Quintic (42 page)

Over a cup of tea, her mother described
which of her old high school friends she had seen at the market,
which was in trouble or jobless. So and so have dropped out of
college. And that one was pregnant.

Her mother helped her fold her clean
clothes; she helped her mother tidy up the garage after her father
had tried, yet again, to fix something during the weekend. That was
the life she wanted, like her mother’s. Smooth. Orderly.
Predictable.

College was wonderful. She liked the
dorms. She liked feeling all grown-up. Now she talked with her
parents as an adult; college had given her that. The waitress job
had given her that.

She earned money now; she bought her
own stuff. Of course, her parents paid for college, tuition, books,
rent, that was a given. She would do the same for her kids when the
time came. Her mother believed a girl needed to go away to become a
woman. College had made her a woman. Emotionally. She was out of
her mother skirt. Intellectually. She was learning things, becoming
someone. Physically. She was pretty and sweet; boys liked that.

One boy in particular had wanted her.
She had liked him too. She had loved him even perhaps.

“
He is going to be my children’s
father some days,” she had once told a friend.

It had not turned out that way. She was
over him now; she had moved on. Her mother believed another man
awaited her in a near future. Her mother had never been wrong, so
until then, she continued her studies.

Wednesdays were pleasant. Before the
kids got back from school in the late afternoon, before her father
returned from work, she and her mother always went out for coffee,
two women enjoying an afternoon break in companionable chatters
over hot cups of coffee. At the end of the day, her parents drove
her to the bus terminal for her ride back to the dorms.

Every other week, she spent the
Wednesday studying, trying to keep up with her teachers
ever-increasing assignments. Her job at the diner kept her
motivated. Her mother had been a secretary before her marriage, but
she aimed to be an accountant. It was the expected order of things
for children to outgrow their parents. It was her parents’ job to
lift her up to success; it would be her job too to make her
children shine when the time came.

She liked accounting. Long columns of
numbers neatly aligned. Precise work. Predictable. Her work at the
diner was a little like that too. She had had trouble keeping up at
the beginning; it was her first job after all. A friend had put in
a good word for her with the cook, but, even if she had been warned
how difficult waitressing was, her first week was a disaster.

Too many people ordered too many
different meals and drinks and side orders! And the waitresses had
to yell at the cook for him to overhear them over the clamours and
voices of the customers. Yelling was not her thing. Her mother
never yelled; neither did her father. It was very unbecoming,
especially for a lady.

She had not yelled when the boy had
said it was over.

He had never yelled at her before but
he had yelled then. “You’re too linear.”

What did that mean? She still didn’t
know. The boy was dating someone else now. That was fine with her;
she had not liked him yelling at her. That had been a while ago.
Luckily, she had good friends with whom to go out. She hated going
to movie theatres alone.

She had been working at the diner for a
couple of months now; she had got the hang of it now, even on a
rainy Sunday night. When she didn’t have classes, she was always
available to fill in for one of the waitresses, well, except on
Wednesdays every other week. She might not yell as loud as the
other waitresses, but she got by. And sometimes, when the
restaurant grew too noisy, the other waitress would repeat her
orders louder, so it all worked out. The staff and the customers
all liked her. She was nice and she was sweet.

Excerpt
from
PI
Unlimited
, by Trica C.
Line

Her at the Last
Minutes

P
atricia sat, once again, at the
diner’s counter. Late in the day. Late in the week. Thursday
already. She was to meet Reid for a drink later, on a well-deserved
night out.

She had
slaved on her book all week; her story was unfolding
satisfactorily, up to the girl’s last living night at least. Her PI
character had done the legwork and talked to the victim’s family
and friends. Her fictional police force was clearly incompetent
(weren’t they always?), and as a last resort, the girl’s mother had
hired her PI to find her baby’s killer.

In her book,
Princess Jane would solve the case alone, however long a time it
took, without help from Jeremy, her police officer boyfriend.
Christopher might read something into that storyline, but really,
he would be wrong.
It’s just
a story, Big guy
. The reference to an
incompetent police force might make him twitch also, but hey, it
was only fiction, right? And for once, she hadn’t hinted at a dirty
cop lurking in the midst of the investigation (a recurrent theme in
her previous books, no shrink needed to explain why).

S
ince she wrote the story in
sequence, her character was now up to retracing the first victim’s
last day. The second murder was to happen during the investigation
hence ensuring a steady momentum in the action.

H
er PI’s investigation spanned
over years. The timeline had impaired Patricia’s writing at first,
but her character was tough; resilient and damn stubborn, her PI
sometimes got discouraged but in the end, she did not give up. The
time lapse allowed in-between adventures for future books if she so
desired. If she ever completed this one, though.

Okeydokey.
To uncover clues the incompetent apes have overlooked, Jane needed
to be near when the second murder occurred, but how? Her PI
couldn’t conveniently show up at the second fictive diner as she
had for real; it would appear too far-fetched.

Jane
had a logical mind hence the second restaurant
had to have something that the first one also had, apart from the
damn rain −
Note to myself:
the damn rain is fast becoming a character in itself.
She had to take it into account somehow − A
staff member that worked at both diners? Too obvious, even for the
apes. A friend? There again, a too-simple scenario, the two girls
went to the same college after all. Then again, did the six degrees
of separation applied to small colleges? Years apart? Hum. Apes
would have checked it out (incompetents yes, but not
unrealistically so). A customer? Perhaps. They were difficult to
track, though, especially if they weren’t regulars. But there
again, if they weren’t regulars, her character, as smart as she
was, would have to be damn lucky to notice a customer at one
restaurant and then the same at the other, days or weeks or years
later. Hum.

Patricia
kept on writing,
confident that when she reached that scene, something would come
up. For now, she let the idea simmer on her backburner, that
subconscious part of her mind that computed and reflected and
reckoned without consulting her conscious self. That innermost part
was always working overtime anyway.

PI Unlimited:
Rain

S
he had worked all
weekend. Night shifts were the worst
. It had rained all weekend. Rain season. It was late, and
she was tired. I’m going to take a taxi back, she decided. She knew
one of the cab drivers at t
he
stand two blocks down. From time to time, the cabbie gave her rides
back to the dorms. His daughter was in one of her classes, and as
he lived close to her building on campus, and his shift ended at
eleven-thirty, he gave her a cheap rate.

She helped the cook clean up
the restaurant. Thankfully, the helper had left already;
she found him strange. The man barely talked to her. Then again,
she rarely spoke to him either.

She put her raincoat on to help the
cook take the trash out. She loathed the rain; it was pouring, and
it was cold. A couple of bags and they were back inside. The cook
started mopping the kitchen floor.

“
How about we go out for a beer
after we’re done here?” He offered.

“
No, thank you.” The man was
married, and he smelled of grease.

She put the chairs up on the table and
left him to his mopping. She had to hurry if she wanted to grab her
taxi. Cabs ran all night from the station, but she wanted the cheap
fare. She only had toilets left to do. The cook would mop the
floors there after he finished the dining area. The waitresses
helped with the kitchen and the garbage; he did the floors. That
was the deal. Even on slow Sundays when one of the two girls left
at nine and the helper at ten, the deal was the same.

The men’s and ladies’ toilets were
mirror-images. She filled the soap bottles, cleaned the sinks with
disposable wipes, brushed the toilets, sanitising them with a
copious amount of the blue cleaner. She cleaned the mirrors with
the foamy pink cleaner. Her mother had taught her the routine, and,
no more ten minutes later, the men’s and the ladies’ rooms were
sparkling, and she had two trash bags to dispose of.

Bags in hand, she finger-waved her good
night to the cook and made her way to the back exit on tiptoe. The
cook growled at the waitresses when they left footprints on his
freshly cleaned kitchen floor.

Patricia
paused.
The girl’s back door exit made
simplified the murder. It explained why the killer had left her
body in the back alley. Nobody had dragged her back there; she had
let herself out that way to dump the toilet trash bags into the
container before heading to the taxi stand.

W
as that how it had happened? Had
the cook lied about the girl leaving through the front door? The
police had brought him up for questioning back then; he had an
alibi. Was it possible his recollection of the girl’s last moments
had been wrong? Without knowingly lying, maybe he had rearranged
the events. He couldn’t tell his wife he had asked the girl out,
now, could he?

Pie or no
pie, s
he needed to talk to that cook
again.

She dropped the trash in the container.
She was already running little late.

“
Hi.”

She jumped at the voice and turned to
see who had spoken to her. The person was leaning on the wall next
to the diner’s back door. “Oh, hi.”

Since the
scene had betrayed
no signs of a
struggle, the police had assumed the girl had known her
murderer.

“
Lousy weather, isn’t it?”

“
Yes. I hate rain,” she barely
paused by her interlocutor’s side. Now, she truly was late. “The
cook has not completed his chores; he’s doing the floors now. Just
knock hard.”

“
Actually, I came to see you. Do you
want to go for coffee or something? My treat.”

The offer took her by surprise. They
had gone out a few times with a group of friends but never the two
of them alone. More the friend of a friend than a friend. “Well…
It’s kind of late. My ride will be leaving soon. Maybe some other
time, OK?”

“
Come on, it’s not that late. You
can take another taxi. Or we can go to my place. It’s not far. I’ll
call you a cab from there. What’d you think?” The friend of a
friend looked at her with a pleading look.

She was tired. Moreover, she wasn’t
entirely sure she liked that person much. Sweet yes, but she wasn’t
looking for a romantic involvement right now. She declined again
and turned to leave. A hand grabbed her by her coat sleeve; this
was becoming unpleasant.

“
Look, this won’t take long. Just to
talk, OK? After all, you’re the one who started it; don’t you lead
me on.”

She didn’t understand. How could she
have deceived anyone? They had held hands and hug, but everybody
did so; it was a group thing. College kids held hands at the
movies; those were scary films. They held hands and embraced in
coffee shops, but only on the cheeks, like brothers and sisters, as
she did with her younger siblings. “I’m sorry you got the wrong
impression. Truly, I am. But I’m not looking for a relationship
right now with anyone. And I really have to go.”

“
I know your type. All sweet and
soft. But what, you think you’re too good for me?”

“
How improper.” What a waste of
time. That unpleasant person must be drunk, or worse, stoned.
Luckily, no yells were thrown her way; she would hate for the cook
to overhear them. How embarrassing. “That is enough. I’m going
now.”

She pulled her arm free and turned to
run out of the alley. Hopefully, her cab ride hadn’t left yet.

She didn’t see the killer grip a
backpack, didn’t see the movement as the killer swung it at her.
She didn’t feel herself fall to the ground for she was already
dead.

It rained all night.

Excerpt
from
PI
Unlimited
, by Trica C.
Line

Not
bad
. She would put that passage aside for
a few days. Let it simmer, figuratively speaking, then she would
rework it. And, if Christopher worked late again this weekend, she
might come back for a chat with the cook.

Why couldn’t
the
world be more like in her books? Life
would be oh so simpler.

Now
that
she had killed the girl, she
deserved a celebratory treat. She yearned for more than a glass of
red wine, though. She had not seen the Big guy since forever, had
not questioned him about the cases. In truth, she had not
asked
anyone
about any of the investigations. She deserved a
drink all right.