Grounds to Kill Read online

  I piled the stack of flyers on the passenger seat and drove off.

  My cell phone beeped with a text message from Beth saying she and Mallory were coming over to help me through my time of need. I drove with my elbows and texted with my thumbs that I was in a bad mood thinking that would change their minds. By the time I got home I was still in a sour mood and spoiling for fight. I texted Beth from the parking lot and told her not to bother with a visit. I picked up the wet flyers that I’d piled on the passenger seat and carried the dripping pile of paper into the building.

  When I entered the back door of the building and headed through the lobby to the elevators I noticed Beth and Mallory standing outside the front doors leaning on the buzzers to be let in. Mallory saw me and held up the items in her hands. Apparently Beth took my surly texts to stay away as an invitation to show up at my apartment with wine and a movie.

  “I’m in a mood,” I said in warning as I let them in.

  “That’s okay,” Beth announced. “We’re here for you.”

  “George Clooney will snap you out of it,” Mallory announced holding up the DVD.

  I thought that was putting a lot of pressure on Clooney, but didn’t respond. We rode up the elevator and when the doors slid open there was grumpy old Mrs. Rudnicki walking down the hall with Mojo on a long leash of red ribbon.

  “What the hell are you doing with my dog?” I demanded. I shook the wad of wet papers in the air.

  Mojo looked like a cartoon character with her feet moving in a fast blur, but not going anywhere, because Mrs. Rudnicki had hold of her. I ran to Mojo and scooped her up.

  “Your stupid mutt was running up and down the hall unescorted.”

  I let Mojo lick my face excitedly as hello then handed her to Mallory who was her godmother and always had dried vegan dog munchies in her purse.

  “How did she get out of my apartment?” I demanded.

  Mrs. Rudnicki shrugged as if it was no matter to her and I pushed past her and began taking angry steps toward my door.

  My friends quick stepped behind me. When I reached my apartment, I stuck in the key, but it swung open at my touch.

  “What the f—” Beth blurted.

  “Holy sh—” Mallory mumbled.

  But I couldn’t come up with any curses of my own. All I could do was gape in astonishment at my destroyed apartment. It was ransacked. Kitchen drawers yanked open and their contents dumped all over the floor.

  It was Beth who took it upon herself to call Detective Kellum after finding his business card next to the telephone.

  He arrived quickly and with a crew who went to work polluting my doorframes and light switches with fingerprint powder.

  “And nothing’s missing?” he stated.

  “No,” I replied.

  “You don’t know that,” Beth said. “I mean how could you possibly know that?” She waved a hand to encompass the apartment. “It’s a disaster!”

  “As far as you can tell,” Kellum rephrased, “nothing is missing.”

  “The most valuable things in this apartment are my TVs, DVD player and my laptop. As you can see, they weren’t touched.”

  And how sad and pathetic is that? I thought. Thirty years old and nothing to show for my life, but a few electronics bought cheap at an after Christmas sale.

  I squeezed my eyes shut against tears that threatened.

  “We’ll clean it up,” Beth said. She drew me close in a one arm hug, obviously assuming I was only upset about the state of my apartment and not realizing I’d gone to the next level and was tearing up about my entire dismal life.

  “And where’s the laptop?” Kellum asked, looking around.

  “Right there on the counter next to the—” I stopped and sighed. “It’s gone.” I threw my hands in the air. “Well, I guess that was it. A big mess all on account of a cheap laptop.”

  “Are you sure you left it there?” Beth asked. “Maybe it’s in the bedroom.”

  “Check around for a laptop,” Kellum ordered.

  “It was there,” I said to Beth. “I used it yesterday and it was running slow so I was going to bring it to you to do whatever voodoo magic you always do when it’s running slow.”

  “You mean run the virus check?” Beth said.

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Well, at least we know what they were looking for,” Mallory said.

  Kellum mumbled something under his breath and the three of us turned to face him.

  “You don’t think it was about the laptop, do you?” I asked.

  “And neither do you,” he said. “Let’s stop playing games here.” He turned and pointed to the door. “Your door was locked. No sign of forced entry. Nobody takes the time to totally destroy an apartment if all they’re looking for are some electronics to snatch and grab.” He offered us a you-can’t-be-that-stupid look and then pointed to the coffee table in front of us. “Oh and I’m curious, do you have a black lab you’ve also been hiding?”

  My face drained of all color as I saw him pointing to the damp stack of lost dog pages that I’d dropped on the table.

  “No...um...no,” I said eloquently.

  “She only has Mojo.” Beth rolled her eyes. “She came into the apartment with those, and was probably going to put them up for a friend.” She turned to me. “Right?”

  My mouth opened, but I didn’t respond. I hadn’t shared the news about my dad’s latest dog flyer obsession with the girls. Truth was, I was embarrassed, but I still needed an explanation.

  “They were all over the back of Merlot’s so I needed to clean them up at the end of my shift.”

  “What about Misty? Did she have a black lab?” he demanded.

  “Not as far as I know,” I said and I began to wring my hands and feel nervous inside.

  “What’s the big deal, Detective?” Mallory asked.

  “Exactly what I’m wondering,” Kellum said turning to me. “What’s with these flyers?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as I folded my arms across my chest. “I should’ve thrown them out at Merlot’s, but instead I had them in my hands already and brought them home by accident.”

  His eyes were cold and piercing and he didn’t say anything for a full minute. Maybe he thought I’d confess to destroying my own apartment based on wet flyers? I didn’t get it.

  “These are from your work?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “They weren’t from here? In your building? In your apartment?”

  “No-o-o.” My eyebrows scrunched together. “Why? What’s the big deal about a few lost dog flyers?”

  “When was the last time Misty visited you at your place of work?”

  “Never,” I said quickly. “Not once. I doubt she even knew where I worked.”

  “Hmmm.” He wrote something down on his note pad and then instructed one of the crime scene guys to carefully bag the flyers.

  “Skip the CSI theatrics,” Beth barked. “If you’ve got something to say to Jen, then why don’t you say it?”

  “Whose phone number is printed on those flyers?” he spat and jabbed a finger in direction of the papers.

  We all stared and shrugged. I didn’t recognize the number right off, but a tiny speck of memory flashed in my gray matter. Then it hit.

  “Oh!” I gasped.

  “So you do know.” Kellum looked smug as he folded his arms over his chest. “Care to explain why you’ve got a stack of lost dog flyers with Misty’s phone number on them?”

  Now my friends gasped too.

  “I...I don’t know what that’s about...” I mumbled. “Really...until you pointed it out, I didn’t connect it with Misty.”

  “Misty had these flyers too,” Kellum said.

  “She did
?” My face scrunched up. That didn’t even make sense. But before I could even process that thought, Kellum threw a zinger at me.

  “You must’ve noticed it since it was on top of her body when we found her?”

  My jaw dropped.

  “What?”

  Kellum narrowed his eyes.

  “Oh c’mon, Jen, you see your sister dead on the floor of her apartment. Murdered. And you were there long enough to throw crap at her for some reason, so you must’ve noticed she had a lost dog flyer on her face!” As he was shouting I felt my knees go weak. He paused for a beat. “Did you give one of those flyers to your sister?”

  “No!” I shouted, matching his own angry tone and then quietly added, “and she’s not...she wasn’t...my sister.”

  “Okay, enough berating my friend.” Beth stepped between me and Kellum. “I imagine you’ll be here a while searching for God knows what.” Over her shoulder to me she said, “Go pack an overnight bag. You’re coming to stay at my place.”

  Kellum grumbled a little at Beth’s firm attorney-ish proclamation, but he didn’t disagree. An officer stood over me observing as I tossed a few things into a duffel bag.

  When I returned to the living room with my tote bag and doggie supplies, Kellum was rifling through a large envelope on my coffee table. He tugged out a piece of paper.

  “Just to be clear, did you or did you not give the lost dog papers to Misty?”

  “No. I didn’t.” I started to walk past him, but he put a hand on my elbow to stop me.

  “Is this your handwriting?” he asked.

  I turned and looked at the paper. It was a lost dog flyer, but not the original, a photocopy of one that had a stain on one corner. My eyes were glued to the stain because I realized if it was on Misty’s face, like he said, that stain was most likely blood. Reluctantly, I dragged my eyes from the stain to the phone number scrawled in shaky bold letters above the phone number. Two words “find me.”

  “Jen?” Beth’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  I realized I’d been staring and Detective Kellum had been asking me questions, but I hadn’t responded. With a shake of my head I mumbled a quick response.

  “Not my writing. Not my note.”

  I took my car, and Mojo balanced carefully on the passenger seat. We met Beth and Mallory at Beth’s apartment a few minutes later. Dropping onto a flowered occasional chair with a sigh, I closed my eyes a couple of seconds and tried to compose myself. Mojo commenced sniffing her surroundings. A sharp bang on the coffee table caused me to snap my eyelids open to find Beth and Mallory seated across from me on the sofa. The bottle of dry Riesling that had first arrived at my place was now placed front and center.

  “Jen, you need to tell us what happened,” Mallory said quietly.

  “What do you mean?” I said, sitting straighter. “My place was trashed. Somebody stole my laptop. You were there. You saw it. Pretty much that’s it.”

  Beth uncorked the wine and filled three glasses.

  “Tremendous Trio,” we chimed our familiar cheer and clinked our glasses.

  We drank and I closed my eyes again as the chilled liquid slid down my throat. I was grateful for the wine, but was even more glad it wasn’t tequila. Once I opened my eyes again, I noticed my glass had been topped off, but when I reached for it, Mallory tugged it out of my grasp.

  “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us.”

  “What do you want?” I demanded. “A confession?” I sat back in the chair and dragged my eyes from one to the other. I couldn’t believe it. “You think I’m guilty.”

  “Of course not,” Beth said waving her hand. “But we want the truth. The whole story. How did those flyers end up in Misty’s apartment with her phone number on them?”

  “Was it a prank?” Mallory asked. “Did you just put up flyers all over town so she’d be getting random calls from people who’d found dogs?”

  “Jen’s not that stupid,” Beth stated with a harrumph.

  “Thank you,” I said with a sigh of gratitude. At least someone believed in me.

  “If she was going to put Misty’s phone number out there it might be on flyers stating ‘For a good time call...’ or maybe some that offered free blowjobs.”

  “Oh my God!” I shouted. “I had nothing to do with the flyers! They are not mine. I did not create them or leave them anywhere!”

  They eyed me skeptically and I realized there was no avoiding the story.

  “A few months ago my dad started coming around,” I began.

  “Your dad?” Mallory gasped. “You’ve patched things up? He’s better?”

  “Let her finish,” Beth admonished. “So your dad was coming around your place and...” she prompted.

  “Not my place. Merlot’s.” I dragged my fingers through my hair and ached to finish that glass of wine. Mallory sensing my ache like a good friend, pushed the glass toward me and I took a very large, unladylike gulp. “He’s been sitting across the street and will put out a cup for spare change. Not every day, but at least a few times a week I’ll see him there. After a few times I started bringing him a coffee and baked goods on my break.”

  “Ah, that’s sweet,” Mallory said.

  “And enabling,” Beth said.

  “Can I continue?”

  “Please.” Beth waved a hand in my direction. “Tell us, what did Mitch think about him hanging around?”

  “Mitch doesn’t know. Of course he saw me feeding day-old baked goods and coffee to a stinky homeless man, but he doesn’t know he’s my dad.”

  Mallory’s eyebrows went up and her look said, “Wow. Ashamed or what?”

  “I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed,” I said heatedly. “It’s just none of his business.”

  “Of course,” Mallory said, but her tone said she didn’t believe it any more than Beth’s raised eyebrows did.

  “But when Misty was killed, you had no problem calling up Mitch to come and comfort you.”

  “He was my third choice,” I reminded them. “You guys were my first and second, but you were out aligning your chakras or whatever.”

  “Actually, during the chakra workshop, Beth was missing in action,” Mallory said, sounding wounded.

  Beth rolled her eyes. “I told you I’d go to the damn weekend retreat with you but I never promised to go to every woo-woo workshop.”

  I finished the story filling them in on my giving Dad the list of homeless shelters in the area and him not parking his butt across the street today, but instead leaving me to find flyers on my car and the back alley wall of Merlot’s.

  “Why?” Beth asked, shaking her head. “I just don’t get it. You don’t see him for, what? Nearly two years? Then he shows up, not to talk but to give you lost dog flyers? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “He’s sick, Beth,” Mallory said quietly. “There is no explanation. I mean, in his mind, of course, it’s all rational.”

  We were quiet a moment, but something was tickling the back of my wine-filled brain cells. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  “There’s one thing, guys,” I began seriously. “Misty had no flyer on her face when I found her.”

  “What?” Beth was on her feet.

  “Are—are you sure?” Mallory stuttered. “I mean, you were in shock, right? Maybe you’re mistaken about that.”

  I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers.

  “I saw her face. I remember thinking ‘My God, even though she’s dead, her makeup is still perfect.’” I looked up and glanced from one friend to the other. “Well, it was! And I wouldn’t have been able to see her makeup if there’d been a piece of paper on her face.”

  “Maybe it was beside her head,” Beth said. “I mean, maybe Kellum said on, but really meant beside.”


  “Yeah,” Mallory agreed. “He could’ve been trying to trap you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said impatiently.

  “Sure it does,” Beth said, agreeing with Mallory for the first time ever. “What if he said on her face thinking maybe you’d be stupid enough to correct him and say it wasn’t on her face, it was beside her face.”

  “Is that even fair?”

  “Jen, everything’s fair,” Mallory said ominously.

  “In love and war everything’s fair,” Beth corrected. “In the legal system, I think that would be entrapment.”

  I took a moment to think about whether or not Kellum was trying to trap me after only this very morning I’d introduced him to the world of quality coffee.

  I shook my head and got down to what had really been bothering me.

  “You guys are missing the big picture here,” I said. I rubbed the palm of my left hand against the arm of the chair. “If that piece of paper wasn’t there when I found her body, somebody put it there after.”

  “But the cops came pretty quick, right? When could someone have done that?”

  “I went back to my apartment to call them. It must’ve happened then.”

  “You need to tell Kellum,” Mallory said emphatically. “You need to call him right now and tell him that the paper wasn’t there and that someone put it there afterward. God, Jen, that person could be the murderer! And they were probably still in Misty’s apartment when you found her!”

  I’d been trying to control my emotions, but a small strangled sob escaped my throat.

  “What?” Mallory asked worriedly. She looked from me to Beth.

  Fat tears squeezed between my lashes, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the thought that was percolating. My palm was itching painfully now.

  “You gonna answer that call?” Beth asked, pointing to my left hand that I was scraping with the fingernails of my right hand.

  Mallory jumped up like she’d been jabbed with a cattle prod and scurried over to Beth’s desk in the corner, returning with a pen and notepad and looking entirely too excited.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Maybe your spirit guide has the answer. Maybe he’ll tell you who the murderer is.”