Don't Eat the Chitlins

The first time I heard a dead woman talk, it came out of a bowl of chitlins. It was day three since my best friend went missing.

Her husband pulled himself together and cooked for all of us who'd come out to help look. "Eat up. You can't search on an empty stomach." The chitlins were cut thick.

Stewed till the broth had gone all the way through them. Everybody had their head down over a bowl. I was the only one who heard her. Don't eat it. Birdie, I never went to Thailand.

I'm still in the building. My fork hit the table. Every face in the room turned. Dale looked more concerned than any of them. "Something wrong?

Broth not to your taste?" I sat there white as paper, staring into a bowl that was still steaming. Then she spoke again. Don't say anything yet. He's still here. In this building.

Chapter 1 Something went through my chest and I put both hands flat on the table so nobody could see them.

Handrolled noodles, and a thick layer of stewed chitlins laid over the top of them, glossy with fat. Nobody else in the state serves it like that.

That's the whole reason people drive here. One bite and the meat came apart on your tongue. The smell went straight up the back of your nose. Dale saw I hadn't touched it.

His face was all worry. "Birdie, you're not eating. Is it not good?" "Hell, this is on me. I said the wrong thing and she walked out. When we find her, dinner's on me.

All of you." Nobody knows I can hear the ones who are dying. Whole sentences. Broken pieces. I get all of it. There's a rule to it, too. I worked that out early.

The closer they get to dying, the quieter it gets. The moment it drops past where I can hear it, they're gone. I was eight when my grandma went down out of nowhere.

Everybody said it was her time. What I heard was her voice. There's nothing wrong with me!

Your aunt pinned my jaw and poured antifreeze down my throat, God damn her, and now she wants the money I put away for your school. Baby, it's that bottle. That one right there.

Eight years old, and I would not stop until somebody called it in and they pumped her stomach. I handed the police the bottle. Covered in prints.

Now I was looking at a plain, decent, honest face, and I held everything down and made myself smile. "Dale, I just don't do cilantro.

Give me a minute to pick it out." The second I turned away with the bowl, my face went blank. Because that weak voice came back. Don't say anything yet. He's still here.

In this building. Him? My head emptied out. Something got scooped out of my chest, and it hurt too much to breathe around. How could Addie be in trouble? Dale did this?

He's the one who called it in, the first day she didn't come home. He didn't even hesitate. Three years married and never a bad month between them.

Boyd's noodle house has been open more than a hundred years. Saying they print money isn't an exaggeration. Dale wouldn't sign a prenup. He put the whole business in Addie's name.

Her stomach's bad, so he was up before her every morning making grits. When she was newly pregnant and got a craving at two in the morning, he drove twelve miles round trip for it.

I watched all of that happen. Addie used to say it sweet, that Dale was no good with words, but he remembered every small thing about her.

How does a man like that put a hand on her? That was when somebody at the far end of the table yelped. "Y'all look. Addie's account just posted.

She's on vacation in Thailand." She'd put it up one minute ago. A few beach shots. Caption: needed to breathe somewhere else for a while, everything's fine. Location: Thailand.

The whole room let go of a breath at once. If Dale was performing, I couldn't find the seam anywhere on him. And then the voice went. Not cut off.

It got smaller by degrees, the way somebody sounds when they're sinking down into deep water. I stood there holding that bowl. Addie. Are you still there?

Chapter 2 Had I heard it wrong after all? I don't know what made me do it. I typed her a message. "Have fun out there.

Food when you're back." Then I felt around for the edge. "Oh, that guy you said you'd set me up with. You never sent me anything." Nothing came back.

Not until Dale got up to go greet a table. Something went through me and I followed him, quiet. Watched him pull out his phone and thumb something fast.

A second later it landed on mine. "Been in a rough place lately, totally forgot. I'll send it when I'm home!" Same voice she always used.

I looked at that line of text and went cold from the scalp down. Addie was in real trouble. Because the two of us had never once had that conversation.

I got my back against the wall. My pulse was going in my ears. So who was in Thailand posting those photos? Dale. What did you do to her. There wasn't time for that question.

What I needed was one thing. Where was Addie right now. He took my phone. He gave me a shot. It hurt so bad. He was giving me the shot and talking to somebody at the same time.

Saying the first three inches past the bend are the best part. Thin wall, plenty of fat, lean and fat run even. Help me. My throat went dry. It was a shade clearer than downstairs.

Not stronger. Just closer. I rented on the fifth floor. Once I heard an old woman two floors up going into cardiac arrest, and afterward I measured it out. Sixty feet.

That's as far as I can hear. Walk out the front door of this place and the voice is gone. Which meant Addie was still in the building. Some part of her, anyway.

But the place is four floors, packed with people who drove in from three states over. Hundreds of bodies. I couldn't hear well enough to find anything.

Where was I supposed to start? I set my teeth, turned, and got a hand on the fire alarm pull station in the corner. Pulled it straight down. The alarm tore the room open.

I screamed fire until the whole place came apart. Every customer surged toward the front door and the staff couldn't hold any of them.

I went the other way, shoving upstream toward the back kitchen. The hallway back there was quiet enough to hear my own heart.

I knew exactly how it would go if I opened my mouth about hearing a dying woman. No cop on earth would believe me. Right now the only thing that mattered was getting her out.

That broth smell was in every breath I took. Every other day of my life it was the best thing I'd ever smelled. Standing in that hallway, it made me afraid.

Then, faint, right against my ear. Left. The big kitchen. But the door in front of me had three separate keypads on it. Her voice came through for me.

The code… the code is… I was straining to catch it when somebody spoke behind me. "You need help with something?" The voice stopped dead. My fingers froze in the air.

I turned around. Dale was standing at the end of the hall. The red strobe from the alarm hit his face and went out, hit it and went out. The corners of his mouth were up.

His eyes weren't in on it. "Birdie. There's a fire out front. What are you doing walking back this way?" "Unless you're looking for something." I backed up without deciding to.

My throat closed so tight I couldn't pull air through it. And then, faint, that voice again. He's testing you. Don't let him see it. …the fire exit. The fire exit. It landed.

I got my breathing even and put a scared look on my face. "Dale, doesn't your back kitchen have an emergency door? An exit?" The corner of his eye twitched. Just once.

Then he took a step forward. Closer to me. Chapter 3 "When the alarm went off I saw the front was jammed, and I remembered Addie telling me you'd put in an emergency exit back here.

That it goes straight outside." Dale followed my eyes to the exit sign. Then he smiled. And he was the same plain, reliable man he was every other day of the week. "That's right.

Put it in with the remodel. Look at me forgetting. Addie really does tell you everything, doesn't she. She counts you as family." Dale insisted on driving me home.

The whole way there he sent Addie voice messages with me sitting right beside him. "Addie. When are you coming home?

Birdie's been out of her mind looking for you these two days." "Any longer and she's going to start thinking I did something to you." He said it light, easy.

My fists were slick with sweat in my lap and I made myself laugh. "Don't even joke. You're worse off than I am.

When she gets back I'm giving her hell for both of us." Upstairs, I went straight to the window and lifted the corner of the curtain. His truck was still there. So where was he?

Then the motion light out in the hall came on for no reason. No footsteps. Nobody walking past.

When it went dark again I pulled up the nightvision camera I'd just had put in, swung the angle around, and stopped. The breath jammed in my throat.

There was someone in the fire stairwell. Going through my trash. I stood in the dark with my palms soaked. A few breaths later I stepped back twice without making a sound.

Dale was watching me. Because he figured out I pulled the alarm? No. That's not it. He was going through my garbage to find out whether I had somebody hidden in my apartment.

My mind went fast. Start here: Dale did something to Addie. And for some reason it didn't finish. Otherwise why would he need to sit on me? Him being out there was the answer.

Addie was alive. She was hurt, and he was looking for her. Which meant I had to be faster than he was. I went straight to the station.

I laid the whole thing out and the desk officer laughed before I was done. "Missing?

Adeline Boyd's own family closed that case days ago." "Her family is probably who did it." He explained it to me patiently. "Her account's been posting, hasn't it.

She wrote you back, didn't she. I swear, y'all watch too many movies. Everything's a murder." We were still going in circles when somebody called out to me. "You again, detective.

What've we got this time?" I knew him. Detective Rutherford. Thirteen years ago, my aunt poisoned my grandma.

I brought the bottle in and every adult in that building treated me like a joke.

Rutherford was brand new then, and he sat down and took my statement like it was real work. "You knew to wrap it in a tissue? How'd you know all that?" I was scared out of my mind.

That was the first time I ever heard someone who was dying. I didn't dare tell the truth. What came out was a mumble. "I saw it on TV… you all wear gloves when you pick stuff up.

And this, this has my grandma's spit on it. Wait till she wakes up and you'll see." That case made his career. Now Rutherford took me back to Boyd's. I followed him under the tape.

When I looked up, Dale was standing in the doorway of his own restaurant. He saw me. And then he smiled, and gave me a small nod.

The same way he did every time I came in to eat, when he waved me toward a seat.

Chapter 4 Customers were held back behind the tape, talking. "Word is Dale's wife is gone and they think he did her." "No chance. Dale worships that woman.

Bought her a car, bought her a house, never once tight about it. And she's easy to get along with.

Never even had a problem with his mother." "Officer, Boyd's is this town's calling card.

You wreck that name, who's paying for it?" Dale and his mother both came out, and neither of them looked worried in the slightest. "Nobody panic.

We can stand up to any investigation there is. Boyd's has been this town's name for a hundred years.

We are not going to let anybody down." "And whatever anyone tells you, Adeline is on a beach right now." Then Dale turned his eyes on me like he was putting a knife in. "It's you." "You've been jealous of Addie this whole time.

I didn't want to say it." He wore it like the world had wronged him. "I never even told Addie.

But you've pushed me to where I've got no choice—" "After Addie got pregnant, you kept messaging me in the middle of the night. Said you were worried about me being lonely.

Said you'd come over." My head came apart. He was making it up. He was dragging it down into a manandwoman thing to pull every eye off himself.

Dale kept going like he had every right. "And I turned you down. I told you I love one woman. And now what.

You want to ruin me, or you want to force me into it?" The crowd came down on me like water through a break. "Addie treated her like a sister.

And she turns around and crawls into that woman's husband's bed." "You watch your girlfriends closer than your locks.

Old sayings are old for a reason." "Addie disappears and we're supposed to think what?

That she wasn't trying to move straight into her life?" There was nothing I could say that would land. So I took half a step forward instead. "You say I messaged you at night? Fine.

Pull them up. What day, what time, what I said. Pull them up." Dale said it like it was obvious. "I deleted them.

I didn't want my wife seeing that." "Of course you won't show anybody.

Because it'd fall apart." I gave him a cold smile. "What you do have on that phone is a record of the ticket you bought her. Detective Rutherford already checked with the airline.

Addie had a ticket. Addie never boarded." I wanted to tear the decentman mask off his face with my hands. "Dale. She never left the country.

She's here." "She's in this building." Dale's eyelids dropped, and under them something twitched that he couldn't stop. "What proof do you have?" This time I didn't blink. "I have plenty." "And it's going to ring before I get to three