What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel by David Housewright (most read books txt) 📗

“Your profile on the website—Dee Dee?” she asked.

“Name of a girl I used to date when I was about your age.”

“Why Dee Dee? Why not use your real name?”

“I guess I wanted to find out who I was related to before they found out they were related to me.”

“Is that because you’re a millionaire?”

“That and other reasons. I didn’t know I was going to learn what I learned.”

“You found Jelly’s gold. You saved that super rich woman’s life—Riley Muehlenhaus.”

I shrugged at the references.

“You did your homework,” I said. “Good for you.”

“You help people.”

“When I can.”

Elliot glanced around me again.

“You could be helpful to us,” she said.

“In what way?”

“Things in my family are going kerflooey.”

“‘Kerflooey’?”

“It’s a real word. An adjective. It means awry or kaput. It dates back to 1918.”

“You really are an English major. That doesn’t answer my question, though.”

I heard a voice behind me. “McKenzie.” I turned to face the young woman sitting there. “What’s your blood type?”

I didn’t know Dave Deese’s blood type. Why would I? So I gave her mine without hesitating so she’d know I was telling the truth.

“A-negative,” I said. “Why?”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes grew wide with surprise.

“That’s rare,” she said. “Only one in sixteen people have A-neg blood.”

“So I’ve been told. Why?”

“Just … thinking. I don’t know how DNA works.”

“I’m not sure it has anything to do with blood type.” I spun back to the woman who called herself Elliot. “What’s your blood type?”

“O-positive. Does that mean we’re not compatible?”

“Like I said, I don’t think blood type enters into it—DNA, I mean.”

Elliot glanced around me again.

“I need to get back to campus,” she said.

She stood up.

I stood up.

The three guys and the young woman stood up, too.

“I need to speak to my father,” Elliot said. “I hope you understand.”

“I do understand.” I fished a business card from my pocket printed with only my name and cell number and gave it to her. “I’d appreciate it if you gave him this.”

“I will.”

“Don’t believe everything you read about me online, either. Most of the stories have been greatly exaggerated.”

Elliot smiled brightly.

“Thank you for coming down here to see me,” she said.

“It was my great pleasure. I hope to see you again.”

All five of the students made their way to the exit. I called to them as they were passing through the door.

“Elliot.”

Only instead of the petite blonde, it was the young woman with the auburn ponytail who turned her head.

“I like clever girls,” I told her.

My notes didn’t end there, of course. Only Shipman was getting a little antsy hanging around my place alone. She transferred my notes to a thumb drive and turned off the computer. Give her props—when she finished the beer, she at least had the courtesy to rinse out the bottle and drop it in the recyclable bin. Either that or she was hiding the evidence.

She left the condominium and took the elevator to the ground floor. Smith and Jones were waiting for her at the security desk. They told Shipman that they had been granted permission by their employers to share their security camera footage without demanding subpoenas and such. They motioned her behind the desk and gave her a chair in front of one of their computer screens.

“By the way,” Smith said. Or was it Jones? “I remembered the woman’s name. We didn’t write it down because, like I said, we didn’t check her in. I remember asking—here.”

He manipulated the computer keyboard and an image of a woman appeared. She entered the building and approached the desk, an envelope in her hand. She extended her hand and Jones took the envelope. She turned and made to leave, but paused. When she paused Smith or Jones tapped a key and image on the computer screen froze.

“I asked her what her name was,” he said. “There was no name on the envelope so I asked her what name I should give McKenzie. And she paused. You can see her pausing as if she didn’t know if she should answer or not and then she did.”

Smith or Jones started the video again and Shipman could see the woman pause, utter a word, and walk away.

He halted the video again.

“Elliot. I asked her who I should say delivered the envelope and she said ‘Elliot.’”

Shipman felt a thrill of excitement run through her body, yet beat it down. She was convinced that Smith and Jones had just solved her case for her, only she didn’t want them to know it. As it was, Shipman stared at the image of the woman, once again frozen on the screen. She saw blond hair and a round face. She didn’t see bright eyes, an easy smile, or dimples. She didn’t see cute, either. The more she stared the more she saw a face that seemed beaten down. ’Course, that could have been caused by the quality of the video, she told herself. Or not.

Shipman leaned back in her chair.

“It’s never this easy,” she said.

SEVEN

Bobby Dunston and Mason Gafford knew two things almost immediately when they arrived on the scene. The first was that it wasn’t an armed robbery, after all. The second was that it was sure to become a “fucktard” story, one that cops would tell for years to come whenever the topic of how completely nuts people can be came up in conversation, which was frequently. Bobby didn’t care much for the term itself; he thought it was derogatory. ’Course, cop slang often was. It referred to someone who was not mentally challenged, yet acted as if they were. Case in point—actually, there were a couple of people to point fingers at.

Start with the young woman who had yet to go to bed and sleep off the hard partying she had engaged in the evening before. She had gone to the fast-food joint while still wearing her short, sequin dress and demanded a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich with decaf coffee and a hash brown patty on the side. If her dress