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“GLENN KNEW.” SHERRY sipped her Seven and Seven. “I don’t know how he knew, but that night when we came home from the race? I could tell something was different. You know that diet us paddlers were doing? He’d never been real supportive of it, but that night he said to me, hey, baby, don’t forget your injection. You don’t wanna let yourself get fat just cause the race is over.”
“He said that?” Grounds for justifiable homicide right there, as far as I was concerned.
“And when I opened the medicine cabinet, I saw my things weren’t exactly how I left them. He’d done something to the needles. I could tell.”
“So what did you do?”
“I made up some story about how I wasn’t gonna do my injection right then, cause I’d switched to doing them in the morning. That bought me twelve hours. I was so nervous I didn’t sleep that night. I watched Glenn till it started to get light out. Then I got up and grabbed five of my insulin pens. I use the 31 gauge, they’re real fine. They slip in nice and smooth. I gave him all five, one after the other. I shook him awake, and we went out for our morning run like always.”
“You were smart. You made sure not to have a body in the house. He’d probably be hard to move.”
“Look, sorry Dr. B, but it was him or me, you know? It was self-defense.”
“No, I understand. You didn’t think you could go to the police?”
“I thought about it,” she said. “I did. But they wouldn’t of done anything. What could they do? It was safer to take care of it myself. I mean, Glenn didn’t think twice about blowing up Kathy’s insulin pump. I knew I was next, and I didn’t have a lot of time. He’s a professional, Dr. B. I didn’t know him at all. His whole pretty-boy act, that was for this job. And now I think about it, I’m pretty sure Glenn Anderssen wasn’t even his real name.”
“You can call me Molly. You’re not my student anymore.”
“Dave calls you Aunty Molly.” Sherry grinned. “Can I call you that?”
“Please don’t.”
“So anyway, Glenn? We were out on the trail about two miles from home when he passed out. And I’ll be honest, I felt bad for a second. But I remembered what he did to Kathy, and how he used me. I was disposable to him. I was just there to help him finish the job.”
“It must have been more than that. He didn’t have to start a relationship with you. If he’d wanted to, he could have just befriended Kathy directly. She wasn’t averse to male attention, from what I could tell.”
“No. No, I was thinking about this. No, he couldn’t. Cause the boyfriend is always suspect numero uno when something bad happens. Right? No one ever suspects the friend’s boyfriend. He hadda get close to someone who wasn’t his mark.”
“Oh. I see your point.”
“Same reason I hadda leave town. They find Glenn, if anyone gets suspicious, who are they gonna look for first? The girlfriend.”
“Did you hear they found him?”
Sherry went a little pale. “They ID’d him?”
“Yes. It was in the County Courier. It said they didn’t suspect foul play.”
Sherry drained her glass.
“I didn’t mean anything to him.” She looked around for someone who could bring us more drinks. “You know what? If he’d of gotten paid when he was supposed to, he probably wouldn’t of come back at all.”
She was probably right.
A waitress came over.
“Evening, ladies. Sisters’ night out?”
“She’s visiting from Hawaii. Can we get another round?”
“Aloha and welcome to California!” the waitress smiled and left to get our drinks.
“So anyway, when Glenn went down, I said, you know, kinda loud, ‘Hang on, baby, I’ll go get help.’ In case anyone could hear. I turned around and ran back home, got dressed, and went up to school. That’s when I saw you in the parking lot.”
“So when I talked to you that morning, you’d already...”
“I was on autopilot. It didn’t hit me till later, everything that happened. You know, I thought I had it all set up. I was gonna finish up my college degree, finally. I was back on my beautiful island. I had a great guy, or that’s what I thought. And I had the paddling. When all this happened, it made me feel like the elevator doors opened and I’d stepped in, but the elevator wasn’t there. Know what I mean?”
“Sherry, why did you say, if it weren’t for me? When I saw you in the halau. What did you mean?”
“If it wasn’t for you? Oh, yeah, right. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been reading those blogs and stuff, that’s for sure. The thing about the wireless insulin pump hacking thing was still in my mind when I found the photo of Kathy. Kinda rang warning bells for me. Otherwise, I probably would’ve said something right to Glenn’s face, like, hey, what’s Kathy’s picture doing in your suitcase? Who knows what he would’ve done then? But thanks to you I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.”
“That was smart.”
“You know, Glenn was always telling me about how wireless stuff wasn’t secure. He said I shouldn’t use the Wi-Fi at the coffee shop unless I wanted everyone seeing all my private email and stuff. That’s why he liked keeping things on paper. I guess he’d know, huh? Hey, Dr. B., can I ask you something? I mean, Molly?”
“Sure.”
“Do you know who hired Glenn to kill Kathy? Who wanted her dead?”
“There was no such person as Kathy Banks. Her name was Karolyn Beckenbauer.”