Drop Dead Lola

by Melissa Bourbon

  I couldn’t help but think about my own living situation and Jack’s proposal to move in together. I understood Gemma’s initial reaction to Philip moving in with her. They hadn’t been married, and neither were Jack and I. If I knew something bad was going to happen to one of us, that might change my mind, but for now, I couldn’t make decisions based on fear.

  “What’s the deal with Aaron?” I asked as I carefully took out the clothing items, feeling the pockets and checking in the bottom of the box.

  She shrugged. “He’s a little off, but Phil and he were friends.”

  A little off—that sounded like a serious understatement. “Do you like him?”

  “I don’t really know him. I guess…he makes me kind of uncomfortable, but he was friends with Phil, so...”

  “What do you think he meant earlier? ‘Keep your family close, but your enemies closer.’” Al Pacino said it in The Godfather, but why did Aaron say it? Did it have to do with Philip’s death? Was Aaron Philip’s enemy? If so, why?

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did Philip know him well?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. Aaron, um, Radley, I think, and Seth Boyd, they were both pretty new to the team. They all hung out after practices and games. Phil thought he was a good guy. Harmless, he said. I don’t know. I didn’t have to see him much. Only at games.”

  “Do you have a team roster by any chance? Maybe Philip had one printed out?” Finding out a little more about the guys Phil played ball with might help.

  Gemma looked toward the ceiling, thinking, then jumped up and disappeared into the bedroom again. Thirty seconds later, she was back with exactly what I’d asked for. “Can I keep it?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said, and I folded it and tucked it into my purse to look at later. I replaced all the clothes from the first box. Jack moved it off the coffee table and I pulled the second box in front of me. This one was a mishmash of Philip’s belongings. Books on fishing and one on all the different varieties of tequila. I committed the title to memory, thinking it would make a good gift for Antonio. There was a stack of old mail, receipts, an electric razor, other toiletries, a few well-used paperback novels, and some random tools: a hammer, three screwdrivers, and a wrench. I left the tools and razor in the box, but took out the other items. Jack took the receipts, while I rifled through the mail.

  “Nothing here,” Jack said. “Lunches and dinners. A few office supplies. Tax write offs.”

  I wasn’t having any more luck with my pile. “I’ve got a few late bills. He may have been having some financial trouble,” I said, but then stopped as I unfolded a letter from a lawyer. I skimmed it first, then went back to the beginning to read it more carefully. When I was done, I handed it to Jack. “This is a threat of a lawsuit.” I looked at Gemma. “From Quaffman Electric.”

  Her face drained of color. “They were suing Phil?”

  That was a good question. The letter threatened a lawsuit if Philip Haskell took Quaffman clients with him to his new company. Whether Joe Quaffman had filed the suit was another matter. What I found interesting was that Joe Quaffman hadn’t mentioned his potential legal action to me when we’d met.

  I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture of the letter, then texted it to Manny. I followed with a quick message, asking him to look into the suit. He’d be able to find out if Quaffman had followed up on the threat. Either way, though, it upped the ante for Joe and his motive to get rid of Philip.

  I went through the rest of the mail quickly, scanning for anything else that sent up a red flag. An insurance claim form, estimation of benefits, a medical form with a website to view further information on test results, and a few other pieces of what seemed like non-important stuff. “What are you going to do with Philip’s things?” I asked her.

  “Put it in the closet for now. I don’t want to get rid of it. It’s all I have left of him. I thought Marnie would want something of his, but now…” She trailed off, leaving the question of Marnie’s survival unspoken.

  “Thank you for sharing it, Gemma.”

  “Will it help you to take the letter from the lawyer?” she asked.

  “It would, thanks. It’s the strongest motive we have for anyone wanting to do harm to Philip.” My phone tinged with an incoming text. Manny. Will do. The man lived and breathed brevity.

  “Can I help you put these away?” Jack asked Gemma, but she shook her head.

  She didn’t move from her chair, but said, “I can do it.”

  I tucked the letter into my purse alongside the baseball team roster and Jack and I left, leaving Gemma to her grief.

  Chapter 16

  I awoke Monday morning to pounding at the front door. I jerked sideways and cringed, every muscle in my body aching from the pole dancing class Saturday. The soreness had crept up on me yesterday with my muscles tightening up throughout the day. The pounding came again. I bolted upright, twisted my body, and tumbled off the bed and onto the cold floor with a hard smack to my hip.

  ¡Ay, caramba! Where was the fire? I glanced at the clock. Six thirty. Way too early.

  The pounding came again, this time followed by Mami’s voice. “Dolores. ¡Abre la puerta! ¡Es tu mama!”

  This was not how I wanted to start my day. I picked myself up off the floor, muttering under my breath. “Just a second,” I said.

  She yelled back, “¿Qué?”

  “¡Espera, Mami, jeez!” I stumbled to the front door, still groggy from the abrupt awakening. At least she hadn’t used her key to barge in. Not that she would have discovered anything salacious. Jack had an early day, so he’d dropped me off after Gemma’s last night and gone to his loft.

  I had slept alone.

  And I missed him.

  I flung open the front door and found myself staring at not only my mother, but Abuela and tía Marina. Dios mío. This was calculated.

  This was an intervention.

  This was insane.

  “Mami! What are you doing?”

  She looked me up and down, frowning. “Tsk tsk tsk.” She waved her hand around. “This is how you open the door to strangers?”

  “Estas loca, Mami. You literally said, it’s your mom. You’re not a stranger.” I gestured to my grandmother and aunt. “And neither are they. Why are you here? It is six thirty in the morning. Six thirty.”

  Mami pushed past me, dragging Abuela in after her. Abuela tweaked my cheek as she passed, but then promptly made the sign of the cross.

  “Not you, too, Abuela,” I said. “And Tía? Mami made you come over this early? Why? Why are you all here?”

  “Ciera la puerta,” Mami ordered. I did as she said, letting the door close with a defiant slam.

  “Why are you here?” I asked again.

  Tía Marina gave me a look that made me feel sorry for my cousin Chely. She had to deal with that stink eye every day. Mami wagged her finger at me. “Dolores, you are living in sin.”

  I gaped. “What?”

  “Sin. Sin. Sin.”

  “I heard what you said, Mami, but what do you mean?” Of course I knew exactly what she meant. Jack. The double standard of our family was alive and well. Antonio had a different woman every other week, it seemed. Beto had been the same before he’d joined the military. Now that he was home, he’d been sowing his wild oats. And Ray? He was a DJ and lived near the beach. Chances were good that he wasn’t a chaste altar boy saving himself for marriage. But Gracie and me? If we so much as looked sideways at a boy when we were younger, Mami had grabbed our earlobes and turned us right around. Gracie had escaped the torment by getting married. But things hadn’t changed much for me, despite the fact that I was an adult.

  “I live here.” I spread my arms. “Alone. That is not living in sin.”

  “Jack Callaghan,” she said, but in her agitated state, her accent was heavy and it sounded like “Yack Ca
yahan.”

  I felt a mixture of amusement and annoyance as I stared at her, “What about Jack?”

  “M’ija, you are a single—”

  I held my hand up to stop her. “Mami, ¡basta ya! I love you, but I am almost thirty years old. If I want to date Jack, I can. If I want him to stay the night, he will. ¡Punto!”

  My aunt and my grandmother gasped. “Dolores, no hables así a tu madre,” tía Marina scolded.

  Mami, for her part, simply stared at me. I could see her blood boiling under the surface, but she was somehow managing to control it. ¡Qué milagro! “Mom,” I said, the word sounding unfamiliar on my lips. I rarely called her by the English nickname, but I used it now to show I was serious. “Mom, I’ve made a decision.”

  She raised her eyebrows and folded her arms over her embroidered house dress. “¿Qué decisión?”

  “I’m moving out. It’s time I lived somewhere else on my own.”

  Once again, tía Marina gasped. Abuela jutted her head forward, her brow furrowing. “¿Qué dijo?” she asked.

  Tía Marina was loving this. I knew from her expression that she could not wait to get out of here so she could start sharing the chisme with her friends. This kind of gossip would make her queen for a day. “Se muda con Jack Callaghan, el donjuán.”

  Now I gasped. Don Juan? Ay caramba. “I am not moving in with Jack, and he is not a ladies’ man!”

  My aunt shrugged. Aha. So she was going to vie to be queen for a week or more by embellishing the story. I was witnessing the telephone gossip game in action.

  Despite my protestations, though, my grandmother was buying it hook, line, and sinker. Her mouth opened to a puckered “O” and her eyes popped wide. “No! No se mude con él,” she said, and then in her very halting English, she repeated, “Do not move in with him.”

  I slapped my hand to my forehead. Ay, ay, ay. “I am not moving in with him,” I said. I repeated it in Spanish so she’d understand, but I didn’t hold out much hope that it would change her mind. Not so long ago, she’d thought I’d died. When I showed up, alive and well, she thought I was a ghost and proceeded to call me un fantasma for the next couple of months.

  She nodded emphatically, looking slightly horrified, but then she winked. I peered at her, but her expression hadn’t changed. Still horrified at the sin of an improper relationship with Jack. Had I imagined the wink?

  But no. No way. Yesterday when she’d been in the car heading to church with my parents, she’d given me a thumbs up and…winked. Oh. My. God. My mouth gaped open as I stared at her. She was on my side of this unwin-able battle with my mother. “Abuela!”

  Mami spun around, but Abuela had lifted the rosary she’d been clutching to her lips and was murmuring “The Apostles’ Creed.” I felt like I was in the middle of a performance, and my grandmother was the star. As Mami turned back to me, the corners of Abuela’s mouth lifted in a mischievous smile. Oscar-worthy. Seriously, bring on the Academy.

  “Where will you move?” Mami asked me, still giving Abuela a side-eye.

  I’d made up my mind and spoken before I’d thought it all the way through. “I don’t know yet. I’m still looking.” Of course I hadn’t even started looking, but she didn’t need to know that. Maybe I’d have to give Antonio’s real estate girl a call—if he hadn’t burned that bridge already.

  Mami harrumphed and muttered something unintelligible in Spanish. A prayer for my soul, no doubt. She turned without another word and yanked the door open. “Ven,” she ordered, and Abuela and Tía obediently followed. But Abuela stopped at the door and threw another rascally smile at me over her shoulder.

  As the door closed, I sighed, half from relief, half from my puzzlement.

  We were a multigenerational family. My mother’s parents had lived with us my whole life, but suddenly I felt like I didn’t know my grandma at all.

  There was no going back to sleep at this point. Salsa took care of her business outside while I took care of mine inside. Before long, I arrived at Camacho and Associates.

  Reilly sat at her desk, her lavender-gray hair falling around her face as she hunched over her keyboard. Day by day, she made her space more personal with plants, a photo of her and Neil, with Neil actually smiling and looking like a halfway well-adjusted and happy adult, and knick-knacks. She brushed her hair away from her face and looked up at me. “Hey! Wow. Surprise, surprise! You’re here early.”

  From the looks of the place, she and I were the only ones. “Unexpected intervention from my mother, aunt, and grandmother this morning,” I told her.

  She sat up and pushed back with her feet, sending her chair rolling backward. “An intervention! What does that mean? Do you have a secret drug habit I don’t know about? I’m your best friend. I should know if you’re addicted to opioids,” she said, almost chastising me for withholding my non-existent addiction from her.

  I lowered my voice in case anyone, meaning Sadie or Manny, were lurking around a corner. “An intervention about Jack.”

  Reilly squealed, then bellowed, “Jack! Dang, girl, that’s an addiction I’d embrace.” Then she put her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered, “But don’t tell my teddy bear that, though.”

  I pressed my lips together and turned an invisible key. “Not a word.”

  “So why are you here so early?”

  I put my purse on the conference table and picked up an Expo marker. “By the time Magdalena left, I was wide awake.”

  Reilly gave me a knowing look. “I know that feeling, when you’re just desperate to sleep, but no matter what, it’s not going to happen.” She rolled herself back to her desk and I stood in front of the whiteboard with my case notes. Bit by bit, I added the disconnected information I had managed to gather, whether or not it seemed to have any relevance to anything.

  Aaron Radley and The Godfather quote: “Keep your family close, and your enemies closer,” and Seth saying: “Keep the family close.” Why?

  Was Philip a Drake fan? (I was just curious about this.)

  The potential lawsuit from Quaffman Electric

  Philip’s general state: late bills

  The baseball team roster—anything relevant?

  Gemma? She was at the bridal shop. Check that!

  Marnie’s note on her calendar: Find out who he is. How does Philip know? My son. Who was she talking about?

  And there was the puzzle of how the rope that Philip had hung from got wrapped around that tree. Who had climbed it, and how? The more I thought about it, the more I knew it couldn’t have been Philip.

  I jumped, startled, when the door to Manny’s office swung open. El jefe sauntered out, looking brooding with his goatee and intense eyes. I didn’t think he was here. “Reilly, I need the case file for the Torres case, por favor.”

  “Aye, aye, boss,” she said, spinning her chair to face the filing cabinet in her office space.

  “Dolores,” Manny said to me as he shifted his gaze to the whiteboard. “Progress? Hypothesis?”

  “Not quite progress, but getting there.” It was a little bit of a stretch, but I didn’t show him my uncertainty. “Anything on that lawsuit?”

  “Yes. Quaffman Electric did file a suit against Philip Haskell, citing Uniform Trade Secrets Act violations. The claim is that Philip Haskell copied client information before he left Quaffman Electric and solicited clients from that list. Quaffman also asserts that Haskell contacted these clients while he still worked with the company.”

  “Did he sign some sort of non-solicitation agreement?” I asked.

  “No need,” Manny said. “The Uniform Trade Secrets Act is an adopted statute. Client lists fall under that umbrella.”

  “Was there a ruling in the lawsuit?”

  “Philip died before it came before the court,” Manny said.

  I thought about this. It didn’t quite work as
a motive for Joe Quaffman killing Philip. If Philip had been the one to file a lawsuit, then I could see Quaffman wanting to take care of him, so to speak. But since Quaffman was the one to file the lawsuit, the motive would have been for Philip to stop his old boss from going through with it. Unless, I thought, Philip confronted Joe Quaffman, it turned ugly, and the killing was a result of that altercation.

  That theory had some holes, though. Number one, who knew if there ever was an altercation. Gemma hadn’t mentioned it. Neither had Marnie. Joe Quaffman certainly hadn’t—and wouldn’t fess up to that if it had happened. Number two, if the killing was the immediate result of an argument, that would be a crime of passion—not the well-thought-out execution via hanging on a stormy night in McKinley Park.

  Although, if Philip were dead, that meant the clients who’d jumped ship might leap right back to Joe. Was that a strong enough motive to kill? Possibly. On the right hand side of the whiteboard, I made a list of possible suspects, leading with Joe Quaffman. I added Aaron Radley. I had a bad feeling about the guy. The comments at the baseball memorial made me include the Haskell family. Any one of them could have a motive I hadn’t discovered yet. Family didn’t always mean loving…or innocent. I finished the list by putting down Gemma’s name. I didn’t see how she could have done it, and I didn’t have even an inkling about why, but I also couldn’t quite exclude her yet.

  Reilly had found the case file Manny asked for and handed it to him. He tucked it under his arm but made no move to head back to his office. They stood side by side, watching me. “The girlfriend?” Manny asked.

  I explained my reasoning for adding her name. He nodded, satisfied with my thought-process. “What’s your hypothesis?” he asked.

  I looked back at my notes. There were only two viable theories, at least so far, but I couldn’t necessarily peg one as stronger than the other. “Either Joe Quaffman—payback for Philip stealing his clients and to get them back? Or Aaron Radley. Está loco,” I said, giving a little whistle and spinning my finger in a circle at my ear.