include Nellie in their sticker-collection group. It’s like . . . Smurf stickers or something. So today Winona told Nellie she’s not talking to her anymore.” O’Donnell’s voice trembled with rage. “And Nellie just spent the evening crying. It’s the third time this month she ends up crying at home.”
“It’ll pass. Kids fight,” Zoe said.
“Nellie doesn’t fight. She’s always so sweet. And last year, Winona didn’t have any friends. She was so happy Nellie would be her friend.”
“It’s probably a phase.” Zoe just wanted the discussion over. O’Donnell was overreacting.
“You know what I’d like to do? March in there, waving my gun around, maybe fire a few shots into the ceiling. Tell them I’m going to arrest them all. Put the fear of God into them.”
Zoe wondered if she’d misjudged O’Donnell. The woman had seemed like a reasonable person at first, but now she sounded demented. “Maybe Nellie needs a different friend,” she suggested weakly.
“Well, yeah, but she doesn’t want a different friend. She wants Winona to be her friend. I should get her to start a different sticker-collection group. With better stickers. It’ll be a sticker war.”
“You should stay out of it. Let Nellie sort it out.”
“Do you have kids?” O’Donnell eyed Zoe threateningly, her tone sharp.
“No. But research studies show that when parents start to involve themselves in their kids’ lives more, it causes—”
“I don’t care what researchers say, Bentley! My daughter cried herself to sleep today because of those . . . those . . .”
“Five-year-olds?”
“Those horrid . . . sticker-collecting gremlins.”
Zoe decided to disengage from the crazy woman. She focused on the next murder case. Murderers she could understand.
O’Donnell flipped the pages of the bank statements violently, ripping one of the pages. Occasionally she’d mutter, “I’ll give them stickers.” Or, “Suddenly she’s Miss Popular, and she doesn’t want Nellie anymore.” Then, after a while, she became silent.
Zoe was getting to the end of the case files. She had a handful of possible leads, but nothing more.
“Catherine emptied her bank account,” O’Donnell suddenly said.
Zoe turned to look at her. “What?”
“She began to withdraw funds every week. The sums weren’t particularly high—two hundred or three hundred a week, but she was consistently emptying her account.”
“Did her father mention anything about it?”
“No, nothing.”
“Drug habit? Gambling?”
“No drugs found in her home, but I’ll make sure the toxicology tests include the widespread drugs she might have used. No online gambling in her browsing history, and no evidence of real-life gambling, either, so far, though it’s possible. In any case, she was about to run out of cash. She has one hundred seventy-five dollars and change in her account. I’ll ask the nearby bank for ATM security footage for her withdrawals.”
“Why?”
“To see if anyone was with her when she withdrew the cash. And maybe get a glimpse of her state of mind when she did it. Was she crying? Was she getting the shakes?” O’Donnell shrugged. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
It sounded like a long shot, but Zoe supposed it couldn’t hurt. “Good idea.”
“I’m not actually going to arrest five-year-olds. Or start a sticker war.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I’m just tired and frustrated. And kinda sick of nuts.” O’Donnell pushed the nut jar away from her. “I accidentally skip meals, and then I end up eating those damn nuts.”
“There’s your real problem,” Zoe said. “This is a clear case of chocolate withdrawal.”
“I don’t really like chocolate.”
Zoe tried to adopt a playful tone, like Andrea did when she joked around. “Are you an alien? From planet Mars?”
O’Donnell frowned and tilted her head. “Um. No.”
Joking wasn’t Zoe’s strong suit, but she tried again. “When I think about it, even an alien from Mars would like chocolate. Because of the um . . . planet name.” She could feel her joke dying in her mouth. Maybe someone else could deliver that pun hilariously, but with Zoe it ended up as flat and stale as a year-old cracker.
“Oh, really?” O’Donnell folded her arms, letting a small smile show. “Well, I’m from planet Snickers, and we despise chocolate.”
Zoe frowned, trying to figure out if O’Donnell was making fun of her. She finally decided that wasn’t the case. “Here, let me show you.” She got up.
“Where are you going?”
“To the snack dispenser in the hallway. Or as I like to call it, the emergency chocolate machine.”
She quickly marched out to the dispenser, got two Kit Kat bars from it, and returned to O’Donnell’s desk, handing her one.