KAREN
The two girls sat in Alysha’s bedroom, curled up on the bed as I stood in the doorway, catching their glances from under their eyebrows.
It was too late to scold them. Too late to preach.
It was time to correct the mistakes, if that was still possible.
I needed to get rid of the hammer, of their bloodied clothes.
The body at my bar was the priority, and that was another crime about to happen.
But these were our children, and we had to protect them.
I still didn’t have the answers I needed. Maybe I had to give the girls time to think it over.
Dougie: your boy derek is in trouble. come to shirley’s right now. or i tell the police what he did with his wife
Nothing made sense. The girls said Dougie was dead when they’d gotten to the bar.
Had Derek been at the bar with Dougie? Maybe.
Had Dougie been blackmailing him? Possibly.
Had he wanted to run Derek out of town? Definitely.
He’d already had a bad run-in with Derek when Derek had pulled a gun on him, threatened him.
This was clearly Derek’s doing, and the girls were innocent.
But that wasn’t how it looked, how it would look to the police.
I needed to get rid of the body, move it, point the clues in a different direction.
The sound of the front door screeching made me stir. I closed the door to Alysha’s room and went to the kitchen, where Donna stood waiting for me.
“What happened?” she asked.
When I told her, she sank into the kitchen chair. “Can’t be.”
I stared blankly at her. “His body is on the floor of Ma Shirley’s. It needs to be moved.”
“They couldn’t…” She raised her horrified eyes at me. “Could they?”
We were talking about our girls. Of course they weren’t monsters. They weren’t criminals. They weren’t capable. But here’s a thing about crime—sometimes it’s not a matter of being capable but making a wrong move at the wrong time, and suddenly your life was spinning out of control.
“It’s him,” Donna said. “It’s Derek. You know it, K. It’s his doing.”
“But he was home. We saw him get home.”
“But he wasn’t.”
I frowned at Donna. “What do you mean? We saw him walk into the house.”
“K, he wasn’t there.”
“What are you talking about?” My mind was spinning. If Derek wasn’t in his house, then we’d been tricked, and he was somewhere else, while something horrible happened at the bar, and he was—
“Where? Is? Derek?” I gritted out, feeling the world spinning like mad on its axis.
“It wasn’t him,” Donna said quietly. “It wasn’t him, K. It’s as if he knew we were waiting for him. It was some girl wearing his hoodie. She opened the door. I left, and Steve stayed behind waiting for him.”
No. No-no-no-no-no. “You were supposed to get him, Donna!”
“I know, but we didn’t.”
“And now our daughters… Now Doug Hartzel is dead, Donna. Do you understand? The boy is dead. And you know whose fault that is? His! Because he was supposed to be gone.”
“I know, Karen! I’m not stupid,” she snarled. “I know! I know! Just let me think. We should call Steve—”
“Are you out of your mind, Donna? And tell him what? That the girls were found with the dead body, with a weapon they both touched, but it’s not them? It’s the guy who no one seems to be able to locate?”
“It’ll be fine! We will—”
“It’s already not fine! Look what those two got into!”
“Those two?”
“They are pointing fingers at each other.”
That’s when Donna shook her head, her face tightening. “Victoria had nothing to do with it. Dougie was Alysha’s problem. Always has been.”
I froze, staring at her. “Don’t even go there, D,” I gritted out.
Both girls denied doing anything to Dougie. There was no way to tell. And we weren’t going there with accusations like this, not when we were trying to cover this up. What the girls needed was to forget they were ever at the bar.
“If anything, K, what happened to Dougie is Alysha’s fault. You know it. We both know it.”
“Oooh, no.” I flared up with anger. “You didn’t just say that.”
“I didn’t accuse anyone, K. But Victoria had nothing to do with Dougie. She was always following Alysha’s lead. I’m saying for the record, if anything—anything—comes out, it’s not on Victoria. You know it.”
It’s situations like this, minutes, seconds, that make the world as you know it crack.
“I can’t believe you, Donna,” I whispered.
“I just want to make it clear, Karen. I’m in on this, a hundred percent. But this—this”—she stabbed her finger into the room where the girls were—“is because Alysha took her games way too far—”
“Get out, Donna,” I whispered. “Out,” I said louder. “I got my ass on the line because I wanted our girls safe—”
“I know that—”
“I will make sure they are safe.”
“I am here to—”
“You already messed up. It won’t happen again. Not on my watch.”
She rose from her chair abruptly, leaning with her palms on the table, all in my face. “Don’t. You. Dare. Karen. I ain’t leaving. Not now. Not till both of us figure this out. Not till the girls are safe.”
I couldn’t stand looking at her, not after what she just said, but I needed help.
“Fine,” I said, taking a deep breath and pushing my feelings away.
This was not the time to fight. “You got here after you closed your bar. That’s the story.
So did I. Victoria and Alysha stay here until morning.
There’s a bag in the bottom cupboard in the garage, the one that has a hidden lever, you know.
The weapon is there. So are their bloodied clothes.
They’ll have to go. Far away from here. Clothes burned.
The hammer dumped somewhere no one can ever find it. ”
Donna nodded, her gaze stern and determined.
“I will clean up at the bar, then call you. We need to get the story straight. And we’ll need to figure out what to do with the evidence. It’s a two-man job.” I meant the boy I’d known all his life, who was now reduced to an object.
All sorts of scenarios ran in my head. How do I move the body? What do I do? Plastic? Tarp? Where do I take him?
Dougie was dead, and my heart ached for what had happened, but he absolutely could not be found in my bar.
Several people had keys to the back door, like anyplace in a small town.
Someone could’ve broken in. But the girls’ DNA was all over the place, and I couldn’t take a chance on the police finding that.
This was my bar, my girls, my business, their lives at stake.
I gave the last instructions to Alysha and Victoria. They were quiet, tails between their legs. No fighting. Faces puffy with tears.
“Whatever you do, do not leave the house,” I ordered them. “Do not answer the house phone. Do not answer the door. Get in bed. When Donna and I are back, we will talk.”
“Where are you going?” Alysha asked.
Without replying, I closed her bedroom door behind me, then closed the blinds and curtains in the house, locked the doors, got in my car, and drove toward Ma Shirley’s.
It was only five minutes to my bar, but before even reaching there, I smelled it—smoke. Then I saw it, the windows of Ma Shirley’s lit up with orange, bright as bright can be, flames raging inside.
I swerved to the curb, afraid to get close, ran up to the side window, and looked inside.
The fire was in the kitchen, slowly creeping up to the main bar area. And there, on the floor—not visible from the window but I knew it was there—lay Doug Hartzel’s body.
It would be minutes before someone called 911, if they hadn’t already. There was no time for my original plan.
Think, think, think.
There was only one thing I could do, and I hoped that it would save the girls. Even if it put me in jail.