Grounds to Kill Read online

  “And maybe he’ll tell me he hates my hair this color,” I said, sniffling and wiping my nose on my sleeve.

  “That was a one-time thing,” Beth said, handing me a tissue box. “Besides, it was your subconscious telling you the truth. You were never meant to be a blonde.”

  My head bobbed in a nod and tears streamed down my face. My palm was itching, my stomach was churning and my nose was running. I was a poster child for screwed up. With a fistful of tissue I dried my tears and blew my nose.

  “I still think it’s a brain tumor,” Beth said. “Not that I want you to have an unhealthy mass in your head, but maybe it’s just a small, harmless one that makes your hand itch.”

  “A benign lump in her brain that causes her to write random thoughts using her left hand, even though she’s right-handed?” Mallory asked, her eyebrows raised.

  “It’s possible. More possible then believing that some spirit from the Great Beyond occasionally takes over Jen’s body and forces her to write weird notes!” Beth replied with heat.

  “In the room,” I stated weakly. “I’m in the room and sitting right in front of you.”

  “You’re forgetting the most important part,” Mallory continued. “When Jen channels a message from her spirit guide, it’s always true.”

  “Always?” Beth asked.

  “Always,” Mallory replied emphatically.

  “Still in the room,” I said. “Stop talking about me as if I’m not right here!”

  I picked up the pen and note pad and my friends immediately stilled. Even though Beth claimed to be a nonbeliever, I couldn’t help but notice she held her breath while she waited for the message.

  Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply and allowed my tumor and/or guide to scribble a brief message on the note pad. “Dear Jen, Find your dad.”

  After this huge non-revelation Mallory and Beth dove into an excited conversation about just how I should go about doing as the Hand of Doom had instructed. I, on the other hand, sat back and gave in to the wine and began to feel woozy, sleepy and nauseated in the way that only booze on an empty stomach can produce.

  “Well?” Mallory gave my shoulder a shove.

  “Well, what?” I flopped back in the chair and slid down its shiny polyester fabric.

  “Well,” Beth said with frustration. “What’s the plan? Do we go tonight to find your dad and ask him about Misty?”

  I looked from one friend to the other. It was really hard to believe they thought it was that simple. Had they not been witness to my entire life story the last dozen or more years? Or even this past week?

  “How the hell do you think that’ll help?” I shouted. “You think I should just walk up and say ‘hey, Dad, how’s it going? Did you hear Misty was murdered? Do you know anything about that, because my left hand believes you hold all the answers.’” My tone was venomous.

  “I don’t get it, Jen. Don’t you want to at least try?” Mallory asked.

  “Try and hunt down dear ol’ Dad and find out which doorway he’s sleeping in tonight and then try and have a reasonable, logical and intellectual conversation with a man who hasn’t spoken in years probably because he believes the government planted a listening device in his fillings?” I swallowed angry tears.

  “You’ve had a rough couple of days and you’ve had a lot to drink.” Beth stated the obvious and got to her feet. “And you probably haven’t eaten. I’ll heat you up some soup and then I’ll go get you a blanket and pillow.”

  Around 5:00 a.m. I woke with a start and wondered where I was. I’d been dreaming of an enthusiastic round of lovemaking with Arthur and now found myself in a hot embrace with one of Beth’s shiny, green throw pillows. I got up to pee and Mojo made a loud yawning and stretching noise before settling back to sleep. For me it wasn’t that easy to go back to sleep. After folding up my blanket I left Beth a note thanking her and telling her we’d gone home. Mojo was less than enthused about my decision and let me know that by whining most of the way.

  Home was my original intention, but I didn’t feel safe there. Instead, I found myself driving slowly down the hill of Cherry Street between Second and First and peering down the tenebrous alley that connected Cherry to James Street. Movement a few feet into the alley could’ve been a person hunkering down for the night, or a large rat looking for food. It was pointless to wait around to find out, just like it was useless to think I’d find my father, one needle in the haystack of thousands of Seattle vagrants.

  Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I released a weary sigh. Dad could’ve been in one of the many available shelters for the night, but it depended on his state of mind. What outraged citizens and altruistic Samaritans didn’t always get was that providing hundreds of beds wasn’t enough. Many of the mentally ill made a conscious choice to remain outside. You could tell a paranoid schizophrenic that there was a warm, dry place for him to sleep, but you couldn’t necessarily convince him that the building wasn’t just a cover for a conspiracy to read his mind and thus enslave the free world.

  With one more sigh I accelerated past the entrance of the alley opting to corner right onto First. Immediately I noticed a short, older woman in a red beanie hat pushing an overloaded shopping cart. I’d seen her before in Merlot’s alley, but what caught my eye was the bright orange Jansport backpack balanced precariously on the very top of her mountain of possessions.

  I slowed and rolled down the passenger window.

  “Hey!” I called out.

  The woman glanced over her shoulder in my direction and picked up the pace. I veered around a parked car and sped up.

  “I just want to ask you about the orange backpack!” I called out.

  “It’s mine,” she shouted back, but due to a lack of front teeth it came out ith instead of it’s.

  I was driving alongside her now, but she was moving at a good clip considering the load she was pushing and the fact that it probably weighed twice what she did.

  “There are probably a thousand orange Jansport backpacks around,” I muttered to myself. Just as I was pulling away from the curb though, she pushed the cart directly under the glow of a street lamp and I caught a glimpse of the small yellow compass dangling from the center pocket zipper pull. Abruptly I cranked the wheel to the curb, put the car in park and jumped out.

  Mojo stood up on the passenger seat and barked at me through the window. I pressed the key fob and locked the car behind me to make sure she’d be safe.

  “Wait up!” I called.

  Ms. Red Beanie took one furtive look over her shoulder and put it into high gear. It took me a whole block before I could catch up, and that was only because stuff began to fall out of her cart and she stopped to scoop up some grocery bags filled with empty cans.

  “I just want to ask you about the backpack,” I said, breathing heavily after my impromptu workout.

  “Mine!” She screamed, snagging the backpack and pulling it to her chest.

  When she began to roll forward with the cart, I stepped in front of her to block her escape.

  “Where did you find it? I saw you before in the alley behind Merlot’s Coffee House. Did you steal it from the homeless man who usually hangs out there?”

  “Ith mine!” She shouted. “You try and take it I’ll call da copth!”

  The backpack was overstuffed and the more I looked at it the more convinced I was that it was Dad’s backpack.

  “I’ll pay you for it,” I said. Digging in the pockets of my jeans, I came up with a five dollar bill and half a pack of gum.

  The woman eyed me skeptically. At first I’d thought she was old, but her lack of teeth and yellowed skin just gave her that appearance. It occurred to me that she wasn’t old at all. In fact, she could’ve been thirty, just like me..

  I held out the five dollar bill and she snatched it from my fingers and
then pointed.

  “The jacket too.”

  “What?”

  “Your hoodie.” She nodded her bony chin in my direction.

  I debated only a second before starting to unzip, then stopped.

  “First tell me where you found the backpack.”

  She shrugged.

  “I found it when I went for lunch.” She indicated behind her by pointing her thumb over her shoulder. “At da bread.”

  “Bread?”

  She rolled her dark large eyes back into their impossibly deep sockets.

  “Yeah...you know...da Bread of Life.”

  “Oh! The Bread of Life Mission?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She pointed a thick finger at my chest. “Jacket.”

  I peeled off my hoodie and held it out to her, then snatched it back at the last second.

  “Backpack.”

  She rolled her eyes again, tossed it to me and then yanked the hoodie from my fingers. In a speedy motion she had her arms inside the sleeves and the zipper up to her chin.

  I opened the backpack, peered inside and saw Dad’s squashed day-old muffins and a stack of lost dog flyers. My heart clenched.

  “Is he there?” I asked before she could steer her cart away from me. “At the mission?”

  “Who?” she demanded impatiently.

  “My dad,” I said, holding up the backpack. “This is his. This is his backpack and I’m looking for him.”

  “You’re Jack’s girl?”

  I nodded.

  “You can’t be on account of he said she was dead. Just got herself murdered.”

  My throat went dry and my stomach tightened with fear.

  “He said that? He told you Misty was killed?”

  “Jack don’t talk, dontcha know that? He ain’t never talked that I heard. Can’t ’member who toll me about Misty. Maybe Jack wrote it down on account of he does that sometimes. Writeth thingth down. Mostly stupid stuff.” She tapped the side of her own head. “He’s knitting with only one needle.”

  “What?”

  “He don’t talk.”

  “I know.” I folded my arms tightly across my chest against the cold. “And you just stole his backpack since he wasn’t well?” I demanded.

  “He left it! I didn’t steal it! He just left it and walked out.”

  “If you see him again, could you tell him his daughter’s looking for him? Jen. His daughter, Jen. He’ll know where to find me.”

  She shrugged and ambled off, the wobbly wheels of the shopping cart making clunking noises over every crack in the sidewalk. I slung the backpack over one shoulder and walked back to my car. I drove back to my own apartment with a feeling of trepidation. I told myself that I was safe. But I didn’t feel safe.

  “Whoever broke in got what they wanted and won’t be back,” I murmured as the elevator rode up to the second floor. “Right?” I asked Mojo.

  The dog just yawned.

  “You’re right. I’m making entirely too big a deal out of my apartment getting trashed for a laptop. I’m fine. Really. This was nothing, right?”

  I obviously didn’t believe my own pep talk, because, when the doors slid open and Mrs. Rudnicki was standing there, I nearly peed my pants.

  “You scared me half to death!” I gasped.

  I stepped into the hall and she stepped into the elevator.

  “Hmph,” was all I got in reply.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do in the middle of the night than stalk the halls?” I demanded.

  “What are you doing coming home when it’s nearly morning?” she demanded in return. “Backpacking across the red-light district?” She cackled as she nodded her chin toward Dad’s backpack.

  The elevator door went to slide shut, and I stopped it with my hand.

  “Why couldn’t you have been out on patrol when someone broke into my apartment, huh? You’re the one-woman security for the building and yet someone got killed and another place was trashed and you saw nothing.”

  I let the elevator door close and allowed Mojo to walk ahead on her leash and pull me along. I glanced momentarily over my shoulder down to the opposite end of the hall and saw the crime tape was down at Misty’s. My chest gave a tight squeeze at the thought of finding her dead.

  Once inside my own place I took in the disheveled apartment and smearing of fingerprint dust and suddenly I felt terrified. After locking the door, I pushed an armchair in front of it and then put an end table on top of the arm chair. Mojo tilted her head and watched my antics.

  “Now would be a really good time for you to get in touch with your inner pitbull,” I told her.

  In response, Mojo ran to her water bowl and slurped noisily.

  Feeling a little safer now that I’d barricaded the door, I slumped onto the sofa, tossed the backpack on the coffee table and stared at it like it held the answers to all that was wrong with my life. A lot of expectation for a beat-up bag. After a few moments of staring I began to unpack the contents. The outer compartments held loose change, bus tickets and for some reason known only to my crazy father, a large collection of triple A batteries, but nothing electronic to put them in. After a moment’s hesitation, I opened the largest compartment. On top was a stack of about fifty damp and crumpled sheets of lost dog flyers. I piled the papers on top of the batteries collected from the outer compartment and then proceeded to pull out numerous mushed and crushed baked goods wrapped in Merlot Coffee House napkins.

  “That’s it, Dad, no more treats for you.”

  After gathering up assorted moldy and crumbling muffins and tossing them in the trash, I continued my excavation through the pack discovering a couple of sweat-stained T-shirts wrapped around something hard and square. Peeling away the shirts, I found myself looking at an oak-framed eight-by-ten picture of me and Misty.

  A small whimper escaped my lips. It was the photo from Misty’s apartment. And that meant he had to get it between the time I saw her and before the police arrived.

  My breathing was quick and shallow. For a minute I thought I was going to pass out.

  Mojo took one look at me and went to sleep in her princess bed. She was a rock in times of crisis.

  Dad was there the night Misty died. He took this picture and, according to Kellum, left a flyer.

  Did my crazy father murder his own daughter?

  Chapter Six

  Sleep was as elusive to me as financial freedom and a satisfactory love life. I tossed and turned until thinking of my lack of love made me do what lonely and neglected women have done since the beginning of time—I called the man who cheated on me.

  Arthur answered the phone sounding sleepy and grumpy.

  “I’m sorry for waking you.”

  “Jen? Wassup?” He yawned loudly in the phone then added needlessly, “It’s, like, really early.”

  “I was just feeling scared. My place was broken into yesterday.”

  “Yeah. I heard. You don’t want to be alone, huh? Want I should come over and, um, keep you company?”

  I could hear the sexy smile in his voice.

  “Give me half an hour,” he said and disconnected before I could reply.

  I told myself that I didn’t really want him to come over, but, halfway through tidying up my trashed apartment and applying fresh makeup, I had to accept that, whether intentionally or inadvertently, I’d just made a booty call.

  Mojo sat in the hall tilting her head and making whining noises at me.

  “I know I shouldn’t have called him, but what’s done is done.”

  Mojo growled and I shook my finger at her.

  “Don’t judge me.”

  Arthur rapped on my door in under twenty minutes. It took me a moment to remove my barricade and let him in. He looke
d deliciously disheveled as he embraced me in a strong hug. I breathed deep the scent of sleep and his cologne.

  My head said STOP, but areas south of my equator shouted MORE.

  Apparently I am doomed to having my fate determined by my tingly bottom half. It wasn’t long before we lay sweaty and content in the tangle of my sheets. I should add that Arthur was content. I, on the other hand, was frustrated and filled with self-loathing and regret.

  “This was a mistake,” I said on a sigh.

  “Why?” Arthur rolled over and reached a hand out to cup my breast. “Give me a minute, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “No. Not that.”

  Well, it wasn’t just that.

  Turning away I reached onto the floor for my over-sized Seahawks T-shirt. I pulled it over my head as I climbed out of bed.

  “We broke up for a reason, Arthur, remember? You were sleeping with my half sister.”

  “That was a one-time mistake,” he said earnestly as he grabbed a second pillow and tucked it under his head. “I never should’ve been with Misty. It just kind of happened. It was an accident.”

  “An accident?” I turned and fisted my hands on my hips as I faced him. “How can sleeping with someone be an accident? You accidentally fell and slipped your penis into her vagina?”

  He laughed and patted the bed, but I refused to crawl in next to him.

  “So how did it happen?”

  “It just did.” He shrugged and looked up at me with soft, beseeching eyes. “Do you really need to hear the details?”

  “Yes.”

  He blew out a long breath.

  “I came by to see you a couple of weeks ago. I thought you’d be home, but you weren’t. As I headed back to the elevator, she was just coming home. She had a lot of bags in her hands and she looked like she needed help getting them to her apartment...” He shrugged.

  “And you ended up sleeping with her?” I could feel my eyes bulging.

  “Like I said, it was just kind of an accident.”

  “So basically you were horny and I wasn’t available, so any old vagina in a storm...is that it?” My breath caught in my throat and tears pricked the back of my eyes. I turned and headed for the living room before he could see me cry. Why did I keep doing this to myself?