by Pandora Pine
21
Tennyson
Ten felt a bit of nerves flare up as he walked with another officer from the Portsmouth Police Department. On the one hand, he was thrilled that Ronan trusted him to interview mother and daughter by himself, but on the other hand, the pair could be a bit intimidating.
“This is the room Mr. Grimm. Be careful, these two are hellcats,” Officer Timmons warned.
“You’ll be waiting right here?” Ten also noticed there was another officer stationed at the room.
“We both will. It’s regulations neither of them can be left unattended,” Timmons said.
“Thank you. Hopefully, I won’t need either of you.” Ten said a silent prayer and entered the room. He gasped when he saw mother and daughter. Ten wasn’t a doctor, but he knew a broken nose when he saw one.
Hope’s nose was triple its usual size and was stuffed full of gauze. Her shirt was covered in blood. Both eyes were already showing signs of bruising. Not an attractive woman by any stretch of the imagination, two black eyes were certainly not going to help her cause. “Hi, Hope.”
“He-woah, Mis-tah Gwimm.” Hope said, her voice hampered by her swollen nose.
Sweet Mary mother of God… “It looks like you’ve had a rough day.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Maxine said from the chair near her bed.
Tennyson turned to get a good look at Maxine and couldn’t help gasping. The older woman had a large bruise on her cheek which had darkened into an ugly brownish-black color. “Are you okay, Maxine?”
“My asshole son and his wife did this to me. Can you believe that?”
Yes, Ten could absolutely believe it. “What caused him to hit you? Both of you actually?”
“It was a test.” Maxine replied. She touched the side of her face before reaching into her purse and pulling out two birthday cards in green envelopes. She fanned them out so Ten could see the writing on the envelopes. Shawn’s name was written on them in two different styles of handwriting.
Ten assumed one card was from each of the women. “What was a test?” He knew the story about what had happened today was going to be a good one, but he had no idea it was going to be a mystery as well.
“Ophelia has been wanting to see us get back together with Shawn and Debbie. After all, they’re the only family we have left, aside from her. Hope bought her a car when she went off to college, so we see her from time to time. Usually, we meet each other for lunch on her school holidays and a couple of times during the summer.” Maxine looked over at her daughter who was managing to smile despite the obvious pain she was in.
“She’s a goop kip.” Hope said.
Ten assumed “goop kip” meant “good kid.” Ten grabbed his phone and motioned to Hope. She nodded and he took a couple of snaps of her injury before doing the same thing with the bruise on Maxine’s face.
“We were surprised when Shawn invited us over to celebrate his birthday and we thought the fight was over and maybe it was time to let the past be in the past. It’s been twenty years since we’ve been a real family, so we needed to make sure that Shawn and Debbie were being sincere and not just grubbing for money.”
It all made sense to Tennyson now. “There were two sets of birthday cards, weren’t there, Maxine?”
Maxine nodded. “The first set of cards were in red envelopes and were just signed with our love. If Shawn smiled and said thank you or hugged us, then out would come the green envelopes.” She held them out to Tennyson. “Go on, open them. I suppose they need to be entered into evidence anyway. We’ll just cancel the checks in the morning.”
Ten took both envelopes. “Are you sure you want me to open these?”
Both women nodded. “Okay.” Ten opened the first card, which pictured a sunset and offered a brother warmest birthday wishes. Not bothering to read the sentiment inside, Ten went right for the check, which was addressed to Shawn Owens in the amount of ten thousand dollars. “Holy shit, Hope. This is quite a generous gift.” He fished his phone back out of his pocket and took a picture of the check.
She nodded, tears glittered in her blackened eyes.
Ten put the check back into the card which he stuffed back into the envelope. He opened the next card which was from Maxine. The amount written on that check was for twenty-five thousand dollars. “Wow, Maxine, I’m stunned.” Ten took a photo of this check as well. Ronan was going to want to see this.
The woman shrugged. “Shawn would have been too if he wasn’t such a greedy bastard. Obviously, I failed in so many ways as a wife and a mother. Here I am, in my seventies, battered, and under arrest for assault and battery.” She shook her head as if it were still all too much for her to believe.
“You’ve both been discharged from the hospital,” Officer Timmons said as he came back into the room. “We’re going to transport you to jail for the night.” He reached for his handcuffs.
Ten pulled him aside. “Is that really necessary with the extent of their injuries and Mrs. Owens age? I think they’ll come quietly, so long as Shawn and Debbie are nowhere in sight.”
Timmons nodded. “Come with me, ladies.”
Ten watched while both women were led out of the room. Maxine gave him a grateful nod. He couldn’t help wondering what was next for these two women. It also crossed his mind that he might have just begged Officer Timmons to show mercy to a cold-blooded killer.
Life would be so much easier if he could just ask Harold Owens who bashed his head in with a two-by-four.
22
Ronan
“They were going to give him thirty-five thousand dollars?” Fitzgibbon’s mouth was hanging open as he flipped back and forth between Tennyson’s pictures on Ronan’s phone.
“I couldn’t believe it either until Ten showed me the pictures.” It almost had him thinking he should have been nicer to the old lady like Tennyson had been. He wouldn’t mind getting the hell out of his shitty apartment in Dorchester. Money like that would have gone a long way to accomplishing that goal.
“Reminds me of some Reader’s Digest story I read way back where this kid had been begging his father for a car for graduation all through high school and when the day finally came, his father gave him a Bible. Well, the kid threw a fit and told his father off. He never spoke to his dad again after that day.”
“Let me guess, the key to the car was taped inside the front cover of the book?” Ronan said.
Fitzgibbon nodded. “You heard that story too?”
“I think it was a sermon in church. It hits all the big themes about being grateful and finding forgiveness in your heart and looking for answers in God, blah, blah, blah…” Ronan rolled his eyes. “How does the story end the way you heard it?” Ronan studied the captain.
“I think the kid finds out about what his father did for him when he comes home for his funeral,” Fitzgibbon said.
Ronan frowned. What a stupid story. All those years of wasted time and anger for no reason other than stubbornness. “Learn the lesson well, cap. If you get Greeley a car, just hand him the damn keys. Making people pass tests is never a good idea.”
“Did this little field trip to the emergency room bring you closer to figuring out who killed Harold Owens?”
That was the bad news he had for his boss this morning. “No. All three of them still seem like viable suspects. Just because Hope and Maxine seemed willing to finally cut Shawn in on the insurance money, doesn’t mean they didn’t kill Harold to get it in the first place. It just means they’re trying to mend broken fences for Ophelia’s sake.”
“What happened yesterday certainly didn’t help with that. In addition to Shawn and Debbie being arraigned for assault and battery and resisting arrest this morning, Ophelia also moved out of the house.” Fitzgibbon pushed the folder on his desk over to Ronan.
Ronan picked it up and skimmed through its contents. The Rockingham County District Attorney declined to file charges against Hope and Maxine. She stated that both women were simply defending them
selves from harm. “This is unbelievable. While her parents were in court, Ophelia was having her grandmother cosign a lease on an off-campus apartment in Durham, New Hampshire.”
“From what I understand, it’s just down the street from her class buildings at UNH. It’s a safe neighborhood and Maxine paid the rent through Ophelia’s graduation day next year.” Fitzgibbon sounded impressed.
“Captain, if this money is…”
Fitzgibbon held up a hand. “I know what you’re going to say, Ronan. There’s nothing we can do about it. If Maxine killed Harold, then the insurance companies that paid out those policies on him will have to battle Maxine for the money back. If she’s smart, she’s hidden the bulk of it somewhere untouchable, like in the Caymans or in Switzerland.”
Ronan nodded. Maxine was a smart woman. If she killed her husband, she had to know this day would come. Ronan had to believe she was prepared for it.
“What’s your next move here?” Fitzgibbon’s voice snapped him out of his own mind.
“Ten and I need to go see Vann Hoffman to go over the original autopsy report with him. There’s not much sense trying to exhume him at this point.”
“I agree. What about trace evidence?” Fitzgibbon opened the original case file and flipped through the pages.
“We’re waiting to hear back from the lab on that.”
“I’ll make some calls. See if I can light some fires under some asses.” Fitzgibbon shut the file. “How’s Tennyson? That was a pretty intense session last night.”
Fitzgibbon didn’t know the half of it. Not that Ronan was going to fill him in. “When we got home last night, he was feeling so relaxed and happy. So many people are telling him that his gift isn’t gone permanently, that it’s just blocked and I know that’s helping him. But…”
“But, you think there’s going to come a point in time where that’s not going to be enough anymore?”
Ronan grinned at his boss. Fitzgibbon was a very perceptive man. “Exactly. He isn’t saying it, but I know he keeps thinking that it will be back when he wakes up in the morning. Every day that we wake up and it’s still gone is starting to take a toll on him. He’s putting on a brave face for his friends and me to see, but there are moments when that mask slips and I see what this is really doing to him.”
“Don’t tell him I said this, but all of us see that mask slip. The smile that’s painted on just a little too brightly or the frustration in his eyes when he thinks no one is looking. I’ve seen it too.”
“I appreciate you telling me. The reason he’s not with me this morning is that he had things to catch up with at the shop. At least that’s what he told me. I wonder if it’s just an excuse for him not to come to work with me.”
“Is there trouble between the two of you?” Concern lit Fitzgibbon’s green eyes.
“No, things are solid with us, it’s just that Ten thinks this case would have been a slam dunk if his gift was intact.”
“What do you mean?”
“He thinks that all he would have had to do is talk to Harold Owens and bada-bing, bada-boom, case closed.”
Fitzgibbon leaned forward in his seat. He seemed to be thinking about what Ronan said. “What if the killer struck Harold while he was asleep? Or from behind? If either of those scenarios were the case, Harold wouldn’t have known who killed him.”
Ronan hadn’t considered that. He doubted very much Tennyson had either. “I’ll mention that to him. It’s not going to make him feel any better, I imagine.”
“I don’t imagine every murder victim knows who killed them.”
“I don’t think so either. I just want Ten to get his gift back so things can get back to normal around here.”
Fitzgibbon laughed. “Me too. God help me, Ronan, but me too.”
23
Tennyson
Tennyson and Carson were sitting at the patio table in Carson’s back yard drinking lemonade and eating Caesar salads Truman had made for them before he’d left to take the babies and Sadie for a walk around the neighborhood.
“This homemade dressing is so good!” Ten was licking it off his fork. If he were home alone, he’d be licking it off the plate.
“It’s Bobby Flay’s recipe or something. Truman loves those celebrity chefs. I’ll have him email it to Ronan so he can be a hero in the kitchen again.” Carson waggled his eyebrows.
Ten laughed. “Did you know that Truman bought Ronan a book about making up with your lover? That’s where he got the idea of cooking for me. There was a chapter in the book about doing that for your man.”
Carson poured them each another glass of lemonade. “No, I didn’t know Truman had done that, but it doesn’t surprise me. When I met him, the only real friend he had was Cassie. I think something really clicked with him and Ronan. Tru only has sisters and where Ronan was an only child, I think Truman sees them as brothers the same way Cole and I see you as the missing third Craig brother.”
Ten always felt like he was a member of Carson’s family. Hearing Carson say that made him miss Bertha more.
“She’s always with you, man. I haven’t seen as much of her these last few weeks because she’s been with you.” Carson rubbed Ten’s left shoulder.
“I know she is. It’s just hard not being able to talk to her. We used to chat every day. Same with me and Ronan’s mom. It’s like I’ve lost them, like they’re gone the way they would be for regular people.” Ten could feel his emotions starting to get the best of him again.
“It’s not that you’re only missing your gift and being able to come to work with us and with Ronan, but you feel like you’re grieving the loss of my mom and Erin?”
“It’s that exactly. I know I was extraordinarily blessed to have this gift and be able to talk to people who’d passed on. There are people who’d give anything to talk to their mother one last time. I get that, but this has been a part of my life for so long now, Carson. It’s like losing my right arm.”
“I hear you. I remember what it was like when Mom died. I never thought I’d ever get out of bed again. The first time I laughed, it crushed me. I mean, how could I laugh at a joke when my mother was dead and buried? Then I had my first vision and heard her chimes jingle in the reading room. Then you taught me how to speak to her whenever I wanted to and it was this whole new world opening up to me. If I lost the ability to speak to my mother now, Ten, it would be just like losing her all over again.”
It helped so much that Carson understood where he was coming from. The last thing he wanted was to sound like a whiny bitch to his best friend. “You know what Ronan said to me last night when we got home from meeting Broughan?”
“Tell me.”
“He said that there were times in the past that he resented my gift. That he’d be angry that he’d be stuck eating a cold dinner because I was off delivering a message from Spirit at a restaurant.” Ten could see Carson was getting upset on his behalf. He reached out, setting a hand on Carson’s. A signal for him to wait a minute before losing his shit on Ronan. “It’s true, that happened more times than it didn’t happen. But, a second later, Ronan says that he would happily eat a lifetime of cold dinners with me if that meant I would get my gift back this second.”
Carson’s angry look softened. “He said that? I owe the big lug an apology. He loves you a lot.”
“He does.” There was no doubt in Ten’s mind how much Ronan loved him. “He even told me about how what’s going on with me is similar to what happened to him after the Garcia shooting. He didn’t know if he’d get his detective’s shield back or if he’d end up directing traffic.”
“That’s a pretty deep story to share with you.” Carson was smiling wistfully.
“It is.”
Carson’s smile faded. “Look, you know I’m not good at dancing around things. I’m more the type to just come right out and say things.”
“Just say what’s on your mind, Carson.” Ten knew he wasn’t the type to hold anything back.
“While you’
re in this holding pattern with your gift, have you figured out a way to put yourself and your relationship with Ronan first at times when you get it back? I mean, it’s nice that Ronan said he’s willing to eat cold meals with you for the rest of your lives, but that’s not fair to either of you to hold him to that romantic sentiment.”
“To be honest, I haven’t thought about this at all. I’ve been more concerned with just getting my gift back that I haven’t thought at all about what I’ll do when it’s back and I can work again.”
Carson raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh, I know exactly what you’ll do.”
“You do?” How could Carson know when he wasn’t even sure himself.
Carson shot Tennyson an, “Are you kidding me?” glance. “Yeah, you’ll rebook all of your cancelled readings. Knowing you, you’ll get through weeks of appointments in three days. Then, you’ll go back to Boston Police Headquarters with Ronan and grab those boxes of boring files you said Ronan had and sit in an interrogation room and talk to the murder victims one by one until they are all solved Am I close?”
Ten sighed. Not only was Carson close. He was right on the money. Now that he heard his best friend say them out loud, those were exactly the things he’d do. “Of course you’re close. You’re a psychic.”
“I didn’t need my gift to pull those answers out of my ass.” Carson took a deep breath. “Listen to me carefully. Working yourself to the bone is what got you in this mess in the first place, where you felt like you had to shout at spirits to leave you alone for five seconds of peace. If you pick up where you left off like nothing has changed, you’re going to end up right back in the same place again.”
He didn’t want to admit it, but Carson had a point. “You might be right.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Ten. You know I’m right. Look, start small. When you’re out to dinner with Ronan, you need to tell the spirits gathering around you that you’re eating and they have to wait until you’re done with your meal. Tell them, ‘If you can’t wait for me to eat up, go find another medium.’”