by Ada Bell
I studied the side of his shuttered face, marveling at how I didn’t realize he was still in so much pain. Clearly, Katrina’s death hurt him very badly. But until I got him to talk about it, either to me or someone else, there wasn’t much I could do.
If only we had something of hers lying around, I could try to trigger a memory. But I didn’t have any idea where to start. To date, none of the things in this house had spoken to me, and Katrina owned or used almost everything. Kevin got rid of a lot of her stuff when she died, but he kept the furniture, the dishes. Stuff you don’t want to replace while in mourning. All of her clothes were donated before the move—but also, that was over a year ago. I harbored no illusions of tracking the clothes down. He must have kept something somewhere. I didn’t have a lot of reason to use the basement. It contained the old car seat, like he said. Kyle’s old crib, clothes he’d outgrown, the high chair he’d outgrown. But suddenly I wondered if I’d find anything of Katrina’s behind all the baby stuff.
The one thing I knew: until Kevin dealt with losing his wife, he wouldn’t truly be able to move on. If he wouldn’t talk about what happened, I needed to figure it out on my own so he could learn to heal. It was the only way he could ever be happy.
There had to be something here that belonged to Katrina. My eyes moved around the room, lingering on every object. Furniture, tables, dishes, a clean mantel…and on the sideboard besides the stairs was a huge wooden base with a gold-painted cup on top. It looked a little too nice to be one of Kyle’s art projects, but not by much. Large red characters spelled out “#3” on one side. And it hadn’t been there when I left the house this morning, because I absolutely would have remembered seeing it.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“My bowling trophy,” he said proudly. “Our team came in fourth, but I took third place overall. Scored a personal best.”
“Oooh, fancy! My brother, the bowling star.”
“‘Star’ is a stretch, but I do enjoy it.” He chuckled. “What about you? How are you doing with all of this? Working for an accused murderer can’t be easy.”
I sighed. “This is all so surreal. A week ago, I was unemployed, sitting here, watching Netflix original movies and trying out Kyle’s caramel-chocolate popcorn balls. Now I’m helping run an antique store while trying to solve the crime my boss was accused of committing.” Oh, and I have psychic powers, but it’s cool. I don’t know how to use them yet.
Immediately, I wished I could pull my words back. He latched onto that last sentence at the same moment I realized my mistake. “What do you mean, ‘trying to solve’? Aly, you know they have professionals to do this type of thing, right? Trained individuals with self-defense skills and weapons and backup?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Objection. Non-responsive.”
That was the trouble with living with a lawyer. They knew when you were lying, and they used jargon to point it out. Feeding him the same line I’d given everyone else wouldn’t get me anywhere: my brother knew darn well what my major was and that true crime shows freaked me out.
“I just want to help,” I said weakly.
“Help. How?”
I hesitated as long as I could. As a lawyer, Kevin would hate my plan to break into Earl’s house. Although, in my defense, it had completely failed. As my brother, he would hate the idea of me looking into Earl’s murder by myself, what with my zero knowledge about anything related to the law or crime or catching murderers. Unfortunately, as both a lawyer and my brother, he also knew when I was hiding something.
The look on my face must’ve spoken volumes because he raked his fingers through his hair. “Geez, Aly. Is there anything else endangering your life I should know about?”
“No…” My newfound psychic abilities probably wouldn’t put my life in danger, and he definitely didn’t need to know about them. Avoiding the question, I focused on his trophy. It was bigger than I would’ve expected. So big, to be honest, I didn’t know where we’d put the thing. It was ugly, too. It might look great in the back of Kyle’s closet, underneath the spare bedding. But was it heavy?
I hefted it up, weighing it with my arms. Probably about four pounds. Lighter than Thelma’s stolen Emmy. What a waste of wood and metal. Then I swung it in a circle.
“What are you doing?”
“Earl was hit from behind with something heavy. The newspaper article doesn’t mention what the murder weapon was, and there’s no coroner’s report yet. This is big and heavy.” An impact hard enough to kill someone would likely splinter the wood, but it could work. And Wendy would have a matching trophy. Sheriff Andrews swore he’d confirmed her alibi, and Thelma said they would’ve been together.
Would the sheriff lie to protect Wendy? Would Thelma?
“Put that down. This isn’t a TV show, you’re not Bones, and there’s an actual killer on the loose.”
I sighed. “Look, I just want Earl’s family to know the truth. If someone could give you answers about what happened right before Katrina died, wouldn’t you want them to try?”
He froze, and I worried that I’d pushed too far. Sure, we were much closer than we’d been a year ago, but this was his wife. Finally, he spoke in a low, quiet voice. “Okay, fine. I will help you reason through this. But I never want to hear you mention Katrina’s death again. She’s gone, and rehashing the details won’t bring her back.”
Since getting Olive out of jail was currently the most pressing matter, I didn’t argue. But I also crossed my fingers behind my back. “Deal. Let’s look at this trophy again. What do you think?”
“I think you’re right that if a person were hit with one of these just right, they might die from the injury.”
“How many were there? Does Benji believe in participation trophies for everyone?”
He snorted. “That’s an emphatic no. There were three. Me, Earl, and Wendy. But they weren’t here on Wednesday Benji was unpacking the box when I arrived for tonight’s practice. Said the shipment had just come in.”
“Oh, right. Never mind.” I shook my head.
“You knew that?”
“I asked about them yesterday when I went to talk to question…I mean…talk to Wendy.”
His eyes glittered. “Aly. This is a job for the police.”
“But police aren’t doing anything! They locked Olive up and declared the case closed. They don’t even have the real murder weapon.” I relayed what Olive had told me about the pan, and he nodded along.
“That’s good. Very good. Olive’s lawyer will point out the holes in the case against her. That’s his job, as you know. Police have their own job, which is to follow-up leads and investigate the evidence.”
“Will they actually look for the real murder weapon?”
“Just because they haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean they didn’t try. The first lead was the cast iron skillet. If that doesn’t pan out—no pun intended—they’ll keep looking. I’m sure you know that most people don’t carry murder weapons around on them. It probably got destroyed or thrown away. This can take a while.”
“Hold on.” Obviously I knew that—I’d had the same thought at Thelma’s house. But Kevin’s words made something itch in the back of my mind. “Wait. Say that again.”
“Which part? Stay out of this?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I said that most murderers don’t leave the weapon lying around where anyone can find it. They get rid of it.”
The itch was getting stronger. “Like…throwing it out with the trash?”
“That’s one option. There are dozens. What are you getting at?”
The longer I thought about it, the more the missing pieces fell into place. All of a sudden, I knew who killed Earl.
Chapter 19
A broken trophy. Jealousy.
“Aly?” My brother’s voice cut into my thoughts. “What’s going on? You’re just star
ing at my trophy.”
“The murder weapon. I finally figured it out.”
He made an impatient noise. “I assure you, I didn’t use my trophy to kill Earl.”
“I know that!” I resisted the urge to stomp my foot and insist he take this conversation seriously. “If I thought it was you, would I really just say so? Listen. When I was at the bowling alley yesterday, I knocked a trash can over on the way out.”
“Our parents should have named you Grace.”
“They should’ve named you Kelvin. Oh, wait,” I snapped, before realizing that this bickering was taking us in the wrong direction. I took a deep breath. “The trash can fell over. Someone made of wood and metal fell out. Something that looked an awful lot like this trophy. But it was broken into pieces, and that was before Benji said the trophies arrived, so I didn’t look that closely.”
Kevin leaned back against his chair and tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Are you sure it looked like this trophy when you were at the bowling alley?”
“Yeah. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I mean, I don’t usually examine trash, and it was all messed up. I thought it was old, because Benji said this year’s hadn’t come in yet. But it does look the same. What did last year’s trophies look like?”
“There weren’t any trophies last year. Tournament canceled due to COVID-19.”
“Huh. Maybe an extra?”
“There weren’t any extra. Benji only ordered three,” he reminded me. “Mine, Wendy’s, and Earl’s.”
“Did Wendy pick up her second-place trophy this evening?”
“Yeah. After the memorial.”
“Did you see Earl’s trophy?”
Kevin shook his head. “I assumed Benji would give it to Thelma at some point, since they were dating. Or Earl’s brother.”
Rusty’s father. Who probably had zero interest in a giant wooden sculpture with a painted metal cup nailed to the top.
“What if Benji didn’t give Earl’s trophy to anyone? What if that’s the same one I spotted in the trash when I was at the bowling alley? Do you think it’s possible that Benji went to deliver it to Earl’s house, they argued for some reason, and Benji hit him? Wendy said they were supposed to be delivered on Monday.”
“That would explain how it got broken,” he said. “But what would they be arguing about? Earl’s been one of We All Fall Down’s best customers for years.”
For a long moment, I considered everything I knew about Benji. Okay, a short moment. The list wasn’t that long. I remembered the way he looked at Thelma, the way he told me to leave the coffee shop because I was upsetting her. Olive telling me that he’d had a crush on Thelma for years. And the handkerchief. T for Turner, not T for Thelma.
Kevin listened thoughtfully while I told him my reasoning. “But why throw the trophy away at his own business?”
“Because it looks like random bowling alley trash,” I said. “If anyone asked later, he could say he’d thrown it away because Earl was dead. He couldn’t leave it at Earl’s house, because that would prove he’d been there. Besides, he made an anonymous tip to send police searching in the wrong place. Or someone did. He hid the trophy in plain sight, which is exactly what someone wanted Sheriff Matthews to think Olive did.”
“Hmmm.” Kevin mulled that over for a moment. “Then all Benji would have to do is sneak out, pretend he’d never been there, and act like the trophy shipment arrived after the murder. Voilà, nothing to tie him to the murder weapon.”
“Exactly.”
Nothing except the broken pieces of wood in his trash can. Which would be picked up by the county and carted away to the dump in about twelve hours along with all the other trash in Shady Grove.
“I can tell Sheriff Matthews our suspicions,” Kevin said. “But I don’t know how we would ever get him to listen.”
“Sheriff Matthews thinks he’s already caught the killer,” I said. “He’s not interested in investigating anyone else. I need hard evidence that shows who really killed Earl, or he’s not going to believe me.”
As I spoke, I knew what I needed to do. I had to get my hands on that bowling trophy, fast. “Kevin, can I borrow your car?”
“Why?”
“Um…”
After a moment’s hesitation, I told the truth (mostly). Unsurprisingly, my brother adamantly refused to let me take his car to head off to the business of a murder suspect and dig through his trash looking for the thing he may or may not have used to kill somene. Either the sibling love was strong with us, or he didn’t want to have to find another live-in baby-sitter.
Finally, he insisted on going with me. I pointed out that we couldn’t exactly leave a three-year-old at home alone.
“He’s sleeping,” Kevin said.
“Is that what you’ll tell the judge, counselor?”
His face turned red. “I meant, we can have Mrs. Patel come over and watch the monitor.”
“Right. Good call.”
Our neighbor didn’t answer her phone, so I tapped one foot impatiently while Kevin went over to knock on her door. What if she said no? What if she wasn’t home? What if I didn't wait around to find out?
My gaze fell on his keys, resting in the dish next to the coffee maker where we left them every time we came in. It took me exactly three-tenths of a second to decide not to wait for my brother to return. If anything went wrong, Kyle still needed a parent to take care of him.
Kevin would be pissed, but, well, he should’ve known better than to leave his keys where I could grab them. My coat still hung beside the door where I’d left it when I came in. I barely paused to shrug into it while bolting for the garage door.
Under the automatic lights sat the most gorgeous vehicle ever created. A shiny black Acura NSX—the same car driven by Iron Man in the Marvel movies. So impractical, you almost had to laugh at the car seat in the back.
The engine purred to life, and the garage door rumbled upward. Throwing the car into reverse, I slammed on the gas.
A shout rang out when I was halfway down the driveway. I pretended not to hear it. My phone rang three seconds later. Although my first instinct was to simply ignore it, the device was in the bottom of my bag. I didn’t want to listen to it ring constantly until I got to the bowling alley to turn it off.
I hit the button on the steering wheel to answer via the built-in Bluetooth and didn’t give him a chance to speak. “You couldn’t come with me and risk orphaning Kyle.”
“The fact that you think I might get killed makes me feel no better about you going on your own. Come back with my car, or I’ll call the police.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“That’s an urban legend. If possession equaled ownership, the state could never prosecute anyone for theft. Bring my car back.”
“Sorry, brother. Not happening. I need to do this.”
“Come on, Aly, think. You’re not a police officer. You’re not even a detective. What are you going to do?”
Unfortunately, I didn’t have an answer. Telling Kevin that I intended to use my psychic powers to solve a crime wouldn’t help, especially when he didn’t believe in psychics. He made fun of me for three days when I wanted to visit the fortuneteller at the county fair last year. As someone neither physically imposing nor particularly skilled at questioning witnesses, he probably wouldn’t believe I intended to get a confession out of Benji. I opted for a partial truth.
“I’m going to look for the murder weapon. If I find it, I’ll call the police. Pinky swear.”
“Here’s a thought. What if you call the police now and they go to We All Fall Down instead of you?”
That made perfect sense, except that I didn’t think anyone on the police force had the ability to see visions when touching objects. What did I know? Heck, maybe this power was common in Shady Grove. Maybe everyone was psychic. Thelma certainly seemed able to read minds at times. Not to mention Olive.
“Aly? Are
you there?”
I took a deep breath. “Look, the only suspect we have other than Benji is Wendy. And Wendy is secretly having an affair with Sheriff Matthews.”
“I hope you’re not suggesting that our town’s primary law enforcement official would intentionally mess up an investigation to protect his girlfriend.”
“No, no. I just… I don’t know. Look, I’m almost there.” I turned onto the road behind We All Fall Down before Kevin finished ranting about why I should bring his car back.
Second Street housed a lot of small businesses: Kevin’s office was here, but also a local accountant, the police station, Town Hall, the county clerk’s office, and a life insurance agent who doubled (tripled?) as the town’s taxidermist and actuary. He also notarized some documents my brother had drawn up to give me guardianship of Kyle if necessary. Clearly a man of many talents. Most businesses in Shady Grove closed by five p.m., so other than the police station, this street was usually deserted in the evenings. Even they didn’t see a lot of action. Rolling in at nearly eight o’clock pretty much ensured that no one would see me.
Since Kevin’s office was so close to the small service road running behind the bowling alley, I decided to park in his shared lot and walk. Leaving Kevin’s fancy car parked at his office would be way less noticeable if anyone happened to pass by than if I left it idling beside the bowling alley’s trash bins.
I exited the car, shutting the door silently. Thank you, Kevin, for teaching me that if I ever slammed the door to his baby, I’d have to sleep in the backyard. The cold air made me shiver. Too bad I hadn’t thought to grab my gloves and scarf when picking up my coat.
Too late to worry about that now. There was no going back.
Although the temperature had dropped so low my California-raised self used to think the thermometers must be in Celsius, the roads and pathways were thankfully clear of snow. It would be tough to be stealthy when slipping and sliding and crunching your way across the sidewalk. At least Second Street had given up the small-town charm of cobblestones in favor of paved roads and concrete sidewalks.