Page 57 of Giving Up The Ghost
“Oscar, please.”
I gasped, sucking in a lungful of air as my attention snapped, the vibration stopping almost immediately.
The cellar was silent, save for Nadine’s choking sobs.
“Come on. Come on, before she gets her shit together. We need to go.”
“My dad,” I began, voice creaking. “He’s here. I can’t leave him with her.”
My dad nodded, motioning towards the stairs. Julian squeezed my elbow and pulled. I stumbled beside him, his uneven gait and my shaking legs putting us both in danger of falling, but we made it to the top of the stairs before Nadine started screaming. “Come on,” Julian muttered. “Come on. Don’t stop now.’
Ezra was pulling up as we staggered out the front door. He threw himself from the car, leaving it running, and bolted to us, taking my other arm and helping Julian half-drag, half-walk me to the car. “What the fuck happened?” he demanded. “I called the cops. Mick is dead—he was behind the counter and… Shit!”
Nadine stumbled out of the house, a kitchen knife in her hand as she shrieked. “No, please! Please! You have to help me!Please!”
Ezra shoved me into the car. “Stay,” he barked. Turning to Julian, he demanded,“What the fuck is going on here?”
Julian shook his head. “Jesus, I don’t know where to start.”
The screech of sirens split the air, three cars and an ambulance swinging into the drive and pummeling the lawn. Nadine jerked to her feet, swinging the knife wildly, screamingno, no, no.
“How did you know to call the cops here?” Julian asked as Ezra drew back.
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I called them to the shop. I came back here to tell you about Mick.”
CHAPTER 15
JULIAN
“Look, we just need to speak to the lady what called us,” the officer who’d cornered me repeated for the third time. “Where is she?”
“The only woman here is her,” I repeated, pointing to a silently sobbing Nadine. Someone had put one of those silver blankets around her, and she clutched it with both hands, staring at her bent knees as she sat sideways in the back of the ambulance. “And I can tell you for damn sure she didn’t call you.”
The second cop tapped his tablet with his thumb, giving me a hard glare. “Well, it wasn’t one of you three. Not unless you’re one of them female impersonators like, what’s it, Danny Kaye? That gay singer.”
“He… was bisexual,” I said slowly. “And an actor. Not a female impersonator.”
“Which one’s the one I mean then?” he asked his partner. “You sure it’s not Danny Kaye?”
“I’m positive,” I interjected. “And what does it matter who called? You’rehere. We told you what she did. We?—”
“I did it,” she shouted, turning her head to stare at us. “My mother. Bashed her head in.Pop-squish. She told me I was not being useful at all, that I was ruining the plan, and it was all my fault. So.Pop-squish.” She turned her face away again and sat quietly, pale, and huddled into as close to a ball as she could get. When the officers had approached her, she’d dropped the kitchen knife and just sank to her knees, quiet and easily yielding to their requests. This was the first she’d spoken in nearly an hour, and it was horrifying in its simplicity.
The first officer swallowed hard. “Well. You’ve been read your rights, ma’am, including your right to silence.”
Two more offers came over with Ezra and Oscar in tow. “I don’t think she cares,” the officer with Oscar remarked. “She’s not all there, is she?”
Oscar stared at Nadine, his own face pale save for the dark circles beneath his eyes. “She’s not well,” he said quietly. “She’s done some terrible things but… She’s not a well person. I want to make sure she gets help, if possible.”
“Listen to you,” the short, round officer with Ezra snorted. “A regular bleedin’ heart. Well, she’ll get whatever help the crown deems fit, won’t she?”
It was loose chaos on the front lawn and a slightly more organized one inside the house. The officers decided they’d asked us all they could for the time being and turned their attention on Nadine. Oscar motioned for us to follow him, and we made our way past a handful of crime scene techs and another officer or three. They didn’t stop us from entering the house, but two grim-faced men stood near the cellar door. “I think this is the end of the line,” I murmured to Oscar. He made a thoughtful noise low in his throat and diverted to the kitchen. Leaning against the counter, he palmed one of the small paring knives Charlotte—no, Nadine—had left out on the counter, slipping it into his pants pocket.
I pretended not to see—surely he had a reason, and I was almost certain the reason was sitting in an ambulance out front. Oscar’s sense of safety was shot to hell, his months-long existential crisis turned into a tool for a grifter to try her schtick on him and now, a pathway to murder for her daughter.
I’d probably feel like being armed, too, if I were him.
“What do we do now?” asked Ezra, watching one of the techs walk past with a tackle box for their scene kit. “Stay here? Go to the pub and ask after their perpetually to-let room?”
