Of Mice and Murder
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Catastrophe
A Rash Decision
The Purrfect Murder (coming 2024)
To all the people who told me I was crazy for wanting to be an author. Thank you. You made me more determined than I otherwise might have been to make my dream come true.
And to anyone who has ever been told their dream is crazy. Crazy doesn’t mean impossible.
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1
For the third time in a row, my phone call to my best friend Ahanti went to voicemail.
My trip to Washington, DC, with Mark to consider the job he’d been offered wasn’t starting out the way we’d planned.
I knocked on her apartment door again. Ahanti never went anywhere without her cell. If she forgot it, she turned back, even if it meant she’d be late to an appointment. So she was either in her apartment and something was wrong, or she was out somewhere…and something was wrong. I’d been trying to reach her since our plane landed at Dulles International Airport hours ago. She couldn’t possibly be asleep or indisposed for this long.
Mark leaned against the wall next to the door. “I know what you’re thinking. Would it help if I promised you she’s not dead?”
I shifted the phone to my other hand and contemplated dialing again. Mark was right. He did know what I was thinking. Not only because he knew me better than anyone else and because I apparently had an expressive face, but also because I’d ended up in the middle of more murders than anyone other than a serial killer should ever see in a year. It’d made me a little paranoid.
“You can’t promise me that.”
He gently removed my phone from my grip and tucked it back into my purse. “No, but the odds are in my favor. It’s more likely she went out of town.”
Perhaps. But if she’d gone somewhere, it’d be the first time in years that she’d done it without telling me. Even though I wasn’t her designated next-door plant waterer anymore, she’d still told me when she and Geoff went to the Dominican over Christmas and headed down to Florida to spend Easter with his parents.
Relationships did change over time, though. I just hadn’t expected it to happen to Ahanti and me. Since I’d moved to Michigan, we’d talked weekly and texted more often than that. I was supposed to be in her wedding next spring, and we’d stopped by her apartment so I could ask her in person to be in our wedding party. Since Mark wanted his two brothers as his co-best men, I’d planned to ask Ahanti to be co-maid of honor along with Mark’s cousin Elise.
A trip did seem more likely than the macabre alternatives running through my head. I took the hand Mark offered me and let him lead me back to the elevator.
The unanswered calls continued to nag at me like an itch out of my reach. They weren’t the only recent difference. “She didn’t reply to my text saying we were coming down for a couple of weeks, either,” I said softly.
Mark hit the button for the ground level, and the elevator doors dinged shut. “That only lends support to the theory that she’s off somewhere. She’s probably been gone since last week.”
He sounded a little less certain than before.
“Is there someone you could call to check?” His hand tightened around mine. “Not that I think there’s something wrong. Just so you can set your mind at ease.”
Ahanti’s relationship with her family was civil, but I wouldn’t have called it close. They didn’t approve of her career as a tattoo artist any more than my parents supported my move to Michigan to take over my Uncle Stan’s maple syrup farm. She was supposed to be a doctor, like I was supposed to be a lawyer. Navigating the expectations of our families, alongside figuring out what we wanted from life, had been one of the things we bonded over.
I doubted her family knew when she was in the city and when she wasn’t. Geoff would know. If I couldn’t get him, either, then I could relax knowing they’d taken off on a trip together.
The elevator doors opened, letting us off in the lobby of the apartment complex. I wiggled my phone back out of my purse and trusted Mark to keep me from running into anything or anyone.
I didn’t know Geoff’s cell number, but since it was Monday, he should be at work. That number I still remembered. Geoff was my chiropractor when I lived in DC. Ahanti and I ran into him at the movies one night, I’d invited him to sit with us since he was there alone, and they’d been together ever since.
His receptionist answered, but she wasn’t the one who’d been with him when I’d gone there. Not surprising, since his original had been close to retirement.
The new receptionist confirmed that he was in the office. I gave her my name, told her I was a friend of Geoff’s, and said I’d wait if he was with a patient.
The hold tone beeped in my ear all the way out to our rental car. We climbed inside, and Mark started the car, cranking the air conditioning against the oven-like late-June sun. He didn’t put the car into drive.
“Nicole?” Geoff’s voice came through the phone. “Is everything alright?”
That was a weird reaction. Granted, I didn’t normally call him at work now that I wasn’t his patient, but the tone of his voice was shock to hear from me rather than surprise.
This could all have a simple explanation. Maybe Ahanti’s phone wasn’t working and she didn’t realize it yet. Maybe she hadn’t even gotten my text. Maybe Geoff didn’t know I was in town for a visit.
“Everything’s fine.” No need to advertise I’d let my anxiety get the best of me. “Didn’t Ahanti tell you I was coming down? I’ve been trying to call her, but I kept getting her voicemail. I thought we could all get together for dinner or something.”
The pause on his end stretched, and my ribs started to ache. It took me a second to realize I was holding my breath. I let the air out and sucked in a fresh gulp.
“I think she might have changed her number,” he finally said.
My heart felt like I’d been sucked back in time, back to the teenage girl I’d once been who hadn’t been asked to the prom. Why wouldn’t Ahanti have told me if she changed her number? Ahanti had never been the type to be easily insulted, and I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to make her this angry, but it felt like Geoff was holding back. Almost like Ahanti had asked him not to give me her new number.
“You’re not sure if your fiancée changed her phone number?” I asked carefully, trying desperately to control the snark that wanted to creep into my tone.
“She broke up with me a week and a half ago. By text. I tried calling her a couple of times, saying we needed to talk about it. I got another text telling me that if I didn’t stop calling, she was going to change her number.”
