Death Comes eCalling (10 page)

“Mommy,” said Nathan over the phone. “Where’s the comb?”

Thank God. Nathan was all right.

Tommy said to me, “They’ve got to take you to the hospital. “

“The comb? It’s in the bathroom.”

“You’ve had a concussion and need to be examined.”

“No, it isn’t! I looked there!” Nathan was in one of the volatile states he gets into whenever his hair gets too curly for hair gel to flatten it.

“Plus, you’re going to need a couple of stitches.”

“Look again. Where’s Karen? Are the police with you?”

“But, Momm-m-myyy, I need the comb!”

“I can’t help you find the comb right now, Nathan. Put Karen on.”

“But I need—“

My chest started to tighten from my growing anxiety.
Where was Karen?
“I’ll tell Karen how to find it. Put her on. Now.”

“This is Officer Black. Who is this please?”

“Officer, I’m—”

Tommy pried the phone from my fingers. “Officer Black, this is Sergeant Newton. The paramedics have to take the kids’ mother to the hospital. Take the kids in the—”

He turned and spoke quietly into the handset, covering his free ear. Steadying myself against a wall, I got to my feet. The baby-faced paramedic grabbed my arm.

“Let go of me! I refuse to go with you!”

He released his grip and looked back at the second, older paramedic, who scowled at me as he told his partner, “We can’t take her without her consent.”

I staggered toward the front of the house. I had to get home. The door was wide open and badly damaged. Only the screen door was between me and my escape. Tommy put a hand on my shoulder.

“Please, Tommy. I have to—”

From outside, a deep voice hollered, “Lady, this is a secured area! Now get back before—” Tommy brushed past me to the front door. I followed him out to the porch.

Stephanie stood on the Wilkinses’ front walk, hands on hips, attempting to stare down an officer. He had just begun the process of unrolling a reel of yellow-and-black plastic police tape cordon. On the sidewalk behind her stood a teenage girl who, except for her gypsy-bright clothing and half short, half long hairstyle, could have been Stephanie at that age. There was one patrol car in my driveway, three in Lauren’s.

Stephanie eyed Tommy and me and said, “Hello. I’m sorry we ran off so fast last night.”

“You’re concerned about last night’s etiquette?” I asked. “Now?”

“I was going over to your place, to cheer you up after that fiasco of a party. I spotted all the police cars and thought Lauren might need me.” She flicked a hand over her shoulder. “This is my daughter Tiffany.”

“Hello,” I said automatically. “Nice to meet you.”

“Mrrph.”

“We need to clear this area, Steph,” Tommy said. The paramedics came through the doorway. They appeared to have packed up. The older one said to Tommy,

“She won’t consent to—”

I headed down the steps and said to Stephanie, “My children are home, and I need to get out of here, so—”

“She’s had a head injury,” Tommy said to the paramedics. “I’ll assume full responsibility.”

During my short descent to where Stephanie stood, I heard a clang as the legs of the cot were snapped into place. Before I could say, “Hide me,” I was swept off my feet and placed bodily onto the cot. “No! I don’t need—”

“Lie still. You’ve lost a lot of blood, lady.”

I rolled to my side, hoping to swing my legs off the cot, but was quickly strapped down flat on my back.

Stephanie gasped. “Oh, for heaven sake, Molly!” She shielded her eyes. “I faint at the sight of blood.” She faced me, her eyes covered by her hand. “Those stains will come out of your clothes if you soak them in cold salt water.”

As they wheeled me past Stephanie’s daughter, she said, “Mom, like, can we go now?”

Still keeping her hand over her eyes, Stephanie asked, “Are you being arrested again, Molly?”

“I have to get home. My children are—”

The young man opened the ambulance doors. They pushed me inside. I felt as if I were being shoved head first into a tomb.

“I’ll ride with her,” Tommy said to a police officer who started to step up into the van. The other officer stepped back, and Tommy climbed in with me. “We can’t do anything at the premises till we get a search warrant. I’ll take her statement at the hospital.”

Just as they started to shut the doors, Stephanie’s daughter leaned in. “Hey. Could you use a babysitter? I don’t, like, do diapers, you know. I’ll charge you five dollars an hour.”

Blam!
The first door was shut.

“Please, Tommy!” I cried. “I’ll go to the hospital. Just let me see my children first!”

“Hang on a sec,” Tommy said. The paramedic stopped and let the second door to the van drift fully open. Another officer began talking to Tommy, and the paramedic glared at them impatiently.

“Stephanie! Help me!”

Stephanie leaned into the van, a broad smile on her face. My asking her for help made her day, big time.

“Come here. Please,” I whispered, doing an impression of a dying person’s last request. She grudgingly got in and duck-walked toward me.

I grabbed her arm. “Please. Bring Tiffany and my children to the hospital.” The nearest hospital was in Schenectady. I would be in for at least a twenty-minute ambulance ride.

She extricated her arm from my hand, checking her sleeve for stains.

“So you’re going to, like, be sure and pay me for watching your kids in the waiting room, right?” her daughter called from outside.

Dizziness overwhelmed me. I closed my eyes. I felt myself dozing off again.

Moments later, I awoke. The ambulance was in motion. Tommy was watching my face intently, so I shut my eyes again. I didn’t want to give a statement now.

Everything sank in during the ride to the hospital. I had been so fixated on seeing my children, I’d missed the crux of the matter. My best friend’s husband was dead.

Murdered. In the house next to mine. Rachel had no father. Lauren was a widow. What would they do? Who was going to tell them, and how?

They gave me a local anesthetic at the hospital. A pretty doctor who looked no more than twenty-five told me I had a concussion. She gave me eight stitches. She seemed to have an easier time with my scalp than I did sewing badges on Karen’s Brownie sash. Hopefully her stitches would hold better than mine. As the doctor was working on me, Tommy stayed out of the room, but came back in with Tiffany just as the doctor was clipping the ends.

“
Eeew
,” Tiffany said, then calmly asked if I still wanted to see my children. My obvious answer was followed by, “So. Did they shave the back of your head?”

“No, but I had them tattoo a New York Giant’s insignia back there just for the heck of it.”

She snapped her gum, whirled on a heel, and left. Moments later she brought in Karen and Nathan.

Tommy gestured to Tiffany and said, “We’ll give you a minute with your kids. Be out in the hallway.”

The doctor told me I was all set, but to stay put. On her way out, she paused, put her hands on her knees, and said to my children, “Your mother’s going to be just fine.”

“Did you sew my mommy’s brains back in?” Nathan asked.

She smiled. “It was nothing that serious. Just a little boo-boo.” She winked at me and left the room.

I assured my children that I was fine, but told them that Steve Wilkins was dead.

“We already heard that from that pretty friend of yours,” Karen said. “Tiffany’s mom. Why don’t you wear makeup like that, Mom? Tiffany’s mom said she could teach you how.”

Tommy entered, carrying my purse, which he explained the officer had retrieved from my house when she locked up.

“How did Officer Black get into my house in the first place?”

Tommy didn’t answer. He ushered the children out of the room, saying he needed to speak with me alone for a few minutes. While Tommy was doing so, it occurred to me that one of my children had to have opened the door for the police; if an officer had kicked it in, Officer Black wouldn’t have been able to “lock up” my house after getting my purse.

I wanted to ask Tommy who had told Stephanie about the murder, but Tommy didn’t give me the chance. His first words to me were a gruff: “Tell me exactly what went on, from the moment I left your house last night, till you came to after knockin’ yourself out.”

I recounted everything, to the best of my ability, giving him the approximate times of the two cars driving off last night. I ran circles around myself explaining why I had left my children unattended.

Before he had the chance to criticize, I told him I regretted waiting so long to call the police. Admittedly, that should have been my very first action, but I wasn’t used to getting faxed help messages—only death threats.

Tommy was more concerned with what had gone on in the Wilkinses’ house, my sensations as I’d lost consciousness. He told me an officer had found the original help message on Steve’s scanner.

That gave me a frightening thought. “The killer probably sent that after Steve was dead to lure me over there. Maybe he was waiting for me and hit me in the head.”

Tommy showed no reaction to my suggestion. He asked me to describe the knife missing from my kitchen, which had a shiny black handle and a heavy, nine-inch blade.

“Sounds like the murder weapon, all right. Okay. So. Mind if we take your fingerprints?”

“They’ll be on the knife. I used it to cut up mushrooms for last night’s dinner.” There was a disquieting thought; last night’s dinner utensil, today’s murder weapon.

“Course your prints’ll be on the knife. That’s why we need to print you. So we can rule ‘em out and identify other prints on it.”

“Oh. That makes sense. I just don’t want—” I let my voice fade away. This was such a nightmare. My stomach lurched. I felt queasy. I might be accused of murdering my oldest friend’s husband!

“See anyone at the party use the knife?”

“Not that I can say for sure. It’s possible any of them could have. There was that time all of you were in the kitchen. But I really can’t remember anyone touching the knife. Before the party started I had washed it and put it in the butcher-block knife holder.

“Where’s that kept?”

“Right on the counter. Next to the sink.”

“Tell me how well you knew Steve.”

“Not very well.” This subject made me nervous. The only thing my relationship with Steve could indicate was whether or not
I
had a motive to kill him. “I met him for the first time almost four weeks ago, when my family first got here. Both families had dinner together twice that first week. We talked quite a bit then.”

“‘Bout what?”

“Just…trivial stuff. Small talk, mostly. Sports, computers. I told him about my starting Molly’s eCards. Then, for the next couple of weeks, I saw him only occasionally, coming or going from his home. The next time I saw him was when he came over and took a look at my threatening emails.”

“He helped you set up your website, right?”

“He advised me. And he helped install my software.”

“Did you show him the threats you got in your email?”

“Yes, but not the one I got last night that said, ‘Your husband is having an affair. If you—’” I paused, remembering the wording. “It serves you right. If you were any kind of a wife you’d be with him.’”

“Know how long the Wilkinses have been married?”

What a weird question to ask me now. I answered slowly, “Ten years.”

“Go to their wedding?”

The question brought back a sad memory. I shook my head. “I had plane reservations and everything. I was pregnant. The week of her wedding, I had a miscarriage. I canceled my trip.”

“Seems to me, she was pretty serious ‘n’ all ‘bout that captain of the Carlton football team. Remember? They announced their engagement at our graduation party.”

“Howie Brown.” I fidgeted with it torn cuticle, to disguise my growing agitation. This time I had no doubts: Tommy was playing dumb. He had known Howie well in school. Tommy had been the equipment manager for the football team. During time-outs he used to run out on the field and squirt Gatorade in everyone’s mouths. They’d reward him by spitting on his shoes.

“Why’d they break up?” Tommy asked.

I met his gaze. He was watching me, his expression blank, as if he didn’t already know the answer to this question, as if the answer were unimportant. I cleared my throat. My mouth was dry. “He was cheating on her.”

“She ever tell you who with?”

“What’s this all got to do with—”

“Ran into her a few months after graduation. She was pretty broken up about it. She kinda…dropped outta sight for a while. Just like you did.”

He paused, but I kept silent.

“Glad to see she was married at our tenth graduation reunion. Course, you didn’t go to the reunion.”

“I want to go home,” I murmured, thinking about Boulder.

“Were the rumors ‘bout you ‘n’ Howie true?”

“What rumors? About the graduation party?”

Tommy kept his face still. He stared straight into my eyes, unblinking.

“I was drunk,” I blurted out. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lauren knew it wasn’t my fault. I explained it to her. She believed me.” My vision blurred with tears. This was dredging up such horrible memories. Eventually she had believed me.

Or had she? During the past seventeen years, each time something questionable happened between Lauren and me, I asked myself that question. Such as last year, when her parents died in a car wreck and she didn’t contact me till a month later.

“Oh, God,” I whispered to myself.

Thankfully, we were distracted as a male doctor entered, ignored Sergeant Tommy entirely, and shined a penlight into each of my eyes to check for pupil dilation. He then proceeded to examine my head wound, all the while asking for my medical history, despite the fact that this was the third time I’d given it and he had my chart. Maybe he was checking for consistency. I suppose short-term memory loss is a symptom of a concussion.

Finally, he finished. He stood in front of me, smiled with what looked like practiced sincerity, and said, “Well, Molly. I’m afraid you have a concussion.”