by Mona Marple
“And if we speak to her she’ll corroborate that, will she?” Taylor asks.
Antoinette stiffens. “I’d rather you don’t speak to her.”
“Why’s that?” Taylor asks.
“She’s fifteen, she’s got nothing to do with this mess and she’s home for the holidays. She’s a little, erm, sensitive,” Antoinette says as her eyes meet mine. “Connie, I’m sure you understand as a woman, as a mother.”
“I’m, erm, I’m not a mother,” I say, feeling my heartbeat quicken.
“Oh,” Antoinette says, giving an awkward laugh. Any solidarity she imagined between us is lost and she returns her attention to Taylor. “Well, hopefully this has been helpful, Sheriff?”
“I may need to speak to your daughter, Miz Cross. You need to be aware of that, okay. I’m used to dealing with minors. There’s really nothing for you to worry about in that regard,” Taylor says, then pauses. “And I am a parent.”
**
An awkward silence descends on us after Antoinette Cross leaves. Taylor’s deep in thought, and I daren’t consider too much what he might be thinking. Is his mind overflowing with ideas about the investigation, or is he replaying how quick I was to distance myself from any parenting role?
How would I feel, if the tables were turned, and my own beautiful babies needed a second parent? How would it feel to hear the person I love, so eager to be distanced from them? Would it cut like glass, or throb like a bass line?
“I might go home,” I say, my voice barely a whisper, as the silence stretches on endlessly.
“Oh,” Taylor says, lifting his head from the pile of papers he has been staring blankly at, “yeah, sure. Need a ride?”
“No, no,” I say, “I’ll walk. The fresh air will do me good.”
And then I leave, and wonder what I’m walking away from and why.
13
Sage
He’s working late, which can’t be good.
Add to that the fact that Connie’s moping around at home watching festive Hallmark movies and eating ice cream from the tub, and I know something’s happened.
I take a deep breath and force myself to walk through the closed door, cringing as the metal workings of the lock grate against my spirit form. Inside, the building is in darkness, but I could see the lamp on in Taylor’s office from the street.
I climb the stairs and tap lightly on his door, which stands ajar.
“Geeze, Sage, you scared me,” he says with a lazy grin, “please don’t tell me you’re here to report another murder?”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” I say, thrown off by his nonchalance. I imagined him in here stewing, a bundle of emotions, but he’s his normal self. “I was just passing and saw your light on.”
“And thought you’d sneak in and give me a fright? I don’t mind answering the door if you want to knock, ya know?”
I can’t help but smile at him. He’s a good man. Even if him and Connie need their heads knocking together sometimes. “Point taken.”
Taylor removes his glasses and rubs the corners of his eyes with his long index fingers, then lets out an involuntary groan. His desk is smattered with papers, beige folders, scraps of paper with handwritten notes on, and at least five empty coffee cups, rings of brown stains suggesting they don’t get washed as often as they should.
“How’s it going?” I ask, gesturing to the desk.
“I’m getting somewhere, I think,” he admits, “I’m just not sure where.”
“Connie says you interviewed Antoinette Cross today? You won’t believe this, but she actually gave me an autograph.”
Taylor smirks. “I never knew you were a fan.”
I grin and pull the paper from my pocket, examine her looping scribble, then turn the paper over. It’s a rehearsal schedule, or part of one at least. The page is torn, edges jagged.
“You okay?” Taylor asks.
“Yep,” I say, “how did the interview go?”
Taylor nods. “She seemed believable. Didn’t want me speaking to the daughter, but I can’t blame her for that. Nobody wants the Sheriff popping round to see their kid, really.”
“The daughter? Why would you need to speak to her?” I ask.
“Alibi witness,” he says.
“For what?” I ask.
“Tabitha’s murder. Antoinette was home with her daughter.”
“That’s hardly grilling the kid then, surely, just checking things out,” I say, glancing at the corkboard behind Taylor’s desk. A photo of Scarlett and Axel as newborns, snuggled together in an incubator, takes pride of place. “Parents seem so desperate to overprotect their children nowadays.”
“Let me guess, it wasn’t like that in your day?”
I consider the question and smile to myself, remembering what life was like as a young mum. The days where I felt sure I would explode if another child’s sticky fingers touched me, or if I heard the word mum once more. The days when I craved a moment’s peace to enjoy my thoughts. And then, when schooldays began, the silence of the house and the realisation that I’d forgotten what thoughts I’d like to enjoy. The days counting down the hours until I could set off on foot to collect them, knowing that news of every tiny part of their day would spill out of them uncontrollably.
Parenting is magical. I’ve realised that now. The trouble, for me, was that at the time, the magic was hidden in the middle of so much busyness, noise and emotions, I couldn’t always see it.
“I think the world just seemed safer,” I say, “there wasn’t this pressure that a parent should keep their children entertained constantly. They wanted to be out with their friends, not stuck at home. You’re bringing the twins up in a very different time.”
Taylor let out a rough bark of a laugh. “Tell me about it. And in this job, I can hardly stop thinking of horror stories. I might just never let them leave the house.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I say, then decide to brave it. “It’s all Connie ever wanted, you know? To be a mum.”
Taylor swallows and looks up at me, earnest, from his swivel chair. “Really?”
“You don’t know that?”
He shakes his head. “Well, we’ve never really talked about it. I mean, I have the twins, I wouldn’t… I don’t…”
“You don’t want more children.” I say.
“I don’t see enough of the two I’ve got, doing this job. And the pressure’s on for me to be both parents. It wouldn’t be fair to spread myself even more thin. Does that sound like an excuse?”
“It doesn’t,” I admit. His responsibility is to the children he already has, not imaginary ones he could potentially have in the future. I get that. And I suspect Connie’s biological clock has already stopped ticking, in any event.
“You think I should have this talk with Connie?”
“No,” I say, to his surprise. “She’s resigned herself to not being a mother.”
14
Connie
When I hear the rap at the front door, my first thought is that I’ve been caught red handed eating chocolates for breakfast. I went into the kitchen to make a coffee, that’s all, but my fingers somehow found the old pack of after dinner mints in the back of a cupboard that’s never stored the coffee.
I don’t even like after dinner mints. And I definitely don’t think they count as a balanced breakfast meal. So, when I took the pack out of the cupboard, my intention was to throw them away.
Who knows what happened next? Add this to the list of great mysteries – like UFOs and crop circles and why I can never find a hair bobble even though I know I must own hundreds.
All I know is that when the door goes, I’m standing by the counter and looking down at six wrappers. Six after dinner mints – gone. Evaporated? Stolen? Or eaten by me? I know which option is the most likely, trust me. That’s why I scoop the wrappers up and toss them into the trash, and then take a swig of scalding coffee to try and mask the chocolate scent on my breath.
Perhaps this is how a person b
egins a life of crime. They just stumble into a situation where they realise how quickly they resort to deceit, how comfortable dishonesty feels.
“It’s you,’ I say, confused, as I open the door.
“You ready?” Taylor asks, leaning in to give me a light kiss on the cheek. I close my eyes and try to turn off the mental chatter looping around and around in my head. He’s here, he’s happy, he smells like baby powder and black coffee, and everything else is in my head.
“What for?” I ask.
“We’ve got Dimitri Matu at the station to interview, and then a visit to Antoinette Cross’ daughter.”
“Did you hire me?” I joke. “Because I don’t remember negotiating my pay.”
Taylor laughs as I slip my arms into my jacket and step into my boots. The sky is grey and heavy with the snow that will be falling by lunchtime, according to the weather reports. I grab my scarf too and close the door behind me.
“You think you’d like to be a cop?” Taylor asks as we set off.
I shake my head. “I’m considering a life of crime.”
“I’d like to say it doesn’t pay,” Taylor says, “but there’s plenty of delinquents out there earning more than I do.”
“You have their numbers?” I joke, “I could see if they’re hiring.”
Taylor lets out a snort and side-eyes me. “You, Connie Winters, are full of surprises.”
**
Dimitri Matu is a nervous ball of energy when we walk into the interview room. A handsome man, and too young to be sitting there dead, he fidgets compulsively.
“You know why you’re here?” Taylor asks. The room smells of an abundance of bleach and I try not to gag. When a room smells this chemical, it always makes me wonder why it needed so much cleaning.
Dimitri shakes his head furiously.
“I want to ask you some questions about the murders. I take it you’re aware of Lionel Wright and Tabitha Reed being killed?”
“Yes I am, and if you want me to sit here and pretend it’s bad news, I can’t do it,” he says, with a flick of his brown hair.
“Why would you say that?”
“They were awful people!” Dimitri exclaims. He has the ghost of an accent that I can’t place and which may, or may not, be real.
“How so?” Taylor asks, his tone soothing. Sometimes, he’d told me, all you need to do is listen and appear to understand and a guilty person will confess because they don’t see they’ve done anything wrong. Others confess because they’re proud of what they’ve done and need to share their accomplishment with you.
Dimitri looks up towards the ceiling and begins to breathe rapidly – in, out, in, out - in little bursts of air, before looking at Taylor again. “They hated spirits. I have a committee to try and stop behaviour like theirs.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of that committee?” I say, keeping my voice curious, on his side.
“It’s for Fair and Respectful Treatment,” Dimitri says, and I wonder if he realises that he has created a FART committee. “I couldn’t stand by and watch the injustice my fellow spirits were being subjected to.”
“And this relates to Lionel and Tabitha how?”
“Oh!” Dimitri cries in frustration, as if the answer to this question is so obvious the question itself is unnecessary. “They’re part of the establishment that discriminates against spirits on a daily basis! Keeping us out of the community, forcing us into the side lines.”
I think about Sage. Nobody has a chance of forcing her into the side lines.
“Give me a specific?” Taylor presses. “I want to understand, help me. What have they done to you, Dimitri?”
“Well,” Dimitri says in a huff of outward breath, “I auditioned for the show, and that man…”
“Lionel Wright, you mean?” I clarify.
He nods. “That man didn’t give me a part!”
“And that’s the discrimination?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light and neutral.
“Well, of course it is! I’ve been on the stage my whole life. I was the best talent he had on offer, and he gave all the parts to the living. I was overlooked purely because I’m dead, and it stinks! It stinks that in this day and age such small-minded prejudice can be allowed!”
“Which role did you audition for?” Taylor asks, reading my mind. Unless he wanted to be Santa, there were no roles for an adult male.
“That’s hardly the point,” Dimitri says with an eye roll.
“Okay,” Taylor says, “that explains your anger towards Lionel. What about Tabitha?”
“She was just a nasty old woman,” Dimitri says with a shrug, “with her letters to the newspaper every week. She thought everything that went wrong in town was because of spirits. She was on a one-woman crusade to get rid of us all.”
“It sounds like you had a lot of reason to want them dead.” Taylor says with an understanding half-smile.
“All spirits are better off without them.”
“So whoever killed them was doing it for the greater good, perhaps? You think that could be a possibility?”
“Absolutely.” Dimitri says. He leans back in his chair, with the swagger of a teenager. Confidence before a fall, I think, as I watch him.
“And how about you?” Taylor asks.
“How about me?” Dimitri repeats, not following.
“You want to tell me where you were on the night Lionel Wright was killed?” I ask.
Dimitri laughs but I see the panic in his eyes as he realises the corner he’s talked himself into. “I was at the town hall.”
“Convenient. Why, if you weren’t in the show?”
“I was protesting. I saw you in the queue, remember?” He says, eyes flitting between the two of us desperately.
“Before the show, yes. Why would you still be at the town hall once it had started?” Taylor asks. I can feel us entering a comfortable back and forth rhythm of questions and allow myself a glance across at him. I’m drawn not to the chiselled set of his jaw, but the laughter lines that burst across his skin and the character they add to him. I have to fight an impulse to reach across and hold his hand, I’m so overwhelmed with a flood of affection for the man he is.
“That’s simple, really,” Dimitri says, his accent switching now to an exaggerated Californian. “I was waiting so I could continue protesting after the show. And while I was there, I figured I might as well see what a mess they made of it all.”
“You were watching the show? I didn’t see you.” I say. This has no significance, of course. My eyes were on the stage, and on my handsome beau, not checking the audience to see who else was there.
“I was behind the curtain,” Dimitri says with a shrug.
“Backstage?” Taylor asks.
“Yes. Until that awful woman told me I needed to move along. Then I went back outside. I saw enough. The whole performance was pitiful. I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever killed Lionel did it to just put an end to the thing!”
“What awful woman?” I ask.
“Antoinette, of course. Miss High and Mighty! Something about me being a fire hazard of all silly things.”
“You don’t like her either?” Taylor asks.
“Not as much as she likes herself.” Dimitri says with a cruel laugh. “To be honest Sheriff, my afterlife would be a lot easier if I could just leave the arts behind, but it’s in my blood. I love performing but the arts are full of people who are just awful. All ego and no talent. Antoinette’s one of those, that’s all.”
“Let’s move on to Tabitha Reed. Where were you the afternoon she was killed?”
“I have no idea,” Dimitri says, “but I know she was shot outside Abe’s and I can guarantee you that Abe’s is the last place I would have been a week before Christmas.”
We both look at him, wait for him to expand.
“I don’t like crowds,” he admits, with a shudder. “Brings back memories of my death.”
We don’t ask for detail. Etiquette tells us it’s bad practice to a
sk a spirit how they died. Sometimes, a spirit won’t even remember the details of their death; like Sage. Others remember every detail and never want to think of it again. And then there are some, of course, who spend the afterlife talking about little else. But this one rule is sacred: only the dead person raises the topic of their death.
I glance across at Taylor and raise an eyebrow slightly. He nods his chin a fraction.
“Thanks for your time, Mr Matu,” Taylor says as he rises from his seat. I do the same. “We might need to ask you some more questions later, but for now, you’ve been really helpful and you’re free to go.”
Dimitri flicks his hair and purses his lips, then stalks past us, seeing himself out of the interview room and down the corridor towards the foyer, where he pushes himself through the closed door without so much as a second to brace himself for the sensation.
“Interesting,” I murmur. Taylor looks at me quizzically. “The boy’s got some experience of getting in places without knocking.”
15
Sage
There are many things I know about Patton.
I know that when he’s nervous, he gets this fake cough. It buys him a little time before he has to answer a question, or distracts from the emotions he’s scared might show on his face, or just gives his hand something to do because he’d never cough without covering his mouth with a balled-up fist.
I know he died on duty, because spirits have to remain in the outfit they wore when they crossed over, and he’s in his uniform. I know that when he realised he was dead, he looked down and checked his body and his very first emotion wasn’t sorrow for his own demise, but an enormous wave of gratitude that he gets to wear that uniform for the eternal afterlife.
And I know that he’s annoyed with me as we stand on the front step of Antoinette Cross’ house and wait for someone to answer the door. We’ve been scoping out the place for over an hour, waiting for Antoinette to leave so that we can speak to her daughter. Off the record, of course.