Fugitive Filling

by Jessica Beck

  “I’m not finished looking around out here,” I protested.

  “I didn’t mean this instant. We might as well be thorough. I’m finished in the kitchen, so it’s time we started on the main living space. You take that end, and I’ll start over there.”

  The first thing I did was to glance through the magazines that were neatly arranged on the small coffee table by the most comfortable chair in the place. To my surprise, a small piece of stationery fell out from between two magazines.

  I opened it up and read the contents. “Thanks again for dinner. Next time it’s on me.”

  It was signed with a signature familiar to me, Trish Granger, the owner of the Boxcar Grill.

  “Did you even know they were friends?” Jake asked me as he leaned over my shoulder. He must have seen me frowning as I read the note and joined me to see what I’d discovered. I hadn’t even realized he was behind me.

  “I didn’t have any idea,” I said. “Is there any way this is a clue?”

  “To her murder?” Jake asked me, clearly surprised by my question. “Suzanne, you’re not accusing Trish of killing Teresa Logan, are you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m just wondering if we should show this to St…the chief.”

  “My guess is that it’s probably not relevant,” Jake said. “But then again, what could it hurt? It’s not as though we’re accusing Trish of anything other than sneaking around your back sharing a meal with someone else.”

  I knew that he’d meant it playfully, but unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to react that way. “Jake, Trish is welcome to have any friend that she’d like. I do things with Grace all the time without including her, so why should she tell me every last person she shares a meal with when I’m not around?”

  “Hey, I was just kidding. Take it easy,” he said as he stroked my shoulder lightly. “She probably didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to upset you. After all, it was no secret to anyone in April Springs about the way you felt about Teresa.”

  “If Trish knew that I felt that way, then why did she go behind my back and hang out with Teresa?” I asked. Even as I said it, I felt as though I’d reverted to high school again, not a pleasant thing. “I cannot believe how small I just sounded. Forget I said it.”

  “Why? Suzanne, you’re allowed to be petty every now and then, just like the rest of us,” Jake said as he hugged me.

  The embrace coupled with my husband’s acceptance were two parts of the perfect answer to my fit of pique. After a few moments, I broke away from him. “Thank you. I’m all better now. Some things just manage to bring out the worst in me.”

  “If that’s as bad as you ever get, I can find a way to deal with it,” he said with a smile.

  “That’s easy for you to say. I’ve never seen you react that way to anyone.”

  “My dear sweet wife, you’d better believe that I have a dark side just as bleak as everyone else.”

  “If that’s really true, then why don’t I ever see it?” I asked my husband. It was the complete and unvarnished truth. Jake was rarely angry, and when he was, it was always with good cause. I’d never known the man to be petty about anything.

  Jake grinned at me before he answered my question. “It’s probably because I keep that part of me chained up in the basement. Every now and then I throw down some food for it, but mostly it stays safely locked up.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said as I kissed him lightly.

  “That’s your prerogative, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Now, let’s finish this up and get out of here, shall we?”

  “Okay by me.”

  It didn’t take long to finish our search, and nothing out of the ordinary came up over the next ten minutes. We might have missed something, even in that tiny space, but I couldn’t imagine what it might be. It would have helped if either one of us had known the woman very well, but as it was, we were there looking for something obvious that anyone would recognize as a legitimate clue. Any nuances about the state of the house would have to be discovered by someone who knew the victim quite a bit better than either one of us had.

  “I’m ready to go now if you are,” I said. “Before we leave, I wouldn’t mind looking around the outside after we lock up. You never know what we might find.”

  My husband smiled. “I was about to suggest that we do that myself. You’re getting pretty good at investigating, Suzanne.”

  “Really? I’m constantly trying to get better, but sometimes it feels as though the more I know, the more I realize just how much I still need to learn,” I admitted.

  “In my opinion, that’s what makes you good at anything you do.” Jake put the things we’d found back into the empty cereal box, added the note from Trish, and then tucked it all under one arm as we exited Teresa’s tiny house.

  I was just locking the door behind us when I heard someone calling out to us. As I turned, I tucked the key into my front pocket, more as a matter of habit than any planned design.

  Alexander Rose trotted toward us. “I’m really glad I caught you,” he said, nearly out of breath. Apparently the attorney didn’t believe in cardio exercise, not that I did much of that myself.

  “What can we do for you?” Jake asked him.

  “I just need to get something of mine inside that’s important to me. I already spoke with Nick, and he told me that you had the key. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me have it so I can retrieve it and then I’ll be on my way.”

  I made no move to do as he asked. “I’m really sorry, but we can’t do that.”

  The attorney frowned. “I just told you I had the landlord’s permission.”

  “If he wants to let you have the key, you’ll need to get it directly from him,” Jake said. “However, I’m going to advise him against doing it.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “You have no right to go in there,” Jake said.

  “Oh, and you do?” The attorney was clearly getting frustrated by our refusal to do exactly what he wished.

  “That’s none of your business,” Jake said, trying to shut him down.

  “We’ll just see about that,” the attorney said as he turned his back and stormed off. “You’re crossing the wrong man.”

  “It won’t be the first time,” I said with a smile as he left in a huff.

  “You know, he does have a point,” Jake said after Rose was gone. “As civilians, we really didn’t have any call to be in there any more than he did.”

  “Maybe not, but do you think Teresa would want him pawing through her things? Miranda told us that she tossed the letter he sent her, but Alexander has no way of knowing that. Is that what he wanted to take, or was he here looking for something else, something that might be even more negative to his reputation than that?”

  “If there’s anything else hidden in that tiny little space, we certainly couldn’t find it,” Jake said.

  “So, either the police chief has already found what Alexander is after, or Teresa hid it someplace else.”

  “In her office, perhaps?” Jake asked.

  “We’ve already searched there, and so has Chief Grant,” I reminded him.

  “True, but as you recall, our search was cut short by the police showing up. Maybe whatever Alexander Rose is looking for is better hidden than any of us realize.”

  “Should we go back there and look again?” I asked.

  “Probably, but not until we see the chief.”

  “I know, I think it’s a good idea, too, but first we’re looking around outside, remember?” I asked.

  “I’m not about to forget that.”

  Together, Jake and I walked around the tiny house, and I was about to give it up as a lost cause when I glanced down into the empty trashcan. There was nothing in it, and I wondered if one of the chief’s staff had removed its contents. The tip o
f something caught my eye on the ground beneath it, and as I lifted up the can, I made a discovery underneath it.

  To my surprise, there was a single red rose pressed hard into the ground, or what remained of one. Most of the petals had been ripped off, leaving only a few stragglers in place. The stem was thorny, and as I bent to pick it up, Jake said, “Let me do that.” He grabbed his handkerchief and retrieved it for me.

  “What do you suppose that means?” he asked me as he studied it.

  “Well, a single red rose usually means I love you,” I said. “Evidently, Teresa wasn’t too pleased to get the message from whoever sent it, based on the condition of this. It’s barely more than a stem.”

  “Why was it under the can, though?” Jake asked.

  “Maybe tossing it inside just wasn’t good enough.”

  “Or maybe she threw it and missed, and when the police team emptied the trashcan, they inadvertently covered up what might be evidence.”

  “That’s probably more likely,” I said. “Do you think that was what Alexander Rose was just looking for? Hey, that makes sense. A man named Rose would absolutely give the woman he’s stalking a single red rose.”

  “It’s got a certain poetic ring to it, but it might not be that obvious a connection,” Jake said. “After all, he claims he just got into town, and based on the condition of what’s left of this flower, this happened at least a few days ago.”

  “I agree, but only if we can trust him when he told us that he just showed up,” I said.

  “True. Then again, it could have come from Bobby Wells declaring his undying love.”

  “As long as you didn’t send it, we’re good,” I said.

  “Take my word for it. It didn’t come from me,” Jake replied.

  “Then let’s go show this to the chief, too.”

  Fortunately, Chief Grant was in his office. It was taking some time to call him that, but I knew that it was important to do it, and not just for my husband’s sake. Stephen Grant had earned the title, and I was going to use it from now on, at least when he was working in his official capacity.

  “Hello, Chief,” Jake said as we walked into his office with our discoveries. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Of course. What have we got?” the chief asked as he cleared off a place on his desk after seeing the cereal box in my husband’s hand.

  Jake pulled out the stun gun, the mace, and the receipt first. Chief Grant studied them each in turn, and then he frowned as he looked at Jake. “Do you mind if I asked you where you found these?”

  “They were in a cereal box in Teresa Logan’s pantry,” he admitted.

  “That area was supposed to have been checked,” the chief said, clearly unhappy with our discovery.

  “Be that as it may, we thought that it was important to bring everything we found in her rental to your attention.”

  “I appreciate that,” he said as he moved the objects off to one side. “Was that all that you found?”

  “No, but I have a question for you first. Did you realize that Trish Granger and Teresa Logan were friends?”

  “We knew about that, yes,” the chief said, looking uncomfortable as he admitted it.

  I showed him the note. “Then this won’t come as a surprise to you.”

  He glanced at it, and then he said, “We considered it insignificant. Do you have any reason to suspect that it’s tied into the murder?”

  “No, of course not. Out of curiosity, did Grace know, too?” I asked him. “I’m not asking you as the police chief, I’m asking you as her boyfriend.”

  “You’ll have to direct that question to her,” the chief replied, refusing to make eye contact with me.

  “So the answer is yes, then,” I said, biting my lip. Why had my best friend kept that particular bit of news from me? It wasn’t like Grace, and I was disappointed in her.

  He took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly before he spoke. “Suzanne, as far as I know, Grace wasn’t aware of the friendship any more than you were. The only reason I know about it at all is because I read that note. Don’t you think she would have told you if she’d realized it?”

  “Yes,” I said, suddenly asking Grace for forgiveness for jumping to the wrong conclusion, though I’d never voiced it to her. “You don’t suspect Trish of killing Teresa Logan, do you?”

  “No. The two of us had a conversation about their relationship earlier, and I’m satisfied with her answers. She’s pretty torn up about it, to be honest with you. It’s never easy losing a friend, especially if she feels she has to hide it from others she cares about.”

  I suddenly realized that I hadn’t made it easy for Trish to share her burden with me. I doubted that her tears had been generated because of onions, though knowing Trish, she’d probably pitched in by chopping them to give herself a reasonable excuse for her crying. I needed to make it a priority to talk to her and clear the air between us; I hated the thought there were any secrets between us. She should be able to tell me anything, and vice versa.

  “What about this?” Jake asked him as he presented the remnants of the rose we’d found out back.

  “We didn’t find that, either. Where was it?”

  “Under the trashcan,” I said. “It was easy to miss.” I felt bad about ratting out one of the chief’s officers, but he needed to know what we’d found.

  “It’s nice of you to try to cover for my people, but you found it, didn’t you?”

  “That’s only because I was working with a highly trained professional,” I said with a smile, trying to ease the blow of our discovery.

  “You’re the one who found it, Suzanne,” Jake corrected me. “Chief, you should know that as we were leaving the property, Alexander Rose showed up and tried to get us to let him into Teresa’s place. He claimed that there was something of his inside.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We refused to let him in,” I said as I slid the key across the desk to him. “Maybe someone should pack her things up for her next of kin before someone else goes through it all.”

  “I’ll have one of my people do it,” he said, “and I know just who to have handle it.”

  There was no doubt in my mind that whoever had missed the cereal stash and the rose was going to be spending the rest of the day going through Teresa Logan’s things again, not that I could blame the chief. A pair of valuable clues had been missed, so a lesson needed to be learned.

  “If we accept Alexander Rose’s statement that he just got here as legitimate and he didn’t bring her the rose, then who might have?” I asked him. I had my own suspicions, but I wanted the chief to reveal his first.

  “It could be any secret admirer,” the chief admitted.

  So much for that line of questioning. “Or a not-so-secret one. Bobby Wells could have done it.”

  “It sounds like something he’d do,” the chief agreed. “I’ll ask him.”

  “And if he denies it?” I asked Chief Grant.

  “Then we’ll add it to the list of things that don’t make any sense at the moment. Was there anything else you needed to bring to my attention?”

  “That’s all that we’ve been able to uncover so far. Will it do us any good to ask you how your end of the investigation is going?”

  “It’s slow slogging right now,” the chief admitted. “I’m going to visit Joe Chastain and Becky Rusch again, but I’m not sure that we’ve got anything to ask them that we didn’t ask before. There’s some physical evidence that we’re still working on, but Jake, you know how cases like this go sometimes. It takes awhile to gather all of the pertinent information.”

  “Have you had any luck with the voice on the answering machine?” I asked, blurting it out before remembering that the police chief had no way of knowing that we’d heard that until I’d just admitted it to him.

  “Why am I not su
rprised you played the tape,” he said.

  “In our defense, we didn’t touch the button with a finger, nor did we erase it after we heard it. The blinking light on the machine was too much to just ignore,” Jake said.

  The chief seemed to accept that. “We don’t know who left it, but we’re going through her case files to try to determine who might have had a grudge against her. Teresa was ruthless when she went after someone, and I’m seeing a side to her that I hadn’t seen before. She had a tendency to use a hammer when a feather would do, if you know what I mean.”

  “You don’t have to tell that to me,” I said, remembering her throwing herself at my husband shortly before she was murdered.

  “Is there anything else you two are keeping from me?” the chief asked after a prolonged sigh.

  “No, we’ve told you everything,” I said.

  “Jake?” he asked my husband.

  “What, my word suddenly isn’t good enough for you?” I asked indignantly.

  “Suzanne, we both know that it’s a fair question for me to answer,” my husband said calmly. He turned to the chief. “You know everything that we know.”

  “I was afraid of that,” the chief answered. “I was hoping you were still holding something good out on me.”

  “No such luck,” Jake answered with a chuckle. I didn’t find any of it particularly funny, but evidently Jake hadn’t had a problem with it, so why should I? After all, he was the former professional law enforcement officer, and I was just an amateur at this line of work.

  “Well, anything you do uncover, I’d appreciate a heads-up,” Chief Grant said.

  “Do you mind telling us if Joe Chastain was telling the truth about Teresa making a call around eight thirty the night she was murdered? Surely you’ve checked her phone records by now.” I probably shouldn’t have asked the question, but my pride was still stinging a little.

  “She called her college roommate,” the chief admitted. Maybe he felt a little bad about the way he’d treated me. I wasn’t above accepting a pity clue.

  “Did she mention anything that might help?” I asked him.