A Grid For Murder

by Casey Mayes

“Go home, Savannah,” he said with a slight smile. “I’ll stay out of trouble so you can go and get some rest.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. I dropped him off at the hardware store and drove back to the cottage. Darkness was already creeping in, but I knew that the worst of it was just beginning. Sometimes I loved daylight saving time, but there were moments when I wished we’d leave time alone. It always took me a few weeks to get my internal clock matched back up with most of the rest of the country, and I found myself admiring those pockets of resistance that had refused to go along with the majority.

  Zach’s car was still gone; no real surprise there. I parked out front and walked up onto the porch. The motion detector in the porch light switched on for one minute, giving me time to dig my keys out of my purse and unlock the door. I had lobbied for a longer delay before it shut itself off, but Zach had insisted that a minute was plenty of time.

  I grabbed my keys as I looked at the front door.

  There was a note taped there.

  In block letters, it read, drop it or die.

  It was short, to the point, and emphatic, with a promise attached if I disobeyed.

  It seemed that I’d managed to get under someone’s skin.

  I started to pull it off the door, then changed my mind, staring at it as I tried to figure out who I’d goaded into threatening me.

  I MUST HAVE BEEN STANDING THERE MOTIONLESS FOR AT least a minute, because the light snapped itself off. I was about to move to activate it again when a pair of headlights came up the drive. I couldn’t make out who it was, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to broadcast my presence on the front porch. I felt vulnerable standing there alone and unarmed, but if I moved, I’d give the visitor light to see me by. That would make me an easy target in case they decided to come back and put their threat into action.

  I held my breath as the car approached, and when I finally realized that it was Zach, I started toward him. The light came back on, and I was caught in his headlights.

  The note fluttered in the breeze as I ran across the drive toward my husband.

  As Zach got out of his car, I nearly knocked him over with my flying tackle. He held me for a few moments, and then he asked, “Savannah, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

  As I buried my face into his chest, I said, “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “What is it? What’s going on?” he asked as he stroked my hair. It was clear from his tone of voice that he was worried about me.

  “Someone left us a note on the door,” I said.

  “Let me see it.”

  He finally broke our hug and walked toward the house.

  After he read the note, Zach shook his head. “We’re dealing with an amateur; there’s no doubt about it.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked as I stared at the note.

  “Anybody with any experience wouldn’t have warned you first.” Zach took a pair of gloves and a plastic bag out of his pocket. He was always prepared, something that I teased him about from time to time. After taking a photo with his cell phone, Zach collected the note, careful to preserve the tape. Once it was secure, he said, “If they’d been pros, they would have been waiting for you in the bushes when you drove up and taken care of you without announcing anything as dramatic as this.”

  I searched wildly around for a few moments, knowing all the while that I was being paranoid, but still not able to help myself. “If they were trying to scare me, it’s working. Can we go inside?”

  “You can drop your end of this investigation; you know that, don’t you? Why don’t you go visit one of your uncles? I know either one of them would be thrilled to see you.” One lived in Hickory, and the other stayed in Charlotte most of the time, so visiting either one would get me away from Asheville, Parson’s Valley, and a murderer who wasn’t pleased with me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just not made that way,” I said. “I might not like being threatened, but I’m not letting anyone run me off.” I tapped the bagged note in his hand. “Besides, I’m clearly getting to someone.”

  “Any idea who that might be?” Zach asked.

  “I have a suspect list,” I admitted.

  “I would have been surprised if you didn’t,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Why don’t we go inside where it’s warm and talk about it.”

  Zach checked the door, saw that it was still locked, and then led me in. I noticed that he wasn’t easy until he was certain that the visitor hadn’t made their way inside our home.

  “Aren’t we going to call Captain North and tell her about this?” I asked as we walked into the living room together.

  “To be honest with you, I’m still not sure what I should do about it. We’re on precarious ground here, Savannah. On the one hand, she probably has a right to know, but on the other, the only thing telling her would do would be to rub her nose in the fact that you’re digging into the murder investigation. It took everything I had to get her to allow me to keep tagging along. Something like this would end every last shred of her patience with both of us.”

  “Then we keep this to ourselves,” I said.

  “For now.” Zach put the note on top of the bookshelf in our living room. “I’m starving. How about you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. Are you offering to cook?”

  “Given my limited range, I am.”

  I laughed, happy for the opportunity to do so. Zach recognized the tension in me, and he also realized the best way to break it.

  “No chili,” I said.

  “That limits what I can offer you, then,” he said.

  “Then I’ll cook,” I said with a smile. “I don’t have time to make a full dinner, but how about some chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches?”

  “Is the soup going to be homemade?” he asked.

  “Would I serve you anything else?”

  “Is the cheese cheddar?”

  “Yes, I know what you like.”

  “I don’t like those little processed squares,” he added.

  “I’ll save those for mine. Is there anything else, your majesty?”

  “Nothing I can think of, but I’ll get back to you if I think of something.”

  I laughed as I started the soup. Zach was doing his best to wipe away the remnants of my fear, and he was doing a great job. That was one of the advantages to being married so long to the same person. We could read each other most of the time as though we were holding up big signs.

  I found a great deal of comfort in that, and I knew that Zach did, too.

  AFTER WE ATE, ZACH GOT OUT A WHITE LEGAL PAD, READY to take some notes.

  “Let’s start with your list of suspects,” he said.

  “Okay. Let’s see,” I said as I consulted my mental list and started ticking names off with my finger. “We’ve got Laura Moon, Sandra Oliver, and Harry Pike to start with, and we can’t forget Greg Lincoln and Hannah Reed, either.”

  “Hang on, I’m writing as fast as I can.” After a minute, he finished and looked up at me. “Is that it?”

  “So far,” I said.

  I was expecting to go on to motives and alibis after that, but Zach surprised me by asking, “Who else has taken an interest in the case?”

  “Besides us, and Captain North, you mean?”

  “I can put all of us on the suspect list, but I don’t think that would be very productive, do you?”

  “Not so much. Let’s see, I guess Rob’s name would have to go there.”

  “And Barbara’s, too,” he said as he wrote her down.

  “I came to her first, remember?”

  “Funny, I thought I saw her approach you today.”

  “You did,” I admitted.

  “Then it shows interest, especially after you turned her down so thoroughly. Anyone else?”

  I tried to think of everyone I’d spoken to recently about Joanne. “Not that I can think of.”

  “Then we’ll leave a little room at the
bottom, just in case. Now, we need to tackle motives.”

  “I’ve got them for just about everyone,” I said.

  “You’ve been busy, haven’t you?”

  “I have my moments,” I admitted.

  Zach’s writing hand paused.

  “Is anything wrong?” I asked.

  “I was just wondering, is there any chance we have any ice cream left?”

  I couldn’t believe it after all he’d eaten. “Are you honestly still hungry? We just ate.”

  He frowned slightly. “There’s nothing wrong with a little dessert.”

  He had a point. “I suppose I might have a little room myself.”

  I started to get up when he said, “You stay here. I’ll get it. After all, that’s the least I can do, and I mean it.”

  “You could always do dishes, if you wanted to be really helpful.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. I haven’t done them in a while. Let’s skip the ice cream and I’ll get right on the dishes.” We’d discussed installing a dishwasher in the cottage since we’d moved in, but it wouldn’t be an easy, or inexpensive, fix, so for the time being, we were hand-washing our things.

  “I don’t mind doing them later,” I said.

  “Nope, I’ve made up my mind. You write while I wash. Let’s go work on this in the kitchen.”

  I wasn’t about to try to discourage him anymore. “Okay, that works fine for me.”

  “You aren’t putting up more of a fight than that?”

  I grinned at him. “Not today.”

  As he filled the right bowl of the sink with warm, sudsy water, I took his legal pad and started to write.

  “Hey,” he protested, “I don’t mind doing these, but you wouldn’t mind doing that out loud, would you?”

  “Sorry, I got carried away,” I said.

  “I get it. I know how you are. What have you got so far?”

  I started reading from the list. “Harry’s got a land deal with Joanne that’s worth a great deal of money; Joanne supposedly stole something of value from Sandra—”

  He cut me off. “Any idea what that’s all about? She wouldn’t tell us a thing when we interviewed her.”

  “No. She denied it to me as well. Rob and I were going to try to talk to her this evening about it again, but she and Nathan were already gone when we got there.”

  “You two are a regular team on this, aren’t you?”

  “What’s the matter—jealous?” I asked.

  “Maybe a little,” he said as he moved a glass to the other sink to rinse it. “You do seem to be spending a lot of time together lately.”

  “We’re working on the case,” I said. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Mostly I am,” he conceded. “Is there anything wrong with wanting to keep my wife?”

  “Not in my book,” I said as I gave him a kiss. “I have no desire to be with anyone else.”

  “Me, either,” he said. After washing a bowl, Zach said, “I’d love to know what Joanne took from Sandra.”

  “It could be important. We need to ask her again.”

  Zach considered that, and then said, “Maybe you should ask Laura. After all, she’s the one who told us about it in the first place.”

  “That’s another thing,” I said. “Laura told me at Joanne’s place today that Sandra isn’t speaking to her anymore.”

  He paused with a plate in his hand. “That’s odd. I thought those two were inseparable.”

  “Apparently so did Laura.”

  “Okay, let’s move on. How about Laura herself?”

  “She’s due to inherit everything Joanne owned, but according to her, that won’t be much of anything after the bills are all paid, even though I find that hard to believe, given what I’ve seen so far. Hang on a second, she knows about the land deal with Harry Pike. That changes everything.”

  “We need to dig a little deeper into what she knows, and when she learned it,” Zach said. “The timing of it all could mean everything. If she knew about the money and property beforehand, it could change everything.”

  “I’ll try, but money is always hard to discuss.”

  “You can do it, Savannah. I have faith in you. Besides, you already have an in, there.”

  “You’re talking about the money we found, aren’t you?”

  “I am. That eleven grand just might be the key to this whole thing,” Zach said. “Where do you suppose it came from?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out since we found it. Could she have been saving it over the years?”

  My husband frowned. “A shoe box isn’t much of a vault, is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s better than putting it under her mattress.”

  Zach rinsed another bowl and put it in the drying rack. “I still can’t believe the police missed it. North couldn’t understand it, either.”

  “None of them are as competent as the great Zach Stone,” I said with a grin. “But then who is?”

  “True, it’s a high bar I set when I was an officer of the law,” he said, laughing. “What other reasons do you have that might lead to murder?”

  “Greg had a lover’s quarrel with Joanne before she died, and Hannah believes that Joanne ran her son out of town forever. Those could both be pretty strong motives.”

  “I hope if anything happens to me they don’t find so many folks with a motive for murder,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, I’m certain they’ll focus their investigation all on me,” I said with a smile.

  “You would be the most likely suspect,” he said.

  “Hey!”

  “Statistically speaking,” he added with a chuckle.

  “Now that we have our list, what do we do next?”

  “Aren’t we forgetting something?” he asked as he finished rinsing the pot I’d made the soup in.

  “No, I think you got them all,” I said as I looked around the kitchen.

  “Suspects,” he said. “Do we have motives for Barbara and Rob?”

  I decided to go along with him. “Well, Rob said Joanne had been friends with his wife. Maybe there’s an old grudge there.”

  “It’s possible. How about Barbara?”

  “I don’t have anything yet, but we’re meeting in the morning to discuss the case, so I’ll see what I can come up with then.”

  As Zach let the water drain out of the sink, I said, “You know what? I’m in the mood for ice cream after all.”

  “Sorry, but the kitchen is now officially closed.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked as I reached into the cabinet for a clean coffee mug. I liked to use them instead of bowls, trying to fool myself into believing that if I used a smaller vessel, I’d have a reduced portion as well. It rarely worked, though. I usually ended up just filling the cup more than once.

  “I’m not washing that,” he said.

  “Relax, I’ll rinse it when I’m through and take care of it tomorrow. Care to join me?”

  “When you put it that way, how can I refuse?”

  Chapter 13

  ZACH WAS GONE BY THE TIME I GOT UP THE NEXT MORNING, something that wasn’t out of the ordinary most days, but especially when he was wrapped up in a case. My husband had an obsessive quality to his personality, and it had bothered me when we’d first started dating, but I knew better than to ever try to change it. That was one of the reasons I loved him now. He could put an intense focus on whatever he cared about, and fortunately, one of the things he cared about most in the whole world was me.

  I made myself a quick breakfast, and then got into town a full two minutes before I was due to meet with Barbara. I had no idea why she was so eager to help me with my investigation so actively all of a sudden, but I was going to do my best to find out.

  I had just walked into Brewster’s Brews when Barbara herself greeted me at the door. “Savannah, I’m so glad you could make it,” she said as she showed me to a table by the window. It also happened to be somewhat isolated from her other custome
rs. I wasn’t sure whether she was doing it for my sake, or hers.

  “Thanks,” I said, startled as she took my coat and laid it on one of the free chairs at our table. When I sat down, I found a coffee waiting for me—just the way I liked it—and a fresh cranberry scone. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Think nothing of it. I want to apologize for my rudeness before. There was no reason for me to act the way I did.”

  “It’s not necessary. You had every right to make the request that you did. I just can’t lie to my husband.”

  “That’s an admirable trait,” she said. “I shouldn’t have tried to punish you for it.”

  What was going on here? “Barbara, is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s absolutely perfect,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “You have to admit that your change of heart was pretty sudden,” I said, and then took a sip of her delicious coffee.

  “Are you questioning my motives?” Barbara asked softly.

  “Absolutely,” I said, making my voice match hers.

  I wasn’t sure how it was going to end up for a few seconds, but suddenly she smiled. “I’ve underestimated you, and that’s something that I rarely do. You’re stronger than you seem to be at first glance, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know about that. I just like to know the motives behind the actions that people take.”

  Barbara thought about it for a few seconds, and then said, “I guess I just hate the fact that something’s been going on in my town, and I didn’t have a clue it was happening.”

  “I didn’t realize Parson’s Valley belonged to you,” I said with a smile.

  She laughed at that. “It doesn’t—I know that—but I still feel overprotective toward it.”

  “And that’s it?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Okay, I’m nosy; I admit it. You intrigued me with your request for information, so I started doing some digging on my own despite our misunderstanding. I found something out in the process.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, honestly curious about her reply.

  “It’s harder to sit on information someone else could use than I ever would have imagined. Will you indulge me?”

  “I’d love to hear what you’ve uncovered,” I answered.