by Blake Pierce
“Welcome to my not so humble abode,” Andi said, waving her inside.
Jessie noticed her host was barefoot and happily slid off her own shoes too.
“I bet that felt good,” Andi said, apparently noticing the relief Jessie felt as her feet escaped the confines of her professional footwear. “Come on in and make yourself comfortable.”
Jessie peeled off her coat as she followed her through the massive foyer and down a long marble-floored hallway filled with sculptures and paintings. It seemed endless, finally opening onto a carpeted den that was as casual as the rest of the house was formal.
The room was dominated by two huge, comfy-looking couches. In between them was a rustic wood coffee table covered with magazines, and not stuff like The New Yorker and The Economist but Cosmo and People—another check in her favor. A wet bar stood in one corner. Directly opposite it was a TV screen that extended almost from floor to ceiling.
“I like a pretty picture when I watch my stories,” Andi said in a vaguely Southern accent, noting Jessie’s eyes widen at the sheer massiveness of the thing.
“It’s like a home theater,” she marveled.
“That’s the idea,” Andi replied. “I’d offer you the whole home tour but that would take up most of the evening and personally, I’d just rather hang in here.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Great,” Andi said, collapsing onto one of the couches. “I was also thinking of ordering pizza in a bit. You in?”
“I am totally and completely in,” Jessie said, tossing her coat and purse down beside her as she plopped onto the other couch. “Do you ever invite the country club gals for any of these mojito and movie nights?”
Andi laughed at the prospect.
“Not so much,” she said. “The ones you met, Marlene and Cady, are pretty representative of what the Beverly Country Club has to offer. They’re not exactly the ‘kick off your shoes and veg out’ crowd. They’re more the ‘judge every possession in your home’ types.”
“That sounds super fun. Speaking of Marlene, she must have had a field day when the Missingers’ maid was arrested.”
“That’s an understatement. She would not let it go; kept saying it confirmed all her suspicions. The phrase ‘I hope this teaches your migrant-loving ass a lesson’ was uttered. It was delightful.”
“I’m sorry to have played a role in reinforcing her stereotypes,” Jessie said, forcing herself not to bring up her doubts about Marisol’s guilt with a civilian.
“No chance it was a mistake or there was someone else involved?” Andi asked before quickly adding, “Not that I’m questioning your work. I just don’t love the message it sends.”
“That’s okay.” Jessie said despite herself. “Believe me—I’ve had my own reservations. But the evidence led to her. It’ll all come out in the next few months. It’s pretty definitive.”
Andi leaned in conspiratorially despite the fact that they were on couches six feet from each other.
“Tell me if this is inappropriate to ask,” she said quietly. “But there’s talk around the club that Marlene’s crazy ‘affair-with-the-boss’ theory wasn’t that far off.”
“I can’t really get into the specifics,” Jessie said, finishing the last of her mojito. “But let’s just say that Marlene’s superiority complex isn’t getting undermined anytime soon.”
“Man, that is a serious bummer,” Andi said and then pointed at the empty glass. “Want a refill?”
“Sure,” Jessie replied, handing it over and curling her legs underneath her.
This couch is more comfortable than my bed.
Andi went back to the wet bar and started tossing ice cubes in the glass.
“I guess you never know what’s really going on in someone else’s house,” she said. I wouldn’t have pegged Michael for the type to shtup the maid at the Bonaventure. It’s such a cliché. But like I said the other day, I wasn’t that close to them. I guess I bought into the image they were putting out there, just like everyone else.”
“Yeah,” Jessie agreed. “You never really know what’s in someone’s heart. I used to live with someone for years, thinking we were birds of a feather. Then he pushed me out of the nest.”
“But I thought that was your job,” Andi said, pouring various ingredients into Jessie’s drink. “Isn’t that what a profiler does—look into people’s hearts?”
“First of all, I’m new to the gig, so I’m still in ‘trial and error’ mode. There’s a reason I was assigned this case and not the one where a serial killer is currently terrorizing the city. Second, profilers don’t look into people’s hearts. They look at the crime and the evidence to create a picture of what kind of characteristics the perpetrator might have. I leave hearts to the clergy.”
“Fair enough,” Andi said, handing her a new drink. “You see what happens when a person who bailed on her education starts making assumptions. Do we want to order that pizza and pick a movie?”
“Actually, before that, do you mind if I borrow your bathroom?” Jessie asked, taking a sip. “It was a long drive over.”
“Of course,” Andi said. “It’s right off this room to the left there.”
Jessie put her mojito down and stood up.
“You know,” Andi said, “you can take your drink with you. I don’t want it to get too watery. Besides, we don’t stand on ceremony here at the Robinson abode. If you have one too many, you can take a Lyft home or just crash here if you like.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Jessie said, grabbing the drink and heading for the bathroom.
“Any pizza preference?” Andi called after her.
“I’m pretty easy,” Jessie answered. “Just no anchovies please.”
“Dear god, no!” Andi agreed, laughing.
Jessie could still hear her chuckling after she closed the bathroom door. The scent of potpourri wafted over her. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled.
Look at you, having a girls’ night.
She took a big glug of her drink, tied her hair in a ponytail, and threw some cold water on her face. She noticed her cheeks were a little ruddier than usual, probably a result of the alcohol.
Despite her best efforts, Jessie couldn’t help but let her thoughts wander back to Michael Missinger. She kept returning to the same questions in her head: What was he doing in his mansion less than half a mile away? Was he mourning in a candlelit room? Was he even there? Or was he entertaining a new conquest at the Bonaventure Hotel at this very moment? Everyone seemed to know that was his seduction spot of choice, even Andi. Apparently it was an open secret.
Was it though?
The thought popped into her head as if planted there by someone else. She tried to push it away, annoyed with herself for letting her brain work overtime on a night she was supposed to be relaxing. But the question circled in her thoughts.
Were his hotel liaisons common knowledge? Because Michael certainly didn’t want them to get out. The whole point was to go somewhere that he wouldn’t be found out by Victoria or his employees. And that detail wasn’t available to the public yet. The only people who knew about the hotel get-togethers were Missinger and his paramours.
“Just stop,” Jessie said aloud, staring angrily at herself in the mirror. She noticed her eyes were watering. She grabbed a tissue and dabbed them.
But despite her entreaty to herself, the thoughts kept coming. If Andi knew about the Bonaventure, was it possible she’d just heard about the hotel through the grapevine?
She would have mentioned it to me.
Jessie grabbed another tissue and coughed into it, trying to get rid of the sudden catch she felt in her throat.
Why wouldn’t she tell me?
The possibilities came fast and furious after that. If Andi knew about the Bonaventure Hotel, then the only reason for her not to mention it was because she knew that it would reveal she was sleeping with the man too.
And if she was sleeping with him, then she was almost cer
tainly being deceptive about a great deal more. For one, she had said she didn’t know the couple well. But it would seem she at least knew Michael quite intimately. For another, it was she who had conveniently reminded Jessie about the “affair with the maid” rumor, sending her down the path of re-investigating Marisol’s alibi.
Jessie turned on the faucet, cupped her hands, and slurped a gulp of water, hoping it would clear her throat, which felt tight.
What was it Andi had said about her love life when they met for coffee?
It’s only recently that I’ve allowed myself to become open to actually falling in love. I’m trying to make up for lost time, I guess.
Was it possible that she’d fallen in love with Michael Missinger? And if she had, how far would she go to make that love something more than illicit? She’d already proven she was a smoothly adept liar. What else was she capable of?
Jessie coughed again. She felt like her throat was clenching up. That and the watery eyes made her wonder if she was allergic to the potpourri in the bathroom. She needed a puff from her inhaler, which was still in her purse on the couch.
Deciding to behave as normally as she could, Jessie resolved to beg off on the rest of the evening and leave so she could untangle her suspicions away from the object of them. She grabbed her drink and headed for the door.
She was about to open it when she looked down at the glass. The wheezing and coughing and watery eyes had started soon after she’d sipped her second mojito—the one Andi had poured for her right after mentioning the Bonaventure Hotel.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Suddenly it all made sense.
Jessie flashed back to their conversation at the Coffee Klatch, where she’d mentioned her violent peanut allergy. It wouldn’t be hard to slip peanut oil into an alcoholic drink and have it go unnoticed.
Andi must have realized she screwed up by mentioning the hotel and assumed I’d figure it out.
And now, just as she’d eliminated Victoria Missinger and Marisol Mendez as threats, she was taking action once again to remove a person who could get in her way.
Jessie forced herself to breathe in through her nose, which was still clear for now. Even as she did, she felt her skin start to itch and her chest burning with the effort to get air in.
Think, Jessie. Find a way out of this.
She pulled out her phone to call 911 but then thought better of it. She’d be unconscious by the time they answered. She considered calling Ryan but worried that even if he picked up, she wouldn’t be able to speak. Even texting the situation might take too long.
Then she remembered the emergency quick-touch code he he’d told her to text if she was ever in imminent danger. She quickly punched in “999” and the message “ASAP” was sent. Hopefully he’d get it and send the cavalry. He knew where she was going tonight. He had access to her phone’s GPS and had even used it once before to locate her at the hospital after her husband attacked her. It might work.
But not if she couldn’t get away from Andi, who was somewhere on the other side of that door, already committed to making sure she didn’t leave the house alive. She had to try to get out without looking vulnerable.
If she could make Andi think the poisoning attempt hadn’t worked, maybe she could walk out of the place without a confrontation. She had to fake being fine and not in the middle of a medical emergency. With that goal in mind, she took one more nasal breath, opened the door, and stepped out.
Andi was still in the living room, looking suspiciously casual as she mixed herself a drink at the bar.
“Everything okay?” she called out. “I was starting to get a little worried.”
Jessie nodded as she made her way to the couch where her purse rested. She felt a cough coming and forced it down so that it came out like a grunt.
“Where’s your drink?” Andi asked.
Jessie pointed back at the bathroom, doing her best not to look directly at her host. She feared that if Andi saw her watery eyes or flushed cheeks, she’d realize that her efforts had worked.
She got to her purse and unzipped the small side pocket where she normally kept the inhaler but it wasn’t there. She began rifling through the main pouch, fearing it had fallen in and gotten mixed up with all her other junk. As she did, she felt her throat close almost completely and gasped involuntarily.
“Are you all right?” Andi asked, rushing around the bar with a concerned look on her face. “You don’t look so hot.”
Jessie felt her vision fade momentarily and dropped to one knee. She gasped again and looked up helplessly at Andi, who was now standing over her.
“How can I help?” she asked urgently as she put her drink down on the table. “Should I call nine-one-one?”
“Puff,” Jessie managed to croak, hoping with all her might that she’d misjudged Andi and that her new friend would come to her rescue.
“Puff?” Andi repeated, looking confused. “You mean like an inhaler?”
Jessie nodded vigorously, pointing at her bag.
“You mean like the one I took out of your purse and put on the bar over there?” she asked slowly, her voice turning sickly sweet as she pointed to the red inhaler sitting innocently on the marble bar fifteen feet away. It might as well have been a mile. Andi’s lips curled up ever so slightly to form a thin, cruel smile.
Jessie gave a massive hack as she dropped to both knees. She knew she didn’t have much longer before her throat closed entirely and she slipped into unconsciousness. As she slumped forward, her upper body crumbling face-first onto the couch cushion, she tried to form a coherent thought in her quickly clouding brain.
Backup plan.
Her backup plan. Her backup inhaler. It was in her inside coat pocket, less than two feet from her—if she could just muster the strength to grab it.
Pushing herself up slightly, Jessie lunged out and managed to clasp the sleeve of the jacket before collapsing back down. She sensed her body slipping from the couch to the carpet and held on to the jacket desperately. She felt it land next to her as she hit the floor and clutched it tightly to her chest as she rolled into the fetal position, now wracked by abdominal pain on top of everything else.
“You may not believe me,” Andi said from somewhere above her, “but I really do feel awful about this. It’s not how I wanted things to go. I really felt a connection to you, Jessie. I thought we could be pals.”
Jessie rolled onto her chest, with her knees curled under her stomach and her coat gripped tightly under her body. As she writhed on the ground, unable to distinguish between the pain in her gut and the burning in her chest, she tried to concentrate on reaching into the jacket pocket for her backup inhaler. She could hear Andi’s voice, though it was farther away now.
That bitch has gone back to the bar to get her drink!
“The minute you mentioned that peanut allergy,” she heard her hostess say, “I had to go out and buy some peanut oil, purely as a precaution, of course. I never thought I’d need it. But then you made me screw up. I got so comfortable that I let the hotel bit slip out. I knew the second I said it that you’d figure it out, maybe not now but eventually. And since this might be my only opportunity to neutralize you, I had to do it. You understand, right?”
Jessie wriggled her hand deep in the interior pocket and hit something hard and plastic with her knuckle—the inhaler. She grabbed it and pulled it out quickly, doing her best to keep it hidden. She was bent over and facing away from Andi, who was across the room. There’d never be a better chance to do it.
She brought both her hands up to cover her face as a legitimate, rasping cough escaped her throat. As she desperately gasped at whatever air her lungs could suck in, she shoved the inhaler spout into her mouth and sprayed.
“How long should I wait before calling nine-one-one?” she heard Andi ask from somewhere closer than before. “I want to make it seem real. Should I wait until you turn blue to try mouth to mouth?”
Fearing Andi was almost upon her, she took one final puff before slumping on her stomach, hiding the inhaler below her. She was still rasping but could feel oxygen returning to her system. Nonetheless, she played up the breathing troubles, even twitching a bit in the hope that the stalling tactic would give her time to come up with another move. As she contorted, she shoved the inhaler into her pants pocket and out of sight.
As she lay there, the thought of Bolton Crutchfield flashed through her mind briefly. He had hinted that the killer was female. He had suggested she was unhappy with her lot in life. In hindsight, everything that had seemed to match up with Marisol Mendez fit Andi equally well: unable to live up to her father’s expectations, a dropout, living a life she knew was empty of meaning, so devoid of love that she would kill to create some spark of it.
“I’m going to call nine-one-one now,” Andi said chirpily, from right above her. “I don’t want to wait too long and have it look suspicious. It’ll take forever for them to answer anyway.”
As if on cue, Jessie gave a final wheeze and lay still. She allowed her body to go limp, even as her mind raced.
The pieces all locked into place, like one of those jigsaw puzzles that Garland Moses said so rarely fit together. Andi had the motive to do this and the wherewithal too. Her chemical engineering background would make something as simple as dosing an insulin injection child’s play. Sabotaging a neighborhood transformer so that the power—and all the security cameras—went out would be a simple task for someone of her intellect. And given the time and desire, framing her romantic target’s employee would be easy and, considering she was a rival, probably very satisfying.
“Hello,” she heard Andi’s panicked voice shout from the ground beside her. Apparently getting through to 911 hadn’t taken so long after all. “Yes, I have an emergency at 2140 South Muirfield Road. My friend has had some kind of allergic reaction. She started coughing and wheezing and now she’s passed out. Please send an ambulance right away.”