Making a Medium

by Erin Huss

  So I say, "Willie doesn't blame you."

  She looks up. "He doesn't?"

  "No. He understands it was his time."

  Willie's mouth drops open. "That's not what I said!"

  "He doesn't hate me?" Betty asks.

  I shake my head no. "He adores you."

  There's no argument from Willie on this one.

  "Tell him I adore him, too," she says, and she means it. I feel the genuine adoration she had for Willie. Heaven knows why. Perhaps he was more pleasant to be around when he had a pulse.

  "He knows you do." I check my watch. We don't have much time. "Can I help you with the thermostat before I go?"

  Willie throws his hat on the ground. "You're horrible at your job!"

  I ignore him and follow Betty down a hallway and into a masculine bedroom. A four-post bed with a green comforter towers in the middle of the room. Off to the side is a sitting area with a faux fur rug and a worn leather recliner.

  Willie looks around. "Tell her not to touch anything in my room."

  I'm confused. "Did you not share a room?" I ask Betty.

  "No," she says over her shoulder. "He told me to take the master upstairs."

  This is a weird marriage.

  Betty hands me what looks like a mini iPad. "The heat and air are both controlled from this, but he put a lock on it. I’ve tried every code I could think of, but none have worked.”

  “Funny that Willie didn’t believe in smart phones, but his house is controlled by an iPad,” I say.

  “Not really,” Willie says. “There’s a big difference between being able to change your thermostat without having to get out of bed and taking a picture of your lunch so you can put it on one of those social media sites.”

  He makes a point.

  I type in the security code. Once I'm granted access, I hand it over to Betty, and she lowers the temp. I can hear the air pushing through the vents. Betty opens her arms wide and lets out a sigh.

  My breath puffs out in a cloud and my hands go numb. I look around. Only Willie, Betty, Daisy, and I are in the room, but I have an uneasy, irritable, almost haunted feeling.

  "We need to talk about the autopsy!" Willie yells directly into my ear.

  "No," I mouth and return the tablet to the side table next to a row of pill bottles. "Were these all for Willie?" I ask Betty.

  "Yes. This one is for acid." She points to each pill bottle. "This one is for his thyroid. This one is to prevent blood clots. This one is his blood pressure medication. This one is for blood sugar. This one is for arthritis. This one is for chronic constipation."

  "That's a lot of pills for someone who was in perfect health," I say, looking at Willie.

  "I was killed," he says. "I think I would know, being as I'm the only one in the room who was there."

  The doorbell chimes, and the little dog barks.

  "I wonder who that is?" Betty says and scoots out of the room, leaving me alone with all of Willie's personal belongings—expensive looking belongings, I might add. A Rolex watch collection, golfing trophies, nice suits lined up in the closet from light gray to black, and a deer's head mounted to the wall.

  I grimace. "Did you shoot that yourself?"

  "Why does it matter?"

  "Because I don't know how I feel about hunting."

  "At least that buck knows how he died. What is wrong with you? Aren't you supposed to respect the wishes of the deceased?"

  "Why did you wait until you were out of blood pressure medication before you asked Betty to fill it?"

  "I didn't wait until I was out!"

  I pick up the blood pressure bottle and give it a shake, nothing rattles around. "See, it's empty."

  Willie blinks a few times. "It doesn't matter. No one is going to have a heart attack because they went three hours without their blood pressure medication."

  He makes a point.

  I think.

  I don't know too much about blood pressure medication or heart attacks. I should look into that.

  "Listen to me, person." Willie squares his shoulders. "I was killed. I'm sure of it. We need to figure out how I died. Once we figure that out, we'll know who it was that killed me. I know it."

  “But Betty’s physic said it was a heart attack because of your blood pressure medication,” I remind him.

  “That’s a bunch of hogwash. I was killed.”

  “Fine. Let’s check your security footage and see if someone snuck in.”

  “I don’t have security footage. What’s the point of cameras when I live in a safe, gated community? I already fork out a thousand bucks for the HOA every month.”

  For the record, if I had a mansion, I’d have cameras.

  "How can you be so sure—" I start to say when Willie shushes me and turns his ear toward the door.

  "What's wrong?" I whisper.

  "Stay here." He disappears through the wall and reappears a moment later. "Beat feet, person. Your parents are here."

  Chapter Five

  I've lost the ability to swallow. "Wh-ha-wh-wh … Why are my parents here?"

  "I don't know, but we need to get out of here before they see you." Willie runs out of the room, and I follow. He starts down the hallway then comes to a sudden stop, and I run right through him.

  That was weird.

  "What are you doing?" I angry-whisper.

  Willie is poised in a battle-ready stance.

  "What is it?" I ask in a panic. “Oh, no. Are they here with the police? Am I going to be arrested?" I feel a bit light-headed. "Are they going to take me away now?"

  "Calm down, person. No one is taking you anywhere," Willie says and furrows his brow. "It's Weasel!" He takes off in the opposite direction, and I stutter around, unsure of what to do, or what Willie means when he says weasel, but if my parents catch me here, I'm doomed. There's no way I can come up with a reasonable explanation as to why I "borrowed" a car, without a license, to visit a dead-man-who-I've-never-met’s life-size-Barbie of a wife.

  Nope.

  I need get out of here.

  Except …

  I hear a crisp masculine voice coming from the entryway. Not the voice of my father. Nor anyone I've met before. Could this be the Phil I saw in my mother’s mind? Or the S?

  I'm conflicted: run away or see who else is here?

  My natural instinct says run! But my curiosity overrides that feeling.

  I tiptoe down the hallway, keeping my back against the wall. I peek around the corner and find Betty cowering before a man whose face is tomato red. Willie takes a protective stance in front of his wife. If this man is Weasel, then I can see why Willie calls him such. The man resembles a weasel: at least fifty years old, with thinning, slicked-back red hair, dark beady eyes, and a small nose and mouth.

  My parents are standing shoulder-to-shoulder by the door and couldn't look more uncomfortable.

  "I had to read about his death in the newspaper!" Weasel says to Betty.

  Betty starts backing up and Daisy growls. "I haven't had a chance to make phone calls."

  "I bet," Weasel makes a big U-turn, and my parents shuffle out of the way in unison. Weasel pauses at the door and peers over his shoulder back at Betty. "He's been gone a day, and you've already moved on to your next victim?"

  Betty's face contours into a questions mark. "What?"

  Weasel walks toward her like a cat approaching its prey. Daisy bites at his ankles. She doesn't like Weasel and, frankly, neither do I. He has a dark presence and an unsettling spirit, similar to what I felt in Willie’s room. "Then whose shoes are by the door? There is no way they belong to Willie. He's not that cheap. They belong to your next victim. Don't they? Don't they!" A vein pops out of the side of his neck. "Don't they!"

  Hold on … Is he talking about my shoes? Because the Weekend Walkers not only cost over twenty dollars ($19.99 plus tax and shipping) but were rated last year's As Seen On TV's best product. Weasel has a lot of nerve.

  Mom raises a hand. "Perhaps we can come bac
k when it's more convenient."

  "Those aren't man shoes," Betty says, cowering.

  “Yes, they are!" Weasel ignores my mom. "Those are old man shoes if I've ever seen them. You're nothing but a gold digger."

  "That's it!" Willie throws a punch that goes right through Weasel.

  "You're mistaken,” Betty says. "I promise."

  Weasel raises his pointer finger up to Betty's nose. "I was going to be nice and give you a month, but I think a week should suffice. I expect your things out of here before Sunday. We're putting the house on the market."

  "But … but … this is my house," Betty says with a whimper.

  "Maybe it was when you were dating my uncle. But he's gone now, and this is my house. You're trespassing."

  "That's not true!" Betty disappears into a room and reappears with a blue file folder. "Willie and I got married a couple of weeks ago, and he changed his will." She hands the paperwork to Weasel.

  Mom and Dad share a look, and I catch a hint of disappointment flicker across their faces. Not that I blame them—the commission from Willie's house would be more than they've made their entire career combined.

  "You talked him into marrying you?" Weasel spits the words out.

  "No. It was all his idea. I promise. And I never asked him to change his will, either. He came home one day with the paperwork and told me."

  Weasel's hands tremble as his eyes dart down the pages. "He left you … everything?”

  "Damn straight, I did." Willie pushes up the sleeves of his jacket. "And if you come near her again, I'll … I’ll …” He looks down at his clenched fists. "Zoe! Come punch this fool for me."

  Um, no.

  Weasel looks like he's about to fall over. "This is garbage." He tosses the will into the air, and papers flutter down around them. "You're nothing but a scam artist!"

  Betty lowers to her knees and gathers the papers into a pile.

  That's it! I don't care what happens to me, but no one deserves to be talked to like that. I stand and puff my chest, ready for a fight, but the timer on my watch goes off. It takes me a moment to remember why I set it in the first place.

  LeRoy!

  "What is that?" Weasel asks. "What's the beeping?"

  Willie appears in front of me. "Follow me."

  "But what about Betty?" I whisper.

  "We're married. The will is legal. She'll be fine. Come on."

  I hesitate, wrestling between helping Betty and saving myself.

  “Hurry up, person!” Willie hollers from the end of the hall. “You’re of no help to me if you’re in jail.”

  Good point.

  I follow Willie down another hall. He makes a left, then a right, then another left, and points to a door. "Open."

  I rattle the knob, but it's stuck, and the deadbolt won't turn. Willie disappears through the wall and pokes his head back through. "There's a key broken in the lock." He looks at me. "Why is there a key broken in the lock?"

  "How would I know?" I check the time. Crap. LeRoy will be awake in thirty-eight minutes, and it takes longer than that to get back. "This way." Willie goes through a different wall, I use the door, and we are in an empty room. "Open the window and go out."

  I go headfirst into a rose bush. Ouch.

  I crawl out, pick the thorns out of my palms, and run behind Willie to the side of the house. We peek around the corner. Mom and Dad hurry to catch up to Weasel who is storming towards a black 4-Runner. He jumps into the driver's seat and starts the car. Mom and Dad climb in and swing the doors shut. Weasel peels out of the driveway, leaving a cloud of burnt rubber behind him. He makes it halfway down the road before his brake lights come on.

  Oh, no.

  He backs up just as fast as he left and stops near the corner where I parked LeRoy's car.

  Oh no, no, no, no.

  Weasel holds up his phone and takes two pictures then screeches down the street.

  That's not good. That's not good at all.

  Willie and I hurry to the car, and I nearly trip over my own shoeless feet. The sprinklers are on, and I must have run one over because it's spewing water all over the trunk of LeRoy's car. It's way too clean. "I'm screwed!"

  "We'll fix it when we get back." Willie takes his position in the passenger seat.

  I slide in beside him and turn the key.

  "Foot on the brake, person," Willie reminds me.

  Right. Foot on brake. Turn ignition. Car on, and we're off.

  "You need to go more than fifteen miles per hour if we're going to make it to LeRoy's before he wakes."

  I ease on the gas, and the car lurches forward. My heart is slamming against my chest. "Who is that guy?" I ask.

  "It's my nephew, Daniel. The only reason he ever bothered to come around was because he thought he'd get everything once I was gone." He laughs. "Showed him."

  I pull out onto the main road and manage to go only five below the speed limit. "You should have told him about Betty so she wouldn't have to deal with him."

  "I planned to," Willie says. "He and I were supposed to meet at the club for breakfast this Saturday. I was going to drop the news then. Obviously, that didn't happen."

  "Obviously." I clutch the wheel and check my rearview mirror to be sure no cops or black 4-Runners are following me. Coast is clear. For now. "So what do we do?"

  "We make sure Betty gets the autopsy."

  I feel like beating my head against the steering wheel. "But if an autopsy shows a heart attack, Betty will never forgive herself."

  "I didn't die of a heart attack. Someone killed me."

  "Even if someone did, we won't find out who it was by the end of the day," I say.

  "Then we'll figure it out tomorrow."

  "But you told me that if you don't know how you died by today, you'd be stuck here forever."

  "I was bluffing," he says. "Obviously."

  * * *

  We're back at LeRoy's. Willie disappears. I grab my briefcase and silently close the car door behind me. I'm in my socks, but I don't have time to care. LeRoy's car is too clean. I grab a handful of dirt and sprinkle it on the trunk.

  "He's waking up." Willie is back. "Hurry."

  I grab another handful of dirt and dump it on the trunk and spread it around. “Um … um …”

  "That's good enough, person!" Willie takes off toward the trees. I still have LeRoy's keys in my hand. If he's waking up, I can't very well enter his house. Instead, I open the car door, throw the keys on the seat, and chase after Willie. The sticks and prickly plants hurt the bottoms of my feet, but adrenaline keeps me going. I run through the forest and wait until we're at the creek before I stop to catch my breath.

  "That was a close one," Willie says.

  "If we keep this up, I am going to have a heart attack." I put my head between my knees. "I can't do this anymore."

  "You can and you will until we figure out who killed me."

  "Mother Nature killed you!" I blurt out and a flock of birds fly out of a nearby bush.

  "Wanna make a bet?" Willie asks smugly.

  "No." I wipe the sweat from my brow. "And what's with you betting to date Betty? That's awful."

  "She's sitting in a ten-million-dollar home with three hundred million dollars about to be deposited into her bank account. How is that awful?"

  I blink. "Three hundred million dollars. You left your wife of less than a month three hundred million dollars?"

  Willie takes a seat on a stump. "The question is, who wanted to off me?"

  "Three hundred million dollars."

  He rolls and unrolls the bottom of his tie. "When we get back to your house, we'll make a list of suspects. Off the top of my head, I've got three people who threatened to kill me recently. We need to ask Betty about the key. I remember going out to the garage yesterday morning. I would have locked the door behind me. But I wouldn't have used a key. There's a code I can type in …”

  "Three hundred million dollars."

  Willie stands. "What time are your p
arents picking you up from The Gazette?"

  I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the three hundred million dollars.

  "Zoe?" Willie waves a hand in front of my face. "You there?"

  Right. Parents. I check my watch. "They'll pick me up in front of The Gazette in an hour."

  "It will take you that long to get there." He starts walking along the creek and waves for me to follow.

  I open my briefcase, grab my pumps, and slip them on. Not exactly walking attire, but I have no choice.

  Wait a second … “Did you say three people threatened to kill you recently?"

  "I rub some people the wrong way."

  "Really?" I mock surprise. "I'm shocked."

  We make the rest of the journey to town in silence. Willie spends the time trying to figure out who killed him. I spend the time trying to not cry. My feet. Back. Entire being hurts, and all I want to do is sleep.

  Also, three hundred million dollars!

  It takes us an hour to get into town, just as Willie said. I fall onto the bench in front of The Gazette, feeling like I just ran a marathon.

  Not that I've actually run a marathon before.

  But I'm assuming one would feel like her cartilage had been replaced with Jell-O once she’d completed the 26.2 miles.

  "The tacky mobile is here," Willie says.

  The van rolls to a stop. My parents’ giant faces are staring at me, and part of my mom’s right hand is peeling off. I guess it is a little tacky.

  I slide open the door and drop into the chair. I pull the seat belt over my chest, and in my periphery I see Brian Windsor exiting the building. He peers into the van, but we're already moving by the time he realizes it's me.

  I fall back against the seat. That was a close one.

  "How was your first day of work?” Dad asks.

  "Fine."

  "Did you do anything exciting?"

  "Fine."

  "I think she's tuckered out," Dad says to Mom, and they begin to chat while I doze in and out of consciousness until I hear Dad say, "MacIntosh," and my eyelids pop open.