Citizen Insane: A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery

by Karen Cantwell

  “Whatcha reading?” I asked bouncy and fun, hoping she’d play along. She didn’t. She gave me a cursory grimace and went back to her book. I peeked at the cover. “Romeo and Juliet. My favorite Shakespeare play.”

  “It’s stupid.”

  Aha. Progress. At least she was responding. She wasn’t looking at me, but words were exchanged. I was relieved that she didn’t direct me to jump off a bridge or visit the home of eternal damnation.

  “You should watch the movie version with Leonardo DiCaprio. Three minutes in and you’re ready to stab them yourselves.”

  That got me a sneer, but no conversation. So much for progress.

  I kept trying. “Has the wireless internet been working okay for you up here?” Callie’s recent birthday present was her own laptop computer, but we had been having some trouble with the wireless router.

  “Yup.”

  “Well, that’s good right?”

  She snapped the book closed so fast that I jumped. “I have to start a history paper now. Could you leave, please?”

  I really didn’t want to leave. I wanted to patch things up. But she was punishing me, which was understandable. After a brief pause, I decided to let her punish away. I would wait for the right time to make things better between us. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll call you down when dinner is ready.”

  “What are we having?”

  “I ordered Chinese.”

  She grunted, which I had learned is teen-age speak for “It figures – you’re such a loser.”

  I was about ready to close the door behind me when she said something faintly, but with biting sarcasm. “Thanks for asking, by the way.”

  “Asking what?”

  “My point exactly. Close the door please.”

  Oh boy. Had I read her signals wrong? Should I have stayed and pressed for more information? Was I about to join Joan Crawford in the League of Despicable Mothers?

  “Callie—”

  “Close the door.”

  Reluctantly, I did as she said, but stood outside of her room wondering what I had or hadn’t done. I briefly considered going back in to confront the issue head on, but thought better of it. It would probably only make things worse.

  As I headed back down the hall to go downstairs, Bethany called from her own room. “It’s Brandon.”

  She sat at her desk, glasses on her pretty little face, pen in hand looking very much the smart, hard worker that she was. This one would run the country some day, I was convinced. First female president.

  “What about Brandon?” I asked as I stood outside her door. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I slapped my forehead and groaned. “Oh no!” I lowered my voice. “Did he ask her out?”

  “I think so. She was talking to Daddy about it. I couldn’t hear everything because the door was closed, but she was giggling.”

  Callie? Giggling? He must have asked her out. I took a deep breath and lamented my selfish stupidity. Not only was I the worst mother in the world, but I had also missed out on a very important maternal experience. This just wouldn’t do.

  “Thanks, Sweetie,” I said. “Is your homework almost done?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, well dinner should be here soon. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  Skulking downstairs, I tried to get a grip on the events unfolding. I was obsessing and my family was suffering the consequence. So what if Bunny was crazy? Did she try to kill Michelle Alexander? Not my problem. I was a mother first. Time to forget about the whole ordeal and take care of my own life and my own family. The police could find the shooter themselves. It was their job, after all, not mine. And Howard did tell me to leave it alone. I decided to listen to him. This time at least.

  I kept money in a coffee can on our kitchen counter for emergency order-out meals. I was pulling out a twenty when I heard a tapping at my back door. No one ever tapped at my back sliding glass door. People always used our front or side door. This was more than odd. Goose pimples sprouted on my forearms.

  Cautiously, I peeked around the cupboard to catch a glimpse – hoping it was friend, not foe. I wasn’t pleased.

  Not a bit.

  My visitor was Bunny Bergen.

  Chapter twelve

  Unfortunately, there is no clear etiquette for handling a wigged-out psycho killer who stops by for a visit. Especially when she’s a mother in your neighborhood who seems to be preoccupied with ruining your life. I’d pulled my head back behind the cupboard, but it was silly to hope that she hadn’t seen me. If I had seen her, reason would dictate that she had seen me too. She knew I was home.

  Damn!

  While I contemplated escape options, Bunny tapped again – louder this time. I was tempted to ignore her altogether and hope she just went away. This would be rude, but then again, so was plugging another mother full of bullets, so we would be even.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Man, she wasn’t giving up.

  “Mommy, what’s that noise?” Amber had wandered in and walked right past me before I could stop her. “Oh! It’s Mrs. Bergen!” She’d blown my cover and I couldn’t move fast enough to stop her. “Mommy, why aren’t you letting Mrs. Bergen in?” She opened the sliding glass door.

  That’s what I get for teaching my kids good manners.

  “I’m sorry, Bunny, I didn’t hear you. Come in.” I pushed the door open farther as if I really wanted her to enter my home. “Amber, Sweetie, would you go upstairs and, um, take a bath?”

  “But isn’t dinner going to be here soon?”

  “Yes, but you really need a bath and it’s getting late. Go upstairs.”

  “But—”

  “Amber, NOW!” My shout was fast and sharp. Poor Amber looked hurt and a little scared. I felt terrible, but I needed her out of the way.

  Bunny stepped inside and closed the door behind her. A paisley purse was slung over one shoulder and she clutched a small, brown suitcase. I would have been more worried if she didn’t look so pathetic standing there all droopy-eyed like a lost basset hound.

  “I’m sorry, Amber, I didn’t mean to yell. Tell you what – just go up to your room and . . . get all of your things ready for bath time, that way it will go faster. Do that now for me, okay? No arguments.”

  “Okay,” she said, walking away and giving me a suspicious look.

  Bunny hugged her suitcase tighter. “Barb, I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I’m afraid.”

  “Why are you afraid?”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  Uh oh. “What do you mean?”

  “Michelle – I didn’t try to kill her. Someone shot her before I got there.”

  Double uh oh.

  “Mom!” Callie’s voice screamed from upstairs. “Is the Chinese here yet?”

  “Hang on!” I yelled back.

  I felt like Michael Corleone in The Godfather III. Just when I thought I was out . . . they pull me back in. Not my favorite of the Godfather movies, but I understood the sentiment.

  The synapses in my brain fired like a shock and awe campaign as I worked to resolve this newest predicament. Either I had a killer in my house or someone who had possibly witnessed an attempted killing. Regardless, the police had to be called. But first my kids needed to be fed and most importantly, kept safe. I decided to stow Bunny away until I could deal with her better.

  “Bunny, follow me.” I was calm on the outside but quivering on the inside. “Let’s get you to a warm, safe place and we’ll talk in a few minutes, okay? I have a guest room where you can rest, is that okay?”

  She nodded and I saw tears well up in her eyes. “You’re so nice, Barb.”

  Man, I wish she hadn’t said that. I was about to send her to the Big House.

  Up the stairs we went, Bunny clutching her suitcase like a toddler clutches a comfort blankie. I opened the guest room door and moved aside so she could go in. She spent a few seconds looking all lost-puppy again, staring around the room rather aimlessly, then
she sat on the bed. She never let go of the suitcase.

  “I’ll be back up in a couple of minutes. I have to feed the kids.” I used Roz’s comforting tones from the day before. It seemed to be working. Probably that whole more-bees-with-honey theory. “You’ll stay in here, right?”

  She nodded again.

  I closed the door, wishing I could lock her in there.

  Then I made rounds to the girls’ rooms telling them to get their tooshies downstairs for dinner. There were some groans when they heard Hunan Rustic Woods hadn’t made the delivery yet, but they did what I asked, once I’d pointed out that they’d get the food faster if they were sitting at the table when it arrived.

  We were all trampling down the stairs when the doorbell rang.

  Hallelujah!

  Callie opened the door and we were all relieved to see Mr. Chang, our favorite delivery man. He also owned Hunan Rustic Woods and evidently liked us so much that he sometimes delivered our orders personally. I ran for the money, and handed it over. “Thank you, Mr. Chang – you’re a life saver!”

  “Any time, Missus Ma,” he said with a smile and a bow.

  Bethany was already busy putting dishes and silverware out on the table while Amber and Callie opened the food cartons.

  I had handled the hungry family. The police were next. I picked up the kitchen phone, but hesitated before dialing. Bunny’s claim that she’d found Michelle already shot echoed in my memory. What if she was telling the truth? She had to come for me for help.

  On the other hand, I reasoned, even if she was innocent, I should call the police and let them deal with it. Let her tell them her story, right? I clicked the ‘talk’ button on my phone. The phone beeped back at me. Of course, the beep-back meant my phone wasn’t charged. We were always leaving it off the charging cradle.

  “Mommy,” asked Amber with a mouth full of lo mein, “aren’t you going to eat?”

  “Yes, honey,” I said, looking around for my cell phone. “I will in a minute.” I lifted a pile of school papers from the counter and peeked underneath. No cell. “I need to do something first.”

  “You should take some up for Mrs. Bergen – she might be hungry, too.”

  Again with the manners. I wanted to make that darn phone call and be done with it, but taking food to Bunny gave me a good reason to check on her. Who knew what she might be doing up there in my guest room?

  “You’re right. She might be hungry. Good idea.” I rubbed her beautiful head of curls and scooped a few forkfuls of lo mein into a bowl, grabbed a fork, and ran upstairs. Halfway up, I remembered that my cell phone was in my jacket pocket. I had put it there after the fiasco at Peggy’s.

  Putting on my I’m-not-afraid-you’re-a-killer smile, I opened the guest room door ready to hand Bunny her bowl of Chinese and pretend everything was just peachy keen, but stopped cold in my tracks when I saw her suitcase lying opened on the bed.

  Actually, it wasn’t the suitcase that stopped me cold. It was the bloody gun inside.

  Chapter thirteen

  Now the thing about wanting to learn how to shoot a gun is that a certain amount of preparatory research is advisable. Colt had suggested it. And I had listened. That’s why I knew that the gun in Bunny Bergen’s suitcase was a Glock 21 – the same model that had been used on Michelle Alexander.

  If ever there was a time for jumping to conclusions, it was now.

  The bowl of lo mein slipped from my hands and fell to the floor, crashing loudly and shattering into several pieces.

  “Are you okay, Mom?” Bethany shouted.

  “Fine! Just a little accident!” I answered. “Stay downstairs!”

  I slammed the door shut and flipped the lock while Bunny dove to her knees and scooped up lo mein noodles. “I found it. It’s not mine, I swear, Barb.”

  “Where?” My heart was thumping out of control and I started to feel a little dizzy. “Is this the one?”

  “It was there when I found her.” Bunny stood up. Lo mein noodles dangled from her hands. “But I wasn’t thinking and I picked it up after. Now it has my fingerprints all over it – and Michelle’s blood.” Tears dripped onto the noodles. She attempted to dry her eyes with her shoulder. She couldn’t have looked more pitiful if she tried. And I was actually starting to feel sorry for her.

  Grabbing several tissues from the box on the dresser behind me, I told her to drop the lo mein noodles and clean her hands. We’d worry about the food mess later. We evidently had a much bigger mess to contend with.

  She wiped her hands, dabbed her eyes with some fresh tissues, and sat down on the bed to compose herself.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Bunny,” I said, trying to maintain composure. “You’ve been acting . . . a little more than strange lately. Then we saw you arguing with Michelle last night and you did threaten to kill her. But now you’ve brought this gun into my house and I’m REALLY not happy about that. I have my daughters to think about. So I’m giving you two minutes to explain yourself, and then we need to figure out how to get that gun out of here. Depending what you tell me, I may call the police to do it for me.”

  Despite my threat to call the police, Bunny had calmed down considerably. She nodded, then started her story. “I don’t know what got into me after the PTA meeting.” She sniffed and dabbed her eyes some more. “I was mad, but I didn’t think I was that mad. But when I was talking to Michelle, my whole head felt like it exploded and I had this powerful urge to just scream at her. I even wanted to punch her. I don’t know where it came from. I’ve never been a violent person ever. You know me. I’m a nice person.”

  I nodded, but I don’t know why. I didn’t know her well enough to agree or disagree.

  “And those awful things just spilled out. So when I got home later, I felt just terrible. Then Michelle called me and said she really needed to talk and was I still mad? I apologized and told her no I wasn’t still mad, and yes, let’s talk. She told me to meet her at Cappuccino Corner. I was almost there when she called me on my cell and said ‘they’ were following her, she was sure of it. She had gone back home and snuck out the back door headed to the little playground in the woods. Did I have a flashlight and could I meet her there?”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know! I had no idea what she was talking about. I was really confused, but she sounded terrified, so I just said I’d come.”

  Moms knew about the little playground in the woods. Many of the paths in Rustic Woods led to the delightful park that sat nestled among the trees. It sat next to a stream so kids could swing or slide or look for tadpoles in the water. But it was so deep in the woods that it would be impossible to find at night without illumination.

  “Did you have a flashlight?” I asked.

  She nodded. “A tiny one I keep on my purse so I can find my keys in the dark. It didn’t help much, but I was able to make my way to the playground.” Her face scrunched all up and she started crying again. “But not in time.” She wept for a good minute before she was calm enough to continue. I was getting worried that the girls would hear her and come to see what was wrong.

  “The first shot made me scream. It was just so loud. I’ve never heard anything like it, and then the other two came right after.” She shuddered.

  I handed over more tissues. “How far away were you?”

  “Not far. I ran about, I don’t know, one hundred feet? Two hundred?” She shook her head. “I’m not good with distances. And there she was on the ground by the slide. She wasn’t making any noise and I was sure she was dead, but I got on the ground and shook her just to see. That’s when she started moaning. I was so relieved. But it didn’t last long. I thought she was dead. I’d run out of my house so fast that I forgot my cell phone, so I got up to run and find a house to tell someone to call 911. That’s when I tripped on something. And I picked it up.” She shook her head.

  “The gun?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I dropped it, but then realized it had my prints on it, so
I picked it up again. I ran with it to my car, terrified that someone would see me with it and think I had killed her. So I drove home and that’s when I called you.”

  I was stupefied. If Bunny was telling the truth, Michelle was a living miracle. She must have regained consciousness and, practically on death’s doorstep, managed to walk out of the woods on the path that empties onto Tall Birch where I hit her while driving to Bunny’s house. I couldn’t have written a better, more exciting movie script if I’d tried. But I needed to figure out if Bunny was on the up and up. She did have the gun after all. She could have been fabricating the mysterious “they” story just to throw me off.

  “Did she manage to say anything before you ran for help?”

  “Yes,” Bunny answered, her face blotched from all of her crying. “She said, ‘In the Pooh Bear’.”

  “Pooh Bear?” Bunny couldn’t possibly know that Michelle uttered those same words to me as well. “That’s what she said to me!” I felt ready to jump out of my skin.

  Bunny looked confused. “When did she talk to you?”

  “Last night. I hit her when I was driving to your house. You didn’t know?”

  “No!” Her face lit up with understanding. “So that’s what happened. So she wasn’t found on the playground?”

  I shook my head and stared her down. Her story made sense, and I was inclined to believe her. Of course, I’m one of these gullible saps that takes anyone at face value.

  “She was still conscious after I hit her,” I explained. “All she could whisper was ‘Pooh Bear.’ I heard today that’s what her husband calls her, so I assumed she was talking about him. He’s being held by the police. They think he did this. Do you?”

  She blew her nose. “I don’t know. He doesn’t seem the type. Maybe though. But I’m pretty sure I know what she meant. I think she left a clue.”

  Chapter fourteen

  It turned out that Bunny had a plan: find the clue.

  The plan didn’t involve calling the police first, and while I understood her position, I argued with her anyway. Tell the police where this clue was, I said. Let them figure it out from there. She wanted to find it herself then approach the police after. She thought having proof of her innocence would protect her. I wasn’t so sure we’d find proof of her evidence, but by agreeing to help her, I got both Bunny and the gun out of my house, and I liked that part.