Crazy, Stupid, Dead

by Wendy Delaney

  “It’s going okay,” he said in a cool tone at odds with the flash of dollar signs in his eyes.

  “A real estate developer, huh?” I knew of one that had been gobbling up chunks of bay view property in the four-block radius surrounding the park. But he had recently retired.

  Byron nodded.

  “A local developer?”

  “Maybe.”

  That would be a yes. “Your parents’ place would be a nice, big parcel. Plus, it’s a great location for anyone wanting to live within walking distance of the hospital.”

  “It’s always been a good location. Near the hospital, near shopping—”

  “Of course, if they want to put townhomes or apartments there, they’d need more than just your folks’ house. They’d need to acquire some of the adjacent property or it wouldn’t be worth their investment.”

  Instead of responding, Byron pressed his lips together as if he couldn’t afford to let that information spill out of his mouth.

  “Can’t imagine that they haven’t been knocking on quite a few of the neighbors’ doors,” I added, inching closer so that I could read him better in the low light.

  He glanced back at the empty street behind him, taking a step toward his quickest getaway route. “I really can’t speak to that.”

  Because I was getting too close to the truth? With Fozzie sniffing weeds at the fence line, it surely wasn’t because Byron wanted to distance himself from my ferocious fur ball. “I also can’t imagine that your mom didn’t compare notes with the lady next door before she called you.”

  He shook his head. “You been talking to my mom, Char?”

  “Nope. Since she’s the savvy lady who does my grandmother’s taxes, I would expect her to look for every advantage. Pretty sure that’s why you’re here.”

  He met my gaze with a sheepish grin. “I forgot that you could do that truth serum thing. You know it’s a little creepy.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “So I’ve heard.” On more than one occasion from my ex.

  “The deal with Cascara isn’t done yet, so don’t say anything, okay?”

  “Cascara is the development company?” I’d seen several of their signs posted in Marietta’s upscale Bayview Estates subdivision, but never anything in this part of town.

  Byron nodded. “And I hope to get this thing wrapped up this week so I can get back to the office. There’s just one person holding things up.”

  I had a sneaking suspicion that person was an Easley.

  Chapter Eighteen

  SINCE A GUNMETAL gray Ford pickup was parked in front of my house, I wasn’t at all surprised to come home and find Steve watching TV on my sofa.

  The same couldn’t be said for my dog, who charged into the living room, barking his intruder alert.

  “Fozzie, no,” I called out over his volume.

  “It’s okay.” Steve held out his hand for Fozzie to sniff. “I’d rather have his first instinct be to go on the offense than for him to want to play fetch with the guy who breaks into your house.”

  “You didn’t break in. You have a key.”

  “He doesn’t know that. Huh, mutt,” Steve said, wrestling Fozzie to the floor.

  Something about coming home to watch my dog expose his belly for a rub from the guy I loved felt a little too domestic. Like we were all playing house, before establishing the rules of the game.

  And I wasn’t in the mood to play.

  I hung Fozzie’s leash on the coat rack and headed into the kitchen with my purchases from the store. “Whatever. You been here long?”

  “Not quite an hour. I called to see where you were.”

  “Sorry, I might have left my phone in the car when we went for a walk around the park.”

  “This late?”

  Everyone wanted to sound like a mother tonight. “Around the park, not in the park. And guess who I ran into.”

  “Byron Thorpe.”

  “Jeez, good guess.”

  Steve chuckled as he entered the kitchen with Fozzie hot on his heels. “I met up with him at the Grill when I stopped for a burger.”

  “It’s funny that he didn’t mention that, but he was being pretty close-lipped about what brought him to town.”

  “Something to do with the sale of his parents’ house, right?”

  Evidently, Byron had been even less forthcoming with Steve than he had been with me. “Right. Located just down the street from Naomi Easley’s house, I might add.”

  Steve vented a weary breath. “Pretty sure that there are at least a dozen houses for sale in town.”

  “I’m sure there are.” I smiled sweetly at him as I put my cherry yogurt into the refrigerator. “I’m just sayin’.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “That it’s an interesting coincidence.”

  “What’s more interesting to me,” Steve said, reaching past me for a beer while Fozzie settled at his feet. “Is why, when you have hardly any food in your refrigerator, you only bought a yogurt.”

  “I have food. There’s kale in there and some spinach for a salad.”

  “Yeah, yum.” He twisted off the cap. “What happened to the leftover cheesecake?”

  “Roxie called, and I took it over to her place.” What was left of it, anyway.

  “Oh.” Steve leaned back against the counter. “I thought it might have gone to your mother’s as part of a peace offering.”

  I didn’t want to talk about my mother. “Our favorite baby incubator has been climbing the walls waiting for that kid to be born. She needed it more.”

  “Eddie made it sound like what she needs is sleep.”

  “It’s really hard for her to get comfortable. At least this won’t go much longer ‘cause if Junior isn’t born by the end of the weekend, they’re going to induce.”

  “Then no one in that house will get any sleep.” Grinning, Steve shook his head. “I pity them all those feedings and diaper changes already.”

  I didn’t. Maybe because there was a time not so long ago that I would have traded places with Rox in a heartbeat.

  But that didn’t happen.

  And Steve was entitled to feel any way he wanted to about someone else’s baby.

  No matter how empty his words made my womb feel.

  I stepped over Fozzie to take Steve’s beer bottle and saluted him with it. “To the sleepless nights that they’ve been waiting a long time for.”

  He wrapped his arms around me while I tilted back the bottle. “And to all the things we can do when we’re not sleeping.”

  Which sounded quite inviting until the cold beer hit my molar like a pickax, and I jumped back so fast that Fozzie scampered into the adjoining dining room.

  “What’s wrong?” Steve asked, frowning at the way I was holding my jaw.

  “Nothing. I just have a sensitive tooth.”

  “Maybe you should see a dentist.”

  “So I’ve heard. Rox gave me the name of hers.” I left out the part about Althea having the same dentist. Steve wouldn’t appreciate how I came to discover that little fact, and I wasn’t in the mood to be on the receiving end of a lecture.

  “In the meantime, you should probably lay off the cold stuff.”

  While he reclaimed his bottle I settled back in his arms. “Yep, ice cream is definitely out.” Plus, I had already had more than my fill for one evening.

  I locked my hands behind his neck. “I seem to be able to handle the hot stuff, though.”

  The crow’s-feet around Steve’s eyes crinkled with amusement as he held me tight. “We’ll see how much you can handle.”

  * * *

  After Steve left around eleven, I stared at my bedroom ceiling for an hour before calling it quits on the notion of sleep and tugging on a pair of sweats.

  Springing into action at the sight of me reaching for my running shoes, Fozzie ran up and down the hall, impatiently waiting for me to let him out.

  Ten min
utes later, he whimpered his growing displeasure with me when I parked across the street from Byron Thorpe’s childhood home. Plus, my restless dog was fogging up the windshield.

  “I realize this isn’t what you had in mind,” I said while I cranked up the defrost. “You thought we were going to the dog park. We can do that tomorrow. Right now, I want to see why a developer would be so interested in this area.”

  Sure, all the houses on this block were close to shopping, and the location would be ideal for anyone who wanted to shorten their commute to the hospital. But that could be said for my grandmother’s house, and no one had come knocking on her door.

  I was pretty sure that was because the Thorpes’ Queen Anne–style house perched on an elevated corner lot high enough to look over all the roof lines to the east for an unobstructed bay view.

  “That’s got to be the major factor,” I said, pulling away from the curb. Because the Walkers’ house next door with the dormer windows shared the same elevation. Add the Victorian with the blue trim to the mix, along with the two-story shingled house on the corner I was creeping past, and a developer would have almost three acres of prime view real estate.

  “Do you know how much money that would be worth?” I mused aloud.

  Fozzie curled into a ball, clearly no more interested in the local real estate scene than Steve had been last night.

  “A lot.” Assuming that everyone on that block would be willing to sell.

  “Byron might have some big-time persuading ahead of him to close this deal.” But based on what I observed in Gordon and Paula Easley’s behavior last Saturday, I had a feeling Byron wouldn’t be the only one in Robin’s ear over the next few days.

  * * *

  “Land sakes, girl.” Alice squinted at the kitchen clock mounted above a vintage red and white Coca-Cola sign. “It’s barely after five. Don’t you sleep anymore?”

  Tying an apron around my waist, I approached her worktable. “You’re the one who used to love to remind me about how the early bird catches the worm.”

  “You were probably fourteen and late to work every day that summer. You needed the reminder. Now that you don’t need to be an early bird, you should probably work on catching another forty winks instead of that worm.” She directed that squint at me. “I’m sure those bags under your eyes would thank you for it.”

  “I’m sure they would,” I said, going to the refrigerator for the carton of butter that my great-aunt’s chocolate chip cookie recipe called for. “But since I’m here …” And I couldn’t stop thinking about what Byron had told me last night. “You might as well get some free labor out of me.”

  “Your labor ain’t free, kiddo,” Duke scoffed as he met me back at the table with two steaming cups of coffee in his hands. “This is called paying off your tab.”

  I smiled at the feisty coot, who loved to rib me about the tab he used to let me run when I was on his summer payroll. “Dream on, old man.”

  He set the cups on the table and then exchanged glances with his wife, who gave her head a little shake like a baseball pitcher who didn’t like the sign from her catcher.

  “What’s that about?” I asked as I reached for the bag of sugar.

  Duke grumbled an expletive worthy of the chief petty officer rank he had held in the Navy. “I’ll just ask flat out. The reason you haven’t been here after sun-up doesn’t have anything to do with that dang fool Miriam and her betting pool, does it?”

  “No.” Not this week. “I just haven’t been able to sleep.”

  “Told you,” Alice said to Duke. “It’s her mother messing with her head.”

  Yes, she was, which seemed to be what my mother specialized in now that she lived in town. But Marietta didn’t have anything to do with all the sheep I didn’t count last night. “There’s just a lot going on.”

  “What’s going on?” Lucille asked, the back door banging shut behind her.

  Duke glowered at his longest-tenured waitress as she hung up her coat. “Do you have some sort of listening device on you so that you can butt into every conversation that doesn’t concern you?”

  Flashing him a smile, Lucille lumbered over in her squeaky orthopedic shoes and took the seat next to me. “Good morning to you, too, Sunshine. Now, since I have a few minutes until I’m on the clock …” She shooed him away with a flick of her wrist. “Scram, so that we girls can have some privacy.”

  He cocked his head at her. “You need privacy? I’d like to remind you this is my kitchen you’ve got your hiney parked in.”

  “Okay, mister boss man,” Lucille retorted. “If you want to hear about my woman parts, stick around. You might learn somethin’.”

  Duke spun on his heel and started walking. “I’ll pass. Don’t wanna ruin my appetite.”

  Alice scowled at his backside. “Don’t be a rude old man.”

  “That’s like telling a dog not to bark,” Lucille said, giving my shoulder a conspiratorial bump. “At least this one took his bark elsewhere so that we can have a few minutes of peace.”

  I didn’t equate sitting down with the queen of Gossip Central with being the least bit peaceful. However, I had found it to be informative on occasion, and my weary brain longed for this to be one of those occasions.

  I pushed the cup of Duke’s foul brew in front of her. “Coffee?”

  “No coffee for you, huh? And you’re here two mornings in a row,” Lucille said, spooning sugar from the bag in front of her into her cup. “So, you’re not drinking coffee, and we haven’t seen you come in to eat for a week.” Leaning against the flour-coated surface, she looked at me the way Marietta does when she thinks I should exfoliate. “And excuse me for saying so, but you look like death warmed over. You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “No!” Sheesh. Why was that always the first question everyone wanted to ask here?

  “Lucille!” Alice chided. “Don’t be a busybody.”

  “Well, something’s gettin’ her up at oh-dark-thirty.” Lucille fixed her gaze on me while taking a slurp of well-sugared coffee. “So? What’s goin’ on?”

  I pushed away the bowl with the butter I had been creaming. “Before I get into it, you two need to swear that this won’t go any farther than this kitchen.”

  They both nodded.

  I pointed at Lucille. “I mean it. ‘Cause this could get me into some hot water at work.”

  “Fine! I swear.” She stared wide-eyed over the rim of her cup. “So start talkin’.”

  I wasn’t sure how much I could tell these two without the news of it flaring out of control like a grease fire, but I needed their assistance if I was ever going to find the answers I needed. “You know how I help with the fact-finding when there’s been a suspicious death.”

  Lucille gasped. “Who died?”

  “No one. I mean I’m not talking about something that just happened. But there was a death last month that I can’t stop thinking about because it was so weird the way she drowned.”

  Lucille knit her thin, sandy brown eyebrows. “You’re talkin’ about Naomi.”

  I nodded.

  “It was pretty crazy to hear about her gettin’ liquored up and passin’ out in the tub.” Lucille’s eyes shifted to Alice. “We all thought so when we heard about it.”

  My great-aunt leaned in. “Here’s something I hadn’t realized at the time that makes it even crazier. Eleanor told me that Naomi was nervous about that big step into her bathtub. Told the girls that she was afraid of falling again, so it’s hard to make sense of her being found that way.”

  It appeared that my grandmother had neglected to mention one salient little detail to her sister. “And Donna had just done her hair a few hours earlier.”

  “That’s right. I remember Florence saying something about that.” Lucille thumbed toward the dining area behind us. “Considerin’ how Naomi wouldn’t take a step outside on a stormy day without a rain bonnet, that doesn’t sound like her at all.”

&
nbsp; “I know. It’s weird, and a lot of what happened that day doesn’t seem like it adds up, but since it’s been explained to me that it could have been an accident …” And since we all knew who would have done the explaining, I didn’t need to mention his name.

  Alice stared across the table at me. “If it wasn’t an accident, are you suggesting—”

  “That they drowned her,” Lucille proclaimed with an edge to her tone that was as sharp as a butcher’s blade.

  They? “They who?”

  “I swear.” She hung her head, the points of her platinum bob brushing the apples of her cheeks. “Since the poor little thing didn’t kick after she fell down those stairs, they decided to finish the job.”

  “Who?!” I wanted to scream.

  “Robin and her daughter.” Lucille sniffed with disdain. “Although I bet Hailey got talked into going over to snuff out Granny by her mom. There always was some sort of wacky codependency thing going on in that house.”

  I looked to Alice for confirmation.

  “I told you most everything I know yesterday. There were some obvious issues with Robin. Had been for years. That’s why she had to move back in with her mom. And then it only got worse after Hailey went away to school. Naomi didn’t talk much about it, and I didn’t want to pry into their personal business.”

  Lucille scoffed. “Maybe we should have. Maybe then, Robin and Hailey wouldn’t have gone over there to finish the job.”

  That was the second time she’d said that. “Are you telling us that Naomi’s fall at her house wasn’t an accident?”

  “Doesn’t sound like you think her drownin’ was an accident.”

  I shook my head.

  Lucille leveled her gaze at me. “How many ‘accidents’ have to happen before you call it like it is? ‘Cause, hon, it seems clear to me—she was murdered.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “HAVE YOU OVERHEARD anyone talking about a company called Cascara something?” I asked when I spotted Lucille starting another pot of coffee for the early risers who would be coming through the door at six.