No, something wasn’t right. Individually, the strange occurrences meant little. Together, they were beginning to paint a disturbing picture: the mess of the files, the recent adding of Kim’s name to the bar and house, and now that she thought about it, that it had been changed around the same time the payments started on that ledger. A woman at home in a skiff in the swamp tips it over and hits her head, right around the time all this other stuff is going on. Smitty seemed way too uncomfortable talking about her death.
Something at the window above her caught her eye. For a second, she thought a face blended with the darkness outside. Her heart hammered and sent blood pulsing in her temples. Then she realized that the shadows and leaves outside only made it look like a face. She got to her feet and faced the curtain-less window, trying to ignore the flutter in her chest. All she could see was her own white face with eyes a little too wide. Shadows and a dash of paranoia.
She released a breath and looked over the mass of papers on the bed. What was someone looking for so hastily in here? Had they found it? She placed the piece of rubber in a baggie and walked out to the living room where the urn sat on the coffee table. “Elva, what were you into?”
Elva’s body had conveniently been cremated, but there had to be a report on her death. Kim gave Oscar a pat on the head. “I’ll be right back. I need to read that report.”
The moon was still bright as she headed to the substation.
The taillights on Kim’s truck faded and then disappeared as she turned right and headed out of town. What had she found in that filing cabinet? It had been gone through thoroughly, but admittedly, left in a mess.
The extra set of keys would come in handy. No matter where Kim had gone off to in a big rush, there was time to check things over and make sure nothing had been missed.
Hopefully Kim wasn’t onto anything. It was hard to kill someone you knew. Killing Rhonda and Elva had been out of necessity. If Kim kept digging, she would have to be taken care of, too.
By the time Kim arrived at the sheriff’s substation, her fingers were locked on the steering wheel. She pried them off and walked into the brightly lit building across the street from City Hall.
“Is Dave working tonight?” she asked when she saw Kinsey behind the desk with his feet perched on the corner.
“I’m the only one here right now. Surely, I can help you, Miss Lyons.” He flashed her the most insincere smile she’d ever seen.
“I need to see the report on my grandmother’s death.”
The smile disappeared as he pulled his feet down. “Now why would you want to see that? Might be disturbing.”
“Police reports are open to public viewing, are they not?”
“Yes, ma’am, they are. Hold there for a minute.”
He made her wait for twenty. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it irritated her, and holding it in made it all the more irritating. When he finally reappeared, he made no apology for the delay. She took the report and walked to the small waiting area. It pinched her chest to see her grandma’s name on that cold, official report titled “Death Certificate.” Elva’s life was laid out in typed text. Under cause of death: accidental drowning and submersion; blunt trauma to head. Elva had been knocked out and then fallen into the water. She’d probably been unconscious when she’d drowned.
The certificate had been prepared by Len Watkins, funeral director and city coroner.
A shadow fell over the paper. “Something I can help you with?” Kinsey said.
She pointed to where it indicated accidental death. “Are you comfortable with this finding?”
“Of course. I made the determination based on the facts.”
“Did you find the object she’d hit her head on?”
“There were lots of logs and cypress knees in the area. She had floated an undetermined distance, and her body had been in the water for two and a half days before Smitty discovered she was missing and went looking for her.”
“Did you even consider that someone may have knocked her unconscious, taken her out in her skiff, and held her underwater?”
He rested his scuffed cowboy boot on the small coffee table. “Who would want to kill your grandma? That is what you’re suggesting, isn’t it? That someone killed her and made it look like an accident?”
“I think it’s a possibility. Did you?”
“We look for suspicious circumstances and order an autopsy whenever a body is found. There had been no threats made against her, no known motive for someone to murder her, and her injuries were consistent with a fall.”
“I may have found some suspicious circumstances.” Kim told him what she’d found, leaving out the mysterious payments since she didn’t know if they were connected. She held up the baggie. “I found this piece of rubber glove on one of the files. Elva wouldn’t be looking through her own files with gloves on.” She realized it wasn’t much. She thought of Tullie’s premonition. “I have a hunch there’s more to her death than an accident.”
“A hunch.” He rubbed his hand down his face. “Based on the evidence you’ve given me, I see no crime. Your grandmother was getting on in years. She shouldn’t have been out there by herself. She probably lost her balance and fell. Nothing sinister about it.” His voice lowered. “If I were you, I’d stop making everything into a crime. Remember the girl who cried wolf?”
She didn’t respond, only walked out of the station. Had someone murdered her grandma? She didn’t want to believe it, but her gut said it was a distinct possibility.
When she got home, Oscar was pacing madly. “What’s wrong?” When he didn’t want to go out, she wondered what else could be bothering him. She grabbed her tear gas and searched all the rooms. She looked out the windows, just to be sure. “I don’t see anything, Oscar. Maybe you missed me.”
Oscar still looked uneasy. “Come on, let’s go to bed.” She took the urn, grabbed her jar of peanut butter and a spoon, and went into the bedroom, closing the curtains tight. He settled on his pile of blankets, though he kept his gaze on the door. “Oscar, stop that. You’re creeping me out.” Her insides were already wound so tight, if she sneezed, they’d probably split apart.
She set the urn on the nightstand. Morbid maybe, but it was like having her grandma there in a way. She sat on the bed facing it while she dug the spoon into the peanut butter. “Elva, what kind of mess have you left me in? I can handle a lot of things, but this, too? If I pursue this, I’m going to end up like I did before.” Her voice went lower. “Or worse. And if I let it go…then three murders have gone unpunished in this town. Could I live with myself?” She rubbed her temples, but the shooting stress pains continued. “Well, I’m older now. Smarter. Maybe I can put this together without alerting anyone. Course, I just alerted the entire town by telling Kinsey what I know, but he didn’t believe me. Or pretended not to believe me. Who knows, he could be in on it, too.”
She stared at the urn. “You could help me out here. If you wanted to show up as a ghost, I’d be okay with that.” She thought of the face she’d imagined in the window. “I need your help. It’s the least you can do after dumping me with this. You had something somebody wanted, maybe wanted badly enough to kill you for. Why not take it when you weren’t here? Unless you caught them in the act. I’ll probably never know unless you appear in an ethereal vision and tell me. The evidence is all gone.”
She slid beneath the sheets, her can of tear gas at her side. She knew she’d keep looking, but she was going to need some real evidence to get this to the attention of law enforcement that cared. As Kinsey said, no one was going to listen to her cry wolf again. Whoever killed Elva, how far would they go to keep the truth concealed?
CHAPTER 12
After tossing and turning all night, Kim woke to the nudge she was getting used to. She cracked an eye to find a smooth, brown object bobbing in front of her. She jerked out of bed with a muffled scream. Before fright could take hold, she realized what it was: her jar of peanut butter f
irmly attached to Oscar’s snout. He wasn’t too happy about it by the way he kept jerking his head up and down.
“Oscar!” She plucked the jar off his snout, and he proceeded to rub the peanut butter off his snout and onto the carpet. She could only shake her head.
After getting ready, she drove straight to the bar, holding her breath as she made the turn onto the road. Nothing looked out of place. She let out a breath of relief and drove to the hardware store.
Evan smiled at her. “Your glass orta be in sometime this morning.”
“Great. I also need two sets of locks re-keyed. Who does that around here?”
“Doyle Cannon. Got his number here somewhere.”
While he looked, Kim ran the name through her memory banks. No relation to the Waddells. “Is Doyle related to the Macgregors at all?” She wanted to make sure no enemy could get a key.
Evan laughed. “No, there’s bad blood ’tween ’em. Doyle and his brother Don sold Winn a shotgun that didn’t work, see, and wouldn’t take it back. That was, oh, about eight years ago.”
“Great, thanks.” She took the number he’d jotted down. “Uh, you wrote the number on a check.”
“I know. It’s bad anyway.”
“Okay then.” She folded the check and tucked it in her pocket. “Thanks for your help. Can you deliver those windows when they come in? I’d like to have them by two if I could so I can install them between lunch and dinner.”
“During the storm time?”
She’d forgotten about scheduling life around summer storms. “I suppose so.”
“You gonna install them yourself?”
“Can’t afford to hire anyone.” The bar’s reserves were beginning to dwindle. “It’s easy, right?”
He blew out a breath. “Easier than building a building, maybe. If you got a few minutes, I’ll have Ed give you some pointers.”
Kim smiled. “Thanks, I’d appreciate that.”
Doyle came out midmorning and re-keyed the bar and her house. Kim finished the painting just as Smitty arrived. She waved him to the back. “Here’s a new key to the bar. I need to talk to you, and promise me you won’t stomp off in a huff this time.”
He stiffened. “Can’t make a man promise something when he doesn’t know what it is.”
She rolled her eyes but reigned in her impatience. “Did you ever think that Elva’s death was suspicious? Be honest with me.”
For a moment he didn’t say anything. “Thought it was wrong,” he said finally.
“Smitty, you know what I’m talking about. She was into something, wasn’t she? That’s what she was making those payments for.” It occurred to her that Smitty had only acted reticent when she’d pressed about those payments.
“I don’t know what they were for. I didn’t get involved in her personal affairs. I just helped her out here and…well, and at other times.”
He started to walk around the corner, but she snagged his arm. “I need some answers. I think Elva was murdered, and I think you do, too.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know what she was up to.” He released a long breath when Kim kept her scrutinizing gaze on him. “But I thought she might be into something, yes. She wouldn’t tell me, got secretive. I asked Zell about it—”
“Zell?”
He ran his fingers down his scraggly mustache. “Not about what she was up to, but what to do about it. Him being the Sage and all. He said I should let her do what she needed to do; that women need to go off and do their thing sometimes.”
She suppressed her groan about Zell giving advice on love. “You didn’t think Elva was cheating on you, did you?”
“We didn’t have that kind of thing going. We did the Yankee Doodle Dandy once in a while, is all. Zell, he thought I was asking about cheating, and I let him. Figured it applied all the same. Wasn’t none of my business anyway.”
“But you were worried about her.”
“A bit. Never thought I’d be worried about Elva.”
Kim started to lean against the building but thought better of it because of the paint. “Did you love her?”
“Love.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Zell says the most common kind of love is the friendship kind mixed with somethin’ extra. That’s what Elva and I had. It’s all she wanted.”
Zell’s sage advice again. Oh, brother. Then she realized they were getting sidetracked. “Why were you worried about her?”
“I could tell she had something on her mind. Something serious. She looked around the parking lot when we left for the night and kept a closer eye on Oscar. Like she thought something might happen. She wouldn’t tell me what.”
Was he telling the truth? How much did he know about Elva’s comings and goings? “I’m trying to figure out what she was up to.”
“Seems you got enough going on without getting yourself into trouble around here.”
“You’d think,” she answered as he walked around to the front when a car pulled up. Trouble seemed to be her middle name.
Smitty didn’t talk much to her during lunchtime, other than to say yes, he’d help her set the windows as best he could. Evan from the hardware store delivered the panes of glass right before the last customers left.
Smitty regarded the glass leaning against the front of the building. “You know how to install these things? Ain’t never had to install a winder before.”
“I got instructions from Ed.”
He raised a white eyebrow. “Plumb Crazy Ed? Oh, boy, this is gonna be fun.”
Kim assembled the tools Ed said she’d need along with the diagrams he’d drawn. “He didn’t seem crazy to me.”
“The craziest people never do. You’d best remember that, young’un.”
The seriousness in his voice made her look at him, but he was sizing up the windows. She remembered Zell warning her about the least vocal people.
Smitty said, “We orta do one at a time so we don’t get stuck with a bunch’a open winders when the storm blows in.”
The eastern sky was hinting at a storm with the clouds a darker shade of blue. “Good idea,” she said even though she’d already decided on that route.
She climbed up on the stepladder and pried off the plywood. Smitty took hold of one end and she the other as they set it on the floor.
“Oscar, are we doing it right?” The pig was watching her every move.
Smitty turned around. “I think that pig loves you. Hasn’t taken his eyes off you.”
“Smitty, I’m beginning to think you see love everywhere, you old cynic.”
He gave her a wink as he donned gloves. “I know you was flirtin’ with Zell.”
“All right,” she said, pointedly ignoring him and studying the diagram. “First we need to push those two big tables together to use as a worktable and then cover them with newspapers.” Once they’d accomplished that, she said, “Now we need to remove the window—er, winder, and lay it on the table.”
She was busy chiseling away the old glazing when she heard a vehicle pull into the parking lot. She wasn’t ready to deal with anybody. Even though the air was on, the humid heat came in through the opening and drenched her in sweat. She’d wrapped a light blue handkerchief around her forehead and had stripped down to a tank top, jean shorts, and hiking-style boots. She walked to the opening and groaned.
Zell and Tullie were getting out of his truck. He looked as good and fresh as he had the day before in a pair of white pants and reddish-orange sunset shirt, his yellow iPod at his hip. Tullie skipped along in front of him as they walked to the bar while Zell talked on a cell phone. His eyes were on her, framed in the opening as she was. She wanted to tell him to halt and go back to wherever he came from. She didn’t need to feel shabby around him and she sure didn’t need any distraction.
Somehow the words didn’t come out of her mouth, and before long, the door opened and the two walked in. Tullie ran over to Smitty and gave him a hug and then she gave Oscar a hug, too. Zell was saying to whoever was on t
he phone, “Looks like you got some gopher tortoises and red-cockaded woodpeckers. I’ll have my report ready next week, and we’ll work up a strategy. Let the state have their say, and we’ll have ours. I’ll be the bad guy. Hell, to them, I always am. By the time I’m done, we’ll prove that everybody can live peaceably, and you’ll have the land you need … okay, sounds good. Bye.”
He disconnected and looked at Kim. She wanted to say, Go away. Yet, as bad as she looked, there was some warped part of her that was glad to see him.
“We’re not open,” she said instead, hearing vanity put an edge to her words.
He took in the window on the table. “I see that. Southern Comfort’s never officially open in the ’tween time. I brought Tullie over to play with Smitty.” When Kim raised her eyebrow questioningly, she followed Zell’s gaze to where Tullie was carrying a backgammon game from the office to the tall table by the side window. “She usually comes over after school and hangs out for a bit. Shar decided she could start coming again.” He walked over and ran his finger along the place where Kim had removed the glazing.
“I can’t spare Smitty right now. We’re replacing the glass.”
Tullie had walked over and was looking at Kim with those beautiful, haunting eyes of hers. “Hi, Kim.”
Kim braced her hands on her thighs to lower herself to Tullie’s level. “Hi, Tullie.”
“I like your hair that way. Don’t ever cut it, okay?”
Kim raised her eyebrows. “Well, thank you. I’ll keep that in mind. Uh, Smitty can’t—” She stopped when Zell started working on the remaining glazing like he knew what he was doing.
He said to Tullie, “You two go on.” The cut above his eyebrow and on his lower lip were starting to heal. It gave him a rough, dangerous look and for some strange reason that appealed to her. She ran her hand across her stomach and felt the belly ring he’d touched.
I'll Be Watching You Page 16