Swan Song by Tracey Ward Page B

asks her harshly, his eyes flashing dangerously.
    I put my hand up and glare at him. “Easy. She’s upset, give her a break. I’ll talk to her. Just go get Lucy.”
    Tommy storms out of the room in search of the bathroom while I sit Rosaline down on the couch. She slumps down hard, the wind entirely out of her sails. I gently brush her brown hair out of her eyes as her tears start up again.
    “We can’t call the cops until we know what happened,” I tell her softly, hoping I won’t have to repeat this for Lucy. “We need to know if it has something to do with the club or with the Outfit. If it does, it’ll be handled privately.”
    Rosaline looks up at me with worried eyes. “You won’t let them just dump her body, will you? What if they want to put her out in the woods somewhere or sink her in the river? You won’t let them, right?”
    I stare back into her pleading eyes and know I can’t promise her that. So I give her what I can.
    “I’ll sure try,” I whisper.
    Rosaline nods then leans over to lay her head on my shoulder again. I take her shaking hands in my own shaking hands, and together they feel somehow solid. Steady. As though their mutual fear cancels each other out and we’re stronger because we both feel it.
    Lucy comes walking into the room looking like a ghost. Her face is pale, her white nightgown flows around her with each step, but her eyes are hard. Rosaline and I are shaken up, but Lucy is different. Lucy, much to my surprise, is fightin’ mad.
    “Scoot over,” she commands. “Your boyfriend told me to sit down and shut up.”
    “I’m sorry, Luce,” I mutter, not sure what I’m apologizing for. About Tommy being harsh with her? About Alice dying so young? About bringing Alice into the club in the first place, putting her in harm’s way? I don’t know, maybe all of it.
    Lucy sits down and waits beside us. We all fall silent, the only sound is Rosaline’s occasional sniff. The small apartment smells uncomfortably of vomit and the inside of an outhouse. It’s wafting out of the bedroom and filling the space with death and decay. With the entire contents of Alice’s body that she left behind when her soul vacated the space.
    Tommy eventually returns with the familiar face of the German doctor on his heels, the same one who attended to Eddie when he was shot last month. I nod hello to him when he enters but he ignores me. Instead, he follows Tommy straight into the bedroom where I hear him plunk his black medical bag down and begin muttering indiscernibly. I hear Tommy’s voice every now and again, low and rumbling, impossible to understand from here but somehow still reassuring. Eventually Rosaline stops sniffing and I wonder if she’s fallen asleep. I wish I could. Though considering what’s happened in that bedroom, I don’t know how I will.
    “Was she taking anything?” Tommy asks loudly, startling us all.
    He and the doctor are standing in the room, their tall, shadowed figures looking down on the three of us.
    “I don’t know,” I answer. “I don’t think so.”
    “A sleep syrup,” Rosaline says, sitting up straight. “I don’t know what kind but it’s in the kitchen cupboard. Brown bottle.”
    “You mean zis?” the doctor asks, holding up a brown bottle with no label and a small cork in the top.
    “That looks like it, yeah. Where did you find that?”
    “Under the bed,” Tommy says darkly. “It musta rolled under after she drank it.”
    “Do you know how full ze bottle vas?”
    We all shake our heads. No one knows. I didn’t even know she was taking it.
    The doctor nods thoughtfully, looking at Tommy. “She must have procured it from another doctor. I did not prescribed her zis.”
    Tommy nods in agreement. “Nicky. His doc.”
    “Zis vas her boyfriend?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Nicky who?” Lucy asks. “This is the first I’m hearing of a boyfriend.”
    “She was dating some big shot named Nicky,” Rosaline tells her, sounding exhausted. “He drove