by Becky Clark
I flung open the door marked Thaddeus Eichhorn without knocking, quivering with adrenaline. I saw Einstein in his tiny office, sitting at a desk piled high with papers.
“Where were you the night before Melinda was killed?” I blurted.
“Schtupping Heinrich.”
I yelped and felt the adrenaline drain from my body, leaving me to slump against the doorjamb. When I recovered a bit, I managed to squeak out, “Heinrich said he was at Mercy Hospital.”
Einstein stood up, said “Excuse me,” and walked to the opposite wall, which he faced. His back was to me, but he was only about five feet away. He pulled his cell from his pocket and started whispering into it.
I strained to hear, but I couldn’t make out any of the conversation. I glanced around the office for any weapons he might use on me, or any I could use to defend myself. My only defense would seem to be hefting stacks of papers at him. And, of course, the enormous piles he’d have to step over to get to me would surely slow him down. I kept my hand on the door knob.
Suddenly he whirled around and was in front of me before I could even react. I gasped and my hand flew to my chest. Einstein jabbed the phone at me. I took it from him.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively.
“Yes, I teach ESL. Yes, one of my students had a baby. No, I wasn’t at the hospital. Yes, I was schtupping Thaddeus.” Click.
Heinrich and Einstein were lovers? Why was this such a big deal? Men in their sixties finding love was something to celebrate, not hide. Wasn’t it? I opened and shut my mouth four thousand times. Handed Einstein’s phone back without a word. He started to speak, then changed his mind. I started to speak, then changed my mind. He sat back down at his desk.
“You and Heinrich?”
A tiny smile cracked the edges of his mouth. Maybe he was glad I’d found out.
“Why the secrecy? What’s the big deal?”
“No big deal. Just … personal.”
“Are you worried about your job? Because there are laws—”
“No laws against parents.”
“Aren’t Heinrich’s parents still in Germany?”
He nodded.
“Then why—” I remembered how angry Einstein had been when his publisher insisted his author name should be Thaddeus Eichhorn II. “Oh. Your father didn’t like you flying your rainbow flag.”
“He still doesn’t.” Einstein fiddled with a pair of eyeglasses on his desk.
“I thought your father was dead.”
“To me he is.”
I wanted to make him feel better, but this was out of my wheelhouse. “He’s just one guy. Surely there are many others who would be happy for the two of you.”
Einstein looked up and brightened. “I suppose that’s true.”
“So why was Heinrich so mad and evasive when I asked him about his alibi if he was with you? I’m no homophobe. Why lie about being at the hospital?”
“He’s angry with me, not you. For wanting to keep this a secret.”
I stared at him. “That’s pretty insightful. You know, for you.”
Einstein waved a dismissive hand. “Therapy. So much therapy.”
“Well, if the therapy is helping so much, why did you run away from me the other night?”
He wrinkled his brow. “It seemed easier than talking to you.”
“Easier for you, maybe.”
“Of course for me.” He genuinely looked puzzled.
“Of course.” I pulled the door shut as I left, flashing him a grin and a wave.
Heinrich and Einstein. Einstein and Heinrich. Who knew?
I made my way back to the Wendy’s where I’d ditched my car. I went inside and, suddenly famished, ordered a double with cheese, large fries, and a chocolate Frosty.
Staring at my plastic tray of food, my hunger vanished. I was glad neither Einstein nor Heinrich was a murderer, but they were the last two on my list. I’d crossed everyone off. I was back to zero. Technically below zero, since Suzanne was in custody and I knew she wasn’t guilty. I’d failed. Suzanne would go to prison.
I dunked a couple of sturdy fries in my Frosty and scooped out some ice cream. There was something about combining the sweet with the salty that I liked. Peanut butter and honey. Chocolate-covered pretzels. French fries and ice cream. Not as comforting now, however.
I took two bites of my burger and shoved a few more Frosty-covered fries in my mouth, then dumped everything in the trash.
What I really wanted was a drink. Margarita, wine, beer, ethanol. Didn’t care. The day had turned on a weird trajectory I never would have imagined. I was crazy to think I could investigate a murder. I couldn’t investigate my way out of a paper bag. I needed to tell the cops about Suzanne’s breaking and entering. She’d get in trouble for that, but it would be less trouble than murder. And on TV, at least, everybody gets some sort of plea deal if they help catch the real bad guy. But who was the real bad guy? I needed advice.
I called Ozzi. Voicemail. I texted him. You busy? No answer. Probably up to his elbows in computer code.
AmyJo never drank in the middle of the day, so I called Sheelah. “Are you busy? I need to stop by. I just found out something … intense.” I didn’t want to be so cryptic, but I really wanted to see her face when I told her about Einstein and Heinrich. And, despite their good news, I was afraid everything else I had to say would make me start sobbing right there at a Formica table in the middle of Wendy’s.
When I got to Sheelah’s, she opened the door and gave me a hug. “How are you?” She ushered me inside. “What’s going on?”
“Well, for one thing,” I said sarcastically, “I’m investigating the hell out of Melinda’s murder.”
“Are you?” She motioned me to sit on the couch next to her.
I nodded. “I’m checking everyone’s alibi, but—”
Sheelah jumped up and held up one hand, traffic cop style. “Hold that thought. I left the iron on. Be right back.”
While I waited, a text came in from Ozzi. He said the place he’d wanted to go for our dinner date was closed and asked me to choose a place. When I tried to tell him which restaurant I preferred, my phone died. I didn’t want any kind of drama between us now that we were back on track, so I assessed my options. He wouldn’t pick up a text from an unknown number, so I couldn’t borrow Sheelah’s phone. She was Android and I was iPhone, so I couldn’t borrow her charger. But I saw Sheelah’s computer and knew I could email him.
“Can I borrow your computer for a sec?” I called, plopping myself on her wheeled desk chair.
She didn’t answer but I knew she wouldn’t care. I jiggled the mouse and the dark screen lit up, showing the background image of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon behind her desktop files. It took me a minute to figure out which internet browser she used and where it was. As I searched for it, I saw a file marked “Melinda Walter.”
“Sweet, she’s trying to help me figure it out,” I murmured. Curious, I opened the file. Mostly it contained the newspaper articles about Melinda’s death, but there was also an image file. I clicked on it.
A mock-up of a prescription label for antibiotics filled the screen.
Twenty-Seven
Sheelah stood in the doorway, holding something behind her back. “I just wanted to email Oz because my … phone … died.” As I spoke, it dawned on me that the prescription image was one she must have created herself. To support her alibi. “But you had an alibi! I checked it myself,” I blurted.
“Bleeding hearts will always rally to your defense if they think your ex-husband is violating his restraining order. That sap at the dentist was happy to lie for me to keep my imaginary ex from finding me.”
A sudden chill hit my spine. “Sheelah, what have you done?”
“Something I’ve been waiting a long time to take care of.” Her voice was like gravel.
“Killing Melinda?”
She shrugged indifferently. “Unfortunate by-product.”
“Of what?”
>
“Of my real goal. Ruining your life.”
I gasped. “My life? Why?”
“To see you suffer like I did at the hands of your father.” She spat out the word like a bad taste.
“My father? What—?”
“God, you’re stupid. So unaware.” She sneered at me and my blood chilled. “You don’t know what happened then, and you don’t know what’s happening now.” She took a step toward me.
I stood and rolled the chair between us, gripping the back tightly.
“Have you talked to your brother lately?” she asked.
I shook my head without thinking. Immediately regretted it. I thought about the note I’d left for Lance telling him I was on my way to Heinrich’s. “But he’ll be looking for me,” I said. I backed away, slowly making my way toward the door, rolling the chair as I went.
“Not today he won’t. You’ll be long gone before anyone knows you’re missing. Especially him. It’s amazing what some well-worded anonymous calls can do to a police officer’s career.”
Goose bumps rose on my arms. “Sheelah, what are you doing? What’s going on? What does Lance have to do with anything? Or my dad?” My whiny voice sounded unpleasant and humiliating.
“I told you. Your dad was the cause of all my pain. He got himself killed by his snitch that day, but worse, he got my Hal killed.” Her face clouded as she walked toward me. “And my kids were taken from me.”
My mind raced. She was talking about the shoot-out in that strip mall parking lot. What did she have to do with that? Was she there?
“My dad would never kill a kid.”
“I never said my kids were dead. But because of the shoddy way your dad handled the investigation, he may as well have.”
I narrowed my eyes and lowered my voice, keeping the rolling chair between us. “You tell me what happened in that parking lot.” If I was going to die, I was going to die knowing the truth. “Everything.”
She laughed again. “Sure. You want to know? I’ll tell you. My husband was Hal Hollingsway. Ring a bell?”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Until she started humming a tune that I recognized as an advertising jingle. “He was that car guy?”
“Owned dealerships, Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce, on the school board—”
“I interviewed him for my school paper in middle school.”
“So you did.”
I frowned. “He wasn’t married. Didn’t have kids. I remember. I asked.” I tried to conjure memories of how this might tie in to my dad back at that time.
Sheelah kept one hand behind her back and put a finger to her grinning lips. “Nobody knew. Nobody knew a lot of things. Like how we made a fortune from runaways.”
“You were a pimp?”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s such a vulgar term. Like ‘white slaver.’ So ugly. I’ve always preferred ‘human trafficker.’”
I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. “You were a human trafficker?”
“I was the human trafficker.” She straightened her posture and smiled. “I was the brains behind the business. Hal was the well-respected frontman. Together we built a huge empire.” Her smile vanished. “Until your dad came along and turned that snitch on us. We flipped him back, but then everything went sideways when he grabbed your dad’s gun. He even took himself out. My one consolation all these years was that nobody knew he’d been your dad’s informant. With the two of them dead, all the suspicion was on your dad. He was in street clothes, dead next to a known criminal and a fine upstanding citizen, his own gun the weapon that killed them all. Everything pointed to him being a dirty cop. I couldn’t have staged it any better.”
Memories of the day my dad died flooded my sense. The smell of charred hot dogs. Cancelled Fourth of July plans as day turned to night, still no Dad. Melted peach ice cream. Another event ruined because Dad had put his job before his family. He loved his job, even when it meant he let us down. But he was a good cop, a conscientious one. “He wasn’t dirty.”
“Facts don’t matter. Perception matters.” Sheelah regarded me with pity, dripping in superiority. “You said yourself there were whispers and innuendo and his fellow officers were forced to attend his funeral while they covered it all up.”
My head felt like it might burst. What did I really know about my dad or myself or that day or Sheelah? “So by framing me for killing Melinda, you, what, bring your kids and husband back to life?”
“My kids aren’t dead,” she snapped. “After Hal died—was murdered—we lost everything. I couldn’t get at the money. I had to abandon the kids at a church, change my name, change my life. I’ll never see them again.”
“Ironic, since that’s what you did to other people’s children.”
A guttural roar exploded from deep inside her. Sheelah hurtled forward, thrusting the pickle jar she held behind her back toward me.
I leaped back, keeping the rolling chair between us.
She unscrewed the lid. There were no pickles. My eyes darted between her face and the jar. I tried to see what was in it but needed to keep aware of her movements as we performed this tango. We were in the middle of her living room. The only thing between me and the front door was a leather recliner. The sun glinted off the contents of the jar.
My stomach turned to jelly and I quivered, releasing the rolling chair and drawing my arms around myself protectively. “Sheelah! Is that … mercury?”
I didn’t want to lose what was left of my cool, but events were conspiring against me. I turned into a human windmill trying to get away from her. I shoved the wheeled chair toward her as hard as I could. She sidestepped it, lunging toward me. My elbow hit the jar. The open jar flew into the air and turned end over end, silvery blobs of mercury in a contrail behind it. The mercury landed on the carpet three feet from the recliner. The small beads oozed back together, forming a large blob.
“Don’t step in that, Sheelah.” I maneuvered around the recliner. “If that blob turns into tiny beads, it’ll contaminate your carpet and make us both sick.”
“Don’t you think I already know that?” She scowled at me from the opposite side of the recliner.
I knew the room was big and well-ventilated, so if the blob stayed big, with less surface area than a bunch of small beads, everything should be okay. I tried to sidestep the mercury and keep Sheelah talking in order to divert her attention. I continued to edge toward the door.
“You really killed Melinda?” I knew in my head that it had to be true, but it wasn’t really sinking in despite the circumstances.
“What do you think?” Sheelah screamed, face turning purple, shaking the pickle jar lid at me. She was done bragging and explaining. Now she was beyond reason, completely out of control. A different person than the one I knew. Thought I knew.
By now I’d backed all the way to the front door, Sheelah matching me step for step, less than a foot away. The mercury was still in a big blob about four feet behind her. I reached back and grappled for the knob.
Sheelah’s eyes followed my hand. Trying distraction again, I said, “Why did we go to the movies yesterday? You seemed so … so normal.”
“I had other plans for us until you invited that simp to join us.”
“I thought you wanted to ruin me, not kill me.”
She smiled like a jack-o’-lantern. “Death by a thousand cuts. Drive you crazy.”
My hand froze against the door. “You made the footprints under my window. You drove those SUVs. You rammed me behind the movie theater.”
“God, you’re such an idiot. Why would I dirty my hands like that? I was powerful—am powerful. People still owe me favors.” She cackled and wistfully closed her eyes, as if recalling an enchanting memory. “Ruining your brother’s career was a—”
With her eyes closed, I took the opportunity to yank the door open. But she was still quicker. She slammed it shut again with an open palm. I ducked under her arm. She grabbed at me as I squeaked
by her, dodging and weaving just out of her grasp. She let out another roar and dove after me. Her tackle landed me face first with a loud “Ooof!” as the wind was knocked out of me.
I struggled for breath, crawling and kicking away from her.
She held tight to my ankle, dragging me backward. I grabbed for a handhold on the recliner, finding the lever for the footrest. I held tight. Sheelah’s fury seemed to give her super-human strength. She dragged me and the recliner toward the mercury blob. I lost my grip on the chair and flew into the pile of mercury, scattering it in a shower of tiny, deadlier beads. My chest heaved. She scrambled on top of me, sitting on my low back, her knees restraining my arms. She pushed my face into the mercury.
The vapor was in my nose. I tasted metal in my mouth, felt it constricting my lungs. I was dizzy. Sheelah was screaming nonsense.
I summoned all my strength and rolled over, pinning her to the floor. I twisted her head to the side so she felt the effects of the mercury. She tried to shake me off, bucking her body from side to side. I needed to keep her near the mercury while keeping myself away from it. If she was weaker and quit fighting me, I could get us both outside to fresh air and safety. My dizziness was getting worse. I began to doubt I could drag myself across the room and out the door, let alone both of us.
Suddenly she quit bucking. Her mouth went slack.
“Sheelah!” I planted my feet on either side of her and yanked her arms. Dead weight. I squatted and lifted her under her arms. The room spun. My vision narrowed to a pinhole. I wasn’t sure where the door was. But I kept dragging her backward, away from the mercury, until I ran into the wall.
My reduced vision swam through a prism of gray and black waves. I felt for the door, knowing that if it was more than arms distance, Sheelah and I would not make it out of this room alive. I couldn’t hold her any longer and felt her thud at my feet.