The Tangerine Killer (2 page)

I was late to the wake because I stopped to buy a new phone. By the time I arrived at the Sunset Palm Funeral Home the parking lot was full and I had to stick my Jeep round the back. People in Tangerine always liked a good funeral. Too bad there wasn’t going to be much to see. This would definitely be a closed casket affair.

Inside it was standing room only and I was right about the place being filled with people who hated me. At least I couldn’t see my mother anywhere. Not yet anyway. I hung about in the back of the room, wondering how long I’d have to stay.

“I thought you left town?”

Harvey Lee Reynolds. Brother of the deceased and philandering asshole. Sadly, he’d had a crush on me since we were kids. Back then he was a bully, now he was just two hundred pounds of sweat and pout.

“What‘s that supposed to mean?” I said.

My hand instinctively brushed against the spot on my waist where my gun usually sat. I felt naked without it. It seemed respectful not to bring it to the wake, now it just felt foolish. Too bad. I would have thrust it into Harvey’s rolls of fat and told him to get the hell out of my way.

“Well, you didn’t really do a very good job did you?” He pointed through the crowd to the coffin.

“Really Harvey? She’d been dead for days by the time I found her. I’d say you guys dropped the ball on that one, don’t you think?”

“Whatever. Come up to the front.”

“No.”

That was the last place I wanted to be. Besides, I might need to make a quick getaway if things got ugly.

“Mom wants you up there. Her heart is already broken. Do you want to shatter the few remaining pieces she has left?”

He pouted and I could have sworn I even saw his lip quiver a little. I had to give it to him, the guy was good. I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand and forced a smile. If everyone made it out of the place alive, it was going to be a miracle.

Harvey used brute force to herd me down to the front of the room where the grieving mother and her friends sat huddled together.

“Stop it,” I mumbled.

Harvey didn’t listen. One way or another he was going to serve me up on a platter to his mother. My car was parked by the emergency exit. If I kicked him in the groin, I could still make a run for it but it was too late. Faye had spotted me.

“Darling,” she flung her arms out and hugged me.

I was swallowed by the black gauze of her floating dress and a cloud of slightly stale perfume. As she pulled away I noticed she had rhinestones glued to the corner of her eyelids and feathers in her hair. I think she’d once been on Broadway, or maybe that was just the excuse she used to dress so flamboyantly. Poor Lisa. The casket may have been on display but Faye was the one thing in the room people couldn’t take their eyes off. Even in death her mother outshone her, albeit in a crazy person sort of way.

“I’m so sorry Faye.”

“It’s okay. I just don’t know why she would kill herself, that’s all.”

She didn’t know why her daughter would kill herself? She was even more deluded than I remembered. Lisa had been stuck living in the same house as Faye and Frank. Between the drunk husband I strongly suspected had been cheating on her and the crazy mother, no wonder the poor girl snapped. She’d never been that tough, even when we were kids.

An angry voice rose over the quiet mumbling in the back of the room.

“Get out of my way asshole.”

It was Frank, pushing his way through the crowd at the door like an angry bull.

Faye crossed her arms. “What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

“I’ll put a stop to this,” Harvey said.

He stuck out his chest and stood up to deal with the situation but as he turned to look, his face paled.

“He looks messed up,” he said.

Poor Frank. I almost felt sorry for him. He was one of those guys who got by on pure luck and boyish good looks but both of those were in short supply tonight. Lank brown hair hung over his eyes and he was wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in four days ago. His unsteady sway and glazed look said he’d consumed far more alcohol than the half empty bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand. The guy was bombed.

“Get rid of him,” Faye nudged Harvey.

“What?” Harvey stammered, clearly intimidated by the man half his size.

“Just do it.”

He shook his head and took a step back behind Faye, as though she could somehow protect him. How pathetic.

Frank reached the coffin and slumped over it. I felt for the cell phone in my pocket, toying with the idea of calling the cops. Instead my fingers closed around the switchblade I kept hidden. It wasn’t a gun but in a pinch it would do.

Frank started to sob. Fat tears rolled down his face and plopped onto the lid of the coffin.

“I told you not to come here,” Faye spat. “You’re not welcome.”

I wasn’t surprised that she tried to ban him from the funeral. The one thing I had discovered over the course of my investigation was that Faye blamed Frank for everything that had gone wrong in her daughter’s life.

“You can’t stop me from being here. This is my wife.”

He turned to face her, his bloodshot eyes still brimming with tears.

“Not anymore,” she said.

I watched as something snapped inside Frank. His whole body shuddered before he lifted his shirt tails and pulled a silver revolver out of the waistband of his jeans. He waved it above his head, his eyes glazed and unfocused.

A woman in the back of the room screamed. It was time to make that phone call. I was usually the last person to involve the cops, especially the incompetent ones in this town, but I wasn’t about to have my head blown off. Frank had hired me to find his wife. I failed. I’m pretty sure that made me his number one target.

“You,” he finally slurred. “You did this.”

Bingo.

Frank swayed forward and centered the gun at my chest. He pushed the barrel into the taught skin beneath my white shirt. It hurt like hell but I didn’t flinch. I felt the power in its solid mass, begging to be released into my pounding heart. One drunken slip of his finger and it would be lights out for me.

The room faded away. I couldn’t see Faye or Harvey. There was no coffin with its bouquet of drooping flowers. The only thing I saw was Frank’s desperation as the stench of his liquored breath filled my lungs.

“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered. “You won’t be able to take it back. Trust me when I say, it will haunt you every day for the rest of your life.”

I watched him try to process my words. He looked straight at me and I knew he saw the resemblance of his dead wife. As kids we looked like sisters but the likeness faded as we grew older. I had chopped my hair off in a fit of rage so it was jagged and uneven, while silky blonde waves still swept over her shoulders. Only our sky blue eyes remained the same. Except they weren’t now. The last time I’d seen Lisa’s they had been half eaten by fish.

“Lisa wouldn’t want you to do this. We were friends. She wouldn’t want you to hurt me.”

“Friends?” His voice was distant.

“Sure. When we were little.”

“I didn’t know her then.”

“I know.”

He spoke through a drunken haze. If I couldn’t get through to him, I’d have to try and grab the gun but if it went off and shot someone in the room we would all be screwed. I had to distract him long enough to get his guard down.

“She was so pretty,” he said softly.

“Yes, she was.”

“You look just like her.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t you help her?”

His words twisted in my gut. They hurt more than the gun pressed against my chest.

“I tried but I couldn’t find her. Remember?”

“I don’t think you tried hard enough.” His voice shook and his eyes filled with tears again.

“I worked hard to find her, you know that.”

“But you never figured it out, did you?”

His arm quivered and then he started to cry. The gun dropped from my chest. He blinked a few times and then shook his head.

“It was right in front of you the whole time.”

He leant forward and kissed my cheek, his lips wet and cold against my flushed face.

“You shouldn‘t have trusted me.”

With those final words Frank raised the gun to the side of his head.

“No,” I screamed.
     

In that split second I knew what was going to happen. I lunged forward to grab the gun but it was too late. He pulled the trigger and blew his brains across the room in a crimson splash. He crumpled to the floor, his body now as lifeless as his wife’s in the coffin behind him. Blood oozed from the hole in his head and trickled into the azure blue carpet.

Before there had only been stunned silence but now everyone in the room fell apart. Men hustled to remove their families from the awful scene. Cell phones beeped as people tried to call for help but it was too late. The damage had been done and it couldn’t be undone. No matter who we called or what we did, a life taken could never be brought back.

“You shouldn‘t have trusted me.”

His words soaked into my head just like the blood that was spreading across the carpet. I’d lost another one. I should have been faster. Tried to wrestle the gun away or threatened him with my knife. I kicked out at the nearest chair. It toppled over with a domino effect that sent several more crashing into one another.

“Oh well,” Faye said. “The bastard had it coming.”

She jumped back from my path of destruction and stood regarding Frank’s limp body with a look of distain.

“No one deserves to die like that,” I said.

“Trust me. The prick is better off dead. If he hadn’t taken care of business, I’d have done it myself.”

Her flat, no nonsense statement was cold and hard. I knew she meant what she said. Whatever had gone on between them all was far bigger than I’d been able to uncover and now they were all dead, except for Faye. I threw a withering look in her direction but she didn’t even seem to notice.

The police finally arrived, late to the party as usual. They covered Frank’s body with a white sheet and took statements, then bustled about trying to look important. Assholes. If they’d stepped on the gas maybe they could have done something to stop him. I managed to slip around them and make a bee line for the exit. Faye followed me.

“You should come and stay at the house,” she said.

Stay with Faye and listen to her constant whining? The two people who lived in the same house with her both killed themselves. One of us would end up dead for sure and it wouldn’t be me.

“No thanks. I’m better off at the motel.”

“But it would be so much fun. Just like old times when you kids had sleepovers.”

“I said no Faye.”

“Suit yourself,” she snapped, before stalking off.

The cops were still interviewing people as I slipped out into the dark night. There wasn’t much for them to do. Frank had killed himself with his own gun. No criminal to pursue. No victims to deal with. Only a room full of traumatized mourners who just saw a guy blow his own brains out in front of them. The second suicide this town had seen in less than a week. I hoped it wasn’t catching.

One of the detectives caught my eye as I turned to close the door behind me. It was Olin. He was laughing at something one of the other guys said. He must have felt me looking at him because he turned and smiled, then held up his hand to stop me. He started to call out but I slammed the door before he had a chance to finish. He didn’t try to follow. I had to admit I was almost a little sad. He was pretty hot and I really needed to get laid. I wasn’t ashamed by the fact that I slept around like a man. In fact, it was a habit that served me well. My job was stressful. I needed some sort of release. At least I didn’t do drugs. Not anymore, anyway.
 

I sat in my Jeep and wrestled with myself. Should I go back? No. Don’t be stupid. I had rules about that sort of thing. Sleeping with cops was all kinds of stupid. I already learnt that lesson the hard way. But what if he had something important to tell me? I was opening the door to get out when the handle on the back exit started to turn.