If it Bleeds, it Leads (An Avery Shaw Mystery)

by Amanda M. Lee

  Lexie gave me her death glare. “I’m not an addict.”

  “Well you’re certainly not a functioning member of society either.”

  “What? Like you?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you had this guy in your bed all night and I didn’t hear any headboard banging against the wall.”

  “So?”

  “So you live your life in a little bubble where everything is about you and you forget about everyone else.” That’s rich, especially coming from the person who only calls when she wants something.

  “I forget about everyone else? Who bails your ass out every other week?”

  “Who asked you to?”

  “You did.” I’m always the one she calls when she gets into trouble. I don’t even think about it anymore. I’m just used to it.

  “Well, you don’t always have to do it.”

  This is unbelievable. I couldn’t believe she was acting this way. Eliot was right. I hated admitting that Eliot was right.

  Eliot seemed to sense my discomfort. “Alright you two, this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to take the flash drive. I’m going to go talk to a few people I know who might be able to help us out with this. You two are going to stay here and try not to kill each other.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Lexie muttered.

  Eliot strode around the table decisively and grabbed Lexie by her T-shirt. “You listen to me, you little shit. I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you O.D. or if you disappear and no one ever sees you again. What I do care about is Avery and the fact that, for whatever reason, she seems to care about you. God knows why, though. You’re a little asshole who just uses everyone around her. That’s what drug addicts do, though. They use people.”

  He let go of Lexie’s T-shirt and took a step back. He seemed to regain his composure. He took the flash drive from the table and grabbed his coat from the chair in the living room.

  “I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour or two,” Eliot strode out the front door in a huff, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “He’s kind of a big baby,” Lexie said finally.

  “Totally,” I agreed.

  “Can you believe he was going to tell on us?”

  “Nobody likes a narc,” I agreed. I didn’t add what I was really thinking, though. How sad were we that we still cared what our family thought?

  Twenty-Three

  After Eliot left, Lexie and I sat on the couch for a few minutes watching ‘Jersey Shore.’ We took turns taking showers and getting ready, and then we just sat there in an uncomfortable silence again.

  “I don’t want to be here anymore,” Lexie finally announced. Way to state the obvious, I thought.

  “You think I want you here?”

  “Then take me home.”

  “That’s the first place they’ll look for you.”

  “They don’t want me anymore. I don’t have anything they want.” This is true.

  “I do.”

  “Well, I just won’t let them find me.” Suddenly she’s a ninja.

  “If you get taken again, I won’t go make a middle of the night trade for you.”

  We both knew that probably wasn’t true.

  “Just take me to my apartment so I can grab some stuff and then I’ll come back here.” She was using her lying voice.

  I didn’t particularly want her here either. She would start cramping my style pretty damn quickly. There’s nothing more annoying than someone watching you play video games.

  “I’ll take you to get your stuff, and then I’ll drop you off in rehab.” I was taking a wild stab in the dark here.

  “I’m not going to rehab.”

  “You don’t think maybe it’s time?” I softened my voice. I was actually being deadly serious.

  “You don’t think it’s time you grow up and stop wearing ‘Star Wars’ stuff?”

  “Hey! Don’t hate on ‘Star Wars.’”

  “Then don’t tell me what I need when you have no idea what I need.”

  “Well, what do you think you need?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s certainly not rehab.”

  “You need better taste in men is what you need.”

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  “Have you talked to Javon since he got arrested?”

  “No. We’re so breaking up.”

  “Does he know that?”

  “Probably not. He’s probably still waiting for me to post his bail.” That sounds like a perfectly healthy relationship.

  “You don’t want to?”

  “Would you?”

  “Good point.”

  We lapsed into an uneasy silence again.

  “Well, are you going to take me?” Lexie can be single-minded when she wants something. We have that in common.

  I sighed. “Yeah, I’ll take you, but you can’t stay here afterwards.”

  “Fine, I’ll stay with Grandma and Grandpa.”

  “No, you’re not doing that either.” Grandma always coddles her, and Grandpa just pretends he doesn’t see what she’s doing. That’s not an environment I want any of them in.

  “God, you’re so bossy.”

  “Well, maybe if you’d listen once in awhile.”

  “Maybe if you said something that isn’t always about making me feel stupid.” What is it with people accusing me of trying to make them feel stupid? I don’t do that. Okay, I don’t do it on purpose.

  “How do I make you feel stupid?”

  “Because you went to college. You have two hot guys fighting over you. What do I have?”

  “You have a chance to better yourself by going to rehab. You can still go to school. It’s not too late. You can have all that, too.” Well, maybe not the two incredibly hot and annoying men, but that’s a whole other discussion.

  Lexie bit her lip. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Really?”

  “I said so, didn’t I? I’m not a liar.” She’s totally a liar. I am too, though, so who am I to cast stones?

  I finally agreed to take her to her apartment. I called Eliot to let him know we’d probably be back before he got to my house, but just in case to let himself in. I was surprised he hadn’t answered, but I figured he was just busy with his contacts. For a brief second, I wondered who those contacts were. For an even briefer second I worried that he’d went to Jake. I put both those thoughts out of my mind, though. My first priority had to be getting Lexie into rehab. After that, I could worry about Jake, Eliot and Kevin Walker. Just the mere thought of that was migraine inducing.

  When we got down to Lexie’s apartment, we drove around the block twice to see if we could see Kevin Walker – or anyone suspicious for that matter – casing her building. The problem was, Lexie lived in a rotten neighborhood so everyone looked suspicious to me.

  “That’s racist,” Lexie informed me.

  “We’re running from a white man; it’s not racist,” I responded.

  “You have an elitist attitude.”

  “Good grief.”

  We parked in front of the building, and I fed four quarters into the meter. I was hoping we wouldn’t be here a whole hour – but I didn’t want another parking ticket. They had started booting cars for unpaid parking tickets in Wayne County over the last few months. The budget crunch was getting severe in the city.

  We made our way up several floors to Lexie’s unit.

  “Do you have your key?”

  Lexie didn’t answer. Instead she lifted up the mat in front of the door and pulled out a spare key. That seems totally safe in this neighborhood. I mean, who would think to look under a Bob Marley welcome mat?

  When we got inside, I looked around disgustedly. Lexie made my housekeeping skills look stellar. She saw me wrinkle my nose in disgust.

  “You’re not a great housekeeper either.”

  “Did I say anything?”

  “No, but you clearly want to.”

  I did. I wante
d to tell her that people didn’t have to live like this. I opted to keep my mouth shut for a change instead.

  Lexie went into the bedroom and started throwing clothes into a bag. I went into the bathroom and started gathering her toiletries. I put them in a plastic grocery shopping bag in case they leaked and then put them on the coffee table in the living room.

  “Do you need anything from the kitchen?”

  Lexie didn’t answer right away. I curiously opened the bedroom door and saw her slip a huge bag of pot into her duffel.

  “That’s not going to my house,” I informed her.

  “What are you talking about?” Lexie feigned ignorance.

  “I’m not stupid. I know what you just shoved in that bag.”

  “You’re spying on me?”

  “I am not spying on you. I asked you a question and you didn’t answer it.”

  “What was the question?” This diversion technique must run in our family.

  “The question was about whether there was anything in the kitchen that you wanted.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “You’re still not taking that to my house.”

  “Oh, come on. There’s $300 in pot here. I just can’t leave it. That’s like throwing money out the window.”

  “Then flush it down the toilet.”

  “How does that make things better?”

  “It doesn’t – from your perspective at least – but from mine that seems like a great idea.”

  “I don’t see why you’re so high and mighty. You used to smoke as much as I did.”

  “Yes, but then I graduated from college and realized that just about every place in the free world drug tests.”

  “Bummer, huh?”

  Actually, it was.

  Lexie still hadn’t taken the pot out of her bag. I think she was hoping I’d forget about it. I didn’t have the short-term memory problems that she had, though.

  I crossed my arms obstinately as I watched her. If I started tapping my foot I thought I’d probably look just like my mother. Despite that frightening revelation, I didn’t change my stance.

  Lexie refused to look up at me. She was acting like a cat. Like if she couldn’t see me I couldn’t see her. This game was getting old pretty fast.

  “You’re still looking at me aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any chance you’re going to stop soon?”

  “No.”

  Lexie sighed and reached into the bag, pulling out the baggie, handing it over to me resignedly.

  “Good girl.”

  “I’m not a dog.” I would have to give her a cookie when we got back to my house. She’d earned it.

  I took the baggie back into the bathroom and flushed its contents down the toilet. I saw Lexie watching forlornly from the doorway. She looked a little sad. Actually, she looked a lot sad. Good.

  We walked back into the living room. “Do you have everything?”

  “I think so. I just want to double check the office.”

  “The office?”

  “The other bedroom.”

  “Where’s that?”

  She pointed to the other door at the end of the hall. The one I had mistook for a closet.

  “I thought this was only one bedroom.”

  “It’s not a very big room, but we have some books and a computer in there.” I couldn’t help giggling internally when she mentioned books. My guess was that “books” was code for the past year’s collection of ‘High Times’ magazine.

  I followed Lexie down the hall. She opened the door and we were both hit by a strange and rancid odor when it opened. We both stood there in shock as we took in the sight in front of us

  For one thing, it had been ransacked. Everything in the room had been tossed. I was right about the magazines, by the way. Oh, and there was a dead body in the middle of the floor. I couldn’t be sure, but I think it was Kevin Walker. The big bullet hole in the middle of his forehead made a positive identification dubious at best. The foot on the body was mangled, though, like it had been run over by a car.

  Lexie didn’t look as surprised as a normal person would if they came home and found a dead body in their home.

  “Is that who I think it is?”

  “If you mean Kevin Walker, I think so.” I grimaced as I tried to get a better look.

  “Good. He was a douche. He had great pot, though.”

  “You don’t think it’s odd that the guy who kidnapped you and held you ransom for a flash drive is now dead in your apartment?” Even Lexie would have to find this turn of events troubling, I thought.

  “It’s weird, that’s for sure.”

  “You’re pretty calm.”

  “Maybe I’m in shock.”

  “Maybe you took something when I wasn’t with you.”

  “That’s a possibility, too.”

  “What did you take?”

  “Does that really matter right now?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You want one?”

  “Maybe later.” I wasn’t ruling anything out at this point. I was feeling a little out of my element.

  We sat there staring at the body for a few more minutes. Neither one of us made a move to get closer. Oddly enough, neither one of us made a move to get farther away from it either. We were both just frozen.

  “Well, shit, I could really use that pot now.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We have to call the cops.”

  “We could just leave and pretend we didn’t find him.”

  “We could, but that doesn’t seem like it ‘s the best idea we’ve ever had.” Plus, someone was bound to have seen us coming into the building.

  “I don’t think calling the cops is a great idea either.”

  “It’s better than doing nothing.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, the cops are eventually going to find the body and then we’re going to be in a precarious situation.”

  “We could leave the state. My dad lives down in Florida.”

  “I hate Florida.”

  “Fine. Where do you want to move?”

  “I’ve always been partial to New Orleans.”

  “Cool city.”

  “Yep, it’s the best.”

  This was an extremely odd conversation to be having with a dead body in the room, I thought.

  “You’re still going to call the cops aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Finally, we both managed to regain some form of momentum and backed out of the room. We walked back into the living room. You would think that finding a body would be the weirdest thing to happen to us this afternoon.

  You’d be wrong.

  Just then, Lexie’s front door swung open and the one person I wasn’t expecting to see walked in.

  It was Sunshine. She seemed surprised to see us – but it was a weird and calculated surprised.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “She lives here.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’re just picking up her stuff and leaving.” Something was not right about this situation. “We’ve got all her stuff so we’re going to go now.”

  I grabbed Lexie’s arm and started pulling her out of the room. She seemed confused, but to her credit she kept her mouth shut. That’s not usually a strength in our family.

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “What?”

  ‘Leave.”

  “Why is that?” I was starting to panic internally.

  I turned around slowly – even though I knew that I should be running out of the apartment instead. For some reason I was dreading coming face to face with Sunshine again. Turns out, I was right to be leery. She’d pulled a gun out of her pocket and had leveled it at the two of us.

  “Because I know you saw the body in the other room.”

  “There’s a body in the other room? How did it get there?” What? It works sometimes. I didn’t think it
would work this time, but it was worth a shot.

  “I put it there.”

  This day keeps getting better and better.

  Twenty-Four

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Probably not the smartest way for me to start out this conversation, but my mind was working at such a furious pace that general pleasantries were not an option.

  “Why are you surprised?” Sunshine was eerily calm. “Didn’t think a stripper could pull something like this off?”

  “Pull something like what off?”

  “This. All of this.”

  “All of what?”

  “All of this!” How could she be getting frustrated with me?

  “You’re the one who came up with the formula aren’t you?” Lexie seemed to be catching on quicker than I did. That’s a frightening scenario.

  “Yes.”

  “Wait, you came up with the meth formula? How?” What I really meant was how does a stripper somehow turn into a chemist? I didn’t say that, of course. I’m not that stupid.

  “I majored in chemistry in college.”

  “You went to college?” I didn’t mean to sound so incredulous. Honestly, I didn’t.

  “Just because I take off my clothes for money, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain.”

  “Then why do you strip?”

  “It’s good money.”

  “Then why did you make the new formula?”

  “It’s better money. I’m not going to look like this forever. I have to have a retirement plan that doesn’t involved dropping my top and gyrating on some fat slob’s lap for a couple bucks in my G-string.”

  “I can see that.” Well, I could.

  “This was my retirement plan and then you came in and messed everything up.” I didn’t want to tell her that I had a knack for screwing up people’s plans. I didn’t think it would help my cause.

  “Me? How?”

  “Your little investigation into Darby’s death. It set off an avalanche of bullshit. But you know that already, right?”

  “Not really. I was just investigating the murder of a co-worker. I had no idea you were involved. I thought it was Kevin Walker.”

  ‘You were supposed to.”

  “You killed Darby, didn’t you?” Things were starting to click into place for me now, too.

  “I did.”