Fatal Debt

by Dorothy Howell

  For a second or two, I wondered who Jarrod’s current girlfriend might be, then was saved from the nauseating mental picture by Slade. He stepped into the office, waved, then went outside again. I grabbed Jarrod’s file, a clipboard and a vehicle inspection report, and headed for the door.

  “Your car’s here,” I called to Jarrod over Jade’s shoulder.

  He bolted past her and followed me into the parking lot.

  Slade had driven the Mustang to our office and parked it at the rear of the lot away from the other cars. He stood at the rear bumper looking hot in jeans and a snug T-shirt.

  I went over the car checking off the boxes on the vehicle inspection form, then compared it to the report I’d completed the morning Slade and I had repo’d it. The vehicle was in identical shape. No dents or dings incurred while in the possession of Quality Recovery.

  I made Jarrod go over the Mustang, too. In the past, a few customers had claimed their vehicle had been damaged while in our possession. It always got messy.

  Jarrod looked over his car, started the engine, cranked up the radio, and finally declared it was in good condition. I made him sign a form to that effect, and Slade had him sign something similar for Quality Recovery.

  “That’s it?” Jarrod asked.

  “That’s it,” I told him, and pressed my lips together to keep from adding “and good riddance.”

  Jarrod hesitated before getting into the Mustang.

  “So, Dana, when will I see you again?” he asked.

  “Never,” I told him.

  “Well, what about if I need another loan?” Jarrod asked. “I mean, I did pay off the account.”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  He slid into the Mustang and ran down the window.

  “See you around, Dana,” he called.

  “No, you won’t!” I shouted.

  But it was no good. Jarrod smiled and waved as he drove out of the parking lot.

  I stood there watching him, thankful he was gone but visualizing my hands closing around his neck. Slade walked up, shattering my perfectly good daydream.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s cool, babe.”

  I blew out a heavy breath. “Yeah, I guess.”

  We walked toward the office building.

  “Everything okay with you?” Slade asked.

  He surprised me with his insight and concern. We’d had our share of moments together in the last week or so, as I’d never expected.

  “Yeah, kind of,” I said.

  “Tell your folks to stay away from that contractor,” Slade said.

  I stopped short. I’d forgotten that I’d asked Slade about Kirk Redmond by pretending I wanted the information for my parents.

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s not much of a contractor,” he said.

  Nick flashed in my mind and his comment about Kirk Redmond being less than a solid-gold businessman.

  “He’s more like a drug dealer,” Slade said.

  “What?”

  Slade looked down at me. “The business is a cover. He works just enough to make it look legit. Way I hear it, he’s got a network of dealers working for him like you wouldn’t believe. The man’s well connected.”

  “What?”

  “Tell your folks to steer clear of him,” Slade said. “He’s bad news.”

  Stunned, I walked with Slade across the parking lot. Kirk Redmond was a drug dealer? And I’d called and talked to him about Mr. Sullivan. No way was I getting involved with him. When Redmond called back about the paint estimate, I’d tell him to forget the whole thing.

  “Later,” Slade called as he headed off down Fifth Street.

  “Thanks,” I called.

  He waved and kept walking.

  I headed for the office door when I saw a blue Chevy pickup swing into the parking lot. I recognized Sean Griffin behind the wheel. I waited on the sidewalk for him while he parked. A little breeze blew, stirred up by the cars going past. Sean got out of his truck and walked over. He had on the same shirt I’d seen him in yesterday. He looked tired.

  He stopped beside me. “I saw Belinda last night.”

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  “I told her I was coming today to pick up the girls,” Sean said.

  The sidewalk in front of the office was no place for this conversation.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  The office door opened and Carmen walked out with the deposit bag tucked under her arm, on her way to the bank to deposit Jarrod’s cash. She smiled and walked past us. Sean reached behind me to hold the door open.

  A car on Fifth Street slowed down at the curb. The window rolled down. The man in the passenger seat pointed a gun at me. Two shots rang out.

  Carmen screamed. Sean pushed me, knocking me to the sidewalk. Tires squealed and the engine roared.

  My heart pounded. I lay on the sidewalk for a couple of seconds, stunned, not sure exactly what had happened. My mind wouldn’t process the information.

  Carmen’s screams penetrated my confusion. I rolled cover and sat up. She stood about ten feet away, hands against her cheeks, still screaming.

  Beside me, Sean Griffin was slumped against the building, his legs stretched out in front of him, two blood-soaked holes in his chest.

  I surged to my feet. A wave of horror washed over me. I stared at Sean. He’d pushed me down. Pushed me to safety.

  Slade appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed Carmen by the arm and pulled her toward the office door. He pushed me in ahead of her.

  “Call 9-1-1,” he said. “Stay inside.”

  Manny was already at the front of the office when we got inside, Inez on his heels. He snatched up the telephone on the front counter and punched in the numbers. I pushed Carmen toward Inez and ran back outside.

  Slade laid Sean flat on the sidewalk and knelt over him. I dropped to his side.

  Blood pumped out of Sean’s chest saturating his shirt, his arms, pooling around him. Slade bent and listened at his mouth.

  “Is he breathing?” I asked, hearing the desperation in my voice.

  “He’s breathing, but he’s going to bleed out before the medics get here.” Slade pulled off his T-shirt, doubled it over and pressed it against Sean’s chest.

  I’d never felt so helpless, so useless, so worthless in my life.

  But I couldn’t just sit there. I scooted around to Sean’s head and stroked his hair. His eyes opened, but I saw no recognition in them only a dull, glassy look. They fell shut again. Color drained from his face.

  What I did served no medical purpose, only offered some measure of comfort in what I feared were Sean Griffin’s last minutes on this earth.

  Slade looked at me as if he read my thoughts. He shook his head. Tears burned my eyes.

  The wail of a siren drew closer and an ambulance drove into our parking lot. Paramedics pulled Slade and me away and went to work on Sean. A crowd gathered on the sidewalk. Two police cars screeched to a stop at the curb. Several uniforms piled out.

  I stood there staring at Sean. The paramedics put tubes in him, forced a bag over his mouth, injected him with something.

  But I knew it was too late.

  I’d seen Mr. Sullivan.

  The uniforms pushed the crowd back and another vehicle pulled into the parking lot. Nick got out.

  I ran to him. Uninvited, shamelessly, I threw my arms around him and he pulled me against him.

  “What happened, Dana?” he asked against my cheek.

  “Sean Griffin was shot,” I whispered, barely able to get the words out. “He was shot … instead of me.”

  Chapter 20

  Nick took me into the office and left me there. He went back outside. Manny and Lucas watched through the window. Inez and Jade stayed with Carmen in the breakroom, talking softly and holding a cool cloth on her forehead. I heard her sniffling.

  I wanted to leave. I wanted to be anywhere but here. I couldn’t bear to look out the wi
ndow. I’d be no help calming Carmen. I just wanted to get away from this place.

  But where would I go? Home? No, I didn’t want to be alone. My folks’ house? I didn’t want to tell them what had happened. Not now, anyway.

  My adrenaline was pumping, but my legs were wobbly. My hands felt like ice. I collapsed into my desk chair and covered my face with my palms, blocking out the world but finding no respite from my thoughts. Sean Griffin’s face floated through my mind.

  The usual office sounds went on around me. The telephone rang. Inez took messages. Normal things happened. Just as if Sean Griffin hadn’t been gunned down a few feet away because he’d pushed me aside and taken the bullets meant for me.

  There really was no justice in the world. Sean, who could have used a little luck in his life, had gotten another bad deal—the final bad deal. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Sean had gotten shot while that idiot Jarrod Parker had left the scene just moments before.

  I didn’t wish Jarrod dead—not really. But it just wasn’t right that Sean, the good guy, had taken two bullets while Jarrod, the not-so-good-guy, had driven away unscathed. Jarrod didn’t even know what had happened. He was tooling the road in his Mustang at this very moment, oblivious to the whole thing.

  Jarrod seemed to be one of those people destined to live his entire life in oblivion. He’d been at Club Vibe the Saturday night when I’d gotten jumped in the parking lot and he hadn’t known anything about it. Now, here he was a week later and the same thing happened.

  Did that guy have incredible luck, or what?

  A little jolt in my stomach caused me to sit up straight in my chair. Was something more than good fortune at work here?

  I’d considered that there was something odd in Jarrod’s change in behavior toward me. Just how odd was it?

  Nick came into the office and spoke with Carmen in the breakroom. He talked to everybody else, then came to my desk.

  “Come on,” he said.

  I knew where he was taking me. I got my purse and left the office with him. But I didn’t want to sit in a police car, so I pulled myself together enough to take my Honda.

  At the police station Nick took me to the same little interview room I’d been in before. He brought coffee and sat down across the table from me.

  “Is Sean … is he—” I couldn’t finish the thought.

  Nick shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”

  Really I knew that, but a little part of me had held out hope that he’d pulled through, somehow.

  “Did you see the gunman?” Nick asked.

  “All I saw was the gun.” I sipped my coffee. “Could this have been an attempted robbery?”

  “Why do you think that?” he asked.

  “Carmen had over seven grand in the bank bag,” I said. “A customer, Jarrod Parker, had just paid off his account in cash to redeem his car I’d repo’d.”

  Nick pulled a small tablet from his shirt pocket and wrote down Jarrod’s name.

  “And you think he might have arranged to have his money returned to him?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I pushed away my coffee cup. “I guess I just want to blame someone other than myself.”

  Nick frowned. “Do you think those bullets were meant for you?”

  Guilt pressed against my chest making it hard to breath. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Griffin was the target,” Nick said. “Two witnesses on the street saw the shooting.”

  The knot in my chest unwound a bit. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Positive,” Nick said. “Why do you think you were the intended victim?”

  “It seemed logical,” I said. “I mean, why would anybody want Sean Griffin dead? It had to be me.”

  “Why?” Nick asked again.

  I drew in a breath. “Because of my involvement with Mr. Sullivan’s murder.”

  “What involvement?” Nick glared at me. “I told you to stay out of this, Dana.”

  I heard the anger in his voice, and I got mad, too. I wasn’t sure if I was really mad at Nick, or mad at life and taking it out on Nick.

  “What about our mutual exchange of information? Have you forgotten about that?” I slammed my fist on the table and pushed to my feet. “And thanks a whole hell of a lot for your concern that I was nearly killed today!”

  I snatched up my purse and broke for the door. Nick was faster. He got there first and blocked it with his body.

  We glared at each other. Inside, I was boiling. Nick was too. I could see it in his heavy breathing and feel it in the heat he gave off.

  This wasn’t a battle of wills over a police investigation. It was something more, something deeper. Something personal between Nick and me.

  He blinked first. “Dana—”

  I darted around him. He didn’t come after me.

  I bolted for my car and drove away. I wasn’t going back to work. It was the middle of the afternoon and I had tons of things to do, but I wasn’t going back inside that office. I didn’t want to see Sean Griffin’s blood stain on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about what had happened.

  I swung onto State Street. I didn’t know where I wanted to go, really, or who I wanted to be with.

  Two blocks later, I admitted to myself that I was lying. I knew who I wanted to be with.

  I drove to my apartment, changed into sweats and chugged a beer hoping it would make me sleepy. It didn’t.

  I hoped it would dissipate the guilty relief I felt over Sean’s death not being my fault. It didn’t.

  I wanted it to make me forget about Nick Travis. That didn’t happen, either.

  In my second bedroom I got the yellow legal pad and a pencil and took them into the kitchen. I ripped off all the pages I’d written on and spread them out on the table.

  So far I’d put just about everyone I knew in the center circle, designating each of them a central character in Mr. Sullivan’s murder. Around them, I’d written the names of other people involved, possible clues, and question marks.

  It had gotten me nowhere.

  I tried them all again. I went through page after page, writing in names, drawing circles, making notes.

  Still nothing.

  The dots I was trying to connect only went so far. The chain didn’t make a complete picture. It didn’t lead anywhere, certainly not to a murderer.

  Desperate, I tried putting Sean Griffin’s name in the center circle, hoping something might present itself. Nothing did.

  I sat back in the chair staring at the pages of circles and names, and wondered if I should just accept the fact that none of these people were connected. Maybe it was Leonard all along who’d murdered his grandfather, and I just didn’t want to face it. Maybe it was someone I didn’t even know about.

  The beer finally kicked in. I went to bed even though it wasn’t dark yet, and fell asleep.

  * * *

  I awoke around eleven with a headache caused by all the dreams I’d had, rather than the one beer I’d chugged, and went to the kitchen. I’d left the light on and the room seemed harsh and chilly. I ran a glass of water and downed some aspirin.

  I checked my phone and saw that Mom had left me a message. I must have slept hard because I hadn’t heard it ring. She asked if I wanted to come over for dinner. Too late for that now.

  There was another message, this one from Manny asking if I was all right.

  No message from Nick.

  I was about to flip off the light and head back to bed when the yellow legal pad on the table caught my eye. Scattered around it were the sheets of paper with all the circles I’d drawn, my supposed suspects, the solid clues, and the unconnected ones I’d thought important.

  None of it fit. Even looking at it again, something was missing.

  I picked up the pencil and, just for the heck of it, I drew a circle in the center of another sheet of paper. But whose name would I write inside? Who was the central character, the one person connected to everyone and everything?
>
  From somewhere in the back of my mind an idea came to me, an idea born from something I’d heard today. Something Slade had said and I’d forgotten in the midst of all the confusion and emotion.

  I wrote down a name—Kirk Redmond. I drew intersecting circles containing clues and suspects. The page filled up fast. All the dots connected.

  My headache got worse.

  I switched off the light and went back to bed.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning I put on my running shoes and did a few laps around the parking lot of my apartment complex. Another great Southern California day had dawned, sunshine, warm breeze, and clear skies.

  As I jogged along firming my thighs, I realized that in my distress yesterday I hadn’t done my usual Friday week-in-review on the drive home.

  It had been a mixed week, to say the least. On the plus side, Mom wasn’t planning to move out, my parents were speaking again, and they were going to a party together this weekend. Also, Jarrod Parker had paid off his account and was out of my life.

  That was about it for good news. Not much to show for a whole week.

  On the minus side, for the second week in a row somebody I knew had been murdered. I was two for two.

  And my last little bit of bad news for the week was that I’d decided to end my relationship with Nick—if what we had could be called that.

  Somehow, even after everything else that had happened, that part of my week-in-review made me the saddest of all.

  When I got back to my apartment, I got dressed for work in jeans and a sweater. Saturdays were dress-down days at Mid-America for everyone except Inez, who wore her customary, self-imposed uniform.

  I gave Seven Eleven some dry food and a cuddle on my way out the door, then noticed the yellow legal pages I’d left on the table. I looked at them in the cold light of the morning wondering if maybe my headache and the beer I’d drunk last night had made me see things that weren’t really there. Now, clear-headed and looking at them again, they still made sense.

  If I hadn’t been so troubled about Nick I would have phoned him and passed along what I’d come up with. But something was between us.

  Really, a lot of things were between us.