Page 112 of Too Old for This

I walk down the hall, into the kitchen, and wait for about fifteen minutes. Long enough for a couple of drinks to be poured and consumed.

With one swipe of my hand, I trigger the camera back on.

“Wait, wait…What are you doing?”

I back up, out of the kitchen and into the dining room, and grab on to a chair. My eyes remain fixed on the doorway of the kitchen, as if someone is standing there.

I throw my hands up, shielding my face. Like I’m trying to fend off an attack. “Stop it, stop it!”

My knees bend, appearing to buckle.

“No, no, nooooooooooooo!”

I bend down, making my body crumple behind the back of the chair. When the floor meets my knees, so does the pain. I knew that would happen.

My screams become more realistic. They sound like I’m dying.

—

I practiced this quite a bit. It took a lot of work to stay in character from beginning to end, pretending to be someone who was getting murdered. To prepare, I watched movies, TV shows, and true crime reenactments so it would look real. They really helped with the finer details of being on camera.

I can thank Bonnie for that. She’s been a huge proponent of how-to videos for a long time, while Sheila prefers to read books. I have never taken a side in their ongoing argument between the two. What I can say is that “how to die on camera” falls into the visual category. Bonnie wins that one.

Recording myself also helped. I was so bad the first fewtimes. Cringey, painful, awful from beginning to end. But after a few hours of practice, I improved a lot. The key was to stay focused.

My only thought:I am going to die.

After setting up my tablet to record the same angle as the camera, I knew where to move and where not to. More importantly, I knew where to fall. My body lands half behind the chair, and the other half lies across the kitchen doorway and out of the camera’s view.

I wait.

Fifteen, thirty, forty-five seconds. I crawl the rest of the way into the kitchen. Even if a tech glitch turns the camera back on, it won’t see me.

I stay in the kitchen for at least ten minutes. Nothing in the house moves except my heart. The pitter-patter is disturbingly fast, as if I really was close to death. Or, more likely, close to being caught. My next step is to get up off the floor and leave the house. All I have to do is avoid the sitting room and head straight for the garage.

By the time I get to the Dew Drop, there are three texts and two missed calls on Norma’s phone.

Burke:Hello?

Burke:Where are you?

Burke:Don’t text. Call me.

That’s not going to happen, though I understand why he said it. Right now, Burke must have three big questions: Is Lottie dead? Did Norma kill her? If so, what are we going to do about it?

Norma:I’m here.

Blue dots.

The screen lights up. Burke is calling, but I don’t answer. He doesn’t leave a voicemail.

Norma:Can’t talk. In an Uber.

Burke:Is everything okay?

Norma:Not exactly, no.

After working at a bank for so long, I can calculate compounding interest in my head, but I’d have to watch a few how-to videos to figure out how to calculate odds. At a guess, I’d say there’s a very good chance that Burke will show up in Baycliff.