Disk of Death

by Kim Smith

  “Maybe his brother did him in,” Tillie suggested, sipping from a tall glass of sweet tea.

  I pulled the pitcher over to me and poured myself some. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Nancy chimed in. “Rick’s brother would have had more reason than anyone. He stood to gain their father’s whole company.”

  “I thought about that. If I intend to find Rick’s killer, I have to think of every possible suspect. Charlie had the most motive, as Aunt Nan pointed out. He’d been fired nearly three months ago, though. Why would he wait so long to act if he wanted to kill over it? And why wouldn’t he kill his father instead?”

  My aunts eyed one another, then me.

  Tillie patted my shoulder on her way back to the kitchen. “Wouldn’t you bide your time ‘til you knew you could get away with it?” she asked in her soft Southern drawl. “And why kill off the father? He would be out of the way neatly enough by retiring. Or dying, eventually. But Rick was young and strong, and potentially, he would be the biggest threat to a corporate takeover.”

  That just made plain good sense. Fortunately, I knew insider information on Charles, like where he liked to hang out. I shivered. No way I would go to the Underground without Dwayne. Damn, if Charlie had that SD card, or even worse, DVDs, I would be in far bigger trouble. It almost made me wish the killer was a stranger. Someone who didn’t know me at all.

  Nancy coughed.

  I looked up. “What?”

  “I asked if you were going to the funeral?”

  “I don’t know.” I had tried so hard to get past this part. I couldn’t run anymore. A long-held hatred of funerals crept up my back like a mosquito. After my parents’ death, I’d been traumatized. The Mamas sent me to a pediatric psychiatrist in hopes of helping me deal with the whole situation. But, I’d lied to everyone about how I felt, and realized I might have to do it again now.

  “Come on, Shannon,” Nancy said, frowning. “You’re a big girl now.”

  “I know. But I just hate funerals.” I took a deep breath. That wasn’t so hard. Maybe I could slide by without lying to her.

  Tillie returned to the table with a basket of steaming rolls and three plates. She clucked her tongue at me. “How would you feel if everyone acted that way when you died?”

  This struck me as funny. I took a roll and handed the basket back to her. “I would feel just dead over it.”

  Her face contorted as she suppressed laughter, and she went back to the stove to return with bowls of food. Nancy pulled her by her apron strings around to her seat. “Sit down, goose. We need to say the blessing.”

  I closed my eyes while Nancy intoned blessings upon everything on the table, those of us seated there, and those of us missing. My thoughts wandered. My heart knew what my head wouldn’t admit. I’d be attending Rick’s funeral, in spite of the pain of rejection by the man and my hatred of such events. I still had to say goodbye. When I lifted my eyes after amen, my aunts both gazed at me expectantly.

  “What?”

  “The funeral?” Tillie asked.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll go. Sheesh. It’s not like he’ll miss me.”

  “Now dear, don’t speak ill of the dearly departed.”

  “I’m not. I think I’m still mad at him is all. He fired me on Friday. You didn’t know that, did you?”

  “Fired you?” Nancy squinted at me from where she carved roasted chicken. “For what?”

  I dug into a bowl of rice and plopped a healthy pile on my plate. “Good question. I don’t know why. He wouldn’t explain it and he didn’t give me any options, but he succeeded in ditching me as his girlfriend, and his assistant, all in one fell swoop.”

  She pointed at my plate indicating she wanted to serve me chicken. I held it out to her.

  “That doesn’t sound right,” she said, placing a sliced piece of breast meat by my rice. “I mean, I wasn’t overly fond of him personally, so the girlfriend-ditching part doesn’t bother me, but I can’t believe he would be unfair about your job. He seemed pretty professional like a man who adhered to proper rules of conduct, if nothing else.”

  Proper? Rules? My mind went back to a red blinking light on a camera posed to capture everything in a dim-lit bedroom. She had no idea.

  Tillie fussed over the platter of sliced tomatoes. “Did you get some of these?” I nodded, and she pushed the bowl of black-eyed peas closer. “Maybe he had an idea his life was in danger, and he didn’t want you in the middle of it.”

  Nancy and I gaped at her. She gazed back, her eyes innocent and wide. She shrugged. “Well, you told us about all that brouhaha at the office with the break-ins, and if he thought someone was after him, he sure wouldn’t want you around where you might get hurt. I think he fired you to get you out of the way.”

  I leaned back and digested this for a few minutes. He hadn’t seemed happy about firing me, but what person would? Had he done it for my safety? The possibility did much to restore my faith in him, but my female pride insisted I reserve the right to do an about-face the second I found he’d fired me on purpose.

  When we finished eating, I helped clean off the table and offered to do dishes. Southern manners demanded that of me, but they also gave the hostess the right to decline the offer.

  Nancy pushed me toward the living room. “No, we’ve got this. But you can go in there and watch pre-season football. It’s on, and I need someone rooting for my team.”

  She’d been a huge Tennessee Titans fan ever since they played in Memphis while their home stadium in Nashville was being completed. I laughed and took her suggestion. The Titans were behind by a field goal when I settled onto the couch.

  I watched the ball carrier stumble and fall just as a musical ring came from my purse. I dug out my cell. “Hello?”

  A deep, muffled voice, barely above a whisper, spoke in my ear. “I’m coming for you, sex kitten.”

  The line went dead.

  I frowned, holding the phone away from my ear to glare at it. The screen went black. Sex kitten? My panic rose. I dialed the last number listed on my calls received list. It rang and rang, but no voice mail answered. I hit the red, end call button. With shaking hands, I pulled out Sal’s card and dialed his home number. He answered on the third ring sounding sleepy. He’d probably been napping in an easy chair, and here I was disturbing him again, twice on the same day. “Sal? It’s Shannon Wallace.”

  “Yeah? What’s up?” He kind of groaned like he had struggled to sit up.

  “I just got a strange call. I think—I think Rick’s killer just called me. I don’t know how he could have gotten my number, so this sounds nuts, I know.”

  “What makes you think it was the killer? I know you’re tripped out since the truck thing, but let’s not jump to conclusions,” he replied. “What was said?”

  I gazed heavenward. “He said I’m coming for you.” Sal didn’t need to know about the sex kitten part. I had to keep him from searching for that SD card and any resulting DVDs until I could hunt for them myself.

  “He said? A man, then? Coming for you? Hm. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “That’s why I called.”

  “If it is our guy, could he have found your number in Mr. Fine’s apartment?”

  I remembered Rick’s red address book, which he kept on his nightstand. “Yeah, it’s possible.”

  “And you’re sure none of your friends are playing a joke?”

  “No way. Nobody would be that sketchy seeing as how my boyfriend was just murdered. What’re you thinking? That my friends would chase me in a big truck to scare me? Then follow up for good measure with sick, prank calls? Get real.”

  “Okay, calm down. I was just asking. Trying to consider-”

  “Well, let me give you something else to consider. If this freak has my cell number, then he may have some other information about me, such as where I live. What do I do about that?”

  “Well, obviously you need to be careful. If this was the killer, we don’t know what he’s
up to. Why would Mr. Fine’s killer want you?”

  I chewed on my nail. My guess was he had seen me in all my naked glory. But I sure as hell wasn’t telling Sal this. The caller was obviously into aberrant behaviors of all flavors, including murder. “I have no idea. Insanity maybe?”

  “Yeah well, my guess is, he’s playing with you right now.”

  “What do you mean he’s playing with me? That was no game of chicken with his Ram truck, Sal. But whatever. I don’t want to play his games. Games like that will end with me mangled. Or worse.”

  “That’s why we have to catch him before he goes too far. We’ll take advantage of every opportunity. Do you have a security alarm on your car and apartment?”

  I gazed up at the ceiling. “No and no.”

  “I would look into both. We’ll do everything in our power to catch this guy, but it wouldn’t hurt to take extra precautions.”

  “I’ve never had to take precautions before. I’m so scared right now I can’t think straight.” Extra precautions? Well duh.

  “That’s to be expected, Shannon.”

  In a few moments, we disconnected and I allowed myself a moment of semi-nausea at this new turn of events. Could it be true? Was it the killer playing some sick game? What if it wasn’t?

  Confusion clouded my mind. I wanted to shove my head into the football game, fall asleep beneath Aunt Tillie’s crocheted comforter, and wake up tomorrow ready to go to work as usual.

  Instead, I wrote down all that had happened, and what I might be able to do to figure out this mess I’d stepped in. At the top of the list: get into Rick’s apartment to find out if the missing card or extra disks were in the safe.

  My hands were shaking.

  I’d never been so scared or stressed out in my life.

  The next day at ten in the morning, I was ready to sneak back to Rick’s apartment. I couldn’t tell Dwayne my plan as he would try to talk me out of it. I didn’t own any fancy tools to try to remove the doorknob, unless you count a rusted screwdriver. But I had seen a former criminal explain to a talk show host how to jimmy open a door with a credit card, and I was willing to try it. Especially after spending a sleepless night tossing and turning over what would happen if the cops got their paws on the killer and subsequently, my video. More like videos since we’d done the nasty multiple times. Sheesh, how many hours did one of those SD cards hold?

  Nevertheless, I was determined to face my demons. I would get into that apartment and take back the cards that remained. My pulse quickened when Dwayne’s words returned to me about Rick making copies. What if the killer did that? I would never be able to gain control of them all.

  Come on, Shannon, one disaster at a time.

  Another troubling matter: how to avoid seeing where Rick had been killed. When I caught myself chewing on an already too-short pinkie nail, I decided to try aromatherapy and went to take a long bath.

  Afterward, I scrunched gel through my hair making it a mass of waves. The short denim skirt and sporty top I chose to wear made me look years younger. I dabbed on a little perfume, a swipe of mascara, and soft pink lip-gloss. Reinforced, I mentally crossed my fingers and headed out. Worst case, I looked good enough to have mug shots made if it came to that.

  I drove through South Lake and noticed new buildings going up on Greenman Road. Growth reared its ugly head in my small town, and the birth pangs of too much traffic, too many people, and too little scenery began to make themselves known. I wished the little town would remain as it was when I first moved into it years ago: one dress shop, one grocery store, and one gas station.

  I parked in front of Rick’s building in the same spot as the night when Rick died. Mr. Yoshi’s black friend story came rushing back, and I wondered if I should tell Sal about it. It could be a big clue, but he had surely questioned all the neighbors. Wouldn’t the cops know about every possible suspect? I made a mental note to at least drop a hint. If he wanted to tell me to butt out, so be it. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

  Summer had not been kind to the greenery this year, and the landscapers had been working to replace scorched vegetation. There were still empty spots between the bushes and in the flower beds. Given that the season neared its end, I wondered why they didn’t just put in mums and pansies and be done with it. No one dug around there this morning, which surprised me since the heat of the day would soon be unbearable for gardening activities.

  I strolled through the breezeway and came to stop in front of Rick’s door, remembering how many times I’d stood here waiting for him to let me in. The door represented entrance to our inner life, the one we kept from the people at the office. Looking back on it, I wondered if he’d taken my key for another reason. Maybe I wasn’t as important to him as he led me to think. Maybe I’d missed the signs of his lost interest.

  My cell chirped, bringing me out of my reverie.

  “Hello?”

  “Shannon? It’s Sal Ramirez. I’m on the way over to your apartment. Are you there now?”

  Shocked, I answered, “Sure, yes, yes, I am, actually.”

  “Great. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Right. I’m here and waiting.”

  We disconnected, and I gritted my teeth. Damn it. Foiled again. I put a credit card in the crack of Rick’s door and moved it up toward the lock. It stopped before reaching where I needed it to be. I slid it back and forth. It kept hitting metal before it got to the lock. Sweat beaded up on my forehead, and even more sweat did a slow slide down my ribs.

  I peered around. No one near by. Even Yoshi’s door was closed. I glanced at my watch. I didn’t have time. Sal said fifteen minutes, and I’d wasted nearly five of it fooling around. I stomped back to the car. Why was he coming over anyway?

  The local jazz station played on the radio as I weaved in and out of traffic, trying to control my despair at having to leave the apartment without success and having to face Sal was just icing on the cake.

  I had just parked and walked to the sidewalk when Sal nosed his car in a front slot. Now I could see it was a new Dodge Charger. How did our little police force afford those? He opened his door and got out. The way he was dressed dimmed my disgruntled attitude.

  His faded jeans and short-sleeved maroon golf shirt took me back to former times. This was the Sal I knew. The jeans were made for his body, snug along his muscular legs and perfectly fitted in the seat. No baggy pants for him. He tapped a manila folder on his leg as he approached me.

  “What’re you doing over this way?” I tried to sound nonchalant, like his being here was the most pleasant surprise.

  “Business. You look like you’re going out. Or did you lie about being at home?”

  I grimaced. Why did he have to look so good and be so observant all in the same package? “Um. Yeah. I was really on my way home though, so no biggie.”

  He lifted the folder slightly. “Got some pictures of Rams. Wanted to know if you would look at them and make sure we were on the same page.”

  “Oh, okay. Sure, I can do that. Come on up,” I answered, leading the way to the apartment. At least he was gentleman enough not to pursue my whereabouts.

  Once inside, he lounged in the kitchen doorway. The sun streamed through the window and Sal pointed at the panes of glass. “We think the guy came in through the kitchen window of the victim’s apartment, picked up a knife from the cutlery set, and went into the living room to do his deed.”

  A bitter taste crawled up my throat. “Oh. God. Poor Rick.” Sal started to say something else, but I raised my hand stopping him. “I don’t think I want to know any more.”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  My thoughts tumbled one over the other, until I found my voice again. “Who do you think did this? Do you have a suspect in mind yet?”

  “Still working on it. Murder cases are often the most involved and take the most time.”

  I thought of Charlie. “Speaking of involvement, have you talked to Rick’s brothe
r?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t drive a white Ram.”

  “So you agree that the truck driver is associated with this case?”

  “Yeah. Could be.” He pointed toward the table, and I followed him over. “Here, look at these.” He opened the folder and pulled out four glossy shots of trucks.

  It didn’t take more than a quick glance. “Yep, that’s the monster. Guess I’ll have nightmares over this now that you’ve kindly reminded me what it looks like.”

  He shrugged. “Had to make sure. Have you remembered anything about the incident that might help me?”

  I shook my head. “No, and don’t expect to. I’m trying to block it out. I have overheard a bit of news, though, about a disagreement Rick supposedly had. Allegedly, he disagreed with an African American man in the presence of others.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I thought I might have heard the little Oriental man who lives next door talking about it. Don’t know who the disagreement was with, though.”

  “You interfering in my case?”

  “Me? Heck no. I’m just paying attention.”

  “The hell you are.” He jangled his keys in his pocket.

  I refused to look at him. “I just overheard something that might be, um, you know, important. Wanted to see if it clanged any bells.”

  “I’m hearing bells okay. But they’re the warning kind. Your boyfriend is dead, I don’t have a good suspect list, or a weapon for that matter, and this case is keeping me long hours at the office. That puts me in a mal humor. Muy mal humor.”

  “I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “You know enough to know what I mean. Don’t get in the thick of this investigation, Shannon. You’re already as involved as you need to be with this truck thing. If you go knocking around the wrong doors, you may end up in jail.” He paused, using a harsh gaze to get his point across. “Or worse.”

  I didn’t answer. What could I say? I wanted my videos, and I wouldn’t quit until I had them.

  He noted my silence. “Are you listening?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but you don’t know how tough I am.”