Grounds to Kill Read online

  “She was humping Arthur!” I blurted. Two little old ladies had arrived and had been quietly making their tea selections until I interrupted with this graphic public announcement. I offered them an apologetic look and lowered my voice. “I went to her apartment to confront her. Not to kill her, or pull her hair out. Just to talk.” I looked pointedly from one friend to the other. “Okay, sure, there may have been dog poop involved,” I admitted. “But that’s neither here nor there.”

  “Poop?” Beth asked, her jaw dropping.

  I sighed deeply because the whole poop fiasco was turning into a far bigger deal than I ever intended. I explained the entire sordid tale beginning with my dinner and mediocre sexual romp with Arthur and concluding with drinking too much tequila with Mitch last night.

  When I was done, I picked up my cup of tea and held my breath while I forced myself to swallow a mouthful of my three dollar piss.

  “I can’t believe she’s really dead.” Beth shook her head slowly. “And I can’t believe you left voices messages and texts saying something bad had happened, but failed to mention Misty.”

  “I didn’t want to mention murder in text or voicemail.”

  “I wonder who killed her,” Mallory said into her cup of oolong.

  “Yeah, it’s crazy to think that someone actually hated her more than we did.” I frowned thoughtfully.

  “I know we all hated her, but that doesn’t mean we wished her dead,” Mallory said.

  “I did,” I said quickly.

  “Me too,” Beth added.

  “But we didn’t really,” Mallory protested.

  “It’s part of the code. All for one and one for all. If evil befalls one, we must bind together in an equal level of hatred.”

  “Sure. I know that.” Mallory chewed the corner of her thumb nervously. “It’s like how we all hate Michael—”

  “Michael?” Beth slowly put her mug of Earl Grey down on the table.

  “Uh oh,” I murmured. “Now you’ve done it.”

  “I thought we’d all agreed that we would never use my ex’s name. If he must be mentioned we’re only to call him the scum-sucking-toilet-worm.”

  “Right. Sorry. I’m just all flustered because of Misty being dead and all,” Mallory explained. “Of course we hate Mi—um, your ex...the worm.” Mallory turned to me. “It just feels harsh to wish someone was dead when they actually have turned up dead.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “We can’t say that anymore.”

  “I mean, putting that kind of hatred out into the world, well, it isn’t good,” Mallory said softly.

  I wasn’t worried about karma, I was worried about Detective Kellum. In Mallory’s way of thinking we probably attracted death to Misty by wishing it. Somehow our intense molecules of hatred took on a life form of their own and brought upon a big, whopping mass of retribution to Misty in the way of a knife-wielding homicidal maniac.

  “So how did you find out Arthur was screwing around with Misty?” Beth asked. “Did he shout her name during sex?”

  There was a pause while I contemplated giving the truth or changing the subject.

  “Oh no, you’re not going to tell me that the Great Hand of Doom wrote out the dastardly deed?” Beth’s eyes sparkled with amusement.

  “Beth, you really shouldn’t make fun of Jen’s connection to her spirit guide,” Mallory warned. “She’s been blessed and you need to accept that.”

  She glanced nervously toward my hand as if it might be preparing to swoop down and smite Beth for blasphemy. I raised it high, just for fun.

  “Put that thing away,” Beth said, pointing to my hand. “It might be loaded.”

  This was the reason why I always hesitated to mention my automatic writing thingamajig. Beth enjoyed mocking me for the curse of a spirit guide. Her theory was that it was a combination of a spastic hand and a brain tumor. And, truthfully, I wasn’t entirely convinced she was wrong.

  Mallory, though, was awed. Also, she was more than a little ticked-off that the spiritual world chose me (an unenlightened person) instead of her (someone in tune with her spiritual side) for this kind of talent. I’d gladly give her my so-called gift but apparently it was non-transferable.

  In some ways the three of us were so completely different that it was amazing that we’d become lifelong friends.

  “Maybe we could start calling my little gift something besides Hand of Doom. Maybe we could brainstorm.”

  “Bingo,” Beth said making a pistol out of her hand and shooting me with it before whipping out her freakishly small laptop. Even today, a Saturday and her day off, she wore gray wool slacks, black pumps and a white blouse. If there was an accounting emergency, she could fly into action without batting an eye. The only sign she wasn’t going in to her office was that her dark hair hung loose to her shoulders instead of being tied back. She held an extra twenty pounds mostly around her rump from years at a desk, but it hadn’t slowed her cat-like reflexes.

  “I didn’t mean now,” I said.

  “Oh.” Beth looked disappointed. She always loved a good excuse to search the net for something besides girl porn.

  “Wait a second.” Mallory stopped Beth before the laptop got stuffed back in its case. “I’ve been wanting to show you something.”

  Mallory tugged the laptop away from Beth and speedily typed in a web address that soon had us gazing at a video. A scene started up with a votive candle burning in a dim room. Beside the candle lay a blank pad of paper and a pen. Eerie music began to sound quietly as a title filled the screen: Ghost Writing. After a minute on the title the scene shifted to a hand reaching into the frame to pick up the pen. By the bulging veins and loose, drapy skin, I’d say it was an old person’s hand, but that was only my opinion. Maybe the hand had just lived a hard life.

  Anyway, the hand took the pen to the middle of the paper and the screen began to list instructions.

  1) Close your eyes.

  2) Hold the pen loosely in the middle of the page.

  3) Ask if there are any spirits that wish to contact you.

  Suddenly an old woman’s voice murmured the request in a barely audible whisper and the hand began scribbling words onto the paper. All three of us leaned in to see what the words said, but just then the screen faded to black and the video ended with a variety of credits and informed us to visit a website for more information.

  “Huh,” Beth stated, sitting back in her seat. “I give it a one out of five for cinematography and a two for suspense, but basically that sucked.”

  I agreed.

  “I just thought Jen might like to see that she’s not alone.”

  “Great. The creepy person in the video and I are in this together. I feel much better.”

  “She’s local too. I checked out the website and it gives a Bellevue address.”

  “Great. I’ll call her up. We’ll do lunch. Compare notes. Maybe even start a club.” I was being sarcastic and mean to Mallory, but couldn’t seem to stop myself. The whole automatic writing spirit guide thing was a bit of a sore spot and like it or not, I’d made a mental note of the website and knew I’d be looking her up later myself.

  “We can brainstorm names for Jen’s spirit guide another time when we can involve martinis,” Beth suggested, suddenly glancing at her watch as if she had an emergency accountant appointment.

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll just go back to calling it HOD.”

  “HOD isn’t bad,” Beth agreed. “Hand of Doom has that old Black Sabbath feel.”

  “Sure,” Mallory nodded enthusiastically. “And if you change your mind, I’ll give it some thought and email you some suggestions.” She paused, refilled her cup with the remaining oolong from her pot and then added, “By the way, guess who I saw last week.”

  “Who?” Beth and I
chimed.

  “Fred.”

  Fred was the reason we became the Tremendous Trio. At the beginning of our senior year at King County High, a charming, charismatic captain of the football team made it his personal goal to deflower the last remaining virgins in his homeroom. As it turned out, the last virginal captives of Room 201 were Beth, Mallory and yours truly. At the senior prom dance Fred stood on a table and announced loudly and with the courage of the reefer smoked outside earlier, that he’d accomplished his goal. Up until that moment, the three of us had been merely nod-and-smile acquaintances in the halls, but after that night we became inseparable. Mostly because nobody else at school could look at us without busting a gut laughing.

  At the mention of his name, I felt my bowels cramp and a migraine threaten, very much like that night at the senior high prom.

  “You’re kidding. Where did you see him?”

  “At Safeway.”

  “No way!” Beth rolled her eyes and spat a curse that would make a sailor blush. She found it offensive that the guy who literally screwed us over in high school could have the God given right to buy groceries like the rest of us.

  “Yeah, we actually chatted a bit,” Mallory said.

  “You chatted?” I glared at Mallory. “For twelve years we’ve all agreed that if we saw Fred again we’d run him over in the street and make it look like an accident, but instead of driving over him you decided to chat?”

  “We were in the cereal aisle.” Mallory shrugged.

  “You should have slammed your cart into his grape nuts,” Beth growled.

  Mallory sipped her tea looking like she wished she’d never brought it up, but now I was curious.

  “So you chatted with Fred,” I coaxed. “Fill us in. What’s he been doing for the last decade? Managing a strip club, pimping out his sister...what?”

  “Actually, he’s a private detective.” Mallory blotted her lips with her napkin as she smiled.

  Beth snorted Earl Grey out her nose and I sat back in my chair in stunned surprise until suddenly it began to make perfect sense. Mallory reached into her purse and took out one of Fred’s business cards for each of us.

  “You know what? I can see that,” I said after a moment of staring at the white vellum card with the raised black ink. “He’s hired by women to spy on their cheating husbands and then afterward he probably comforts them in their time of need by introducing them to his love torpedo and follows it up with blackmailing them about it later.”

  At least with the whole Fred discussion we could end our morning tea session on a high note, or one of mutual hatred. Talking about loser Fred almost helped to take my mind off possibly the worst twenty-four hours of my life. Still, as much as I enjoyed seeing my friends and drinking warm sweat, it was time to leave tea and head for java. I was scheduled for a noon shift at Merlot’s and that only gave me a couple of hours to get home and pull myself together.

  Mallory asked for a ride home. She was too environmentally conscious to own a vehicle of her own, but didn’t mind bumming a ride if someone else was polluting the air with fossil fuels.

  “So have you notified people about Misty’s death?” Mallory asked a few minutes later as I turned onto her street.

  “Me? No. Don’t the cops do that?”

  “Well, sure, if they know how to trace the family,” Mallory said. She gave me her best do-the-right-thing look. “Wouldn’t it be better if they heard about it from you?”

  There were few people on the planet who could resist one of Mallory’s guilt inducing looks. Even Detective Kellum would have nothing on her. There’s a very good chance Mallory missed her calling and should be working for the Seattle PD, the FBI or God.

  But I’d been on the receiving end of Mallory’s looks many times and I simply countered it with an “I’ll think about it” to let myself off the hook.

  “But I’m not sure how to contact anyone who matters,” I said seriously.

  “And maybe you can also think about asking your spirit guide to tell you who really killed Misty.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I explained, and certainly not for the first time. “When I want to know something, ol’ HOD goes on vacation.” I held up my hand and glared at it. “Every few weeks I get a little tidbit. Yesterday’s news flash was that Arthur was screwing Misty. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to find out I was wasting my time with that two-timing jerk, but if I’m channeling someone from the Great Beyond, you’d think it would be something more profound.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that maybe Misty was about to get killed, or even a message about how I could facilitate world peace, or invent a bra that actually fits, or how to deal with my dad.” I bit back emotion.

  “Is he still coming around your work?” Mallory asked quickly picking up on the real issue at the heart of my rant.

  “Yup. So maybe the great hand could scrawl out something profound about my Dad instead.”

  “Maybe you need to talk to a professional.”

  I pulled up the curb in front of her building and put the car in park.

  “A counselor? A priest? Who?”

  “You could start with that website,” Mallory said, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening her car door.

  When I got into my own building I rode up the elevator, and when the doors slid open, I glanced left and cringed at the sight of the crime scene tape still covering Misty’s door. I was so busy looking left that when I turned right to head in the direction of my own apartment, I walked straight into Detective Kellum.

  “Just the lady I want to see,” he said, steadying me with firm hands.

  “Oh really?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been pounding your door for the last half hour. I didn’t take you for an early riser.”

  He fell into step alongside me while we walked to my apartment.

  “I met up with some friends for tea and now I’m going to get ready for work.” I jammed my key in the lock. “I’ve told you everything I remember, Detective.”

  “I think you left something out.”

  “Really? What?” I opened the door and glanced over at the Detective expectantly.

  “You failed to mention that your dad used to be a cop.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see how that matters.”

  “He’s mentally ill, right?”

  Chapter Four

  Of course it was right at that moment Mrs. Rudnicki stuck her head out her door across the hall to give me the hairy eyeball. I had no choice but to graciously and calmly invite Detective Kellum inside in order to avoid having this chat in the hall.

  “Why don’t you come inside and I’ll put on the coffee.”

  I looked past the detective to offer Mrs. Rudnicki a sweet-as-pie smile that really meant bite me.

  Once inside I closed the door behind the detective and let the sweetness drop.

  “I’ve got to be at work in an hour.”

  “Then it’s time you started to be honest with me.”

  “I’ve been completely honest.”

  “A lie by omission is still a lie.”

  Now he sounds like my mother.

  He watched me intently as I scooped up Mojo and calmed her while she made angry barks at the detective.

  “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t see what my dad’s mental illness had to do with this situation with Misty.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of what’s relevant.”

  “Fine,” I agreed. “But I need to shower and get ready for work.”

  “I’ll wait,” he announced.

  I rolled my eyes and he followed me as I walked down the hall to my bedroom. I snagged my pink fluffy housecoat from a hook on the back of my door and walked across the hall to the bathroom. He leaned against the wall in t
he hall and folded his arms across his chest like he had all day. I closed the bathroom door behind me.

  I lathered up, rinsed off then turned up the temperature of the spray and let the hot water pelt me between the shoulder blades for a few minutes while I rested my forehead against the cool tiles. I tried to relax, but every time I closed my eyes I thought of Misty and the fact that she was murdered only a few apartments away. I was very aware I had a homicide detective in my apartment waiting to ask me questions. It made me feel more like vomiting and far less tranquil. Stepping out of the shower I toweled off then wrapped my housecoat around me and opened the door. I let out a small “eep” of surprise when I found Detective Kellum was directly in front of me when I opened the door.

  “So you and Misty didn’t share a mother, but you did share a father, right?” Detective Kellum asked.

  Folding my fluffy robed arms across my chest I looked at him defiantly.

  “You really want the entire sordid tale of my pathetic life?”

  He shrugged.

  “It would help.”

  “I really want to do my part and help you catch whoever did this, but I don’t see how hearing about my wretched childhood will help one tiny bit and—”

  I noticed Detective Kellum was no longer looking at me, but instead was looking over my shoulder.

  The bathroom mirror had steamed up to reveal “Dear Jen, Arthur is screwing Misty.”

  “Who wrote that?”

  A hot blush crept up my neck and covered my face.

  “I did.”

  I left him staring at the mirror as I pushed past him and crossed the hall to my bedroom. I closed the door and started rummaging through my drawers and then my laundry hamper for something resembling work wear. I tossed a couple of items on the floor and Mojo made a quick nest out of my dirty clothes and regarded me thoughtfully. The pants were an easy choice—Merlot’s didn’t mind jeans—but the shirt was supposed to be white and all my white shirts had coffee stains. Occupational hazard. I slipped on the least-stained blouse and buttoned it up, then flung open the bedroom door.

  “Any other questions?”