Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“Let’s see, how does that quote go?” Cutter screwed up her face and looked at the ceiling as if reading the quotation there. “I remember now.” She looked back at him. “The quality of a marriage is proven by its ability to tolerate an occasional exception.”

“You think that’s true?” Cutter had just had her third kid six months ago. From what he could tell she was one of the lucky ones who enjoyed marriage and kids.

“I wouldn’t know. And I hope I never have to test the theory.”

Cutter turned and swished down the hallway, while Vaughn headed toward his desk, his thoughts soon returning to another woman. Izzy McNeil.

E very cell in my body went on high alert. Get up, get up! a voice yelled in my head.

But my terrified body wasn’t reacting as fast as it normally would. Everything seemed tilted, slanted. I couldn’t tell if it was the angle of the helmet or the blow to the head. My knees screamed. I felt blood trickling from them.

I sensed someone behind me, and as I looked down, trying to focus on the ground, telling myself to stand, I caught a glimpse of shoes behind me. Men’s athletic shoes. I tried to notice what kind they were. I heard Mayburn telling me to take note of any details. I got to my feet, but then I felt a massive shove from behind. My hands flew out, catching myself on the garage. I sensed other blows coming. I cowered, covering my head.

“Stop!” I yelled. “I called the cops! They’re already on their way.” I had no idea why I was saying this, but it was the only thing I could think of.

It must have worked because suddenly the only sound was the faint trickle of rain on my helmet. I stood and spun around, the lack of peripheral vision in the helmet making me feel as if I was stoned.

Hit him back, the voice said. Kick him.

But no one was there.

My hands shook so much I could hardly drive the scooter. I felt the air drying the blood on my knees. Finally, I was almost back to the Fig Leaf. As fast as I could manage with my quivering hands, I headed down the alley behind the store. Luckily, the rain had stopped.

Parking the scooter and pulling off my helmet, I tried very hard not to whimper. My brain felt discombobulated. Fear rang inside me like a loud gong, steady and loud.

My hands shook as I looked at my watch. I’d been gone almost twenty minutes.

I had wanted to call Mayburn but it was hard to talk on the cell phone and drive the scooter at the same time. I had wanted to call the cops, but now that I was a person of interest, it seemed fishy somehow for me to have found a dead body and then been smacked around in an alley all in the span of twenty-four hours.

When Zac said he told the cops I’d been with Jane, I’d felt irrationally guilty. I had done nothing wrong when it came to Jane. I had done nothing wrong tonight. And yet I knew as a lawyer that little jagged pieces didn’t just make up the puzzle of an investigation, they could make someone innocent look very, very suspicious.

Somehow, I would finish work, I decided, and then I would call Mayburn. And he would help me decide what to do.

As I put down the kickstand and took off my helmet, it struck me as odd that I hadn’t even thought to call Sam. A short time ago, he was the only one I called with any kind of crisis-large or small. And yet now, even after the comfort he had provided last night, he wasn’t my first gut response. He wasn’t even the second. I looked down at my knees. They were only minimally scraped. A few streaks of blood ran from them. I licked my fingers and tried to rub it off.

I glanced at the door to the Fig Leaf. The Styrofoam was still in there. Thank you, God. I pushed open the door, stepping gingerly inside.

“Where the hell did you go?” Josie stood in the center of the room, hand on her hip, angry eyes peering from behind her silver glasses.

“Um…I was going to run to Starbucks.” I glanced down at the helmet in my hands. “But I came back to see if you wanted anything.”

Her eyes narrowed further, then dragged down my body, stopping at my knees.

“And I fell,” I added. “Accidentally.”

She stalked toward me. “There is no leaving the store while you’re working.”

“Right. Won’t happen again.”

“Ever.”

“Of course.”

“And we don’t prop open this back door. That’s a security risk. Do you understand?”

“Absolutely. I’m sorry.”

She was close to me now, and I could detect the smell of talcum powder and something beneath it, an exotic scent. For the first time, I noticed that her light green eyes were flecked with spots of brown.

“You’re on thin ice,” she said.

I wasn’t sure precisely what she meant but I nodded.

“So you’d better be careful.”

L ater that night my cell phone rang. Mayburn, the display read.

“It’s cleaned out,” he said.

“What is?”

“The garage. I just went over there.”

“Are you kidding me?” I padded over the wood floor of my living room in pajamas and socks.

“There’s some basic stuff there, like a bench, newspapers, but nothing personal. I tracked down the owner of the place. He rents out the bungalow to a family and rented the garage on a month-by-month basis to some guy from the neighborhood.”

“Is the guy named Steve?”

“He says the name he gave him was Tobias Minter. He never ran a credit check because it was just the garage and it was month to month.”

“Did you look up Tobias Minter?”

“Yep, and the only one I could find with that name died in 1670.” He sighed. “How’s your head?”

“Killing me.”

“Did you take some Advil?”

“Is ten too many?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I wanted to take ten. I scaled it back to three.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

“No, I don’t think I have a concussion, just a whopping headache. There’s not even a bump. The helmet saved me. Plus, I’m too tired. If I go to Northwestern, I’ll be there all night, and I have to go on-air in about seven hours.”

“I’m really sorry, Iz.”

“Aw, don’t be,” I said, trying to make light of the situation. “Everybody needs to get smacked around once in a while.” But really, the fear was still ringing inside me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Jane. About what she’d gone through. About me being a person of interest.

I told Mayburn about it.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Mayburn said. “A person of interest is not a good thing.”

“Thank you. I think I know that.”

“You gotta get the cops not to talk. They’ll smear you with this stuff if you let them.”

“Maggie is working on it.” Please, please, please let Maggie be able to do something.

“When can I pick up that pearl thong you bought tonight? I want to check it out.”

“Hey, no sharing Maggie’s pearl thong with Lucy.”

“Oh, she’s going to be getting her own, trust me.”

“I don’t know what’s with these thongs, but the odd thing is Josie seems to have two kinds-one that comes in a black box and one, like mine and Maggie’s, that comes in silver boxes. I’m not sure if they’re just different colors, but they seem to be from different manufacturers.

“Another odd thing is she keeps them locked up.”

“And the guy who delivered them was probably the one who smacked the hell out of me.”

He grunted. I could tell he was thinking. “We need to get both kinds of these thongs-the black and the silver-if I’m going to really check them out. When are you supposed to work again?”

“Sunday. But please don’t make me go back there. I’m even more scared of Josie than I am of Steve. Or whoever he is.” I leaned against the kitchen counter and rubbed my forehead with my hands.