Chapter 10 #2
I sighed. “Fine. But I want to make it clear that I in no way actually believe that this is what happened. Understood?”
Everyone nodded eagerly.
“I had this goofy thought that, what if Rachel hanging around at the café was a way for her to establish an alibi even though she really did kill Richard, by hiring a hitman, and the guy who came to meet her at the café was the hitman telling her that the job was done. Okay? Are you all happy? That’s the stupidest thought I’ve ever had. ”
Tawny looked from Erik to Ricky to me, her eyes wide. “Wow! You think that? That’s wild!”
“No! I thought I was clear—you all said you understood, were you not listening?—I absolutely do not think that,” I said exasperatedly.
“It’s an interesting theory,” Ricky said. “It would be a B-level theory coming from me, but for Oliver, it’s impressive. But we’re not sure Rachel had much motive. We have to investigate more, to see if we can find out.”
“Ooh, investigating! I thought you were writing a travel article,” Tawny said. “Being undercover detectives is so much more exciting!”
“We’re not undercover detectives,” I protested, my agitation mounting. “We are writing a travel article.”
“But we’re also keeping our eyes and ears open,” Ricky said, nodding as if he and I weren’t completely contradicting each other.
Tawny nodded, too, as if all of this was making perfect sense. “So what other theories do you have? What other motives could explain all of this?”
“We haven’t had a chance to discuss this yet,” Ricky said, shooting me a conspiratorial look, “but it seems like the thing that could connect Richard and Cecilia’s deaths is the chain of inheritance for Cecilia’s estate.”
Tawny’s eyes went wide again. “You mean, someone killed her for her money?”
“And killed Richard first, to make sure they inherited all of it,” Erik said, putting the pieces together. “Aha, I get it. But that wouldn’t be Rachel.”
“No,” Ricky said. “That would point right at someone else.”
We must have looked ridiculous, all turning at once as a group to look as Lis rounded the corner coming out of the lounge.
I felt guilty, all of us gawking at this woman who, in a span of two days, had lost her brother and mother.
Lis, for her part, looked very tired, her normally erect posture sagging at the shoulders.
She gave a sad little wave, and I wondered what to do or say.
Platitudes seemed especially empty in this situation.
Thinking of her as a suspect suddenly felt very wrong.
Ricky stepped forward, offering his hand. “I’m so sorry again. This must be awful for you.” I wondered if he felt as bad as I now did, or if he was still in his suspicious mode, trying to feel her out.
“Thank you,” Lis said weakly. “It’s hard to feel anything other than numb at this point. I wish I could understand. …”
“What did happen?” Tawny was, as usual, a model of tact.
“I don’t know, exactly. Apparently, the massage therapist left the room to take a phone call, which seems awfully unprofessional to me, but maybe it doesn’t matter. She said Mother spoke to her when she left, but when she returned and tried to restart the massage, Mother was dead.”
“Omigod, she was massaging a corpse,” Tawny gasped.
“I think she figured it out fairly quickly,” Lis deadpanned. “Anyway, I was out in the parking lot, on a phone call, and didn’t even know anything was happening until the sheriff’s people arrived. The deputy said it looked like a heart attack. I’m sorry, all, I need to be alone.”
Everybody tried to make sympathetic clucking noises as she walked to the elevator.
As soon as the doors slid shut behind her, Tawny, Erik, and Ricky were ready to resume their huddle.
I rolled my eyes and reluctantly joined them, tugging a little at the hem of Ricky’s T-shirt to indicate that I wanted to leave.
I still wanted that shower, but he didn’t seem to notice my signal.
Erik still had a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “Well, what do we think of that?”
“She was awfully anxious for us to know where she was when it happened,” Tawny said. “Like she thinks she needs an alibi. That’s kinda suspicious to me. I think you guys are onto something with this inheritance idea.”
I was losing my patience. I liked being nosy with Ricky—up to a point, with my caution balancing out his impulsiveness—but I wasn’t sure how our dynamic duo had become this featherbrained foursome in which I was severely outnumbered.
“And what is it,” I snapped, “that she’s supposed to have done here? The deputy said there were no signs of foul play. So she didn’t sneak back into the spa and smother or strangle her mother or something.”
Tawny shrugged. “It’s just weird that Cecilia was fine, and then she was alone for a minute, and then she was dead. And we don’t know for sure whether Lis really was in the parking lot on the phone or not.”
“So subpoena her phone records, then,” I said, my voice getting dangerously close to a shriek.
I could feel the day finally getting away from me, the fight part of my overactive “fight, flight, or freeze” instincts kicking into high gear, with me powerless to stop it.
“She was old! Old people die! What are we supposed to do with this? Why do we care? It’s not our problem! ”
Ricky was walking backward away from the desk, pulling me with him. “I think it’s time to get you that shower,” he said soothingly.
Tawny had shrunk back, a frightened look on her face. “It was your idea,” she said, raising her hands, as if in surrender. “I was agreeing with you, that’s all.”
“My idea?” Ricky was steering me backward into the elevator now as I flailed my arms and screeched, “My idea? Mine? Me?”
As the doors closed and we started to descend, Ricky spun me around, holding both my arms at my sides with his hands and looking worriedly toward my eyes, which couldn’t meet his. “Oliver, breathe,” he said.
I heaved against his hold as I tried to comply, gulping hoarsely but getting dismayingly little air.
“Breathe with me,” Ricky said, taking an exaggerated breath through his nose, and exhaling forcefully out his mouth. I tried to follow along, eventually falling into rhythm with him as he guided me out of the elevator and down the hall to our room.
He shut the door behind us, and sat me down on the edge of the bed. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged miserably, still breathing heavily.
I was confused and disoriented, unsure how I had gotten into this state.
All I knew was that it had been a very long, very busy, very strange day.
And somewhere in the back of my mind—or maybe it was the back of my body—oh, yeah, it was my back—I knew that I still felt sticky and slimy from the massage oil.
An image popped into my head, of a magnifying glass directing a ray of sunlight on a point, intensifying the heat in the spot over time until it eventually combusts.
I wasn’t sure if the massage oil was the sunlight or the magnifying glass in this metaphor; all I knew was that I was now reduced to a pile of ashes.
Ricky was still regarding me, his brown eyes clouded deeply with concern. “Do you still want a shower? Or a bath? Do you need something to eat? Or do you want to go to sleep?”
“Bath,” I mumbled, and heaved myself up to head to the bathroom.
As I floated limply in the tub, exhausted, I tried to visualize the oil washing off my skin, forming an imaginary slick on the surface of the water.
It was maddening that the part that felt the worst was my back, where I couldn’t reach to scrub.
I wondered if—if I could convince Ricky to be more than my fake boyfriend—he would ever scrub my back for me.
This led me to other, less comforting thoughts about Ricky, and the status of our pretend relationship at the end of its first day.
It had started off fun and flirty. There had been a fair amount of spontaneity, which isn’t usually my thing, but which had felt fine at the time.
Ricky had taught me to drive; we had agreed to change our appointment time at the spa; I had gone to witness Cecilia Rose’s will; we had gone snooping in Richard Rose’s suite with Erik, then into town to follow Rachel’s alibi; we had taken an impromptu walk on the beach with Tawny; our massages had been disrupted; Erik and Tawny wanted to play detective, too.
None of this had been in our plans when we woke up this morning. Also, somebody had died. Again.
When I added it all up, it suddenly looked like a lot. And, like the magnifying glass starting fires, it had been okay until it wasn’t.
There was another factor, too. Ricky and I had started the day more or less alone together, but it turned out I wasn’t the only one susceptible to Ricky’s charisma, and by the end of the day he had roped in Tawny and Erik, and I felt less in control and less sure that his charisma was a positive force.
We had, I realized, spent most of our time together up to now basically one on one.
But that wasn’t how real relationships worked, and I wondered what it was like to be with Ricky among his friends or family.
What was it like for him to be in a group with me?
Had I been a wet blanket on his fun with Erik and Tawny? Probably.
Ricky had seen me shut down before, and now he had seen me start to melt down, though fortunately—or maybe unfortunately, if this was already enough to put him off—I hadn’t gone all the way to code red.
So far, he had always been sweet and supportive and tried to help me through the moments when I got overwhelmed, but at what point was the reality of my autism going to be too much for him?
Would today be the day he realized he couldn’t—or, worse, didn’t want to—deal with me?
And why, I wondered for the millionth time in my life, couldn’t I simply deal with myself and not get so overwhelmed in the first place?
I sank down in the water, submerging myself almost to my nostrils, and blew a few frustrated bubbles from my mouth. I was spiraling, and getting into a pity party, and getting hung up on questions I couldn’t possibly answer, no matter how much I hated surrendering control over that knowledge.
So much for things I didn’t know. I needed to claw my way back onto solid ground. What did I know?
My head was still swirly from the overwhelm of the day. I had to close my eyes and think for a long time before I could latch onto anything concrete.
Here’s what I came up with: I had some strong feelings for Ricky.
I kind of had for nearly as long as I’d known him, I realized.
They weren’t quite in-love feelings yet, although I had a creeping suspicion that they were getting somewhere close.
But at the core, it was simpler than that.
These were feelings that I had, up to this point in my life, only really ever harbored for my parents—or maybe a more apt comparison was how I felt about my teddy bear, Chester.
Ricky could be a lot, but he had been, so far, an unfailing friend to me, a source of joy, of comfort, of reassurance, of companionship.
I felt possessive of him, and I wanted to know that it would always be like this between us.
And I knew that I couldn’t expect Ricky to be perfect, because, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t be perfect for him.
And that was the problem. The big difference between Ricky and Chester was that Ricky was a person.
I loved my teddy bear deeply, but I didn’t have to do a whole lot to know that he’d never leave me.
I wasn’t sure what to do to keep Ricky happy, or interested, or not scared off.
But I knew I had to try to come up with something, because I had felt about very few people the way I felt about Ricky.
What else did I know? I knew that, no matter how fine he appeared on the surface, Ricky had been deeply rattled by seeing Richard Rose fall.
If he felt like he would feel better understanding how that had happened, and if I cared for him and wanted to show him that I cared for him, I knew I had to do my best to help him figure it out.
But maybe we could be more discreet about it—try not to invite more involvement from Erik, Tawny, or any other members of the extended Rose family.
I knew that this was at least partially my possessiveness talking. I was fine with that.
I realized that I knew a few more things.
I knew that it had to be getting late. I knew that it had been a long day.
I knew that Ricky would be getting hungry.
I knew that my toes were getting pruny. I knew that there was only one bed in the room out there, and that—novelty of novelties—I was craving more of the closeness I’d stolen from Ricky in our sleep last night. It was time to get out of the tub.
I drained the water, dried off, and put on my pajamas.
As I left the bathroom, a foil take-out container of pasta from the restaurant next door greeted me on the nightstand next to the bed.
Another, empty container sat on the coffee table, and Ricky was stretched out on the couch, fast asleep.
I wondered for a moment if I should wake him up, but decided that would be selfish.
Instead, I pulled a blanket off the bed, draped it over him, then sat on the bed alone, watching him sleep as I ate.