by E. C. Bell
“From—from Arnie.”
“He’s not still here, is he?” James looked around as though he expected Arnie to pop out of thin air.
“No,” I said, fairly certain I was telling him the truth. I hadn’t seen Arnie since he’d disappeared earlier in the evening. “He’s having trouble dealing with some—harsh truths about himself. I think it’ll take me longer to move him on than I thought.”
“Why do you have to deal with him at all?” James asked. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, hard. “He’s an evil son of a—”
“He needs to move on, James.” I pulled my hand from his and rubbed my fingers. “I can’t leave him for my mother to deal with. You understand, don’t you?”
“I guess,” he said. But he didn’t look like he believed his own words. And I didn’t really blame him.
“He’s no danger to me anymore, James. You do get that, don’t you?”
“No, actually, I don’t,” he said. “I’ve seen some shows—”
“Shows?”
“On TV.”
“Are you actually using TV to make a point about reality?” I tried—really, I did try—to hold back my laughter. Didn’t work, and it blurted out of me in ugly little huffs. “Seriously, James. You gotta quit watching that stuff.”
“So, there’s no way in the world he can hurt you?”
That brought me up short. A spirit could hurt someone living, if he got angry enough.
I thought about going to Rosalie’s apartment, and then going to Arnie’s parents’ place. Arnie had been really upset both times.
I had to stop doing stuff like that, if I was really intending to move Arnie on. Mom was right. All I was doing was provoking him, and that was no good. Arnie had to stay calm. If he stayed calm, he wouldn’t get to that bad place. I was almost sure of it.
“I just need to be careful,” I said. “And Mom’s here to help me, if I need it.” I patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry about me.”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” James said.
“That’s sweet,” I replied, and grinned. “Now, can I tell you about Rosalie?”
“Sure.”
“All I have to do is figure out if she owns a blue Sunfire,” I said. “If she does, then I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that she’s the one who picked up Arnie the night he died. Which means she’s probably involved in his murder. Don’t worry. This’ll be easy.”
“Yeah, sure,” James said. “Easy as pie.”
He didn’t sound like he believed those words, but I didn’t care. The information I’d given him was as nearly as good as if the witness was alive. And it wouldn’t be hard to find out if it was actually Rosalie who picked up Arnie. All I had to do was go to her apartment building and find her car.
“We should go check that car our right now,” he said.
“She works nights,” I replied. “Her car won’t be there.”
“How do you know she works nights?” he asked. “Did Stillwell tell you that, too?”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t him. Rosalie told me herself.”
“Rosalie told you?” James’s voice sharpened. “She didn’t come here, did she?”
“No.” God, I didn’t want to tell him, but I had to. “I went to her place. To talk to her.”
“Why?”
“She called me, and said she had information about the case. So I went to see her. Talk to her.”
“Oh,” he said.
“I won’t talk to her again,” I replied. “I’ll just go check her car tomorrow morning. In and out, real quick.”
“Why don’t we let the police handle this?” James asked, his voice like ice. “I can call Tyler right now. Let him do the actual investigation. Heck, this might even get him off my back.”
“And what are you going to tell him? That we got the tip from a dead guy?”
James blinked. “Right,” he said. “Probably won’t go over that well.”
“Probably not. Just let me check the car out tomorrow. Then we can both go to talk to Tyler. All right?”
“All right.” But he didn’t look happy, and I didn’t blame him. So I decided to try, once more with feeling, to put a smile on his face.
“I did one of your course chapters,” I said.
That brought him to attention, but not in the good way I was hoping. “What?”
“I—I did one of the chapters in your PI course.”
“What?!”
I was going to repeat myself a third time, but decided against it. Instead I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him to standing.
“Come and see.” I dragged him down the short hallway to my old bedroom. “I didn’t wreck anything. I promise.”
I retrieved the binder that held his work and waved it at him. “See?” I said, holding the binder open at the pages I’d covered in my fairly readable scrawl. “Got it all done.”
He looked down at the binder, then up at me. “Oh,” he said. “You just wrote them in the book.” He took a deep breath, let it out, and smiled. “That’s all right then.”
“What did you think I’d do with the answers?” I asked. “Write them on the walls or something?”
“No,” he replied. He set down the binder and opened his computer. “I thought you’d completed the chapter online.” He pointed at the website on the screen. “I was worried that you somehow figured out my password,” he said, and grinned crookedly. “Even though it shouldn’t be that easy to figure out. I have numbers in there and everything.”
“Oh,” I said. Numbers in his password. Wasn’t he cute? “I didn’t realize you were doing the course online.”
“It’s pretty easy, actually,” James said. “I printed off the book so I could read it, you know, like a book. Then I go through the same chapter online. Answer the questions at the end, and then go on to the next one.”
“It said in the book that it should take you nine days,” I said, fairly unhelpfully.
“I imagine that’s if you’re not being dragged into the local cop shop every day for questioning.”
James sat on the little wooden chair and reopened the binder.
“This doesn’t look bad,” he said as he quickly glanced through the chapter. “I read this through once, and it looks like you figured most of it out.”
“Well, of course I did!” I said, even though I remembered sweating blood on most of the questions. “I’m not an idiot, Lavall!”
He laughed. “I never ever thought you were an idiot,” he said. “It’s just, sometimes, the questions can be—tricky.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.” I reached over his shoulder to flip the pages to one section that was particularly littered with James’s handwriting—especially the exclamation points and question marks and all those WTFs. “Guess this chapter really gave you some trouble.”
James stiffened. “I was just surprised, is all,” he finally said, turning the pages back to my work. “I was under the impression that things were done—differently.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Didn’t your uncle teach you about most of this stuff? Shouldn’t have been too many surprises for you.” I laughed. “What, you weren’t paying attention?”
“I was paying attention,” he snapped. “It’s just, my uncle wasn’t exactly playing by the rules.”
“What?”
He turned away from me and closed the binder with a thump. “He wasn’t as on the up-and-up as I thought. There were a lot of situations that were handled badly. By him. By me.”
“By you?”
“Marie, he had me breaking the law. All the time.” His lips tightened, and he hissed out an angry breath. “All the frigging time.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him. I’d assumed that everything he’d been doing had been above-board. True, we had broken into quite a few places since taking over his family’s business, but still. Wasn’t that just part of the job?
“We can’t break the law,” he said, and shook his head. “Even if it’s for
a good cause. Even to get the bad guys.”
“Oh.” I looked down at the binder. Maybe it was time for me to read a few of those chapters myself, just to make sure I wasn’t doing anything too terribly illegal.
“Everything will be okay, James. All you have to do is finish your course. While you’re doing that, I’ll figure out who killed Arnie. Then we should be free and clear. We can get out of here and go back to our own lives.”
“I like the sound of that very much,” James said.
I did too, to be honest.
Arnie:
Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are
I WAS STARTING to believe that Rosalie was a bit touched. Really.
There was the business of my blood and brains all over her walls, which she decorated with photographs of me growing up.
And then there was the business of her making plans with my parents—my parents! For a meal.
And then there was the business of her wearing my clothes.
No shit. She’d taken the clothes I’d brought home from lockup and carefully washed and ironed them all. She kept singing those fucking love songs and ironing everything until it looked better than it did when I bought the stuff, and then she put my clothes on.
The sleeves of the sweater hung down over her hands by about four inches, but she didn’t even roll them up. Just wrapped her arms around herself, as though the sleeves of that fucking sweater were hugging her, and sang that goddamned song. Over and over again.
The last thing she did—and for some reason, this was the thing that got to me the most—was when she started talking like she thought I was there.
Now, I actually was with her, but I was dead. Right? And she wasn’t like Marie or old lady Jenner. She couldn’t see me, or talk to me, or anything, but she acted like she could.
Creepy as shit.
“Arnie,” she singsonged, walking around in her little apartment like she was looking for me. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Then she laughed like a fucking loon and started all over again.
One time, she walked up to me, and it was like she was looking right in my face. “Arnie?” she whispered. “Why won’t you answer me?”
She acted like she could see me, so I played along and answered.
“What do you want, you silly little twat?” I asked.
“I want you to love me, Arnie,” she replied.
That gave me pause.
“What?” I said to her.
And she said, “I want you to love me, Arnie. Love me.”
So I said, “Can you really see me?”
And she said, “Arnie, come out, come out, wherever you are,” and skipped off down to her bedroom.
I hated her for that. All right, so she couldn’t see me, but Jesus. She’d made me feel like I had someone to talk to, but it was a lie. I was all alone, even with her in the room.
And I don’t do so good being by myself.
I spat at her closed bedroom door and went out on the balcony to pull myself together.
Marie:
Preparing for the Family Get-Together
THE NEXT DAY, we all slept until noon. The only one who even made a move was Millie the step-on dog, and she only went out to relieve herself. When I offered her some kibble, she basically shook her head, marched to Mom’s room, and disappeared. So I went back to sleep.
Mom was the first human to rise. She came out of her room looking exhausted and used-up.
“Where’s Laurel?” she asked, before I properly had my eyes open. I glanced down at the end of the couch where Laurel usually sat. It was empty.
“No clue,” I said. “Maybe she moved on.”
“Oh, she’s not ready,” Mom said. She hobbled into the kitchen and drew herself a glass of water. “Not now.”
“But you moved Roy on,” I said. “Last night.”
“Yes, I did.” Mom’s mouth pursed. “He told me some unnerving facts about Arnie, before he moved on.”
“Laurel told me.”
“Well, be careful. I’m afraid that he’s becoming dangerous.”
“I will.” I patted her hand. “Don’t worry about me.”
“You can’t stop me,” Mom said, and smiled. The first real smile she’d given me since our big talk.
“Laurel also told me that she wanted to think about things before moving on,” I said. “Maybe she did.”
“She wasn’t ready,” Mom said, and looked around, concerned. “I wonder where she went?”
“Don’t worry about her,” I said. Too late, but I said it anyhow. “You want a cup of coffee? Maybe some breakfast?”
She smiled. “That would be nice.”
“You don’t mind cold cereal, do you?” I asked, hopefully. “And maybe a couple of pieces of toast?”
“That’ll be fine,” she said. She sat at the tiny table and downed the rest of the water, then held out the empty glass to me. “And more water, that’s a good girl.”
I hustled around getting her watered and fed, and she did look better afterward, but still, I was worried. Her colour was worse than usual, and it seemed to me that she was taking a rest between bites of toast. Which just wasn’t right. No one should be that exhausted.
“Maybe it’s good that Laurel’s gone,” I said. “You need time to yourself, to recover. You know?”
Mom didn’t look at me. Just sighed and put down her coffee.
“I’m not turning my back on Laurel just because I’m a little tired,” she said. “It was time for Roy to move on, and now I’m recovering from it. When it’s time for Laurel to move on, I’ll recover from that, too. Understand?”
Yes, I understood. But that didn’t stop me from worrying over her, handing her glass after glass of water, until she finally pushed me away.
“That’s enough,” she said. “I’m going to slosh when I walk, I swear! I think I’ll go and lie down for a while longer, if you don’t mind. Wake me when it’s time to get ready to go to Rhonda’s, will you?”
I nodded and sighed, thinking that the last thing Mom needed was a night out at Rhonda’s for her stupid family meal. But I knew there was no way to keep her from going, so the best I could hope for was that she’d get enough rest before.
James walked into the kitchen a few minutes after Mom disappeared into her bedroom. He looked as exhausted and used-up as Mom had.
“Is that coffee I smell?” he asked.
“Be quiet,” I whispered, and poured him a cup. “Mom’s trying to sleep.”
“Probably good for her,” he whispered. He sat in the chair Mom had vacated and spooned some brown sugar into his cup. When I gave him my patented what-the-hell look, he shrugged. “Your mom might be on to something about the brown sugar. We need to get some for the office.”
“Brown sugar in coffee is nearly a sin,” I whispered. “Just so you know. Want some toast?”
He nodded, so I made him a couple of slices, and then sat down across from him as he ate it.
“What’s your plan for today?” I asked.
“I have to work on that damnable online course,” he said. Then he frowned. “We’re supposed to go check out that girl’s car, aren’t we?”
“I can go,” I said. “It’ll only take me a few minutes. I’m not going to do anything more than make sure it’s a blue Sunfire and write down her plate number.”
“Are you going to go talk to Officer Tyler after?”
I frowned. The thought of talking to Tyler about information I’d gathered from a dead man—even if I had confirmation—filled me with all sorts of dread. I was afraid that he wouldn’t believe me. I was even more afraid that if I tried to point him in a different direction in his investigation, he’d think I was somehow involved, and then he’d start investigating me. If he wasn’t already.
“Even if I find out Rosalie owns a Sunfire, I don’t want to talk to Tyler today,” I said. “But I’ll do it tomorrow.”
I was certain James was going to fight me on this. After all, he was the
one Tyler kept dragging down to the cop shop for little “talks” that lasted hours and hours. But he didn’t. Just nodded and said, “You know best.”
He finished his toast, and touched my arm. “Be careful,” he said. “She might be dangerous.”
I said I would, then watched him as he trudged down the hallway to my old bedroom, so he could work on his course.
As I got ready to leave, I worried about what I was going to do if Rosalie didn’t own a blue Sunfire. How was I going to find the mysterious dark-haired woman who’d picked up Arnie, if it wasn’t Rosalie?
Back in the day, I would have sweet-talked somebody down at the Blue Ox Inn to help me figure it out, because Arnie’s friends weren’t just drunks. They hovered around the edges of legitimacy and had surprising ways of finding out anything they wanted. But this was definitely not back in the day anymore.
I didn’t even know many of the police officers well enough to ask them for a favour. The only one I recognized was good old Officer Tyler.
Briefly, I considered going to Victim Services, to see if they’d be able to help me, one more time with feeling. They’d been very helpful when I was trying to figure out how to get a restraining order for Arnie. I think they even believed me about him. But I decided that that move would do nothing but fuel the small town rumour mill. “See?” they’d all say, “She found herself another violent one. He probably did kill Arnie. Probably.”
Then I went a bit crazy and thought about standing on the side of the road, yelling, “So, who owns a blue Sunfire?” at everyone as they drove by. Gave my head a great big shake, and figured that what I needed to do was find out if I even had a problem first. I had to check Rosalie’s car.
I got dressed and drove down to Rosalie’s apartment building. I wondered if Arnie was there. Decided he probably was, but decided it didn’t matter.
After all, I was only going to be there for a few moments. He probably wouldn’t even see me, and even if he did, he was trapped in that apartment. All I had to do was stay out of the apartment, and I would be okay.
I parked in the lone visitor parking spot and looked out at the cars in the lot. There were quite a few of them, but I wasn’t that surprised. It was, after all, Fort McMurray, the town that never, ever slept. It wouldn’t just be Rosalie working the night shift.