The Menopause Murders

By Mary Maloney and Ed Markel

Meet Debbi Dickerson: mousy, codependent housewife who, at age forty-seven, feels her life is over. Her dreams of being an artist have long been discarded in the wake of her failing marriage, and her kids think she's invisible. She's stuck on the hamster wheel, going nowhere.

 

That is, until menopause blindsides her. Derailed by one symptom after another, Debbi struggles to find a way to quell the hot flashes, night sweats, sudden panic attacks, and unbridled rage. The gals in her scrapbooking club give her advice on how to survive menopause, but nothing seems to help . . . except killing.

Meet Jerry Dickerson, Debbi's husband: arrogant, insensitive, all-around jerk, whose greatest dream as a homicide detective is to catch a serial killer and be admired, for once. So when a series of strange deaths break out in Tacoma, Washington, Jerry is elated, but the pressure is on to catch the killer.

 

Jerry's boss, Sergeant Myra Manners, is also going through menopause and makes his life hell. And then there's his teenage daughter dishing out hormones like Girl Scout cookies. Seriously, what's a misogynist to do? Have an affair with some bubblehead, of course.

 

Debbi discovers Jerry's infidelity and decides to kill off his girlfriend. But along the way, bodies start piling up, and Jerry's suspicions of Debbi grow. Could his wife actually be the Tacoma Terror?

 

Debbi, channeling Tacoma's claim to criminal fame, Ted Bundy, evades capture as she reinvents her life. No longer painting cutesy Hallmark cards, she lets loose her rage on the canvas, throwing paint and dishes, and at a friend's urging takes the abstracts to a high-end gallery in Seattle. To Debbi's shock, she's hailed as the next Jackson Pollack. But even that great sense of accomplishment can't stop her from killing more people.

 

Debbi sees herself as a kind of vigilante, ridding the world of sexist, arrogant, and mean people who deserve their comeuppance. But her killing spree is about to come to a quick end, and she knows it. However, she's prepared a coup d'etat for her unsuspecting cop husband. More than dishes are going to fly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ubiquitous Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215045688

Book preview

Chapter 1

Turkey Bacon and an Upper Right Cross

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Big, fat ugly drops splatted against the thick glass, as if the sky was spitting at Debbi Dickerson and her pathetic life. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen sunshine.

Debbi turned from the window that showed her wide residential Tacoma street at low-flood stage, squeezed her eyes shut, and massaged her temples, willing the migraine to seep out of her skull before it cracked her head open. Hard, pounding, relentless rain. A great way to usher in the New Year.

Since when did she get migraines? This was the third onslaught this week, and the two Tylenol she’d popped upon waking had been as useless as M&M’s. Maybe consuming mass quantities of chocolate would work better, she thought as she measured the scoops of ground coffee and dropped them into the paper filter sitting in the coffee maker.

Usually the drugs Dr. Pierce gave her for her bouts with Seasonal Affective Disorder took the edge off her melancholy. But lately they hadn’t made a dent in her mood—other than make her more depressed because they weren’t working. Three weeks of nonstop rain hadn’t helped either. If only the sun would break through the thick blanket of clouds—even for a few minutes. Debbi couldn’t recall a January so dark and gloomy, but maybe the combination of global warming and the impending inauguration of Donald Trump had seeded the clouds with rage and retribution. It sure felt like it.

Through the painful throb clogging her ears, she made out snippets of her kids’ incessant arguing upstairs, which made her wish for the millionth time that Jerry would agree to convert the downstairs half bath into a full. She’d thought only teenage girls spent hours primping in bathrooms—until Brad hit puberty. Did all seventeen-year-old boys stare into mirrors, making sure every stray hair was in place? She should have bought stock in those hair gel companies. Brad went through tubes of the stuff each month, and the brands he insisted on weren’t cheap.

The gurgling of the coffeepot set her on the sharp edge of her nerves, but it was Jerry’s heavy-booted pounding down the squeaky carpeted stairs that pushed her over that edge. Tears leaked out of her eyes as new pain struck behind her eyes. The kitchen suddenly felt stiflingly hot. She leaned across the sink and slid the window open. Chilling rain pelted her in the face, almost sizzling on her hot cheeks. She sucked the cold air into her lungs, then sighed.

What’s wrong with you? Jerry asked, striding like a rhino into the kitchen, swiping an arm out and grabbing the glass pot of hot coffee from its black plastic shrine. Coffee continued to dribble out and sizzled on the hot metal warmer, the burnt coffee stench triggering nausea as he narrowed his eyes and scrutinized her. His glare was like a laser beam drilling into her frontal cortex.

Headache, she muttered, her eyes downcast, hoping her soft tone would prompt him to lower his voice. She noticed he was wearing his uniform—a rare occurrence. And a glance at his bulging tire over the top of his pants zipper told her that her latest efforts to rein in his calorie intake wasn’t helping. How could it? Who knew how many donuts he gobbled at work?

Take some aspirin, for God’s sake, he bellowed. Is breakfast ready yet? I gotta drive down to Vader this morning—

There’s really a town called Vader? Brad said, tromping into the tiny kitchen and scooping up a piece of bacon from off the counter. He scrunched up his face and said in a deep voice, Luke, I’m your father. Then he laughed, and the abrasive timbre made Debbi squint in pain again.

Of course there is, Jerry told him. How else could I be going there if there wasn’t, butt-head?

Brad merely shrugged off his father’s rebuke—water off a duck’s back—or maybe off the waterproof hair gel—and slid into his chair.

Debbi had noticed that ever since Alabama beat Washington in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on New Year’s Eve day, Jerry’s temper was on a short fuse, and just about any little spark ignited it. He wouldn’t tell her, but she was sure he’d wagered a hefty bet on the game and had lost. How much?—she hated to think. He stashed money somewhere, had to—since their bank account never reflected the obvious windfalls Jerry enjoyed—made evident by spontaneous and extravagant expenditures, such as the new surround-sound speaker system he’d bought himself for Christmas. But if mood was any indicator, Jerry lost more than he made, his pernicious gambling habit still the biggest bone of contention in this boneyard of a marriage.

She’d been cutting a wide swath around him these last two days, hoping his ire would let up. But, as with the persistent rain, there didn’t appear to be any silver linings hovering nearby.

He glanced over at the window, then gave Debbi another irritated look. You’re letting in the rain! Shut that window.

Debbi dutifully obeyed.

Jerry huffed and plopped into his chair at the table, Brad joining him. Debbi hurried to put all the platters of food before them—scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, fruit cocktail—then poured herself a cup of coffee, knowing she’d never hold down any food.

Brad, unfortunately, was an almost exact replica of his burly, wide-shouldered father, and that included his cocky know-it-all attitude that Debbi couldn’t seem to do a thing about. All of Jerry’s dashed hopes rode on his son to be the famous football star Jerry had failed to aspire to in college.

In the Dickerson family, the men ruled. When she’d first married Jerry, she liked the way Jerry had taken charge, made all the decisions. But his authoritarian manner had gotten old fast, though, at that point, with two babies in arms, what could she have done about it? She’d given up her dream of becoming a famous painter and took on the expected role millions of women throughout history had willingly and many unwillingly embraced—being a submissive wife and mother. Despite her own mother reminding her that women’s lib had done away with all that and replaced it with ... what? Debbi had no clue.

She’d hoped in time her artistic dreams would sputter out—God knew Jerry had done all he could to extinguish any sparks that occasionally ignited. He didn’t mind her doing those paintings for Hallmark, since the money they brought in helped—a little. But doing cutesy card art did nothing to satiate her creative juices. Ellen, her best friend, had told her repeatedly: He’s jealous of your talent—since he has none. And that’s why he squelched her efforts to make it as an artist. Majoring in art in college was one thing, but a woman’s place was in the kitchen—or in bed. Though she and Jerry hardly did anything in bed these days worth mentioning.

Familiar feelings of depression and failure crashed like a wave over her, and tagging along at their heels were the expected litanies that ran circles in her head. You’re not attractive anymore. Your skin is sagging and wrinkled. Your hair is limp and dead from dyeing it every month to cover the gray. No wonder Jerry doesn’t want to touch you. Which sent her mind spinning into her paranoid fantasies of how Jerry surely had to be cheating on her and even secretly planning on divorcing her. Which then sent panic racing through every muscle, causing her knees to weaken.

She grabbed the kitchen counter with one hand, only dimly aware that Chelsea had come downstairs and was sitting at the table, hunched over her cell phone, texting madly with her thumbs. Debbi had a sudden image of Chelsea’s thumbs heating up from the sheer speed of her texting, dark smoke twisting from her purple-painted nails, then her thumbs melting all over the phone in puddles of pink wax.

A perverse giggle escaped Debbi’s mouth. She looked over at Jerry, who sat at the table gaping at her, his mouth open, a piece of bacon in his hand.

Debbi shut her mouth, and the kitchen fell silent except for the ticking of the silly cuckoo clock on the wall—a tacky wood and plastic souvenir that her mother had bought in Switzerland for her a few years ago, on one of her many whirlwind Elderhostel trips. Every hour that dumb wooden bird popped out the swinging door and tittered cuckoo at her. I hate that clock ...

What the hell is this? he demanded, waving the strip of bacon in the air like a winning lottery ticket.

Wh-what do you mean? she asked, feeling a sense of doom swell. It’s bacon.

The hell it is! This tastes like cardboard! He threw the piece onto the table, and it was quickly snatched up by Brad, who stuffed it in his mouth, never one to miss an opportunity. He’d grown nearly a foot this last year, now an inch taller than Jerry at six feet even.

Chelsea, in her tight angora pink sweater, never even looked up when her brother reached across her plate to retrieve the strip, thumbs still moving at light speed, her streaked blond bangs falling into her eyes.

Debbi shrugged, knowing the gesture would fail to console him, but it was her knee-jerk gesture whenever Jerry got testy. "It’s turkey bacon. It’s healthier than regular bacon—"

Jerry stood suddenly, pushing back his chair, the wooden legs sounding like nails scratching the surface of a blackboard. Debbi cringed, wilting under his fury.

Jerry strode up to her and cupped her chin in his hand, making her look into his eyes.

His voice was a low growl. "Turkey bacon, huh? I don’t want any healthy bacon, understand? I don’t want any healthy anything. I want fattening, greasy, high-cholesterol bacon made from pigs. I want real food. Real food for a real man. Ever since those nerdy, hippie California nincompoops invaded the campus, the market’s been full of this crap. And tofu. Tofu! What the hell do you do with tofu? Use it as a butt plug? It tastes like wet chalk! But you have to add it to the spaghetti sauce because of my cholesterol."

Debbi’s shoulders jerked up and down again. The doctor said—

I don’t give a damn what the doctor said, you hear me? Just ... just ... He let go of her chin and clamped his lips so hard, they turned nearly white. Debbi rubbed her sore chin.

Sweat trickled down Jerry’s wide forehead, catching in the deep creases. He raked a hand through his thick chestnut hair that had been thinning at a fast rate ever since he got transferred into Homicide last summer.

His dream come true.

All Jerry Beauregard Dickerson wanted was to crack a big case and get on CNN. But he had to get a case first. And lately the only trouble brewing in Tacoma was from the usual gangs fighting over turf. Hence his chronic irritation with work. Though Debbi guessed that had more to do with the newly hired Sergeant Manners than anything else. He positively loathed that woman.

Come on, Chels—let’s get going. Brad nudged his sister, rolling his eyes at the predictable "Morning Show," and she finally extricated her gaze from her pink cell phone, though it looked as if it pained her to do so. Part of his driving privileges stipulated that he drop his sister off at her middle school on his way to his early gym class.

Chelsea stood and looked around as if only now realizing she’d been in the kitchen the last fifteen minutes. She hadn’t eaten a thing, as usual. But Debbi wasn’t in the mood to fight that battle today with her near-anorexic daughter. Exhaustion tugged at her like a lead weight dangling from her neck.

With quick hand waves and mumbled good-byes, her two kids fled the house, Debbi’s eyes fixated on Chelsea’s tight faded jeans riddled with quarter-size holes, some of which revealed bits of hot-pink underwear.

Debbi’s words caught in her throat. She couldn’t let Chelsea—only fourteen—go to school wearing that—

What are you doing?

Debbi wrenched her gaze from her daughter’s butt and turned to Jerry.

What? she asked, opening the fridge.

Jerry put his hands on his hips—his ever-widening hips. But, she should talk. She’d gained five pounds in the last month and had no clue how that’d happened. Nowadays all she had to do was look at a potato and she gained weight. As if potatoes had some sinister arcane power to send calories across space and plaster onto unsuspecting victims’ bodies.

The thought heaped on the depression. She used to be thin and cute in college. A cheerleader who could do back walkovers and the splits. One day she was twenty, and the next, forty. Where had all those years gone?

A sudden squall lashed more rain against the window, sounding like a dozen birds crashing into the glass. Thunder rumbled so loudly overhead, the house shook.

Deb, I said, what are you doing? His condescension dripped off the words like syrup off a flapjack.

Jerry was shaking his head, a look of disgust on his face.

She had no idea what Jerry was so riled about.

You put the milk in the cupboard and the biscuit box in the fridge, he said flatly, emphasizing each word as if speaking to a five-year-old.

A shiver of horror ran up her back. She yanked the fridge open. Sure enough, the bright-yellow biscuit box sat on the top shelf, glaring at her. She took it out and set it on the sink counter, telling herself to breathe slowly. For some reason her heart was racing at breakneck speed. Sweat prickled on her forehead. The room grew suffocatingly hot again. She put her hand on her clammy forehead, expecting a fever, but the skin was cool.

As she took the milk carton down from the cupboard, Jerry said behind her, Maybe that electric shock therapy would help snap you out of your weird moods. You know—like what Ted’s grandmother had. He laughed and threw her another disgusted look. Are you even taking your meds?

Ted. Again with the Ted talk. Debbi’s ire roiled in her stomach. The man was obsessed with Ted Bundy—Tacoma’s eerie claim to fame. The serial killer who had done such disgusting things to his victims, Debbi felt like throwing up every time Jerry mentioned his name. He spoke about the dead man like they’d been best buds. Ted this. Ted that. Ted used to stand at his aunt’s bedside with knives in his hand when he was only three. Ted dumpster-dove looking for pictures of naked women. Ted had the perfect criminal mind. The way Jerry talked, Ted was a god to be worshipped. She was sick to death with hearing about Ted. And ever since Jerry had been transferred to Homicide, the Ted stories had multiplied like cockroaches in an abandoned building.

I said, are you taking your meds? For that seasonal disorder problem?

Erg! Maybe I’m not suffering from SAD. Maybe it’s MAD—Man Anger Disorder. How many years had she stuffed down her anger and disappointment, never complaining, believing that love conquered all, that Jerry was just going through a phase? Right—how many phases was that in the last two decades?

She sighed. She knew Ellen was right. Debbi Dickerson was weak, a mouse, a wimp. But this was her lot in life, and there was nothing to be done about it. She’d tried to change Jerry for years, but it was like trying to prod a two-ton elephant with a flyswatter.

Jerry had put on his jacket and hat and was standing in front of the door, frowning at her. His expression triggered another stab of pain to her temples. The meds, Deb? Are you taking them? His voice was laced with threat.

They don’t help, she managed to spurt out, her headache pounding against her scalp.

Then go see another doctor. With all the drugs out there, something’s bound to work. Honestly, I don’t think I can take much more of this.

She put the milk back in the fridge and closed the door, her drawn, distorted reflection rippling on the surface, glowering back at her, hateful.

Debbi turned, riding on some errant wave of anger that had slipped unnoticed from a crack inside her heart. She’d rarely ever raised her voice to Jerry—only a few times in all these years. But right now she wanted to scream.

"You ... can’t take ...?" The words tasted poisonous on her tongue. She walked up to Jerry and looked him in the eyes.

"You can’t take much more of this?"

The venom in her voice stunned her. As if some creature had taken over her vocal chords. "How do you think I feel?" she screeched.

Apparently it stunned Jerry too. His wide, shocked eyes quickly narrowed.

Get a grip, Deb. You’re driving us all crazy with your erratic moods. He grunted, leaning back, and shook his head. I’m gonna be late.

The condescending dismissiveness in his voice made Debbi looked down at her hands.

Odd. They were clenched into fists, the knuckles turning white. Her ragged-bitten nails dug into the skin of her palms, but she barely registered the pain. She couldn’t recall a time, any time in her life, when she’d made a fist.

Something in her eyes must have set off alarms because Jerry froze suddenly like the proverbial deer in the headlights and put his hand out to stop her, the way he might stop traffic. But it did no good.

Debbi’s fist slammed into Jerry’s cheek—so fast neither of them had seen it coming. Her hand exploded with pain as bone hit bone.

As Debbi groaned, Jerry yelped and jerked back, and his reaction sent strange frissons of satisfaction tickling over her skin. She pulled her hand back and stared at it as if it were some alien object that had fallen from outer space and glomped onto her wrist. She had never hit anyone in her life—not even spanked her children when they were disobedient.

Her mouth fell open, and though she fumbled for words, nothing came out.

Something was wrong with her. Something very, very wrong. Was she insane? Losing her mind? Fear took a strong hold of her, and every inch of her body shook.

Jerry rubbed his cheek and winced, and Debbi noticed an ugly black bruise already beginning to swell. Huh, she had smacked him pretty hard.

He cursed under his breath and shook his head, looking away, at the wall, out the window—everywhere but at her.

Then, without a word, he grabbed his keys off the wall hook, threw open the door, stormed out, and slammed the door behind him.

The violent sound ricocheted through the room and pinged off Debbi’s head until it petered out and the room fell silent—except for the ticking of the stupid Swiss cuckoo clock in the kitchen and the hard rain battering the house.

Her mind suddenly went blank. All emotion drained from her limbs, leaving her weak and listless. She stumbled over to the nearest kitchen chair and fell into it, then put her face into her hands and wept.

Chapter 2

The History of Hysteria

Wednesday morning, January 4

Debbi’s teeth chattered. Why was the exam room so damn cold? She’d sat in this room a dozen times over the years—for annual checkups and getting scrips for her allergies and SAD. Dr. Pierce’s office had never been this cold before.

She looked over at the window—closed. Maybe their heater was broken. Debbi stood and paced, trying to feel her toes wiggling in her boots. They were numb. In fact, she couldn’t even feel her feet in her thick wool socks.

Niggles of fear piled on top of her trepidation as she sat back on the cushioned bench—wanting to avoid the exam bed with its crinkly, noisy white paper lying across it like some poorly wrapped present. She played with the silver charms on the bracelet Chelsea had given her for Christmas. Her daughter had made it herself, and Debbi cherished this silly little thing with its dangling rabbit and easel and tennis racket and other items Chelsea thought represented her mom. Debbi hardly ever wore jewelry—lately her necklaces and earrings had been disappearing somehow—fell off while sleeping or dressing, she figured, though she searched the sheets and the dryer lint trap. And when her gold locket vanished just last month—an heirloom from her grandmother—she decided to give up on accessorizing.

Her thoughts raced haphazardly as she yanked off her boots and tried to rub some sensation back into her toes. Her feet were tingling and prickly. Did she have poor circulation? Was she becoming diabetic? She’d heard somewhere that lack of feeling in the extremities was a sign of the early onset of diabetes. Was she borderline diabetic? Her mom had had low blood pressure.

Debbi blew out a breath. What was wrong with her? She’d never been a hypochondriac before, but lately it seemed as if every moving part in her body was breaking down. She was only forty-seven, for crying out loud. And while she wasn’t all that keen about exercise, she stayed in shape with her daily—well, more like weekly these days—power walks. She made sure to eat from all the food groups, even juiced from time to time. Well, she did have a weakness for chocolate, but who didn’t? Besides, she read in last month’s Vogue that chocolate was actually good for your heart. Or something like that. Not that she needed an excuse to eat chocolate.

The thought sent her rummaging through her big shoulder bag. She’d put a Milky Way in there just the other day. It should be there ... unless she’d eaten it. Had she?

When her frantic fingers couldn’t find the wayward candy bar, she opened the maw of the orange leather Rebecca Minkoff knockoff and stared inside the black hole, hoping to see past the countless crumpled grocery receipts to her coveted prize. A jolt of anxiety shot through her chest when she dumped out the contents onto the Formica counter and found the empty wrapper. Aggh, when had she gotten so forgetful?

Suddenly, the muscles in her head tensed as a tsunami of heat smashed in an explosion against her face, setting her head on fire.

Debbi dropped her empty bag onto the floor, gasping. Even the follicles on her scalp felt on fire—like someone had just flame-torched her. Her heart thumped as if an alien was inside her chest trying to burst out.

What the—?

She waved her hand in frantic motion at her face, but it did nothing to cool her down. Spotting a magazine lying near the sink, she leapt up to grab it, to fan her cheeks with it, but she couldn’t get any purchase with her numb feet—she couldn’t even feel the linoleum floor!—and, whamo! fell face-first, barely sparing her nose from breaking by throwing her arm out to arrest her fall.

A knock sounded at the door at the same moment it opened. If Debbi’s head could heat up any hotter, it would have. Could anything be more embarrassing?

She looked up from the floor, the contents of her shoulder bag littered about her, and her eyes traveled up from the doctor’s polished black shoes along his nicely pressed gray slacks to his white exam coat to the two Cross pens in his pocket to the perplexed look on his face.

I-I slipped, she said.

His pale-blue eyes regarded her as he extended an arm to help her up, her patient folder in his other hand.

Debbi mumbled thanks and smoothed out her cable-knit sweater, then scurried back to sit on the bench, distrustful of her traitorous feet.

Mrs. Dickerson, are you all right? Dr. Pierce looked over the tops of his wire-rimmed glasses at her, measured concern on his face. Debbi imagined he was envisioning a lawsuit due to a slippery floor. His shock-white hair had been swept over the top of his head in a losing effort to hide a growing bald spot, Debbi noticed.

Dr. Pierce stood with precise posture, a picture-perfect elderly physician, one her mother adored. Any time she mentioned him, her mother’s eyes twinkled in some sort of clandestine delight that Debbi did not care to inquire about. The man was old-fashioned, but Debbi found a measure of comfort in the familiar smells of the small rooms and the doctor’s kindly bedside manner.

Thankfully, the heat dissipated from her face as quickly as it had struck. She took in a large breath and calmed her racing heart. She wiggled her toes and felt them tap against the inside of her shoes. Back to normal again ... sort of.

I’m— She was about to say she was fine, but she was anything but. Images flashing through her head of her fist meeting Jerry’s cheek reminded her of why she’d come. She winced at the memory.

I ... I think something’s wrong with me. Her voice came out paper thin.

Dr. Pierce gave Debbi one of his trademark smiles. She thought he’d be great in a Hallmark card commercial, with those bright straight teeth, so bright she wondered if they were even real. Dentures? Suddenly his face morphed into Marcus Welby MD. She shook her head hard to fling away the horrifying hallucination.

He clasped his hands, exuding patience, waiting for her to elaborate.

I-I hit Jerry last night. The words came out that way, on their own. Debbi’s face heated again, but not as ferociously as before. She couldn’t believe she just said that. I mean ... I just ... lost control. And I-I hit him.

Dr. Pierce frowned, taking a thoughtful pose, one hand on his chin. Have you been ... experiencing any unusual changes in your health? Any unusual symptoms? He opened the manila file folder, and his brows narrowed as he read. You’re what—forty-seven, if I’m doing the math correctly?

Debbi nodded, the tingling returning to her toes. Just the action of moving her head caused another blast of heat to engulf her head. A chill racked through her body at the same time. How in the world could she be so cold and hot at once?

She jumped when Dr. Pierce laid a steadying hand on her shoulder. She spun to face him, her face on fire.

What is it? What’s wrong with me? What is happening to my head—it’s like ... it’s like someone is setting me on fire.

The doctor chuckled.

Chuckled? He thinks this is funny?

Debbi’s eyes widened in horror, then her horror turned to virulent rage. Rage? She could hardly keep her mouth clamped shut—a barrage of mean, hateful words clamored at the back of her teeth, demanding release so they could catapult into Dr. Pierce’s smile.

Relax, Mrs. Dickerson, relax, he said, patting her in his patronal manner that she now found as abrading as 40-grit sandpaper. It’s just a hot flash. Very common with menopause—

"It’s just what? Menopause? Isn’t that something old women get? And what’s just menopause"? Her hot face? Or everything she’d been feeling?

Dr. Pierce chuckled again, looking at her as if she were three years old and had asked why the sky was blue. She quickly glanced down at her hands to ensure they weren’t forming into those fists that had a mind of their own. Phew, okay—no fists.

Actually, most women start experiencing menopausal symptoms in their thirties—some even younger. It’s very common. He scribbled something in her chart and asked, his eyes on the paper, When was your last period?

Uh ... Debbi never paid much attention to her monthlies. Um, maybe ... three, four months ago—

So you’ve been having erratic cycles. Not regular, each month ...

She nodded, then frowned, trying to think of what she knew about menopause. Like, well, nothing. Okay, she’d heard of hot flashes but thought those were flashes of inspiration or something. And if menopause was so common, how come no one ever talked about it? Was it some secret or shameful thing? She never heard any of her friends or coworkers at the realty office bring it up.

She realized the doctor was still speaking to her, but she hadn’t heard a word.

So ... there really is no reason to suffer from all these symptoms ....

Wait, she’d missed the list. Excuse me, what are the other symptoms I ... might suffer from?

Well. He adopted that thoughtful pose once more. They vary from woman to woman, of course. Irritability and mood swings are common—

Debbi grunted. Oh, we haven’t seen anything like that lately, have we ...?

—as are night sweats, loss of libido, disorientation, memory loss, itchy skin—

Debbi swallowed, these symptoms sounding way too familiar.

—depression, bloating, racing heart, hair loss, weight gain—

He stared off into space as if the list were scrolling like a web page before him. Debbi couldn’t believe her ears. Why ... how could anyone endure all this? She imagined these symptoms like rats waiting for her in the dark corners of her house, scheming to pounce, rubbing their little clawed paws in eager anticipation.

—dizziness, loss of balance, changes in body odor, tender breasts, dry ... uh ...

Debbi stared at him when he stopped speaking suddenly and cleared his throat. She noticed his gaze had dropped down to her cleavage showing a bit out of her sweater. His head briskly righted, and he cleared his throat again. What? Did he just check out my boobs?

So, um, Mrs. Dickerson—have you been having any of these problems?

Debbi sighed, over-overwhelmed. Some. She hated to ask, but did anyway. H-how long do these symptoms last? I mean, do they just go away after a while?

That, too, varies from woman to woman. For some, they’re gone after a few months—

I could hang in there a few months. She knew he was going to prescribe drugs. She hated taking drugs. Every drug had some awful side effects in a list longer than the benefits. The SAD meds caused eye fatigue, headaches, and insomnia. That’s why she rarely took them—only when she was really desperate—

—but the average time it takes to get through menopause is four years—

Wait—did he say four years?

—though, some women report the symptoms never go away, not even decades later. A few of my patients in their seventies are still suffering from hot flashes and—

Seventies? She could have menopause for three frigging decades? God, just kill me now. Wait, Isn’t there some natural way to treat this? You know I don’t like drugs.

The doctor frowned, his eyes drifting down to her cleavage again. Some women take a menopause multiple, and that’s been known to ease symptoms. But, if you truly want to avoid misery, I’d recommend you take the full spectrum of meds. Don’t worry, these progestins have been tested and tried for years, approved by the FDA, and if you have some unpleasant side effects, we can try a different drug or two. How does that sound?

Debbi fought with herself. If all these horrible things she’d started experiencing were going to escalate, she would never get out of bed. She’d never be able to function. She’d already gained more weight than she could stand. Could the drugs be so bad? The doctor seemed so confident they’d help. She could at least give them a try. And maybe ask Becky at scrapbooking about some natural alternatives.

Becky was a fount of hippiedom, bringing kale smoothies to their get-togethers and rambling on and on about the virtues of chewing wheatgrass. She recalled Becky talking about how she kept a little patch of wheatgrass growing in a pot by her front door, and every time she got ready to leave the house, she would graze her little patch, chewing the grass while driving, swearing it jumpstarted her day with loads of energy!

Debbi looked back at Dr. Pierce, who was scribbling on a scrip form. When finished, he handed it to her. Her eyes went wide.

How many drugs are you putting me on? she said, looking at an illegible list that took up the entire blank rectangle, panic clogging her throat.

He gave her another sparkling smile, the light from the overhead fluorescents glinting off his teeth, causing them to sparkle like in those toothpaste commercials.

Just a few, just a few. Some synthetic estrogen complexes, like Premarin. Your body is suffering from hormone loss, and so you need to replenish them. These medications will help you stay youthful and moist.

Debbi’s mouth dropped open. Excuse me, what did you just say?

He continued monologuing, unfazed. "You know, back in the day, doctors, not having the miracles of modern medicine as we do now, gave women hysterectomies, thinking that would cure their symptoms. That’s where we get the word hysteria. It comes from the Greek hustera, which means womb. And husterikos—meaning ‘of the womb’—came about from the belief that such a condition was caused by the womb. Hence the belief that removing the uterus would cure women of their ... well, hysterical behavior."

Debbi’s mouth dropped open. Unbelievable. A woman gets emotional, so a man takes her to the doctor to remove her uterus. All because she has a few erratic moods.

You don’t see women castrating men when they get overly testy, do you? Testy ... as in testicles. Were those words related too?

The thought made her giggle. If women started threatening their husbands with surgery, wielding carving knives, I wonder how many would stop their nagging. She had a sudden picture of backing Jerry up against the wall, a knife at his crotch, fear streaking his eyes. Her giggle turned to laughter, then the laughter turned to a paroxysm of hilarity.

Dr. Pierce frowned. Mrs. Dickerson ...?

Debbi tried to stop laughing but found that the harder she tried, the more out of control she was getting. She was becoming ... hysterical! The realization, in light of Dr. Pierce’s history lesson, made tears leak from her eyes. She pictured him throwing her onto a gurney and whisking her directly into surgery to remove the offending organ—her hysterical uterus.

She wrapped her arms around her stomach and doubled over, trying to soothe the ache from all her chortling. Now that was a funny word—chortle. She said it over and over in her head, her body rocking in laughter, feeling as if somebody was tickling every erroneous zone on her body, thinking of that book she studied in her college Psych class, written back in the seventies by Wayne Dyer about rational emotive therapy—that gobbledygook psychobabble that taught that a person is rarely affected emotionally by outside things but rather by her perceptions, attitudes, or internalized sentences about outside things and events ...

A hand landed softly on her shoulder. Debbi sucked in a deep, long breath and wiped her wet face. The glee fizzled into keen self-consciousness as she glanced up and saw Dr. Pierce’s eyes full of vindication and bordering on smugness. The kind Dr. Welby was acting more like an annoying know-it-all. Is smugness a word? If it isn’t, it should be.

Let’s focus here. Now, I’d like to schedule you for an endometrial biopsy—

A what? Why? The word biopsy made her blood run cold as she wiped the tears of laughter from her face.

Oh, it’s just a small procedure. We take a piece of tissue from the endometrium—it indicates cell changes due to variations in hormone levels.

Where in her body was an endometrium? She didn’t dare ask.

Before Debbi could protest, he continued, dropping his head to write more notes in her chart. And a bone density evaluation. It’s just an X-ray to help determine your calcium levels. When was your last mammogram?

Debbi shrugged. I-I don’t think I’ve ever had one. Truth was, she was scared to get one. She’d heard how agonizingly painful they were, squashing your breasts flat as pancakes between two cold metal plates. No one in her family had breast cancer, so she figured she could skate by that one.

His brows furrowed. You should have been getting one a year since age forty. Who is your OB/GYN?

She shrugged again, prickly ants starting to crawl up her spine. She squirmed on the bench, the room getting hot and stifling again. I had one when my kids were born, but that was a long time ago—

He scribbled on another piece of paper. Here’s a referral to a doctor in our medical group. And here’s the order for the bone density exam—that’ll be done off site. He handed her three pieces of paper. Is Rite Aid still your preferred pharmacy?

She nodded, about to protest that she didn’t want any of those prescriptions.

I’ll call these in for you. He paused and regarded her with a stern expression. The hormones will help you, Mrs. Dickerson. Not just with your menopause symptoms but with your overall health. One in two post-menopausal women get heart disease because of hormone loss. Two out of three die from it. He let that sink in.

She swallowed past a pebble lodged in her throat.

The minor side effects from the medication pale in comparison to the danger and suffering a loss of hormones causes. Hormone Replacement Therapy is ubiquitously accepted the world over—and women are healthier and happier for it.

And, no doubt, so are men. Who don’t have to deal with hysterical wives ...

Debbi let out a long sigh, gripping the papers as if they might truly be the only lifeline to sanity.

Now’s the time to start paying attention to your health, Mrs. Dickerson. You’re not a spring chicken anymore. Yet again, his gaze dropped to her cleavage. She was tempted to ask if he’d lost something down her shirt.

Debbi glared at him. A chicken? Was that why he couldn’t wrest his eyes from her breasts? Was that all women were to most men: breasts and thighs? She shook her head, and, like snapping open a Cyalume light stick, her face and neck exploded in white-hot heat. A surge of nausea clenched her stomach, and a millions needles of pain bit into the skin of her face and scalp.

She grew aware of the doctor’s eyes on her—a look of pity and dare.

I expect to see you back here in three weeks. By then all the test results should be in, and we can see how well these drugs are working to control your symptoms. I’ve given you a prescription for Prozac as well. It’s not contraindicated with the drugs you’re already taking for your Seasonal Affective Disorder.

While her face burned like the flames of hellfire, he opened the door, gave her his Marcus Welby MD smile, then strode down the linoleum floor of the corridor, his polished black shoes clicking ever so rhythmically.

She glanced down at the pieces of paper in her hand, her fingers tingling, then going numb. If today was any indication of what the next four years—or thirty years!—would be like, she knew she should run, not walk, to Rite Aid and get the scrips filled.

The unfairness of it all slammed her with rage. Women had to suffer the discomforts of pregnancy, not men. Women had to go through the agony of childbirth, not men. Women had to endure the cruelties of aging more than men. She huffed, thinking of how men who aged and grayed were considered handsome and distinguished but women were merely old and ugly, quickly discarded by their men for some newer, younger model sans the hysterical symptoms. Yes, women, not men, had to fight the ravages of menopause and take hormones to stay sane. But at what cost?

At forty-seven, she was not willing to throw in the towel and quit the game. Yet, after seeing Dr. Pierce, she had the hopeless feeling that it was a done deal. That she’d already lost before the coin toss, much less the kickoff.

Chapter 3

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Hormones

Wednesday afternoon, January 4

Dickerson! Sergeant Manners yelled from her office.

Jerry sat at his desk not twelve feet away from her, playing Solitaire on his computer. He always kept the screen turned so that the Bellowing Bitch could not see it. He turned his chair and cranked himself out of it like an old man so the sergeant and the other detectives could see he did not jump when she hollered. There were five other investigators in the large office space, and they all looked up to see if Jerry was about to be reamed.

He took a few leisurely steps to get to her office, stuck his head through the open door space, and said, "Yes sir?" A little emphasis on the sir.

She sat at her large modern desk and squinted at her computer screen. As a sign of power, she had a sleek wooden desk and a brand-new computer, compared to the old metal desks and decade-old computers that were all the department could afford for the detectives.

Manners—Bradford’s replacement from Portland—was a tall, rail-thin woman with a masculine attitude, but lately she had been acting like she was losing it. Like Deb at home, he thought. It was just what he needed. Two crazy women to make his life hell.

What do you want? she asked him. It came out all in one word: whaddayawant?

Uh, he said and blinked at her. You called me.

She looked at him as if she had never seen him before and then said, Oh, yes. I need that motorcycle accident report you were supposed to have ready yesterday.

He took another second to wonder about her and said, Sure, I put it right there on top of your desk. He paused for effect. Friday.

She gave him another strange look, then shuffled through the papers until she found it.

Okay, she said, There it is. Right. Try to get these to me on time, will ya?

Uh, he said again. It was becoming his favorite noise. I did.

Don’t argue with me, Dickerson, she snapped. Just do your damn job.

"Yes sir, he said, giving the word an extra nudge. Not enough to be sarcastic but just enough to be noticed if she was listening. It was his favorite thing to call her because he thought it was ironic. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

No, Dickerson, she said. Go bother someone else.

He paused for a second and then thought he would push it a little bit more.

Can I get you a cup of coffee?

She had gone back to reading whatever was on her computer screen. Now she looked at him again. No, Detective, she said with a sigh. Thank you, but please go away. You’re giving me a headache.

He smiled, nodded, and walked away. Better than the pain in the ass she gave him, he thought. Why the powers that be appointed Manners to take over the department instead of a guy from the inside, he hadn’t a clue. She’d been in Tacoma three months and acted like she owned the place. Well, in a sense, she did. But she could be nicer about it.

He ambled over to the side of the office where the coffee table sat and surveyed the room with a casual glance. The other detectives sat at old metal desks and were now pretending to be busy. There were two empty desks that were cluttered with office supplies. On one of the spare desks, a broken computer printer sat like it had given up on life, waiting for someone to take it away to the old printer burial ground.

In the middle of the room stood a large group of bookcases that was used as a divider between them and the other six detectives who made up the Tacoma Homicide Unit. Sergeant Manners liked to keep the unit divided into two groups because she probably thought they were more manageable that way, or some other female management nonsense. The other detectives worked a split shift that didn’t start until six p.m., but everything was actually pretty casual when you were working in the Homicide unit.

If you had a case, you could be working on it all hours of the day and night. Witnesses and suspects couldn’t always be found during the day or had jobs they needed to go to. So the Homicide dicks had to go where the work was when it was there. It was the perfect job for a goof-off like Jerry. He could go to a movie during the day and no one would question him about where he had been, as long as his partner, Mike Harrigan, covered for him.

Jerry grabbed his Go Hawks coffee mug from its place on a shelf above the table and poured coffee into it. His coworkers, sensing that there would be no blood in the water today, relaxed a little bit at their desks.

Now that the all clear had been sounded, the other detectives felt free to join him.

Man, that was a close one, Mike said as he lifted the coffeepot to fill his mug. She’s been on the warpath all day today. Mike was what Jerry considered a typical Irishman. Red hair, pale skin, and drank way

Reviews for The Menopause Murders

[Elizabeth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Debbi Dickerson's mind is a very scary place to be. Her sanity hangs by a thread as she struggles through the physical, emotional, and mental torture that come with her rough passage through menopause.

It took a couple of chapters for me to get into this book, but once I did it was a real page turner. Although I can't say I liked Debbi, she was a compelling character and I was very interested in how things would turn out for her. I'm her age and many of her struggles resonated with me.

Although it was a very well-written book that had me smiling in places, there were some things I didn't enjoy. A couple of instances of gross-out and slapstick comedy were unnecessary and lowered the tone of the book's otherwise witty humour.

Another thing that bothered me went deeper than that. Debbi was a well-rounded character who felt like a real person. But the people she murdered were like cardboard cutouts. I realise that this might be part of the genre--we're not supposed to sympathise with the murder victims in this type of story.

The authors want us to think more deeply about sexism and the struggles women face, but I find I can't do that without also being appalled at some of the other things that happen in this story and which are skimmed over for the sake of a good joke.

Readers who are okay with murder being played for laughs will enjoy this clever and funny book. I could definitely see it being a successful TV series or movie.

Five stars for the excellent writing despite my misgivings about some of the content. I received a complimentary copy of this book, but this didn't influence my opinion.