Page 22 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snap. I stand up and Mort pushes Pause on the video. Evan looks horrified.

“Well, it’s not the best quality video ’cause the lighting in here sucks, but Mort says posting the video on YouTube will help grow the audience, so we thought people would look past the lighting,” Herb says, cluelessly.

“Herb, please,” Florence says, then places a hand on Evan’s shoulder. “He didn’t know anything about this until just now.”

“Why would you do this? I told you not to get involved. For your own safety,” I say, vibrating with frustration…and fear, if I’m honest, about the possible implications.

“Well, dear. I know that’s what you did say, but it looks like a lot of people watched this,and what better way to catch the son of a bitch than blast this all over to Timbuktu and back? It could help. We can’t donothing.”

“I gotta agree with Flor on this one, as much as it pains me to do so. Cops came out when the HVAC and generator were destroyed. But what can they really do? I guess it’s not exactly their fault, even though the detective has a head full of chipped beef still. They can file a report, whoopee. We have security now, fine, but there’s a slim chance anyone will be caught. This could actually help in a big way, not a report in some drawer Chipped Beef scribbled up,” Herb says, and I must say I’m surprised at his conviction. And it’s not that he doesn’t have a point, it’s that they have no idea how much danger they could really be in.

“I’m trying to protect you,” I say.

“We made it this long, we can take care of ourselves, Shel,” Millie pipes in.

I run my hands through my hair and blow out a deep breath. “Well, what the hell else is on the video?” I ask, and Mort presses Play. Herb passes around an oversized container of Cheese Balls as we all watch. Heather comes in and doesn’t know what’s going on but sits and watches anyway, taking her share of Cheese Balls in her palm when they come her way.

The video continues. The gang is still having what seems like a cozy fireside chat with drinks and wooly sweaters, only they’re talking about me.

“Someone in this small town of ours knows who’s doing this. Someone you probably know—a friend, a neighbor—is responsible and yet, no leads, no clues. And now Otis has been murdered in his own hospital bed, and it’s time we take justice into our own hands if the police can’t get to the bottom of it, and that’s all I have to say.” Florence ends her speech, a bit over-the-top if you ask me, but then it turns into a free-for-all with the whole gang piping in.

“Oooh, we have a serial killer. How exciting,” Millie says.

“We don’t have a serial killer. Leo is missing, no one has said he’s dead, and let’s be honest because we are all thinking it, he’s probably involved,” Mort says to my utter surprise, and they all turn and look at me apologetically at this comment before turning back to the screen.

“So he probably doesn’t want to be called dead is all I’m saying. We only have Otis dead and that comes with a lot of question marks, so let’s take a pill and not say serial killer just yet.”

“Take a pill yourself, Mort,” Herb says.

“Yeah, up yours, Mort,” Millie echoes, and Mort tries to keep control of things. They go on to argue about whether there is a woman’s scarf in the frame the news showed of the security footage, and what motives Otis’s killer might have—how all the cases have to be connected. Once Mort finally pushes Stop on the video, they all turn to me.

“We learned that most people only watched about a third of the video, so Evan is gonna help us learn how to edit,” Florence says and Evan holds up his hands in a gesture that says, “I didn’t know you didn’t know.”

“I mean, only if that’s like, okay with you,” he says with wide eyes that look a little bit terrified of what my reaction might be. “I just—it’s gone viral, apparently, so…”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Millie says.

“Mill, join us in the twenty-first century, will you? That’s a good thing,” Herb says, wiping orange cheese crumbs from his fingers onto his pant leg.

“He said viral, Herb! Do you have your listening ears on? Viral… Like the pink eye you probably carry around. That’s not a good thing,” she says.

“Oh my God,” Herb mutters, shaking his head.

“It’s not okay with me,” I say. “None of this is okay, Florence. What the hell?”

Florence stays very calm and speaks in a soft voice.

“I know, dear, but I read about some podcasts that helped bring someone to justice—don’t you think the best way to protect your girls is to make the details public? There’s a much better chance of finding him or at least maybe scaring the person into not making themselves susceptible to getting caught if they continue to do more terrible things?” she says with conviction in her voice, and I sit back down and take it in.My girls, I think. Could this really be the way to make a difference?

“I don’t know,” I say quietly to my lap.

“Evan says people must have liked how candid we were. Not a rehearsed single host like they’re used to, but us silly antiques sitting around just chatting, I guess,” she says.

“It’s refreshing,” Evan says, staring at the screen and scrolling. “The comments are saying that, I mean. I’m not saying that. There are a lot of comments. Wow, this is nuts.” He keeps looking through them all with a bewildered look on his face.

“Mort says he was going to take a break from English literature and move on to bread making and nobody wants to hear about that,” Florence says.

“Hey.” Mort pushes up his glasses and glares at her.

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