Pall in the Family

by Dawn Eastman

  “Wow. That must be why he was anxious to sell his land. Sara wouldn’t sell her share, and that put him in a bind.”

  “I suppose.” Tom shrugged. “All I know is the lawyer managed to find a couple of the guys who were there, and they alibied Gary after we said we wouldn’t press charges about the poker game.”

  “Mac must be looking at other suspects.” I thought about how many times I would make Mac admit he was wrong.

  Tom shook his head. “Mac still thinks Gary did it. He says he has an even better motive now that we know he needed the money from the land deal. Plus he doesn’t trust the guys who gave the alibi.”

  Maybe the simplest answer was the best. Gary could have gotten desperate for the money and fought with Sara. That solution didn’t feel right, but I was trying to stay out of this. Tom wanted me involved, Mom and Vi wanted me involved, and I just wanted it to be over so I could get on with my summer. After last night, the summer was looking more interesting.

  “Listen, Tom. I think Tish knows something. She’s been acting really strange since Sara died.”

  “We talked to her already because she was at the séance.”

  “You interviewed the people from the séance?”

  “Well, not all of them yet, but we’re working on it. Why wouldn’t she have told us what she knew?” His naïve question made me chuckle. I covered it with a cough.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to try to find out. I think she knows who killed Sara.” I didn’t mention I was starting to suspect Tish herself.

  The bushes rustled next to us. I stood up quickly and saw Cecile kneeling on the other side. I realized our mistake—we couldn’t be seen, but we also couldn’t see out. And we could be heard.

  “Can I help you?” I said.

  “Oh, Clyde. Hello. I was looking for my glasses. I dropped them around here somewhere and just can’t find them.”

  Tom stood up and peeked over the shrub. “Do you want some help, Mrs. Stark?”

  “No!” She stood up quickly. “No, I’m not sure I dropped them here. I’m just returning to places where I might have lost them. Thanks, bye.”

  She hurried off, weaving along the path toward the gate.

  She had been very quiet, and I had no idea how long she’d been there. Sensing eavesdroppers would be a useful talent.

  “Do you think she heard us?” Tom asked, reading my thoughts.

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  “She was at the séance, too. Mac said she didn’t add much to the séance story when he interviewed her.”

  “Did she mention that Tish left her house really early on the day Sara died?”

  “Not that I know of, but I haven’t seen Mac’s report yet.”

  I watched Cecile’s head bob out through the gate and down the street.

  “Clyde, you don’t think Tish could have killed Sara, do you?”

  A cold chill crept down my spine with his question.

  “No. She may not have liked Sara, but Tish isn’t a murderer. I’m sure of it.”

  As I walked out of the garden with Tom, I tried to convince myself that I was right.

  18

  After finishing the afternoon’s work, I went to Tish’s house. Seth had left several messages on my phone to say he was waiting for me to pick him up to continue our rounds for the day. But I had other things to do.

  Tish’s Tahoe sat close to the front walk. Baxter barked somewhere deep inside the house. A few kids played basketball down the street, but otherwise the neighborhood was quiet. Taking the porch steps two at a time, I raised my hand to knock when I saw the sign: READING IN PROGRESS, PLEASE WAIT.

  My hand dropped to my side. I felt prickly and cold even on that muggy summer day. Shivering and rubbing my arms to warm up, I peeked in the front window. That was odd—Tish usually sat with clients in her front room, but it was empty. I checked my watch.

  I knocked on the front door. There was no answer, so I knocked again and tried the knob with a growing feeling of concern. She had to be in there. Then I got a very bad feeling.

  I took the key from under the mat. As I slid the key into the lock, I heard a loud pop! like a car backfiring. Instinct kicked in and I dropped to the floor of the porch. There were no cars on the street. I had heard that sound before. A gun had been fired inside the house.

  From my vantage point on the porch, I spotted a forgotten spade among the bushes. Makeshift weapon in hand, I finally turned the knob after fumbling with the lock. With only a gardening tool as a weapon I slipped inside. It went against every bit of training I possessed. Baxter was barking more vigorously, and I wondered where he could be.

  Keeping to the periphery of the front room, I inched toward the dining room—no one there. I kept the spade cocked like a baseball bat. Softly creeping around the edge of the door, I made my way toward the kitchen. The back door slammed. Three strides took me to the kitchen doorway. Tish was on the floor. A dark red stain had soaked her shirt and spread across her chest. I stifled a cry, scanned the room, and checked the backyard, but saw no one. Baxter’s barking had become a keening howl, and I realized he was locked in the basement.

  Tish lay on her back. Her legs made quotation marks on the floor. One of her high-heel mules had slipped off and sat not far from her bare, unprotected foot. I saw the slight movement of her chest. Tish’s face was white and her eyes fluttered briefly as I said her name. Her right hand scrabbled at her chest, her left arm lay tucked under her back. She tried to talk but only wheezed.

  I let the spade drop to my side and focused on breathing. I replayed other shooting injuries I had seen, including the boy from last spring. The room began to feel hot, and I leaned against the wall for a moment until the spinning sensation stopped. I had to pull myself together. I dropped the spade and knelt next to Tish on the floor.

  “It’s Clyde, Tish. I’m calling for help.” Her hand sat motionless in mine as I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. I gave the address, hung up, and turned to her again. Her eyes were partly open.

  I squeezed her hand. “Tish, who did this?”

  She opened her eyes and stared past me. Her fingers pushed slightly against my palm. Baxter’s howling filled the room. Her lips began to move, and I leaned closer in order to hear.

  “Take Baxter . . . his bed.” She struggled with these few words and then coughed. A trickle of red spilled from the corner of her mouth.

  “Tish!” I shook her shoulder. “Tish, don’t try to talk. Just hang on.”

  I ran through my first aid training. I knew I had to keep pressure on the wound, but I also knew that gunshot wounds to the chest caused all sorts of internal damage. I remembered one muggy August afternoon during training when they’d talked us through first aid for GSW to the chest. Something about covering the wound so the lung could expand. What was it?

  Her eyes opened once more, but they were unfocused. Then I remembered. I needed to cover the entry wound with plastic to allow her to breathe. I got up and rummaged in her kitchen drawers for plastic wrap. I grabbed tape out of her box of first aid stuff.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I lied.

  I knelt next to her and opened her shirt. I fought the tide of nausea that came over me. How would she ever survive this? Tripling the plastic, I placed it over the hole in her chest and taped it down on three sides. I was pretty sure the next instruction had been to get the person to a hospital as soon as possible. Not knowing what else to do for her, I held her hand and told her reassuring things I didn’t believe. At some point, I knew she couldn’t hear me anymore.

  The next several minutes were a blur. I kept checking Tish’s pulse, but it was fading. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. I didn’t think my plastic-wrap trick was helping. I felt my throat tighten and my eyes grew hot. Fighting a rising sense of panic, I shuffled through my mental catalog of first aid maneuv
ers that I had learned everywhere from Girl Scouts to the police academy. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Mostly I forced myself to ignore that this was Tish, one of my best friends in the world.

  Finally, the EMTs arrived, but they were too late. They tried to stabilize her blood pressure with fluids, and they put in a breathing tube. She’d lost a lot of blood—I had most of it all over me. My hands were crusted and stiff with blood; the knees of my jeans were sticky and damp where it had soaked through the fabric. A sharp metallic taste stuck in the back of my throat. The EMTs pronounced her dead after ten minutes of trying to resuscitate.

  The EMTs sent me to the living room to wait for the police to arrive. It was disorienting after all the blood in the kitchen to see a place untouched by tragedy.

  The cozy room reminded me of all the time spent there as a teenager. I used to think it was her decorating that made me feel at home. It was warm and unfussy—unlike my mother’s overly fringed and accessorized rooms. But as I sat there and thought about Tish, I realized it wasn’t her stuff that made it cozy. It was her. A great listener, never jumping in with advice or comments unless I asked, she had always been there for me.

  I had repaid all that by suspecting her of murder—spying on her and sneaking around town, prying into her life because I had forgotten who she was. There was a roaring in my ears and a wave of nausea forced me to focus on breathing slowly and staying in control. It was the one part of my police training I could rely on. In the midst of a crisis, I had learned to push all emotion into a small box to be dealt with later. I wished now that I had stormed in the minute I got to her house and scared off the person who had done this. Or that I had been able to foresee what was coming. Why could I sense some things that were about to happen and not others? My “gift” for seeing future events seemed limited and shallow if I couldn’t stop bad things from happening to the people I loved.

  Baxter had quit howling just before the paramedics arrived, as if he knew Tish was already gone. I’d forgotten all about him until one of the EMTs dragged him into the room by his collar. Baxter stopped short a few feet from me, sat down, and moaned.

  “Come here, boy, it’s okay,” I said.

  He didn’t budge.

  “Uh, ma’am? He might be able to smell the blood,” the paramedic said, gesturing toward me with his head.

  In a daze, I had forgotten about the blood. I’d tracked some of it into the living room, and I felt the stiff and sticky glove of blood on my hands.

  “I’ll go wash it off,” I told him. “Just hold on to him until I get back.”

  A good five minutes of soap and steamy water seemed to do little. I felt I’d never get my hands clean. I looked in the mirror and saw the terror in my own eyes. I had wiped blood across my forehead at some point. Another wave of sickness assaulted me, and I splashed cold water on my face to calm down.

  Baxter’s low bark from the front of the house broke into my thoughts, and I went to rescue the EMT.

  Mac stood in the front doorway. Just a glance at his eyes, which were warm and soft and not the usual stern ice, melted all my resolve to get through this without crying. Suddenly my cheeks felt wet, and Mac was there, holding me. I tried to remember why I had been mad at him for so long, and couldn’t.

  Eventually, I pulled myself away from Mac and wiped my eyes. The paramedic stood in the doorway, averting his gaze. Mac asked me to wait in the living room and limped to the kitchen to begin the long process of investigating the scene. The rest of the county crime-scene crew was due to arrive within the hour.

  My thoughts bounced from Tish to Sara and how their deaths could be related. I had actually been suspicious of Tish, but obviously that was way off. That left me with Gary, or Sara’s mysterious website stalker, or Milo. When I realized how little I knew, I thought of Tish and how much I would miss her.

  In our shared sorrow over the loss of Tish, Baxter and I leaned against each other and waited.

  * * *

  We didn’t have to wait long. After surveying the kitchen and hearing the report from the EMTs, Mac sat with us and began the questioning immediately. What was I doing there? Why did I come over? What had I heard exactly? Did I see anyone?

  Feeling about as useful as Baxter, I told him the story of the past hour. I hadn’t seen anyone. I heard the gunshot. Yet again, the only one who could identify the murderer was a dog. Aunt Vi was going to be insufferable.

  “Was she still conscious when you found her?” Mac asked.

  “She was, but just barely. She told me to take Baxter and said something about his bed.” I rubbed Baxter’s ears, wondering what I was going to do with him now.

  “Her last words were about the dog?” Mac scrubbed his face with his hands.

  “I know it would have been more convenient if she’d named her killer, but all she said was ‘take Baxter and his bed,’ or something like that,” I said.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Mac said, hands outstretched to include Baxter in his disbelief.

  “She was barely there, Mac. I don’t know that she knew what she was saying,” I said. I felt my throat tighten as I remembered her struggling to breathe and force out those few words. Her last words had been about Baxter. Had she known? Would she have said something more useful if she’d known she only had a few words left? I looked away from Mac and blinked back the tears threatening to well up again.

  “Okay.” Mac put his hand over mine. He stole a glance at his watch. I knew he had a lot of work to do. “Can you drive yourself home?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I attempted a smile to show how fine I was. I could tell by the way he searched my face that he didn’t believe me.

  “Let’s meet tomorrow morning and go over your statement.”

  Just the plan to see him again made me feel better, and I nodded.

  “Can I take Baxter with me?” I sniffled, and rubbed my nose with the wad of tissues Mac had quietly handed me.

  “Yeah, that’ll be fine. It sounds like she wanted you to have him.”

  I packed up Baxter’s things, including his dog bed, which he had never used when staying at my mom’s, and took him out to the car.

  Mac walked out with us and helped me load Baxter into the backseat. His method involved lifting all one hundred thirty pounds of dog and tossing him in. It worked better than my system of pushing, pulling, and ending up in the dirt.

  “Clyde, be careful.” He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned against the open window. “Whoever killed Tish is probably the one who killed Sara. I can’t believe that after years of no homicides, we could have two unrelated murders in the span of a few days. Just lay low and let us do our job.”

  “Right. Okay,” I said. I stared forward through the windshield so he wouldn’t see the new determination in my eyes.

  As Baxter and I pulled out, I waved to Mac, who turned and went back into the house.

  “Don’t worry, Baxter. I’m going to find out who did this,” I said.

  Baxter rested his wet chin on my shoulder and moaned.

  19

  We were met by a loud babble of voices at the door. There were arms hugging us and questions being asked and it took me a moment to realize who was in my house. My father had been listening to the police band again. He said if my mother can spy on the town with her readings, he should be able to back her up with the police reports. He’d heard the call about Tish’s death on the radio. My aunt and mother had assumed the rest when I didn’t arrive to pick up Seth. They had called Alex, who had called Diana, and I arrived home in the middle of a wake.

  Baxter looked exhausted and lay down in the center of the chaos, which was where Tuffy found him. They curled up together as if they understood that they shared a similar tragedy.

  Everyone spoke at once as they gathered around.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Is it true
?”

  “I was so worried.”

  “I just knew it!”

  I could hardly identify who said what, except for the last statement, of course, which could only be Vi. I tried as best I could to reassure them I was okay. This was difficult, considering the amount of blood on my clothes. What I really wanted was a long shower, a whiskey, and bed. I settled for a short shower.

  I left them all hovering over Baxter. Vi was on all fours trying to get some information out of him. He looked like he could use a break as well. I thought I saw him cast a wistful look at the stairs as I climbed toward the bathroom, but he was quickly swallowed by the crowd.

  I stripped off my jeans and T-shirt and threw them in the trash. There was no way I would ever want to wear them again, even if the blood did wash out. I turned the water on as hot as I could stand and got in the shower. I washed quickly and then stood in the searing spray, trying not to think or to feel anything at all. The heat couldn’t stop the trembling that started up as soon as I relaxed. My whole body shook, and the tears came—some for Tish, some for Sara, some I had been saving for Jadyn, the boy I’d shot in the spring. The police psychologist had said I should let my emotions out more. But it only left me exhausted and red-eyed.

  After the shower, I tried to calm my eyes down with cold water but had only minimal success. I would just have to face the mob downstairs looking like I was suffering a severe allergy attack.

  They were all in the dining room because my mother insisted on feeding people when a tragedy occurred. A pot of chili sat on the table, but no one was eating. Seth looked scared and young and sat with both dogs on the floor. Alex and Diana were at one end of the table, Mom and Vi at the other. My father was manning the neutral middle territory.