Purple Knot

by Raquel Byrnes

  I nodded and went to talk with Jimmy out in the hall. He looked ragged. He’d been with me during the police and FBI interviews. He’d even stayed in the room while the doctors made sure the explosion hadn’t scrambled my brains.

  Jimmy took my hand in his and rubbed my wrist with his thumb. “How’s Salem?”

  I shrugged helplessly and the tears started again.

  Jimmy pulled me to his chest and stroked my hair. He whispered in my ear. “He’ll be OK, Rain.”

  “He’s just a kid, Jimmy. I should have been…”

  “Shhh, don’t do that,” Jimmy said and kissed the top of my head. “He’ll be fine. He’s a strong boy.”

  I nodded against his chest. “How did the meeting with the District Attorney go?”

  Jimmy’s chuckle caught me off guard.

  “You definitely nailed Parker to the wall with the drug evidence. I’ve never seen a lawyer actually rub his hands together with glee before.”

  “I’ll bet it was a sight,” I intoned.

  “Oh, hey,” Jimmy said and reached over to his briefcase on a nearby chair. “This came by messenger to the hotel.”

  I looked at the manila envelope in Jimmy’s hand and frowned. “What is it?”

  “It’s from that Chuy guy, I think,” Jimmy said.

  He pointed to my name on the front. “It’s the same handwriting as the stuff that came earlier.”

  I tucked the envelope in my purse and smiled. I was tired.

  Jimmy gave me a quick hug. He pecked a kiss on my forehead and stepped back to look at me. “I have some things to take care of with Bennet. Are you going to be all right here?”

  I nodded.

  “OK, then. I’m going to be back here in a few hours to pick you up.”

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll be here.”

  Jimmy left and I walked back into Salem’s room. The nurse was opening a package of gauze and clicking her tongue. I peered over her shoulder at what she was doing. An angry red welt rose up from Salem’s neck.

  “Ew, what’s that?”

  She turned to me and smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s just a minor infected abrasion. I just need to clean it out and apply some ointment.” She squinted at the wound and then turned to the instrument tray to her side. She picked up the tweezers, and picked at the center of Salem’s cut. She pulled something out and held it up to the light. “Huh.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the tiny particle. “What is it?”

  She shrugged and dropped the debris on a piece of gauze.

  “Just a splinter, sweetie,” she said softly. “No need to worry. We’ll just wash out his hair and he’ll be right as rain.”

  “Right as rain,” I repeated, staring down at the splinter.

  The nurse finished up with Salem and left.

  I plopped down on the chair by his bed. The envelope crinkled in my hand and I looked at it. I didn’t remember what I’d asked Chuy to do the other day. I mused as I ripped it open. Had it really been only a few days? “Let’s see here.”

  I flipped through the information and realized it was the skip trace information I’d ordered on Summer. After resolving to look at her murder like a normal case, I’d asked Chuy to look into all of her records for me. He’d opened up her phone records and her financials. I ran my hand along the phone records and saw her call to me the night Jimmy had Parker arrested. I saw Jimmy’s number, Parkers, even Mona’s.

  Chuy was thorough.

  Summer’s private line at Hill House was even in the file. I was about to close the file when I recognized a number on the call log. She’d only called it once. I jerked when I saw it.

  I looked up at Salem, at the wound on his neck. Something the nurse had said ticked at the back of my mind. She’s said she’d wash the splinter out of Salem’s hair.

  The butterflies started in my stomach. I dove into my bag and pulled out the murder book. Hands shaking, I flipped through the pages to the coroner’s report. Right there in black and white I read the same sentence. The surgeons had washed splinters out of Summer’s wounds before doing the craniotomy.

  Shuffling through the crime scene photos I found the one with the wood, the black wood splinters on the floor of Summer’s house. I looked at every picture of the room, every angle. There was no chair, no table, nothing that was black. I sat back in my chair, breathless.

  Flashes of my encounter with Crawley ran through my mind. He’d only ever used a gun. But both summer and Salem had been attacked with a blunt weapon. Crawley didn’t fit as Summer’s assailant. He hadn’t known about her attack when Shane blamed him. Neither of them knew. I looked back at the number on Summer’s phone records, and then back at the picture of the splinters. And then, it hit me.

  I’d seen the weapon. I’d seen it before.

  Purple Knot

  40

  I walked along the polished wood floor behind the maid as she led me to the library. She motioned for me to sit on one of the leather chairs by the fireplace and left the room. Behind me the step-tap, step-tap of Grayson’s cane sent spikes of anger through my stomach. I rose to face him.

  “Reyna Cruz,” he snarled. “Come to gloat?”

  “I came for answers.”

  He chuckled through a grimace. “What, the great detective miss something? Think I’m going to help you throw more wood on the fire you’ve built around Parker?” He walked past me to the round library table. He crossed his arms across his chest and glared at me. His disgust was evident.

  “I want to know what you and Summer talked about the day before she died.”

  Grayson’s eyebrows went up.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Summer called you from her private line at Hill House. The call lasted over twenty minutes. You don’t strike me as a chatter box, Grayson.”

  He scowled at my use of his first name.

  I moved toward him. “What did Summer say to you, huh? Did she tell you she’d retained a lawyer? Because she did, the best in the state. I have phone records to prove it. She spoke with Marty Travers for over three hours the week of her murder. Three hours, Grayson. That’s not a free consultation. That’s a strategy session.”

  Grayson waved his hand dismissively. “Never would have happened.”

  “Oh, why’s that?” I asked. “Because of your influence? I’ll bet you threatened to take her baby, didn’t you?”

  Grayson shrugged. The corners of his mouth twitched up. “She would have lost in a custody battle.”

  I shook my head. “You see, I think she had leverage. I think she found out about Parker’s activities down at Veno Pharmaceuticals. I think she found out what he was doing and threatened to expose him.”

  Grayson chuckled. “That’s a nice story, Reyna,” he snarled.

  I smiled sweetly at him and put my hand up. “Oh, wait. I have more. You see I started to wonder how Crawley or Shane would know the significance of daffodils enough to use them to torment me with that package you sent to my office.”

  Grayson smiled like an alligator, all teeth and no warmth. “You have no proof.”

  I pulled a paper out of my pocket and unfolded it. I wiggled the photo from the surveillance camera in front of him.

  His expression faltered when he saw it. “That could be anybody.”

  “The package store lady is ready to swear that you mailed the package.”

  Grayson snatched the photo from my hands and ripped it in two. “This is nothing, Reyna. I doubt you could get anyone to care.”

  I nodded and pointed my finger at my temple. “That’s true, but you see…the thing with evidence is that it tends to pile up.”

  “You have nothing,” he said and smiled.

  I held up my hand and pointed to my pinky finger. “I have the blood you left at the office when you attacked me. I’ll bet if we looked, we’d find a bullet wound somewhere on your scrawny body.”

  Grayson’s eyes narrowed but kept silent.

  I ticked of
f the points on my fingers.

  “I have the pictures I took of the work truck you keep by your peach grove. I thought I saw some of the paint from Jimmy’s SUV still on the bumper. You know, when you used it to run us off the road.” I looked at him and cocked my head to the side. “Is it because of your leg?”

  Grayson looked at me startled. “My what?”

  “Your bum leg,” I said and pointed to his cane. “Is that the reason you didn’t climb down the ravine and finish us off, because you couldn’t?”

  “That’s enough,” Grayson said and leaned in close. “You have no right to come in here and accuse me…”

  I grabbed his cane, flipped it upside down, and shook it in his face. “You should have thrown this away, Grayson.”

  He reached for it but I stepped out of reach. “You didn’t have this at the funeral. I remember because you always have this stupid cane with you. I think Summer told me once that it’s made out of a piece of your first boat, is that right?”

  “Give me that! Get out!” He wagged his finger in my face. “You have no cause anyway, Reyna. You’ll never get a judge to sign a search warrant based on your suppositions.”

  “I just had the police collect a splinter of this from the hospital. It was buried in my friends neck,” I said evenly. “Detective Worpel is going to match it to the splinter of wood found at Summer’s house. Did you know there aren’t that many antique restoration places in Seattle? At least not many that the great Grayson Evans would deign to enter. Do you want to see the repair ticket? I have it right here. This and the splinters give the police probable cause to test your cane.”

  I twirled the cane in my hand like baton girl at a parade. Then I grinned from ear to ear. I bobbed my eyebrows up and down. “Once you’re in jail with your crazy son, I’ll bet the judge gives Autumn to Jimmy.”

  Grayson’s face contorted with rage. A guttural growl tore out of his mouth and he grabbed the marble lamp from the library table and hurled it at me. It glanced off of my shoulder and I stumbled back, dropping the cane.

  “Do you think anyone will believe you? Do you think anyone cares what a dirty orphan from the docks thinks?” He lunged for me, spittle flying from his mouth as he yelled. “No one, not Summer, not you, is going to take anything from this family!”

  I crawled backwards, yelling as I went. “What are you going to do, Grayson? Beat me like you beat Summer? You going to leave fake drug evidence next to me, too?”

  “She deserved it! She tried to blackmail me and Parker into giving her full custody,” Grayson yelled. “How dare she even think…”

  I got to my feet and turned to run but Grayson was on me.

  He pulled on my hair, and we went down against the leather chair. I broke free and ran for the door, but I was turned around and the door I pulled open led to the terrace.

  “Come back here!”

  Trapped three floors up I whirled to face Grayson. He had his cane again and he swung it as he came at me.

  “You killed the mother of your grandchild. You killed her in cold blood.”

  Grayson swung the cane but I ducked and it smashed into the glass panes of the French doors.

  “She was going to take what was mine,” he snarled. He blocked my path back into the house and raised the cane over his head like a wood cutter.

  Fear flashed through me as he swung it at my head. I screamed and ran into him with my shoulders, knocking him off balance. I wrapped my hands around the shaft and tried to yank it away.

  Grayson wrenched us sideways and then we were against the railing. My legs got tangled up with his, and he gave a final jerk on the cane. It flew out of my hands.

  Then he used it like a baton against my throat. “You will not do this,” he yelled in my face. “You are nothing!”

  I struggled to breathe.

  He leaned forward with the baton pushing me further and further up, and over the railing. My feet left the floor and I kicked frantically.

  His eyes glimmered with hatred and he gritted his teeth with the strain.

  I clawed at his face and his hands desperate. Then I felt myself going over. I screamed and grabbed at his sweater as I fell. He barreled forward, off balance, and we went over together.

  I don’t know how I caught the railing. I only knew that as I went over I managed to hook my legs around the pole. I hugged it with everything I had.

  Grayson hadn’t been so lucky. He dangled by his hands thirty feet above the street. Panting, he looked at me with wild eyes.

  I hauled myself over the railing and back onto the terrace floor. My heart was in my chest, and I gasped for breath and rubbed my neck.

  Grayson grunted and his hands slipped a little. He yelped and adjusted his grasp.

  I leaned over the railing and peered down at him. He was old. He wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. I looked out at the dark night and remembered Summer’s broken body. He deserved to die. He deserved to die like this.

  Jimmy’s voice echoed in my head. You need to decide between the blood boiling in your veins and the grace hanging over your head.

  I’d told Jimmy that I was trying to believe, and I had been. But trying without doing was nothing. I knew that. I sighed, reached out, and grabbed Grayson’s sleeves.

  “What…what are you doing?” He stammered.

  I grunted with the strain but managed to pull him back up onto the terrace. He crumbled to the floor panting. He looked up and chuckled bitterly.

  “What’s the matter Reyna,” he spat. “You don’t have the killer instinct? Nobody will ever believe you!”

  I reached up to my blouse and undid the button. Grayson watched me with a frown. My fingers closed around the button camera and I held it out in front of him.

  “Somehow, I think they will believe me,” I said, through painful gasps.

  Grayson’s face fell and he shook with anger. He started to speak, but I turned and walked off the terrace without looking back. Grayson Evans didn’t deserve anymore of my time.

  ****

  The next few weeks seemed to flash by. Grayson was arrested and the D.A. used the confession to broker a deal.

  I was relieved to avoid a trial.

  Jimmy was angry that I’d confronted Grayson by myself, but I explained that he never would have confessed in front of him. I had to talk to him alone. I had to make him believe I was on my own.

  Parker received fifteen years for his part in the drug scheme that ended with Shane and Crawley’s death. Afraid for his life, Parker had gone to his father for help. He’d told him about the drugs, showed him the tablets. The pill found next to Summer, had been left by Grayson to throw the police in the direction of a drug deal gone bad. It had nearly worked. Grayson had sent Parker to make it look like Summer was entering rehab to sell the story to the police. And it was Grayson that tried to help Parker cover up the Digi-Safe break in by making the ‘digital apocalypse’ calls. My assumption that Parker didn’t have the brains to pull everything off was right. Had I not been so angry, so focused on revenge, I might have seen it sooner.

  I had been right about some things and completely wrong about others. Still, that hadn’t stopped the truth from coming out. I visited Summer’s grave a few days after the whole ordeal. I told her everything. I told her that Autumn was with Jimmy now and that she’d be loved more than any child could be loved. After a while I just sat in the grass and listened to the wind blow.

  “I miss you, Summer,” I told her. “I miss you so much.”

  Epilogue

  Lavender Plantation

  The weeping willows swayed in the warm breeze. Eyes closed, I listened to their gentle rustling with my face turned up to the sun. I opened my eyes. Sunlight flitted through the Spanish moss and played over the yellow petals that wound in a path across the lawn. Overhead, bunches of daffodils and tulle draped over me in an arch. Butterflies skittered in my stomach, and I ran my hand down the embroidered bodice of my dress. I took in a slow breath and the sweet smell of lav
ender swirled around me. In the distance the music started.

  “They’re playing your song, old girl,” Maurice said.

  He walked over to me and I smiled at him. He offered his arm, and I hooked mine through his.

  “Here we go,” I breathed.

  We walked arm in arm down the aisle. My dress trailed behind as I strode past the friends and family gathered on either side. Mona held Autumn’s tiny arm up and made her wave as I walked by. Her little white dress had tiny daffodils sewn into the satin. Her eyes lit up when she saw me. They were gray, like Summer’s.

  Up ahead a white gazebo stood in a field of lavender. Jimmy stood on the first steps. He watched me walk toward him and grinned broadly. He reached out with his hand.

  “Ma chér,” he whispered.

  I took his hand. It was strong and warm and he pulled me up to the step with him.

  The pastor smiled down at us and opened his bible. Behind Jimmy, Salem stood in a matching tuxedo. He winked at me and smiled.

  Jimmy lifted my veil with shaking hands. I smiled at him and then he reached up and gently held my face in his hands. He looked at me with eyes the color of thunderclouds and murmured softly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  My heart soared and I thanked God as I said a silent prayer for this man, this life. It was more than I could have ever hoped for. I blinked back tears and put my hands over Jimmy’s.

  “My one and only,” I whispered through happy tears. “You’re my one and only.”

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