by Anna Castle
“Did y’all drink any of it after you got home?” Tillie asked. Her eyes switched from Krystle to me and back again. The tension between us was making her unhappy. “You and Jason?”
“Porn,” Krystle swapped in another DVD and swiveled around to look at Tillie. “I’m sure I didn’t,” she said slowly, “but did Jason?” She tapped her foot while she tried to remember. “I couldn’t swear to it, but I kinda don’t think he did. He was really wiped. I got some sheets and blankets and made up the couch and he crashed. That was pretty much it.”
“He could’ve poisoned the bottle before you gave it to Greg,” I said. “We haven’t considered Jason. He did go back to the bathroom in the studio, so he could’ve stolen the chemicals.”
“What would be his motivation?” Krystle asked, confusing acting method and criminal behavior.
“He could’ve killed Greg to protect you,” Tillie said, ever alive to the romantic angle. “He’s crazy about you, that’s the only thing we really know about him.”
“I know a lot more, believe me,” Krystle said. “The guy’s a total loser. I doubt he’s even figured out that I’m in trouble. He never notices anything but his own damn—”
“Not very plausible, I admit,” I said, cutting her off in mid-bitch and getting another sapphire glare in return. “But not impossible. We need to figure out everyone who had access to that bottle.”
“Nobody, between when we left the studio and when I gave it to Greg.”
She sounded irritable, the way an innocent person would sound if their friend was tap-dancing around the idea that they’d committed a hideous crime. On the other hand, she had been an actress of sorts for the past eight years. We only had her word for it that she sucked so badly nobody would hire her.
“Maybe Deputy Finley put the poison in the bottle while he was driving y’all home,” Tillie said.
I tried to picture him pouring chemicals from a hard-to-open packet into the neck of a bottle while driving through town without either of his passengers noticing. I failed, but I liked the trend of her thought. “Or he could’ve gone back into Greg’s offices Sunday night to search again and gotten frustrated and said, ‘To heck with it, I’m gonna off the guy,’ and put the chemicals in the bottle. He’d have all the time in the world to clean up afterward. He could have stolen the chemicals Saturday night on a just-in-case basis.”
Krystle pointed at me with her half-empty Shiner bottle. “That is not terrible.”
I grinned. “It isn’t, is it?”
“Except I don’t want it to be Michael,” Krystle said. “I was going to come back for him, after I finish The Bachelor. He could be a cop in Dallas or wherever I get my spokesmodel job.”
“He could be the next Bachelor,” Tillie said.
“He totally could!” Krystle beamed at her.
“He could be a killer,” I reminded them.
“So could you be,” Krystle retorted.
“Well, so could you!”
She stuck her tongue out at me. I returned the favor. She made a snarly pirate face at me. I put my thumbs in my ears and waggled my fingers at her while crossing my eyes.
Tillie cried, “Wrinkles! Wrinkles! You’re going to wear those faces for the rest of your lives!”
Krystle couldn’t be guilty. No way a real murderer could be so childish. On the other hand, we had my developer chemicals in her mezcal bottle.
What did guilty look like, anyway?
“You know who else had a chance to poison that mezcal,” I said. “The museum board. They were all in Greg’s office on Sunday afternoon.”
“Burrie? Mr. M.? Marion? That board?” Tillie sounded shocked. “It can’t be them. We talked to all of them.”
I had to admit it was a stretch.
“Porn,” Krystle said, swapping in another DVD.
“They did all have secrets,” Tillie said. “Or, well, not Marion, but she was related to a secret, if that counts.”
“It counts,” Krystle said. “You know what else? Not one of them said, ‘I did not kill Greg Alexander’ in so many words.”
“I don’t think we asked them,” I said, trying to remember three conversations at once. “But it can’t be Marion. I don’t believe she would’ve killed Greg to get Robbie off the hook.”
“I don’t either,” Tillie said. “She has better ways.”
“Way better ways,” I agreed. “She would (a) call the sheriff and have Greg arrested, (b) call that chat room woman and tell her to shape up and stop acting like a twit, and (c) ground Robbie until the age of fifty-seven.”
Krystle wasn’t convinced. “You just don’t want it to be anyone you like.”
“Neither do you. Our best suspect is cute, sweet Deputy Finley.”
“Don’t fight,” Tillie pleaded. “It doesn’t help.”
“We’re not fighting,” I said.
“We’re just being assholes,” Krystle said, “out of pure frustration. Because I don’t want it to be Michael and Penny doesn’t want it to be Marion or Mr. M.”
“Well, we ruled out Mr. M.,” Tillie said, “so he’s safe. He’s better off with his secret out than in. And it wasn’t Marion. She doesn’t need poison to punish people. Neither does Burrie. That story she told was pitiful, but it wasn’t even her secret. You don’t kill people for other people’s secrets.”
“Politicians have affairs all the time,” I said. “It’s like an occupational hazard. Nobody but her would even care.”
“Plus, I think Burrie still has the power to put anyone in town in detention for as long as she wants,” Krystle said. “At least, anyone who went to high school here.”
Tillie said, “But we don’t even know what Deputy Finley’s story is, so we have to keep him on the list.”
“I’m sure it’s something stupid,” Krystle insisted. She still had her back to us, working through the DVDs.
“I kind of think it might be gambling.” I told them about Sgt. Garza and the fishing contest and about the way Finley had said ‘a full house’ and the sheriff had scowled at him.
Krystle said, “That’s pretty slender evi—”
“No, it’s perfect,” Tillie interrupted her and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. Gambling could be really bad, depending on how much he owes and who he owes it to. He’s a cop. What if he’s in debt to the Mob?”
Krystle drew in a sharp breath. “That would be bad.”
“Very bad.” I was glad to have her back on board. “So, we’ve got Finley. What do y’all think about Andy Lynch?”
“He was a door-slammer,” Krystle said. “He didn’t tell us anything. Porn.” The DVD drive whirred as it read in another disk.
“The insurance guy?” Tillie gave me a doubtful look. “From what you told us, it sounds more like he refused to pay up, so Greg let his wife find out and that’s why they were arguing. If his secret was out, why kill anybody?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but he’s so perfect otherwise. His office is right next door to Greg’s. He might even have keys in case of an emergency. He could waltz in there six times a day and poison everything in sight.”
They both shrugged their indifference to my theory. “What would be the point?” Krystle asked.
“The point would be to give me a nice solid alternative.”
More shrugs followed by a long silence punctuated by the clack and whir of the DVD drive.
I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. I couldn’t think of any way to find out more about Finley or Andy Lynch or the Garricks. The vets were my favorite suspects, since none of us cared about them and they had skedaddled, a sure sign of guilt. But we didn’t have anything strong enough to take to the sheriff.
Had we reached the last resort at the end of the line? Was it time to swallow my pride and call Ty again — again — and ask him to ask his wizards to break into Greg’s online vault? Imagining a world in which he was willing to commit an illegal act for my sake.
“Porn,” Krystle said.
&n
bsp; It was beginning to sound like a Zen meditation chant. Ring the gong. Rattle the tambor. Porn. Life is porn and porn is life.
Tillie watched Krystle for a few minutes. A particularly graphic scenario flashed across the screen and she winced. “You know, we had a unit about encryption in my online office skills course. Nowadays they use little photos, like daisies or cars or whatever, as part of your password sequence.”
“Yeeesss.” Knowing Tillie, there was going to be a point to this and it would be nice and pointy, but I couldn’t guess what it was.
She smiled to thank me for my patience. “I wonder if those files aren’t really in there somewhere on those DVDs, only disguised. Encrypted. See, what I’m really wondering is, isn’t there some kind of program that can encrypt something to make it look like pornography?”
“Yes,” Krystle said, without missing a beat. “It’s called a man’s brain.”
“Wait a minute!” I grabbed my phone and thumbed it awake. “Ty has a phone in his office. A landline, a business phone. Duh! I even have the number. He gave it to me in case of emergency.”
“Is this really an emergency?” Tillie asked. “We’re frustrated, but nobody’s bleeding.”
“People are going to be bleeding if those files aren’t found and publicly destroyed,” Krystle said. “And let’s not forget those cookies.”
“Good point,” I said. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, the sooner, the better.” I scrolled down to Ty’s office number and tapped the phone thingie with crossed fingers. I grinned nervously at Tillie, who crossed her fingers with both hands.
The phone rang twice before Ty picked it up. “What’s now?” He sounded harried.
“I need your help.”
“Penny.” He did not sound delighted to hear my voice. “I’m up to my eyebrows here. I told you to hang on. I’ll get to your problem as soon as I can.”
“It can’t wait, Ty. I know you’re busy, but things are getting out of hand.” I summarized the situation in Lost Hat as succinctly and as calmly as I could. I told him about the pink cake that killed Jim and lightly touched on the topic of drugged cookies. My recent foray into the burglary sphere could wait for happier times. I told him about Greg drinking poisoned mezcal right in front of me. My voice hardly even quavered when I told him about the letter from the lawyers and the OxyContin in my house. I skated over the petition expedition, emphasizing how we needed to get into that online vault so we could convince the sheriff about the blackmail so he would have some better suspects than me to investigate and could thus catch the bad guy before anyone else got poisoned.
A long silence followed my summation. Silence in the sense of Ty not talking, that is. The background was full of printers clacking and voices rumbling.
“Cookies?” He had an uncanny ability to latch onto the things not said.
“I guess they’re easy to poison. And tempting.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. The ones we ate were apparently doctored with out-of-date meds.”
“You ate some of them?” Oops. He’d been asking a general question. Now he sounded angry. I hoped it was the you scared the holy crap out of me kind of anger and not the you are too stupid to live kind. “When?”
“Does it matter?” The break-in stories would not improve his humor. “The point is that someone is really desperate to get those files.”
“When were you planning to tell me about all this?”
A voice in the background shouted Hawkins! You gotta see this! Ty hollered, “In a minute!”
“Ty?” I needed his full attention. I didn’t want to have this conversation twice.
“It’s a zoo in here tonight. We’ve got a major client coming first thing in the morning.”
“I thought that was next week.”
“Nope, they changed their schedule. So we get a fun surprise.”
I made a sympathetic groan. “I know you’ve got a lot on your plate and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to bother you about any of this. I know you’re still mad at me.”
“Mad at you?” He zoomed past angry, straight into furious. “What are you, twelve?”
My cheeks caught fire. I stared at the tabletop, blinking rapidly to stave off tears.
He wasn’t finished. “You have a serious problem that you know I can solve, a very serious problem, one that could result in your death or imprisonment, and you don’t call me because you think I’m mad at you?”
I swallowed, hard. I let a few seconds go by to make sure he understood that he had crossed a line. Also to make sure that the tears were under control. “I did call, several times.”
Something fell over in Ty’s office, something with metal parts that clanged. “Dammit!” He shouted into the background. Then he said, “Sorry.” I didn’t know if he was apologizing for the interruption or the insult.
I said nothing. Anger was rapidly overtaking shame and it felt much, much better. As far as I was concerned, we were now officially even. I had submitted my photograph to a prestigious contest without asking his permission: big whoop. He had treated me like a child. That was way worse.
“Penny? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Listen, I can’t think straight. It’s like a madhouse around here.”
“A zoo.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
Another pause. I think he was feeling my shift in temper. “I left my damn phone in my jacket, which is out in my damn car in the damn garage. I haven’t had time to go get it. Everyone I need to yell at is here, anyway.”
“Um-hum.”
Ty sighed dramatically. “Listen, I’ll do what I can. Shoot me an email with everything you’ve got about that vault. Do you have Greg’s email address?”
“Yep.”
He was silent for a few seconds. Maybe he realized I had gone monosyllabic and was starting to understand what that meant.
“OK.” Now he sounded a little subdued. “Penny—” I heard a whooping victory cry in the background. Some nerd having a eureka moment. “Would you shut the frak up!” Ty shouted into the void beyond the phone.
It was kind of funny. I almost smiled with the sheer amusement of it all.
“Penny,” he said.
“Yep.”
He sighed. The Sighing Man. The Prince of Sighs. So many demands on his princely time. “Send me everything you can think of. I’ll put one of these hoodlums on it. Greg was a lightweight; I’m betting a couple hours, tops. Can you hold on that long?”
“Easily,” I said, the Queen of Dignity.
“Penny—”
“The mail is in the mail.” I tapped off the phone with that clever parting shot and sat there gripping it in my fist, biting the inside of my lip. I did not want to burst into tears. That’s what twelve-year-olds did.
I couldn’t look at Tillie. Her brown-eyed sympathy would melt me like a marshmallow in a microwave. A deep breath. Another breath. I cleared my throat. “Krystle, can I get in there for a minute?”
She had been politely pretending not to listen, focusing on her task. Now she hopped out of the chair and gestured me into it like a spokesmodel. “All yours.”
I opened Eudora and assembled the information about Greg’s vault, including the link from the top of the browser. I added a link to Mariposa Internet Services, in case that would help. I found Greg’s email address in my Sent messages folder, pasted that in, and sent it all to Ty.
That steadied me enough to face my friends again. I swiveled around and said, “Well, Ty will get one of his hoodlums on the job. That’s the main thing. A couple hours, he said.”
“Rough call, huh?” Tillie’s eyes were as sympathetic as I’d feared.
I had to grimace and growl a little to keep my anger on top. “Rough enough. I can tell you this: there will have to be flowers. And chocolates. And quite possibly a weekend in Cancun.”
“A whole week,” Krystle said. “From the sound of your voice…”
“Yeah.” I felt like the top of my head had been blown clean off, allowing a fresh breeze to cool my weary brain. Like that first couple of minutes after an all-out race, when your heart rate slows so you can breathe again but the endorphins still own your body. I suddenly felt like laughing hysterically and tearing things to tiny pieces and stomping the pieces into the muckety mud and then eating a mountain of extra-cheesy Mexican food and falling into a weeklong slumber, right there on the restaurant floor.
Whatever happened next between me and Ty, we would be starting from Square One.
* * *
Miley Cyrus started singing The Climb at the top of her lungs. Krystle cried, “Mine!” and lunged for her backpack. She stared at the number on the front of her cell and said, “No way.” She answered the call. “I’m not coming in, Lydia. My shift starts at seven tomorrow anyway.”
She listened for a minute, her expression changing from resistance to disbelief to anger. “That stupid sorry son of a pitiful loser! How trashed is his car, do you know?”
She listened again. Now we saw surprise, shock, wariness and, finally, worry. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God.” Pause. “That’s horrible.” Pause. “Oh, the poor thing.” Pause. “Yeah, OK. OK. OK. Hold on a sec.”
She turned to me. “Can you give me a ride to the clinic? Jason was in an accident.”
Chapter 43
The waiting room at the Long County Family Health Center looked like every waiting room in every hospital in the world, only shinier, since this building wasn’t very old and it wasn’t exactly a high-traffic emergency center. The three of us marched through the automatic doors, cheeks stinging with the cold. The air inside was warm and scented with industrial cleaning products. As we breasted the waiting area, Tillie and I hung back to let Krystle surge ahead toward reception.
“I’m here, Lydia,” she said to a nurse standing near a pair of swinging doors. She moved in for a close conversation. Then Nurse Lydia swung on through the doors and Krystle came back to us.