“What is it this time, Joe?” Jesse said. “This is the second time today I’ve had to deal with you. Even for you, that’s a bit much.”
Joe pulled away from Greg. “Your officer interfered with a private conversation I was having with my neighbor.”
Greg rolled his eyes. “He got into an argument with Violet Gordon again.”
“The lady who owns the flower shop?” I said.
“That’s the one. They get into it a few times a month. Yesterday she punched Joe in the mouth.”
I looked at Joe again. He wasn’t a big man, maybe five-seven or -eight, a hundred and forty pounds, but still, how had she managed to do what most of the town had been thinking about for a long time? “Violet is a tiny little thing,” I said. “And she’s really nice. Are you sure she punched him?”
Joe cocked an eyebrow. “She can give as good as she gets.”
“Joe and Violet had words on the sidewalk outside her shop, which ended when he grabbed a chair from his restaurant and threw it through her window. She found me and told me what had happened.” Well, at least that mystery was solved.
“Is Violet okay?” I asked.
“Didn’t you listen, quilt shop girl? I didn’t throw the chair at Violet,” Joe said, his speech growing more slurred with each sentence. “All I did was break a window and ruin a few flowerpots. It’s just a tiny little hole of a shop, so how much damage could I have done? You don’t even know if she’s going to press charges. In fact, I’m the one who should press charges. She grabbed my coat and ripped it to shreds.” He pointed to a small tear in his jacket, a puffy winter coat with dirt on the collar. He had it zipped up to his neck so that his head looked like that of a turtle popping out from its shell. A very angry and drunk turtle. “You should arrest her for this instead of trying to pin something on me.”
Greg looked about out of patience. “You pushed me, Mr. Proctor. That’s assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.”
“That’s a lie.” Joe’s words slurred even more. “I didn’t push you. You pushed me. You’re just a punk kid, Greg Burke. Your father was a punk, and so are you.”
Jesse turned to me. “I’m sorry, Nell, but I’m going to have to stay—”
“No way,” Greg interrupted. “This isn’t going to keep you from your weekend. I’ll put him in a cell and do the paperwork. There’s nothing for you to do.”
I looked at Jesse. “It’s up to you.”
“Oh, come on, Chief,” Greg said. “You can trust me to look after one prisoner. I know I’m a little new as a detective, but I’ve been babysitting since I was thirteen, and that’s pretty much all I need to do with Joe here.”
Jesse walked over to Joe and gave him a long, hard look. “You threw a chair through Violet’s window and broke a couple of flowerpots. That it?”
“That’s it.”
“You want to tell me why?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Your wife worries about you, Joe. And frankly, so do I. Maybe I should send you to the hospital and make sure you didn’t throw out your back. A man of your age hurling chairs around—”
“My back is fine.” Joe spit the words out. “Dewalt, you want to have a lawsuit on your hands? You start spreading rumors that there’s something wrong with me . . .”
Jesse grunted. “The whole town already knows there’s something wrong with you, Joe.” He moved back and looked at his detective. “Okay, Greg. Joe goes in the cell. Fill out the report. Charge him with damage to property and assaulting an officer for now. Call Violet and see if she’ll come to the station to make a statement. And call over to Larry at the garage if you need anything. Just don’t leave the station until Larry gets here. It means you have to spend the night . . .”
“What am I going to do, escape?” Joe asked.
“No. You’re going to sleep it off.”
Joe chortled. “I’m not drunk, you two-bit excuse for a police chief. I can hold more liquor than there is in this whole lousy town.” But as he spoke he stumbled forward, and Greg had to catch him.
It took a few minutes for Greg and Jesse to put Joe in the only jail cell at the Archers Rest police station. We had just enough time to run the few blocks to catch the train to New York.
“No dead bodies, no crime scenes, no killers to unmask, and no Joe Proctor,” Jesse said once the train was heading south. “Promise me a weekend free of all things criminal.”
I kissed him. “We’re going to New York City,” I reminded him. “I can’t actually promise you there won’t be crime.”
“As long as we’re not involved, I don’t care,” he said.
“Don’t worry. We’ve got other plans.”
I kissed him again just as our train passed the sign that read, THANKS FOR VISITING ARCHERS REST, A PEACEFUL PLACE TO MAKE GOOD FRIENDS.
It is, I thought. As long as you’re not in the mood for a slice of pizza.
Chapter 4
Three hours later we hit the Harlem–125th Street station. One more stop and we’d be at Grand Central.
“You look beautiful,” Jesse told me as our train idled while some of the passengers disembarked. “Have I told you that?”
“Once or twice.” I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder. “But I don’t mind if you keep saying it. It’s going to be a great year. You know how I know that?”
“How?”
“Because there’s a superstition. Whatever you do on the first day of the New Year, you’ll do all year.”
“Then we’re set for an amazing year,” he said. “I cannot believe I have you all to myself for the whole weekend.”
“Can we start by getting something to eat?” I asked. “I’m starved, and that blueberry muffin wasn’t enough.”
Before he had a chance to answer, his phone rang.
“It’s got to be Allie,” I said. “She probably misses you already.”
“She never misses me when she’s with her grandma.”
“But you miss her.”
Jesse grabbed his cell phone from his pocket. It was clear from the first words of his conversation that it wasn’t his daughter on the other end. He looked confused and agitated as he listened to the caller.
“How?” he asked. “I just don’t get it.” After a few minutes of listening, he sighed. “No. I’m coming back. . . . Right now. Just wait for me.”
“What happened?” I asked when he hung up.
“There’s been an incident at the jail.”
“What kind of incident?”
“Joe Proctor is dead.”
“Dead?” It didn’t make sense. “Heart attack?”
Jesse stood up and grabbed our bags. “I’m sorry, Nell. I have to . . .”
We jumped off the train just before the doors closed, and the train sped farther into Manhattan without us. Whatever disappointment I felt was muted by my confusion. Jesse rushed across the platform to catch the train heading north, the last one for the night, and I ran to keep up. We had barely made it when the train arrived and the doors opened.
“Was it a heart attack?” I asked again.
“It looks like he was murdered.”
“That’s impossible. He was in a jail cell, alone in a police station.”
“He wasn’t alone,” he reminded me as we settled into our seats. “There was one other person in the police station: Greg.”
Chapter 5
“Let’s start at the beginning.”
“You were here for the beginning. I arrested him, and we put him in the cell. That’s it. That’s all I know.”
Greg looked anxious, and I couldn’t blame him. The normally quiet police station was filled with people, most of them strangers. Archers Rest shared paramedics and firemen with Morristown, a larger town just north of us, and several were hovering as Greg, Jesse
, and I huddled in the main area of the police station. Two people from the county coroner’s office were dealing with Joe’s body; at least four state police officers were wandering past us; and Larry, a mechanic and volunteer police officer, was giving a statement to one of the state police just out of earshot of the rest of us.
Jesse tried to get Greg to focus on him. I could tell Jesse wanted to bring Greg into his office and question him privately, but a detective from the criminal investigation unit of the state police, a woman named Terri Adkin, had already commandeered Jesse’s office, as well as the conference room and the jail cell. We were lucky to be allowed in the station at all. She’d made it very clear that a possible homicide involving a member of the Archers Rest police force, in the Archers Rest police station, meant that the state police were in charge of the case.
“The beginning,” Jesse said to Greg, quietly and calmly, “was when you saw Joe throw the chair into Violet’s window.”
“I didn’t see it,” Greg corrected him. “I told you. I was on my way back up Main toward the station, and Violet came running over to me, saying Joe was out of control again. So we went over to the flower shop, and Violet and I went inside to see the damage. Joe was already in there getting his chair back. He told me right away that he’d done it. It wouldn’t have been rocket science even if he hadn’t confessed. So I handcuffed him and brought him here.”
When I’d passed the flower shop earlier in the day, the three of them must have been inside. If I hadn’t been in so much of a hurry, I might have stopped. Not that it would have done any good, I reminded myself. Joe didn’t die because he threw a chair through a window. At least I didn’t think so.
“He said you pushed him.” I’d been quiet up until that point, standing behind Jesse and trying my best to stay out of the way, but it was better any issues with Greg’s statement be cleared up now before Detective Adkin found them.
“That’s right.” Greg looked even more flustered. “He said that. Well, I didn’t push him exactly. I just tried to handcuff him, and he wouldn’t let me. So I kind of—you know how it is, Jesse—I kind of grabbed him. He kept going around in a circle, trying to keep me from getting his hands. Like it was a game or something. I wasn’t rough on him, I swear I wasn’t. He got away from me, so I had to grab him before he did any more damage to Violet’s place. And then, once I got him cuffed, he knocked into me. I don’t know if he thought he could escape or what he was doing.”
“He was drunk,” Jesse told him. “We could all see that.”
“And the coroner’s report will show it,” I agreed. “Why are they so sure it’s murder?”
“They’re not. I am.” Greg took a deep breath. “He was making a fuss, told me he wasn’t feeling well. He said he had some medicine he takes every night and he needed it. I called Mrs. Proctor, and she brought it by. I gave it to him, and ten minutes later he was dead.”
“You’re saying Lori killed him?” I asked.
“No, I’m saying I did.”
As Greg spoke those words, Detective Adkin walked over. “Can I get you to repeat that statement, Officer Burke?” she asked.
Jesse stepped between Greg and Detective Adkin. “No. He’ll get a lawyer and give an official statement tomorrow,” he told her. “And he’s Detective Burke.”
“Okay, Detective Burke. Why did you wait so long to call the police?”
“I am the police,” Greg said. “I called Will Thompson over at the Morristown Fire Department. He’s the ranking paramedic there, and he came over and told me what I already knew: that Joe was dead. Then I called Jesse and waited for the chief to come back. It’s his jurisdiction.”
“And when I got here, I called the state police,” Jesse explained to the detective.
She smiled. It was a warm smile, which gave me a glimmer of hope. “I appreciate that, Jesse,” she said. “But we’ve got a problem. I’ve got to go by the book the same way you do. I’m not looking to hang Greg out to dry, but if he’s saying he killed someone . . .”
“He misspoke,” Jesse said sharply, putting his hand up to stop Greg before the detective could utter another word. “We won’t know what happened until we have an official cause of death.”
“You’re right,” Adkin agreed. “And tomorrow being New Year’s Day, I doubt I’ll have anything. But January second, I will have an autopsy, and your detective will have to explain himself.”
Greg stepped forward. “Am I under arrest?”
“As your chief has made clear, I don’t know if a crime was committed yet, so no,” she said. “But this is the death of a prisoner in custody and . . .” She hesitated for a moment before carefully choosing her words. “There are reasons to be concerned that it wasn’t natural causes.”
“What reasons?” Jesse asked.
“I can’t share that with you. So, until we know for sure what happened, the jail cell is a crime scene. No one from the Archers Rest Police Department is allowed back there. I’ll be posting an officer to make sure—”
“Terri . . . ,” Jesse started.
“And you are not allowed to investigate this incident, Chief Dewalt.” She turned to me. “And neither are you, Miss Fitzgerald.”
“I’m just an art student,” I said. “I make quilts.”
She laughed. “You don’t think I’ve heard the stories about the murders you’ve helped solve? You and your friends at the quilt shop make a nice unofficial branch of the Archers Rest Police Department. But not this time. Not this case. Am I making myself clear?”
Even as I said yes, I wondered how many of the quilt group I could round up to start looking into Joe’s death. And when I caught Jesse’s eye, I could tell he was wondering that, too.
Chapter 6
An hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve is not the best time to try to get people to come to a quilt shop, but Eleanor and Barney made it, as did Carrie. She left her husband to watch their two sleeping children with a promise that she’d kiss him next year, and arrived at Someday Quilts just after eleven-thirty. Unfortunately, the other members of our little group were out of town for the holidays, leaving us with a skeleton crew of amateur detectives. This time we had Jesse, though he seemed a little lost. He was used to being the one who discouraged unofficial investigations; now he was leading one. I felt sorry for him but also, selfishly, a little excited to be working so closely together. I decided to put my disappointment about the weekend out of my mind and focus instead on this rare chance to share every step of the case with him.
We sat, as the quilt group usually did, in the classroom of the shop. Carrie brought leftover treats from Jitters, and Eleanor brought a few sandwiches along with a large pot of coffee she’d brewed at home. Quilters are always prepared to provide comfort, whether it’s with food, a quilt, or a few kind words. But right now, I was just grateful for the food. I’d been hungry four hours ago when our train was approaching the city; I was famished now. I grabbed a sandwich and a few of the doughnuts, and sat next to Eleanor.
“Do you guys remember the day I opened Jitters?” Carrie asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “Joe stormed in yelling that I’d better not put pizza on the menu or I’d be sorry.”
“I remember,” I told her. “All he had to do was look around. The place was stocked with coffee and muffins, and no pizza or pizza ovens. But Joe wouldn’t listen.”
“He never listened,” Eleanor agreed.
Carrie took a deep breath. “He scared my kids. He scared my customers. He scared me. I hate to say this, but maybe this time he tried to scare the wrong person and he was killed because of it.”
“Assuming it was murder,” Jesse pointed out. “Lori said it herself: all that anger and stress could have led to a heart attack.”
“Or Lori could have arranged a heart attack with whatever was in those pills she brought to the police station,” I added.
“Poor
thing.” Eleanor spoke quietly, as if she were talking to herself, and patted Barney’s head.
“Poor Lori?”
“Yes, her, too. But poor Joe,” she said. “He lived his life with such unhappiness. Never saw joy in anything. Not in his beautiful wife, or his successful business, or in the many friends that were his for the asking. He looked for reasons to be angry. He alienated the people who tried to help him. It’s nearly impossible not to be made happy by something, and yet in all the years I knew him, Joe never was. That has to be a sad way to live, and now a sad way to die.”
Leave it to Grandma to remind us that Joe, for all his faults, deserved better than to die at someone else’s hand. I turned back to Jesse. “So what do we do?”
“Greg made a semi-confession in that statement that Terri Adkin overheard. She’s a good cop, a fair person, but she’s got a guy who had an altercation with Joe saying he killed him. If the autopsy shows foul play, Greg’s going to be in trouble.”
“Plus, there’s that history between Joe and Greg’s father,” Eleanor said. “Once the state police look into that, it will add motive.”
Carrie looked at me, but I shrugged. Neither of us were Archers Rest natives, so we didn’t know the backstory behind many of the town’s feuds, but it wasn’t surprising that at least one would involve Joe.
“Why did Greg say he killed Joe?” Carrie asked.
“He was talking gibberish,” Jesse said. “Greg has a tendency to blurt things out without thinking.”
“If you didn’t think he meant it,” I asked, “why did you stop him from explaining himself?”
“Because everything he says is on the record. If he changes his story later, it could be a problem.” Jesse took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice sounded tired and frustrated. “He’s a good cop, and one day he’ll be a great one, but his eagerness gets the better of him. He jumps in with theories and opinions when he should stick to the facts. Sometimes he thinks he’s solved a case before we’ve even made it to the crime scene. I don’t want him to say anything to anyone in law enforcement, including me, until he has a chance to calm down and think through what really happened. Once that ball gets rolling, I might not be able to help him.”
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