Who Killed Kasey Hill

by Charlotte Moore

  Well, if this has anything to do with Kasey Hill’s death, you don’t have to notify him. He already knows,” she said. “We’re all very sorry for the family’s loss and for that little boy, but they broke up a while back and that’s over.”

  B.J. and Darby had both perfected the art of waiting to hear “the rest of the reason,” the clear message in their friendly, curious faces being that they hadn’t yet gotten a response to their question.

  “And, no, he’s not here,” she said. “He’s up in Macon with his new girlfriend—well, with this young lady he’s going out with—and some of her friends, and he won’t be back until late.”

  “Could you give us his cellphone number?” Darcy asked.

  “I don’t have his permission to give his number out,” she said primly.

  B.J. took out one of her cards and offered it.

  “Well, we’ll check at the lumber yard tomorrow, but when you talk to him would you give him my number?”

  She took the card, nodded and closed the door.

  “Hmm,” B.J. said as they headed for B.J.’s cruiser. “I think she probably didn’t care much for Kasey Hill.”

  “So let’s go see if the crime scene guys are done,” Darby said, “And then talk to the best friend.”

  “I don’t want to interview Jazz Carpenter at home,” B.J. said. “I don’t want his mother hanging around.”

  When they arrived on Butterfield Road, Barney Thomas and his team had the tents down and were packing up their vans.

  “That’s the worst crime scene ever,” he said. “All sorts of fibers, could have gone with anything. Clothes all over the place. The back door wasn’t locked, so maybe the kid had walked out before the tornado. There was a six-pack of beer in the fridge, with one missing. I got some prints, but they’re probably just hers. Some Cheetos and chips and stuff like that, all over the place. We found her purse in the bedroom area. Had the usual junk and about ten dollars. No cellphone anywhere. No laptop. I’d guess she didn’t even have internet.”

  “I need the purse,” Darby said. “You sure about the phone?”

  Barney gave him a raised eyebrow.

  “If it was there, we would have found it,” he said. “How about letting that Wellston guy know when he can come over here? He came over twice. Wanted to move the victim’s car to his place. Well, he said it’s in his wife’s name.”

  “You’ve searched the car?” Darby asked.

  “Yep. Got a car seat in it and some toys and a lot of fast food wrappers. Her car keys are in her purse, but I think the brother-in-law had one of his own.”

  Jazz came to the police station a little after five. He had changed to purple jeans with a black t-shirt, and had his hair loose.

  “Let’s get your name first,” Darby said after turning on his digital recorder.

  “Jazz,” Jazz said. “Just Jazz. And what’s this all about?”

  “I need your full legal name, for the record,” Darby said. “First, middle initial and last. What’s on your driver’s license, Jazz?”

  “Percival James Carpenter, Jr.” Jazz said. “And we haven’t laid eyes on my daddy for the last ten years. He went back to Mississippi and all he left me was his stupid name. Everybody calls me Jazz.”

  “Okay, Jazz,” Darby said with a grin. “No problem. I don’t like my first name either, and Chief Bandry here probably won’t tell you what B.J. stands for.”

  “What does it stand for?” Jazz asked B.J.

  B.J. shook her head and said, “Let’s get started. We need your help, Jazz. We’ve had some further information on the cause of Kasey’s death. It turns out that she was murdered before the tornado ever hit.”

  “No!” he said. “No WAY! You mean somebody killed her? Do you know who? That’s crazy! How? Was she shot or…”

  “We don’t have any idea who did it,” B.J. said, dodging he last question, “But let us ask the questions for a few minutes so we can get this in order.”

  I’ll help any way I can,” he said, brushing his hair back from his face. “Kasey wasn’t just my cousin. She was the best friend I ever had.”

  “Just for the record,” Darby said. “Where were you yesterday afternoon?”

  “I was working!” Jazz said. “I swapped Saturday afternoon with Kasey, and if I hadn’t, she’d be alive.”

  Tears were welling up in his eyes. B.J. pushed a box of tissues toward him, and said, “You just did what any friend would do, and we’re hoping you’ll give us some vital information now. Let’s start with yesterday. She was supposed to work all day, and you were going to have the afternoon off. How did she happen to swap working times with you?”

  “She sprung that on me as soon as we got to work,” he said. “She said she thought Logan might be getting sick, and that she had some of her special customers that morning, but not that afternoon, so would I swap? And then she’d take my place Monday morning. I didn’t much want to, but she wouldn’t let it go. She said she was worried that Holly had so much going on that sometimes she didn’t pay enough attention to Logan, and anyway I caved. It didn’t make all that much difference to me. I could tell the weather was going to be awful and we probably wouldn’t have that much business anyway.”

  “What was she wearing when she left?”

  He looked surprised at the question.

  “Her work smock and jeans,” he said. “I guess. I would have noticed if she was wearing something different.”

  “Did she mention expecting any company?”

  “No. It was all about Logan. Tell you the truth, I never heard her say anything like that about Holly before. I mean Holly’s like Logan’s second mom.”

  “Do you know who Logan’s father is?” Darby asked.

  Jazz sighed.

  “No. I don’t know his name,” he said. “I know something about him, but she made me cross my heart and hope to die if I told anybody.”

  “Crossing your heart doesn’t count if somebody gets murdered,” B.J. said. “Somebody strangled her, Jazz. She’d want that person caught.”

  “So help us,” Darby said. “We need to catch this guy.”

  “I don’t think it would have been Logan’s father who killed her,” Jazz said, “Like I said, I don’t know his name. I just know the story. It was somebody she met when she was working up in McFall, you know, before she got fired up there at Glam and came back to work for us, and turned up pregnant. But, I don’t think it could be him that killed her. He’s a lawyer.”

  “When did she tell you about this?” B.J. asked. “Her sister didn’t seem to know who the father is.”

  “I don’t think she ever told Holly,” Jazz said.

  “When did she tell you?” Darby repeated.

  “It was just a couple of days after she moved into the trailer, so it was back in the spring, and I was helping her put Logan’s new bed together. She had ordered one that was a crib, but would turn into a little kid bed later, and it came unassembled. We nearly went crazy trying to understand the instructions.”

  “Anyway,” he went on, “She was carrying on about how much everything cost, and how people didn’t tip enough, and how she needed a raise and I told her to ask Mama for one. She said she already had and that Mama had told her that she should have stayed in the house instead of moving, and whoever Logan’s daddy was, he was supposed to be paying child support and she ought to see about that. Mama’s like that sometimes—real blunt.”

  He shook his head, remembering. B.J. and Darby waited for him to keep talking.

  “I’d been thinking that maybe Kasey just didn’t know who the daddy was, because I’d heard she really got in with a wild crowd up in McFall. Or that’s what I heard. She kinda forgot about me for a while there. Anyway, when she told me what Mama had said to her, I just came right out and asked her if she even knew who the daddy was, and for some reason she told me
about it, but even then, she didn’t tell me his name.”

  “So, what did she tell you?” Darby said, leaning back and stretching as if they were just having a friendly conversation.

  “Well, he was married, for one thing,” Jazz said. “And he wasn’t part of any of that crowd she was drinking and dancing with at the Red Barn. She met him when she was cut his hair and trimmed his beard at Glam, and one thing led to another. She said they were in love, but he had to break it off because his wife got cancer. He told Kasey she was the love of his life, but he had to keep his marriage vows. Then the next thing she heard was that they’d moved up somewhere near Atlanta so his wife could be nearer her family and get the treatment she needed.”

  “And she thought the baby was his?” B.J. asked.

  “Well, she said she was sure Logan was his from the start, but when she finally found out where he was, he told he didn’t think he could—you know—conceive. He and his wife had tried for years, he said, and now his wife was dying… and to please not take him to court to try to prove it because it would break her heart.”

  He stopped with a sad look.

  B.J. raised her eyebrows at Darby, who cleared his throat and went on with the questioning.

  “So she didn’t make any legal effort?”

  “No, I don’t think so. She said she just hoped that Logan would have this guy’s brains.”

  Darby said. “Can you remember anything else she said about him? We’d like to talk with him.”

  “Only that he was a lawyer and he had a beard,” Jazz said. “I remember the beard because she set she met him when she was trimming his beard. And his wife got cancer.”

  “This guy lived in McFall?” Darby wanted to know.

  “I think so,” Jazz said.

  “Why did she move into the trailer?” B.J. asked, wanting to get Jazz’s take on that arrangement. “We understand that the house on Linnet Lane was half hers.”

  “She wanted her own place,” Jazz said. “Now, don’t tell Holly this, but Kasey felt like Holly was always bossing her around, and wanting her to help clean up and cook. Kasey said there were like four of them and just her and Logan, and it was the girls who messed things up, not Logan since he was just a baby, and she didn’t even have a separate room for him. Besides, she wanted to have people over, you know, and that didn’t work with Roger sitting in the middle of the living room watching TV every night, and the kids running around screaming.”

  He shrugged and said, “Holly could be kinda bossy, but it’s Roger I couldn’t have put up with. I think they all got along a lot better after she moved out. You know Roger owns the trailer, and the guy who was renting it moved out, so they agreed that she’d move in and not pay any rent, and they made some kind of deal about Holly keeping on taking care of Logan while Kasey worked… They were going to pay her off for her share of the old house as soon as the kids were older and Holly could go back to work. Anyway, Kasey thought it was a real good deal, but it’s like my mother said: she didn’t count on the cost of food and power bills and that kind of thing. Kasey was just thinking about having her own place.”

  “When did Champ Brennan come into the picture?” B.J. asked.

  “About a month after she moved into the trailer. She met him at that that big Barbecue Cook-Off and they had this big romance. He was taking her out to dinner and sending her flowers and stuff like that. And next thing I know, he’s moved out of his sister’s house and moved in with Kasey.”

  “What’s he like?” Darby asked.

  “Normal,” Jazz said. “Like he watches sports on TV and goes to the gym and likes to use a smoker and a grill and all that stuff. I think he probably makes good money at the lumberyard. My mom liked him. She thought it was too bad that didn’t work out because he could have supported her and he would’ve been a good daddy for Logan.”

  “Why didn’t it work out? B.J. asked. “Do you know?”

  “Well, at first when Champ moved in, it was like he was her best friend instead of me, but then she was back to talking with me a lot again, and she said she’d just got out from having Holly and Roger trying to run her life, and now she had Champ acting like he was middle-aged. She said Champ was fun to start with, but then he wanted to stay home every night or grill steaks or smoke pork butts of whatever. When they broke up, she said she kicked him out, but I think maybe he was the one who broke it off. Either way, they weren’t getting along.

  “Why do you think it was him that broke it off?” B.J. asked.

  “Well, I know it was him who walked out. Holly told Mama about it, so keep this between us. See, they had their anniversary that Friday night and the girls had spent the night with their grandma up in McFall, so they went out and Roger wanted to sleep in the next morning. But Champ shows up at their house at about seven and bangs on the door and hands Logan over to Roger. He says he’s moving out, and that he has to get to work and that Kasey got drunk the night before and she was still asleep. Or something about like that. Anyway, Roger’s got a bad temper and he never did much like Champ, so he was hollering that Champ could just take Logan right back over there, but Holly got into it and she took Logan.”

  “OK,” Darby said. “I understand you’re saying he walked out, but it was her place he walked out of. Could she have been the one to break it up?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jazz said. “Because Kasey was calling him over and over and crying a lot.”

  “Do you think she loved him?” B.J. asked.

  Champ sat silently for a while before saying, “I don’t know. She sure complained about him a lot before they broke up, but then I thought she really wanted him back. Maybe she just loved him more when he left. Or it could have been the money. I know she was stressed about the bills, because he had been paying for just about everything and she’d been spending her paycheck on clothes and things for Logan, like she did when she was still living in the house.

  “Let me ask you this,” Darby finally said. “We’ve all had friends we knew had problems. Did you ever get the impression that Kasey lied to get her own way, or maybe to make herself look good?”

  Jazz nodded.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “She could make anything look like it was everybody else’s fault and not hers, but she was still my best friend. I think she probably told me more than she told anybody.”

  After he was gone, Darby looked at B.J. and asked, “What did you think of the lawyer story?”

  B.J. looked exasperated.

  “I thought it sounded made-up,” she said, “Like something she saw on some made-for-TV movie, and Jazz believed it. I think it was her way to get him to drop the subject and maybe making it sound good for Logan. Champ Brennan is the one who interests me. Maybe he was going to come over to talk, and she didn’t want anybody to know in case they didn’t make up. So she put on the dress to look nice for him and brought Logan home to lay it on thick, and then something went wrong and he went nuts and strangled her.”

  “But, this is the guy who took the little boy to his aunt’s and uncle’s house before he went to work, instead of leaving him there with her,” Darby said. “You think he’d just have left the kid there with her dead on the kitchen floor?”

  “What choice would he have?” she asked, and rubbed her forehead. “You know, it’s been non-stop drama since that tornado hit. We can’t do anything else now, so let’s go home and not even talk about any of it.”

  “What about the brother-in-law?”

  “He’s not going anywhere,” B.J. said.

  As they left her office, she groaned. Andy Abbott, the owner and sole announcer of Laurel Grove’s radio station was coming through the front entrance.

  “Hey Chief, what’s been going on over on Butterfield Road?” he asked in his booming baritone. “I got a tip that y’all are thinking Kasey Hill got murdered before the tornado even hit.”

  B.J. frowned.
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  “I was going to call you in the morning,” she said.

  “Hey, the public’s got a right to know tonight if there’s a killer running loose.” Andy said. “A lot of people knew Kasey. Maybe somebody saw something or heard something. Have you got the hotline going?”

  “You’re right,” she said. “And we’ve always got the hotline going. It’s just that we don’t ask the public to call until we’re ready to go public. Come on into my office, and give me a few minutes to get the details right.”

  “I’m going to go pick us up some supper,” Darby said. “See you at home.”

  Darby, who never had to give his weight a thought, had picked up pizza with everything on it, plus extra cheese.

  As they dug in, she told him about Logan’s rescue, about the sheltie, and about Evergreen’s insistence that it was her dog, Lady, who had died when Benton was still a boy.

  “So the dog just disappeared? You sure she wasn’t right?” Darby asked with a grin.

  “I had my mind on Logan and on Holly,” B.J. said, “That sheltie of hers is buried right under the big magnolia in their back yard. Maybe she sees ghost dogs, but I don’t. The one I saw was real. Beautiful, too. I meant to call the two vets’ offices today and see if I can find the owner. They ought to know that their dog saved that little boy.”

  Chapter 6

  Evergreen Tinsley was up early baking oatmeal cookies.

  She hadn’t heard the news on the radio the night before, but her sleep had been troubled by a bad dream. She was a young mother again in the dream and had left Benton somewhere and forgotten where she’d left him. Even when she woke up and remembered that Benton was now a middle-aged lawyer and perfectly safe, the anxious feeling hovered.

  She had just taken the first batch of cookies from the oven when her daughter-in-law to ask if she’d heard that Kasey Hill was murdered.

  “She was murdered?” she asked, partly surprised that Ingrid had known it before she did.

  “Yes,” Ingrid said, “It was on the radio last night. Benton heard it. The poor girl was already dead when the tornado hit. I thought you might have talked with Chief Bandry about it.”