Page 79 of Always Murder

“I put the scissors in the open envelope.They can test for blood, you know.Even if you wipe it off.Mom and I watchForensic Files.”

“Okay, well, that was going to be my big—you know what?It doesn’t matter.It actually wasn’t that bad an idea: hide the weapon in plain sight while you moved your mom’s body.Then, you could figure out how to get rid of the scissors.The door from her office to the warehouse meant you just had to wait for an opportunity, and then you put her on a pallet and stashed her high on the shelves.But when you came back—”

“Someone took it,” Andrea said.That note of plaintive disbelief made the words nasal again.“They took the envelope.”

“Yeah, I know, I was about to say that.”I drew a breath.“That’s why—”

“That’s why I had to steal it back.”

I said a few words that would have made Mrs.Claus run for a bar of soap.“Why can’t anybody in this town let me finish a dang sentence?”

(I didn’texactlysaydang.)

“Mom had been talking about Paul all week.I knew she’d fired him because she thought he was stealing.A couple of customers had shown her the footage from their doorbell cameras, with somebody in a Santa costume taking their deliveries.And I remembered the address on the package, the one with the scissors.Mom says I have the best memory of anybody she knows.”

It was hard to reconcile the almost childlike confidence of that last statement—and the disorienting slips into the present tense—with the same woman who had coldly and clinically covered up all traces of a murder.In my mind, I could still see her on her hands and knees, trying to get stains out of the carpet.Not Cherry Coke, I thought.The overturned can of soda had been another part of the ruse.

Another of those soft, scraping steps came from the aisle.

I wasn’t sure how long it had been since Bobby left, but the sounds of Andrea’s steps were definitely getting closer.Halfway down the aisle?More?I tried to catch a glimpse of her between the crates and boxes, but I didn’t have a clear line of sight.

Bobby would have told me to run.

What if he needed more time, though?What if I scampered off to save my hide, and that was the exact moment Bobby needed cover, and she turned and saw him and—

I forced myself to keep talking.“After that, you had to make sure Paul took the fall.You knew people would figure out eventually what had happened to your mom.Did you tell people she left on vacation?Or maybe you even got on her computer and sent an email.But sooner or later, someone was going to get suspicious.So, you needed a suspect.And who would be better than someone she recently fired, someone she’d accused of theft, someone who might have gotten into an argument with her, someone like—”

“Paul.”

“Jiminy Christmas.”

(Again, notexactly.)

“It was all going to work out.When I got the scissors back, I knew that guy would see the Santa suit and think it was the same person who’d stolen all the other packages.And when I called Paul, I told him I knew who’d been taking the packages, and he said he could meet me at the storage unit.I just had to—” The sudden break in her speech, the emptiness where the words should have been, hinted at a capacity for brutal, savage violence that existed somewhere below the level of thought.“I’d already put some of Mom’s money in his trunk; she always said you should keep cash on hand for an emergency.Then I’d leave the package with the scissors.And everything could go back to normal.”

I understood the words.I understood what they meant at a literal level.I even understood her need to believe them.And, at the same time, it felt like my brain couldn’t quite wrap itself around the willful self-deception, the monomaniacal fantasy.

In a different, harder tone, she said, “Everything’s going to go back to normal.”

And then quick steps moved toward me.

In my mind, this part of the plan was going to be easy—there’s nothing quite like a gun to transform someone whose motto islying down is the new sittinginto a champion track-and-fielder.Reality, however, didn’t quite live up to my expectations.I rose from my crouch, turned, and started to run around the shelving into the next aisle.But time slowed down, and everything took longer than I had imagined.I was still reaching out a hand to grab one of the shelving supports, planning to use it to swing myself into the next aisle, when Andrea came around the corner.

She was only a shadow.And the gun was just another blob of shadow that came up toward me.

The lights clicked on.

For a moment, I was blinded.Then, my vision cleared.Andrea had bags under her eyes, and her hair was flat and greasy.I recognized, in a more extreme form, the same signs of someone pushing themselves too hard that I’d seen in Bobby.A little too late, I realized that if I could see Andrea, she could see me.Her eyes narrowed, and she swept the gun toward me.It was chrome, and light rode the metal like a wave.

And then Paul shouted, “Bobby, look out!She’s got a gun!”

Andrea whipped around and squeezed off a shot.The clap of the gunfire was deafening this close.

My entire body drew tight around a single, panicked thought: Bobby.

I didn’t even think about it; I gathered myself to tackle Andrea.

But instead, a rattlingclackechoed through the warehouse.Andrea took a staggering step back.She dropped the gun, and it clattered against the floor, but I only barely heard it because at the same time, Andrea’s hand flew to her face, and she screamed, “My eye!”

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