Home Before Midnight

by Virginia Kantra

  It was certainly black. Bailey slung the purse over her shoulder.

  Dorothy smiled.

  Obeying impulse, Bailey put her arms around her mother, feeling the purse slide and bump between them, feeling Dorothy’s start of surprise.

  Her mother’s shoulders were thin and bony, the skin of her upper arms soft and loose. But she smelled the way she always had, like Dove soap and White Shoulders perfume. Bailey breathed in and held on, fighting unexpected, inexplicable tears.

  “It’s really great,” she repeated. “Thanks.”

  She trudged up the stairs to her blue-flowered bedroom, the dusty yearbooks lining one shelf and the faded posters of Melissa Etheridge and Lisa Loeb decorating the walls. Paul’s evidence cartons were stacked beside the white painted desk where Bailey used to do her homework.

  She refused even to look at the three-ring notebook on top, the manuscript Paul said wasn’t ready to show anyone else. That she hadn’t touched in almost four months.

  Too much clutter, she thought, blocking my chi.

  Or maybe it was the ghosts of the departed Dawlers—Shirley, Tammy, and Tanya—held to this place by this forlorn collection of their possessions, the grisly mementos of murder.

  Was the murder weapon in there?

  She hadn’t checked.

  She didn’t want to know.

  But she was powerfully tempted to look, like a rubbernecker slowing to stare at an accident on the highway. She eased the lid off the top box to find . . . paper, a long row of manila folders and photocopied pages grouped by grubby rubber bands. She exhaled in relief and disappointment.

  One item stuck out. Literally. A spiral-bound notebook was crammed along the box’s side, its silver coils rising above the sea of paper like some exotic ocean creature.

  Bailey tugged it free and turned it to the light. Bold black letters marched across the purple cover: TANYA DAWLER. MY DIARY. KEEP OUT.

  Bailey felt a tickle at the back of her neck, a prickle in her fingers. Billy Ray’s fifteen-year-old sister. His victim.

  Curious, she carried the book to the bed with her. Propping her pillows against the headboard, she curled her legs under her and began to read the childish, rounded handwriting.

  Detention again. I’m always in trouble even when I haven’t done anything. Which I didn’t. This time, anyway!

  Bailey smiled.

  But it’s like the teachers expect it. Dawler trash.

  The words were underlined. Dawler trash. Even after twenty years, she could see the mark where the pen dug into the paper.

  You can see them thinking it. Like they know my brother and they know my mom so they think they know me. The male teachers mostly stare at my tits.

  Bailey’s smile faded. She didn’t believe Steve’s charge that Paul exploited his subjects. But until now, Tanya Dawler hadn’t been quite real to her—a research subject, a sad chapter of the Billy Ray story. With every word and exclamation point, Tanya took on depth. Substance. Personality.

  Did Bailey really want to start identifying with a teenage murder victim?

  But the loopy purple handwriting drew her on and drew her in.

  So, anyway, in detention you have to do homework, even if you don’t have any, which is totally unfair!!! Mr. D. keeps coming by my desk to say, “What are you doing, young lady?” and squeezing my shoulder in that fakey fake way. What a perv.

  So I’m writing in this notebook, Tanya continued in her defiant scrawl. That’ll show him.

  Bailey turned the page.

  NINE

  THE Stokesville Police Department wasn’t CSI: New York or Miami or anywhere else glamorous with television cameras and inventive scriptwriters and swarms of evidence technicians. Hell, it wasn’t even the Metropolitan Police Department, which at least had its own crime lab.

  Steve hefted the carton containing his selection of potential murder weapons into the trunk of Wayne Lewis’s Crown Victoria, dropped and locked the lid, and initialed the shipping manifest.

  “Is that everything?” Wayne asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “I didn’t see the tray. In the box, I mean.”

  “That’s because I returned it to its owner.”

  “Ellis?”

  “Nope.” Steve folded the manifest and put it in his pocket. “Mildred Wheeler.”

  Wayne digested this as they retraced their steps. “So the girl’s story checks out.”

  Steve opened the back door of the station house. “So far.”

  “Did you, like, dust it for fingerprints anyway?”

  “I dusted.”

  “And?” Lewis asked eagerly.

  Steve rubbed the back of his neck. He appreciated the rookie’s enthusiasm. He appreciated him volunteering to make the drive to the state crime lab in Raleigh even more, especially since the chief resented the time his officers were putting in on this case. But . . .

  “Turned up prints on damn near everything from damn near everybody, including the cleaning lady and the deceased.”

  Wayne frowned. “What about blood?”

  “Nothing visible.”

  “You spray with Luminol?”

  Steve shook his head. “I’m not going to jeopardize the evidentiary value by doing my own testing.”

  “So you think there’s something there.”

  “Not really.” Steve nodded a greeting to Sergeant Darian Jackson, writing reports at his desk.

  “Why not?”

  “There are multiple prints on everything,” Steve explained patiently. “If Helen Ellis’s attacker wiped her blood from the object he struck her with, he would have wiped away the prints, too.”

  “But the lab might still find something,” Wayne insisted.

  “Maybe.”

  Maybe not. He’d had one chance, one shot, to find the murder weapon, and he’d blown it. If he didn’t come up with something soon, Walt would have his ass and his job. Unless the chief was so relieved at being able to drop this case he only demoted Steve to crossing guard.

  Steve forced a smile. “We’d need SBI to do the DNA testing anyway.”

  Which the State Bureau of Investigation would get to in their own sweet time. DNA results took weeks or months, not hours. But juries were more and more reluctant to convict without high-tech forensic evidence. Steve blamed it on television.

  Wayne nudged a box with his foot. “What about the computer?”

  Steve managed to back up his own files. He even paid his bills on-line. That didn’t qualify him for the Geek Squad. “I don’t have the expertise to conduct a search of electronic data. It’s too easy to destroy or tamper with the evidence. The computer should go to an evidence preservation lab.”

  Darian spoke up from his cluttered desk. “You really think it’ll help your case to find out Paul Ellis bookmarked a bunch of porn sites?”

  “Porn sites, no. Unless he’s making assignations in private chat rooms. If he’s having an affair—”

  “He doesn’t need to go on-line to have an affair. Not with that little Wells girl living right upstairs.”

  Tension gripped the back of Steve’s neck.

  Wayne’s ears turned red.

  In his gut, Steve didn’t believe Bailey was guilty. Of an affair or anything else.

  But his gut wanted to have sex with her. He couldn’t trust his gut any more than he could trust her.

  “I’m looking into it,” he said. “You find anyone yet who saw her on her walk?”

  “Martha Grimes was out watering her roses that night,” Wayne volunteered. “She saw Bailey cross the street.”

  Steve had been gone too long to know Martha Grimes. “Which street? What time?”

  Wayne fumbled for his notebook, flipping through the pages. “Church Street. Right around the corner from the Ellis place. About nine o’clock.”

  “Kind of late to be watering flowers,” Steve observed.

  “Less evaporation. Saves water,” Wayne said.

  “Plus, Martha was probably out
sneaking a cigarette,” Darian said. “Her husband’s been after her to quit.”

  Steve nodded. “So, Bailey would have gotten back . . .”

  “A little after nine.”

  That matched her story. Plenty of time for her to return to her room and do some reading before she came downstairs to fix herself some ice cream and discover Helen’s body.

  Or to hit her employer’s wife over the head, dump her body into the pool and sneak upstairs.

  He looked at Darian, who had volunteered to do follow-ups with the neighbors. “Anybody remember seeing anything after that?”

  “You mean, like a murder?” Darian shook his head. “Nope. Fellow across the street let his dog out about eleven. Thinks he saw lights on in the front bedroom window and in the study. That’s about it. You get anything else from that lawyer?”

  Two days ago, Steve had gone to Helen’s executor to question him about the Ellises’ financial affairs. The lawyer, Macon Reynolds, informed him Helen Stokes Ellis had taken out a four-million-dollar life insurance policy as part of her prenup—enough to convince Steve her husband had a motive for murder, more than enough to convince the judge Steve had probable cause for a warrant.

  “Just that the insurance company won’t pay out as long as the manner of death is ‘pending.’ ”

  “He told you that?” Wayne asked. “Isn’t that, like, breach of confidentiality or something?”

  “Not if he doesn’t represent Paul Ellis. Helen was his client.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  “He still has to act in her best interest.” Steve smiled thinly. “I just convinced him her interest was best served by cooperating with the police.”

  Which hadn’t been hard. Reynolds claimed to remember Steve from high school, so Steve had played the home-town connection. Despite her years away, Helen had been One Of Our Own. Ellis was a Yankee interloper who didn’t deserve his dead wife’s fortune.

  Steve picked up the carton that housed the flat-screen monitor and cables, all tagged and labeled, hoping Wayne would take the hint and grab the computer box.

  “So we dump all this with the state crime lab and wait for them to tell us why Ellis suddenly needed money?” Wayne asked.

  “We don’t have to wait. Most criminal investigation isn’t rocket science. We have bank statements. Bills. Correspondence. Let’s start there.”

  Wayne’s eyes lit as he saw his opportunity to be involved in something more exciting than lost dogs and public disturbances. “I can help. When I get back.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Steve asked.

  The younger man’s face fell as he remembered. “Funeral at eleven.”

  Darian looked at Steve. “You got traffic duty, too?”

  Steve bared his teeth in a smile. “Not yet.”

  REGAN heaved behind a headstone. Another stream of coffee and bile arced to the grass, spattering her black $275 Kate Spade pumps.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Tears leaked from her eyes. She sagged against the back of the marble headstone where she had taken refuge, fighting the buzz in her head. The hum of mourners leaving her mother’s grave site blended with the whisper of leaves and the rising whine of the cicadas. Despite the sun beating down on her unprotected head, she felt flushed and cold. She should be out there now, a brave little smile on her face, accepting the condolences of people she barely knew and couldn’t care less about, inviting them back to the house. Her house.

  She doubled over, her stomach rebelling in fury against an overload of uncertainty and grief, of tranquilizers and caffeine. Fuck them all.

  Something white fluttered at the corner of her vision like a ghost. Regan’s heart crowded her throat along with what was left of her stomach contents. But it was only Bailey coming to check up on her.

  “Tissue?”

  Regan snatched it, pressing it to her mouth. “Go away,” she ordered.

  But maybe dweeb girl had some spine, after all, because she didn’t leave. Not right away. She rummaged in her monster purse—like Mary Poppins’s, only uglier, big and black with gold zipper teeth—and came up with a mini-bottle of water and a packet of Tic Tacs.

  “Here.” She unscrewed the bottle of water. “Rinse, don’t swallow.”

  Leaning weakly against the tombstone, Regan reached for the water. She rinsed and spat on the thick green grass. Rinsed and—ignoring Bailey’s instructions—swallowed. Her stomach lurched, but the water felt so good against the parched tissues of her mouth, against her hot, tight throat.

  “Are you all right?” her stepfather’s assistant asked gravely.

  “What do you care?”

  Bailey shrugged. “I just . . . Your mother . . .”

  “I’m fine.” Regan closed her eyes. “You’ve done your little ministering angel bit. Now get the fuck away from me.”

  When she opened her eyes, Bailey was gone. Regan’s chest squeezed. Good. She knew that caring act was a bunch of crap. She took another swig of water.

  “Regan, honey, how you holding up?” That smooth baritone flowed like molasses, rich and slow.

  She lowered the bottle. A guy stood on the other side of the grave. Blond hair, pocket square, expensive suit, polished shoes. She recognized him. Reynolds something. Her mother’s lawyer.

  “How do you think?”

  He smiled. “I think you look like a lady who could use a drink. And I don’t mean water.”

  Regan considered. For an oldie, he was kind of a hottie. And he was on her side. He was the one who told that greedy bastard Paul he wouldn’t get a penny of her father’s money.

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked.

  He looked her up and down, and the cold inside her ebbed. “Well, now, that’s up to you. I imagine there’s sherry back at the house.”

  She pulled a face. Sherry and a bunch of chattering old farts who would expect her to listen to their stories about her parents.

  “Or we could go someplace quiet for a vodka and tonic,” he continued smoothly.

  “Make mine an appletini,” she said. “And you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “How about a date?” he said, still smiling.

  He wore a ring. Asshole. Married asshole. Unlike dweeb girl, Regan didn’t waste her time on married men.

  But she deserved a little comfort, didn’t she? Or at least a drink. Her mother was dead. Her brother wasn’t here. And the hot male appreciation in the older man’s eyes warmed the edges of the cold void inside her.

  Don’t do it, her instincts whispered, but that little warning voice sounded annoyingly like Bailey.

  Regan pushed away from the headstone. “Sure, why not?” she said.

  SOUTHERNERS appreciated a good funeral.

  His wife’s death thirty-one months ago had blunted Steve’s enjoyment of such events, but the folks around him, drifting away from the grave and toward their cars and the buffet line, seemed to be having a good old time. Maybe it was the weather, incongruously bright, decorously hot, cooperatively dry.

  Teresa had died two days after Christmas, her spirit fading with the waning year. She was buried in Saint John’s churchyard in the short, bleak interval before New Year’s. Her parents flew up from Brazil for the funeral. Steve remembered holding Gabrielle’s small, damp hand, listening to Rosa’s soft sobs as the organist played “Ave Maria” to a nearly empty church.

  People had packed the sunlit pews this morning at Helen Ellis’s funeral. The older ladies of the congregation counted the turnout, their lips moving silently. The service was beautiful and decorous: the flowers, the candles, the sedate, brief hymns, the even more sedate and briefer sermon. But Steve felt like he was watching a play. The tasteful, traditional ceremony in the packed church seemed more empty of real feeling than Teresa’s quiet, sparsely attended mass.

  Who had loved Helen Ellis? Who mourned her?

  Jamming his hands in his pockets, he strode towards his truck.

  “Lieutenant Burke?” Bailey’s voic
e was slightly breathless, as if she’d hurried to catch him.

  Steve felt the blip of sexual attraction, like the warning whoop from a squad car. Something about being pursued by an attractive woman, even if she was a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. . . . He turned.