The First Time I Fell

by Joanne Macgregor

  “In the guest room, of course.” He gave me a slow, sexy smile. “Unless …”

  “If I’m too drunk to drive, I’m too drunk to …” What had Hugo called it? “Nug-a-nug.”

  “Agreed. Let’s hope you’re not a regular heavy drinker.”

  I nearly fell asleep with my head on his shoulder, waiting for my ride. Some date I was. At the door, Ryan gave me a soft kiss. On the mouth this time. At the touch of his lips — warm and firm — something lightened in my chest. I felt a small ballooning of hope, of expectation, even. But Ryan ended the contact right there.

  And I could tell that if this was to go any further, the next move would have to come from me.

  – 30 –

  Ryan arrived at the Andersen house in my car at nine the next morning, which was too early for someone who felt — and probably looked — as rough as I did that day. Ned Lipton, who was hanging a wind chime on his porch, gave me a friendly wave as I slid behind the wheel.

  “If a crime is ever committed in this estate,” I told Ryan, “check with my neighbor because I swear, he sees everything that happens here.”

  “Good morning, Garnet,” Ryan said.

  “Speak for yourself.”

  I searched the dash and glove compartment for my polaroid sunglasses, then discovered I was already wearing them. They were doing a piss-poor job of screening out the sunlight.

  “Here” — he handed me a cup of coffee — “I thought you might need this.”

  “God bless you, Chief Jackson,” I said, and took several sips before starting my car and backing out the drive.

  “I had a good time last night,” he said.

  “So did I.”

  Fact was, I’d had too good a night. I’d woken up this morning to a pounding headache and whining dogs standing beside my bed, pawing at me and licking my face. I must’ve forgotten to lock them in the kitchen the previous night before I flopped on my bed and passed out.

  “So,” Ryan said, “sometime after your first whiskey last night —”

  “My first? How much leprechaun juice did I have?”

  “— you began tempting me.”

  Shit. What had I done?

  “I don’t recall any … tempting,” I said, avoiding meeting his gaze.

  “You said you had some interesting things to tell me. Verrrry interesting, you said.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, relieved. “That I do. I met with Bethany Ford yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “I feel sorry for her, but I don’t much like her.” I waved a thank-you to Doug when he opened the gates for us. He glowered back. “Left, or right?” I asked Ryan.

  “Right. Why didn’t you like her?”

  “For one thing, she has a maid. And she keeps birds in cages. I don’t approve of keeping wild things trapped.”

  “They were wild birds? Not, like, parakeets or canaries?”

  “I didn’t actually see them,” I admitted. “And she has a paper-shredder, which surely only people who want to destroy evidence have.”

  “Or sensible people who want to protect themselves against identity theft and industrial espionage.”

  “I suppose,” I conceded, grudgingly. “But she’s one of those people who makes the rest of us look inadequate. She has a killer body with a rock-hard eight-pack. She composts and recycles. She even enjoys kale smoothies. I mean, who does that? And she works insanely hard and knows exactly what she wants from life. She’s scarily disciplined.”

  “So, basically, you don’t like her because she’s the opposite of you,” Ryan said.

  I was seriously tempted to punch him. I settled for giving him a dirty look and drinking more coffee.

  “In the interests of peaceful cooperation between police and civilians, I am going to pretend I never heard that,” I said tartly.

  Ryan merely chuckled.

  “Did you see her house?” I said. “She has a whole trophy room dedicated to her time as a beauty queen! That’s where she met Laini — they were both contestants in kiddy beauty pageants together. And that industry, let me tell you, is a whole other level of disturbing. Did you know that they make the kids wear fake teeth? They’re called flippers, don’t ask me why. And some of them get Botox injections!”

  “The kids?”

  “Yup. For those pesky toddler frown lines. It’s insane! And on pageant days, they’re given this cocktail of Red Bull and Mountain Dew to drink. It’s called ‘gogo-juice.’ Or else they’re fed something called pageant crack, which is a mixture of sugar, caffeine and who knows what other stimulants.”

  “What for?”

  “It pumps them up for their performance onstage. I mean, that can’t be legal, can it?” Without waiting for an answer, I added, “And the way they dress these kids – like little hookers — and teach them to pout and twerk and grind their hips, it’s nauseating. Especially when you just know there have got to be pedophiles in the audience getting their rocks off.”

  “It sounds obscene.”

  “That’s the perfect word for it.”

  I’d caught up with the vehicle ahead of us, an oversize-load truck carrying a monster section of concrete piping. It was traveling super-slowly, and I was glad of it because it would give me more time to talk with Ryan.

  We sat in silence for a minute, then he asked, “So, you like Bethany Ford for Laini’s murder?”

  I pulled a face. “No. Much as I would like to, I don’t. No motive. You don’t find and recruit an old friend, benefit enormously from her skills, and then push her off a cliff because she beat you in a few beauty pageants thirty years ago. Besides, she seemed sincerely distraught over the loss of her bestie, and no two ways about it, the business is going to suffer without Laini.”

  “Did you learn anything, you know, factual from your chat with her?” Ryan asked.

  I wagged an admonitory finger at him. “Never underestimate the character stuff, Chief.”

  “Spoken like a true shrink.”

  “I learned lots. For instance, Laini spent the Saturday night before her death at Bethany’s house.”

  “Yeah, we already knew that from her statement.”

  “According to Bethany, Laini went into town the next morning, kissing her goodbye on the way out, and a little later sent texts to Bethany and Carl, telling each of them she’d be spending the day with the other. Was that in their statements, too?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Those texts, though … They puzzle me,” I said.

  “They’re not puzzling if you assume it was a suicide. She was buying time to kill herself.”

  “Why not just send a goodbye message? She could still jump before they could possibly find her and try to stop her.”

  “Maybe she was still undecided. She wanted to think about it first — alone and in a quiet spot, without being disturbed by either of them.”

  “Hmmm.” I downed the last of my coffee, even though I was beginning to suspect that strong coffee on an empty morning-after stomach was probably a bad idea. “Bethany said that Jim Lundy was infatuated with Laini, but we knew that already. Did you check his locker?”

  “Yeah, but we found none of that stuff you mentioned.”

  “I didn’t imagine it.”

  I could still feel that tickle of the lock of hair on my face, still see that crazy collage of photos.

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “He must’ve cleaned it out. Maybe I didn’t put the coats back right, and he could tell someone had seen it.”

  “And his record is clean apart from an altercation with a woman on the street last year.”

  Up ahead, the truck driver stuck an arm out his window and signaled that it was safe to overtake. I ignored him.

  “Altercation?”

  “Jim said the woman — a known heroin addict who was panhandling in town last summer — accosted him, and when he refused to give her money, she got violent. Jim wound up with a black eye and a bruised ego, but the junkie ran off and then skip
ped town before we could catch her.”

  “Or get her side of the story. Did Jim have an alibi for the time of Laini’s death?”

  “Nope.”

  “And Denise, Bethany’s assistant?”

  “Denise? Why are you asking about her?”

  That was the moment I ought to have come clean on Denise’s dipping into the company cookie jar. My inner detective advised me to tell Ryan. My inner therapist begged to disagree.

  “Just dotting i’s and crossing t’s,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I mean, she’ll probably get Laini’s job — that could be seen as a motive.”

  “I didn’t peg a small syrup company as that cutthroat,” he replied. “But yes, as it happens, she had an impeccable alibi — me.”

  “You were with Denise early on Sunday morning?” I asked, running through the possible permutations of how this could have happened. Even so, his next words surprised me.

  “I was watching her perform in the Bethel United Methodist Church choir, at the eight-thirty service.”

  “You go to church?” I asked, studying his face.

  “Sometimes. Watch out!” he yelled.

  I snapped my eyes forward and slammed on brakes, bringing the car to a halt with just a hair’s breadth of space between my fender and the back of the huge truck, which had stopped at the intersection.

  “Sorry,” I said, meekly.

  Ryan blew out a breath. “Take a left here. We’ll go around via Fifth, it’ll still be quicker than staying stuck behind this guy.”

  I grabbed my coffee from the cupholder to take a sip, discovered it was empty, and shoved it back, sending an assessing glance at Ryan’s coffee.

  “No, you can’t,” he said, clutching his cup close to his chest.

  “If you know what time to alibi Denise, that must mean you’ve got some clarity on the time of death.”

  “Laini Carter died at eight fifty-seven AM.”

  “That’s very specific.”

  “She had a fitness-tracker app on her phone, which was in her pocket. It stopped updating to the cloud at that time, because presumably that’s when it got crushed in the impact.”

  The impact.

  The words triggered a flashback to the sight of Laini’s body at the quarry. Black clothes, white snow, red blood. I shook my head to clear it and resumed my summary of what I’d learned from Bethany.

  “Bethany said Laini suffered from depression, that she didn’t handle pressure well and felt overwhelmed at the prospect of being made a shareholder in the business. And, for the record, that shareholder plan surely gets my client off the hook even though, according to Bethany, he borrowed money from his sister and hadn’t paid it back —”

  “Is that so?”

  “— because if he was planning to off her, surely he would’ve waited until she owned a chunk of the company? And, yes, before you ask, Bethany says Kennick did know about the plan to make Laini a shareholder. She also said there were problems in Laini and Carl Mendez’s relationship. By the way, did you know that Bethany dated Mendez before Laini did?”

  He shook his head. “What kind of problems?”

  “Bethany said Mendez is a guy with a temper, kind of implied he might have been abusive toward Laini.” I gave Ryan an I-told-you-so look. He didn’t respond. “Look, are you going to drink your coffee or just fondle it?” I demanded.

  Ryan smiled and took several long sips, smacking his lips afterwards. I picked up my empty cup, flicked off the lid and bit around the rim, flattening the curled cardboard lip with my teeth.

  “Slow down a bit,” Ryan said.

  I took my foot off the gas, even though we were cruising at a sedate pace.

  “Slower,” he said, studying a battered blue sedan parked on the verge of the road as we pulled alongside it.

  A man in faded jeans and a black hoodie was leaning with his elbows on the rim of the open driver’s window, talking to someone inside. As we crawled past, he glanced our way and then resumed his conversation with the driver.

  Ryan pulled out his phone and thumbed through a call. “Ronnie? I need you to check a vehicle for me.”

  He gave her our position and rattled off details of the car, including its license plate number, then listened while Officer Capshaw spoke.

  “Right, right …” His eyebrows lifted, and he cut me a glance. “Is that so?”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “And the phone records? Uh-huh, right. So that checks out. Right, I’m on my way to interview Carl Mendez. Call me if you pick up anything on that Toyota.” He ended the call and then said to me, “Guess whose client is back on the hook?”

  “Judging by the smug look on your face, that would be mine?”

  “Right in one. Laini Carter had a one-million-dollar life insurance policy, and Kennick is the sole beneficiary. Did he share that interesting bit of information with you?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t get a chance yet,” I protested feebly. “Also, client confidentiality, ethics!”

  “You’re not a priest, Garnet, or a psychologist.”

  I wasn’t much of an investigator, either. It felt like the rug had just been pulled out from under me. With the news of the insurance policy, Kennick was once again looking like a fine suspect.

  To change the subject I asked, “Any more news on the Button Man?”

  “You mean the serial killer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. Though it’s not likely they’d share it with me even if they did have something, the territorial bastards,” he muttered. “Take a left here. Mendez’s place is number 1103 on the right.”

  I hadn’t realized we were almost there. “So, what’s the plan for interrogating this suspect, Chief? Are we going to play good cop, bad cop?”

  “The plan is that this will be an interview, not an interrogation,” he said. “I’m going to play good cop, and you’re going to play silent sidekick.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

  “Seriously, Garnet.” He gave me a warning look as I pulled up outside Mendez’s house. “You have no official standing here. I shouldn’t be taking you along and will get into deep shit if you screw up and it gets out.”

  “I’ll be on my best behavior,” I promised. “Scout’s honor.”

  “But maybe …”

  “Yeah?”

  “You could try to touch something of his and let me know — afterwards — if you picked up any cosmic transmissions.”

  I grinned. “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

  – 31 –

  Carl Mendez’s house was the epitome of suburban blandness, from the white picket fence out front to the generic Ikea furniture and uninspired art inside. I couldn’t imagine the colorful butterfly that was Laini being trapped in the middle of all that beige and oatmeal dullness. Then again, maybe that had been the plan — to provide a lackluster canvas against which she could radiate life and loveliness. The only element of the décor that popped was a series of enlarged photographs of her which hung on a wall in the living room.

  I’d been hoping for another cup of coffee, but Carl Mendez merely settled his bulk into the largest chair and rubbed a hand across his stubbled cheeks when Ryan introduced me as a special consultant. I stared at the brass buttons on the leather jacket Mendez was wearing and then looked away, pushing back the flashbacks of that other button. The wooden one.

  “… just wanted to clarify a few things,” Ryan was saying when I tuned in to the conversation. “Such as the reason for the breakup in your relationship with Laini Carter?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Mendez replied, as though we could still ask her. “It wasn’t my idea. And Laini didn’t give me a reason. Not a real one, anyway. She just said our time together had run its course, and that nothing lasts forever.”

  “Was there someone else?”

  “She swore not.”

  “And for you?” Ryan pressed.

&nbs
p; “No! I loved her, I wanted to marry her.”

  “We’ve been told that there was a lot of conflict in the relationship.”

  “Who said that?” Mendez demanded, gripping the arms of his chair.

  “Is it true?”

  “No! We were happy! I still can’t believe she did it. That she didn’t even leave me a note. How could she do that — leave one for Bethany and not one for me? I loved her! I thought —” He pinched a thumb and forefinger across the bridge of his nose, as if trying to push back a headache. Or tears. “I thought she’d just take a few days and then come back. I never dreamed …” His voice petered out.

  Ryan gave him a moment, then pointed to something I hadn’t noticed — a fist-sized dent in one of the walls. “What happened there?”

  Mendez shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “When Laini left, I got mad, you know? I lost it for a moment.”

  “Ever lose it with her?”

  “Never. I never laid a hand on her in anger. I would never have hurt her. That’s not who I am.”

  “And yet, you have a criminal record for assault,” Ryan pointed out.

  Aha! I’d known there was something hinky in this guy’s past.

  Mendez sneered. “I had a fight in a bar when I was a student twenty-something years ago. That’s a very different thing from assaulting a woman.”

  Ryan consulted his notes — more, I suspected, for effect than actually to jog his memory — and said, “The fight was over a woman.”

  Double aha. Mendez with his hot temper and aggressive attitude was rising in my suspect stakes by the moment.

  Mendez stared incredulously at Ryan. “Yeah, but I didn’t hit her, did I? I’ve never hit a woman. What has this got to do with Laini’s suicide, anyway? Are you thinking that having ditched me, she was so sad we were over that she threw herself off that cliff? Because I can assure you, she hardly seemed devastated,” he said bitterly. “There must have been another reason for why she … why she did what she did.”

  “In an unnatural death, we’re obliged to investigate all possible options, Mr. Mendez,” Ryan said. “Including that her death was not suicide.”

  “What do you mean? Do you think it was an accident? Or” — he looked from Ryan to me and then back again — “Murder?”