My next story is well underway. Below is a quote from page 2, after Magda's body is discovered and her sister, Emma, knows that Magda is dead. What's with Zookie? And why doesn't Emma comfort him?
Stay tuned....Cinnamon and Burro are solving mysteries again...
Yellow police tape
fluttered in hot wind. Emma seemed to flutter at the same rate, leaning first
into Burro and then me. Two police cruisers, blue lights intense against the
heated May sky, were parked parallel to each other, facing the crowd. Emma slumped fully against Burro, and
we used her condition to carve a path through the crowd to a low wall near the
entrance.
“Magda,” she
whispered. “My only family.”
A
skinny man, about 5’2”, all in black, dropped to the ground and grabbed Emma by
the knees. His long black hair
fell in front of his face, and he began a desperate monologue.
“You sister was a
wonderful woman. Nobody alive was
as good as her, as kind, as generous, as giving. She taught me in 9th grade, you know that? She treated me like a son, her own
child, a boy she cared for and cared about. Nobody could hurt an angel like her. Nobody, not even that weird Rein. She loved him, too, she did.”
Emma readjusted
her body, throwing the fellow off her knees. He fell on the pavement, looking up at her now, his hair off
his face. I saw a scar running from his left lip to her ear. His eyes were cat-green, and a sour
smell fumed off his clothes.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Zookie.” Emma put her hand up to hold the man
away. “You know Magda didn’t like
that sort of display. Think of
her, for goodness sake. She was an
angel – everyone thought so. But maybe
someone robbed her or…she caught somebody robbing the lunch room and they whacked
her in the head. We don’t know the whole story yet, is all.”
“That doesn’t make
any sense, Emma,” Zookie stood up.
“There’s no reason for our Magda to be down at the bottom of the caverns
at night. She was dragged down
there by a cold-blooded killer, I say.”
Zookie’s green
eyes were showing red around the edges, and I realized he was drunk or stoned,
or both. Emma followed my look, and
explained Zookie.
“He was one of
Magda’s students, “ Emma flipped a hand in his direction, “when she taught high
school here in Carlsbad. Magda
helped her students out when they…they had problems.”
Zookie took
offense at this. “She saved my
life, is what she did. She said so herself, over and over again. I’d be dead without her.”
“Zookie,” Emma
stood up now, looking the black clad man in the face. “You can’t save someone’s
life over and over again. The truth
is you manipulated…”
