Ebony Makepeace is Dead (Brad Culley Mysteries Book 1) - Janeen Ann O'Connell

---

Ebony Makepeace is Dead - book excerpt

The Shooter

She hunched over the table. Her long, dark, dank hair formed a curtain around the sides of her face. She wrote furtively, checking every few minutes to see if anyone was watching. I caught her eye; a glimpse of despair emanated from the wide, brown spheres. She turned away from my gaze. Head down, hunched over her secret, she kept writing.

I sauntered over to the table and sat down opposite her. She smelled of musk, a pleasant musk, not mouldy or stale as I had imagined. Her clothes, although dated and worn, were clean. She was writing with a pencil so badly chewed on the end, that the lead protruded through the ragged pieces of wood. Her fists clenched and her knuckles whitened. She kept writing. Her head was so low over her work, that the hair curtain now covered the front of her face.

I cleared my throat. ‘Nice bit of rain we are having.’

She ignored me. It wasn’t the ignoring that stunk of arrogance; it was different, as if she didn’t hear me. I sat for a few more minutes watching her, her head almost resting on the table.

I’d watched her come to this café most mornings for two weeks. The café had a nice ambience, not my scene. I am a trendy fellow, and this place was, well, mundane. There was nothing about its décor to set it apart from any other café on a suburban strip. But something drew her to it. The staff perhaps?

With my right hand, I reached into my jacket and slid the small gun out from its hiding place. Resting it on my lap, I touched the tip to make sure the silencer was still attached. I would wait for the right moment.

This was the second time I’d been told to kill someone. She was my target. The instructions were brief, but clear. I was expected to point the gun that hid on my lap at her abdomen, pull the trigger, put the gun back in my jacket, and walk away.

The security cameras would record me approaching her table, would watch as I attempted small talk and would take no heed when I got up from the table to leave. They would not identify me because my disguise had me looking so ordinary, no one would look twice. But this was conjecture, I hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. She raised her head and stared through my disguise into my soul.

‘Why do you think you can encroach on my space?’ she hissed. ‘I am using every ounce of strength I can muster to prevent myself from leaning over the table and slapping your smug, superior expression. Go away, leave me alone.’

The menace she tried to force into her voice struggled to find its way out. Instead, she was left with a rasp that bordered on a whisper. Her intent was clear, however: she wanted me away from her, to leave her alone. But that was not for her to say.

‘I don’t know what you have done,’ I whispered across the table. ‘You may not know either, but you have pissed off someone powerful. Don’t speak. Listen.’

A glimmer of fear washed over her face, and she nodded ever so slightly.

‘Under the table, I have a loaded gun fitted with a silencer, pointed at your abdomen. You should have started bleeding three minutes ago.’

She frowned; confusion burrowed its way into her eyes.

‘The only way you will live is to pretend you are dead. I am going to shoot you. I won’t shoot to kill, but I do have to shoot you. I’m going to smile at you, a nasty, vindictive, self-satisfied smile, and when I get up to walk away, you will drop your head to the table. If you’re unnoticed, fall off the chair onto the floor. Chaos will ensue. They will call an ambulance. If you are not unconscious, pretend to be. When my employers look over the camera footage, they will see I’ve done my job and you’ve collapsed on the floor, presumed dead. Or, at the very least, dying. If you don’t follow my instructions, we will both die.

‘I will organize your death.’ I raised my index fingers and indicated quotation marks around the word death. ‘Just do as I say. You will see me soon.’

She stared into my very being.

I squeezed the trigger.

Ebony

Ebony Makepeace lay prone on the ambulance stretcher, eyes closed, breathing shallow. A paramedic used scissors to cut open her shirt and her jeans. It annoyed her; the jeans were from an op shop and the only pair she had found that fitted comfortably. Should I be worrying about my clothes? she wondered. How badly am I hurt? As the question was about to form itself into words, a paramedic clamped an oxygen mask onto her face, stifling her attempt to communicate.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ the paramedic soothed while attaching a blood pressure pad to her arm and an oxygen reader to her finger.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Ebony whispered into the oxygen mask. ‘You are frowning and look worried.’ Then darkness swallowed her consciousness.

***

‘Welcome back.’ The woman’s voice startled Ebony, and she turned her head quickly to the side to see who was speaking.

‘It’s okay. You are safe. You’re in Recovery. You’ve had surgery, and the bullet has been removed. No damage to internal organs. Very lucky girl. We’ll take you to your room shortly. The police are waiting to speak to you.’ The woman smiled at Ebony, then turned her attention to someone else.

While the bed was being wheeled out of Recovery and to a room, Ebony tried to focus on what had happened to her. Thoughts and images swirled around in her mind like clothes in a washing machine. She couldn’t pick one item to concentrate on. They all cluttered her head, scrambling for attention. With the bed in place in the room, the equipment designed to monitor her condition plugged in and set up, and the pain meds flowing through the IV, Ebony was left to her imaginings.

It was difficult to keep her eyes open, and when through half-closed lids she saw two people walk in, police detectives by their cocky stance and boring clothes, Ebony feigned sleep. There was nothing to say to the police that they would believe. The ramblings of the man who shot her made little sense; how could she relay them to anyone else?

‘Is she sleeping or drugged?’ the male detective asked his colleague.

‘Let’s see,’ the woman offered. ‘Miss Makepeace, Miss Makepeace. We would like to talk to you.’

Panic seeped into Ebony’s being. She wasn’t a good liar, and the truth was unbelievable. The effort to lie still, to not yell at the police to leave her alone, exhausted her. Ebony gave in to the pain-killing drugs that drip, dripped from the blue square machine next to her into the canula in her hand, and hoped the detectives would take the hint.

***

‘Would you like a sandwich, Ebony? Do you feel well enough to eat something?’

There were four people in her life who spoke her name, and this woman was not one of them. Ebony’s eyes focus on the nurse who was checking, adjusting, and fussing over the automated drug machine next to Ebony’s bed.

‘Yes, please.’

She thanked the nurse, who placed a sandwich cut into four triangles on the tray alongside her, and raised the back of the bed so she was sitting up enough to eat.

‘You’re welcome, dear. The bell is right next to your hand. Press it if you need anything.’

With her right hand, Ebony reached out for the plate with the sandwich on it. She wasn’t hungry but had agreed to eat, thinking she might need her strength. The ham, cheese, and tomato sandwich stayed uneaten on the plate. Ebony had been a vegetarian all her adult life and was not about to eat a sandwich with ham in it for any reason.

Putting her head back on the pillow, she tried to work through the events that had led to this moment.

***

The café, usually quiet on a Tuesday morning, had brimmed with chatter coming from groups of people ensconced on the benches, arms around each other or spread on the tables. It annoyed her. Why couldn’t they find another café? She came to this one because it was quiet from Monday to Thursday. Even the music had changed. The speakers in the corners, hanging precariously from the ceiling on little hooks, whispered gentle melodies on other days— great music to have in the background while she wrote. Today’s music was straight from a mainstream, cookie-cutter radio station.

Standing for a moment, Ebony grappled with the thought of leaving and finding another place.

‘Good morning. Let me show you to a table.’ The waitress with the ivory skin, coal black hair, and deep green eyes led Ebony to a small table in the far corner of the café. ‘There are only two chairs,’ she said as she handed Ebony the menu. ‘Put your coat on the back of that one so you’ll be left alone.’

‘Why is it so busy today?’

‘University students passing through on the way to a conference of some sort.’ The waitress pulled a pen and notepad out of her apron pocket. ‘The boss is pleased. Even if we are not.’

‘I’m not pleased,’ added Ebony. ‘I come here because it’s quiet.’

‘Ignore them and concentrate on your writing. They’ll leave soon enough.’

Ebony thanked the girl, who must’ve been in her early twenties, and ordered a cheese toasty and flat white.

She’d finished her toasty and the last dregs of the flat white pooled in the bottom of the coffee cup, when the man ignored her coat and sat on the chair opposite. The fake tan on his face and hands was a shade too dark for his complexion, and the light brown beard speckled with grey covering his cheeks and chin needed a trim. Is it real?

He wore casual clothes that looked tailor made, and his expensive brand name sports shoes had the “just out of the box” look. She glared at him when he spoke, hissed in his face that he had no right to bother her and to go away. He didn’t go away. What was he talking about that she had pissed off someone important? Why did he have to shoot her?

***

Ebony had a restless night. The events of Tuesday morning, the pain in her side from the surgery, and the fear of “why me” played with her psyche, daring sleep to envelop her. With her eyes closed, going over the events in the café again, trying to recall every little detail, she did not hear the detectives come in.

‘Miss Makepeace,’ a female voice shrilled. ‘We must speak with you.’

Ebony was used to working out problems in her head, but most of the ones she grappled with were fictitious, part of her story writing process. Should she acknowledge them and answer their questions vaguely? Or should she ignore them and pretend to sleep?

She opted for the answer behind box number one—knowing they would keep coming back until she spoke to them. Ebony opened her eyes slowly, as if she were waking from a long sleep.

‘Who are you?’

‘Hello Miss Makepeace. I am Detective Sanderson, and this is Detective Tomy,’ the officer said, waving to the woman standing at the end of the bed. ‘Her name is pronounced toe me for future reference.’ He smirked at the woman. ‘We want to chat about the shooting.’

‘All right,’ Ebony said. She did not need to sound feeble or vulnerable. Her voice was raspy and her throat sore. The breathing tube from the anaesthetic, she acknowledged to herself.

With the forced smile of someone who had been told to be more affable, Detective Sanderson began. ‘Who shot you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Had you seen him before?’

‘No. How do you know it was him?’ Ebony added for dramatic effect.