“You might if you knew some of his friends, or one of his middle-school teachers.”
“Remind her how she still filled a Christmas stocking for me every year,” Justin put in, “even after I was too old to believe in Santa. When I was seven she put a little compass in the toe, because we’d moved over the summer and I was going to a new school for second grade and I was scared of getting lost.”
I repeated the pertinent information. Getting lost seemed to be a theme with Justin.
Angela Braydaven’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Why are you here?” she asked. Her hands lay, fidgety, in her lap.
“Because of Justin. He—he asked me to come.” I looked nervously at the shrine over the fireplace, briefly at Justin and then back to Angela. She seemed tense now, as though she might be wishing she had a phone handy, so she could dial 911, or calculating her chances of escape before I went berserk and struck her down with a lamp or something.
“That’s impossible,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“Not really.”
Angela flushed with anger. “I saw his body. I buried him. If this is some kind of con...”
I shook my head. “I don’t want anything from you, Mrs. Braydaven. I’m just here because Justin asked me to tell you—”
“That I love her,” Justin said quickly, stretching his arms far from his sides. “This much. All the way to forever and back.”
I put the water bottle—still unopened—down on a coaster on the coffee table and mimicked the gesture. “He loves you this much,” I said. “All the way to forever and back.”
Angela began to cry, softly, silently, and with a desolation that made me want to weep, too.
“And then she’d always say back,” Justin went on with an eagerness that tore at my heart, “‘I love you twice that much.’”
I choked up a little, repeating that part.
Angela cried harder, and then she asked essentially the same question Helen Erland had when I’d told her I could see Gillian. “Why isn’t he in heaven? He was such a good boy.”
“He’s waiting for Pepper,” I said, my eyes wet. So much for the artfully applied mascara.
“Pepper?” Angela echoed.
“The dog wants to die,” I said. “He’s old, and he’s in a lot of pain. But he’s hanging on because—because you need him so much.”
Angela sat in silence for a few long moments. Then she spoke to the dog. “Pepper,” she said gently. “Come.”
He lifted his muzzle off my lap and walked stiffly over to her, tail wagging slowly. Even that seemed to be an effort.
Angela Braydaven took his head between her hands and looked deep into his eyes. “If you have to go,” she told him quietly, “it’s all right. I’ll be fine on my own, I promise.”
Now Justin was crying, too, and so was I.
Angela caressed the faithful old dog’s ears for a while, then eased him back a little so she could stand. Without looking at me—I might not even have been there—she made a slow, complete turn. “Justin, are you here?”
“Tell her I am,” Justin urged.
“Yes,” I said. “He’s here.”
Angela spread her arms wide. “I love you this much,” she said. “All the way to forever and back.”
“Tell her I love her twice that much,” Justin said.
I did.
Angela nodded, as though resolving something within herself, turned, went to the mantel, took the votive candles in her hands, one by one, and blew out the flames. Stood with her back to the room, spine straight, staring at the assembled memorial to her son.
I rose, patted Pepper on the head once more and left the house as quietly as I could. Justin stayed behind. He couldn’t speak to Angela, but it didn’t matter. There are goodbyes that run too deep for words, and this was one of them.
* * *
“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?” Jolie demanded when I got back to Greer’s place and let myself into the main house. She was dressed for work, purse and cell phone in hand. “You’ve got mascara all over your face. And what’s with the loan-officer getup?”
“Never mind,” I said. “How’s Greer?”
“Not good,” Jolie replied. “And I can’t sit with her today or tonight, Moje. Sweetie’s probably digested my new couch by now, and I do have a job.” Sweetie was Jolie’s dog, a mixed-breed pound fugitive roughly the size of a Shetland pony and possessed of a profound dislike for yours truly.
I swiped self-consciously at my cheeks with the backs of my hands and sniffled, still making the emotional shift from the Braydaven visit to Greer Central. “Chill,” I said. “I’ll take it from here.”
Take it where? That was the question of the hour.
To Shiloh, Montana?
It was, as Alex had maintained, the logical place to start. I guess I knew, even then, that Greer wasn’t going to be forthcoming with any helpful details, and, besides, if she really was a suspect in Alex’s murder, she wouldn’t be allowed to leave Arizona. There was still the funeral to get through, too, and I couldn’t leave Gillian.
What I needed, I thought, pushing back my bangs, was a paying client. I get cynical when I’m stressed.
“Where is Greer?” I asked, trying to sound like a person who could cope.
“On the patio, crying,” Jolie said. “The erstwhile Mrs. Pennington called first thing this morning. She wants to make all the funeral arrangements. I say, let her. But Greer’s in a state. In fact, I think she’s working herself into a nervous breakdown.”
I nodded grimly. Squared my shoulders and headed for the patio.
I hadn’t even gotten all the way across the entry hall, though, when Jolie stopped me with a tersely whispered, “Wait a second!”
I stopped, turned.
Jolie took a few steps toward me. “Something else has happened,” she said, eyeing me with suspicious concern. “You look as though all the blood’s been drained out of you and replaced with skim milk.”
I swallowed, already rifling through my personal issues, trying to decide what to share and what to keep to myself. Jolie knew I saw ghosts, and she was a believer, due to a direct experience with Nick in the kitchen at my apartment, not to mention my dead cat, Chester, but it wasn’t something we talked about a lot. “I saw Alex Pennington this morning,” I said, sotto voce. “He believes his son, Jack, killed him, using a gun that belongs to Greer.”
For a moment I expected Jolie’s two jillion shining mahogany braids to stand out from her head as though electrified, shooting blue sparks. “What?”
“Don’t make me repeat it, Jolie,” I said. “It was hard enough to say the first time.”
By then, Jolie was practically nose-to-nose with me. “What else did he say?”
“That he died broke,” I said. “And that he knew about the blackmail.” I left out the part about Shiloh, Montana, and diagnosis: borderline sociopath.
Greer was self-absorbed. She was definitely high maintenance. But she wasn’t a sociopath, borderline or otherwise.
“There’s no money?” Jolie asked.
“No money,” I confirmed. “He went through a chunk of it trying to get Greer out of the jam she’s in. Had some tied up in real estate investments, overseen by Jack Pennington. There may or may not be a life insurance policy—Jack is going to collect on one—but according to Alex, Greer’ll be a bag lady when the fiscal dust settles.”
Jolie took a few minutes to absorb the implications. “Sistah,” she said, “is not coming to live with Sweetie and me!”
“If Tucker can’t prove Jack Pennington shot Alex, Greer may wind up in the state penitentiary,” I said pointedly. “Let’s get past that before we start arguing about who has to take her in.”
“Mojo?” Greer’s voice sounded small, tentative and very nearby. “Is that
you?”
“I’m out of here,” Jolie said, and booked it for the front door.
“It’s me,” I called back to Greer as cheerfully as I could. It was only about ten o’clock, but I already felt wrung out and used up—relaying I-love-you-this-much messages between a dead boy and his mother will do that to a person. And don’t even get me started on the dying dog.
Greer appeared in one of the three eighteen-foot arched doorways trisecting the entry hall, the dining room behind her. She wore jeans, a T-shirt with one sleeve cut away to accommodate her cast, and the kind of plastic flip-flops Walgreens sells for $1.99.
I hadn’t seen her dressed like that in years, and frankly, the sight took me straight back to the bus-station coffee shop in Boise, where, with Lillian, I’d first met Greer. She’d worn her hair in a blue Mohawk then—a look that definitely wouldn’t fly in Scottsdale—and she’d had piercings, too. But some element of her appearance, besides the wardrobe, was the same.
I decided it was the look of pure terror in her eyes.
I heard Alex’s voice again. But if I had to hazard a diagnosis, I’d say she’s a borderline sociopath.
He’d been wrong about that. He had to have been wrong. Was there a Damn Fool’s Guide to Identifying the Sociopaths in Your Life? I was pretty sure there wasn’t, but I had skimmed a convincing book once, wherein the author maintained that one out of every four people qualified.
It shed a new light on neighborhood poker games and garden clubs. Not to mention Brownie troops and church socials.
I jumped off that thought train and rolled down the metaphorical bank beside the tracks, dizzy when I landed.
“You okay?” I asked Greer, because nothing more sensible came to me right away, and it was my turn to talk.
“How can I be ‘okay’?” Greer demanded, flailing her one good arm. “My husband is dead. And the police probably think I killed him.”
I’m not proud of it, but I wondered in that moment if I’d have to spend my recently acquired nest egg on defense lawyers for Greer. If what Alex had said about her financial condition was true, and I had no reason to think it wasn’t, she wouldn’t be able to raise the money.
Then I decided I was getting ahead of myself.
Greer wasn’t the killer.
Jack Pennington was.
Probably.
All I had to do was make sure somebody—preferably Tucker—proved it.
“You haven’t been formally charged with anything, Greer,” I reminded her, approaching and taking her by the elbow to steer her back out to the patio. She and I needed to talk about Shiloh, Montana, and about the blackmail, whether she liked it or not. “The police question everybody when someone is murdered, especially those closest to the victim.”
Greer’s eyes were awash in tears.
I guided her through the dining room, then the kitchen and then to the umbrella-covered table where she’d been sitting, according to Jolie, when I got back from Angela Braydaven’s place.
“Do you own a gun, Greer?” I asked, once I’d sat her down and taken a chair for myself.
She swallowed. “You sound like the police,” she accused. She paused, squinted at me. “What happened to your face?”
“I’ve been crying,” I said. “Stop stalling. Do you own a gun?”
“Is it over Tucker Darroch?” Greer persisted, still stuck on the mascara stains. “I told you you shouldn’t get involved with a married man.”
“He’s divorced,” I said, rising above the temptation to point out to Greer that Alex had still been married to Beverly when she’d snagged him. “Answer my question.”
“A .45,” she said grudgingly. “Automatic.”
“Do you have it?” I know, I know, it sounds like a dumb question, since if said lethal weapon had been found, the police would hold it as evidence, but I needed to know what she’d say.
“It disappeared weeks ago,” Greer said. “And I reported it missing as soon as I knew it was gone.”
I could ask Tucker later if the gun had been found, examined by the lab and stashed in some evidence room. And if Greer had filed a report when it disappeared. “How come it never came up in conversation that you had a .45?” I inquired.
Greer hesitated, bit her lower lip. “It was my gun, wasn’t it?” she whispered, skirting my question yet again. “Alex was shot with my gun. My fingerprints will be all over it. The real killer probably wore gloves—”
“Take a breath, Greer. I know you didn’t kill Alex, and I’ll find a way to prove it. Right now, you have to tell me about Shiloh.”
She looked as though I’d punched her in the stomach. “Shiloh,” she repeated woodenly, and that fevered, hunted glint was back in her eyes.
“Your old hometown,” I said, and though I was going for casual, I probably sounded accusatory. “I can find out everything I need to know about the place in five minutes, just by logging on to the internet, but I’d rather hear it from you first.”
Greer rocked in her chair, huddled in on herself, trying to disappear. “Who told you?”
“That’s beside the point,” I said. “What happened in Shiloh?”
“N-nothing.”
I started to get up. “Okay, fair enough. I’ll just check out Google awhile.”
“Don’t,” Greer pleaded.
I hovered between the chair seat and my full height, with my knees bent. “One more time, Greer,” I said. “What happened in Shiloh?”
She sighed.
I sat, even though I wasn’t sure I’d won the little standoff. Between last night’s sex marathon, Alex’s visit to my kitchen and the interlude with Justin, his mom and Pepper, my legs were noodly. “You told me you did something terrible,” I reminded her. “What was it?”
“They’ll kill me if I tell.”
This job takes a lot of patience. Sometimes a lot more than I happen to have on hand. I managed to refrain from getting Greer by the throat. “Who is ‘they’?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have some idea,” I insisted.
“You should wash your face,” Greer said. “It can’t be good for your skin, all that smudged mascara.”
“Greer.”
“I really don’t know, okay? Someone must have seen—or stumbled across something—”
“Tell me what you did.”
The phone rang, and since the receiver was sitting in the middle of the patio table, Greer reached for it.
I stopped her by grabbing her wrist. “Let voice mail pick up,” I said.
“It could be the blackmailers,” Greer said, and she looked so frightened, so frantic, that I let go of her so she could take the call. “Greer Pennington,” she chimed, as though it were an ordinary day, and Alex might stroll in with an offering of conciliatory jewelry at any moment.
“Put it on speaker,” I said, expecting resistance.
Greer surprised me by thumbing the speaker button immediately.
“This is Jack Pennington,” the caller said flatly, and a chill went through me. The voice of a probable murderer, and not just any cold-blooded killer, either. The man might well have rubbed out his own father, over money. “The police won’t release Dad’s body right away, so we’ll have to move the funeral up a week. Not that that will matter to you, since you’ll probably be in jail.”
Greer opened her mouth, but no words came out, just a barely audible croak. It was literally all I could do not to turn the tables on Jack Pennington, and tell him I had reason to think he’d been the one to empty the magazine of an automatic pistol into Alex’s chest. I didn’t want to give him the options of hiding evidence, skipping town, or shutting me up for good, along with Greer and possibly even Jolie.
“Greer?” Jack demanded. “Are you there?”
“I did
n’t kill your father,” Greer said.
He laughed, the bastard. He actually laughed. “Of course you did, Greer,” he said. “Or did you hire your sister the detective to do it? That would amount to the same thing, you know. You’d still be charged with murder one.”
Another chill whispered against my nape. It was ludicrous to be afraid—I hadn’t killed Alex, though God knows I’d wanted to, more than once. But I was afraid. What if Jack found a way to frame me for the shooting? Fingerprints or none, the police probably didn’t think Greer could have strong-armed Alex out into the desert and sprayed him with hollow-points, especially with one arm in a cast.
I couldn’t have strong-armed him, either, The Damn Fool’s Guide to Self-Defense for Women notwithstanding. But I could have jumped him in the parking garage beneath his office building, thunking him on the head with something hard, like the butt of a pistol, bound his hands with duct tape and put a bag over his head. It would have been a struggle, but I could have hoisted his inert form into the trunk of a car, driven him out into the desert, slipped on a pair of gloves and let him have it with the .45.
Motive?
Revenge, possibly. I’d done Alex’s medical billings for a long time, and he’d fired me recently, when he found out I’d been snooping, at Greer’s behest, into his extramarital escapades. On top of that, he’d accused me, in front of television cameras no less, of murdering my own parents. Even though the actual perpetrators had been arrested and charged, with trials pending, there were probably a lot of people out there who still believed I’d somehow picked up the gun, held it in a five-year-old’s hands and fired the fatal shots.
“Don’t call here again, Jack,” I heard Greer say, and realized I’d been woolgathering when I should have been listening. “And I will be at the funeral. Alex was my husband.”
“You were setting him up—” Jack began, but Greer ended the call, slammed the receiver down.
“About Shiloh,” I said, calmer now that I’d had a few moments to recover from my brief foray into raging paranoia.
“I’m going to throw up!” Greer cried, and dashed into the house before I could stop her.
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