Page 34 of Too Old for This

My breakfast nook has become a workstation. The computer is set up, my prepaid is fully charged, and everything feels ready.

I take a chance and call in the evening. Might be too early, but I do it anyway.

“Harmony Hotel. How may I direct your call?” The woman is quick and to the point. Friendly is not her style. Fine by me.

I hit a button on the laptop and hold my phone up to the speaker. A man’s voice comes out.

“Norma Dixon’s room, please.”

“One moment.”

A click, followed by another ringing phone. My finger hovers over the mouse, ready to tap on a response if she answers. This would be a lot easier with a voice-changing app so I could speak the words in real time, but my prepaid is not a smartphone.

Morgan helped me set this up. I told her it was for answering the phone or talking through the front door when I don’t want anyone to know I’m home alone.

Those excuses felt a little shameful. It hurt to admit a weakness out loud, even if it was a lie.

And it hurt more that she was so quick to believe every word.

“I get it,” she said. “When I first lived by myself, I kept a baseball bat behind the front door.”

“I’m not sure I’d have the strength to swing a bat these days.”

“Maybe you need a stun gun,” she said. “They’re supposed to be very easy to use.”

“Is that right?”

“I’ll look into them for you, if you want,” she said.

“That would be so kind. Thank you.”

It was probably the best conversation I’ve ever had with Morgan. Helpful, too. If she hadn’t been around to guide me through setting up this app, it would’ve taken me a lot more time.

My call to Norma goes unanswered, and I’m sent back to the hotel operator. She asks if I want to leave a message. I hold my phone up to the speaker on the computer, scroll through my prerecorded responses, and click Play .

The same male voice says, “Can you try the lobby bar, please?”

“One moment.”

It takes several rings for anyone to pick up. A young voice answers and gets straight to the point.

“Bar.”

Play. “I’m looking for a guest. Her name is Norma Dixon. She’s in her fifties, dark hair, looks like a smoker?”

“Hang on.”

I have no idea how busy the bar is on a Friday or how difficult it would be to find a customer. I sit on hold, no music, for two minutes.

“Hello?” a woman says. “This is Norma Dixon.”

Play. “Don’t believe him.”

“What? Who is this?”

“You can’t believe anything he says.”

“Who the hell is this?”

Norma sounds a little frantic. I press Play one last time. “Stop asking the wrong questions.”

Click.

I roll my eyes at myself. At the drama of it all. Norma seems to like questions and riddles and thinking too hard about inane encounters with strangers. This should keep her busy for a while.

It would be easier if I could kill her, but that isn’t an option right now.

You can’t have multiple people die or disappear after stopping by your house.

Even the worst detective would figure that out.

But what I can do is try to confuse Norma and throw her suspicion somewhere else. Same thing I did with Tula.

The trick is not confusing myself. Given my recent mistake with the phone, I have to be extra careful.

That brings up another problem: how to keep track of everything without leaving a pile of evidence lying around. I can’t exactly put a handwritten list on my refrigerator.

Murder has become exhausting. If I were young now and I met Gary and went home with him, and if he said the same things to me…

he might be alive. Or I would’ve called the police and told them he slipped.

I wouldn’t have walked away—not with cameras in the bars, phone tracking, GPS, traffic cams. They would find me.

I wouldn’t be able to deny I was with him or that I went to his house.

On top of all that…the DNA, hair, fibers, body fluids, fingerprints, and who knows what else.

With a sigh, I put on a pair of plastic gloves and take out another new purchase: a box of note cards. Cheap, blank, plain white. I use my printer for the message, which seems like the best way. Handwriting is risky, and so is cutting out letters and pasting them together like a TV serial killer.

But like all electronic gadgets, the printer is a tricky beast. It takes me three tries to position the message in the center of the card.