Blood on the Rocks: A Slapshot Prequel (A Slapshot Prequel Trilogy Book 1)

by Myers, Heather C.

  “Oh no, no, no. I’ll drop off the books for you at your office at Sea Side.”

  “Perfect, thank you very much.”

  When she got off the phone, Seraphina felt much better than she had before she made the call. Once she got Simon’s books, surely there would be answers. Or, at least, more answers than what she had now. She leaned back in her chair, hoping to give her mind a little peace before resuming her work. Instead of trying to figure out what her grandfather wanted, she decided to try and learn more about the game and more about the players. When she reached out to grab Hockey for Dummies, the sight of her grandfather’s planner stopped her. How could she not have thought about this before? Perhaps Papa would write his thoughts in his planner since he didn’t keep a journal. She grabbed the planner and relaxed in her chair, pulling her knees up and resting the book on her thighs. Instead of focusing on the dates, she decided she’d rather flip through the pages, looking for notes. But after a quick search, she was left empty-handed once again. There were no side notes or anything, just appointments.

  Okay... Well, might as well start with the obvious. She flipped back to August 22, a Sunday. The day of her grandfather’s death.

  Interestingly enough, there was an appointment marked there... with Brandon Thorpe at six o’clock that evening. Seraphina had found him just before seven thirty. She wasn’t surprised that her meeting with Papa wasn’t marked; it was something between the two of them, informal, casual. Most of the time, it was last minute, impromptu sort of thing. But it did surprise her that it was likely the last person to see her grandfather alive – besides, of course, his killer – was Brandon Thorpe.

  Why didn’t he mention that to her?

  Had the police found this out? Surely they must have because they returned his planner to her. Had they questioned him? Seraphina didn’t know; she doubted it. He was still at every practice and Henry hadn’t mentioned anything. But if Brandon Thorpe hadn’t told her about this meeting, he might not be so forthcoming about being questioned by the police.

  Did knowing this cause her feelings for Brandon to change? Did she still believe so adamantly that he didn’t do it?

  Yes... ?

  She should probably call him and ask him about it directly. Like, now, so she wouldn’t have to think too much about it.

  Flipping open her phone, she dialed the number next to Thorpe’s name in Papa’s book. With every ring, Seraphina’s heart pounded harder and harder.

  “Hello?”

  “Um, Mr. Thorpe? It’s Seraphina Hanson.” He did remember who she was, right?

  “Oh, yeah. Is everything okay?” His voice was cool, calm, revealing absolutely nothing.

  “Yeah, I just had a couple of questions, if you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m looking at my grandfather’s planner and it says that he scheduled a meeting with you at six the twenty-second of August.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the day her grandfather died; it felt too accusatory, too rude, and too soon. “It doesn’t actually say what that meeting was for, though, and I was just wondering if maybe you could tell me.”

  “Um...” He let his voice trailed off, and Seraphina felt herself hold her breath. She had no idea why she was nervous; she had every right to ask him about this. “Listen, I’m actually heading to dinner right now. Could you meet me? We can talk about everything there.”

  “Oh.” Well, that threw her off. She blinked once, twice. “Yeah. Where?”

  “Jack’s Burgers. It’s a small Mom-and-Pop burger joint.”

  “I know it.”

  When she got off the phone, Seraphina dashed up to her bathroom in order to shower. She threw on jeans and a t-shirt, ran a brush through her hair before grabbing her keys and heading out the door. She knew the place Brandon was talking about. When she was younger, her grandfather would take her and her sister down there Saturday afternoons. It had two televisions and enough space for no more than forty people. Waitresses came and went – usually high school girls who needed money – but the owners knew Seraphina and her family by name. In fact, Jack Dawson, the owner, actually called the sisters personally in order to offer his condolences.

  Seraphina was actually surprised that the guy asking for more money knew about a small dive like Jack’s Burgers. It wasn’t long before she arrived. The place was nearly empty, save for a couple of regulars sitting at the bar. Brandon was already there, off to the corner of the room, as far away from the inhabitants as possible. When she reached him, she took a seat at the table across from him.

  “To answer your question,” Brandon began, diving in directly instead of beginning with expected small talk, “the reason we were meeting was to talk about my contract.”

  The waitress interrupted the two of them, asking for their order. Brandon ordered a cheeseburger and a side of fries with Coke. Seraphina ordered the same thing, except she substituted the Coke with an ice water.

  “Water?” he asked her with furrowed brows. It was the first time he inquired about something personal, except when he asked if she was okay after her uncle’s surprising departure. “Isn’t that a little... boring?”

  Seraphina was so shocked at his question that she couldn’t help but laugh as she asked, “Excuse me?” Shaking her head, she answered, “I’ve never, in my life, liked carbonation. Water’s my favorite drink.” Brandon pushed his brows up but said nothing. “Obviously it’s not boring if you had to comment on it,” she pointed out.

  His lips twitched up. “Touché,” he agreed. The waitress came back with their drinks before rushing off to take more orders.

  “So you called the meeting with my grandfather to talk about your contract, or did he call it?” Seraphina asked.

  “I did,” Brandon said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “He had yet to make a decision with me about my new asking price, but the papers were already reporting that he was planning to reject my offer and trade me. I wanted a direct answer for him.”

  “Wait a second,” Seraphina said. “You mean he never mentioned trading to you at all before the press found out about it?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “That was the weird thing. I’ve known your grandfather for three years and he didn’t like the press in general. I really didn’t think he would leak something like this to them without talking to me about it.”

  “I don’t think he did.” The words were out of her mouth before Seraphina could stop them. She blushed at her mistake, her careless mouth, but she continued on. “What did you guys end up discussing during your meeting?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, his pale green eyes appearing to be more bold in color the more his discussed this with Seraphina. “His door was closed, and when I knocked, there was no response. I thought Ken might have forgotten about our meeting, but when I called him, I also got no response. I was kind of pissed. I thought that maybe he was blowing me off or trying to teach me one of those lessons he always preached about, so I left.”

  “You didn’t open the door?”

  “No. I feel weird about that. I’ve had some bad experience walking in on things I’d rather not see, even if I do knock prior. So if there’s no response, I don’t push it. I try to respect peoples’ privacy.”

  At that moment, the food arrived. Midway through a rather big bite of cheeseburger, Seraphina’s phone went off.

  “Excuse me,” she said, her mouth full of food. She stood up and chewed as quickly as she could, swallowing, before she said, “Hello?”

  “Miss Hanson, it’s Detective Williams,” came the other voice. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “No, no, what’s on your mind?” Seraphina asked, wondering just what Williams wanted. Was he finally going to tell her that her uncle Alan was the prime suspect in her grandfather’s murder?

  “Yeah,” he said in a voice that sounded as though he didn’t quite believe her. Well, it wasn’t as though what Seraphina was doing something wrong, right? “Well, if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like to sw
ing by your place tomorrow and talk to you and your sister. The autopsy report just came in, and it’s pretty obvious that we have some stuff to discuss.”

  “It is,” Seraphina said a bit harsher than she intended. She headed back to the table and apologized before popping a fry into her mouth.

  “I hate to do this,” Brandon said, and from the look on his face, Seraphina thought that he seemed... uncomfortable. “But I want to point out that technically, I haven’t yet resigned with the team.” Seraphina gave him a dry look.

  “I know,” she said. “Let’s just keep our agreement, okay? I pay for each game, and once this entire thing is over, we’ll talk about it.” She pursed her lips. For whatever reason, she suddenly felt annoyed. Maybe it was Brandon, even though he looked pretty cute in black slacks and a white t- shirt. Maybe it was Williams, and the fact that he seemed to be keeping her and Katella out of the dark and all she wanted was to know what happened to her grandfather and be done with all this... pain. Maybe it was both. Maybe she was stressed. Maybe she was in over her head. She needed to get out of here. She needed to be alone. “I have to go.” With that, she put a twenty on the table and headed out the door, shoving her hands in her pockets, without looking back.

  The cool air pinched her cheeks but it had a soothing effect on her. Her shoulders loosened. Her heart did too. She slid into her car, ready to go home and go to bed.

  It was probably Jack’s Burgers. She really missed her grandfather.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, Seraphina woke up just before eight o’clock in the morning. She groaned, still not used to waking up early for this new job she had been thrust into. Looking out the window, she decided that perhaps an early start would be worth it, given how beautiful the day already was. It was typical Southern California weather that she had to remind herself not to take for granted: a light sea breeze and the sun already shining in a soft, blue sky.

  As she showered, Seraphina realized that her previous crush on Detective Christopher Williams had all but vanished. She was still annoyed with his abrupt phone call from last night, and even more so that he hadn’t told her about Alan personally. However, he did mention that the autopsy report was finished. Maybe he would make up for his lack of forthcoming information by telling she and Katella about what actually killed Papa.

  Her mind tried to go back to when she found him, lying there motionless on the floor of his office. He never would have wanted her to see him like that. But all she could think about was seeing if he was alive, not what caused him to be this way. When she realized he was dead, all she cared about was holding onto him for just one minute longer, before the police came and took his body away from her, somewhere where she would never be able to see him again. What happened didn’t actually factor into her mind. She didn’t care at that point. All she cared about was that it had happened, and Papa was gone.

  Now, a few weeks after his death, Seraphina found that she was actually curious as to what had killed Papa, and even more than that, who would do it and why. As silly as it sounded, she was hoping that maybe she could help solve this, even in some small way, for Papa. Running a hockey team still felt unfulfilling right now. Papa’s killer was still out there. Justice had yet to be served. Even though it wasn’t her fault, she felt as though she could be helping and wasn’t. If the positions were reversed and Seraphina had been killed, Papa would do everything in his power to figure it out. She wanted to do the same thing. It would give her a purpose, instead of just sitting around, doing nothing.

  Besides running the team, of course.

  Seraphina stepped out of the shower, making sure to dry her face more so than normal. Tears came easily nowadays, but that didn’t mean she wanted people asking about them, asking if she was okay, so she allowed herself moments when she was by herself, like right before she fell asleep and when she took showers. As she got dressed, she could hear Katella bustling around downstairs, probably making some coffee and ensuring the kitchen looked presentable.

  At ten o’clock sharp, the doorbell rang. Katella led Christopher Williams – who was wearing a green shirt in the same style, like the last one Seraphina had seen him in, and brown pants – into the dining room. Seraphina was already sitting, the day’s paper pushed off to the side of the table and a cup of half-drunk coffee resting between her hands. At Katella’s look, Seraphina stood until the detective took his seat.

  “Coffee, Detective?” Katella offered.

  “Yes, please,” Williams said, nodding his head. “Again, I’d like to thank the two of you for meeting with me this morning. I know it must be hard waiting for information about this.” He placed a couple of manila folders – folders Seraphina hadn’t noticed until this minute – onto the table. He began to murmur himself, something Seraphina was beginning to notice as one out of many eccentricities that made up the young detective.

  Katella set the mug on the table before taking a seat next to her sister. Her posture was much more professional than Seraphina’s, but that was probably because Katella had been up longer. She had always been a lark, someone who was an early-bird, which Seraphina liked to stay up at night and figure things out in the quiet isolation. Katella took after Papa in that way, while Seraphina was supposedly more like her parents.

  “Do you have work today?” Christopher asked, looking up. His blue eyes still caught Seraphina by surprise, but the butterflies seemed to regress back into their cocoons. “The reason I ask is that I’m going to need to talk to you for a bit, so any meetings you might have, you might want to call and let them know you’ll be late.”

  “I don’t have a meeting until one,” Katella said, “and we both run our own businesess so we won’t have to take you up on your suggestion.” Seraphina watched as Katella forced a tight smile. “But thank you.”

  Seemed Katella was just as annoyed at the lack of information as Seraphina was.

  “Good.” He looked back down at the folders before him and then back at the sisters. He repeated this action two more times until he finally said, “So the autopsy report confirmed what we already assumed, that your grandfather was, in fact, murdered. The M.E. wrote that he was strangled and that there was also trauma to the head. There were no fingerprints left around his throat, so we assume the perp was wearing gloves.”

  “So someone hit our grandfather on the head with something and then choked him to death?” Katella guessed.

  “That’s what we think happened, yes,” Christopher said with a curt nod. He looked back down at the paper. “Also, we found time of death to be between five and seven o’clock at night.” He paused and then glanced between the sisters. “Because of this, we will be taking Brandon Thorpe in for questioning. In fact, we have men picking him up right now.”

  “But he didn’t do it.”

  They were the first words out of Seraphina’s mouth during the entire conversation. If she was going to help solve this thing – unbeknownst to the actual police involved, of course – she knew she would have to keep quiet and listen to everything rather than comment. Perhaps she would ask an innocent question as to inquire more information, but otherwise, her mouth would be glued shut. However, this determination wasn’t rifting through her mind and therefore could not prevent her from stating what she thought was so obvious. Brandon Thorpe didn’t kill her grandfather.

  Both Christopher Williams and Katella turned to look at Seraphina. Both had perplexed looks on their faces while Katella actually had a touch of red on her high cheekbones. Seraphina couldn’t exactly blame Katella for being embarrassed at Seraphina’s outburst. It wasn’t as though Seraphina could take the words back so she sat up straight and met Christopher’s stare with a level gaze of her own.

  “Excuse me?” the detective asked her. It sounded as though it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to remain as polite as he had been.

  “I” - Seraphina stopped herself. She wasn’t going to apologize for something she thought was true. “I just don’t think he did it.�
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  Christopher rubbed his lips together, still openly staring at the young woman in front of him. “With all due respect, Miss Hanson,” he began slowly, as though speaking in this way might help Seraphina better understand what was going on, “he is the most likely candidate.”

  “What happened to Alan?” Seraphina asked. Again, she spoke before she thought, but she felt as though she was starting to be pushed up against a wall and had no choice. If no one else was going to defend Brandon Thorpe, she would have to. “Both my sister and I had to find out in the papers that he was your first primary suspect.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that,” Christopher Williams said. “The lieutenant who released that information before he was given clearance to so has been punished.”

  “Even so, you should have told us personally, after it was released.”

  “Seraphina!” Katella hissed under her breath, despite the fact that the detective was sitting right there, in front of the two of them.

  “What?” the younger sister asked. “It’s true.” She turned back to Christopher. “First you accuse our uncle – and you don’t even tell us directly, whether or not it was cleared – for killing our grandfather and now you’re accusing one of my players.” My players? Maybe she was getting the hang of running her own hockey team. “Well, which one is it? Why is it one and not the other?”

  “It’s not.” It was the first time Detective Williams’ voice was curt. “We’re looking into everyone, every player on the team, the coaching staff, the financial advisor, the medical staff, everyone. Your uncle actually has an alibi for that night. Brandon Thorpe does not. And, in fact, Thorpe was most likely the last person to see him alive. Have you checked his date book? Certainly you must have. You saw that he was meeting with Thorpe. He has motive, too. He wants more money. He wants to play for the Gulls. He didn’t want to be traded.”

  Seraphina’s idea that her grandfather didn’t actually want to trade Thorpe danced on the tip of her tongue, but instead of allowing it to tumble out as she thought she might, given the last few quips she made, she held back. The weird part was that she didn’t have to think about doing that, either. Guarding that was as natural as one of her quick remarks. Normally, she would have tried to figure out why she kept this to herself, but she couldn’t with Detective Williams right in front of her. He might somehow figure it out, and for whatever reason, Seraphina didn’t want him to do that.