David briefly explained to Eric why we had come here to talk to him.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for conflict to find its way into the conversation.
“How do you expect me to remember where I was on a random day eleven years ago?” Eric asked.
“It wasn’t just a random day,” I said.
“Maybe not to you, but it was to me,” Eric replied.
“So you’re telling me that you have no idea where you were?” I asked.
“That’s right,” he said.
“You do remember hearing about Jessica’s disappearance, though, don’t you?” I asked.
“It would be hard not to. There were news stories about it everywhere,” he said.
“I can’t help but ask you this, then. Why do you remember hearing about her disappearance, but not where you were that morning?” I replied.
“Stories about her disappearance were splashed across the TV for months. That’s a much wider time frame than asking me where I was on one particular morning,” Eric said.
I narrowed my eyes. “You seem to have a very selective memory.”
“I was probably at work. I put in a lot of hours back then,” Eric replied.
I folded my arms. “That isn’t the most committal answer.”
Eric shook his head. “No. But it’s the best you’re going to get. What do you want from me?”
David stared him down. “A cohesive story would be nice.”
Eric threw his arms out. “It was a long time ago.”
“You may be done with the past, but the past isn’t done with you. My sister was murdered, and her killer is still out there,” I said.
“I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t kill her,” Eric said.
“You can say that as many times as you want, but without an alibi, you have no proof,” David replied.
“What we do have is a great deal of suspicion. After all, you were stalking her,” I said.
He held his pointer finger out. “I wasn’t stalking her.”
“That’s not what she said,” I replied.
Eric snarled. “She was wrong.”
“If someone hadn’t murdered her, I could ask her,” I replied.
“Look. The whole stalking thing doesn’t matter anyway because I didn’t kill her,” Eric replied.
I groaned. David and I weren’t getting anywhere. If we wanted to make any sort of headway, we would need to try a different approach.
“You were working at Treasure Cove Cemetery back then, weren’t you?” I asked.
Eric shrugged. “Yeah. So what?”
“What did you do there?” I asked.
“I took care of the grounds,” Eric said.
I stared him down. “That’s not how I remember it. Didn’t you dig graves?”
Eric reluctantly nodded. “That was a small part of it. But I did a lot of things at the cemetery.”
“Jessica’s killer buried her six feet underground,” I said.
“I already told you, I had nothing to do with that,” Eric replied.
David spoke up. “You know, we can talk to your old boss at the cemetery. We can also have them pull your employment records and your time cards.”
“Go ahead. I’m not scared of you,” Eric said.
David puffed his chest out. “You should be.”
Eric scowled. “Are we done now?”
David shook his head.
Eric groaned. “I answered your questions. What else do you want from me?”
“An alibi would be nice,” I said.
“For the last time, I don’t remember where I was that morning. Now, are you going to charge me with anything?” Eric asked.
David stared him down. “Not at the moment.”
“In that case, I have nothing else to say to you,” Eric replied.
“Don’t even think about leaving town,” David said.
Chapter Eighteen
I didn’t trust Eric or his story. Mostly because I felt like there was something he was keeping from David and me. My gut agreed. The more I listened to my instincts, the more I felt that doing some extra digging into Eric’s past was crucial.
David and I took a drive over to Treasure Cove Cemetery, Eric’s former place of employment.
Bill Foster ran the human resources department at the cemetery. The lanky, tall fifty-five-year-old wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses and had no hair on his head to speak of. Perhaps overseeing the cemetery staff had made him pull out all of his hair. Then again, maybe it was just genetics. Either way, there were more important questions that needed asking than what had caused him to go bald.
David and I sat in Bill’s office, which overlooked row after row of headstones. What a depressing thing to have to look at day after day. No wonder Bill was a little more downbeat than the average human resources employee that I had met over the years.
“What can I do for you?” Bill asked.
“Do you have employee timecards going back eleven years?” I replied.
Bill nodded. “We do.”
“Great. We’re looking for information on Eric Tilden. Can you pull up his old timecards and everything else you have on him?” I asked.
Bill let out a hearty laugh.
My forehead wrinkled. “What’s so funny?”
“Just because we have timecards going back eleven years doesn’t mean I can pull them up,” Bill replied.
I scrunched my nose. “I don’t understand.”
“The world may be in the digital age, but that doesn’t mean this cemetery is,” Bill said.
Bill got up from his desk and walked David and me over to a back storage room that was filled with stacks of boxes.
“The timecards and personnel file you are looking for are in here,” Bill said.
“Where, specifically?” I asked.
Bill shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
I raised my eyebrows at Bill. “Seriously?”
Bill threw his arms out. “Trust me. Rooting through these old boxes is not my idea of a good time. When do you need these records exactly?”
“As soon as possible,” David said.
“Do you have a few hours to spare?” Bill deadpanned.
“We can come back,” David replied.
“That would probably be a good idea,” Bill said.
I held my pointer finger up. “But before we go, there’s something else I want to ask you.”
“What is it?” Bill replied.
“Do you remember an old employee of yours named Eric Tilden?” I asked.
Bill nodded. “Oh yeah.”
“What do you remember about him?” I said.
“He was a creepy guy,” Bill replied. “I was glad when he quit. That meant I didn’t have to fire him.”
“When you say he was creepy, did he ever do anything specific that made you cringe, or did you just get a general unsettling feeling when you talked to him?” I asked.
“Sometimes I’d look out my window and he’d just be wandering around the cemetery completely at random,” Bill said.
“Are you sure it was random? I mean, maybe he was heading to the grave of one of his family members,” David replied.
“Trust me. It was just random. The guy just liked wandering up and down the rows of headstones. So much so that he even came here on his days off,” Bill said.
“Do you have any idea why?” I asked.
“I asked him that once,” Bill said.
“And what did he say?” I asked.
“He told me that this cemetery was the most peaceful place he had ever been,” Bill replied.
I rubbed my forehead. “Really?”
Bill threw his arms out. “Like I said, he was a creepy guy.”
“Trust me. He hasn’t stopped being creepy,” David said.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Bill replied.
“Did Eric do anything else that was out of the ordinary?” I asked.
Bill shook his head. “Not that I k
now of. Then again, I didn’t spend much time with him.” His eyes widened. “Actually, you know who you should talk to?”
“Who?” David asked.
“Willy Joplin. He and Eric used to work together a lot,” Bill said.
Chapter Nineteen
With a case like this, there was a shortage of good news to go around. I had to take the small victories wherever I could find them. One such instance was in finding out that Willy Joplin was not only still employed by the cemetery, but that he was actually working a shift that afternoon.
That fact saved David and me a trip across town. Instead of having to track Willy down at his house, David and I just walked a few hundred feet away, where Willy was digging a fresh grave.
The tall, bearded man in his late fifties stopped working when he spotted David and me approaching him.
Willy seemed relieved to see us. Not so much because he wanted to speak with us, but more because our impending conversation gave him a chance to take a short break from the heavy physical labor of digging.
David and I introduced ourselves while Willy leaned on his shovel and wiped sweat from his brow.
“Don’t worry. We won’t take up much of your time,” David said.
“Feel free to take as much time as you want. I’m in no hurry to get back to work, if you know what I mean,” Willy deadpanned. “There’s no reason to work myself to death.”
David and I both grimaced.
A disappointed look came to Willy’s face. “That was a joke.”
I forced a smile. “Oh. Good one.”
Willy’s nose wrinkled. “I forget that not everyone appreciates gallows humor. But let me tell you. In the break room, that joke kills.”
“I’ll bet it does,” I said.
Once more, Willy looked disappointed to not get a laugh out of either David or me.
“Wow. Tough crowd,” Willy said.
David took a serious tone with Willy. “Mr. Joplin, we need to ask you some questions.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?” Willy asked.
“We’re looking for some information about Eric Tilden,” David said.
Willy shrugged. “What did you come to me for, then? I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Why? Did you two have a falling out?” I asked.
“I just didn’t enjoy hanging out with him anymore,” Willy said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“He just got to be too creepy,” Willy said.
It didn’t seem to matter who was being interviewed. Whenever Eric’s name came up, a reference to him being creepy always seemed to follow shortly after.
“Did he do anything particular that creeped you out?” I asked.
“Honestly, at the end of our friendship, almost everything he did creeped me out,” Willy said.
“Can you be more specific?” David asked.
“To start, he talked about death all the time. We’d be in the middle of digging a grave sometimes, and he’d start going on about how lucky dead people are because they don’t have to suffer like the living do,” Willy said.
“Really? He actually said that?” I asked.
Willy nodded. “Oh yeah. You don’t forget when crazy talk like that comes out of someone’s mouth. I mean, this job is hard enough without having to listen to a coworker go on about how lucky dead people are.”
“I’m not quite sure how to respond to that,” I said.
“How do you think I felt having to listen to it?” Willy shook his head. “That guy was a real piece of work.”
“I can’t disagree with that,” I said.
Willy narrowed his eyes. “Speaking of, what kind of trouble did that creep get into?”
“What makes you think he got into trouble?” David asked.
“It’s not every day that a police detective comes around, asking me questions about a guy I haven’t seen in years,” Willy replied.
“True,” David replied.
“So what did that creep do exactly?” Willy asked.
“We don’t know for sure that he did anything,” David replied. “We’re just gathering as much information as we can about him.”
Willy bit the corner of his lip. “Does this have to do with Jessica Daley’s skeleton being found the other day?”
“You heard about that, huh?” I asked.
Willy nodded. “It’s terrible what happened to her.”
“I’ll say. She was my sister,” I replied.
“I’m so sorry,” Willy said.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“Do you think Eric might have killed her?” Willy asked.
“Like I told you, we’re just trying to gather as much information as we can,” David said.
“You know, back in the day, he used to talk about her quite a lot,” Willy replied.
My eyes lit up. “He did?”
Willy nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Eric was convinced that he and Jessica were meant to be together. That if she just broke up with that guy she was with and gave him a chance, she would see how right they were for each other.”
“Really?” I asked.
“You do think that Eric might have had something to do with Jessica’s death, don’t you?” Willy replied.
“That is yet to be determined,” David said.
Willy got a faraway look in his eyes. “You know, I’ll never forget the day that she went missing.”
“Why is that?” David asked.
“Because it was my birthday. And let me tell you, news like that has a way of spoiling a birthday really fast,” Willy said.
“It has a way of spoiling a lot of things,” I replied.
Willy gave me a sympathetic look. “I’ll bet. I thought I had it bad, getting called into work on my birthday. But you had it far worse.”
My forehead wrinkled. “Wait a minute. You got called into work on your birthday?”
Willy nodded. “Yeah. Because of Eric.”
“Why? What did he do?” I asked.
“He called in sick that morning. At the last possible second, too. I was all ready to go out and have a good time when my boss called me in,” Willy said.
“Your boss couldn’t have called anyone else?” I asked.
“Everyone else was already working that day. So I was out of luck,” Willy said. “The crazy thing is that Eric wasn’t even really sick.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I don’t know it for a fact. It’s just how I feel,” Willy said.
“Why do you feel that way?” I asked.
“Because Eric showed up to work the next morning looking just fine. If you had seen him, you wouldn’t have believed that he was sick the day before, either. And I think that’s because nothing was ever wrong with him,” Willy said. “To this day, I still believe that Eric faked being sick that morning to get the day off of work.”
David scratched his chin. “That’s very interesting. Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Joplin.”
“No problem.” Willy glanced my way. “I hope you find out who killed your sister.”
“I hope so, too,” I replied.
After finishing up with Willy, David and I headed back to the cemetery’s administrative offices. By that point, Bill Foster had found Eric Tilden’s old personnel file.
Just like Willy had told us, the records showed that Eric had called in sick the day of my sister’s disappearance.
While that was not proof of Eric being guilty, it also didn’t make him look innocent either.
Chapter Twenty
Another discussion with Eric was in order. David and I headed back to the tattoo parlor to talk with him. Unfortunately, when we arrived, Eric had already left work for the day.
David and I tried to track Eric down at his rental town home, but we had no luck. Not only did he fail to answer our knocks, but his hearse wasn’t parked in the driveway. I went around to the backyard but saw no sign of him there
either.
Clearly, Eric wasn’t at home. So the question became, where was he?
David decided to put out an all-points bulletin on Eric in case he had decided to make a break for it. I prayed that was not the case, but my instincts did not have a good read on the situation.
Since it could take a while to get a hit on the bulletin, David and I decided to move on and question the next suspect on our list.
***
David and I entered Rosie’s Chic Boutique, a retail shop on Pine Street where Clarissa Arnold worked as a clerk. Clarissa was a five-foot-six thirty-year-old with long, curly black hair, glasses, and an hourglass figure.
At first, she mistook me for a customer, but David quickly pulled out his police badge and explained to her why we were there.
A look of befuddlement came to Clarissa’s face after David finished speaking.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m not sure what this has to do with me,” Clarissa said.
“We just need to ask you some questions,” I said.
“But why?” Clarissa asked.
“If you just let me ask the questions, it will all be clear,” I said.
Clarissa groaned. “All right. Let’s get this over with, then.”
“Do you remember where you were the day my sister went missing?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t have a clue.”
“You answered awfully quickly. Do you want to think about that question a little longer? August tenth. Eleven years ago. Where were you?” I asked.
“I just told you, I don’t have a clue. That was so long ago. I don’t know why you’d expect me to remember that,” Clarissa said.
“Because it wasn’t just any day. My sister’s disappearance was front-page news. Everyone was talking about it. If you remembered just one day in the last decade and a half, I figure it would be that one,” I replied.
She shrugged. “I’m sorry. I can’t say that I do.”
“Here’s something you should remember. Before my sister and Ryan Davidson started dating, you and Ryan were a couple, right?” I asked.
Clarissa tensed up. “I don’t like the direction this conversation is going.”
Daley Buzz Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 62