Second Grave on the Left

Chapter Seventeen

I dropped a twenty on the counter as we ran past. “Brad, can you make our orders to go?”

He stuck his head through the pass-out window, his palms raised in question.

“We’ll be right back.”

We raced across the street to a brick building with bars on the windows and a large metal door. It was starting to sprinkle.

“I don’t think they’re open,” Cookie said, panting behind me.

I pounded on the door, waited a moment, then pounded again. After a long while, a sleepy-eyed Hulk opened up.

I decided to smile. Mostly ’cause I didn’t want to incur his wrath. “Hi.” I held up my license. “My name is Charlotte Davidson, and this is Cookie Kowalski. I’m a private investigator on a case for the Albuquerque Police Department,” I half lied. “Can I talk to you?”

“No.” Hulk was grumpy when awakened in the middle of the night. The show never mentioned that aspect of his character. I’d have to write the producers.

And clearly he was not impressed with my license. I held up a twenty instead. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions. I’m looking for a missing woman.”

He snatched the twenty then waited for my Q&A session.

“Oh.” I took Mimi’s photo out of my bag. “Have you seen this woman?”

He studied it, like, forever. With a heavy sigh, I handed over another twenty. If this kept up, I’d have to find an ATM PDQ or we’d be SOL.

“Maybe,” he said. He took it from my hands and looked closer. “Oh, yeah. That’s Molly.”

“Molly?” Molly made sense, considering her name was Mimi. It would be semi-easy for her to get used to answering to as opposed to something like Guinevere or Hildegard.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. But they’re all asleep right now.”

“Listen, you know how, like, if a nuclear bomb were going to drop on our heads any second, kissing our asses good-bye couldn’t wait until morning?”

He chuckled. Who said the Hulk didn’t have a sense of humor? “You’re funny.”

“Yeah, well, think of me as an armed nuclear warhead. I really can’t wait until morning.”

“So, you want to see her now?”

Damn, he was fast. “Speed of light, buddy. Are you a stone genius?”

He frowned at me, trying to figure out if I was making fun of him.

I leaned forward. “And afterwards, maybe you and I could hoof it to the café over there and have a cup?”

“You’re not my type.”

Damn. It happened. What was a girl to do? “Fine, will you just let us in?”

“My type is more … green.”

“Oh-Em-Gee, mister.” I took out my last twenty. “You’re breaking me here.”

He plucked it out of my fingers and opened the door. “You’ll have to sign in, and I need a copy of your PI license, then I’ll take you to her.”

Five minutes later, Cookie was nudging a sleeping woman wrapped in a gray blanket on one of dozens of cots scattered throughout a huge gymlike room. “Mimi?” she said, her voice an airy whisper. To help Mimi understand that we came in peace, Cookie borrowed the Hulk’s flashlight and held it under her face. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she looked like the Ghost of Christmas Past. “Mimi, honey?”

Mimi stirred, looked up through heavy lids, then let rip the loudest, most bloodcurdling scream I’d ever heard in my life. From a human being, anyway. The homeless people around us did everything from jump out of their skins to continue snoring.

“Mimi, it’s me!” Cookie said, shining the light straight on her face. Which really only made her look more like the Ghost of Christmas Present as it smoothed the fine lines of age and gave her skin that soft, nuclear-irradiated glow.

Mimi’s legs had shot up in the air, and I had to admit, as a fight-or-flight response, it just didn’t make much sense. Then she scrambled to the side of the cot and fell to the floor.

A man tapped my leg from behind. “What the hell is going on over there?”

“Exorcism. No need to worry, sir.”

He turned over with a harrumph and went back to sleep.

Mimi poked her head above the mattress. “Cookie?” she asked, her voice much softer than before.

“Yes.” Cookie hurried around to help her back onto the cot. “We came to help you.”

“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry. I thought—”

“You’re bleeding,” Cookie said as she fished a napkin out of her bag.

Mimi touched her upper lip, then dabbed at her bleeding nose with the napkin Cookie handed her. “This happens when my life flashes before my eyes.” She paused and stared straight ahead a moment. “And I may or may not have peed my pants.”

“Come on, sweetheart.” Cookie helped her stand, and I rushed to Mimi’s other side. For the low cost of a twenty spot — this time from Cookie’s wallet — we borrowed one of the offices in which to talk to her.

“You got a set of lungs, girl,” I said as I raided a small fridge for a water. I handed it to her when her nose stopped bleeding.

“I am so sorry about that,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face. “I was disoriented. I just didn’t know who you were.”

“Well, it didn’t help that Casper the Flashlight Ghost was all up in your face.”

Cookie scowled. “Mimi, this is Charley,” she said.

“Oh, my gosh.” She tried to stand, but her legs didn’t hold and she toppled back into the chair.

I reached a hand over and took hers. “Please don’t get up. I’m not that special.”

“From what I hear,” she said, holding my hand in hers, “you’re every bit that special. How did you find me?”

Cookie grinned. “That’s what Charley does. Are you okay?”

After a few minutes of introductions and the lively tale of how Mimi ended up in a homeless shelter that involved a drunken taxi driver and a small but containable fire, we moved onto the more important part of the story, why she was in a homeless shelter.

“I just thought no one would look for me here. I thought they wouldn’t find me.”

“Mimi,” Cookie admonished, “Warren and your parents are worried sick.”

She nodded. “I can live with that. Better worried sick than dead.”

She had a point. It was late and my head was on the verge of exploding. I decided to fill her in on our suspicions and go from there. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”

She frowned up at me.

“One night in high school, there was a party. A girl named Hana Insinga snuck out of her house and went to this party, and the next day she was reported missing by her parents.”

Mimi looked down when I said Hana’s name.

I continued. “Some people remembered seeing her there, some didn’t. Some said she might have left the party with a guy, some said no way, she didn’t leave with anyone.”

A soft hitch in Mimi’s breath had me thinking I might be on to something.

“And now, twenty years later, everyone who saw Hana leave the party with a boy is dying one by one. Does any of that ring a bell?”

Mimi lowered her head as if unable to face us. Cookie put a supportive hand on her shoulder.

“You’re almost there, but Hana didn’t leave the party with just a boy. She left with several of us.”

Cookie stilled. “What do you mean?”

“She means,” I said, fighting through the sorrow that suddenly consumed her, that pushed against my chest, “that several kids took her body out of the house that night. She was already dead, and they went together to bury her. Am I right?” It was the only explanation that made sense.

She wiped at a tear with the blood-soaked napkin. “Yes. Seven of us. There were seven.”

Cookie tried to stifle a gasp behind her hand.

I kneeled down to Mimi’s eye level. “Someone at that party killed her. And you saw it, perhaps? Did they threaten to do the same to you?”

“Please stop,” she said, sobbing openly now.

“Did they bully you at school? Push you in the halls? Knock books out of your hands? Just to remind you. Just to keep you on their leash.”

“I can’t … I—”

I decided to begin with Tommy Zapata, to leave Kyle Kirsch for my grand finale. “Did it have anything to do with the car dealer you had lunch with, Tommy Zapata?”

She gasped and looked up at me. “How did you know that?”

“Tommy was found dead three days ago.”

Her hands flew over her mouth.

“They’re bringing murder charges against your husband if we don’t prove he didn’t do it soon.”

“No!” She jumped up and headed for the door. “No, he didn’t do anything. They don’t understand.”

I followed suit and clutched on to her arm. “Mimi, stop. We can help, but I have to know what happened.”

“But—”

“You have to sit down and explain this to me so I can get both you and your husband out of trouble. What happened that night?”

She hesitated, wavered, then with a shaky sigh folded herself into the office chair once more. “We were at the party, and I’d went to an upstairs bathroom with a friend. I wasn’t feeling well.”

The friend was most likely Janelle York.

“We were at Tommy Zapata’s house. His parents were out of town.” She turned a desperate gaze on me. “We were having fun. You know, just messing around and listening to music. But my friend and I went into the bathroom off Tommy’s parents’ bedroom. I guess we were in there awhile, just talking. Then we heard voices, so we turned out the light and cracked open the door to look. We figured someone was making out on his parents’ bed, and we were going to scare them. As a joke.”

Cookie found a clean tissue and offered it to Mimi. She took a moment to blow her nose.

“But it was three of the boys. Three of the football players. They had Hana on the bed. They were having sex with her.” She sobbed into the tissue.

“Was one of them Tommy?” I asked.

“No, he was making out in the corner.”

So he had definitely been there, and now he was dead.

After taking a moment to recover, she continued. “I don’t think it was actually consensual. Hana was so drunk. Then she threw up on one of the boys. He got off her and started yelling. He scared her. She stumbled to her feet and tried to walk to the door. That’s when it happened. I’m not sure if the boy pushed her or what. It was hard to see. But she fell into the corner of the Zapatas’ dresser and busted her head open. Tommy tried to stop the bleeding, but she was dead in moments.”

I found the fact that she wasn’t telling us Kyle’s name interesting. Was she that afraid of him?

She looked up at us beseechingly. “It was an accident. It could have been explained, but the boys freaked out. For, like, half an hour they paced and cursed and tried to figure out what to do. Tommy’s dad worked at the cemetery, and one of them came up with a plan. So, the guys were going to wrap her in some towels, and that’s when they found us. I was crying really hard. The guys freaked out even more.”

“Did they hurt you?” Cookie asked, her expression almost as desperate as Mimi’s.

“No,” she said, “not really. They wrapped Hana in some towels and cleaned up the blood, and after everyone left the party, they carried her to Tommy’s truck. After throwing two shovels into the bed, they made us get in the back with them. Then they drove us to the cemetery.”

“Of course,” I said, having a V8 moment. “The numbers you wrote on the bathroom wall by Hana’s name. I knew they looked familiar. They’re plot addresses. They buried her in a fresh grave.”

“Not just in one. Underneath one.” When my brows furrowed in question, she said, “The mortuary had already dug a grave for a funeral that was to be held the next day. The guys dug down some more while we watched.” Her voice cracked with the memory. “We just watched. We didn’t even try to stop them. If ever there was a time to do the right thing…”

Cookie took both her hands into her own. “This wasn’t your fault, Mimi.”

“But they said it was,” she argued. “They said that we helped, that we were accomplices, and that if we said anything, they would kill us. Oh, my god, we were so scared.”

The fear that had consumed her for twenty years reared up and took hold of her again. It washed over me in suffocating waves. I fought it, filled my lungs with air to keep it at bay as she continued.

“We thought for sure they would kill us, too. But they didn’t. They put Hana’s body in and covered her up. The next day, they buried Mr. Romero right on top of her. And nobody knew.”

The fact that it was somewhat of an accident and not a planned murder was the only reason in my mind Mimi and Janelle survived. If those boys had been true killers, utterly remorseless, I doubted I would ever have met Mimi.

“I was shaking so hard, I could barely breathe,” she said, shaking almost as hard right then. “And you were right about the bullying.” She looked up at me. “They got more and more brazen, and it just became unbearable. I stopped going to school and then finally begged my parents to let me live with my grandmother here. I just couldn’t live there any longer. I couldn’t look at Mr. and Mrs. Insinga any longer, knowing what they must have been going through.”

“Did they offer Janelle the same treatment?” I asked.

She looked up at me, confused. “Janelle?”

“Janelle York.”

Her face morphed from sadness to disgust. “She became nothing more than their lapdog. She was a part of it, a part of them.”

“I don’t understand.” I rose to my feet. “You two were hiding—”

She frowned at me. “I wasn’t hiding with Janelle in the bathroom,” she said, almost appalled that I would even think such a thing. “She’d been in the room with them, making out with Tommy on a beanbag in the corner. She would’ve done anything for him. When he freaked out about his parents finding out what happened, it was her idea to bury Hana underneath that grave.”

I turned up my palms. “Then who was hiding with you? And who was having sex with Hana?”

She swallowed hard. I could tell she didn’t want to tell us. “It was Jeff. Jeff Hargrove was … on her.”

“Wait, Jeff Hargrove was having sex with Hana?”

“Yes, well, at that time. I think … I think they took turns.”

“And who were they?”

She thought back with a helpless shrug. “Besides Jeff, there was Nick Velasquez and Anthony Richardson.”

What the hell? “Mimi, who was in the bathroom with you?”

She lowered her head. “This is confidential, right?”

I kneeled down and peered into her eyes. “I can’t promise this won’t get out, Mimi, but we need to know who was there.”

With a heavy sigh, she said reluctantly, “Kyle Kirsch.”

Her answer knocked the wind out of me. “You mean, Kyle had nothing to do with Hana’s death?”

She seemed surprised. “No, not at all. They treated Kyle almost as badly as they treated me. Only he was the son of the sheriff, so they didn’t go quite so far with him.” She gripped my arm, her fingernails sinking into my sleeve. “You would have to know Jeff Hargrove. He’s crazy. Sheriff or no sheriff, he would have killed us both.”

I fell back on my heels. “Okay, so then what?” I asked, thinking aloud. My incredulous gaze landed on Cookie. “Kyle, what? He didn’t want all of this surfacing, so he’s killing everyone?”

“What?” Mimi almost screamed, her fingernails digging in, setting up shop. “Kyle would never do that. He would never hurt anyone.”

“Mimi,” I said, my voice sympathetic, “everyone started dying about two seconds after Kyle Kirsch announced his intention to run for a seat in the Senate. That’s a little hard to explain away.”

“I know everyone started dying, but nobody knows who’s doing it. Even Kyle. He’s scared shitless.” She glanced at Cookie. “Hired all kinds of bodyguards.” After a moment lost in thought, she shook her head. “It has to be Jeff Hargrove. He was always nuts.”

Cookie leaned forward. “Mimi, Jeff Hargrove drowned in his swimming pool two weeks ago.”

Pure, unadulterated shock overtook Mimi’s features. She was just as confused as the rest of us. And I was utterly lost.

“And Nick Velasquez allegedly committed suicide three weeks ago.”

“I knew that. Anthony Richardson did, too, but I didn’t know about Jeff.”

“Sweetheart, they’re all dead, everyone who was in that room, except for you and Kyle. There’s no other explanation.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head in denial, “that’s just not possible. If you knew Kyle.”

“Were you two involved?” I asked her. Love was not only blind, it often careened into Blithering Idiotsville as well.

She cast me another one of her looks of incredulity. She was really good at those. “No, we weren’t … You don’t understand.” She stopped and bit her bottom lip, then said with an acquiescent sigh, “Nobody knows this, nobody, but Kyle is gay. We were in the bathroom talking about boys.”

Oh, for the love of hush puppies. This just got better and better. “Okay, let me think,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Tell me again, why did you have dinner with Tommy Zapata the other day?”

Her brows crinkled. “He asked to meet with me. I was kind of scared not to. He said he was being blackmailed and he just couldn’t live with himself any longer.”

Blackmail tended to convince people they could no longer live with what they’d done. It was amazing.

“He said he’d met with Kyle and told him he was going to step forward and confess everything, take responsibility for his part in all of it. He asked me if I would back him. He was going to tell the authorities how they threatened Kyle and me, how they forced us to go with them.”

This was still not making a lick of sense. “Kyle’s family has money and you are married to a wealthy man, yet neither of you were being blackmailed?” I asked, incredulous.

“No, but we think we know who was doing it.”

“Really?”

“Tommy thought it was Jeff Hargrove.”

“Wait, the guy voted most likely to go to prison for rape and murder? That Jeff Hargrove?”

“Yes. Tommy thought he’d gotten into some financial trouble and decided Tommy, who owned a car dealership, would be an easy target. And Tommy was right. I checked into Jeff’s financial records—”

Dang, she was good.

“—and he’d made deposits on the same days as Tommy’s drops. Three of them.”

Wow, and yet both Tommy and Jeff were dead.

“Kyle called me later,” she continued. “He told me Tommy had actually apologized because he was likely going to ruin his political career.”

“That’s a pretty good reason to kill, Mimi,” Cookie said.

“No, Kyle didn’t care. He was going to step forward with Tommy. He was going to give a speech today with Tommy by his side and announce what happened.”

Gutsy. “Maybe he changed his mind.”

She sighed in frustration. “You would have to know Kyle. What you’re implying is so against his character, it’s unreal. He felt like he was living a lie anyway, hiding his homosexuality.”

I ran a hand down my face. My head hurt and not entirely because of the concussion. I thought I had this thing figured out. That’s what I got for thinking. “Okay,” I said, my voice airy with frustration, “so after you left for Albuquerque, what did Kyle do? Did they ease up on him?”

She shrugged, her mouth a grim line. “Kyle’s a good actor. He eventually convinced Jeff he was on their side. Then when school was out, he did the same thing I did. He left and spent the whole summer with his grandmother.”

“So, after you met with Tommy Zapata, did someone threaten you? Is that why you ran?”

“It wasn’t long after that I realized everybody was dying. I knew that my family was in danger. As long as I was a target and they were around me, they would not be safe. So I just got in a cab one day and ran. If not for that fire, I’d be in Spokane right now.”

“You kept yourself alive,” Cookie said. “Now we need to get you to safety.”

Yeah, while I figure out what the hell is going on.

The lights flickered out, and an eerie silence fell over us. I shushed everyone, then squatted down and peeked out the office door. An emergency light down the hall showed a large body, most likely belonging to Hulk, sprawled on the floor.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, unable to quite believe it. “They followed us?” I totally needed to pay more attention to who was on my ass. This was getting ridiculous.

“Who?” Mimi asked, her high-pitched whisper traveling down the hall.

Cookie shushed her with a finger over her mouth. I took hold of Mimi’s hand while Cookie took the other and we rushed out of the office toward a back exit I’d spotted on the way in. We weaved around boxes and bags as quietly as we could until we came to the back door. Thankfully, the rain pelting the roof offered us some cover. There was an emergency release on the door, but it would set off an alarm, so I was hesitant to go through it. Then again, maybe an alarm was exactly what we needed.

I led everyone to a darkened corner near the door, and we huddled there as I tried to decide if I wanted to draw that kind of attention.

“Hey, boss,” Angel said, appearing at my side.

I jumped, startling Cookie and Mimi, then scowled at him. “Again? Really?” I whispered.

“What are you doing?”

“Running from bad guys. What else do I do on a regular basis?”

“Who’s she talking to?” Mimi asked.

“Um…” Cookie panicked a moment, then said, “She’s rehearsing for a play.”

“Now?”

“So, I should just leave you to it?” Angel asked with a husky giggle.

I rolled my eyes and turned to Cookie. “Okay,” I whispered, “have your phone ready. You two run through that door and don’t stop for anything. I’ll close it and try to barricade it from the outside.”

“With what?” Cookie asked, her whispery voice squeaking in fear.

“Cook,” I said, wrapping a hand around hers, “have I ever let you down?”

“I’m not worried about you letting me down. I’m worried about you letting you down. These people are cold-blooded killers, Charley.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Mimi said. They were both shaking so bad, I had serious doubts they would make it to safety without collecting at least a couple of fractures from a fall. “Cook, you have to get Mimi out of here. She’s counting on us. You can do this.”

She took a deep breath. “Right. Okay. I’ll do it. But hurry. You’re a much better shot than I am.” She took out a.380 from her bag.

“Holy cow,” I said. I had yet to get my Glock back from the abandoned motel crime scene. Cookie rocked like a rock star. But, judging by the weight of it … “So, do you have bullets to go with it?”

“Oh!” She dug in her bag again and brought out a fully loaded clip. She handed it over with a smile. “Hurry,” she said as I locked the clip into place and chambered a round. The clicking sound echoed loudly, and I cringed. The rain seemed to muffle it a bit, but anyone within a stone’s throw would have heard it and been clued in to the fact that I had a gun.

“Do you know how many there are?” I asked Angel.

“Just one. The mean one from the motel.”

“Evil Murtaugh?” I asked.

“Okay,” he said with a shrug.

“Damn him,” I said, scanning the area. “Damn him to hell.”

“She’s really good,” Mimi said. “Dramatic.”

“Aw.” I turned to her with a smile. “Thank you.”

It was Cookie’s turn to roll her eyes. After an exasperated sigh, she took Mimi’s hand and charged toward the door, slamming into it really hard. Her second attempt was much more productive. When the door opened, as expected, it set off a shrill alarm that reminded me a lot of Mimi’s scream, and as I followed them through it, two things happened simultaneously: Cookie stumbled down the steps outside, and a wicked, wicked knife sliced across my back.