“Just saying hello,” she said cheerily, stepping further into the room. She glanced at the computers surrounding them. “I heard you work here, right? Something to do with computers? I remember you were always good with them, whereas me, sheesh! So how’s it going? I haven’t seen you in years. But I guess that’s because I haven’t lived here in years. I just moved back here about seven months ago.”
She was babbling, she knew, but instead of discouraging her, Archer’s dour silence egged her on. He didn’t look as enraged as he had on Saturday night. In fact, he appeared quite the opposite—quiet, morose, beaten down almost. His hair was a tangle of black knots, he wore faded olive jeans and a gray T-shirt with a stain in the middle, and his chin was peppered with red, angry-looking acne spots. Archer Janick looked like life had thrown him into a mincing machine and then spat him out.
“You got a broken computer that needs fixing?” he abruptly asked, pulling out a long blue cable with a jerk of his fist.
“Um, no.” She couldn’t help noticing the wiry strength in Archer’s arms. At first glance he might not seem like much, but he was stronger than he looked. Strong enough to push a drunken man into a lake and hold him down until he stopped struggling.
“Then I don’t have time to stand around gabbing all day.” Archer wrapped the cable around his hand, his hostile gaze fixed on her.
“I was just trying to be friendly,” she said, telling herself not to be intimidated. There were several desks between them, and the open door was just behind her. If need be, she could sprint out in seconds and raise the alarm.
“Why?”
“Because...well, it’s the school anniversary. It makes you think back on the old days, I guess.”
“The good ol’ days, huh?” Archer gave a dismissive grunt. “They might’ve been good for you, but for some of us they were no picnic.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She hunted for a safe subject to bring up. Archer was virtually a stranger to her. They hadn’t shared any classes, and she’d rarely spoken to him during high school. Really, the only thing in common they had was Mervyn, but that was definitely not a topic she could mention, not when she was trying to establish a rapport with him. “I agree high school wasn’t always easy, but we were very young and immature then. People can change a lot in twelve years.”
“What are you implying?” His eyes were like hot coals as he lowered at her from beneath his mop of black hair. “Are you poking fun at me? Because of what I’ve gone through? Where I’ve ended up?” He advanced on her, his voice growing louder, his fists clenched around the length of plastic cord.
Emma stepped back, hands raised. “Hey, lighten up. I’m just trying to make conversation. If you don’t want to talk, fine, but you can stop acting like a crazy person.”
He stopped dead in his tracks and cackled. “A crazy person? That’s funny, because that’s exactly what I am.” He sniggered at her, then widened his eyes and pulled a face. “Boo!” She jumped back as he sneered at her. “Ha-ha! Yeah, I’m certifiable, all right.” He turned his back on her and returned to his work, muttering to himself.
Emma pressed a hand to her chest. What was up with Archer? Whatever it was, she didn’t want to find out. She hurried out of the room and scooted down the hallway. Now where was that decoration room?
She finally located the room tucked at the end of the hallway. It had once been a teachers’ lounge, if she remembered correctly. Now, it was furnished with several folding tables holding boxes filled with various materials. A woman in a wheelchair was parked at one of the tables, her straggly blonde hair covered by a knitted beanie.
“Hello.” Emma walked around a table so she could face the woman. “I’ve come to help with the decorations. I’m Emma Cassidy.” She hesitated for a moment before she realized with a shock that the woman was Katrina Heston. She’d known about Katrina’s car accident, but nothing had prepared her for the devastating change in her former classmate. “Oh, hi, Katrina,” she said, trying to disguise her reaction.
Katrina Heston lifted her head to inspect her. It seemed an effort for her, which was not surprising, given her emaciated body. Wrinkled blue eyes studied Emma for a while until recognition gradually filtered in. “Emma...?” she said with some effort, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“Yes, it’s me.” Hesitant, Emma drew up a chair and sat, hoping she sounded normal. She could scarcely believe this was the same girl she’d known in high school. Gone was the dazzling, haughty cheerleader who had everything—curvaceous figure, rich doting parents, handsome jock boyfriend, adoring circle of friends. Now she was almost unrecognizable, shrunken, almost skeletal, her body wasting away. Life could be so cruel. Pity filled Emma, but she sensed pity was the last thing a person like Katrina would welcome.
“I heard about your accident. I’m so sorry.” Impulsive, she touched Katrina’s hand that lay on a small tray table attached to the wheelchair for a brief moment.
“Yeah, I hear that a l-lot.” Katrina stretched her lips into a wry smile.
Emma nodded and swallowed, then turned to the table and pulled one of the boxes closer. “Guess I’d better make a few decorations, huh? What do we have here?” She hauled out sheaves of crepe paper in various colors. Belatedly she saw the corkboards on the wall that held instructions for making various decorations, a different one for each table. Her table was assigned to making crepe flowers, and beneath the table was another box holding completed flowers.
“It’s…easy,” Katrina said, her thin fingers tapping on some squares of pink paper on her tray table. “I sh-show you.” Slowly and laboriously, she began to fold the paper.
Emma watched on, only half-concentrating, her mind still taking in the full extent of Katrina’s injuries. According to Owen, the accident had happened about eighteen months ago. She could only imagine the amount of suffering Katrina must have endured and was still experiencing.
Back in high school Katrina had always been surrounded by her girl pack, her adoring besties who copied her slavishly. Other girls had longed to be invited into the charmed circle, but Emma had never been one of those. Maybe Katrina had picked up on her lack of admiration because she wasn’t above making disparaging remarks to Emma about her dubious fashion choices, with her girl pack smirking and sniggering in the background. The sly digs had never affected Emma much; after all Katrina was mean to a lot of people. Katrina was not one of Emma’s fondest memories, but no one deserved to be struck down and confined in a wheelchair before they were thirty.
“There.” Katrina held up a crooked, crumpled mess of paper in her bony fingers.
“I see,” Emma murmured.
Katrina pointed at the box under the table. “I made all those, you know.”
“Oh, you did?” No way could Katrina have constructed all those flowers, but it would be mean to contradict her.
Emma set to work on her own decoration, hunting through her mind for a safe topic of conversation. All the usual questions—How are you? What are you up to these days?—were minefields of potential awkwardness. Of course Katrina was not well, and her days were most likely filled with pain and suffering. She wondered how Katrina had got here. There was an elevator in the building, and her wheelchair was motorized, but Katrina was definitely not well enough to transport herself. One of her parents must have brought her here.
Katrina began scrunching up a new square of crepe paper. “What did you hear about my accident?” Each word required effort to enunciate.
“Uh, just that you had a car crash. I’m very sorry, Katrina. It must be awful for you.”
Katrina’s lips curled back, revealing crooked teeth that had once been perfect. “I’ve had better days.” Her voice slurred, and Emma guessed that the exertion of speech was tiring for her.
“How did you get here?” Emma asked. “Did someone drop you off?”
“Mom.” Once more Katrina bared her teeth, and it seemed more a grimace than an attempted smile. “I wanted to go shopping, but she brought
me here.” She pouted and swallowed, the cords in her throat contorting. “Silly twit.”
Emma blinked, surprised by Katrina’s sulky tone. “What did you want to buy?”
“I need a new dress. For the dinner. I’ve got nothing to wear!” Katrina’s fingers scrunched up the crepe paper. Her thin chest heaved as she struggled to get the words out. “Stupid woman won’t listen to me. She never listens to me. I’ve tried to tell her but she won’t—” She broke off, gasping for air. “No one will—”
At that moment a tall, statuesque woman whirled into the room, stopping short when she caught sight of Emma. “Oh! Hello. I’m here for Katrina. I’m Marjorie Heston, her mother.” She moved forward, eyes darting to her daughter.
Katrina’s mom looked like a middle-aged version of what Katrina might have become before her accident—coiffed ash blonde hair, silk scarf, smart pantsuit. Except her face was prematurely lined, and her eyes were strained. Little wonder, if she and her husband were taking care of their injured daughter.
“Hi, Mrs. Heston. I’m Emma Cassidy. I went to school with Katrina.”
“I think I remember you. Your father taught history.”
Katrina shifted in her wheelchair. “I was telling Emma about what happened.”
“Oh, dear. It won’t do us any good to dwell on the past. We’ve got to focus on the future. Anyway, we should leave now. We have to get to physio in an hour.” She scurried about, clearing Katrina’s tray table of decorations before grabbing hold of the handles, almost bundling Emma out of the way.
“But I want to go—” Katrina protested.
“Not now, dear, or we’ll be late.”
Katrina made an irritated sound in her throat but was helpless as her mother pushed her out of the room. Moments later, Marjorie came hurrying back into the room. She scooped up the misshapen flowers Katrina had made and shoved them into her purse.
“I don’t want anyone saying my daughter’s not capable,” she said stiffly to Emma. She paused and gazed harder at Emma. “Please understand that Katrina is not herself these days. She’s under a lot of pain, and it’s only natural that sometimes she says things she doesn’t mean.”
“Oh, I understand, and I’m very sorry about what happened.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Heston sighed, and for a brief second she dropped her guard and looked utterly exhausted. Then, like an invisible cloak that she hauled over herself, her composure returned. “We’ve had our challenges, but we’ll overcome them, one way or another.”
As Mrs. Heston disappeared, Emma wondered what Katrina had tried to say before her mother had arrived and interrupted her. It hadn’t been about shopping for a new dress. Something else was bothering Katrina. What was it, and why wouldn’t her mom listen to her?
***
“Wonderful. You’re a star.” Janet Ramos beamed at Emma. Her smile made Emma wish she had a tail she could wag. After ninety minutes of work, Emma was glad of Janet’s approval at the amount of decorations she’d completed.
“It was nothing,” Emma said, surreptitiously flexing her stiff fingers. “I’m glad I could help.”
“Will you be staying for lunch? A trip down memory lane in the school cafeteria?” Janet’s eyes gleamed with a hint of mischief.
“School lunches.” Emma laughed. “I don’t know if I need to relive those.” An image of Mervyn’s mom working in the cafeteria floated up from her memories. A lot of teenagers would have been embarrassed at their mom working as a lunch lady, especially one as motherly as Vera, but Mervyn had never seemed to mind the other kids’ teasing. “I guess Vera Butterick doesn’t work here anymore,” she said, “now that Mervyn is such a success.”
“No, she doesn’t.” Janet began to help Emma clean up the leftover scraps of crepe paper. “But she’s still very active around the school. She’s no lady of leisure, that’s for sure.”
They straightened the room, and then switched off the lights. As they walked down the corridor past the computer lab, Emma saw the door was still open and couldn’t resist peeking in, wondering if Archer was there.
He was, but he wasn’t alone. Owen stood in front of him and appeared to be questioning him. Emma blinked in surprise just as Owen caught sight of her. He raised his eyebrows infinitesimally at her before refocusing on Archer. Emma continued walking alongside Janet. Why was Owen interrogating Archer? It had to do with Saturday night, she was sure; because Archer had looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Downstairs, she and Janet chatted for a few minutes before the school bell rang and a flood of students poured out of classrooms. She said goodbye to Janet, and then stood back to let the first surge of teenagers pass her by. The hallway, so quiet a moment ago, now echoed with voices, chattering, laughing, and whooping. She’d forgotten how noisy a bunch of school kids could be.
“Pretty deafening, huh?” a voice spoke near her.
She turned to find Owen standing just a foot away, and her heart did an involuntary little leap that always seemed to happen these days when she bumped into him.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Were we ever this loud?”
“I’m sure we were.” His brown eyes held hers. He seemed in a friendlier mood today; maybe it was something to do with the location. “Lot of memories here,” he said, glancing about the hall.
Good ones, she thought, like leaving notes in Owen’s locker, and finding him waiting outside school for her. Yes, good memories, but it did no good to dwell on them.
In an effort to distract herself, she waved at a nearby drinking fountain. “That’s where Zoe and I always used to meet up.”
“You guys still keep in touch?”
“Well, we drifted apart for a while, there,” Emma confessed. “She was in San Francisco, and I was in New York, and we were both working so hard. But we reconnected recently through Facebook, and she’s here for the anniversary. In fact, we’re meeting for dinner tonight.”
Being on opposite sides of the continent for so many years, each with demanding jobs, had loosened the ties, so Emma was looking forward to seeing her old friend and renewing their bond.
“That’s great,” Owen said. “You’ll have plenty of catching up to do.”
“Yes.”
She definitely had her work cut out ‘catching up’ with Zoe. Was it childish of her to be slightly embarrassed about the yawning difference in their achievements? She’d seen Zoe’s photos on Facebook, all the trappings of success like her silver BMW convertible, her slick apartment, her trips to Tahiti, her employee of the month awards from the software company she worked for. Zoe’s career had been a smooth upward trajectory to stratospheric success, whereas Emma’s chart more resembled a roller coaster ride.
“I saw you questioning Archer,” Emma said, wanting to change the subject. “Was that about Saturday night?”
Owen eyed her thoughtfully. “You didn’t mention Archer gate-crashing the party earlier in the evening.”
“Hmm. It slipped my mind.”
“I’m not surprised.” He hesitated, tapping his fingers on his belt. “I hope it didn’t shake you up too much, discovering Neumann’s body.”
She had largely recovered, but it was good of Owen to be concerned about her. Not that she should read anything into it; he was just a considerate man.
“I’m fine,” she said. “But Mervyn is devastated. He wants to get to the bottom of this. Does Archer have anything to do with Todd’s drowning? Did he tell you where he was at midnight?”
Owen sighed. “You know I can’t discuss an ongoing police investigation with you.”
“I know, but it was worth a try.” She slanted her gaze at him. “So you’re aware of Archer accusing Mervyn of cheating him out of millions and how he threatened to get even with him?”
“I’m aware,” Owen said in a wary tone.
“And you know that Todd was wearing Mervyn’s red jacket when he drowned, so it could be possible that…” Emma twirled her fingers in the air, trying to draw Owen out on what he suspected.
It seemed he was impervious to her hypnotizing skills. He folded his arms and shifted his stance. “There’s a word for you, Emma, and it’s incorrigible.”
“Me, incorrigible?” She pressed a hand to her breast and gave him a coy look. “Is that good or bad?” Oh, no. What was she doing? Why was she flirting with Owen? Coughing, she dropped her coquettish pose. “Actually, don’t answer that.”
“It means that you’re meddling again when you know you shouldn’t.”
“Hey, I’m just pointing out that maybe Todd’s drowning wasn’t an accident, and maybe Mervyn was the target.”
He shook his head. “No, just…no.”
“What?” His blank refusal was beginning to irk her. “Isn’t that possible?”
“I’m not going to discuss possibilities with you.” A hint of exasperation roughened his voice. “Why can’t you stick to event planning?”
“I don’t know, Owen,” she shot back, annoyed. “Maybe it’s because I care about my friends. I’d hate for Mervyn to come to any harm because I wasn’t incorrigible enough.”
“Mervyn’s your bosom buddy now?”
“No, but he’s a decent man, and I don’t want to see him get hurt.”
His jaw tightened. It seemed she was getting under his skin, too. “Look, we haven’t come to any conclusions as to whether Todd Neumann’s death was an accident or not. We’re pursuing all lines of enquiry. We want the public to come forward with any information. What I don’t want is for you to go stumbling about asking the wrong questions, stirring up a hornets’ nest, and doing something foolish. Got that?”
“Yessir! Loud and clear.” Frustrated, she gave him a mocking salute, then marched off before she lost her temper.
Why did she let Owen get to her? Why did they rub each other the wrong way? At times, there was such tenderness between them, but it never lasted. It always blew up in their faces, like a grenade hidden in a cake.
She had barely left the building when footsteps hurried after her.
Murder Most Likely (an Emma Cassidy Mystery Book 3) Page 7