were the last to see her alive. The FBI’s best guess was that she was followed from Jonah’s parents’ house to the bar. The killer must have waited for her to exit the establishment alone before he struck. Her car was still parked in the back near a dumpster.
No one heard or saw anything. The pool hall had cameras, but the car was parked out of the line of sight of the cameras.
The FBI and most especially Jonah seemed to be most interested in the autopsy results. Jonah had called Helen’s parents and spent a good hour talking to them. He offered to handle her remains and thankfully they declined. Though it would be a while before they could lay Helen to rest properly since she was part of an ongoing murder investigation.
Me, I was fretting about work, waiting for my boss at Tracks to call me back. I’d informed the on-site manager about what was going on. I asked for a week or two off in order to give the FBI time to find their man, and she said she would relay it to Owen and have him call me back. He owned the bar but wasn’t known for being the nicest guy. He paid a fair wage and didn’t hit on the women who worked for him, but he didn’t have any emotional connection to his staff nor was he cool about sick days and time off. He had the ‘work your ass off for what you want’ mentality. Which I totally understood. That’s all I’d ever been doing since I secured a work permit at fifteen. I just knew he wasn’t going to be cool about me needing the time away regardless of the severity of the situation.
I jumped when my phone rang on the table as though it were a King cobra ready to strike. Jonah chuckled, stood up from the couch, and grabbed our empty beer bottles.
“Another?”
“Sure,” I said and answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Simone, it’s Owen. I understand you’ve got some trouble preventing you from coming to work?”
I gave him a quick rundown of the situation.
“Darling, I understand that you feel you need to be home in order to be safe. However, you need to look at it from my perspective too. I’m a business owner. I’ve already let you off two days of work for this shit. I can’t allow for any more or I’m setting a precedent for the other staff. We’re already understaffed. I’m afraid if you don’t make it in for shift tomorrow, I’ll have to let you go.”
“What? No. I need this job, Owen. You know I do.”
“And I’m offering to let you continue working it. We have plenty of bouncers and security here in order to keep you safe. I can make accommodations so that you stay behind the bar, and in view of one of our guys at all times, but either way we know shit can happen. You have to make the decision for yourself. If you don’t show, I won’t deny or put up a fight regarding your unemployment, but I prefer you here. If I see you here tomorrow, I’ll know you’re still working. If I don’t, I’ll have your final check ready for you to pick up, darlin’. Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah, uh, thanks, Owen.”
He hung up and I pressed my hand to my head and slumped into the back of the couch. Worry and fear about how the heck I was going to pay my bills shredded through me like a hundred tiny biting piranhas.
“What now?” Jonah entered with two cold ones in hand. He gave me one and I sucked back a long drink trying to cool my frustration at my predicament.
“My boss at Tracks says if I don’t go in tomorrow, they’re going to fire me.”
“The fuck you say?” He growled, his face turning to granite.
“He’s been as cool as he can be with me missing work. I need to go in.”
“You’re gonna have to quit, babe. You can’t go in. It’s unsafe.”
I shook my head and stood up to pace the room. “Tracks is my primary source of income. As it is, I’m going to need to find a new place to live. And since I’m not going to give any notice, I’ll lose my entire deposit. I’m going to have to move back into Kerrighan house again which is already a huge embarrassment. But if I don’t make money, I can’t pay for my coursework. I’m already behind on