Cause of Death

by Laura Dembowski

  “See you later, honey. Oh, and could you pick up some milk on the way home? We’re all out.”

  She’s out the door before I even have time to answer. Clearly she wasn’t interested in my response. I am her bitch. I am being blackmailed by my fiancée.

  Never mind. Can’t think about that now.

  I’m going to solve the death of Lana Moore if it’s the last thing I do.

  “How was last night?” Kate asks the moment I sit down at my desk.

  I wish I would have gotten here before her. I just wanted a moment to myself. My mind was racing on the way here, trying to make sense of the forced engagement, Tracy’s blackmail . . . I don’t think one coherent one passed between my ears.

  “It was interesting.”

  “Interesting?”

  “We are possibly engaged.”

  “How are you possibly engaged?” she asks, swatting my arm.

  If only she knew.

  “That sounds moronic.”

  “What happened last night was pretty moronic,” I say, sadly nodding my head.

  “Okay, I need details.”

  “Well, we were having a decent time at dinner, and then she pulled a giant diamond ring out of her bag and pretended I had just proposed. So, yeah, interesting.”

  I leave out the parts about Tracy knowing I’m cheating on her, cheating on her with Beth, being blackmailed. Kate can get the gist without knowing all the dirty particulars.

  She’s about to pile more questions on me, I can tell, so I say, “Do you think it’s possible Dave Moore gave us the tip?”

  “You can’t change the subject like that right after dropping this bomb on me.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Look,” I growl, “I had a long night, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, so can we drop it for now?”

  She sighs. She wanted gossip, but she’s not getting it at my expense.

  “I’ll ask Sarge if we can listen to the tape again,” she says, a bit dejected.

  “You talk to anyone at McKellan yet?” I ask.

  “I did,” she says, not into the conversation at all.

  “And?”

  “And we have a meeting there.”

  “Do they want a warrant?”

  “Got one,” she says, waving it in the air.

  My eyes glaze over for a few seconds.

  Kate throws a wadded-up piece of paper at me.

  “What?” I say.

  “I was just telling you that we need to get going to McKellan, and you, I don’t know, zoned out or something.”

  “Sorry. Long night,” I say, unsure of where my brain just traveled. That happens to me sometimes. I chalk it up to having too much going on and being easily distracted.

  I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. I peek at it. A text from Beth. This will only further distract me. “Can you come over later?” it says.

  I put my phone back in my pocket, knowing the answer is clearly no, but not wanting to tell her right now. I actually want to see Beth. I want to see someone who wants me for me, and not the things she knows she can get from me. I don’t want to disappoint Beth. The last thing I need is two women against me.

  Kate is standing next to her desk, snapping her fingers, waiting for me to get with it and follow her to our car. I’ve zoned out again. It probably won’t be the last time today, either.

  “We were very excited to have Ms. Moore as a part of our team. She was actually supposed to start Monday. When she didn’t show up, we called her a few times and sent an e-mail, but then we had no choice but to move on,” the owner of McKellan is telling us. He’s nice, a typical businessman type. It’s hard not to like him, but I find a way; all these businessmen are up to something, especially the ones who work in advertising.

  “It didn’t ring any alarm bells when she didn’t show up?” I ask. Isn’t it common courtesy to investigate a little when someone doesn’t show up for work? We’re not sitting in the middle of a fucking McDonald’s, talking about some teenager who flaked. We’re talking about a young woman who worked at one of the top firms in New York and was now going to be employed here. They should have been jumping for joy, to acquire such an employee—and should have been concerned when she didn’t show.

  “Listen,” he says.

  I hate when people start a sentence with Listen. It’s like he thinks he’s going to teach me something, like I couldn’t possibly understand where he’s coming from, but he’ll do his best to explain it to me.

  “People don’t show up sometimes. It happens. I’m not a private detective, and I’m not about to hire one to track someone who hasn’t even started working for me yet, as promising as she seemed.”

  “Did she mention any friends, or a boyfriend?”

  “I try not to pry too much into the personal lives of my employees. You show up drunk, that’s my problem. You spend the weekend getting trashed, that’s not; you know what I mean?” he asks with a chuckle.

  We don’t laugh. Maybe we do know, maybe we don’t; maybe we know all too well.

  We finish the conversation and walk out with proof of her employment and a copy of her résumé. Kate’s flipping through her notebook and looking at Lana’s résumé as we walk back to our car. I’m distracted again—this time by the beautiful flowers surrounding the building, the birds singing, the cool breeze. I’m wondering if my world is going to come crashing down sometime soon, and choosing to enjoy nature before that time comes.

  I get in and start the car. Kate is still standing outside, looking at the papers. I roll down the window.

  “Now who’s zoned out?” I shout over the motor.

  “This is a different cell-phone number,” Kate says, wagging the résumé at me. “It’s different than the one her parents gave us.”

  We have a whole new list of people to speak with as soon as the phone records are in our hands. I can’t decide if Margaret was hiding things from us or if Lana was hiding things from her mother. This could be another one of those cases where we’ll never really know the truth. I hate those cases. They drive me crazy and keep me up at night.

  Before we bring in all of Lana’s potential friends, lovers, boyfriends, friends with benefits, Kate and Sarge think we should go and see if the Moores are back from their vacation and will talk to us again. See what we can get out of them. Push some buttons.

  Just as we reach the car, my phone vibrates again. It’s Beth. It’s actually the third time she’s called. She must really want to see me, and I can’t quite figure out why. Our relationship has been so hands-off, no strings attached, that this number of calls and texts is kind of freaking me out. Shit, maybe Tracy threatened her.

  “I gotta take this,” I say to Kate, and walk away to a spot in the station where I’m pretty sure I’m alone.

  “I can’t talk now,” I say into the phone.

  “Fine, but can’t you come over later? Devin’s working late again.”

  “What about the kids?” I ask, certain she’d never let me come over when her children are roaming around freely.

  “Oh, God, they go to sleep at, like, eight. Sleep like rocks; wish I could do that. They’ll never know the difference. Please,” she says in a whiny, pleading tone.

  “I can’t tonight,” I say, hoping she’ll drop it.

  “How about tomorrow? Or the next day? Even on your lunch. Whatever.”

  “Tracy knows,” I blurt out. I don’t regret saying it, either. In fact, I feel better the moment the words cross my lips. Simply knowing someone else knows relaxes me.

  “Your girlfriend knows about us?” she screams into my ear. I pull the phone away, hoping no one else heard. “How?”

  “She had me followed, apparently.”

  “You’re a cop,” she’s still screaming. “How do y
ou not realize someone is following you? How is that even possible?”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just wanted to have a good time and be with you. I think I love you, Beth.”

  Whoa. And there’s the tension back.

  Do I really love Beth? I must, since I just said it. I’m fairly certain I don’t love Tracy anymore—not that she really loves me, either.

  “You love me?” Beth asks, baffled.

  “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “I have a family. This wasn’t about falling in love. It was about having fun. Come over, don’t; I really don’t care what you do with your life. Why are all guys such assholes?”

  I say nothing. I have no answer for that.

  I walk back to the car, slightly breathless.

  “Why don’t you drive,” I say to Kate, noticing that my hands are shaking.

  “But you never want me to drive,” she says, too distracted to notice my current state.

  “First time for everything.”

  The last thing I want to do right now is go to the Moores’ house, but I have no choice.

  Kate talks on the drive there, but I don’t process a single word. I’m too busy thinking about Tracy and Beth, about the mess I’ve made, and how to get out of it.

  Suddenly, I’m worried that the first thing Beth did after she hung up the phone with me was call her sister.

  Chapter 11

  Margaret

  “So let me get this straight,” I say to Officer Whatever-His-Name-Is, who has been bothering us since the first time he and his partner walked into our house.

  “You think my daughter had a secret cell phone and a secret job, along with a secret boyfriend.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we do,” the girl cop says, looking at the floor. She’s not even woman enough to look me in the eye while telling me I know absolutely nothing about my daughter.

  I turn my head from the detectives standing in front of me, just inside the door—they are not welcome to come any further—and see Dave. He’s on the floor, his legs crossed, his face in his hands, swaying back and forth.

  “She had so much to live for,” he sobs. “How is she gone? How is this possible? Why her? Why us? Why me?”

  Girl cop—Detective Hutchinson, whatever her name is—walks over to him and stoops down.

  “I am so sorry for your loss, Mr. Moore. I know it is no consolation, but we are going to find out what happened to her,” she says in a soothing voice that makes me want to kick her in the ribs.

  “We know what happened to her. She killed herself,” I say.

  What are these detectives talking about? This is bullshit.

  “She had friends, a new job,” boy cop says. “Life was going pretty well for her, it seems to me, and we are struggling to figure out why she would have killed herself.”

  “You never know what’s going on inside people’s minds,” I say, staring them down. “How dare you question our daughter’s motives. Don’t judge us.”

  Dave looks back and forth between the two officers, confused. “So she really didn’t kill herself?” he asks.

  “We don’t know yet. Sometimes things like this can be staged, and it’s almost impossible to tell the difference,” girl cop says, moving to sit on the floor next to him. She doesn’t touch him, keeps her distance, but I can tell she’s trying to make an emotional connection, to break him down, get him to confess to something. She has another thing coming.

  “Should I not have touched her? Did my DNA contaminate her body? Or maybe if you’d been able to see her room as she left it,” Dave cries, his voice and body shaking.

  “Sir, you tried to save your daughter. You did what anyone would have done. The officers on the scene at the time of her death collected the evidence,” girl cop says in her annoyingly soothing voice.

  Dave manages to stand, God knows how, and shake the detectives’ hands.

  “Thank you for your hard work. I know you will find the truth and give Lana peace.”

  What if I don’t want to find out? What if I want to live in ignorant bliss the rest of my life? What if I think we’re better off with Lana dead?

  Wait, I didn’t mean that. Obviously we’re not better off with her dead; it’s just that she was bringing us down. Threatening to kill yourself over and over eventually stops having an effect, unless you actually go through with it, so this was the next logical thing for her to do.

  “Just a few more questions,” boy cop says.

  I shake my head no, but he’s going to ask them anyway, I already know that.

  At least Dave and I are together this time, so I don’t have to worry about them comparing our stories. Not that we’re telling stories; it just makes me unreasonably nervous that one of us will remember something differently, inaccurately, and we’ll be imprisoned.

  “Why did you take a vacation immediately after Lana’s death?” girl cop asks. I don’t appreciate her tone.

  “Immediately? We had her funeral, mourned. We needed an escape.”

  “You needed an escape,” Dave adds. “I went along.”

  I give Dave some serious side eye as the detectives spew more questions at us.

  “Where did you go?”

  I hear words coming out of Dave’s mouth and understand that I’m supposed to know what they are, as common in the English language, but they don’t make any sense. The cops’ insinuation that they know more about my daughter than I do is too much.

  The pieces start to fall into place in my mind. If Lana had a job, and a boyfriend, there was no reason for her to kill herself. So how did she die? I can’t fathom it suddenly. This is unimaginable.

  Dave must know something. He had to. Did he start this whole investigation because he knew she wouldn’t have killed herself? What else does he know about Lana that I didn’t?

  Shit. He thinks I killed our daughter.

  I fall to the floor. Dave doesn’t even make a move to try to catch me. He looks at me, sitting there, pretending to be in pain. I’m trying so hard to grab some of his attention, but he refuses to give it to me. It’s like he knows I’m acting and not really in pain at all. That, or he doesn’t give a fuck. If I thought he killed Lana, I guess I wouldn’t give a fuck about him either.

  Wait a minute. Maybe he did kill Lana. How have I missed it this whole time? That’s why he’s been so upset about her death. It’s why he’s been drinking and doing drugs. Everything makes sense now. He wants to be the last suspect on anyone’s mind. He’s the poor, old, likable husband, and I’m the evil shrew. But it’s all an act.

  Suddenly I look up and the detectives are gone. I want them to come back. I’m trapped in this house with a murderer. It’s one of those things I never thought I’d have to deal with. You know, other people’s kids get killed. Other people marry someone they think is awesome at first, but turns out to be a serial killer with a second family.

  How did I end up here? That’s the only thing crossing my mind. I was supposed to be an upper-middle-class suburbanite with a successful child and a blissful marriage. I was meant to always look put together, to be a good baker and a gardener. In reality, I am none of those things. I am a mess. My life is a disaster in which I have left a path of nuclear waste, bound to contaminate anyone who comes near me. I have a house that only serves to remind me of my dead daughter, a husband who has been keeping secrets from me, including potentially that he killed said daughter. I can’t cook or bake a damn thing, I hire someone to handle the garden, and I’m starting to look like I died along with Lana.

  I glare at Dave, hating him more than I’ve ever hated anything or anyone in my entire life.

  “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  He looks at me, baffled. “Who?”

  “Who? Who? All you have to say to me is who? Lana. That’s who.”

  He laughs. He actually laug
hs. I can count the times he has laughed since Lana died on one hand, and now that I am accusing him of staging her suicide, he is laughing.

  “Really, Maggie? Really? You think I killed Lana? I could say the same thing about you.”

  My eyes bulge. “You do think I killed her, don’t you?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you—the thought has definitely crossed my mind. I don’t think you have it in you, though. You’ve always been more of a talker than a doer.”

  I question my entire life with that one statement. I’ve always waited around to be mixed with another person to take on their form, to become exactly what they want and need me to be, totally losing myself every time. I did it with all of my boyfriends, most of all Dave, and then I did it with Lana. I don’t have a personality. I’m merely a shell of a person waiting to be filled by someone else.

  “How much do you really know about McKellan?”

  “I knew she’d gotten a job there,” he says, hanging his head.

  “Why didn’t you tell the detectives?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head at himself, at his own behavior.

  “So why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “I figured it would destroy you. You have come to rely on Lana so much.”

  “You’ve got this all wrong. You’re the one who’s been a mess,” I say. “I’ve been taking this all in stride, if you ask me.”

  “Yeah, because taking your daughter’s death in stride is something to be proud of.”

  “Well, we can’t both be wasted basket cases.”

  “I agree. You might not be wasted, but I know which one of us is the basket case.”

  “Glad we agree on something.”

  “We don’t agree on it, Margaret. Stop kidding yourself. Stop lying. My God, I should have divorced you years ago.”

  “Maybe you should have just killed both of us,” I say, wishing that’s what had happened.

  “I didn’t kill her. I did not kill Lana!”

  “But you’re so sure she didn’t kill herself,” I say, wondering if he has some secret stash of evidence. “What about the note?”