by Joan Hess
“I thought you said he was Roderick James.”
“I think he is, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything.” I could hear the tremor in my voice. Before Peter could offer sympathy, which would send me flying over the edge of self-control, I managed to say, “But I haven’t given up.” I repeated the conversation I’d had with Sarah about Tricia Yates. “I need a current photo. After I catch up with Evan, I’ll go back to the church and see if they have the equivalent of a yearbook or directory.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Peter said. “Even if Tricia was a member of SAC and was having an affair with Tuck a year ago, it doesn’t mean that she had anything to do with his death. Sarah is lying about that night. She has means and motive. The shotgun was replaced inside her house.”
“But she’s not stupid. She told me bluntly that if she’d intended to kill him, she would have done it in a way that would not implicate her. That I believe.” I glanced up as a pizza delivery car pulled into the parking lot. “Chaperone with an eagle eye, darling. I’ll be home eventually.”
I trailed the aroma of pepperoni to the door, where Evan was counting dollars, and went to the restroom to wash my face with unnecessary vigor. When I entered his office, I nodded politely before grabbing a slice of pizza and settling in a chair. The poor lad was a worse mess than I. He’d started the day in a coat and tie, but now he looked as though he’d dressed in the dark and spent the day in a bar. We ate pizza in weary silence.
“Here’s the update,” I said at last. I told him about finding the green van and then learning that it had disappeared. We agreed that we needed to ascertain if Sarah could identify Tricia, although neither of us was optimistic. Evan said he’d been unable to get an appointment with Prosecutor Wessell until the next afternoon. I said boorish things. Evan’s cherubic face began to resemble a cherry. Rather than watch to see if he imploded in pulp, I announced that I was going back to the Mount Zion Methodist Church to try to find a current photo of Tricia.
I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t be locked, but I wasn’t ready to give up. Breaking a window may have crossed my mind, albeit briefly, so I was heartened to see an unfamiliar car parked near the front door. I went inside and stopped at the back pew, listening for something more substantial than a church mouse. Nothing stirred. I went down the aisle and toward the office. As I prepared to barge in, Grady appeared in the hall. He was wearing his standard missionary garb: short-sleeved white shirt, dark trousers, bow tie. Miss Poppoy would have nailed him from a hundred feet.
“Ms. Malloy?” he said.
“I’m so glad I caught you. I was afraid that the building was locked.”
“I have a key. Why are you here?”
It was a reasonable question. The answer would have required a run-on sentence to rival James Joyce’s finest effort in Ulysses. “Looking for Tricia,” I said mildly.
“She left after the service and won’t be back until tomorrow—no, Tuesday morning. Are you still snooping into the campout nonsense? It was typical teenage behavior.”
“Then why did you and Tricia make such a big deal about it? The kids were terrified when I asked them.” I prefer evasion and omission to straight-out prevarication, so I chose my words deliberately. “One of the kids talked.”
“Yeah, which one?”
“I will share that with the prosecutor if it comes to that. I’m sure what I heard was an exaggeration born of postpubescent angst.” I hadn’t been on the track team in high school, but I’d played a mean game of Blind Man’s Bluff. “Shall we sit down in the office and discuss it?”
“Nothing happened,” Grady said.
“Then stick to your story. You might want to start sending out your résumé as soon as possible. Your reference will not glow in the dark. These kids are minors, and their parents are staunch conservatives.”
“Okay, Ms. Malloy, let’s talk. I’m not going to allow you to spread some crazy rumor about me.”
Before I could respond, he took my arm, pulled me into the office, and locked the door.
13
“Was that necessary?” I said to Grady as I sat down behind Tricia’s desk. “Do you anticipate a posse of parents barging in to demand the lurid details?” I opened a lower drawer and feigned surprise. “Would you look at that? Tricia left us a libation. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a long day. There’s only one cup. Why don’t you look in the kitchen for another one?” I took out the half-empty bourbon bottle and poured myself a wee shot, then sat back and smiled at him. I wasn’t apprehensive. Even the mildest-mannered bookseller can take down a choir director in a bow tie.
Grady leaned against the door. “There’s no one else in the building, and there won’t be a service tonight because of the holiday, but it’s a habit. Tricia always ordered me to lock the door so we wouldn’t be interrupted if she…” He motioned at the bottle. “Dealing with teens is stressful. I only took this job to get the paycheck. I’d like to end up with a large congregation with adults who can sing. My choir came up with a rap version of ‘The Old Rugged Cross.’ I almost let them do it so I could practice CPR on the elders, but I’m not very proficient.”
“The Red Cross offers free classes. Now why don’t you tell me what really happened at the campout so I can be on my way? If you can persuade me that this had nothing to do with Tuck’s death, I may not feel compelled to demand a criminal investigation.” I may have emphasized the word “criminal.”
“Who’s Tuck?”
“The man who was killed that night. Your turn, Grady.”
“I think I’ll go find a cup,” he said, sounding as petulant as a trophy wife who hadn’t been offered breakfast at Tiffany’s.
As soon as he left, I yanked open the rest of the desk drawers in search of a glossy church directory filled with names, addresses, and lovely color photographs. Tricia had a fondness for sesame sticks, raisins, and chocolate drops. She had a remarkable variety of breath mints. Other drawers contained a ledger, folders, and typical bookkeeping paraphernalia. I was eying a cabinet when Grady returned.
He poured bourbon into a coffee mug and sat down across from me. “I’m going to tell you what happened, but I will deny every word of it if it leaves this room. If you persist, I’ll claim that you came back here to seduce me and went berserk when I rebuffed you.”
I was impressed with his display of assertiveness, although it wasn’t going to save him. “Knock it off, Grady.”
“Yeah, there were some problems that night. The boys knew we were going to Flat Rock, so the little bastards went there beforehand and hid their booze and pot on the other side of the river. Tricia was so proud of herself for thinking to search their backpacks and confiscate their pathetic little stashes. I knew better.” He waited for me to coo in admiration, but I declined. “She ordered everyone into their assigned tents about ten o’clock. There were giggles, whispers, an attempted foray, that kind of crap, and then they quieted down. Tricia told me she wanted to make a private call and disappeared. I saw her wade across the water upstream. I was wondering about it when I saw several of our dear campers doing the same, only not so far away. It seemed wise to see what they were up to, so I gave them a few minutes and then followed them.”
“And?” I asked, my eyebrows lifted. I was far more intrigued with Tricia’s behavior, but I wasn’t ready to pounce on it.
“I could smell the pot by midstream. Two of the girls had taken off their shirts and spread them on the stubble. Jason, Bianca, and Annie were cramming blueberries in their mouths like feral scavengers, the juice dripping down their chins. It was disgusting. I bawled them out, told them to pick up the evidence, and warned them that I’d tell their parents if they ever said one word.” He stood up to splash the last of the bourbon into his mug. “So maybe I should have, but their parents are a bunch of self-righteous despots. Besides, if they’d all been grounded, I’d have lost my job.”
I’d given him limited time to rehearse. His story was credible, and
the superfluous details were colorful, but he was unable to control the faint quaver in his voice. “You’ll have to do better than that,” I said sternly. “Tricia was there when they were forced to take an oath on the Bible.”
He seemed to find his chair uncomfortable. “Maybe, but that’s pretty much it. Tricia returned and heard us. She demanded to know what happened, and was appalled because it could get her fired, too. By this time, the girls were crying and the boys were slobbering. Tricia sent me back for her Bible, and then we formed a circle and passed it around. I kept waiting for the firmament to blaze while the celestial choir belted out a fierce hymn of salvation.”
I bought part of his story, but I had a feeling he had glossed over his involvement. He had twitched when I mentioned a criminal investigation. “What time was this?”
“Maybe eleven or so. We herded the kids back to their tents. Tricia wanted to seal the zippers with duct tape, but I talked her out of it. When you gotta go…”
“True. Did you ask Tricia why she’d taken a stroll in the blueberry field?”
“Everybody was really, really upset. If I’d seen her beamed up into an alien spaceship, I wouldn’t have asked her if she enjoyed the ride. She was bitching and moaning worse than the kids. A couple of them had rashes on their hands and ankles and were carrying on like they had that flesh-eating bacteria. I was calculating whether I could pay the rent with a minimum-wage job.”
“And nobody heard a loud noise from across the field?”
“Did I just say that everybody was really, really upset? An explosion might have caught my attention, but we’re talking nuclear. I may have heard a car backfire shortly after we got back. I was more worried about surviving on discarded hamburgers and cold fries from a fast food waste bin.”
“How well do you know Tricia?” I asked. “I gather the two of you hang out in here. Has she ever talked about her past?”
Grady put down the mug. “You wanted to know what happened at the campout, and I told you. This has nothing to do with Tricia. I don’t know anything about her past beyond the basics. She doesn’t have a college degree, and she never got married. She hates it here, but she can’t move to a city until she can afford it. We are not friends; we are two survivors on a deserted island, forced to ferment the coconut milk to keep ourselves sane.” He wobbled to his feet and did his best to point his finger at me. I did not need to duck. “You just tell Bianca to keep her mouth shut and we’ll be okay. Got that, Ms. Malloy?”
He stomped out of the room, huffing and puffing with indignation. When I heard an exterior door bang closed, I began a systematic search of the office for any paperwork concerning Tricia’s employment. Methodists were methodical, I assured myself as I took files out of the cabinet. I found Grady’s file, which contained a résumé (bachelor’s degrees in musicology and religious studies from a private college) and an earnest letter. He’d been born and raised in Indiana and had volunteered every free hour to his beloved hometown church. He currently lived in a rental house on a side street near the campus.
Tricia’s file was no more enlightening. From Ohio, community college, bookkeeping jobs in small companies, a reference letter from her last position at a nonprofit declaring her to be honest and proficient. The photocopy of her driver’s license was blurry. I copied down her address at a notorious apartment complex across from the Farber College dorms, and her telephone number. At the last second, I removed the page with the photocopy. I did not lock the door on my way out.
Grady’s car was gone. I pondered my next move as I got in my car and took out my keys. Tricia was definitely involved in whatever happened that night. She’d taken a walk, most likely to meet Tuck in the moonlight. She’d dutifully returned and found her charges in disarray and disgrace, and the consequences had drowned out any random noises.
I decided to call Evan to tell him that we had something resembling a lead. Nothing worthy of euphoria, I had to admit, but promising. When he answered, I said, “I just had a conversation with Grady, the choir director, and he told me that—”
“I can’t talk,” the ingrate said curtly. “I’m on my way to a motel to follow up on an anonymous tip. I’m not at my office, so don’t go there.” He ended the call.
I gazed at my cell phone, perplexed. He was on his way to a motel, he’d had a tip, and he didn’t want to discuss it. If I’d had one of Tricia’s breath mints, I would have popped it in my mouth on the off-chance he’d caught a whiff of bourbon via his cell phone. I have been known to underestimate the sophistication of twenty-first-century innovations. I used my forefinger to erase the tiny wrinkle between my eyebrows and called Peter.
“How’s the party?” I asked when he answered with a grunt.
“You don’t need to come home to chaperone,” he said. “I have everything under control. I’ll talk to you later.”
“What’s going on?”
After a pause, he said, “There are some people who would like to talk to you. I told them I have no idea where you are, and I don’t want to know. Don’t use a credit card.” He, like Evan, terminated the call without a cheery good-bye.
I dropped the cell phone as if it were melting. I seemed to be the Wicked Witch, however. There were no flying monkeys in the trees or storm troopers on the roof of the church. “Some people” sounded ominous. Wessell did not qualify, nor did Deputy Norton, leaving the FBI in the forefront. Peter and Evan were afraid their phones were tapped. I snatched up the cell phone and almost hurled it out the window before I caught myself. I squeezed buttons until it blinked and went black. It did not seem prudent to remain where I was, but I’d been warned to stay away from the office and my house.
It seemed like a good time to go fishing.
* * *
Larry Lippet and the unseen but vaguely ominous Marie were not outside among the menagerie. This was encouraging, since Deputy Norton was likely to be on my trail and might have asked them to watch for me. I parked by the trash bin, briefly considered piling branches on my car, noted there weren’t any handy branches, and climbed over the stile. When I arrived at Flat Rock, I saw Billy on the far bank. Instead of fishing, he was flipping over stones and poking whatever he saw with a stick.
I waved. “Any luck?”
“Not yet. I’m looking for dragon eggs.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“You got to bring your own stick,” he said before hunkering down to tug at a large stone.
William appeared behind him as I waded across the water, my shoes in my hand. “Claire? Is everything okay?”
Not exactly, I thought as I beamed at him. “I have a few more questions, that’s all. I remembered that you and Billy were coming here to fish.”
“And search for dragon eggs,” Billy called as he dropped the stone and moved down the gravel bar. “When I find one, I’m going to put it in a shoe box with a lightbulb to keep it warm. After it hatches, I’m going to take it to show-and-tell. Nobody’s ever brought a baby dragon to school.”
“I believe that,” I said as I stepped onto the gravel bar and wobbled on each foot until my shoes were where they belonged. I joined Will. “I finally found out what happened the night the church choir was here. The night Tuck was killed.”
William scratched his head. “I didn’t know anything happened. I mean, besides the…” He gestured at a fallen tree trunk. “Sit down and tell me. Is this going to help Sarah? I was convinced that she shot Tuck, but you’ve got me wondering. It seemed so straightforward. Now I don’t know what to think.”
Billy put his fists on his hips. “You said you were gonna help me, lady.”
“I am, after you help me,” I said. “What’s more, I can appoint you an honorary detective for the Farberville Police Department. You’ll get a citation.”
“I’d rather have a dragon.”
So would I, especially one that could be trained to attack on my command. “A citation is pretty cool. No one at your school will have one. Can you take a break and tell me again
what you saw that night? You weren’t lying about seeing what you believed were zombies. I confirmed this with some of them.”
William frowned at me. “I wish you wouldn’t encourage this. His imagination runs wild as it is. His mother and Junie are worried about him.”
“When my daughter was four, she decided she lived on a planet called Frittata. She demanded that we take all of the furniture out of her room, and wore nothing but pink thermal pajamas and red rubber boots for a month. She got bored and moved on. So will Billy.”
Said child threw his stick in the water and came across the gravel bar. “You talked to zombies? Cool!”
I leaned forward. “They were pretending to be zombies to fool everybody. You said you saw flashlights. Do you recall how many?”
I could tell he was not pleased. “You mean the zombies were pretending to be zombies. They didn’t fool me. They had two or three flashlights. What’s more, they were yelling and hitting at each other. That’s how I knew they were for real zombies, not pretend zombies.”
William laughed. “Good luck with this.”
Billy was not going to make a good witness, I warned myself with a sigh. “The bang woke you up, right? You went to the window and saw one of them behind the barn.”
“Stealing vegetables,” Billy said adamantly. “Like carrots and squash.” He gave me a disgusted look and stalked back to the gravel bar to continue his search.
The timeline was getting increasingly muddled. Grady had told me that the confrontation with the wayward teenagers had taken place shortly after ten, which meant the Bible had gone from hand to hand no later than eleven. I looked at William. “Is there any way you could have been wrong about when you heard the shotgun? Maybe you forgot to set back your clocks for daylight savings time?”
“In August?” he said. “We would have noticed if we were off for six months.”
“What time did you see lights at the house?”