Dispatched Confessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 2)

by Talia Maxwell

  “Where is he?” Holly asked.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Xiomara said and she leaned against an antique cabinet in the entryway as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Put down the gun. You look ridiculous with that…you think you know what would happen if you shot me, Holly? Really?”

  Holly laughed. The laugh started as a ruse, a play to act off her rocker, but as the fake laugh began to grow, she thought of the situation—her with the gun her kid stole from his father used to shoot Xiomara. It was a clichéd mother-in-law fantasy, and Holly could admit she had no desire to hurt anyone, but the thought of acting the whole fantasy out gave her greater joy than she was expecting.

  “Why are you laughing?” the woman wanted to know. She was vulnerable and she was never vulnerable and Holly stopped to relish in the moment and take in the nuances of Xiomara’s fear.

  “Because you still think you can rule my life,” Holly said and she shook her head.

  “I don’t care about your life,” Xiomara said and Holly was certain that she said it truthfully and without any idea how callous the admission sounded. For Holly, it felt like a victory to finally hear her admit it after all these years what Holly had known from the start: she never mattered.

  “But the kid, right? You don’t give a shit about me….but you care about my kid,” Holly rolled her eyes. “Well, you don’t get one without the other. Which is why I’m here. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” The grandma was offended by the accusation, but she didn’t hide the truth well enough.

  “Let’s search every room.”

  Xiomara scoffed. Holly moved closer and pointed the gun at her leg, then her chest. The old woman didn’t flinch. “You’ll be disappointed.”

  “Save us time and tell me where he is then.”

  The woman was silent and stony. She waited a requisite amount of time before pushing Xiomara forward and forcing her to enter the rooms first, look under beds, open closets. Even the garage and the shed and her son’s old play castle in the yard were checked. And while Xiomara whined, she uncovered each unspoiled spot with a sense of growing indignation.

  “Now, you see,” the woman said and she pointed to her door. “Leave. He’s not here.”

  “Just because he’s not here doesn’t mean you don’t know where he is.”

  “This is ridiculous. I’m calling the police.”

  “I’ll shoot you before you do that.” And Holly said it like she meant it—the entirety of her voice filled with panic and rage. “Police know that Alex stopped making the confession calls himself. Hired out street kids to make them and paid them in burner phones and cash. Alex doesn’t have money and if he needed it…he’d come to you.”

  “That boy and I reached an understanding on our trip,” Xiomara said with bite. “I wasn’t going to cover for a criminal.”

  “He’s not guilty of that girl’s death,” Holly said.

  “It’s nice that we know that, darling, but everyone else has an interesting way of making facts bend around a notion they already have.”

  “You’re hiding him,” Holly said and she kept the gun out, her arm starting to ache. She lifted her left hand up to prop her aching muscles. “You know if he’s with Francisco that’s a violation of his custody agreement and I will take him to court—”

  “My son is clueless and scared, just like you,” Xiomara responded. She stalked forward, inching closer, and when she was within striking distance, she put up a single finger and stuck it into the barrel of the gun, never taking her eyes off of Holly. Her eyes glanced to the safety and then back to Holly’s eyes. “I’m not afraid of this or you or death,” she whispered, “but I am terrified of a justice system looking at my grandson for a crime he didn’t commit. Go home, Holly.”

  “Tell me,” Holly whispered back.

  And Xiomara removed her finger from the barrel of the gun and Holly lowered her weapon, exhausted, relieved.

  “At what cost?” Xiomara answered.

  Holly thought it was weird. She remembered when she first met her then boyfriend’s mother; how they both tripped all over themselves trying to set the stage for what could come next. She clearly disapproved and Holly struggled to say anything right—the luncheon was borderline disastrous with Holly crying in the restaurant bathroom on the phone to her friend when she was pretty sure his mother came in the next stall and eavesdropped.

  The truth was Xiomara didn’t expect Holly to stick around and she was right. But not sticking around didn’t mean she could disconnect; divorce was a complicated and tricky web. It felt nice to hold a gun to the woman; she felt defeated to realize that no tactic was going to work—Xiomara, like Holly, would protect Alex first and foremost.

  “You and I are on the same page,” Holly tried. “I need to see and speak with my son and if you know where he is and you’re keeping it from me…at any cost…then you’ll regret it.”

  “He’ll get in touch with you, I’m sure,” Xiomara said with certainty that scratched at Holly’s feeling of interiority. To pour salt in the wound, she added, “How are things going with the man from the pool?”

  “The man?” Holly asked, disoriented, then she realized. “Joel.”

  “Joel,” she repeated and adopted a faux-blush. “He’s quite handsome.”

  Holly raised the gun again and Xiomara put up her hands in surrender.

  “Okay, okay. God forbid the man you’re screwing is a good looking fellow.”

  “Don’t talk about the guys I’m seeing or not seeing. Just…don’t talk. Unless it’s to tell me where Alex is. Okay?” She lowered the gun again.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Xiomara said and she approached Holly with slow and measured steps, a manicured finger pointed out in front of her. “When you held that baby in your arms,” and with a wrench of anxiety Holly wanted to interrupt and say that Xiomara held her baby first, “didn’t you think you’d do anything for that child?”

  “Of course?”

  “Didn’t you stop to think about what anything was?”

  “Of course,” Holly said, quieter.

  “No, you didn’t.” Xiomara smiled. “You thought about being patient when he cried and teaching him how to swim and saving money for his college and his trips around the states and…”

  “…I get it, Xiomara…you’re a better mom than me because you would also be an accessory to murder or obstruct justice…”

  The woman laughed. Her laugh was large and it filled the space between them, and Holly was filled with instant dread. She might have brought a weapon, but Xiomara’s casual confidence struck fear into Holly’s heart. It came from a woman who knew she wasn’t going to lose—she knew she could squish Holly like a gnat, and she did. She wore her down.

  “How about I don’t call the police for you showing up to my house with a weapon, because let’s not give them the idea this is just something our family does, and you go home and wait for your son to make himself known like you know he will.”

  “Is he here?” Holly asked again, defeated.

  “No. You looked, too.”

  “But you know where he is.”

  “Sixty seconds to get in that car and head back to your little mansion on the hill, darling, courtesy of my son. You’re welcome for that and your alimony…and, in this particular case, an understanding that when I held that baby in my arms, I took a different kind of oath. Without question or objection, I would do anything for that child.”

  “Xiomara—”

  “Fifty seconds, Holly Gamarra.”

  “I’m changing it back to Bloom.”

  “You should. It doesn’t suit you. Forty-five.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the name that didn’t suit me.” Holly said. A metal taste formed in her mouth and she bit it back. “Maybe it was just the family.” And she turned, expecting to hear the woman launch something even wittier and more hurtful as a reply, but Xiomara was silent and unmoving. Holly opened the door and walked outsid
e into the night without looking back. She didn’t even shut the door behind her; instead, she wandered back to her car and put the gun under her seat. The safety on. Her hands shaking.

  She started the car and drove past Xiomara’s house—the front door still slightly ajar—and traveled half a mile out of sight before pulling over into the shadows of some large oak trees. Hidden by the cover of night, Holly put her head down on the steering wheel and began to sob.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Emergency meetings were always attended by just a handful of the Love is Murder crew. Gloria, tending to grounded teens, opted to stay home, but Maeve was there and her sister Millie—and Holly trusted the sister’s dynamic power to cut through bullshit and get to the heart of the matter.

  Holly wanted action.

  Rounding out the crew was Rosie and Kristy—twenty-somethings and roommates, who met on an online forum of people looking for roommates who like unsolved mysteries and “I Survived” stories. And then there was Annie, their lawyer friend, and her friend Erin, the private investigator. The six women, all so different and all so helpful to Holly in her biggest moment of need.

  She was raw and emotional—still a bit shaky—and still wearing her black dress from the expulsion meeting.

  “I saw him there,” Holly said to Maeve as Maeve poured them wine. She was thinking of Joel. “I waited for him in the parking lot. And I couldn’t just tell him.”

  “You know he probably won’t stick around if you just like literally and physically pushed him away… twice. Guys might be dumb but they don’t like to be kicked for a third time,” Maeve said, her voice low.

  “You know that’s not fair. I need time. It’s bad timing and…”

  “I don’t disagree with you, sweetie. Take your time,” Maeve clarified. “But then you’ll have to go back to him and…”

  “Beg. You’ll have to beg him,” Millie interjected.

  “He’s not dumb and he’s not mean. He gets it,” Holly defended, although she knew Millie’s hyperbole was from her humor not her actual opinions. “And just because I can’t say to him…. Hey, Joel, I keep having sex dreams about you…and then I wake up and can’t stop crying about my missing son.”

  “Missing vigilante son!” Millie corrected and she raised a wine glass offered by her sister.

  “Well, that’s better than murder suspect,” Holly rolled her eyes and lifted her glass, too.

  “Hey, wait,” Maeve said and she raised a hand to stop the toast. “Let’s get the wine charms!” She scrambled over to the bar top in their wooden outbuilding and nabbed a mesh bag sitting by the sink. The charms were all the murder weapons from clue—Holly was the lead pipe. Maeve had another set with their favorite true crime novel miniaturized.

  She was endlessly buying kitschy shit for their headquarters. They created a special area for an autographed picture of a live-taping of a podcast about murder. They’d gone together and become tipsy beforehand, stumbling up to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall dressed in black and talking loudly about the most recent missing woman on the news that day.

  With the charms dispersed, Millie started the toast again. “To us,” she circled her glass around the ladies, clinking glasses as she went, “to the bad-asses of true crime and the only ones who are going to fucking solve this mother-fucking mystery…”

  “That’s good enough, Millie,” Maeve interrupted and everyone finished the cheers and laughed and hugged. Then they settled down to business. “Here’s the yearbook from last year.”

  “How’dja nab that?” Holly asked and leaned over the heavy-bound book and tried to hide her own interest in scanning the staff photos. The girls went right to Joel and spun the book so she could see—she was as subtle as an air raid siren. She couldn’t help but stare at his picture. His goofy picture—with his white-toothed grin and blue eyes, head slightly turned and dressed in his best tie.

  “Kristy stole it from the library today.”

  “I legit tucked it into my pants,” she confided with a solemn nod and a wink. “They make the yearbooks a reference item and the copier was down…so. I’ll return it.”

  “I stole a law library book once,” Annie said and she raised her glass in solemnity.

  They all nodded knowing there was a 50-50 chance the book ended up part of their permanent collection of borrowed items.

  “Okay, so now that Holly has ogled guidance counselor Rusk,” Maeve said and repositioned the book back in front of herself, “what do we know?”

  “We know,” Holly said, clearing her throat, “that an adult in that building was lured…framed…or stumbled upon Gregor’s fake social media pages. Whatever took place was something he wanted to hide.”

  “Only if she was going to expose him,” Erin answered. “I don’t think people kill as a first resort. I bet she was blackmailing him.”

  “One of her friends will talk,” Kristy said and sipped her wine. “I could hack some pages…”

  “We’re ahead of ourselves,“ Maeve said. “If we’re looking at an adult…we’re looking for one who has enough to lose that he’d strangle a girl in the park.”

  Maeve tapped her fingers to her lips and said, “That’s the whole police case. The timeline that says Alex can escape the Donald Cooper detention center, run or get a ride to the park, kill Claire, dump the gloves somewhere on his way back, and be back in his bedroom by the time the fight investigation wound down and the block was closed.”

  Holly held her finger up and went to her large yellow handbag. She pulled out a blue file folder and scanned a few documents. “I wrote it down after a meeting with the lawyer. Roughly forty-two minutes. That’s the whole timeline. He’d have to escape Cooper and be back in forty-two minutes.”

  “I think we should do a run through. Place someone at the park, people at the center. Time it. See if we can get there and back in that time frame. Have someone run it…have someone take a car.”

  “The police already ran it,” Holly said with a shake of her head. “They said it’s possible. Also, Alex isn’t guilty. It doesn’t matter if the test pans out and the police theory holds up. He didn’t do it. If he could have done it isn’t helping…”

  “We can help by having facts. I want proof,” Millie said and crossed her arms. “Let’s do it.”

  “I’m kinda built like Alex,” Kristy said and raised her hand. “I could try to run it.”

  “Are we really doing this?” Holly looked at all her friends. Maeve shrugged and put down her full glass of wine. She hadn’t had a drop. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and counted up the girls in the room: Millie, Holly, Kristy, and Rose. She could fit them all in her Honda CRV, she said. Erin and Annie had other engagements and would stay up-to-date through texts.

  Before Holly had time to calm the rising tide, the swarm of her social club had her convinced: they weren’t going to settle for anything. This was their boy, too.

  Holly went through clues as they drove. She had a few more things that came down the second-hand information pipeline. Someone called dispatch that night for a prowler in the block around the park, which then meant that it was possible he cut through yards, too.

  It was night and Kristy wondered about the neighbors and the cop presence; after all, hadn’t a girl been murdered?

  “Keep to the main roads then,” Maeve instructed. “We’ll be along the route to back you up.”

  “We can figure out how backyards could slim down the time later.”

  “The prowler could be unrelated,” Rosie said.

  Holly leaned her head against the cool window and sighed.

  “You holding up?” Kristy asked and reached an arm forward to tap Holly on the shoulder. “I mean…we can set up a schedule at the house to keep track of news so you can sleep…”

  “Do I look like I need sleep?” Holly asked. She didn’t budge from her place near the window and she shrugged. The dark circles and the grief was shared between her child and the abse
nce of Joel. She was a mess, given to the same indecision she hated in other people. She both wanted Joel and knew she couldn’t have him. And she’d been such an ass to him before, picking fights, getting angry about things he couldn’t control.

  Holly wasn’t a risk-taker. She didn’t want to live in a reality where her child was far from her and without help. She didn’t want to pine for the man from high school. She’d stalked all his socials and she didn’t know what to think or how to move forward and she needed to find Alex. She paused. That was the problem. Her anxiety couldn’t fixate long enough on one problem; no, it merely bounced her through everything she was worried about in a loop: dying lonely, her child’s possible guilt, her child’s real hurt and anguish, the secret messages from her dispatch friend, her mother-in-law’s hurtful campaign. And was there gas in the car? Would they be able to live at the school without her for a few more days?

  Her friends, their voices lifting in excitement, discussed Kristy as Alex on her journey to disprove the forty-one minute murder.

  “I just can’t stop thinking about his safety,” Holly said. “He took all these risks…he’s hiding and he feels in danger…”

  “Gloria feels responsible,” Maeve blurted and Millie punched the back of the seat in apparent frustration at the piece of gossip. Holly was heartsick at the thought of her friend bearing any responsibility for her son’s choices. There was no way she held Gloria guilty for Alex’s running away nor would she ever.

  “Alex is responsible for his own actions,” Holly said. “That’s always how I’ve raised him.”

  “She’s confiscated all the kid’s phones,” Maeve laughed.

  And Rosie piped in from the backseat, “I approve of phone snatching!” She raised a fist in solidarity. “More parents should take phones away or take a class on teenage technologies.”

  Holly knew her friends were right, but she could feel her cheeks burn with shame and recognition of her own enabling of Alex’s bullying. She encouraged him to make friends online prior to heading into high school and she trusted him enough to give him full reign of his phone; it had been a mistake. Where teens once could only hide physical diaries in the physical realm, the digital world kept a slew of secrets. The moment Holly figured out one, Alex was on to another.