Murder in copper, p.2
Sorry, Sophie (Detroit ABCs), page 2
But this was my real life. I wanted to run, cry, scream, and kiss him, but none of those were viable options for my behavior. Instead, I gave him my best approximation of my sister Nicola’s death stare.
“I am sorry to leave you like this, then,” he said, and he did sound sorrowful. He looked truly bereft, and if that was the case, there was an easy fix! We could stay together and both of us would be happy. But he held up his hand in a farewell and took a step back, because he was leaving without me. He was putting his foot to the metal and pounding the road, too.
“Wait,” I said, because I was weak. There was still hope that we could work this out, wasn’t there? It couldn’t actually be over. “I love you,” I admitted.
“I understand that. It is such pain for you.” Now he put his hand to his mouth, those long fingers and the well-shaped palm which he kissed softly and then blew on. He took another step back, and a strong gust of tropical wind tossed his thick, silky hair. “Sorry, Sophie.”
Sorry? He was sorry, and that was it? The breeze rustled the palm behind him, and I looked up to see a cluster of coconuts about ten feet above his head. They swayed as the tree leaned with the wind, and then the trunk snapped back into place with a sharp movement. There was a little cracking sound and one of those coconuts—
“Did it hit him on the head? Did it knock him out? Does he have amnesia?” Addie clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Holy Mary! He could wake up in a hospital and have no memory of anything that happened that night. He might still be in love with you, Sophie!”
“Addie, are you serious?” our big sister Nicola asked. She sounded totally exasperated. “This is real life, not some made-up drama. And you’re in nursing school! You should know that post-traumatic amnesia is nothing like bad TV movies.” She explained, in detail, what the condition entailed and I was sure she was right, because Nicola always was.
Finally, she finished and turned to me. “Well? Did Caspian get hit with the coconut?” Our younger sister Juliet held up her hand, fingers crossed.
I hesitated before I answered, because this could go a few different ways. “No,” I finally said. “No, he didn’t get hit with a coconut.”
There was a collective growl of anger from my listeners. “If there was any justice in this world, it would have nailed him, just like in some cheap soap opera. There’s never any justice at all,” Nicola bitterly pronounced.
“Not for him,” I answered. “The coconut landed in the sand and he walked away. I heard his motorcycle start up, and then he was gone.”
“Oh, Sophie,” my sister Addie said. She was crying a little, and had been through most of this story. “Oh, it’s all so awful. I wish it had hit him, too! He deserved it. Why did he want you to fly all that way, just to say such horrible things?”
“Men are walking penises,” Juliet opined. She was only nineteen and was in an “angry at all Y chromosomes” phase of her life. She was the youngest sister here; in our family, first there was Nicola, then me, then Addie, then Juliet and her twin Patrick, then Brenna, and finally Grace. “Yes” was the answer to the question “are your parents crazy?” and “no” was the answer to “did they plan for seven kids?” But we were what they’d gotten.
I’d decided to explain my situation to a few sisters at once so that I wouldn’t have to go through the sad story again and again. Our brother was in Chicago for college and our two littlest siblings weren’t in attendance, either. Brenna was probably too young (seventeen) and also uninterested (self-absorbed). Grace was definitely too young (fifteen) and was also uninterested (space cadet). Anyway, I had previously deputized Nicola to explain it to them, if they had questions. They always went to her, since she was more like their mom than our actual birth parent had ever been.
Our mother was the person on Addie’s mind, too. “What are we going to tell Mom about this? We have to say something, Soph, because she knows that you just took that trip. She knows that you were going down there because of a guy.” Her voice turned mournful. “You went to that beautiful island and this happened before you had a chance to even try for a tan.”
The sunny, balmy Caribbean felt very far away from our current location in my sister Nicola’s living room in Detroit in the middle of winter. “I’m not going to answer any of her questions,” I stated. “All I’m going to say is that we broke up. It’s over.” The story had ended.
“Mom may want answers, but you don’t have to give them,” Nicola said grimly. “She can work herself into a fit but none of us have to pay attention.”
“Nicola, you don’t have to be mean,” Juliet chided our oldest sister. “Mom means well and she loves us. You guys are always saying nasty things about her.”
“You don’t live here,” I reminded her. “We have her on our backs all the time but soon enough, you’ll head back to the dorm at your private college.” That was true, because JuJu had gotten to leave Michigan to study elsewhere, something that her older sisters (meaning Nicola, me, and Addie) hadn’t been privileged to partake in. “Mind your own business, Juliet, and don’t tell Mom any of mine. Keep your mouth shut.”
She got mad and started to argue but Nicola cut her off. “The issue here isn’t our mother, for once. The issue is Sophie’s boyfriend dumping her in a foreign country and leaving her abandoned and alone,” she stated loudly, and boy, did it sound stark when she said it like that. She was right, though: I was alone.
“It’s ok, Soph,” Addie said kindly. “I’m sure you’ll meet someone else! You’re only twenty-three. You have time before the well runs dry. There are still a few years to find a new guy, a better one who won’t trick you into going on an amazing vacation and then ruining your life. You can still get married and have plenty of kids.”
“No.”
My sisters all looked over at me. “No?” Addie echoed.
“No, I’m not doing that. This is why I told you the story about Caspian. Because that was it. I’m done, I’m through, and I’m finished.”
Nicola was checking a notification on her phone and frowning at it. She probably had a shift at the hospital to rush off to, because suddenly she was working all the time. “What are you talking about, Sophie?” she asked me. “Spit it out and stop being dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic!” I flared up, although in retrospect, I had been. Slightly. “I’m just telling you that he was it. Caspian was my final boyfriend and I’m not trying it again, no matter how much time I have left. I’m done with it.”
“When you say ‘it,’ what do you mean? Because I can totally understand a woman wanting to flip off the patriarchy and say no to a relationship that ties her down for life. But are you also talking about giving up sex?” JuJu asked doubtfully. “Won’t you miss the feel of—”
“Juliet!” Addie admonished. She blushed, too, but then asked me, “You don’t really mean that you’re giving up on everything, do you? Men, sex, marriage, kids? Don’t you want any of that?”
“Nope,” I answered. “None of it.”
“But…” Addie stopped and then restarted. “But, don’t you think that you’ll be lonely? Don’t you want to fall in love and have someone love you?”
“Not everyone needs that.” Nicola sounded tired. “That’s just not in the cards for all of us.” Addie looked horrified.
“But…” Juliet also stopped and then continued. “But, don’t you think that you’ll want to screw someone? You don’t need a boyfriend for that. You can just sleep with different guys, no strings attached.”
“I don’t want any of it,” I told them. “None.”
“If you’re worried that you won’t find anyone else, you probably will,” JuJu said. “You just need to tone it down, Sophie. You’re…a lot. Guys don’t like that.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Sophie,” Addie defended me.
“No there isn’t,” I said angrily. “And I won’t be looking for anyone, anyway. Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m done.”
I thought of Caspian, conjuring his perfect face in my mind. There was his noble brow, the sweep of his hair, his soulful eyes, his kissable mouth. There he was in all of his perfection. The dream boyfriend.
I could tell that my sisters didn’t believe what I said about men and my relationships with them. They didn’t think I would stay single, but they didn’t need to. I didn’t care what any of them thought, I didn’t care what my mom would say, and I didn’t care about being all by myself forever.
“None of it,” I repeated, and Caspian’s image shimmered and then broke apart like mist when the wind gusted, just like how it blew outside my sister’s window. The icy blasts scattered the snow on her front lawn but in my mind, I could also hear the rustle of palm fronds.
“Sophie,” Addie started to argue, but I shook my head.
“No, I’m done. Forever.”
That was final, and nothing would change it.
Chapter 1
Somewhere in Detroit, now
There it was. Got him!
I smiled at the screen as a rush of satisfaction filled me and I mentally patted myself on the back. Good job, Sophie! I had just uncovered the final nail that I would drive into his coffin, the last piece of damning evidence that meant I had him dead to rights: this giant jerk was cheating on his wife and thanks to me, the secret was coming out. Totally out.
It hadn’t been that difficult to uncover this information because the minor moves he’d made to obscure his tracks were both obvious and puerile. I thought that he would probably get his comeuppance for adultery but in my estimation, he had also earned some punishment for stupidity. Seriously, a bunny rabbit was craftier! He deserved to have rotten fruit and veggies thrown at him in public, and I would have been happy to show up with a bag of squishy tomatoes…except I never personally interacted with my clients or their targets. The only contact we had was via email and I didn’t even sign those with my name. I would have only been able to watch the produce humiliation from afar.
So my part in this drama was almost done. I added the latest details to my report, a narrative with supporting evidence of screenshots, dates, times, and video clips. Then I read it through, first to check for errors of grammar and spelling, and then to confirm a logical sequence. I tried to view the report as the wife would when I sent it to her, as if I were a newcomer to the information and was seeing it with fresh eyes. I made sure that each proof followed the next and I tried to hammer shut any opening where doubts could have crept in. The last thing my client needed at this moment in her life was to finish my account of his behavior and think, “Well, maybe he didn’t really. He might not have.”
Because this was what I got paid for: certainty. The wife had contacted me because she’d had questions and suspicions, but her husband had promised that he was faithful. He’d promised that he loved her and only her, and he’d sworn up and down that there was no other woman. He’d looked her in the eyes and put his hand over his heart, his left hand so that she could see how he still wore the band that she’d placed on his finger on their wedding day. He talked and talked until he had managed to talk her around…
Almost. He’d almost done it, but not quite. When she’d first contacted me, her tone had been close to apologetic. She was sure that she was wrong, she’d written in the form on my website. She’d confronted her husband but he had explained away all her concerns, and his explanations made sense. There was really no reason for her not to trust him…
Except that she didn’t. There was still something there, a feeling that she couldn’t seem to shake. So she’d found me and written that she needed to verify that he was being truthful. She wanted me to confirm that he was, in fact, still the same man that she’d fallen in love with and married ten years before, that he was the steadfast, loving husband and father on whom she’d always depended. She wanted me to prove that their marriage had only two people in it…
Nope. There were at least seven people currently in their relationship, and he sure wasn’t anything like steadfast. She’d asked me to check into his activities over the last six months, but I’d gone back farther and found evidence that he’d cheated for years. He was not, and probably had never been, faithful and loving.
As I cleaned up my report, reading through the sordid details of how he’d built their life together on lies, my sense of satisfaction ebbed. This always happened when I wrapped up a case. I was glad to catch these people and put them in their places, but it didn’t make me feel good to ruin the lives of their partners.
I looked at my notes. Sugar, they had three kids together, too. My client had said that she couldn’t possibly stay with him if he’d been cheating, which meant that I was effectively breaking up their family.
But that wasn’t my problem and I certainly wasn’t the person to blame in this situation. I typed a cover letter, briefly stating that I’d tracked down evidence of his affairs, and that the proof was attached. What she wanted to do next was on her but as I hit send, I cringed. No matter how I told myself that I shouldn’t, I always felt guilt about my involvement in the bifurcation of marriages, the breakups of businesses, the divisions of families. That was a definite drawback of this job.
One of the benefits was that it paid me to work how and when I wanted. I could, for example, be awake in the middle of the night and sit at my desk wearing only my underwear, and in fact, that was what was happening at this moment. I never, ever had to get dressed in nice-ish outfits to talk to people, since I never met my clients face-to-face. I never even had to wear a bra, because I hardly ever went outside at all. Makeup? No, I didn’t have that anymore. I sniffed and wondered when I’d last applied deodorant…it might have been a while.
But now I was tired, so I walked through the pitch blackness of my house toward my bedroom and immediately tripped on the plastic bags I’d left in the hallway. I banged hard into the wall and stood rubbing my elbow. How long had it been since I’d taken out the trash? And what day was it today? Sunday, I thought, late on Sunday night. That made sense since fairly recently, I’d been forced into a Friday dinner at my parents’ house. My sister Addie and her new boyfriend had come to pick me up for it and I’d been forced to sit in the back seat and listen to their disgustingly loving conversation—that Granger certainly looked imposing, but it had turned out that his insides were made of marshmallow fluff. At least, that was how it seemed to me when he kissed her hand, called her “honey,” and talked incessantly about their cat.
Marshmallow fluff. I was briefly sidetracked as I considered that I would love to eat some right now. But first? I would take out the trash. My pickup day was Monday and technically, it was already early Monday morning. I grabbed a bag, thinking how happy it would make Addie because she was usually all over me about the state of my house. Maybe I would text to let her know about my clean-up efforts, except that she was probably asleep. Or it was possible that she and her new boyfriend were still up and involved together, which would also mean that she wouldn’t answer. Not that I expected her to be at my beck and call, but it was a little hard to acknowledge that, just like our sister Nicola, Addie now had more important things to do than bother with me.
It was nice to see her so happy, though. I stopped to put down a garbage bag so that I could open the front door, but I paused and sighed a little instead of charging right outside. I was glad for her and for the newlywed Nicola, because all of my sisters deserved someone sweet (except Brenna, of course, because she deserved to have a lemon squeezed over a paper cut in between her fingers).
Out of our seven siblings, now the sister above me in age (Nicola, thirty-one) and the sister below me (Addie, just about to turn twenty-seven) had settled down. My brother Patrick was only twenty-five but he would be a dad soon, and Nic was pregnant, too. She and I had always been the “older girls” team, but not anymore. It wasn’t like we weren’t friends, but things had definitely changed over the last few years, and now she’d gotten married and was having a baby. But everyone was so excited about that, including me.
Kind of. Yes, sure, I was. I wasn’t running around buying kid books and teddy bears like Addie had already started doing, but I was excited. Marginally.
Whatever. I opened my door and grabbed the garbage bags again, then shuddered as a frozen wind blew right through me. It was terrible outside and there was suddenly snow on the ground! Of course, it was January in Detroit so that wasn’t out of the norm, but the last time I’d looked, I hadn’t noticed any snow. When was the last time I’d looked?
Well, I really noticed it now, because I was only in my undies. I slammed the door and felt along the wall for the coat that I left on a hook there, and then I kicked around on the floor in the dark until I found the slides that I usually put on when I took out the trash. Which I did, sometimes.
Better equipped, I tried it again and now I was slightly warmer than when I’d been mostly naked. I would still have to go fast, though, so I ran down my front path toward the street with the big bags bumping against my bare legs. The bricks beneath my feet were also covered in the stupid snow and there was moss under that, since it grew there on its own and I had never bothered to scrape it off. Icy particles filled my open-toed, rubber shoes and, after just a few steps, fully froze my feet. I skidded slightly as I threw the garbage toward the curb, then I spun around and raced back toward my house, only huffing slightly. Ha. I was the queen of speed! I knew that both Nicola and Addie had taken up exercise and they’d been smug about how I was such a couch potato compared—
As I put my weight onto the right slide, it slid. My foot went out from under me because these smooth soles had squat for traction, which was why most people didn’t wear them for running—
I screamed when I flew into the air, not a delicate, gentle-lady squeal, but more of a deep, double-barreled yell. Then I landed hard. My body slammed into the bricks and that stupid snow was no kind of cushion: my head bounced off the ground like when my little sister Juliet had played basketball (she was the sporty sibling in our family). I lay there unmoving because I couldn’t think of what had happened or what I was supposed to do next.
