The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  He would make sure the guy didn’t get his saw anywhere near the bullet.

  And then he would tell Bob Ho that the insurance adjustor had one more thing to adjust.

  CHAPTER 38

  What the heck kind of glasses are these, anyway?” Warren had stopped looking around the bedroom and was now staring directly at Bo with a puzzled expression. Looking at her through her spy glasses that pretty obviously only held clear glass. How long until he noticed that the part over the bridge of the nose was oddly springy? That was the spot where the recording unit could be toggled on and off.

  “It’s just that . . .” Bo let her voice trail off. She had run out of lies, and a giggle would not serve her.

  The lines between Warren’s brows smoothed out. “It’s because guys don’t take you serious, right? I mean, you’ve got that rocking body, but nobody pays attention to your mind!”

  Understanding dawned. He thought the glasses were a kind of cover, that the carefree girl in heels and a too-tight sweater was the real her.

  “Exactly right.” She plucked the glasses from his face and slid them on. “How about if I go to the store and pick up a few things while you sleep in a little? Then I can come back and make you breakfast in bed.”

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “Are you just saying that because you want to get out of here? That’s okay. You can go. You don’t have to lie.”

  “I swear to you, I’m not lying, Warren.”

  He smiled, but his eyes were wary. “Then sure. And if you really want to make me breakfast, I would love it.”

  “See you in a bit,” she said as she pushed her feet into her high heels, ignoring the way they protested. She leaned down and picked up her coat.

  “I sure hope so, Song. And maybe while you’re out, you can get them to turn the sun down. It’s hurting my eyes.” Warren pulled the pillow over his head.

  Before she left, she checked out his kitchen. It was surprisingly neat, but maybe that was because he owned so few dishes, cooking utensils, or pantry items. He had the sad, half-empty kitchen shelves of a man who had no idea how to cook.

  After making sure it wouldn’t lock behind her, she pulled the apartment door closed. She had to get Warren talking again. And the best way to do that, it seemed, was to get him drunk. At the store, she got coffee, tomato juice, celery, Bisquick, maple-flavored syrup, a bottle of cheap vodka, and a bottle of Everclear. Warren shouldn’t be able to taste the Everclear, but the vodka would hide any lingering taste—and explain why he was going to start feeling drunk. As she walked back to his apartment, she rehearsed explanations if he saw the Everclear and asked why she had bought it. But he was still snoring gently when Bo let herself in.

  She filled one glass with tomato juice and the second with half Everclear, a splash of vodka, then the rest tomato juice, and stuck a stalk of celery in each. She mixed up the pancakes and cooked them in a frying pan she unearthed. In lieu of a breakfast tray, she set everything on a cookie sheet. Before she carried it in, she pressed the glasses at the bridge of her nose to start the recording.

  Warren woke up as she was setting the cookie sheet down next to his cigarettes. He smiled sleepily at her. He looked as happy as an American child might look on Christmas morning.

  “You came back,” he said simply.

  She handed him his glass. “O ye of little faith.”

  He smiled uncertainly, and she guessed he didn’t know the Bible verse. “What’s this?” He took a sip before she even answered.

  “Bloody Mary.”

  Groaning, he started to put it back on the cookie sheet. “Not for me.”

  “Oh, please, Warren.” She fake-pouted, leaning over to give him another glimpse of her cleavage. “A little hair of the dog, isn’t that what they say?”

  He grunted, but he did hold on to his glass and take a sip. And then another. While she waited for the alcohol to take effect, Bo asked him easy questions in between bites of pancake. About his job. About the giant spool that served as a table, which Warren told her had come from an industrial job site. He grew more animated, more red-faced, and Bo returned twice to the kitchen to pour them new drinks, upping the proportion of Everclear each time. And slowly she brought the topic back around to the trial.

  “The articles said that no one understood why you voted no.” She tilted her head. “So why did you?”

  He licked his lips, looked from side to side, then set down his plate so he could learn closer to her. “Here’s the thing.” He slurred the word thing so it stretched out forever. “If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone, okay?”

  “I won’t,” she lied. “I promise.”

  “As the trial was beginning, a man came to me. Big guy. Built like . . . like a mountain. He threatened me. He said I had to vote that that guy who was on trial, that David Leacham, was not guilty. He said no matter what the other jurors said, I could never change my mind. I would have to keep voting that he was not guilty.” Warren took a shaky breath. He looked around as if someone might be listening and then lowered his voice. “And he said that if I didn’t do what he said, he would have me killed.”

  Bo got to her feet. She was exhilarated, as if she were the one who was drunk. “You need to go to the police.” Now she had the proof. Now Mia would be able to persuade her boss to reopen the case.

  “No, Song.” He caught her wrist. “I need to be honest with you. There’s something else that he said.”

  “What’s that?” Her eyes didn’t leave his face.

  “He said that if I voted the way he wanted, he would also give me money. More money than I’d ever seen in my life. But if I tell anyone what happened, they’ll take that back. And then they’ll kill me.”

  “But you can’t really believe that guy was innocent!”

  “I didn’t say innocent. I said I voted not guilty.” Warren emphasized this as if it were an important distinction. “I mean, it is possible Leacham didn’t mean to do it, that it really was an accident. And besides, I was the only one who voted not guilty. There were eleven other people on the jury. Before I decided whether to do what that guy wanted me to, I looked up what would happen. If the jurors can’t all agree, it’s called a hung jury, and it goes back to trial. Basically, they just start over again. Which means that in the end, Leachman will be convicted. So no blood, no foul. Only now I’ve got more money than I know what to do with.” He managed a sick sort of grin. “I’m hoping you can help me spend it.”

  “But he’s free.” Bo crossed her arms, making sure she covered her chest in the process. “He could even be killing other girls right now!”

  “He won’t be out for long. Besides, they’ve got him on an ankle monitor. And I’m sure that wife of his is not going to let him out of her sight.”

  “But what if they don’t try that man again? They don’t have to. In fact, I’ve heard they’re not going to.”

  Warren looked stricken. “What do you mean?”

  “It is optional. It is not like the rules say they have to put him on trial. They could choose not to re-try him. And I heard that was what the prosecutor was going to do. I heard she was going to let him go free.”

  Warren was so drunk it took a long time for the information to sink in. When it did, he buried his face in his hands. “Oh no. What have I done?”

  “You can go to the authorities.” One way or the other, she would make sure the police learned what Warren had done. If he was the one who told, he would probably get in less trouble than if she did. “Tell them what you told me.”

  “I can’t do that! If I do, I’ll be the one on trial. I’ll be the one going to prison.”

  “Not if you explain that he threatened you,” she said, not knowing if it were true or not. “Not if you give the money back.”

  “Maybe,” Warren said, but she could tell he didn’t believe her. “But this guy also promised to have me killed if I told. And I’m pretty sure he meant that.”

  “Together, we can figure out what to do.” She s
queezed his hands, then released them. “But first I’m going to stop by my place, change clothes, and then come back here.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you in a bit. And then we’ll sit down together and figure out what to do.”

  “What?” He stared at her blearily. “No! Let me take you.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” she lied.

  “It’s just that I still can’t quite believe that you’re real.” For some reason, his words stung.

  “I promise I am real, silly. But I think you should take a nap and I should take a cab. My apartment is kind of a mess.” She couldn’t let him see her photos of Dandan.

  “Let me pay for it, then.” She tried to argue, but he wouldn’t listen. Instead, he got to his feet with a groan, went into the bathroom, and emerged a second later with a hundred-dollar bill. Bo took it and kissed his cheek, feeling a bit like Judas. Once she was home, she would download the recording, then call Mia and tell her what had really happened at the trial.

  CHAPTER 39

  Gabe wanted to put it off forever, but he knew that once his mom came home from church with his grandfather she would ask him if he had started researching that stupid report she wanted him to write. Telling her no was not going to help his chances of getting un-grounded.

  Only once he started to research the report, it turned out not to be so stupid.

  Since his mom told him he had to cite his sources, Gabe went to different websites from the ones he had used to research exactly what steroids to take, how much, and when. Those had painted steroids as miracle drugs that piled on muscles, with few if any side effects.

  The new websites might as well have been discussing a different drug. They talked about liver damage, heart disease, impotence, sterility, breast enlargement, premature baldness, acne, benign tumors, and violent behavior. They sounded like Charlie, only scarier. The new websites made it sound as if steroids ruined your body and destroyed your mind.

  Gabe read for a long while, then went back to the original sites and message boards he had first looked at. Only now he imagined what his mom would say if he showed them to her.

  On one board dedicated to taking steroids, a guy complained about how everyone around him was acting. “My gf and my parents keep saying I get more angry now, and claiming I didn’t used to be like that.” His response was to rant and swear about them online while other people on the boards urged him to ignore them and called them names.

  Gabe saw posts from other guys saying any side effects were worth it. Talking nonchalantly about taking testosterone or having to rely on Viagra. Even about having cosmetic surgery to get breast tissue removed.

  Next he checked out news websites. The pro-steroid boards all said the mainstream media exaggerated things, especially the link between extreme emotional disturbance and steroids. But it was hard to be nonchalant when he read about a guy his own age who had come home from school and told his mom he was going upstairs. Only he never came down again because he had hung himself from his closet rod with a belt. Then Gabe read about a pro wrestler who killed his four-year-old, his wife, and then, after sitting with their bodies for a while, himself. He read about men who beat people unconscious for doing things like cutting them off in traffic.

  Could Charlie be right? Could the steroids have changed more than Gabe’s muscles? Could they have changed not only his body but his mind? His mom and Eldon had said he was more angry now. Was it true?

  From where Gabe sat, he could just see the shallow, fist-shaped crater he had left in the wall. He looked from the dent to his still-swollen knuckles to the big muscles in his arms. Were they really worth it? Worth risking his own life—and maybe the lives of more people? What if he snapped again like he had when he hit the wall, only when he had something more dangerous than his own fists available to him?

  Gabe had a sickening image of himself arguing with his mom in the kitchen, the knives in the butcher block within easy reach. But he would never do that. Would he? He remembered how before he hit the wall it had been like a red mist descending. How he had gone blind and deaf and dumb to anything but the urge to do some damage. And it didn’t sound like those people who killed themselves or killed other people had been depressed or angry before steroids.

  When he made the decision to start taking steroids, he had acted just like a kid. Like a stupid kid. Wanting something for nothing. If left to her own devices, Brooke would have Doritos for breakfast and follow that up with a candy bar. Was he any more mature?

  But he wasn’t a stupid kid. He was nearly an adult. Maybe he should act like the adult he now nearly was. The adult he already looked like, at least for a while.

  It wasn’t enough to say he was sorry. It wasn’t even enough to stop using. But maybe, Gabe thought, feeling something unfurl in his chest, maybe there was a way to redeem himself. Maybe even to become a hero.

  CHAPTER 40

  In the cab, Bo leaned back against the black faux leather seat and closed her eyes against the weak late-afternoon sun. She wanted to hate Warren, but found she couldn’t. Why hate the puppet? It made much more sense to hate the man who had pulled the strings. Who had made the puppet dance. And clearly, that was David Leacham.

  After the cab let her out, she pushed open the door to the apartment lobby with a sigh. She went up the shallow stairs to the second floor, her feet screaming at every step. At the top of the stairs, her elderly neighbor, Georgina Frye, shot her a suspicious glance and then darted back into her apartment. Bo was sure she was still staring at her through the peephole, probably judging the scantiness of her outfit.

  Mrs. Frye lived to complain, to find fault. If she didn’t have anything mean to say, then she just avoided Bo altogether. She didn’t like the smell of the garlic and ginger that Bo cooked with—or, as she put it, “all those foreign spices.” Mrs. Frye had complained to the manager about Bo keeping her bicycle outside her apartment, even though the hallway was eight feet wide. So now Bo kept her bike in her living room, where it always seemed to be in front of something she needed to get to, like the bookcase or the closet.

  The first thing Bo did after she walked in the door was to take off her shoes. As her feet tried to settle down into place, her arches began to cramp. Moaning a little at every step, she hobbled forward, her shoes dangling from her fingers. Before she called Mia, she needed to download the recording from her glasses into her computer, make sure it was clearly audible. And while she was doing that, she would try to massage some life back into her feet.

  She paused at the door of her bedroom. Where was her laptop computer? She thought she had left it on the little desk, but she didn’t see any sign of it. In fact, she thought she had left the bags from Macy’s in the bathroom, but there they were on the bed. Now why would—

  Without any warning, something pink and white dropped in front of her eyes. Bo blinked in surprise. Before her eyes even opened again, unseen fingers viciously yanked whatever it was straight back so that it bit into her neck.

  She stumbled backward. One of her shoes fell from her hooked fingers. Her heavy glasses tumbled from her face and landed on the carpet. Then her bare foot came down on them and she felt them snap in half.

  Her attention had narrowed to the thing wrapped around her neck. The thing that was killing her. It was, Bo realized, a scarf. In fact, she recognized it as her own long silk scarf, patterned with pink peonies. When she wore it, she liked to loop it loosely around her neck. Now someone had taken it from her bedroom drawer and was using it to strangle her.

  With her right hand, she tried to claw the fabric away from her neck, but it had already sunk deep into her flesh, cutting a groove. The world began to spin around her like water swirling down a drain.

  “Let go,” a voice hissed in her ear. A man’s voice. She didn’t recognize the voice, but she did the language. His words were in the Guandong dialect. “Go and join your daughter. Everyone will understand. Go join Dandan.”

  In an instant, Bo saw what would happen next
. First she would die. Then this man would drag her body to someplace where he could tie the scarf. From the ceiling fan in the living room, perhaps, or from the highest rail in her closet. He might take one of the chairs from the dining room and knock it over, as if Bo had stepped off into death.

  In China, by far the most common method of suicide was hanging. And there, suicide was considered not just an act of grief but of revenge. The spirits of the dead were thought to torment the living. It would be easy for people to think that Bo had believed killing herself would make David Leacham suffer, or that she was striking back against the authorities for not avenging Dandan.

  Everyone would shake their heads, not in confusion, but in sorrow. With Dandan dead and her daughter’s killer set free, why shouldn’t Bo Yee take her own life?

  Years ago, Bo had taken a self-defense course offered by the church. The whole time she had pictured the enemy, not as some stranger in a dark alley, but instead as the people who had killed her baby. Now if this man killed her, then Dandan’s death would never be avenged.

  Shifting her hips to the left, she made a fist with her right hand and thrust her elbow back as hard as she could into the man’s solar plexus. She was rewarded with an explosion of air. But the scarf did not loosen in the slightest. In fact, it tightened. Her vision was going fuzzy.

  Then she remembered the single shoe she was still clutching in her left hand. Pressing it against her thigh, she shifted her grasp until the tall pointed heel was turned back. Then, summoning the last dregs of her strength, she hammered it back over her head. She heard it knock against her attacker’s skull, but his grip didn’t loosen.

  “No. Let go,” he whispered. “Stop fighting.”

  Bo’s knees began to sag and she let them. At the same time, she arched her back. Mouthing her daughter’s name to give her strength, she swung one more time, only this time she aimed farther back—

  And was rewarded with the man’s high-pitched scream, right in her ear, as the heel met something soft and yet substantial. It stuck. And then it slid.