Chapter 22
After leaving the boarding house, we went straight to Yeast of Eden. I parked in front and turned in my seat to face both Olaya and Mrs. Branford. I’d filed away the idea that Bernard knew something and turned my attention to my other working theory. “Alice and Michael Ryder.”
They both stared at me. Mrs. Branford was the one who spoke first. “What about them?”
“Hank borrowed money from Alice.”
“You think Alice, she could have killed Hank?” Olaya said, her voice incredulous. “I do not think that could be possible.”
Mrs. Branford jumped in from shotgun, notching her thumb toward Olaya. “I hate to admit it, but she’s right. I spoke with Alice last night and early this morning. She is utterly distraught. She cared for Hank.”
“Maybe,” I said, but it was without conviction. Alice acted as if she cared for Hank, but did she really? She’d lent him the money he’d asked for, had tried to get it back, and none of us knew what had happened after that.
But Mrs. Branford was having none of it. She lifted her chin, full of indignation. “I would be more inclined to think Michael was capable of murder.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. Was she just trying to divert my attention away from Alice, or did she really believe Michael could have killed Hank and put him in Brenda’s garbage can? “Do you really think so?”
Mrs. Branford was going with it full throttle. “Anyone is capable of anything,” she said. “You know that.”
She was right. I’d learned that right here in Santa Sofia not so long ago. I went with it. “What if Michael found out and confronted Hank? And what if it went bad and Michael—”
We fell silent, each of us contemplating that scenario. “Hank is dead,” Olaya said, as if realizing it again for the first time.
I continued the thought in my head. Hank was dead and someone was responsible. “Does Michael have—I don’t know—a dark side?”
Mrs. Branford scoffed, which was something I had not seen her do before. The idea that her friend’s husband was on our radar was sending her into a tizzy. “A dark side? This is not a Marvel movie.”
I snuck a glance at her. I shouldn’t have been surprised by her cultural reference, but I was. Surprised and impressed. “Whoever killed Hank has a dark side,” I said.
She came right back at me. “But that doesn’t mean it was Michael.”
I stopped my jaw from dropping. “You’re the one who just suggested that he was capable of it.”
She looked out the passenger window, turning back to me a minute later. “Maybe he is,” she said. “I just don’t know, anymore. I just don’t know.”
* * *
I took Olaya back to Yeast of Eden, dropped Mrs. Branford at home, and took Agatha to the beach for a walk. The day had finally warmed up enough that all I needed was a sweatshirt, but beneath it, I shivered anyway. With a murderer on the loose, Santa Sofia wasn’t the town I wanted it to be.
Agatha trotted along beside me, kicking up the dampened sand along the way. We walked and walked and walked, and I thought all the while, trying to sort out what I knew, which wasn’t near enough. I kept coming back to two things. Make it three things: Bernard, Michael, and the money. Why had Hank borrowed that money and what happened to it? Did Michael try to get it back? Could that money really be at the core of Hank’s death? It made the most sense, but what did Bernard have to do with any of it?
“Nothing,” I muttered. “He had nothing to do with it.” Bernard was not stable, and I’d just read too much into his behavior, that’s all.
I kept walking. Death. It seemed to be everywhere. Seaweed washing up on the sand. The limp body of a black-feathered bird. Driftwood. I peered out toward the horizon, trying to push away the reality that Hank was now among the dead.
I drew in a few bolstering breaths. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t unearth the killer if I didn’t know what had happened to Hank in the first place. All I had was a very loose theory that centered on the money Alice had lent Hank. Money had the potential to drive people to distraction. Whether it was Michael Ryder or someone else, whoever was behind Hank’s death, I felt quite certain that the money was at the center of it.
My dad’s voice rang in my ears, telling me that it wasn’t my responsibility. I should leave it to Emmaline and her officers, but maybe I really did have some latent need to crime-solve. I couldn’t get it all out of my head.
After another ten minutes of walking, Agatha and I trudged up the beach. I shook off my shoes, wiped her skinny little legs off, and we drove back home. I had the photos of the boarding house to review, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t ever gotten back to take photos of Baptista’s. It felt like he’d asked me eons ago, but it had only been a matter of days. Did he even want me to take them anymore?
So much had happened in the last few days: Hank going missing, the Winter Wonderland Festival, the Blackbird Ladies, Miguel’s revelation that he didn’t want to see me, and now Hank’s death.
I could only control so much, and right now understanding what had happened to Hank wasn’t possible. Instead, I went with what I could control and what I could be productive with: Photographs. I transferred the pictures I’d taken earlier in the day to my computer by inserting the memory card into the port. The transfer started immediately, a little image icon showing up and moving pictures from one file to another. Once the transfer was done, I replaced the memory card in my camera, snapped the little battery flap shut, and turned my attention to the uploaded files.
I labeled the folder Thompson Victorian and opened the first photo. It was a time-consuming process to rename each photo so they’d be easily identifiable, but it was the smart thing to do. I’d been lazy in the past, not taking the time to do this tedious task, and I’d regretted it. It was better, I’d discovered, to just bite the bullet and do things the right way.
I opened the pictures one by one. It took time, but I analyzed whether each one was worth keeping or discarding, dragged the rejects to the trash, and named the ones worth keeping. The exterior shots from the front had turned out pretty well, given the lack of vegetation. These photos were only for the Thompsons’ personal documentation, so even if there were a few things I wished were better, I could live with them. I did think it would be worth reshooting in the spring, though, when all the flowers were in bloom.
The backyard shots weren’t as good. The lighting wasn’t as even, and the patches of dirt throughout the yard were distracting. We’d definitely need to redo them whenever the landscaping was finished. The shots of the flower petals and the crocuses close up were nice. Good detail, but Bernard had been right; the dead branches scattered here and there were another distraction. I wanted to show Bernard the flowers, though, so I kept them. I’d print them and make him a collage, or something. Maybe they could have a calming effect on him. And maybe, if he was calm, I could convince him to tell me if he knew anything.
I spent an hour or more sorting through every photo, culling the collection until I had the best. I finally opened the last set, the pictures from the third-floor bedroom—and that’s when my hand froze. My heart nearly stopped. My jaw dropped.
Surely not . . . Was I really seeing what I thought I was?
* * *
It took me three minutes to call—and leave a message—for the cavalry and a total of twenty-five minutes for that cavalry to arrive. Emmaline came first, bursting in through the front door with nary a knock. She hollered from the entryway. “I’m here!”
“Kitchen!” I yelled.
The clackity-clack of her heels against the tile floor grew louder, but a second set of footsteps, this one heavier, came alongside it. “Hey, sis.” I looked up. Billy’s heavy footsteps. Billy’s voice. The two of them appeared at the archway to the kitchen, and I looked them up and down. My brother was dressed in khakis and a navy pullover sweater. He was the spitting image of our father—tall and lean at five-feet-eleven inches with a wave and a hint of red in his br
own hair. His arm was around Em, his hand on her slim waist. Emmaline had on a red knit dress that hugged her curvy figure and three-inch knee-high black boots. The red of the dress was gorgeous against her perfect mocha skin, her hair loose and untamed in wiry strands of black spiral curls. She was devastatingly sexy, and from the way Billy looked at her, even in the aftermath of my phone call, it was clear he was never leaving her side.
No wonder they hadn’t answered the phone. I laid my hands flat on the table, one on either side of my laptop. “You’re on a date?” I said.
“Your deductive reasoning skills are beyond compare,” she said as she held a large envelope, tapping it with the pads of her fingers. “The crime scene,” she said.
My heart raced and I had to stop myself from grabbing the envelope right out of her hand. “I’m allowed to see them?”
“I can’t seem to stop you from digging around, so I figured, why not? Maybe you’ll notice something I missed. Look at them first, then show me whatever it is you found.”
She sat, Billy standing behind her chair, and slid the photos from the envelope. I inched forward in my chair to get a better look. TV and the movies were one thing, but I had never seen crime-scene photos in real life. I hadn’t expected the impact it had on me. I recognized Brenda Rivera’s house in the first one. It looked completely ordinary. But the next picture, this one of the garbage cans on the driveway, was more ominous. Crime-scene tape, just like on TV, spanned the width of the driveway, secured with two stakes the police had presumably driven into the ground on either side. There were photos of the ground, little areas marked with numbered tags: The forensic evidence Em and her team would process as they tried to solve the crime.
It was the next photo, though, that gave me pause. One of the garbage-can lids was open, and there, shoved heartlessly inside, was a body partially wrapped in what looked like a large, black plastic garbage bag. I slapped my hand over my mouth, my heart in my throat. The image made it horrifyingly real. Hank Rivera really was dead.
The next picture was a close-up of the body in the can. I gasped at the matted hair, caked with blood. I quickly stuck it to the back of the pile to look at the next picture. It was a collection of items spread out on a tarp of some sort. Number tags sat beside each item. I held the picture up to look more closely. “The next few are of each item,” Em said.
I slid the one I’d been looking at to the back of the stack. Each photo in the next set featured one of the items from the selection on the tarp, including the number demarking the find. I looked at them one at a time: A worn, brown wallet with a broken zipper closure. A crumpled brochure, which I recognized. “That’s for Rusty Gates,” I said, holding up the photograph. “That’s where Hank’s father lives.”
Emmaline nodded as I turned to the next several images: A chunk of splintered wood. A muddy work boot. A wad of tissue. I stopped at the last one. “Is that a bank receipt?”
“It’s for a deposit,” Em said. “I have someone looking into it.”
At that moment, Miguel appeared in the archway, broad-shouldered and filling the space in a way only a former marine can. “Looking into what?” he said, avoiding meeting my eyes.
Seeing him, I instantly regretted my phone call to him. I’d phoned Emmaline and Billy first, but had gotten no answer. Mrs. Branford had been exhausted by the end of the day. She’d probably chew me out for not calling, but I didn’t have the heart to prevent her from a good night’s sleep. Olaya had to be at the bread shop before it was even light outside the next morning, so I couldn’t ask her to give up her sleep, either. I’d thought about calling my dad, but in the end, Miguel seemed like the best choice. He’d initiated this investigation, so he had to be the one to help finish it.
Billy answered, his voice revealing his torn-up emotions. “A bank receipt found at the crime scene.”
“All of this was found on his person,” Emmaline specified.
Miguel’s face looked ragged, his jaw tight. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” he said. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes and gave his head a slight shake. “That he was killed.” Finally, he looked at me. “We were too late.”
As Emmaline slid the photos back into the envelope, I felt my eyes prick with emotion. Blinking to clear them, I pushed my open laptop across the table. The picture I’d taken at Richie Thompson’s boarding house was open on the screen.
The three of them stared at it, as speechless as I had been. I’d wondered if I’d been seeing things, but their reactions proved that I was, in fact, sane.
I remembered the shot with my camera almost as if I were experiencing it again. The third-floor bedroom. I’d opened the blinds, shooting through them to capture the light in the sky. And then lowering the camera, accidentally depressing the button, the camera snapping a series of pictures. I hadn’t looked at them, not until I’d downloaded all the pictures from the shoot.
Two of the resulting photographs had been of the wall and floor, but the first one in the series . . . that was the money shot.
When I’d been in the yard, the patches of flowers seemed more present, while the mounds of dirt had been less noticeable. In the picture, it was the opposite. The dirt was most prominent, while the flowers were more clustered than I’d originally thought. But it was more than that. From a bird’s-eye view, albeit a blurry one, the backyard looked . . . disturbing.
The thing that drew my immediate attention was the mound of dirt. It was big. Oddly shaped. Sort of rectangular.
Emmaline drew in a sharp breath. “Seriously?”
Billy took a step back and dragged his hand through his hair. “Dude.”
Miguel looked more closely, his arms propped on the table. He gave a low whistle and then murmured, “Holy shit. Do you think that’s a grave?”
Chapter 23
We looked at the picture, none of us sure what to say next or how to voice our thoughts. My voice was low. Hushed. As if I might raise the dead if I spoke too loudly.
Billy shook his head, his mouth agape. “It can’t be. Can it?”
In my head, I reordered my theories, taking Michael and Alice off of my list for the moment. I came back to Bernard. I’d thought he knew something, but I hadn’t really thought he was behind Hank’s death. That impression was starting to shift. What if he wasn’t quite as feebleminded as he seemed?
I shared the possibility with Emmaline, Billy, and Miguel. “You think this guy killed Hank?” Miguel asked.
Good question. Was that what I thought? Before I could answer, Em shook her head. She was always the first to play devil’s advocate. “You having a feeling about someone based on their behavior—especially someone like this guy, Bernard—does not give him a motive.”
I ignored her, continuing with my theory, though. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? The way Bernard is obsessed with the garden and how he keeps talking about Hank. He can’t let the flowers die.” I remembered how he’d picked up the dead branch, how adamant he was that it not be there. Was that his way of subconsciously trying to reclaim his yard?
“I don’t know,” Em said, but I could see her thinking. Processing.
I didn’t necessarily consider myself a keen observer of human nature, but I had my intuition. “Bernard loves that yard. Think about it. Hank moves in and takes over, pushing Bernard out of the way. Not literally, of course, but, you know, he makes the yard his domain. Plants flowers and all that. From everything I’ve learned about Hank in the last few days, I don’t think he’d have done it maliciously, but if it happened, Bernard might have snapped.”
Emmaline hesitated. “I don’t know if that’s motive enough to kill.”
She might be right, but I was not willing to abandon the idea. “For someone with Bernard’s mental deficiencies, it could be.”
Em seemed to consider my argument. “I suppose it could be possible, but how would he have done it? We know that Hank was killed somewhere else and moved to the Rivera residence. This Bernard, he can’t drive, can
he?”
“No,” I said slowly, remembering that Mrs. Branford had told me that Richie took his tenants to the doctor, the store, to wherever they needed to go.
My skin pricked with anxiety. I didn’t know the scope of Bernard’s issues. To assign blame to him or accuse him of killing Hank based on the circumstantial evidence I’d presented suddenly didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem as plausible as it had sounded in my head. Maybe I was trying to settle on the easiest answer, or the first one that had presented itself.
Billy still stood, his arms folded over his chest. “Bernard’s not the only person who lives there, is he?”
“No, there are others,” I said, thinking about Richie, who ran the place, Mason Caldwell, and Dixie. There were also other tenants who I hadn’t met. We talked through the list, trying to think of possible motives. I went with Richie first. “He runs the place, is the caretaker for the people there. It seems like a good gig. Why would he kill Hank?”
Miguel stood, his hands on the back of a chair as he leaned over the table. “The money.”
The money. I considered that. “How would he know about the money? How would anybody know about it?”
“Which discounts the other tenants,” Em said. “Unless Hank told people about it, that can’t be the motive.”
“Hank was trying to get Mason to move to the senior community,” I said, my mind going back to the brochure for Rusty Gates that had been in Hank’s pocket at the crime scene. “It’s an expensive place. If that’s why he borrowed the money from Alice in the first place, maybe he explained to Mason how they could make it happen.” I hated the mere thought that Mason could be involved, if only because it would crush Mrs. Branford. But I had to keep an open mind. The truth was that anyone could have killed Hank, and without knowing the motive, how could we ever know the truth?
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