Book Club Bloodshed

by Brianna Bates

  “Richard.” Marie rowed on the erg next to her. “Perfect name for him.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because he’s kind of a dick,” Marie said.

  “Oh.” Missy laughed between breaths.

  Marie smiled over at her. “Why are the dicks always the ones that are easy on the eyes?”

  Missy checked Richard out as he pumped out a quick twenty-five pushups. He was done that before she’d even gotten off the rower. Richard had light blond hair and a thin, but very round face. His eyes were brown. He wasn’t really Missy’s type but could see how women would be attracted to him for his physique.

  “Push-up time,” Anastasia said, appearing out of nowhere. Marie groaned. Missy could understand. Push-ups weren’t her favorite either. The only thing worse was pull-ups. The absolute worst.

  “You can do this.” Anastasia helped them both up, a sheen of sweat glistening on her bare skin.

  Marie and Missy took their places on the floor and assumed the plank position. Missy surprised herself by pumping out a few, but her arms started shaking and her core was trembling too just trying to stay locked into that rigid position.

  “You can do them on your knees,” Marie said. “Work your way up to the real thing.”

  Missy was about to take Marie up on the offer, but then thought, what the hell? She decided to go as long as she could. She surprised herself by getting all the way to ten push-ups—had she ever done that many before? She was too tired to go on in the plank position so she bent her knees and put them on the floor to complete her set. Her arms were shaking by the end. She belly-flopped on the floor, feeling her boobs crush against the black padding. She wanted to lay there for awhile, but Marie was tugging on one arm and Anastasia on another.

  “Can’t stop now! You’re more than halfway through the set!”

  Missy groaned but got up. She fell in line behind Marie with the people that were jogging around the perimeter of the open floor. Quickly she checked her heart rate. It was a whopping one hundred and sixty! Ten beats over her target. Her immediate reaction was to slow down. She had to be careful. But another part of her liked the challenge, and Missy kept running.

  “Close it out with a sprint!” Anastasia urged. “Close it out with a sprint!”

  Missy hadn’t sprinted since the pit in field hockey for high school. But she pumped her legs till her lungs felt like they were going to burst.

  “Box jumps,” Marie groaned. “The worst.”

  Missy followed her over to the big boxes she’d noticed earlier when first coming in. No way was she even attempting the taller ones. Missy had no concept of how high she could jump, no scratch that, no concept of how high she could jump safely. Marie motioned at two boxes that looked a foot tall. Missy nodded, happy to try the smaller ones.

  “Twenty-five!” Anastasia yelled from behind them.

  Marie gave her a look. “The worst.”

  Missy couldn’t help but laugh. She knew already there was no way she’d be able to do four more sets of this…but damnit she’d get through one. That was something. That was a lot more than she would have thought she could do.

  She bent at the knees. How long had it been since she’d jumped? She had no idea. There was never a need in her world. It wasn’t like she was meeting up with the boys on Sunday morning for a pick-up game of basketball.

  She landed mostly squarely on the box, then hopped off. One.

  “See what I mean?” Marie asked.

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “Oh, you’ll see.”

  Missy did see about three jumps later. Her legs were on fire. There was no way, just no way she could finish.

  “Come on, girls!”

  “Let’s go!”

  “You can do this!”

  To her horror, Missy realized she and Marie were the only two left that hadn’t completed their first circuit. Anastasia must have permitted everybody a breather between sets, because they were all standing behind her and Marie, clapping and cheering. Missy tried to forget that her yoga pants were see-through, so right now all the men were treated to a view of her purple thong. God, why had she worn a thong of all nights?

  “Come on!”

  Missy looked right and the cop, Richard, was standing next to the box she was jumping on. He clapped encouragingly, his eyes sliding up and down her body. On her twelfth jump, she nearly slipped and with catlike grace, he moved in to catch her. Missy understood what Marie had said earlier now. Richard wasn’t the best-looking guy in the world, but wow was he in shape.

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  “You can do this!” he yelled.

  The cheering gave her a little burst of adrenaline. She forgot about how silly she must have looked in her transparent pants and powered through the jumps till she got to twenty-four. With just one more to go, her legs quaked and she was breathing heavily. Her heart rate was up to one-seventy. She wondered how much higher she could safely go.

  Marie finished her set and everybody cheered. Missy smiled and told her good job. Marie nodded and started clapping, urging her on. Despite her exhaustion and to her surprise, Missy was enjoying herself. She loved how they were all pushing for her and actually felt part of something larger than herself.

  She bent at the knee for her last jump and launched.

  Only, she didn’t quite hit the box with both feet.

  Missy lost her balance and spiraled out of control. Panicked she swung her arms wildly about, expecting to hit the ground. But instead something broke her fall softly. When she stopped panicking and opened her eyes, she looked up to see that Richard was holding her.

  He grinned ear-to-ear. “You did it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Missy fist-bumped one more person and followed Marie into the back where the locker room was. The other woman peeled off her clothes quickly and grabbed a towel.

  Missy hadn’t taken her clothes off in front of another woman in a long time and hesitated by a locker, with her bag still over her shoulder.

  “Pretty good, isn’t it?” Marie asked, already naked.

  “I’m going to be sore for a week,” Missy said, but she was smiling.

  “Probably.” Marie nodded. “So Richard took an instant liking to you.”

  “Yeah,” Missy said, thinking back over the workout. She’d tried a second set and gotten mostly through it, but had to bow out before she did all her box jumps. Figuring almost two sets was enough for her first night of WiredFit, she’d stopped and gone to a free treadmill to walk the rest of the time. She’d closed out by stretching for ten minutes, feeling all her muscles quivering.

  Missy realized she was making things weird by just standing there. So she quickly undressed and wrapped a towel around herself. Marie acted like this was perfectly natural, standing around naked in front of someone else. Missy wondered how anybody could ever be that comfortable in their own skin. She wished she could someday.

  “Just be careful with him, that is, if you’re interested,” Marie said.

  “Why is that?” Missy walked quickly to the showers, hung her towel up in front of one, and got inside fast, jerking the shower curtain closed. She could sort of take Marie seeing her naked, but she didn’t want anybody else to, especially not the other women who looked like Spartan warriors from that movie.

  Marie’s voice carried from the next shower stall. “You saw him with his friends, right?”

  Missy turned the water on and it got hot quickly. It felt so good. As she shower steamed up, she felt her muscles loosen.

  “Yeah,” Missy said. “He was kind of aggressive.”

  She could just hear Marie laugh. “That’s one way of putting it. He’s like Testosterone Incarnate. I hear he’s a third-degree black belt, in addition to being a cop. Just the person you want to have anger issues, right?”

  Missy’s ears perked up at the sound of anger issues. “What do you mean?”

  “He got into a fight one time here with one of the members over noth
ing. He went from zero to uppercut in about three seconds.”

  Missy made a mental note. “Good to know, thanks.”

  “Yeah. Hey do you want to grab something to eat? We usually go to Carney’s after the Thursday class.”

  “Oh really?” Missy pretended not to know this. “Yeah, sounds great.”

  “Just don’t eat their seafood,” Marie said. “It’s deadly.”

  Missy smiled, already knowing that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Carney’s Beef and Ale was a few minutes up the road. Missy told Marie she’d meet her there, she just had to make a call first.

  Missy walked to her truck. She took out her phone to call Paul before she got in. Not that she wanted to talk to him but it was probably a good idea to fill him in on what she knew.

  “Good class?”

  Missy screamed at the top of her lungs as she heard the voice and saw the dark shape move in the passenger seat. Paul was sitting in her truck and talking to her through the cracked driver side window.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He held out a palm. “Take it easy. You should really lock your doors. Some creep could get in here.”

  “Yeah.” Missy bit back what she really wanted to say.

  Paul said, “I’ve been waiting ever since the class broke up. Smells like you took a shower. Nice.”

  She rolled her eyes and forced herself to keep thinking about Noreen being in jail, and not this creepy guy in her truck. She got in.

  “There were five or so cops in there,” Missy said. “One of them is named Richard—”

  “Dicky Carew. I know him.”

  “Right. One of the other women in there told me he—”

  “Has anger issues? Thanks for the news flash. Everybody knows that, Miss.”

  She looked over and hoped her eyes burned a hole in him. “I didn’t know that, Paul. Okay? And how about you give me some credit? I just went through hell in there in transparent yoga pants!”

  “Lemons.” He smiled, nodding. “Yeaaahhhhh.”

  “Thanks for telling me my pants were see-through, by the way.” She faced forward again. “Would have been good to know before I started doing squats in front of twenty-five people.”

  “You looked great.”

  “I’m headed to Carney’s. Sounds like they’re all going there.” Missy motioned at the door. “So you’d better get in your car.”

  “I will.” He leaned over and she smelled his after shave. Paul held up his camera. The digital screen on the back of the camera lit up so she could see one of his photos. “I just wanted to let you know I got some great shots.”

  Missy was about to yes him to death as he scrolled through the pics, when she saw the fourth one.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s one of Richard, actually. Looks like he was yelling at one of his friends. Just imagine what he could do to a woman that’s broken his heart.”

  “I can hardly see Richard in this picture!” Missy felt her face getting hot. Richard was in the background. The foreground, the focus of the picture, was really of her rump as she prepared to do a box jump. The yoga pants were stretched so thin, her purple thong was right there for the world to see.

  “Good picture, right?” Paul asked.

  “Don’t take anymore pictures of my butt!” Missy pushed the camera away. “How dare you!”

  “What?” he asked innocently. “I was focused on Richard. Look at the anger filling his face. That guy has a hair trigger. I’ll bet a dollar to a donut he’s our guy.”

  Missy was too angry to agree verbally, but in the back of her mind she thought Paul was right. Though he’d saved her when she’d fallen off the box, she’d watched him the rest of the time and the guy had constantly challenged his friends, actually losing it one time when he thought somebody had done less than the mandated three minutes on the rowing machine. If he could flip out about something as minor as this, what was he really capable of?

  Not to mention the fact he had a black belt and worked as a cop. He really was the perfect suspect.

  “You look nice, by the way.” Paul slid out of the truck before Missy could respond.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Carney’s was a neighborhood bar and had been there forever. The name said it all: beef and ale. Their drinks were domestic and cheap. Their menu had all pub fare (including sea food!). It was always loud.

  Missy found Marie sitting at the bar with the cops and a couple other people from class. Given how much they were into fitness, Missy didn’t understand why they’d come to a place like Carney’s where fried itself was literally on the menu. But when she reached the bar and sat next to Marie, she understood.

  “They started offering healthy options.” Marie was picking at a salad with no dressing on it.

  “That’s cool.” Missy sat. When the bartender came over, she asked for what Marie was having and—screw it—ordered a light beer. She’d earned it tonight.

  Marie smiled at her. “So I have to confess something.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know who you are. Knew already, I mean.”

  Missy frowned. “And who am I?”

  “You’re the one that solved Albert Switzer’s murder last year.”

  Missy shook her head. “I helped is about the most you can say.”

  “Don’t be modest. That had to be pretty exciting.”

  “At the time it was anything but exciting.” In her mind she went back to that night when Gordon Cooper had come to her house, intent on killing her too. When she had nightmares, she could still feel his hands around her throat.

  “Oh yeah.” Marie leaned in. “I don’t know if you planned on talking to Richard, but I wanted to let you know his girlfriend is here.”

  Missy’s stomach dropped. Richard had a girlfriend? It didn’t mean he couldn’t have also been seeing Anne Baxter on the side, but it had to lessen the likelihood.

  “Girlfriend?” She was disappointed, just not the way Marie thought. She looked past Marie’s shoulder, down the bar, to see the cops. Richard was at the far end, engaged in a heated conversation with one of his colleagues. Probably arguing about something trivial.

  “She’s in the bathroom.” Marie sipped her water. “Apparently they’ve been dating for a month. Never saw her before tonight.”

  Missy nodded, taking that in. The bartender came over with her beer and salad. Great dinner. She asked him for a water also, and he went off to get it. Missy sipped the beer. She was surprised how good it tasted. Normally she ordered wine, but wine wasn’t on the menu here.

  As she turned in her seat to talk to Marie, she recognized the woman coming out of the bathroom down the hall.

  Ellen Stein.

  She smiled and waved, happy to see her. Missy excused herself and met Ellen at the end of the bar, right near Richard.

  “Ellen, how are you feeling?” Missy asked, coming in for the hug. She and Ellen had been friendly for awhile now, but after last night’s events she felt even closer to her.

  Ellen hugged her back. “Miss, what a nice coincidence.”

  The two women smiled at each other.

  Missy said, “Who are you here with?”

  “Get over here, babe.”

  Missy at first thought the man was talking to her. And when his arm reached toward her, she wondered who had the nerve to call her babe and then try to grab her.

  The arm belonged to Richard, the cop, and it kept going right past her to wrap around Ellen’s shoulders.

  Ellen smiled and leaned into Richard. “I’m here with my boyfriend. Have you two met before?”

  Missy had to pick her jaw up off the floor. “We met tonight, actually.”

  Richard smiled. “We haven’t been formally introduced. Hi, I’m Richard. I saved your life tonight.”

  Ellen shot him a jealous look. “What does that mean?”

  Missy laughed, hoping to keep things on an even keel. “I almost broke my neck when I was doing box jumps.
Richard grabbed me before I did any serious damage.”

  Ellen looked at Missy anew. “You exercise at WiredFit?”

  She hadn’t come out and said what she’d been thinking, but Missy could tell from her tone she was full of disbelief. Because obviously, how could a big, curvy woman like Missy work out at such an intense place like that?

  “First night,” Missy said. “I liked it. The people there are very encouraging and supportive.”

  Richard sipped from a water and eyed the two of them. “So how do you two know each other?”

  Before Ellen could answer, Missy spoke up. She wanted to see his reaction. “We’ve known each other for awhile, but specifically, we know each other from the Book Club.”

  Something filled his eyes, but Missy couldn’t tell what.

  “It was horrible what happened last night,” Missy said. “I think the whole police department was there. Were you working?”

  She asked the question as innocently as she could, but she felt Ellen’s eyes on her, weighing her words.

  Richard shook his head. “No. I was off last night and worked the early shift today. I’m back on at midnight though. A cop’s life is never normal.”

  Missy made another mental note. He was off last night, which gave him opportunity to kill Anne. But why would he if he was dating Ellen? And would he cheat on Ellen with Anne? She didn’t know enough about him to make that call.

  “And what does a cop do on his night off?” she asked, playfully.

  Ellen made a face, thinking Missy was flirting with her boyfriend right in front of her.

  Richard shrugged. “Same things anybody else does. I think I just stayed in last night by myself.”

  So he had no alibi, he had a vicious temper, and he was dating Ellen Stein. Did all of these things add up to something?

  “It was awful what happened to her,” Missy said. “I mean, I saw her and had to call nine-one-one.”

  Richard made a face and muttered something.

  Ellen grabbed his arm. “Richard, don’t.”