Citizen Insane: A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery

by Karen Cantwell

  They were in the conference room.

  Eating pizza.

  *****

  A long, sleek cherry wood table occupied the center of the expansive room. Flat screen TVs hung on the wall at each end while two more doors and three large, framed color photos depicting the nature of Rustic Woods lined the longer back wall. Quite a lavish conference room, fully decked out for absolutely nothing to happen. Except a kidnapping apparently.

  Facing us and sitting in two of the numerous cushy black leather chairs surrounding the monstrous table were Peggy, shoving a slice of pizza into her mouth, and Roz who looked about as happy as Jack Nicholson being grilled by Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men. She wasn’t terrified. She was seething.

  Peggy dropped the pizza onto the cardboard box in front of her and wiped her mouth with her hand. “Barb!”

  Colt grunted as he moved to a chair. I helped him sit.

  Peggy looked confused. “What happened?”

  “Krystle shot him in the foot. You didn’t hear the shot?”

  She blinked. “We did, but Shashi promised us no one would be hurt and this was all just for show.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think her name is really Shashi. She has—”

  “A southern accent. I know. Her name is Marilyn Schmutz. It’s a long story. How are you two?”

  “We’re okay,” Peggy answered. “But if you look under the table, you’ll see we’re limited.”

  I bent to peek under the table and saw that their feet were bound with duct tape. Roz’s hands were also immobilized, resting quietly in her lap. Peggy’s were free to grab her pizza up and take another bite, which she did. “Sorry,” she said after swallowing. “I get low blood sugar. Have to eat something every hour or I get dizzy and crazy. It’s hereditary. My Uncle Declan – my mother’s uncle really – had terrible issues, except they didn’t know it was low blood sugar and thought he was crazy. Well, truthfully, some family members actually believed he was a werewolf, but that was because of the hair. He was unusually wooly for an Irish man.” She sighed and sat back. “I feel better now. But the pizza made me a little thirsty.” She looked at Krystle. “Would I be bothering you if I asked for some water?”

  Krystle didn’t have to think long on that answer. “You’ve been bothering me since you got here.”

  I have to admit, I was surprised at Peggy’s ease with the situation. “Peggy, can you really eat at time like this?”

  “I have to keep my energy up and my wits about me for Roz. You know she doesn’t cope well.”

  Roz, who had been simmering and silent, decided to defend herself. “I cope fine.”

  “Not last time you didn’t.”

  “Last time they were threatening to kill us and my hand was broken.”

  “Sprained,” Peggy corrected her in a hushed tone.

  “Fine. Sprained. But this time it’s me that wants to kill.” Roz glared her evil Jack Nicholson glare at Krystle so intensely that I expected to her growl, “You fucked with the wrong Marine!” But she didn’t, thank goodness, because really between the two of them, Krystle was the one with the body of a Marine, and in a brawl, Krystle would win.

  “What’s got your pony all up in a tail?” Krystle asked.

  Roz’s gaze could have frozen Lake Superior. “You know, it was bad enough that you bailed on your volunteering duty for summer swim team, and that you always turned in your PTA expense reports two weeks late. But that little stunt with the yearbook could have hurt the whole school.”

  “You’re sitting hostage in a conference room while I’m shooting Sit-com wannabes in the foot, and you’re worried about a stupid yearbook?” Krystle’s tone was incredulous. “And, for what it’s worth, I did my swim team volunteer time.”

  “Timing two heats doesn’t count. You were supposed to take three shifts and you couldn’t even finish one.”

  Peggy burped then excused herself before joining in on the conversation. “Three shifts? Really. Then add me to your list of bad volunteers. I thought it was just one.”

  “Me too,” Bunny whispered.

  I turned around to see that Shashi, gun still in hand, had escorted Bunny to rejoin us. “Sit,” Shashi ordered. Bunny obeyed.

  So there we were, me standing next to Colt who sat quietly in the chair nearest to the door, Peggy and Roz sitting across from us, Big Mama Krystle with her Big Mama gun standing in front of the door and Bunny and Shashi to the other side of her. Aside from the deadly firearms and Colt’s bleeding appendage, it had all the appearances of a business meeting ready to commence. I decided to call the proceedings to order.

  “So, do you mind me asking why you’ve called us here today?”

  “You’ll find out when the time is right.”

  I guess the time was right, because that’s when our friendly neighborhood psychotherapist, Waldo Fuchs, entered the room from a door behind Peggy. A backpacked weighed him down. “Man!” he exclaimed. “It’s a long haul walking down those fourteen floors!” He took a moment to catch his breath. “But I’m proud to report that all three elevators are rigged,” he said clapping his hands. “We’re ready for some live action.” He locked eyes with me. “Time for your husband to save the day, Mrs. Marr – you did call him, didn’t you?”

  The light bulb clicked on and suddenly, Shashi’s “that’s part of their plan” comment was clear. They wanted the FBI involved all along.

  Chapter nineteen

  “What do you mean, rigged?” asked Shashi, who was getting more and more agitated with each minute that ticked by.

  Waldo looked annoyed. “Mary, we’ve been over this with you. The elevators are set with charges on the fourteenth floor. The FBI doesn’t comply, we blow the charges and the little ladies fall to their little, miserable deaths. In fact, we should get them up there soon.” Just then he noticed Colt. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  Shashi wasn’t changing subjects and her southern drawl was deepening. “It was supposed to be a threat only. No casualties.”

  “A threat has to be real, sweet cheeks,” he answered. “Why is this asshole here and why is he bleeding?”

  “He’s a friend of hers,” Krystle sneered, pointing to me. “Followed her here. Thinks he’s a funny guy so I shot him.”

  “I know who he is,” Waldo said. “I asked why he was here.”

  “You’re doing it again,” said Shashi, who had started to pace viciously. “You keep making decisions without me, and I’m sick of it. You couldn’t manage to frame Bunny for Michelle’s murder, much less actually succeed in killing Michelle. You’ve been bunglers from the get-go. That’s why we’re on that damned list. How is this going to work any better?” Each time her pacing brought her near Krystle, she’d throw her a glance loaded with loathing.

  “You mean you were drugging Bunny to frame her?” I asked. Of course, I knew the answer to that from Shashi’s version of The Krystle and Waldo Show, but I needed more answers and I needed them without giving away how much I knew.

  Waldo laughed. He sure was a creepy dude. Even his laugh seemed coated in slime. And those long fingernails made me want to retch. Men just shouldn’t have long fingernails. “Nicely executed, don’t you think? Bunny has a paranoid personality anyway, so all I had to do was push her over with those little white pills then convince her to confront Michelle about the awful lies she’d been spreading.”

  Bunny pushed a few blonde strands of hair from her hardened face. She sat in her chair stewing like a pot of spaghetti sauce with the lid on too tight. “I’m not paranoid,” she protested under her breath.

  “Come on, gorgeous,” Waldo said, “let’s face it – you think everyone talks behind your back.”

  “They do,” she retorted.

  Peggy chimed in. “It’s true. They do. Barb, you said just the other day that she could probably feed a hundred hungry kids with what she paid for those boobs.”

  “What?” Bunny slapped the table and looked like she was going to stand up, but then she did something aw
kward with her pants and settled back into her chair, fuming. “First off, they’re real, and second off, I don’t know why you’d think otherwise. They’re not huge or anything.”

  “No, they’re not huge,” agreed Peggy, “but you have to admit, they’re bigger than Barb’s, and they’re awfully perky for someone who’s had two kids.” Then she leaned over the table and whispered, “I think she’s jealous.”

  I loved Peggy, but I was fighting back the urge to grab the gun out of my pants and shoot her between the eyes. “Can we please just talk about how we got here?” I turned my attention back to Waldo, who seemed to be delighting in the banter. “Michelle hadn’t been spreading any lies, had she? You fabricated the story to stir up Bunny’s emotions.” I just wanted to confirm the truth for myself.

  “And it worked.” He was a smug manipulator.

  “What did he tell you, Bunny?” I asked “What did he tell you Michelle was saying?”

  She mumbled under her breath and I couldn’t hear her answer.

  Waldo egged her on. “Speak up, Bunny. We can’t hear you.”

  “That I was sleeping with Howard.”

  “And it wasn’t a stretch, since she and Howard had developed quite a relationship, right Bunny? You want to tell Barb why you’ve been spending so much time with him lately?”

  My stomach did a backflip and the landing wasn’t pretty. “You’ve been spending time with Howard?”

  Bunny didn’t answer but she set a hard gaze on Waldo. The room was quiet. Finally she spoke, but her generally breathy, sweet voice went deep with venomous antipathy. “When I get the chance, I’ll make sure you suffer.”

  Obviously, there was something going on between Howard and Bunny that I needed to know more about, but at the moment, I really wanted to understand Waldo’s interest in this scheme. “Here’s what I don’t get,” I said to him. “Why are you involved? What could you possibly have at stake here?”

  “Because I’m tired of wearing this.” He reached his right hand around to the left side of his face and pulled it off – his face, that is. Actually, he only pulled part of it off.

  Roz, Peggy and Bunny gasped in unison as if it were scripted, which would have caused me to giggle if I hadn’t been as astounded as they were. I felt like I was watching a bad take from the filming of Mission Impossible XX.

  “Crap!” He cursed under his breath. “I hate it when that happens!” He pawed at his face and hair until he’d pulled enough away to reveal a different identity altogether. Sadly, the mug beneath the mask wasn’t nearly as pleasant to look at as sexy super agent, Ethan Hunt. Mostly because Waldo, it would seem, was a woman, not a man. That’s why his hair had looked so odd to me. It wasn’t really his. I mean, hers. And the disguise didn’t improve on her looks a whole lot, if you get my drift. Bits of mask remained stuck to her face and dangled oddly causing her to look like some decaying, walking dead character from a Friday night scary movie marathon.

  “Holy shit,” Colt grunted. “You really are Anita Abernathy. Damn I’m good.”

  “How did you know?” I asked, almost more stunned at his comment than the revelation itself.

  “I had minor suspicions, but wasn’t sure until now. I’ve been tracking his . . . her history since yesterday. I didn’t follow you here, Curly. I was following him. Her. Whatever.”

  Shashi had neglected to mention this little twist when giving us the low-down back in the van. I wondered if that was intentional and was still worried that she wouldn’t be on my side if the going got tough. Well, if I was being held hostage for some sort of ransom, I wanted to know what it was. “So what are your demands?”

  “I’m tired of this, let’s get them moving!” Krystle screamed. I had almost forgotten she was there.

  Colt added his two cents. “My guess is they want their names to be erased from the FBI’s Most Wanted List.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” I argued. “Shashi’s right – if that’s what you’re looking for, this is a stupid plan,” I said, more thinking out loud than anything else. “So they meet your demands and take your names off the list and erase your photos from the databases. So what? They’ll just put them back on when you let us go.”

  “Not when they see the little package we’ll leave behind for them,” WaldoAnita giggled, picking pieces of plastic from her face. That’s why the threat has to be real.”

  Those little hairs on the back of my neck were springing up again. I didn’t like where this might be going.

  “What package?” Bunny croaked.

  Krystle’s lips curled like The Grinch’s when he got that wonderful, awful idea. She tipped her head at WaldoAnita. “You want to share?”

  “I’m way ahead of you.” She threw a large, manila envelope onto the table and it landed with a THWACK that made me jump. “Go ahead,” he said to me. “Open it.”

  With shaky hands, I reached across and pulled the envelope close, not sure I wanted to see the contents.

  “Come on,” WaldoAnita said. “We don’t have all day.”

  I pulled back the unsecured flap and pulled out what felt like a magazine. My breathing quickened, when a closer inspection told me it wasn’t a magazine at all. It was the size and thickness of a magazine, but the cover was of stronger, glossier stock. The words, Tulip Tree Elementary, were emblazoned in bright yellow across a blue tie-dye themed background.

  “What is it?” Peggy asked.

  “The school yearbook,” I said, flipping open the cover, then turning several pages. “This isn’t good.” I flipped and stared, flipped and stared. This wasn’t the bungled yearbook that Roz had described. This one did have pictures of kids other than Krystle’s son. Even scarier, were the pictures of Amber and Bethany, Roz’s kids, Peggy’s kids, Bunny’s kids, not to mention many other neighborhood kids, with notes written under each.

  Roz shook her head. “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s my own mock-up,” Krystle laughed. “You can get anything done at copy centers these days. Those notes you see under the pictures of your kids: we’ve done our research. Birth dates, social security numbers, school bus routes, soccer teams they belong to, their friends, their favorite places to play. I have to give you credit, Anita. You know how to get what you need out of those moms.”

  WaldoAnita smiled. “Well, thank you. The disguise helped.”

  Krystle continued. “We know it all. If our names end up on a list again, we’ll find those kids and we’ll hurt them. Survival of the fittest and all of that.”

  My stomach churned and I felt sure I would throw up. Bunny started hyperventilating again.

  “But you have a son,” I screamed. “Could you really do that to a child?”

  “It’s because of my son that I have to do this. And trust me, I will do anything to get our lives back.” Her face turned tomato red and she screamed, “ANYTHING! Do you hear me?”

  I heard her loud and clear. So did Roz and Peggy, who both started crying. My heart was breaking for all of us. How were we going to get out of this? Surely, the FBI would be along any minute and a negotiator would deal with these crazies, but would our children’s lives be forever in danger? The only way they would ever be safe was if Krystle and Anita were caught, dead or alive.

  It was one of those moments in life, where you feel you are at the very bottom of a place that you couldn’t possibly be strong enough to pull yourself out of. You’re about to give in to fate. Give up. But there’s that littlest bit of something – I don’t know what it is – hope? Strength? Stupidity? You know you’re not going to give up. You’re going to fight the fight. The weakness feels overwhelming, but you’re going to do it anyway. It was at the very moment that I felt this power surge when Bunny let out a wail and went ballistic. Literally.

  Before I could even blink, she was standing and screaming at the top of her lungs. “I don’t think so!” At the same time she dug her hands down into the front of her pants, yanked out a tennis ball and waved it around. “I don’t think so, I d
on’t think so!”

  It was when she pulled a pin out of the tennis ball that I realized it wasn’t a tennis ball at all.

  Bunny had a hand grenade.

  Chapter twenty

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Bunny! Where did you get that?”

  “Frankie!” she yelled out the door. “We need you!” She shot me a smile. “He was in the bathroom – he gave me this if things got hairy!”

  Simultaneously, Shashi was on her knees scooting under the table. What a chicken I thought.

  Colt took advantage of the commotion to push me to the floor and tackle Krystle.

  As my face hit the carpet, I caught a glimpse of Frankie’s fancy leather shoes then heard him warn Anita. “Don’t even think about it . . . lady?”

  BOOM! My ears rang and my eyes watered. Another shot, BOOM! People were screaming, but I didn’t know who. BOOM! A third shot. The acrid smell of gun powder filled my nose. I said a prayer and begged God to let me live through the nightmare so I could see my kids again.

  A couple of seconds after the third BOOM! I rolled over to see Colt on top of Krystle. Neither of them was moving.

  Shashi yelled, “Run!” and that’s when I noticed that Peggy and Roz were up and circumnavigating the table toward the door behind me. She must have cut their duct tape binds under the table. Not such a chicken after all, and obviously on our side.

  Frankie pulled me up by my elbow and that’s when I saw Anita in a heap on the floor and Colt stirring.

  “Frankie,” I said. “Go with Roz and Peggy. Make sure they’re okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He took off, guiding Roz and Peggy out the door. Shashi was at my side and we both helped pull Colt off of Krystle. Her eyes were open and she was breathing, but she wasn’t moving and she didn’t look good. She must have taken a shot to her lower abdomen where a red stain grew larger by the second. The carpet beneath her was soaking up a good amount of blood, as well. “For a minute there I didn’t know if it was going to be her or me,” he said. “You okay?”