The Inheritance 4

by Zelda Reed

  “Why?” Alanis asks, setting her gun in the middle of Louis and Chris.

  “Because I know who killed Julian,” Louis says. His eyes are trained on my profile, drinking in my wide eyes.

  Ashleigh moves across the room, shrinking into herself the closer she gets to Alanis. “Julian was murdered,” she says to me, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

  I can’t look surprised, the pit boiling in my stomach won’t allow me to. I turn towards Louis. “Who killed my father?” I say.

  Louis glances towards Chris.

  He pulls his hands from his pockets and motions towards Alanis. “He isn’t saying anything until you put that gun away.”

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” she says.

  “How about if she puts the gun down?” I say.

  “With the safety on,” Louis says.

  Alanis tosses me a look over her shoulder. I nod and she lowers her arm. The sound of the safety clicks loudly in the open room.

  Louis stands, growing to his full, staggering height. “Everyone else was standing so.” He shrugs and pulls a lone cigarette from his pocket.

  “Who killed Julian?” Ashleigh says.

  Louis sticks the cigarette in his mouth. It hangs unlit from the center of his lips. “Anyone got a light?”

  “Oh my god,” Alanis says, running a hand through her hair. “Just tell us who fucking killed him.”

  With the cigarette pinched between two fingers, he says, “It was Neal, of course.”

  A gasp ripples through the room. It starts in Ashleigh’s throat and floats through the air, catching on the tip of my tongue.

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, though there’s a tremble in my voice. Neal wouldn’t do something like that -- Would he?

  “That’s because it’s bullshit,” Alanis says. She lifts her gun and points it towards Chris. “Now let’s talk about why we’re really here.”

  “No,” Ashleigh says, barely above a whisper. A trail of tears drip from her eyes as she balls two fists at her sides. “I want to talk about this!”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Alanis says.

  “Shut-up!” Ashleigh screams. “I don’t even know who you fucking are. I just found out my boyfriend was murdered by…by…”

  “Ashleigh,” I say, stepping towards her. “It’s not true.”

  “How the fuck would you know?” she spits. “You’ve only known him for what? A few days? You think having his dick inside you makes you an expert on the type of man he is?”

  This shuts me up. Ashleigh is telling the truth. As much as I love Neal, as much as I want to understand him, our knowledge of each other is limited. Our relationship runs on instinct instead of time and facts. We’re three steps away from love-at-first-sight.

  Alanis has known him for years. “Chris is lying,” she says.

  Chris stuffs his hands back in his pockets. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “What motive would Neal have to kill my father?” I ask.

  “Total control of his business,” Ashleigh says. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  Once again I’m rendered speechless by the furious blonde standing beside Chris.

  “If he killed him,” Alanis says. “Then how’d he do it?”

  “With a few of these,” Louis says. He pulls out a small pill with a clear casing and pale white dots inside. “Mercury pills. After I assigned Julian some medication to help with his cancer, Neal replaced a bottle with these.”

  Detective McManus’s voice lights up in my head. Any doctor worth his salt would’ve recognized the mercury.

  “And you never caught that he might have mercury poisoning?” I say.

  “I was well aware but…” He glances over at Ashleigh, a red rim surrounding her eyes. “Neal paid me very well.”

  “You bastard!” Ashleigh shouts. She shoots across the room, small hands reaching for Louis’s neck. She grabs front of his shirt. Her fingers twist in the fabric as Chris wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her away. She claws at the air around Louis’s face and kicks him twice in the ankle.

  “Hey, that actually hurts,” he says.

  Ashleigh wants to tear off his skin, to bury strips of it beneath her fingernails as he bleeds, but Chris won’t let her.

  “I’m not proud of it,” he says.

  Ashleigh fights against Chris’s hold, attempting to worm out of his hands but he’s strong enough to withstand her. Like a child he lets her squirm and kick and scream until her movements slow and she’s worn herself out.

  “I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth,” Alanis says to Louis.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” he says. “It’s the truth.”

  Ashleigh’s sobs fill the room as Alanis places the gun back into her holster.

  “We need to talk,” she says to Chris.

  He pats Ashleigh’s hair. “I’m a little busy right now.”

  Alanis rolls her eyes. “You’ve got twenty minutes to sort her out.”

  ______

  We wait for Chris on the balcony.

  Alanis leans back against the railing as the summer wind whips through her hair. Her mouth is pinched as she stares at Chris and Ashleigh on the other side of the glass door.

  He has one hand in her hair while the other wipes away her tears, the pad of his thumb gently skirting across her cheek. A few days ago she wouldn’t let him touch her and now she’s leaning into his hand like a cat itching to be pet.

  I’ve been put out of my own house. My teeth clamp down on the inside of my cheek to keep myself from storming inside and pushing them all out. This is my fucking space and you won’t relegate me to the goddamn balcony.

  I need the air. The condo’s suffocating with the smell of Louis and Chris, their cologne mixing to form a toxic cloud. I can’t stand the sweet scent of Ashleigh’s perfume, which appears in pink mists, like bubble gum. Sugary, innocent, playful. The opposite of what’s become of my stay in Chicago.

  I’m weighed down by false truths crafted by master liars; men who can spin a wild story without blinking. Men like my father who play tricks with their words. How many lies do you think will fit in her mouth?

  Louis opens the balcony door, his cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Chris is ready to see you.”

  A sliver of rage crawls up my throat and settles in the back of my mouth. I want to be as collected as Alanis, who moves into the living room with a calculated ease, but I become undone at the sight of Chris popping open my father’s whiskey and pouring three glasses as if we’re his guests and he’s our host.

  Ashleigh’s nowhere to be found.

  I snatch the bottle away from him. His dull nails slide across my palm and a splash of brown drops to the floor. I ignore it in favor of staring him down. Chris inspects his hands and licks a drop of liquid from his skin.

  “What seems to be the problem now?” he says, plucking the only full glass from my father’s small bar.

  “You don’t live here,” I say, smacking the glass out of his hand.

  The rocks glass falls to the floor. Alanis’s eyes widen as the whiskey and ice spill out, the glass rolling towards the balcony.

  With an open hand, Chris looks at me. The corners of his mouth twitch with rage but he composes himself. “It must be upsetting to find out this way,” he says.

  “This isn’t about my father. Why the hell were you meeting with Lee?”

  “I could ask you two the same thing.”

  “We were helping Neal,” Alanis says from her spot near the couch.

  “So was I.”

  A tight smile spreads across Alanis’s mouth. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  Chris chuckles. “You’ve always hated me, Alanis, and I’ve never known why.”

  “Because you’re a snake,” she says. “You’re always up to something and this time is no different.”

  The balcony door slides open and Louis steps inside. With him, he brings the cloudy scent of cigarette smoke,
clinging to his skin and clothes.

  “My intentions are nothing but honest,” Chris says. “I wanted to give Ashleigh some closure. She knew there was something off about Julian’s death and I wanted her to know she was right.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say. If Ashleigh truly thought something was wrong with my father’s death, she would’ve come to me…Right?

  Chris shrugs. “As I’ve said before, whether or not the two of you believe me is not a top priority of mine.”

  “But if you want proof,” Louis says. “Everything you need to know is at Neal’s house.” He looks at me. “Before your father died I sent Neal a bottle of mercury pills. He didn’t get to use them all.”

  Alanis spits out a noise of disbelief.

  “You’re blind because you love him,” Chris says. He isn’t talking to me. His gaze locks on Alanis.

  She raises a perfect eyebrow. “I know Neal,” she says. “And he’s never been as power hungry as you.”

  “You’ll find out sooner or later,” Chris says. “But I would be careful if I were you, Caitlin. If Neal had no problem killing your father, who he knew and loved for years, what makes you think he won’t off you too?”

  Four

  Ashleigh’s barred herself in my father’s bedroom. I call her name and am met with sobs in response. Alanis tries the knob. She’s locked herself in.

  “I can kick it down,” she says. I don’t want her to do that. I’m not going to drag Ashleigh out by her hair, I just want her to talk to me.

  “I can’t stay here,” I say as the pair of us stand in the foyer, Alanis’s back against the wall.

  “You can’t,” she says. “But you can’t go back to Gina’s either. Chris or Louis might follow you. Is there anyone else you can trust?”

  “No.”

  “Do you trust me?” she says.

  Our eyes meet across the small space. We have only Neal in common but she wants to protect him as much as I do.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll have to come along with me.”

  “Alright,” I say. “Where are we going?”

  ______

  The sun’s setting by the time Alanis parks down the road from Neal’s house. A single police car’s stationed across the road. Two cops are supposed to be on watch but one’s grabbing coffee from the café on the corner, while the other nods off behind the wheel.

  Despite this window of opportunity Alanis leads me around back. We stroll through the alley and hop the tall fence (Alanis goes first and helps me over).

  A few wooden lawn chairs and a covered grill hang beneath a string of lights in Neal’s backyard. The grass is spotless, not a speck of brown in sight, footsteps regulated to the stone path leading to the porch steps.

  We crouch at the back door. Alanis points her phone towards the back window. There’s a faint beep on the other side of the door.

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  Alanis smiles, “Disabled the alarm.”

  I crawl first through the back window.

  “Watch for glass,” Alanis says.

  I land on my palms, fingers spread across the wood, barely missing the debris. Shattered plates and broken glass decorates the floor, alongside containers of food ripped open and dumped in red, brown and yellow piles. A cigarette’s been tossed into the sink, resting at the bottom of a wine glass stained with my lipstick. Ruby Red. The trashcan near the door’s been tipped over, rotten food and stale wine spilling out. A flurry of gnats congregate around the mess, snacking on aged chicken soaked in beer and rotten salmon coated in spoiled cream cheese.

  Alanis lands on her feet. I throw my arm over my nose, clinging to my last breath of fresh air.

  “I’ll check down here,” she says. “You take the second floor.”

  I don’t have to ask what we’re looking for. The same level of shame runs beneath our skin.

  We want nothing more than to blindly believe in our hearts but we’re both too practical for that. We’re logical women. Women whose hearts are easily deafened by uncertainty and we’re both uncertain of Neal’s role in this game of who done it?

  The second floor is only better than the kitchen in terms of smell. The glass desk at the top of the stairs has been shattered – the lamp and computer fallen to the ground below. The guest room’s overturned – the sheets ripped from the flipped mattress, the drawers pulled out and thrown every which way, the mirror’s cracked, the decorative plants de-potted and destroyed.

  Neal’s man cave, complete with pool table, suffers the same fate, though in this room they’ve stolen the television.

  I almost laugh. How much is Lee paying them that they can’t afford a television of their own?

  I pick through the mess for a good ten minutes and find nothing beyond a stack of playing cards and bottle caps.

  Alanis is still downstairs when I head to the third floor.

  Neal’s bathroom is unsurprisingly trashed but in a way you expect from a group of teenage boys. Toilet paper clogs the toilet, bottles of cologne are smashed on the floor, his towels are thrown in the shower and a pile of hardened shit rests in the corner. On the mirror, written in sticky purple lipstick, are the messily scrawled words – Your head means you’re dead.

  I poke around the room, not for what I’m supposed to be looking for, but for the tube of lipstick used on the mirror. It never occurred to me until now that one of the men who broke into Neal’s house might be a woman. I certainly didn’t leave a tube of lipstick behind. I pick through the towels in the shower, sift through the tossed trash with my foot. The cabinets beneath the sink have been thrown open. I look there too, wading through the bottles of cleaner and boxes of condoms.

  I don’t find any lipstick but my finger catches on the corner of the photo of Neal and Alanis. The photo’s been torn to shreds and tossed beneath the sink. Near my knee I can make out the top of Neal’s head, poking beneath a rustle of palm trees.

  “Did you find anything?” Alanis calls from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Nothing,” I shout back.

  Her feet storm up the stairs and I gather as much of the picture as I can fine. I stuff the remnants in the back.

  “Shit.” She pokes her head in the room. “They’ve done a number on this place. You check the bedroom yet?”

  “I was just about to.”

  Alanis takes the closet and I handle the rest, starting with the drawers on the opposite side of the bed. Neal owns a mountain of clothes, all neatly folded and coordinated from dark to light, even his underwear. He’s been wearing the same three outfits for a few days now. I should bring him something new.

  My hand catches on something in the fourth drawer down.

  A lump forms in my throat as I turn my wrist and spot the pills, filled with white, stuffed in a translucent orange bottle with my father’s name typed on the label. The evidence has manifested in the palm of my hand but I can’t bring myself to believe it.

  The nagging voice in the back of my mind says, you don’t know anything about Neal. I refuse to swallow that truth, even if there is a motive and more proof than I can handle.

  I’m stuffing the pills back into the drawer when the front door opens. I freeze, crouched in front of the drawer, as two officer’s grunt at the bottom of the steps.

  “Did you forget to set the alarm again?” one of them says.

  “I don’t think I did,” says the other.

  Alanis pokes her out of the closet and motions for me to join her. Quickly, I rush across the floor and stuff myself beside her.

  “Do you think they saw us?” I whisper.

  Alanis shoots me a glare. She mouths, shut the hell up.

  My heart swells in my chest as the police move about the first floor. They head up the stairs and wander directly below us with a quickness that says they’re doing routine patrol, making sure nothing’s gone wrong.

  They head to the third floor and a sharp panic builds inside of me. There’s nowhere to hide. There’s too
many shoes positioned neatly beneath the suits for us to slide between the rack of clothes.

  I think of those old cartoons, where a character freezes with their head on a stool, pretending to be an ancient Greek bust. If only cops in real life were as stupid, Alanis and I would be saved.

  They enter Neal’s bedroom, a flashlight shining up and down the far wall.

  “You think they’re ever gonna catch the guy who did this?” one of the officer says. The other one doesn’t answer. “Did you hear what I said?”

  Alanis turns towards me.

  “Did you open this drawer?” the second officer says.

  My throat drops into my stomach. Shit.

  Over the fabric of her dress Alanis grabs her gun and my fingers wrap around her hand. The last thing I need is the guilt of a dead cop on my conscious. Alanis rolls her eyes and snatches her hand away from mine, balling her fists as the cops come closer.

  It happens in snatches.

  One officer shines his flashlight in the closet, the yellow bulb scanning the space between our heads. Alanis rushes out, her shoulder pressing into his chest.

  The second officer yells, “Hey!”

  I’m run out next. My eyes are wide as my hands press against his chest and I attempt to push him. The second cop’s larger than the first. He stumbles back but recovers quickly, both hands wrapping around my wrists as he forces my arms behind my back. It’s a painful yank of the limbs.

  A scream slides from my stomach but the cop doesn’t let up. I kick my legs into the air, wiggle from left to right, but his fingers tighten around me. He wrestles with a pair of handcuffs.

  Alanis has the first cop on his back. Face to the ceiling he says, “She’s got a gun.”

  The first cop throws me to the floor and Alanis glances his way. She heads towards Neal’s bedroom window. She kicks her foot back and hits the first cop in the crotch. He topples over and she lifts the window, stepping onto the ledge.

  “Come on,” she screams.

  “I can’t,” I say. I’m useless with my hands cuffed around my back.

  For a moment she stares at me, an internal debate waging behind her eyes.