by Marc Timms
“Thomas, darling,” Carolyn said, as she entered the room. Johanna followed after a few steps, allowing the woman to play the bereaved role without compunction.
No one was in the room beside the two women and the man on the bed. Carolyn dropped the act immediately.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Carolyn said with little more than a look at the man. “I have to say I feel sorry for him. He never liked even getting a scratch. This has to be killing him.”
The phrasing left little to be desired, but she understood what Carolyn had meant. The other woman walked around to the wall, where a plastic bag was hanging from the wall.
Carolyn took down the bag and started going through it.
“What are you doing?” Johanna asked, sure that this woman would rifle through his wallet for cash.
“I have to look for the insurance card. Guaranteed that someone will be in to quiz me about Thomas’s insurance and plan. I remember his date of birth and social security number, so they can work it from that. Note to you: always remember your ex’s identifying information. It’s wonderful blackmail for later.”
She paused. “That’s odd—very odd.”
Johanna walked over to where she stood. “What the matter?”
“His wallet is gone. I’m not sure I understand how that could happen?” Carolyn went through his pants again, and Johanna felt a touch sick to her stomach as the woman held up the pants that were now torn and bloodied. She recalled the incident from the previous day where he had to rip his pant leg to deal with the wound. This situation was so much worse than that one had been.
“It could have been lost in the accident. I mean, a car hit him.”
Carolyn held the pants higher. Along the belt loop was a chain, and the other end was bare. “Thomas still fancies himself as a rebel at times, and he always wore his wallet like this.”
“If it couldn’t have come loose naturally, then someone took it?”
“His father. Arthur is in town.” Carolyn’s voice was soft and calm, but the words had an edge to them.
“You can’t know this,” Johanna retorted.
“I’ll go through the conclusions with you. The driver of the car would never have struck him if they needed something from his person. They’d have to stop the car, search him, and then take off again. I doubt that anyone would do that, especially if they were driving without a passenger. So that leaves the EMTs, police, and such. Too many people around, and most of them wouldn’t take the chance. But they didn’t have it when you came into the room with the police. So someone here had to be the culprit. I guess Arthur slipped in the hospital and took it while they were trying to get him settled. Someone had to get him undressed and in a gown to treat him.”
“That’s a lot of conclusions from one missing wallet,” Johanna replied, though she admitted that it made sense. The car driver was the most likely person to want it but also the least likely person to have time following the accident to get it.
“I wonder what he wanted,” Carolyn said. “There’s more to this than I first thought.” She pulled out her phone and scrolled through some app until she turned the phone around and held it close to Johanna’s face. “Have you seen this man?” she asked. “Look carefully.”
Johanna took a long time to look at the photo. She thought something looked familiar about the face, but she couldn’t place him. At first, she had believed that Carolyn would pull out a picture of the man who was killing women in the cars. However, that was too much like a horror film, and that was only fiction.
“I mean, he could be someone I’ve met, but I don’t remember him.” Johanna felt terrible that her memory for faces wasn’t better. She might need that in a case like this.
“That’s okay. Look, I know this sounds terrible, and I don’t want you to think that I’m catty about the ex and his family. They’re grifters of the worst kind. Follow me.” Carolyn walked down the hall to the nurses’ station.
The woman looked harried. Tendrils of light brown hair fell around her face in disarray, and despite having a pretty face, Johanna could see the crow’s feet around her eyes.
“Excuse me, could you help me?” she asked. “I’m looking for this guy? He’s a friend of a friend, and I won’t hear the end of it if I don’t ask about him while I’m here.” She held up her phone as she had done before.
The nurse nodded. “He works here sometimes. He’s a temp of some sort. Sorry, I don’t know his name either. The temps come and go so fast that I can’t keep track. ”
“Was he here today?” Carolyn asked, with a smile. “I was hoping not to have to make a round trip for this.”
“Yeah, he was here earlier, but I haven’t seen him since, say, eleven o’clock or so. He might be gone for the day.” She gave them a quick smile and went back to work. Johanna took that as a polite dismissal.
They walked back to the room in silence. Johanna was expecting Carolyn to put on an act of superiority, showing that she knew something was going on. However, when they arrived back in the room, the other woman flopped down on one of the hard plastic chairs, making a noise that could be heard down the hallway.
“I wish I knew what they were doing,” she said finally. “Two things are going on here. The first is who killed Jessica. That took a lot of planning and nerve. Penny is extremely protective, so it had to be an inside job—one of the family—otherwise, that dog would have raised the roof. The other is the will, the estate, and the lawyer.”
“What about them?” Johanna asked, feeling like she’d been left behind in the conversation. Dealing with Carolyn was far different than the discussions with Marnie. However, this woman got things done, and at the moment, that methodology appealed to her.
“Who did it, of course. I can’t see Thomas or Arthur killing Jessica. They’re sneaky and perhaps underhanded at times, but they’re not out to physically hurt people.”
“So the murder was done by someone else.” Johanna went back to her thoughts about the murder and its tie-in to the man killing women in stolen cars. There could be a link between that set of crimes and Jessica’s death.
“But the arson at the lawyer’s office would be a classic example of them. Spur of the moment, meant to provide them with a gain of some sort. I highly doubt that Jessica would have left Thomas the bulk of her estate.”
“I would disagree with that.” A voice came from the bed.
Johanna didn’t recognize it as Thomas’s voice at the moment. It was husky and crackled with pain.
“You would,” Carolyn said.
“I must be in hell if you’re here.” The voice had more tone in its second pronouncement. “Why are you here anyway? Are you expecting anything from my will?”
Carolyn smiled at Johanna and made an expression that she wasn’t able to interpret. However, she was relatively sure that it wasn’t complimentary.
“No, the hospital called. You really need to take me off as your emergency contact. I gave them your details, so they can charge you for the cost of this hospital stay. I’m always so giving.”
“I’m sure you took a few dollars from the wallet.”
“No, that was your dad. He stopped by long enough to take the whole thing.”
The animosity from Thomas melted at that news. His following sentence was far more friendly. “That’s not good. You saw him?”
“I deduced that it was him. The nurse on the floor saw him.”
With that comment, Johanna could detect a change in Thomas again. His voice grew weaker, and his eyes fluttered.
“Next time, we’ll have to find out if he saw who hit him.”
The nurse came into the room, checking on Thomas’ condition. Johanna hoped this meant that he was getting better. She wasn’t quite as enamored as she had been with him. Yet, at the same time, she was glad that he wasn’t married and flirting with her just to get information.
The two women left again, and Johanna drove them both home. They’d pulled into the parking lot outside of Johanna’s com
plex when she said, “You know that my car was used to run down Thomas. I might as well tell you now, before the police inform you.”
Carolyn laughed. “I wondered how you were involved in this; at first, I thought it was because of Thomas, and we were going to have a chat about that. But when we were at the hospital just now, I knew there was more to it than that. You shouldn’t feel particularly bad about that. I mean, you didn’t leave your keys in the car and a note on the car door to steal the thing.”
“Thanks, but I still wonder why my car? What was the purpose of dragging me into this further? I’m at a loss.” Johanna felt tired all of a sudden.
“There’s more to this?” Carolyn asked. “You’re going to have to give me more coffee if that’s true. Come on inside, and let’s talk.”
Johanna started another pot of coffee and made a note to herself to buy some more pods when she went to the store—if not before that.
“So let’s hear the entire story from start to finish,” Carolyn said, sitting down in a reclining chair.
Johanna spilled the entire story from memory. She’d shared it with the police and with her friends. Now Johanna told this relative stranger, who might be playing a role in the murders.
“As I said before, I married into a bunch of grifters, but I didn’t marry into a band of killers. Something is going on around here, but I’m not sure how the family is involved in all of this. I do want to see the room where Jessica was murdered. If it was locked, there either has to be a trick, or I can tell you that Thomas and his father were not a part of this. They don’t have the intellectual capacity to do that.”
They stood up and headed to Jessica’s house. Carolyn skipped the visit to Lilly’s house and the time with Penny, the Scottie. She marched up to the house and tried the door, but it was locked.
She sighed, and the two women walked over to Lilly’s home for the key. Johanna knocked on the side door, the one closest to Jessica’s home, but there was no answer. She tried to look in the detached garage, but the door was locked, and the walls were windowless, preventing them from peeking into them.
Johanna was confident that two relative strangers walking around the house should have alerted Penny, causing a barking frenzy. Still, she heard nothing from inside the house. She wasn’t sure where the woman and the dog might have gone in the middle of the day, but she worried about it.
When they came around to the front door, a piece of paper was stuck to the door. The sign announced that Penny was missing, and a reward would be given to return her. Johanna felt a spasm of panic as she read the sign. There had been so many deaths and close calls with this case already to believe that the poor dog would be coincidentally missing. Someone had taken her.
Carolyn had lost the sunny disposition she had all morning, and her face looked grim. “I have an idea, but you need to take me to the lawyer’s office—now.”
Johanna wasn’t sure what was going on, but she recognized the sheer determination on her new friend’s face. She drove them there as fast as she could, trying to forget the car accident that had happened to her own car. This case was dangerous for many people, and Johanna worried that it would be lethal for her.
They pulled up in front of the house across the street from the lawyer’s former office. There stood the shell of the house that had belonged to the lawyer.
A clearly homemade sign stood near the sidewalk announcing that the lawyer’s business had moved to this house for the meantime.
Now that the fire trucks were gone and the light of day shone upon it, Johanna could see the damage done to the building. The windows were now just ash-encrusted holes, and the door frame had bowed out, making it look rather comical.
Carolyn got out of the car and strode up the walk. “Stay here. Be back in a moment.” Johanna saw the woman throw open the door and use her best enthusiastic voice.
In a few minutes, Carolyn came out of the house, looking grimmer than before. She went to the door and looked in through the window. “It’s as bad as I thought. It appears that someone has taken Penny and is holding her for a ransom. That definitely sounds like something that Arthur might do, and I’m going to stop him. Are you in?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marc Timms is a creative writer who has loved writing ever since he was a young boy. He has studied the art of writing throughout school and has always had a passion for writing. At a young age, Timms moved from the US and is currently living in Australia with his wife and four kids. He has only recently decided to share his work and publish it to the world.
Marc recently became an international best-selling author when he published his first book "Shock" which went straight to number 1 in several categories.
When Marc isn't writing he loves to spend his time watching Aussie rules football and spending valuable time with his family.
Books by Marc Timms
SHOCK SERIES
SHOCK
SHOCK – The Truth
SHOCK – The Chase
SHOCK – The Chaos
SHOCK – The Capture
FORGOTTEN SERIES
FORGOTTEN – The Return
FORGOTTEN – THE Quest
FORGOTTEN – The Revelations
FORGOTTEN – The Reveal
FORGOTTEN – The Unveil
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[NLS1]
