by Karen Pullen
For an answer, he pointed to his finely shaped nose, then to my banged-up one. “We have an opening in arson. How’d you like a trip to Connecticut to train with an arson dog?”
Crunch through cinders while Queenie sniffed for accelerants? I gave a little chuckle so he’d think I thought he was joking. “No thanks.”
“Arson is a good career move.”
Oh really? Queenie would get all the credit. I failed to see how that could be good for my career. “I really like working on homicide investigations,” I said. As I spoke I felt a qualm of doubt—was I any good at it? Surely by now I had interviewed Justine’s murderer and just as surely that person was still walking free.
“Think about it. I have a few days to fill the opening. Let me know by Friday.” He picked up his cup and swiveled in his chair to admire his view of the employee parking lot. My signal to leave.
I went back to my cubicle and sank into a chair. Richard’s suggestion had drained my energy. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. Come on, Stella, focus. I pulled out my notebook and flipped through its pages, scanning my notes on a dozen or more interviews. I underlined the dangling threads, circled the thoughts to pursue, and made question marks on facts that needed checking. At six P.M. my stomach was growling, so I picked up my notebook and left the building. Merle needed to be walked. I needed to be anywhere else.
Since 1895 when its first brick building was erected on a hilltop in the middle of a cluster of dogwood, oak, and tulip trees, the Gardner University campus had grown to more than 90 buildings on 320 acres. Clutching a campus map in one hand and steering with the other, I trolled nearly every one of those acres in search of a legal parking space, until I finally gave up and swung into a half-empty Employees Only lot. Since it was after eight P.M., I hoped the campus police wouldn’t care too much about my lack of a parking sticker.
A brisk breeze had cleared away the haze and overhead the heavens were full of stars, a sliver of moon, and the twinkle of airplanes floating to and from Raleigh–Durham airport. I strode along the walkways to Edmonds Hall, an imposing building of pink brick with cream trim, and caught Gregor McMahon on his way out, locking his door.
“You’re late.” He looked at his watch. “I don’t have much time.” I was struck, as before, by how stiff and formal he was, an impression not helped by his cervical collar. And how furry, utterly covered with a pelt of black hair.
“I won’t be long,” I said. A woman poked her head out of the office next to his and looked at me with curiosity. I didn’t look like a student. I looked darned cute in a jacket dress, dark blue with short sleeves, and blue and white spectators. I had even made an effort with my hair and tamed most of it into a twist. Gregor nodded at her but didn’t introduce us. He unlocked his office, shooed me in, and shut the door. He sat down behind the desk, and I took the only other chair. His desk was clear except for a phone and a pile of manila folders. Behind him, a small table held a laptop and a framed photograph of Gregor and a young woman, both in hiking attire, crouching on a rocky plateau with a vista of sky and clouds behind them. The woman’s face was shadowed by her hat brim but I could see a friendly open grin.
“Is that a picture of Emma?” I asked.
His face softened. “We went hiking almost every weekend.”
“I have a question about her. How well did she know Justine Bradley?”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Emma’s bracelet was found in Justine’s room on the day she was murdered. I’m wondering how it got there.”
He looked at me with dead eyes and an expression of distrust. “You found Emma’s bracelet? The charm bracelet? Where is it?”
“In an evidence envelope at the sheriff’s department.”
“I want it. She wore it all the time.”
“When did you last see it?”
He grimaced. “The day Emma died. I assumed someone in the hospital took it. It was in Justine’s room at the B&B?”
“Did they know each other?”
“No. I don’t think—no. I mean, I saw them talking at the picnic but Emma was friendly with everyone. When can I have the bracelet?”
“When we find out who murdered Justine.” I kept my voice even.
He closed his eyes. “My neck is killing me tonight. Anything else?” He did look miserable, his skin greasy and pale under dark stubble.
“I’m sorry. Just, can you think about this for a minute? Who else can I ask?”
Silence as he appeared to be thinking. Finally he opened his eyes. “Ingrid Hoyt.”
“Because . . .”
“She was a friend of Emma’s. In fact, she introduced us.”
“When and where?” Just another tangle in this mess of knots.
“Four years ago, in July. Some friends from State had rented a big beach house on Oak Island for July Fourth week. Kate and Ingrid were there too, and one night Ingrid called some of her Wilmington friends to join us for a beach bonfire. Emma came and we met and started talking and . . .” He pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and blew his nose hard. “She was really special. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I understand.” I remembered the picture in Gia’s apartment, the happy group around the bonfire toasting marshmallows, drinking beer.
“It sounds really corny but she was my sunlight. When she died, my world died. I would like to have the bracelet.” He folded his arms across his chest and winced.
I wondered what Emma had seen when she met him. I saw a fur-covered pain-wracked man with an unpleasant manner. Perhaps he was just unpleasant to me. Perhaps the pain was recent. “I’ll see that you get it,” I said.
CHAPTER 22
* * *
Tuesday Mid-Morning
Bebe had offered to fix breakfast and Camilla had been easily convinced to let her.
“Country style,” Bebe said. She held an unlit cigarette in one hand and a brown crayon in the other. As Ollie leaned over her arm, she carefully colored a horse. She had a nice technique, outlining first then filling in. “Cheese grits, ham, fried apples, eggs, biscuits.”
“We all loved it,” said Fern. “Then banana pudding.”
“Oh dear. Dessert too?”
“It’s a B&B. Breakfast needs to be special,” Bebe said. Ollie handed her a red crayon and she started on the horse’s mane and tail.
“It was good,” Ollie said, watching every expert stroke of Bebe’s crayon. “I like this place.”
“Where is Camilla?” I asked.
“Shopping and visiting her father in Salisbury,” Fern said. “She said there weren’t any check-ins so she’d be gone until this evening. We have this lovely home all to ourselves. She left me a project.” She pointed to a box emitting a flowery fragrance. “Packages of bath grains. She bundles them together and sells them.”
Since I was just hanging out, waiting for a call from Justine’s brother, I offered to help. The bath grains were in small envelopes illustrated with a line drawing of a magnolia. Fern had found some watercolors and was painting the envelopes, giving each flower a wash of pink. She handed me a piece of pink sheer ribbon. “Tie this around five packets, then stick on a price label.”
“I can handle that.” The ribbon’s silver edges were wired so that it held a nice bow and I could scrunch the ends. “How’s this?” I held up my first effort.
Oliver looked up from the coloring book. “Pretty.”
“You have to go, Ollie?” Bebe asked. He was clutching himself. He nodded. “Come on, then.” She heaved herself to her feet and he followed her down the hall.
“He’s a nice little boy,” I said.
“He is,” Fern agreed. “You know, something is bothering me, Stella.”
“What?” I looked at her. She was her usual blooming self this morning, her skin fresh, her eyes clear. Yesterday’s worries had been dispelled with a good night’s sleep and a country breakfast. Whatever was bothering her, it had to be minor.
“I’ll te
ll you now, while Bebe’s out of the room.When Camilla started me on this project, she told me to get the scissors out of her son’s dresser. After she left, I went up to his room. Do you know what I found?”
“Dirty socks?”
“Go up to the third floor and look in his dresser.Top drawer.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Go on. Then come back and tell me what you think.”
“What is it? Dirty pictures? Pot?”
“You won’t believe me if I tell you. See for yourself.”
I shrugged. “Okay.” I climbed the two flights of stairs, up to Camilla and Blue’s rooms at the top of the house. The wide hall landing was their living area, furnished with a comfortable sofa, desk, and TV cabinet. An open door led into a bedroom where a flowered nightgown had been flung onto a chair and a clutch of makeup littered a cherry wood dresser. A second door was closed, and I opened it tentatively, feeling squeamish at invading Blue’s private space, but at the same time curious to know what was bothering Fern.
The room was furnished in golden oak with a dark blue area rug and bedspread, and very neat. Drawings had been thumb-tacked everywhere, pictures of futuristic cars and spaceships, robots and aliens, meticulously detailed and wonderfully colored. I knew Fern would instantly recognize his talent, but that wasn’t what she’d found in his dresser.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror—my face was a mess of greenish-yellow bruises. Ugh. I pulled open the top drawer to expose a couple of Playboy magazines. Certainly those had not bothered Fern. But when I lifted the magazines I saw what she meant—five thick wads of cash, fastened with rubber bands. I flipped through each, seeing twenties and fifties, about five thousand dollars. A shocking amount of money that I was certain Blue didn’t earn working for Wyatt at the Rosscairn Castle B&B. There could be no good reason for it, only really bad ones like theft, drugs, blackmail.
Murder?
I returned the cash and magazines to the drawer, left the room, closed his door, and leaned against it to ponder my next step. This situation would make a good law-school exam question. Camilla hadn’t invited me to rifle through her son’s belongings. The money wasn’t in plain sight. I didn’t have a warrant. Ergo, my knowledge of the money wasn’t something I could use legally.
But I could take a much harder approach with Blue. I’d suspected he was implicated in the vandalism at the Castle B&B. Now it seemed he was a greedy fool, deep into serious crime. Blue’s involvement in a felony would ruin his life and crush his mother’s spirit. I wanted to rattle his bones until he gave it up—where did this money come from?
Downstairs, Bebe and Ollie had returned from the bathroom and were once more absorbed in their coloring. Fern caught my eye and I shook my head. We weren’t going to talk about the money right now. I was feeling agitated and restless, in no mood to hang around and tie pretty bows until Blue came home from school in five hours. The three of them didn’t need me; they were occupied and safe.
“Call me if you need anything,” I told them, and picked up my car keys.
My car was a ten-year-old Civic. Whenever I thought about trading it in on a newer car, I’d envision my bank balance, depleted by regular debits for purchases of dog food and Fern’s home repairs, and be happy I didn’t have a car payment. A state salary only went so far. The Civic got great mileage, so I didn’t feel guilty about driving around aimlessly, talking to myself, mulling different theories out loud.
Ingrid finds dying Justine. Kate next-to-last to see her; someone came in later. Poison came from barn. Blue took poison? Handed poison to killer? I turned onto 15-501 heading south. Tricia and Scoop have reason to stop wedding; however, both have alibis during time window.Would Lottie Ember leave Alice alone, trot upstairs and poison bride? To what end? Lottie doesn’t seem crazy. Turned west onto Highway 64. Gia, however, is crazy. But she’s taking pictures. She doesn’t take her eyes or camera lens off Mike for an entire hour. Took the next exit, turned right. Ingrid friend of Emma McMahon. Ingrid friend of Justine Bradley. Emma, dead. Justine, dead.
Ingrid. The needle pointed to Ingrid.
My wanderings turned out not to be so random after all. Impelled by frustration and a strong desire to put Jax behind bars, I turned into the stone-walled entrance to Victory Ridge. Fredricks had not forbidden me to drive by Lynn’s house, park a few houses away, and get out of my car. At that point I stopped thinking about what Fredricks had forbidden. Since I’d bought oxycodone from Lynn a few times, she might trust me. What if I just asked her for the name of a cocaine dealer? She might give me Jax’s phone number. Or I could tell Lynn that I knew him, but his phone number wasn’t working. Just bring his name up idly, as I admired the pictures of her grandkids and stocked up on painkillers.
A red minivan was parked in the driveway but no one answered the clack of the brass door knocker. I heard muffled voices from behind the house, then the unmistakable sprong sprong of a diving board. I went around to the side, encountering an eight-foot privacy fence and a man clipping shrubbery. We exchanged “holas” then continued with our tasks—his, attacking an overgrown half-dead butterfly bush, and mine, peering through a chink in the fence.
The pain pill business must be lucrative. I saw a twenty-fivefoot pool surrounded by a flagstone patio. Teak benches and planters under a vine-covered pergola. At the pool’s shallow end sat Lynn, wearing a black bathing suit and a floppy white hat and dangling her feet in the water. At the deep end, swimming laps—Jax Covas.
He touched the concrete, flipped, and started back. He swam like a machine, not particularly fast but strong and steadily. When he reached the opposite end he rolled again, and on this lap he faced me as he turned his face out of the water for air. Was it my imagination or did his one good eye seem to drill through the chink in the fence, espy me spying on him?
My heart began pounding like an unbalanced washing machine on spin cycle. I took a quick step back from the fence and sped back to my car to call the Essex County sergeant.
“I’ve located Jax Covas. But there’s a problem. We can’t arrest him where he is.” I told the sergeant about Lynn and the complications of the investigation into the prescription drug sales. He asked me to wait, he’d have a unit in an unmarked vehicle there within ten minutes to follow Jax and arrest him.
I scrunched down in my seat to wait.The air was waterlogged, the sky dark, and thunder growled in the distance. Jax would get out of the pool when the rain began. My phone rang—it was Justine’s brother returning my call. He was the only person I knew, besides Ingrid, who might know something about Justine’s relationships prior to her engagement to Mike. He was at his nursery, he told me, sorting bulbs for a sale on the weekend.
“Remember the charm bracelet I showed you?” I asked. “Turns it out belonged to a woman named Emma McMahon. Do you know her?”
“I don’t recognize that name.”
“Emma was a friend of Ingrid Hoyt’s. From Wilmington.”
“If Johnny knew her in Wilmington . . . it would have been during high school or earlier.”
Duh. High school. “Before she married, Emma’s last name was Grantham. Emma Grantham.”
Daniel paused. “Oh, sure. Johnny had a friend named Emmy Grantham. They went to junior prom together. I remember her. Bubbly, funny.”
“They dated?”
“Well, Johnny didn’t really date girls. But he tried to fit in. Emmy was a friend.”
“What about the picture—could one of the two girls have been Emma?”
He paused. “Emmy had long dark hair like the girl in the picture. It was a long time ago, you know, and I didn’t know her well. I’d hate to send you down the wrong path.”
“Did they remain friends? I’m trying to figure out why Justine had that bracelet.”
“I don’t know, sorry.”
Emmy Grantham, Emma Grantham McMahon. Had to be the same. I’d thought Emma and Justine first met at the fateful picnic when Emma died. But they’d known each other well,
when Justine was John. They’d been friends. So surely, when they met at the picnic, Justine recognized Emma. Did Emma recognize the new John, the feminized version with long hair, breasts, a new nose and chin, and a brand-new rock on her third finger, left hand? Did she react, or look twice, or ask a leading question?
Justine had to be consumed by fear that Emma could ruin it all for her. Then how convenient for her that Emma had a fatal reaction to an allergen. How convenient for her that Gregor couldn’t find his car keys to get the epi-pen out of his car. How convenient for Justine that Emma perished that day.
I was so focused on sorting these bits and pieces into a theory that I almost didn’t notice Jax come out of Lynn’s house. He got into the red minivan, backed out of the driveway, and headed toward me. He was using his phone, and probably not paying attention to the cars on the street, but I turned away as he passed, just in case. I started my car and eased onto the street. As soon as he was around the corner I made a quick U-turn and began to follow, staying well back. I punched the number of the Essex County sergeant into my cell, to give him the bad news that we were on the move. “Stay on the line. I’ll get dispatch and find out what happened,” he growled.
It had begun to rain, fat drops that smacked my windshield hard. Jax swung onto Highway 87 and headed south. I kept a considerable distance between us, as traffic was light and the red minivan was easy to follow. After five minutes he made a right onto Gum Springs Road. A minute later I made the same turn and realized two things simultaneously—the red minivan was nowhere in sight, and my connection with the sergeant had broken. Dead zone. Ahead lay miles of road through fields and farms, dotted with the occasional business—a carpet store, a massage school, a nursing home. I slowed, scanning the landscape for the red minivan. I tried to get my phone to work but “searching, searching” scrolled across the screen. Yeah, everyone’s searching.
Searching paid off as a flash of red down a little-used lane caught my eye. I backed up and turned into the lane, no more than a couple of ruts in the underbrush. I could see the parked minivan about twenty-five yards ahead, next to a sagging weathered barn, in a cleared area. Brambles scratched the side of my car as I inched my way slowly and uneasily. I knew he had been alone in the van, but he could be meeting others and I had no desire to confront Jax and his minions by myself. Backup—where were they? My useless phone was still searching. I stopped the car and rolled my window down. It was utterly quiet—no voices, no rustle of leaves, no birds—but the harsh stink of burning gasoline filled the air. Perhaps the fumes had driven away the birds. When a cloud of black smoke began to billow up from behind the barn I decided to act. I backed up my car almost to the road, where it couldn’t been seen from the cleared area, yet still blocked the lane. I opened my trunk and slipped into a Kevlar vest. I took out my duty belt and stripped the first aid kit, knives, and baton from it, leaving the Taser and cuffs. I unholstered my SIG and edged my way along the lane, pressing into the undergrowth to minimize my profile. When I reached the edge of the clearing, the air was slowly being poisoned with acrid smoke that burned my eyes, grabbed my lungs in spasm, and nauseated me with its metallic almost sweet smell. I wondered what he could be burning in this sputtering rain.