Page 27 of Best Served Cold
CCTV footage last places him at Tony’s Garage on the 8th of September, days after a known acquaintance of his, Edward Beckett, was also confirmed to be missing. Police now suspect that the cases may be connected. After new evidence has come to light, Arthur Strickland is now believed to be dangerous. If you have any information as to the disappearances of both Arthur Strickland, or Edward Beckett, please contact the authorities immediately.
The screen illuminated a photo of Edward Beckett; a recent photo that highlighted, at least to Lee, how alive he had once been. His eyes, once open, like in the photo, would never be opened again.
Without warning, Lee expelled herself from the sofa much like a bullet out of a gun as she made a beeline for the bathroom, making it to the toilet only seconds before she emptied her stomach.
When the nausea had cleared, she leaned against the bathtub, her head falling back as she stared at the water-stained ceiling above. Morgan was presently perched on the toilet with the seat down, leaning forward now as she stroked her hair, calmly. “I’ll be right back, okay? I’m just going to get you some water.”
When she took her leave, Lee Holmes exhaled every last morsel of air out of her lungs. She could tell, before even discussing what they had witnessed, that Morgan was feeling more relieved as the minutes passed, accepting that their plan had worked, or at the very least, the fundamentals of the plan was beginning to come to fruition. Lee wanted to feel the same way, she truly did, and yet, when she closed her eyes, she could only see the man they tore apart bit by bit, piece, by piece.
Morgan Finch entered the bathroom just as Lee had made the decision to attempt to stand. With one hand, she held out the glass, supporting Lee with the other. “Thanks,” Lee said, taking a sip of the cool water, and then another sip, and then another until she had downed the entire glass, placing it on the sink upon doing so.
“Fuck,” Morgan said reasonably quietly, shaking her head as she placed a single hand in her hair, moving her fingers around to create a wild look about it. “They’re not saying it in as many words on the news, but according to my mom, they like Arthur Strickland for the murder of Edward Beckett, with or without a body. They’re conducting a full search on Arthur’s house as we speak. I feel like we just shot an arrow in the dark and got a bullseye. It was almost too easy. It doesn’t feel right.”
Lee Holmes shook her own head now; her eyes focused solely on Morgan as she spoke. “No,” she said, sternly. “No. We getto exhale, now. We have to assume that we did everything we needed to do in order for our plan to come to fruition. Otherwise, we will both drive ourselves crazy.”
Lee wasn’t entirely sure who she was trying to convince at that moment in time. She knew the pair of them had been meticulous in their plan, and yet, there would likely always be a part of her that would never feel weightless again, like holding a mask she would never wear. Or at least, never wearagain.
The fact of the matter was that the police would never find a body, at least, if Lee and Morgan had truly been as careful as she thought. Would the newly-bloodied drivers license truly be enough to put the matter to bed?
“I know, I know,” Morgan replied, holding up her hands, now. “But you have to admit, it’s wild, right? It feels like we’re the villains in a cartoon, and the entire episode we’re thinking that we might actually win this time, only we don’t. Because…the villains never do. And yet, we have. We did what they couldn't.”
“We arenotthe villains,” Lee hissed, like a snake out of venom.
Even as the words left her mouth, Lee was unsure as to whether she meant them or not. She wondered at present time if Morgan had ever faced the same internal battle she had been facing ever since she had disposed of Edward Beckett. She hoped that the answer was yes, if only so that she could acknowledge that all of the parts inside Morgan were working as they should be—to know that she wasn’t simply in love with a clock missing its ability to tick.
Morgan placed a calloused hand upon Lee’s arm, gentle, and steady. “You’re right,” she said, relatively quiet. “I shouldn’t have worded it that way and I’m sorry. Lee, you are the kindest, purest soul I know. I never want you to feel like any part of you is bad, unless that part of you is me.”
And just like that, with a gentle touch, and a few spilled words, the sound Lee had been dying for was right against her eardrums, and she could hear it as clearly as ever.Tick, tick, tick.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After a late lunch at work on Monday, both Lee and Kat had been called into one of the assigned meeting rooms on their office floor, presumably to discuss the article they had been working on about Arthur Strickland, given the recent turn of events.
Prior to last week, Lee didn’t realize just how much her palms could sweat until instances like this one whereby she had found herself wiping her hands on her pleated gray trousers not unlike a child covered in mud or chocolate.
The pair walked relatively slowly, savoring each moment of company time they were being billed for as they took each and every step. “It’s going to be bad news,” Kat huffed, pulling out the wad of bubblegum in her mouth with her hand as she placed it into the trash can to her right. “Either our whole article gets completely dismissedorwe have to rewrite it. Neither option fills me with much enthusiasm.”
Katherine Myers was no stranger to the recent turn of events concerning Arthur Strickland, just as Lee was no stranger to the recent turn of events concerning Arthur Strickland. And, withthe rarity of being called into one of the meeting rooms with their manager, Perry, it was likely that he was also no stranger to the news, either. “Firstly, nothing fills you with enthusiasm, and secondly, we don’t know that for certain,” Lee said, trying not to show visible distaste upon her face for what Kat had done moments earlier with her bubblegum. “I mean, you’re probably right, but let’s just get in there first and see what’s what.”
At that moment in time, Lee was almost envious of Kat, because Kat’s inconvenience stemmed from having to do more work, which, all things considered, was a very trivial, and normal thing to be inconvenienced about. Lee’s inconvenience was rooted in being discovered that she had broken into Arthur’s home and planted evidence for the police to find before his house was turned upside down over the weekend. The two of them were walking the same walk, very literally speaking as they made their way to the office, but very much metaphorically talking a different talk entirely.
Lee had been naive in believing that her weekend could be a quiet one, acknowledging that with every hour that passed whilst Diana and her team inspected Arthur’s house, Morgan’s DNA could be found at any moment. The memory of breaking into Arthur’s house was indelible, like a mental tattoo, only, in her less-than-rational mind, Morgan had taken off her gloves and rubbed her now fingerprinted hands on every available surface. She knew this to be false, and yet, her mind would not waiver, even if she so desperately wished that it would.
A quiet weekend, it seemed, would now forever be too much to ask for.
Sitting down now in the chairs that were unsurprisingly far more comfortable than the ones in their respective cubicles, the pair of them waited in relative silence for Perry to enter the room and break the news concerning their prospective article.
Lee could see that he was close by, exchanging pleasantries with another employee sitting in their own cubicle. After all, these offices were walled with glass sheets, which Lee found to be rather redundant, given the fact that this was meant to be considered a private meeting space. Despite this, knowing of his presence prior as she watched him walk towards the not-so-private-meeting-space did little to suppress the anxiety that coursed through her as he made his way inside.
“Okay,” he said, immediately, before he had even closed the glass door behind him; the glass door that supposedly was intended to make the space more private, which naturally, it didn’t. With just one word, he sounded inconvenienced himself, as if he had been writing the article that would likely be nothing more than waste for the scrap-pile, and Lee knew immediately that this conversation would be a tiresome one.
He took off his suit jacket and threw it very lazily on the office chair at the head of the table. “We probably all know why we’re here, so let’s not waste time beating around the bush—the bush being your article. I presume that you’ve seen the news over the weekend, and, if you haven’t, as journalists, I’d be rather disappointed in you both, so let’s just get straight down to it.”
Lee Holmes shifted awkwardly in her seat, suppressing a smirk in the process as she committed to the act of pretending to scratch her cheek, covering her mouth as the left side of her lips tweaked upwards ever so slightly. She acknowledged at that moment that her poker face needed work, but if this conversation was any indication, paired with the fact that she hadn’t been arrested yet, her criminal pursuits did not.
Sitting in this meeting room felt like sitting in an office as Spider-Man in the process of selling photos of himself to the Daily Bugle, Lee thought, only, if Spider-Man was tasked to do an article on himself instead, and his secret identity that came with it. Lee was part of an inner secret that only she and Morgan were privy to. At that moment in time, she was Peter Parker.
Her manager, Perry Graham, did not seem equally as enthused by the conversation, leaning forward over the table, his eyes focused directly upon Lee’s, as if automatically assuming that she was responsible for a vast majority of the work. “How much of the existing article will need to be discarded?”
