The coffeehouse wasn’t terribly busy tonight, so I went to the ladies’ room to primp for my date. Truth be told, I was having a few mixed feelings about meeting Stan. I went through the motions of freshening my makeup and choosing an outfit from the stash of clothes I kept at work, but I just couldn’t get as excited about seeing him as I used to. Normally, that would be a pretty clear sign it was time to break things off, but between trying to help him deal with his sister’s accident and accepting that stupid bracelet, a breakup would be a dick move right about now.
Stan picked me up at nine, but he wouldn’t tell me where he was taking me. He seemed happy enough, chatting while he drove. I was able to make small talk, but I wasn’t in the mood for a deep conversation with him. When we pulled up to the club, my heart skipped a beat. Stan had brought me to Mixology, where Ryder had taken me on our first date. I sighed at the memory of that night—we’d had a great time, and Ryder had kissed me until I could barely remember my own name.
Stan and I ordered our dinner and drinks, but all I could think about was Ryder—his smile, his laugh, even his teasing. Stan called me out several times for spacing out on him, but I was able to play it off that I was tired from working all day. Why was I unable to get Ryder out of my head? I had thought about him off and on since we broke up, but after I saw him at Stan’s grandmother’s repast, he had been on my mind a lot more than I would care to admit. I thought I had made peace about not being with him, for the most part, but tonight I couldn’t seem to come up with a good reason why I shouldn’t go running back to him. Well, aside from Stan, of course.
After Stan insisted that we dance, I couldn’t maintain the charade. I feigned a headache and asked him to take me home. I felt horrible about it, but felt more horrible thinking about another man while on a date with him. Stan and I hadn’t ever discussed being exclusive, but I should at least have given him my full attention when we were out together. It wasn’t fair to him otherwise. I went straight to bed when I got home, hoping some sleep would clear my head.
—
Saturday morning, I picked up my thousand cookies at Java Jive and drove them over to Centennial Park. I had purposely come an hour early, because parking at Centennial (and this area in general) was crappy on a good day. I found a spot fairly near our tent without too much trouble. After carefully loading the tower of storage boxes onto the hand truck I’d brought along, I headed across the lawn, shivering and wishing I’d worn a warmer coat.
I couldn’t see very well in front of me, and halfway there, one of the wheels of my hand truck plunged into a hole in the uneven ground. Before I could stop it, the top box slid off the pile and went crashing to the ground. “Damn it!” I yelled, as the lid popped off and a few dozen cookies shot out of the box and onto the grass. Continuing a tirade of cursing under my breath, I righted the box, making sure none of the cookies that touched the ground went back in, and slammed the lid back on.
Completely engulfed by my temper tantrum, I was startled when someone picked up the storage box for me and said, “You look like you could use a hand.”
My breath caught in my throat when I heard that deep voice. Ryder. I scrambled up quickly and smiled at him, hoping I didn’t have too dopey a grin on my face. “Thank you. I…um, dropped my cookies.” Brilliant conversation.
He chuckled. “I see that. It’s a shame, because your cookies are fantastic.” A slow smile spread across his face. “I’ve missed your cookies.”
Was that a little innuendo? I certainly hoped so. It gave me the courage to take a step closer to him and reply, “Well, since you came to my rescue here, maybe I should give you some of my cookies to say thank you.”
“I might just have to take you up on that,” he said, winking at me as he set the box back on top of the stack and took the hand truck from me.
I led the way toward the vendor area. Glancing over at Ryder, who was dressed in track pants and a fleece jacket, I asked, “Are you running in the race, or are you protecting and serving?”
“Running. I’m off duty today. What’s with the assload of cookies?”
“Java Jive has a vendor booth,” I replied, gesturing toward Java Jive’s blue tent, which thankfully had side walls to protect us from the chilly morning air.
“Are you manning it solo? I could give you a hand.”
I would have loved to spend some time with Ryder, but Pete would be here any minute. I certainly didn’t want the two of them together in an enclosed space, because they weren’t exactly friends. Grabbing hold of the zipper on the side of the tent, I replied, “Thanks for the offer, but Pete’s going to be here soon to help me.” I zipped the side open enough that I could step into the dark tent, and promptly stumbled over something on the ground. “You can bring those cookies in here—”
Looking down, I froze mid-sentence, sucking in a huge gasp of air. No, no, no, no, no! It couldn’t be. My stomach lurched as I forced myself to look over at what was attached to the expensive shoe I had just tripped over. It was Cecilia, dead-eyed and covered in blood, with a milk frothing thermometer sticking out of the side of her neck at a sickening angle.
Horrified, I screamed, “Ryder!”
He instantly appeared behind me. “What’s wrong? Oh, shit.”
Chapter 5
I whirled around and buried my face in Ryder’s chest, shaking and clinging to him. He wrapped his arms around me tightly, stroking my back to calm me down. After a minute or so, I stopped trembling a little, and he kissed the top of my head.
“Are you going to be okay? I need to call this in,” he said gently, still holding me.
I took a deep breath and lifted my head. Nodding, I replied shakily, “Yes, as long as I can get out of here.”
He led me outside and zipped the tent back up. He had me sit down on the lawn while he went out of earshot to make a phone call. I put my head in my hands, trying to keep myself together. This couldn’t be happening…again. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Cecilia was dead. It didn’t seem possible. For her to be so cruelly hurt and left to die shook me to my core. Even though we weren’t close, her murder disturbed me deeply.
My reeling mind came to a sudden halt. Pete. He would be absolutely devastated when he found out what had happened. My heart nearly ripped in two at the thought of him having to cope with this loss. Regardless of the fact that things weren’t going well between them, he cared about Cecilia, and this would crush him.
Wiping my eyes, I looked around and noticed that people were beginning to show up for the start of the race. I spied Pete walking toward me, and I sucked in a shuddering breath. Another tear slid down my cheek as I realized that I was going to have to be the one to break the news about Cecilia to him. I felt sick at the thought of what this would to do to him.
He came over to me. He looked tired and depressed, totally unlike his usual cheerful self. Frowning down at me, he asked, “What’s wrong? Why are you sitting out here instead of getting things ready?”
I took a breath and hesitated, looking up at him. I hadn’t a clue how to begin a conversation like this. “Pete, maybe you’d better sit down, too.”
“What, is something wrong with our booth?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at the tent. Behind Pete, I could see two cops hurrying over on foot. It was just a matter of time before this place was teeming with law enforcement.
Hopping up, I took both of his hands in mine. Tears started spilling from my eyes as I said, “It’s Cecilia. She’s—”
His face turned angry. “Did she pick a fight with you again? Because if she did—”
“No, Pete. Nothing like that. She’s…she’s dead.”
He stared at me for a moment in disbelief. “She’s not dead. I saw her last night. If this is a joke, it’s not funny, Jules.”
Shaking my head sadly, I said, “You know I wouldn’t joke about something like that. I’m so sorry. I found her just now in our tent.”
“She’s…in our tent?” he asked dazedly, dropping
my hands and starting toward the tent.
I couldn’t let him go in there. For one thing, it was a crime scene now, and the police would have both of our heads. More importantly, though, I didn’t want Pete’s last memory of Cecilia to be the gruesome scene inside the tent. Hurrying to get in front of him, I put my hands on his chest and warned, “Pete, do not go in there. Trust me. You don’t want to see her like this.”
Pushing me aside, he continued on to the tent. I rushed to get in front of him again, but he went around me. Someone needed to physically stop him, and obviously I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I grabbed Pete’s arm and held on, yelling, “Ryder! Help me!” Ryder snapped his head toward me, quickly ending his call as he sprinted my way. Pete was dragging me with him, only a few feet from reaching the tent.
Ryder got to us and grabbed Pete by the shoulders, pushing him back and saying, “You can’t go in there.”
I finally let Pete go, which might have been a bad idea, since he now had both hands to hold Ryder back. Pete struggled against Ryder, raving, “I need to see Cecilia. Let go!”
“I can’t let you do that,” Ryder said calmly, managing to get a better grip on Pete’s flailing arms. I could only hope that Pete wouldn’t think about trying any of his boxing moves on Ryder. That would only get him an ass-kicking, and probably a trip to jail.
Pete was getting belligerent now. “Get off me, you son of a bitch! I have to see her. You have to let me see her!”
Grabbing Pete by the front of his jacket and giving him a rough shake to get his attention, Ryder said firmly, but not unkindly, “Look, man, I’ve been exactly where you are right now. You’re angry and hurt, and you probably can’t see straight. I know you think you want to take a look for yourself, but you don’t want to remember her like this. You want us to find her killer, don’t you?” Pete nodded, and Ryder continued, “If you go in there, you’ll compromise the crime scene, and we could lose valuable evidence. The best thing you can do for her right now is to get out of the way and let us do our jobs. Can you do that?”
I was floored by Ryder’s empathy for Pete. I wondered if what happened this morning might have hit home a little for Ryder, since his wife had been murdered years ago. He really did know exactly what Pete was going through.
Pete had quit struggling partway through Ryder’s talk with him. He hung his head and raised his hands in surrender, backing away from Ryder and the tent.
Ryder said to me, “You take him over there,” and gestured to a bench under some trees. “Once we get the area secured, someone will be by to take your statement. They’ll need to talk to both of you.”
I nodded in agreement, putting my arm around Pete and leading him over to the bench. We sat down, and he put his head in his hands. I didn’t have any idea what to say to him, so I just sat close, rubbing his back. Police cars began showing up, their sirens wailing, causing the crowd to shift their focus from race registration to the vendor area. Onlookers began congregating, and luckily we couldn’t see the tent from our vantage point, due to all of them. The last thing Pete needed was to watch Cecilia being carted away in a body bag. Our obstructed view wouldn’t last long, though, because the police were rapidly beginning to push the gawkers back in order to cordon off the area with crime scene tape.
Feeling him begin to shake, I pulled Pete closer to me and held tight. I murmured, “I’m sorry, Pete. It’s going to be okay,” over his quiet crying. Having to watch him go through this anguish was killing me. There was nothing I could say or do to make it better. I felt utterly helpless.
After a few minutes, he lifted his head off my shoulder and sniffed, “Tell me what happened.” He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and stared at the ground. “Come on, I can take it.”
“Pete, I don’t know…” I was concerned about his reaction to my story, but I also doubted my ability to recount it without getting sick. I had been focusing all of my attention on tending to Pete, partly in an attempt to keep my mind off what I’d just seen. Worrying about his emotional issues was the only thing saving me from having to deal with my own.
“Just tell me, Juliet,” he cried, his voice cracking. My heart constricted in my chest. He was serious if he called me “Juliet.”
Maybe I could satisfy him with the basic facts. I said quietly, “There’s really not that much to tell. When I got here this morning, I opened up the tent, and Cecilia was…lying on the ground inside. It was obvious that she was, um…gone, so I yelled for Ryder and that was it. He had just called it in to the police when you got here.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he said through gritted teeth. “Tell me what you really saw.”
“Pete, I don’t want to—”
Snapping his head up, he focused his red-rimmed, angry eyes on me. “Tell me how she died. You know, and you’re keeping it from me.”
I cleared my throat, my stomach starting to roll and twist as the image of Cecilia’s bloody neck flashed into my head. “Okay. She was stabbed.” He glared at me until I continued. I swallowed and said as gently as I could, “With…one of our milk frothing thermometers. In her neck.”
His face crumpled, and I reached out for him, but he was already up off the bench, heading toward the Parthenon. Knowing he needed a moment, I followed along behind him, at a distance.
I had a good idea where he would end up, because this wouldn’t be the first time I found Pete mourning a loss on the steps of the Parthenon. The first time I had tracked him down here was in the spring of my freshman year.
—
The trees and plants were bursting with cheerful spring flowers, a striking contrast to Pete’s gloomy mood that afternoon. He’d been acting strangely all day, and then he disappeared. I looked for him all over campus and at Java Jive, but couldn’t find him. Worried, I went to his dad.
When I asked if he knew where Pete was, George sighed heavily. “You’ll find him at Centennial Park, probably at the Parthenon.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Why the Parthenon? What’s he doing there?”
George’s eyes were misty. “The twentieth of April is always a rough day for him. He could use a friend, but tread lightly with him, dear.”
“What’s today?” I asked, baffled.
George only shook his head and shuffled back to the kitchen. I racked my brain, trying to think of something that could have happened that would have made both Pete and his dad upset. My heart sank as I realized what it was—the anniversary of the day Pete’s mother had walked out on their family. She’d never come back.
I raced over to the Parthenon, which was quite a haul from Java Jive, a good fifteen minutes of jog-walking. After rounding the building, I found him on the west side, sitting against the wall, staring blindly out at Lake Watauga. Wordlessly, I sat down next to him. After several minutes, he looked over at me.
His voice quiet and rough, Pete said, “You know, one of my only happy memories of my mother was the time she brought me here to Centennial Park. I was probably about six years old. It was a Saturday in the springtime. I don’t remember if Pop was working or what, but it was just the two of us.” He sighed. “It was great. We skipped rocks on the lake. She had brought a Frisbee, so we threw that back and forth until a dog came by and snatched it in midair. The dog ran away with it, and I remember my mother laughing her head off about it. She had a great laugh. We walked around every trail in the entire park, and she pointed out all the different kinds of flowers that were blooming.” A tear rolled down his cheek.
“It sounds like the perfect day,” I said.
He replied bitterly, “It was, but I guess that’s why it sticks out in my mind. Because it was unlike her to pay that much attention to me.”
It bothered me to hear him talk like that. Normally, Pete was the happiest guy around. I wasn’t too sure how to deal with hurt, angry Pete. I was only nineteen, after all, and I had a great mom who quite frankly paid a little too much attention to me. Having no idea how to relate but wanting to try, I
scooted closer to him and put my arm around his shoulders.
I said, “That sucks. A lot. And I don’t know the right thing to say to make you feel better. So I’ll just sit and listen with my mouth shut. You know not to expect any wisdom or miracle cures out of me. I’m no Dr. Phil.”
Chuckling, he said, “That’s the worst pep talk I’ve ever heard.”
I looked over at him. “You’re smiling now, aren’t you?”
He stared at me in disbelief. “Wow. You’re good.”
“Now, how about drowning your sorrows in a big bowl of ice cream? My treat.”
—
That afternoon I had managed to convince him to get up and shake it off, and aside from the occasional frown, he had seemed to have gotten over it. Throughout college, I would find him at the park every once in a while in that same exact spot, alone with his thoughts. I had always been pretty good at pulling him out of his funk.
This time, though, I knew a bad pep talk and an ice cream sundae wouldn’t even begin to help soothe the pain he was experiencing. I was at a complete loss as to what to do to comfort him, but at the same time I was growing more and more nervous about something Ryder had said. The police were going to question Pete about Cecilia’s death. It made perfect sense to question a victim’s boyfriend, but in this case it would surely be a formality. Pete was the gentlest person I knew. He hadn’t killed Cecilia, but that wouldn’t stop the police from following procedure. My worry was that he was in such a bad place right now, he couldn’t handle a police interrogation.
I found Pete sitting in his regular spot, his back against the wall of the Parthenon, gazing out across the lake. I went and sat down next to him. I reached over and took his hand, lacing my fingers through his. Neither one of us spoke for a long time.
His tone raspy, Pete finally asked, “Jules, who would do something like this?”
Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t know.”
Pete didn’t reply. He seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, his gaze fixed on the lake again.
Mug Shot Page 5