‘Give that back! Who the fuck do you think you people are?’ Morley screamed.
‘We need to see what’s in the bag,’ I said.
‘You need a warrant to do that!’ she screeched.
‘No, we’re not police,’ I said.
‘Then you’re thieves and I’m calling the police!’
‘You want them to see what’s in the satchel?’ I asked.
‘Mom—’ Graham started.
I ignored him. ‘Shall we have a look?’ I said, going for the bag’s zipper.
‘Pugh, you really shouldn’t do that,’ came a voice I recognized but really didn’t want to hear.
My shoulders slumped and I turned around to find Luna standing there. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘she’s hiding something and I want to know what it is!’
‘Maybe it’s that Advil you were so anxious to take?’ she said.
I started unzipping the bag. Luna put her hand over mine. ‘Anything you find in there will not be admissible in a court of law, Pugh. You know that.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Gretchen Morley said. She grabbed the bag out of my hands and unzipped it, spilling the contents on the sidewalk in front of her dorm. ‘There! Happy?’
I squatted down to look. Books. A laptop computer. A hair fixer. And a protein bar. That was it.
‘Let’s go, Pugh.’
‘Yeah, why don’t you all go?’ Gretchen Morley said. ‘Straight to hell!’ With that she picked up her belongings and scooped them into the satchel. But not before I saw the zippered compartment on the inside of the bag – the compartment that she hadn’t opened.
‘So what’s got the bug up your butt about Morley again?’ Luna asked.
We told her – Graham and I – about seeing her and Ng together at Threadgills, and Miranda about the conversation she heard between Morley and Ng in the hall of the chemistry building.
‘Ng?’ Luna asked, a frown on her face. ‘Tina Ng?’
‘Yes!’ Miranda said.
‘A teaching assistant, right?’ Luna asked.
‘Yes! Miranda said, almost jumping up and down.
I looked at Luna. ‘What do you know about her?’ I asked.
‘Champion interviewed her—’ Luna started but Miranda interrupted.
‘I told you there was something going on there!’
‘About what?’ I asked Luna, ignoring Miranda, who, let’s face it, was fairly hard to ignore. But I tried.
‘She was the T.A. for the class that Lexie Thurgood said the girl who told her about Bobby Dunston’s parents was in.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Graham asked.
We all shrugged. ‘Damned if I know,’ Luna said. ‘But it’s a string. Now we’ve just got to pull it.’
The Pugh kid wasn’t at the motel. Neither was his mom or Luna. Champion sat in his unmarked and waited, thinking. What did he actually have on the kid? How easily could that lawyer, Stuart Freeman, get him out of jail? Pretty damn quick was the answer to that. Did he shoot his wad now or wait for more confirmation? Surely it was coming. The kid did it, he knew that. Probably. More than likely. Maybe.
In frustration, Champion hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand – hard. It accomplished two things: he hurt his hand and the horn of the five-year-old unmarked began to beep and wouldn’t stop. Cursing, Champion got out of the car and opened the hood, taking note that the motel manager and several guests were outside now and staring at him, with some idiot shouting, ‘Turn it off!’ at the top of his lungs. In a perfect world, Champion thought, he could throw the guy’s ass in jail for that.
He started pulling wires until the horn stopped, but then, once in the car, he couldn’t get it to start. He knew nothing about cars except how to put gas in them. And he’d been pissed when full-service stations had mostly shut down and he’d had to learn how to pump it himself. His wife – ex-wife, he reminded himself – could change her own oil. And often, jokingly – he was told repeatedly – called him a sissy. He kind of wished she was around now so she could do something about it. Instead, he used his cell phone and called for service from the police garage. He knew he was going to get harassed for it but at this point he didn’t care. He just wanted to arrest somebody. Anybody would do.
TWELVE
I missed my overlarge tub in my renovated bathroom back home. But the one in the motel room worked in a pinch. I’m a water baby; I think best while in water. So I lay there in the small motel bathtub, turning the hot water on occasionally to keep things all toasty, and thought about my life in its current state. My husband and three of my children were away from me, doing God only knows what, while I was stuck in a motel room with a cranky cop and my son was next door doing God only knows what with his new girlfriend. And all of this was just a waiting game. Waiting for Champion to either arrest my son or find the real killer. Somehow I didn’t think he was even looking for the real killer.
My life had taken a drastic turn many years ago when my daughter Bess’s birth family was murdered. They were our best friends, our two families entwined in so many ways that, with their passing, it seemed our whole world had collapsed. But Willis and I had persevered, gotten Bess and the rest of our family through it and had helped find out who had killed our friends. That was also when I met Elena Luna, who now lived in the house where Bess’s birth family had lived. But their murders, and my involvement in the resolution of that, had started a trend in my life. A trend in finding dead bodies, or somehow getting involved in murder. But this was the first time since then it had truly hit home. The first time I was so scared I could hardly think straight.
And maybe that was the problem. I hadn’t been thinking straight. There had to be a reason why Bishop Alexander was killed and my son roofied. No one would go to that much trouble and be that premeditated just because someone pissed them off. There was more to it. I knew there were two basic reasons for murder: love or money. As far as I could tell, the only person who could be considered to have loved (and I use that term loosely) Bishop was his ex-girlfriend, Gretchen Morley. And with her ‘love’ probably meant what the man in question could do for her. Money, connections, power of some sort. Well, Bishop had a couple of those things – money and connections – but they were second hand, through his mother. Morley would have to wait a while to get her hands on any of that. And for all I knew, Morley herself came from a rich family and didn’t need those things. She was pissed enough to key his car and send him those Ex-Lax brownies, but I didn’t feel the passion coming from her. There would have to be passion to kill someone over love.
And the love angle could also be considered as a motive for the student adviser, Gaylord Fuchs. Bishop had acted horribly toward Fuchs’ wife, so horribly that Fuchs had taken a swing at him. It hadn’t worked, mainly because of Fuchs’ size. Would those two humiliations have been enough for Fuchs to plan such a brutal revenge? Wouldn’t Graham have noticed a little person in the cafeteria? Probably not. I had to admit my son was pretty oblivious most of the time.
And we hadn’t even started on Bobby Dunston’s parents. Had Champion interviewed them? I was pretty sure Luna hadn’t or she would have said something. Did we go talk with them? Where were they? I wondered. Where did Bobby come from?
The only person left was Lexie Thurgood and Luna had mostly written her off. She was definitely a long shot.
As the water began to get cold – so cold another shot of the hot water wouldn’t help much – I decided to get out of the tub. I was getting a prune look anyway. I took one of the motel’s skimpy towels and dried off as best I could, then tucked myself into my thick terrycloth robe I’d brought with me and went back into the main room. Luna started talking before I was totally in the room.
‘So instead of going after Morley again,’ Luna suggested, ‘why don’t I go visit Tina Ng?’
‘“I”? As in singular? As in you go and I sit here in the motel and twiddle my thumbs?’ I said. ‘No. Nada. Nien. Been there, done that. I’m going with you!�
�
‘And so are we!’ said Miranda Wisher from the doorway. I hadn’t heard her and Graham enter my room.
‘Absolutely not!’ Luna said. She sighed. ‘I’ll take E.J. but the two of you are to stay here, do you understand?’
‘How about we follow in my car?’ Graham suggested. ‘And just wait for you outside?’
‘Why? We’ll come back here and tell you what happened!’ Luna said.
‘Yeah, maybe you will,’ Miranda said, ‘and maybe you won’t.’
‘You don’t trust me?’ Luna said.
The ‘no’ was unanimous from all three of us standing there.
Luna looked indignant. ‘Maybe I should just go home – back to Black Cat Ridge. I came here to help you, Pugh, but if you don’t need it—’
‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot, Luna,’ I said. ‘I need your help. We need your help. But we have to be sure you’re on Graham’s side and you’re not going to go running off to Champion about everything we do!’
‘I haven’t—’ she started, then stopped. ‘OK, I won’t. Nate and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms right now anyway.’
I tilted my head in a question. ‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘I sorta suggested he was an idiot because of the way he’s been handling this whole thing. He seemed to take exception to that.’
I wanted to hug her. But Luna and I – we don’t hug. Instead, I held up my hand. She just looked at it. ‘High five?’ I said. She ignored me. I stood there for what seemed an eternity before Miranda ran up and hit my palm with hers. Somehow, it just wasn’t the same thing.
‘Where does Ng live?’ Luna asked.
‘Graham, where’s your laptop?’ Miranda asked.
‘In my room.’
Miranda grabbed my son’s arm and headed for the door. ‘We’ll find out!’ she said over her shoulder.
Once in Luna’s car, I brought up what I’d been thinking about in the tub. ‘We haven’t talked to Bobby Dunston’s parents.’
‘True,’ she said.
‘Don’t you think we should?’
She shrugged. ‘Do you really think they’re viable?’
‘I don’t know!’ I said, more heatedly than I’d intended.
‘Don’t yell at me, Pugh!’ Luna shot back.
‘I’m not yelling at you!’ I yelled at her.
‘Yes, you are!’ she yelled back.
‘I’m yelling at the situation! Not you!’ I yelled.
‘Well, whatever you’re yelling at, stop it!’ she yelled.
‘OK!’ I yelled.
We were quiet for a moment, although the small motel room seemed to vibrate from the strength of our voices.
‘They’re people we haven’t talked to yet,’ I said in a reasonable voice.
‘You’re right. We haven’t talked to them,’ she said.
‘Has Champion?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I doubt at this point that he’d tell me.’
‘Do we know where they live? Where Bobby’s from?’
‘I don’t. Do you?’
‘No, of course not!’ There I went, almost yelling again. I took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘But Miranda seems to do well on the computer. Why don’t we ask her to look up his home address?’
She nodded. ‘Doable. But first, let’s check out this Ng chick.’
I sighed. One problem at a time, I told myself. One witness at a time.
Champion had no idea where to go next to find the kid, short of putting out an APB on him, and he didn’t have enough to do that. Hell, he really didn’t have enough to do much of anything. His case was weaker than a wet Kleenex. He decided to go back to the shop and review the whole thing. There had to be something he was missing. A smoking gun – or in this case knife – that would put the Pugh kid away for good.
Tina Ng was home when we got there. It was the bottom floor of a fourplex close to campus and appeared to be a one-bedroom, although Ng didn’t bother to give us a tour. Peeking in, I could see the place was furnished in IKEA – everything in it I’d seen in an IKEA catalog, from the furniture to knick-knacks to the dishes draining in the IKEA wooden dish drainer.
Luna and I had left Graham and Miranda at the bagel shop on the drag, just a few blocks from Ng’s apartment. The plan was to regroup there after we’d interviewed the T.A. To say she wasn’t pleased to see us would be inappropriate. She was totally non-committal, as in she said nothing after Luna introduced herself and showed her credentials. Ng just stood there looking at us. Her eyes gave away nothing. No fear, no anger, no humor – not much of anything.
‘May we come in?’ Luna finally asked.
‘Why?’ Ng said.
‘We need to talk, unless you want to answer questions here in the hall,’ Luna said.
Ng shrugged but still said nothing. She just turned, leaving the door open – her way, I suppose, of inviting us in. She sat down on an IKEA chair while Luna and I chose the IKEA sofa. Little choice really, since those two things – the chair and the sofa – were the only places to sit in the room.
And again, our hostess said not a word. Luna broke the silence. ‘I need to speak to you about Gretchen Morley.’
No answer.
‘Do you know Gretchen Morley?’ Luna asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How long have you known her?’
Ng shrugged. Luna decided to play the silent game herself. Finally Ng said, ‘Since her freshman year. Maybe two years.’
‘How did you come to know her?’
‘She was in the economics class I teach.’
‘Is she still in one of your classes?’ Luna asked.
‘No.’
‘But you still see her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you friends?’
There was another silence, then Ng said, ‘Yes,’ but it was tentative – the first time I thought she’d actually lied.
‘So what is she holding for you?’ Luna said.
I stared hard at Ng, waiting for some giveaway. Eyes shifting, posture tightening. Anything. But I got nothing. Ng just sat there, not answering.
‘Ms Ng?’ Luna said. ‘Could you answer my question?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, so therefore I see no reason to answer,’ Ng said.
‘OK, then let me explain. You were overheard this morning during a conversation with Gretchen Morley, in which she reportedly stated that she didn’t want to keep something and you reportedly told her she had to. I just want to know what that something is.’
‘No.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Someone lied. I said nothing like that to Gretchen Morley.’
‘Really?’
No answer.
‘Ms Ng, you’re not being very cooperative.’
Ng stood up and walked to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room of her apartment. She went to a very nice IKEA bowl I’d thought about buying for Graham for his dorm room and brought out a card. Coming back into the living room, she handed the card to Luna.
‘Talk to her,’ she said.
Luna looked at the card. ‘Is this your attorney?’
‘Yes.’ Ng turned, walked to the door and opened it. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. We got up and left.
Champion was headed to McMillan Hall, thinking maybe the Pugh kid decided to go back to the scene of the crime. Hey, he reminded himself, it’s happened! He was driving down Guadalupe Street, better known in that section in front of campus as the drag, when he was stopped at a red light. Sitting there, he happened to glance in the window of the bagel shop across from the entrance to the university. He almost spit out his nicotine gum when he saw Luna, the mom, the kid and some other chick sitting there big as life. He looked around for a parking space but, of course, there weren’t any.
‘So you think she’s lying?’ Graham reiterated.
‘Yep,’ I said.
‘Probably,’ Luna said. ‘Her demeanor changed when I asked her if she and Morley were friends. And then she basically clammed up when asked about what Morley was keeping for her.’
‘Of course, clamming up seems to be her modus operandi,’ I said.
Luna nodded. ‘I’d say she’s the strong, silent type for sure.’
‘But she’s so little!’ Miranda said.
Luna cut her eyes at the girl. ‘I meant that figuratively.’
‘Oh,’ Miranda said, and I saw Graham touch her hand. I could only hope this one lasted for more than a few months. I had to wonder about the reasons my son seemed to flit about between women. Was I giving him way too much credit in thinking he’d broken up with Alicia to save her pain? Probably, I thought, and then felt guilty. Worry about one thing at a time, I told myself.
‘What about Bobby Dunston’s parents?’ I asked Luna.
She sighed and my dander got up again, then I worried I’d start yelling in the bagel shop. Not good for my son’s reputation, I told myself. If it didn’t get totally ruined by, you know, being accused of murder and all.
‘What about Bobby’s parents?’ Graham asked.
Calming myself, with great effort, I said, ‘We haven’t interviewed them yet. It may be a long shot but I think we should do it. Do you know where Bobby’s from?’
‘Ah, San Antonio, I think,’ Graham said.
‘Where’s your laptop?’ Miranda asked.
Sighing, Graham held out his keys. ‘In the car,’ he said and rolled his eyes.
‘He’s a caution, as my grandma used to say,’ Miranda said, grinned at me and headed out the door.
‘Where are you parked?’ I asked Graham.
‘Hell and gone,’ he said.
The door to the bagel shop opened and we were blessed with the presence of Detective Champion. Yes, I’m using sarcasm.
‘Well, hello!’ he said upon seeing us, like it was a great big accident that he happened to walk into the same establishment where we were sitting – right in front of the big plate-glass window.
‘Nate,’ Luna said, nodding her head at him.
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