Twenty-One #2
I took another sip of hot cider. “There’s something I’m missing, though. Something that’s right under my nose.” I could feel it. My stomach rumbled loud enough for us to hear.
“Hungry?” asked Jude. “I can warm up some of Tammy’s hot dish.”
“Everything is better with cheese and potatoes,” I said. I tried to get up, but Jude stood, holding up his one good hand.
“Let me get it for you,” he offered.
“Aw, isn’t that sweet?” Mom said as she slowly descended the stairs. “I told you he was a keeper.”
I watched from the sitting room as Jude disappeared into the kitchen.
“And nothing heals you like Tammy’s hot dish,” Mom said, taking Jude’s now vacant seat. “That woman can cook.”
“I can’t believe she has time to bake what with her spreading gossip all over town.”
“She’s a woman of many talents,” Mom said, nodding.
“It’s too bad Tammy never worked a full-time job. She could’ve made a killing if she’d had her own hot dish show. Or even just a restaurant. People would line up for these cheesy potatoes.”
“She had a job before her kids were born,” Mom pointed out as she picked a piece of lint off her otherwise pristine pants.
“You mean when she sat at a desk in the Air Force?”
Mom’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. She didn’t sit at a desk.” Mom studied me. “She was an intelligence officer.”
“She… what now?” I blinked, sitting up a little straighter.
“Oh, yeah. She flew diplomats around and listened to their conversations. She knows at least four other languages. Russian, Arabic, Spanish, French…” Mom ticked them off on her well-manicured fingers.
“In the early nineties, she flew Russian diplomats to Moscow, and because she was a cute blond thing, they just blabbered away, thinking she couldn’t possibly understand them, but she understood every word. ”
“Tammy Anderson,” I repeated. “Tammy Anderson is fluent in Russian.”
“And Arabic. And several other languages. She was an army brat growing up and learned to speak all kinds of languages. She was also pretty good at computers, too, and hacking terrorist codes.”
None of this made sense. The hot-dish-making nosy busybody tradwife was a spy—a computer hacker spy?
“Tammy Anderson. Our neighbor, Tammy Anderson.”
Mom nodded.
“It’s one of the reasons I’m so nice to her, honestly,” she said. “She had a bit too much to drink one night at knitting club and told me she killed a KGB agent one time. On a secret mission, but still.”
“She… what now?”
“She’s got some pretty intensive combat training, I guess.
She didn’t mean to tell me about that. She says it was self-defense, but it was after everyone else at knitting club went home and she busted out a new bottle of homemade limoncello.
And when she starts throwing back limoncello shots, the woman gets so chatty! ”
“Wait… limoncello? That’s liquor made with lemons?” I could feel my stomach clench.
“You haven’t had any of Tammy’s homemade limoncello?
” Mom seemed surprised. “She grows her own lemons. She’s got at least two lemon trees in her three-season room.
She goes on and on about how she got the seedling from Italy when she and Ted went there a few years back.
She won’t stop talking about them, honestly. It’s kind of annoying.”
“Are they Sorrento lemons?” I felt like my ears were ringing. Mom looked at me with surprise.
“Yes! How did you know?”
Because the Canceled Killer left Italian Sorrento lemons with the fresh branches and leaves on at the crime scenes. They didn’t have stickers from the grocery store because she grew them herself.
Tammy.
Freakin’.
Anderson.
She loved Barry the Chihuahua. See: all the victims of the Canceled Killer who abused dogs.
She hated childless, career women who never married. See: all the very dead childless female corporate executives.
She was a veteran pilot herself. See: the CEO she murdered who sold fake PTSD cures and the Eezee airline exec who skimped on safety checks.
Also, Russo said the perp he saw wore a life vest.
Or maybe that was just Tammy’s signature orange puffer vest.
No.
It couldn’t be.
It… couldn’t.
Tammy wasn’t a serial killer. Neon-orange-puffer-vest-wearing, 1980s-frosted-hair Tammy couldn’t be…
“Hang on a minute.” I grabbed my phone and pulled up Tammy’s social media pages.
I skimmed back to the oldest over the last year, and sure enough.
She’d taken trips to Chicagoland on the very days people were murdered.
Little jaunts to visit her son and daughter living in the city, or her mother in the suburbs. Most of them overlapped.
I heard the horn of the RV in Tammy’s driveway next door. They were about to leave.
I limped toward the front door.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked, alarmed.
“It’s Tammy, Mom! Tammy did it.” I was already at the door.
“What do you mean?” Mom called after me, confused. “Tammy did what?”
“Call Oscar!” I shouted. Outside, I saw the Briton Landscaping truck parked at the street and a crew working to bag up fallen leaves.
Tammy and Ted’s RV sat in the driveway, Ted loading grocery bags of food inside the mini kitchen.
I moved toward the front door, noting it was wide open.
I limped up the steps and straight inside.
The kitchen was empty. No Tammy. But in the small three-season porch off the kitchen, I saw three full-grown indoor lemon trees.
She did it.
And then I realized I was in her house, unarmed except for my crutches. I should get out of here. Why didn’t I think before I acted? Had I learned nothing at all?
Then I heard a footfall behind me.
I whirled.
Ted stood behind me, looking as startled as I felt.
“Ope, sorry! You scared me!” Ted said.
“Where’s Tammy?” I asked.
“Around here somewhere.” Ted scratched his head. “Tammy?” he called up the staircase. There was no answer. Ted opened a nearby door, revealing stairs to the basement. “Tam?” he called down. Again, no answer. “Ope, well, I guess she must’ve taken Barry on a little walk before we take off.”
“Do you know where?”
“I don’t know, but when she takes him out, she usually goes toward your house. That way.” Ted pointed.
Jude. Mom. Olivia. I’d left them alone. They were in danger.
I hurried past Ted and back to Koi. I limped into our backyard through the bamboo gate, and that’s when I saw a flash of orange by the back of the Airstream. I whipped out my phone.
Diamond David slapped a big golden tail against the surface of the koi pond, but otherwise the pebble paths and stone lanterns sat cloaked in silence.
My heart thudded in my chest as I approached the Airstream, dialing 911 on my phone while trying to balance on my crutches.
I put my phone on speaker. I could hear it ring once. I slowly inched behind the Airstream. Another ring.
That’s when I felt a singular prick in my neck. I slapped at my neck, dropping my phone. I spun around.
Tammy stood there, holding a half-empty syringe in one gloved hand and her dog’s leash in the other.
Barry the Chihuahua growled at me, baring his little pointy teeth.
She fixed a plastic cap back on the needle and wrapped it up in a neat doggie bag.
Then she snapped off her rubber glove and tucked it in the bag, tying it neatly and slipping it into her vest pocket.
“Lake Sanguis 911, what’s your emergency?” I heard faintly from my phone, half buried in the Zen garden sand.
Tammy leaned down, picked up my phone, and ended the call.
“What did you just inject me with?” I demanded.
“Succinylcholine.”
“Succo-what?”
“Succinylcholine,” she repeated. “It’s an agent that will paralyze your muscles. In a few minutes, you won’t be able to speak. Ironic, don’t you think, for a podcast detective?”
I hated to be the one to break it to her that I wasn’t one anymore.
But I couldn’t because I was already starting to feel the agent working on my nervous system.
I was having a hard time holding my crutches.
I dropped one and took a clumsy swing at Tammy.
She easily dodged it. “Pretty soon, you won’t be able to walk, and then you won’t be able to talk, and then you won’t be able to breathe.
Succinylcholine is what they use during surgery to make sure you don’t breathe or move.
” Tammy pulled out a Sorrento lemon from her pocket with a stem and leaf attached.
“You’ll be another fruit I had to cut from the vine.
” She held the lemon up and it caught the sunlight; then she made a little snipping gesture with her fingers.
My throat felt like it was closing up. I tried to open my mouth to yell for help, but it came out as a soft grunt.
“Why?” I groaned, my voice already a whisper, as I backed away from her, leaning heavily on the one crutch. I was losing feeling in my feet.
Tammy made a disapproving sound in her throat. “Did you ask Russo why? Or did you just assume he had a good reason? Of course you’d ask me why. And you call yourself a feminist.”
Barry yipped and growled at me. I felt dizzy. My vision blurred.
“Help!” I tried, but it came out a croak. “Someone help me.”
“You won’t be able to scream,” she said. “Your muscles are already relaxing.”
She was right. I was quickly losing control of my body. Breathing felt hard.
“You love lecturing me about how I belittle the fairer sex, but you thought the killer was a man this whole time.” Tammy clucked her tongue.
“What does that say about you, Miss Hypocrite?” Tammy sneered.
“I listened to your podcast. Too much potty mouth for my taste.” She wrinkled her nose.
“But you always referred to the killer as he.”
“Most… serial killers are men…”