“No. There’s no change in either of their conditions. Could you close the store? We need privacy.”
I turned the sign in the front door from OPEN to CLOSED. “I’m all ears.”
His legs practically buckled beneath him as he sank down into the tall stool. Robbie couldn’t meet my gaze. A sick tremor started in my hands. “What is it? Detweiler? Is he okay? Was he shot?”
This was my worst fear, an accident in the line of duty.
“No.”
I breathed again. I knew it wouldn’t be about Anya or the school would have called.
“Then what?” I leaned toward him, as though I could pry it out of his mouth.
“The Illinois state troopers’ Crime Scene Investigators found bullet casings scattered around Brenda’s body. The lab ran tests. They’re a lot quicker than we are, but I guess since her dad’s a big contributor to the local politicos, this was a fast turnaround even for them.”
“So they have an idea what kind of gun was used to shoot her? That’s good, isn’t it? They might be able to trace the gun, right?” I was excited. Perhaps Anya and I wouldn’t need that extra patrol.
“Right.” Robbie sounded bleak.
“Why aren’t you happy about this?” I wondered if he was just tired. He’d had a rough couple of days, just as I had.
“You’re right. They can trace the bullets.”
“Good deal! Hot dog!” I stopped abruptly when I saw the misery written large on Robbie’s face.
“They came from Chad’s service revolver.”
twenty
“You’re kidding, right? There’s been a mistake. Or you’re joking around. I mean, that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Why would Detweiler shoot her? And with his own gun? That would be totally stupid. You know him. He’d never, ever do anything like that. Ever. Come on, Robbie. Get real.” I couldn’t even focus, the shock was so great. My stomach convulsed and I thought I’d vomit on the craft table, right then and there. Instead, I raced to the john, rinsed out my mouth and splashed my face with cold water. Then I grabbed a Coke for Robbie and a Diet Dr Pepper for me.
On second thought, I decided the artificial sweeteners might not be good for my baby, so I grabbed two regular Cokes. Robbie gratefully took his from me and turned his head as the pop-tab sizzled.
“As much as I find this hard to believe, the evidence speaks for itself. The lab couldn’t have made a mistake. They are spent casings from bullets fired out of Chad Detweiler’s gun. The marks prove it. And rational people can do irrational things in the heat of the moment. It happens every day of the week.”
“What?” I yelped, and I spilled a bit of my Coke. “Robbie, you don’t believe that for a minute!”
“You’re right; I don’t. But what else can I think? There’s no question that the striations on the casings are a match. Maybe Chad thought her body wouldn’t be found. With that electric blanket around it, the time of death is nearly impossible to pin down. If a real estate agent hadn’t wandered in, Brenda’s body might have been there for months. Decomposing. Making it harder and harder to tell what happened. Maybe in the heat of the moment he forgot to search for the spent casings. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.”
“But not to Detweiler! You know him, Robbie. He’d never do anything like this. Ever!”
“Be that as it may, they are planning to take him into custody about now.” Robbie rubbed at a spot on the leg of his navy police uniform. Even after the spot disappeared, he kept rubbing the same place, over and over.
I hopped up and down like a deranged bunny rabbit, all the while waving my arms as if to get his attention. “You can’t let this happen. You have to stop them! A cop in jail? You know how dangerous that’ll be for him? He’d never do anything like this! You know it! You have to do something! Robbie? Are you listening?”
I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. Correction: Tried to shake him. He’s too big and solid for me to have bothered.
Batting away my hands, he said, “Kiki, here’s the thing. You can’t imagine how upset he was when he heard you’d been hurt. He was furious. I’ve never seen him like that. Ever. At the scene, two state troopers had to restrain him. He even took a swing at one of them! Chad’s usually one of my more level-headed officers, but even I was worried about him when he found out what happened.” Robbie paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. “And threatening Brenda when the Crime Scene guys were there? It wasn’t smart. Not at all. Chad was definitely on a rampage.”
“Maybe you misunderstood him. What exactly did he say?” I perched on the stool so I could steady myself by gripping the craft table. Stars swam across my field of vision. This was too much to handle coming on top of Dodie’s meltdown.
Suddenly my environment seemed silly. Trite. Meaningless. The pretty paper. The cute embellishments. What was I doing here? The guy I loved was going to jail. For life. Falsely accused. Whatever the ballistics testing said, I knew that Detweiler couldn’t have hurt Brenda. That wasn’t like him. No way.
But then again, I’d only seen him angry twice. And I couldn’t imagine how upset he must have been over Brenda’s participation in tricking me—and in the shootout at the slough. Worse yet, I shivered as I imagined how he might have reacted when he realized that she’d endangered our baby.
“Have the Detweilers hired an attorney for him? I mean, they need to get him out as soon as possible.”
“I’ve talked to them. They’re doing everything they can, but their resources are limited. You heard about the second mortgage on the farm? Because Brenda’s father co-signed, Chad’s folks are between a rock and a hard place. If they irritate Milton Kloss, he could call the loan. They would lose their home and the farm. If they don’t help their son, they’ll never be able to live with themselves. It’s an unholy mess.” Robbie ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick out like porcupine quills.
I tasted bile, and it choked me. “What about a public defender? Or someone who owes Detweiler a favor? Anyone who owes you one?”
“He’ll need an attorney who’s passed the bar exam in Illinois. My contacts are all here on the Missouri side.”
I buried my head in my hands.
Robbie tapped my shoulder. “Sometimes the only thing left is to pray. I know that sounds simple. I know it sounds like I’m giving up, but on more than one occasion in my career and my life, I’ve had to come to terms with the truth. We do what we can and we leave the rest to God. Try not to worry so much, because it’ll stress your baby. Say your prayers. Light a candle, and turn this over to the Lord.”
twenty-one
By the time Clancy and Laurel showed up to relieve me, I had gone berserk, returned to sanity, and broken down sobbing several times, going through those phases like a washing machine clicks its way through various cycles.
As they listened, I spit out the news about Brenda’s death and how the bullet casings matched those from Detweiler’s gun. If I’d been more in control of my emotions, I might have spoken more prudently, but I trusted both women and I couldn’t restrain my emotions. So I let it all out, the entire ugly mess, complete with the news that Detweiler had threatened Brenda in front of other cops. In the midst of my meltdown, my phone rang, but I didn’t recognize the number so I let it go to voice mail.
“Where’s Dodie?” asked Laurel, looking around.
“Horace came to get her. She was distraught and so was he!” That admission started a fresh round of tears as I explained what happened with our strange visitor.
“When it rains, it pours,” Clancy said. She isn’t a toucher, but she patted my shoulder awkwardly.
Laurel went to the refrigerator and brought me a bottle of cold water. “Text-message your sister and tell her I’m giving you a ride home. You need to lie down, sip a cup of chamomile tea, and chill out. Clancy can watch the store until I get back.”
I tried to argue, but
I was too tired—emotionally and physically—to put up much resistance. Although my manual dexterity is good, you’d never know it by watching me punch in a text message. There are more misspellings than a D-student’s term paper. Eventually, I patched together a couple phrases that would make sense to Amanda.
I also checked the message on my phone. It was an accounting firm. Probably the person Horace had hired to do our books. Well, that person could take a number. Literally and figuratively.
Gracie needed to go for a walk before we put her in the car, so Laurel put the leash on my dog, and the three of us wandered along the broken concrete sidewalks in the transitional neighborhood where Time in a Bottle is located. As we ambled, Gracie dutifully peed and sniffed at every bush. When I wobbled, Laurel gripped my arm if I were a doddering old lady.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she said. “You’ll see.”
“Besides all this, Mert won’t even speak to me,” I whined.
“Aw, Mert’s like that. She gets mad and withdraws. But Johnny is going to get well. I just know it. When he does, she’ll relax.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Laurel stopped walking, which effectively prevented me from moving ahead. “Kiki, you know he will. You have to have faith that he’s going to be all right! Here’s the deal: You aren’t helping anyone by being a basket case, girlfriend. No one. Not yourself and certainly not anyone who loves you. Detweiler and Dodie both need you. There’s a lot to be done, but none of us can move in the right direction if you don’t get your act together. So knock it off, okay? As for Johnny? Send him positive energy, not your doubts and worries. And Mert? Leave her alone. She’ll come around in her own good time. She’s a slow processor, a person who needs to mull over her emotions and thoughts before finding closure.”
“But you don’t know what I’ve been through!”
“No, and you don’t know what I’ve been through, either.”
“What?” This certainly wasn’t the answer I expected. At first I thought I’d heard her wrong. Her hazel eyes flashed with anger, and I stepped away from her in shock. Laurel is typically so kind, so accommodating, that I wondered, “Who is this? Has she been hijacked by an alien?”
But, no, it was a new side of Laurel, that’s all. There she stood in her skinny jeans and her azure and maroon blouson top with that long hair of hers spilling over her shoulders like a shawl of palomino gold. Yep, it was Laurel, only she lacked her customary smile.
“Look, you aren’t the only one who’s had tough luck in this world. Leave it at that. This isn’t the time for the story of my life. Point being: All of us go through stuff. Hard stuff. Challenges. Disappointments. Things that should never happen, happen. Stuff that’s unfair. Stuff we didn’t ask for. Big deal. At the end of the day, it’s all about moving on. Do you wear a big, stinking sign around your neck that says, ‘Poor me’? Or do you pull up your big girl panties and keep going? It’s so very, very easy to play the victim. To want sympathy. You know what? Victims are weenies. Weak people. Something happens to them and then they put out the welcome mat and invite other yucky stuff to happen over and over again. They never move forward. They are defined by the crap that happened. Victims play an endless loop tape that says life is unfair, especially to me. Is that what you want? Or are there other things you’d like? A happy home? A loving man? Friends? Or do you want to hang onto your victimhood and drag it around like a security blanket, using it as an excuse for a miserable existence?”
I had never heard her talk this way. With a bolt of surprise, I realized that I’d never looked past her beauty. If you had asked me about her, I would have said, “She’s as pretty as a centerfold,” but I wouldn’t have commented on her steady personality or her habit of turning lemons into lemonade.
I’d never really been fair to her. They say, “Don’t judge a book by the cover,” and that witticism is intended to keep us from discounting folks with less than desirable appearances. But the opposite is also true. We judge extremely attractive people and decide they are stupid. Or vacuous. Or superficial.
None of that was true about Laurel, but I’d never spent much time really getting to know her.
“Let’s get back.” She tightened her grip on my elbow and we resumed our walk.
I didn’t like what she said. Didn’t like it at all. She was calling me a whiner when I had a perfect right to feel sorry for myself.
Even as I tried to shake off her comments, deep down, I knew she was right. I was making a choice. I could either drag around my garbage bag of hurts or let it go and move on.
After all, Dodie and Detweiler needed me.
twenty-two
I had intended for Laurel to drive me home immediately after our walk, but Rebekkah had shown up at the store while we were out. Clancy convinced her to wait for our return. Opening a burgundy faux-leather book in the middle of the worktable, Rebekkah pointed to one specific photo in a line of formal portraits. “That’s her. The person who told Mom that Nathan’s death was her fault. At least that’s the girl Mom identified.”
I grabbed a magnifying glass and bent closer. “Yes. I think so. Her hair is different, and she’s older, but I think that’s her.”
I asked Laurel if we could postpone leaving until after I’d talked with Rebekkah. Clancy got busy straightening the rubber stamps in their rack, while Laurel grabbed a handful of promotional postcards and took them to the front counter to address to customers.
Pulling her bushy hair back from her face, Rebekkah leaned over the yearbook, located a dog-eared page, and flipped to another photo, a candid picture of the girl chatting with a group of students. The description read, “Cherise Landon, class president, discusses issues with her constituency.”
“Cherise Landon,” I said. “That’s definitely the girl who dropped by.”
Rebekkah nodded. “Mom recognized her immediately. Didn’t even have to put on her glasses. Nathan had a huge crush on Cherise, and while she was nice to him, she was out of his league, and he knew it. There’s always an ‘in crowd,’ isn’t there? The best-looking kids. The ones with athletic ability or lots of money.”
“Is she Shep Landon’s daughter?” I’d heard the name on TV.
“Right. He’s the senior partner at Landon, Paisley and Humphreys, the law firm that advertises on TV. She was class president, as you can see, also the May Day Queen. The All-American girl that every guy wanted to date. Nathan followed her around like a lovesick puppy.”
“She was there the night he died?”
Rebekkah reached into the hip pocket of her cargo pants. “Uh-huh. This is a list of the kids who were there. At least, it’s the official list.”
“Meaning?” I read the cramped writing.
“Meaning that I suppose they could have lied and omitted a name, but I don’t think so. By the time the authorities arrived, the kids were all sober. Their stories all matched. Since no one was to blame there wasn’t any reason to lie about who was there. Also, they’d taken one car, so if there was another person, how did he or she get home?”
“What exactly did they say? About what happened?”
Her brownish-green eyes swam in a puddle of tears that she hurriedly blinked back. “Do I have to?”
“Look, I hate to ask, but I need to know if I’m going to try to figure out what gives here.”
“It started with a party at Spenser Sutherland’s house. There were five kids. Nathan, Spenser, Cherise, Tiffany Perotti, and Jeff Horton. I mean, maybe there were more kids at the start of the evening, but most of them had left before someone suggested going for a ride in Jeff’s car. His parents had just bought him a Pontiac GT in bright orange, and he loved showing it off. They piled in and drove around St. Louis for about an hour. Then, they got the idea to drive to the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area, in the Meramec River watershed.”
“Why there?”
; “Because Jeff had heard the road leading to the gravel pit was haunted. It was all the rage at school. Everyone wanted to get in touch with dead spirits. Personally, I think the boys wanted to put a scare into the girls. To spook them. On the way to the conservation area, they decided to buy a case of beer. They stopped at a convenience store and found a customer who agreed to make a purchase for them. They also bought sandwiches and chips.”
“Was Nathan a drinker?”
“He would have a beer or two at parties, but booze didn’t agree with him. Gave him headaches. Mainly he’d grab a can at the start of the evening and sip it all night. You know how it is. He wanted to fit in. I mean, he got teased a lot because he was little, like Dad, see? And smart. Really smart.”
“They drove to the gravel pit and then what?”
“There was a full moon. After telling ghost stories, the boys challenged each other to jump off the cliff and touch the moon. Supposedly, they went several rounds without incident and then it was Nathan’s turn. There was a thunk, a splash, and nothing else. Cherise grabbed a flashlight out of Jeff’s car. The girls trained it on the surface of the water. The boys swam out, but couldn’t find Nathan.”
“When was the last time you saw Cherise?”
Rebekkah closed the yearbook. “Four years ago. Her last day of high school. She got into Princeton. Studied international finance, I think. Must have just graduated last month.”
“But why visit your mother today? Especially …” I stopped. I didn’t know exactly what Rebekkah knew about Dodie’s condition.
“When Mom’s dying?” Rebekkah’s voice stumbled over that last word, giving it the harsh treatment it deserved. “Dad and I went to our appointment with the hospice worker this morning. She’s coming to talk with all of you later this week. See, we don’t want any misguided heroics.”
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