A Gift for Murder

by Capri Montgomery

  Megan remembered the horrid moments of her past. When she was allowed to go grocery shopping alone for items she needed in order to bake something she was creating a delicious recipe for she could walk into a store with creative food on her mind and end up leaving the store masking the tears trying to break the dam and flood out of her eyes.

  She remembered how they looked at her. How they stared as if she was nothing and they were everything. They were dressed in store blue and gold with a yellow smock to those hovering around the automated register section. She could feel the evils of their eyes watching her, waiting to find yet another thing to tease her about. She didn’t look back. Her body was hurting, one too many pushups teamed with ten too many squats, and yet she could still feel the weight of their judgment weighing down on her. It was too much for a child to experience, but she survived it all. She wasn’t surprised that her parents let her go to the store alone. Her father was always working and her mother was at home trying to keep it precisely perfect to keep her father home. Maybe Megan should have known then the trouble coming to their home one day, but she didn’t. Forrest Springs was relatively safe back then. The neighbors knew each other, or about each other, and children outside alone wasn’t always rare after a certain age.

  Megan wondered once again why she came back here and anchored her feet here when she got out the first time. Megan mentally laughed at herself realizing her desire to make it better, to not give up, kind of stood in the same line of the pre dug hole of the if at first you don’t succeed try, try again as Portia did with marriage after marriage. Portia probably shed her tears, wiped the wet and salty water off her cheek and figured the next time might work better than the last time.

  “The Greek’s never gave up. Since they think so lowly of you, rise above all of their pain hurling boulders and keep soaring out the hell judgmental people try to bury you in and never look down.” She pushed her shoulders back and walked onward with her head held high. She had a friend who needed a favor. She had to think of the good in her life and not let the bad drown her in despair.

  Portia was next state over and she was smitten with a Coast Guard man so she wasn’t looking to lose him. She had failed to tell her everything other than tall, blond and muscular with onyx and gray eyes. Portia had a way of romancing the love until the romance turned into a wad of coal. But when the romance was high on life she could out chirp like the happy humming bird floating effortlessly at the wildflower rustling in the light spring wind.

  Walking to any place, and, back to home was hard because of an accident abroad where the car got totaled and she was lucky to make it out alive. The driver of the car she was in was not so lucky but she tried not to think about the bad part. She got full medical, and they paid the medical plus a huge chunk of benefits, which is actually how she was really able to pay for years abroad, and the café and the flat here. She could drag her right leg a little, so long as she made it home okay. She would break glass for her tricycle though. She laughed out loud. “The cops at the precinct holding your mode of transportation would probably cuff you to the cage they’ll lock you in for destruction of city government property than let you ride off into the sunrise.” She shook her head with a smile on her face reminding herself to remember the good things. She had a café to open, a bed to sleep in under a roof over her head, walls that kept her safe and a new lease on life. Things could be good. Things will be good. She corrected herself.

  She would be okay. She could take her tricycle to places here and there, and if she craved going walk about she could walk to and fro in a space falling was less likely to break her. She was okay, and the spa, the murder and the crazy that followed would not hold her down.

  “Maybe you should send her your mom’s easily delicious recipe for ice cream just in case.” She said to herself as she padded along making a mental list in her mind.

  Sweet and Deliciously Easy Ice Cream. “This one is so easy it would be the least stressful for her to make, but I’ll have to write this one down for her too. Simple ingredients include 2 brown eggs that need to be mixed at high speed until eggs are foamy. That’s easy enough so long as she didn’t crack the shell in the bowl and forget to get it out.

  Next step 1 cup sugar that need to be added to the bowl with the eggs while mixing. Be sure to lower the speed while adding the sugar. Megan knew she would have to be sure that fact went in to the process.

  One more needed ingredient would be 1 tablespoon pure vanilla flavor or lemon if you wish. Any flavor is fine but whichever chosen needs to be added to the bowl with the ingredients just mixed. Add 2 cups heavy whipping cream and 2 cups fat free milk. Continue to blend. Make sure it’s all combined fully before adding to the ice cream mixer.

  Sounds basic enough to me. I will be sure to put all of this in an email to Portia. Ice cream to convince a soon-to-be husband you know what you are doing.”

  Megan smiled to herself. She loved making that recipe. Her mother had taught her many, many moons ago. Best part was that she didn’t have to cook it before blending it. She avoided those recipes as often as she could. Portia could impress her fiancé just fine with this one without going crazy while mixing.

  Megan was just at the front door to the door she needed to go through to get up the stairs to her flat. So close, yet so far. Seconds away from getting her bag out the way to get her key, she felt a buff linebacker knock her down.

  Megan screamed but he didn’t care. He jabbed his hand into her messy hair, tied up in a bun without the bobby pins holding it there, yanked out the scrunchie holding the black with hints of silver mess up and yanked her head back. His lips came breath’s distance from her ear and the whisky smell of his breath made her sick as it wafted through her nose.

  “Stay away.” His guttural voice raked through her ear with a mix of tenor and vicious animal. “People die. You can die. Stay.” He punctuated the word tartly. “Away.” He once again had the rage of an alligator waking up hungry spitting out of his mouth. “Stay away or die.” His warning was not an option to him. His words were not a threat really; they were a promise.

  She wanted to ask what exactly she was supposed to stay away from but she was too petrified to form the words. The man had to be at least three times larger than her petite size and his body with his legs straddled her completely now she couldn’t find a way to get out of his human chain. At least his knee was no longer in her back, but after what he had just promised why hadn’t he just let her go already?

  Tears were flowing down her cheeks now. He had promised her death but he hadn’t said he would kill her right this second. He said if she didn’t stay away, from something she didn’t know to stay away from, but not now. He had to release her, yet he hadn’t. Feeling the heat of his body pressed against her and the air he was still blowing against her neck and ear she knew nothing good would come of this. He wasn’t just going to let her go without causing more harm than he already had.

  “Please let me go? Let me go! I don’t know what you’re talking about staying away from. I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but please let me go.” She would refrain from telling him a gentleman would never do this to a lady because there wasn’t a bone of gentleman in his body, an honest nerve trigger in his mind or god, not even the God, in his heart. Then again maybe there was a god. Maybe he had the god of evil be done to innocent in him. She had traveled the globe, been is perilous situations, but never once had she felt this much animal fear before. Never. He was either going to kill her or leave her behind wishing he had. He wasn’t leaving. When his tongue swiped over her ear and a wicked slurp on her neck she knew things were going to get worse. There wasn’t anybody out this time of night and the area was not so violent that cops were roving around in two second rounds. He was going to kill her; or worse. Much worse. When she felt his hand slide down to her waist and squeeze hard she let out an ear piercing holler and cried with frustration. Why? Why hadn’t she seen this guy lurking before he came up behind her? And why coul
dn’t she have been blessed with enough strength to be the winner in the first scuffle? She wasn’t a fighter and she knew that. She never had to be a fighter. If she had to be dubbed Greek why couldn’t she have been Athena? The Greek Goddess of war would have snapped a sword and killed this villain. She wasn’t a bearer of gifts and she wasn’t an ancient mythological Greek goddess of war either.

  “Let me go. Please let me go.” She could ask forever and he wasn’t caring to listen to her either.

  When she heard the roar of a large animal and felt the man being ripped away from her body she felt relief. Her tear stained eyes lifted to see Jake Rivers pounding at the brown grizzly sized man. Jake could handle his punch like a cage fighter, but that grizzly could fight, too. The vicious mange filled grizzly won because his right cross knocked Jake down enough for him to run away. The man didn’t have rabies, but he acted like a beast that did. No passion. No willingness to settle down and stay away. He just had a craving to inflict fear, cause pain and control. He might not be infected with rabies but he wasn’t infected with the good side of human sanity and lawful wonderment either.

  Jake got up with haste, policed the surroundings before helping her to her feat. Megan looked down and found the thirty two ounce load of heavy whipping cream packaged splashed all over the ground in front of the café’s front door. The busted canister took home in the mess of cream. It wasn’t as if the container could clean up the mess. Megan anticipated opening the container. She imagined it being graciously emptied; not bursting and flowing out the shattered container like lava slid down the mountain and then took home wherever it remained.

  “Megan. Are you okay?”

  She sighed. Okay was not really what she felt but at least she was still breathing. She nodded to say yes.

  “Thanks for saving me, Jake.”

  “Any, and every, time, Meg. I will save you.”

  The sixteen year old was tall and as stringy as a beanpole but he could fight like a panther going in for the kill. His eyes were a shocking mix of hazel and black cat green-gold. The sharp cheekbones and strong jaw made him look like a supernatural warrior ready for a holy war of victory. God save the idiot who pissed him off on a storm laden day.

  “My father is home. The station is two blocks south west of here. We have to tell him about this now.”

  “He’s at the station then, because you all live that way.” She pointed opposite of his direction.

  Jake shrugged his shoulders. “My dad is captain there. He lives and breathes there. He has dinner there, and if I want to have it with him I have to go to him because he never comes home. I can see why my mom left him. But I love him so I stayed with him.” Jake placed his hand on her back but kept keeping watch out for the enemy. For an average person they would assume that after graduating Jake was going military or cop like his father, but people who knew him knew he was born to climb. Jake had been spending the last six years calculating and planning for his own nature Climb to Hike company. He has already trade marked on things he designed for use. He had the name of his company and his mousy blond and beautiful girlfriend had designed the logo and business papers and envelope designs.

  “Did you know who that man was?”

  “No. But he must have known me since he attacked me right outside my home door.” Megan trembled. She had lived all over the world, volunteered in scary territories and never been attacked. Beyond having a book bag full of Crayola color pencils and drawing paper snatched away from her she hadn’t had anything as scary as tonight happen, physically, to her. Not that she could remember anyway.

  “What was he saying to you?”

  She shrugged one sore shoulder. “You know, the usual…stay away or die stuff. He never told me what I am supposed to be staying away from though.”

  Jake’s shoulders grew stiff. “My dad will find him and he’ll get him. That monster will never hurt you again.”

  She hoped Jake was right but she was still shaken with thoughts of terror because she knew that man was the type who would kill for the joy of it. Now, she knew that he knew where she lived and that terrified her. She wanted to go home and lock herself inside her flat, but what if he came back while she closed the doors to café she was still prepping to open? What if he was like Spiderman and could climb up walls to the back balcony of her flat, burst through the glass patio doors and come after her again? She was scared-stiff right now and while she wanted to say it was all on what just happened she would have to admit that she was in fear of what could happen if that man returned.

  She didn’t even know that constipated turd of a man. She rarely got out. Had she not won that spa day thing she wouldn’t know, or be known, to practically anybody here. She was the typical homebody, stay-in wallflower. She had grown to be that way before to get away from the bullies and the liars, and because nobody ever really wanted to friend her because of what they thought of her. She gave up going to any event she could convince her parents not to drag her to, which were many. Her mother thought she had to meet people to find a good man one day and marry him. Megan would laugh if she could muster the mental and emotional strength to do so. Her mother wanted her to go out, but she failed to realize how many events, even her friends, had stopped inviting her to. Nobody really wanted Megan there, no matter how many children her age would be there.

  Things that she went through in her school years was why she worked superfluously hard to graduate a year and a half early, ditch coming back for graduation day and took flight from Forest Springs and kept going for so long. She ran. She ran away because she could only see bad here when she left. Maybe seeing the world with different eyes had given her a hint of hope that things could be different here this time.

  She liked the winter festivals, the spring picnics, the summer horseback rides and the autumn change of the leaves, but she could have found those same things elsewhere. So why did her bright side of a day out with her parents draw her back home? Her parents weren’t even here anymore. Technically, her father had left long before and her mother left too. They were gone from Forest Springs before she even came back to America. Where she had to come back to see her parents was far east of Forest Springs.

  Megan made sure their house there was sold and gone before she decided to come back here. Her parents were strange creatures. Her mother kept the house for her even though she was not planning to come back here. The last thing she needed was for anybody to know who she was just because she went back to her childhood house. For a while she had been successful with being an enigma that nobody here felt the need to solve. But now it was like a sea of red ants multiplying hurriedly, and all of them wanted to eat her hopes alive. She wouldn’t allow that. She had a mission and a dream to make her café work and she was not giving up on that no matter what.

  The precinct was just as usual as she had heard police stations really were. There wasn’t anything luxurious with windows to give glorious views of lilies and lavender adorning green grass. There wasn’t a lemon and mint essential oil fragrance of relaxation. It was typical supermarket store light meets a hint of shade over head, small paper cluttered desks, and the people filing a report sitting opposite the man in dirty jeans and white shirts taking them. The air was stiff with the scent of alcohol and tobacco, cigarettes and the pungent foul smell of months of untaken showers. There weren’t any views of grass and flowers; the only view she got was the roguish man with an unkempt graying beard being force taken with the cuffs holding his hands behind him to another closed door with the cinder block wall telling the story that that man would go in but he would never come out. Megan knew the man under arrest would get out of there. The Trustful Avenue station was a basic precinct. It was like a holding tank relief for the criminals if they got arrested. It was not a prison where the men and women who got arrested would stay for the rest of their life. It was the holding tank, where they would stay, until they were arraigned. Going beyond that wall was more likely print, shoot and pin in a cage. It no doubt directed al
l down to the bottom level holding cage until they went to court. The bottom level was where criminals would have to be taken to stay until the court date. The judge would be the holder of the cards and the cops were just the paid puppets moving to the strings that were pulled to move them. There wasn’t anything romantic, heroic or magical fairies about this place. Megan knew she could never be happy working in a place like this; a place where the only window in the place was two inches down from the ceiling in a four by five glass block layout on the first wall to see after coming past the first waiting with coffee and tea entry and the first door leading into the dead zone of the cage with all the armed and lawful guards pecking away at their laptops and shuffling papers to be stacked in the silver, metal cabinet for another time.

  When Eduardo Rivers, the captain of this precinct and the father to Jake Rivers, finally walked out of his office he waved her to come in. He walked his son to the door and Jake sauntered out she caught his eye as she approached going inside. Megan was sure Jake had given him the skinny on the events that had just happened as Captain Rivers uttered words to the officer in uniform who told him he would drive around and look for the guy. This was not the night she planned on having but this wasn’t the week she ever saw happening either.

  “Captain, your son saved my life. You’ve raised him very well.”

  “I believe I told you to call me Eduardo. Save calling me Captain for business hours and city business events.” He pointed his finger at her. Megan just felt odd calling any man she didn’t know who was clearly on work duty, by his first name.

  “Jake has explained to me what happened in the dark shades of hell you went through tonight. He told me of the fiend that attacked you. How he had to pull that man, if you can call it a man, off you. Now I need information from you as to what happened.”