The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (12 page)

“You don’t need to know. He’s my employee and that’s all. You want to be a woman and ask questions, find a place of your own to live in. This is my home and what goes on inside of it is my business.”

Her father, a fat man made round by age and poor diet, put a large hand to the wood paneling of the door frame he was standing in, his grey eyes milky but sharp and boring holes into her. He frowned, and the change was dramatically fierce. That frown held a world of judgments in them.

“I don’t need to ask where you’ve been all this time. I told you I don’t want you seeing that boy, and I meant it.”

“And I told you that I don’t care what you want.”

The large hand that had been resting on the frame flew, nearly of its own accord and struck Abby broadside across her cheek. She reeled backwards
and stumbled over her feet until she hit against the far wall. The pain radiating over her face felt warm in the wake of the shock that had flooded her the moment her father had backhanded her. He had menaced her, threatened her, but never before had he set his hands to her.

“You’ll leave that boy, or so help me, you’ll be sorry.”

The next morning, Abby stood in her bathroom, looking at her face in the mirror, and thought that with a little makeup, the bruise that colored her cheekbone could be covered up. It had gone purple overnight, and it was sore to the touch, though she figured if his aim had been worse, she might have suffered more than a sore face. If anything, the makeup she’d use to help her forget what happened would keep her nosy co-workers from asking questions.

She didn’t understand what had happened to him that would have made him physically violent with her. Not once in the twenty-two years that she’d been alive had he ever hit her. Not when she’d broken her mother’s China, not when she’d dyed the cat green, and not even when she’d stolen his Mercedes on her sixteenth birthday.

The man that her father has said was his employee had appeared to her as if the only job he was suited for was making babies cry. What on Earth could he have been hired to do? Certainly, it wasn’t to replace Roger Daniels in mowing the lawn.

Abby sighed as she applied the last of her cover up to her cheekbone, and satisfied that no one was going to be able to tell that her face looked as if a plum had been embedded beneath her skin, she turned and made her way for the front door.

As she bent to pick up her purse from where she’d tossed it as she come through the night before, from the edge of her vision, Abby caught a flash of black and thought that the man with the tree face had crept up behind her. When she turned, she was surprised to see a young woman, her face freshly scrubbed for the morning, dressed in a stereotypical maid’s uniform. The one thing missing from the scene would have been a guy in a moustache carrying around a camera to capture the action as he cued the pool man to walk through.

“Who are you?”

The maid smiled, and Abby could tell that the brightest part to her was not in her skull. The maid replied, “My name is Nina Pickett. I’ve been hired to take care of the house. It’s nice to meet you, Miss Bradley.”

Abby raised an eyebrow. Miss, Nina Pick-it-up, had to have come through the same movie portal as the man in the leather jacket. She frowned as she replied, “I guess it’s nice to meet you too. When did my father hire you?”

Nina shrugged, her black hair tickling over her porcelain features as she blinked her brown doe eyes. She put a finger to her chin and answered, “I think it was sometime last week when the call to my company was put through. He told us that the house was in desperate need of someone to come in and clean, but I’ve been wandering around all morning
with nothing to do.” Nina stared at Abby, accusing her of being an accomplice to the lie she’d been told.

Abby doubted highly that this was the first time that poor Nina wandered around with nothing to do. She offered the woman a smile, picked up her purse and hoped that meeting Nina wouldn’t set the standard for how the rest of her day was going to go.

********

Travis waited outside of his sister-in-law’s work building, thinking to head her off before she went in so that he didn’t have to go inside to have a word with her. It was a very little known fact about him, but he hated the feel of anything sterile. Hospitals especially. The white bleached, cleaning fluid infused wasteland of sterility made him feel as if he was drowning inside of a bottle of rubbing alcohol while wearing the world’s most constricting neck tie. The only reason he could stand to go in was because he believed in doing his job and not letting his personal weakness affect the way he set about doing it. It stood to reason then, why no one would ever know that Cory’s morgue was the worst place he could imagine being inside.

“Travis?”

A smile that could stretch around the Earth cracked Travis’ face and as his brother’s wife walked up to him, he gave her a hearty hug. Despite the reason he was here, he couldn’t help the warmth Cory’s happiness inspired in him.

“Are you dying?” Cory said as Travis let her go. She seemed surprised by the intensity of his hug.

Travis playfully punched his sister-in-law’s shoulder and shook his head. “What? It’s not like you’ll need a Tetanus shot.” He set an arm around her and gave her an extra hug from the side. He supposed that his newfound friendliness toward Cory came from the fact that most of the tension and desolation he met every time he was near her had dissipated. She was a ball of sunshine.

Travis sobered. “I came here to ask you a few questions.” He could tell that his sudden switch from the warmth he’d been feeling to chill seriousness had caught Cory’s attention.

“Sure. What’s on your mind?”

Travis folded his arms to his chest, and as they were standing just outside of Cory’s building, he leaned against the brick of the wall. “I’m sure you heard about what happened yesterday. Have either of them come across your table?”

Cory shook her head and replied, “Mrs. Lawson’s son did not want her to have an autopsy. As far as I know, she’s being kept at the mortuary to be prepared for burial. As for the man, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Heart failure. There wasn’t an autopsy needed there either.”

Travis frowned. He didn’t quite know how to express to Cory that he thought that it was too much of a coincidence that two people who knew each other happened to die of heart failure on the same day.

He said, “Is there a way you would be able to run a test for poison or anything like that? I’m having a hard time believing that they both died naturally. I knew Mrs. Lawson and Roger, neither of them had trouble with their hearts. They worked together, Cory. It smells bad; the whole situation is a hot Dumpster.”

Cory shrugged. “What do you want me to do, Travis? There is a lot of tape to cut through in getting the permission to do what you’re asking. Ben Lawson was adamant; he said it was against his mother’s wishes to have anything done to her body after her death.”

“Was he here?”

“Sure. Only really to identify his mother and gone before there could be any discussion about trying to find her precise cause of death. I didn’t see a reason to keep her here; it wasn’t as if she’d been attacked. You were there, right? An old woman collapsing in a convenience store isn’t a story worthy of a front page.”

Travis frown deepened. Cory’s tone told him that she wished him luck with whatever hunch he was going to follow after, but that if he wanted her help, he’d have to pull all of her teeth. He sighed. “Thanks for the talk, Cory.” He glanced at his watch, a gift his brother had given him, and he added, “Louis gets itchy if I’m not on time to start our shift. He’s more irritable lately because he’s not allowed to drive the cruiser.”

Cory put her hands on her hips. “He deserves whatever he gets. I can’t believe he’d try to play grab hands at my wedding.”

She stuck out her tongue and Travis smirked. She was right, Louis deserved a little punishment for thinking with the brain in his pants instead of the one in his head. He headed back to his car and Cory stopped him by taking hold of his right forearm.

“Is everything okay? When you get serious, I start checking the ground for ice cubes.”

Travis chuckled through Cory’s joke about hell freezing over and let it slide off his back. He knew that Cory thought the world of him, saw him for who he really was instead of what other people thought of him. She’d taken a bullet to her thigh to help prove his innocence, and there was nothing on the face of the planet that would knock her off the pedestal where she belonged in his personal pantheon of incredible women.

He placed a hand to her shoulder and said, attempting to mean it, “Nothing I can’t fix. Don’t worry about me.” He forced a smile.

As he walked away with Cory’s eyes at his back, he wished he was able to make himself believe that.

********
 

When lunch rolled around, Abby was ready to pack up camp and head home to the bed she knew was waiting for her. Her body simply hadn’t wanted to come to work, and as she looked at the lunch she’d picked up from the cafeteria located inside of the nursing home where she works, she thought she might hurl all over the table she’d plopped herself in front of. Was she sick?

“Girl, you look like a hot mess. What’s eating you?”

Abby lifted her head and noticed that her co-worker, Reyna had taken the bench across from her. While they were both dressed in the same scrubs; a cute pink number with a floral print, Abby figured Reyna wore it better. The woman was beautiful, as far as her personal definition of the word extended, and since she’d known Reyna since high school, she’d seen the girl blossom from geek into chic in the short years since they’d graduated. Reyna was also one of the most selfless people she’d ever known.

Abby leaned the left side of her face into her hand and exhaled slowly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Reyna. I woke up with enough energy to give an eating disorder to a sumo wrestler, but now, I feel like a slug. That, and my stomach is pretending to be an Olympic gymnast. And, I swear, the smell of this place is like I have my nose in Marne’s mop bucket. That cleaner she uses is driving me insane.” She paused, letting her head slide from her palm and on down to the table. The chill of the table felt wonderful. She continued, “The only thing I can understand is why I’m tired; Travis and I had an interesting night.”

“
Oooh, you got lucky?”

Abby scoffed. “No, I got pancakes.” It was as far as she was going to go into the details of what had gone on the night before, and it was as far as she wanted it to go in her head. For all intents and purposes, the encounter with her father never happened.

“Well you got one answer. How about for the rest of it? Maybe those pancakes weren’t such a great idea.”

Abby shrugged her shoulders and it looked like a lumpy boulder had shivered. She replied, “I loved the pancakes. I hadn’t eaten them in forever, but you can’t beat Trudy’s homemade blueberry syrup.” She paused, thinking back to how her day had started, how she’d gotten up with the same kind of energy and left home from work feeling as if she were forced to walk in slow motion. She’d wanted to hit the convenience store to stock up on supplies for the monthly visit from her Auntie Flow, but then she’d met up with Travis and forgotten all about i
t


“Oh, God.”

Abby sat up, no longer interested in mapping the interior of her eyelids. It occurred to her, and she’d admonish herself for not thinking about it sooner, that she could be suffering from more than the pre-game show to her monthly.

“What is it? Are you going to be sick?”

Abby looked to Reyna’s eyes and met them with an expression of glossy hazel concern. She wasn’t about to tell her friend what was going through her head, since if she did, it would mean that it was a real possibility and it terrified her. She said, after what seemed an eternity of staring silence, “I need to go home early. You can cover me, can’t you?”

Reyna nodded slowly. “Sure, I got you today. You going to be okay?”

Abby swallowed. As she lifted herself from the table, she hoped to hell she was going to be okay. If she had screwed the pooch this badly, it wasn’t likely she was going to live much longer than it took to tell Travis how stupid she’d been or to tell her father that he might be a grandpa. Either one of them would have more than enough motive to kill her.

She replied, desperate to believe it herself, “I’m going to be just fine.”