A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  She stared at the dashboard of her car to hold back the tears fighting their way to her eyes. She was damned if she was going to let him see her cry and report it to Joshua.

  Tad knew the tears were on their way. “Listen, Jan, I have lived more than you ever will, and I have been around the block a dozen times more than you have ever been, and there is something that I learned that I think you should know.”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Bed partners come and go. Friends, good friends, are forever. You can’t get a better friend than Josh Thornton.” He added softly, “He is your friend, no matter what happens. Don’t spoil it by trying to sleep with him.”

  Tad didn’t wait for her argument. He got out of the car and went up to his apartment.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?” Dr. Tad MacMillan asked Joshua Thornton and Lieutenant Seth Cavanaugh.

  The three men studied Grace Henderson’s naked back. In death, the girl lay with no dignity on her stomach on the cold steel table in the morgue in East Liverpool City Hospital’s basement. Every crevice and orifice of her body had been probed and studied in hopes of finding evidence to identify her killer.

  There are no secrets in death.

  Unable not to compare her to his own teenaged daughters, Joshua thought, She shouldn’t be here. She should be spending her father’s paycheck at the mall.

  It was easy to see what Tad was talking about when he asked them what was wrong with her. Etched into the once pink flesh of the cheerleader who had been teased for the puritan boundaries set by her parents was an eagle with its wings spread out across her buttocks. The bird’s head rose up above the top of the crack in her buttocks. Its body ran down along either side of her cheeks for the tail feathers to spread out where her legs parted.

  The artwork took up her entire rear end.

  “It’s a tattoo,” Tad told the speechless men. “I see a lot of them in my line of work. This is a good-quality one. It’s quite expensive to get this type of artwork done.”

  Joshua noted what was obvious to him from his personal association with the victim. “This girl didn’t even baby-sit. Where’d she get the money for this?”

  “Her folks?” Seth guessed.

  “No,” the prosecutor disagreed, “they would never have agreed to a tattoo, especially on the butt. A couple of weeks before she was killed, she came over to our house to see Tracy. Her mother and I had to chaperone. Our house, mid-afternoon on a Saturday to bake cookies with another girl. We are talking about a very strict family here.” He took her earlobe into his hand. “She didn’t even pierce her ears.”

  “Her parents can see her ears,” Tad said. “What are the odds that they are going to be checking out her butt?”

  “So we have a girl who’s got a secret life,” Joshua concluded.

  “Oh, yeah.” The medical examiner referred to the report he pinned on a clipboard. “She was shot once through the heart. It was a contact wound. The gun was pressed against her chest when the shot was fired. She was killed instantly. The slug was a thirty-eight caliber. I sent it to the state lab for analysis. They’ll call you with the results.”

  The detective nodded his approval.

  “She had a blood alcohol level of point-zero-three. The forensics people found vodka in the water bottle in her gym bag.”

  “She drank?” Joshua was surprised by the revelations about the girl whom he considered to be one of his daughters’ friends.

  Tad covered her with a sterile white sheet to show only the back of her head. “From what I saw of her liver, she had been drinking regularly, recently, even heavily, but she had not been drinking over the course of the long term.”

  “What about drugs?” Seth wondered.

  “None in her system at the time of her death, nor did she smoke. Her lungs were pink and healthy.”

  “What about sexual assault?” Seth reminded them, “She was found with her skirt up.”

  “Nope,” was Tad’s answer. “There is no evidence of sexual assault whatsoever, but she was pregnant.”

  “She was pregnant!” Joshua exclaimed.

  “At least four weeks.”

  “She didn’t even date.”

  “It isn’t dating that gets you pregnant,” Tad responded matter-of-factly.

  “Maybe she was raped.”

  “She was no shrinking violet. She had consensual sex less than twenty-four hours before her death.”

  Seth concluded in a firm tone, “It’s this girl’s secret life that got her killed. She got herself a secret boyfriend, got herself pregnant, and the boyfriend decided to do away with her and the baby.” He stepped towards the door to leave. “I’ll start interrogating the football team.”

  Joshua shook his head.

  Offended by the shake of his head, Seth snapped, “What’s wrong with you? Whoever killed her got close enough to press a gun against her chest. That means it was someone she knew, someone she trusted—like trusted enough to let him get her pregnant.”

  “Don’t waste your time on the football team. Murphy got closer to our killer than anyone. The perp was slightly built. That doesn’t sound like a football player.”

  “It’s my job to investigate this murder and catch the guy who did this,” Seth reminded him. “It’s your job to not screw up my collar and prosecute the son of a bitch!” He asked Tad, “What is he even doing here?”

  “I invited him,” the medical examiner answered. “If this guy was a football player, based on Murphy’s description, he’d be mincemeat after fifteen minutes on the field.”

  Joshua told them, “According to everyone who knew the victim, Grace did not date anyone she went to school with.”

  “Did they know about this tattoo?” Seth lifted the blanket to reveal the eagle as if his memory needed to be refreshed. “Who is to say that she wasn’t dating someone at the school? Our killer had to have access to the murder scene. You claim that she had no freedom to come and go. Who is she going to date and let get her pregnant except someone she had access to, and who does she have the best access to except a boy who goes to Oak Glen?”

  Joshua argued, “I know teenagers. I have four. If a teenager wants freedom, she’ll take it. Clearly, Grace managed to escape from her parents to create a secret life for herself. This life was so secret that she was drinking without anyone in her immediate circle of friends knowing.” He chuckled. “We are talking about a very careful girl here.”

  “If she was so careful, how did she get pregnant and how did she get herself killed?” Seth cracked.

  “She didn’t reveal her other side to the girls on the squad because she was afraid one of them would rat her out. I don’t think she dated anyone from school because her parents could find out. She kept that life outside of Oak Glen’s environment because it was less likely for word to get back home.” He shook his finger at him. “You’re going to find this guy someplace other than her school.”

  Seth’s flushed face warned them that his fury was rising.

  Tad crossed to his desk and returned with a notepad on which he scribbled a name and phone number. “Start with the tattoo.” He tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to the detective. “There’s only one guy in the valley who does this type of work. Tell him I sent you.”

  Seth was right. Joshua’s job was to prosecute the case after the detective brought the killer to him. Reminded of this, he told himself that he had to sit back and let Seth do his job. But, there was nothing that said that he couldn’t talk to his kids’ friends himself in his role as a parent.

  Since his daughter Tracy was running for the cheerleader spot left vacant by Grace’s death, the squad invited themselves to her home to teach her the cheers to help her win at the tryouts. The twins and their friends who got wind of the girls coming over gathered in the family room to
play with their drums and guitars. Donny was playing games on his computer while Sarah loitered in the kitchen. The thirteen-year-old girl seemed to be searching for ways to annoy her sister.

  Joshua had no idea how many people were at his home. The first batch of pizzas he ordered for the girls disappeared to the family room with Admiral in hot pursuit. There was not even one slice left, and he suspected that the dog was successful in begging more than one slice for himself based on the tomato sauce in his whiskers. Joshua had to order a second batch.

  Grace’s pregnancy was kept secret. Anyone who proved to have knowledge of that information would give himself away as knowing about her secret life. It was Tracy who unknowingly revealed that the dead girl might have known about her pregnancy. She was picking at the cheese on a pizza pie while stirring a pitcher of lemonade when she told her father about how annoyed the captain of the squad was with Grace. “She said she didn’t want to be on the top of the pyramid anymore.” Tracy fought the smile at the corner of her lips. “If I make the squad, Madison is going to put me at the top.”

  “Things are really working out for you, huh, Trace,” Sarah noted with a wicked grin while taking a slice of pizza with everything on it. When a mushroom dropped off the pile of toppings to the floor, Admiral almost knocked her off her stool diving for the morsel. He snorted with disappointment when he discovered that it was not his favorite.

  “That’s not funny, Sarah,” Joshua chastised her while pushing Admiral down from where he placed his front paws onto the counter to see if the boxes contained anything except mushrooms. His snout claimed that they did.

  “People have killed for less.”

  Fear came to Tracy’s eyes. “You don’t think the police are going to suspect me if I get on the squad, do you?”

  “Don’t you have homework to do?” Joshua snapped at Sarah while he sorted the pizza boxes to divide up between the cheese, vegetable, and supreme.

  “No.” Sarah studied a slice of green pepper as if she were deciding if she should eat it or give it to Admiral whom she knew did not like peppers. “Everyone has been moving so quickly about replacing Grace. It’s tacky, if you ask me.” She held the piece of pepper up over her head and then dropped it into her mouth.

  “No one is asking you. It’s the sponsor who’s rushing the tryouts to replace her.” Tracy placed the pitchers of lemonade in the refrigerator. “Football season is really gearing up and the squad is short one cheerleader.” She gestured towards Joshua. “I asked Dad if he thought it would be in poor taste for me to try out. He told me to go ahead.”

  The doorbell rang. Tracy rushed off to greet her friends. Sarah ducked out of the kitchen to her bedroom with another slice of pizza.

  Joshua did not notice her thievery. He was thinking about Grace’s request not to be at the top of the pyramid. If she was afraid of falling, then she didn’t want to lose the baby, which told him that she knew she was pregnant and wanted to keep it. He helped himself to a glass of lemonade.

  Tracy escorted the band of giggling girls into the kitchen. There were ten in all. Trying to be casual about casting her eyes about the room and out into the backyard, Madison, the captain of the squad, asked if Murphy was home. Before anyone could answer, the boys rushed in from downstairs. With shouts and squeals, the party began.

  In a flash, Joshua recalled parties he had hosted in the same kitchen decades ago. He remembered one that was not so happy—the day he and his friends learned of another cheerleader’s death. Somehow, he was not sure how, at the end of that day, everyone ended up at the home he shared with his grandmother. The house was quiet. They spoke in soft whispers, as if speaking in a normal tone would wake their dead friend.

  Joshua was amazed by how unbroken these young people seemed to be about Grace’s death. Twenty years earlier, the squad did not replace Tricia out of respect for her memory. Grace wasn’t buried yet and they were already replacing her, most likely with his daughter.

  After the pizza was consumed, the young people spilled out into the backyard for a football game with Murphy and J.J. as team captains. The game was well under way when Connie, a cheerleader who Murphy had noted was in his social studies class, took a break when Joshua and Donny came out onto the porch steps. The father and son were eating ice-cream sundaes.

  Joshua had observed that Connie was different from the other girls on the squad. She was pretty without all the trappings of cosmetics. While her friends were diving for the pizza, she stood back to observe the goings on in the kitchen before taking her slice after the mob had cleared. Uncomfortably, Joshua noticed that often her eyes landed on him. He suspected that he was being sized up.

  A few minutes into the football game, Connie took a break to sit on the steps to pet Admiral. It did not take her long to initiate a conversation about Grace’s murder. The dog shook his head at her touch on his ears. She had interrupted his staring match with the ice cream.

  Ignoring Admiral’s order for a bite, Joshua responded coyly to her question about the investigation’s status. “We’re still looking for suspects. Do you recall Grace having any disagreements with anyone?”

  “There was that fight she got into in the locker room with Heather Connor last week.”

  Madison came up onto the porch to help herself to another glass of lemonade. “Oh, yes. That’s right. I forgot about that.” She was gently patting her sweaty face with a hand towel so as not to smear her mascara.

  “One of your friends gets blown away, and you forgot about the fight she got into the week before?” Joshua asked.

  The rest of the girls came up to get refreshments. The boys had taken over the backyard. J.J. proved to be a bigger match in leading his team than Murphy’s players had thought.

  “It was not an actual fight,” Madison said. “It was more of a shoving match. It was nothing serious.”

  “I’d say having Heather Connor gunning for me would be serious,” Tracy muttered.

  “Connor,” he asked. “Is that Connor as in the Connor Estate, as in the same neighborhood where the killer had escaped after the shooting?”

  “The very same,” Connie answered before asking her friends, “What was the fight about anyway?”

  “I have no idea.” Madison told Joshua, “It was over as soon as it started. It was so minor that the coach didn’t even write it up. She told Heather that she would give her detention if she caused any more trouble with anyone on the squad.”

  “Who is this Heather?” he wanted to know.

  His daughter answered, “Her mother’s big in real estate. She builds and sells all these housing developments. She’s real rich.”

  The kids had taken over the family room after the football game. Joshua had put Admiral on a leash and had dragged him away from the chips and dips and salsa spilled around the basement to walk down Rock Springs Boulevard to Church Alley to knock on Tad’s door. He wanted to ask his cousin about Heather Connor.

  The blue Mustang outside could have belonged to one of the other residents whose homes backed up to the alley. It was only after Tad, dressed in his bathrobe, invited them inside and put the kettle on the stove that Joshua discovered he had company.

  “Oh, geez, I’m late!” he heard a shriek from the back of the one-bedroom apartment.

  A woman with her red hair cut in a pixie-type style rushed into the kitchen doorway. She was stuffing her panty hose into her purse with one hand while slipping her black pumps onto her feet at the end of her legs that seemed to go on forever. She was gorgeous.

  “Tad MacMillan, you are awful! Why is it that every time I come over here you make me forget about the time?”

  He chuckled at her while he reached for mugs from the cupboard in which to pour the tea.

  Playfully, she slapped his arm. When he turned to her, she pecked him on the lips. He retaliated by pulling her close and kissing her ful
l on the mouth.

  “Until next time, darling,” she whispered. “You know my number.”

  She was not flustered when she noticed that someone was in the room to witness the farewell to what had to be an intimate encounter shortly before. Her blouse was still untucked when she waved good-bye to them on her way out the door.

  “If you had told me you had a date—” Joshua sat at the kitchen table. Admiral plopped down in the middle of the floor with an eye on the door in preparation to leave if Tad’s dog appeared. Though Dog was a fraction of his size, the young canine exhausted him.

  “She was a friend who just stopped in to say hello,” Tad explained.

  “A friend? What kind of friend?”

  “A very good friend.” His naughty grin matched Joshua’s.

  While waiting for the water in the kettle to boil, Joshua told him, “None of the kids know about Grace’s pregnancy.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know.” Tad placed a mug in front of his guest. “She was no more than six weeks along.”

  “No, she knew. Tracy said that she requested to be taken off the top of the human pyramid.”

  “She didn’t want to fall and lose the baby.” Tad pushed his tea bag down into the cup and squeezed the herbs inside together. “I wonder if her boyfriend drove a white Pontiac Firebird.”

  “A white Firebird?”

  “Or it could have been tan. Or it could have been a Camaro.” Tad smiled. “Deputy Hockenberry told me that on a house-to-house search of the development behind the school, he found a girl who saw someone in a black trench coat take off in a white or tan Firebird or Camaro. Cavanaugh took credit for finding the witness. What a jerk.”

  “But she doesn’t know if it was white or tan or a Camaro or a Firebird,” Joshua said. “That witness doesn’t sound credible enough to use in court.”

  “No, she doesn’t.” Tad shook his head sadly. “It’s such a shame about Grace. Sweet kid like that. Who would want to kill her?”