Love Me If You Must apam-1

by Nicole Young

  “Mad because you respect Jack’s privacy but not my own? Imagine that.” I crossed my arms.

  It had taken Brad all of thirty seconds to spread the rumor of my background in October. I hated double standards. My look must have said it all.

  “Whoa, Tish. I’m doing my job as a peacekeeper. Dietz’s murder in your basement couldn’t exactly be kept under wraps.”

  “I’m not talking about Dietz. I’m talking about my grandmother.”

  Brad’s brow shot up. “I didn’t release that information.”

  Pressure built up behind my eyes. “Maybe not just now. But you knew about it last month. How could you go around telling everyone?”

  His forehead creased. Brown eyes stared into mine. “You’re wrong. I read about it in the paper this weekend, along with everyone else.”

  “You looked me up in the police computer and saw my rap sheet.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “You already knew my name. The second day I was here.”

  “I saw Dorothy the next morning. She’d talked to the realtor and knew your last name. That’s all. The only reason the story’s out now is because some reporter did his homework.”

  “I wish I could believe you.” I almost choked on the lump in my throat.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because you’re a cop.”

  “And that makes me a liar?”

  “Let’s just say I have a basic mistrust of anyone in authority.”

  “And why is that?”

  I wanted to slap him for asking so many questions.

  “Because I spent three years behind bars and found out that jerks run the system.”

  Brad looked off toward the window. “A uniform doesn’t make someone good. It doesn’t make someone bad. It’s just a uniform. People are human everywhere you go.”

  “Well, some people have an obligation to be better than human.”

  “Does that include you?”

  My hands yearned to strangle him. “I’m not exactly in a position of power. If I mess up, I’m not wrecking other people’s lives.”

  “What about your grandmother’s?”

  I stared at him a second, shocked that he could even make the implication. His needle came a little too close to popping my balloon.

  I jumped up and stumbled toward the kitchen. “How are you doing in here, Jack?”

  He stood at the water dispenser, holding down the lever. Water dripped to the floor.

  “Hey, buddy.” I smiled and headed his way with a towel. “Someone’s going to slip in that puddle.”

  He took the towel and wiped up the spill. “I like this. It’s better than the small bottles.”

  “Cheaper too.” I swung my arms. “So, Jack. I heard you did a great job down in the basement. Who else worked on it with you?”

  I felt Brad’s aura enter the room. I glanced over my shoulder. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, listening.

  Jack put up a thumb and a finger. “There was Mr. Lloyd and his son Josh.”

  That was old news. I knew about Lloyd & Sons’ participation back in July when I started canvassing for a contractor.

  Jack put up another finger. “You know David. I saw you with him the other night.”

  I remembered my surprise to learn that David Ramsey had earned a key to my house from his efforts on the project. It was hard to picture him wearing work clothes and wielding a sledgehammer.

  “There was Mr. Hershel. He used to live here.” Jack added a finger to his count.

  I’d only met Rick Hershel briefly, but from what Dorothy said, Rick was having a hard time letting go of the Victorian himself.

  Another finger made a full hand. “And I helped,” Jack said. “I carried buckets of cement down the steps. I dumped it in the holes.”

  “You did a great job.”

  Incredible. It was hard to picture myself actually living in a neighborhood where people would work together like they had on this one waterproofing project. When I was growing up, Grandma always complained that no one would lift a finger to help her out. Of course, she’d never admit she needed help.

  Rawlings had that good-neighbor element that so many towns lacked. Then again, a year after the project, one man was dead, bashed by one of these so-called neighbors. And there was the possibility that another body was beneath the surface of a waterproofing project gone bad.

  I poured myself a cup of water and took a sip. “So, Jack, do you remember seeing Mr. Dietz in the basement?” I glanced over my shoulder to see what Brad was up to. His stony features hadn’t moved.

  “I saw him sometimes. He came down to talk to Mr. Hershel. He got in a fight with Mr. Lloyd one day.”

  “A fight, huh? What was it about?”

  “Mr. Lloyd wasn’t doing it right. He wanted to dig a hole for the water to run into. Mr. Dietz said no, he had to put in a pump. The hole could be outside, not inside. Mr. Lloyd said, ‘What do you think that cistern is there for anyway?’ Mr. Dietz said he better not catch him digging holes in the basement unless he was hooking up a pump. The job better get done right, or Mr. Dietz would make sure Mr. Lloyd lost his license.”

  I could almost picture the scene between the two men. Tall, gray-haired Lloyd versus stocky, bald-headed Dietz. One bare basement bulb reflecting off their sweaty brows. Gentlemen, take your corners.

  “Sounds like Mr. Dietz was really mad.” I imagined veins popping from his temples, ready to burst.

  “He yelled really loud. Jan came down to see what was wrong. She told Mr. Dietz to get out, but he wouldn’t go. Said he wasn’t done inspecting the project. She went back upstairs and called Officer Brad.” Jack nodded toward the off-duty Brad.

  I turned, intrigued. “So, you broke up the neighborhood brawl?”

  “Dietz was gone before I got here. Jan was pretty upset, but Rebecca and Dorothy came over and helped her calm down. As usual, Sandra came by later and smoothed everything over for Dietz.”

  “Of the four women you mentioned, three of them aren’t around anymore.” My unspoken question hung in the air.

  Brad nodded once. “Rough year. Three relationships down the tubes.”

  I pursed my lips. “You don’t sound very sorry for the trouble you caused.”

  Brad raised an eyebrow. “What trouble was that?”

  “Please. Don’t pretend you weren’t all over Rebecca Ramsey.”

  Brad squinted. “I don’t know where you got that information, but it’s incorrect.” His voice took on a ragged quality. “There was never anything between Rebecca and me.”

  I blinked, wondering whom I should believe. David, who swore Brad was after his wife. Or Brad, standing there close to tears, seeming to wish there’d been something more between him and Rebecca than merely friendship.

  And maybe there had been.

  I moved a step closer and squinted at him. “How does Rebecca like California? Hot enough for her?”

  Brad gazed down at me. “We don’t correspond.”

  “Well, maybe now that David’s out of her picture, she’ll be back in touch.”

  “Highly unlikely.” Brad closed the gap between us. “Am I missing something? You called me. So why do I feel like you’re annoyed I’m here?”

  I stood my ground. “I’m not annoyed. I’m ready for bed.” I ruffled my fingers through my hair. “Thanks for coming by.”

  I turned toward my other visitor, who toyed with the nozzle on the water jug. “You want a to-go cup, Jack?” I looked at Brad. I wanted in the worst way to be polite to him. But somehow, manners would signal a truce. And I wasn’t ready for that. I pushed Brad and Jack out the door using only eyebrows, crossed arms, and tapping fingers.

  30

  I ran a hot shower, hoping to calm my nerves and get some sleep. But later, as I lay on my cot, I couldn’t banish the day’s events.

  The whole town knew about my grandmother. And they all thought I killed Martin Dietz.

  My self-preservation instinct tol
d me to never leave the house again. Order my groceries in, finish the renovations, and get out of town fast.

  But the rebel in me said, Hold your head up. Don’t let anybody run you out of Rawlings.

  Tonight I sided with the rebel. But who knew? Maybe tomorrow I’d go along with the preservationist.

  A train whistle blew in the distance. The faint rumble grew louder and louder until the whole house shook from the vibration of fully loaded boxcars flying past on narrow steel rails.

  I imagined I lay in a hole in the cistern, damp sand and lumpy pebbles beneath me. A layer of wet, slimy cement mix covered me, getting thicker and thicker as it hardened. Yet with each lurch of the train, the cement settled around my body, filling in every tiny crack and crevice, until my face, hands, and foot protruded from the grave like a plaster cast. Whoever had poured the concrete mix on top of me hadn’t counted on tremors from the tracks doing such a great leveling job. I needed another layer of cement to cover my features, so anyone looking down at me couldn’t see me screaming and clawing and fighting for my life. I wasn’t finished.

  I sat up on my cot. Beads of sweat dampened my forehead. That’s what Jack kept saying. The job wasn’t finished.

  I swung my feet to the floor.

  Did Jack have something to do with the murders? Or was I being paranoid? Even Brad seemed to know a little more about neighborhood events than he let on. He shouldn’t even be on the Dietz case. He was too embroiled in the whole affair to be impartial.

  Who was Brad protecting in this mess? Just Jack? Or was Rebecca a part of it?

  I rubbed my temples. With my mind moving as fast as the train outside, I’d never get any sleep. I stood. The warning bells outside quit dinging, and the rumble of boxcars faded into the distance.

  I was wide awake. I might as well get something accomplished. I grabbed my paint supplies from a corner of the parlor.

  The front stairs creaked and groaned as I made my way to the second story.

  I flicked on the light to the bedroom directly at the top of the steps. The room had an odd shape where it angled in for the staircase. It looked like a square with one corner cut off. One window looked out to the side yard, right into the branches of the maple tree. The other looked out onto the balcony. The walls were in decent condition—nothing a little spackle couldn’t cure. The Hershels had been kind enough to strip the thick bands of woodwork down to a light pine color. I spent the next half hour taping the trim so I could edge around it with a fresh coat of paint.

  But taping was a mindless job. Thoughts of murder, bodies, and motives had plenty of room to roam. I’d already narrowed down the identity of the body in my basement to three possibilities. Unfortunately, by midnight, the list of suspects topped ten and continued to grow. Even the biddies from the clothing store weren’t immune from my late-night scrutiny.

  Motives ran the gamut from love scorned to money owed to rumors spread. And still nothing made sense.

  I had to get this thing figured out. Then maybe the authorities would take my body-in-the-basement theory seriously. And I could be cleared of Dietz’s murder.

  I poured paint into an old cottage cheese container and started cutting in. I wondered what David must think of me now that the story of my grandmother was out. Would he avoid me like the plague? Would he plague me with accusations? I couldn’t blame him if he reacted just as everyone else had over the years. Like I was worthless because of what I’d done. Who wanted to hang out with someone capable of murder?

  I wished I could go back ten years and redo Grandma’s last days. I’d been too eager to please. I should have said no. I should have had standards, morals, ethics, something that would have prompted me to do the right thing instead of the easy thing. I should have had compassion. I should have had a backbone. I should have known better. I should have been more patient. I should have had more faith.

  I dipped the brush in the paint and tackled another section of wall. But why stop with Grandma? I carried an equal load of guilt for Martin Dietz’s murder. I should have seen it coming. I should have tried to stop it. I should have known arguing with Dietz was a waste of time. I should have gone along with him and not made him mad. I should have installed a security system so people couldn’t sneak around in my basement when I wasn’t home.

  I could bury myself in should-haves. Or I could figure out what made this small town tick like a bomb about to explode, and try to stop it.

  I yawned. It had to be almost 1:00 a.m. My body ached, my brain ached, my heart ached. I wrapped my brush in cellophane. I’d come back up tomorrow to finish the job.

  The baseboard pipes clunked as the furnace kicked on. I glanced out at the hallway. Blackness. I stretched plastic wrap over the paint, half-expecting to see Jacob Marley standing in the doorway of the room. With my favorite tappy hammer, I sealed the lid on the paint can. I wiped a glob of ivory on my pass-me-around pants.

  The neighborhood seemed eerily quiet tonight. No midnight train, no cars bouncing over the tracks. Even the wind had died. It was as if the hot water pipes and I were the only two noisy elements in the universe.

  I cupped hands around my eyes and peeked outside. A foggy halo circled the streetlight in front of my house. Without the snow, the town had gone back to looking like Halloween. Spooky, and silent as the grave. And I was the main caretaker of the graveyard.

  The skin on the back of neck my prickled. Beneath me, two flights of steps down, lay a body. I was almost sure of it.

  I jolted down the steps, shaking the walls around me as I beelined to my bedroom and slammed the door.

  My sleeping bag became a sanctuary. In its warm safety, I finally drifted to sleep, ghosts and guilts and guys flitting through my mind.

  A week went by as I hunkered down in the house, my brushes and rollers my only friends. Dorothy had come by a couple of times and brought soup. I wouldn’t answer the door. She left the pot on the porch, and I snuck out to get it after she’d left. I never heard from my buddies at the cop shop. Officer Brad may have dropped by once or twice, I don’t know. I ignored any knocking I heard when his cruiser was parked out front. He never barged in to arrest me, so apparently, the local loon squad had some other culprit in mind for the Dietz murder. Even so, that didn’t erase the fact that I’d been fingered for the crime. And you couldn’t brainwash a whole town into forgetting the details that had surfaced throughout the ordeal.

  Becoming a hermit for the week definitely lowered my stress level about the Dietz/Grandma accusations. I pretended that nobody really paid attention to gossip and rumors anyway. I gave everyone in the Village of Rawlings the benefit of the doubt when it came to holding a grudge against a truly harmless, albeit too-daffy-for-her-own-good Renovator Chick.

  But today, the cans of nuts, the dried fruit, the cereal, and the slightly moldy bread had run out. I was Old Mother Hubbard. And I was hungry.

  Deucey gulped twice, then fired up after the long vacation. I backed her out of the garage and turned on to Main Street.

  The second block past the tracks, a sign caught my eye: Parker Floral Designs. I hit the brakes, earning a blast of the horn from the driver behind me. Traffic cleared and I maneuvered Deucey into a parking spot made for the compact cars of a new generation. There was barely room to squeeze my knees past the bumpers as I made my way to the sidewalk and into the quaint flower shop.

  Eucalyptus seemed to be the mainstay of every arrangement in the shop. Its mellow odor greeted me at the door and stuck with me to the back counter.

  “May I help you?” a middle-aged woman asked. Short brown curls bounced with her animated walk. She rounded the end of the counter and nearly tackled me with her perkiness.

  I stepped back. “I got a flower arrangement a couple weeks ago from a secret admirer. I was hoping you could help me figure out who it is.”

  The woman gave a look of disapproval. “We value the privacy of our clients. If the individual wanted you to know his identity, he would certainly have revealed himself
to you on the card.”

  I had no idea floral arrangements were protected by the Privacy Act. Take two. “Actually, it’s more complicated than that. I’m dating a guy who got me some flowers. But I think they were really flowers that he got from somebody else. I just wanted to make sure he really got the flowers for me.” I took a big breath. “I absolutely hate hand-me-down roses.”

  Her eyelids peeled back in a look of horror. “That would be understandable. How do you know they came from Parker’s?”

  I fished in my jeans pocket, relieved the woman couldn’t know they hadn’t been washed since the night I’d snuck over to David’s. I pulled out the card and envelope and handed it to her.

  She studied the chunky black lettering.

  twenty-five years. remember that.

  “Not very romantic. From the letter formation, I’d say a woman wrote this. Did this come with your bouquet?”

  “Not exactly. I found it later. I’m sure it wasn’t meant for me. I guess that’s why I’m a little upset. Can you find out who originally purchased them?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. You said you got the arrangement a couple weeks ago?”

  “Yes. There were twenty-five red roses. I counted.”

  “Hmm. Twenty-five. Just like on the note. Sounds like somebody was sending a definite message. That’s what flowers are for, you know. Let’s take a look.”

  She tapped at the computer on the counter, entering data faster than I could think.

  “Were they delivered to you?”

  “No. Picked up by David Ramsey.”

  The woman’s fingers came to a dead stop. She looked at me through curly bangs, never lifting her head.

  “I see. You must be Patricia Amble, just down the street.”

  I held my head up. “Yep.” The word may have come out a little snotty, but I had my pride.

  Her chest rose and fell in quick little gasps. She was nervous. Scared to death, even. Here she was, stuck alone with a woman on a possible killing spree.