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“But why kill him?” I mused out loud, frowning at the screen. If I was working from the assumption thatCanvaswas behind the hacking, Kim’s attack, Monica’s attack, and the break-in and Monica’s house, I had to assume that Kellen’s murder was part of it too. Everything except the hacking had one of those messages with it – the names of the nail polish colors.
Ithadto all be connected.
What was the motive though? Exactlywhatwas the catalyst?
“Why use the nail polish names? There has to be a reason.Hasto be a reason.”
After thinking about it for another few minutes, I navigated to my internet browser and typed a simple string of keywords as a query into Google.
Monica Stuart Vivid Vixen Interview Wicked Widow
Immediately, a dozen or so articles popped up, many of them just referring back to one main article – an interview she’d given withSugar and Spicemagazine.
“I got the idea from Twitter, actually,” she’d told the interviewer. “There was this picture going around of this woman in this really gorgeous, lavish sheer gown, with feathers, and the caption on it was something like, “what I’m wearing to my much older husband’s funeral after he “mysteriously” dies. And I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I chuckled at it, you know. There’s like this fantasy or something, of being the tender young thing for some dinosaur of a man, and he leaves you everything. I guess it sparked something in my imagination, because before I knew it, I was jotting down these names for colors that this woman might wear. “Gold-digger Goals” as this lush, intense gold tone, and “Poison Potato Pie” which is gorgeous fall orange, and “Champagne at the Funeral” – a beautiful pearlescent nude. That’s just a few of them. I’ve gotten some pushback about it, which is to be expected, but I really just wanted to do something different and sexy and fun. Of course I’m not advocating murder – I think nail polish is considered contraband in prison! I just wanted to flex my creative muscle and tell a story – a fictional story.”
Okay, so, that was innocuous enough that I didn’t see how the creation of the collection could factor into motive. Maybe the names were just convenient ways to torture Monica – which, at this point, was exactly what I considered all of this to be.
And I waspissedabout it.
A knock at the open door to my office made me look up, to see Monica standing there, looking good enough to eat – again – in jeans and a BSU tee-shirt, with her hair pulled up in a ponytail.
“Hey… you said two hours, right? I thought we were meeting downstairs?”
My eyes went immediately to the time in the bottom corner of my screen. “Oh, shit. My bad. Yeah, let’s get to it,” I told her, pushing back from the desk to stand. “I just need to throw some shoes on.”
“Is what I’m wearing fine?” she asked, looking down at the blue Sperry’s on her feet.
“Absolutely. You are very,veryfine,” I said, winking at her as I eased past her in the doorway to get to my room. She rolled her eyes about it, but couldn’t help the smile that came to her face, which had been my goal anyway.
A few minutes later, I was opening the door for the stairs that led to the basement. I flipped the light on, then motioned for her to lead the way, which she did without any complaint.
Even with the light for the stairs, the basement was pretty dark until we passed a certain point. Then, step by step, everything lit up, activated by our movements until Monica let out a gasp as we reached the bottom.
“Wow,” she whispered, stopping where she stood to put her hands on her hips as she stared in awe. “That is… a lot of goddamn guns.”
Itwasa lot of goddamn guns.
But, I wasn’t without my reasons.
If the white boys with no military or law enforcement training could build up their arsenals with guns bought off the internet, my ass was building up an arsenal too. Anybody that came here looking for a problem would definitely get it. I’d first taught Kay to use a simple handgun when she was sixteen, and I’d had her down here at least once a month since. She knew how to use everything in this room, from the lightweight pistol, to the hunting rifle, to the AR-15 I hoped I never had a reason to use.
As long as Monica was here, I was going to make suresheknew how to use one too.
“Point out what you think you’d be most comfortable with,” I told her, leading her to the handgun case. I have all different types, different ammo caliber, different grips, different weights. We can find something that works for you.”
She sucked in a breath. “Oh, um… probably something like what I already have. I took a class a few years ago. Once it was clear that Kellen wasn’t interested in being a protector anymore.”
“That’s good. So you know how to protectyourself. How to keep your gun clean, loading and unloading, all of that?”
She nodded. “Yeah, they taught me all of that.”
“Perfect. So we should just be able to run through a refresher then. What do you have right now?”
A semi-blank look crossed her face. “Um… a Glock? 9mm I think?”
“Okay. How many rounds does it hold?”
“Excuse me?”
