“The only way I’ll ever get a ticket out of town is if I’m the beneficiary on some millionaire’s life insurance,” Chelsea said, letting her words dangle in the popcorn-scented air of the employee break room.
“Good luck with that, Chelsea,” Brenda said.
Chelsea went over to the coffee pot and poured some of the overboiled brew into a cup.
“Thanks for reminding me,” she said.
Brenda scraped her nails on a bug bite that was giving her grief. Blood oozed and she watched it bead up, then roll to the tabletop.
“You don’t need to be a millionaire to have a lot of money on your head,” Brenda said. “Do you?”
Chelsea sat back down. She handed Brenda a white paper coffee filter.
“Blot the blood with this,” she said. “And no you don’t. You just have to be the beneficiary of someone who’s purchased a large policy.”
“Like your husband?” Brenda asked.
The wheels were turning.
Brenda soaked up the blood droplet. “Look,” she said, unfolding the filter to reveal a kind of inkblot.
“I made a bloody heart,” Brenda said.
Chelsea leaned over. It was gross, for sure. But it was a bright red heart made of blood.
“Cool,” she said.
* * *
Chelsea grew quiet, and Kendall turned toward her on the park bench. Brenda’s former coworker and friend refused to look into the detective’s eyes. She sat facing the river.
“Something happened after that encounter, didn’t it?” Kendall asked.
Chelsea stayed mute.
Kendall pushed a little more. “Don’t you want to stop her?”
Still quiet.
“Think of Kara and Joe,” the detective said. ‘Think of the three latest victims. She’s killed five people, Chelsea. Do you want that number to keep growing?”
“She killed six, Detective.”
Kendall repeated the number. “Six?”
“Yeah,” Chelsea said. “We had a temp working for us at Allstate. Her name was Addie Lane. She was twenty-three. She’d come from Manpower to work on a new filing project that none of us wanted to do.”
“What happened to her?” Kendall asked.
Chelsea swallowed hard. “Brenda happened to her.”
Chelsea needed to be more direct.
“I don’t follow you, Chelsea,” Kendall said.
“I don’t want to get into trouble. I’ve been running from this for all of my adult life, and I thought I could just sweep it under the rug. Forget about it. Never even think about it. But I can’t do that. I haven’t been able to do that. I see Addie’s face in my mind’s eye every now and then.”
Kendall caught her gaze just then. Terror and regret poured from Chelsea’s eyes. She reached over and put her arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, touching her dream-catcher tattoo.
This next question was a tough one to ask anyone. Chelsea was vulnerable. She was scared. What she was telling Kendall would never have been disclosed if Brad hadn’t taken her to her deli that day.
“Did you help her?” Kendall asked.
Chelsea bristled, which brought Kendall immediate relief. She liked her and felt sorry for her. Secrets can be an enormous burden. She knew that first hand.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t know what happened to her until after Addie missed work. I swear I didn’t know a damn thing about what Brenda was up to. I would have stopped her if I had.”
Kendall believed her. “I’m sure you would have, Chelsea. Tell me what happened. Talk to me. I will help you any way that I can.”
Chelsea swiveled over to face Kendall. Her eyes were wet, but she wasn’t crying.
“After Addie died,” she said, “a bunch of us went to her service. It wasn’t like we knew her that well, but Brenda insisted it was the right thing to do. She said that we were her ‘office family’ and we needed to show support. I had no idea what was going to happen there. Really I didn’t.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The service was in a small Methodist church in Tonasket, an apple-growing town not far from the Tri-Cities. Since Addie Lane was young and single, most of the mourners were high school friends and a few older couples who’d known her family when she was growing up. Pictures of the dead girl hung on the memory board posted by the door showed her as a darling little blonde with big blue eyes and pink cheeks.
“A cherub without wings,” said one elderly woman standing by the photos.
“She has those wings now,” said a man with a sad smile.
Brenda introduced herself and Chelsea, telling the family friends that they were close friends from work.
“She was only a temp,” Brenda said, “but we’ll never forget her.”
Chelsea didn’t like the sound of that. Brenda had put emphasis on “temp,” like it was some kind of twisted in-joke between the two of them.
After the minister gave a brief eulogy, family members and friends were invited to the front of the church by the altar to share a memory of the young woman gone too soon.
Though Addie’s brother, Devon, could barely speak through his grief, his effort was valiant. He talked about his sister and how proud they’d been of her when she was the runner-up for Miss Apple Valley as a senior in high school. He talked about how they used to sneak away from their house to swim in the creek that ran through their family’s property. Addie had a pet raccoon named Bandit that she’d raised with a doll’s bottle when its mother got hit by a car.
“My sister was the nicest person you ever met. It was a real tragedy what happened to her. A real sad shame,” he said.
Brenda got up and made her way to the front of the church. Her eyes were puffy from tears.
“I just want you all to know that we thought of Addie like a sister. She was our kid sister. We all loved her at the company. She was part of our family. She looked like a cherub without wings in those baby pictures by the door. Now she has wings. She has the most beautiful wings ever.”
* * *
Chelsea lit another cigarette. The light had started to fade, and the river was turning to gunmetal gray. The man with the dog and the Frisbee packed up his SUV and drove away. It was just the two of them along the river then. Not even a gull or crow hovered by the trashcan to disturb them.
“What happened to Addie? How did she die?” Kendall asked.
Chelsea exhaled, and the breeze caught her smoke, pushing it at Kendall.
“Sorry,” she said, fanning it away.
“How?” Kendall repeated.
“Car accident. Her brakes failed and she went through the guardrail.”
“What makes you think Brenda had anything to do with that? Did she tell you? Did she confess?”
Chelsea leaned back and shook her head. “Brenda was never going to confess. She led me to believe that she