A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  When there was a break in the conversation as the three friends ate their lunches, Joshua became aware of Margo’s voice across the aisle. “. . . Randy and I were groping around in the dark looking for my panties. We were laughing so hard that I thought I was going to bust my gut.”

  The hurt in Tricia’s eyes was unmistakable.

  He raised his voice an octave to drown Margo out. “Hey, Tad is giving a party this Friday. How about if the three of us go after the game?”

  Margo answered, “Randy’s parents are going away. We’re going to spend the whole weekend together.”

  “Shut up!” Beth whirled around in her seat to order the girl seated across the aisle from them to cease her taunting. Joshua motioned for her to be quiet, but Margo had already picked up the gauntlet.

  “Make me.”

  Tricia challenged her for the first time since the war was declared. “Just because you’re a slut, doesn’t mean you have to advertise it. Some of us have higher standards.”

  “Keep saying it, and maybe you’ll convince yourself that it was your choice to give Randy up, instead of the other way around.”

  Tricia turned her back to her.

  Margo resumed picking away. “He told me that it is like making a choice between a diamond and a lump of coal.”

  Tricia’s jaws worked while she ground her teeth.

  Encouraged by her allies, Margo continued, “You do know the difference between a diamond and coal, don’t you? A diamond is exciting while all coal does is lie there.”

  “Margo, eat your lunch!” Joshua ordered.

  “Eat shit!” she snapped back. “You guys act like you’re so high and mighty. Then, you get your noses out of joint because the rest of us are having fun with each other.” She stepped up to the aisle but didn’t cross it. To do so would be to go into enemy territory.

  Tricia faced Joshua, who sat with an arm around her shoulders. She kept her eyes focused to the wall behind him.

  “That’s why Randy has been spending so much time with me,” Margo taunted her. “I’m woman enough to know how to have fun, and you don’t even know how to play the game, let alone where the bases are.”

  He stood up to his full height. “Margo, go back to your side of the theater before I put you there.”

  She ignored the warning. “Randy and I have both gone around all the bases. As a matter of fact, he’s hit a home run every single time.” She giggled. “You’re still in the little league, while I’m playing the majors.”

  “As the whole team will testify,” Tricia shot over her shoulder.

  “At least I’m not alone on the bench. That is where you’ll remain for the whole season with all the rest of the old maids.”

  Tricia whirled around and delivered a slap across Margo’s face with the speed and intensity of a whip. She retaliated with a slap that only clipped the tip of her rival’s nose before Tricia pulled her to the floor by her hair. Before Joshua could jump in to stop them, the two girls were screaming and writhing like cats tearing at each other with their claws.

  Randy Fine, the center of the triangle, appeared from where Joshua did not know.

  Tricia was on top of Margo when Joshua picked her up by the waist and yanked her back to their side of the auditorium. Randy lifted Margo up off the floor with both arms around her waist. Her breasts looked like two water balloons spilling over his arms while he held her back. Both girls strained and kicked to grab at her opponent.

  Randy attempted to alleviate the tension with laughter. “What’s going on here?”

  Tricia snarled at him. “Oh, Randy, please! Like you don’t know.” She freed herself from Joshua’s hold and smoothed her cheerleading uniform that she had worn for yearbook pictures that day—the same one she would die in.

  “Ladies, please! There’s enough of me to go around!”

  Margo expressed amusement along with him. She had scored a big success by making the reserved Tricia lose it in front of all their friends.

  “Go to hell, Randy!”

  There was silence within the room.

  Joshua had never heard Tricia curse before. The words didn’t sound right coming out of her mouth.

  Randy was the most speechless of all. “What?” he finally gasped out.

  Her voice was low and steady as she stepped up to him and yanked the blue class ring that hung on a gold chain from around his neck. “Go to hell.” Tricia tore off his ring that she wore on a chain around her neck and tossed it into the air. Too shocked to move, Randy didn’t make the catch.

  The ring landed on the floor with a thump.

  “Whoa!” Joshua heard breathed from more than one of the witnesses.

  There was only silence in the auditorium when Tricia turned around and gently pushed Joshua out of her way to leave. The last time he saw her she was walking tall and proud out of the little theater’s doors.

  He saw Doug Barlow attempt to speak to her when she passed him while he held the door open for her, but she kept on going without saying a word to anyone. Before following her, Doug glanced at the students who could not miss the brush-off.

  All cockiness gone, Randy took in his peers who were looking at him with a mixture of satisfaction that he got what he had coming, and pity for Tricia’s public rejection of him. He gave a nervous laugh, which he had hoped to come off as self-confident, before snatching his ring from the floor and running after her.

  Margo was smoothing her cheerleading uniform. She declared herself the victor of the war. “I guess that’s over.”

  “In more ways than one,” Joshua heard.

  He realized it was Gail Reynolds’s voice. She had been sitting in her usual seat towards the front of the theater with members of the student government and the newspaper staff. Jan sat with this group.

  “It’s like watching Diana dumping Prince Charles,” he heard Gail announce.

  Jan disagreed. “More like Jackie Kennedy dumping John after catching him with one bimbo too many.”

  Twenty hours later, Joshua was told that Tricia had committed suicide by firing a bullet through her heart.

  “Who is that?” Seth Cavanaugh asked.

  Joshua was startled to see Tori Brody at the bar. The eyes of every man in the lounge took in her figure encased in a bright blue sweater dress. Even though the dress had a high collar that came up around her neck and the skirt fell down to her knees, she was still seductive.

  Her feminine colleagues eyed the addition to their crowd with scorn at her open sensuality, which they deemed as an affront in their battle to be accepted as unisex equals in a man’s world.

  Joshua answered his question. “She’s a part-time lawyer with Ruth Majors.”

  “She’s a lawyer?”

  Wanda came out from behind the bar to deliver a beer mug filled to the brim to their booth. Some of the brew splashed on the table when she plopped it in front of Joshua. “Here. It’s from her.” She tossed her head with displeasure in Tori’s direction.

  The defense attorney raised her glass of wine in a toast to the prosecutor. Joshua’s face reddened when he felt every eye in the joint now turn to him. He picked up the beer mug, raised it in a halfhearted toast to her, and then took a sip. She sashayed across the bar to join them.

  “What were you talking so seriously about?” She took a seat in the booth next to him.

  “Murder.” Joshua was aware of the warmth of her thigh against his. “Tori, have you met Seth Cavanaugh? He’s the chief of detectives with the sheriff’s department.”

  The investigator welcomed her. “I guess we’re going to be on opposite sides.”

  “I guess so.”

  Seth’s cell phone rang. He snatched it from the case on his hip. “Cavanaugh here.”

  Joshua tried not to look at her, which was diffic
ult. He felt the heat of her body pressed against his side in the booth.

  “What murder were you talking about?” she asked in a low voice so as not to disturb Seth during his call. “That high school girl?”

  “Tricia Wheeler’s.”

  “Tricia?” she responded. “Ah, I heard that Gail Reynolds was back in town digging that up. I thought she killed herself.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Seth hung up and got up from the table. “I have to go.”

  Joshua could tell by his manner that it was urgent. Before he could dismiss the detective from their meeting, Seth was out the door in a dead run.

  “I can’t stay long.” He realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth that his tone was abrupt. He sounded rude.

  Tori didn’t seem to notice. “Who killed her?”

  “We don’t know. I have the authority to reopen the case. With Gail in town going around asking questions, I have to, or it will look like I’m covering something up.” He eyed her. Now that the conversation had turned to murder, he felt more comfortable to be with her. “Did you know her?”

  She shook her head with amusement. “Tricia and I did not run with the same crowd. I wasn’t even there to see that famous last fight between her and that bitch cheerleader—What was her name?”

  “Margo Sweeney. It’s now Connor.”

  “Everyone called me a slut, but she slept around, too.”

  “Your mother wasn’t vice president at the bank and your father was not a commissioner.”

  “I heard she screwed every player on the football team. Did you hump her? You were the quarterback.”

  “No.” He returned to the topic of their conversation. “Do you have any idea who could have killed Tricia?”

  Tori responded with a question, “Why do you care so much about finding Tricia Wheeler’s killer?”

  Joshua started. “Because she was my friend and she did not deserve to die so young.”

  “Was she your girlfriend?”

  “I was dating someone else.” He turned in his seat to observe her profile. He saw a spark of jealousy in her eye. “Why do you ask?”

  “I had the impression that she was more than just your friend.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “Pity—for her.” She purred, “Before you go looking for Tricia Wheeler’s murderer, want to come take a look at my place?” Her hand was on his thigh. She placed it close to his crotch.

  Joshua took her hand into his and placed it on top of the table. “Thanks for the offer, but I have to get home and help my son with his algebra.” He gestured for her to get up and let him out of the booth.

  “Where is J.J.?”

  “He went to the Mountaineer Inn to put in his application.” Tracy turned off the oven.

  “Application for what?” Joshua opened the oven door and picked at a piece of crispy skin hanging at the edge of a chicken breast before returning to the table to watch Donny work the math problem he had ordered him to attempt on his own.

  “He got wind of a job opening up for a personal trainer at their spa,” Tracy answered. “They pay really good, too.”

  “How’s that?” Donny shoved the notebook over to show his father.

  Before Joshua could examine his work, the phone rang. It was Sheriff Curt Sawyer telling him that he needed to return to New Cumberland.

  “We got Billy Unger and he’s screaming for a lawyer,” the sheriff said. “Ruth is sending Tori Brody out here to defend him.”

  The news was enough to interrupt Joshua’s check on his son’s algebra homework. “Tori is kind of green to be defending a murder suspect, don’t you think?”

  “Ruth took the bigger fish. She’s handling Walt Manners. My boys got him and his whole gang, seven in all including Unger, for attempted robbery, resisting arrest, and attempted abduction. They tried to rob an armored car at the Mountaineer Inn. Deputy Hockenberry picked up a lead about the robbery going down from one of his sources in Steubenville.”

  “You nailed Manners.” Joshua was pleased. “Cool!”

  Walt Manners was bad news. It was easy for Joshua to assume that he was the brains of the holdup. Not yet thirty years old, he had been arrested and convicted twice for armed robbery and burglary. This arrest would be his third strike, which was why the public defender herself was already on hand for his defense. A conviction would mean mandatory life in prison.

  Curt was equally proud. “I wish I could say it went down without a hitch.”

  “What happened?”

  “Manners took a hostage. A young woman. There was a standoff and he tried to get away in a white van that was parked near the hotel’s entrance.”

  Joshua groaned at the thought of the media response to an attempted arrest by the county sheriff’s department that ended in a hostage situation. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Manners got a broken wrist. The kid who was driving the van he tried to steal saw what was going down and hid in the back with a tire iron. When Manners climbed in, he swatted him good. Manners dropped the gun and his hostage made a run for it. My men swooped in and picked him up.”

  “Sounds like a smart young man who took Manners down with a tire iron.”

  “Like father, like son,” Sheriff Sawyer laughed. “It was Joshua Thornton, Jr.”

  Joshua Thornton, Senior was not so amused.

  “Billy was carrying a thirty-eight when we caught him,” Seth Cavanaugh announced when Joshua came through the doors at the sheriff’s office. “We’ve got him redhanded for armed robbery and resisting arrest.” He fell in step with the prosecutor.

  Joshua jogged up the stairs towards the interrogation room. “Is the lab checking the gun to see if it’s the murder weapon?”

  “As we speak.” Seth trotted up the stairs behind him. “Not only did we catch him with the gun, but guess what he was wearing?” Before the prosecutor could answer, he responded to his own question. “A black bandanna, dark wrap-around glasses, and a trench coat with a tear in it. I sent the coat to the lab to see if they can get a match to the hunk of material we took off the fence at the Henderson murder.”

  “Good!”

  “We also picked up six other guys. One is Walt Manners,” Seth added with a chuckle. “Guess I earned my paycheck tonight.”

  Joshua stopped at the top of the stairs.

  He had told himself on the way back to New Cumberland that he would not get into a fight with Seth about letting the ambush of the gang of robbers get so out of hand that Walt Manners was able to take a hostage and put his son in equal danger. When Joshua reached him on his cell phone, J.J. swore that he had been in no danger. That was little comfort to him. His son would never have admitted it if he was.

  The detective’s cockiness made him change his mind.

  Joshua turned around on the steps. “How was it that my seventeen-year-old son apprehended a sociopath like Manners in a parking lot filled with deputies under your supervision?”

  Seth’s smile dropped. “Your kid was lucky he didn’t get his head blown off. He stepped in where he did not belong.”

  “He was minding his own business filling out a job application in our van when Manners took that woman hostage! It was your job to make sure no innocent bystanders were in the area while making this arrest.”

  Seth shouted, “I had everything under control.”

  Before Joshua could respond, deep laughter erupted up the stairs from behind him. He whirled around to find Deputy Pete Hockenberry chortling so hard that his beer belly shook. “Sure! You had everything under control!” He directed his sarcasm at the lieutenant from over Joshua’s shoulder.

  Seth’s face filled with rage.

  “He froze,” Pete announced.

  “I did not!”

  “I had
Manners in my sights after he nabbed the lady. I could have taken him out, but Cavanaugh refused to give the order. I asked—”

  “You could have hit a bystander!” Seth tried to reach around Joshua to grab at the deputy, who was delighting in his failure.

  “You were going to let him get away! That woman would not have lived through the night if J.J.—a kid!—hadn’t have nailed him!”

  Seth charged.

  Joshua stumbled on the stairs before regaining his balance and shoving Seth up against the wall in the stairwell. “Why didn’t you clear the parking lot when you went in for the bust?”

  “I ordered him to clear the area.” The detective pointed at his subordinate.

  “You did not,” Pete said.

  Joshua blocked Seth’s attempt to punch the officer.

  Still laughing at the detective’s blunder, Deputy Pete Hockenberry continued on his way down the stairs and out the door.

  “You blew it,” Joshua said when he released the detective. “You put innocent citizens, including my own son, in danger.”

  “It wasn’t my fault! Those rent-a-cops that Sawyer has working in this department were supposed to clear the area!”

  “You were in charge, Cavanaugh! That makes it your fault!”

  “Hey, I got Manners!”

  “Wrong! J.J. got him!”

  Tori Brody and Billy Unger were in deep discussion when the prosecutor and detective came into the interrogation room. Since it was the defense attorney doing the talking, Joshua ran the interrogation.

  Billy was the youngest of Walt Manners’s gang of hoodlums. His sandy-colored, waist-length hair was tied back in a ponytail. He unbuttoned his wrinkled, black shirt down to his navel to display an assortment of gold chains that hung around his neck. In doing so, he advertised his association with Grace Henderson. The eagle tattoo that took up his muscular chest was a duplicate of the one he had paid to have etched on her buttocks.