Firework Fiasco

by Kathi Daley

  Buckner steepled his fingers. “Okay, so you moved the body through the connecting door into your own room after wrapping it in plastic. Then what?”

  “Then I waited for nightfall. When it was dark I transferred the body to my car, then took it into the woods and buried it.”

  “Do you remember where you buried it?” Deputy Buckner asked.

  He nodded. “I can find the spot.”

  “Okay. So after you buried the body, then what?”

  “Then nothing. I went to the competition and tried to act normal. I figured by the time anyone found Calvin’s body, if they ever did, I’d be long gone.”

  “What about the sheets?”

  “I dumped them along with Calvin’s blue jacket earlier that morning. Both had the fake blood on them, so I drove across town and tossed them in a dumpster.”

  Buckner leaned in just a bit. I hoped he was getting to my question. “What about Calvin’s personal possessions? What did you do with those?”

  “Nothing. Calvin’s costumes and other personal things were in the room before the rehearsal that evening. I saw them there while we finalized the plan. But by the time I came into the room the next morning to fulfill my part, all of his possessions, including his costumes, were gone.”

  “So who took them and why?”

  Brown shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  I glanced at Zak. “I have a feeling this mystery isn’t quite as over as we’d like it to be.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  I continued. “Either Calvin moved his things before putting the plan into action or someone stole them while he was out partying. If his possessions were stolen, it seems that should have given him enough pause to abandon the plan. The only other time the costumes could have been stolen was after Nona and Calvin got to the room but before Brown was brought into play. But if Calvin was in the room when his belongings were removed, wouldn’t he have made a fuss about it? If he had, someone would have heard something.”

  “Which means Calvin must have moved his belongings himself as part of the plan to disappear quickly.”

  I frowned. “Yeah, I guess.”

  After the interview Buckner followed Brown’s directions and found Calvin’s body right where he said he’d buried it. It was dug up and transferred to the ME’s office so he could determine the cause of death. Connor Brown was arrested for crimes related to concealing a body and burying it on land that belonged to the National Forest Service. I wasn’t sure what would happen with him, but I was more interested in what had happened to Calvin and where his possessions were. At least we had corroboration of what had happened to Nona, which should help her deal with it.

  It was late by the time we got home and we were exhausted. We fell into bed and a dreamless sleep, at least for a few hours. When I woke in a cold sweat at four a.m. I knew I was going to need to find out the rest of the story, even if I could already deliver the answers to Nona we’d set out to find.

  Chapter 14

  Monday, July 9

  “If Nona remembered seeing Calvin’s possessions when she arrived in his room, and they were gone by the time she and I returned to find the body gone, they had to have been removed either by Calvin while Nona slept or by someone else after he was dead,” I said to Zak as we drove to Bryton Lake that morning. “Connor Brown indicated the possessions were gone when he went into the room to find Calvin dead, so unless he’s lying and he really took them, it only makes sense that Calvin himself removed them, or perhaps he had another accomplice who came by and picked everything up after Nona passed out.”

  “Okay, say that’s true,” Zak responded as he turned the wheel of his truck into a tight S curve. “If Calvin cleared his room of his possessions in preparation for a quick exit, which really does make sense, where did he stash them? Did he have a car? I don’t remember a vehicle being mentioned at any point.”

  I tilted my head. Zak had asked a good question. “We know he went to the bar, but he showed up with a group, so he might have gotten a ride. We also know he and Nona went to a party at the beach, but I seem to remember Nona saying they’d taken her bike back to the motel. We should ask her, if she’s in any shape to answer questions, that is.” I frowned. “I wonder if she’ll be able to speak. I wonder if she’ll even know who we are. I imagine we should anticipate some pretty significant side effects after brain surgery.”

  Zak’s lips tightened. I could see he was as worried as I was about what those side effects might turn out to be.

  I decided to change the subject back to the Elvis mystery. Worrying about what we might find once we reached the hospital wasn’t going to help anyone. “I thought I’d call Deputy Buckner later. I’m hoping he’ll have at least a preliminary autopsy report. I’m very interested to find out if Calvin died of natural causes while he was lying there on the bed pretending to be dead, which would be beyond crazy, of if someone slipped in and killed him during the five minutes between when Calvin knocked on the door to alert Brown that he was ready to put the fake death scene into play and cracked open the door.”

  “The odds of either happening is pretty small,” Zak said as he came to a stop at the light at the bottom of the mountain. “The only thing that makes any sense is that Brown killed him.”

  “I agree, but if he did, why would he even mention the fact that he was dead to Buckner? Everyone assumed Calvin just took off.”

  Zak made a left turn onto the highway leading to Bryton Lake. “It doesn’t make sense he would have. Maybe there was a third person involved. I can’t remember if Buckner asked Brown about anyone else who might have been in on the plan.”

  “I’ll ask him when I call him. Do you think we should stop to get flowers for Nona?”

  “She’s in Intensive Care, so she can’t have flowers. Once they move her to a room we’ll get her the biggest bouquet we can find.”

  My heart was pounding a million miles an hour while Zak and I waited to speak to a doctor before being allowed to visit Nona. I figured the news must be of the bad variety; otherwise why not send a nurse to fill us in? I thought I was prepared for anything, but the longer we waited, the more certain I became that the short- or long-term side effects we could expect would be terrifying.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman,” the doctor greeted us. “Your grandmother is awake and stable. We’re going to keep her in ICU for a couple of days to make sure there are no complications, but we don’t anticipate any problems.”

  I let out a breath of relief.

  “Your grandmother will need full-time care when she leaves here. If you or another friend or relative aren’t able to provide it, I can recommend a long-term care facility.”

  “She’ll come home with us,” I said immediately. “I’ll take care of her.” I glanced at Zak. “We both will.”

  The doctor smiled. “I’m happy to hear that. We find our patients do much better at home.”

  “Are there any significant side effects we need to be aware of?” Zak asked.

  I put my hand on his leg and he wrapped my hand in his while we waited for the doctor’s reply.

  “Your grandmother is a strong woman who did very well considering the invasive nature of both the tumor and the surgery to remove it. There may be some memory loss, especially short-term memory. It’s hard to know at this point because she’s still pretty groggy. Additionally, her balance might be affected, at least in the short term. I recommend that you rent a wheelchair for her to get around until she’s steady on her feet. We spoke briefly, and her speech seems fine, although, again, she’s a bit groggy. What she says might not make a whole lot of sense.”

  “Anything else we should know?” I asked.

  “A nurse will go over everything with you prior to release. If you plan to care for her yourself, we’ll be certain you know exactly what to do and what to look for. The nurse out front will show you to her bed, but we’re going to limit the visit to just five minutes today. You can come back tomorrow and every day after
that, if you’d like, but I don’t want her to overdo.”

  Zak and I held hands as we followed the nurse down the hall. I wanted to cry when I saw all the machines Nona was hooked up to and the turban wrapped around her head. She looked small and weak, but at least she was alive. I had exactly zero experience being a nurse, but I figured I could learn what I didn’t know so Nona would receive the best care and get back to her old self as soon as possible.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked as I sat down next to Nona’s bed. Zak stood next to me. We’d been told to be careful of all the tubes and wires, so I sat with my hands in my lap, even though I wanted to hug the poor, frail woman.

  “Been better,” Nona croaked out. “You here to take me home?”

  I glanced at Zak.

  “Not today, Nona. The doctor wants to make sure all your vitals are stable before he’ll release you. But Zoe and I will come back every day, and as soon as we get the all clear, we’ll take you home and get you settled into your suite.”

  “I don’t want to be a bother.”

  Zak touched her hand with one of his fingers. “You could never be a bother. We love you and are happy to have you stay with us for as long as necessary.”

  Nona closed her eyes. It looked like she might have dozed off. Zak motioned to me that we should probably leave. We were only supposed to stay a few minutes anyway.

  “You catch Elvis’s killer?” Nona asked as I stood.

  I decided to keep it simple. “Not yet. But we’re close. Really close. I should have news by tomorrow.”

  “I heard something,” Nona said. “As I was coming to. I’d forgotten about it, but it came to me all of a sudden as I was coming out of the anesthesia, which was an eerily similar feeling.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “I think there was someone else in the room. I wasn’t all the way awake yet and everything felt blurred and fragmented, but I remember hearing the door close. I think I fell back asleep for a few minutes at least before I came to all the way, but I remember the scent of strawberries. Of course, smelling things that aren’t there could be a symptom of the brain tumor they just removed.”

  “Maybe. But it might be an important clue as well,” I answered, just as the nurse came in and indicated we needed to leave. “We’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully with the answers you’re looking for.”

  Zak kissed Nona on the forehead and we followed the nurse out of the cubicle, down the hallway, and out of the ICU.

  “I know who killed Calvin,” I said as we walked through the hospital to the parking area.

  “Who?”

  “A woman I met at the competition. I don’t know her name, but I sure as heck intend to find out.”

  ******

  The woman I’d spoken to on the beach last Friday had sported red hair and smelled like strawberries. She’d told me that she’d been following the Elvises for a long time and had taken the time to speak to and get to know them all. She also was the one who’d first mentioned to me that Calvin had all his costumes custom made. I had no idea why she’d kill Elvis #3, but if Nona smelled strawberries in his motel room, I was pretty sure that woman had been there. I wondered how she’d pulled it off. Maybe she’d been there all along. Maybe Calvin had taken Nona back to the room and drugged her, then found himself in want of some female companionship. Maybe she’d been hanging around and he’d invited her in, or perhaps her being in the room was her idea and she’d knocked on his door. Maybe she’d slipped Calvin some of the drug he’d given Nona, or maybe she’d had a drug of her own. Maybe she waited until he fell asleep and then killed him. Or maybe she knew about the plan from the beginning. Maybe she’d been the one to knock on the door to alert Connor Brown that Nona was waking before she left. There were certainly a lot of maybes, but I was determined to turn all of them into answers by the end of the day.

  I called Buckner while Zak drove back up the mountain. He was willing to talk with us, so we arranged to meet him at his office when we arrived back in town. I hoped that between my hunch about the strawberry redhead and the results of the autopsy, we’d finally be able to put this mystery to bed.

  Chapter 15

  Buckner was waiting for us when we arrived at the sheriff’s office. I jumped right in with what Nona had remembered when she was in and out of consciousness in the motel room. I also shared that I’d met a woman on the beach with red hair who smelled like strawberries.

  “Is this the woman you saw?” Buckner slid a photo across the desk.

  I nodded. “Yes, that’s her. Who is she?”

  “Her name is Bonnie Needlemeyer. A couple of witnesses remembered seeing her hanging around the motel the night Calvin Jobs died. No one thought anything about it until I started asking questions. It seems she was a regular with the Elvis crowd. She even followed them from state to state.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “Seattle.”

  I frowned. “I guess it makes sense she wouldn’t still be here now that the contest is over. In fact, I never saw her again after that one time, so she may have left early. Are you going to have Seattle PD arrest her?”

  “I’ve already had them bring her in for questioning. She claims to have been a part of Calvin’s plan, that after Nona passed out, Calvin texted her and she came over. He put his belongings in the car she’d rented because he’d gotten a ride to Ashton Falls with another Elvis. She’d agreed to drive both him and his belongings out of town after his fake-death drama had played out. She helped him with the fake blood and knife as Nona was beginning to come to, then left. He’d told her he’d meet her in a parking lot a few blocks away once he was done. He never showed. She heard he’d taken off and didn’t know he was dead, so she figured he’d reneged on the money he’d promised her and cut her out of the deal. She wasn’t too upset because she had the costumes, which she figured he no longer needed and she could sell for a pretty penny.”

  “So he never showed and she just went on about her business?” I asked.

  “She said she went to visit her sister, who lives in Bryton Lake, for a few days before flying home.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to make sense of that. “So who killed Calvin?”

  “Actually, I believe Ms. Needlemeyer did. The autopsy report shows he died from heart failure brought on by a drug cocktail injected directly into his heart. There was a small puncture wound in his chest. The logical assumption is that Ms. Needlemeyer helped set up the scene for the fake death as planned, then administered the drugs. He would have died almost immediately.”

  “So is she going to be charged with Calvin’s death?”

  Buckner shook his head. “At this point all we have is a theory, and Ms. Needlemeyer isn’t ’fessing up. The Seattle PD are working on her. There is one other possibility, though. Two, in fact. One is that Conner Brown killed Jobs, which in my opinion seems unlikely. The other is that the man you captured in your photo killed Jobs and was in the room the whole time.”

  “Did you ever find out who that was?”

  “No, but we have witnesses who saw a tall man with dark hair and a long, pointy nose hanging around earlier in the day.”

  “A tall man with a pointy nose?” I said. “The man who approached me that day was tall and had a pointy nose. He said he was from the costume company and was there to collect Calvin’s costumes. He thought someone from the contest had them because he’d left. He must have killed Calvin so he could steal the costumes, which I’m betting he knew had real gems sewn onto them.”

  Buckner frowned. “You think the real stones were still sewn onto the costumes? It seems an unnecessary risk to bring them to the competition.”

  “Maybe, but what if Calvin knew he was going to disappear and wanted them to help him make a new start? He wouldn’t want to carry around a bag of gems that would most likely have been flagged at the airport, so he left his last shipment on the costumes rather than turning them over to whoever he’d stolen them for. He planned to fake
his death and take off with them, but somehow his boss found out what he planned and sent the tall man with the pointy nose to deal with Calvin and collect the gems. Do you know if Ms. Needlemeyer still had Calvin’s stuff?”

  “She did. The Seattle PD are collecting it. If she killed him, we’ll figure out a way to prove it.”

  ******

  I provided the sketch artist with an image of the tall man with the pointy nose, then Zak and I left the sheriff’s office. We still didn’t know for certain who had killed Calvin, but Buckner said he’d call me when he had news and there wasn’t a lot we could do to help. We’d let the police do their jobs while we spent time with our family. We felt bad that we’d had to postpone sailing yet again, so we invited everyone over for a BBQ and swim party. In addition to the Dentons, we asked my parents and Harper and my grandfather and his girlfriend, Hazel, to join us.

  “I’d like to make an announcement,” my grandfather, Luke Donovan, said after we’d finished eating. He glanced at Hazel, who sat beside him. She smiled and nodded. “Hazel and I are getting hitched.”

  “You’re getting married?” I chirped with happiness. “Congratulations.” I got up and hugged both Grandpa and Hazel, and pretty much everyone else did likewise. “When?” I asked after the commotion calmed down a bit.

  “In a couple of weeks,” Grandpa answered.

  “Couple of weeks?” My mom was the one chirping this time. “You can’t plan a wedding in a couple of weeks.”

  “Sure you can, if you keep it small,” Grandpa countered. “We already spoke to the reverend and we plan to invite only family and a few close friends.”

  I wanted to argue, but Zak squeezed my hand in a gesture I was sure was to remind me that this was, after all, their wedding. “I think that sounds perfect. You can have it here.” I glanced at my mother. “Mom and I will help with whatever you need.”