by Gilian Baker
The new mystery on my iPad was probably great, but I couldn’t get into it. Instead, I sat looking at the screen without really seeing it, thinking about what a dunce I’d been to be taken in by Dillon. There was no need to make a new timeline of the crimes. No suspect lists could console me. No mystery could hold my attention.
The sad fact was Ellie, Gabby and I had been duped by someone we’d trusted and thought we knew. We’d so wanted Dillon to be innocent. We were so sure he was. But no one can truly know another person.
I messaged Gabby letting her know we’d backed the wrong horse, and that I was done investigating. There was no way I could help her defend the guilty party if I wanted to sleep at night.
After that was sent, I gave up trying to read. After giving Christian a perfunctory kiss, I slogged up the stairs to our bedroom. I didn’t bother to turn on the light. I didn’t bother to brush my teeth or wash my face. And I let the clothes I’d worn that day drop to the floor in a pile. Pulling a nightgown over my head, I climbed into bed.
Although it was too hot for it, I curled up under all the blankets and even covered my head. I needed coziness and comfort. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.
In the middle of the night, I awoke to intense thunder and lightning. Christian softly snored beside me. I was freezing, having kicked off the blankets I’d hid beneath earlier. Moving through the house, I shut all the windows and threw down some towels to soak up most of what had already gotten in.
***
Birds chirped a serenade outside my bedroom window and sunlight streamed into the room. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow and ragged as images of my dream flooded before my eyes. I’d been behind jail bars while Dillon had been standing free outside, jeering at me. He had on his arm a ventriloquist dummy and was making it say rude things to me. They both laughed wickedly.
Suddenly Harper appeared beside him, joining in on the cackling. Older than her real self, she started tap dancing, flipping my business cards around the room as if cajoling me to play fifty-two card pickup.
I lay in bed until my heart slowed to a normal rate, and when I finally glanced at the clock, I couldn’t believe I’d slept until after 9 a.m. But there was no need to jump up. Geena could handle the work items and today was probably the day everyone in town would discover my folly when Ross dragged Dillon off to jail.
After a long, hot shower, I wrapped up in my bathrobe and gazed out the window. Last night’s tempest represented my mood far better than the current blue skies. The only evidence of last night’s storm was a few twigs in the yard and some puddles in the grassy, low-lying area outside our bedroom window.
My phone chimed announcing a text, pulling me out of my thoughts. When I picked it up off the nightstand, Phyllis had invited me over to her place for brunch. I caught myself smiling in spite of myself. It was probably a ploy to get me to help her unpack more boxes, even though I’d told her it was Ellie who owed her for babysitting Harper.
My fingers poised hesitantly above the tiny keyboard. I didn’t feel like going anywhere today. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone. By this time, Ellie and Christian were both hard at work so I had the next few hours alone to sulk and consider the meaning of my life. Jeez, how pathetic.
I snuggled back in bed, leaning my wet head against the pillow and closing my eyes. I’d ignore the text. She’d think I was too busy to respond.
I should have known better. Thirty minutes later while still staring up at the ceiling, I was again jarred out of my contemplation by a chime emitting from my cell phone. I’d make an excuse for avoiding her invitation. But this time it was Gabby.
When I saw the name, I tossed the phone on the bed beside me without even opening the text. No doubt she was plying me with questions and offering a pep talk. She’d have to wait. I wondered about my mood swings lately. Maybe I was clinically depressed. Maybe I never should have left academia. I’d never felt this badly when I was there.
I knew I was making this whole thing a mountain out of a molehill—I wasn’t responsible for Dillon or his crimes. I’d only been trying to help someone I thought worthy of it. It was now someone else’s problem. My phone chimed again. Disgusted, I picked it up and saw another text from Phyllis. I won’t take no for an answer, dear.
Every cell in my body wanted to stay right where I was, and yet, was repulsed by my abject attitude. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be cheered up. I wanted to wallow, just for today. Even though my current focus was on my feelings about being taken in by a crafty young man, I suspected the underlying cause was feelings of listlessness and uncertainty about where I was headed in life. Gawd, what a sad sack. Before I changed my mind, I texted Phyllis back. Be there in 30.
Chapter Seventeen
Upon jerking the door open in her usual manner, Phyllis clutched me in an embrace and patted my back as I held onto her tiny frame. My mind flashed back to last night when I’d done the same thing to Ellie, comforting her when all felt lost.
After a few moments, we released each other, while awkwardness swirled between us. We didn’t really know one another that well, and yet, we clearly felt a kinship that went beyond the generation gap between us.
She welcomed me in and we sat down to an impressive spread. She’d cooked up eggs, bacon, and toast and had gone to get Danish. Having been reminded that I was cared for with that hug, I felt lighter and suddenly realized I was famished.
Some people stress-eat, but I’m the opposite. When I’m stressed or upset, I don’t have any appetite. But now, I found myself filling my plate. Breakfast food was comfort food in my book.
We chatted through the meal, though she did more of the talking. My mood had lifted, but as I listened to her gruff voice, I found myself zoning out so the words were unrecognizable. My heart began to sink a little as I comprehended that even though my load felt a bit lighter, nothing had changed. I slowly lowered my fork to the table. I’d just thought myself right out of enjoying the meal.
From seemingly far away, I heard my name being called.
“Jade. Earth to Jade,” Phyllis joked.
“Oh, I’m sorry. My mind drifted off. What were you saying?”
She placed her bony elbows on the table and looked me in the eyes. “Okay, spill it. What’s going on with the investigation?”
It all came flooding out—my lack of enthusiasm for blogging, being embarrassed about being wrong, not once, but several times, about the killer, my frustration at being out of the loop and getting older. I pushed up my bifocals at the bridge of my nose.
Pushing my bifocals up at the bridge of my nose, I whined, “Oh, Phyllis, I’ve made such a mess of everything.”
“Sounds like you just need to get your groove back, like in that movie with Angela Bassett and Whoopi Goldberg. You’ve been workin’ nonstop for years, according to your own admission. No wonder you’re feelin’ sick of it all. And as for the case, you let me know if anyone gives you flack about that. I’ll go medieval on their butts.” She gave one firm nod as if that settled it all.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Since I wasn’t going to turn back time and grow younger, I hoped I’d end up sassy like my friend.
“And, if I may say so, you seem mighty quick to condemn the Hexby boy.” She crossed her arms over her sagging chest.
“No, it wasn’t sudden. I’ve wondered for a while now if he wasn’t the one who did it. The problem is that I let my affection for him cloud my judgement.” I listed all of the motives he had, as well as the means and opportunity.
“But you haven’t talked to Gabby today, so you don’t know that this Charley guy didn’t do it. Maybe Ross has already found out that he’s the one. You never know. Maybe your theory’s right—Jack and Paula had something on him.”
“It just seems like a long shot at this point.”
“So did helping Liz out of her mess a while back.” She chortled, “I think you even believed there for a while that I’d done my neighbor in.”
I just gave her the teacher look and moved on. I wasn’t going to confess I’d had just a little doubt when she’d started behaving so peculiarly.
“Okay, talk me through the finer bits. Maybe, if we put our heads together, we’ll figure out something that’s been missed. We have to tackle the case first. The rest will have to come later.”
Taking a deep breath, I started at the beginning. When I got to the part where I’d found Jack’s body, she asked to see the pictures I’d taken. I hadn’t looked at them since Ellie and I had learned about the ketamine.
Once I pulled them up on my phone, she took it out of my hands and made the image as big as she could without zooming in.
“Ah, I see drag marks in the dust.” She looked up at me, “Homer hated cleaning that place. Said he could sweep ‘til the cows came home, but could never get rid of all of it. Drove him batty. He loves everything just so. Plus, it made his asthma act up.”
Her aside completed, she turned her attention back to the picture. “What’s this?” Phyllis asked me. “Why aren’t the drag marks going back to the kiln? Seems to me the body’s been drug the wrong way.”
“Let me see that,” I grabbed the phone back from her. “Yeah, Ellie and I noticed that too.”
Phyllis scrunched up her eyes and tapped her bent index finger under her nose while she thought. “Why’d they drag Jack towards the front of the building this time? Why not back to the kiln, like the last time?”
I made the picture zoom back out so I could see the placement of the body and asked, “Do you think he was dumped back where the drag trail starts, and he pulled himself towards the phone in the gallery? Maybe the killer thought he was dead, but he wasn’t, so when they left, he tried to reach the phone to get help. But that would mean his legs weren’t working correctly. Otherwise, he’d have just stood up and walked.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe he was barely hanging on and that was all he had the strength to do. Let me see it again.”
I handed her the phone and watched as she looked at different angles. “You know, the thing with the kiln has always bothered me,” I said, “Why burn her body? I get that it could’ve been to burn the evidence, but it seems like there should be more to it than that. Were they trying to make it look like she’d taken off and left her family behind? Why would she do that when she’d just set up a new business? It doesn’t make any sense. If she wanted away from her family, she could divorce Dillon… she wouldn’t need to run away.”
“Dear, I don’t think he was draggin’ hisself across the floor. Look, there woulda been halted marks in the dust where he stopped and then gathered strength to pull up a little further. And wouldn’t we be able to see handprints in the dust too? He would have had to put his hands to his sides and use the leverage to pull himself. There are none of that.” She was quiet for a minute. “What? Oh my…” She trailed off.
“What? What do you see?”
She stood up and leaned across the table so I could see the picture. “Look how clean the floor is over there.” She pointed to the area above Jack’s head, leading into the gallery. “I mean, it’s not like you could eat off of it, but it’s cleaner than the rest.”
“Paula would want the floor in the gallery to be nice and clean to look professional for customers. Maybe Homer just went a little further into the studio with the mop.”
“Now, come on. You can do better than that. Homer hasn’t cleaned since the place shut down. Why would he? And why would the mopped area stop right at the top of the victim’s head?”
Understanding started to filter through my foggy mind. I whispered, “There were two killers all along. That’s why I couldn’t figure it out.” I looked up at Phyllis, both of our eyes wide.
“How’d ya come up with that?”
“By putting all the facts together, not looking at them individually. The first killer didn’t use ketamine because they didn’t need it. Paula was killed at the studio and dragged to the kiln to be incinerated. The second murderer didn’t know to do that when they copycatted Paula’s murder because Ross kept it out of the papers. And the first killer didn’t worry about leaving footprints. They didn’t mop any of them up.”
“He mighta, if Homer hadn’t interrupted him.”
“That’s true. But we still have the other clues.”
“Yep, and the killer covered their tracks by mopping their way out the gallery door.”
“They didn’t want to leave their shoeprints behind so Ross could use that to figure out who’d killed him.” I sucked in a large breath. “Because their footprints wouldn’t have matched the set left at the first crime scene.”
My hand went up to my open mouth as I thought of how this connected so many dots. It meant I wasn’t a total moron—I’d just made the same assumption as everyone else, as the second murderer had counted on.
“Imbecile,” I said as relief flooded over me. Even my little Belgian mentor was known to make assumptions from time to time. Ones that kept him from figuring out the crime until the suppositions were wiped away, when he could reframe the crime without assumptions getting in the way.
“What did you say, dear?”
“Oh, nothing. Just something Poirot says when he suddenly understands a mistaken assumption he’s made.”
“Does that mean you’ve figured it out?” Phyllis looked at me expectantly.
“No. But it means I’ll be able to now.”
***
Promising to call Phyllis as soon as I knew whodunit, I went back home after our mutual discovery. I needed to look at my notes to narrow down who could have perpetrated each murder.
It had been smart of Ross to hold back some details of Paula’s murder from the press. The second murderer hadn’t been able to definitively duplicate the first because they hadn’t had all the facts. They hadn’t known to drag Paula’s body to the kiln. That plus the mopped floor in the studio was proof there were two killers at work. No doubt the second murderer saw their chance to do away with someone they’d had it in for when the first murder wasn’t solved straightaway.
My only frustration now was Dillon wasn’t yet off the hook, but this did at least give him another chance. Maybe he hadn’t been involved after all. I crossed my fingers as I walked up the stairs to my office to review my notes. As I sat in my chair, my phone chimed.
It was Gabby asking if I was okay, and to let her know I’d gotten her message. I sent back a quick reply that I’d be in touch soon. Now that I’d gotten home, I was anxious to see if I could redeem myself.
Charley, Natalie, Dillon and Shelly were still on my list of suspects, though what I had on each was pretty thin, except for Dillon. I couldn’t do anything else with Charley, so I’d have to focus on Natalie and Shelly. But the fact remained that the murderers might not even be on my list. What a depressing thought.
I looked again at the notes I’d taken on Natalie first. I decided to tune into my intuition and trust my gut, not just look at the facts, but really pay attention to their behavior. I learned long ago not to believe every word that came out of someone’s mouth, especially if they were in a tentative situation looking for a way out. This went for students and mucky-muck administration alike.
Natalie had been decidedly nervous when I’d first handed her my card, informing her I was there on official business. Her behavior turned even more wary when the ketamine had been brought up. Was it possible she didn’t know ketamine was used in other ways than on animals? It seemed unlikely, though I hadn’t known about it either. But, I didn’t have the vet to my house to take care of a large horse population either.
It made sense Paula would feel comfortable with one of the students standing behind her. We often did that in class so we could see exactly how she working with the clay. I ticked off the name of each student in my mind. Nope, the only ones that still made sense were Betty and Natalie.
Did the attempt to use the kiln to incinerate Paula mean her killer was knowledgeable about such things? Or maybe they’d just do
ne a Google search as I had. I’d pop by and talk to both women to see what they claimed to know about firing a pottery kiln. Since it would be easy to claim ignorance, I’d need to keep an eagle eye on them, watching for tells they were fudging the truth.
And what about Dillon? Had Paula taught him how to use a kiln? How much of her craft had she shared with him? Most of what I believed about their marriage was supposition, so even though I had doubts about how much they’d shared about their separate, inner lives, I could be totally off base. I dreaded going back to see Dillon, but I’d have to.
I’d start with Natalie since her place was close and then work my way through town, ending up at the Sheriff’s Department on my way home. I hadn’t checked in with Ross or Crystal for a while, and it was time to let them in on what Phyllis and I had figured out. They might already have spotted the discrepancies, but not added it up to spell out two separate murderers.
I flipped through the other notes I’d taken while investigating. I came across the slip of paper on which Shelly had written her contact details. I’d never really taken Shelly as a serious candidate for the murder, but now I’d worked out there were two murderers, I should. She had no qualms with Jack, but she had a strong motive for wanting to get rid of Paula. Even though she’d told me they could all still be friends when Dillon came to his senses and hooked up with her, maybe she’d decided to get Paula out of the way once and for all.
I leaned back in my chair. This was an interesting notion. Sure, Paula had been using Shelly, but wasn’t Shelly using Paula as well? She was using the coffee delivery routine to get close to Paula. To get friendly with her. And Shelly had said she often stayed and visited with Paula while she worked. Paula had no reason to worry Shelly was a serious contender for Dillon’s affections, and if Shelly often stayed to watch her work, Paula may have been comfortable with Shelly sitting behind her.