The Gossip

by Nancy Bush

  “Thank you, but . . .”

  “Join me,” Tommy invited. “I remember Rayne. She was too young for the place, and I don’t mean you can’t be young and work there, but you gotta be respectful. You gotta care. She was friendly to me, but maybe not so much to the women. Talk to them. They’ll give you a different perspective.”

  “I’ll come and talk to them, but I don’t need dinner. I’ll take my own car.”

  It was something of a revelation to Taft that Tommy still saw Maureen. He’d thought she was just one of many of Tommy’s companions, but she appeared to hold a special place in his heart. Taft followed Tommy to Ridge Pointe and walked in with Tommy toward a grouping of elderly women around a rectangular table.

  The ladies immediately urged him to sit down and order dinner, but Taft demurred. Tommy, however, sat down across from Maureen and ordered the same thing she did: a chicken sandwich. Taft held off their insistence on dinner. He wasn’t sure who paid and how and didn’t want to burden anyone. He managed to get by with a light beer, but was peppered with questions by all the women. He admitted he was asking into Rayne Sealy’s death and wondered what they could tell him about her. To a one they looked at each other and dolefully shook their heads. They knew of Rayne, but they were relatively new residents and had never met her. Their friend Jewell could tell him all about her, but Jewell was with family.

  “You could ask Emma,” one of them said somewhat reluctantly. Collectively they looked over at a young woman who was seated alone at a table. She looked to be in her thirties and wore her long, light brown hair in a single braid. Her eyes were blue and she possessed a frank gaze that nevertheless seemed slightly off-center.

  “Emma’s not all there,” one of the women whispered, for which Tommy chided her. She looked slightly abashed and glanced toward Maureen, who didn’t seem to be following the conversation closely.

  Taft finished his beer, and since the women were clearly enamored of Tommy, he scooted back his chair and walked to Emma’s table. Emma had just finished eating and was just getting up. She watched him out of the side of her eye as he approached and she paused, perched on the edge of her chair.

  “Hi, Emma, I’m a friend of Tommy’s. My name’s Jesse. I was talking to the other ladies about Rayne Sealy and they said that you knew her.”

  “She took a selfie and she died,” Emma said in flat voice.

  He could see he was going to need to be specific in his questions. “You knew her when she worked here?” Taft tried.

  “”Sort of. I was mostly with Jamie, Harley, and Cooper. Jewell knew her, but Jewell’s not here. She left early for Easter.”

  “Okay. So Jewell talked to you about Rayne?”

  “Yes.”

  Taft gestured to the empty chair opposite her. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “It’s a free world.”

  Taft eased into the chair and looked at his interviewee. He didn’t know what, if anything, had happened to her. Maybe it was autism. Something on the spectrum. Maybe something else entirely. But he thought she was definitely “all there.” She just didn’t have a ton of accepted social graces.

  “I’m trying to determine if Rayne’s death was truly an accident.” He almost added, “for a friend,” but decided not to muddy the waters. “And that means doing some background on her. Find out what she was like. I’d like to talk to Jewell. Maybe next week, when she’s back?”

  Emma cocked her head, as if in deep thought. “I can tell you what Jewell said about her.”

  “Great. I’d like to hear it.”

  “Jewell said she was a hot pants but Jewell gossips. Mrs. Throckmorton saw Rayne kissing the guy with long hair on the front porch. Jewell said Rayne was with Mrs. Throckmorton’s grandson, but he doesn’t have long hair. Old Darla says that he’s her grandson but Mrs. Throckmorton thinks he’s hers. Old Darla gets things wrong, but so does Mrs. Throckmorton.”

  Taft was having trouble following. “Do you know the name of the guy with the long hair?”

  She frowned. “I don’t think he was Thad.”

  “Who’s Thad?”

  “Mrs. Throckmorton’s grandson.”

  “Was Thad a friend of Rayne’s?”

  She looked at the remains of her half-eaten plate of pasta, her frown deepening. “It’s very confusing.”

  “Sounds like it. How long have you been here?”

  “Since we got my mom’s money. Jamie had to fight for it. That’s how those legal things go.”

  Taft nodded. “I’m trying to determine how long ago Rayne was here.”

  “Ask Bob. He thought she was too friendly for here and she quit.”

  “Bob is . . . ?”

  “Supercilious. That’s what Harley says. She has a big vocabulary. It means snotty.”

  Taft fought back a laugh. “Bob is one of the residents here?”

  “Bob Atkinson is the administrator. He wants to get rid of the cat, too. He and Jewell are two peas in a pod.”

  “Who’s Harley?”

  “My niece. Jamie’s my sister and Cooper’s her boyfriend. He has a stepdaughter named Marissa. We’re a blended family.”

  Taft realized belatedly that Cooper might be Detective Cooper Haynes, who had a stepdaughter. “Detective Cooper Haynes?” he asked.

  Emma’s eyebrows shot up. “You know him.”

  “I know of him,” said Taft, repeating her words.

  “You don’t like him?”

  “No. I don’t have any problem with him.” He could practically see the wheels turning in her mind.

  “You think he should be finding out what happened to Rayne.”

  “That’s not it. I’m—”

  “You think something bad happened to Rayne.”

  Taft held up his hands, unable to stop her.

  “And you think Cooper should do something. So do I. I’ll tell him,” she said determinedly.

  “Her death was very likely an accident,” Taft assured her. “I’m just following up.”

  But Emma was no longer listening to him. He’d given her something to think about and she was gone from the conversation.

  “I have to leave,” she said, and she moved from the table and headed out the door. A black-and-white cat strolled a few steps after her and Taft assumed this was the cat Bob and Jewell wanted to get rid of.

  As if it had heard him, the cat whipped its head around and gave him a cool stare.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was just getting dark as Cooper drove Verbena to sprawling Staffordshire Estates where the body had been found. The development was into its Phase III and homes were in varying stages of production. They passed the illuminated, smiling billboard of Andrew Best, owner of Best Homes, as they entered. Best had erected more homes in Staffordshire Estates than any other builder. Laidlaw Construction was another major contender, but their advertising, a smaller black-and-white sign with the company logo, was far less overt.

  There were several trucks, headlights piercing the graying evening, parked along a side road. Cooper nudged in behind them and he and Verbena stepped into the red and blue swirl of the light bar from one of River Glen PD’s patrol cars.

  Cooper was a little relieved to see the cop at the scene wasn’t Ricky Richards but one with years of service under his belt, Bill Tillis. Bill had called in the discovery of the body, and he was with his partner, Owen Lomax, who was younger than Bill but not by much. The two men were standing outside a construction site where the house’s framing rose to a second story, which was currently just a flat roof with a few studs pointing to the sky like accusing fingers.

  “What have we got?” Verbena asked. She’d tucked her riot of dark curls into a cap. The early April night was growing cold.

  “Looks like he fell off,” Lomax said in a tone that suggested he didn’t believe it. His flashlight was trained on a jean-clad body sprawled alongside the building amidst the dirt, rubble, and puddles left over from an earlier spate of rain, the victim’s arms and legs spla
yed in abandonment.

  “His ID reads Granger Nye,” Tillis said. “Best Homes foreman. Somebody called in from one of the houses.” He pointed to a finished home with a Mercedes SUV in its drive. “Heard something but didn’t want to get out and look. About the same time the vic’s girlfriend called dispatch and said she couldn’t raise him on his cell. Said she tried to call Best, but he didn’t answer. We came and found him.”

  Cooper switched on his own flashlight. “He fell from the second story?”

  They all looked upward. “Looks like it,” Tillis said.

  “Think he was pushed?” asked Verbena.

  “Lady with the Mercedes said she heard yelling,” Tillis answered, leaving them to their own thoughts on that score.

  Lomax played his flashlight beam over the wall and then down to the concrete on the first floor, which was remarkably clean and swept. Verbena shone her light on the victim’s face. Nye’s eyes were half open and a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth ran black against his skin. “He’s the foreman?” she repeated.

  “That’s what the girlfriend said,” Tillis responded.

  “What time did the neighbor hear the shouting?” Cooper asked.

  “About an hour ago?” Tillis looked at Lomax.

  “About that,” Lomax agreed. “The techs are on their way.”

  “We need to reach Andrew Best,” said Cooper. “What’s the girlfriend’s name?”

  “We’ll get it from dispatch,” Lomax responded.

  Cooper and Verbena waited around until the crime scene techs and coroner’s van arrived. They moved over to the house with the Mercedes and knocked on the door. The woman who answered didn’t want to open her door past the chain. She said she’d said all she was going to say. Verbena asked if she could discern how many voices were yelling and if they were male or female, and she said she didn’t know. In fact, she wasn’t sure the yelling had even come from that direction and well, if there had really been any yelling at all.

  “Doesn’t want to be involved,” Verbena said as they left, stating the obvious.

  “We can come back at her later.”

  “Explain a few things to her,” she agreed.

  They tried calling Best but again there was no answer. After a short consultation, Lomax and Tillis took on the task of alerting Nye’s girlfriend and any family members to the man’s death, and Cooper and Verbena headed to Andrew Best’s personal residence. More correctly, Best’s River Glen personal residence. He owned a number across the greater Portland area and his company had branched out through other parts of Oregon and Washington as well.

  Best’s home was fairly unprepossessing, a meandering ranch shrouded by overgrown foliage. For all his cheery pictures on the billboards touting his business he was a fairly private man. Cooper knew next to nothing about him other than he built a lot of pricey houses, though he apparently didn’t want to flout his wealth on his own home.

  Cooper and Verbena walked between high hedges and through a wrought-iron gate on their way to the front door. Cooper pressed the doorbell, momentarily thinking of the Stillwell house, where he was supposed to be having dinner tonight. That home, although larger and more stately since it had been pulled back from the brink of ruin by the Far-lands, was also surrounded by thick hedges and a wrought-iron gate, although access was blocked at the end of the drive.

  There was a security intercom beside the door and Cooper punched the talk button. It took a full minute before a female voice finally answered in a thick Hispanic accent, “Hello?”

  Cooper identified himself and Detective Elena Verbena and said they wanted to speak to Mr. Best.

  “He is not here.”

  “Is there a way we can get in touch?” Cooper tried.

  “Nooo . . .” the woman answered uncertainly.

  Verbena put her hand on Cooper’s shoulder and gave him a small push. He ceded to her and she leaned into the speaker and spoke in rapid Spanish that Cooper, though he knew a few words, couldn’t follow. The result was that the woman on the other end said, “Okay,” and clicked off.

  “What did you say?” Cooper asked his partner.

  “I just made it clear her boss would want to know that there was a dead body at one of his home sites.”

  “You didn’t threaten her.”

  “Cooper . . .” She gazed at him aghast.

  He inwardly snorted, though it was true Verbena saved most of her vitriol for men. Someday he was going to learn what lay in her past that fueled her male-specific misanthropy.

  “She says Best isn’t here, and that may be, but I want to see her face-to-face.”

  The woman who eventually opened the door proved to be a middle-aged, worried housekeeper of sorts who spoke in English for Cooper’s benefit, but carried on most of her conversation in Spanish with Verbena. She had a lot to say while wringing her hands and while he waited to learn what that was, Cooper’s attention wandered. He moved away from the two women, looking around the house, which clearly had been renovated to the cool, mid-century modern style that it had likely been at one time. Best Homes was putting up expensive houses but they were all two-story mini-mansions to maximize square footage. This house was a nice surprise of keeping with its original architecture. Cooper wouldn’t have expected that of Best, based on his advertising. More to the man than he thought.

  “Meester . . . ?”

  Cooper had walked into the living room and was gazing across an expansive backyard with a western view that was currently lit by mushroom-shaped path lighting. It was full dark by now, but he could imagine the beauty of a setting sun blazing in coral and pink across the horizon. He turned around at the woman’s voice.

  “It’s Detective Haynes,” Verbena told her.

  The woman clearly was anxious about him moving into the living room, so Cooper returned to the walnut planks of the entry where she and Verbena were standing.

  Verbena said, “This is Norma Peña, she’s the housekeeper for the Best family. She says they’re all on vacation. Wife and kids are in California and Mr. Best is unavailable. She knows why we need to get hold of him, but she’s very reluctant.”

  Cooper regarded her. Lines of distress marked her forehead and her eyes were wide. She was scared to disturb the boss. “He will want to know this,” Cooper said to her. They’d agreed not to relate that the dead person was Mr. Nye until they talked to Best himself. “Call him,” Cooper urged gently, holding the woman’s frightened gaze. “I can get the number if I have to, but it would be better if you call him.”

  “Madre de Dios . . .”

  She shook her head, but she pulled out her own cell phone and plugged in the number. When the call went to voice mail, she said in a quavering voice, “Meester Best, thee detectives es here. Police. Someone es dead at your beeldings . . .”

  Cooper held his hand out for the phone with a question on his face and she eagerly passed it to him. He said, “Hello, Mr. Best. This is Detective Haynes with the River Glen Police Department. Please call back at this number.” He left his cell number, clicked off, and handed Norma back her phone. She made the sign of the cross over her chest before she took it.

  In the SUV again, Verbena asked, “How long before he listens to that message?”

  “Depends on what he’s doing.”

  “You didn’t believe the vacation line?”

  He shrugged.

  “You could have demanded the number from her,” she pointed out.

  “We can get it other ways. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

  Verbena snorted. “If she’s in trouble for helping the police over the death of his foreman, he’s an asshole.”

  “There you go again. Making assumptions.”

  “You think I’m wrong?” she challenged.

  “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “You wouldn’t?” Now she half turned in the seat.

  “I prefer to live.”

  She threw herself back down and muttered something in Spanish.


  “I don’t know what you said, but it sounded like swearing.”

  “It was. Serious, serious swearing.” The edges of her mouth turned faintly upward. “You think I’m a man hater, but I’m not.”

  She was right on the first part. He wasn’t sure about the second.

  “I just want fairness,” she said. “And you have to fight for it, when you’re a woman.”

  “What about Bennihof?” he asked. The question just popped out, almost surprising him.

  She jerked a little but she didn’t pretend to misunderstand what Cooper meant. “He’s never tried anything with me.”

  “But he has with others? Who? Mackenzie Laughlin.”

  She frowned. “I was thinking of Katy Keegan. Why? Do you think he messed with Laughlin?”

  “Not sure. What kind of messing are we talking about?” Cooper was running a little blind. He wasn’t in the habit of addressing rumors around the station. Half the time they weren’t true and only created more drama.

  Elena muttered something beneath her breath, which he thought sounded like “Grab ass.” It wasn’t like her to keep things to herself and he said as much, but she made a face and said, “I’m not a fan of Bennihof’s,” and the subject was tabled.

  Back at the department, Verbena offered to write up the report. Cooper said he would help her, but she waved him off. “I’ll take care of it this time. Let me know when Best calls.”

  Cooper had put his phone on silent and now turned it back on to check the time. He saw there was a message from Emma.

  “Rayne Sealy’s death is suspicious. You should do something,” Emma’s monotone voice told him and then she hung up.

  Emma had been focused on Rayne’s death ever since Cooper had had to leave the Whelan house the night Rayne’s body was discovered. He didn’t know what had precipitated this particular message, but Emma wasn’t letting it go.

  He put in a call to Jamie, whom he’d pressed to go on to the dinner at their friends’ house without him. She had, though she’d made it clear she wanted him to join her at Camryn and Nate’s no matter how late it became. Now she let him know they’d all finished dinner but were still drinking wine and talking, and she urged him to come. Sounded good to him so he said, “On my way,” as he slid into his Explorer and headed in her direction. He was just cresting Stillwell Hill when the call came in from Best.