“Uncle Vinny?” Mickie called as she walked into the too-quiet office at Girabaldi Enterprises on Friday morning at nine-thirty.  When there was no answer, her brow knotted as she put her purse down beside her desk, then leaned around the corner to glance down the hallway. 

The light was on in her uncle’s office and the door ajar, so he had to be in there.  Vinny never left his door unlocked when he wasn’t in, because his safe was in the closet.  She strode down the hall and frowned when she passed her cousin Teresa’s office and found the light was still off. 

She was thankful to see it, because that meant her reaming from her cousin for being thirty minutes late would not happen until she had her latte, but it was odd.  Teresa was never late, but then she’d never left sick before either, and she had yesterday afternoon during a heated argument Vinny was having with an associate.  But her arms and bags had been loaded down with work when she left, of course.

Mickie had no idea what the argument was about, because Vinny and Teresa didn’t include her in their business dealings, but she heard every word.  It was that loud.  She didn’t ask questions, because she didn’t want to know.  She was perfectly happy being the oblivious office worker, errand girl, and barista here, who was given as much notice as the potted plant beside her desk.  She was paid well to keep her nose in her own business, and she did. 

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.  Get a paycheck.

Stopping at her uncle’s office door, Mickie pushed it open wider and walked in, but stopped in her tracks.  Her fingers went numb and she dropped her lunch bag.  She ran over to drop to her knees beside her uncle, who lay face down on the Persian rug in front of his desk. From the doorway, the red rug masked the red blood that had soaked in all around his head.

Her hand shook as she reached to feel his throat for a pulse.  When she didn’t find one, she started to try to turn him over, but her eyes landed on a small, charred hole at his hairline, which told her she wouldn’t be finding one.  The biscotti she’d eaten on the way in lunged up to her throat to choke her as she shrank back to put a violently shaking hand over her mouth. 

Her eyes darted to a pistol laying in front of the chairs across from her uncle’s desk.  It was her uncle’s thirty-eight that he kept in his drawer.  He must’ve tried to defend himself, but the gunman shot him first.

What if the killer came back?  Mickie’s heart raced as she scrambled on her knees toward the chair, but her eyes darted to the open closet door.  She saw the light, heard someone ruffling through things in there and froze. 

Oh, Dio! The killer was still in that closet!

Mickie grabbed the pistol, but it slipped through her sweaty palms twice before she got a good grip on it.  Her hand shook so badly, she dropped it again as she crawled back to her uncle.  That told her she would never be able to shoot it at whoever was in that closet anyway, so she left it there. 

The best thing she could do was sneak out of there like she’d come in.  Before whoever was in the closet realized she was there and shot her too! The rug burned Mickie’s knees as she race-crawled to the office door and used the door jamb to pull herself to her feet. 

Feeling a bullseye between her shoulder blades, she ran on the toes of her stilettos toward the front door and her heart didn’t beat once until she was outside.  A junky, beat up car on the other side of the lot caught her eye, and her heart stopped again when she saw a head in the passenger side of the vehicle. 

God, how could he have missed her going into the office?  How could she have missed that car?!?

Thank God she relied on the bus instead of driving, and that it was later than usual today.  Well, she wasn’t going to give that lookout another chance to see her, she thought, streaking down the sidewalk, toward the side of the building.  When she rounded the corner, she saw her only hiding place in the wide open space would be the garbage bin. 

The thought of climbing inside that bin nauseated her, but not enough to make her want to die to avoid it.  Mickie ran there, lifted the lid and gagged as the odor of hot garbage surrounded her.  She held her breath, stepped up on a cardboard box beside the bin and fell inside on top of the pile of refuse.  Eventually she had to breathe, and lost her biscotti for her first few breaths.  After an hour or so, she got used to the smell and settled in.  Every so often, she’d lift the lid to look down the alley, but she stayed there. 

Three hours later, Mickie got brave and decided to go to the corner to see if they had gone.    She had to go back inside the office to get her purse and call the police, but she would not be there when they arrived.  They would ask questions to which she didn’t have answers.  She knew who did have those answers, but that woman was conveniently absent today. 

The day her uncle was murdered. 

Mickie was not going to be Teresa’s scapegoat.  They didn’t pay her enough for that.

She lifted the lid on the bin, light poured in along with fresh air that reactivated the rank odor, making Mickie gag again.  She looked down as she started to climb out and the flowered straps of a familiar canvas tote bag caught her eye. It was obviously the bag that Teresa had used for many years to carry work home with her.  One she’d had with her when she left yesterday afternoon. 

Mickie stopped, rested the lid on her back so she could see, then pulled the bag out from under the mound of paper it was buried under, which appeared to be company memos and documents, but Mickie was more interested in what was inside the tote.  Unzipping it, she spread the sides apart and saw a journal and several notebooks. 

The odor inside the dumpster overwhelmed her and alerted her that this was not the place to examine those things.  She quickly re-zipped the bag, tossed it to the ground, then climbed out of the dumpster.  She would do that in Teresa’s office, where she might also find other things that could tell her what was going on here. Before she called the police.

Uncle Vinny was dead, and a few hours wouldn’t make him less dead.