I hadn’t expected Tommy Sims to look the same as he was when a teenager—and I’d seen him a time or two from a distance at the grocery store—but I hadn’t been prepared for a close look at the weathered, wrinkled face and sagging jawline. His once dark-brown locks were threaded with gray, and his hairline had receded several inches at the front.
I tried to be generous. After all, I had my own wrinkles and stretch marks and a fierce reliance on dye to keep my hair its once-natural light-brown color. But my figure these days was trim and athletic, a far cry from my chubby adolescence.
“Lieutenant Oliver and Deputy Blackwell with the Sheriff’s Department. We’d like to ask you a few questions,” said Oliver.
Tommy barely glanced my way as he responded to my partner. “Son of a . . . if this is about last night, Strickland provoked us.” His hand lightly touched the welt on his face. “Man gave as good as he got.” Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “He file a complaint or somethin’?”
“What was the fight about?” I asked, bypassing his question.
Tommy leveled his gaze at me and shifted uneasily on his bare feet. “We thought he might be bothering Jori Trahern, so we stepped in.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. “Why did you think there was a problem? Did you observe any violence or distress between them?”
“Nooo,” he drawled slowly. “It was more because of who she is.”
I quirked a brow. “Which is?”
“A cousin of Jackson Ensley’s. Guy was murdered by Ray back in high school. Shot in the back of the head. Cold blooded.”
A shiver eased down my spine like a melting ice cube making tracks. This marked the second time today I’d heard Jackson’s name. I’d have to brace myself for more of the same in this investigation.
Tommy’s eyes narrowed on me. “Do I know you? You look kinda familiar.”
A flush crept up the nape of my neck. So he didn’t recognize me. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or affronted. I ignored the question and asked one of my own. “Had you ever observed Mr. Strickland and Ms. Trahern together prior to last evening?”
“Nah. First time I’d seen Ray in ages.” Tommy crossed his arms over his chest, a half sneer painting his face. He’d sported that expression in high school whether on the ball field or hanging out with friends.
Images from over three decades ago flashed through my mind—Jackson and Tommy milling together with others at a party and the two of them sitting in the school cafeteria with a dozen others. But I couldn’t recall seeing them alone together. They always seemed to have a more “friend of a friend” type relationship. The two couldn’t have been more opposite—the clean-cut jock and the guy who acted too cool for school and slightly dangerous. Jackson had a reputation as a heavy drug user. As far as I could tell, the only thing the guys had in common was their callous treatment of me. Not that either knew or cared.
But if they weren’t close, why did Tommy seem so bent out of shape about seeing Ray and Jori together? Did Tommy have a thing for Jori Trahern? She was a lot younger than him, but that didn’t necessarily rule out the possibility.
“What caused the fight?” I asked abruptly.
“Man had no business being at the Pavilion.” Tommy’s chest puffed out, and his tone rang with righteous indignation. “It weren’t right that he was just sittin’ there chattin’ it up with one of Jackson’s kin. Ray needed to be put in his place.”
Was this merely a male territorial move? Tommy showing off to his friends by bullying Ray?
“Hey, I do know you.” Tommy raised a hand and pointed his finger at me. His lips pressed together and breathed out a puff of sound. Buh.
I braced myself. Here it comes. The old moniker. But Tommy stopped himself midword. I was surprised he possessed this modicum of self-control.
“Yeah, I recognize you now,” he continued, a smirk settling over his mouth. “You look lots different. Better.” His eyes did a slow scan up and down my body. I kept my poker face on, revealing nothing.
Oliver’s sidelong glance burned into me, and I felt him assessing this development in the interview. Before I could respond to Tommy’s insult-wrapped-in-a-compliment, Oliver took over the questioning, pressing for more details on the altercation. Tommy insisted there wasn’t much of a physical fight, but I suspected he was downplaying the situation. We’d check with Broussard’s staff who were on duty last night and take statements from witnesses and the other three men involved.
“Did you threaten to kill Mr. Strickland?” Oliver asked at last.
Tommy shook his head in disgust. “It was just words said in the heat of the moment. Don’t tell me that hardened convict claims he’s scared for his life now.” Tommy crossed his arms over his potbelly, and his mouth turned down in a scowl. “So are you arresting me, or what?” he demanded.
Oliver tucked his notepad in his vest pocket. “Depends.”
“On what?”
Oliver leveled him with a stern gaze. “On whether or not you were the one who murdered Raymond Strickland last night.”
Tommy paled, as though Oliver’s words had landed like a punch to his gut. “Murder? Ray’s dead?” he asked, blinking rapidly.
The woman who’d opened the door to us appeared immediately by Tommy’s side. She’d evidently been listening in on us. She sidled up to Tommy, and he wrapped an arm around her waist. “What’s this about?” she asked. Her voice was loud with a false bravado.
“It’s okay, Sandy,” Tommy reassured her. “Just a misunderstanding.”
Her chin lifted. “My husband was with me all last night.”
“What time did you return home from the bar?” I asked Tommy.
He rubbed his face and turned to Sandy. “I’m not sure. About eleven?”
“Yeah, maybe even a little earlier.” She answered with her gaze fixed on me, dislike and mistrust brimming in her faded blue eyes.
“You willing to come to the station for a GSR test?” Oliver asked.
Tommy blinked. “A what?”
“Gunshot residue test.”
I retained my poker face. Oliver was trying to assess Tommy’s frame of mind. The GSR test would be useless at this point. It was only relevant four to six hours after a shooting, and that was only if the suspect hadn’t washed his hands and had also been inactive. While I’d talked to Strickland’s neighbors, Oliver had spoken briefly with the coroner and pressed him for a quick assessment. According to the coroner, Raymond Strickland had probably been dead over eight hours by the time his body was discovered.
“Yeah, I’ll—”
“No way,” Sandy interrupted. “He ain’t doin’ nothing without a lawyer present.”
“If your husband is innocent . . .” I let my voice trail off.
“I told you, he was with me last night. I just don’t trust y’all not to try and pin him with the crime.”
Oliver ignored her outburst. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Sims.”
It sounded more like a threat than a casual comment.
A cowed Tommy nodded. “Yes, Officers.” The door began to close as Oliver and I stepped off the porch.
“Who was that woman?” I heard Sandy ask before it shut behind us.
“Nobody.”
A nobody. That’s what he thought of me. I pressed my lips together. After all these years, his opinion didn’t matter. I regarded Tommy Sims as a low-life scumbag, so all things considered, I thought less of him than he did of me.
Oliver didn’t address me until we were safely ensconced in the cruiser. “Mind telling me what all that was about? How well do you know Sims?”
“Not well at all. Especially not these days. He’s just someone I knew from high school.”
“Somebody from high school, eh?” he asked, gently probing.
“We went out once.” I practically choked on the euphemism. What we’d done hadn’t even been on an official date.
“Hmm,” Oliver noted, backing out of the driveway. His tone was neutral, inviting discussion.
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I shut it down with a dismissive shrug. “It’s a small town. Lots of connections and paths crossed over the years. So. Who are we interviewing next? Eddie Yaeger, Alden Knight, or Jayrod Booker?”
“You know them too?” he asked wryly.
“I’ve seen them around. They all like to hang out playing pool at the Pavilion and trying to act like tough hotshots.” I held the radio mike in my hand. “Which house directions do you want next?”
“Actually, I’m more intrigued by Strickland’s association with Jori Trahern. She might be the last person he ever spoke with. Let’s visit her first.”
Chapter 4
JORI
Drinking the evening before had been a bad idea. Zach and Mimi had both been restless last night, wandering around the house for no good reason in the wee hours before dawn, which meant that I couldn’t rest either. All it would take was one slip on the rug for Mimi to fall and get injured, or for Zach to decide to fix something to eat and turn on a stove burner, and disaster might ensue. The possibilities had kept me up and coaxing them both back to bed whenever I heard wooden floors creak in the hallway.
As I poured Zach a glass of iced tea in the kitchen, I tried to rub away the dull throbbing in my temples.
Zach bit into the sandwich I’d prepared and frowned. “Pick . . .” The final consonant of the word was a garbled glug.
“Pick what?” I asked.
His brows drew together in concentration. “Pick . . . ,” and he again uttered some strangled syllable.
I stared blankly at his face, which was puckered with agitation.
“Mimi knows,” he said. Those two words were his favorite expression, and he joined them together as a single word: Mimiknows.
I turned to Mimi, who was putting away the dried breakfast dishes. “What does Zach want?”
“Pickles,” she said. “He won’t even eat peanut butter sandwiches without them.”
Mystery solved. I opened the fridge and moved around contents. No pickle jar. “It’s not here.”
Mimi turned away from the dish rack, her brows drawn together, echoing Zach’s expression. I’d never noticed the resemblance in my brother and grandmother before, but it struck me suddenly with full force. Mom had also used to wear that same pinched look, especially in the latter stages of cancer, when she’d been heavily dosed on painkillers and in that twilight world where she was neither here with us nor there on the other side of life. For a moment, the memory squeezed the breath out of my lungs.
“It’s got to be there,” Mimi asserted, striding over. Her house slippers flapped against the linoleum, blending with the tiger-orange cubes my colored hearing produced.
“Pickles,” Zach insisted, his voice rising. Zach’s tone was similar to Mimi’s, the same cubed shape, but the color was marigold with blended specks of orange and yellow. My own colored sounds were a bronzed sandstone of shaved ice, not near as flashy and pretty as theirs but still genetically related.
I opened the pantry cabinet and spotted a half-empty jar on the top shelf. “Here we are,” I said triumphantly.
“It shouldn’t have been in the pantry,” Mimi said. “Zach must have moved it.”
Or she had done so and just couldn’t remember.
“Did you take your medicine this morning?” I asked her.
“Can’t rightly remember,” she hedged.
I checked Mimi’s pill dispenser on the counter. The donepezil pill sat forlorn and neglected in its Saturday slot.
I poured her a glass of water and then handed it to her with the pill.
She frowned. “I don’t like taking them. They make me tired.”
Her tone was that of a recalcitrant child, and I silently tamped down my irritation. “The doctor said this might help you.”
“Might,” she emphasized bitterly.
“It’s worth a try. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Zach.”
The defiance in her dark-blue eyes faded, and she held out a hand. Was I doing the right thing insisting she take the medication? The doctor had warned it only worked in half the patients, and even then, the effects were limited to six months or a year. There was no cure. The most it could possibly do was slow the progression of the disease.
Just as there had been no cure for Zach’s autism or Mom’s brain cancer, it seemed the Traherns were a cursed lot. At least our branch was. Was my own neurological quirk with synesthesia a product of some faulty brain chemistry I’d inherited from the maternal side of the family?
My hands fluttered involuntarily to my empty stomach.
A knock sounded at the side door. Before I could answer, it squeaked open and Uncle Buddy strode in, bringing with him a breath of fresh air into the tense kitchen.
“Morning, y’all,” he said easily, his deep voice filling the room. His eyes settled on Mimi scowling at the pill in her hand. “You taking your vitamins this morning, Oatha?”
In a swift move, she popped the pill in her mouth and swigged it down with a gulp of water. Scowling at the both of us, she set the glass on the counter. “Y’all happy now?” Without waiting for an answer, she shuffled to the den.
Uncle Buddy raised a brow. “Always was a grump in the morning, even as a kid. Tressie was the same. The two of them used to snap at each other every day until noontime.”
Hard to picture Mimi as a child. Especially since she never talked about her childhood. “Was she always this stubborn?” I asked.
“You bet.” He slanted me a curious look and cocked his head toward the door. “Got a moment?”
“Sure. Back in a minute,” I called to Mimi and Zach. Once outside, I turned to him. “What’s up?”
He withdrew a wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a check. “A little something to tide y’all over,” he said, handing me the check.
I accepted it, whistling softly at the amount. “I’m sure this is way more than—”
“Got a call from the bank late yesterday,” he interrupted. “Oatha was overdrawn.”
I groaned. Seemed I’d have to add managing Mimi’s financial affairs to my growing list of duties. “I won’t let it happen again,” I promised.
“Not your fault. I’d have just directly deposited this in her account but figured you needed to know what was going on.”
No telling how many times Uncle Buddy had to “help out” his sister over the years. I suspected he assisted with Tressie’s bills too.
“Thanks. How about you and Aunt Sue coming over one night soon for dinner?”
“Sure thing. I’d reckon Sue would appreciate a break from cooking.”
If she did have a complaint, I couldn’t picture his wife ever voicing it. To me, she’d always appeared a mousy kind of person, shuffling about quietly in the background while Uncle Buddy took center stage with his huge personality. Both of their daughters favored Aunt Sue in looks and personality. Quiet people. I’d never been especially close with my cousins. They were a generation older than me, and both had moved out of state decades ago.
He fixed an intense stare on me. “Anything else I can do to help, give me a call.”
With that, he waved and climbed into his truck. I reentered the house and stepped into the living room, where Mimi and Zach sat together on the couch, chuckling at demolition footage on HGTV.
“Boom,” Zach squealed as a construction crew hammered a wall, slashing holes into slabs of sheetrock.
My heart warmed as I watched. How many times had I observed them laughing together like this? They seemed to bring out the best in each other. I swallowed past a lump in my throat.
Before I could join them, the front doorbell clanged, emitting bursts of green triangles, and we all startled. Nobody ever rang the bell. Friends and family just knocked once on the side door before entering. Like a call after midnight, this signaled something that could not be good.
“I’ll get it.” I wiped my sticky palms on the front of my jeans and headed to the door, stoically pulling it open to face whatever bad news awai
ted. Two strangers, a man and a woman, stood on the porch. I glanced over the khaki uniforms and the official-looking patches on the shirts. Cops or detectives. My mind raced with questions. Had someone died? Were we in some kind of trouble? Maybe someone had called Social Services again. My heart skittered wildly as I imagined these cops poking into our business and deciding we provided an unsafe environment for Zach. What would become of him then?
The woman spoke first, her voice a blue-gray herringbone pattern. “Are you Jori Trahern?”
I swallowed with difficulty. “Yes.” My answer came out squeaky and timid.
“I’m Deputy Blackwell, and this is Lieutenant Oliver with the Sheriff’s Department. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?”
“Your conversation last night with Raymond Strickland.”
I let out a deep breath. Zach was safe. Along with the relief, my manners returned. “Please, come on in,” I invited, opening the door wider and motioning them to enter. Raymond Strickland. What the hell was this all about? Was he angry that I’d spoken to him last night and drawn the ire of the redneck pool players? Perhaps he’d filed a complaint or restraining order against me. Fine. I had no desire to ever see the man again anyway.
Mimi stepped into the den and frowned as the officers seated themselves on the couch. “What’s all this here about?” she demanded, crossing her arms at the waist. Mimi had never much been the gracious kind, always suspicious of strangers, especially cops. But either old age or the Alzheimer’s disease had made those rough edges sharper.
I gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s about a bar fight I witnessed last night while I was out with Dana. Why don’t you go ahead and finish eating lunch with Zach?”
“I don’t want these people in my house,” she sniffed. With one last glare of distrust, Mimi turned and left us alone. I shrugged an apology to the officers, who acted as though they hadn’t witnessed my grandmother’s rudeness. They were probably used to rude receptions in the course of their duties.
“Has the guy filed a complaint against me?” I asked, getting right down to business. “I didn’t talk to him but a few minutes. And anyway, he told me he was leaving town soon.”
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