Murder book, p.14
Murder Book, page 14
She followed the railing and found a sitting area, arranged around a fire pit, several logs smoldering, the coals white hot.
A man sat in an Adirondack, holding a glass of wine and watching her. The handsome man who looked like an honest news anchor. He was aglow with cherry light.
“Making a getaway?”
“Trying.” Stackhouse didn’t want to laugh but she did. “Don’t tell.”
“Your secret is safe.”
“I never drink too much. But I did.”
He indicated the fire. “Join me. It’ll pass.”
She gripped the back of the Adirondack. “Shouldn’t you be… You know? Descending on a quivering plaything?”
She said it like, sending on a quiv’ring playthen.
“I made a getaway, too.” He held up a slip of paper. “Though I’ll need to apologize to whomever waits in Room Three.”
“Oh!” Stackhouse slid slowly into the chair. “That’s me!”
“Then I apologize. I just can’t.”
“No apology needed. I’m running away, remember.” Stackhouse felt tremendous relief. At being outside. At being free. At the safe man and the realization she wouldn’t be humiliated.
“I mean I can,” he said. “But I won’t.”
She smiled, her eyes closed. “I’m Andie.”
“I know. I’m Timothy.”
She grabbed his hand. His warm safe hand. She thought it would help. “I just realized who you are. The principal at the elementary school.”
“Crystal Spring, and assistant principal. But yes.” They were quiet a minute, the logs crackling, and Stackhouse felt a deep bliss. Timothy August was perhaps ten years older than her. Slightly grey at the temples.
“We were supposed to fool around. Isn’t that funny,” she said.
“My first date in five years. It is funny, isn’t it. Neither of us knew what kind of party this was, but she insisted on playing. I hope she’s enjoying herself.”
“Isn’t that the grossest?”
“It absolutely is. My first and last blind date,” he said.
“I heard your wife died.” Stackhouse winced and slapped a hand to her mouth. “Sorry. I swear I never get drunk.”
“It’s okay. She did. It’s counterintuitive, but I’d rather be taking care of her, at her bedside, than partying with these people.”
“Taking care of someone you love sounds nice. Less exhausting than Maddie Owens. Good Garfield, what a… I think I should walk home.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll drive you.”
“The walk will be good for me. Penance.”
“It speaks well of you, that you’re not in the house,” said Timothy. “After watching the partygoers, and witnessing their change over the previous decade, I worry that time erodes our true selves. Never lose that goodness. Never lose whatever it is inside you that ejected you from the room.”
Stackhouse adjusted in her seat and released him. She leaned forward to place her forehead in her hands, elbows on knees. Deep breaths. “I’m not sure I can promise that. I never used to get drunk. Now here I am, at a swinger’s party, dizzy.”
“You said No, though.”
“I want to be an attorney, or an FBI agent, but…” Andie, shush. You’re blabbering. “Those dreams fade away if I can’t keep a grip on who I am.”
“My son, he’s a police officer too. In Los Angeles. Watching him from afar, I see your job has a cost. It requires part of your soul that other jobs don’t. He’s younger than you but he’s flailing. I hope he’s built from whatever it takes to keep him afloat. Like you are.”
She sniffed. “Thanks. Doesn’t feel like it.”
“You have a problem, you know.”
“I do know this. Which specifically?” she said.
“You’re too attractive. That’s not a pickup. It’s a real problem. That comes with a cost too.”
She raised up and pushed her hair back and squinted at him. “You’re good-looking. Is it a problem for you?”
“It can be.” He indicated the house with his glass of red wine. “I get invited to parties I shouldn’t be at. Principals can be fired for less.”
They sat in silence, ears tuned into the noises coming from the house. Some identifiable, others less so. Noises that required alcohol to make, and alcohol to forget later.
Eventually she detected she could walk without falling. “Time for me to go.”
Timothy set down the glass. “I’m positive I would pass a breathalyzer. Would you like a lift?”
“No thank you. It’s only a mile, and it’s a safe walk, and I’m a fraction too tipsy and happy, and part of me is thinking you’re the kind of man I’d like to take to Room Three, but that is wrong, Timothy, I’m not that kind of girl, so to forestall any temptation I will be walking home alone, but thank you.”
On the slip of paper marked with a big Three, he wrote down his phone number and said to call him if she fell into a ditch on the walk home.
Which she did, once, rolling her ankle, too embarrassed to call him. She limped to her front door thirty minutes later, relieved to find Kaye already asleep, and she collapsed into her bed fully clothed.
Dr. Raymond Pierce followed her home, bemused at a distance. She limped and cursed, a ballet of ignominy. For a lesser woman, he’d deem the shame a fitting discipline. But on Andie Stackhouse, the stumbling shamble could be choreographed. Could be poetry in motion.
A dementia burned within himself, he knew, an unhealthy fixation on this woman that turned her faults to fascinations.
His own date in Room Six would wake in an hour or two, none the wiser, a slight bruising in her neck and a metallic taste on her tongue. When he’d opened the door to Room Six and found the foul woman instead of Andie Stackhouse, a rage threatened to engulf him. She reeked of reefer. He’d suffered her only a few minutes before rendering her unto sleep.
When Andie Stackhouse reached her front door, he was mere feet behind. To the casual observer, they’d look like a couple returning home, one ahead of the other as though in an argument. He intended to watch her through the windows, but behold, the drunken damsel forgot to latch the lock.
He counted to one hundred and slipped in like a panther on silent paws.
No noise came from above. She’d forgone teeth brushing and makeup removal. Even these unhygienic foibles he enjoyed. A shadow by the front door, he waited and waited, until the stillness of the house was confirmed and complete. He’d brought madness with him and he worried it would wake her.
Or wake Kaye Calhoun, one of the few other worthy women in the Roanoke Valley. Buxom and brilliant, a deserving roommate. Kaye Calhoun understood herself enough to wear dresses, not short skirts, a self-awareness necessary for women to ascend. She’d risen just enough, to her rightful place, with no false aspirations or airs. Good for her.
The first thing he did, he laid on the couch and breathed in the oxygen trapped inside pillows. His lungs filled with Stackhouse. With her shampoo, her lotion, her sweat, her odor, all of it perfume. He also detected Kaye there, a less powerful stimulant. He gripped the pillows with his fists and wished he was gripping the woman instead.
His heart pierced him when he discovered photographs attached to the refrigerator with magnets. There was his son, Preston. His murdered son. A group photograph, taken early in Preston’s career. Sergeant Stackhouse with her squad. She was peacock proud, beaming and beautiful, standing with the others whose names he’d forgotten. Other than Hurst. Hurst he knew. Hurst, who might need to be silenced.
Dr. Pierce closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool metal and he cried.
He’d been so careful. So got’damn careful, for years, fitting for a surgeon, meticulous. Maintaining his sanity, his peace guarded and carried around like a child with a frail Lego structure, threatening to shatter if dropped. And then his wife developed leukemia, a swift and devastating six months, and he let go. He gave in and his self-control vaporized. Soon after, his son was shot, and life spiraled and spiraled and he didn’t sleep, he hunted, he disciplined and fought back, and now his son was smiling at him, unexpected on a glossy 4 x 6, a glimpse of what life could have been, should have been, a reminder of what was stolen, the young Andie Stackhouse grinning, perfect and pert and youth immortal, his own wrinkling reflection superimposed over, and what he saw frightened him.
The floor didn’t creak as he slumped to the table and sat. He needed a moment. He needed to gather himself, and to leave. He’d done no pre-op work for this invasion and it was foolish. Far too foolish recently.
His gaze fell on a crinkled letter on the table.
Dear Andrea, it began.
Dr. Pierce pinched the letter by the edges and he read. As he did, his posture surrendered further and he leaned into the backrest. Delicious backstory. Disastrous news. The ultimate father wound, oncoming death without reconciliation. He read it a second time.
It was signed, Love, Your Aunt Mary.
Poor Andrea.
Poor Andrea. No wonder she over indulged tonight.
“But,” he whispered. “But what is the full diagnosis, Aunt Mary? Meningioma? Glioma? Astrocytoma? Medulloblastoma?”
What tests had been run? Angiography? MRA? A needle biopsy? Who was the surgeon? Which clinic? Where the hell was this? Aunt Mary’s casual disregard for details was maddening. Had Mr. Stackhouse been a machinist? A metal worker? A farmer, mixing agricultural toxins? Or was he merely the beneficiary of poor genetics?
Based on Mr. Stackhouse’s daughter, the latter wasn’t likely.
With fingers that trembled, he raised the letter to inhale its fragrance, and he heard footsteps approaching the front door. This late?
Soft as a whisper, Dr. Pierce abandoned the table and hid near the door, cloaked within the folds of front window drapes. He heard mumbling outside. A man’s voice. Dr. Pierce peaked around the sill but the man’s face was hidden, backlit by streetlights.
“Andrea?” called the man. Whoever he was, he was drunk. Wildly, grotesquely drunk. “Andrea, the hell aren’t you answering your phone? Is everything good? Where’d you go, gotammid?”
The words were decipherable, mostly, his call a hooded, slurred whisper, the man too intoxicated to recognize the woman he hissed at wouldn’t hear.
The intruder tried the front door and said, “Hod’dammm,” when it opened.
Fool, thought Dr. Pierce. I should have locked it. Just anyone could walk in, after all. Even a monster.
James Rigby took four steps into the kitchen, staring around mutely, stupidly, his first time inside the house, and Dr. Pierce metastasized from the black, a pale specter behind, and he plunged a needle into Rigby’s neck, a cold blast of Etomidate that shocked Rigby’s nervous system and shut him off like a switch. Pierce grabbed him around the stomach and helped him slump to the floor, the event lasting a silent ten seconds. Rigby murmured, soft, and then it became a drunken snore.
Dr. Pierce listened again.
No response upstairs. No alarm, no panic.
Lucky for him they had no dog.
Yet very unlucky for this hairy suitor. This damned finance piece of shit, and Dr. Pierce trembled looking at him.
19
“Never drinking again?” asked Val Farmer.
“Never again,” Stackhouse confirmed. They waited in wrought iron chairs inside a Starbucks courtyard. Stackhouse wore Ray-bans.
“That’s a load of malarkey, lady.”
“I know.” Stackhouse had been trying to shake the headache since yesterday morning. Arriving at work Monday to discover from Val that the gossips were aflutter with Saturday night’s party, now she had shame to deal with. She’d texted James Rigby an apology but hadn’t heard back. That relationship was probably torched. Not a great loss, but she felt guilty. “No more alcohol for a while, and no more drunkenness until New Years Eve.”
“But you said nothing happened,” said Val.
“That’s right. I left the party before it got weird.”
“Then why—”
“Because, babe. Because. Now hush.”
“You can’t tell me to hush, kiddo, I outrank you,” said Val.
“Hush hush hush.” Stackhouse threw back a couple aspirin and drank her iced coffee. “Tell the gossips my sex life is dormant. Or dead. And to get their noses out of my business.”
“If I was young and hot like you are,” said Val, “I’d be exhausted from all the screwing.”
“I’m middle-aged. Younger than you doesn’t mean young.”
“Don’t you like sex, lady?”
Stackhouse considered the milky swirls in her coffee. “I don’t like the hurt that comes after.”
“That’s what penicillin is for.”
“Hush hush hush, so much hush.”
They were waiting on Allyson Knowles.
According to Maddie Owens, Allyson and Rose Felton had been arch rivals. Hated each other.
According to Staci, Allyson was good, ranked fiftieth at WIG.
According to Loma Stubblefield, Allyson was insufferable and resorted to cheap tricks. Everyone had opinions on Allyson.
Allyson arrived in a red Kia Spectra. She drove and her husband sat in shotgun. Allyson wore jean shorts not long enough to cover the pockets, plus a tank top and oversized sunglasses. She waved to the two waiting police officers and said, “We’re getting coffee, BRB.”
She and her husband Lonnie stepped inside Starbucks.
“BRB,” mumbled Val.
“It means Be Right Back.”
“I know that. Older than you doesn’t mean old or stupid. But who says BRB?”
Allyson and Lonnie came back and sat next to each other, across from the detectives. They had the courtyard to themselves in the shade of a tall oak.
“This is my husband Lonnie,” said Allyson. “Lonnie Knowles. He took my last name. Because fuck the patriarchy, that’s why.”
Val grinned. “Good to know. How you doing, big guy.”
Lonnie was not tall. He was shorter than Allyson, but muscular. He had a bald head and wide pale blue eyes. He raised his to-go cup to her. “Just along for the ride.”
“Lonnie and I were in Tampa when Rose got herself killed,” said Allyson. “On stage. At the conference. We can’t help you solve the murder.” Allyson was mid-twenties, but she spoke like a modern teenager, artificial laziness and distant echoes of Valley Girl in her affect.
Already Stackhouse didn’t like her. Like Loma Stubblefield, Allyson was full of herself, with whatever gumption came from peddling makeup better than other women.
“You and Rose were rivals,” said Stackhouse.
“You could say that. Bitches, both of us. But I was in Tampa.”
“She’s a big deal,” said Lonnie. “Only so many WIG women get invited on stage. You can see her in the pictures.” He tapped his iPhone screen with his thumbs and set his phone on the iron table. “See? That’s her, day of the murder, on stage.”
“Congratulations,” said Stackhouse.
“It’s a lot of hard work. I bust my ass. I’m gonna retire Lonnie from CVS so he can be my little bitch. Hell yeah congratulations, it’s hard, it’s a land grab, every woman for herself, but that doesn’t mean Rose had to die.”
“It sucks,” said Lonnie. “What happened to her.”
“I’m not here to accuse you of murder. I’m here to learn.”
“Learn what? Shouldn’t you know all of this?” said Allyson.
“You’d think. Who benefits from Rose’s death, financially? Would the woman who signed Rose in the first place?”
“Yes, she would absorb a greater percentage.”
“Carla,” prompted Stackhouse. Ned mentioned that Rose met Carla at rehab.
“Right, Carla Olive,” said Allyson.
“Where can I find her?”
“Prison. Three strikes and you’re out, and she was on, like, her tenth strike. It’s no coincidence Carla was the one to sign Rose. Both of the bitches were drugged out of their minds.”
Rats. I should’ve known that.
“I think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Lonnie. “There’s no money in Rose’s murder. There’s no benefit to anyone. Even Carla’s bump would’ve been minimal. Rose was a whore in Vegas. That’s probably why she died.”
“By a whore in Vegas, do you mean an adult film star in San Fernando Valley?” said Stackhouse.
“Whatever, same thing, Sex and the West Coast.”
“We’re looking into that, but we’re following the money too. Wasn’t Rose good? She was selling a lot of product, gobbling up the market?” said Val.
Allyson shrugged. “She was okay.”
“She was top twenty in the company, lady. She kinda ruled Roanoke. So if you remove her, it creates more opportunity for others, right? She was a rising star. Bump her off, divert the flow of money?” said Val.
“She didn’t rule Roanoke, and Lonnie and I were in Tampa. I was on stage.”
“I don’t mean you. I mean someone else.”
Allyson dug in her oversized purse and came up with an envelope. She opened the envelope and produced airline tickets. “These are our tickets.”
“We know,” said Stackhouse. “In fact I saw you get off the plane, wearing the flower shirts.”
“Were you stalking us?”
“No, I was there to get—”
“We had hotel reservations. We rented a car. There’s video of me on stage.”
“We know!” said Val. “You can’t listen? We’re talking about someone else, not you.”
“You were here.” Allyson pointed an entitled finger at Stackhouse. “I’m surprised you’re not a suspect.”
Stackhouse grinned, not sure what inane thing would come from Allyson’s mouth next. “That’s true, I was. But I’m not a suspect, Ms. Knowles, I’m the detective.”
“It’s a land grab, detective. You could benefit with poor Rose out of the way.”
“How would I benefit from Rose Felton dying?”
“Because you worked with her, duh, and you wanted her customers,” said Allyson.
“I bought mascara and concealer. Not the same thing.”
