Killing Ruby Rose by Jessie Humphries

“I know I never showed much appreciation for the way the two of you spent so much time together, shooting and fighting and whatnot.”
    “That’s a bit of an understatement,” I said, wondering where she was going with this. “All you ever did was punish him, and me, for it.”
    “I know,” she said with a grimace. “And I’m sorry.”
    Jane Rose said the S-word? And not in a sarcastic way?
    “Turns out, he was right.” Tears emerged in her eyes. “He was a good man, and he would have wanted me to tell you—”
    A loud chime reverberated through the house.
    “Are you expecting someone?” she asked, reaching up to smooth her hair.
    “No.” I shook my head, thrown off by (a) Mom’s most sincere moment in years; (b) what Dad “would have wanted” my mom to tell me; and (c) the sound of the doorbell. Normally, people had to press the call button and get buzzed in to get past the entry gates. My parents couldn’t be too careful with all the criminals they’d put away.
    She grabbed the kitchen towel again and attempted to wipe away every sign of emotion before she took off toward the door, putting the Guccis back over her eyes.
    As I absorbed the whiplash of emotions she’d just put me through and listened to the abrasively familiar click-clack of her heels on the tile as she walked away, I wondered who’d dared to trespass. Who was pulling my mom away just when she was finally opening up to me?
    Before I had time to prioritize the feelings of annoyance at being interrupted and anger at Mom leaving me hanging again, I heard her gasp.
    “What the hell!” She sounded scared. My mother was never scared.
    I froze, allowing my mind to conjure all the fatal possibilities.
    Just as I managed to gather myself to search the kitchen for some kind of weapon, the air pressure in the house changed, opening the front door with a gust.
    I was out of time.
    Clutching the steak knife I’d grabbed and listening for a ny indication that Mom was in danger and I needed to act. Why would she have opened the door if she was scared? Maybe she wasn’t the one who’d opened the door at all.
    “Hello, Jane.” A deep Spanish-flavored voice boomed through our grand entryway. I knew that voice.
    “Detective Martinez, is there some reason you didn’t call my office?” my mother said in her trademark passive-aggressive tone.
    My fingers uncurled from my weapon as I realized I no longer needed one—and that brandishing a blade wouldn’t win me any points with the man investigating me as a murderer. I dropped the knife and cringed when it clattered into the stainless steel sink.
    “I apologize,” Martinez muttered, sounding entirely unapologetic. “But I did call your office. Several times, in fact.”
    “So you show up unannounced at my home?” my mother seethed. “This is hardly appropriate, Detective.” She may have been irritated at his unexpected drop-in, but I was terrified. Even though he wasn’t the first dangerous person who’d come to my mind when my mom gasped, he was dangerous nonetheless. Perhaps he’d found evidence to contradict my sworn statement. Maybe he was here to catch me in my lie—that I’d never heard of Charlie LeMarq before the night I killed him—and take me in with hands cuffed behind my back. Or maybe he really was at the art show, and he knew a lot more about the investigation than he’d been letting on.
    “Have I interrupted something?” Martinez asked.
    “No,” she said, as if she’d completely forgotten that we were just in the middle of a rare moment of her opening up to me about my father. I tried not to let her lie sting.
    “Good, because we need to talk.”
    “About what?”
    “About the investigation, of course,” he said, inviting himself in. “Is Ruby around?”
    I tiptoed across the acoustic tile and peeked around the corner.
    “Yes, but I would prefer it if we talked privately,” she said, trying to corral him into her office. Instead, he walked around the foyer