She looked overwhelmed.
“The kitchen’s a mess,” she said to her husband. “All those dishes.”
“I just got that new drainpipe in,” he said, “It’s fixed. Don’t worry about it.”
“Roger, the whole church will be coming over here with casseroles and stuff once they hear. You know it was when Mamma died.”
“I remember,” Roger said. “Let’s just get out of here and deal with it in the morning. Tell you what. I don’t want the girls seeing all that, but I want to take a look. I’ll take my truck, so I can drive by and get a look, and you take the kids in the van.”
“Well, help me get them ready first,” Holly said. “I’ve got to get Logan into dry clothes.”
B.J. left, thinking that Holly Hill Wellston was going to lose it at some point, and hoping that her mother-in-law was more comforting than her husband.
Demetrius Cater stood watch near Kasey Hill’s body. Two paramedics, who had been hoping to save a life, were now waiting by their van, prepared to take the body to the morgue.
In his mid-twenties, and a former captain of the Laurel Grove High School football team, Demetrius had been on the police force for four years. The young woman whose body had been found face down on the kitchen floor had been two years behind him in school. He remembered her as a skinny blue-eyed girl who had changed her hair color every other month, but was mostly a blonde. She had been a magnet for boys and had gotten herself talked about. Not that she had ever seemed to mind.
He was surprised and deeply relieved that the little boy was safe, but he was puzzled, too. He’d been braced to find the child’s body under hers.
He wondered if Kasey had been drinking or high on something. There had tornado warnings on television and radio for over an hour, and then the civil defense alarm had wailed for a good twenty minutes before the tornado finally hit.
It wasn’t something anybody could miss.
She should have gotten to safety, he thought, and even if she had been foolish enough to think the old mobile home could withstand a tornado, she would have heard the twister coming. Why was she even in the kitchen and why was her little boy running loose?
When he saw B.J. getting out of her cruiser, he smiled for the first time in a couple of hours. She was a foot shorter than he was, and didn’t look much older. Even in uniform she was a surprise to anybody expecting a police chief from central casting. In her jeans and sweatshirt, she looked like a teenager.
That image changed as she made her way through the shards of metal, torn curtains and household clutter and took charge.
“The little boy’s with his family and the coroner’s going to see the body in the morning,” she said. “Now show me, and let’s get things moving. Have you taken pictures?”
“Yes, I took a bunch, but she’s face down,” he responded. “All the stuff that was on top of her has been moved, but I didn’t know if I should turn the body over or not.”
“It doesn’t matter at this point,” B.J. answered. “We just need to get the body moved to the morgue and get some tarps or something over all this stuff before it rains again.”
Looking at Kasey Hill’s body wasn’t easy. B.J. concentrated on the damp fabric of a red and white patterned dress that clung to the body, and the thick, streaked blonde hair, which was wavy even soaked with rain. The left arm was out to one side at an odd angle, with her fingers clawing downward at nothing. B.J. noted that Kasey Hill had put on red false fingernails and one was broken off. She had been wearing red high heels.
“Jasper tried getting a pulse,” Demetrius said, referring to the older of the two paramedics, “but he said he could tell as soon as he touched her that she was dead.”
B.J. steadied herself in the debris, reached down and touched the back of Kasey Hill’s hand. It was cold and stiff.
She waved to the paramedics to come and get the body.
Chapter 3
Days were getting shorter, and Laurel Grove was dark when B.J. left the police station, where the generator was keeping the lights on. Aside from Kasey Hill’s death, there had been no reported injuries.
The firefighters and the volunteer rescue unit had cleared the main streets, but there was work that would require power saws, and that would have to wait for the electricity to be restored. Sawhorses with reflectors were blocking some side streets where fallen trees, branches and debris remained, and an eerie quiet had settled on the town.
Sgt. Chip Stanley, who was working part-time as he neared his longed-for early retirement, had come in grumbling to take the night shift. He would always rather be at home with his wife and their kennels full of cocker spaniels.
Mildred Morris, on the other hand, seemed happy to get out of her darkened home for her turn as dispatcher and had brought a romance novel, a flashlight just-in-case, and a bag of chocolate chip cookies.
Sheriff John Harp, whose office was in the county seat, McFall, ten miles away, had been an immediate help. In addition to assigning two deputies to patrol Laurel Grove’s streets until daybreak, he had sent down four ice chests full of cold drinks for the volunteers from the fire department and the rescue unit.
The sheriff, who had been elected without opposition for twenty-four years, was Darby’s boss, and B.J.’s friend and mentor. The strength of his department made it possible for Laurel Grove to operate with small police department, and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of Laurel County and its families.
B.J. called him before she left work.
“Did you know Kasey Hill?” B.J. she asked.
“Knew her to see her. She had a couple of DUI’s when she was working up here at the fancy spa place. I knew her Mamma and Daddy pretty well. Real sweet-looking girl, but maybe not all that bright. The older girl used to work at Security Bank, I think. She’s married to one of the Wellstons.”
“Roger,” B.J. filled in.
“Yeah, he’s from McFall, grew up right down the street from where we used to live. Good folks. I thought Roger and his wife lived in that trailer.”
“They live in an old brick house on Linnet Lane now,” B.J. said.
“Yeah, that’s the Hill family home,” he said. “Too bad this girl didn’t stay there, too. You say her name’s still Hill? Who’s the baby’s daddy?”
“I don’t know,” B.J. answered. “I asked the sister and either she doesn’t know or she doesn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t going to push her about anything right then. You think I need to find out?”
“As long as the kid’s in good hands, I’d let them sort it out,” he said. “Could be it’s somebody the sister doesn’t like. If he lives around here, he’ll know soon enough.”
And then he changed the subject to Detective Sylvester Darby.
“So when’s Darby getting back from that funeral he went to? Where was it?”
“Lawrenceville. And he’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,” B.J. said.
“Y’all found a house yet?”
“No,” B.J. said. “We’re still looking.”
She was tired, but far from sleepy, and she wasn’t looking forward to bumping around in the dark, so instead of heading home to her apartment, she decided to take one more ride around town.
The downtown business area was darker than she’d ever seen it, but a block past the commercial area she saw flickers of light between the trees up ahead.
She accelerated, turning the curve that led toward the historic part of town and saw the mansion on Tinsley Court glowing with a strange light from every window.
Within seconds she had screeched to a stop on the long curved driveway and was out of her cruiser. She took the front steps two at a time and pounded on the big front door, fumbling for her phone at the same time.
She was saved from calling the fire department when Councilman Benton Tinsley opened the door.
““Chief Bandry,” he said with a
smile. “Did you think my mother had finally set the house on fire?”
“Well, actually, I thought I should check,” she said, looking around at what seemed to be hundreds of lighted candles of every size and shape. “I never saw so many candles in my life.”
Max, the Tinsleys’ Golden Retriever came flying by chasing Loki up the stairs, and Evergreen arrived from the far reaches of the hallway. She smiled.
“B.J.! I’m so glad you came by. We need a full news report, and we’re just about to have dessert. I’ve got Benton and Ingrid and Meg here for the night since they could hardly stay in the dark, and I’m the one with a gas stove.”
The kitchen smelled like pineapple and brown sugar mixed with mysterious spices and was illuminated by an old-fashioned kerosene lantern as well as a dozen or more candles, positioned in and out of the pots of herbs. The Councilman’s wife, Ingrid, was washing up the dinner dishes, and their teenaged daughter, Meg, was just taking the cake out of the oven.
“I was just talking about you with one of my friends,” Meg said, beaming. “I heard you made them move a trampoline, and then you saved a little boy by jumping right over a power line!”
“That poor child,” Ingrid said. “It’s good that he’s too young to remember what happened. Who will ever know what he experienced?”
Ingrid was Swedish, and had met Benton Tinsley when she was an exchange student. She was beautiful and inclined to worry.
“Kasey Hill cut my hair the last time I went to Chloe’s Clips,” Meg said as she put a cookie sheet on top of the cake pan. “She was kind of fun. She talked a lot about when she was a cheerleader in high school. She had pictures of her baby taped on the mirror.”
“I just don’t understand why she didn’t get to a shelter with the child,” Ingrid said. “That horrible horn went on for so long. Why was he running around on his own? What if he had touched that power line? It could have killed him. What if you hadn’t been there to save him?”
“It was really a dog who saved him,” B.J. said, thinking of getting Ingrid into a happier frame of mind. “This dog was being protective and when I yelled to Logan to stop, he wouldn’t, but the dog caught the back of his overalls and made him sit flat down on the ground until I could get to him.”
“What kind of dog was it?” Evergreen asked. “What breed?”
“Mom!” Benton said, shaking his head as if he knew what was coming.
“It was a really beautiful sheltie,” B.J. responded, “You know like a collie but…”
“It was Lady!” Evergreen said, clapping her hands. “Oh, what a good dog! Good for Lady!”
“Mom,” Benton said. “Don’t start that foolishness!”
“Well, you know it had to be Lady!” Evergreen put her hands on her hips.
“Benton,” Ingrid interrupted. “Your mother’s not foolish. There really are things we don’t understand.”
Meg, who had used two oven mitts to flip the cake pan over on the cookie sheet, served her usual role as the family’s interpreter.
“Grandma had a Sheltie when Dad was growing up,” she explained to B.J., “And her name was Lady. She’d be forty years old now if she was alive.”
“But she isn’t alive. She’s buried right in the backyard under the magnolia tree,” Benton said. “Case closed.”
“Such a good dog!” Evergreen said. “And, Meg, you can lift the pan up now that the pineapple rings have had time to settle. Do it carefully.”
“That’s just the kind of thing Lady would come back to do,” Evergreen added to B.J. “She used to herd Benton all around the yard, and she’s manifested more than once. There was a parade once when the Ellison’s little girl almost got run over by one of the floats, and Lady pushed her out of the way, and then there was the time Tom Bingley’s little boy…”
“Mom,” Benton said firmly. “That dog has been dead and buried since I was twelve.”
“Oh, don’t be so obtuse,” she said. “I know you can’t see her, but isn’t it fascinating that B.J, did. I would never have expected that.”
B.J. wasn’t sure that was a compliment, but she was sure of one thing, and she said it.
“I saw a real dog. There was nothing mysterious, I promise you. I just knew it was a sheltie because a friend of mine had one. I’m sure it belongs to somebody in that neighborhood. It looked well-cared for.”
“And I would imagine if you ask around, you’ll find out who owns the dog,” Benton said.
“Oh, of course it was Lady,” Evergreen said.
Ingrid nodded solemnly.
“There really are things we don’t understand,” she murmured.
“Everybody look at this pineapple-upside-down cake!” Meg said. “Isn’t it perfect?”
The cake with its topping of pineapple rings, cherries and nuts was, in fact, one of the most perfect things B.J. had ever tasted, and they all ate in respectful silence while Evergreen offered a choice of milk, coffee or tea.
It was Benton Tinsley who brought the talk back to the subject of the Hills and Wellstons.
“I was surprised that the Hill girl was living in that trailer,” he said. “The last I knew they were all living in the house on Linnet Lane. Their mother was one of my clients, and she left the house in her will to both of the daughters. I guess they must have worked something out.”
When B.J. got home, her apartment complex looked unfamiliar in the unrelenting darkness. She used her flashlight to find her front door.
Inside, she found her way to her bedroom, only stumbling over boxes twice, and collapsed on the bed. She was happy that her phone was still working, but worried that the battery was low and she’d forgotten to recharge it in the car.
She sent Darby a text.
Had tornado w/ one life lost here. Things settling down. Sheriff big help. Had cake w/Evergreen and family. Candles everywhere. Am home now. Phone battery low. See u tomorrow. I love u.
She ended with a row of hearts, pulled off her clothes and got under the covers. Her mind kept turning to Kasey Hill’s fancy dress and red high heels in all that rubble, to little Logan Hill and to the sheltie.
Stay around Evergreen Tinsley too much and you’ll believe in anything, she told herself. I saw a real dog, not the ghost of some dog who died before I was even born. That dog bit the kid’s overall and yanked him backwards. It was about as real as things get.
But Evergreen had been right about a few weird things before.
B.J. finally settled her mind by deciding to call the veterinarians on Monday and just ask who owned a sheltie. She could even say that she wanted to be sure the dog’s owners knew what a good dog they had. Because she did think the dog might have made all the difference.
She wrapped her arms around Darby’s pillow, wishing he were home, and the next thing she knew it was a little after four. She could hear the icemaker in her refrigerator making up for lost time, and half the lights in her apartment were on. She got up to turn the lights off, fell back into bed and slept restlessly until six thirty, when she got up and got ready for her morning run.
It was a little before seven when she left her apartment. She smiled as she started down Russell Street, thinking that she was out early and might manage not to encounter Pinky Brayburn and her poodles.
This was not a matter of disliking the old lady with the pink outfits and pink makeup, and fluffy hair, or really minding the dogs and their hysterical barking. It was that Pinky Brayburn considered morning walks to be a social occasion, while B.J. considered her morning run to be exercise.
She had given up running in the city park across the road for that very reason. There were others, of course, like Mayor Fred Fuller, who would expect a fifteen-minute discussion anytime they crossed paths, but Pinky Brayburn regularly took Fifi and Pierre to the park and if B.J. didn’t meet her on the first lap, she’d meet her on the last.
She had ju
st reached the corner of Russell and Willow Street, when she heard her name called out, and the dogs yipping, and she sighed.
“Miss Pinky”, as everyone called her, was hurrying along in one of her several pink walking outfits, already made up for the day with bright pink lipstick and rouge. Her snowy-white poodles were pulling at their leashes.
This time, however, she wasn’t smiling. She looked distressed.
“Tell me something,” she asked as she got closer, “How is that little boy? The one whose mother was killed when that tornado struck? Was he in the house?”
“He’s fine,” B.J. said. “He wasn’t hurt at all. His aunt—his mother’s sister –has him, and they say he’ll have a home with them.”
“That’s amazing,” Pinky said, “That she could be killed and he wasn’t hurt at all. Oh, I’m so glad he’s all right. I never see you in the park anymore.”
“I like to take different routes on different days,” B.J. answered, “The way Mayor Fuller does—just to check on things.”
She ran on, glad she had encountered Miss Pinky and could reassure her, and glad the stop had been as short as it was.
As she got to the north side of town, it was good to hear the sound of power saws, as volunteers went to work on the fallen trees and damaged buildings. Disaster, she knew, brought out the best in many people.
LaKeisha Taylor, B.J.’s office manager, had coffee ready when B.J. arrived at eight thirty. Deputy Andrea Cole was there from the Sheriff’s Office, stifling one yawn after another.
“We ran a few kids away from that trailer site,” Andrea began. “Roger Wells came by this morning and took a look through some of the stuff. I figured it was okay since he said it was his property. I remembered him and Holly living there when they were first married. Anyway, he picked up a few things that weren’t ruined. I told him the sooner that all gets cleaned up, the better, and the Rescue Unit will help. There’s food in there and it’ll get rats and possums before you know it.”
Who Killed Kasey Hill Page 2