by Lila Dare
Another wave broke over us, but to my relief it seemed to be pushing us toward the shore, not pulling us away. The tide must be coming in. My toes scraped sand and I tried to stand, but the surfer’s weight and the sucking of the water as the wave receded kept me down.
“Hold on,” strong voices called from the shore. “We’re coming.”
Water blurred my vision, but I thought I saw three men pounding toward us, carrying the yellow and green surfboard and a flotation ring. One of them flung it toward me and it bounced off my forehead. I hardly registered the pain. Still holding the surfer by his hair, I grabbed for the ring just as the men splashed up to me in what turned out to be only waist-high water. Two of them grabbed the unconscious surfer while the third helped me stand. My every muscle trembled, and he put his arm around my waist to keep me from falling. I looked up into his face, at blue eyes framed by bushy white brows and seamed skin that spoke of decades in the sun, and thought I’d never seen anything so wonderful.
BACK IN MOM’s KITCHEN AN HOUR LATER AFTER A shower, shampoo, and change of clothes, I spooned up chicken noodle soup and defused Mom’s worries.
“You said you wouldn’t go in the water,” she said, ladling more soup out of the pot into my bowl.
“I’m full,” I protested. I cupped my hands around the bowl, letting the heat seep into me. The room exuded warmth with its brick wall, yellow paint, copper pans hanging from a rack overhead, and a faint scent of vanilla. “And it’s not like I planned to go swimming. What did you want me to do—leave the poor guy to drown?”
“Of course not. Whatever possessed him to trying surfing with a hurricane off the coast? Didn’t he know how dangerous it was?”
I rather thought that was the point. The surfer had turned out to be a man in his mid-twenties who worked for some government organization in Atlanta. He’d regained consciousness and thanked me and the fishermen for rescuing him as the EMTs prepared to load him into the ambulance to have his broken arm set at the hospital. Over his shoulder, I noticed a reporter speaking with a police officer who had responded with the medics.
“You saved my life,” the surfer said, surprising me with a kiss on the cheek. “My parents thank you.”
“The surf was pushing you toward the beach, anyway,” I said, embarrassed by his gratitude. My hair dripped onto the blanket the EMTs had wrapped around him, and I shivered.
“Still. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, let me know.” Brown-flecked hazel eyes looked into mine with grateful sincerity. “And next time you’re in Atlanta, I’m taking you to dinner.” He pressed a business card into my hand, fishing it from the pocket of khaki shorts the fishermen had retrieved, along with his shoes and wallet, from a heap down the beach. His gaze strayed to the heaving water behind me. “What a rush!”
He was certifiably insane. I told him so and he grinned. As the ambulance started down the road, I glanced at his card: “Stuart Varnet,” it read, “Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.” Sounded like a cheery job.
Rachel had driven me to my apartment in my car, where I’d cleaned up and put Band-Aids on a couple of places scraped raw in the surf. The worst spot was high on my cheekbone, and any facial movement—smiling, frowning, laughing—tugged at it and made me wince. Now, while Rachel and Althea dealt with a client up front, I brought Mom up to speed on what Rachel had told me and what I’d learned from Dillon and Coach Peet. I didn’t mention my upcoming date with Dillon; that was a development I wanted to keep private for the moment.
“I can’t believe Braden was participating in a pharmaceutical study,” she said. “Aren’t there a lot of risks involved?”
“Can’t be any worse than surfing in a hurricane,” I said.
She laughed. “That’s a true fact, but I’m sure Braden had to have his parents’ permission to take part in a drug study; that young daredevil today certainly didn’t tell his folks. It would be just criminal if Braden had a reaction to the drug and it contributed to his death in some way. Could the medicine have made him dizzy so that he fell?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” I said, rinsing out my bowl and putting it in the drainer. “But don’t forget that someone smothered him. If the fall was an accident, why would someone stalk him at the hospital and kill him? I’d been thinking that the murderer finished him off at the hospital because they were afraid he’d wake up and ID them.”
“That makes sense,” Mom said. She gazed at me over the lenses of her rimless glasses. “How much money would a pharmaceutical company have invested in a drug? If it’s a lot—millions—and a test subject had a potentially fatal accident because of it, mightn’t they want to cover it up?”
“With murder?” I laughed. “You’ve been watching too many thrillers, Mom. This isn’t that Rachel Weisz movie where the evil pharmaceutical company tested drugs on innocent Africans. What was it called? Something about a gardener. Corporations don’t run around killing people. Thanks for the soup. It hit the spot.”
“It was just out of a can.” Mom pursed her lips. “I still think you should follow up on the drug test thing. Maybe that boy who was here yesterday, Braden’s friend, could tell you more about it.”
“Mark Crenshaw.” I’d already planned to talk to him. “Maybe I’ll run over to the school and see if I can catch him before football practice. Then I’ll come back here in time to help with the Locks of Love cuts.”
“You should be resting.” Mom put her hands on her hips.
“I got wet,” I said, kissing her cheek. “It’s not like I was in a car wreck or something. I don’t need to rest.”
“Hmmph. You got pretty beat up. Look at the bruises on your arm.”
The sight of the bruises reminded me of what Rachel had said about Mark’s dad maybe abusing him and I told my mom. “Should I tell someone?”
“I don’t know how you can,” she said, tapping a finger on her lower lip. “You heard it from Rachel who heard it from Lindsay who noticed some bruises on Mark. That’s hardly proof of abuse. You don’t want to start rumors based on such flimsy evidence.”
“His mother had a bruise, too,” I said. “I noticed it this morning.”
“Well, if having a couple bruises is proof of parental or spousal abuse, anyone looking at you would toss me in jail quicker than I can say ‘Jack Robinson.’ ”
“Good point,” I said, eyeing my bruised and scraped arms. I hadn’t relished going to the police or anyone with those accusations and I was relieved to hear Mom didn’t think I should.
I gave her a hug. “Thanks for worrying about me.”
“It’s my job.” She sounded severe, but I caught the twinkle in her eye. “But the pay stinks and the hours are lousy.”
Arriving back at the high school, I headed around back to the practice field. Unless things had changed since I went there, the football team practiced last period and then for an additional hour or so after school. I hoped to intercept Mark Crenshaw before practice kicked off. Coach Peet, I knew, was unlikely to let me distract his players once practice got underway. The field, goal posts at either end, stretched greenly away from the back of the high school. A single section of rickety bleachers—once white, now a silvery gray where the sun and humidity had chewed away the paint—marked the fifty-yard line. A girl sat midway up, holding her long hair back with one hand and pressing the pages of a textbook open with the other.
I expected to see a steady stream of football players trickling from the exterior gym door onto the field; instead, two players in practice jerseys tossed a football back and forth in the middle of the field. Coach Peet was nowhere in sight. I crossed the field, behind the players, my low-heeled pumps sinking into the grass. I noticed “Crenshaw” stenciled on the back of one of the kids’ jerseys. The other player suddenly cut across the field, then zigzagged toward the middle. Mark brought his arm back and launched the ball in a tight spiral. The receiver snagged it with his fingertips and raced for the end zone.
“Mark?”
He turned, startled. “What? Oh, hi, Miss Terhune.” His eyes slid to his teammate down the field. He caught the football as the receiver lobbed it back to him.
“Do you have a moment to talk?” I asked. “About Braden?”
“I’ve got lots of moments,” he said. “No practice today because of the hurricane. Too many people have evacuated. Give me ten, okay, Josh?” he called to his teammate. “Then we’ll run some more patterns.”
Josh gave him a thumbs-up and joined the girl on the bleachers. I felt awkward standing in the middle of the field, but the bleachers were too small to allow for private conversation.
“My car’s just over there,” Mark said with a nod toward a blue Mustang parked outside the fence. “We could sit there if you want, out of the wind.”
“Sounds good.”
As we headed toward the car, he asked, “What happened to your face?” His hand brushed the air around his own cheek.
“Swimming accident.” I didn’t want to go into it. “How are you holding up? Everyone says you and Braden were best friends.”
“It’s hard,” Mark said. Pulling off his helmet, he tossed his hair out of his eyes with a flip of his head. “I just can’t believe he’s gone. At practice yesterday, Lonnie would run the pattern and turn, waiting for me to throw to him, but it just wasn’t the same. Every time I hit Lonnie with a pass, it reminded me that Braden’s gone. Dead. It was like finding out he’s dead over and over again, you know? Before, I was really pumped about this season, looking forward to the playoffs. Now . . .” He shrugged. “I’m just kinda going through the motions. I’m thinking about quitting.”
He beeped open the car’s locks and we climbed in. The interior was immaculate and smelled vaguely of pine. A sleeve on the visor held a selection of CDs; other than that, the car looked like it had just come off the showroom floor. “She was a present from my folks,” Mark said self-consciously, smoothing a hand along the dashboard. “When I got my appointment to the Naval Academy.”
Whatever happened to giving a kid a suitcase for a graduation present? “What’s Coach Peet think? About you leaving the team?”
“That I should stick with it. My backup’s just a freshman. He’s good, but Coach would rather go with a known quantity.”
I felt for Mark, but I wasn’t qualified to advise him on his football dilemma. “Look, Mark, a couple of people have told me Braden was participating in some sort of drug study. Do you know anything about that?”
“The Relamin study? What about it?” He looked startled, then uneasy, bringing his thumb to his mouth to chew on his cuticle.
“What is it? When did he start with the study?”
Mark turned his head away to stare out the window. “It’s a new antidepressant. It’s supposed to work differently—better than the serotonin re-uptake inhibitors—but I don’t really understand the chemistry behind it.”
Sero-what? I quickly decided I didn’t need to understand how it worked, either. “Did you see any changes in Mark after he started the study?”
He thought for a moment. “Nah. Not really. He hadn’t been through a major depressive episode in quite a while, at least not that I knew about. And I don’t think I would’ve missed it. We spent a lot of time together. He could have been receiving the placebo anyway, in which case—obviously—he wouldn’t have side effects.”
It wasn’t obvious to me. “What do you mean?”
“In drug studies, there’s always a control group that receives a placebo instead of the new medication. You don’t know which group you’re in, so you might be getting the new drug, or you might just be getting a sugar pill.” His brows twitched together with a hint of suspicion. “Why are you asking about Relamin? Do you know something about it? Have you heard something?”
“Nothing. I was wondering about possible side effects, that’s all.”
He seemed to lose interest. “Dr. Solomon would know. But she probably won’t tell you. These drug studies are very hush-hush; at least, that’s what Braden said.”
“Dr. Solomon?”
“Yeah. She’s the one running the study. You met her—she was at the ghost hunt.”
The short woman with the widow’s peak. A chill trickled down my spine. Was it mere coincidence that she was at Rothmere the night Braden fell? I bit my lip. I was letting Mom’s theory color my thinking; of course it was coincidence. I changed the subject, sensing that Mark was about to bail on me by the way his hand rested on the door handle. “Look, can you think of anyone who hated Braden or who might’ve wanted to hurt him?”
Mark was shaking his head before I finished. “No. Everyone liked Braden.”
“Even Lonnie?”
He paused and began gnawing on his cuticle again. “Oh, Lonnie’s okay. He was pissed at Braden after his brother got sent to juvie, but he’s okay with Braden now.”
Hm. Clearly, Mark wasn’t going to rat out a teammate, or probably anyone else. The culture of “don’t tattle” was alive and well in high school, even with a murderer on the loose. I tried to squelch my irritation; it must be incredibly hard to believe that someone you knew, someone who kind of was you—a high school senior looking forward to graduation and maybe college, who played ball and struggled with calculus tests—could kill someone. “He told Rachel that there was some situation he was dealing with, or aware of, and he was debating whether or not to ‘intervene.’ That’s the word he used. Do you know what he was talking about?”
Mark’s eyes widened. “He said that? To Rachel?”
I couldn’t tell if he was more puzzled about what Braden might have meant or about his talking it over with Rachel. “Uh-huh.”
“I don’t know—He didn’t say—” His teeth worried at the cuticle and a fleck of blood appeared.
His mother was right—Mark was wound way too tight. I put a hand on his arm, but before I could say anything, the door on my side swung open, letting in a gust of sea-scented wind. A strong pair of hands grabbed my upper arm and yanked. I tumbled out of the seat, my feet getting caught somehow. My shoulder thudded against the door and then I was on the ground. Ow.
“You bitch! What the hell do you—”
“Lindsay!” Mark’s horrified voice cut through his girlfriend’s tirade.
“Oh my God! Miss Terhune! I’m so sorry. I thought you were—Are you okay?” Lindsay hovered over me, contrition on her face.
From my upside-down position on the ground, she looked like a young Amazon warrior with a really good haircut. Thank God she wasn’t carrying a spear. The driver’s door slammed as Mark scrambled out and came around to our side.
Pushing to a sitting position, I freed my foot, grateful I wasn’t wearing a skirt. I felt undignified enough as it was without my lavender Jockey hipsters on display. I massaged my twisted ankle for a moment, then stood, dusting off my slacks. Adrenaline still surged through me and my voice was tight as I said, “You attacked me.”
Wearing skinny jeans that made her look even taller than she was, Lindsay looked like she was going to cry. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were . . . were putting the moves on Mark.”
“You what?” Incredulity and anger flooded me and I felt my face flush. I was pretty sure I’d never “put the moves” on anyone, and I couldn’t imagine being interested in an eighteen-year-old. The idea made me faintly nauseated.
“Not you. I didn’t mean—I mean, I thought you were a girl, like, you know, a student here, and that you—she—was hitting on my boyfriend.”
I followed her disjointed sentence with difficulty. “Is that how you react whenever Mark talks to another student?”
“Of course not.” Mark jumped in to defend Lindsay. He put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him. “She misinterpreted the situation, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Pulling a twig from my hair, I gave the pair a level look. “You reacted like a kindergartner. At your age, I’d expect a little more impulse control.”
“I’m really sor
ry,” Lindsay whispered again. “You won’t tell, will you?”
Tell who? The police? Her folks? I could just see that conversation: “Hello, Mrs. Tandy? I’m calling to let you know your daughter pulled me out of a car—no, it wasn’t moving at the time—because she thought I was getting cozy with her boyfriend. Well, yes, I was alone in the car with him, but there was nothing going on. I was just grilling him about his best friend’s murder.” Not a conversation I wanted to have.
“I can’t afford detention,” Lindsay said. “Coach Adkins won’t let someone play for a week if they get detention.”
Ah, she was worried I’d tell Principal Kornhiser. Merle. Suddenly, I felt too weary to bother with this conversation anymore. I was tired from fighting the sea this morning, and being bounced onto the ground by Lindsay had awakened all the aches that two painkillers had put to sleep. “I’m going home,” I said grumpily. “If you think of anything else, Mark, or have thoughts about what Braden meant when he talked about ‘intervening,’ give me a call at Violetta’s.”
The kids exchanged a look I didn’t know how to interpret but said nothing. When the silence had stretched to thirty seconds, I turned and started toward Mom’s. Mark’s belated, “Will do,” and Lindsay’s, “Sorry,” floated after me.
Chapter Fourteen
I ARRIVED BACK AT MOM’s TO FIND FRED WILKERSON, Mom’s handyman, nailing plywood over the salon windows. Mom was starting to take Horatio seriously.
“Hi, Fred,” I greeted him.
“Gonna be a big blow,” he said, shaking his grizzled head. At least seventy, he wore denim overalls and work boots. A patch of stubbly white whiskers sprouted from his jaw where his razor had missed a spot. “I saw this morning that most of the boats have moved out of the marina.”
Leaving him to his work—whack, whack, whack went the hammer—I entered the salon. With some of the windows boarded up, it felt like a dim cave. “Are we closed?” I asked Mom, who was rearranging the bottles and tubes of Althea’s Organic Skin Care Solutions. The weather report played without sound on the television behind her. The swirly mass of clouds had moved closer to Georgia.