Final Call

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  I blinked in surprise. “This is your boyfriend?”

  “Just a date. His name is Grady Mullins. I met him when he helped Rosemary move in. I thought they were dating, but when he called me this morning and begged me to cancel plans with my girlfriends so we could go out, he told me they were just friends.”

  “I can explain,” Grady said. “I left something with Rosemary, and I need it, but she’s not answering her cell. No one seems to know where she is. When I saw you had company, I thought I’d just get it from her room first, so I wouldn’t have to make a big deal out of it.”

  I snorted. “Cutting open the window isn’t a big deal? Tell us another one.”

  “I bet whatever it is, going out with me was just an excuse.” Mallory gave him a deadly look. “What, did you think I’d invite you in for a drink, and you could search Rosemary’s room at will?”

  Grady didn’t deny it.

  With a small cry, Mallory turned and stalked around the side of the house, her boots making squishing sounds in the grass.

  His loss, I thought. I couldn’t understand what the beautiful blonde saw in Grady Mullins anyway besides his pretty face. She was already half a head taller, and the heels she’d had in hand when she answered the door would definitely make the night awkward. Besides the physical difference, his character obviously wasn’t much to appreciate.

  “When was the last time you saw Rosemary?” I asked Grady.

  “Wednesday before lunch. She came to tell me she’d gotten the part of Juliet.” He grimaced as though the words tasted bitter.

  “Came where?” Shannon asked.

  “To the theater—her old theater where she’s been working for the past two years. She came to let us know we’d have to cast someone else for the part she was supposed to play.”

  “Oh, you’re an actor.” That explained a lot.

  Shannon’s lips quirked, but he didn’t comment.

  Grady drew himself up to his very unimpressive height. “Yes, I am.” He darted a look in the direction where Mallory had disappeared. “I’m Rosemary’s boyfriend, too. We’ve been dating a year now.”

  “Then why don’t you know where she is?” I asked.

  His gaze dropped to the ground. “We had a little disagreement.”

  “What about?” I asked.

  “Nothing important.”

  “What are you here to get?” Shannon pressed. “You were just about to tell us, right?”

  Grady shook his head. “I know my rights. I don’t have to say anything.”

  “Unfortunately, the law also says that breaking and entering, or attempting to do so, is against the law. We’ll question you further at the station.”

  “What about her?” Grady pointed at me. “She attacked me!”

  “Oh, and I thought it was you who jumped off that ladder and flattened me into the mud.” I rolled my eyes.

  “I want to press charges,” Grady insisted.

  “Shut up.” Shannon shoved him roughly forward. “You’re lucky she didn’t shoot you.”

  Oh, that’s right. I had a gun.

  Grady blinked. “Fine. Take me in. But I’m not saying a word.”

  “Your decision, but while you’re sitting in the car waiting, you can think about telling us what you were doing at the theater and what you had to do with the murder there.”

  Grady’s jaw dropped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh?” I said sweetly. “Then why aren’t you asking who’s dead? I mean, if you care so much about Rosemary.” I wished we had more light so I could see his expression better, but it was enough to have him stunned into a short silence.

  “Well, it wasn’t Rosemary, was it?” he asked finally.

  No one answered. Shannon motioned for his companion to take Grady. “Oh, and don’t put him in my car. I just had it cleaned. Wait till the others get here, and put him in the back of a squad car.” He turned to me, grinning, his face as unguarded as I’d ever seen it, though maybe it was the lack of proper lighting. “Tracy is going to hate that she missed all this,” he said lightly.

  “There’s always next time.”

  He lifted a finger to my chin and wiped off some mud. I shivered inside, a thing I knew couldn’t be blamed solely on the cold. “You want to go home?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I need to look at Rosemary’s room. If she was hit by that hammer, she might not last much longer.” Provided she wasn’t already dead, of course.

  He took another step, his eyes glittering even in the darkness. A warmth shuddered through me. The tension between us was so taut that I could almost see it like a line tying us together, bringing us closer. Moments ticked by. I could see the rugged planes of his face, maybe even the premature crinkling of the skin around his eyes that told how much he was in the sun. Droplets of rain clung to his sandy hair, making the ends curl even more than usual. If one of us didn’t come to our senses soon, we might do something we’d regret.

  He shook his head, and a few drops of water sprayed me. “I’d better get back to work.” His voice was so low and soft, I barely heard him. I wanted to reach out to stop him from leaving, but that would be totally stupid, wouldn’t it? Besides, he was working. So not the right time, even if I had things clear in my mind.

  Some women might think that having two guys in my life wasn’t all bad, but for me it meant limbo because I wasn’t a player. I didn’t want to hurt either of them, though maybe I was fooling myself about the possibility where Shannon was concerned. Any way I looked at it, he was tough.

  I walked with Shannon around to the front of the house, neither of us speaking. The strain between us was heavy, and I almost longed for the days when that awkwardness came from wanting to rip the other’s head off instead of how it felt now. On the porch, I removed my coat and boots, which would at least prevent me from ruining the carpet. My pants, hair, and face were still caked with mud.

  “The guys will finish soon,” Shannon said. “Why don’t you clean up in the bathroom?”

  I passed a pouting Mallory sitting on the couch, noticing that the other detectives had arrived and were heading with their crime kits to the back room.

  The bathroom was small, and towels hung on every available space—the towel bars, the shower curtain rod, the edge of the sink, and the side of the tub. Cosmetics and makeup crammed the sink counter, top of the toilet tank, and the mirrored medicine cabinet, which had been left open. Thin lines of mold had grown around the plastic baseboard, though the shower and tub had been scrubbed clean.

  I looked worse than I’d expected. The two-inch-long scrape on my right cheek was already turning purple, even beneath the layer of mud. My hair was plastered to my head with mud in the back, and bits of mud were scattered throughout the rest. Good thing I didn’t have long hair. Picking up one of the towels, I used it to turn on the water. Faucets weren’t usually good carriers of imprints, except in domestic violence cases, but I didn’t want to risk any ugly memories until I was halfway decent. If someone had to pick me up off the floor, I’d rather be a bit less repulsive.

  Mud filled the sink as I washed my hands and then more gingerly my face. My wound stung, but I wanted to get out as much mud as possible since I wouldn’t be able to put comfrey salve on it until later. When that was clean, I set about pulling as much mud as I could from my hair. The lukewarm water felt hot on my cold hands, but at least the feeling in them was coming back now. Only a good washing could salvage my jeans, and I didn’t bother to do anything with them except scrape off the biggest splotches of mud on the knees.

  I took my time, knowing the police would take even longer. I had a big bruise on my left arm, and the aches in my legs and torso told me I probably had quite a few more I couldn’t see.

  After I finished cleaning up, I forced myself to touch everyt
hing in the bathroom—sink, faucets, toiletries. If the police searched for prints here, they’d find a lot of mine, though knowing Shannon, he’d already seen everything in here that he wanted to see. I found nothing, and I was glad no one was around to notice the shimmer of tears in my eyes that signaled my relief that Rosemary hadn’t been hurt here.

  When I emerged, Shannon was nearby holding a plastic bag with a glass I recognized.

  “It tests positive for poison residue, even though it went through part of a dishwasher cycle. It’s up in the air whether or not we’ll find anything else useful, but the outside has no prints, so you can do your thing.”

  My thing. The only thing I really wanted to do was to drop into bed and sleep for a week. But I had a murderer and a missing woman to find.

  He opened the plastic bag, and I reached in to touch the glass. No use taking it out. This time I was prepared for the imprints.

  I’ll teach her a lesson she’ll never forget. In the thirty seconds it will take for her to pass out, she’ll finally know who is in control. Glee and a sense of power spread through me. Delicious. Euphoric. I couldn’t wait.

  The part of me who was Autumn felt horrified.

  I dumped the white powder into the glass of pale yellow liquid and stirred thoroughly with the long spoon. I couldn’t see the poison container, but the brief glimpse of hands revealed light skin, which let out a few of the actors and actresses. I set the glass on the silver tray waiting on the counter. Next to it was another glass that looked exactly the same. No poison for that one.

  The image cut off, and a new imprint started. I stirred a powder in the glass, only this time it came from a pink sugar packet. This will solve my problem, I thought. But there was no real emotion as I set the glass on the silver tray that was sitting on a table. Beyond the table I could see the curtain of the stage.

  Another similar scene played out, and I was beginning to feel I’d watched enough. The difference between the first scene, which was the most recent, and the next two scenes was obvious to me now. The first was real; the others, playacting.

  Wait. Here I was again, mixing something into the glass, this time a liquid. I caught sight of a small brown bottle. I’d teach them both a lesson. They wouldn’t take this chance from me. A thrill inside gave me strength. This was true power. Their lives in my hands. I set the glass on the silver tray on top of a dusty crate next to another identical glass. No stage or curtains in sight.

  “Autumn?”

  I kept touching the glass, but nothing more came. When the imprints began repeating, I pulled my hand from the bag, feeling that I was about to be violently sick.

  “The murderer is white,” I said. “And the poison was a white powder put into a glass of lemonade. Mixed in the kitchen at the theater, I believe. That’s about it.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Not a person with big hands. I’d say a strong woman or a slender man. Hard to say. But it wasn’t the first murder.”

  Shannon stared at me. “What?”

  “Eight years ago someone mixed a liquid from a small brown bottle in this same glass with the intent of killing two people. I couldn’t tell where it happened, but it wasn’t any place in the theater that I recognized.”

  I waited for him to question me further, which would shed welcome doubt on my own impressions, but all he said was, “The same person for both murders?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I’d say yes. The feelings were much the same. The method, too. They were different from the other scenes where the glass was used as a prop to mix pretend poison. Sugar packets. Pink.” I was shaking inside, and I felt weak clear to my toes. Almost, I longed for the crazy power and anticipation I’d felt during the first and last imprints, but I knew the negativity and the feelings that were so opposite mine were what was making me feel so fragile. I took a deep breath and hurried on. “You should also know that tonight I heard something about two actors going missing on an opening night. That was eight years ago, too.”

  Shannon was making notes, seemingly unconcerned by what he once might have considered the power of suggestion. One moment I heard two actors were missing, and the next I read an imprint in which someone was planning to poison two people around the same time. Even I was skeptical, or would be if I hadn’t experienced it for myself.

  “We’ll check into the disappearance eight years ago,” Shannon said. “See if it really happened.” He paused, and his voice grew softer. “You okay?”

  “Sure. It’s just getting late. Look, are your guys almost finished?”

  “They are with Cheyenne’s room. Would you like to look at that first?”

  I wanted to say yes, but I didn’t feel I had the strength for two more rooms. I bit back my pride. “Not today. I can’t really help her anyway. It’s Rosemary I’m worried about now.”

  “The cases are probably connected.”

  He was right, but Jake would have taken the hint when I said I didn’t want to look at the room. He would have protected me from further exposure regardless of the effect on the case—or cases. He wouldn’t have felt compelled to be so honest about the need for my input. For a brief moment I hated Shannon.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I turned and went into the bedroom, not bothering to see if Shannon followed. The room wasn’t messy, but it had that not-quite-together look that told me it had been thoroughly searched. The fingerprint dust around key points was still apparent, though someone had made a halfhearted attempt to clean it up.

  Once again I started touching things, and it was apparent from the beginning that I was not on Cheyenne’s side of the room. From the imprints on the knickknacks, writing utensils, books, and alarm clock, this woman was a first-grade teacher who loved the children she taught and who dedicated hours of preparation to her lessons. She was also an avid lover of historical romance novels and had a crush on Mike, a fifth-grade teacher at her school, who was also single. She owned a pearl necklace her parents had given her when she graduated from high school; it filled me with such love that I felt stronger and more than a little envious of the good memories.

  If my birth mother had lived, she had been close enough to my adoptive parents that I might have seen her, if not regularly, then at least sometimes, and once Summer died, she might have had a guiding hand in my life.

  I pushed the thoughts away and hurried through the rest. A little self-consciously I opened drawers, hoping to find nothing that would ruin my image of the teacher or connect her with the murder. It was with a sigh of relief that I moved to the other side of the room.

  Two more different women couldn’t have existed. While the teacher was calm, shy, careful, steady, and loving, Cheyenne’s imprint showed impracticality and loud confidence accentuated by bursts of insecurity, jealousy, rage, kindness, and despair. She was a study in contrasts. The pen on her night table was the most recent imprint, one of faint resignation. I will do it, she/I thought, but I didn’t know what “it” was and the imprint was too brief and unfocused to give me a hint.

  “Nothing,” I said to Shannon. “But did you find something she wrote on? The pen indicates she was planning something last night.”

  “We found a journal, but the last entry only talks about how excited she is to have the part of Juliet since Rosemary didn’t show up to rehearsal. We’ll have someone go through it for more.”

  “I’m done here. Sorry I couldn’t help more. Her roommate seems nice, though. A teacher. A good one.”

  One of the detectives who had arrived with the reinforcements looked at me, surprise evident on his face. Not someone I’d worked with before and apparently someone who was doubtful of my ability. Join the club, I thought. Even I didn’t believe it if I thought about it too much.

  Finally, I was in Rosemary’s room, which showed the same minor displacement as the previous room, along with th
e fingerprint residue. I started on one side, but when the first imprint on a glass dog knickknack showed me the hands of an old woman presenting this beloved gift to her blonde granddaughter on her eighth birthday, I set it down, not waiting for the earlier imprints that would surely be on it, and went to the other side of the room. Even if Rosemary had been blonde as a child, which I didn’t believe, Liam had once told me he didn’t know anything about his grandparents. The odds were this imprint belonged to the other roommate. I wondered now if Liam’s grandparents had died or if they were estranged from their family, just as Rosemary was now.

  So much time wasted, I thought. I felt angry that anyone would throw something away for which I’d give anything.

  We had good years. It was Winter’s voice in my mind. Just what I knew he’d say if he could speak to me. Always a glass-half-full kind of guy. He was right.

  Again the police detective I didn’t know watched me with narrowed eyes. The man had dark hair and was bulky, though his bulk looked like muscles rather than fat. One look at him might scare even the most hardened criminal. I wished Shannon would tell him to leave, or call his partner, Tracy, who knew and believed in me.

  Shannon saw my stare. “Warren, would you mind?”

  Warren nodded and reluctantly left the room.

  “Thanks,” I said. “He was making me nervous.”

  “He makes everyone nervous. He’s new.”

  “I figured by the way he stared. Most of your other guys have seen me around enough by now to limit their staring to when I’m not looking.”

  He laughed. “By the way, your prints were the only ones they found on the hammer, but there was some blood residue. They’re doing DNA. They’ll compare it with Rosemary’s and everyone else in the case.”

  That was good news. “So, did you find any reason for the boyfriend trying to break in?”

  “Maybe.” Shannon withdrew something from inside his jacket—another plastic bag. “A note.” He passed the bag to me.

  “‘Don’t take the part,’” I read through the plastic. “‘You’ll be sorry.’”