by Libby Howard
“It’s hard,” she confessed. “We grew up together. He was my boyfriend back in high school, my first love. It was so good to see him this weekend and catch up. I just can’t believe that I’ll never see him again.”
“Everyone thought you two would end up married,” I said.
She laughed. “Who would think that? Besides Holt, I mean, and even that surprised me. We broke up when we were sixteen. I hadn’t even heard from him in four years.”
“But he still loved you,” I pressed.
Her smile turned wistful. “No, I think he missed me. He’s been in a world where everyone wants a piece of him, where everyone is trying to climb to success on each other’s backs. He’s had to put together this public persona, and kick and claw his way to the top, and there’s no one in his life that really knows him, that knows who he is inside. There’s no one he can trust. That’s what I was to him. I’m a childhood friend. I’m someone he could relax around and just be that poor kid from Trenslertown. He thought that was love, but I know better. And I know very well how things would have ended for both of us if I’d married him.”
This young woman was wiser than people twice her age. I was pretty sure she was wiser than me.
“Peony never understood why you broke up with him in high school. She didn’t understand why you didn’t marry him and ride off into the sunset.”
The smile vanished from Violet’s face. “Peony is just like Holt, you know. I love her, and I really want something different for her, but she’s just like Holt. She thinks I’m a fool for running up all this debt and going to college just so I can get an entry-level job and bust my tail for decades working my way up the corporate ladder. She doesn’t think anyone from Trenslertown can get out of poverty that way. She thinks the only way out is to be like Holt, to climb out on the backs of other people.”
“And that’s why you broke up with Holt?” I asked softly. “Because of Buck Stanford?”
Her laugh this time was bitter. “Oh, there were other things before Buck Stanford’s ‘accident’ on the football field, and every one of those things showed me just how ruthless Holt could be. He’d go to any lengths to get what he wanted, and if someone was in his way, they were going to be steamrolled, or clipped after the play. He wasn’t the kid I grew up with anymore, and at fifteen I saw what kind of man he was going to be. I didn’t want that. I still don’t want that. I’ll take that tax assessor’s assistant job over being an NFL player’s wife any day.”
I shook her hand and walked her to the door, promising to e-mail the recommendation tonight and put a hard copy in the mail to her. Then I watched her get in her rust-bucket car and drive off. She’d turned down Holt Dupree. Maybe Peony was right. Maybe in his grief, Holt would have been willing to accept a substitute.
I guess that was something we’d never know.
Chapter 23
“Guess what just came in this morning?” Miles strolled into my office. This was becoming a regular occurrence. The cop and I seemed to have bonded over this Holt Dupree thing, although the both of us were now viewing it from the sidelines.
“Labs?” Thank heaven our local police were such gossips. I’d been curious to know if Holt was drunk or not—and if the M.E. thought he was drunk enough to attribute the accident to alcohol, or the vehicle tampering.
“Labs and cause of death. Guy was sober as a judge. Not even the equivalent of a dose of cough syrup worth of alcohol in him.”
“Well, that makes a whole lot more work for your detective. The pressure is going to be on to find who tampered with the truck and ‘murdered’ Holt Dupree.”
“Nope. Guess again.”
Miles pulled up a chair, his grin both smug and excited.
“Guess again what? Sober. Loss of control due to sabotage of the vehicle. What’s to guess?”
The officer leaned forward. “No alcohol, but Holt did have drugs in his system.”
My mouth fell open. “Steroids? Holt was on steroids?” I could hardly believe it. “He was an athlete. He had a huge NFL contract. They drug test, don’t they? I can’t believe he would sabotage a career he’d worked so hard to obtain.”
Miles waved his coffee at me. “No, not steroids, drugs. Flunitrazepam.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Better known as Rohypnol.”
My mouth fell open. “Roofies?” At the word a shadow appeared over by J.T.’s desk. My heart sank. I hadn’t seen Holt’s ghost since I’d spoken with Peony, and had hoped that his spirit had been satisfied with the discovery of the tampering and moved on.
I guess not. Roofies. Who would have guessed that one?
“And Viagra,” Miles added.
What in the world? “Why would a healthy twenty-two-year-old man need to take Viagra?” I turned to the shadow and smirked, feeling the ghost’s anger ratcheting up a notch at what must have been an embarrassing reveal.
Miles shook his head. “I know, but it’s starting to be a problem with kids in the last few years. Seems even the young guys want to keep going for up to four hours.”
That did not sound like fun to me, although Holt had seemed to be all sex all of the time according to Kendra. Maybe that was how he managed to be doing it half a dozen times a day.
“So Holt Dupree had roofies and Viagra in his system?” I shook my head. “Nobody roofies themselves, so someone must have spiked his drink. Or in this case, his water bottle.”
The ghost pushed a pen holder off the desk. Miles jumped to his feet at the sound, stared at the pens rolling across the floor, then turned to me.
“Mice.” I shrugged. “I’ll get J.T. to get an exterminator in this week.” Yeah, an exterminator named Olive.
The deputy shot a nervous glance around the floor. I noticed when he sat down, he held his feet a few inches off the floor. How funny. Miles was afraid of mice. I wondered if he was afraid of ghosts as well?
“I’m thinking drugs in the water bottle too,” he told me, his gaze shifting between the fallen pens and the top of J.T.’s desk. “Which means we have someone pissed off enough at Holt to tamper with his vehicle, and someone else pissed off enough to drug him.”
I shook my head. If the tie rod end hadn’t caused the accident, then the drugs eventually would have. “But don’t those things take effect pretty quickly? He should have been passed out half a mile from the party if someone drugged him. Unless it wasn’t a whole lot?”
“Oh it was a whole lot, and you’re right. It takes effect fast. Doesn’t mean he didn’t down it at the party, though. Someone may have handed him a water bottle they’d laced with roofies, and he spent the evening just carrying it around. I’m guessing he didn’t drink it until he was driving home.”
I eyed the shadow. For once Holt’s ghost wasn’t knocking anything over.
“So if the tie rod end hadn’t snapped and caused the accident, then he probably would have wrecked another ten miles down the road from the drugs,” I mused.
“It would have taken less than one, by my estimate.” Miles leaned forward. “Here’s the thing—the accident didn’t kill Holt Dupree, the drugs did. The M.E. found that he had quite a few injuries from the crash, but nothing that would have caused his death. He died from cardiac arrest. Sometime between when that truck went off the road and the ambulance crew pulled him out of it, Holt stopped breathing and his heart stopped.”
I was stunned. “Drug overdose. Someone murdered Holt by drugging him.”
The shadow moved closer. A potted plant on top of filing cabinet scooted a few inches, and I glared at the ghost. If that plant hit the floor, I was definitely calling Olive. As if sensing my intentions, the shadow faded and vanished.
Miles leaned back, the smug look returning to his face. “Seems roofies and Viagra are pretty nasty combination, especially in the quantity Holt had in his bloodstream.”
“So whoever tampered with his truck isn’t the murderer,” I mused.
“No, although we still want to press charges if we can find
out who did that. The murderer is whoever gave Holt Dupree those drugs.” Miles leaned forward again. “We’ll find them. And when we do, whoever it is, is going to be spending a very long time in jail.”
Drug overdose. I stared down at my files long after Miles had left, trying to think of who would have slipped drugs in Holt’s water bottle. It really could have been anyone—any of those millions of spurned girls who were upset Holt wasn’t going home with them. It could have been a spiteful act by Kendra right before she left with David. Heck, it could have even been David, or Buck doubling down, or…anyone.
And there was a faint chance that Holt had taken them voluntarily, that he’d mistaken the roofies for the Viagra he’d been popping or some other recreational drug, but it didn’t seem likely. The guy who planned every action and word to further his career wouldn’t take a chance on recreational drugs. I could see him taking the Viagra. The NFL probably wouldn’t have cared one way or another about him trying to enhance his sexual performance. No, those roofies couldn’t have been an accident or something Holt would have knowingly taken.
Which left murder. And I had a terrible feeling deep down inside who the murderer might be.
Needing to think, I left the office and once more drove out to Stanford Paving. Buck had never returned my call, but that wasn’t the reason for my visit this evening. I just wanted to trace Holt’s last steps, to figure out if what I suspected was really what happened.
I sat in the car and thought of Holt arriving late with Kendra after some nookie in the field and a trip to the liquor store. They’d partied. I was sure Holt had grabbed a bottle of water either from the liquor store or at the party, and I couldn’t see him carrying it around for a few hours without drinking it, so that bottle must have been clean.
He saw Violet and talked with her. She turned him down. Kendra and Holt fought. She and David left. And I was positive that Holt would have locked his truck so fans didn’t loot it, so I doubt Kendra would have been able to spike any bottle of water he had left inside it on her way out.
Holt went to leave, saw Peony walking, and offered her a ride home. No, she’d been there to see him talk with Violet and fight with Kendra. She’d approached him for a ride, made a plan to be Holt’s substitute Violet. She wouldn’t have just walked off drunk and hoped that Holt would come upon her and offer her a ride. No, she’d planned to seduce him, and she’d approached him at the party, leveraged their childhood friendship as well as her resemblance to her sister to get him to give her a lift home.
And then what? I drove my car along the route Holt would have taken, thinking that it was twenty minutes from Stanford Paving to Trenslertown. Twenty minutes. The roofies would have taken five to ten minutes to take effect. So halfway home Holt gets drowsy? They pull off the road. And…
That would have left Peony in a truck with a passed-out guy. That hadn’t happened, so Holt must have taken the roofies when he was closer to that fatal corner on Jones Road.
I pulled into a diner a few miles from the turn onto Jones Road and went to sit at the counter, ordering a coffee and yanking my notes and files from my briefcase. With them spread out before me, I stared down at the papers. I was pretty sure I knew what happened, but I had no proof. Roofies and Viagra. It was a risky combination. In this case it was a lethal combination. And I truly thought Holt’s death was unintentional.
The guy at the counter poured me a coffee and looked down at my open notepad. “That was a real tragedy. I saw him play his senior year. Real talented young man. A gentleman too.”
Of all the things that Holt Dupree was, I’d never imagined anyone would ever call him a gentleman. The waiter must have seen my surprise because he chuckled.
“I know. Surprised me too. He came late that night with some young girl and I thought the worst, but he was real kind to her—like a brother. He was trying to sober her up a bit. She tried to get frisky a few times, and he was downright compassionate putting her off and trying to get her to drink her coffee.”
“Wait, Holt was in here the night of the Fourth of July?”
He nodded. “Actually the next morning. It was near two o’clock when they left. The girl was a bit more sober. He bought a bottle of water for the road. With all the water the two of them had drank here, you’d think they would have been floating out the door. Nice guy. Tipped well. Real shame he died, but that’s a bad curve out there on Jones Road. Easy to cross the center line, especially in the dark.”
Peony had never mentioned stopping for breakfast, or for Holt to try to sober her up. With the concussion had she just forgotten it? Or…
“You said they bought a bottle of water for the road?”
He nodded.
“For her?”
He chuckled. “For himself, although she was joking around and snatched it. Said she wanted to take some aspirin or something. He went back to put a tip on the table and she gave it back to him when he came back.”
“You saw her take the aspirin?”
“I saw her take a drink then pour something into the bottle. It was a powder. I thought it was one of those lemonade or flavored powders people put in their water sometimes.”
Would the drugs have dissolved that fast? They probably would have.
I put some money on the counter and gathered up my files, leaving the untouched coffee. Then once I got to the car, I made a phone call.
I know. I’d sworn I would never put myself in a position where I confronted a murderer again, but this was different. I don’t think Peony ever intended to be a murderer, and if she waited for the police to catch her, her future was going to be a whole lot worse than if she came forward on her own and pleaded this out. I might be taking a risk, but I would be in a crowded coffee shop, confronting a fifteen-year-old girl— a fifteen-year-old girl who shouldn’t be tried as an adult and have to spend decades in prison, even if she had caused Holt Dupree’s death.
Chapter 24
The coffee shop was nearly empty at six o’clock at night. Peony sat in the usual spot off in the corner, her tangled blonde hair covering her face. She was hunched in upon herself, looking so small, so young that I felt a stab of sorrow. Dreading this and wishing I’d just gone to the police, I went to the counter and ordered two frozen mochas.
Yes, I was buying a coffee for a murderer.
Peony looked up at me as I sat down and gave her the coffee. Her crumpled shirt was the same that she’d been wearing yesterday, and I wasn’t sure if the dark smudges under her eyes were from old mascara or lack of sleep.
“Did they arrest someone?” she asked after thanking me politely for the mocha.
“No.” I took a few sips of my drink at watched her carefully. “But the M.E. ruled on a cause of death.”
She stiffened, not meeting my gaze.
“And the labs came back.”
The girl froze like a hare in the briars, praying that the fox passes him by.
“They found Viagra in his system.”
Her head jerked up, eyes astonished. “Viagra?” She laughed. “Dog! I should have known with all the pu…number of times he was scoring.”
“Viagra and Flunitrazepam.”
She froze again, the corner of her mouth trembling.
“Roofies.” I told her, since she clearly wasn’t going to ask what Flunitrazepam was.
Now more than the corner of her mouth was trembling.
“What if Holt had said ‘no’, Peony?” I asked her. “You knew there was a good chance a sober guy, one who’d just been turned down by the woman he loved wouldn’t be satisfied with a fifteen-year-old lookalike. There was a chance he’d lose his judgement and take you up on your offer, but you knew there was a better chance that he’d say ‘no’.”
Her expression turned wary. “If he’d said ‘no’ then that would have been that. He would have dropped me off at my house and I never would have seen him again.”
“Roofies are commonly date-rape drugs used on women. Fast acting. Difficult to detect in a drin
k. And they’re out of your system fast enough that it’s hard to get them to show up on a lab unless the victim gets tested right away. Or dies before their system completely process the drug.”
She shoved her hands under the table, and stared at her drink. “You can’t date rape a guy with roofies. Girls, yeah. Guys need to get it up, not pass out.”
“They wouldn’t pass out right away. Just like women, a man who’d been roofied would act like he was really drunk. He’d stumble, slur his speech, be open to suggestion. The passing out would happen later.”
Her eyes widened and she took a series of shallow, ragged breaths. “What are you talking about?”
“You knew Holt would probably say ‘no’ to your seduction attempt. Maybe you wanted a little insurance, just in case. Maybe you had a back-up plan, like slipping something into his water at the diner.”
She was silent a moment, then she took a steadying breath and brought her hands back up to hold the mocha. “Holt took me to the diner to sober me up a bit before he took me home. He knew my mom would have a fit, and he didn’t want me to show up like that at two in the morning. I was drunk, so I don’t remember a lot of it except us drinking coffee and water, and him trying to get me to eat an egg or something. Then we left. I don’t know how those roofies got into Holt. Maybe the waiter at the diner did it. Maybe he doesn’t like Holt for some reason, or doesn’t like football, or the Falcons, or something, but I’ve got no idea.”
“The waiter at the diner saw you slip something into the bottle of water, then hand it to Holt when he came back from paying the tip,” I told her.
She was a deer in headlights. I don’t even think she was breathing.
“Why, Peony? Why?”
The girl swallowed, lowering her eyes and fidgeting with her drink. “I tried at the diner, but he wasn’t interested. He said I was like a little sister to him, even if I did look just like Violet. I thought if he loosened up a little, he’d change his mind.”