Opening the door revealed a ham-like fist, still raised in mid-swing. David restrained Johnson so he wouldn’t fly through the opening for an early breakfast.
“David Wilcott?” The resolute fist and a voice to match belonged to a tall, good-looking man with steely eyes.
“Yes?”
A badge was flashed, then folded in its case and stowed. David noted a pair of handcuffs on his belt, as well as a blinking walkie-talkie.
“Detective Ormsby, Shady Grove P.D. I’d like to talk to you about your whereabouts yesterday.”
While Detective Ormsby was in plainclothes, David could see several uniformed policemen and ambulance personnel moving about the common area. “What happened? Did something happen?” he asked. And even without his eyes on Ormsby’s face, David caught the flinch of irritation that immediately tightened the detective’s features.
“Yes, something happened. Clearly. Now, is this a good time to talk? Or would you like me to send out for some pancakes and coffee so you can better pay attention?”
David’s eyes again found his. And while pancakes and coffee did indeed sound better than continuing this conversation, David understood that the offer had been made with distinct irony. “Now is fine,” he replied coldly. “Perhaps you could give me a minute to put my dog in the other room.” Johnson was still trying to thrust himself outside.
“That’s fine. Do it,” said Ormsby.
David closed a recalcitrant Johnson into the bedroom, and then returned to the front door. Ormsby’s eyes intently locked on his, and an almost palpable aura of hostility began to ripple between the two men. David knew what he didn’t like about Ormsby; the authoritarian swagger of testosterone-fueled masculinity had never been an attribute he’d found tolerable. The man’s chiseled handsomeness only enhanced the antipathy David felt toward him.
And Ormsby, looking downwards at the somewhat shorter-than-average David, saw what he despised more than anything: a man who was worse than mediocre in every possible way. Physicality, intelligence, income, lifestyle. What could the world come to, populated with purposeless weaklings like this?
A notebook came out. An automatic pencil as well, all without breaking eye contact.
“What do you do?”
David blinked, and cleared his throat. He felt as if he needed to hold his own here, but was already losing before he’d even begun. “I’m a website architect. I design… I build and design websites. For companies that hire me… to do so.”
“Do you work from here?”
Another blink. “Yes, some of the time. If the company is local, I split my time between the business and here. I enjoy getting a feel for the company and its – ”
“Were you working here yesterday?”
David shook his head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs. “Yesterday?”
The detective’s words were laden with disdain. “Yesterday. Wednesday. The day before today. Were you working here yesterday?”
David had to think. “Yes. No, not the entire day. I was at the Culpepper Mills corporate offices for a while.”
“When?”
“I… I took the trolley downtown around ten. They have a space there for me to work, and I stayed until twelve thirty or so. I ate lunch in the public square with Johnson, and then we wandered around, had some dessert, and then I suppose I got back here around three fifteen or three thirty.”
Ormsby almost sneered. “Sounds like a hard life. I might need to speak to this Johnson. Do you have a contact number?”
David couldn’t help but smirk. “I just put him in the bedroom. Would you like me to let him out so you can question him?”
A tightening of the face again. A stiff inhalation. “No. But I will be needing to confirm your alibi with someone at Culpepper Mills. What other companies have you architected websites for?”
“Alibi? Why don’t you tell me why I need an alibi?” David was suddenly angry, pissed that at six in the morning he was standing in his apartment doorway in boxers and socks, being questioned like a felon while an arrogant cop taunted him with his own words.
“I’ll tell you what I want to tell you,” was snapped back. A hand slid toward the cuffs. “Why don’t you answer the question, Mr. Wilcott?”
David breathed deeply, trying not to avert his eyes from the detective’s. “I’ve designed over fifteen websites. Ten were for companies that hired me online, five are local. Culpepper, Jack Sprague for his real estate business, Sally’s Flower Cart, the Shady Grove library, and Gâteaupia, which if it matters is where I ate dessert yesterday before I returned here to work for the rest of the evening.”
“Why did you take the trolley?”
“Excuse me?”
“There’s plenty of parking in downtown. Wednesday morning, no traffic, Culpepper’s office is one block off the trolley route. Why didn’t you drive?”
David shook his head in incredulity. “I don’t own a car! How could any of this, these useless questions of yours, possibly have anything to do with – ”
“Murder.” David’s jaw dropped. “Murder, Mr. Wilcott. And in a murder investigation, no piece of information is useless.”
David’s eyes shot to the common area again. He peered around Ormsby’s bulk, and saw that, sure enough, a stretcher with a body bag on it was being carefully guided out of an apartment door. Apartment 1D. “Janice?” he asked aloud, disbelieving.
“No.” Ormsby’s head shook. “Not Janice. She found him, though.” He was scrutinizing David’s face, searching and studying.
David retreated, and his eyes found the detective’s again. “Heck?” he asked, puzzled.
A slow nod. “Yes. Hector Vance, age thirty-seven. Did you know him?”
“Barely. He was sometimes here, sometimes not. I don’t even know if he officially lives here.”
“Lived.”
“Fine, lived. I didn’t know if he lived here.”
“The sole tenant on the lease for 1D is Janice Templeton. You’re acquainted with her?”
“Yes,” David answered.
“Detective?” A meatball of a man in an ill-fitting suit had waddled up.
Ormsby turned. “Steve?”
“They need you back in there.” The man didn’t even glance at David. “Found some things you should check out.”
The notebook was flipped shut, the pencil vanished. Ormsby’s glare was back. “I’ll have more questions for you,” he said to David. “Stick around.”
“All day?” David asked. “All week?” He’d tried not to be overly flippant, but…
Slowly, slowly, Ormsby crossed his arms. “Just don’t go crawling into some hole where I can’t find you, got it?”
And then he was gone, trailing Steve around the perimeter of the common area toward Janice’s apartment.
David took in the entire scene, and waved awkwardly at a group of neighbors gazing down from the second floor walkway. He could hear Johnson whimpering and knocking his head against the bedroom door.
No use attempting to go back to sleep. He let Johnson out, and the two of them began to get ready for their day.
Chapter Four
Shady Grove’s downtown district was charming and relaxed, almost appearing as if it had been engineered to exude a nostalgic, small-town ambience. A public square anchored the western end, majestic trees and wood-chip playgrounds and an outdoor amphitheater with a covered stage offering a social center to the town. The library and the town hall bookended the northern and southern midpoints of the square, with the police station, a stone Episcopal Church, and other esteemed public institutions dotted about like perfectly constructed hobby shop models.
Stretching east from the public square was a two-block-deep swath of businesses. Not a mall in sight, but a few enterprising chains had recently begun to slip through the cracks of local proprietorship. Bordered on the north by Willow Avenue and on the south by Oak, with Larch Avenue bisecting the middle, this wealth of various establishments extended from Third Street all the
way down to Seventh, where the town immediately began to peter out, taking only two subsequent blocks to transition into farmland.
No one knew for sure which variety of tree had provided the original grove for which Shady Grove had been named, but with Maple, Gum, and Birch Avenues bridging the gap between Oak and Smithfield, it was anybody’s guess.
The foothills north of the town began to set up shop a touch early, midway through the public square. And while this made for a natural locale for the outdoor amphitheater, with the audience backing toward the corner of Willow and Second and the stage set cozily into the curvature of the land, it also made for a wonderful view of Shady Grove from The Restful Nook. And The Restful Nook is where David and Genevieve truly met, three months after David moved into the Rainbow Arms.
“No Johnson today?” had been the question lobbed down a hallway as David exited a room, irritated and in a hurry to catch the trolley that would depart Willow Avenue in a few minutes.
“Huh? Oh, hi. No, no dogs allowed.” He certainly recognized the woman, but couldn’t place her.
“Oh! I suppose I should have known that, but it’s never been an issue for me.”
She had taken several steps toward him, and as he took in the delicate cheekbones, the sensuous eyebrows, and the hints of warmth behind the businesslike exterior, it clicked: she worked at Gâteaupia! It had instantly become David’s favorite dessert haunt when he’d discovered it a few weeks before.
“You don’t know my name, do you, David?” But she was amused, not upset.
He attempted a grin. “I do. I… uh – ”
“Genevieve.”
“Ah. Pronounced like that. That I didn’t know.” His grin was widening, becoming honest as he realized that she actually didn’t care.
“And do you recall where we’ve run into each other, David?” she threw out coyly. The warmth was melting her habitual cool, and David understood that Genevieve enjoyed challenges. Especially when she was challenging others.
“Gâteaupia,” he beamed. “You’re… You’re a counter girl there.”
This last response elicited a genuine peal of laughter. David glanced around them, nervous suddenly that he really had put his foot in it. There was no audience present for his faux pas, though.
“All right,” she managed to say, “I’ve been called many things in my life, some of them not so complimentary, but that’s a new one.”
David began running synonyms through his head, as fast as he could: server, salesperson, waitress, attendant, menial, drudge… Not one of them was appropriate, or any better than counter girl.
Her hand reached out to gently touch his arm. A smile followed. “Being a counter girl would be a relief at times,” she said quietly. “I actually own it, though.” Her hand withdrew. “So. Who are you here to visit?”
Relieved that the subject had been changed so smoothly, David glanced back down the hall. “My Grandpa. Henry Wilcott. He’s actually the reason I chose to move to Shady Grove.”
“Oh, so that’s why we’d never seen you before a few weeks ago!”
He smiled. “Your cakes are pretty much the best cakes I’ve ever eaten.”
A hand rose to brush hair off her cheek. David liked her hair; it was strawberry blonde with subdued highlights, usually tightly wrapped in a bun, but today hanging loose below her shoulders. Genevieve smelled sweet, too, like brown sugar with a dusting of cinnamon.
“Thank you,” she said. “We try. Is your Grandpa pleased that you moved here?”
David couldn’t help but grimace. “I’m not sure. He’s… angry a lot of the time. All of the time, to be honest.”
“He doesn’t like being old?”
“Who would?” But David shook his head, unable to make light of it. “The last time I’d seen him was five years ago. He lived down on Gum then, in the same house in which he’d lived for over fifty years. He was independent, a bit crusty, but content. My Grandma died a decade ago, and he’d been dating some, which he loved. Always younger women! He had a fall, though, about two years ago while he was pruning his trees, and that was it for the independence. One knee went out, and then the other, and everything else in his body apparently decided to follow suit.”
Genevieve’s eyes hadn’t left his. “That’s sad.”
“I know. I try to make him happier, but it’s tough. I’ve even brought him some of that Bourbon Chocolate Tipsy Cake of yours, which is his absolute favorite, but then he just starts going on about all the things he can’t eat anymore.”
“Oh! That’s really sad.”
David couldn’t help but grin. “We tried playing cards today. When I was a kid, he always used to let me win at Uno and War. It made me happy, even though I hadn’t known at the time he was doing it. Today, I let him win – bottom dealing and such – but nothing will make him happy. He’s just… He just wants it to be over, I think.”
Genevieve glanced away from him, toward a picture window that overlooked the town, and David found himself doing the same. It was an incredible view, for The Restful Nook sat atop a low hill, cattycorner from the amphitheater in the public square. The multitude of trees appeared as a rolling carpet; a slight haze above the distant farmland induced a mystical aura; the square itself was humming with Saturday activities.
“May I ask who you’re here to visit?” David said without turning toward her.
“Abby Lowell,” she replied, also still gazing outside. “I call her my angel. She taught me art once, and when I opened Gâteaupia, she became one of my first customers. She told all of her friends that they had to come in and try my cakes, so they did. And then she told them to tell all of their friends. She’s bought cakes for schools, for her clubs, for her church, for everything, really. I’ve never had such a booster. I adore her, and I try to come every week to see her.”
“She doesn’t sound that old.”
“She’s not! She’s our age or younger, just stuck in a 76-year-old’s body.”
David turned to look at her, struck suddenly with a surge of admiration for this successful businesswoman who still made time for those people in her life who had helped her become successful. She was definitely a bit forbidding, but yet at the same time he wished he could have been more like her. Her confidence in herself, her obvious ability to choose a path and stride down it, remembering the steps she’d taken and not second-guessing each move, not making wrong moves that she would then spend years ruing.
Genevieve’s head tilted toward him. “Lydia’s going to be jealous. She thinks you’re cute.”
“Lydia?”
Again, she laughed. “The girl with the purple streak in her hair and a hummingbird tattooed on her shoulder.”
David couldn’t help but look delighted. Lydia was his favorite server at Gâteaupia. Bright eyes, a raunchy wit, a penchant for making every type of cake sound like the best type of cake.
“I think you’re cute, too,” Genevieve added. “And maybe I’ll see you in the store again sometime soon.”
She tapped his shoulder as she passed by, but her eyes lingered on his until she was a few feet away.
David decided that he could walk back to the Rainbow Arms instead of taking the trolley. He could think, and then perhaps he and Johnson could meander back into town for a piece of cake.
Chapter Five
Thirty-three hours after Detective Ormsby had so rudely awakened him with his barrage of knocks and brusque queries, David was enjoying the mid-afternoon sun in the courtyard. Johnson lay dozing by his feet; the fountain was murmuring pleasantly; his newspaper lay on the bench at his side, its contents perused, mulled over, and digested. Obviously, the story of Heck Vance’s killing hadn’t made the Thursday papers, but Friday’s edition was practically about nothing else.
David had worked at home on Thursday – Ormsby’s warning aside, it had been his original plan – but this morning, he’d spent several hours at the Culpepper Mills corporate offices, where both he with his questions and Johnson with his compa
nionable disposition were always welcome.
While the subject of the murder had indeed come up, no one at Culpepper had put together that David lived in the same building.
And David hadn’t volunteered this information to anyone.
The Shady Grove Courier was full of facts, speculation, paradoxes, and innuendo in equal measure, exactly what any self-respecting rag in any city, large or small, would print. Color pictures of Heck and the Rainbow Arms on page one to draw in the looky-loos, and then ambiguous quotes from Detective Ormsby, along with seemingly endless rehashes of the same information, on the inside.
Hector Vance lived with Janice Templeton at 565 Piston Avenue.
Heck Vance did not live at the Rainbow Arms, but with his sister-in-law in Greenville.
Janice Templeton was head cashier at the Bargain Bin at Willow and Eighth.
Janice Templeton worked as a waitress at The Hot Spot.
Heck Vance was a drug dealer.
Heck Vance worked for a drug dealer.
Glass hashish pipes had been found at the scene, along with vials, digital scales, and zipper storage bags.
A backpack belonging to the deceased had been found that contained drug paraphernalia, but no drugs had been discovered despite an exhaustive search of the premises.
The few facts that were apparently not in dispute are as follows: that Hector Vance, a 37-year-old man with an expired driver’s license and a slew of unpaid parking tickets, had expired himself in the kitchen of Apartment 1D of the Rainbow Arms. The back of his head had been stove-in by brute force with an as-yet undetermined weapon. The murder occurred sometime between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday. When Janice Templeton made the call to the police at 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night, she was initially the prime suspect. She was not considered a suspect after officers determined that she had been 240 miles away, visiting her mother in the northern part of the state, from Monday evening until she returned to Shady Grove approximately 52 hours later.
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