Puzzling Ink

by Becky Clark

  She smiled, pocketed her phone, and stepped from the restroom. She hadn’t even heard them leave. Before meeting up with Loma at the doughnut shop, though, she wanted to ask the attorney if she heard correctly and that Margosha wasn’t Emmett’s beneficiary, and if he didn’t have any of Emmett’s documents, how he would know that. She must have missed something in the snippets of conversation she heard. Maybe she could also get the new attorney’s information. She hadn’t heard Loma ask for that.

  Quinn felt close to the truth; just a bit more information to figure out Margosha’s scheme. Directly in front of her was his office door, opening halfway into the hallway. She stood awkwardly behind it. As she tried to decide whether to push it closed while coming around in front of it, or simply knock on it while standing behind it, he got a phone call. Quinn waited for him to finish while she loitered in the hallway, hidden behind the door, still not sure how a normal person would make their presence known.

  She peeked into his office through the crack in the door. She saw his profile and a suitcase sitting on the floor next to his desk. His desktop was empty except for a wooden in/out tray, his desk phone, something she assumed was his nameplate, and a stapler. Everything was neatly arranged with straight edges and square corners, except for the stapler. It was at a haphazard angle that Quinn desperately wanted to align with the edge of the desk.

  As she tried to push this out of her mind, replacing it with figuring out Margosha’s plot, the attorney’s voice washed over her. There was something familiar about it.

  Before she fully processed the voice, she heard him say, “Wrong,” and then after a pause, “Wrong again.”

  The memory slammed into her. He was the murder mystery guy! The same obnoxious phrase he had used in the diner that night with Emmett.

  “Mushrooms,” she whispered, then clamped a hand over her mouth. That’s why this neighborhood felt so familiar. It was on that news video she watched on the Colorado Mycological Society website.

  She had to get out of there, but didn’t dare pass his office. She turned quietly to go back to the end of the hallway near the restroom, and then through the kitchen, and out past Katrina’s desk.

  Adrenaline coursed through her body and her hands began to tingle. Her chest felt tight, only allowing her shallow breaths. She grabbed for the table with the lamp, both to steady herself and to make sure she didn’t knock it over. The lamp wobbled, but Quinn steadied it. Gripping the table with both hands, she leaned over and said a couple of baba ghanoushes. It didn’t do anything to calm her, so she released her grip on the table and sidled around it. She hurried from the dim hallway through the archway into the kitchen, sneaking a glance behind her to check for Patterson. It seemed like it had been a lifetime since she’d heard that wrong again, but knew it had only been a couple of moments.

  While her head was turned she ran into a tall trash can and sent it sprawling and skittering across the kitchen. She didn’t wait to see if Patterson heard, because there was no way he hadn’t. She scrambled through the kitchen and had almost made it to Katrina’s desk when she saw him between her and the front door.

  “You,” he said. “I know you.” His blank look was replaced with one of recognition. “The Chestnut Diner.”

  Quinn didn’t stick around to have a conversation about the diner. She feinted left but ran right.

  He dove for Katrina’s desk.

  Quinn raced for the door. As she reached for the knob, she heard him slam his hand on Katrina’s desk, then a click. The knob didn’t budge under her grip. She turned it the opposite way. Nothing. She rattled it hard and banged it against the jamb.

  He had remote locks to the front door.

  Patterson came toward her. She ran back into the kitchen. Old houses had kitchen doors leading outside, Quinn knew, and she scanned the area. She almost didn’t see it on the opposite side from the archway because it was wallpapered in such a way as to camouflage it. She lunged for it, but not before she heard the click of its lock too.

  She scrambled through the kitchen and found herself near the restroom, searching for another way out. She never saw the door, but heard the click. She turned and found herself face-to-face with Patterson, who gripped her upper arm and steered her back to his office. He pushed her into an armless leather chair in the corner.

  “Don’t move,” he growled.

  Quinn knew Patterson’s secretary would be back any minute; she’d said she only had a couple of errands to run. Quinn just needed to stall until then. But, as if reading her mind, Patterson stood in the doorway and pulled out his phone. “Katrina? Hey, I’ve had a change of plans and won’t be needing you to pick up groceries for my house sitter.” He listened for a bit. “That’s okay, just take them home with you. My treat.” He smiled. “Everyone loves some Ben and Jerry’s. Enjoy! And I’ll let you know when I know my plans. No need to come in before Tuesday, for sure.”

  Quinn had said a thousand baba ghanoushes by the time they ended their conversation.

  She was locked in here alone with him. Even though she’d had the wrong killer pegged, at least she’d told Rico where she was going and why. But he said he was busy. He wasn’t going to miss her any time soon, or even realize she was still here. Loma was waiting for her at the doughnut shop. She’d come look for her if she never showed up. Quinn groaned inwardly. What would she make of the “shh” smiley face she’d texted? Would Loma understand it meant that Quinn wouldn’t tell anyone if they had a couple of doughnut holes? Why in the world didn’t she just say “I’ll meet you in five minutes,” like a normal person?

  All of this shot through Quinn’s brain in a nanosecond.

  Patterson stared at her from the doorway of his office. “You’re that waitress. What’s your name?”

  What’s my name, what’s my name? “Quinn.”

  “Well, Quinn, it seems like you and I have a bit of a problem.” He tilted his head at her. She recognized the mole that looked like a dimple on his right cheek. He was the man wearing the winter cap at the diner on the day of the festival, and the cater-waiter with the dimple who gave Emmett’s plate with the poisoned mushrooms to Donnie to serve.

  “No, we don’t. We don’t have any problem at all. It’s just been some…misunderstanding.”

  “Why were you skulking in my office?”

  “I wasn’t skulking. I just had to…use your restroom. But you got a call before I could ask. I was just waiting until you got off the phone.”

  “How’d you get in here?”

  “I came with Loma and Margosha.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I waited in the reception area.”

  “Why didn’t you leave with them?”

  “I didn’t know they left. I was in the restroom. I had some questions I wanted to ask you, but you got a call, so I waited.”

  “I thought you said you were waiting to ask me to use the restroom? Which is it?” Patterson leaned against his desk after sliding his nameplate aside. It read Samuel Patterson. Sam the headhunter had used the same obnoxious phrase. Patterson was Sam the headhunter, the murder mystery guy, and Emmett’s ex-attorney.

  “What questions did you have?” he asked calmly.

  Why did you freakin’ kill Emmett Dubois and frame Jake for it? “Oh, they’re not important anymore.” Quinn tried to keep from panicking, tried to match his calmness.

  He studied her. “Did I hear you say mushrooms earlier? Who were you talking to?”

  “Nobody. Myself.” Quinn felt a drip of sweat run straight down her spine. She could have kicked herself. If ever there was a time for a well-placed lie, like she was always trying to teach Rico, it was now. “Actually, that’s a lie. I was talking to Rico Lopez of the Chestnut Station Police Department. He should be here any minute.”

  Patterson’s eyes got wide with fear and Quinn readied herself to be released. “Let me unlock th
e door for him.” He hovered his hand over a button on the corner of his desk that looked like a doorbell. Instead of pressing it, he snapped his fingers instead. “Oh, I just remembered.” His face morphed from mock fear to sneering contempt. “Rico Lopez of the Chestnut Station Police Department won’t be coming for you. You and I both know that.”

  Quinn saw her vision dance with tiny blobs, then close in from the periphery as she began hyperventilating again. She had to put her head between her knees to keep from fainting. As her vision cleared and the baba ghanoushes faded to whispers in her brain, she saw Patterson’s shoes right in front of her. She slowly raised her head until she looked him in the eye.

  If she was going to die, she was going to die with answers. “What did you gain from killing Emmett?”

  “That idiot ruined a good thing by feuding with Jake. He ran Jake off and the restaurants were never the same. He lost our rating, he lost every penny I invested. I had to resurrect this practice and chase ambulances just to survive.”

  That explains why this place looks so shabby, she thought.

  “If Emmett did all that, why frame Jake? He must have lost everything too.”

  A joyless laugh left his mouth. “Aside from the obvious scapegoating, have you ever ruined someone’s life?”

  “Probably, but not on purpose.”

  He stared at her. “You’re funny,” he said, not laughing. “Jake landed on his feet. It was too tempting not to knock him down a peg or two. He loves that awful diner, but when I heard he wanted to get back into gourmet cooking, the plan practically wrote itself.”

  “The plan where you pretend to be a headhunter and get Jake that job at the fundraiser so you could slip in those poisonous mushrooms? You must be the anonymous tipper too.”

  “You’re pretty smart, for a girl.” He laughed when he saw Quinn’s face contort. She was now equal parts terror and outrage. “I knew I should have bugged out of town the day you called me. I meant to get rid of that phone number to Colorado Premium Employment. How’d you get it, anyway?”

  “Jake’s call history.”

  “Ah. Well, this is all very Murder, She Wrote, but—”

  “Why the stupid two-hundred-dollar amount in that blackmail note?” Quinn knew she had to keep him talking. She always thought it was a bit over-the-top when crooks spilled all their secrets in TV shows and books, but apparently that was what they really did.

  “Stupid? Genius, you mean. It was just a token amount I knew he could pay. Plus, I knew deep down Jake had a soft spot for Emmett and if he thought Emmett was that hard up for cash, he’d want to give it to him.”

  Exactly what Jake had said.

  “You’re Emmett’s silent partner, not Margosha.”

  Another one-syllable laugh shot out of Patterson. “Margosha may have an accent, but she’s hardly silent.”

  That was the same thing Jake said about Loma. What was it about men trying to take away women’s voices? A funny feeling dredged up from Quinn’s toes. She didn’t recognize it until it hit her belly.

  Fury. She was feeling fury.

  It allowed her to leap to her feet and surprise Patterson with a knee to the groin. He doubled over. Much of her physical training for the police academy kicked in. Thank goodness for Rico’s help to learn some of the moves before she applied. She used her knee again and clocked him in the forehead, sending him reeling backward where he hit the wall with a thud and a loud “Ooof.”

  Quinn scrambled for the buzzer on his desk to unlock the door, but Patterson got there first. He hit her chest with his forearm and knocked the wind out of her. She stood gaping, trying to get breath into nonworking lungs. He came around the desk toward her. With wild eyes, she looked for anything to use as a weapon. She saw it, memorized its location, then locked eyes on Patterson.

  At the same time he lunged for her, she lunged for the stapler. As she raised it over her head to strike him with it, it flopped open. When it connected with his temple, she heard him yowl and raise his hand to his face.

  “Did you just—staple me?” he bellowed before charging at her.

  She scurried away from him, but he kept coming, the staple in the side of his face catching glints of light.

  Muscle memory kicked in. When he got close enough, she punched him hard, right in the throat. He crumpled to the ground.

  Quinn breathed deeply; huge, convulsive gulps of air. As she tried to control her breathing, she glanced around for something to tie him up with. Her eyes landed on the suitcase on the floor next to his desk, wrapped with a canvas strap.

  She removed it and then dropped it on the floor next to the armless chair she’d been sitting in earlier. Scooping Patterson under his arms, Quinn tried to lift and carry him over to the chair. When that didn’t work, she let go of him and he thudded to the floor again.

  Quinn brought the chair and the strap to Patterson. Bracing herself, she heaved and wrangled him into a seated position in the chair. She tightened the strap around his arms and torso, pinning him to the chair. She didn’t like that his feet were free. She unzipped his suitcase, rummaging around until she came up with two neckties. She lashed his ankles to the chair legs.

  Finally, she slammed her hand on the buzzer to unlock the front door, and raced from the office.

  She and Loma crashed into each other in the hallway, both yelling at once. Quinn’s words turned to sobs and Loma held her tight, eventually easing her into Katrina’s chair.

  “I have to call Rico,” Quinn said, fumbling for her phone.

  “I already did. He’s on his way. You just sit.” Loma tiptoed to Patterson’s office and Quinn heard her squeal, “Giiiiirl? You’re like a ninja!”

  “How did you know I was here?” Quinn called to her.

  “You weren’t at the doughnut shop and your car was still there. Where else would you be?”

  Quinn hadn’t seen Margosha follow Loma in and was surprised when she tenderly knelt next to her and placed a cool palm on Quinn’s cheek. “He has hurt you, yes?”

  “I’m okay.” Quinn stared at Margosha. “You didn’t have anything to do with any of this?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then why wouldn’t you talk to me? Why’d you call the cops on me?”

  Margosha stood and leaned against the desk, eyes flashing. “Rico promise no tellink! I say no financial claim on Emmett, just want give him nice funeral. But he tell you about green card marriage.”

  “He never said a word to me about that.” That’s why Rico didn’t want to talk to me about Margosha. He’d made a promise to her and if he and I talked about her too much, I might have asked a question he’d have to answer. “But you had a big divorce party. It didn’t sound like a secret.”

  “Secret from ICE and reporters. Not secret from friends.”

  “You thought I was a reporter? I’m not.”

  Margosha nodded, clearly relieved. “Plus, you say friend of Jake’s, but Jake in jail so I think guilty. Why reporter want talk to me? Easier no talk.”

  Maybe for you, Quinn thought.

  Loma came back out to the reception area, babbling about how Patterson was still out cold. “What did you do to him, Furiosa?”

  Before Quinn could tell her, four uniformed officers from Denver PD stepped into the open door of the law office, weapons drawn. “Hands up.”

  All three women raised their arms immediately. Two officers passed through and headed down the hallway. The other two stayed and frisked them.

  “Quinn Carr.”

  “Yes sir?” Quinn didn’t move a muscle.

  “So we meet again.”

  Quinn glanced at the officer’s name badge and smiled. “Officer Childers. I’m very happy you’re here.”

  One of the other officers returned to say there was a man tied up in the office, just coming back into consciousness.

 
“Who was responsible for that?” Officer Childers asked.

  “Mad Max–wannabe there.” Loma tipped her chin in Quinn’s direction.

  “You did a good job. You can lower your hands.”

  The officers holstered their guns.

  Officer Childers bounced his glance between Quinn and Margosha. “You two friends now? You want to tell me what happened here?”

  Margosha kept quiet, but Quinn started in on the story, stopping and twisting back when none of it made sense. Finally she said, “Remember how my boss was in jail? That man I tied up in there is the real murderer. He killed Emmett Dubois.”

  Officer Childers had a lot of questions. As the women were filling in details, Rico burst in. He went straight for Quinn and squeezed her tight. When he was sure she was okay, he and Officer Childers went into the office where Patterson was tied up.

  Before they got too far, Quinn said, “Rico, I think you’ll find Emmett’s will or life insurance papers or something in a big envelope in Patterson’s suitcase.”

  When all the police were in Patterson’s office and the women were left alone in the reception area, Loma asked. “What did the ‘shh’ emoji mean? I didn’t know if we were getting doughnuts or you were judging me.”

  “I have never wanted to get doughnuts with someone more than I do right now.” Quinn flung one arm around Loma’s shoulder and sagged against her, trusting Loma to support her.

  She did.

  Chapter 16

  At the Chestnut Diner the next day, decorated by Quinn and Loma in a welcome-back motif, Georgeanne called from the kitchen, “Can I get a little help back here?”

  Jake jumped up, but Quinn waved him back down. “I’ll go. You relax. This is your last vacation day. Tomorrow you’re back at work and I’m going to sit around.”

  “I wasn’t sitting around on purpose, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Quinn disappeared into the kitchen. “What do you need, Mom?”

  “Can you take these out there for me?”