KAREN
“Mom! M-Mom! Something horrible happened. Oh my god. Oh my god. Mom, Mom, Mom, you need to come here.” Alysha’s voice on the phone sounded like she was in hysterics.
“What? What are you talking about?” I asked, putting my palm up in the air to keep Steve and Donna quiet.
“It’s…bad. Mom, it’s really bad,” she sobbed. “There’s blood everywhere.”
My insides turned into a knot. “What’s happening?” I met Donna’s worried eyes.
“I don’t know how, Mom. I d-don’t know how this happened. Please, come! Please! Please!”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At the bar. At your bar.”
The bar was closed. No one was supposed to be there. I knew Alysha had taken the spare key out of the house multiple times, snuck booze from the bar. I had security cameras, had caught her once. She’d sworn she wouldn’t do it again, and she had no way to steal the spare I kept in the bar office.
If she was at the bar, that meant something must be really wrong.
“Stay put. I’ll be there,” I told her and hung up.
“Something’s going on,” I told Donna and Steve.
“I have to go, but you need to stay here, watch him. Watch him closely. Make sure he doesn’t leave the house.
Doesn’t go anywhere. I have no time for this guy right now. Keep me posted. He can’t get away.”
This was silly, of course, me telling the chief of police how to do his job. But Derek couldn’t leave that house without handcuffs.
“We got it, K. Go,” Donna said.
I drove at full speed to the bar. No way to see much from the outside. Only two windows facing the sides were not blacked out, like others. I didn’t have the time to spy. The lights were on, and something was happening inside.
The first bad sign was that the camera outside the back door had no tiny light shining underneath its lens—that meant it was off.
The next bad sign was the tone of the voices when I went in through the kitchen.
Alysha and Victoria screamed at each other like banshees.
I couldn’t see them at first, so I went around the bar counter, saw them on their knees, both looked up at me, spooked, and another person was lying on the floor.
Dougie Hartzel.
It was dim, the only illumination coming from the lights above the bar counter. I sure didn’t expect that.
“What happened?” I asked, staring at the puddle of blood on the floor. Alysha’s hands were covered in it. Victoria’s too.
“I don’t know, Mom. He was here. He was like this. I don’t know. He was already like this.”
I stepped closer, my eyes on Dougie’s face, his eyes open and not blinking. That’s when it hit me. He was dead.
Oh, god…
Next to him lay a hammer. “Who touched this?” I asked calmly, though my head was spinning.
Victoria, her chest shaking, looked up at me. “I did. I moved it away.” She sobbed, her mascara smudged, her eyes on me pleading and so helpless that it broke my heart.
No, no-no-no-no-no.
“You had it in your hand when I came in,” Alysha said angrily, her own face wet with tears.
“No, I didn’t!” Victoria fought back.
“Yes, you did! You pushed it away as soon as I came in!”
“You liar! You probably were here before me, and you did this to him—”
“You are a bitch! You knew he was talking to Derek—”
“You stupid cow—”
“Liar—”
“You killed him!”
“You killed him and want to make it look like I did it—”
“Shut! Up!” I barked. “Both of you! Shut it!”
The two went quiet, heads low, chins on their chests. Victoria kept wiping her hands on her jeans. Alysha wiped the tears off her face with the back of her hand.
I had to act fast.
The trouble was, if it was Alysha’s doing—an accident, I’m sure, whatever had gone wrong—I couldn’t have my child go to jail. Victoria? The same. No matter the cleanup, evidence would be everywhere. So first things first, I needed to get the girls out of here, then think how to deal with this.
“Both of you, up!” I ordered them. “Go to the kitchen, wash your hands. Thoroughly. With soap. Take the towels and wipe off your clothes. Quickly. We don’t have much time. I hear you arguing again, I am going to take both of you to jail right now. Move!” I yelled.
Both of them sprang up and ran back to the kitchen.
I went around the bar counter, into the bartenders’ area, picked up rags and a trash bag, then a flashlight from a drawer. I killed the lights over the bar. It may have been too late to do that, but if someone looked in now, at least they couldn’t see Dougie’s body from the outside.
I went around the bar counter again, put the flashlight between my teeth, holding it so it shined onto the floor, and, with a rag, picked up the hammer.
My fingerprints were on it. Other workers’ too.
Now, Alysha’s and Victoria’s. I wiped the handle clean, then dropped the rag and the hammer into the trash bag and walked into the back kitchen.
“Who had the extra key to the bar?” I asked the girls. They stood quietly, heads down, exchanging glances from under their brows. “There’s no time for secrets. I asked. Who? Had? The key?”
Alysha raised her eyes. “The back door was open when I came in. After her.” She pointed to Victoria.
“It was open, Mrs. Boots,” Victoria blurted. “I swear. The back door was open. I walked in, and he was already like that.” She pointed at the bar area, and her face contorted into a whiny expression as if she was about to burst into tears again.
“You drove?”
They nodded right away.
“Separately?”
Another collective nod.
I stopped at one of the kitchen shelves and took three pairs of latex gloves.
I couldn’t take a chance of having blood traces all over the place or their cars.
I tossed a pair to each of them. “Put those on. Get in your cars and drive to my place. Now. No stopping anywhere. No calling anyone. Try not to touch more than you need to in the car. I am right behind you. When you park at the house, walk in through the side door and wait there.”
They listened. For once, those two did exactly as they were told.
I killed all the lights, locked up the bar, and followed them in my car. When I got to the house, the two stood like statues, in the enclosed patio, in the dark, waiting for me.
“Both of you, in the bathroom,” I ordered. “Clothes off. I’ll bring you fresh clothes. Wash your faces, hands, and hair. Thoroughly. Leave the gloves with the clothes in the bathtub.”
They scrambled inside. I took off my gloves and dropped them into the plastic bag with the hammer and the rag. Then I picked up the phone and dialed Donna.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Where are you?”
“Sitting with the chief trying to figure out what to do.”
“Something bad happened.”
“What?”
“Don’t tell Steve. Look normal. I need you to get in your car and drive straight to my house. Don’t tell him what I just told you. Tell him I’m not feeling well, and I’m at home. I need you here. Victoria and Alysha are here, too. Come as fast as you can.”
I hung up and tried to even my breathing out because the world was falling apart around me, and for the first time, I didn’t know what to do.
Donna and I had messed up. We’d been outsmarted.
We’d been fooled and set up. The worst part was that we didn’t know if our children were collateral or willing accomplices.