by June Shaw
I bit my tongue, hoping she wasn’t a killer that I’d have to tell on. I would tell if I determined she’d murdered him.
They returned home, and I made phone calls. I checked on a couple of my offices and family members. Nobody seemed to need me right now. Hiring good managers had made my life much easier and my life was usually peaceful. But I missed having Betty Allen run my San Francisco office. She was a major part of my business family. I was going to reinstate her, no matter what.
I realized I’d been so tied up with deaths, I hadn’t even called Frank Karney, the CEO of Sterling Bryst.
I got him on the line and apologized.
He was laughing. “Don’t worry about it. Everything turned out fine.”
“It did?”
“People started e-mailing us, saying our ad was so funny. They thought it was cute that we’d come up with the idea of saying our sunscreen protected people from fun. All except a handful of people who wrote seemed to think we’d done a clever job.”
A whoosh of relief left my throat. “I am so glad customers liked it.”
“Yes. But we might change the ad next time.”
“Whatever makes you happy, Mr. Karney. That’s what my company’s here for.”
We exchanged a few more pleasantries and hung up.
I called my San Francisco office and got Liz, who was taking Betty’s place as manager. “Everything’s fine here,” she said.
“Liz, you’re a terrific employee, and I really appreciate the job you’re doing there. But I feel the need to have Betty running that office.”
“Great. I mean that would be fine, whatever you want. Being manager is a lot tougher than I imagined.”
We agreed that she’d resume her previous position. I also gave her a raise since she’d been so willing to take the managerial position.
I got Betty Allen on her cell phone. “Betty, I need help at the office out there. Would you mind going back and taking over?”
She gasped. Didn’t answer me.
“Betty,” I said, “everything worked out fine with Sterling Bryst.”
She sobbed, “Cealie, I’d love to get back to work for you.”
“Wonderful. And I’ll come out and visit y’all one day.”
I hung up, happy. Made another call. I stood in the den, laughing with Bud Denton, manager of my Cape Cod office, and didn’t notice the sound of the garage door opening and a car pulling in. Stevie stomped inside with a stuffed school bag. We locked gazes. Her empty hand clenched in a fist.
I got off the phone. “You’re back early.”
“It’s the last week of school. We have half days. We can take papers home to grade.” Her words stayed level, along with her hardened stare.
“That’s a good thing.”
“You aren’t supposed to be here anymore.”
I breathed. Thought of what came to mind while I was gazing at the mountains. “Our children are but God’s precious toys. He loans them to us for a while.”
Stevie’s face softened. “What did you say?”
“You know those words. Your mother wrote them long ago. They’re beautiful and so true.”
“You remember them.”
“Yes. And April’s situation may be that way. She and Cherish are in your life for a while. Who knows how long?”
Looking like she might stumble, Stevie sat. I sat beside her on the sofa. She put down her bag. Gazed at me. “And if I lend you my child, will you love her forever? Keep her safe and always free from pain?”
Tears popped to my eyes. I nodded. My mother, her mom’s sister, had written that.
We traded quotes we recalled from each other’s mothers and our own. Some short poems, some longer verses. Each lovely. Each one calling more of our tears to come forth.
Stevie sighed. I clasped her hand. “I couldn’t leave you alone. I’m afraid for you.” I squeezed her hand. “I hope April’s okay and nothing will change for you and her, but I don’t know. We need to know the truth.”
She appeared to stop breathing. After a long moment, she nodded.
“So I’ll stay,” I said, “and we’ll figure things out. And at least I’ll feel like you’re a little safer with your cousin around, taking care of you.”
We both grinned. To lighten her mind even more, I leaned forward. “Go ahead, for old time’s sake, give my hair a tug.”
She considered a moment and then lightly tugged. Stevie bent her head toward me. “Now you do mine. Come on, get even.”
I pulled a pinch of her hair. The temptation came to grab two big handfuls and pull like crazy. That childish mood only lasted a second, then washed away. “I’m done. Thanks.”
Stevie smiled. She lifted her sack of papers. “Want to help me with these?”
We spent much of the afternoon working on averages for her first-grade students, most of them S for Satisfactory. We recorded notes in her roll book. We laughed often, especially when she spoke of her students, mentioning special things about each one. We shared glances with each other. She might have been thinking the same thing I was—that this was one of the best times we’d ever spent together.
We ate snacks, wonderful homemade brownies with pecans and fudge topping, and tall glasses of milk. I put soapy water in the sink. “Don’t you ever leave a few things in here?” I asked, laughing. My phone rang. I answered it.
“You sound happy. That’s good,” Gil said. “Are you coming back with me tonight?”
“I think I need to be here with my cousin.”
“I’ll miss you.” He quieted. And he said, “Cealie, I love you.”
My throat jammed. “I, uh, miss you, too.”
We hung up. I stared out the kitchen window. Why couldn’t I tell Gil I loved him? Did I?
I tightened my emotions, trying to stop feeling. I did not want to love a man now, did not want to be so in love with him that I felt I needed him to exist. I’d been in that situation too long.
Later in the afternoon, I suggested to Stevie that we go someplace different for dinner.
She took me to a Japanese restaurant. The chefs chopped and sizzled our meal in front of us, steaming greens and noodles on a huge grill. Our chef put on a show, flipping a raw egg off his spatula and into his hat. We chuckled and ate and met nice people sitting around our grill.
Back at Stevie’s, we went to bed early since we’d promised each other tonight was the night.
She woke me at two a.m.
I moaned and groaned, and we laughed together, changing into loose clothes we could wear to work out. She drove through the dark to a gym.
“I cannot believe anyone actually does this,” I said as we walked into the place. It was small and well lit. Lots of equipment. A sterile smell. None of sweat. “But nobody’s here. Maybe we should leave.”
A hulk of a balding man stepped out from a rear room. He looked at us. Swerved his head away. He went to work on a machine, adding weights to it, and then sitting, pulling the ropes down and letting them up again. I recognized the jogging suit.
“Stevie,” I whispered to her in a far corner, “that’s the guy who walks by your house all the time.” She glanced at me with no change in expression. “And he has a dog,” I said.
She said nothing. I couldn’t stay in a place with a large man who might jump us, pretending he wasn’t there with us. Stevie stepped up on a treadmill, obviously not ready to leave. I went to the man with the bulldog neck and looked him full in the face. “Hello. I’m Cealie Gunther, and that’s my cousin, Stevie Midnight.”
He nodded, and I swear, it seemed he blushed. “Mac,” he said, yanking the weights down harder. They struck the machine and clinked.
I stepped onto a treadmill beside Stevie. We both started a slow walk. In fact, we only sped up our pace for a couple of minutes and then laughed. “No use breaking into a sweat this first time out, right?” I said, and she agreed. We pulled and pushed on a few other machines. Mac stayed on the same one. We didn’t get close to him.
�
��That was fun, but it was time to call it a night,” I told Stevie later, when she used her remote to open her garage door and then drove inside.
“Right, and you promised you’ll come back there with me.”
“Only until you get in the habit again, and I can leave town.” My shoulders ached a little. I noticed my legs. No aches in my shins lately. Did that mean they were healing? Or the killer had been caught?
Grateful for either, I shoved into the kitchen door right behind Stevie.
I bumped against her. “Oh, no,” she said, sinking backward.
I looked inside.
The back door’s window was shattered.
Chapter 33
The police came and checked Stevie’s house. Nobody was inside. Someone had gotten in the back door and escaped.
“The perpetrator didn’t get anything that you’ve noticed?” Detective Renwick asked Stevie after she and I went through the house with him and a deputy.
I slumped against the kitchen sink. “He got Minnie.”
Renwick came and looked at me, holding the broken Minnie as I’d found her. “Sorry about your plant,” he said. “Maybe the perp got in here and then got scared. Could’ve been a dog barking or some other noise.” He faced Stevie. “Let us know if anything happens or you get frightened. Are you sure you’re okay with your door like that for now?”
Some men had boarded up the part of the door where the glass had been. The screen door outside it was ripped open. Whoever came here had used a hammer or some other strong object to break the window. The police took prints but figured the guilty party wore gloves or held a thick rag or both. Dawn brightened the sky by the time they left.
I held Minnie’s broken parts. Soil from her dumped pot trailed across the countertop to the sink. Someone’s hand probably bumped against her pot. Possibly accidental. Maybe turning in the dark made that person’s hand slide over the countertop. No malice intended toward Minnie, my plant. My plant I’d chosen to come with me during my recent travels. She was a cactus, an adorable two-inch cactus with a pink grafted head of poufs like old sponge rollers on a green stem shaved of thorns.
I heard the front door close. Stevie’s footsteps returned. I felt her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
I shook my head. “It’s okay. She was just a plant.” She’d been the living presence accompanying me instead of an animal that might have been more difficult during my travels. “Just a plant,” I said, shaking more soapy water off her. She’d been knocked into this water—the water I had left in the sink—and was broken into bits. Her head knocked off. Tiny pink poufs came apart.
My arms shook and my eyes burned as I held my cactus, the one I’d spoken to and learned how to keep alive. Until now.
“I want to bury her here,” I told Stevie. “And I’m going to get whoever did this.”
We went into the backyard. Stevie carried a shovel. I carried Minnie. I chose a sunny spot in the corner near the fence on April’s side.
“Do you want to say anything?” Stevie asked once I had Minnie buried.
I stared at the loose dirt. Shook my head. Told Minnie, “You were important.”
Stevie called in sick at school. We went to town, and I bought a white trellis. We found a few bright flowers to plant near Minnie’s place of rest. Back at Stevie’s, we positioned the trellis and plants, creating a memorial.
“You can come and visit anytime you’d like,” Stevie said.
I squeezed her hand. “I respect you even more for not laughing at me.”
“I haven’t heard you laughing when I go in with my candles.”
“Do you really believe in all that stuff?”
She sighed with a shrug. “I need something or someone to believe in.”
I cut my eyes toward April’s house. “You’ve been afraid to lose them. You knew everything wasn’t as it seemed next door with the way they’ve lived.”
Fear filled her eyes. “Don’t hurt them.”
“I don’t want to. Darn it, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want everybody to be just great! But they’re not.”
We stared at each other. Parted inside the house and did our separate things. She fiddled with papers. I studied my list, jotting notes next to most names of her quitters’ group, pushing my mind to come up with more. Massaged my shins that didn’t even hurt.
The newspaper arrived. Fawn’s funeral was tomorrow. She had a husband, two children, one brother, three sisters. I cried for her and them and Minnie and myself and Pierce Trottier, who might have had faults but didn’t deserve to have anyone take his life.
“Time for lunch.” Stevie held her purse.
I sat in my bedroom. “I’m not hungry. I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“We haven’t eaten a thing today. I understand. I’m not real hungry, either, but good food will help us think.”
When she said good food, I knew she’d head for Gil’s restaurant.
She did, and we joined the dozen or so people inside. It was only 11:15. No Gil visible. If he was inside Cajun Delights, I hoped he wouldn’t come out while we were here. Sure, I’d want to share my loss with him, to tell him about Minnie and someone breaking into the house. But he had that other agenda, possibly a heavier one to deal with.
Love.
I didn’t want to have to consider my feelings toward him right now. Hatred for whoever was hurting people around us and my plant swelled inside my chest, leaving little room for other emotions. We ordered red beans and rice and smoked sausage and corn bread and iced tea.
The musicians set up on stage. Their presence reminded me of something else I’d said I would take care of. I glanced around.
“Have you seen Babs?” I asked Stevie. “You know, the pretty manager who’s here in daytime.”
“The one who’s scared to drive at night? No.”
I spied Babs going toward the restaurant’s rear. I wasn’t in a mood for trying to get a couple together, but I’d promised Gil I would help him here. I hadn’t said how, since he believed people were attracted on their own to find love.
I believed they sometimes needed help. Maybe a nudge would get Babs to really consider Jake a man to date—a man who seemed to like her, but was too shy to ask her out.
I was way past shy. Gil needed more help at this restaurant to get it back on its feet. Getting his managers together so they would no longer argue seemed the best way for me to help.
“I’ll only be a minute,” I told Stevie. I followed Babs, thinking she’d go into the ladies’ room or the lounge. She did go through the empty employees’ lounge and continued out the back door.
I smelled cigarette smoke before I opened that door and saw her right inside the fence, lighting up. She dropped her lighter back into her purse.
“You smoke?” I said, surprised. “You don’t seem like the type.”
“What type of people smoke?” Her voice sounded huskier than I’d noticed before, possibly because tars and nicotine now coated her throat.
“I don’t know. People who drink a lot of coffee often smoke. And I don’t really know. I’m just surprised at you.” I hesitated to speak of dating someone, not certain I was getting off to a good start. But Gil needed help. “Did you think about what I mentioned to you the other day—that Jake seems like a good man?”
I watched her eyes—wide and pale green usually, but now hard and narrowed.
A jolting chill shook me. I feared those eyes had stared at me before.
She held her cigarette high, red lipstick surrounding the filter like a kiss.
My gaze swerved to the ground beside the fence. A few cigarette butts. Two with plum lipstick. My legs numbed. I’d seen her wearing that lipstick before, I now realized. The first time I’d seen her, that lipstick matched her suit.
“You were with Pierce Trottier before he died, weren’t you?” I said, staring at the butts like the one I had found. “And you came outside their stop-smoking session to find out how people would react to his d
eath.”
“He was a vicious man.” She pointed at me with her long cigarette.
“What you did to him wasn’t nice, either.” I shifted my purse on my shoulder. Not heavy enough to hurt her. My phone was inside it.
“I don’t have to be kind to the people I hate.”
Another fear emerged. “Fawn McKenzie? Did you kill her?”
Babs leaned toward me. “She was supposed to be him.”
Him numbed my brain.
“Yes, you know who. Your precious man who threatened to fire me if I didn’t straighten up and quit arguing in front of customers.”
My jaw went slack.
She meant Gil. She’d tried to kill Gil.
I was moving toward her. She drew a pistol out of her purse. Aimed it at my chest.
I kept still. “Were you watching me from across the street of my cousin’s house the other night?” I asked, remembering a smoke tendril out there. “You watched when I went on the porch.”
“I was deciding. Watching you out there and deciding what I would do. It’s a good thing I live only a couple of blocks away and didn’t have to drive too far at night.”
“So you saw my car out front one day.”
“I saw you.”
A new chill ran down my arms. “Why would you want to hurt me?”
“I know you’re most important to him. I’d hurt him any way I could.” She aimed the gun higher, its barrel pointed at my nose. “And I tried last night. I finally made the decision to break in. But you were gone from the house.”
So she’d broken in. Moved through the house in the dark. Smashed Minnie along the way. My Minnie.
“There’s a gate back here,” Babs said. “I want you to go through it. I’ll have this gun aimed at your back. I guarantee I’ll use it.”
I turned toward the rear gate. “What’s back there?”
“A garbage vat. You’ll climb inside it.”
Depravity had guided this woman, making her kill two people that I knew of. And now she believed I’d want to take my chances inside a dumpster, and possibly she’d miss me with her gun? I faced the gate, slipping my hand inside my purse. I opened my cell phone, ready to press the memory button for Gil. I glimpsed inside my purse. Not one pinch of light. Dammit, was my battery dead? Or maybe it worked, and Gil was about to answer his phone. I’d speak so he’d know where I was and my problem.
