Jenn McKinlay - Due Or Die

“I’m sorry that the Friends vote has been so upsetting for you,” Lindsey said. “But you can’t go around threatening people and trying to run them over with your car because you don’t like the way things turned out.”

Marjorie stuffed a mint in her mouth and chewed furiously.

“That sort of behavior doesn’t help anything,” Lindsey said. She spoke calmly, hoping that maybe she was getting through to Marjorie.

“You know what I think?” Marjorie asked. She swallowed her candy, and her eyes went wide, so wide that Lindsey could see white all around the irises.

“No, Marjorie, what do you think?”

Marjorie jumped from her seat and pointed a bony finger at Lindsey. Then she bellowed in a voice so loud and deep that it sounded like it came from the bowels of hell.

“I think you killed Markus Rushton, that’s what I think.”

At that moment, the door swung wide and in walked Chief Daniels.

“You had a torrid affair with Markus Rushton,” Marjorie continued, still pointing at Lindsey. “You were madly in love with him, but he ended it, and you were devastated, so you shot him and killed him.”

The chief looked at Lindsey, who gave him a bemused smile and a finger wave. “Hi.”

The chief glanced between them and then shook his head as if to clear it of confusion. Then he looked at Marjorie and said, “Marjorie, I’m going to need you to come to the station.”

“Why?” she asked. “She’s the one you should be arresting. She’s a murderess!”

Chief Daniels stepped forward, and Marjorie started shifting her weight from foot to foot as if gauging how she could run around him and get out the door.

Chief Daniels was not a little man, however, and the odds were unlikely that she’d make it even if her reflexes were faster than his. The man just took up too much space.

“I need to talk to you about what’s been happening over the past few days.”

“What about her?” Marjorie pointed at Lindsey. “Don’t you need to question her?”

Chief Daniels turned his back to Marjorie and looked at Lindsey. He opened his eyes wide, and she figured he was trying to tell her to go with it.

“I’ve got Officer Plewicki coming to pick up Ms. Norris here.”

“So, you know she killed Markus Rushton,” Marjorie said. She looked impressed with the chief.

Lindsey opened her mouth to protest, but the chief gave her a look that clearly said shut up , so she did. It wasn’t easy.

“We have several people we need to question in regards to the murder,” he said. “And, of course, I need your statement.”

“Oh!” Marjorie’s little body went aquiver. “Of course I’ll give my statement. I have all kinds of information about everyone, you know.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” he said.

Lindsey watched as he led Marjorie out of her office and through the library. She exhaled and realized she’d been holding her breath for the past several minutes. There was something in those eyes of Marjorie’s that made her skin crawl.

And she wondered, did Marjorie’s crazy accusation hold some truth to it? Like maybe Marjorie’d had the affair with Rushton, maybe she was the killer?

Beth appeared at her side with Ann Marie.

“What was that all about?”

“Marjorie seems to think I had a torrid affair with Markus Rushton and killed him because he dumped me,” Lindsey said.

“Wow,” Ann Marie said. “I wouldn’t be too concerned if I were you. She once told me that my boys were the obvious by-product of an alien-on-human experiment gone wrong.”

Both Lindsey and Beth looked at her. Ann Marie’s boys were known for TPing their teachers’ houses and teaching Beth’s mechanical parrot dirty words, and last year they hijacked a float in the annual Fourth of July parade so they could sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with armpit fart accompaniment into the microphone, among other things.

“Well, I’m not saying she’s wrong about everything,” Ann Marie said and then grinned.

Lindsey chuckled, happy to release the knot of tension that had torqued her from the moment Batty had walked into her office.

The front door to the library slid open and Officer Emma Plewicki walked in. She glanced around the room and headed toward Lindsey.

She was dressed in her usual uniform of dark blue pants and pale shirt. She had on her government-issued fleece-lined coat and a matching hat with earflaps; only someone as pretty as Emma could make that hat look fashionable.

“Hi, Emma,” Lindsey said. “Thanks for responding so quickly. You wouldn’t believe the crazy talk Marjorie was spewing. She was really beginning to make me nervous.”

Emma nodded, then cleared her throat and glanced quickly down at the floor before glancing up to meet Lindsey’s gaze with hers. “Ms. Norris, I’m going to need you to come to the station with me.”

BRIAR CREEK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

“What?” Lindsey, Ann Marie and Beth asked together.

Officer Plewicki leveled them with her best you’re-parked-in-a-red-zone-and-I’m-giving-you-a-whopper-of-a-ticket stare. Then she doubled over. Her shoulders were shaking and Lindsey was sure she was having a fit. Then a snort escaped through her nose and Lindsey realized she was laughing.

“Oh, that was just mean,” Lindsey said, but she couldn’t help but smile, especially as her heart had resumed beating again.

“I got you,” Emma said. “I got you good.”

Beth and Ann Marie both sagged with relief, and Beth exchanged knuckles with Emma. “Well played, girlfriend.”

“Can I hire you to scare my boys with that?” Ann Marie asked and Emma grinned.

“All kidding aside, I really do need you to come to the station,” Emma said. “The chief thinks it will encourage Marjorie to talk if she sees you coming in.”

“Do I have to wear cuffs?” Lindsey asked.

“No, but if you put up a fight, I’ll taze you,” Emma said and Lindsey blanched. Then Emma busted up again and said, “I am on a roll today.”

Lindsey glanced at the clock. She was beginning to think she was never going to get any work done.

“How long will you need me?”

“Not long,” Emma said. “It’s just a walk-on part. In through the front door, past the interrogation rooms and out the back door.”

“All right, I can do that,” Lindsey said. She looked at Beth and Ann Marie. “Back in fifteen.”

“Don’t get tazed,” Beth said with a wave.

As they passed Ms. Cole, the lemon puckered up at the sight of Lindsey leaving. “I was not aware that we were closed already.”

“We’re not.” Lindsey sighed. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Mr. Tupper never had police officers escorting him from the building.”

Perhaps after the stressful events of the day, she had just reached her breaking point, but for once Lindsey simply could not listen to the effusive worship of her predecessor.

“That’s because Mr. Tupper was as boring as day-old bread!” she snapped.

Ms. Cole stood there with her mouth hanging open like the cover of a book with a broken binding, and Lindsey turned and followed Emma out the door with just the tiniest bit of self-satisfied swagger in her step.

“Those were Italian,” Lindsey said.

Heathcliff looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows. Then he lay his head down on his paws, looking pitiful.

Lindsey sighed and tossed the brown flats into the trash. There wasn’t a shoemaker alive who could mend the shredded leather.

“Come here,” she said. Heathcliff bolted for her and she knelt down and caught him as he wiggled up against her. “I shouldn’t have left them out where you could chew them. It was my fault.”