Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hugo
I’m vibrating like an overeager Golden Retriever as Rue turns into our driveway on Friday, but instead of rushing over to her, I force myself to finish smoothing out the last of the fertilizer for the bushes on my side of the duplex.
Even though it’s raining. Even though it’s a little late in the season to be adding more of my nutrient compound. When my phone buzzed with my Rue proximity alert, I rushed outside and am now drenched and covered in soil and bone meal.
It’s all worth it when, instead of heading straight for the mailboxes like usual, she walks right over to me.
“Did you hear?”
“I, uh, hear a lot of things,” I say with my goofiest smile and my fussiest voice. “Most of them during sessions and therefore confidential.”
Normally, a stupid deflection like that would earn me an eye roll, but today, those gorgeous amber eyes just crinkle at the edges.
“Remember that fatal arson we talked about?”
She smiles from underneath her favorite umbrella while my smile falls away at the reminder of how hard she’d tried to hide her distress that day.
“Yes. Of course I do.”
“So the cops didn’t have enough evidence to arrest their main suspect, but guess what?”
I don’t have to guess, neighbor girl. I fucking know. I’ve got the chemical burns and stab injury to prove it.
“What?” I say instead.
“He’s dead.” She spins her umbrella between her fingers.
“You’re kidding.” I adjust my glasses, hoping it hides the triumph in my eyes. “How’d that happen?”
“That’s the wildest part.” Another colorful twirl. “It was a house fire.”
God, imagine if I could tell her everything.
Tell her I saw how upset she was, and even though I couldn’t bring back Mary, I could do something.
Imagine her being so overwhelmed with gratitude that she’d dig her hands into my hair and ruffle it and kiss me.
Hell, I’d probably roll over and ask her to scratch my belly too.
But I can’t tell her I did this for her, just like I can’t tell her I’ve got to keep my gardening gloves on because it turns out that potassium nitrate causes a wicked chemical burn if it lands on your skin.
I can’t even be overly excited about the news that Marshall’s dead because a normal person wouldn’t celebrate.
A normal person would shake their head and frown and say that it’s awful, just awful, but it’s justice.
I suppose it’s for the best. Dr. Mohr’s hair is too full of gel for a proper ruffling anyway.
“Oh wow.” I frown and shake my head, even furrowing my brow for good measure. “That’s awful. Just awful. But I suppose it’s justic—”
“It’s poetic,” she says, her voice almost dreamy. Then she shakes her head. “I mean, it’s justice, for sure.”
Her certainty eases the tiny twinge I’ve been carrying since I lit that initiator and walked away.
I was so focused on making things right for Rue that I didn’t do my usual due diligence on Marshall.
But between Rue’s access to investigative details, Morticia’s confidence that he was the guy, and my own research, I’m comfortable fitting this kill neatly inside my code.
“Anyway, Bart and I took the call on Howard Marshall.”
“Wow. Was it bad?” I ask, as if I don’t have a damn good idea.
“Ohhh yeah. An overloaded extension cord lit up his accelerants. Like I said, it’s almost poetic.”
I’m so relieved she shares even a fraction of my notions about right and wrong and fitting punishment to crime that a laugh bursts out of me. When she looks at me curiously, I clear my throat and roll out my most stick-up-the-ass voice.
“Well, you know, Rue, it’s not uncommon for arsonists to injure or even kill themselves practicing their craft. So I’d say it’s less poetry and more a statistical likelihood.”
Stuffy mansplaining usually has her speed-walking toward her garage, but today she stays put. And not only does she stay put, but she looks pointedly at my damp cardigan, then clucks her tongue.
“Care to tell me why you’re gardening in the rain?”
Her exasperated concern thrills and alarms me.
“Um,” I say, trying to come up with an answer that doesn’t get me pepper-sprayed, “it needed doing.” I shrug and project good-natured helplessness. “And technically, it’s not raining anymore. Just puddles everywhere.”
I gesture toward the street, which could double as a lake in front of our duplex. She peeks out from under her umbrella to confirm this for herself, then laughingly folds it up and tucks it under her arm while I hide my satisfied smile.
In June, during a routine security check—a.k.a.
me pulling up the cameras in her house when I heard some unusual thumping through the wall—I found her tearing apart her coat closet, then calling her coworker Bart to see if he’d seen her favorite umbrella around the office.
He hadn’t, so I bribed Pell to hand over three months’ worth of his outside footage, which let me review every rainy-day walk to the mailbox to see when she last had the colorful Yayoi Kusama umbrella she bought at an art museum gift shop on her New York vacation last year.
Buying her a new one would’ve been the easiest solution, but the umbrella’s been sold out since shortly after her trip, so I had to get creative.
First, I pulled all the day-shift cases the ME’s office handled between the last known sighting of the umbrella and her phone call with Bart.
Then I cross-referenced that list with the recorded precipitation within the city limits and searched for any locations she might have visited on those days that would have publicly accessible lost-and-found collections.
When I visited those spots and came up empty-handed, the next step was to scour resale sites and specialty auction houses, where I learned that its limited production run had turned the Yayoi Kusama into a bit of a collector’s item.
Thankfully, everyone has their price, and I found a paralegal in Winnipeg who was willing to part with his prize rainy-day companion for a number with enough zeros in it.
From there, it was a simple matter of waiting to receive the shipment, then causing a brief “power outage” that knocked Rue’s home security offline.
I let myself into her half of the duplex and tucked the replacement umbrella into the pocket of a jacket she hadn’t worn since last fall.
A week later, when the temperature dropped, there she was in that jacket, and on the next rainy day, she strolled to the mailbox looking beautiful under the Yayoi Kusama, none the wiser.
I also slipped an extra box of animal cookies into her pantry while I was at it.
I calculated she’d be running low around then, and the extra box came in handy the following month when she hit a busy patch at work and ended up circus-animaling her way through the sleepless nights as she caught up on her reports for her office.
“Hugo!” She says it like it’s not the first time she’s tried to interrupt my thoughts.
“Sorry.” I’m wet from the rain, she’s dry under her Yayoi Kusama, and I’m so happy to hear my name on her lips that I speak before thinking. “Maybe they’ll do your bar-fight, high-heel guy next.”
“They?” She blinks at me, and oh fuck. As far as she knows, Howard died in an accident with no help from the two people in his closet.
Sloppy, Hugo. You’re not this sloppy.
I force one of my hapless smiles. “You know, they. The powers that be. Karma. Gender-fluid Jesus.” I wave toward the heavens. “Or hey, maybe the woman who started the job will show up to finish him off.”
Rue’s lips purse. “Actually, that last one’s not impossible. Plenty of women are happy to handle problems themselves.”
“Very true.” I smile, lost in the memory of Morticia’s ferocity with her wicked little knife.
Usually, I scroll the apps or hit a bar to take care of any lingering post-kill adrenaline, but this morning, I went straight home and fucked my fist in the shower to memories of Morticia’s pussy clenching around my fingers and fantasies of Rue’s doing the same.
At some point under that hot water, my body stopped being able to tell the difference.
And now I’m standing next to the woman whose waiting-for-the-water-to-boil dance I know, thinking filthy thoughts while she bites her lower lip until it’s red and plump and begging to be wrapped around my—
“High five?” I blurt, desperate for anything to distract myself from thoughts of feeding her my cock until her eyes water. “You know, for, uh, justice?” I add weakly.
It’s definitely the kind of thing Dr. Mohr would do, and I somehow make it worse by flinging my arm into the air, palm facing out.
Not only is this the single weirdest thing I’ve ever done around her, but I’m still wearing the fucking gardening gloves, and oh yeah, I’m also too tall for her to reach.
I pull my hand down and yank my gloves off, burns be damned, then instead of letting the moment pass like a normal person, I toss my arm into the air again because I’m an idiot who cannot help myself around this woman.
Am I an idiot, though? Because, miracle of miracles, Rue rolls her eyes and says, “Oh my god,” as she goes up on her tiptoes to play along. The motion pushes her tits against the thin turtleneck sweater she’s wearing, and nope, I’m not an idiot at all.
I’m a motherfucking genius.
“Geez,” she says when her fingers finally make contact with mine, “a girl really has to work for it with you.”
Her breasts are soft and firm against my chest as I grin and say, “Maybe. But I always make it worthwhile.”
She sucks in a sharp breath, and I’m aware, distantly, that I said something too bold to be Dr. Mohr. But before I can walk it back, she rests her free hand on my hip like she needs help staying balanced and says, “You take up too much space, Hugo.”
Her complaint is breathy, and she’s all pink cheeks and golden hair as she blinks up at me. I should let her go and take a step back. Instead, I wrap my fingers around hers and slowly lower our hands to our sides, tipping my head down to murmur, “You’re still not used to it?”