A Slow Ruin

by Pamela Crane

  Through stinging tears I found the car, almost missing the ticket tucked under the windshield wiper. I pulled it out, wondering why on earth I would get ticketed in the parking lot. I swiped away the wetness dampening my eyes, noticing that one edge was torn, as if ripped from a notebook.

  Or a journal.

  “Oliver!”

  He glanced up at me, then returned to his phone call.

  “Oliver! You need to see this!”

  By the tone in my voice, he knew this was serious. Pocketing the phone, he rushed across the pavement, fancy footwork saving him from getting hit by a car backing up.

  “Look—read this.”

  I held out the paper, watched his eyes hop across the bubbly handwritten words like skipping stones:

  I realized today I have to do something drastic. Austin thinks I’m crazy, but in the end he understands why. He grew up with a dysfunctional family too. I guess that’s why he’s willing to help me. Part of me wishes I could talk to Mom about this, but I have no reason whatsoever to believe her word after finding out she had been lying to me practically my entire life. It’s not like there’s anyone I can talk to who hasn’t been a total fraud my whole life. The only way forward is on my own. But I’m afraid. Terrified. This whole thing…what am I supposed to make of it? Would it be safer just to ignore it? That is, if that’s even possible. No, knowing myself, I can’t just ignore it. I have to do something, but at the moment, I’m afraid to do what it takes to know the truth. God, why did I have to see that stupid picture?

  It was from Vera’s journal.

  “Vera was here, Oliver.” My daughter had been here while I was inside the restaurant. One hundred feet away, I was arguing with her daddy while she was placing a note on my car.

  “Unless it’s from the person who took her,” Oliver replied. “A message of some sort.”

  I shook my head. “No, you’re wrong. Why send a message now, six months after she disappeared? It has to be Vera. She’s reaching out, wanting to come home but afraid to.” Yes, that’s what it was, I convinced myself.

  “I don’t know, Felicity…” Oliver wasn’t buying it, but this was more than anything Detective Montgomery had uncovered in the past six months. This was hope.

  “She might still be in the neighborhood, if she’s on foot,” I said. “You go that way.”

  “Felicity, it’s a waste—”

  “Just do it!”

  Shaking his head, Oliver walked toward the other end of the parking lot where it dipped down into a hilly tree line.

  Clutching the paper to my heart, I looked up the vacant street for any sign of life. Nobody, just a homeless man lying in the doorway of a closed bakery. Then I looked the opposite direction…

  A young woman, a petite blonde, walked briskly along the sidewalk, her back to me. The swish of her hair, the confident stride, the way she hunched her shoulders up against the cold. And that purse. Vera had one just like it.

  I took off after her, fast-walking, staying in the shadows, careful not to spook her. She turned her head quickly, too quickly for a good look, and noticeably quickened her pace. If it wasn’t Vera, why was she running from me?

  Please be Vera. I need it to be Vera!

  “Vera! Please stop! I just want to talk to you!”

  The girl glanced around again, broke into a fast trot. I matched her pace. In another few seconds she would round the corner where a throng of people waited at the bus stop, and lose me in the crowd.

  Five feet away. Three. Lunging, I snagged her shoulder and spun her around.

  “What the hell, lady? What you chasing me for, huh?”

  This girl was so not Vera.

  “I’m-I’m sorry, I th—”

  “Weird psycho.” She whipped out her smartphone and began snapping pictures of me. “These are going on my Instagram page.”

  “I don’t think so.” Oliver snatched the phone out of her hand and deleted the photos with a few deft taps, and handed it back. The girl stood there gobsmacked as Oliver grabbed my waist and led me back to the car.

  “You don’t have to explain,” he said, pulling me closer. “I thought it was her too, for half a second. But Vera’s a lot prettier.”

  I cracked a tiny smile. “That’s for sure.”

  We arrived back at the car, adrenaline spent, optimism faded.

  “Okay, so we’re back to square one,” Oliver said. “What do you think this means?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Skimming the torn edge with my fingertip, I wondered if I’d be able to match it to a missing page from the journal to get an idea of when it had been written. I reread it, interpreting every word. A secret. Fraud. Austin. Do something drastic. A picture of some sort. They were all clues to finding her. If I could piece them together just right…

  “She obviously found out about what you did,” Oliver speculated. “Do you think she was planning to out you?”

  “Maybe. But she didn’t.”

  A tiny thought crawled into my brain. Had Vera planned to turn me in until something—or someone—stopped her? But who? Only me, Oliver, my in-laws, and Cody knew about what I had done…and possibly Marin. She had always been a loyal sister to me until I found out she wasn’t, but capable of hurting Vera…? No, she couldn’t have. But then there was Austin Miller. What was his part in all of this? I grabbed Oliver’s arm, tightening my grip as I imagined confronting the boy who hurt my daughter once. Got kicked out of school for it, even. Was destroying our family his way of getting revenge?

  “All I know is Austin Miller hasn’t been honest with us and I’m going to find out what he’s hiding.”

  Chapter 24

  Marin

  I hadn’t been to this house in ages. Now that I was here, I remembered why I had avoided it for so long.

  Five total strangers shared the four-bedroom one-bathroom house on Roslyn Place, last I remembered. A scruffy fifty-something starving artist who made sculptures out of garbage he found while Dumpster diving. A one-armed vet with PTSD living in squalor because apparently his sacrifice and service to our country wasn’t worth the price tag of consistent mental health services. A college dropout girl who slept on the couch and did everyone else’s bidding. A wealthy hipster chick who wore pricey vintage but wanted to “experience life” by slumming it with four other strangers. And the person I came here to see. Though new faces were always coming and going, one consistent body waited for me inside. The one who made promises, promises.

  Heading toward the house, I nervously fingered the delicate By Chari gold chain that rested on my collarbone, a Christmas gift from Debra after she discovered it was one of my favorite Black-owned businesses. I paused at the foot of the porch steps, second-guessing myself, wondering why I was even here.

  Roslyn Place had the distinction of being one of the last remaining streets in the United States comprised entirely of wooden blocks. Installed in 1914, the creosote-soaked blocks were smoother and quieter than cobblestone, and served to muffle the clickety-clack of the horse-drawn carriages prevalent then. I remember reading somewhere that 26,000 blocks were required to cover the 250-foot thoroughfare. Amazingly the wood had held up over a century later, surviving the advent of the automobile in remarkably good condition. I imagined the iceman driving his wagon down the street with kids stealing chunks when he wasn’t looking, and a newsboy in knickers barking headlines on the corner.

  I climbed several steps to the porch landing where Scruffy Artist sat on an Adirondack chair strumming a banjo, the bottom half of a Peeps marshmallow chick sticking out of his mouth, completely unaware of my presence. I knocked on the door. My nerves tingled. They always tingled when I showed up here. Fear of being seen. Fear of getting caught. Fear of the unknown. There were a lot of unknowns every time I came to Roslyn Place, because I only came here for one thing. And that one thing was make-it-or-break-it for me.

  The door swung open.

  “Mare Bear! Get y
our cute little ass in here for a hug!”

  Brad Walters—I mean Brad Spielberg, as he insisted on calling himself in honor of his idol, the legendary director-producer-screenwriter—pulled me into his arms. At five-foot-two and a buck ten, he looked more hobbit than man. I imagined slipping him into my pocket for safekeeping, my little personal muse. When I lacked the courage to get a job done, the aspiring scenarist was there to remind me of the end goal. This time: murder.

  I stepped into the living room where two people I’d never seen before were smoking dope while watching ESPN, casually arguing over player stats. I followed Brad up two flights of narrow, creaky stairs, my eyes fixed on the back of his red hair curling at the nape of his neck.

  His bedroom—if you considered an air mattress on the floor a bed—took up the entire third-floor attic. A single window framed a flotilla of clouds, pink as wads of cotton candy in the westering sun. A guttering candle’s citrusy scent fought bravely against the lingering stink of stale sweat and week-old pizza boxes and dirty clothes strewn about the floor. An episode from the Asylum season of American Horror Story—Brad was obsessive about that deliciously disturbing show—streamed on a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. In another nod to his penchant for the macabre, he had repurposed an antique coffin—God knows where he got it—as a combination dining table/computer table/everything table. His computer sat on it, along with a lamp and a dragon-shaped ashtray overflowing with marijuana roaches.

  “Still got the grow room in the cellar?” I asked, sitting in a cowhide chair that smelled like it had just come from a pasture.

  “Shhh! I don’t want one of those lowlifes to snitch on me to the landlord. Yeah, still got it. Why, you need some weed again? I got a good crop of Purple Kush coming in.”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Suit yourself. Now, about the screenplay. You’re not going to leave me hanging again, right?” He raised a red eyebrow.

  “No, I promise I’m for real this time.”

  “Great! Alright, we’ve got a murder to plot.” He slipped into a rolling office chair behind the coffin desk and moved his mouse around to find the cursor. “So what made you decide to finally help me finish this screenplay, Mare Bear? Because I thought you had given up on the Hollywood aspirations.”

  “I had, but I can’t take my boss anymore.”

  Brad groaned. “That guy’s still alive?”

  “Hopefully not for long. I told him off pretty good the other day. I had just had it. I either need to quit—which I can’t afford to do, and he knows it—or kill him. But I need a backup plan first, and this is it. This screenplay is my ticket to freedom.”

  Brad swiveled his chair to face me with a deadpan expression. “You want me to take out your boss for you?”

  If I hadn’t known Brad since my theatre days, I would have believed him capable. A tiny nerd-man who plots murders for a living and sleeps on a blow-up mattress in an attic of a house full of assorted misfits, druggies, and ne’er-do-wells wasn’t exactly the picture of good mental health. Considering he hadn’t sold a screenplay yet, I often wondered where his income came from. Guess selling weed was pretty lucrative. The little weirdo was probably a grave robber on the side.

  “I would do it myself if I wouldn’t get caught. But he’s so mean he’d probably haunt me from beyond the grave.”

  Brad rotated back to his computer. “You know it’s going to be an uphill battle to sell this, right?”

  “I know, but Cody mentioned something that I’ve been considering and wanted to discuss with you. I’m thinking about starting my own production company. Instead of proposing this as a movie, how about producing it as a play and starting our own theatre company together? Will you help me?”

  Brad considered it for a long moment, bare foot tapping on a pair of boxers strewn under the desk. Ew, as Vera would say.

  “You know what—why not? Let’s do it! Let’s make a killing killing.”

  I chuckled at his terrible play on words. “So I finally have an idea for how to murder the husband and get away with it.” I envisioned Mortimer Randolph slicing his apple, carelessly dropping the peels for me to pick up. “And it involves a paring knife.”

  “You’ve piqued my attention.”

  As I gathered my ideas in my mouth, ready to tell my new partner all the ways I had imagined killing my boss, my cell phone rang. Speak of the devil, it was Mortimer’s number. If I didn’t need the Pretty Woman gig so badly, I would have ignored him. But two grand could be enough to get my new business venture started. I accepted the call.

  “Miss Portman”—Mortimer sounded agitated and out of breath—“I need you to come down here right away.”

  I wondered why he would call his assistant rather than an ambulance. If I kept the old coot on the line long enough, maybe he’d die before help arrived. “What’s the emergency?” I answered reluctantly, feigning concern.

  “I can’t find my lucky cufflinks.”

  All I could think as I agreed to rush over there right away was jabbing those lucky cufflinks into his two beady eyeballs.

  **

  The sun had sunk into the horizon, and the moon grinned high above me by the time I got home. I didn’t want to face Cody right now, as we hadn’t yet made up after our “disagreement”—a fight would have drawn blood—and I didn’t feel like playing the dutifully apologetic wife. This was on him to fix. He was the cheater, not me.

  I softly clicked the car door shut and headed down the brick road that led into the heart of Wilkinsburg, each red block a reminder of the hands worn raw a hundred years ago. Massive Victorian homes that once upon a time belonged to elite families had been transformed into triplex apartments where kids crowded the postage-stamp yards. I walked until I reached the newly constructed Abraham Lincoln statue, a dedicated effort by a passionate local historian to commemorate the Lincoln Highway that brought life to this small community a century ago. With over 3,000 miles of transcontinental road, one could potentially drive from New York City all the way to San Francisco. Realizing I had been walking for over an hour, I turned back home, hopping over jagged cracks where maple tree roots had effortlessly lifted the sidewalk.

  Three houses down from my own I pulled out my cell phone from my back pocket. Two houses away I dialed and hoped—despite knowing that hope only led to disappointment—that someone would pick up. By the time I reached my next-door neighbor I got dropped into voicemail. Not a personalized voicemail, but the generic default one:

  “The person you have called is not available right now. Please leave a message at the tone.”

  I hesitated before speaking. “Please call me back. I need to know if Vera is with you, if she’s okay. Her family is in a panic looking for her, and the cops are involved.” Talking while walking, I lowered my voice while I ambled up the driveway. The windows were two bright eyes against the inky abyss of night. “Please, I need to speak with you. Before it’s too late.”

  I inhaled, uncertain what else to say, then whispered, “If you care at all what happens to you—to us—call me back.” Then I hung up.

  Upon passing my car, I realized I had left my purse on the passenger seat. I grabbed it and swung it over my shoulder, heading toward the walkway that passed under a bare crab apple tree limb. I’d need to prune it soon.

  My cell phone rang as I was just about to step up onto my front stoop. It was Karen Delacroix, Mortimer’s legal secretary. I had no idea why she’d be calling at this time of night, but I answered immediately.

  “Hey, Karen. What’s up?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “Huh? No, why?”

  “Good, then you’re in the perfect position to jump for joy. Get this, sister: Maleficent Morty’s dead.”

  I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her right. “Did you say…dead?”

  “As the proverbial doornail. I’m at the mansion. Morty and I had a row over the phone. What else is new, right? So I came over to try to pa
tch things up. When I got here the paramedics were getting ready to haul him away. Apparently the old bastard had a heart attack.”

  I was still in a state of shock but managed to ask, “How did the paramedics know to come?”

  “Somebody called 9-1-1. They wouldn’t say who. But that’s unimportant. Now you really will want to sit down.”

  “Are you kidding, Karen?”

  Karen giggled. “No. Sit, Mare.”

  I sat on the curb. “Okay, shoot.”

  “Okay. I shouldn’t be telling you this, it’s not my place—and remember, you didn’t hear it from me—but the old boy left you everything. The whole kit and kaboodle.”

  I was glad I was sitting down, or else I might have fallen into the path of a speeding car.

  “You’re not shitting me, are you, Karen?”

  “No way. I’m his legal secretary, right? I have access to all his personal legal papers, including but not limited to his advance directive and his last will and testament. There’s no mistake, Marin Portman. You have just won the lottery.”

  I let the news wash over me. It made no sense, but Karen wouldn’t lie to me.

  “But why? Mortimer treated me like shit.”

  “Simple. He told me how you stood up to him. He admired that. I think you actually got to him, Mare. Morty may have been a sonofabitch, but he was old school. Beneath that racist and sexist exterior there was a chivalrous old fart chomping at the bit to get out. He had no family, no friends. He realized he only had a few good years left, if that. His naming you the beneficiary of his estate was his last chance to actually do something worthwhile in his miserable, misbegotten life. Not to mention, it was a great way to piss off his partners. They never saw eye to eye, you know.”

  It still seemed unreal to me. “Are you sure about all this?”

  “Absolutely. Listen to this, straight from the horse’s mouth. His will is extremely detailed and complicated, as you can expect, but it contains this simple but eloquent remark: To Marin Portman, my personal assistant whom I should have treated with more respect and dignity, I leave everything in my estate. I have complete faith she will use my assets for greater good than I ever did. There’s a ton more legalese, but that’s the gist of it. You are one rich bitch now, Mare.”