Sex on Tuesdays (4 page)

“That's exactly what we'd like to know, Ms. Summers. Which is why we need you to accompany us down to the Elizabeth Police Station for further questioning.”

4

Tuesday, 12:30 p.m.

Hospitals, dentists and police stations…It's their smell that gets to me every time.

The moment I shuffled through the doorway of the interview room, my mouth tasted of chalk, my breath gave a hitch, and that overwhelming blackness that begins in the pit of the stomach and snakes its way up into the chest grabbed hold and wouldn't let go.

The door shut behind me with a dull thud, and immediately I wanted to throw up what was left of my four coffees and half a dry biscuit. How could I be a suspect in a murder case? Me? Danielle Lee Summers. Single, white middle-aged female whose biggest crime was refusing to pay a parking fine when my car was stolen by joy riders and left overnight beside a no-parking sign.

It had me wondering how many innocent people were framed and found guilty. How many poor souls were incarcerated in a four-by-six cell, with a wooden bench for a bed and toilet facilities straight from an 18th century movie-set, while the real culprit walked free.

I started to shake as I pictured myself in a prison shower facility, surrounded by pale-skinned naked women with mean lips and even meaner minds. I'd watched enough prison shows to know about corrupt warders who looked the other way. And how many uses could be made of a wooden spoon.

My brain, hooked on that resourceful wooden spoon, discontinued sending motivational messages to my extremities. So, not wanting to end up in a jellied heap on the floor, I lurched towards a hard-backed chair placed beside a scarred wooden table attached to an equally clichéd grey stone wall.

As I slumped onto the chair, Detective Turner of the fat gut switched the interview video to record. Scraped his chair in closer to the table. And then began talking.

And talking.

And talking…

No matter how hard I concentrated, none of the garbage spewing from the man's mouth made a sliver of sense. And nothing I told him seemed to penetrate the thick layer of cement surrounding his brain. It got so I eventually tuned out his voice and entertained myself by watching dribbles of sweat descend from his forehead onto his hooked nose, run along the nose until they reached the point of no return, and finally plop onto the table in front of him.

“Did anyone else at the newspaper office have access to your copy?” asked DC Tate, the smaller detective, who at least had an open mind. Unlike Detective Turner who had me charged, convicted and fried to a crisp without a trial.

“Every one of the staff plus any number of people who came in off the street yesterday to ask questions, place an advertisement in the paper or deliver goods.”

“So, who would have emptied the trash after you screwed the paper up and threw it in the bin?”

“I guess that would be Alice, our receptionist, cum tea lady, cum cleaner.”

“But it was
your
writing on the sheet of paper,” interrupted Detective Turner. “It was
you
who wrote ‘shove something hot down the bitch's throat.'”

At that I blew up. Just couldn't take any more. My life was falling in tatters around me. My reputation at the paper was in the toilet. And I didn't even know who of my friends I could trust anymore. Someone had framed me and it looked more and more likely that my “someone” wasn't a stranger.

“How many times do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with murdering that woman?” I yelled and thumped the table with my fist to make my point. “Even if I had written that message—which I didn't—at the time
DF
's wife died, I was in bed. Hell, I was so drunk I was incapable of standing. Ask Simon Templar. Ask the staff at Erika's Eatery.”

“Oh, we will Ms. Summers, we will,” drawled Fat Gut with a sneer worthy of the protagonist in
Mean Girls
.

His companion leaned toward me, still playing the part of Good Cop. “Mr. Templar is also answering questions in another interview room at the moment, and we have two constables at Erika's Eatery right now, talking to the staff. If what you say is true you'll be out of here very soon.”

Thank God for that. But would the detectives in the next room assume Simon was protecting me? Would the staff at Erika's back him up? Would they tell the constable how many gins, how many types of cocktail, how many glasses of wine I'd consumed after my blind date went up in smoke? Would they remember me falling off the table while dancing the can-can and singing along to the juke-box version of “Yellow Submarine”?

This was turning into one of those ghastly free-falling nightmares experienced after pigging out on too much pepperoni pizza. Only yesterday I wrote my “Sex on Tuesday” column, as normal, answering a cry for help from a frustrated husband whose wife had lost interest in sex. And look where my expertise had landed me—the advice I'd given him twisted into a plot for a grisly murder.

And I was being treated as a suspect.

DC Tate shifted in his chair. “Before we go any further with this interview Ms. Summers, would you like a lawyer to represent you?”

“No. Why should I? I have nothing to hide.” I paused, sent a dagger-like glare in the direction of Detective Turner. “Shall I tell you again for the benefit of the tape and the hard of hearing? I don't
know
who sabotaged my column. I don't
know
who killed
DF'
s wife. And I don't
know
what I'm doing here.”

If only I could go home, swallow more painkillers, pull the quilt over my head and sleep for a week.

“What about the woman's husband?” I demanded, tired of being the fall-guy just because the police needed a suspect to cover their asses. “Or the kid who delivers her morning paper? Or the garbage collector? Any one of those people would have more of a motive for murder than I have.”

“There's no need to get upset Ms. Summers.”

“Upset! Of course I'm upset! You're accusing me of murdering a woman I've never met. I don't even know
DF'
s real name or where he lives because all our correspondents write into the paper anonymously and then get filed under the initials of their non de plume. In this case,
Distinctly Frustrated
became
DF
.”

“We only have your word that you didn't know the victim's name and address,” persisted Detective Turner. “And in our game, that doesn't cut any ice.”

“Let's see,” interrupted DC Tate leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. “For the moment, we'll assume the murderer was an outsider. The problem this scenario presents is, how did someone from outsider the newspaper office manage to sabotage your column?”

“Perhaps he or she broke into the office during the night, or hacked into my computer. I don't know. I'm not the detective here.”

Baring his teeth at me, Turner snarled. “And don't you forget it.”

“Now, Ms. Summers,” said DC Tate, ever the mediator. “Can you please walk us through what happens at the
Tribute
before and after you've written each day's column?”

“Okay,” I agreed, massaging my temples with the tips of my fingers. “Firstly, I read the letters that come in and trash anything that's either too sick or just plain yuk—”

“Such as?” A drool of spittle hung off the side of Turner's thick lips as he leant forward across the table.

“And then I choose half a dozen of the most interesting letters to answer in my column each day.” I continued ignoring the interruption. “After that, I surf the net researching related material, read relevant articles in my many books on the subject, and finally consult with my co-researcher, Megan Starr.”

“Who?” asked Detective Turner.

“A friend of mine, Megan Starr. You wouldn't know her.”

“The name rings a bell.”

“Megan, also known as Megan the Magnificent,” I went on, rolling my eyes in his direction, “was once a high-class prostitute. Any questions that are a little out of left field, Megan gives me the benefit of her vast experience. We discuss the letters at length and then collaborate on the most appropriate answers.” Pausing to get my facts straight, I bit down on my bottom lip. “Okay, then I scribble a first draft in long hand on scrap paper before transferring the entire column to a file in my computer. From there I email it to—”

There was a tentative tap on the door. While DC Tate strode across the room to answer the knock, his companion switched off the interview video. Then, with a burp and a sniff, he began to casually scratch under his armpits. For an encore, I half expected him to swing from the rafters while peeling a banana.

By now, my rear end had decided to go to sleep, so I shifted around on the chair in search of a comfortable spot. There wasn't one. Like everything else in the room, police-issue chairs were made for intimidation, torture and confessions. The last thing on their agenda was comfort.

There was a mumble of talk going on behind the door and an occasional grunt, but although I pricked my ears and strained to catch the drift of the conversation, I couldn't hear a damn thing.

What's more, I needed to visit the ladies room again. This would be the third time since the beginning of the interview. Too much coffee, the depressing grey décor of the room, and Detective Turner's continued aggression was doing a bang-up job on my iffy waterworks.

Standing, I dredged up a fake,
I'm-so-sorry-but-I've-gotta-pee
smile and trained it on my burping, stomach-scratching, curmudgeonly nemesis. Then, without waiting for his acquiescence, strolled towards the interview room door.

Outside in the corridor, DC Tate and a hippy-type detective sporting a goatee beard and a buzz cut that emphasized the angular shape of his skull, were deep in conversation.

“I'm not trying to escape,” I informed them as both heads swiveled in query. “Just need another loo break.”

“Too much coffee?”

“Hey, are you like, a detective or something?” I said, giving DC Tate a cheeky wink. Couldn't let him see how unnerved I was by this whole interview-the-murder-suspect thing.

However, before I could take another step, an ever-vigilant policewoman—tight smile, and even tighter uniform—attached herself to me like underarm hair. She must have been velcroed to the corridor wall; her job, to guard the interview room door and pounce at the first sight of my snub nose and dark bobbed hair.

“Hi again,” I said. For some weird reason the air in the hall smelt sweeter than the sweaty tension in the interview room. If I could keep Velcro Girl talking I might be able to delay my return. She nodded and then for the third time in the last hour we bumped together like dodgem cars all the way to the bathroom.

How much longer were they going to keep bombarding me with questions? What else could I say to convince them I had nothing to do with either the suggestion in my column or the murder? Every time I tried to think through what happened the effort short circuited my brain.

By the time we reached the end of the long passageway, I was almost at the stage of walking with my legs crossed. Damn that coffee. I'm sure I read in a
Reader's Digest
somewhere that black coffee was the best treatment for a hangover. Not so. I'd had a gallon of the foul-tasting stuff and all it did was give me a bloated bladder. And as for easing my headache—large loose screws filed to knife points, still jostled around inside my skull. Their mission: to shred soft ouchy brain matter and shut down rational thought processes.

After taking care of urgent business, I adjusted the waistband on my tailored navy pants and pushed open the door of the stall. “So,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the prickly uniform standing at attention next to the automatic hand dryer. “You get a kick out of this kindergarten routine, do you? Or is it just a slow day at the office?”

“No fun for me, either.”

“Could have fooled me,” I told her squirting a generous amount of liquid soap on my hands before turning on the tap. “After all those years at cop school, I thought your first priority would be out on the street catching crooks and locking them up.”

“Who says I'm not preventing a crook from escaping now?”

I activated the dryer and warm air blew onto my wet hands. “Oh come on.” I sent an elaborate eye roll in her direction. “Do I look like a murderer to you?”

“What exactly does a murderer look like?”

Good question. How
do
you describe evil? Another good question: would a person need to be insane to kill? Or just plain black-hearted wicked? Who, in their right mind could tie a woman to a bed and while she screamed and writhed in fear, heat the point of a poker in the fire? Would the adrenalin crash through the roof when the killer jammed the poker into the screaming woman's mouth? Would he jerk off after forcing the murder weapon down her throat?

I shivered as though I'd been spooked by a ghost.

Finding it hard to breathe, I cleared my throat before answering. “What about thin lips, crooked nose, piggy eyes, and a permanent snarl?”

She shook her head. “Not necessarily. We had a seventy-eight-year-old woman in here a couple of weeks ago with a face like a Christmas angel and a smile that said ‘walk into my parlor little children, and I'll bake you a double-layered chocolate cake.'”

“Uh! Oh! Sounds like the witch in Hansel and Gretel.”

“Exactly.”

“Go on. What happened?”

“It was school holidays and because some local kids made a racket outside her house, this sweet old lady enticed a gorgeous four-year-old into her home and proceeded to feed the child poisoned sweets. Then, to get rid of the body, she stored it in her freezer.”

“I don't think I want to hear any more.”

“Probably would have got away with it too, as we had the stepfather in custody for the murder,” she went on disregarding my queasiness. “But three months later, while in hospital for minor surgery, the electricity went off in Wicked Wilma's house and a neighbor, investigating the overpowering smell coming from the freezer, discovered the grisly remains.”