Someone must have jammed the second door before entering through the main entrance to the office.
The realization hit Addy like a punch to her chest.
None of this was an accident. It wasn’t a misunderstanding. She wasn’t paranoid.
She was in danger.
“Where are you going?” a voice said. A fragrance assaulted Addy’s nostrils. Pungent. Cheap.
The lights in the office went out. Only the soft glow through the frosted glass of the door illuminated the space around Addy. Everything else was pitch black.
The scraping sound came again, so close it was difficult for Addy to tell if it came from in front or behind her.
Addy felt breath on her cheek. She was trapped.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN JOYCE
The text Joyce was waiting for arrived just as she was about to leave for her meeting with Susan. It was from another “friend,” but at least this one was truly a man with benefits. Unlike Ralph. Or Randy. Whatever his name was.
Joyce read the message, which confirmed what she’d been hoping. She had one errand to run, but it wouldn’t take long and would make her life easier in the end.
Afterwards, finally at the park, Joyce felt the weight of the gun in her bag like a phantom child she carried; dense, familiar, and needy. She hadn’t shot the gun in a very long time, and even then it was just at the firing range, but it was a talisman for this meeting with Susan that she couldn’t go without. Joyce hoped she wouldn’t have to use it, but simply knowing it was there, snug in her purse, was a comfort.
Clara was the one who’d bought it for Joyce, years and years ago now, after she’d discovered in her housekeeping that Joyce was in the habit of meeting with sometimes less than savory men. She’d been surprisingly accepting of Joyce’s indiscretions, not appealing to Joyce’s sense of loyalty or fidelity, but Clara remained insistent that Joyce have some form of protection.
‘Not all men are as kind as your husband,’ she’d told Joyce, and although Joyce’s initial reaction had been to respond with a sarcastic comment, she’d recognized the truth of Clara’s words and kept her mouth shut while Clara explained. It so happened Clara had a cousin who traded guns out of the back of his van, and for two hundred dollars she could get Joyce an unmarked handgun.
Joyce met the cousin, with Clara in tow, in the alley behind the diner in the center of town, and although the price point was good, Joyce decided to go the legal route. The cousin had a squirrelly look to him, his eyes shifting right to left even though nothing was moving around in the alley. Instead, Joyce applied for a conceal/carry license at the gun shop on the freeway outside town. Being an upper-class white woman in America with no criminal record, Joyce was carrying a loaded Smith and Wesson pistol in her purse before the end of the week—with the safety on, of course.
“Is your cousin one of the men who isn’t as nice as my husband?” Joyce had asked Clara after the alleyway meeting.
“Oh, yes,” Clara replied.
Joyce spotted Susan almost a block away. Her shiny blonde hair fell in a sharp line along her chin, and she wore a bright-pink coat for their meeting. It struck Joyce as rather strange, that a sister would think to pack multiple coats when traveling to sort out her murdered brother’s affairs.
Although Joyce might have been inclined towards the same sort of sartorial planning. When life hurtles out of control, what you put on (or in) your own body is sometimes the only bit you can take hold of.
Joyce joined Susan and slipped her arm through the younger woman’s. “How are you?” she asked.
Despite her sleek exterior, Susan’s face looked ravaged. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her foundation had seeped into the cracks around her eyes and mouth, aging her. Some of her makeup was smeared onto the white neckline of her silk blouse.
She looked like a woman in the throes of grief.
“I’ve been better.” Susan gave a small conciliatory laugh and wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief. “It’s all just so much, you know.”
“I don’t think I can imagine what you’re going through right now,” Joyce replied. The two of them started walking around the perimeter trail of the park. The sun was out, and despite the chill of winter it was pleasant in the sunshine.
“The police contacted me earlier this morning, just before I called you. They had a suspect in Dermot’s murder, the woman you told me about yesterday—”
“Trina?” Joyce’s throat tightened. The past tense of Susan’s statement pricked at her composure. She knew Trina was dead, but Susan didn’t know that. Simon was already being questioned at the police station about it. The meaning of Trina’s death was more slippery than Joyce had anticipated.
The gun’s weight offered a welcome pressure to her left side as she and Susan continued their walk, balancing Joyce’s momentary wave of dizziness.
“Yes, Catriona Dell. The professor at the university. They said she’d had a history of imbalance, recently, just like you told me.”
“Had?” Joyce caught the word and threw it back at Susan this time.
“Well, that’s why I wanted to meet with you. That’s why the police were calling me. This suspect of theirs was found dead in her apartment yesterday.”
“Was it suicide? How dreadful.” Joyce paused, appearing to think. “But at least it will bring you some closure.”
“No, no, nothing that…” Susan appeared to struggle for the word. “That simple. She was murdered.” Susan stopped walking and turned to face Joyce. “And they want to know where I was yesterday. I need to account for my whereabouts.”
Joyce played dumb. “But why would they need that?”
“They need to rule me out as a suspect for this woman’s murder! They think it might have been a revenge killing, for what she did to Dermot. And that’s just it. I met with you, after getting my nails done at the salon. And then I went to the police station, gave my statement, and headed back to my hotel room. After that I was alone for the rest of the day.”
“Did you talk to your family? Your husband or children?”
“Yes, we had a call to say goodnight around 8:30pm.”
“Any room service? Did you go down to the front desk for anything?” They’d begun walking again.
“No, I wasn’t very hungry.” Susan turned her head as a flock of starlings spilled off a nearby tree and into the sky. “Look, I appreciate your help in trying to poke holes in the police’s questions for me, but what I really need is something else.”
“Of course.” Joyce didn’t dare look at her in the moment. “You need an alibi.”
“And I don’t know anyone in this town, besides the nail-salon ladies and the police.”
