Beautiful Disaster

by Laura Spinella

“Yeah, well, if the same holds true for girlfriends, she’ll have to join a witches’ coven for the upgrade there. You know, Roxanne, you ought to—”

  The earsplitting sound of metal hitting glass interrupted them as Mia’s utensils slammed into her plate and she bolted for the kitchen. Roxanne and Flynn were silenced, left staring at the dinner plate, cracked right down the middle.

  A few moments later, the two of them sulked into the kitchen. Mia had her back turned and was scrubbing a frying pan with violent strokes as dishwater sloshed every which way.

  “We’re, um, sorry,” Roxanne mumbled. “Really, we are . . . sorry.” Apologies were not what she did best.

  Flynn spoke louder, over the rush of running water. “Yeah, Mia, I . . . we both behaved badly. I’m sorry. Would you come back to the table? We promise, no more fighting. Please?”

  It was the “please,” that got her. There was little Mia found she could deny Flynn, even when he acted like a complete jerk. She shut the water off, and threw her head back. “I just . . . I just wanted the two of you to get along. You don’t have to be best friends. You don’t even have to like each other much. But I was hoping you’d realize that you do have one thing in common.” She turned to face them. “Me. I’m not going to hang around just to dodge the splatter from your bloodbath.” Like scolded schoolchildren, they both offered a submissive nod.

  “Fine,” she said, throwing the dishrag on the counter, “if the two of you think you can manage a civil conversation then, Roxanne, you can clear the table. I’ll get dessert.” Inwardly Mia had huge reservations about giving it another try. They were two of the most stubborn, acerbic people she’d ever known. Their chances of finding common ground were practically nil. Then she realized that was the entire problem. She was the common ground. Plunging a knife into an ice cream cake she honestly wondered if there was enough of her to go around.

  Mia flipped on the television, thinking a spin through the channels might be the right counterweight. Maybe they’d discover a mutual interest. Maybe on some remote cable channel she’d find an ex-beauty queen demonstrating how to change motor oil. She settled for Animal Planet. It was an unfortunate choice. She exhaled a wheezy breath as two lions tore furiously at the bloody carcass of an antelope.

  “You don’t look so good. Are you all right?” Flynn asked, easing in next to her.

  “Huh? Oh, fine,” she murmured, tossing her uneaten cake on the coffee table. Moving on, she stopped at the evening news. Current events—that could work. A reporter was coming in live from Birmingham, Alabama.

  “And that’s all authorities are willing to say at this point, Jim. Students are holding another candlelight vigil, as this would have been Marissa Middleton’s twenty-first birthday. There are no leads in the murder of the University of Alabama coed. It’s been over two months since she was found, badly beaten, drowned in a bathtub. All leads appear to have grown cold. Police are theorizing, however, that this murder is linked to a string of cross-country coed killings that have taken place over the past two years. All the victims were brunette, attractive, and by friends’ accounts, friendly and outgoing. Colleges around the country are braced for the possibility that their campus could be next. Back to you in the studio,” he reported with a morbid grin of satisfaction.

  “Damn,” Flynn said, rubbing a hand over his mouth, “ice cream cake is cold.” Mia changed the channel once again. The spinning, chiming whirl of Wheel of Fortune filled the room. “Mia, did you seriously want to go to that concert in Atlanta next week? If you do, I don’t think it’s too late to get tickets.”

  She smiled, flattered that he would remember a small remark about an offbeat bluegrass band she followed. “I really hadn’t thought about it. If you want to go, I’ll drive. I love your bike, Flynn, but I’m not sure I want to ride all the way to Atlanta on it.” She took his plate from him and snuggled into the crook of his arm.

  “Um, would you be interested in going too, Roxanne?” Flynn asked, delivering the civility he’d just promised. “I can probably get three tickets.”

  Roxanne blinked, clearly lost in thought. “What? Ah, no thanks. Funny, Mia and I don’t share the same taste in music, either.” They both shot her a warning glance. “So, tell me something, Flynn.” Roxanne slipped from a chair to a giant floor pillow. She shyly tucked her legs beneath her and struck an unassuming pose. “Have you been traveling a long time on your bike? I mean, don’t you have a home anywhere?” Mia’s attention was drawn away from the TV, listening carefully, but she didn’t pick her head up off of Flynn’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, there’s some family. My sister lives in Texas and I have a brother in the Southwest.”

  “The Southwest? That’s an interesting part of the country. Do you visit much? I mean, that’s an awfully long way, from there to here. Mia tells me you came here from Alabama. Were you there long? Isn’t it tiring, all that riding?”

  What are you up to, Roxanne? This isn’t just polite conversation.

  “It has its moments. But you get used to it, the riding. I like open spaces.”

  “Mia mentioned that you were in the Marines. What was that like? Did you enjoy it?”

  “It was the Marines, not a Caribbean holiday. Enjoyment wasn’t really one of their goals.” Mia felt Flynn’s body tense up against hers. Her hand automatically rose to his chest, and she gently stroked her fingers across the soft cotton fabric. He fought it, then relaxed a bit.

  “I see. Well, what about your travels? Do you have family scattered around the country? That’s really interesting, because I don’t have a single relative outside the state of Georgia. I could visit them all in a day. What about yours?”

  “Well, I went to see my brother when I first got out. That’s when I bought the bike, a couple of years ago. Eventually I ended up at my sister’s, hung out awhile. Texas took some time, it’s big country. After that I just started state hopping, a long shot up through the middle of the map. Saw my mom for a day in Indiana. That was probably the worst of the ride. Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, really nothing to see.” He stopped, leaning forward, scraping his fork through a puddle of ice cream, avoiding Roxanne’s intense stare. The silence seemed to force him to go on. “Um, it does get monotonous, so I take breaks. One of the advantages of traveling like that, you can stop anywhere. I took a construction job in Little Rock for a while.”

  “Oh, but that didn’t make you want to stay, maybe put down some roots?”

  “Ah, no. No, it didn’t. I moved on to Iowa. Had some, uh, business, I guess you could say. One winter in Iowa is enough for anybody,” he said, glancing up. “I headed south again, but decided to make a slingshot trip through Canada, back through the upper Midwest last fall. Since then, I’ve been working my way southeast.”

  “Canada, upper Midwest, huh? That’s off the beaten path.”

  As he rambled, Mia’s head slowly inched up from his body. Flynn talking about himself, that was generally a nonevent, but now he was babbling to Roxanne like she was long-lost kin. When he finished speaking, Mia was upright on the sofa, blinking at him in utter disbelief.

  “What?” His eyes jutted to her, then to the television. “Mission Impossible,” he loudly announced, a clear attempt to end the discussion.

  “Huh?” the girls replied in unison. Flynn pointed to the television, where Vanna had revealed the letters m, l, and n. A few turns later and it was game-show bedlam as a contestant reached the same conclusion.

  “How in the world did you figure that out from three consonants?” Mia said, her stare shuffling between him and the game of hangman.

  “Lucky guess,” he said, shrugging.

  Roxanne, who also seemed distracted, gazed at the television then back toward Flynn. She mumbled just loud enough for Mia to hear, “Yeah, it’s amazing what you can deduce from a limited amount of information.”

  Chapter 14

  Three pairs of jeans lay stretched out across Mia’s bed, each matched to a different shirt, the ensembles creating vari
ous statements. She jerked a lavender tank top away from the middle pair and replaced it with a slinky, low-cut black blouse. It was a bold deviation from a wardrobe that consisted mostly of jeans and comfortable cotton shirts. Roxanne wandered in from the hall. She passed by Mia and snatched up the blouse, examining the price tag.

  “Hmm, why didn’t you get the matching skirt? Then your outfit could be worth more than he makes in a year.” She tossed it back onto the bed and flopped into a chair.

  “Ah, sharpening your claws again, Rox? Careful, I wouldn’t want you to snag one on my new outfit. For your information, I did get the skirt. It’s over there,” Mia said, motioning toward a skimpy, thrill-seeking skirt that hung from the doorknob. “I was thinking it’s too dressy for an outdoor concert, but maybe I will wear it. I think Flynn would love it.”

  Roxanne snickered, rolling her eyes. “Right, like you need to dress to impress him. Like he’s not getting it all for the asking anyway.”

  Mia held a hand up in protest before there was some analogy about purchasing cows and getting milk for free. “Roxanne, I’m in too good of a mood. Don’t start. I’ve been looking forward to this all week. Listen, can I borrow that silver necklace of yours? You know, the one with the onyx stone. It’s exactly what this needs. I promise, I won’t let Flynn hock it,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  “Fine, it’s on my desk.”

  Mia scooted across the hall, shuffling through a desktop filled with Roxanne’s busy schedule notebooks, medical school correspondence, textbooks, and a map. A map? When she turned, Roxanne was standing in the middle of the room, reeking of nervousness.

  “I was just coming to help. There’s so much stuff in there. Let me look, you’ll never find it.”

  “Don’t bother, I found everything. What is this?” demanded Mia, holding the map covered with scraps of sticky notes.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. Give it to me.” Roxanne sprang across the room, grabbing for it as if Mia might burn herself on it.

  “Don’t give me that.” Mia held the map tight to her chest, walking back to her room. “Why do you have a map of the country covered with sticky notes, and why does the one in New Mexico say ‘Flynn starts here’?” They stood in a momentary face-off. It was generally Mia’s job to cave, to give in to whatever Roxanne wanted: what was for dinner, the movie on TV, plain versus pepperoni. While Mia viewed the tiny controls as insignificant, Roxanne’s need to dominate larger issues, like Flynn, was fast becoming an irritation.

  Roxanne backed away, oddly agreeing to acquiesce. “All right, Mia, I’ll tell you. But you’re not going to like it.”

  “I already hate it. Start talking.”

  “Right now it’s only a theory. I didn’t want to tell you yet because it would be my word against . . . Well, just give me the map and I’ll explain.” Mia held out the map and Roxanne spread it out over the boudoir fashion show. “I want you to be openminded about what I’m going to show you.” Mia cocked her head to one side, reading the notes that began in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and trailed across two dozen states, ending in Athens, Georgia. “Flynn said he started out riding cross-country two years ago starting from his brother’s, who lives in the ‘Southwest.’ Do we agree on that much?”

  “I suppose, but I don’t know where exactly. He’s never said.” What in the world are you up to, Roxanne? Why do I suddenly feel like I’m in the middle of a Nancy Drew mystery?

  “Well, for argument’s sake, let’s say it was around here,” she said, pointing to the sticky farthest left. “Albuquerque, near the university. From there we know he went to Texas to visit his sister. ‘Hung out awhile’—those were his words, right?”

  “That’s what he said . . . I guess,” she said, following Roxanne’s finger across the map.

  “We know that from there Flynn says he stopped in Indiana to see his mother. We also know he worked a construction site in Little Rock, Arkansas.” Roxanne’s banter was heating up. She was plowing toward something that Mia was positive she didn’t want to hear. “He spent some of that winter in Iowa; remember he said how cold it was? Said he had some ‘business’? Him, what business would he have in Iowa? Now that grabbed my attention.”

  “Good Lord, Roxanne, I thought you only took copious notes in organic chemistry. He was talking so fast I don’t see how you could recall any of this,” Mia protested, clearly recalling the “business” to which he’d been attending. For a moment Mia considered telling Roxanne about the nightmares . . . how he dealt with them, the pot. She passed; it would only feed her fire.

  “Well, I probably would have tuned him out completely, if it hadn’t been for the news report we were listening to before that. Do you remember?”

  Mia shook her head, studying the map, then Roxanne. “No, I don’t, but I’m guessing that all of this doesn’t tie into a segment on cross-country travels on the back of a motorcycle.”

  “Hardly.” A paper clip was fastened to the edge of the map, and behind it were copies of news stories printed from the Inter-net. Mia felt her expression shift from confused to concerned as she began to leaf through them. “I know you’re going to think it’s an incredible leap, but for one minute forget about how you feel and listen to the facts. When I started looking, it was no more than a wild hunch. To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting to find anything—but look,” she said, fanning the news stories out. “Look at these stories and the places Flynn said he traveled to. Most important, Mia, look at the timeline.”

  She focused on the first headline, reading aloud, “ ‘UNM Grad Student Murdered,’ ” glancing over the date. She didn’t bother with the story, moving on to the next one. “ ‘University of Texas Coed Slain.’ ” Mia’s head began to involuntarily nod. “The Case of the College Killer” became evident as she continued with similarly worded stories, Arkansas on to Iowa. The fifth headline belonged to a girl from Minnesota State, a grisly discovery made by her roommates after they left her alone for the weekend. At the bottom was the last printout, Marissa Middle-ton, the girl from Alabama, beaten and drowned in a bathtub. Mia bit her lip hard and held the pages tightly, studying them, then the map. “I see what you’re getting at, Roxanne.”

  “Look at the dates. They’re awfully close. From what Flynn told us the other night, he was somewhere near each one of those murder scenes during that time frame. You at least have to agree that it looks suspicious.”

  Mia crinkled her forehead, her gaze darting between the map and the news stories. She closed her eyes, blocking it all out, thinking only about Flynn and an instinct that told her this was nothing more than Roxanne’s overprotectiveness, her own past interfering with Mia’s present. Mia’s grip eased, and her expression went flat. She refused to feed it. Placing the papers on the bed, she began to put away the map.

  “Mia, what are you doing? Look at the map, look at the trail Flynn admitted to. You can’t just dismiss this.”

  “Dismiss it? Oh, I wouldn’t dream of dismissing it, after all the keen detective work you’ve done. Tell you what, Nan. You give the Hardy Boys a ring and when they get here we’ll all put our heads together. I bet we can not only solve these murders, but maybe we can get Flynn to admit to being Jack the Ripper too.” She finished refolding the map with pinpoint precision, and reattached the news headlines. Mia moved them aside and continued to fuss over the outfits on the bed.

  Roxanne grabbed her arm, pulling Mia’s body around to face her. “I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m doing this because I care what happens to you.”

  Mia jerked away. “You’re doing this because you don’t believe any man is trustworthy, particularly one who doesn’t meet with your preapproved notion of good versus evil.”

  “It’s not a bad standard, Mia. If Rory had given even a little consideration to the kind of man—”

  “And there we go,” she said, an arm sweeping past Roxanne. “I figured the comparison wasn’t too far behind. You have to stop this, Rox. What happened to Rory isn’t going to happen to me.” />
  Roxanne shook her head, her sky blue eyes clouding with concern. “Probably not,” she said with a shrug, the drawl deadpan. “But what are the odds that it would have happened to Rory? My fear is that something worse will happen to you. There’s a chance, Mia, that Flynn is more dangerous than Rob Valente ever was.”

  Hearing Roxanne say the name of Rory’s ex-boyfriend aloud, it was beyond taboo. Mia swallowed hard, staring, wanting to make clear the world of difference between someone like him and Flynn. “Roxanne,” she said, slow and steady, the way you’d give a speech into the bathroom mirror, “you’re my best friend and one of the smartest people I know. You’ve been there through some really crappy stuff, bad decisions on my part. But about Flynn—what you’ve conjured up here,” she said, pointing to the map, “you couldn’t be more wrong. He’s not a drug dealer, he’s not a serial killer, he’s not dangerous.” Roxanne tried to interject, but Mia held firm. “Drop it. I mean it, Roxanne. You’re pushing toward a conversation I’m not sure either of us wants to have. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed. I told Flynn I’d pick him up at four.”

  “Maybe you could look at this from my perspective. What do you want me to do, Mia? Sit around and wait for you to turn up dead? What would you do if this whole situation were reversed?”

  Mia looked hard into Roxanne’s face, truly considering the scenario. For one outrageous moment she considered Roxanne and Flynn. She shook it off. Worlds colliding and little green people made more sense. She chose softer words than the ones she was considering. “I think I would trust what my friend had to say about the man she loves. I’d believe that she knows him better than me. I’d give her credit for having some speck of common sense that would tell her if she were sleeping with a killer. Then I would mind my own business.” Mia turned back to arranging her wardrobe.

  Roxanne’s chin tipped upward, her posture beyond stiff. “All right, Mia. I can’t force you to listen. And even if it’s all just a wild theory, even if it turns out that Flynn spent the last two years building houses for the homeless, donating his paycheck to the poor, there’s one thing I’m not wrong about.”