Except him.
Only Derek’s mood remained the same after Michael’s confession. Pressing on, he asked, still obviously believing he had the killer sitting right in front of him, “Where were you Sunday night between midnight and five in the morning?”
Barely whispering, Michael answered, “My mother’s.”
All three of us looked at each other in disbelief at his answer. Unable to even keep the sneer from his face, Derek said, “So your answer is that you were at your mom’s? Seems pretty convenient, and I’m not sure we’re going to be able to take your mother’s word for where you were that night. Moms tend to not be very reliable witnesses, Mr. Thompson.”
He looked up at Derek and nodded. “I know what it sounds like. I’m a grown man who has to stay at his mother’s. You think I’m pathetic. Well, I guess I am. It’s just too painful to stay in my own house at night anymore. There’s no furniture on the first floor and there’s only beds and empty dressers in his kids’ rooms and the master bedroom, and all they do is remind me that I have nothing. So I began staying at my mother’s every night a few weeks ago around the holidays.”
“Wow, that’s sad,” Derek said quietly as he turned away, unable to even look at Michael after that pathetic explanation.
“Do you have anyone other than your mother who can back up your alibi?” Alex asked.
Michael’s eyes opened wide and suddenly he looked like the man we’d met on his back porch. Excited, he nodded his head up and down. “My mother’s next door neighbor, Jeanette Childers, called the house at right around one in the morning about her furnace turning off and on and wondering if my mother could send me over to see what was wrong. She woke me up out of a sound sleep. I ended up in her basement for nearly three hours trying to figure out that damn furnace. All you have to do is ask her. She can tell you I was there all night before I got it fixed.”
“Your mother’s next-door-neighbor?” Derek asked in disbelief.
“Please, just ask her. Mrs. Childers will tell you I was in her basement for hours on Sunday night,” Michael begged.
Derek pushed a piece of paper and a pen toward him. “Write down the name and number.”
His handcuffs clanking against the metal table, he did as he was ordered and pushed the information back toward Derek. “You’ll see. She’ll tell you I was there all night.”
Alex and I stood to follow Derek out of the room so he could call Michael’s mother’s neighbor. It seemed like a flimsy alibi to me, but my gut still said this guy wasn’t Bethany’s killer.
Closing the door, Alex grimaced. “That was not the man we met at his house. Those pills must be wonder drugs to make him seem normal because he was anything but last night.”
Derek shook his head. “I believe you. What I can’t believe is that I have to call a suspect’s mother and her neighbor to see if his story holds up about the old lady next door with the faulty furnace. It sounds like some kind of awful mystery novel title. The Old Lady and the Faulty Furnace available now in hardcover. Find out what’s hiding in that basement.”
I stifled a giggle at Derek’s joking as Alex’s expression told me Michael Thompson’s questioning had been an even bigger disappointment to him. I could only imagine how he felt now that our best suspect seemed to be yet another example of a false lead.
“What about Samantha Cooper?” he asked, his voice full of hope.
Shrugging, Derek said, “Nope, she had an alibi. She was at the Hotel Piermont that night with some guy who likes to be smacked around. I had no idea Sunset Ridge was this exciting. Who knew all these people in town had such freaky secrets?”
“So nothing with her?” I asked, hating that she was slipping from our grasp too.
Turning serious, Derek patted Alex on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, but none of the suspects so far have panned out, and if this guy’s mother and next-door-neighbor say he was there and there’s nothing else to point to him, I’m going to have to let him go.”
Quietly, in a voice full of disappointment, Alex said, “I understand.”
“That doesn’t mean I think you did it, Alex. It just means we’re going to have to take a better look at this case and find the clue we’ve been missing so far.”
Derek left us standing there in the hallway to call Michael Thompson’s mother, and I hated what I had to say. Taking Alex’s hand in mine, I gave it a squeeze of support and said what I knew he had already admitted to himself.
“He’s not our murderer, Alex. I wish it wasn’t this way, but Derek’s right. He’s not the killer.”
Struggling not to frown, he nodded and said in a low voice, “I know, but that leaves us back at square one. Mariah didn’t do it. Samantha didn’t do it. Michael didn’t do it. Then who murdered Bethany and why? We’ve looked into her life and only found those three people who seem to have any motive. But none had opportunity. Did she have other enemies we don’t know about?”
I hated seeing the pain in his eyes when he said that. I knew what he was thinking, but I couldn’t let him get discouraged about this case.
“We’ll find the answer, Alex. Don’t get down about this. We will. I’m not giving up, and I won’t let you give up.”
He tried to put on a good face, but he couldn’t pretend enough to smile. “I know. I can see why I was the prime suspect, though. I’m the only one who doesn’t have an alibi other than being alone, which you know as well I do is no alibi at all.”
I kissed him on the cheek and wished we were alone in my house so I could take him into my arms and kiss him long and deep to take his mind off all the terrible things surrounding us. It broke my heart to see the man I loved so disheartened.
“Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”
Lowering his eyes, he looked away and said, “I’m sorry, Poppy. If I never answered her call or never went over there when she asked me to, you wouldn’t have to be standing here with the only person the police should be looking at.”
I cradled his face and looked into those brown eyes so full of sadness. “Don’t think that way. Please listen to me. You went to a friend when they asked you to. You have nothing to apologize for with that. Come back to my house with me and we’ll curl up on the couch and watch a movie. We won’t think about this case for a few hours. We’ll just let our minds go blank and enjoy time together.”
He gave me a tiny smile but shook his head. “I think I’ll just go home for a little while since I’m not scheduled until tonight. I’ll give you a call later, okay?”
“Okay. My invitation will be open all day, so if you change your mind, my couch and I will be waiting.”
He nodded, and as he walked away down the hall toward the door of the police station, he said, “Thanks, Poppy. I’ll talk to you in a little bit.”
I wanted to run after him and tell him how much I loved him and that we wouldn’t stop until we solved this case, but he needed time to be alone, even if it was only going to end up making things worse. I understood, though. Sometimes a person just had to be with themselves when everything in life looked bad.
As I walked toward my house, I promised myself and him no matter what it took, I’d figure out some way to get a break in this case. Alex deserved at least that from someone he loved.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Curled up under my throw, I sat on my couch and prepared to binge-watch TV until I heard from Alex. The Weather Channel had a marathon of some monster storm show I hadn’t seen many episodes of yet, so I settled in with a large glass of root beer, my favorite drink of choice for long term television viewing, and a bowl of buttery popcorn and began watching about some supercell tornado that ravaged the Midwest in November 2001.
I wanted to get lost in the program, but try as I may, I couldn’t stop thinking about the case. The Weather Channel usually helped me forget my troubles through some strange way of replacing concern for whatever bothered me with concern for those terrorized by the storms, but this afternoon even the devastation wreaked by Mother
Nature couldn’t push my own worries about Alex out of my mind.
He looked so sad when he left the police station. When Derek thought he was the killer, he’d been hurt by the betrayal of the people he worked with, but this was different. Now he wasn’t the main suspect anymore, but the question of who killed Bethany still hung over his head. It didn’t matter that Derek and the rest of the force didn’t think he was guilty. As long as her killer remained free, there would always be that niggling doubt if Alex had anything to do with her death, just like with Helena’s murder.
I thought about calling him to see if he needed anything, but I knew what he needed, even if I didn’t want to give him that. I worried that if he spent too much time alone, he’d crawl inside his own head and get lost in the misery that always remained somewhere hidden but always threatening to take him over. Just as he’d never really gotten over Helena’s death, Bethany’s now pressed on him, and I wasn’t sure he could handle wondering if people blamed him for both.
Reaching for my phone, I let my finger hover over his name in my contacts for a moment. No, I had to give him what he needed now, but a need of my own simmered inside me, so instead of calling Alex I called my father.
“Poppy, I was hoping you’d call me today. When you called yesterday and had to get off the phone so quickly, I worried something terrible had happened.”
“Nothing more terrible than what’s already happened, Dad,” I admitted sadly. “I would have told you if anything else came up in the case.”
My father’s voice eased my mind, just as I knew it would. “I saw Derek last night and he told me Alex was probably going to be in the clear today. So why do you sound like you lost your best friend?”
I knew that was just my father’s way of saying I sounded sad, but that description was more accurate than he could know. I was afraid I was losing my best friend. This case had been torture for Alex, and now it felt like he was slipping away into something I wasn’t sure I could save him from.
“It’s nothing. This case. We’ve run into another dead end, and I don’t know what to do.”
“What you always do. Look for the question you haven’t asked yet. Then you’ll find the answer, and hopefully it will be the answer to this mystery of who killed poor Bethany.”
Poor Bethany.
In all the investigating leads and worrying about Alex, I hadn’t thought much about her, except for feeling guilty about how bad a friend I’d been. I hadn’t told a soul about it for fear of what they’d think of me and my petty jealousy, but I needed to get it off my chest. Only my father knew how wracked with envy I’d been when she and Alex got together, so I took the opportunity to unburden my conscience to him and hoped even he didn’t think I was an awful person for what I’d felt.
“Dad, can I tell you something?” I asked, knowing the answer but dragging my feet about finally telling someone about who I really was.
“Of course, Poppy. You can tell me anything, honey,” he answered in his usual sympathetic voice, giving me the green light to confess my darkest sin.
I took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I wasn’t a very good friend to Bethany, Dad. Her death has forced me to see that, and I can’t seem to get past it.”
The phone fell silent for a long pause until he asked, “Why would you say that?”
“You know how I felt about her and Alex dating. I was a horrible person the whole time, even after I convinced myself that I accepted they were together. I never stopped wishing they’d break up. That’s not a good friend, and she never knew how terrible I was.”
“Oh, Poppy, I know it’s hard to fight making her a saint, but like everyone else, she was human. You’re no different. You liked Alex and were jealous that she was with him. That doesn’t make you a terrible person. It makes you human.”
Tears welled in my eyes, ready to roll down my face. “I wasn’t a good friend, Dad. Not one minute the whole time they were together did I really want them to be happy. I was so consumed by jealousy that their happiness never even occurred to me. What kind of person does that with people they care about?”
As I began to cry at the truth of what I’d been, my father said, “You’re being too hard on yourself, Poppy. You didn’t do anything to break them up, did you? I can’t imagine you did.”
“No, I never did anything like that. I just secretly hoped she would get tired of him and move on, like she always did. But even that shows I wasn’t as good a friend to her as she was to me.”
“Again, you’re making her a saint when she was a mere mortal like the rest of us. Bethany was a girl who liked to have a good time. There was nothing wrong with that, so don’t think I’m saying there was. But even someone on the outside like me knew she and Alex wouldn’t last very long. She was a woman who needed attention and a lot of it. She’d gotten used to having that in her life, and I don’t think Alex could ever give her enough of what she needed.”
She couldn’t get what she needed from him. He needed things from me I wasn’t sure I could give him. I didn’t give her the support she needed from a friend. He might never be able to give me what I needed because he was still in love with a ghost.
Was love in all its incarnations just need none of us seemed to be able to fulfill?
“I wish she was still here so I could apologize for being a petty, jealous fool.”
“Poppy, Derek told me she was seeing some married man when she was supposed to be dating Alex. I think it’s possible you’re not seeing the real person because your view is clouded by guilt, but you have nothing to be guilty about. Caring about someone doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“I think it breaks one of the commandments to covet thy neighbor’s boyfriend, Dad.”
My father had strayed from the church after my mother’s death, so any quoting of scripture fell on deaf ears. “Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s how the commandment was written and you weren’t coveting Alex as much as secreting pining away for him. Does that make you feel better?”
I couldn’t help but smile at the way he phrased things sometimes. “Not really, but now I’m just a little creeped out by you saying I was pining away for him.”
“All I’m saying is Bethany was a flesh and bone human being with all the flaws that come with having feet of clay. Don’t beat yourself up for how you felt about her being with Alex. Something tells me she may have felt very much the same way when she found out you were with him. That didn’t change how she cared for you just like it didn’t change how you cared about her. Give yourself a break. You never did anything to sabotage their time together. Your conscience can rest easy, Poppy.”
Sighing, I tried to believe what he said, but I couldn’t. My conscience wasn’t convinced. “Maybe someday. Now I guess I just need to accept what happened and hope she is somewhere knowing that I wish I hadn’t been so jealous that I couldn’t be happy for her.”
“Jealousy is like a cancer, but you didn’t let it overtake you. Give yourself some credit. Others have done far worse when that green demon has taken them over. Just like you hope she can forgive you, you have to forgive yourself. When you do, you’ll see you aren’t that person you’re making yourself out to be.”
I dried my eyes and took a deep breath to let what my father was saying settle into my head. He was right. I hadn’t done anything so awful it couldn’t be forgiven. This was just my sadness at her death and regret I’d never get to see her again to tell her how much I admired her love of life. The truth was, like me, she had been human in all her choices. I needed to remember that.
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll try. Maybe when we solve this case I’ll be able to finally see things like you say.”
“About that, have you and Alex had any success after finding that man in Ellicott City? Derek seemed to think he’d be able to wrap this case up today. He was buying drinks for the whole bar to celebrate last night.”
The disappointment from Michael Thompson’s alibi turning out to be good made my shoulders sag. Lead
after lead had seemed so promising, and yet every single one had turned into a dead end. Alex may not have become the prime suspect again, but we had nothing to go on after Thompson’s mother and her next-door-neighbor happily gave Derek chapter and verse about how Michael had spent all those hours working on that broken furnace.
“No. It appears Derek’s celebrating was a little premature. The guy turned out to have an ironclad alibi during the hours when the murder took place, so it can’t be him,” I admitted, not able to hide my disappointment at how this case had turned out so far.
“Well, I’m sure you two will be onto the next suspect in no time,” my father said trying to be supportive, even though he had no idea what he was talking about.
Normally, I didn’t mind my father’s empty platitudes since I knew they were meant to make me feel better, no matter how little they succeeded in doing that. Today, though, it wasn’t enough.
“I don’t see how, Dad. We have nowhere else to look. Bethany had a few enemies and none of them seem to be our killer. I’m not sure what theory we can turn to now.”
“It seems to me that if Bethany wasn’t the reason for this, then you need to find another reason and there you’ll find your murderer. Just be careful, Poppy. I know Alex will be by your side, but be careful all the same. I’d feel better if it was Derek and Alex handling this one, to be honest.”
Chuckling, I thought about what Alex had said about Derek’s detective skills and tried to imagine the two men working together on a case. Nothing good could come of that.
“I think Alex would rather work alone if that was the case. Derek isn’t exactly great when it comes to this kind of thing.”
My father made a clucking voice with his tongue meant to show his disapproval of my attack on our police chief. “You underestimate Derek, Poppy. He’s far more clever than you or Alex give him credit for.”
On this point, I wouldn’t bother arguing with him. He’d always had a special place in his heart for Derek Hampton. I wasn’t sure if it was because he admired him for the football star he’d been in high school or simply because the Sunset Ridge chief of police had always been good to me, but my father wouldn’t hear anything truly negative about Derek.
The Darkest Hour Page 20