Authors: Kelly Rey
"Doesn't look like it. Oh." Maizy bit her lower lip. "Well, that's just weird."
"What?" I reached for the binoculars.
Maizy blocked me with her arm and kept looking. "I think Roger just smelled Weaver's hair, in the back, down by the collar."
"No, he did
not!"
I made another grab for the binoculars.
Maizy handed them over with a shrug. "See for yourself."
I looked for myself, but all I saw was Roger following Weaver, each with Slurpees in hand, toward the cashier. Or maybe Seaver. That was yet to be determined as far as I was concerned, although I had a feeling if Roger Marrin had been caught sniffing Seaver's hair, he would be wearing his Slurpee, not sipping from it as they emerged from the store. They weren't speaking. In fact, they didn't seem to be aware of each other as they got into their respective vehicles. Weaver drove off immediately, headed back the way he came. Roger's SUV sat parked.
Maizy blew out a breath. "Okay, so they're not friends."
I shook my head. "Are you sure that's what you saw?"
"I know hair sniffing when I see it," she said. "You think I've never had my hair sniffed? Brody Amherst sniffed my hair just last night."
I looked at her. "Did he?"
Her cheeks turned pink. "You know, at the free speech rally."
Right.
"It wasn't so great," she added, her attention fixed on Roger Marrin's SUV. "Brody wears Old Spice. He smells like my grandpa."
"It gets better," I told her, thinking if Curt wore Old Spice, I'd tear his clothes off with my teeth. I had a soft spot for Old Spice. And Curt. A sigh escaped me.
"Just invite him to dinner, already," Maizy said.
I blinked. "How did you know what I was thinking about?"
She shrugged. "You sigh a lot when you think about Uncle Curt. It's your tell."
I was going to have to watch that.
She kept her eyes straight ahead. "I hope I meet someone someday who'll make me sigh like that."
"I have a feeling you will," I told her.
The SUV's driver's side window rolled down, and Roger Marrin dumped his Slurpee onto the parking lot.
"Told you the Slurpees weren't so good here," Maizy said.
Roger Marrin dropped the cup into the Slurpee puddle. The window slid closed, the engine fired up, the headlights came on, and he was gone.
"That's littering!" Maizy yelled, flinging her door open. "That dink couldn't be bothered to put the cup in the trash if he didn't want it?"
I thought about the newest developments while Maizy rushed over to pick up the dink's discarded Slurpee cup, careful to avoid stepping in the cherry-colored mess on the ground, and deliver it to the waste can by the entrance. Weaver and Roger had had no conversation, no eye contact, no physical contact. Yet Roger had purposely driven to Weaver's neighborhood, taken photos of him, and followed him to the 7-Eleven. No chance we were dealing with a simple coincidence here.
When Maizy came back, I said, "I think I know what this was all about."
She pulled a wad of tissues out of her pocket and scrubbed her hands. "Yeah? What?"
For the first time all day I felt a surge of optimism. "That was an excuse to get close to Weaver Beeber." I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking. "Only question is why."
"The why is obvious," Maizy said. She tossed the tissues onto the floor, pulled a bottle of hand sanitizer from her satchel, and poured some on her palms. The scent of vanilla filled the car, reminding me I hadn't eaten in awhile, and that I had actual food at home, including the mother of all turkeys, and
that
made me think about Curt and—
"You're sighing again," Maizy told me. She put the hand sanitizer back and brought out a container of antibacterial wipes.
I stared at her. "You planning to perform surgery?"
"Don't mock me," she said. "There are a lot of superbugs out there, and Roger Marrin's cup was probably hosting a half dozen of them. Do you know what those things can do? They'll eat right through your skin."
So much for my appetite.
She put the antibacterial wipes away and pulled out a bag of sweet potato chips. I shook my head when she held it out. I saw no point in sullying potato chips with health and nutrition. "So you want to hear the why, or what?" she asked while she crunched. "I think he planted some sort of bug on Weaver. Probably he had it in his nose and when he smelled his hair, it flew out and stuck in there. What are you looking at me like that for?"
Eww.
"Roger the dink is probably some sort of stalker," she said. "I bet he has all sorts of weird contraptions at his house." She started the Escort. "I think we ought to go look."
I didn't think I was ready for more breaking and entering. The studio was one thing. I'd been pretty sure that would be empty. But Roger Marrin's house was something else. He might be headed back there right now. Besides—"We don't even know where he lives," I said.
I should have known better.
"Concord Street," Maizy said. "The Shop 'n Save manager told me." She slid me a sideways glance. "He might've thought I was there in an official capacity."
I sighed. "Doesn't your well ever run dry?"
"Apparently not," she said cheerfully. "I checked it out on Google Earth. It's pretty gross. He's got an above-ground pool filled with green water in the backyard."
Eww again. I did
not
want to see the inside of a house that had green pool water on the outside.
Maizy braked for a red light and looked over at me. "Doesn't it seem strange to you that Roger knows where Weaver lives, brought a camera with him,
used
the camera,
and
still followed him to the 7-Eleven?"
"And sniffed his hair," I added. "Of course it seems strange to me. Roger Marrin seems strange to me."
She nodded. "I think Roger's gone off the deep end. He's waiting for his opportunity to get revenge for being a cashier."
"He could have done that outside the house," I pointed out. "With a gun."
Maizy snorted. "As if he would ever get away in a neighborhood like that, driving a Hulk-mobile like that, after a gunshot." She shook her head. "Trust me, he's got a plan. And the poor guy doesn't even see it coming. But we do." The light changed, and she floored it.
I grabbed for the dashboard. "You have to stop doing that," I told her when she'd leveled off to a reasonable fifteen miles above the speed limit and dipped back into her bag of chips.
"Well, we don't have all night to get there," she said. "Do you have any moral qualms about residential B&E?"
"Yes," I told her. "Huge qualms. Please tell me you have huge qualms, too."
"Not so much," she said. "While you're wrestling with your huge qualms, think about this. The next photo of you in the newspaper might be you doing the perp walk into jail."
I sighed again, and this time Curt had nothing to do with it. "Fine, we can look in his windows. Tomorrow, in the daylight, when he's at work." I crossed my arms. "After all, he might have a security system."
"He might have a Rottweiler, too," she said. "But we both know he has a cat, or a hamster. Maybe a ferret. Something weaselly."
I gave her a look.
She shrugged. "But we'll do it your way. So what do you want to do now? We're too late for Harvey McWirth's Starbucks run."
"We could go clean out my desk at work," I said glumly.
"You don't want to run right over and do that. Make the bozo wait."
"The bozo might throw out my things," I said.
"I've seen your desk," she said. "You haven't got anything worth keeping."
That wasn't true. I had an almost new box of Krimpets in my bottom drawer. And a snow globe paperweight with a family of tiny polar bears poised on a tiny iceberg. Beyond that, Maizy was right. Howard frowned on too many personal items being on our desks, claiming it detracted from the professionalism so noticeably absent from the rest of the office.
"It's getting kind of late," she said. "I've got to get home. We can get together tomorrow, catch up with Harvey and Tippi McWirth." She glanced at herself in the rear view mirror. "I'm thinking I'll color my hair tonight. Maybe see what blonde looks like."
My mouth fell open. "But your hair has always been blue!"
"Not always," she said. "I was born a brunette."
I couldn't picture it.
"Besides, the blue might be a little too unconventional for someone who's gonna be eighteen. And a licensed driver."
"It
is
unconventional," I agreed. "That's why it suits you. You're not a conformist." Then it struck me. "This wouldn't have anything to do with Brody Amherst liking blondes, would it?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. It's no big deal."
"It
is
a big deal," I told her. "Don't change for any man, Maizy. Especially a lousy little hair-sniffer. If you're not good enough for him,
he's
not good enough for
you."
"You think?" Her dimple flashed. "He does have kind of a big nose. When he sniffed my hair he practically parted it."
"There you go," I said. "That should tell you right there. Who needs some guy with an enormous beak telling you you're not good enough?" Or for that matter, some guy with killer good looks and an antiquated notion of what a "normal" woman should be?
Damn it.
"Take me home," I muttered. "I want to be alone." I had some heavy-duty sulking to do.
Maizy glanced at me with uncertainty. "Did I say something?"
"Nope." I forced a smile that I'm sure looked as shaky as it felt. "I did. It's nothing for you to worry about."
We drove in silence for a while. Then Maizy said, "Uncle Curt's not like Brody Amherst."
No kidding. Curt had chest hair, for one thing. And a job. And how did she
do
that, anyway?
"I still think you should invite him to dinner." She pulled up to the curb in front of her house, an older split-level with white siding, an American flag on a pole, and subtle landscape lighting. Nice. "I have a trig test tomorrow," she told me. "But I'll cut out before study hall and meet you at your place around eleven."
I was up early the next morning, had a bowl of Styrofoam pellets masquerading as cereal, which Maizy had insisted I buy at the Shop 'n Save along with some tasteless unsweetened almond milk, and a slice of nutty whole grain bread, unbuttered. Ten minutes later, I hauled out the box of Cap'n Crunch, which I ate in dry fistfuls straight from the box.
I spent the next twenty minutes practicing warrior asanas while wondering who could have taken that newspaper photo of me. It seemed clear that Maizy wasn't a target in the same way that I was. She hadn't been photographed or named a person of interest. Of course, she was the daughter of a police officer and therefore not the easiest person to frame, but none of our suspects would know that. The real question was why frame me? Why would anyone think I'd want Dorcas dead? Knowing what I now knew, I wasn't fond of her, but it was pretty clear that a lot of people had real motives to kill her. Knowing what I now knew, I wasn't too keen on her myself. And all Maizy and I had to go on was a black SUV and a lot of dollar signs. Even if we followed the money trail, it veered off in several different directions.
Meantime, the phony evidence against me kept mounting. Which made me wonder why Detective Bensinger hadn't shown up to ask me about the photo in the paper.
Or why I hadn't followed up on it myself. Maizy had gotten nowhere with a phone call, but maybe that wasn't the end of it.
I pulled myself out of Warrior Two and reached for my rickety old laptop. It had the Windows Prehistoric operating system, but it was good enough to get me online, and moments later I was on the newspaper's website. I hadn't even noticed if the photo of me had carried a credit. Time to find out.
I scrolled down to find a link to the prior day's paper. I didn't scroll far before I noticed the screaming headline for the current edition. "Did Local Woman Owe Thousands to Murder Victim?"
Oh, no.
I pressed my fist against my mouth to keep from screaming as I read. Sure enough, I was the local woman who
works at a boutique law firm
(guess they weren't quite as up-to-date with their information as they thought). According to this new load of cow patties, I'd been overheard threatening Dorcas with dire consequences over some nonspecific grievance about which the reporter seemed happy to speculate. Was it a professional association gone wrong? Money? A secret love affair between Weaver and me?
I know. I had to read that last part twice too.
Outside of its straight-from-the-50s film noir language, the article was completely useless. To me. To a casual reader, I was clearly so guilty that a trial would be superfluous, and I should just go straight to death row before the sun set. Although bogus, here was the motive I'd been lacking. The article was so general that it could have been talking about anybody. Like, say, the actual killer. Huge sums of money, vague threats, overheard arguments. It was straight out of an episode of
Columbo
. I know. I'd seen
Columbo
on MeTV during a bout of insomnia a few weeks earlier.
Only it wasn't talking about anybody. It was talking about
me
. As usual, a photo accompanied the article, a shot of the façade of Parker, Dennis, complete with the blue-with-gold-lettering sign out front. And this time, I noticed the credit, for a staff photographer whose name was unfamiliar. And irrelevant. Parker, Dennis used that same stock shot in its marketing.
I groped for the phone and punched in Maizy's number. She answered in a whisper on the third ring. "I'm in the paper again," I told her. "It's a real hatchet job. They're claiming I was overheard threatening Dorcas."
"Hold on. I'm in English class." I heard some rustling around, the sounds of Doc Martens clomping along the floor, a door opening and closing, and then Maizy was back. "Okay, I'm in the bathroom. Wait, let me get this up on the tablet."
I fidgeted while I waited, unable to stand still. "Unnamed sources," I spat out. "Why are they allowed to hide behind anonymity when they're dragging me through the mud?"