Better Late Than Never

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Fine,” Lindsey said. “Maybe you don’t know for sure, but you suspect you know.”

  “You need to leave. Now,” Judy said. “School is about to start and I can’t listen to this ridiculous nonsense.”

  “Judy, stop it,” Lindsey said. “Don’t you see? Candice’s murderer is back. You disappeared after she was killed. Likely the murderer left town, too. But now you’re back and so is he, which is why he returned the library book. He wanted everyone to know he is back.”

  “No, no, no.” Judy sank onto the edge of her desk and lowered her face into her hands. “The sweater. I left it in the back of . . . someone’s car. Candice must have gotten it for me. It was cold that day in October, if she put it on to keep warm . . . Oh, God, there really is no escaping the past, is there?”

  “Not when you sleep with someone else’s husband there isn’t.”

  Judy and Lindsey turned toward the door. Karen Larsen stood there, wearing an expression that was so brutally cold it made Lindsey shiver.

  “Michelle said you were going to the library to see Hannah,” Karen said to Lindsey. She wagged her finger at her. “But you lied and came here instead. You’ve been poking around, snooping, sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. I knew I had to follow you and see what you were up to, and I’m so glad I did.”

  She turned and looked at Judy. The malevolence on her face would have been impressive if it weren’t so terrifying.

  “Karen, it’s not what you think,” Judy said.

  “Oh, I’m guessing it’s exactly what I think,” Karen said. “You and James. Huh. I didn’t really see you as his type.”

  Lindsey met Judy’s gaze and shook her head. If Judy confessed to the affair, who knew what kind of crazy it would unleash in Karen? For now, it was best to deny, deny, deny.

  “All this time, I thought I’d gotten rid of the bitch who was trying to steal my husband, but it turns out it was really you,” Karen said. “That was your blue sweater that I found in my husband’s car after a ‘school board meeting’ ran late.” She made air quotes with her fingers.

  Judy’s face flamed bright red and then deathly pale. It couldn’t have been more clear if she had verbally confessed to having an affair with James Larsen.

  “So, poor Candice died for your sins,” Karen said. “Bad luck.”

  “You strangled her,” Judy said. Her voice was raspy, as if she couldn’t quite form the words because they were so awful.

  “After I found the sweater, I confronted James. I asked him who it belonged to but he said he didn’t know. Here’s the thing: James is a terrible liar. But you probably already know that since you slept with him. Surely, you must have seen how his lips quiver when he tries to lie. Honestly, it’s pathetic.

  “Of course, I pretended to believe him and then I waited. It took several weeks, but then I saw her wearing the sweater and I knew that she was the one James was having an affair with and I knew what I had to do.”

  “You killed her. You killed her because of me.” Judy gasped and then dissolved into tears.

  “I did, and you know, it was quite satisfying strangling the life out of her, knowing that she was the whore who thought she could steal my husband.” Karen closed her eyes and a small smile lifted the corner of her mouth as she mentally revisited snuffing the life out of Candice Whitley. “But now that I know the truth, killing you is going to be so much more rewarding.”

  “Karen, there is nothing to be gained by killing Judy,” Lindsey said. “The affair is long over and James is with you and he always has been.”

  Karen turned to look at Lindsey. Gone was the mild-mannered reading teacher. In her place was a woman with vacant eyes who, while standing in the room with them, was obviously tuned in to some alternate channel otherwise known as the crazy voices in her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She pulled a petite yet lethal-looking handgun out of her purse. “But it looks like I’m going to have to kill you, too.”

  Now Lindsey felt her skin flash scorching hot and then bitterly cold as panic made her heart stop and then pound triple-time.

  “Not here,” Judy said. Her voice was faint. “Not in front of the students.”

  “Of course not,” Karen said. “Let’s reunite you with your friend under the football bleachers. It’s a lovely place to die.”

  Lindsey tried to swallow around the lump of terror lodged in her throat but she choked on it instead.

  “Let’s go,” Karen said. She gestured for them to walk toward the door. When they hesitated, she snapped, “Move it! Unless you want me to shoot you in front of your first-period class.”

  Lindsey and Judy walked to the door, giving Karen a wide berth. The halls were still deserted, for which Lindsey was grateful. She was terrified that Karen might lose her grip completely and start blasting them when students were nearby. She most definitely did not want to live with endangering any kids, assuming they survived this at all.

  Karen ushered them down the hall to an emergency exit. It said it was alarmed but when they pushed through it the absence of noise made the caution sign a lie.

  “The student smokers like to hang out in this stairwell,” Karen said. “One of the many perks of being here for so long is that I know all of the school’s secrets.”

  Lindsey wondered if she caught the irony of her own statement in that her murdering Candice was the school’s biggest, darkest, ugliest secret of all. Glancing at Karen’s face, she guessed not.

  Karen stayed at their backs with the gun pointed at them and instructed them to walk beside the brick building toward the football stadium. A narrow service road ran between the music department and the stadium. They only had about twenty-five feet of open area to cross before Karen would have them out of sight under the bleachers.

  “So, why did you do it?” Lindsey asked.

  “Duh, I thought she was sleeping with my husband,” Karen snapped.

  “No, not that,” Lindsey said. “Why did you return the library book you took from Candice’s body? Did you really think no one would notice a book that was twenty years overdue?”

  “I didn’t,” Karen said. “Candice didn’t have a book on her when I strangled her.”

  Lindsey glanced over her shoulder to see if Karen was telling the truth. The woman was glaring, looking like she’d be happy to shoot Lindsey on the spot. She turned back around. If Karen didn’t return the book, then who did?

  “Do not try and draw attention to yourselves or call for help,” Karen hissed as they crossed the narrow road. “I will shoot you.”

  Judy was a step ahead of Lindsey. Her shoulders were slumped and she seemed resigned to her fate. Lindsey supposed the guilt she was feeling at finding out that her friend was murdered because of her own affair with the principal had taken the fight right out of her.

  Lindsey understood, she did, but she had also just gotten her boyfriend back and he had popped out the “L” word. If Karen thought she was going to shoot Lindsey and prematurely end her relationship with Sully by killing her, she was seriously mistaken.

  The underbelly of the bleachers was open on the sides but blocked by a cement wall along the back. As they stepped into the side of the stadium seating, Lindsey started scouting for a weapon. There had to be something. Didn’t they have groundskeepers who maintained the garbage that got dropped down here with rakes and shovels? Lindsey was betting that a good slap upside the head with a shovel would take Karen down. Unfortunately, there was nothing.

  Lindsey started to feel panic swell up inside of her. She leaned close to Judy and hissed, “If she kills us, she gets away with Candice’s murder as well as ours. We’re the only ones who know what she did. We have to stop her.”

  Judy turned a sad face toward Lindsey. She met her gaze and then gave her a small nod.

  “That’s far enough,” Karen said.

  They w
ere at the midpoint under the bleachers. No one could see them here. Lindsey glanced down at the tufts of dead grass, candy wrappers and broken glass at her feet. She was not going to die here. No way in hell.

  “How do you plan to explain the town librarian and the high school English teacher dead under the bleachers?” she asked. It was part stalling and part curiosity to see just how crazy Karen was.

  Karen snorted. “Easy. What everyone will find out is that Judy killed Candice in a jealous rage over Benji, and you, the nosy librarian, figured it out. The two of you had an altercation, which resulted in you killing each other. At least, that’s what will be surmised after I make it look like you fought over the gun, resulting in both of you being fatally shot in the tussle,” she said.

  “No one’s going to believe that,” Judy said. “Benji was my friend, nothing more.”

  Karen shrugged. “When I get done spinning my tales and planting my bogus evidence, they won’t believe anything else.”

  Lindsey would argue that no one would believe that she was a nosy librarian, but yeah, that wasn’t going to work. She had to get Karen to see that her plan was flawed.

  “Your lies will fail,” she said. “And I’ll tell you why.”

  Karen didn’t seem inclined to listen to Lindsey as she raised the gun, assumed a shooter’s stance with a two-handed grip and sighted her target—Lindsey—with one eye. The gun was pointed right at Lindsey’s chest, which suddenly felt so tight she couldn’t breathe.

  Lindsey was going to die. Karen was going to pull the trigger and kill her and there was nothing she could do to stop her. A terrified paralysis took over Lindsey’s whole body and she stood there, unable to think, speak or move.

  “Stop!” Judy cried. “You can’t do this. Lindsey has nothing to do with what happened between James and me and your anger with us.”

  “So what? She’s in the way,” Karen said. She looked so smug, so sure of herself. It really pissed Lindsey off.

  “You’re going to die in prison,” Lindsey said. “Because whoever turned in that book did it to draw you out, and they’re never going to believe that Judy and I killed each other. That’s entirely too convenient. You know it, I know it and the person looking for Candice’s murderer knows it, too.”

  A flicker of doubt crossed Karen’s face. She relaxed her stance for just a moment and it was all that was needed.

  “Get down!” a man shouted.

  Lindsey and Judy threw themselves to the ground just as two big, dark shadows dropped from between the bleacher seats above. Karen’s gun went off and there was a piercing scream and then a sickening crunch as the two shadows took Karen down to the ground under their full weight.

  Lindsey heard the gun skitter across the ground. She rose from her crouch and hurried to grab it. Once she had it wrapped in her shirt in an effort to preserve Karen’s fingerprints, she turned to see Brian Kelly—rather, Matthew Mercer—with another man she didn’t recognize, pulling Karen Larsen to her feet.

  She was scratching and biting and clawing at them until the stranger punched her right in the face, knocking her out cold. She slumped into Matthew’s arms and he let her drop to the ground as if he couldn’t bear to touch her. The stranger shook out his hand and the two men looked at each other and exchanged satisfied nods.

  “Lindsey, this is my friend Benji Gunderson,” Matthew said.

  “Oh, hi,” Lindsey said. It occurred to her that he looked an awful lot like his brother, but she didn’t dwell on it. Relief was making her a bit weak in the knees and light-headed. “Your timing is excellent.”

  “Benji?”

  They all turned to see Judy still sitting on the ground, holding one arm into her chest while blood gushed out of a wound by her elbow.

  “Judy!” Benji yelped and raced toward her. “You’ve been shot. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

  He went to pick her up, but she shook her head. Tears were coursing down her cheeks and she sobbed.

  “Candice is dead because of me,” she said.

  Benji shook his head at her. “No, she isn’t. She’s dead because of Karen and only her.”

  “But the sweater . . .” Judy said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Benji said. “Karen Larsen chose to kill her. That has nothing to do with you. And now she is finally going to pay for her crime.”

  He scooped Judy up into his arms and carried her out from under the bleachers. Lindsey walked toward Matthew. She was still shaking from the aftershock of thinking she was going to die, but the sweet sense of relief that she felt was beginning to sweep over the fear.

  “Lindsey!”

  She glanced up to see Sully running toward her. Behind him was Emma, limp-running with Robbie’s assistance.

  “Here!” she cried. “I’m here!”

  Sully hit her like a train, picking her up and clutching her close, knocking the air out of her with the force of his embrace and then a lip-lock that took what little oxygen she had left. She didn’t care one little bit. He cupped her face and stared into her eyes as if reassuring himself that she was all right.

  “Careful,” she said. “I’ve got a gun.”

  “I’ll take that,” Emma said. She held open an evidence bag and Lindsey dropped the gun inside. Then Emma muscled her way in between Lindsey and Sully and gave her a one-armed hug that about cracked Lindsey’s ribs. “Do not ever scare me like that again. When the call came in over the radio, I thought I was going to have a stroke. For real.”

  “Same goes for me, love,” Robbie said. “You’re giving me a head full of bloody gray hair.”

  He gave Lindsey a quick squeeze and then turned her back over to Sully as he joined Emma by Matthew, who was still standing guard over Karen’s unconscious body as if she might come to and escape.

  Sully opened his arms and Lindsey stepped into them. She pressed her cheek to his chest and listened to his heart thunder behind his ribs.

  “This,” she said. She leaned back and looked at the face that was so dear to her. “When Karen pointed that gun at me, I froze and the only thing I could think about was this. You and me. Having that taken away. I’ve never been so scared. Ever. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said. She could tell from the tight grip he was maintaining that he was just as rattled as she was. And that’s when she knew; she knew she couldn’t put them through this ever again.

  She leaned back and met his gaze. “I promise I will never investigate, snoop, be a buttinsky, get involved in police business or anything like this ever again. I swear on my favorite detective books. I will mind my own business from now on.”

  Sully hugged her close and she relaxed against him. She breathed in the ocean smell that was uniquely his and felt the last of the terrified trembles leave her. It was going to be okay. She was newly committed to a nice, quiet, appropriately librarian way of being that would no longer invite danger into her life. Truly, she was reformed.

  It took her a second to notice that Sully was shaking. Maybe he was having a delayed reaction of shock. She stepped away, preparing to call for help until she looked at his face.

  “Are you laughing?” she cried.

  “Lindsey, wait!” Sully cried.

  She ignored him. Here she had poured out her heart to him and he was laughing. She continued stomping away from him, mindful only of not smacking her head against the steel bars around her that held up the bleachers.

  “It was the shock!” he said.

  She gave him a look over her shoulder that told him where he could shove that. She marched ahead, following Robbie and Matthew as they half carried, half dragged Karen out from under the bleachers, leaving Emma to hobble after them.

  Sully caught up to her and grabbed her hand, forcing her to stop, then he turned her around to face him.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just the thought of yo
u not . . .” His voice trailed off as if he knew better than to continue this line of discussion. “Listen, I love you as you are, even if you get yourself into situations that scare the snot out of me. You don’t have to change for me or for us, because now that I’ve got you, I’m never letting go.”

  And just like that, the fight went right out of her. Lindsey threw herself into his arms and hugged him tight. What she didn’t tell him was that she meant what she said. She was never going to put either of them at risk again. What they had was too special to be taken for granted. Now that she had him, she was never letting go either.

  It was clear Sully wasn’t ready to hear that she was going to change, so she would just have to show him. Thankfully, since Karen hadn’t blown a hole right in the middle of her chest, Lindsey had nothing but time. Her days of investigating anything more taxing than a patron’s reference question were over and she was going to happily spend the rest of her life proving it to Sully.

  • • •

  The crafternoon room was pleasantly crowded. Violet, Charlene, Nancy, Mary and Beth had been happy to open up the group to new members. Hannah and Paula had joined the group and as promised Paula was leading the discussion on The Catcher in the Rye while Hannah brought her chai tea to share with the group.

  “I enjoyed the descriptions of New York City,” Violet said. “It reminded me so much of when I arrived there and started auditioning for parts back in the sixties.”

  “Everything was so glamorous back then,” Nancy said.

  “It didn’t sound glamorous to me,” Mary said. “It seemed seedy and creepy and sad.”

  Paula rolled her eyes and Hannah laughed.

  “What?”

  “I told you not everyone was going to love the book as much as you,” she said.

  Paula tossed her purple braid over her shoulder. She had an intense look on her face, a look Lindsey had come to learn was her determined face.

  “Holden Caulfield is a post-war rebel,” Paula said. “His entire journey is an anti-conformist one. He doesn’t want to be a part of the newly minted shiny fifties. He is drawn to authenticity and is undone by innocence. He is the inappropriate gritty underbelly of the youth of his time.”