The Chick and the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  "Don't get your knickers in a twist, lady." Bob was making a sandwich. He licked mayonnaise off the knife, then stuck the knife back in the jar, and I made a mental note to myself to avoid the mayo at all costs. "That call came in this morning. I hope it makes sense to you because it sure don't to me. Doesn't that Quinn guy know? There are plenty of bridges in this town."

  There were, but I knew exactly which one Quinn was talking about. And if it seemed a little strange that he'd want to meet me outdoors on a night as drippy as this?

  Like I said, cops weren't exactly chatty. I was sure Quinn had his reasons, and I for one couldn't wait to find out what they were.

  With that in mind, I checked the clock that hung above the stove. It was already after seven. Yeah, I was only a couple of minutes away from the bridge, but I wasn't taking any chances. I raced upstairs for a raincoat and called Quinn to leave a message on his voice mail that I'd be there. In spite of some people's opinion, I wasn't dumb. I also took the time to redo my makeup, run a comb through my hair, and change my clothes, too. If I was going out to meet Quinn, I wasn't going to do it looking as if I'd just spent the day opening books for Merilee so she could scrawl her dear, dear signature on the first page.

  Jeans and a lightweight sweater?

  I thought not. Not for a meeting this important or a guy this hot.

  I opted for black pants instead, a black tank, and a darling cropped jacket I'd gotten online for a song.

  A coating of Paris Nights on my lips, and I jumped in my Mustang. With any luck, before another hour was over, I'd find out if the papers I'd left with Quinn for testing were what I hoped they were: Didi's original, handwritten copy of So Far the Dawn.

  And the sequel.

  The Hope Memorial Bridge is a major artery leading from the east side of town to the west (or from the west to the east, depending on which way you're headed). There are four lanes, two in each direction, and a sidewalk along each side of the street. Spectacular views aside—the downtown skyline in one direction and the industrial valley in the other—there is no place to park.

  Always sensible (at least when it comes to getting my hair wet and taking the chance of streaking my mascara), I decided not to leave my car at one end of the bridge and walk to look for Quinn. Instead, I cruised between Ontario and Lorain Avenue

  a couple of times.

  I didn't see Quinn or anyone else.

  At least I didn't think I did.

  It was a little hard to tell. After a day of rain and sky-high humidity, the temperatures had cooled considerably. Fog wafted along the street in front of the car and collected in pockets along the railing that looked down at the river.

  "Yeah, the bridge. That was a bright suggestion." I grumbled the words while I made another pass, checking out both sides of the street and wondering what on earth Quinn had been thinking. My window was fogged, and I turned on the defroster. "You couldn't have picked a nice little coffeehouse in some trendy neighborhood like Tremont? Or a cozy little bar in the Warehouse District?"

  Maybe he could have, but he didn't.

  I was just about in the center of the bridge, heading back east and thinking that I'd do an illegal U-turn at Jacobs Field and make another pass, when the fog parted, and I saw a man waiting on the sidewalk.

  I cursed Quinn's flair for the dramatic, wheeled the car as close to the sidewalk as I was able, punched the gearshift into park, and put on my flashers.

  "Quinn?" I got out of the car, and thank goodness it wasn't raining. I didn't have to spoil the effect of my outfit with something as fashion-lacking as a windbreaker. As I rounded the car, I wondered if that was good news or bad. A cold wind blew in from the north, over the lake, and I shivered. "You couldn't have found someplace a little dryer? And warmer?" I stepped up onto the sidewalk. "You couldn't have—"

  I took one look at the man waiting for me, and words failed. It was just as well. Whatever I was going to say, it would have been blown away on the next blast of chilly air.

  See, the man on the sidewalk wasn't Quinn. Or even Dan Callahan.

  It was Weird Bob.

  Call me a chicken. Or maybe I've just got a whole lot more common sense than most folks give me credit for. I stopped dead in my tracks. Right before I backed away.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" I asked him.

  Bob didn't answer. He didn't need to.

  The answer came from right behind me.

  "We can't have you ruining everything, can we?"

  Was I surprised when I turned and found Merilee not three feet away?

  Honestly? Not a whole bunch. Like the old saying goes, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

  This investigation had been quacking at me practically from Day One.

  "If I'm supposed to be surprised, I have to tell you, I'm not," I said. What I was, though, was cold. I hugged my arms around myself. "It was all because of the manuscript, wasn't it?"

  Merilee was swaddled in an elegant purple cape trimmed with fur. It was a little out there when it came to fashion, especially for early summer, but hey, she'd been born and raised in Cleveland. Like the rest of us, she knew how unpredictable the weather could be.

  She tugged at her leather gloves. "I told you," she said, "I don't like surprises."

  "I'll bet Trish didn't, either." I heard a noise behind me and glanced over my shoulder to see that Bob had moved a bit closer. Instinct told me to take another step toward the railing. Caution advised otherwise. There was a lot of nothing between that railing and the river far below. I wasn't taking any chances. I held my ground.

  "That is what this is all about, isn't it?" I asked Merilee. "Trish found the manuscript in the attic. I don't know how. Maybe she was plain nosy."

  "Maybe she was just a pain in the ass." Merilee's words were as cold as the breeze. "Maybe she should have minded her own business."

  "Instead, she was minding yours. Trish is the reason the boxes had been moved away from the window. She's the reason the manuscript wasn't there when I looked for it. But she wasn't dumb. As soon as she realized what she'd found, she must have put two and two together. She knew your handwriting plenty well, and she knew that manuscript wasn't written by you. Let me guess, when she told you the news, she didn't show you the whole thing, did she? She didn't need to. She stashed the manuscript over at Garden View—you know, it was in your dear, dear parents' flower urn the whole time—and showed you just a couple of pages, right? Just to prove she had it. And boy, I'll bet when you saw those pages, you just about peed your pants."

  "Please!" Like she smelled something bad, Merilee sniffed. "There's no need to be crude."

  Bob moved again, and me? I gauged the distance between where I was standing and my car. I might actually have made a run for it if the fog didn't lift for a moment. The light of a street lamp glinted against something in Bob's hand. A gun.

  I knew I wouldn't make it to the Mustang, so I pretended a bravado I didn't feel. "That's what Trish was talking about, wasn't it? When she told Ella that things were looking up for her. They were looking up, all right. She was blackmailing you. That explains why she was acting so weird that day at the TV station. And how she was able to afford to get all dolled up." I thought back to the gala and what Thomas Ross Howell had told me about getting rid of the manuscript page in his possession. "It explains why I found ashes in the fireplace in your study, too. After you got rid of Trish, you had to get rid of the pages. The most permanent way was to burn them."

  "That's one way to take care of a problem." Merilee nodded, and though I knew it was a signal to Bob, I couldn't move fast enough. Before I knew it, he had one hand clamped on my arm.

  The quacking got louder. At least inside my head. If I didn't want Merilee and Bob to see that I was shaking, I would have slapped my forehead. Without a lot of options, I played my trump card, glancing from Merilee to where Bob's fingers were wrinkling my new jacket.

  "Just like Didi," I said.

  Though she tried to
cover it with a toss of her head, I saw Merilee's eyes widen. "Didi? Why are you always yammering about Didi?"

  I shrugged. No easy thing when Bob's hand was a vise around my arm. "Maybe because you killed her?"

  Merilee's gaze was as emotionless as a snake's. "So Susan was right. You do have this crazy notion about my poor, unfortunate sister."

  Susan.

  It made sense, of course. I'd talked to Susan at the gala, and Merilee must have seen us. It was only natural she'd wonder why.

  "What did you do?" I asked her. "Take advantage of Susan's greed?"

  "She's common." Merilee tossed her head. "For a couple hundred dollars—"

  "She told you I knew Didi had been pushed. From this bridge. That's how you… " I glanced at Bob. And the gun. It was hard to decide which was scarier. "That's how you knew about the bridge. Why you faked the note from Quinn that told me to meet him here."

  "Stupid." Bob's laugh was anything but warm and fuzzy. He yanked me closer to the railing.

  "Kill me if you want," I said, at the same time I hoped they didn't take the comment seriously. "That doesn't change a thing. I know exactly what happened to Didi. And Quinn knows, too. I told him everything." Okay, so I lied. What did they call it on the TV cop shows? Exigent circumstances?

  This was exigent, all right.

  "I'll bet Susan's the one who told you Didi and Judge Howell were supposed to meet here that night. That's how you knew where Didi was." I thought back to the scene I'd witnessed. "That explains the scraping noise I heard when she stood here at the railing, too. You figured she had a copy of her manuscript in her suitcase. And that's what you were after."

  Because of the lack of light and the wisps of fog that blew around us, I may have been imagining things, but I could have sworn Merilee's face went pale.

  "You think you're so smart! But you're making all that up. You have to be. There's no way you can know for sure. And what makes you think anyone would believe your crazy story? After all, Didi did leave a suicide note."

  Disgusted, I shook my head. "It's the only convincing thing you ever wrote," I told her. "And the cops never picked up on the fact that Didi didn't have a pen with her. You didn't know that, either, did you? If you were a real fiction writer, you would have thought through your plot and left one behind. You know, a sort of clue."

  "If I was a real fiction writer?" Merilee's voice was shrill. "You mean if Didi was a real fiction writer? You call that trash she wrote fiction?"

  "Millions of people do."

  "Millions of people are wrong. I'm the scholar in the family. I'm the real writer. She wasn't educated enough or smart enough. She wrote about stupid Opal and stupid Palmer. She made up history."

  "But she had the imagination."

  Merilee laughed, and shivers shot up my spine. She nodded, and Bob tucked away his gun long enough to wrap his arms around me. He lifted me into the air, but there was no way I was going to make it easy for him to move me closer to the railing.

  I kicked and I squirmed and I screamed, but as I probably mentioned before, he was a big guy and pretty beefy. The railing got closer. So did my view of the Cleveland skyline. Bob lifted me higher.

  All the while, Merilee's voice pierced the night. "No, you're wrong. I'm the one with the imagination. After all, I made it look like a suicide and everyone believed me. They'll think the same about you, of course." She plucked a piece of paper from the nether regions of her voluminous cape, and right before Bob swung me over the side of the bridge, she stuck it under my nose. "You see, I've written your suicide note, too."

  "And I think I've heard all I need to hear."

  Do I need to say how relieved I was to hear Quinn's voice coming out of the fog?

  "Drop her," he told Bob.

  "Don't tell him that!" I screamed.

  Lucky for me, Bob was so surprised, he spun the other way before he did anything. When he dropped me and raised his hands, it was onto the sidewalk. Into a puddle.

  I cursed, and on my hands and knees, maneuvered around two uniformed officers who appeared out of nowhere and slapped handcuffs on Bob. What Quinn was doing during all this, I can't say. I'd like to think he was making a move to help me. Something tells me that he was darting in Merilee's direction instead.

  Once I realized I wasn't going to die with a splat in the Cuyahoga River, I saw why.

  Merilee could move pretty quick for an old lady. She had scrambled up onto the railing.

  "I'm not going to jail," she told Quinn and the universe in general. "You're not going to take away my reputation."

  "You don't have a reputation." By this time, I was on my feet. I stood on Merilee's right; Quinn was on her left. Neither one of us was close enough to grab her. "You took credit for Didi's work. You killed her, too."

  When she turned to look at me over her shoulder, Merilee was smiling. "You bet I did," she said. "Just like I killed Trish. I lived in a blaze of glory. And now I'm going to die the same way."

  She moved but I moved faster. Right before she jumped, I grabbed a fistful of her cape. Quinn moved in the same instant. Between the two of us, Merilee wasn't going anywhere.

  Anywhere except prison.

  Needless to say (but I'll mention it anyway), things got pretty crazy after that.

  Merilee was hauled onto solid ground by the team of firefighters Quinn had brought along just in case.

  Bob was carted away in one black and white patrol car.

  Merilee went kicking and screaming to the Justice Center in another.

  Quinn and I were left on the bridge alone.

  "Lucky for you I got your message," he said, and though he sounded hard-nosed, when he saw me shiver, he slipped off his trench coat and draped it over my shoulders. "You want to explain how the hell all that happened?"

  "I told you. I got suspicious. Working at the museum. I knew Merilee didn't write the book."

  "And you knew Merilee and that goon of hers killed her sister, how?"

  Just as Quinn asked the question, Didi popped up out of nowhere right behind him. "You can tell him if you want," she said.

  "Nah." I shook my head. "Even if I did, he wouldn't believe me."

  Quinn turned and looked at the nothing over his shoulder. "Who the hell are you talking to?"

  My only answer was a smile.

  "All right, I give up." He breathed a sigh of one hundred percent exasperation and reached into his pocket to pull out a small beige card. "Here," he said, pushing the card into my hand.

  I knew exactly what it was, and I didn't bother to look at it. "What good does it do me to have your card?" I asked. "I have called. Plenty of times. Are those lab results back yet?"

  "No, but something tells me that now we know exactly what they're going to prove." He reached for his raincoat, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for his car. "And the card…" He glanced over his shoulder at me. "That's my home number on the back. When you're ready to talk, give me a call."

  Didi and I watched him drive away. "You think I did the right thing?" I asked her.

  "I don't know. He's not exactly the patient type. And he is awfully cute."

  "I wasn't talking about Quinn. I was talking about Merilee. Do you think I should have let her jump?"

  Didi looked over the side of the bridge, her expression so thoughtful, I wondered if she was thinking of what it had been like as she watched the world slip past her and knew she was headed for her death.

  "I never would have jumped on my own, you know," she said. "I wouldn't have done that to Judy."

  "And Merilee?"

  "Merilee is going to have her reputation yanked out from under her."

  There was no denying that. I'm not a vindictive person, but I knew exactly what it meant. For Merilee it would be a fate worse than death.

  Chapter 21

  I had no idea how long it took labs to do whatever it was labs did. I only knew that it was too long. The results of the tests on Didi's manuscript and Merilee's copy of So Far the Dawn
never arrived until the day of the premiere.

  After what had happened on the Hope Memorial Bridge that rainy night, I wasn't the least bit surprised by them. The rest of the world, though…

  Because of its IMAX theater, the new and improved version of So Far the Dawn premiered at the city's Great Lakes Science Center, and thanks to the notoriety of the event plus the fact that the author thought to be responsible for the book was being held in the county jail for the fifty-year-old murder of her sister as well as the recent death of Trish Kingston, the place was packed to the rafters and buzzing with excitement.

  When Ella walked out on the stage, it took a minute for the crowd to quiet down.

  I had to give her credit. Ella was as cool as the color of the minty gown that flowed around her ankles. No easy trick, considering that she was still recovering from the shock of Merilee's arrest and the shock-on-top-of-shock that resulted from the letter detailing the official lab results. We'd each been handed a glass of champagne as we entered the theater, and Ella held hers in trembling hands.

  When word first came down about the test results, Ella had herself a good cry, but if I knew nothing else about my boss, it was that she was one tough lady. Her voice was froggy, her eyes were red, but she knew the So Far the Dawn show had to go on. She cleared her throat.

  "I have an important announcement about a book—and a movie—we all love," Ella said. "It has recently been determined beyond the shadow of a doubt that the handwritten manuscript of So Far the Dawn displayed in the museum and attributed to Merilee Bowman is nothing more than a copy. The paper she used was never manufactured until ten years ago. Between that and a scientific handwriting analysis… well, the results are conclusive: Merilee did not write the book."

  Do I need to point out that, at this, the crowd went bonkers?

  They would have gone even crazier if they'd known what I knew: Didi was on stage right next to Ella. In a pink strapless gown with a matching gauzy stole, she looked like a million bucks. Or maybe that was because of the smile that lit her face.