Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  There were enough tie-ins there to make me think I was onto something, although none of the pieces fit the way I wanted them to. Especially the part about the photos. I didn’t want to believe that Eddie, with daughters of his own, could be part of anything so unsavory. Yet the pictures were in a school envelope, and Cheryl had given them to Eva right after meeting with Eddie.

  Then too, there was the matter of the ten thousand which had mysteriously appeared in the Marrero’s checking account. Unsavory business was sometimes quite lucrative.

  I continued to ponder the matter on the drive home. Short of confronting George or finding Cheryl, I couldn’t think of a thing I could to that would bring me any closer to the truth. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know the truth. Except, of course, that it might save Jannine.

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  I spent the afternoon cleaning the large downstairs closet where my father had stashed everything from old linens to a broken toaster. Among the stash I found the silver-plated bread tray he and my mother won in a dancing contest. The tray had become something of a family joke almost immediately. Sabrina and I, always on diets, refused to eat bread. John, who ate a loaf a day, preferred it three slices at a time, straight from the plastic bag. But my mother had claimed, only half jokingly, that the bread tray was the most elegant gift she’d ever received. For a while there, it had adorned our dinner table every night, amid much light-hearted banter. It’s one of the last recollections I have of my mother. I wrapped the tray in tissue and set it aside.

  By the time I’d finished packing everything away in boxes, dusk had fallen. My body ached, my mind was a muddle and my four-footed friend was getting impatient. I washed the grime from my hands and arms, changed shoes, and took Loretta for a stroll.

  It was that time between sunset and nightfall, when the sky is a deep indigo, seeming to stretch on forever. A quarter moon hung on the horizon, and a single star flickered overhead.

  Star light, star bright, First star I see tonight . . .

  If only it were that easy.

  I thought about George and Carla and Cheryl, and wished for answers. I thought about Jannine and Eddie, and wished there was some way to undo all that had happened. And when that didn’t get me anywhere, I thought about my own life, about where it was headed and where I wanted it to go. No shortage of wishes there either.

  It wasn’t wishes that troubled me, however, so much as questions.

  And they did nothing but lead me in circles.

  I ambled along, my mind a hundred miles away. Which is why I didn’t see the car until it was almost on top of me.

  It was coming from the opposite direction, on the same side of the street I was walking along. A large, light-colored model that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Its engine accelerated, then it swerved in my direction, heading off the pavement and onto the wide shoulder. The headlights flashed on, blinding me.

  I froze.

  The rest is a blur. Instinctively, I must have leapt out of the way, tripping over a fallen tree in the process. I tumbled onto the jagged rocks beyond the roadway. My shoulder and face hit first, bare flesh scraping against the hard, rough surface. My left leg twisted under me, and a searing flash of pain shot through my knee.

  I heard a dull thud as the car collided with the stump of the tree. The impact was like a small earthquake. A cloud of dust rose up, stinging my eyes and filling my mouth and nose with grit.

  For a moment, there was an eerie silence. Even the pine branches overhead, illuminated by the car’s headlights, were still. Then the car gunned its engine and shot backwards, momentarily spinning out in the soft dirt at the edge of the pavement before swinging onto the road.

  I lay without moving while my heart dropped from my throat and my insides unscrambled. Finally, I began to test the extent of my injuries. I ran my tongue around my mouth. Although I could taste blood, my teeth appeared to be secure. I could move my fingers and toes, and recite the names of the last four presidents in reverse chronological order. My left eye was already beginning to swell, giving me a somewhat distorted angle of vision, and my knee throbbed, but as far as I could tell I was in one piece.

  I was trying to garner the strength to move when I heard a soft whimper behind me.

  Loretta. Had she been hurt ?

  Twisting my head, I looked around, straining to see in the growing darkness. Nothing. And then I twisted the other way. Almost immediately, I met up with a cold, wet nose. It prodded and poked and then nuzzled against my neck. “Hello, girl,” I said, running a hand along her back and legs. Her tail thumped hard against my ribs.

  I wrapped my arms around her plump, warm body and buried my face in her fur. For a long time, neither of us moved.

  When I finally stood, my legs were weak and shaky. Nonetheless, I managed to limp home, taking frequent rests along the way. I made myself stop thinking about the pain, but I couldn’t make my mind stop reliving the incident.

  Had the driver been some reckless teenager out for a wild Saturday night? Or had he deliberately swerved in my direction?

  Was I right in thinking the car had been a white American full-sized model like the one I’d noticed at Carla’s? And the one that had doubled back and nearly collided with me earlier that same day.

  After my experience with the fish guts I was understandably nervous. Was I also paranoid?

  I let myself into the house, stripped out of my clothes and took a long, hot shower. The water stung my face and hands, but it felt wonderful on the rest of me. I dried myself gingerly and applied ointment to the scrapes and cuts. Then I pulled on a pair of loose-fitting sweats, gave Loretta another once over, checking for injuries I might have missed, and sat down with paper and pencil to see if I could make sense of the day’s events. I doodled my initials in the right-hand margin, a flower in the left, got up to get a glass of wine, then changed my mind and put on a kettle for tea instead. My mother had been a tea drinker. I could remember coming home from school winter afternoons to a warm house that smelled of lemon and spice. She would fix us a snack and then sit at the table with us, sipping her tea and listening to the chronicles of our day.

  I paced the kitchen, checked the lock on the back door, hugged my arms across my chest. The water was taking forever to boil. I picked up the pencil, doodled some more, then put it down again when I noticed my hand was trembling. Despite the heat of the day, the house seemed suddenly, inexplicably, cold. In fact, I was shivering so hard I was actually shaking. Then it dawned on me that what I felt was scared. Scared and alone.

  I turned off the stove, reached for the phone and invited myself to Jannine’s.

  Chapter 22

  “Holy cow, Kali, what happened to you?”

  I hadn’t told Jannine about my encounter with tree limbs and hard granite. Now I thought maybe I should have prepared her.

  “I was walking the dog,” I explained. “A car almost ran me over.”

  “Are you okay? What did the doctor say?”

  “I didn’t call a doctor. I’m fine, just sore is all.”

  She looked dubious. “Was the guy drunk or something?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw him.”

  “You mean he didn’t stop to help?” She let the screen door flop shut behind us. “That’s a hit-and-run, isn’t it?”

  “He didn’t exactly hit me. It just seemed like he was about to.”

  “Still, you should report it.”

  I’d seen enough of police headquarters, and I thought they’d probably seen enough of me. I wasn’t anxious to go waltzing in with still another complaint. Besides, there wasn’t a lot I could tell them.

  “It all happened pretty fast And it was getting dark, so I didn’t see much anyway.” I considered sharing my suspicions about the driver aiming for me, then decided against it. Jannine had enough to worry about.

  “I’m fine,” I told her. “Really. I just didn’t feel like being alone right now.”

  “Of course you didn't,” she soothed. “Come on,
I’ll make you a drink, a stiff one.”

  She settled me into one of the kitchen chairs, guiding me as though I were a decrepit old woman. “How about food, have you eaten?”

  I remembered I hadn’t.

  Jannine set a glass of straight Scotch in front of me, then poured herself a heavily watered version of the same. “The kids and I had boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner. There’s some left. Or I could make you a sandwich. The only bread we have is the squishy white stuff, but I’ve got some good salami.”

  “A sandwich sounds wonderful.”

  She opened the fridge and began pulling out ingredients. “I hear you were out with Tom Lawrence last night”

  “How’d you hear that5”

  “Eddie’s uncle.” She began shaving off thin slices of salami. “He said you stopped by the tavern for a drink.”

  “He called just to tell you that?”

  “Of course not. He dropped by this afternoon to see how we were getting along. He offered to lend me money until I get my feet under me. Isn’t that generous?”

  I’d spent a good part of the last two days thinking about George Marrero. Generous was not a word I’d have used. In fact, it made me wonder about the timing of his visit.

  Jannine handed me my sandwich and took the seat across from me. “So tell me,” she said, elbows on the table, an eager, school-girl expression on her face, “was it a real date or an old friends kind of thing?”

  That was a question I’d asked myself, although not in quite those terms. “A little of both, I guess.” I bit into the sandwich hungrily. The bread formed a layer of paste on the roof of my mouth, and I had to pry it loose with my tongue. Even so, it was delicious.

  “I see him around town now and then. He’s a good-looking guy, kind of sexy in a way.”

  My mouth was full so I smiled blandly. I thought it was a bit more than “kind of.”

  Jannine stared off into space while I chewed. “You know,” she said, after a moment, “there’ve been moments when I really envied you. Single, no one to answer to, all those glamorous and exciting men, the fascinating adventures.”

  I laughed. “It’s not quite the way you make it sound.”

  She laughed back. “Maybe. ’Course I never did have your pizazz, and now, on top of that, I’m fat and dumb, and I’ve got four kids.”

  “You’re not—”

  Jannine cut me off with a feeble smile. “You can’t deny I’ve got four kids.” The smile vanished, and her face closed down. She stared hard at the golden liquid in her glass. Finally, she sighed. “Now that I’m single, I can’t imagine why I ever found the idea attractive.”

  I reached across the table to squeeze her hand. Before I could say anything, Erin strolled into the room, a set of headphones plugged into her ears. She glanced briefly in my direction, turned away and then turned back. She removed the headphones and draped them around her neck. “You run into Godzilla or something?”

  “Erin!” Jannine screeched the way mothers do.

  “It’s okay.” I gave Erin one of my all-purpose smiles. “I tripped over a fallen tree and landed on some rocks. It looks worse than it is.”

  Erin pulled a can of diet soda from the refrigerator and popped the tab. “Maybe you should get glasses or something.”

  “Erin.” Jannine tried again, but Erin had already left. “Sorry,” she said, turning to me. “Erin’s in one of her moods.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Seems like only yesterday I used to pull stuff like that myself. Besides, my face has looked better.”

  “Eddie’s death has hit her pretty hard. Harder than the others, I think. She’s at that age — and the two of them were quite close.”

  The photographs I’d seen that afternoon were etched in my mind. Girls only a year or two older than Erin. Eddie couldn’t have had anything to do with it, I was sure. The school envelope didn’t necessarily mean anything. Cheryl could have picked it up while she was working in the office.

  But if I was so sure, why did the very idea cause my stomach to knot up?

  Jannine took my empty plate and stuck it in the dishwasher. Then she poured us each a second drink and suggested we move into the living room. She directed me to the sofa and settled me into the downy pillows, tucking and plumping them around me.

  The Scotch had helped. My body still ached, but the pain was muted, as though it were calling to me from a great distance. Even the growing tightness around my left eye didn’t bother me much.

  “Tell me about Cheryl Newcomb,” I said. “She babysits for you, doesn’t she?”

  “Occasionally, when Erin is busy. Eddie and I never went out all that often.”

  “She a family friend?”

  Jannine shook her head. “Eddie knew her through school. One of the few advantages of being a teacher. We never had trouble finding a sitter.”

  “Has she been here recently?”

  “Not for about a month. She was supposed to help out at that party Friday night, the one you were at. She cancelled at the last minute, though.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “I didn’t talk to her. Eddie did. I guess she got sick or something. Usually she’s pretty reliable.”

  “She’s run away from home. Nobody’s seen her since last Sunday.”

  Jannine frowned. “I heard. Cheryl always struck me as an unhappy kid putting up a brave front The kind you worry about because you know she can’t keep it up forever. I feel bad that I didn’t try harder to reach out to her.”

  “Did you ever talk to her?”

  “A couple of times. She and Eddie got on pretty well, but she never said much to me.”

  “She was at school last Saturday morning. One of the students saw her walking with Eddie.”

  Jannine nodded and shrugged at the same time.

  “Eddie also wrote her phone number on his desk calendar that day.”

  A simple nod this time. “Eddie was always making notes to himself.”

  I paused and took a swallow of my drink. I’d thought I was working up to telling Jannine about the photographs, but I found I couldn’t. Not while there was still the possibility that Eddie was somehow involved.

  “You’re sure Eddie knew her through school and not through some tie-in with his uncle?”

  “George?” Jannine looked at me as though I’d sprung antlers. “What makes you ask that?”

  “George and Cheryl’s mother have a . . . a business connection.”

  “Are you sure about that? I remember one time Cheryl sat for us. George dropped something off here just as we were leaving. Eddie introduced them, and George was barely polite. You’d think he’d have said something if he knew her mother.”

  I nodded absently. You’d certainly have thought so. Unless George’s connection with Carla was something he wanted kept quiet.

  “Did George say anything else about me when he stopped by this afternoon? Other than reporting the latest developments of my love life, that is.”

  Jannine gave me another one of those looks. “He just happened to mention it in passing, Kali. It isn’t like he particularly cares who you go out with.” She kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet up under her. “He did ask, though, if you’d found anything about the tavern in that box of Eddie’s stuff I gave you. Have you had a chance to look through it?”

  Here was another chance. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the photographs, but I could tell her what I’d learned about George.

  “Jannine,” I said slowly, “there are some—”

  I stopped when Lily walked in. She’d gotten the zipper of her yellow fleece pajamas stuck and needed Jannine’s help. When the zipper was once again free, she climbed into her mother’s lap and pulled Jannine’s arms around her, like a shawl. It was a capture-the-moment picture Kodak would have been proud of, and it touched one of those places deep inside I try to keep hidden.

  “I found a couple of loose pages,” I said lamely, looking down at my glass. “They were just copie
s, but I’ll get them back to you all the same.”

  “Did you find anything that was helpful?”

  I shook my head, suddenly aware that I felt uncomfortable. It had been a mistake coming to Jannine’s. There was simply too much I wasn’t telling her.

  “I may be on to something, though. I’ll know in a day or two.” I stood and yawned. My earlier shakiness had been supplanted by bone-deep exhaustion. “I think I’ll head back.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here. I have an extra toothbrush.”

  “I’ll be okay. Thanks for taking care of me this evening, though.”

  “Gracious, Kali, you don’t have to thank me for that.” She walked me to the door, then hesitated. “Did you talk to Vicky?”

  I nodded.

  She gave me a funny smile. “I figured you would.”

  We were silent a moment.

  “What’s she like?” Jannine said finally. Her voice had an unfamiliar scratchiness to it. “Besides being beautiful, I mean.”

  “She isn’t even beautiful. Blonde and skinny, but that’s about it.”

  Jannine sighed. “That’s enough, isn’t it?” Then she hugged her arms across her chest. “Vicky couldn’t have known him as well as I did, though, or loved him as much.”

  I had no doubt about the love. But when I thought of the pictures, I wondered if there was a side of Eddie Jannine hadn’t known at all.

  Chapter 23

  It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, and when I finally did, the quiet comfort I’d sought eluded me. I slept fitfully, like a dog hunting in his dreams. What woke me a little after two, however, was neither my aching body nor the demons I’d been chasing in my mind. It was a sound. A sound so faint, so fleeting, that once I was fully awake, I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard it.

  I glanced at the clock, using its green glow as a beacon to orient myself. I lay perfectly still, barely breathing, straining to hear through the surrounding blackness.