Chapter 37
“Should we be waiting for you, Mo?” calls one of the parents, clearly not recognizing the urgency of the situation that is
a murderer and a whole bunch of hostages standing around a sinkhole.
“Yes, please,” I yell back. “Just a little traffic jam!”
to them that they should call but make it subtle . . .
“But none of this icky violence would have been necessary if it hadn’t been for Hannah ignoring my Insta messages,” Leslie says. “And
when E for Execute didn’t work, what was I supposed to do?”
Hannah grimaces, and as she speaks, I can’t help but notice how hoarse she’s become. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why your stupid program doesn’t work. I killed Cran and still had problems. So I upgraded UPGRADE,” Leslie
says, her pitch escalating. “To POWERHOUSE. P is for Pick your Weapon, O is for—”
No, no, this is getting away from me—Leslie is way too angry at Hannah, and I don’t like the sound of this POWERHOUSE. I need to get her to focus on me. And I need to catch the eyes of one of the parents, which should be easy because they’re all gaping at me.
“I’m going to put your crowbar down for you,” I say, trying to maneuver my body to face the parents. I catch the eye of one
mom and sort of nod at her in a way that I hope says call 911 but don’t announce it.
“So you started POWERHOUSE, which sounds really interesting by the way,” I say.
The mom pulls out her phone. Yes!
“Thank you,” Leslie says. “Took me a long time to figure out the acronym.”
“And once you got Cran out of the picture, next step was to kill Claudia?” I ask as curiously as I can.
The mom lifts her phone high in the air and yells, “I’m calling 911!”
Oh come on.
But Leslie doesn’t seem to notice the crowd we’re amassing anymore. She’s too wrapped up in herself.
There’s a lesson in here somewhere for me. Not that I like getting my life lessons from murderers.
Leslie barks a laugh. “That was Claudia’s own fault for snooping. She was on to me from the beginning. Like you said at the
funeral, she was getting close.”
That’s Leslie for you, always lurking, always listening. Meek, forgettable, and murdery. I suddenly remember her peeling out
of the funeral home parking lot. She probably made a beeline right for Claudia’s house and the gas line.
I retch at the confirmation that my big mouth got Claudia killed. I’m so sorry, I think.
I can practically hear Claudia’s voice in my head: I’m gonna haunt the shit out of you for this.
But now isn’t the time to get waylaid by regret. “How’d you do it?” I ask.
“Psht. I went in the same way you did, in back. Turned on the gas in the basement. Made it look like a leak. Easy peasy.”
“And the money?” I ask.
“An unexpected bonus,” she says, patting the bag around her body.
Oh shit. She’s got it on her right now.
Time to shut this whole thing down once and for all. But how? UPGRADE? POWERHOUSE? Rodney O’Malley?
I’m going to have to wing this, Mo Ellery style.
“That money isn’t going to help you,” I say kindly, and then gesture to the entire school standing around outside, watching
rapt. “There’s too many witnesses.”
Leslie suddenly notices the crowd around us. She narrows her eyes at me. “And what would you suggest I do, crossing guard?”
Okay, she’s being snarky, but I think she’s feeling the squeeze.
Before I can say anything, Merle pipes up out of the blue. “Sugarcube, maybe take the needle out of the nice girl—”
Shut UP, Merle. This guy has the worst timing.
Leslie whirls around and Hannah squeals a bit. “For ONCE could you just put me and my needs first,” Leslie hisses. “Make yourself
useful and grab that crowbar.”
I shake my head at Merle, but he’s already hobbling toward the crowbar. Shit shit shit.
What is taking the cops so long?
Leslie keeps talking as she backs away holding Hannah, toward the curb, over the edge of the metal plate where only Benny’s
wrists and hands are visible. “Merle, you are useless. I am sick and tired of dealing with the messes you make. I bet you
haven’t even noticed the FBI rolling past the office in their unmarked windowless vans. You know who did? ME!”
Huh. Well, that’s an interesting development.
“So on top of everything else I do for you, now I’ve got to shred—”
At that moment, Leslie trips on Benny’s forearms, he screams, and Leslie screams and stumbles, and Hannah screams as the syringe
gets yanked from her neck, which has apparently gone straight into her jugular, and not in a careful way, because a thin but
very steady stream of blood starts spurting out.
This is suddenly a very different kind of mess.
I race over to where Hannah’s crumpled to the ground and dive next to her, pressing my hand firmly to her neck as she stares
up at me, wild-eyed. The blood is slicking her neck and my hand, and making it impossible to keep the pressure on, and (oh
god) I can feel her heart beating, pumping the blood through my fingers. There’s so much blood. Not Hannah, my whole body
screams as I push down on her neck. Where is that ambulance?
And the kids seem to realize it, too, that this is not the fun after-school entertainment they’d thought it was. One of them
starts screaming, and almost immediately, all of them are screaming. Half the parents are trying to drag their kids away,
and the other half are now taking video. Very helpful, everybody, thanks for the assist.
Meanwhile, Leslie has fallen to her knees, and that’s when we all hear the sirens approaching. She scrambles up, glances at the ambulance and cop car skidding around the corner,
and starts to run.
I can’t leave Hannah, and clearly Leslie is faster than me anyway, but there is no way I’m letting this woman get away.
Suddenly, my mind clears. I don’t have to chase her. I know exactly what to do. I take a huge breath and holler at the top
of my lungs.
“Jean Valjean!” I yell, pulling one hand from Hannah’s neck to point at Leslie. “Treats!”
And just as I knew he would, that dog bounds over at top speed, following where I point, and leaps onto Leslie, grabbing her baby bag in his jaws.
As he rips it open searching for the treats, hundred-dollar bills start to flutter out.
Leslie swats and tries to spin out of his grasp, but she’s wrapped up in the strap.
She whips around, and Jean clearly thinks this is a fun game because now he jumps and bats at her arm.
The one with the syringe in it.
The syringe goes into her face, right under her eyebrow. Jean noses in at exactly the wrong moment, and the plunger goes down.
Leslie screams and collapses under a pile of dogs.
EMTs rush over with their gear and pull me gently off Hannah.
I am covered in my best friend’s blood.
I watch as they start fixing her up, but she looks so, so pale. Her eyes are fluttering open and closed.
After an agonizing, endless moment, one of the EMTs looks up at me and smiles. “You did a good job,” she says. “She’ll be
fine.”
Relief washes over me for exactly one second before I hear Benny calling out from underground, the strain clear in his voice.
“A hand anybody? I can’t do this much longer!”
I whip around to the sinkhole and those sexy, but—for me—platonic forearms, and despite the slippery blood coating my arms
and the knowledge that I am a bona fide weakling, I’m about to lie on my belly and try to pull him up, when I hear a familiar
voice behind me. “We’ve got this.”
It’s Marlowe. With a firefighter.
She shrugs. “He offered to help.”
“I didn’t offer to help, kid,” the firefighter points out. “You dragged me over here.”
However he got here, he’s got a massive ladder and I am so relieved when he lowers it into the hole.
The ladder clunks to solid ground . . . approximately five inches below the pipe that Benny’s slipping off.
“Oh,” Benny’s voice echoes from the hole. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”
He climbs out of the hole.
That’s it. Everybody’s safe. My whole body is shaking, and I flop down onto the dirty-ass street, right in the middle of the
intersection.
Marlowe hovers over me. “I can’t believe you started all this without me,” she grumbles.
“Next time I’ll give you a heads-up,” I say.
Except no freaking way will there be a next time. My sleuthing days are so over. One and done, as they say. I think I might
just stay here, spread-eagle in the middle of the street, in fact.
Behind my head, I hear a guy scream-whispering at someone about how much trouble they’re going to be in for “missing the whole
thing.”
I squint up and because I’m looking at them upside down, it takes me a second to recognize the two young guys, one of whom
is holding a Dickie’s Tavern pizza box.
They’re not wearing the vests, but I know a neon vest wearer when I see one.
They did the same thing I did when I was pretending to be the gas company. Everyone respects a neon vest. Shoot, a neon vest
is basically a Rodney O’Malley confidence hat.
“Well, I’m sorry I’m not a robot who doesn’t need to eat lunch,” the other whispers back angrily.
It’s the fake surveyors. AKA the FBI.