I dug a bottle out of my bag and shook two capsules onto the table. I found some Ibuprofen as well. Ellmann went to get ice, and I looked in the pharmacy bag. There were more dressing supplies, the narcotic painkillers, and some antibiotics. I shook out a dose of antibiotics and swallowed them down with the rest of the pills.
Delicious food smells were coming out of a second bag. Chinese, by the scent. I confirmed this when I peeked inside and saw the square takeout containers. My stomach growled.
Ellmann returned and filled the ice pack the hospital had sent home with me. I tucked it under my shirt, placing it over the bandage. He began unpacking the food.
“I picked up dinner from Saigon Grill.”
“My favorite.”
“Good. Your choice of beef and broccoli or sesame chicken.”
“Chicken.”
“Egg drop soup?”
“Yes, please.”
We sat at the table and sipped our soup.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said softly.
“Any particular reason why?”
“I’m a suspect in the murder you’re working. It won’t look good—for either of us—if we’re spending all this personal time together.”
“First, you’re the only suspect in that murder. Second, I’m not working it anymore.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because of our personal time. I had my captain assign another guy to take lead: Darrel Koepke. I’ve agreed to stay out of it. Of course, that’s only on paper. Koepke will keep me in the loop and let me tag along. For the record, he doesn’t think you did it, either.”
“That’s good, I suppose.”
“Except you look like I just gave you bad news.”
“Isn’t it? I mean, isn’t this bad for your career or your reputation or something?”
“Don’t worry about that. This sort of thing happens sometimes. Granted, it’s usually witnesses, not suspects, but hey.”
I sighed. “So what happens now?”
He shrugged. “We keep working the case. I think everything is connected somehow. Koepke doesn’t agree, but he’s a good investigator; he’ll get to the bottom of it. He’ll probably want to talk to you tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. I’m free all day.”
He looked at me. “Why’d you leave work early?”
“I quit.”
He continued looking at me. “So you weren’t fired this time either?”
I explained.
“What’s your plan?”
I told him about Hobby Lobby. Apparently I’d passed whatever personality test I’d been given in lieu of an interview. Helen had called to offer me the position. I’d called her back after leaving King Soopers and accepted, arranging to start the following day.
“When one door closes, another door opens, huh?” He was leaning back in his chair, chopsticks in one hand, takeout box in the other.
“How philosophical of you, Detective.”
“Guess I’m also superstitious, ’cause I’m starting to believe there is such a thing as luck. And, baby, you’ve gotta be the luckiest person I’ve ever known.”
_______________
Another night passed without any intruders, gunfights, or other interruptions. I felt much better, though the pain and stiffness were still there. Ellmann was awake beside me. I tried to look at the watch on my left wrist, but that hurt. Instead, I shot a glance at the clock beside the bed. It was after nine.
“Do you have the day off?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’m not lead anymore, so I don’t have any reason to be there early.”
“How long have you been awake?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “A while. How did you sleep?”
“Great. I feel a lot better. Did you sleep?”
“Yes. Do you have any big plans for this morning?”
“No. Why?”
“Would you like to have breakfast?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
Ellmann drove us to the Silver Grill. On another day, I might have walked. But I didn’t want to expend all of my energy right out of the gate; I had a whole day to get through.
We were seated at a booth for two in the middle of the dining room. Ellmann took the seat with a view of the windows and the door, and I didn’t protest. (Another energy-conservation move.)
We ordered then sat quietly for a while, watching the people around us, listening to their conversations. My mind drifted and eventually settled on the first morning I’d had breakfast with Ellmann. I remembered the two cops who had tried to give him a hard time.
“Do you remember our first breakfast?”
He smiled. “How could I not? I’ve never met a girl who could eat almost as much as me.”
Great. That wasn’t the part of the morning I had really wanted him to remember. And, for the record, “almost” was a horrible exaggeration. I didn’t even come close to eating everything on my tray, as he had.
“Not that part. The part with the cops.”
He chuckled. “I’ve seen them around the station a couple times since. They avoid me like the plague.”
“They said dating was a sensitive subject for you. What did they mean?”
He hesitated for a moment. “I had a bad relationship end very publicly.”
I was curious to know more, but I could see he wasn’t willing to share any more at this point. I understood well how he felt. I didn’t enjoy rehashing the details of my failed relationships, either. But, I thought this was a case of show-you-mine/show-me-yours. If I put myself out there first, he might be more inclined to do the same.
“When I was eighteen,” I began, setting my coffee cup down, “I started dating a guy named Matt. My close friend Brandi had introduced us. She said we were perfect for each other. Boy, was he charming. He asked me to marry him and I agreed. I ended up dropping out of school, quitting my job, and moving to Denver for him, for the relationship I thought we had. I thought I was happy. I was planning a wedding, preparing for a life together, all of that.
“Everything was fine until I got a call from the doctor’s office telling me they had the results back on my pregnancy test. That was interesting, considering I hadn’t been to the doctor or taken a pregnancy test. Apparently I was nine weeks along. Then it occurred to me. Brandi and I were always getting each other’s phone calls because our phone numbers were the same except for one digit. I asked the lady whom she was calling for and, sure enough, it was Brandi.
“Naturally, I was excited for my friend. Although, I was surprised she hadn’t told me she thought she was pregnant, and I wondered whom she was seeing since she’d broken up with her boyfriend a few months earlier. I called her with the news and we celebrated.
“Several weeks later, I was trying to coordinate a time with Matt to look at this great wedding venue. I dropped by his office for lunch, and the lady called me back about an appointment when he stepped out. His planner was open on the desk, so I looked it over, trying to figure out a time that would work for us both.
“I saw ‘ultrasound’ scheduled for the following Monday. The same time Brandi had her ultrasound. When he came back, I confronted him. He tried to deny it, but I knew. I just knew.” My voice had gotten soft, sad. “I can still remember how I felt standing in the office with him that day. I couldn’t breathe. I had a horrible pain in my chest. I felt the world spinning around me, out of control. It all hit me at once. All the lies, all the things that didn’t quite add up, all of it. I’d never felt so stupid in my entire life.”
As I spoke, tears filled my eyes. It was all too easy to recall what I had felt that day, and to feel it all over again now.
“Brandi tried to convince me I was wrong, that it wasn’t what I thought, that it had just been a one-time thing. I never spoke to either of them again after that, except once. I ran into Brandi right before her baby was born. She told me she’d found out Matt was seeing someone else.”
I wiped my eyes and sniffed.
The waitress delivered our breakfast and then departed.
Ellmann was sitting very quiet, very still. He seemed to have his cop face in place, because I couldn’t get a read on him. After a few minutes and a few bites of breakfast, he finally spoke.
“Her name was Kristen,” he said softly. “We met in our last year of college, and she was so different from the other girls. I’d played football for all four years of college and most of high school, so I had all sorts of girls chasing me, you know? But she was smart and pretty, focused on her schoolwork and her future career. We started dating, but things didn’t get serious very fast. I was way into her, but I just always came second.
“A couple weeks before graduation, she called to tell me she’d taken a pregnancy test two weeks earlier and that it had been positive. She wanted me to know she’d been to a clinic and had it taken care of. That’s what she said: ‘I had it taken care of.’ Without consulting me. It was over and done before I could say anything.”
He shook his head as if he was reliving the phone call all over again. Whatever mask he’d had in place was gone now, and I could see the hurt and regret and terrible sadness he felt in his eyes. The tears in my own eyes were spilling over my lashes and running down my cheeks. My heart broke for him as he told his story.
“Not a day goes by I don’t think about that baby. I’ll lie awake at night and wonder if it would have been a boy or a girl. I would have been happy with either, but I usually end up deciding it was a girl. She would be eight now. I imagine what it would have been like to hold her, to watch her take her first step, to teach her how to tie her shoes or read a book. I would have taught her how to throw a baseball or swing a bat, how to play soccer and football.
“I have tried and tried, but I can’t keep myself from hating Kristen for what she did. All she could think about was her stupid career, her goals, and her timeline. There was never any place for anyone else, certainly not a baby.”
I sniffed and wiped my cheeks, trying to get a grip on myself.
Several minutes later, I spoke. “You said the break-up was public.”
“I managed to pull myself together and get through finals. As graduation got closer, I thought I was fine, getting over it. Two days before the ceremony, I realized I was nowhere near fine. I spent the next two days pouring over every abortion statistic I could find and compiling hundreds of pictures. I put together a very provocative PowerPoint presentation. Kristen was valedictorian, of course. Before her speech, I hijacked the audio/visual equipment from a nerdy sophomore who may or may not have believed I’d beat him up if he tried to stop me. When she started her speech, I played the presentation.
“I managed to lock myself in the equipment room, so the whole five-minute presentation played. Half the audience was in tears. Half of those who were crying left. A lot of people vomited, a couple passed out. Kristen didn’t know what was happening on the screen behind her until a minute into her speech. At the end of the presentation, I put her name up, so everyone would know what she’d done. Those two cops, Topham and Olvera, they were in our graduating class. They saw the presentation and know our history.
“She still hasn’t forgiven me. I suppose that’s fair, because I haven’t forgiven her, either. I’m not sure either of us ever will. And, you know, some good did come out of it. Because of what happened, I got involved in a lot of pro-life organizations. They still show my presentation at conferences, rallies, demonstrations, stuff like that.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper.
“Me too,” he said. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“What does she do now?”
“She’s an attorney. She does a lot of women’s rights crap, including abortion cases promoting a woman’s right to choose. Not that women’s rights is all crap,” he added quickly. “It’s just—”
“I get it.”
When I’d asked him about dating, I’d had no idea his history was anything like this. I now had a whole new dislike for the two cops I’d seen poking fun at Ellmann, and in a moment of hateful vengeance, I wished their big, gay secret would get out for all to know. I also thought my own history was far less hurtful than Ellmann’s. The betrayal I felt from my friend and fiancé was minimal compared to what Ellmann’s girlfriend had done to him. She was on a whole different level, and I thought maybe I should be grateful my experience was what it was, understanding now how much worse it could have been.
We finished breakfast, though neither of us really had an appetite. When we returned to the motel, I invited Ellmann back inside. He agreed and followed me in. I think it was the deep-seated hurt in our stories, but I felt a need to reach out to him, to connect with him.
I kissed him, wrapping my functioning arm around his neck. He pulled me to him until I winched from the pain in my shoulder. He immediately loosened his embrace.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Please, don’t stop.”
“Maybe we should wait.”
I lifted the sling over my head and eased it off my arm, dropping it onto the table. “If you don’t mind a few bandages, then I don’t want to wait. We just have to go slow.”
And that’s exactly what we did.
_______________
I reported for work ten minutes early. Probably I shouldn’t have been driving. The truck is a manual, and I was severely limited in the use of my left arm. Driving seemed reckless.
My new boss, Helen, was waiting for me at the framing counter.
“Oh, my goodness, dear,” she said, a hand fluttering against her chest. “What happened?”
“I had a little accident. I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.” This lady was going to wonder what the hell was wrong with me; every time I saw her, I had new and worsening injuries.
“Well, are you sure? You don’t look good.”
“I’m sure. Kendra’s training me today, right?”
“Yes. She’s waiting for you.”
I was outfitted with a blue vest with an orange logo on the left breast and a plastic name tag with zoe handwritten in black Sharpie marker. After the grand tour, Helen walked me through how to “clock in” and “clock out,” which consisted of writing my name and the time in a logbook kept near the employee lounge. Very complicated. Very high tech.
After this, Helen connected me with Kendra, whose position I was actually taking. It was another Groundhog experience. I shadowed Kendra for a while. Then I shadowed people in various other positions.
I spent the last hour of my shift training on the cash register. “Cash register” is probably too generous. It’s a large, expensive adding machine. Every item that came through was stickered with a price tag. I simply punched each price into the machine and hit “plus” between them. When the last item was entered, I hit “total,” and that was the end of the story.
I learned the population of Hobby Lobby shoppers is largely middle-aged and elderly women, most of them demure-looking housewives working on one craft or another. I listened as almost every one of them proceeded to describe their projects to me, explaining why they were buying each item. I recognized immediately this would get old very fast.
Kendra sent me packing fifteen minutes early, commenting that I looked “tired.” This was probably a nice way of saying I looked like I’d recently been shot. I “clocked out” and left.
Likely just out of habit now, I cruised past Tyler Jay’s house and then his mom’s house. I saw no sign of him, the Honda, or his Escalade. Too tired for a stakeout, I didn’t stop, motoring over to the motel. My phone rang as I let myself into the room.
“Zoe? This is Henry Davis. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, Henry.” I dumped my bag onto the bed and sat beside it, digging in it for Krupp’s gun. “Is everything okay?”
He sighed. I didn’t know the man well, but I sensed he was stressed.
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what? What’s the matter?”
>
“This job! I can’t do this job! I thought I could, thought I wanted to, but I can’t . . . and I don’t. It’s only been a week!”
“Exactly,” I said reassuringly, closing my hand around the gun. I carried it with me to the armchair, where I sat and crossed my ankles on the ottoman. I set the gun on the side table. “You’ve only been doing the job a week. And it was dropped in your lap. You have no one to show you the ropes, and you’re two people short in your office. Of course things are a mess right now.”
Mark White had big plans for Henry Davis, and the more focus White gave to others, the less he gave to me. I couldn’t afford for Davis to crap out now. He needed to perform. There was no way in hell I was taking over the Greeley office, and I was getting tired of turning White down. I needed Davis to pull it together immediately.
“We’re about to lose a dozen clients,” he whined. “And some woman named Patricia Newell has threatened to pull her entire account. She refuses to work with anyone other than you. Do you realize she has nearly forty properties with us, two of them apartment buildings, many of them duplexes?”
Yes, I was aware. I’d been managing Newell’s properties privately since I’d met her at a function in Denver years before. I’d brought her with me when I’d gone to White Real Estate. I’d told her I was on vacation, but Newell is the type of woman with an obscene amount of money and far too much time on her hands.
“I’ll call Patricia,” I said. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“All your clients love you,” he went on. “They’re all calling, wondering where you are, when you’re coming back, bitching about the people I have covering for you. They hate me. They’re all going to leave. White’s gonna fire me. Oh, this is terrible!”
“Henry, get a grip. I’ve been doing this longer than you have, that’s all. I’ve known some of my clients for years. They know me personally. They trust me. You just need to prove yourself, and you’ll be fine.”
“You’re right,” he said, sniffling. “You’re absolutely right. I’m overreacting.”
The Trouble With Murder Page 26