Linda fished in her purse for the keys to her car as she stormed through the parking garage, fuming at Helen's no-show. Her rival had texted her, asking her to meet at a nearby cafe, presumably to talk (make veiled threats) about the recent verdict exonerating Linda of pimping out Sandi and her little club, but after over an hour's wait, Linda had had enough and left without paying for her coffee.
Scant feet from her car, she paused, as she thought she heard footsteps just behind her. Clenching her keys in her fist as a rudimentary weapon, she whirled around...and saw it was Helen's loser husband, Jake. She had a vague recollection that he worked somewhere here downtown; as it was, he was making a beeline for her.
"Hello, Jacob," she said, giving the man a neutral smile. "How is Helen? I was supposed to meet her earlier, but -"
"She's not coming."
The abruptness of the interruption startled Linda, as did the commanding tone coming from his mouth. "Excuse me?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.
Jake raised one hand out of his jacket pocket, flashing Helen's cell phone. "Helen didn't message you to come here today. I did."
With a budding sense of unease, Linda noticed that Jake's other hand was also nestled safely in his jacket pocket. "I see. And why did you do that?"
"You tried to hurt one of my little girls," he said, coldness in his eyes. "And you're going to pay."
Linda forced a giggle. "Oh! And I suppose you're the one who's going to make me pay, hmm?" She clucked her tongue. "Now, Jacob, what would your wife say, coming all this way to confront me? She's a lawyer. She knows that the courts exist for a reason, and she knows that I've been found innocent of those silly charges of running an escort service. If that's all..."
"No, that's not all," Jake said, shaking his head as he revealed his other hand. Of course it was a gun.
Linda began to sweat. "Jacob, you aren't going to shoot me," she said, slowly beginning to walk towards him (feeling that if she tried to scurry away, he would shoot her dead right off the bat; at least if she got close enough, she had a fighting chance). "You're too much of a wimp, hiding in the shadows 'cause you keep thinking your daddy's gonna pop out at you after years of rotting away in a grave." She was almost close enough to push the gun away from being aimed at her. "Now, maybe I've got just the thing for you. You see, Helen's a stone-cold bitch; what you need is somebody sweet and demure. I could give you Stacy Rowe's number, and -"
Jake closed the distance between them with two quick strides, shoved the barrel of the gun into Linda's stomach just below the rib cage, and squeezed the trigger until it ran dry.
In the instant before she toppled to the ground, a look of immense surprise showed on Linda's face. Once she found herself horizontal, she desperately grabbed at her wounds with her hands, futilely attempting to stifle the blood pumping out of her. She looked up at him, a savage grimace of pain and triumph on her face. "You'll go to prison for the rest of your fucking life for this, Morgendorffer," she hissed out.
"I don't think so," Jake said, shaking his head as he replaced the gun in his pocket. "You see, I have an airtight alibi. My wife's sisters are all in town, and they're going to swear up and down to whoever will listen that I was in the house all day, trying to mediate the latest round of their lifelong arguments." He crouched next to Linda, whose features grew more lax as she succumbed to the blood loss, and dumped her purse, grabbing her wallet from the spilled-out clutter. "Everybody who knows the Barksdale sisters knows that they would never agree to collaborate on anything," he said with a chuckle. "So if all three of them say I was there all day today, nobody on this planet will think otherwise." He let out a dark chuckle as he stood back up. "Well, unless they figure out that Amy and Rita don't really care too much for somebody trying to entrap their niece in a prostitution ring."
Linda struggled to lift one arm and point at Jake's jacket pocket, the one with Helen's cell phone in it. "Cell phone..." she murmured.
"Oh, this old thing?" Jake smiled as he patted the pocket, looking positively feral. "Wouldn't you just know it, but Helen's car broke down last week, so she had to take a cab. And whaddaya know, she left it in there! By the time she realized it and called the cab company back, somebody else had found it. Can you believe the luck?" He shook his head, false chagrin on his face. "At least she got her new cell phone today, so she can talk to that boss of hers all day long!"
Jake noticed that Linda had finally stopped breathing, and the chipper countenance fell away, once again replaced with his murder face. He started the walk back to his car, mentally calculating the nearest route to the quarry where Linda's wallet, Helen's cell phone, and Mad Dog's old service pistol would all be disappearing. After that, home.
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Written for an IC on the PPMB proposed by LSauchelli, in which the Fashion Club is found to be an 'escort service'