Journaled to Death

by Heather Redmond

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Whatever came my way. Monsters, mostly. From fantasy role-playing games.’

  ‘Do you still have them somewhere?’

  ‘I think they went into the trash along with my first marriage. Not much survived from that bitter ending.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were divorced, too.’

  ‘Long hours, career focus. It’s hard on relationships.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘Better to date people with the same kind of lifestyle. I married my college sweetheart. She put up with med school but by the time I became a resident she was tired of it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Any kids?’ Kit passed Mandy the espresso drink and she handed it to the doctor.

  ‘No. We had some losses – well, you know. Never made it to the delivery room.’

  Mandy touched his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor O’Halloran.’

  He pressed his lips into a brave smile. ‘One of these days. Children are a blessing.’ Giving Kit a nod, since she’d come to stand behind Mandy, he walked away.

  ‘If you don’t date him I’ll go through your phone, find your most embarrassing selfie, and post it on the cafeteria bulletin board,’ Kit hissed in her ear.

  ‘I can’t imagine having a baby at my age,’ Mandy said. ‘Not even for Doctor O’Hottie.’

  ‘Oh, come on. My ovaries just melted and he’s not even my type.’

  ‘What is your type, anyway?’

  ‘I have terrible taste.’ Kit stuck out her tongue.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I don’t date much. I just get these flashes of lust, and then I end up in bed with someone a few times.’

  ‘Oh, to be twenty-four again. Not that I was twenty-four like you are. I was pregnant at twenty and had a pre-schooler at your age.’ Mandy turned to face Kit. ‘Anyone here ever possessed you with a lustful urge besides Doctor O’Hottie?’

  Kit tugged at her left ear. Three round balls dangled from chains in her piercings. ‘I’m almost afraid to admit it, but Ryan.’

  Mandy’s mouth fell open. ‘My cousin? My old-enough-to-be-your-dad cousin?’

  Kit sighed. ‘I know, right?’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Last year.’

  Mandy wiped up a spill at the espresso machine. ‘Last year was like five weeks ago.’

  ‘Summer,’ Kit clarified. ‘You invited me to your Fourth of July barbeque, remember?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She shoved her towel in the open space under the counter.

  ‘He worked out.’

  ‘I remember a phase,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘We were done before the weather changed, but he was looking good in July. I’m a biceps girl.’ Kit shrugged. ‘Flash of lust. We were hot and heavy for about two months.’

  ‘He did like sleeveless shirts.’ Mandy made a face, figuring Kit had kept the affair hidden due to embarrassment at dating such an older guy. In her opinion, tank tops on men were unseemly. No one needed to see all those tufts of armpit hair. And they had one less layer of defense between her nose and BO. But to each their own attraction.

  Kit laughed, then sobered. ‘Yeah. We had fun. He was probably drinking less than usual. I was drinking more than usual. You know. There was a drunken fight and that was the end of it.’

  ‘It sounds like you helped him for a little bit. I remember him being in an unusually good mood in the summer. I’m glad he had a girlfriend for a while, at least.’ Mandy hesitated. ‘I knew he had herpes. I saw the medicine. Did you?’

  Kit shrugged. ‘We were careful.’

  Mandy blew out a breath. ‘Glad to hear it.’

  Kit sighed. ‘It was a bad breakup.’

  ‘I would have preferred you to the friends who came next,’ Mandy said, suspecting Ryan hadn’t actually been drinking less than usual. He couldn’t have seen Kit as often as she claimed or she’d have noticed her co-worker around eventually. But the story did remind Mandy that Ryan had a secretive side.

  ‘Hello, ladies.’ Scott sauntered up to them, followed by a jumpsuit-wearing underling carrying a ladder. ‘I’m going to get in there behind you for a moment and install the new security camera.’

  ‘No way,’ Kit said, her face contorting. ‘I don’t want to be spied on.’

  ‘It’s going to look at the snacks, out over the counter,’ Mandy said. ‘Right? Not at us working.’

  ‘That’s the plan.’ Scott gestured to his underling, who walked around the counter and set up the ladder behind the cash register.

  ‘I want to see exactly what you pick up on camera,’ Kit demanded.

  Scott frowned. ‘That’s for Fannah, not you, kiddo.’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ Kit snapped. ‘I’m an adult.’ She stalked off. From the back, her narrow hips and thin frame made her look a decade younger.

  Mandy glanced at Scott, who had an unreadable expression on his face. Considering Kit’s behavior, had she had a relationship of some kind with Scott as well? Maybe she had Daddy issues.

  When she looked past Scott, she saw a trio of administrative assistants approaching. It must be break time for them. ‘Can you finish this during the pre-lunch lull?’ she asked. ‘Kit and I need to bust out some drinks.’

  ‘Anything for you,’ Scott said, motioning to his colleague. The kid, maybe Ryan’s replacement, left the ladder where it was and slouched off behind Scott.

  Mandy called to Kit and forced a smile in her customers’ direction.

  In the parking garage after work, Mandy pulled out her phone and leaned her head against her seat. Exhaustion had hit a couple of hours before. Her arms ached. Before she could second-guess herself, she called Detective Ahola.

  ‘Ahola,’ he said, answering on the second ring.

  ‘It’s Mandy Meadows.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you found another murder weapon,’ he said, sounding distracted.

  ‘Is there one?’ Mandy asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  Lovely. ‘I’m just calling because I realized something today.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I found out about another relationship my cousin had over the summer. With my closest co-worker, no less. I didn’t realize Ryan could hide so much from me, much less someone I work with all week.’

  ‘How long ago was the breakup?’

  ‘Probably September. I’m not saying that gave her a motive or anything. Just that I thought I knew what happened in my basement and I’m obviously wrong. For instance, Alexis and Dylan might have been around far more often than I realized. Or anyone else, really.’

  ‘Who is this co-worker of yours?’

  ‘Kit Savva. She’s only twenty-four, so I was surprised she’d dated a forty-two-year-old. And she acted funny when our maintenance supervisor came to install a security camera today. She’s paranoid.’

  ‘Why is a camera being installed?’

  ‘We requested it because of pilfering.’

  ‘Thank you. We haven’t spoken to her.’

  ‘I’ll help anyway I can,’ Mandy said, after another pause. ‘I need the income from a tenant or I will lose my house.’

  ‘Why can’t you get another tenant?’

  ‘How can I advertise the space, not knowing if someone might break in? I’m still afraid my daughter saw a person in the basement, not a ghost. Besides, Ryan’s sister hasn’t picked up his possessions yet. The bedroom and family room are both full of his furniture.’

  He made an inarticulate noise. ‘What do you think about your cousin Jasmine?’

  ‘She seems to have been jealous of my close friendship with Ryan,’ Mandy said. ‘Or what I thought was a close friendship. She’s greedy and suspicious. But she had no reason to kill him.’

  ‘If you follow the money, she inherits his estate.’

  ‘Not his mother?’ She hadn’t thought Jasmine had any motive to kill Ryan.

  ‘He had a will.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Mandy said, confused by that bit of planning on Ryan’s par
t. ‘But Jasmine said there wasn’t even a bank account. I didn’t go through his stuff, just packed it up. I would assume there has to be a lot of cash somewhere, but where?’

  ‘Maybe that’s why you are having break-ins,’ the detective suggested. ‘I’d consider some security.’

  ‘We’ve added bolt locks on the basement doors. I stacked cans inside the door to the outside.’

  ‘You hear them fall, you call nine-one-one,’ he advised. ‘No investigating.’

  ‘Nope,’ Mandy agreed. ‘Not a chance. I was thinking about getting a dog.’

  ‘Do you have time to care for a pet?’

  ‘No.’ Nor the money for vet bills.

  ‘Then think carefully about that,’ he said. ‘I need to go. Be safe out there.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Mandy disconnected and closed her eyes. Had she just suggested to a homicide detective that her co-worker had killed her cousin?

  At home, Mandy felt guilty about the dishes and set about doing them before Vellum got home. When she arrived, she said she had a couple of hours of homework. Mandy sent her to her bedroom with the last of Linda’s latest batch of late-night brownies and then washed that pan, too.

  She needed to check her sticker sales … well, she needed to see if she had any. The big push would come after the video went live, and it was too early in the month to load it. Instead of looking at her statistics, she dried Linda’s pan and walked it across the street.

  No one answered at Linda’s back door, so she opened the screen door and set the metal pan inside it. Since she’d already bundled up, she went for a short walk while the clouds were behaving. Across the street, the bakery beckoned her with far superior pastries than her workplace had to offer, and warmth, but she walked past it and crossed the street to the apartment building. Across the next side street, her mother’s house was dark. Reese hadn’t made it home yet either. She drifted down another couple of residential blocks, the air textured by cold. The entire landscape slumbered in gray, leafless winter. It should look very different a month from now. At this time of year, she found it difficult to gather artistic inspiration here. She went over her mental to-do list. She was due to film a weekly spread, something she didn’t manage every week. It happened about once a month, to give her an excuse to use her new sticker sheets or highlight a product that wasn’t moving. Her unfilmed weeks were much more basic bullet point list than artistic, though she used her journal daily.

  When she reached her own small stretch of houses, she saw Crystal Roswell bent over in her doorway. Her neighbor straightened, a package in her hands.

  Mandy called out a ‘hello’ but didn’t receive a response, so she waved her arms and went up the stairs to Crystal’s yard.

  Over the railing, Crystal, clad in a thin T-shirt and jeans, her lank sandy brown hair in need of a wash, glanced at her impassively.

  ‘Is Aiden around?’ Mandy asked.

  Crystal’s brow creased. ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you a private question, mom-to-mom,’ Mandy said. ‘Can I come in for a sec?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Crystal said, in a tone that indicated her utter lack of interest.

  Mandy followed Crystal inside. Her house was very similar to Mandy’s. When Mandy and Cory had first moved in, Crystal’s grandmother had lived in the house. A year or so later, she’d gone into assisted living and Crystal had taken over, first with her husband, and then alone. Mandy had no idea if the old woman was still alive, or who owned the property. Given that Crystal managed a small store in the mall, she couldn’t possibly afford the house on her own.

  Inside, Mandy saw the same furniture that had been there a dozen years ago. An overstuffed three-piece suite, now stained in places, a small television, and two bookcases filled with bestsellers from the era of James Clavell. Laundry lay in a heap on the loveseat and Crystal’s oversized, drooling mastiff panted on a rug in the corner. The living room smelled like boy sweat and dog. Given the smell, Mandy had to question Aiden’s hygiene level. Or maybe the laundry mountain wasn’t washed yet.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to bother you,’ Mandy said, then paused. A normal person would offer her a beverage and small talk, but this was Crystal, who offered nothing and said little more. ‘Last week, Aiden was playing on my lawn and hurt himself.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Crystal mumbled. ‘I told him to stop being so stupid.’ She walked through the house and into her kitchen.

  Mandy followed her. Crystal hadn’t been doing her dishes. The kitchen looked far worse than Mandy’s, even before she’d cleaned up, with bacon grease coating the stove, and fast-food wrappers from the mall food court on every surface.

  ‘I don’t know why he thought skateboarding on my lawn was a good idea, but as far as I know, he hasn’t tried it again.’ Crystal said nothing, so Mandy pressed on. ‘He told me Ryan was a jerk, that he deserved to be murdered. Do you know why he said that?’

  ‘I told him to stay away from your house,’ Crystal said, staring at last year’s giveaway calendar from an automotive place, still pinned to her wall. The month displayed was October.

  ‘Because Ryan did something?’

  ‘Because of last week,’ Crystal said impatiently.

  ‘Yes, thank you for that, but I’m asking about what happened in the past, between Aiden and Ryan.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing happened? Then why did Aiden hate him?’ Mandy’s fingers itched to rip the calendar off the wall. Back when she’d first discovered journaling and had been sharing her excitement with the world, she’d offered to teach Crystal how, thinking it might help her to organize her life, but she’d declined. Apparently, she’d wanted to live her life four months out of sync.

  Crystal’s jaw worked. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘What doesn’t matter now?’

  ‘Ryan.’ Crystal’s linebacker-sized shoulders went up and down, her unbound breasts jiggling with the movement. ‘We hooked up a few times, until I told him to stop coming over.’

  Mandy winced. ‘What happened?’

  ‘One time he fell asleep, spent the night. Not really appreciated, since he lived right next door, you know?’

  Mandy nodded, too horrified to do more. Besides, she wanted to hear the rest.

  ‘Anyway, the next morning he went into my kitchen like he paid for the groceries, even though he’d never bought me so much as a hamburger. And you know what he did?’ Crystal’s arms flailed.

  Mandy averted her eyes from those pendulous breasts. ‘What?’

  ‘He ate the last of Aiden’s Oreos for breakfast! Still had crumbs on his lips when the kids came into the kitchen. Jerk. Aiden lost it. I had to tell Ryan he wasn’t welcome here anymore.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  Crystal’s gaze actually rolled over to her out-of-date calendar then back again. ‘Summer. Late summer. He’d come through the side yard and call into my window, then climb in.’ She almost smiled. ‘Kind of sexy. Like a pirate boarding a ship.’

  ‘OK,’ Mandy said, holding up her hands. ‘Would it surprise you to know he was with other women during that time?’

  Crystal glared at her. ‘I already said we weren’t dating, OK? He never brought anything, even condoms or a joint.’ Her eyes welled with tears and she brayed, a donkey-like cry of pain.

  ‘A joint?’ Mandy asked, confused. ‘Ryan always told me he didn’t use drugs. And I hope you used condoms. He had herpes.’

  Crystal snorted, but the involuntary laugh mixed in with her tears and she choked. Mandy darted around her neighbor and pounded her on the back.

  Emilee ran into the room and grabbed her mother’s arm, her hands looking tiny against Crystal’s flesh. ‘What did you do?’ she yelled at Mandy.

  ‘I’ll let myself out.’ She walked rapidly to the front door, hoping Aiden wouldn’t appear, too.

  Once back on the sidewalk in front of her house, she breathed a sigh of relief. The frosty air felt good in her lungs, free of grime and dog an
d despair.

  But she knew she hadn’t just uncovered a motive for Kit killing Ryan, she’d found a new suspect for the murder. Not to mention the sticky issue of herpes. If her cousin had been having unprotected sex, someone could have been awfully upset with him when they’d picked up an STD.

  NINE

  On Tuesday, Fannah came in at six, Kit at seven, and Mandy at nine-thirty to cover the entire day. They were kept busy between the front counter and work in the back. Mandy baked cookies since they were in high demand and Kit preferred to run the cash register when she could. Since she tended to be a sloppy barista and often ended up covered in foam and espresso grounds, Mandy tried to accommodate her.

  When they reached their pre-lunch lull, Fannah sent both Mandy and Kit on their ten-minute break.

  ‘I need to get my blood moving,’ Kit said, yawning. ‘Want to walk up and down the stairs with me?’

  Mandy’s hands had been icy all day. Had the maintenance guy jostled a fan in the ceiling when he’d installed the security camera? Air moving in the wrong way could really make a job miserable. ‘Let’s do it.’

  They grabbed their coats and dashed outside. The hospital and the attached office building created a ‘U’ shape around an attractively planted area, which gave patients something pleasant to look out on if they had a room on the right side of the building, and also gave stressed-out folks a place to pace.

  ‘I’m glad we’re getting a few minutes together,’ Mandy said.

  ‘Want to complain about Fannah?’ Kit whispered loudly.

  ‘No. Nothing to complain about.’ Mandy scowled. ‘It’s about Ryan.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kit said, elongating the word until it trailed off.

  ‘It sounded like you guys were legit in a relationship for a couple of months from what you said.’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘I don’t want to ruin your memories of him,’ Mandy said, trying to be delicate.

  Kit stuffed her hands into her REI trench coat. ‘He wasn’t that special to me.’

  ‘That makes me sad, because he was very special to me,’ Mandy said. ‘But since he’s gone, I’m learning things that would have upset me.’

  Kit stepped up on the marble edge of a fountain and balanced on it, before hopping off again. ‘Like what?’