It took him only minutes to arrive at the school, which housed students from kindergarten kids to seniors. Divided into two parts separated by a short breezeway, kindergartners through eighth were housed on the left and the right was for freshmen to seniors.
Claire’s pink bicycle was locked to an old, rusted bike rack and a car was parked in the lot, letting him know that she and the coach were still here.
He parked his motorcycle next to the car and then headed for the front door of the high school side of the building. Locked.
He made his way around the side of the building to the back where he knew there was a door that would take him into a hallway that led directly to the gym.
This door was unlocked, and as he stepped inside it was to the scents of pine cleaner and floor polish. Once school started again the clean smells would disappear beneath the odors of sweaty bodies and smelly gym clothes.
On either side of the hallway were doors that led to the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms.
Before he reached the gym he heard the sound of squeaky shoes pounding the floor and a male triumphant shout. He stepped up to the open doors and peered inside to see Claire facing off for a tip-off with a tall, pleasant-looking blond man who had the physique of a coach.
But it was Claire who captured his attention. Clad in a pair of white shorts that showcased shapely athletic legs and a turquoise T-shirt that clung to her feminine curves, she looked sexy as hell even dribbling the basketball, which had tipped to her side of the court.
She saw him and grabbed the ball in her arms, a warm smile curving her lips. She moved closer to him. “Bo, I didn’t think you were coming.”
“I wasn’t sure myself until I got here.”
She dropped the ball to the floor as the coach approached where they stood. Claire made the introductions between the two and Roger shook Bo’s hand with a firm grasp and a pleasant smile.
“You play?” Roger asked and leaned down to pick up the ball. “I could use a little more competition to keep me in shape.” He grinned at Claire as she started to protest. “Face it, Short Stuff, you’re good for running me around, but not any real competition.”
Bo smiled at the outrage on Claire’s face. “Actually, I played a little in high school,” he said. “But not since, so I probably wouldn’t be any better competition than Claire.”
“He wouldn’t trade me in for somebody better,” Claire replied. “If he had any real competition and got beat he’d go home and cry like a sissy baby. And speaking of going home, I’ve invited Roger back to my place for a late lunch, and now that you’re here, you’re coming, too.”
“Oh no.” Bo took a step backward. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“Nonsense,” Roger replied. “It’s an eat-and-run for me. Besides, Claire already told me she made chicken salad and you don’t want to miss a chance to taste it. She makes the best.”
Claire looped her elbow with Bo’s. “No arguments. You’re coming to eat and once we’re finished you and I will have a chance to talk.” Her blue eyes radiated a steely strength.
“You might as well just give in,” Roger said. “When Claire makes up her mind about something it’s darned near impossible to change it.”
“Bossy little thing, isn’t she?” Bo replied, making Roger laugh and Claire sputter a protest.
Minutes later as Bo followed Roger’s car with Claire’s bicycle fastened to a rack on its back bumper and her in his passenger seat, Bo realized Roger was right.
Claire was like a force of nature, a whirling dervish of focused energy. Cyclone Claire, he thought with wry amusement as he pulled up behind Roger’s car in front of her house.
The moment they got inside the door, Claire pointed them to the table where the two men sat across from each other and talked about sports while Claire bustled to get plates and drinks on the table.
Bo almost immediately noticed two things about his male lunch partner. Roger appeared to be a nice man, and he seemed to suffer more than a little bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Claire tossed his silverware next to his plate and he carefully lined up spoon, fork and knife and then moved his iced tea glass a half an inch to the right of his plate.
“We’re rolling our own,” Claire said as she placed first a large bowl of chicken salad in the center of the table and then a plate of soft whole-wheat tortillas next to the bowl. “Eat up,” she said and joined them at the table.
Bo grabbed one of the tortillas and globbed the chicken salad onto it and then folded it into a semblance of a sandwich. Roger carefully spooned the salad into equal mounds and then rolled the tortilla into a neat burrito.
While they ate, the conversation remained pleasant. It was obvious Roger and Claire shared the camaraderie of coworkers and an easy friendship.
Once they were finished eating it took Claire only minutes to clear the table. “Have you asked Mary out yet?” Claire asked Roger as he got ready to leave.
He winced. “I haven’t quite gotten up my nerve yet.”
“You’ve been saying that for a month now. For goodness’ sake, man, ask the woman out. She’s a terrific woman and I’m sure you two would have a good time together,” Claire said.
“I know, I’m working on it.” With a wave of his hand to Bo, Roger thanked Claire for the meal and then left.
Bo sat back down at the table and after offering him another glass of iced tea, Claire joined him. “He seems like a good guy,” Bo said.
“He’s a really nice guy,” she agreed. “He’s got some issues he’s working on.”
“You mean the OCD stuff?”
She raised a blond eyebrow. “So you noticed?”
“It was a bit obvious.”
“Not as much as when he first arrived in Lost Lagoon,” she replied. “His illness destroyed his first marriage, it was so out of control. He came here for a new start and he’s been working with Mama Baptiste using herbs and meditation techniques to help him.”
Everyone who had spent any time in Lost Lagoon knew Mama Baptiste. She and her son, Eric, lived two doors down from Claire and they ran an herb and apothecary shop in the center of town.
“Maybe Roger is your secret admirer,” Bo suggested.
Claire laughed, the pleasant sound swirling that crazy warmth through him. “No way, Roger and I are strictly in the friend zone. He’s got a major crush on Mary Armstrong, a waitress down at the diner, but as you heard he can’t seem to get up the gumption to ask her out.”
She waved a hand. “Enough about Roger.” She placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward, her gaze so intent he felt as if she were somehow peering inside his soul. “So, are you in for a little crime investigation or are you out?”
The fresh, slightly floral scent of her perfume drifted across the table as her gaze continued to hold him captive. He had arrived at the high school not knowing what his decision was, whether he intended to hang around and buy into Claire’s scheme of trying to find the real killer or get out of this town as fast as possible.
The light of her belief in him shone from her eyes. He bathed in it and realized he wanted this...his innocence restored among the people who had once been friends and neighbors.
“I’m in,” he finally said. He hoped in making that decision he hadn’t just made a mistake he would come to regret. Asking questions, talking to people and stirring up everything from the past also might stir up a killer’s rage.
*
CLAIRE GRINNED AT Bo and popped up from the table to retrieve a pen, a legal pad and a three-ring notebook complete with color tabs from a kitchen drawer. “I hoped that was going to be your answer,” she said as she once again sat down.
“What’s all this?” Bo asked as he gestured toward the notebook.
“I’m a teacher, Bo. I love lists and notebooks and any kind of office supplies.”
“You don’t have any flash cards stuck in there, do you?” he asked wryly.
She laughed. “No flash cards, I pr
omise.” She was pleased that he’d decided to stick around and do a little digging into the crime that had forced him to leave town under a cloud of suspicion. She was also pleased that he apparently had a sense of humor.
She placed the legal pad in front of her and pushed the notebook to the side. “I figured we’d spend some time this afternoon coming up with a plan, names of people to talk to, the events that led up to Shelly’s body being found in the swamp, anything that might provide a clue as to who was responsible for her death.”
Bo raked a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair. “It’s a bit overwhelming, trying to go back to a crime that happened two years ago.”
“Overwhelming is trying to keep second graders focused enough to learn math and reading,” she replied. “This is just a puzzle and we need to start at the beginning and work outward. I know Shelly was murdered around eleven thirty at night. I don’t know if I ever heard where you were at that time?”
When the murder had happened Claire had been as horrified as anyone in town, and although she’d tried to stay up on all the developments, she’d heard so many stories it was difficult to discern truth from false gossip.
“I was in my bedroom at my mother’s house in bed with a twenty-four-hour flu bug.”
“Then your mother was your alibi?” she asked and watched a growing darkness take hold in his eyes.
“An alibi easily dismissed. My mother was an early-to-bed kind of woman and she was also a woman who didn’t lie.” He raised his chin, obviously proud of his mother. “When Trey Walker asked her if she would know if I left the house that night after she went to bed, she confessed that she probably wouldn’t have known.”
“And there was nobody you saw or talked to who could confirm that you were in bed sick?”
Bo shook his head. “I went to bed a little after five. I made two calls before I crashed out, one to Freddie Hannity, who managed the bar at Bo’s Place, to tell him I wouldn’t be in that night and to take care of things for me. The other was a text to Shelly telling her I was sick and wouldn’t meet her that night.”
He paused a long moment, his eyes no longer dark blue but rather black and unfathomable. “You know Shelly was the night manager at the Pirate’s Inn and night was my busiest time at Bo’s Place. She started her shift at midnight so every night around eleven I’d sneak out of the bar and we’d meet at the bench down by the lagoon.”
Once again he stopped talking and stared outside the front window, as if reliving each and every moment of that fateful night.
Claire had known that going back in time to the night of Shelly’s death would be difficult for him, but she hadn’t expected the rawness of his emotions. Even though Shelly had been gone for two years, it was obvious that love for her, that grief for her, still filled his heart.
Without giving it any thought, she reached out and covered his hand with hers. He blinked twice and then directed his attention to her hand. He turned his over and grasped her.
“Sorry, I got lost in my head.” He gently extricated his hand from hers. “Anyway, the next thing I knew it was five in the morning and Sheriff Walker and Deputy Ray McClure were pounding on the front door.
“They told me Shelly had been killed around midnight and I needed to come into the station and answer some questions. I knew the minute I saw the way they looked at me that they believed I was responsible. I scarcely had time to grieve before I was vehemently defending my innocence.”
“What did they tell you about the actual crime scene? I know Shelly was found in the lagoon, but she wasn’t killed in the water.” Claire picked up her pen, knowing that from this point forward the conversation would contain things she wanted written down. She didn’t even want to think about how warm, how right it had felt to momentarily hold his hand.
He sat up straighter in his chair, his eyes once again focused. “The sheriff believed the actual strangulation occurred in the bushes around the bench and then she was put in the water, probably in hopes she wouldn’t be found until morning or maybe forever. The bushes were trampled as if a struggle had happened, and they found her necklace tangled up in some of the brush. Her engagement ring was missing and has never been found. A couple of teenagers had gone to the swamp to gig for frogs. They’re the ones who found her just after two.”
“Why would Shelly have gone down there knowing that you weren’t coming?” Claire asked. “Are you sure she got your text?”
“Positive. She texted me back that she’d see me the next day. As far as why she went to the lagoon that night, I have no idea. That question has haunted me for two years. I keep thinking that if I hadn’t been sick that night...if I’d shown up as usual...” He allowed his voice to drift off.
“You can’t blame yourself for this,” Claire protested.
He raised a dark brow. “But apparently a whole town could blame me.”
“That’s because a real investigation was never done, and that’s why we’re doing this now,” Claire replied. “I’m assuming your phone records were checked. How did Trey explain the fact that the texts were the last communications you two had that night?”
“He figured I’d found Shelly somewhere in town and didn’t need to use any other form of communication.”
“Did Shelly mention to you anyone who was giving her trouble? Anyone she’d made angry?”
“No, she didn’t mention anything like that to me. Shelly wasn’t the type to make enemies.”
“Maybe it was something she didn’t feel comfortable talking to you about. Maybe she’d have been more apt to confide in a girlfriend. Names, I need names of the people Shelly was closest to other than you,” she said.
“Definitely Savannah.”
Claire knew Savannah was Shelly’s sister. She was a year younger than Shelly and the two had appeared very close. She wrote down Savannah’s name on the legal pad. “You know she’s now working the night shift at the Pirate’s Inn. Who else can you remember?”
“Shelly was friendly with Julie Melbourne. I know they often had dinner together at Bo’s Place while I was on duty. She also ran around with Valerie Frank and Sally Bernard. I think that’s about it as far as her closest friends.”
“Talking with Sally and Julie shouldn’t be a problem. They’re both teachers and I’m friendly with both of them. Valerie works the dinner shift at the diner. We can catch up with her there.”
Bo scowled. “None of those women will want to talk to me.”
Claire offered him a bright smile. “And that’s why you have me. You’ll be with me, but I’ll do the talking.” She looked outside where dusk had begun to fall. “We’ll start first thing in the morning and try to get Sally and Julie interviewed. Then we’ll catch up with Valerie and Savannah later in the evening.”
He tilted his head and gazed at her curiously. “Do you really believe anything will come of all this?”
“All I know is that nothing will come of this if we don’t try. I believe in your innocence, Bo, and I hate the fact that somebody got away with murder while you have carried this burden for so long. As far as I’m concerned you have two choices—stay here and work the case to prove your innocence or climb back on that hog of yours and leave town with that same burden weighing you down for the rest of your life.”
He picked up his glass and peered inside it. “You didn’t drug my drink, did you? Because when I listen to you, when I look into your eyes, I feel hope and I have to admit that scares the hell out of me.”
“Embrace your hope, Bo.” She desperately wanted to grab his hand again, to feel the warmth of his big grasp around her much smaller hand, but she knew it wasn’t her place.
She was his partner in crime-solving, one of few people who believed he had nothing do with Shelly’s death. She wasn’t his girlfriend. She had a feeling Shelly still occupied that space in his heart, that she might always be there, allowing nobody else in for love.
For the next hour or so they talked about the elements of the crime, and Clai
re took copious notes that she would later transcribe into neat colored tabs of material in the larger notebook.
It was just after seven when Claire popped a frozen pizza into the oven, and once it was finished baking they continued their conversation while they ate.
They moved on from discussing the crime and Shelly to Bo’s life in Jackson. “Bo’s Place is small compared to what I had here,” he said as he reached for a second piece of the pepperoni pie. “I don’t socialize with the customers like I did here in Lost Lagoon. I keep pretty much to myself. I don’t want people getting too close. It’s easier that way...safer.”
And it was the saddest thing Claire had ever heard. Before the murder Bo had been gregarious and bigger than life. He’d made Bo’s Place popular by his mere presence.
“And lonelier,” she said softly.
Bo shrugged. “There are things worse than being lonely.” He gazed at her curiously. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“You mean other than my secret admirer?” she asked drily and then continued, “I dated Neil Sampson for about two months and then broke up with him six months ago. He’s a city councilman and a nice guy, but there weren’t any sparks, at least on my end.”
“How did he take the breakup?”
“Not particularly well.” Claire took a drink and thought about Neil. He’d shown little passion except for town business until she’d broken up with him, and then he’d spent the next month trying to talk her back into his arms.
“Is it possible he’s your secret admirer?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” she replied thoughtfully. “But we’ve really had very little contact for the last five months or so. He’s one of the liaisons between the town and the company putting in the amusement park and we really don’t run in the same circles.”
“And nobody else since Neil?” he asked.
“No. I’m twenty-five years old and as of yet I just haven’t felt the kind of passion or love to bind my life with anyone.” Except gazing into Bo’s eyes definitely shot a tingling electricity through her that she tried desperately to ignore.
Carla Cassidy Page 4