The Murder Next Door

by Ivy Thorne

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Yes. I only just nodded off,” he replied. He yawned and then sighed. “I suppose I should explain myself for running off last night.”

  “At least you didn’t leave behind your shoe,” Marla joked. She waited for Dane’s laughter but was disappointed when it didn’t come.

  “Listen, I like you,” he stated seriously. “But, you are still a suspect in this case. Though currently, it doesn’t seem as though you’re a serious one. Still, we have to be careful. If we were seen together by the wrong person, it could jeopardize both of our careers. As much as I enjoyed kissing you, I didn’t want to be caught. We have to keep our relationship low-key. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Marla responded, frustrated.

  If she wasn’t a murder suspect, Dane could be in her bed giving her a massage right now. Marla flexed her shoulder blades. She could use a massage. At the very least now she knew Dane was attracted to her.

  The faster I find Reggie’s killer, the faster I get to have Dane, Marla reasoned.

  “I never understood why Cinderella wore glass slippers,” Dane remarked. He was, of course, saying this to acknowledge the joke Marla had made about him not leaving behind a shoe. “Glass would be such an uncomfortable material to wear on your feet,” he continued. “I mean, it has no flexibility and it most certainly would chip and break. I think Cinderella left that slipper behind on purpose. She’d probably intended to shed them both. I certainly wouldn’t want to be dancing all night in glass shoes.”

  Marla giggled. Leave it to a detective to take note of such a minuscule detail in a classic fairy tale. She had to hand it to him, though, glass was an impractical choice for footwear.

  “Are you aware someone leaked information about the case to a journalist?” Marla said. “I was named as a suspect in the Wallsberg Post.”

  She heard Dane huff in a flustered sort of way. “Yeah, I meant to ask you whether you’d seen that,” he said. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Marla.”

  “My boss has me on temporary leave from work right now. He doesn’t want anyone from Reggie’s family or friends group recognizing me as the person who may have killed him. It wouldn’t exactly be reassuring to go to the funeral service of someone who was murdered only to see the person listed as a suspect working at the funeral home,” she explained.

  “Oh, God…” Dane sounded stressed and apologetic. “I can’t help but feel like I’m partially to blame for your situation.”

  “There’s only one person I blame for my predicament, and it’s not you,” Marla informed him.

  “Is it that the guy from work?”

  “Yeah. He’s a creep. I have reason to believe he fed information to a reporter to get me fired.”

  The more Marla talked with Dane, the more she wanted to get involved in the investigation. She’d already spoken to Sommer and discovered Reggie’s inappropriate behavior. Perhaps this was a clue she could use to help her solve the case. Now that she had all the time in the world, she may as well take matters into her own hands.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know,” Dane offered. “I could see about contacting a reporter to have your name cleared.”

  “No. You don’t want to risk making it seem as though you were the leak,” Marla said.

  “Thank God! The officers are already on my ass about that. They always suspect the newbies when it comes to spilling confidential information.”

  “Do you have any other suspects besides me?” she asked.

  Dane shared with Marla the direction in which the case was going. Currently, the detectives had ascertained that whoever killed Reggie was likely familiar with Slasher Saul’s case, as he was murdered in the same way. They were shifting their focus toward people who’d been involved with Saul − friends, family, ex-lovers − to see if any of them also had a connection with Reggie. Maybe Reggie had done something to hurt Saul in the past. The town of Wallsberg was a tight-knit community, so someone might have murdered Reggie to seek vengeance for Saul.

  When Marla, at last, ended her conversation with Dane, her head was swimming with information. The next morning she would collect her thoughts and open up an investigation of her own.

  She was going to find the copy-cat killer and ensure that they were put away so she could get back to being a better employee than Speckleman, and hopefully get her ass laid with Dane.

  The next morning, Marla sat at her table with a notebook, pen, and a mug of coffee. As she drank her way through the pot, she made a list of potential suspects. If the police were looking into people who once knew Saul, then the fist person they’d want to contact would be his ex-girlfriend. Marla remembered from the extensive reading she’d done about the Slasher Saul case that the girlfriend’s name was Jessica Morris. She’d also lived next to Marla for a time, though Marla never had interacted with her, nor known her name until she’d read it during her research.

  Contacting Jessica out of the blue after ten years terrified Marla. The woman’s ex-boyfriend had violently murdered the man she’d loved. Or, at least, that’s what the news story read. Jessica might have had something to do with Jared’s murder. Perhaps she’d had something to do with Reggie’s murder. The only way Marla would find out was if she talked to Jessica.

  Oh, God, I don’t want to talk to that woman, Marla thought, anxiously.

  She felt her heartrate increase as she imagined herself bumbling to Jessica. Coffee consumption did nothing to improve her nerves. Marla was awkward at the best of times. The notion of speaking to someone who’d endured that level of trauma was beyond uncomfortable. What if Marla let on like she suspected Jessica? She would come across as disrespectful.

  There’s got to be another person I could speak to first, Marla reasoned.

  The phone number of Sommer’s boyfriend surfaced in Marla’s memory. She sighed as she picked up her phone. It didn’t seem likely that Sommer’s boyfriend had killed Reggie. According to Sommer, he hadn’t even been in town. But, technically, he did have a motive. Reggie had been a creep to his girlfriend. As her man, it was his job to protect her.

  Marla dialed the number. God, this is going to be an awkward conversation, she thought as she listened to the phone ring.

  “Hello?” a young man’s voice answered.

  “Hi,” Marla greeted him. “Are you the guy Sommer is dating?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m Sam. Who the hell are you?”

  Marla pinched the bridge of her nose. She could feel the start of a headache emerging behind her eyes. She’d only just said hello and this Sam guy already had his guard up. Perhaps he was the sort of person who would go to extreme lengths to protect his girlfriend.

  “I’m Marla. I’m a friend of Sommer’s. She gave me your number,” Marla explained. “I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened to Reggie?”

  “Yeah. The dude was murdered. That’s messed up.”

  Marla updated Sam on the situation, informing him about the wrongful accusation, as well as the conversation she’d had with Sommer.

  “Screw the cops!” Sam blurted out. “I don’t trust those blue-blooded monsters. They’re always getting crap wrong.”

  “Right… well, I’m trying to find out what happened to Reggie to clear my name and was hoping you might have some insight. Sommer told me you lived in his house with her for a while.”

  Sam confirmed that he did rent from Reggie for some time, but that he’d had zero contact with him.

  “I helped Sommer pay her rent. We stayed in the same room. It was kind of tight, but whatever. I don’t know why I wasn’t allowed to rent that other room. That Ashley girl was never even there,” he said.

  This information intrigued Marla. Was there a suspicious reason why Ashley never had been around, or had she been frequently absent because she’d always been working and attending classes?

  Sam continued, “I think that Reggie dude was scared of me. Me and that other guy who rented the place before us.�
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  “Other guy?”

  It was then that Marla had a realization: The man Marla had sublet to had lived as Reggie’s tenant before Sommer and Sam. His name was Peter. Surely he could be a suspect, or, at the very least, be able to provide some information that could explain why Reggie was murdered.

  “Yeah, I forget what his name was. When he was showing us the place, Reggie stayed out of his way. It seemed like there was some kind of tension between them.”

  “Was this man’s name Peter?” Marla asked. She had to be sure it was him.

  “Yeah. That was it.”

  The other thing Marla needed to be sure of was Sam’s innocence. For all she knew, Sam could be trying to throw her off by implicating Peter.

  “Sommer told me you moved out to go to college,” Marla said.

  “Yeah, I did. I found a place in the city close to the school I’m enrolled in for September,” he explained. “I got a job here. I miss Sommer like crazy. I’m not gonna lie, when she told me about Reggie returning her panties, that got me pissed. I wanted to punch the creep in the face, but she told me not to, so I didn’t.”

  So far, everything Sommer had told Marla about her boyfriend had been correct. Sam even corroborated her story about being in a bar the night of Reggie’s murder.

  “I know you probably think I killed that dude,” Sam said. “That’s cool, I get it. You can call this guy named Pierce. He’s a buddy of mine who works as a bartender at the bar I was at. I’ll give you whatever contacts you want. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  Marla didn’t doubt him. Wallsberg was quite a distance to travel from the city. She could understand Sam wanting to punch Reggie for his inappropriate behavior toward Sommer, but it didn’t seem realistic for him to go to the extent of taking the trip to do it. Still, it was important to be thorough.

  After ending her talk with Sam, Marla spent the remainder of her morning following up the alibis he’d given her. They all checked out. Sam was innocent. Next on her list was Peter.

  Marla’s only hope of tracking down Peter was to call him. His number still sat within the file of phone numbers inside her head. The two of them had conversed briefly over the phone when Marla had been in search of a subtenant. Again, the thought of phoning someone she’d barely known after years did not appeal to her. But, she preferred that option over presenting herself before Jessica.

  Again, Marla picked up her phone. She put it back down. Eyes tearing, she stared intensely at her phone − almost as if she expected to be able to call Peter using telekinesis. Somehow it was harder to call someone she’d had a brief encounter with than it was to call a stranger.

  Come on, Marla, you just called three random people, she reminded herself. Suck it up and call the guy!

  At last, the willpower came over her. Before she could think too hard about what she was doing, Marla grabbed her phone and punched in Peter’s number. The phone rang.

  Maybe he has a different number now.

  As lame as it was to hope Peter wouldn’t respond, the discomfort was real. The longer the phone rang, the more Marla chewed at her nails. She only stopped when she got a taste of iron from the blood that started to leak from her mangled cuticle.

  “Hello?”

  Shit! Holy shit! Oh my God!

  “Hi, is this Peter?” Marla said, feigning composure.

  “Uh, yeah. Who’s this?”

  “I’m Marla. I subleased a room for you a few years back.”

  There was silence on Peter’s end. It was a brief period of unresponsiveness. Even so, Marla managed to make it feel like an eternity of awkward doom.

  “Oh, yeah. I remember,” Peter eventually said. “Is there a reason you’re calling me?”

  “Yes. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the guy who was your landlord, Reggie, was murdered.”

  “No way. Is this a prank?”

  “No!” Marla blurted. “I wouldn’t joke about that.”

  The moment those words left Marla’s mouth she realized they weren’t true. She made dark jokes all the time. Why she decided to tell Peter this, however, was beyond her.

  “That’s not true,” Marla corrected herself, “I have a morbid sense of humor. But I’m not joking this time!”

  Peter chuckled, uneasily. “Uh… okay.”

  Crap! He thinks I’m crazy!

  Marla took a deep breath before continuing. She had to sound like a reasonable human being and not some hysterical chick having a mental breakdown, though that was essentially how she felt.

  “Listen, Reggie was murdered. His neck was slit. You can look it up. There’s a newspaper article. It doesn’t exactly paint me in a favorable light, but it’s there,” she said.

  “Damn!” Peter exclaimed suddenly. “I just searched for his death online. You’re right. Sorry, I had no idea. I’ve been so busy with summer classes I haven’t been paying attention to the news.” He paused. “As horrible as this is, it still doesn’t explain why you’re calling me.”

  Marla went on to explain her situation. She told Peter the police’s theory about a Slasher Saul copy-cat killer.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. The cops think you’re a murderer?” Peter said. “That’s just typical. Cops always are getting it wrong. I swear sometimes they pick someone and make them look guilty just to close the case and get a paycheck. It’s disgusting. How can I help?”

  Peter’s response both surprised and pleased Marla. It was clear he wasn’t fond of the police. Was this because he was a criminal, the sort of person who would kill another man, or because he’d been treated unfairly by police in the past?

  “I’m trying to prove my innocence,” Marla stated. “Would you be available to talk? I’m just looking for information on Reggie to try figuring out why he was killed and by whom. Anything you can tell me would help.”

  Peter agreed to speak with Marla. He told her he was enrolled in some classes at the college on the outskirts of the town.

  “I’ve got a two-hour break between my afternoon classes,” he said. “You can meet me in the cafeteria around one o’clock.”

  Chapter 13

  Although Marla had lived in Wallsberg for quite some time, she’d never been inside Wallsberg Community College. She’d driven by it before and, by the looks of the building, it wasn’t a big campus. Ashley had attended the college as well. Perhaps Peter had bumped into her a few times.

  When Marla arrived at the campus, she discovered that her initial impression of it being small was wrong. The building’s size was deceiving. On the outside, it appeared to be insignificant, but Marla found that the interior stretched back farther than she’d thought. For this reason, locating the cafeteria proved to be a chore. To save herself time, Marla stopped a student to ask for directions. Talking to strangers was always uncomfortable for her, but it was sometimes necessary.

  The cafeteria was like an auditorium. It was a vast space filled with various food vendors and long narrow tables. Marla walked in with the realization that she had no idea what Peter looked like. Because she’d lived a fair distance from Wallsberg when she’d moved out of Reggie’s place, she’d never met Peter in person. She’d only spoken to him on the phone.

  Marla texted Peter to tell him she had arrived in the cafeteria. She asked him where he was and what he was wearing so she could identify him. He swiftly responded to inform her he was wearing a yellow T-shirt and black shorts and sitting at the table closest to the ramen vendor.