Kill Smartie Breedlove (a mystery) (29 page)

“Only a woman’s struggle with herself.”

“People saw you come in.”

“Hours ago.” Casilda poked Smartie’s shoulder, shoving her a little closer to the wall. “In a blond wig, sunglasses and jeans.”

“My critique group—my friends—they know I wrote that book.”

“They’re about to receive an e-mail from you, confessing that Herrick wrote it all, despairing about living a lie. Saying goodbye.”

“And what possible motive would Herrick have—”

“You and Herrick behaving strangely?” Casilda scoffed. “It would be more suspicious if you didn’t.”

“Herrick will never associate himself with
genre
fiction!”

“Herrick doesn’t know his ass from a Norton Anthology.”

“Because you’ve been keeping him drunk,” said Smartie. “Or drugged.”

“And how much of a challenge do you supposed that’s been?” said Casilda. “Herrick brings new meaning to ‘publish or perish.’ He wants it so badly it’s literally burned holes in his liver. He wants it more than he ever wanted you or me.” Casilda punctuated her assertion with a brief, bitter laugh. “When the opportunity is presented to him, he’ll seize it.”

In one swift motion, Smartie stripped the thick rubber band from the manuscript, cast it in Casilda’s face and made a dive for the door, but before she could unjam the table leg from the track, Casilda had her by a thick handful of corkscrew hair, and they girl-fought for an awful moment, slapping and screeching at each other.

The handgun clattered on the tile floor and was kicked into a drift of scattering pages. The wind whipped a tattered blizzard around them as they scuffled, white paper drifting into the open air over the freeway frontage road and tree-lined boulevard below.

T
he barmaid eventually rounded up a bellhop to eject the drunk.

“Another round?” she asked Shep, and he nodded.

“Hit me.”

Shep was tipping the second shot to his lips when the flitter of white caught the corner of his eye. Hugging his arm across his ribs, he went to the window. Loose sheets of clean paper drifted down like cherry blossoms across the greenway. The evicted drunk was out on the sidewalk, picking up pages and scratching his head.

“What the hell…” Shep whispered, the plot unspooling.

His memory settled on the smallest of things. The paper tray from Starbucks in Casilda’s hands. Her knuckles were scuffed. If he’d bothered to check the trunk of her car, he’d have been reminded of a fundamental truth.

It was always the ex.

B
acked against the half-wall now, Smartie felt the rough edges of the circle-in-square brickwork, the cool metal of the railing along the top. She hurled herself against Casilda, but the caftan may as well have curtained a cinderblock wall. Without anything fancier than a step forward, Casilda had Smartie bent over the railing, looking out into a vast expanse of altitude, gravity and the inevitable.

“Casilda, no! Please! Don’t do this!”

Smartie screamed and kicked as she felt her feet displaced. She grabbed hold of the metal railing with both hands and instantly knew that Bean was right; there was no way she’d be able to hang on.

Don’t you think it would have been better to have her get her arms around it somehow?

She looped one arm between the metal railing and the sharp-edged brickwork, hugging the rail, gripping her elbows, hoping it might give her another moment to beg.

“Casilda, don’t. You’re a teacher. You’re a good person. Casilda, please!”

Smartie felt herself gripped and lifted at the middle. Her kneecap painfully clipped the metal bar as her legs were thrown over the railing, and then she was hanging in the air, in the sky, with city air and the distant din of traffic updrafting the silk slip dress and Casilda’s fists raining down blunt and hard on her head and shoulders. And then suddenly Casilda was gone, and there was nothing but the breeze.

“Casilda, help me. Please. Don’t do this.” There was no answer, but Smartie heard the soft scrape of an iron chair in the far corner of the balcony. “Casilda! Please. Don’t.”

Smartie flailed her feet, trying to find one of the little rain drainage circles. She caught one with the toes of her right foot and worked that foot forward, her heart beating so hard, she didn’t immediately separate from it the sound of pounding on the balcony door.

“Smartie? Smartie, are you out there? Open the door.”

Smartie uttered an involuntary sob and started screaming. “
Shep! Shep, help me!
”

There was a loud noise. Glass breaking. A moment later, his startled face appeared above her. “Smartie, for Christ sake, what—”

“
Behind you
.”

His expression held neither surprise nor pain, as if he knew an iron ice cream chair had struck him in the side of the head, but there wasn’t quite enough time to process a connection between the explosion of his eardrum and the word
damage
.

Shep slumped forward, bending over the rail, blood rivering down his forehead and face. He hauled himself back, blinking hard, opening his eyes wide, screwing them shut, opening them again, groping for daylight. He staggered backwards and disappeared, and the ice cream chair came down with the force of a guillotine on Smartie’s arm.

The pain was transporting.

In a moment of dizzy blackness, Smartie lost her foothold on the wall, her body swinging against the bricks. She didn’t know if she was still alive or awake or drunk or dreaming until the discharge of a gun brought her sharply back to reality. Through an opening in the brickwork, she saw Shep hit the floor of the balcony, blood matting the curls at the back of his neck.

Broad, raw screaming tore from Smartie’s chest, but the sound was lost in the wind and the city, the hammering of blood and terror in her veins. Desperate hands grappled at her wrists, dragged at her neck and shoulders. Her arms were slick with sweat now and so numb she could hardly tell them from the arms of her assailant.

Surging with adrenalin, she gained another tenuous toehold, heaved herself upward, and sank her teeth into the forearm closest to her mouth. She didn’t recognize the taste, but the howl was unmistakable.

“Herrick?”

Her eyes locked on his. She watched the story unfolding in his face, saw the decision being made.

In a great rushing, Smartie felt a piercing wonderfulness of the world, a stinging sweet desire not to leave it. She’d had a good time overall, and looking into Herrick’s eyes, she found a last little gift in being murdered for love instead of money.

As the last moment of her ability to grip the metal bar slipped away, Smartie felt a circle drawn around herself, like a chalk line tracing the outline of her body.

She closed her eyes and let go.

\\\ ///

30

“
O
ne man in particular crossed her mind at the moment she breached the steel-framed ceiling of the dining solarium, which gave way in a cascade of shattering glass and scattered voices.

Whiteness.

Darkness.

The fleeting presence of roses.

Sixty seconds later, Smartie Breedlove was dead
.”

There was a heavy silence around the kitchen island as Temple laid the last page aside and plucked a Kleenex from a box on the counter.

“God. This business,” she said. “What a soul-consuming sonofabitch.”

“How did we not realize?” Yuki shook her head. “All this time…”

Phyllis squared her shoulders and said, “She was a good writer. They can’t take that away from her.”

“She really was,” Smartie sniffled and helped herself to a Kleenex. “And Herrick truly did love her. I don’t know how he’ll ever get over it.”

“Now that it’s been a month or so, I want to pump Shep for material about how it feels to shoot someone.” Phyllis finished signing the cast on Smartie’s broken arm and passed the Sharpie to Yuki. “I know this is Vampira of me, but there’s got to be some powerful imagery there. Think he’d be open to talk with me about it?”

“I don’t know,” Smartie said. “He didn’t want to kill her, but there was blood in his eyes, and he was about to pass out, and Casilda kept hitting me so he just… bam.” Smartie poked her index finger just above the bridge of her nose. “The paramedics said she was dead before she hit the floor.”

“Good God and gladiolas. What a thing,” said Temple, squeezing Smartie around the middle. “I’m just grateful you’re alive to tell the story.”

“Smartie.” Herrick appeared in the doorway looking even more dyspeptic than usual. “That wildebeest has soiled my closet floor again. My Paul Smith loafers are ruined. Ruined!”

“Oh, yams,” said Smartie. “I’m sorry, Herrick. I’ll take care of it.”

“The Buchans are moving to Finnegan’s Pub for the rest of the evening.”

“Okay,” she waved cheerily. “See you later.”

Phyllis waited for the sound of the door before she said, “Smartie. Tell me you did not let Bilbo Baggins move in here after everything you just went through to divorce him.”

“What could I do? Casilda owned that house they were living in, and he saved my life, and anyway, it’s only until he gets a book deal. His agent says he’s
this close
.”

“Frankly,” said Yuki, “I wouldn’t have thought Herrick had the upper body strength to end up the hero in this scenario.”

“Oh, he doesn’t,” said Smartie. “But he’s so clever. Right before I passed out, he whipped off his belt and cinched me to the railing and called for help. An off-duty fireman dashed up from the bar and pulled me in.”

“There’s really nothing like a good fireman, is there?” said Temple.

“That’s so true.” Smartie rested her chin in her hand. “Maybe Smack should have a fireman next time around.”

“What about Nash?” asked Yuki. “You actually let a man live through an entire manuscript. You must be planning to do something else with the character.”

“Maybe.” Smartie put the teakettle on and unsheathed the Fig Newtons.

“Who is the one man in particular supposed to be?” asked Phyllis, flipping through the final pages of Casilda’s manuscript. “The man Smartie Breedlove is thinking about as she smashes through the roof.”

“Obviously, Casilda meant Herrick,” said Temple. “I have my own theory.”

“She’d be thinking of her darling rabbi,” said Phyllis, and Smartie smiled because that made her think about him now.

“It would be Fritz,” said Yuki. “She’d be agonizing over missing a deadline.”

All the Quilters agreed that this was true.

H
e kissed me hard and broke away harder.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t feel anything, Smack.”

I trailed my fingers through his helmet hair.

“I feel plenty, Nash. But the cops are about to bust down that door and take you where you don’t want to go for a whole lot longer than I don’t want you to go there.”

I kissed him this time. Pulling away was like taking my tongue back from a frozen lamp pole.

“Good luck, Nash. If you get life, I’ll write. If you get the gurney, I’ll make sure they bury you in your leathers.”

Shep tossed his Kindle on the coffee table. On the sofa next to him, Charlie had melted like a weary little snowman, oozing over sideways, drooling peacefully on his favorite blanket. There was a brisk knock on the front door before Libby let herself in.

“Hi and ’bye,” she said, kissing Shep on the cheek. “We’ve gotta scoot. Spence is waiting on us in the car.”

She collected Charlie into a gelatinous bundle on her shoulder while Shep bird-dogged the sports car in the driveway, trying to get a better look at the driver.

“What do we actually know about this Spence guy?”

“I know I like him. He was nervous on the first few dates, that’s all.” She tipped Shep’s chin to the side and inspected the sutures over his right ear. “Healing nicely.”

“My head’s still banging like a kettle drum.”

“This too shall pass, brother.”

As Libby made her way down the steps, the subject previously identified as Spencer James Waltrop got out to open the car door for her and waved a sheepish hello to Shep. Shep nodded and went back inside.

Down the hall in his office, Bean sat behind the desk, eating the last slice of pizza from a Godfather’s box.

“What did you come up with?” asked Shep.

“Spencer James Waltrop. Thirty-six, divorced, Episcopalian, HIV negative, no STDs, but he did have a nasty sinus infection last winter. Makes monthly contributions to Save the Children and Habitat for Humanity. Ordered Domino’s pizza seventeen times and Chinese food fourteen times in the last three months. Got a speeding ticket eight months ago, fifty-one in a thirty-five. No porn downloads, but he did order some herbal male enhancement stuff last week.”

“Great.” Shep rolled his eyes.

“I’ve got his credit report and bank statement printing, along with a map to his house, which he purchased three years ago. Healthy down payment. Excellent rate on the mortgage.” Bean propped one foot up on the edge of the desk. “Basically, he’s a much better person than you, Shep. You don’t even look at quality porn.”

Shep handed Bean forty dollars and said, “Get your shoe off my desk.”

Bean pocketed the cash and set a jackknifed jump drive on a pile of manila file folders.

“Here’s the download from the lawyer lady’s computer. All she did online before she left was send somebody flowers. She must have been using an external drive for her address book and e-mail and stuff because her hard drive was immaculate as the body of Christ. Nothing but the pre-installed programs.”

“Did you make me a separate sound file from the first two hours?”

“Affirmative, Ghostrider. But the first fifty-four minutes—”

“Right.”

“So now what? You use it to get her extradited?”

“I don’t know.” Shep rubbed his hands over his face, still feeling the vague sting of her nails below his shoulder blades.

“You’re not even gonna try, are you?” said Bean.