by J. C. Kenney
Okay, that was potentially big, but it felt wrong. I disliked adding fuel to the flame, but sometimes, like now, the risk of being scorched was worth it.
“Any idea what brought this about?”
Maybelle took a drink from the coffee our server brought her. “Supposedly, the police found some rope under his trailer. They did some tests and it matches fibers found on the girl. Sounds like case closed to me.”
“Indeed.” I exchanged another look with Sloane. She pressed her foot down on top of mine. My bestie’s warning was spot on. Encouraging Maybelle at this point was a bad idea.
“How are your grandkids? Do you have new pictures?” Sloane asked. A surefire way to get the older woman to shift gears was to bring up her family.
Five minutes later, after showing us the latest photos, Maybelle told us she had an appointment. I promised to pay for her coffee as a thank-you for the information. She accepted with a small grimace, then took her leave.
“What do you make of that? If she actually saw Matt taking Spade into the station, it has to be true, right?”
I scratched a mosquito bite on my arm. “Maybe. If he was in handcuffs, yes. I didn’t want to ask that question, though.”
Sloane nodded as she stabbed her fork at the remnants of her meal. “Good point. Too bad you can’t ask Jeanette about it.”
“True. But I don’t think I have to. Jeanette was with Matt, right? And this went down a couple of hours ago. The cops would be tight-lipped about the reason for bringing him in. That begs the question—”
“How did Maybelle find out?” Sloane smiled. “Someone leaked that info. Whoever did it knew it would get back to you.”
I clinked drink glasses with Sloane.
“It would appear I still have allies in the good old Rushing Creek PD.”
“Oh, come on. You always have and always will. I mean, I get why Matt wants you to stay out of this one. It can be really hard being the child of a troublesome parent. Especially when you have to clean up after them in public. You know his heart’s in the right place, right?”
“I do. And, as always, thank you for reminding me things aren’t as bleak as I think they are.”
Sloane had firsthand experience on this topic, after all. As the daughter of bestselling author and notorious drunk Thornwell Winchester, she’d spent more time than I could imagine fixing her dad’s screwups and apologizing for his misdeeds. She’d always borne that cross with grace and dignity, too. Such was the amazingness of my friend.
Matt had confided in me not so long ago that he hardly relished following his father’s footsteps in law enforcement. He’d tried to make the right choice by becoming a cop. When he became chief, he worked hard to end his father’s system of cronyism.
Like Sloane, he’d faced a lot of complaints about his father. Unlike Sloane, he’d also been forced to dodge barbs hurled at him from those who preferred his father’s penchant for selective justice.
To make amends for her father’s transgressions, Sloane had donated the real estate and the funding for a new community park. In a way, Matt was trying to make amends, too. I needed to salute him for stepping up and doing the right thing.
What I wouldn’t do was let him stop me from finding Valerie’s murderer.
Our conversation turned to more pleasant topics. On Sloane’s end, after months of effort, she’d finally trained Luke to separate whites from colors when doing the laundry. I, in turn, was able to give her a glowing report on the strides Calypso was making with the agency.
By the time we left the diner, after exchanging hugs with Big Al, of course, I felt good, centered. The case was headed in the right direction.
Some things were bothering me, though. Instead of heading home, I popped back into the diner for a slice of Big Al’s carrot cake, then pedaled to the library. I wasn’t above attempting to bribe my beau, after all.
Brent grinned when he looked up from the scanner as I entered the building. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“Do I need a reason for coming to visit you?” With the cake hidden behind my back, I got up on tiptoes to give him a peck on the cheek. “And bring you this?”
His grin transformed into an ear-to-ear smile when I revealed my surprise. “Perfect timing. I was planning on taking a lunch break in a few minutes.”
“Then let me join you while you dine.” I sauntered toward the library’s break room. There was no need to tell him I wanted to discuss the case until he’d devoured the carrot cake.
While he ate, Brent filled me in on his previous evening’s exploits. It bored me to tears. I had tried, really tried, to become interested in his role-playing board games. It didn’t matter, none of them could hold my attention.
But I deeply cared for my guy, so I used my active listening skills until he finished. When he asked me about my day, I seized the opening.
“I wanted to run some things by you. About the case.” I left it at that. Our positions on the matter were as solid as the walls surrounding us. Hopefully, he’d see my request as an olive branch, of sorts.
He tapped a plastic fork on the edge of the paper plate where a few of the cake crumbs remained. After what seemed like hours, he crumpled up the plate and tossed it into a nearby trash can. He dropped the fork into a gray and black lunch box.
When he’d zipped the container closed, he let out a long breath. “Against my better judgment, tell me what’s on your mind.”
I filled him in on my trip with Sloane and the news from Maybelle. When I finished, I started pacing around the room.
“The thing is, I don’t think Spade’s the guy.”
Brent raised an eyebrow. “The chief isn’t known for rash decisions. Seems to me, if he brought Mr. Spade in, he must have a good reason for it.”
“Sure. And believe me, I’m glad the police found the rope and connected it to Valerie.” I didn’t mention that I was the one who found the rope first. It seemed smarter to refrain from poking that hornets’ nest.
“Here’s my quandary. Ronald Spade didn’t live at the trailer at the time of Valerie’s disappearance. He had his own place. So, how did the rope end up there?”
“Dunno.” He shrugged. “Maybe he got rid of the rope he used to kill her. Then, sometime later, he remembered he didn’t use it all and panicked. Without thinking, he hid the rest instead of tossing it in a lake. I mean, the guy doesn’t strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed.”
I nodded. “Could be. But hiding it there put his mom at risk. What if the police had found it back then? Would they have believed her if she claimed she didn’t know anything about it?”
“The police weren’t trying very hard, though, right? What’s your alternative?” The question wasn’t merely a sarcastic retort. It was Brent’s way of prodding my thought process along.
Running the pad of my thumb across my fingertips, I puzzled over the missing pieces to the mystery. When another piece clicked into place, I snapped my fingers.
“What if someone else, the real murderer, hid the rope there?”
“To frame Spade’s mom?” He shook his head
“Yeah. That does seem like a stretch. But what if the murderer had kept that section of rope around, hiding in plain sight, waiting for the right time to get rid of it. Then, when Spade got out of jail, he moved in with his mom since he was a registered sex offender. It’s the only alternative he had. That’s when the murderer hid the rope under the trailer.”
Brent poured us each a cup of coffee, apparently warming to the subject. He often told me part of the enjoyment he got out of gaming was the problem-solving aspect of a campaign. This was proving to be another opportunity for him to practice the discipline.
“If we go with that premise, then why did the murderer keep the rope in the first place? It seems to me it would have made more sense to get rid of all of it at the time of the murder. I mean, whoever killed Valerie couldn’t have known for certain the body would never be found.”
It was a
good point. I sipped the aromatic dark roast as my mind turned puzzle pieces left and right, this way and that, until I found a fit.
“The murderer couldn’t get rid of all the rope because someone might have noticed if it was gone. So, the unused portion was left in plain sight. Then, over time, Valerie’s disappearance became a sad story in the history of Rushing Creek. Most people moved on. When Spade was released from prison, the murderer saw his chance to snip the final loose thread and stashed the rope under the trailer.”
“And the rope, which might have been noticed had it gone missing at the time of Valerie’s disappearance, got moved without anyone being any the wiser.” He shook his head.
“And if Valerie’s remains were ever discovered, the rope used to strangle her now happened to match the rope hidden under a convicted sex offender’s home.”
“Wow, that’s devious.”
“And possible? Plausible, maybe?” My heart was pounding as if I’d just pedaled two miles at full speed. My senses were tingling in anticipation as I awaited Brent’s response.
He rubbed his chin, then cleaned his glasses. Time seemed to stop while I waited.
“I’ll give you definitely possible, getting close to plausible. If you’re right, though, you know what you need to do.”
“Yep.” I thanked Brent with a long kiss that hopefully left him a little dazed, then hustled out of the library.
His version of what I needed to do and my version of what I needed to do were two vastly different things. Hopefully, my version would turn out to be the right one.
Chapter Eighteen
I dashed home and, after a stop to feed Ursi, headed for the shower. It was a place I could relax, both body and mind. Often, as the hot water cascaded down from above and created a steamy mini sauna, my mind would open itself up to solutions I’d not considered before.
As I massaged my scalp with tea tree shampoo, the pieces of information I’d gleaned throughout the day morphed into a coherent narrative.
Valerie’s murderer was most likely a former Rushing Creek baseball player. It also seemed unlikely that the murderer had kidnapped and held her hostage before committing the brutal final act. If my reasoning was correct about the first points, she must have been murdered a few months after her disappearance. That meant she went somewhere, into hiding perhaps, for a few months.
By the time I was finished showering, I was left with a question.
Why did she choose to leave when she did?
I fetched Valerie’s diary from her box of things. When I’d reviewed it before, I’d been operating on the assumption she left because she was unhappy with her home life. If there had been a specific reason for why she took off that Christmas Eve, she may have left some hints I’d missed before.
“We’re getting there, girl.” I patted a spot on the couch, inviting Ursi to join me, and opened the diary. It was time for some serious reading between the lines.
Ninety minutes later, I read the final entry. I wiped a tear from my eye as I closed the diary. The words told the story of a young woman in great pain. She had ambition but felt shackled by her circumstances. She was smart but saw no way to put her brains to use. She craved independence but had been browbeaten into fearing her own shadow.
The poor girl. Regardless of whether she was pregnant, I could totally empathize with her feeling that she was backed into a corner. With nowhere to turn and nobody to lean on, she struck out on her own.
I ran my fingers up and down Ursi’s spine as I thought things over. The cat’s purring instinctively soothed me. Which generated another idea.
Among other things, Valerie had written a number of poems in her diary. They were well-crafted and quite moving. She’d also jotted down what appeared to be song lyrics. More often than not, the words conveyed a dark, unhappy mood.
Every now and then, she made lists of names, presumably people in a study group. I made a mental note to cross-check the names with her classmates. If they were in her diary, they must have mattered to her in some way.
She’d also written a lengthy entry about attending a bonfire after a Rushing Creek football game. In my hometown, high school football and bonfires went together like peas and carrots. In a tradition that went back at least fifty years, a Rushing Creek senior hosted a bonfire after each of the team’s home games.
While the school never sponsored the events, no doubt due to concerns about drinking and other illicit behavior, they were woven into the fabric of high school life as much as Homecoming and Senior Prom. Sloane and I had attended a few of the bonfires. Thanks to the recently departed Georgie Alonso, I didn’t have fond memories of them.
But the entry in Valerie’s notebook read like a fond memory.
Ursi was kneading my thigh with her front paws. “Hold that thought, girl.” After a moment, she stopped. I’d learned the hard way the value in warning her before moving. Even when they were trimmed, her claws could pierce the skin with minimal effort.
I set her next to me and dug Valerie’s senior yearbook out of the box. The bonfire tradition was so important, a few photos were always included in the fall semester social activities.
During a previous review of the yearbook, I’d come across a two-page section devoted to Valerie. If there was photographic evidence of her attending a bonfire, it might be included there.
With a methodical patience that would make Hercule Poirot proud, I flipped through the pages, taking a moment to scan each one. Eventually, I found what I was looking for.
Yes.
With that familiar fire in my belly returning, I gazed at the result of my efforts, a black-and-white photo in one corner of the page. The caption below it indicated the shot had been taken at a bonfire the last weekend of August. Valerie was arm in arm with her fellow Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse, grinning at the camera as if they hadn’t a care in the world.
My fingers traced the image of Valerie’s brow. The sad, lonely girl of her notebook was nowhere to be seen.
“What happened to you that night, Valerie?”
The image didn’t answer that but generated another idea. What if the event in the photo was the same one mentioned in the diary? More to the point, what if Valerie hooked up with someone and got pregnant that night?
I did some quick math. If she got pregnant in late August, she likely would have been aware of her condition around Halloween. At Thanksgiving, she may have been trying to keep her condition to herself. Thus, her reaction when Bobcat hit on her. By the end of December, the signs of pregnancy would have become harder to conceal with each passing day.
Her condition would go a long way in explaining why she disappeared. She was pregnant and decided to leave town. I set aside the question of where she went to keep focused on the timing.
According to Connie, Valerie was seven months pregnant when she died. If she was four months pregnant at the end of December, that would put the time of the murder around the end of March.
I dashed to the kitchen. I kept a copy of the school calendar on my fridge. It helped me keep track of the twins’ breaks. During those weeks, I helped Mom watch the kiddos on days Matt and Rachel couldn’t get away from work. I ran my finger through the calendar until I came to late March. An entire week was blocked off in gray, indicating school was closed.
Spring break.
A theory as sharp as a professional photograph taken at Brown County Photo Studios came into focus. I wasn’t ready to share it with human ears, so I searched for Ursi until I found her curled up in the center of my bed. She opened an eye and yawned when I sat next to her.
“Sorry to bug you, but hear me out.” I dropped a kitty treat between her front paws to entice her to pay attention.
“Valerie goes to a bonfire, parties it up, and ends the night hooking up with some guy. A couple of months later, boom, she finds out she’s pregnant. By Christmas, since she was beginning to show, she panics and takes off before her secret’s discovered. She goes to a family planning clinic in India
napolis. At some point, she decides to keep the baby. She uses the money she’d saved up to hide out in Indy until spring break. She returns to Rushing Creek and confronts the father. Things get out of hand. He kills her, stuffs her in an equipment bag he has on hand and goes to the forest to get rid of the body.”
Ursi gave me a long look. Her stare, with those amazing golden eyes, held me transfixed. After a moment, she blinked once, then curled up and went back to sleep.
“I’m glad you agree. That rules out Spade once and for all. The killer kept the unused rope and planted it to frame him later. That’s some diabolical behavior going on there, girl. Thanks.”
I kissed Ursi on the head and dropped another treat in front of her. My search was narrowing. It was time to blaze a new trail and focus on athletes.
After some time going back and forth between the bonfire photos in the yearbook and my list of baseball players, I had a pared-down group of suspects. There was more digging to be done, though. For starters, there could have been more baseball players at the bonfire than I could glean from the yearbook. Luke could help me with that.
I snapped my fingers as another idea came to mind.
I needed to pay Ted Borus another visit. Besides being a baseball player, he was a big wheel of his class. He could probably tell me the name of every person who attended the bonfire in question, including whether the memory-impaired Bobcat had been in attendance. And then there was Dak. I could ask him about the status of his relationship with Valerie at the time.
With a feeling of intense satisfaction I’d not yet experienced on this case, I closed my notebook, grabbed my keys, and headed upstairs. I was in the mood to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
I knocked on the door to my assistant’s apartment. It was convenient having a coworker, and someone I enjoyed spending time with, living so close by.
“Calypso? You home?” I waited a moment. “Dinner at Marinara’s is on me tonight.”
A shuffling sound came from the other side of the aged pine door. The young woman had told me she rarely had visitors and she was fine with that. It did tend to make her leery of opening the door when someone knocked, though.