Stirring Up Murder

by P. D. Workman

  Erin felt a little thrill at Vic’s words. She longed for that attraction. For people who were somehow the same inside as she was. Some person who wouldn’t find her strange or an outsider, but who would connect with her like Erin never had with any friend or foster family.

  “Those are people you grew up with,” she reminded Vic. “The reason you’re alike is that you were raised in the same social structure.”

  “Nurture, not nature? I don’t know. I don’t think so. Some of it. But there is something, like a pattern in a tapestry, a common thread. There’s something more than just being raised in a similar way in a similar place.”

  Erin stirred sugared cranberries into the batter. She needed to focus on her work, or she was going to be behind before they even opened. “I’d like to think I’m going to find something like that with my sister. But I’m not counting on it. I don’t think… I don’t think shared genetics are going to make us the same in nature.”

  Vic rubbed the back of her arm across her forehead. “Blood is thicker than water.”

  “Think about Trenton and Davis,” Erin said. “You’ve heard Melissa say how different they were. We saw it ourselves, even if we only saw Trenton briefly. Those two boys couldn’t have been more unlike. Trenton was a bully. Good at everything. The Midas touch. And Davis was the opposite. A victim. Depressive. Unpopular. An addict. They didn’t even look anything like each other. Not only that, they hated each other. Davis killed Trenton. Plotted it out and killed him, not just an accident or heat of the moment. What if my sister is like one of them?”

  Vic tossed her head. “Well, maybe…”

  “I hope she’s someone who can be a friend,” Erin said, “but I’m not counting on it.”

  Chapter Six

  T

  he fixer knew going in that it was risky. They were talking about mob, even if it was only a small Tennessee clan. They might not have the reach of some Italian or Asian connection, but their bloodlines ran through most of the families in the county and it was impossible to know who was connected or could be leaned on.

  He watched the young man for a few days. Robert Dyson was not at the top of the organization, but he was son, brother, and nephew to members who were. Bobby himself was a small-potatoes street soldier who still needed to make himself. A man couldn’t just rely on his father’s high position to get him a place in the Dyson clan. He was far below a hundred men who didn’t even bear the Dyson name. But they’d worked to earn their positions, and so far, Bobby boy simply swaggered, expecting to be given everything.

  The fixer watched for the right time and opportunity. Bobby had his coterie of admirers, people who hoped to ride his coattails in his ascent up the ladder, and the fixer needed to catch him alone to do his job.

  Subtlety wasn’t his strong suit, but he suspected it wasn’t Bobby’s either. Maybe the Dyson clan had become too inbred, knocking off a few IQ points with each new generation until it seemed that only the grandfather’s generation had the smarts it took to run anything in the organization.

  So Bobby found the fixer in the hall outside Bobby’s apartment, banging on the door late at night. Bobby looked him up and down, the sneer becoming more deeply ingrained in his smooth face.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The fixer turned slightly toward Bobby, allowing a little sway and sloppiness in his stance. “Where is she?” he slurred slightly, motioning to the closed, locked door. “I thought Charlotte was supposed to be here tonight.”

  Bobby Dyson looked confused. “She isn’t here. She’s out with the girls tonight.”

  “I know,” the fixer agreed with a leer. “The girls.” He snickered and snorted. “That’s what she tells him.”

  “Tells who?”

  “You know.” He gave a broad wink. “Her old man. When she needs to get out and have a little fun. He doesn’t exactly give her everything she needs to put a smile on her face.”

  Bobby was having obvious difficulty working through the clumsy innuendo. Too much to drink at the pool hall before making his way home, shaving even more IQ points from his already low score. He inserted his key into the apartment door lock, a process that took multiple attempts between his double vision and the shakiness of his hands.

  At first, the fixer thought Bobby was just going to go into his apartment and shut the door, forgetting all about the conversation. But Bobby waited, motioning for him to enter. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

  “You’re friends with her?” he asked. He blinked, trying to focus.

  “Friends…?” the fixer let the word hang. “Well, you could call us friends with benefits. But it’s more about the benefits. She has plenty of friends.”

  Bobby’s face flushed red. He was finally getting it, starting to put the pieces together. He would confront her the next time he saw her. Hit her. Threaten her with his mob connections. He owned the city. He had friends everywhere. There was nowhere safe for her to go.

  And if she were smart, Charlotte would disappear. A girl like she was shouldn’t need to be told to make herself scarce more than once.

  He drifted toward the door, still open.

  “What are you talking about?” Bobby demanded, still trying to make all the connections. “You don’t know her. I’ve never even seen you before.”

  “If she’s not here, I know where to find her,” he said. “It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been one of the girls.”

  Bobby threw a punch, but the young soldier was drunk, and his girlfriend’s alleged paramour was only pretending to be, so Bobby couldn’t land a blow.

  “What’s up with you, bro?” taunted the fixer. “It’s not like a girl would look at you twice, if it wasn’t for your money. That’s all she wants. You should have known from the start she’d be fooling around on you.”

  Bobby came after him again, flailing like an untrained child.

  The fixer easily avoided Bobby’s flying fists and drifted out the door, leaving Bobby screaming incoherently behind him.

  Chapter Seven

  I

  think I know your long-lost sister.

  Erin looked at the words on her phone screen, not quite believing it. She’d placed messages on a number of adoption reunion boards, but she hadn’t actually expected to get any hits.

  And there was no guarantee that it was a hit. I think, not I know. It wasn’t her sister writing back that she’d been looking for Erin. Would her sister even know about Erin’s existence? Had she been told? Had her adoptive family been told?

  It was probably nothing. How many adoptions had there been in the state? Just because the responder knew a woman who had been adopted around the appropriate time, that didn’t mean she knew Erin’s sister. It could be almost anyone.

  Erin thought about whether to answer. What was the point in pursuing the poster? What were the odds it was legitimate? It could be some creep who wanted to meet her somewhere quiet. A predator.

  Erin closed her email, checking her social networks instead. She only had a few quiet minutes for lunch, she didn’t have time to be answering random emails. She picked up a grilled tomato sandwich.

  “Are you okay?” Vic asked.

  Erin wondered how she knew. Had Erin gone pale? Could Vic tell how hard Erin’s heart was beating?

  She hadn’t expected to find anyone so quickly. She wasn’t ready for it yet.

  “Uh, yeah. I’m fine.”

  “You look like you just swallowed a live frog.”

  Erin laughed. “Just a weird message in my email. Whatever. Lots of creeps out there.”

  “Nasty pictures?” Vic suggested.

  “Uh… no. It’s nothing. No worries.”

  “If it’s someone in town, you should let Terry know.”

  Erin shrugged. She made a quick conversation switch. “So Willie’s back tonight?”

  “No… he said he got held up. Going to be a few more days.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you okay with that
?”

  “Going to have to be.” Vic gave a shrug. “He’ll get back as soon as he can.”

  Bobby Dyson was in a state by the time his girlfriend got home from her evening out with the girls. As soon as she opened the door and walked into the apartment, the fixer heard Bobby snort and awaken, and then the screaming started.

  “Where have you been? You think you can just treat me like this? Taking off and hooking up with some other man? Nobody does me like that!”

  “What’s your problem, Bobby? Are you drunk?”

  “What’s my problem? What do you think? You’re running around all over town and you think I won’t find out about it? Who do you think you’re dealing with here? What exactly makes you think I’m just going to sit back and take it?”

  “Bobby…” her voice was pitched low and soothing. “What’s the matter? I told you I was going to be out with the girls tonight. I’m not cheating on you!”

  He cursed her up and down, calling her every name in the book.

  Meanwhile, the fixer was listening from outside the apartment door, leaning with his ear against the wall to try to catch every word.

  “If you’re going to treat me that way, I’m leaving.” There was a snap in her voice. All of the soothing calm was gone.

  Bobby swore even more at this. There was a crash from within the apartment. The fixer got closer, his whole body tense. Everything was going to plan, but if Bobby ended up killing her, that would screw everything up. He didn’t fancy having to go to the boss to tell him that.

  “Let me go, Bobby,” the woman warned, her voice getting strident. “You take your hands off of me.”

  “You’re not going anywhere. You hear me? You’re never leaving here again!”

  More sounds of struggle.

  The fixer touched the doorknob. He was prepared to pick it, but he didn’t think Charlotte had locked it. It turned smoothly and silently in his hand. Not that silence was needed this time. The screaming that was going on within would mask any small creaks and squeaks the fixer made.

  He followed the noise of the struggle, the argument now going hot and heavy. Then he caught sight of them. If he’d imagined that Bobby was simply holding on to his girlfriend’s wrist, he was wrong. He had both hands on her, and she wasn’t just standing still and taking it. The two grappled, crashing into walls and furniture, kicking and clawing, neither one sparing the other because of tender feelings. But Bobby’s superior strength was gradually overcoming the woman’s desperate struggles. He managed to pin her against the wall. Then, holding her there with his body, he put one big hand around her throat, squeezing her windpipe and then the carotid. A few seconds without oxygenated blood to the brain, and she would be unconscious, unable to fight back against him any longer.

  Her eyes glazed.

  “Let her go, Bobby!” the fixer yelled.

  Bobby was so startled by the unexpected voice that he released Charlotte, whirling around to face this new threat.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, staring into the eyeholes of the fixer’s black balaclava.

  “I’m here to stop you from killing your girlfriend.”

  Bobby’s brain was stuttering, trying to work through the possibilities and figure out what this strange man was doing in his apartment.

  “Get out of my house! I’ll call the cops.”

  “You’ll call the cops with your girlfriend unconscious on the floor?”

  Bobby’s eyes went to the woman, who was not unconscious and was only now realizing it, coming back to herself.

  “Who the—”

  Maybe he was starting to put the clues together, figuring out that the man in the balaclava might be the drunk he’d been talking to the night before. But before he was able to finish the sentence, Charlotte’s leg snapped out, and she kneed him, aiming straight for the groin. She wasn’t fast enough and telegraphed the move, and Bobby was able to turn his body slightly so that she only kneed him in the leg, making him grunt with the impact instead of disabling him. Bobby grabbed her again, spinning in a circle to throw her down, but she clawed at him as he tried to put her down, pulling him off balance and making the two of them fall together, right through a glass coffee table.

  The fixer winced as they both went down and glass flew everywhere. He took a few steps closer, fearing the injuries he would discover. The woman was struggling. He grasped her by the arms and pulled her to her feet. She didn’t ask him who he was. Her eyes were wide with shock. Like Bobby, she’d probably spent half the night drinking, and she wasn’t able to keep up with all that was happening. Bobby was still at first, then he reached behind him, and the fixer was sure he’d broken a vertebra or otherwise injured his back.

  But Bobby brought his hand back out from behind his back holding a baby Glock. He pointed not at the masked intruder who had come into his apartment, but at his girlfriend.

  If she were killed, the contract was off, the fixer’s boss had made that clear. The fixer reacted as quickly as he could, pulling his own gun and aiming for center mass.

  When he pulled the trigger, the effect was instant. Bobby lowered his gun, eyes glazing and mouth opening. He took a couple of spasmodic breaths, but it was obvious that the body’s rhythm had been disrupted and, in a few seconds, all movement ceased.

  Charlotte shouted at the fixer. She shoved him and ripped the gun out of his hand, her eyes wide with shock and horror.

  “No! Bobby!”

  She was on her knees over the man who had, just moments earlier, been trying to kill her. She laid the gun down on the floor as she held him, feeling for some sign of life.

  “Lady, you’d better get out of here,” the fixer told her. “If someone didn’t call the cops when they heard you fighting, they surely will have now.”

  “You killed him!”

  “I was never here. But everybody in the place heard the two of you fighting.”

  She didn’t understand right away. “I didn’t kill him! You did.”

  “They’re going to come after you. They’re going to be here within five minutes, so if you don’t want to be cooling your pretty behind in prison for the next twenty years, I’d get up and get out.”

  “No.”

  He stared back at her and she didn’t waver. For a minute, he thought she was going to hold firm. She really wasn’t going to leave, but would wait by her boyfriend’s body until the police came and arrested her.

  Then she finally broke eye contact with him and looked around the apartment.

  “Nobody heard,” she disagreed. “Even if they did, nobody called the cops. They know better.”

  The fixer raised his brows, which was, of course, useless because the mask covered his expression. “They know better?”

  “Everybody knows who Bobby is,” she insisted. “No one is going to risk turning him in to the cops. We’ve fought before, and no one has ever called the police.”

  “Somebody will have heard the gunshot. It’s pretty obvious how this argument ended.”

  “No,” she told him again. She stood up and dusted crumbs of the tempered glass table off of her pants. Shocked sober, her brain was in high gear. “I do need to get out of here, just in case. But nobody is coming.” She cocked her head for a moment. “No sirens.”

  The fixer stared at her. That was one cold broad. She had turned off horror and sorrow and was operating purely on logic. She looked around. He didn’t realize what she was looking for at first, and then saw her purse where she had put it down on the counter when she came in the door. She picked it up and slung it over her shoulder.

  The fixer tried to work out what she was going to do. If framing her for murder didn’t keep her away, what would?

  She gave the fixer one last long, appraising look, and then she was gone.

  Chapter Eight

  E

  ventually, Erin broke down and told Vic about the possible tip she had received on the adoption reunion board.

  “I don’t know what to do about it.”


  Vic rolled her eyes and shook her head. “What do you mean you don’t know what to do about it? You know exactly what to do about it. Answer them and get more information. You’re not going to know if it is her or not without doing some more investigating. So find out.”

  “I know… I should… but I’m not so sure I want to find out now. What if it isn’t her? What if it is her? What if we hate each other? Davis and Trenton hated each other, and they grew up together. They should have had a good relationship.”

  “I think it’s because they grew up together that they hated each other. Trenton was the golden boy and Davis never measured up. And Trenton was a bully. Not exactly conducive to a good relationship.”

  “What if we don’t get along?”

  Vic raised her hands in a shrug. “Does it matter? Do you get along with everyone as soon as you meet them? Some people you need to get to know. And some people are always going to rub you the wrong way.”

  Erin’s stomach roiled and twisted. All her life she had wanted a family. Ever since she had lost her parents when she was eight. She’d suddenly been cut off from everything and everyone she knew, shoved into alien environments and left there to sink or swim. How many years had she dreamed that it was some mistake and one or both of her parents would find her and take her home and they could be a family again?

  Even before that, growing up as an only child, she had dreamed of having a baby brother or sister to help take care of and play with. Now she was finally on the brink of getting what she wanted, an actual biologically related sibling, and her brain was shutting down.

  “I think I’ll go to bed. I don’t feel very good.”

  “You can’t just avoid it, Erin.”

  Of course she could.

  Erin had lots of experience with avoidance.

  Erin sat at the kitchen table with Vic, going through her notes and sketches.

  “I was thinking about what we talked about. That we don’t have the time or resources to be supplying bread and baking for the grocery store as well as Auntie Clem’s.”