Killer Deal

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  “His girlfriend and my wife. I’ll do my best,” Aaron answered. I wanted to turn around and catch the expression on Cassady’s face, but I didn’t dare throw off anyone’s concentration.

  The nurse sniffed skeptically but led us down the hall, the people in the curtained areas popping in and out of view like vignettes of suffering and rejoicing, to the back corner where Peter was propped, naked from the waist up, a huge expanse of thick gauze taped to his side and tubes peeking out from multiple locations. His grin as he saw us was positively lopsided and when the nurse announced that his brother had come, Peter, who has only sisters, nodded sleepily yet enthusiastically. “Hey, bro!” he greeted Aaron.

  The nurse gestured for us to stand close around the bed and started to close the curtains behind us. “We gave him something for the pain. It affects people differently.” She paused behind me, speaking sternly. “Only a few minutes and if you cause any trouble, I’ll have those police back in here to haul your pretty little butt outta here for good.” With a pointed flick of the curtains, she withdrew.

  “A reputation already. Nice work,” Cassady whispered.

  “Thanks for coming to get me, guys, it means so much to me,” Peter gushed as though he were hosting a birthday party rather than sporting a bullet wound.

  “Peter, we’re not taking you home.”

  “Please? I’ll be good.”

  “They have to keep you for a while,” I said gently.

  “No, they don’t. I feel much better now.”

  “Ask him again when the morphine wears off,” Cassady suggested.

  Somehow, I felt responsible for Peter’s condition and wanted to do something, perform some act of penance. “There anyone you need us to call?”

  Peter fumbled to take Aaron’s hand. “My brother’s here and that’s all that matters.”

  “Knock it off, Peter,” Cassady suggested.

  Peter swung his bleary eyes in her direction. “Did you know I got shot? Are you the one who shot me?”

  “Sadly, no,” Cassady said. “Gotta say, this is sure to yield valuable information, Molly. It’s a good use of your time.”

  I gestured for her to be patient just a moment longer. “Peter, what did you think you were going to find in Ronnie’s apartment?”

  “The Pentagon Papers,” Cassady muttered.

  “The gun. And I found it! The hard way!” Peter was increasingly heavy-lidded and thick-tongued. The strength it had taken for him to rouse himself from the surgery sedatives was ebbing quickly.

  “No, no, different gun.” Ronnie had turned the weapon over to the police immediately; it was a 9mm and Garth had been shot with a .32.

  “Oh, then the original merger agreement. Kimberly said it changed and Ronnie was really, really pissed.” Peter sank back into his pillows, drained.

  It took me a moment to place the name. “Ronnie’s niece Kimberly? The receptionist? She’s your inside source?”

  “And you’re my best girl.” Peter let go of Aaron’s hand and grabbed mine, squeezing much harder than I would have thought possible in his chemical haze.

  “That’s very sweet,” I said, trying to extricate myself, but his grip was like a Chinese finger trap—the harder I tried to get loose, the harder he held on.

  “I love you, Molly.” Peter yanked on me, trying to pull himself back up out of his pillows, but he wound up knocking me off balance. I caught myself, bracing my hand on the bed. Which is why I was leaning over him as Tricia entered. With Kyle.

  “Are we interrupting?” Tricia asked with classic Vincent aplomb.

  “Damn, my family’s gotten big,” Peter drawled, his eyelids at half-mast.

  Tricia stood in the gap in the curtains, looking at Peter with concern. Kyle stood behind Tricia, one hand in his pocket, the other to his bottom lip, staring at me. I had no idea why he was there. I hadn’t called him. Which, I realized, was going to be a problem because I’d called Tricia and Cassady, but I hadn’t called him. And I hadn’t called him because I knew I was there with Peter and I didn’t want him to know I was there with Peter and I also didn’t want him to know I was hanging around people with guns again.

  There are searing, formative moments in my life that continue to play in my mind so vividly that I literally flinch when I remember them: throwing up onstage in the third grade Christmas pageant (I still get stage fright); thinking Tom Garrett was asking me to the prom when he was seeking my advice about asking my best friend (I now ask a lot of questions before I answer one); and walking in on a college suitemate in the midst of a ménage à trois (I always knock first). This moment was etching itself into my memory as though a branding iron were pressed against what little gray matter I possessed.

  “Does this look like a place to have a party?” The senior nurse flicked the curtains back imperiously and pointed to the exit.

  “We’re family,” Cassady attempted.

  The nurse gave us a sickly sweet smile to assure us she knew we were, in fact, liars. “Sweetheart, you could be Jesus Christ and the Apostles and I’d still throw you out. Too many of you in here. Go away and let him rest.”

  “Can Molly stay?” Peter asked mournfully.

  “No,” Cassady and Tricia answered for me. They pulled me out of his reach and hustled me down the hall. Aaron and Kyle brought up the rear. I heard Aaron describe himself as “Cassady’s new friend” and held my breath when Kyle paused before saying he was my boyfriend. Maybe he wasn’t as angry as he looked.

  “Why’d you bring Kyle?” I whispered to Tricia, trying to sound calm and curious.

  “He was with me when I got the message. It would’ve been even more awkward to shake him.”

  “He was with you?” Cassady repeated, not quite as quietly as I would have preferred.

  “He wanted to talk. About what to get Molly for her birthday.”

  “Six months away,” Cassady pointed out.

  Tricia shrugged and started picking her cuticles, a sure sign she was lying.

  Somehow, I’d plopped Tricia right in the middle of something I wasn’t even sure I knew about myself and I didn’t want to keep her there any longer. As we exited back into the waiting room, I turned to Kyle and asked, “Could we talk for a minute?” I pointed to a grouping of chairs away from the main traffic patterns of the room.

  “Can I join in?” Detective Donovan asked.

  “No,” Kyle said before I even registered that Detective Donovan was standing there. Kyle took me by the arm and walked me firmly over to the chairs I’d pointed out. “Are you done?” he asked quietly as he released my arm.

  “I’d like to talk to Wendy—”

  “You don’t understand my question.”

  He let the statement hang in the air between us so I could study it, fully appreciate all its dimensions, and realize why my answer was wrong. It took me a moment, but then my error shivered through me. Kyle wasn’t talking about my being done for the moment. “You mean, am I done with the article?”

  “I mean, are you done trying to get yourself killed?”

  I almost protested that no one was shooting at me—for a change—but I was learning enough to keep that observation to myself. “I just want to cover the story,” I said simply.

  “And what does Mulcahey want?”

  “To beat me to it.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Then why didn’t I know he was back until now?”

  “Because I didn’t think it was important.” Which was true. Possibly not completely true, but somewhat true. There might be other blocks, Freudian or otherwise, involved, but in the greater scheme of things, especially in the scheme of Kyle and me, it wasn’t important. “I’ve been trying to get rid of him,” I said, hating that that wouldn’t be clear to Kyle.

  “I could see that.” He nodded, not looking at me.

  There was something in his voice I hadn’t heard before. “Are you being snarky?” I asked, not doubting that he was capable but surp
rised that he’d go there.

  “No, I’m being frustrated.” Now he looked at me and his blue eyes were blazing with a passion I would’ve been delighted to see under more pleasant and intimate circumstances. “One thing you learn early on as a cop, it’s really hard to protect someone who doesn’t want to be protected.”

  “That’s not it,” I protested, “I just want to see this story through. You know what I have riding on this assignment.”

  “Too much.”

  While I groped for breath and an answer, Detective Donovan inserted himself into our tête-à-tête, which felt like it was verging on a mano a mano. “Sorry to break this up, Edwards, but I need to talk to Ms. Forrester, since she’s such a great detective and all.” Some people can’t be snarky; they’re too mean and it leaches all the humor out of anything they say, especially when they’re trying to be funny. It’s like trying to drive a car with no lubrication—you just get high-decibel screeching.

  I was prepared to leap in and defend myself, saving Kyle from the trouble, but he spoke first. And told Detective Donovan, “She’s all yours.” He walked away, throwing back over his shoulder, “I gotta go back to work,” and I honestly wasn’t sure whether it was for my information or Detective Donovan’s.

  I wanted to run after him, yell, and/or cry, but none of those options seemed particularly viable while Detective Donovan was standing in front of me with his notebook open and Kyle was disappearing down the hallway without even half-glancing back. I chewed on the inside of my lip for a moment to refocus, then gave Detective Donovan my most professional smile. “What can I tell you, Detective Donovan?”

  “Was Mulcahey at Willis’ apartment looking for Willis or for you?”

  “There’s absolutely nothing going on between me and Peter Mulcahey,” I told Detective Donovan with all the bite I’d held back from Kyle. “I had no idea he was going to … do whatever he was trying to do. There’s no conspiracy here to be uncovered, Detective. It’s an unfortunate collision of people on intersecting paths, that’s all.”

  “So why were you there?”

  “Working on my story.”

  “Wendy says you followed her.”

  “I felt she was hiding something. Like her involvement with Ronnie. Which she was.”

  “Why, do you suppose?”

  “So she doesn’t look like an opportunistic slut to her coworkers.”

  Detective Donovan’s eyebrows wriggled briefly, but he refrained from further comment. “And is she?”

  “I don’t know yet. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re off-track. This still sticks to Gwen Lincoln and as soon as we find the gun, we’ll be able to prove it.”

  “No wonder you like Wendy. She and Ronnie will not only endorse your candidate, they’ll probably campaign if you ask them nicely.”

  “But you don’t agree.”

  The problem was, I wasn’t sure anymore. Something about seeing Wendy screaming on the floor in the fetal position had shaken her validity as a murder suspect. But it still made sense that it was one of Garth’s Girls. The perfume, the injuries which could have been from someone forcing him to drink for his charm, the two gunshots … Gwen would have been more to the point, because she was killing out of anger. Garth had been killed more slowly, deliberately, out of vengeance.

  “You’re not sharing,” Detective Donovan continued, incorrectly interpreting my silence.

  “I don’t know anymore,” I finally said, honesty being the shortest distance between two problems or something like that. There was also the chance that if he thought I was stumped, he’d back off a bit.

  This time, his eyebrows just knotted. “We don’t have to be on opposite sides here.”

  “I didn’t know there were sides. Just points of view,” I said politely.

  “Yeah, well, there are sides and I like people to be on mine,” he stated with no politeness at all. “If you and Mulcahey aren’t going to play nicely, I don’t want you playing at all.”

  “Then maybe I better take my ball and go home,” I said, endeavoring to end things on a pleasant note.

  “Don’t go any farther than that.”

  “Detective Donovan, are you asking me not to leave town?”

  “Telling you, Ms. Forrester. Good night,” he said and walked away. But his attempt at making a forceful and intimidating exit was undercut by his stopping to turn back and salute Tricia, Cassady, and Aaron with a tip of his notebook to his forehead.

  Cassady swept the other two over to me immediately. “Was he nasty or seductive?”

  “I’m not sure he was either. Or can be either,” I said.

  “He’s not without his charm,” Tricia said.

  “His charm is at home in his attic,” Cassady countered.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Tricia said, “because I asked him to be my guest at the gala.”

  Sixteen

  THE TRUE ALLURE OF A martini glass lies in its creation of the illusion that you could lean forward and plunge your entire face into it, bathing yourself in the cool, refreshing liquid of your choice that shimmers there, and wash away cares, tears, and maybe even a wrinkle or two. Or, in more dire moments, stick your head in and shock yourself awake, like the crazy guys in the movies with the sinks filled with ice cubes. I contemplated the Rob Roy that shimmered before me and decided, while the whisky facial was tempting, my current problems would be best addressed by pouring the whole thing down the front of my blouse because it would give me a splendid reason to go home and throw things around my apartment for a couple of hours instead of attempting to carry on a conversation with Tricia, Cassady, and Aaron.

  After Detective Donovan’s departure, I’d pressed my cell phone number on the post-op nurse and begged her to call if Peter needed anything, and we’d decamped to the Lenox Lounge to attempt to take stock of the evening. Even in such cool and classic art deco surroundings, with smooth jazz floating in from the Zebra Room, it was a frustrating task. I felt somewhat like a camp counselor with fifteen minutes to go before the parents drove up, trying to figure out how I was going to explain that all my campers had wound up drunk, pregnant, or communist in the short time they’d been in my care.

  While it was tumultuous in my head, it was relatively quiet in the club. We’d reached that quiet part of the evening when people are either eating dinner or getting a second wind, not pushing quite so hard to charm their companions or conserving energy to look for new companions, murmuring rather than shouting, pacing themselves for the final leg of the marathon and kindling the desire to cross the finish line with someone full of excitement and potential. This particular race doesn’t necessarily go to the swift, but often to the slick or clever or persistent. Still, it’s hard to opt out and say you’re not going to run.

  Cassady and Tricia were allowing me time to gather my thoughts because they were engaged in a fierce debate of their own, centered on, as Cassady delicately put it, “What the hell were you thinking, inviting that vulture to the gala?”

  “Aaron,” Tricia said in response, “I’m sure you’ve already discovered that one of Cassady’s more endearing traits is her tendency to beat around the bush.”

  “Tricia,” Aaron replied, matching her tone uncannily, “I’ve found that the best way to control the results of an experiment is to limit the number of variables introduced.” He gestured for her to keep it between the two of them and turned to me. “Too many variables diffuse your attention. Follow one thing at a time, right?”

  Though my experience with physics was limited to some pretty shaky experiments in high school, I knew what he was getting at. You had to be sure of your hypothesis going into an experiment and seek to prove only that, or you cluttered your mind and endangered the experiment with extra interactions and reactions which were more measurable in how distracting they were than in how they impacted the results. You wound up proving nothing.

  Was that my mistake with Garth’s death? Had I gone in with the wrong hypothesis
and now lost sight of the original question in my drive to get the facts to conform to my suppositions? Oddly, when I’d been looking at people I knew as murder suspects, it was such a shocking concept that I’d had a hard time committing to suspecting anyone. This time, trying to follow the twisted relationships, I found everyone similarly tainted and no one emerging as the leading suspect. No one had an extraordinary reason to kill Garth; they all had equally good ones.

  So was I missing someone’s reason or had I missed a suspect altogether? If I was going to salvage either the story or my ability to tell it, I needed to shed some biases and take a fresh look at all the players. And while I appreciated Aaron’s empathy, the one guy I really wanted to discuss all this with was probably at home that very moment, changing the locks or at least short-sheeting the bed.

  But I’d have to dwell on that cop later, because Tricia and Cassady were getting quite animated in their discussion of the other one and I felt some responsibility for keeping that from getting out of control.

  “He’s not even that cute,” Cassady was protesting as I returned my attention to their conversation.

  “Don’t try to be quaint. That’s not the only reason to ask a man out,” Tricia answered.

  “Of course not, but in this case, there are no other redeeming qualities in evidence,” Cassady said.

  Now it was my turn to lean in to Aaron. “Should you be exposed to trade secrets so early in your association?”

  He smiled. “Education is never wrong. Painful sometimes, but never wrong.”

  Cassady arched an eyebrow at both of us. “And I suppose this all makes sense to you.”

  “It’s too much to ask that other people’s decisions make sense,” Aaron answered.

  “Though I hesitate to ask, I’m sure she has her reasons,” I agreed.

  “Why would you hesitate to ask?” Tricia frowned.

  Now I hesitated to answer, hoping to minimize the number of people I loved who would be angry with me by midnight. “Your reasons are your own,” I sidestepped. The idea of Detective Donovan joining us at the gala was noxious, but I clung to the notion that Tricia knew what she was doing.