Three

It was mid-afternoon by the time I left the detectives. I powered up my phone to call my brother. Lance would know what to do. I walked alone through the sunlit atrium of the police department and headed to one of the carved stone benches and sat, facing a faux jungle. Palm and ficus trees, ferns, oversized blooms, and a tangle of vines covered a two-story craggy cliff that rose above me. I’m no expert, but none of those plants seemed indigenous to Colorado. They sure looked real, but I knew that on the other side of the skylight, despite the cobalt blue sky that had finally made an appearance, was a cold March wind, not the tropics. Although with the way my world had been knocked upside down that morning, maybe the natural world was different, too.

I was the only one in the lobby. Even without Essence of Orange it was remarkably calming, especially with my back to the offices, detectives, and all the unpleasant questions and insinuations. Was that a waterfall I heard? I guess this was the kind of police station the property taxes in Melinda’s neighborhood bought. I’d been to my brother’s precinct. A walk through their fetid lobby made you long for a Silkwood shower afterward.

Before I dialed Lance, I got a text from Cordelia. It said, Please don’t mention that I read your manuscript.

The ridiculousness made me read it again. And again. Still not understanding.

I replied, Why not?

She must have been staring at her phone waiting for me to respond because a new message immediately popped up. It wouldn’t be convenient.

Convenient? I barked out a noise, then quickly covered my mouth with one hand. None of this was convenient. I typed, Sorry. Already did. Why wouldn’t it be—I tried to type convenient, but my phone autocorrected it to convincing. I retyped convenient. This time it stuck. I waited for Cordelia to respond but she didn’t. I considered calling her, but decided I needed to talk to my brother more.

It went to voicemail. I listened to Lance’s outgoing message, then said, “Hey, I don’t know if you heard anything through the grapevine or not, but I need to talk to you. I may or may not be in trouble. Call me as soon as you get this, but I’m calling your dispatch, too.”

I clicked off and tried the other number.

“Denver Northfield Precinct.”

I could barely hear the woman’s voice over the background noise. I spoke louder to compensate, self-conscious in the quiet atrium. “I’m looking for Lance Russo. Is he working today?”

“Is this an emergency?”

“No. Maybe. No. I’m his sister and I need to talk to him.” I glanced around the lobby, expecting stares or shushes, but there was still no one around, just the distant sound of muffled voices and ringing phones. “Can you tell him to call me?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” She hung up and I was alone once more in the jungle.

I made sure my ringer was on all the way, then dropped my phone in the front pocket of my bag. I stood and sighed, conflicted about ending my tropical vacation. Nobody had brought me a piña colada, but this peaceful interlude sandwiched between the nightmare-
behind-me and the nightmare-sure-to-come was a welcome way to spend five minutes to collect myself. I would have liked a coconut-and-rum-laced concoction, though. And not to have been questioned by those detectives. And not to have been told Melinda was killed. And not to have written that horrible manuscript. Maybe I did need a few piña coladas.

I opened the door to a blast of cold wind and hurried to my car, politely driven here by one of the uniformed cops who’d picked me up. It then occurred to me that it wasn’t polite at all, and I’d probably given permission for him to search it, too. Fine. I had nothing to hide. I waited for a couple of squad cars to pass me in the parking lot before I turned toward home, with none of them doing so much as glancing at me.

The detectives hadn’t acted like they thought I killed Melinda, and I understood they had to question everyone. But I couldn’t help but wonder how much trouble I was in. I gripped the steering wheel tighter than normal. It’s not a crime to write a novel. It’s not a crime to write a crime novel. It’s not even a crime to write a criminally bad crime novel. But it doesn’t matter if it was good or bad. Somebody used my imaginary crime to kill Melinda. To frame me? Because it was such compelling prose they simply couldn’t help themselves?

Why this? Why now? Why her? Why me?

I slumped in my seat, powerless over my circumstances. Then I straightened a bit. The cops would figure this out. Cops solved heinous murders all the time. Despite their condescension earlier, they were treating this as a routine murder, if there was such a thing, and they said none of us were in danger.

I drove a couple more blocks. But what if they were wrong? What if I’d put my friends in some kind of danger simply by asking them to read my manuscript? I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to any of them. I had to figure it out.

I thought about my critique group that morning. Their faces when I told them. Kell’s implication about my suspicions with Melinda and my royalties. I groaned. Why did I lie to them about meeting with her?

Stop that. No use worrying about it. What’s done is done. I hadn’t murdered Melinda. But somebody did. And it was probably someone I knew. And they probably knew where I lived.

A car honked. I gasped and jerked the Kia back into my own lane. My long-cold travel mug of coffee caromed around the cupholder.

Keeping my eyes on the road, I rooted around my bag until I felt my phone. I pulled it out and looked at it. No calls. What good did it do to have a cop for a brother if you couldn’t find him when you needed him? I slipped it into my console with the pens and paperclips that seemed to find their way there no matter how often I cleaned it out.

I glanced at the phone every four seconds while I drove, willing it to light up.

If this real killer used one of my fictional scenarios, then what about all my other stories? Book number one was an arson cover-up. Book number two was a bomb in a package. Book number three was a maniac stalker in the lilac bushes.

I stopped at a red light and glanced nervously to my right. The guy in the Escalade looked like a murderer. Maybe the head of a drug cartel. I locked my doors. And that lady in front of me with her cigarette out the window. Why couldn’t she smoke inside her car? Did she just kill her lover and needed to calm down but didn’t want her husband to get suspicious?

Across the street a woman pushed a double stroller. Really? Two babies? Not hiding an Uzi in there?

The light changed and I gave the Kia a bit too much gas, almost ramming the suspicious smoker. I slammed on my brakes, glancing in the rearview mirror at the same time. The guy behind me threw a middle finger salute and I raised my hand in contrition. Or at least I meant it to be contrition. What if he thought it was defiant and he pulled his handgun from his glove box, roared up next to me, shot me dead, then escaped to New Mexico? Another unsolved crime.

I saw a Facebook meme the other day that said the average person walked past a murderer thirty-six times in their life. I knew what it meant, but because of the poor sentence structure I made a joke that I’d just go the other direction on the thirty-seventh time. Now it didn’t seem so funny. I’d seen at least thirty-six people today. Statistically, did that mean one of them was a murderer? Did Facebook know what it was talking about?

I shuddered. I turned my heater up a notch, but I didn’t think it would help my chill.

Okay, let’s set aside for a minute all the real murders seemingly going on around us all day, every day. Clearly, Melinda’s murderer was either paying homage to my imaginative prose, had no imagination of their own, or was trying to frame me.

None of that seemed more comforting than real murderers all over the place, whether they were toddlers or terrorists.

But if it had something to do with my writing, my books, my imagination, then maybe I could figure it out and keep myself or one of my friends from being their next victim. But what if it didn’t have anything to do with my books? What if this murderer was just too lazy to think up their own method? What about all those other genre tropes, all those rules and clichés we mystery lovers loved?

I was suddenly too hot and turned off the heater.

What about all those murders in movies and TV? Arsenic in elderberry wine. Dissolving bodies in chemicals. Firing squad. Axes. Well-placed kicks to the head. Gruesome stabbings. Feeding people to pigs. Burying them alive.

Geez, just avoiding the scenarios Adrian Monk dealt with would be a full-time job. And then there was Rockford, and Columbo, and Sherlock, and Castle, and Longmire, and those crazies on Criminal Minds. How could I be alert for all of them?

I pulled into the driveway at my apartment complex, where the security gate was wide open. I despaired that they considered this a secure complex. I flushed with shame at how many times I’d been happy when it had been left open for days at a time, probably broken. It was so much more convenient that way, instead of having to fumble with a key card. Plus, there was a pedestrian gate right next to it that didn’t even lock; the only people that gate kept out would be those murdering toddlers who couldn’t reach the latch. The other two pedestrian gates, on the north and south sides of the perimeter of the complex, weren’t much better. I paid extra for security, so it shouldn’t be a joke. I should feel safe. And I didn’t anymore.

I parked in my space but stayed locked in the car while I scanned the area. I debated whether to move my car from my covered carport space to the empty guest space closer to my apartment. Snow was in the forecast, so I stayed put.

I took a deep breath, mustered my courage, and bolted from the car. Ten paces away I realized that in my rush, I’d left both my phone and my messenger bag in the Kia. I raced back and fumbled for my keys, eyes nervously darting around. I dropped my phone into the pocket of my bag, tucked it under my arm like a football, and re-locked my car. With my keys in my hand, I made my way up the sidewalk. As I neared my front door and began to breathe easier, a rabbit streaked out from under a juniper hedge and scared the bejesus out of me. I ran up to the door and shoved my key in the lock. I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it, fighting for control of my lungs.

The stillness of my apartment calmed me after a few moments. Everything was as I’d left it that morning. Dirty dishes still in the sink from last night’s lasagne feast with Ozzi. Scarf I’d decided not to wear tossed over the back of the living room chair. Light on in the bathroom down the hall. Wait. Did I leave the light on? I squinched my eyes, trying to remember.

Ozzi had tried to persuade me to shower with him before he left, but I knew from experience that it wouldn’t have made either of us very clean. Quite the opposite. Plus, it was the middle of the night. He’d given up and used the hallway bathroom so I could get back to sleep. He must have left the light on. Probably. Why couldn’t I remember? When did he leave? Was it before or after midnight? And why didn’t he stay like he normally did?

I glanced again down the hallway. But the more pressing question right now was, why was my bathroom light on? Was someone here? Would a murderer need a light to kill me?

As I tried to decide whether to grab a knife from the kitchen and investigate or race out of my apartment, across several state lines, away from all of this trauma and danger to hole up in some off-the-grid cabin in a remote wilderness, my phone rang full blast with my brother’s ringtone. For the second time in three minutes, I had no more bejesus. I scrambled for the phone and saw Lance’s photo on the screen. My brother was two years younger than me but looked ten years older. It startled me to see how much he looked like Dad. Probably always would.

“Lance. Hey.” I took a deep, calming breath and sidled along the hall toward the bathroom. My brother on the phone gave me courage. At least if I got murdered someone would know about it right away.

“You know anyone named Joaquin?” Lance often seemed to start a conversation halfway in when he called. Sometimes he made me wonder if I’d blacked out for three sentences of small talk and didn’t remember we’d been chatting.

“I don’t think so.” I poked my head in the bathroom. Empty. “The reason I called earlier—”

“I know why you called.” I heard the exasperation in his voice.

“You heard about Melinda?” Without waiting for an answer, I asked, “Didn’t she live in a ritzy gated community? How could someone tamper with her car?” I tiptoed across the small bathroom, even though I recognized that with all the noise I was making, I couldn’t possibly sneak up on anyone hiding in the bathtub. I yanked the curtain open. Empty.

“So?” Lance said. “Remember when we’d sneak into those neighborhoods and swim in their pools? It worked because we acted like we fit in. Hang on a minute.”

“Don’t be too long. My battery’s dying.” I sat on the edge of the tub and thought about who I knew who’d definitely fit in with Melinda’s neighborhood. Kell, for sure. And Cordelia. Hell, maybe she did live there for all I knew about her. She was so inscrutable. She’d started out writing romance, but when she found out erotica paid better, she immediately switched genres. Very mercenary for someone who seemed so prim. Took us all by surprise. Like at our critique group Christmas party with the white elephant gift exchange. Instead of keeping the delicate bone china tea set she got, she swiped the Led Zeppelin Greatest Hits box set right out from under Jenica’s nose. What else didn’t I know about her? Maybe I didn’t want to know.

Lance came back on the line. “I’ve been talking to my buddies. Joaquin is the mechanic who worked on Melinda Walter’s car recently. Is there any possibility he found a copy of your manuscript on her seat or something?”

“Yes, of course. That must be what happened.” I blew out a huge breath and smiled, glad once again to have a cop in the family.

“Did you stop for coffee this morning?” he asked.

“And a blueberry muffin.”

“Why didn’t you tell the detectives that?”

“How do you know—oh my gosh, I forgot to tell them. I do it almost every day. It completely slipped my mind. I’ll call them about it.”

“Go ahead or it looks bad. But they already know. And Charlee … ”

“What?”

“I know you didn’t kill your agent. Of course. But there’s a process, protocol. Don’t do anything … stupid. Just answer their questions and cooperate. It’s going to take some time. Remember what Dad always said. Marathons start with one step.”

“Dad said a lot of crazy things. Did he ever run one?”

“I don’t—”

“And why are you telling me this? I thought you just said that mechanic, Joaquin, was the suspect.”

“One of them. Gotta go. And you might want to lay low, hole up in your apartment for a while.”

His photo disappeared along with my confidence. One of them? Lay low? Lance thought I was in danger? If I was in danger, then I’d put my friends in danger, too, even if the detectives refuse to acknowledge it. I couldn’t lay low, couldn’t do nothing.

How would I handle this in a novel?