Mint Chip & Murder

by Erin Huss

  "So I've heard. But they do have a yacht?"

  "My mom inherited it when her mother died. She's the one who came from money."

  "And your dad is the one who is cheap?"

  "They're both cheap. Park down the street."

  I pulled over in front of a house with a high fence and crawled out of my car. "What is your plan?" I asked Kevin as we hiked back up the street.

  "I'm going to ring the doorbell."

  "OK."

  "Then I'm going to ask for my birth certificate."

  "OK."

  "And if they don't give it to me, I'm going to ask if my dad had an affair."

  "OK."

  "And if he says no, then I'm going home."

  "Oh. OK." Seemed a bit anticlimactic. It also didn't sound illegal. Looked like Kevin didn't need me there after all.

  "Then I'm going to smash a brick through their window."

  I spoke too soon.

  The driveway was long, with weeds towering from the cracks in the cement. Kevin stepped up to the door, and I hung back.

  "What are you doing?" he asked.

  "You want me to be part of this conversation?"

  He jerked his head, as if to say, Duh.

  Alrighty then. I stepped behind him, my phone in hand, ready to dial for help should the situation go south.

  Kevin bypassed the old-fashioned lion-head knocker on the front door and pounded with the inside of his fists. A second-story window illuminated, and a few minutes later, the front porch light turned on.

  A thin, tall man with droopy cheeks and gray hair opened the door and tightened his robe. "Kevin?"

  "Hello, old man. I need my birth certificate."

  Wow, he was sticking to his plan.

  Mr. McMills' mouth sagged open, and his eyes shifted to me. "Who is that?"

  "It's my wife," Kevin said.

  I raised my hand, about to protest, then thought better of it.

  "Wife?" Mr. McMills' face was plagued with confusion. "You married her?"

  "Yeah, I know. Her hair is wild, and she talks a lot. She's good company, though."

  Honestly.

  "I need my birth certificate," Kevin said again. "Now."

  "You can order one from the county," Mr. McMills said.

  "No, I want it from you. I'm sure it's here somewhere." He pushed past his father and into the home.

  I moseyed on forward, keeping enough distance to not be in the way yet close enough to still hear what was going on.

  "You can't come barging into this house." Mr. McMills' words were harsh, though his tone was light. "Your mother is sleeping."

  Kevin spun around. "Is she my mother?"

  Mr. McMills scowled. "Of course she is."

  "Did you hear about the woman in the barrel?"

  "Yes, Trevor told us. Very sad. I don't see what that has to do with us."

  "You don't, Enest?"

  "Are you high?" Mr. McMills ran his hand down his face. "Don't make me call the police, Kevin. Just go back home."

  "He's been sober for nine months," I said, then stepped back and assumed my position at the door.

  "The little woman is right. Sober nine months," said Kevin. "No thanks to you."

  Mr. McMills closed his eyes, as if counting to ten. "Kevin, please leave."

  "No. I want my birth certificate."

  "Why?"

  "Because I think you are immoral."

  Mr. McMills tensed. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "Did you have an affair with a woman named Marisa Lola?"

  Oh, geez. I raised my hand. "Sorry to interrupt. I think he means Larissa Lopez. She also went by Lara." I took a step back, then remembered. "By the way, we think Larissa is the woman dead in the barrel."

  Mr. McMills' face blanched. So much so I questioned his involvement in Larissa's death. If he'd killed her and stuffed her into the barrel, then he wouldn't have looked as if this was the first time he was hearing the news. Or he was a good actor. Or he blanched because he knew he'd been caught.

  "Get out!" Mr. McMills pointed to the door. "Get out of my house, now! You are not welcome here." He grabbed Kevin by the arm and forced him forward. "Take your wife and leave."

  "Such a hothead, old man," Kevin said, dragging his feet.

  "Get out of my house!" He gave Kevin one hard push and slammed the door closed.

  Well, oh, em, gee. I rocked from my toes to my heels, unsure of what to say next.

  Kevin started laughing. "Did you see his face? He was all"—Kevin puffed his cheeks —"get out of my house."

  "Yeah, I saw. He absolutely knew Larissa."

  "Ha! What a wacko." He sighed with a big smile on his face. "OK, cool. I'm good. Let's go."

  "You didn't get your certificate," I said.

  "So?"

  "And you don't have answers."

  "So?"

  "Don't you want to know what happened?"

  "Nah. I'm good." He shrugged. "Let's go. Jack in the Box is open twenty-four hours."

  "Wait a second." I grabbed Kevin by the sleeve of his shirt. "Larissa could have been your mother."

  "Then she's dead, and it doesn't matter. I want a taco."

  "How can you not care?"

  "Why do you?" he retorted. "This isn't your family. This isn't your life. The only reason you're doing any of this is because you want the job at Cedar Creek. You don't give a crap about what happened to anyone."

  My breath hitched in my throat. I specifically hadn't told Kevin about my interview next door. "How'd you find out?"

  "I saw you sneaking over there wearing your blue dress and put two and two together."

  "It's a good opportunity," I said, feeling guilty.

  "Listen to my words," he said, as if he were about to explain something very simple to someone very stupid. "All I care about right now is a deep-fried taco. You can work wherever. Marry whoever. Eat whatever. Dress however. I don't care so long as you don't cry."

  "It's whom," I muttered. "And why do you have to be so mean? Sure, you had a crap family who did crap things in this crap house. I have done nothing but be there for you since day one…well, more like day seven or eight. You were a belligerent butthead in the beginning, but whatever."

  Kevin looked up and mouthed why to the sky.

  "What are you doing?" I demanded.

  "Sometimes it's easier to care about tacos, than to think about the stuff you can't change." He gestured to the house.

  Oh.

  "I'm sure your boyfriend and his partner with the ugly hair will figure this out without us," Kevin added.

  Perhaps.

  "What we can do is get into your car, drive to Jack in the Box, eat two tacos, curly fries, and a vanilla shake, take five Tums, and go to bed."

  Not a terrible plan. But, "I want chocolate."

  "Gah! You're so difficult." He playfully wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his armpit. "By the way, you're paying."

  "Then it's only one taco."

  "When you get the new job, you'll need to start buying better groceries. I'm sick of your generic, non-dairy, foo-foo garbage."

  "First, it's cheaper. Second, Lilly has a milk allergy."

  "According to WebMD."

  "Your point?"

  "How many hours a day do you spend on the website?"

  "Not relevant." A lot. "You could buy your own food."

  "New subject. Let's talk about Hampton's hair. I think we should stage an intervention."

  "Guess who has to go to dinner with him and Silvia on Fri—"

  An explosion cut me off. Kevin and I whirled around, using our hands to protect our face from the heat radiating off the McMills's McMansion. Flames spewed from a second-story window and up to the roof.

  "No!" Kevin ran towards the house before I could stop him.

  "Wait, Kevin!" I chased after him.

  He kicked the door, but it didn't open. "This…looks…so…much…easier…in…the…movies," he said with each kick
.

  I pulled my shirt up to cover my nose and mouth and reached over and tried the handle. It was unlocked, and the door swung open. The entryway was filled with smoke, and about seven houses' worth of stuff. Oh, my gosh. I could see into the living room, and there were manmade hallways through piles of flammable-looking books and clothes and artifacts and furniture. This was an arsonist's dream.

  Kevin headed up the spiral staircase, taking two steps at a time. For someone who hated his parents, he sure was eager to save them. I went after him, fumbling with my phone, wanting to call 9-1-1, but I dropped it on the floor. The thick smoke made it impossible to see where it had gone, and I decided to keep going. The explosion had been loud. A neighbor would have called for help already.

  I followed Kevin down a hallway lined with more stuff and into a room. The smoke was getting thicker by the second, and I hunched down. "Kevin, we need to get out of here," I yelled out, my voice hoarse.

  I had no idea what room we were in, and I had lost sight of Kevin. A little disoriented, I spun around, and stepped forward. Loud voices caught my attention, and I followed the sound. The smoke cleared with each step, and I found myself at the end of a hallway. The door was half shut (or half open for the optimist, not that there was anything optimistic about this situation). Inside, Mr. McMills and a woman who I assumed to be Mrs. McMills were arguing. She had a gun in one hand and lighter fluid in the other. They were in what appeared to be a library, with shelves stuffed with dusty—flammable-looking—books.

  "I had no choice, Ernest!" she yelled.

  "Stop it, Dolores. Put the gun down."

  "Put it down?" Dolores mocked. She had a helmet of bleached hair, a tight face, and red nails. A silk robe was wrapped around her bony frame, and yesterday's makeup was still caked on her face. "You want me to put the gun down?" She fired two shots into the bookshelf. "Who is the one who couldn't keep it in his pants?"

  "I-I understand," Mr. McMills said, backing up, his palms up. "Just put the gun down."

  "She wanted the kid, and I dealt with it."

  "Please, put the gun down."

  Dolores fired another shot into a stack of books. "I'm the one who had to look your infidelity in the face every day!"

  "You never told me Larissa came back."

  "Because you would have let her see the boy!" She waved the gun around. "I should have listened to my parents. They told me you were no good."

  I coughed as silently as I could into the crook of my elbow, not wanting to be heard. It sounded to me as if I was right. Larissa was pregnant with Mr. McMills' baby, but it was Dolores who put Larissa in the barrel, and I wanted to hear more.

  Also, Dolores appeared to be unstable, and I wasn't eager to get caught in the crossfire. The problem was the actual fire was inching its way closer. I'd soon have no choice but to join them in the room. I crouched down to the floor where the air was cleaner, and listened.

  "I didn't know you killed her," Mr. McMills said. "Why did you kill her, Dolores?"

  "I had no choice. She wanted to see the kid. That was part of the deal. She was never to see him. Don't you understand, you idiot? She would have made things worse!"

  "But you killed her."

  "No one was supposed to find the body," she said.

  My heart pounded and my mind scrambled. Despite the alarming amount of carbon monoxide in the air, I was able to make sense of the situation. Ernest had had an affair with Larissa, and she'd gotten pregnant. Dolores and Ernest paid her off and told her to stay away, kept the baby themselves, and raised him as their own. When Larissa didn't keep her end of the bargain, Dolores killed her, likely in a heated argument, by smacking her on the back of the head with something heavy. I wasn't sure how little Dolores managed to get a dead body up to the attic, into a barrel, and construct a wall by herself. But desperate people manage to do desperate things all the time. Patrick must have known about Kevin—that's why he'd been acting so strange. Larissa must have told him the truth when the two were arguing.

  Hallelujah, my boss is innocent! I felt like singing. Except I was running out of oxygen. I only hoped Kevin had found whatever it was he was looking for and had managed to escape.

  Speaking of escape… The fire raged forward, and I was left with no other option. I crawled into the room, hoping the dueling duo wouldn't notice.

  "Who the hell is that?" Dolores spit out.

  So, I guess my plan was a bust.

  "That's Kevin's wife," Mr. McMills said.

  "Wife?" Dolores took a staggering step back, and I took note of her limp. She must have been the woman who came by Apartment 14B today. She heard about the barrel and went to see for herself if it had been discovered. So it wasn't a ghost.

  I stood up slowly, my hands up and shaking. I could not believe I was in this situation. I'd come to make sure Kevin didn't do anything stupid, and here I was on the wrong side of a gun—again!

  Note to self: Time to reevaluate your life choices.

  "You're Kevin's wife?" Dolores didn't hide the shock from her voice. She still held the gun and lighter fluid tightly in each hand.

  "Errr…" I wasn't sure what to say.

  So Kevin said it for me.

  He fell into the room, coughing, his face covered in soot. "I got it." He held up a handful of records. "My"—cough, cough, cough—"Barbara Streisand collection," he gasped out. "I found it."

  Oh, for heaven's sake.

  "Kevin!" Dolores's voice shook. "What are you doing here?"

  He looked at the records in his hand then at his mother and shrugged, as if it were obvious.

  "You're…m-married?" she stuttered.

  Kevin coughed into the inside of his elbow and nodded his head. "This is my ball…and…chain." He smacked my butt.

  Oh, geez.

  Dolores shook her head. "You told us you were gay."

  "Yeah, well, you told me"—he paused to cough—"that you were my mother."

  "I am your mother," she said with a stomp of her foot. "What are you talking about?"

  "No," he coughed, "Mari…or…Lar…" He looked down at me. "What was her name?"

  "Larissa," I muttered.

  "Larissa was my mother!"

  "No, she was not!" Dolores waved her gun around, and I cowered behind Kevin, my shirt still over my nose and mouth.

  "Kevin, what are you talking about?" Mr. McMills asked. "This is your mother. She was pregnant—" He stopped himself.

  "What?" Kevin demanded. "Get out with it, old man. We're all going to die here anyway."

  Uh, I'm not dying.

  I hoped.

  Dolores fired another shot into the bookcase. "Keep your mouth quiet," she warned her husband.

  Mr. McMills' eyes were approaching frantic. "I'm tired of lying!" He crossed the room and put a hand on Kevin's shoulder. "I had an affair with a beautiful Latina girl from El Salvador. You were our love child."

  "You've"—Kevin coughed—"got to be kidding me!"

  "Your mother couldn't have kids," Mr. McMills continued. "She has low libido. You were our chance to be parents. We paid Larissa to go away and let us raise you. For what it's worth, I think we did a terrible job."

  Kevin blinked a few times, the Barbara Streisand collection still in his hands. "You killed my real mom?"

  Mr. McMills brought a hand to his heart. "Your mother did. She's ashamed of my affairs. It's not my fault. I have needs."

  Oh, please make it stop.

  The way Mr. McMills' mouth curved into a faint smile when he said needs made me shudder. It's like I was trapped in a telenovela with a pervy grandpa.

  "Seriously?" Kevin gasped. The smoke billowed in, and I kicked the door closed to buy us time.

  "It has taken every ounce of power I have to keep your father from ruining our name!" Dolores fired another shot into the ceiling. Chunks of drywall fell down, and we all covered our heads.

  I checked around for the nearest exit. The only window was behind Dolores. We had to get the gun away from her and mak
e a break for it.

  "Dolores, I don't see how burning the house down will serve any purpose," Mr. McMills said. "Put the gun down."

  "No!" She doused the shelf behind her with lighter fluid. "If I'm going down, you're going down with me. I will not spend the rest of my life in prison because of you."

  Great. If she fired a shot, this room would go up in flames. Just in case it didn't, she dropped the lighter fluid and produced a lighter.

  "Stop!" I jumped out from behind Kevin. "You can't do this. You'll kill us all."

  Dolores could not have cared less. I knew because she said, "I couldn't care less."

  "I'm a-a mother," I stuttered. "I have a child. She needs me."

  Dolores faltered. "I have a grandchild?"

  No, but, sure. Let's go with it. "She's three, and she's beautiful. She has big hazel eyes, curly hair, and a sweet, heart-shaped face. Right now, she loves Captain Marvel and anything to do with unicorns. She just started preschool, and she's obsessed with her daddy…Kevin." I hoped to tug on Dolores's heartstrings. "I need to be there for my kid. Please, please, don't kill me."

  Without uttering a word, she jerked her head to the window. I shuffled towards her with my hands up in the air. There was a single moment of hesitation when I passed her. My eyes went to the gun and lighter in her shaking hands. I knew she had a slight limp and wasn't in the right frame of mind. It wouldn't take much to tackle her to the ground. Seemed like a no-brainer, but then there was Lilly to think about, and my promise to Chase to be careful. Leaving was the only surefire way to escape this situation alive.

  The thing was, though, I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd left. Not if something happened to Kevin. With slow determination, I unlocked the window and pushed it open. The plan was to catch Dolores off guard and rush her once she thought I was gone.

  I climbed up on the shelf below the window. My body pumped adrenaline, ready to attack, when Dolores shoved me with all her might. I rolled down an awning and landed in a bush. I stumbled to my feet and limped to the front of the house. Kevin!

  A group of neighbors had already gathered on the sidewalk. Someone pulled me away from the burning building as I protested each step, screaming for Kevin. He was inside. He was inside!

  A man with a shaved head and goatee held me by the shoulders to keep me from running in. This felt like a dream. A really bad dream. As if I were outside of my body watching the entire event from above: the fire trucks pulling up one by one; the police cars quickly following; the firefighters with gas masks and oxygen strapped to their backs, filing into the house, dragging a hose.