“Lay down?” A voice floated from my entryway. “The party is just getting started, Marian!” Frowning, I looked up at Rory and blinked. His face flooded with relief and then confusion. The apartment grew silent as everyone looked towards the doorway. Turning, I gasped. Standing before us were Corbin, Addie, and Carmen Suarez in the flesh.
“What in the-” I began to say, but Carmen quickly moved forward and held up a hand. “Don’t ask,” she said in her beautiful, thick accent.
I leapt off the couch, the blanket falling from my shoulders. “Don’t ask?” I cried, my voice high and angry. “What the hell do you mean, ‘don’t ask?’ I’m going to ask! What in the hell is going on?”
Veronica, who had been speaking quietly to an officer in the corner, gasped when she saw Carmen and nearly dropped her sheet. The officer kindly grabbed it just before it revealed anything good and hiked it back up, giving Veronica an awkward smile.
Addison swept across the room, pulling me into a long, hard hug. When she pulled away, her eyes were glistening. “Hi, Mare,” she said quietly.
“Hey, Addie,” I responded, my brain still processing the scene before me. “What’s going on?” I turned and caught Mika’s eye. “Did you know about this?”
Mika shrugged, bewildered.
“Even I didn’t know about this,” Addie said, leading me back towards the couch. We sat in unison.
Rory quickly leaned across me, took Addison’s face in his hands and began to kiss her. “Where? How? What?” he kept asking in between smooches. I pressed myself back into the couch cushions, hating every minute of being caught in the middle of their reunion. Finally, Rory pulled away. “Sorry, Em,” he said, clearing his throat. “Addison, you were saying?”
“I think it’s better if Carmen explains,” Addison said, turning towards her. Carmen was standing off to the side, her arms crossed, staring lovingly at James. He, too, seemed transfixed by her presence. I wasn’t sure if it was love or just because he couldn’t get over the shock of seeing her alive.
“Carmen,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Snap out of it.”
“What?” she asked, blinking. “Oh, I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I said, you need to explain to Marian and company what happened,” Addison repeated. She shook her head. “I don’t know if I could explain it.”
Carmen sighed and slowly unraveled the colorful scarf that had been wrapped around her neck, revealing a huge white bandage. “Ohmigawd,” I squealed, leaping off the couch towards her. “What? How?”
James also raced across the room. He gently took Carmen’s face in his hands and tilted her head to catch a closer glimpse of her neck. She winced but didn’t protest the examination. “I really did think I was going to die,” she said after James released her. “I was lying there in Addison’s lap. Her hand was pressing into my neck, trying to stop the blood from flowing. I could feel my life draining away. Everything went dark.”
I shuddered. “Who hurt you?”
Carmen looked surprised. “Mario. I thought you knew?”
I shook my head adamantly. “But the footprints in the bedroom. Three sets of women’s shoes. One was yours. One was Addie’s. Who was the third woman?”
“Mario,” Carmen repeated.
“Wait, when did you go into the crime scene?” someone in plain clothes asked. I recognized him as a new homicide detective. He’d been a transfer from somewhere around St. Louis.
Just then, Carly stepped back into the room. Her breath caught when she saw Corbin. They must have missed one another in the hallway. He turned, as if sensing her presence, smiled, and held out an arm, inviting her near. She obliged.
“Uh-” I stammered, trying to come up with a lie to tell the detective.
“I don’t think that that’s important right now,” Mika said, tossing an arm around my shoulder.
“So anyway,” Carmen rushed on, “the third set of footprints was Mario. He wore women’s shoes. I saw them. He came out of nowhere. Must have been hiding in the bathroom or a closet. I felt someone behind me but, before I could turn, he’d grabbed me. I kept feeling these jabs all over my body and then it was as if my throat was on fire.” She stopped to catch her breath, shuddering at the memory. “I was dizzy and remember falling to the ground. I saw Mario walking away in the Jimmy Choo Demi-Wedge sandals.” She clutched a hand over her heart as if paying homage to the shoes he’d worn. “He paused near the bed. Must have heard Addison. He pulled something out of his pocket. They were blue. Like shoe covers you wear in a hospital. Stepped out of the wedges and into the shoe covers. Pulled some gloves out of his pocket. Put those on, turned, and looked at me.” She closed her eyes and quivered. “In that moment, I knew he’d just realized he had doomed me and not Veronica. He started to run. Opened up the window, closed it behind him, and I listened as he crashed down the fire escape.”
“I didn’t hear him at all,” Addison confessed from the couch. “I just remember seeing Carmen, laying on the floor.”
“Your hair rustled,” I said suddenly. “In the video, Addison. Your hair was fluttering around. We thought maybe the window was left open. Mario closed it?”
“You saw the videos, too?” the new homicide detective asked.
“Oh, that was just the air vents,” Carmen said, flipping her hand and ignoring him.
“But she watched you die,” I said to Carmen. I turned to look at Addison, questioningly. “You watched her die right in front of you.”
Carmen shook her head. “As far as she knew, I was dead. I don’t remember anything after that, until I woke up in the hospital.”
“What?” I gasped. “You let her take the fall for your fake death?”
“I didn’t know that anything was going on,” Carmen assured me, her eyes pleading. I hated to believe her, but I did. “Mario missed my aorta by less than a quarter of an inch,” she said, breathless. “I’m told that, when they took me down to the ambulance, my pulse had been so weak, they hadn’t realized I was still alive. No one could feel my heartbeat.”
The air in the room had gone stale. “How did they figure it out?” Carly breathed.
Carmen shrugged. “They said that when they hooked me up to one of their machines, they found a pulse. Weak but there. A bodyguard was with me. He’d sworn everyone in the ambulance to silence. No one was to know that I was alive.” She looked down at the floor. “Not even the police. It was for my own safety. At that time, no one knew Mario was involved, not even my security. It’s not like I’d ever told anyone about him. My people didn’t realize someone was after Veronica, not me. They just knew some crazy person had tried to kill Carmen Suarez!” She took a breath, her eyes wild. “And I was so drugged up that up until a short time ago, I had no idea what was going on outside the hospital.”
“What about Addison?” I cried angrily. “Someone could have jumped her in jail! She could have been shanked! Her reputation is ruined!”
“Marian,” Addison said, standing and wrapping her arms around my neck to hug me close. “Everyone loves a redemption story,” she whispered into my ear. “I’m gonna redeem the shit out of myself. I’ll win every award that exists in journalism.”
“You’re not mad?” I cried, spinning to face her.
“I’m furious,” she admitted. “And I’m going to use that to become the best damn writer that the world has ever seen.” Given the glint in her eye, I knew that what she was saying would come true. “Besides, you can’t really blame Carmen. You heard her yourself, she didn’t even know what was going on.”
“And what about Veronica?” I asked Carmen, waving my hand at the woman who still stood off to one side, clinging to the sheet that covered her ample bosom. “Why didn’t you just tell us where she was? You were the one that helped put her into hiding! If we’d known about her and Mario and the whole mess, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Carmen shrugged noncommittally, bored by my questions. “I had no idea that Mario knew where she was,” she said by way
of explanation.
Mika took me by the shoulders and began leading me away. “Would of. Could of. Should of,” he whispered. “It doesn’t matter. We’re all here. We’re all safe.”
I felt my anger dissipate slightly. He was right. “Still,” I muttered, “if one of us had died, it would have been on her shoulders.”
“And I think she’d regret that more than she lets on,” Mika assured me. We turned to look back at Carmen, who was lost in James’s tight embrace.
A week after “the incident,” as it had become to be known, things were finally returning to normal. The superintendent had been unable to get the rusty bloodstains out of the carpet in my bedroom. After several attempts, he had given up and sent in a crew to remove it. Beneath were beautiful wood floors that matched the rest of the apartment. I’d begged to leave them uncovered and, as this spared him further expense on my behalf, he agreed.
The Carmen Suarez edition of Food Porn was released two days after news reports surfaced that she was, in fact, still alive and well in Milwaukee. Needless to say, it was our highest-circulated issue to date. She’d also announced that she’d be taking a break from filming for a while, as she recovered from her near-death experience. I had a feeling that when she was ready to return to Hollywood, her star would be even brighter, were that possible. The girl knew how to work the public sympathy card. She’d purchased a gorgeous loft in the Third Ward and planned to live in Milwaukee for the time being. This was just as well, because she and James had more or less become inseparable since it was discovered that she was still alive.
Somewhere in there, Carly and Corbin had also started dating. She still lived here, and he in Madison. It was far too soon to tell if one or the other would make the big move, but they seemed rather smitten with one another and that, for now, was enough.
Rory and Addison disappeared into his apartment and didn’t come up for air for four days, except to congratulate me when I called about Food Porn circulation numbers. When they finally did emerge long enough to meet up with Mika and I for dinner one evening, they looked so in love that it made my heart ache. Addison had already begun to write her first novel. It was a tell-all memoir about her time behind bars. Given America’s current obsession with Orange is the New Black, I imagine her book will be quite popular. In fact, several publishing houses have already been courting her.
Veronica, now free to live life again, basically gave the middle finger to Doris, and everyone else who was working for the foundation, before jetting off to Los Angeles. She was recently in touch with Carmen to announce that a television station had approached her about starring in a TV movie about her life. Veronica hoped that it was her own step towards the big spotlight.
Betsy, who had missed the entire Mario adventure because she’d been sent home for the day, was all the more determined to major in something crime-related once she’d heard what she missed out on. However, once Carmen came back into the picture and Betsy realized that she wouldn’t be getting into James’s pants, she dismissed herself as his intern, a decision I think he was quite satisfied with.
Mika and James were once again partners. Mika had been kind enough to come over and install about five additional locks on my door, and three more on each window. He’d also restocked my freezer with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, taken the lime green sheets in a trash bag to the dumpster, and managed to stay quite his sexy self during it all.
And then there’s me. This marked the third time in under a year that my life had been threatened. Near-death experiences have a way of forcing you to really examine your life. For some people, that deep examination may lead to a change. Me? I decided that I no longer wanted to be a struggling freelance photographer for the Milwaukee Police Department. My life had, had plenty of drama, and I had no desire to capture someone else’s any longer.
What I did love was my magazine. The increase in circulation that it had seen was enough to assure me that I could safely make it a low-cost publication, and grow it in ways I’d before only dreamt of. Mika and I had discussed the implications and he’d kindly agreed to support me financially as I struck off on my new venture. We were in our relationship for the long haul.
One evening, not long after Mario’s death, Mika, James, Carmen, Addison, Rory, Carly, Corbin, Janet (who had flown in from Florida), and I gathered around a private table near the back of the tiny Bolivian restaurant that had been featured in Food Porn. Not surprisingly, they were no longer struggling for business.
It was my birthday. Earlier that day, I’d driven back from my parents’ house, along with Mika, Addison and Rory. We’d had a small family gathering up north the last few days. It was the first time I’d seen my family since my niece’s kidnapping and I loved every single moment. Plus, I’d officially introduced Mika as my “boyfriend,” for which my mother was over-the-moon joyful. No doubt she’d soon start calling me with dreams she’d had involving Mika and I getting married and blessing her with multiple grandchildren.
Now I was here, sitting in a restaurant among those who understood this new, ambitious me best of all. Our meals were eaten and cleared. Our drinks were nearly empty. I’d opened all of my gifts — my favorite of which was a beautiful coat, just like Carly’s that I had envied not so long ago, though it was a soft gray, rather than her plum purple.
I took in each of their faces in turn, a smile dancing across my face. I was so lucky. Taking Mika’s hand, I leaned close to his ear. “I love you, Mika.”
His smile spread wide and he kissed me full on the lips. Suddenly, the lights above us flickered off and a chorus of “Happy Birthday” began. Out of the kitchen stepped the family who owned the restaurant, carrying a small plate of flan, with a large pink and white candle placed daintily in the middle.
Everyone finished singing just as the order of flan was set down in front of me. Mika leaned close to whisper into my ear. “Make a wish.”
Smiling at him, I closed my eyes, conjured my wish, and blew out the candle.
Allison Janda is a writer with New York Times bestseller dreams. She currently resides in Nebraska with her two dogs, one of which acts more like a cat.
Visit her today (or tomorrow, if you’re in a hurry right now) at:
AllisonJanda.com
@AllisonJanda
Facebook.com/AllisonJJanda
Alllison Janda - Marian Moyer 03 - Scandal, Temptation & a Taste of Flan Page 19
