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“The guy was such a putz,” Bree said to her friend Beth as they sat together inside The Reading Room, St. Isidore’s only book store. “Tim did all the hard work. All I had to do was get him off a couple of times and he was jizz in my hands.”
Beth squeezed her girlfriend’s fingers under the table and said, “So he killed Steven and Debbie and you got the insurance money, the inheritance, all of the cash. Why didn’t the cops come looking for you before Tim burnt the house? Why didn’t they try to rescue you? You were kidnapped. And where were you hiding out? His house? Really?”
“Come on. You know how the Swingin’ Izzy police work,” Bree said.
“They were the last ones to know. When Tim killed Paul — and he had to go, that twerp knew too much and I mean, oh my God, he was a cop, right?”
“It was perfect. It gave the cops one more thing to occupy their time. Then Steven and Debbie got killed, and all of a sudden, they had three murder victims, and a burning house.”
“Okay. But I still don’t know why you had to be kidnapped. Why not just run off with Tim?”
“The kidnapping was my alibi. I was not a killer. I was a victim. How could I be a criminal?”
The cops found her little pee bucket in the basement, the cot, the plywood walls, everything was just like Bree said it was.
She was even able to provide tears and hiccuping sobs in the interview with Chief Lumpy, and it worked so well to dissolve any disbelief Lumpy might have, the act became a regular staple of Bree’s TV interviews.
“I gave them everything they wanted and I got everything I wanted,” Bree said.
“The house insurance money, the life insurance money, the inheritance — not much but every little bit helps — and now the book deals. I am the Kim frickin’ Kardashian of St.Isidore.”
“Everybody wants to write your story,” Beth said. “I can hardly wait until Oprah comes calling. You are going to need an agent to help you sort this out.”
Adam and Anne, the owners of The Reading Room, glanced over at Beth and Bree, their celebrity customers. Adam saw dollar signs. The Reading Room, his first business, was fighting the tide of failure washing over bookstores like his. Beth and Bree, “The B Girls” as the bloggers and TV people called them, could bring in more customers.
Anne didn’t look at it that way. She had seen her share of hard times and couldn’t help wondering what troubles were in store in the life of Bree.
“I know where she is in her head,” Anne told Adam over breakfast. “She thinks she has it all figured out. Bree doesn’t have any idea of what is ahead of her.”
“So you still don’t think she was a victim in this?” Adam said.
“Not even close,” said Anne. “I knew what Steven was doing. It was so obvious to anyone who had been through it, like me. The bastard should have died. But murder is never the way.”
“And, what about poor Debbie?”
“She had a feeling it would end this way. We talked about it.”
“Is it true she had a pacemaker?”
“It exploded inside her when she burned. What a mess that must have been.”
“But what about Tim?” asked Adam. “He must have been a real sicko.”
“ I knew Tim. I slept with Tim...”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“Oh, look who’s getting jealous,” Anne teased. “I did not know he was a killer.”
––––––––
NOBODY IN ST. ISIDORE, except Paul, knew it. But like Anne, everyone was learning that, too. The police were still counting up the men, boys, girls and women Tim killed and hung up in what everyone was calling “The Suicide Forest” while Adam and Anne were digesting breakfast and the latest news about the neighbors.
“And what about Paul? I knew they hung out together, but I never thought Tim would hang him out to dry.”
“Funny,” said Adam. “So, he was a killer, a kinky SOB of the craziest variety, but you don’t think he was a kidnapper. Seems like a pretty small crime compared to all the rest.”
“Maybe, but still I can’t believe he did it. Tim was lost in a fantasy world. Every one of those killings was the result of one of the impulses he couldn't control.”
“So he had an impulse to kidnap and ran with it.”
Bree was put into foster care as soon as the police finished their investigation. Anne wasn’t the only person in St. Isidore who doubted the official version of the kidnapping or the killing of Tim. There were still some people who liked him, although there were twice as many who told every reporter who asked that they saw this coming.
Bree’s foster parents could have been better. But they could have been a lot worse, if the rest of the world wasn’t watching them.
Dave and Sherri were a little nervous having Bree in their home. After all, she was a teenage girl who some people said had arranged the murders of her mother and stepdad.
Still, Dave and Sherri were able to turn a profit too. Some of the money rolling in off the Bree tidal wave that swept into St. Isidore from the Wild West of internet capitalism slid their way.
But it didn’t come close to the cash that Bree raked in.
Three months into their lives together, Dave and Sherri had to give Bree permission to install her own phone and internet connection. It was the only way she could keep up with the media requests, agent offers and book deals.
Bree turned into quite the entrepreneur. She created her own fashion line.
“Bree could have started small, hoping to expand, but that wouldn’t be Bree, would it?” said one TV commentator.
Bree was also able to sue and take over several small pirate entrepreneurs who were selling Bree screen savers, photos and videos without her permission.
“I’d sue the people selling brie cheese if I thought I could get away with it,” Bree told Beth.
It is not like Bree needed the money, but Beth knew Bree would never be satisfied until she was sure she had it all.
“She’s a schemer,” Anne whispered to Adam when Beth and Bree walked into The Reading Room. “Just look at the two of them.”
“She’s got her own business,” Adam said, doing that quote thing with his fingers in the air, that drives Anne crazy, “Bree Incorporated.”
“I’ve got nothing against that. But she’s just into it for the money. She’s not creating anything for anyone else,” said Anne. “And I just think there’s more to this kidnapping thing than we know.”
Anne drummed her fingers on the table top like the rim shot on a snare head in a burlesque house.
“What about Tim getting killed? If she did set him up, she murdered him.”
“How could Bree set him up? She got kidnapped,”Adam said, while he sent out a tweet welcoming Bree and Beth to The Reading Room.
“What did you just do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s in your hand under the table?”
“Just dreaming about tonight”
“I call bullshit on that,” Anne said, reaching under the table and coming back with Adam’s smartphone.
She read the tweet and snorted.
“The Reading Room welcomes The B Girls?”
“Free advertising. They bring in a crowd.”
“A good public hanging would do the same thing,” said Anne. “Watching those two is like being trackside in the chicken wing section at St. Izzy Speedway. Everybody’s just waiting for them to crash and burn.”
It could be that’s what bothered Anne most of all. Everyone in St. Isidore, even Adam, seemed to be in a race to see who could make the most money off the girl before she flamed out.
She’s only, what, sixteen? Beautiful too? Yes, but that doesn’t last. Bree’s going to find out soon enough that all any of us are doing is getting older every day and one day closer to the finish line
Beth said, “You got away with it. Everybody thinks you were kidnapped. Tim is dead. You got the insurance money. Now we go off together?”
“Yeah baby now we go off together. And a man will never touch me again. Or another woman either, unless you want to watch,” Bree said with a whisper, a laugh and a squeeze of Beth’s bare thigh under the table.
“This is what we have been dreaming of, right?” said Beth.
“Right. But first, I need you do so something for me....”
Two tables over, John Sheldon sipped his coffee, pretended to read a newspaper on his smartphone, and waited.
The End