by Erin Huss
Kevin placed his hands on my cheeks and maneuvered my attention upward to the billboard across the street from the hospital.
"Oh…bleep!"
CHAPTER TWENTY
—Everyone claims to have an attorney.
"Mother…freakin'…son of a bleeper…" I pumped the gas three times and turned the key. My car started with a sputter and a splat, and we were off.
"What are you saying, Momma?" Lilly asked from her car seat.
I flipped on the blinker and merged onto the freeway. "Nothing. I'm upset right now."
"Who are you mad at?"
"Humanity?"
"What's hum-an-nan-nin-ity?"
"A species incapable of making good decisions."
"What's species mean?"
"I'll explain it to you when you're older." I weaved through traffic, took the next exit, and used side streets to get home. "Flipping…stupid…pee-brained…"
I took a sharp right onto our street and pushed the gate opener stuck to my visor. My right leg bounced, shaking the entire car. Kevin was right. I was flipping out.
I sailed over a speed bump and screeched into my parking spot. In the maintenance garage, Mr. Nguyen looked up from behind the air-conditioning unit he was working on, but I didn't say anything. Not even a hello. I was too upset.
With Lilly on my hip, I marched to the third courtyard and up to the Nguyen's apartment. The door was unlocked, and I let myself in. Mrs. Nguyen sat behind her sewing machine at the kitchen table, hemming a pair of dress pants. I knew without looking there was a pot of pho simmering in the kitchen. Mrs. Nguyen peered at me over the glasses resting on the tip of her nose. "You look terrible."
Mrs. Nguyen wasn't a beat-around-the-bush kind of woman.
"She's mad at hum-man-nin-ity," Lilly offered.
Mrs. Nguyen looked to me for clarification.
"Can Lilly hang out with you for a few minutes? I need to use adult language."
"Of course. Go. Go." Mrs. Nguyen held out her arms, and Lilly crawled onto her lap. The two conversed in Vietnamese, and Lilly helped press the pedal to make the sewing machine work.
I quickly retreated and soared down the stairs. My jaw tight, hands clenched into fists, and legs still shaking. Never in my life had I ever wanted to punch someone as much as I did in that moment.
Which is saying something.
I'd met a lot of punchable people.
Kevin waited in the middle of the courtyard, hands on thighs, struggling to catch his breath. "Damn, woman, I almost got in a car accident chasing you."
I didn't answer. I ran up the stairs to Larry's apartment and pounded on the door using the inside of my fist until his hoarse voice yelled for me to come in.
Larry's apartment smelled stale. Piles of newspapers and books were stacked on every available surface. A television sat atop a card table, and Larry lay atop a recliner in the middle of the room. Both legs wrapped in hip to ankle braces and a bandage over his nose.
I stood in front of the television, my chest pumped full of adrenaline, and struck a Wonder Woman pose. If only I had a lasso to whip him with. "You hired a lawyer!"
Larry cowered, as if willing himself to blend in with the fabric of his chair. "I'm not allowed to speak to you."
"I went to the hospital, and they told me I wasn't authorized. It's because your lawyer, Brian T. Rains Attorney at Law, aka Clint Eastwood look-a-like, told you not to!"
Kevin stood in the doorway with a smirk on his face. He was enjoying the show.
"I'm…I'm…" Larry struggled to speak. His eyes shifted from Kevin to me and back again.
"For the past three days I've been worried sick about you." Well, not sick. But certainly worried. "And your lawyer has been snooping around here. If Kevin hadn't shown me the billboard right outside the hospital, a billboard with Brian T. Rains' giant face plastered across it and the promise to get millions for your personal injury case, then I wouldn't have been able to put two and two together! I can't believe, after living here for as long as you have, that you'd sue Elder Management!"
"I'm not suing Elder Management," said Larry. "They've been great to me."
"Oh." Oops.
"I'm suing you," he said.
For a moment, I couldn't even speak.
All I could do was stare.
Until my brain caught up.
Then all I saw was red.
"What!" I exploded. "Why would you sue me? I didn't do anything."
Larry made a steeple with his fingers. "If you hadn't yelled at me, then I wouldn't have slipped on the roof and broken my nose. Which prohibited oxygen to my brain. If I'd had full use of my faculties, then I wouldn't have fallen from the roof."
Correction: never in my life had I ever wanted to punch someone as much as I did in that moment.
"What does Daniella have to do with any of this?" I asked. "Why was your lawyer looking for her?"
"As a character witness."
"For whose character?"
"Yours."
Kevin held me back. "You tried to jump from the roof! I stopped you!"
"Like I said," Larry continued, his voice measured, hands still steepled. "I didn't have full use of my faculties because my nasal septum was prohibiting air supply."
He looked like Larry.
He smelled like Larry, but he didn't sound like himself.
It took a great deal of effort to keep my anger at bay. This can be solved logically, I thought. Even if Larry didn't have full use of his faculties, an argument could be made he never did.
Brian T. Rains had infested these ridiculous ideas into Larry's head. There was no way he'd come up with it on his own.
Two can play at this game.
If he was going to be ridiculous, then I was too.
"Fine. Then I'm filing a countersuit against you," I said.
"For what?"
"Your boot hit me on the head, and I now suffer from insomnia." The hope was he'd hear how stupid the accusation sounded and realize how stupid the lawsuit against me was.
No such luck.
"Then I will see you in court."
Ugh! "Larry, I understand you're under a great deal of stress right now," I said. "However, spending your time and energy on a lawsuit you'll end up losing is a waste. Think about how this will play out in court. I tell the judge about the call I received from a resident saying a man was attempting to break into her apartment and how this man had climbed onto the roof. She doesn't know who you are. Then I see someone walking on the roof. Of course I was going to yell at you. I wasn't trying to scare you. I didn't even know it was you. But if you hadn't been on Apartment 15's patio, then none of this would have happened. Heck, if you weren't on the roof, none of this would have happened."
Larry made a W with his arms. "What are you talking about? I was never on anyone's patio. I climbed the roof and was going to cross the breezeway and climb down to the walkway on the other side. Why would I go on someone's patio?" he said, as if the concept was absurd.
I stumbled backward. "But…but if you weren't on Julia's patio, then who was?"
"How would I know? I got locked out of my apartment!"
My breath hitched in my throat. Wha…wha…huh…but… "I have to go." I huffed out the words.
"Don't leave, Cambria! Wait. Wait." Larry held up a cup and gave it a little shake. "Could you, uh, fill this up for me?"
"I don't know. Will you sue me if I don't fill it up right?"
"It's nothing personal."
"How's it not personal?" I barked.
"Please." Larry smiled.
I should have walked away. I should have slammed the door and left.
So I did.
Then I opened the door, grabbed the cup, and filled it up because, I mean, the guy didn't have use of his legs.
I handed Larry the water, snapped a picture of his face with my phone, and ran off. My mind racing.
If Larry wasn't on Julia's patio, then someone else was…there was a man on her patio around the same time Viol
et went missing…her apartment faces Cedar Creek…someone could have easily climbed on the wall and up onto the patio.
Thru the breezeway and into the second courtyard I went. A group of residents were having a pool party. Large inflatable swans floated in the deep end, and beach balls bounced around. House Rules, page five, paragraph twelve: no oversize inflatable toys permitted in the pool area.
Note to self: deal with this later.
"Wait up!" Kevin came running up behind me. "Where are you going now?"
A beach ball smacked me in the back of the head. "If Larry wasn't on Julia's patio, then someone else was right around when Violet disappeared."
"That's not good."
"No. It's not."
We were at Julia's door. I had no idea if she was home or not, and after knocking multiple times, I realized she wasn't. Kevin and I flew down the stairs and were marching side-by-side to the office when we saw Julia at the mailboxes, sorting through her mail. She had on scrubs with kittens on them, a Taco Bell bag wrapped around her wrist.
"Was this the man on your patio?" Kevin and I said in unison. I had my phone out with the picture of Larry on it.
Julia flatted her back against the mailboxes, a hand over her heart, mail now on the ground. "You scared the crap out of me."
"Sorry," I said. "Is this the man?"
"No."
"Can you look a little harder? Imagine him without the brace on his nose and without the look of shock on his face." I held the phone closer until she went crossed-eyed.
"The dude on my patio looked nothing like this guy. He had a hood pulled over his head, and his face was longer and younger."
I looked at Kevin to see if he was thinking what I was thinking, and since he was already headed to his apartment, I thought we were thinking the same thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
—Certain situations are beyond profanity.
The three of us sat around Julia's kitchen table. Her brother Kane was home, on the couch, playing a video game. Never acknowledged us. I'd already left two more messages for Hampton. Julia kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs under her butt, with a bean burrito in one hand, a beer in the other, and eyes closed as she tried to remember the facial features of the man she saw that night.
Kevin's pencil danced around the page as he erased and re-sketched. I studied the drawing over his shoulder, watching the lines come together to form the outline of a face, the cheeks, nose, eyes, hairline, chin.
The more the sketch began to form, the more familiarity the picture took on.
There's no way!
I had my phone out, searching the internet. "How do you know this was a man?" I asked Julia.
She shrugged. "Because of the big sweatshirt, I guess. Why? Does it not look like a man to you?"
"It actually looks very similar to this woman." I showed her the picture I found online.
Julia squinted. "Oops. I guess it wasn't a guy. I just assumed it was."
Kevin and I shared a look.
The picture was of Violet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
—As the manager, I can enter the premise without warning in case of an emergency.
And emergency is subjective.
Kevin, Julia, and I were on her patio, not exactly sure what we were looking for. The block wall separating the two properties stopped a foot below the bottom of the patio. If Violet had stepped on the hood of a car, she'd have been able to climb up fairly easily—wounded or not.
"She may have been looking for help," I said, thinking out loud. Or Violet set this whole thing up to look like she'd been kidnapped, when really she was on an island somewhere sipping water from a coconut, happy she'd escaped prison time, is what I was thinking inside.
"Crap!" Julia freaked. "And, like, I told her to go away or I'd kill her!" She sandwiched her cheeks between her hands. "I mean, I was in the shower and, like, I come out to find this guy…or girl…banging on my window. That's scary. What would you have done?"
The same thing.
Except I would have called 9-1-1 instead of the manager.
Seemed insensitive to point that out again. "It's not your fault," I assured her. "There's no way you could have known."
"Cambria, look at this." Kevin pointed to Daniella's patio directly below us. All the outside furniture was turned on their sides. Even the charcoal BBQ pit (which are strictly prohibited) had been knocked over, and ash dusted the concrete.
Note to self: deal with that later.
I rose to my toes and leaned over the railing, nearly giving myself the Heimlich. It was hard to tell from my upside-down position, but there appeared to be glass on the ground as well. A horrid thought trampled into my head.
Daniella never did return my phone call. If Violet had jumped down onto Daniella's patio, and her attacker chased her, or if Violet herself was desperate to get away unnoticed…
"What's wrong?" Julia asked in a panic. "Why are you making that face?" She turned to Kevin. "Why is she making that face?"
"She's thinking," he said.
"What is she thinking!"
I rose upright and waited for the blood to return to my head. "It's fine," I said as convincingly as I could. "I need to speak to Daniella."
And make sure she's still alive.
"But she's, like, out of town on vacation," said Julia, and the relief hit me like a two-ton brick. Except…
"No she's not," I remembered. "She was out of town two weeks ago. I fed her tarantula while she was gone."
"No. She came back from Miami and then left again. She went to Argentina for three weeks. I'm feeding her spider now." She made a face. "Except, crap, I forgot to do it this week. Shoot. I also forgot to let out the cat."
Hold on… "Daniella has a cat?"
Julia slapped her hand over her mouth. "I wasn't supposed to tell you that."
"When did she get a cat?"
"She brought it back from Miami."
"Are you serious—" Stay focused, Cambria. "Never mind. Not important."
Not now at least.
I went downstairs. Julia and Kevin followed.
Daniella's blinds were drawn. "And you're positive she is out of town," I confirmed with Julia because I was about to open Daniella's apartment, and if I did so and found her on the other side, she'd berate me, or kill me, or sue me, or all the above.
"Yes, I'm positive," said Julia.
Good enough for me.
I used my master key to open the door and poked my head in, afraid of what I would find. Daniella had a futon instead of a couch and a large dark rug that took up the entire living room floor. Her walls were covered in framed pictures of family and friends and snapshots from tropical vacations. On the entry table sat Gary the Tarantula's cage.
"Are you sure she has a cat?" I asked Julia, who cowered in the doorway.
"Mmmhmmm. Daniella said she brought back a cat from Miami and to let it out when I fed the spider so he could get fresh air. Then she said not to tell you because pets aren't allowed. But then, like, I see pets around here all the time."
"They're service animals," Kevin told her.
"Ohhhhh."
"I don't think she has a cat," I said, surveying the living room. "I typically have a horrible allergic reaction when I'm even in the same… Holy mother of everything that's unholy!" A giant bat-looking creature jumped up on the back of the futon and hissed at me. "What is that thing?"
"It's a hairless cat," Kevin said. "Wow. I've never seen one in person."
"Why is it looking at me like that?" I backed against the wall. "Is it going to attack?"
Kevin extended an arm out to the feline. "Nice kitty."
Nice Kitty bared his teeth and hissed. Kevin stepped outside with Julia. "I'll let you handle this, Cambria."
Gee, thanks.
The cat ran his tongue over his mouth and lay across the back of the futon, folded his paws, and kept his big orange eyes on me.
Please don't let this be how I die.
The patio door was in the kitchen, and I inched slowly, sidestepping on my tiptoes as if I were the Pink Panther. I could almost hear the theme music. To do, to do, todo todo todo todo todooooo.
When I stepped into the kitchen, I saw the broken window. I saw the litter box. I saw the turned over chair. I saw the trail of red. I saw…
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
—Murder is an emergency.
A woman in a blue jacket tied the end of the caution tape to a wooden pillar and rolled the rest across the walkway, prohibiting unauthorized personnel from entering. Julia was back in her apartment, drinking. Kevin was sitting against the pool fence, holding Daniella's cat. Violet was in Daniella's kitchen, dead.
I had four thoughts on the subject.
One: Violet had been attacked, left to die, escaped, and run to my community. When she was denied access to Julia's apartment, she tried Daniella's, broke the back patio door, and died in the kitchen before she could get help.
Two: I'd thought I heard someone yelling my name on Monday night. It could have been Violet.
Three: I might join Violet when Daniella finds out about this.
Four: How can I convince both Tom and Chase to move to Montana?
The woman in the blue jacket was back. This time she held up the tape allowing the coroner to pass under. He wheeled a gurney containing Violet. I looked away even though she was covered. The pool party was still going on. The air smelled of chlorine and sunscreen. KIIS 102.7, the local radio station, pumped from a portable radio. Laughter erupted from the woman in a yellow bikini perched on the shoulders of her friend, engaging in a chicken fight—blissfully unaware of what was happening yards behind her.
If only I could live in a state of blissful unawareness.
Also, it would be nice to fit in a bikini.
"Stabbing," Hampton said, and I spun around. His face remained stoic, and his hair remained squirrelly.
"Excuse me?"
"She was stabbed in the back and twice in the side."