Fruit of All Evil

by Paige Shelton

  “I’m committed to staying in South Carolina, Becca.” What Ian was really saying was that he was committed to me, to us.

  “Ian,” I began, but he stopped me by putting a finger on my lips.

  “We’ll talk about it later. I don’t mean to pressure you, really. I was going to bring you out here next week if I could get Bud’s situation straightened out.”

  “Well, I can tell you this much. Even if you do get this property, build a big house and workshop, and grow some lavender, I’m still going to call you my boyfriend, and I’ll probably spend a night or two here with you if I’m invited and if I can bring Hobbit,” I said.

  I felt Ian lean toward me. He was coming in for a kiss, and I could tell it was going to be a good one. Our kisses had been strained lately, and this one was going to make up for all that, this one was going to propel us back into the “us” that was wonderful and perfect. But his phone buzzed, killing the potential romantic scene.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled it from his pocket and looked at the ID.

  “Sam,” he said as he flipped open the phone. “Hello, Officer Brion. Yes, Madeline Forsyth did call me today. I didn’t return the call yet. Yes, sort of, we were in the middle of a potential business transaction. No, it didn’t occur to me to tell you about that until about twenty minutes ago, but I thought I’d call you tomorrow to let you know. Yes, of course I can meet you at the station tonight. I’m on my way.” Ian snapped the phone shut.

  “Dang,” I said. “Sam wants you to go to the station?”

  “I wish I’d remembered to tell him that she’d called me. When he questioned me, I didn’t mention Bud’s bank issue. I hadn’t talked to Madeline yet, so it didn’t occur to me that it might be important. I guess I’ll have to go clear my name.”

  “So unless you get arrested, we’ll get to resume that . . . well, whatever that was about to be, later?”

  “Absolutely.” Ian took my hand, and we made our way over the land that might someday be covered in purple.

  “Lavender?” I said as Ian opened the truck door for me.

  “Yep, lavender.”

  “Seems like a pretty good plan,” I said.

  “I think so, too.”

  Seven

  The old brick building that housed Monson’s small but efficient group of police officers was full of activity during normal business hours, but not so much during the evening. Apparently, the mayor had an office in the building, as did a few attorneys and some other local government officials, but no one was working this night except the police.

  Ian and I made our way up a small flight of stairs and past an unmanned receptionist’s desk. The frosted glass top half of the door we opened had one word on it: Police.

  Inside, we found a flurry of activity. The back glass-walled offices were empty and dark, but the group of desks in the open area were occupied by officers at work. Vivienne Norton and her muscles were on the phone. She was taking notes of some sort. Drew’s cousin Sally sat next to Officer Norton’s desk; she looked tired and upset. Though not up to Vivienne’s standards, another burly officer, Officer Sanford—I’d come to know him during the last Monson murder case, too—was shuffling some papers as Shawn and Mid sat across from him. Sam was standing with his hands on his hips as he looked at something on his desk. He looked up as the door shut behind us, and signaled in our direction.

  We made our way, all the while gathering glances from Drew’s cousins.

  “Ian, Becca,” Sam said. “Ian, have a seat. Becca, would you either wait over there”—he pointed to a couple of chairs on the far side of the station—“or outside? We have only one interview room, and it’s occupied. I need to have as much privacy as possible with Ian. Grab some coffee if you’d like.”

  “Sure, of course.” I nodded at Ian, and he winked at me with the eye that Sam couldn’t see.

  “Thanks,” Sam said.

  I’d had the coffee here once before, and probably still had the damaged taste buds to show for it, so I headed toward the empty chairs, content to wait without a beverage. But something—something that felt magnetic—caused me to veer at the last second.

  I made my way to the door Ian and I had just come through, put my hand on the knob, turned around to see if anyone was watching me leave—no one seemed to care in the least what I was doing—went out to the hallway, and hurried the opposite direction of the building’s front doors.

  So the interview room was occupied, was it? And just who were they interviewing? Linda? Drew? The blond cousin, Alan? The cook? Was there someone the police actually thought was the killer? Or were the rooms and spaces available just being used as efficiently as possible? I had to know.

  When the police arrested my friend Abner for Matt Simonsen’s murder, I’d visited him in one of the small, cagelike cells that were at the back of the building. On the way to the cells, I’d walked through the area with the officers’ desks, and down a hallway that led past the interview room and some bathrooms. I wondered if there was another way to access that back room. I scurried into an unlit area of the hallway, hoping for some place that offered a short cut or something.

  The first door I came to had the lettering Law Offices, but nothing else. It was locked. The second door was labeled Janitor. It wasn’t locked, but it wasn’t any sort of short cut—it was a small closet full of mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies. There were no other doors, but there was one other possible option: at the end of the hall was a large window.

  No, I told myself. What am I thinking? That I’m going to go out a window, use my Spidey skills and hope that there’s another window I can go in through?

  Ridiculous.

  I turned and resigned myself to waiting for Ian in the truck. Maybe I could get some rest.

  But as I passed the janitor’s closet again, I stopped and turned.

  The window really was big—the kind common in an older government building. It had lots of glass, and the wood frame was in need of a good sanding and staining. If—a big if—I could get it open, I could look outside to see how close another window was, and gauge the possibility of actually making my way to it. Shoot, what would it hurt to look?

  The window was as old as the building, and not built for security. It was just a simple window that lifted open when the swivel lock wasn’t in place. I stepped up on my tip-toes, turned the lock, and pulled gently on the bottom of the wooden frame.

  As it slid up, the old wood traveled on rusted metal sliders, screaming like a herd of hungry zombies.

  “Lovely,” I muttered. For a moment, I stood still and listened to my own breathing. Surely, someone was going to come out of the police station, gun drawn, and discover my antics. But no one did.

  I didn’t dare open the window much more than I already had, but the space was enough for me to lean out if I bent over. There were no bars or cage security over the window like the ones I’d noticed on the building’s lowerlevel windows.

  I threaded my head and shoulders out the open space and looked to the left. There was most definitely another window, and it wasn’t far away—and it seemed to be in the exact area that I estimated was where I wanted to be. The only issue was getting there. A good sized brick ledge, fitting the rest of the old architecture, jutted out from the building and led perfectly from one window to the other one. A quaint courtyard was below me; lit with only a couple of small lights; I could see chairs and a picnic table circled by a narrow walking path.

  At that point, my common sense flew right out the open window. Most people who recognized they were two stories above the ground with only a ledge to take them from one window to the other, would probably choose to leave the ledge-walking to professionals. But at that moment, it seemed like a simple and not-too-dangerous proposition.

  Plus, despite my insistence that I knew Linda couldn’t be a killer, one thought, one question kept running through my mind—where had she gone today after leaving Bailey’s? I couldn’t stop it from nagging at me. I needed
to know if Linda was the one in the interrogation room. I needed to know if she was a main suspect. I needed to know if I was so wrong about my friend. If Linda was a killer then I had to question everything I thought I knew about my instincts. Walking on a building ledge suddenly seemed like a small price to pay to ease my mind.

  But I couldn’t go out headfirst. I took off my new flats, put them in my pockets, and rethreaded myself out the window, this time letting my feet lead the way. Halfway through, I twisted and somehow got my toes onto the ledge. I maneuvered the rest of my body out the window, and holding on to the frame, I managed to stand up. But I was facing the building, which wasn’t the way they did it in the movies.

  Still holding on to the frame, I slowly turned around and was pleased I’d managed to get my back to the brick building. This perspective on the world, however, brought my common sense back with the force of a kick in the gut.

  What was I doing? Two stories might as well have been a hundred. If I fell, I would land in a small grass courtyard. If I didn’t die, I would surely be horribly injured or maimed.

  This was stupid. I stepped back toward the window I’d come through. I was going inside, then out to Ian’s truck. There was still time to save myself—from myself.

  But just before my fingers reached the open space, the window slammed shut. The sound echoed through the courtyard, and then everything became horribly silent. I froze in shock for an instant. Three or four thousand fast heartbeats later, I looked at the closed window and said, “Really?”

  I was pretty well balanced, but panic was beginning to cause cool drops of perspiration to bead on my back. I had to get inside that building, and quickly.

  I took another side step and grabbed the window frame. But it wouldn’t budge. At all. Even a little bit. Because of my angle, and the darkness both outside and inside the building, I couldn’t see the lock. The window had gone up so easily the first time—I couldn’t help but think that it had been locked again. Had someone seen what I was doing and then locked me out?

  I thought about pounding on the window. Someone would eventually hear and help, but I really hated getting caught doing things I wasn’t supposed to be doing. A new resolve swept through me and wiped away the panic. I was going to try the other window and see if it opened before I gave in and gave up.

  Being able to move along the ledge made me grateful for my small feet, but there wasn’t much else that was good about it.

  Long seconds passed before my side steps took me to the next window. This one was frosted, so I had no idea what was behind it, except that there were clearly no lights on.

  I grabbed the bottom sash, gritted my teeth, and sent a silent prayer out to the universe that it wasn’t locked.

  It wasn’t. In fact, apparently it had recently been oiled. It was the first time I’d experienced a window “flying” open. The speed caused an air suck, and I was pulled through the opening. Fortunately, the floor wasn’t that far down. I know I made some sort of umph sound when I landed, but it wasn’t loud.

  It was dark in the room, but the light from the courtyard illuminated just enough to let me know exactly where I was: the men’s bathroom. It could have been worse—it could have been occupied.

  I was so happy to be off the ledge and so impressed with my newly learned skills that I didn’t care much about what someone would think if they saw me exiting the men’s bathroom, or how I was going to appear in the police station from a place no one saw me go to in the first place. I put on my shoes and started to make my way back to where I’d started.

  But as I reached the door, I heard a male voice moving in my direction. The person attached to the voice either was going to come in here or move on to the cell room.

  I turned to examine the bathroom. There really was no other place to hide, no choices other than where everyone hides when they’re hiding in a bathroom. I hurried into one of the two stalls, shut the door, locked it (glad I didn’t need a purse strap to keep this one closed), and stood on the toilet. Along with all the adrenaline, there was a good dose of humiliation running through my system. I was hiding in the men’s bathroom at the police station. A new low.

  Sure enough, the person came through the door and switched on the light. He was talking on his cell phone as he went about his business, and fortunately he didn’t attempt to open the stall door.

  Once I thought I might not be discovered, I focused on who the person was. It didn’t take long, because it was a voice I’d heard often enough. I was getting to know Drew Forsyth far too well.

  “Yes, okay, I can talk better now,” he said. “I know. I did the best I could. I hope it was good enough.”

  He said uh-huh a number of times before wrapping up the conversation by saying, “Enough was enough, you’re right.” Pause. “I don’t care, just make it look good. We’ll talk later.” He snapped the phone shut.

  I told myself that he could have been talking about any number of things, not necessarily about participating in his mother’s murder. Nonetheless, I didn’t like the sound of it.

  He washed his hands, turned off the light, and left the room. I hurried off my perch, grabbed a paper towel and stuck it in my pocket, and hoped the hallway was clear.

  Once out of the bathroom, I took a deep cleansing breath and gave myself a silent pep talk. So far, so good. No one saw, so if I don’t act guilty, no one will know what I’ve been up to.

  While trying to look casual, I hurried to the back room where the cells were located. I was greeted by one lone prisoner—Linda. This was worse than if she’d been in the interrogation room!

  “Becca?” she said from her seat as I stood in the doorway.

  “Oh, Linda, they arrested you?” I asked as I walked toward her. She was in the same cell that my friend Abner had been in six months earlier. I was beginning to wonder if it was used exclusively for Bailey’s vendors.

  “No, of course not. They separated us when we got here, that’s all. This is where they put me.” She stood and walked out of the cell. “The most comfortable seat was in there.”

  “Oh, Linda, how are you?” I hugged her, relieved that she was still a free woman.

  “I’m okay. Terrible dinner party, though, huh?” She gave a strained smile.

  “I’m so sorry about Madeline.”

  “Me, too. Really. Though she was a tough cookie, she was Drew’s mother and my future mother-in-law. And what a horrible way for anyone to go. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone deserves that.”

  “How’s Drew?” I asked.

  “I think he’s okay. He seems to be handling things all right. It’s in his makeup to be the ‘strong one.’ He’ll probably have some sort of delayed reaction, but we’ll see.” She smiled again, but her eyes were watery and sad. I felt terrible for her. “But to be honest with you, Becca, I just don’t know. Drew and his mother haven’t had much of a relationship over the last ten years or so—I know this is upsetting to him, but whether he’ll be sad she’s gone or sad he didn’t get the relationship where he wanted it to be, I don’t know. I don’t want to burden you with all that now.” She paused and looked over my shoulder. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I had to use the bathroom,” I lied. I wanted her to burden me with more, but now probably wasn’t the time.

  Linda nodded. “I bet Sam won’t be pleased you stopped by to say hi to me. You’d better get back.”

  “Probably. But are you okay, really?”

  “I’m fine. Shook up, but fine. Oh, Becca, of course we’re postponing the wedding until Drew gets back from active duty,” she said.

  Just that morning, I’d wished for some sort of miracle to get me out of being in the wedding, but now my heart sank. This wasn’t the type of miracle I was shooting for, and even though Madeline being killed should trump wedding plans, I knew postponing the event would break Linda’s heart. On the other hand, if his phone call was any indication that Drew was involved in the murder, Linda shouldn’t ever marry him. I wasn’t r
eady to jump to those conclusions, though.

  “Linda, I’m so sorry. He still has to go—on his mission or active duty or whatever . . .?” I whispered.

  “Yes. We were only able to talk before the police arrived, but it was the first thing he wanted to tell me—that he was going to have to go, no matter what. Drew is committed to what he does. I think the only way he could be stopped would be if he was arrested for the murder, but that’s not a possibility. He’ll do what he thinks is the right thing to do.”

  “Oh,” I said, because I wasn’t sure what else to say. Had Linda wondered the same things I was now wondering? How could Drew possibly handle leaving at this time? Was the fact that he was leaving just good timing? Was he headed out of town, probably to another country, just in time to pull off a murder, ditch his bride, and disappear beyond potential prosecution? I hated thinking these sorts of things about Drew Forsyth, but I couldn’t ignore obvious possibilities. I wondered if Sam would let Drew leave. Did the Monson police have enough power to keep someone from military duty?

  She saw the question in my eyes and said, “I know he couldn’t have killed her because he was with me. I was upset about Madeline’s ‘show’ at Bailey’s this morning. Drew came over, and we . . . well . . . anyway.”

  “I get it,” I said. I was relieved if she and Drew had spent the afternoon together. Linda’s fair skin gave away their activities every time. Whenever she and Drew spent time together, I could discern the details by the shade of red her cheeks took on. Linda’s blush told me two things: One, I didn’t think she was lying about being with Drew. And two, they’d had a great time. I deduced a third detail—their good time hadn’t occurred in the process of committing a murder. I wanted to believe her.

  What if the murder was solved quickly? Drew was scheduled to leave a week from today, Friday. Could Sam and his officers figure out who the killer was in that short amount of time? It all depended on the evidence, and I didn’t know what evidence they had. Sam would find a way to detain Drew if he thought it necessary.