Page 19 of Best Served Cold
A driver’s license, more importantly, that was presently underneath her bedroom floorboards. She was grateful, at the very least, that she had made the sensible decision of leaving it there as opposed to placing it in her purse to use as ammunition against Morgan later.
Scrolling through the page haphazardly now, Lee scanned through the article at an accelerated pace in a desperate attempt to discover the man’s name. Kat ushered the words “Arthur Strickland,” at the same time she saw it splayed across the screen, confirming the worst. “Seems like he just left in the middle of the night without any explanation. It’s so weird how people can simply wake up one day and then just suddenly…disappear,” she added.
Isn’t it just,Lee thought, closing the page down as if she could close down this entire chapter of her life for good. She leaned back in her chair, her eyes wandering over towards Kat’s. “Do we know anything about him?” she asked. “Anything about his…lifestyle, or…?”
“Hislifestyle?” Kat mimicked, distastefully. “That just makes me think of all those homophobic assholes who call being queer a ‘lifestyle choice’,” she quoted with her fingers, before placing one of said fingers in her mouth as if pretending to vomit.
Lee heard it too when she said it, and yet at present time she wanted to know just about anything Kat could give her, hence the broad and yet strangely worded question. His preferences concerning whether he used a manual or electric toothbrush would be welcomed information considering how newly desperate she was to discover something, anything, she didn't know already. She just wanted to know why Morgan had his driving license under their bed where they slept. Was he already dead?
There it was, the concoction of nerves and power again. Lee thought she just might vomit for real at the sheer anxiety of itall, and yet underneath, the idea of being one of two people in the world to potentially know of Arthur’s fate felt somewhat…exhilarating.
Except, she didn’t know, not for definite. And until she did, she was just like everyone else at the office, plugging away at articles with unanswered questions, in search of the truth. An onlooker, not the participant. “Yeah, that’s my bad. I guess I’m still a little hungover," Lee lied, having adopted the sensible choice of downing a glass of water before bed after their night out, before making the less than sensible choice of diving under the sheets with her serial killer girlfriend straight afterwards. “I mean, there has to be something about him, a factor in his life, perhaps, that triggered his unknown whereabouts. People don’t tend to just…disappear. Not random fifty-four-year-old men, anyway.”
Kat looked at Lee inquisitively, scratching her head, and before she had even opened her mouth, Lee knew that she had said the wrong thing. “Huh…interesting. I wasn’t aware of his age. You read fast, Holmes. You had that article open for like…two seconds.”
It occurred to Lee all of a sudden that the knowledge of Arthur’s age was not obtained from the article, but rather, his driver’s license.I’m terrible at this,she thought.Next, I’ll be telling Kat he’s an organ donor.
A smile peaked at the corner of her lips at another terrible notion.Perhaps he already donated his organs to one ‘Morgan Finch.’The guilt of finding such things humorous settled her back into reality again, within the confines of her office. “Hate the player, not the game, Kat.”
Kat’s own lips curved into a smile as she went out of view for just a moment. Hearing the scrunching sounds on the other side of the partition, Lee knew to quickly dodge out of the way of an incoming paper ball as it skimmed her hair and fell somewhereunderneath the desk where it would remain with all the other missed shots, like a paper ball graveyard. “Whatever, Holmes. Let me grab us both another coffee and then we can get started.”
“My, my, only 9:18am and Katherine Myers is already desperate to start working despite her usual proclivities,” Lee jested, pretending to check her watch as her eyes diverted towards her wrist.
“You tell anybody about this, and I’ll start setting my paper balls on fire before I throw them at you. I’ve got a reputation to uphold, you know?” Kat winked, before stepping out of her office cubicle, around the corner, and out of view entirely.
When there was nothing left but ringing phones, and whirring technology, Lee leaned back in her office chair and exhaled until she was nothing but a deflated balloon. If she inhaled again, she deduced that she could pop at any moment. Alas, people needed to breathe in order to survive, and so, she took an intake of breath and prayed to an unknown entity that she would make it through the day with bad jokes and even worse coffee.
If she wanted both herself, and Morgan, to stay out of prison, she had to.
Chapter Seventeen
Waiting for Morgan Finch to return home was like waiting for a bus in the pouring rain that was seemingly never going to arrive. Lee had checked her watch a dozen times now, propping an elbow on the desk that occupied the hallway due to a sheer lack of space in any other room whilst she made lazy circles in her swivel chair, pushing it along the carpet with her feet. She wondered how people committed to the bit so hard in the movies, a cat sat firmly in their lap with an “I’ve been expecting you,” speech planned out in their head. Lee Holmes didn’t have a cat nor a speech.
Something that Lee had always appreciated about her girlfriend was that she was always punctual. She never returned home after a shift at the construction site later than 6:30pm.
A few days ago, she watched said girlfriend plunge a knife into someone, and since then everything she knew about Morgan Finch had changed, even her schedule. Something so significant made all the trivial parts of their lives alter simultaneously. It didn’t matter if her schedule was the last domino in a row of thousands, it all fell eventually. Perhaps Lee was simply beingdramatic, and something as simple as a schedule didn’t matter, but since both of their lives had essentially turned into a screenplay, she allowed herself a little exaggeration.
The door rattled to life at 6:58pm as a key twisted inside the lock, and a previously somewhat settled Lee spurred back into life with it. She wasn’t sure what emotion to feel, exactly, and yet as Morgan closed the door behind her, and as she leaned back against it, meeting Lee with a thoughtful smile, she felt comforted. “Everything alright?” Morgan asked, pushing herself back from the door with one of her boots as she walked towards Lee.
Everything was most definitely not alright, and although she wouldn’t admit it aloud, Lee Holmes was worried that things might never be alright again. “I’m not in the business of asking you if we can talk every time you walk through that door, so I’m not going to ask you that. Instead, I’m just going to ask you a question and in this instance, and in any future instances for that matter, I’ll just want straight up answers, does that seem fair?”
Morgan paused her journey towards Lee for just a moment, not quite unlike a startled cat, nodding as she stood in place, directing her head downwards towards the carpet afterwards. “I think that’s fair.”
“Who is Arthur Strickland?” Lee asked, cutting right to the chase, her elbow no longer propped upon the desk as her hands sat firmly in her lap. She felt her fitness watch vibrate on her wrist, alerting her to keep up with her cardio. Her cardio, in this instance, being her crippling anxiety, raising her heart rate to a less than optimum rhythm.
No longer standing in place, Morgan made her way over to the kitchen, and just as Lee was about to follow, her girlfriend returned with a spray bottle filled with water. “I’m not going to ask you how you know that name, because I think I already knowthe answer,” she said, spraying down the plants in the hallway with the moisture. “But Arthur Strickland is a piece of shit, just like Edward Beckett.”
Sometimes, a singular word meant nothing, and yet at present time, the word ‘is’ meant everything, at least to Lee Holmes. “He’s still alive?”
Morgan chuckled, as if amused by the question, spraying down more plants with her bottle. “Yeah, sadly, he’s still alive. Listen, Lee,” she said, placing the bottle down upon the floor instead of putting it back where she originally got it from as if to aggravate her girlfriend further. “I don’t want you to get the impression that I just go around killing everyone I see. Do I want to kill Arthur Strickland? Absolutely. The fact of the matter is I can’t, so you can put that worry to bed immediately.”
Huffing through her frustration, Lee removed herself from her office chair and made her way over towards the spray bottle on the floor, before padding along to the kitchen in order to place it back where it belonged in the cupboard under the sink. “I can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but why not?” she said, her tone raised in order to account for the fact that she was no longer in the hallway.
There was a minute of silence before Lee heard boots transfer from carpet to floorboard, to tile. “It’s complicated,” was all Morgan offered, resulting in another sigh from her girlfriend who had now turned to face Morgan as she leaned against the kitchen counter.
“I’m dating a serial killer, Morgan. I think we’re past complicated,” she observed, whirring a hand in Morgan’s direction as if spurring her on to continue.
Morgan sighed, flattening down her shaggy brown hair, an act she often committed to when she was nervous. “You remember how I told you that Edward Beckett happened to Summer Roberts? Well, he wasn’t the only one involved. ArthurStrickland was equally culpable in the murder of Summer. That’s why it’s complicated. There’s a certain…fulfillment I get when I rid the world of people like Edward, like I’m some fucked up vigilante or something minus the tights and mask, but there’s also a disappointing aftertaste you sometimes get knowing that families like Summer’s will never know what happened to their daughter. Because no one will ever know that Edward and Arthur killed her. No one except me…and now you I guess,” she said, motioning in Lee’s direction whilst she herself leaned against the doorway to the kitchen now, as if anxious to enter.
