Book Club Bloodshed (4 page)

Missy woke in the darkness to an annoying, insistent buzzing. Through the confusion of being stirred from sleep early, she squinted her eyes and noted the time on her clock: 3:15AM.

So much for sleeping tonight.

She grabbed her cell and checked the caller ID. It was a local number, but one she didn’t recognize. Probably some player fat-fingering the number for one of his booty calls. Missy would normally let such a call go to voicemail, expecting it to be a wrong number. But tonight was anything but a normal night, and she got a feeling the call was important.

“Hello?”

Noreen was hysterical. “Missy?”

“Nor, are you okay?”

“No.” She laughed but the laugh was full of despair. “I’m not okay.”

Noreen started crying.

Missy was already getting out of bed. “Nor, I’ll be right there.”

“No…hours…right now.”

Her words had been garbled through her hysterical crying. “What did you say? Noreen, calm down for a sec and tell me what’s wrong.”

Noreen needed a moment to pull herself together. When she spoke, her voice was clear as a bell. “There are no visiting hours right now.”

Missy’s heart sank. She knew what this meant.

Noreen forced a laugh. “You’re my one phone call, Missy.”

“Oh my God, Noreen. This can’t be happening.”

“It’s happening.” She started crying again. “I need your help, Miss. They think I did this.”

Missy felt horrible about equivocating with Noreen earlier. Of course she was going to help. She’d do anything for her best friend.

“Noreen, we’re going to get through this. I promise.”

“Thank you, Missy.” She sad-laughed again and it broke Missy’s heart.

“First thing in the morning, I’m going to talk to Len Greenberg,” Missy said. “He’ll have you out of there in no time.”

“Okay.” Noreen was breathing heavily now and sounded like she was hyperventilating.

“Nor, take it easy, take it easy. Take a long, slow breath, okay?”

“Okay.”

Missy sat back down on the bed. Cody picked her head up and looked sullenly at her. The dog always could tell her moods and knew whenever something was wrong.

“Missy.” Noreen’s voice was calm again. “I did
not
do this.”

“Don’t worry,” Missy said, making up her mind. With Noreen officially arrested, she couldn’t sit on this information that Trudy had shared. “I think I can get you out of there fast. Is Tyler right there?”

“No.”

Missy cursed silently. “Is he at the station?”

“They processed me an hour ago, and that was the last time I saw him…I really don’t know where he is.”

Missy thought about it. She could just call him directly. It was probably safer that way.

“Okay, Nor. Listen to me. I’m going to call him right now, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And even if that doesn’t work out, I’ll still be there tomorrow with Len Greenberg, okay?”

“Miss, I didn’t do this.”

“I know, Nor. I know.”

“Missy, I don’t know what to say…I’m so scared.”

“Me too. But we’re going to get through this.”

Missy told Noreen to be strong and try to get some sleep, promising her tomorrow would look a lot different. It was 3:30AM by the time she got off with Noreen, which really wasn’t a great time to call somebody but Missy figured that Tyler was still up. He’d just arrested Noreen, so he was probably at the station, filling out the endless paperwork she’d heard police complain of all the time.

She scrolled through her contacts and thumbed the phone icon next to his number.

It rang a few times before a woman answered in a sleepy voice. “Hello?”

Missy was thrown off by the voice. Who was this?

“Hello, I’m calling to speak to Tyler.”

“Who is this?” The voice was instantly suspicious.

“This is Missy DeMeanor.”

There was a pause. “I’ve heard about you.”

Then Missy put it together. It had to be Tyler’s ex-wife, Jill. They were estranged but trying to work out their marriage. From what Missy had heard, Jill still lived near Philadelphia, where Tyler had worked as a detective until recently. When he’d moved back here, it had been alone. Missy knew they were working things out, but she hadn’t known Jill was in town.

“I’ve heard about you too,” Missy said, which was only half-true. She’d heard about Jill from everybody
except
Tyler. In the few conversations they’d had over the last six months, Tyler had mentioned her in passing, and never by name, and he’d never revealed anything about her except that she worked at in sales at a pharmaceutical company. Missy knew that meant she made a fortune, at least by Missy DeMeanor standards. She’d seen pictures of the woman online, and she was
stunning.
Tall, long legs, blond hair, year-round tan, and her body had a long, lean look to it like she’d played sports her whole life.

In other words, she looked exactly like Missy didn’t.

“What do you want?” Jill said, no humor in her voice.

Missy’s anger rose. “I called Tyler because I need to speak to him.”

Jill didn’t respond for a moment. “Why are you calling my husband at this hour?”

“It’s police business.”

“Oh right.” Her voice changed tone and became mocking. “You think you’re a detective. I forgot. You think you can do what Tyler does.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“More like you’re trying to get your friend out of trouble by exploiting your relationship with the chief detective.”

“You must not think much of Tyler if you think he’d let someone he thought was guilty go because I said so.”

Score one for Missy.

“You can speak with him tomorrow.”

“I need to talk to him now. He’s got somebody locked up who shouldn’t be, while there’s a killer out there.”

“You mean he’s got your
friend
locked up right now. Talk to him tomorrow.”

“You’re not seriously going to hang—”

Jill cut her off. “Don’t ever call my husband on his private phone again.”

“This is—”

“And don’t ever call Tyler again at this hour. I don’t care if you’re dying.”

She hung up.

“What a bitch,” Missy said.

The morning came early. It had taken Missy an hour to calm down enough after her call with Noreen and nasty conversation with Jill, Tyler’s wife, to fall asleep. She woke at 7:00AM, her mind already racing, and as tired as she felt couldn’t fall back asleep. It was still too early to get a hold of the attorney, Lee Greenberg, so she decided to exercise instead.

Missy pulled on some old sweats that were really starting to get loose (yay!) and a black t-shirt that wasn’t quite form-fitting but also didn’t look like she was wearing a trash bag. The sun was out when she slipped on her sneakers and bounded down her steps. Cody watched her leave from the front door.

Though Missy had always been overweight, she’d also been an athlete in high school. She’d been a pretty good field hockey player and had made the volleyball team too. Anybody looking at her would never suspect she had an ounce of athletic talent in her, especially if they knew she was a bookworm. But long ago (almost twenty years!) she’d played varsity sports and had known what it was like to be part of a team. Even though the years had added plenty of cushion around her hips, thighs, and butt, she could still move okay.

She walked for a minute down the road then started jogging. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have been caught dead running on the street, where any nitwit could see her, preferring instead to go to the gym and use the ellipticals with other people “of weight.” But a month ago she’d decided to get over it.

Missy jogged at a good clip. She was running toward the sun, and the early morning light felt good on her skin as the day broke. Spring was right around the corner. At this rate, she might be down another fifteen pounds in two months and, believe it or not, meant she might be able to get back into her black (slimming) one piece bathing suit and make her triumphant return to the Grove City pool.

She hadn’t been able to fit into that in almost three years. The thought of that motivated her to pick up her pace and she was feeling extraordinary, getting that runner’s high that temporarily made her forget about everything else that was going on—

Till a car horn blared her out of her zen-like state. The sound actually startled her. Missy lost her footing and went down in the grass strip along the road.

“Get out of the way, you whale!” the guy yelled through the passenger window before speeding off. She didn’t recognize him or the car, but if she ever saw them again, she definitely would.

Missy picked herself up. When she rubbed her sweatpants, the mud she’d accumulated smeared onto her hands. Though the guy was about to take the bend in the road ahead, she gave him the one-finger salute before he disappeared from view.

Sometimes, she loathed men. For some reason, it was socially acceptable for them to give people a hard time about their weight. People just shrugged or laughed it off and looked the other way.

There wasn’t much of a shoulder on this two lane road, but still, she wasn’t
that
big that he’d need to swerve to avoid her.

He was just an asshole.

And even though she told herself she shouldn’t feel bad, and repeated to herself that the guy was just
one of those people
who reveled in making people feel awful about their weight, she couldn’t help but feel down. The runner’s high she’d briefly experienced dissipated quickly, and once the adrenaline died she was left short of breath with tired, aching muscles. She turned around and ran back home, but her heart wasn’t really into it.

***

Missy took a shower and purposely didn’t look in the full-body mirror in her bedroom. Instead she went with her standby comfy, loose jeans she always wore and an equally comfy, loose long-sleeved t-shirt under a flannel. It was a great outfit for work, she was always getting up and down and carrying things and moving around in Books and Crannies.

Exercise always made her even hungrier than usual, so she was ravenous when she got to the kitchen. She fed Cody first, then weighed her options. They came down to: cereal, cereal, cereal. She settled on cereal.

She ate quickly and checked the time: 8:15AM. By now, Lee Greenberg was probably in his office. But maybe she didn’t even need to call him. Missy nodded to herself. She wasn’t going to let that idiot from earlier ruin her outlook on the day. Nope. Today she was going to get her friend out of jail. And she might be able to do it without a lawyer.

Ignoring Jill’s orders from last night, Missy scrolled through her contacts again and called Tyler’s cell phone instead of the station.

“Hello, Melissa.”

His tone was neutral. Missy wondered if he was home or at the station. She pictured Jill standing behind him, fuming. And it made her smile.

“Tyler, we need to talk. Can we meet?”

“Come to the station.”

Missy was thinking it would be safer if they talked outside of the station. She didn’t want anybody there to overhear them, in case Trudy’s theory was right and the mysterious cop was Anne’s killer.

“I really need to talk to you somewhere else, Tyler. I—”

“If this is official police business, I need you to come to the station, Melissa. If it’s not, then…”

“Then what?”

“Then…I don’t know.”

Missy didn’t think she’d ever heard Tyler say
I don’t know
before. He sounded lost.

“I spoke to Jill last night.”

His voice turned high-pitched. “What?”

“Yeah, I spoke to her,” Missy said. “Guess she didn’t give you the message.”

“What…what did she say?”

“That I wasn’t supposed to call you on this phone anymore.” Missy chuckled. “Oops.”

“Melissa,” he said. “Our situation is
complicated.
She knows a lot about you, too, so she must have felt threatened.”

Why would she feel threatened unless Jill knew Tyler still had feelings for her? It was the only explanation. Missy was both happy and angered. She would have gladly dated Tyler again and had come close six months ago, right before he’d dropped the bomb on her about he and his ex-wife trying to work things out.

She let her frustration and disappointment get the better of her. “That’s funny, Tyler, because I don’t know much about her.”

“Melissa, don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know like what,” he said. “And I really don’t have time for this.”

“This? What you mean is, you don’t have time for me.”

He said nothing.

Missy knew she should take a deep breath, but she was on a roll. “I thought we were supposed to be friends, Tyler.”

“It’s just not that simple.”

“Sure it is,” she lied through her teeth. She knew full well they couldn’t be friends. At least, not yet. Missy still had feelings for him. “Ever since you closed the books on Albert Switzer’s murder, you haven’t been able to look me in the eye longer than five seconds. When we bump into each other, you act like we’re perfect strangers.”

“I’m in the middle of a murder investigation and can’t—”

“By the way, you arrested the wrong person.” She was livid now, her hand almost crushing her cell phone. “Noreen didn’t kill Anne. That’s why I was calling you last night. So now she’s spent the night unlawfully imprisoned.”

Missy didn’t know if Tyler had broken any laws, but the phrase sounded pretty good.

“If you have information, you need to come down to the station,” Tyler said. “I can’t do this over the phone.”

“Why not?”

“Melissa, you really don’t get it, do you?”

“I guess I don’t.”

A hard edge lined his voice. “This is a small town and when something terrible like this happens, everybody has their eyes on the detective.”

“If you can’t stand the heat…”

“I can stand the heat, that’s not the problem.” He sighed. “The problem is, I can’t have any appearance of impropriety when I’m investigating. If anybody thinks I’m being influenced by my ex-girlfriend, I’m finished. Don’t you get that?”

Missy was about to fire back, but finally got herself under control. He was absolutely right and had warned her of this last time when she’d meddled.

“So come in here and we’ll have somebody take your statement.”

“Not somebody,” Missy said. “It has to be you.”

“God!” He laughed sardonically. “Are you trying to be difficult, woman?”

“No. I’m starting to think that comes naturally.”