“Thank you for meeting with me,” she said. “I was the one driving the car when Janie Rose Carlton was killed.”
“I’m so sorry,” said the girl. “I read about your accident.”
“The police haven’t found out yet what happened. I’m trying to fill in some blanks in my mind.”
“Okay.”
“So you were roommates freshman year?”
“Yeah, I’m from Nebraska and didn’t know a soul here. So the housing office paired me with a local girl. I think they do that so you’ll have your roommate’s family if you need support.”
“But you didn’t get along?”
Ashley looked surprised. “No, we got along fine.”
Charlie paused for a moment.
Finally, Ashley spoke again. “Why would you think we didn’t?”
“The Gamma Delta Phis told my aunt – she’s a reporter for The Grambling Rambler – that was the reason Janie Rose moved into the sorority house. That she didn’t get along with her roommate.”
Ashley’s face cleared. “Yeah, she probably did tell them that. But it wasn’t true. It was just that Janie Rose was hell-bent on being a Gamma Delt. At every possible level.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Janie Rose was super into rush and into being one of those Stepford girls.”
Charlie laughed. “Yeah, my aunt did mention that your Gamma Delts have a type.”
“To put it mildly. They still think it’s the 1950s. They all want to be engaged by the time they graduate.” Ashley shrugged. “Which is fine. Whatever. But Janie Rose really liked them and wanted to live in that sorority house the minute she could. She heard that one of the sisters was moving out and she made a beeline over there to get her room. I didn’t know she pulled me into it, but I’m not really surprised.”
“But you didn’t want to be a Gamma Delt?”
Ashley pulled a face of mock horror. “No! I wasn’t one hundred per cent sold on going Greek at all. But I play soccer, and half the team is Kappa Epsilon. So I joined. But it’s pretty laid back.”
“Except for the hearse.”
“Yeah, there is that,” Ashley conceded. “Our one big silliness. The police still have it. I’m not sure we’ll ever get it back.”
“Did you know Janie Rose’s boyfriend, Jones Rinehart?”
“Sure. They started going out sometime in the middle of that first semester. It was a pretty big deal because he was this hot frat guy. An upperclassman.”
“Was it serious?”
“I guess. I mean he sure was around a lot. I hate to say this because I love Maggie, but after awhile you can get kind of sick of Jones. He’s not terribly bright and he’s arrogant. Not a great combination.”
“Do you know why he and Janie Rose broke up?”
“They didn’t while I was living with her. After she left the dorm, I lost track of her. Then I heard she’d left school entirely.”
“Did you know why?”
“Not at first. But one day I ran into Dr Carlton in the library and asked. She said Janie Rose was headed to UGA and everything was fine.”
“When was that?”
“Around graduation. Late May.”
Charlie paused for a minute. “And I guess you read about the reason she left? About Mackenzie Broadus falling off the goalpost and being paralyzed?”
“Yeah, we all read that. It was all anyone talked about when we got back from Christmas break. But I didn’t know Mackenzie or Maylene Ayers other than to say hi.”
“Were you good friends with Janie Rose? We hung out some in middle school and at Georgia, but I still wouldn’t say I knew her well.”
“I’m not sure I’d say that either. One thing I do know is that she was going to be a writer. She wrote in that blue journal every night.”
Charlie perked up. “So she did keep a journal while you lived with her. She told me she journaled. What did it look like?”
“Very nice. Blue leather cover. Kind of an unusual size – maybe eight by six inches.”
“What kind of stuff did she write in it?”
“Everything, I think. I never read it, of course, but she’d spend five to fifteen minutes a night on it, sometimes more.”
“And obviously she took it with her when she moved out of your dorm room?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“It wasn’t found in her suitcase or in her apartment in Athens.”
“Then somebody took it,” said Ashley. “There is no way Janie Rose Carlton was living anywhere without that journal.”
Chapter Eleven
Branigan signaled for Jody to meet her in a conference room, but before she could step away from her desk, her phone rang. She held up a finger to ask Jody to wait, and answered it.
“Miss Powers? This is Tony Broadus, Mackenzie’s brother. Do you remember me?”
Branigan sat down in surprise, and pulled a notebook and pen to the center of her desk.
“Of course I do, Mr Broadus. How may I help you?”
“I’ve called the Grambling police and they won’t tell me anything, so I thought of you.”
“Okay.”
“Are they still working on the murders of those girls? Those friends of Mackenzie’s?”
“Absolutely.”
“Can you tell me if they’re close to finding out who killed them?”
She still didn’t know what Detective Scovoy had learned from interviewing Ralph, so was able to truthfully plead ignorance. She added: “Why are you asking now, Mr Broadus?”
“We – that is, my parents and I – are worried about Mackenzie. She seems really anxious. We’re wondering if she will get better once all this is over. Settled.”
“Do you mean she’s worse now than when I was there?”
“Yes. No.” He hesitated a moment. “I don’t really know. It’s hard to put my finger on it.” She could hear the pain in his voice. “But we can’t stand seeing her like this.”
Branigan let the silence stretch out.
“I thought… I thought… I mean, I wasn’t sorry when I heard they were dead, those girls who moved her. I know that sounds awful. But I wasn’t. Now, though, it’s like it’s even worse for Mackenzie. I thought it would be better, but it’s worse.”
Branigan was furiously taking notes. “Mr Broadus, do you know something about these murders?”
“No!” He sounded confused. “No! Why would I?”
She backed off. “Do you think Mackenzie knows more than she’s telling us?”
“No! At least I don’t think so. Why would you ask that?”
“It’s just that I never got over the feeling that Janie Rose and Maylene’s reaction to her accident was rather drastic.”
“Are you kidding me? They were responsible for her being paralyzed. I hardly think there’s any reaction that would’ve been too drastic.”
“So you do think they were responsible? That’s not what you said last month.”
“I think I said I didn’t blame them. That’s a little different.”
“Is it?”
“Miss Powers, I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sorry.”
“Wait a…” But he had already hung up. Branigan was left staring at her scribbled notes: “I thought it would be better, but it’s worse.”
She shut the conference room door behind Jody, and he looked at her expectantly.
“I need you to do something for me,” she said.
“Let me guess. Call Scovoy.”
She blushed. “How did you know?”
“I heard you call him twice this week and it sounded like you weren’t getting what you wanted. So I’m guessing you’re too embarrassed to keep calling.”
“You’re scary,” she told him.
“And you’re going to set Tan-4 of
f. You know how he feels about us dating sources.”
“I know. And this guy was not my source until we downsized so much that we’re all cop reporters.”
“Details, details.”
“So will you call him? I need to know what Ralph said was in his video that he thinks exonerates him.”
Jody sighed. “And in return I get…”
“My undying gratitude.”
“Big whoop.”
Jody spun around in his chair and caught Branigan’s eye. “He lawyered up.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Scovoy went to interview Ralph Batson about the video, Ralph asked for a public defender.”
“Why didn’t Scovoy just tell me that?”
“I think he kept hoping Ralph would talk through his attorney and tell him what was on the video. But the attorney is advising him to keep quiet for now.”
“That’s maddening.”
“I’m sure his attorney is hoping it’s something he can use at trial or for a lesser plea. He doesn’t want to squander it too early.”
“Even if it can help catch a killer?”
“The attorney swears there’s no direct link. And of course, without the video, the police would have only Ralph’s word for it. Not the most reliable witness.”
“Still, it could point us in the right direction,” Branigan fumed.
“The right direction on a story we’re not even working on?”
“Shhhhh,” Branigan warned.
An hour later, Branigan finished a Valentine’s Day story for Julie on a local bachelor auction to benefit the county’s no-kill animal shelter. She was torn between the inanity of the fundraiser and her genuine respect for the shelter’s work.
“Just hold your nose and knock it out of the park for us,” the shelter director told her. He was acquainted with Cleo and the line of German shepherds raised by Branigan’s grandparents.
“I’ll do my best,” she’d promised him. And she had.
She was giving the story a final read-through when the downstairs receptionist called. “A Charlie Delaney here to see you.”
“Send her right up,” Branigan said.
She met Charlie at the elevator. “Your casts are off!” she cried delightedly when the girl emerged.
Charlie grabbed her arm. “Aunt Brani, you are not going to believe what I learned today. Where can we talk?”
Branigan led her to the conference room she and Jody had used earlier, and closed the door.
“What’s going on?”
“I hardly know what to tell you first,” Charlie began, taking a moment to sit and catch her breath. “Jones Rinehart dated Janie Rose Carlton before he started dating Maggie Fielding.”
Branigan’s eyes widened.
“And I never told you this because I wasn’t sure it wasn’t all in my head. But on my last night in the hospital, the cop at the door was called away, and Maggie and Jones invited Chan to go downstairs with them for hot chocolate. I told him to go, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, Jones was standing over me. He said he’d left his phone in the room, and then he offered to straighten my pillow. I don’t know if I’d been dreaming or what, but for some reason I was absolutely convinced he was going to hurt me. I hit the button to call the nurse, and he ducked out real quick.”
“Charlie! You should’ve told us.”
“Like I said, I’m not sure what he was doing. I may have imagined the whole thing.”
Branigan hugged her. “I’m so sorry. I thought we were protecting you better than that.”
She thought for a moment. “But he dated Janie Rose Carlton? How did you find that out?”
“I went to Rutherford Lee today and talked to Maggie and then to Janie Rose’s freshman roommate. The other bombshell is that Janie Rose definitely kept a journal. Her roommate said there was no way she’d live in an apartment in Athens or go home for Christmas without her blue leather journal.”
“So Malachi was on the right track,” mused Branigan.
“And one more thing I thought of.”
“There’s more?”
“Well, just a wild idea really. Has anyone considered that someone close to Mackenzie Broadus killed Janie Rose and Maylene? Maybe they blamed them for her accident? Or at least for being paralyzed.”
Branigan swiveled in her chair as she remembered the phone call from Tony Broadus. “Yes, I have considered it.” She pictured the manicured subdivision in Columbia, the frightened young woman in the wheelchair, her handsome and protective brother. She remembered Tony Broadus’s soft murmur, What are you gonna do?, and the quote in the notebook lying on her desk: I thought it would be better, but it’s worse.
But would he know about the hearse? And who but Ralph could have killed Maylene with Ralph’s crowbar? What was that saying you heard all over TV crime shows these days? When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.
Ralph was the one who blackened Maylene’s eyes, who punched her in the face. Who else would beat the pretty co-ed to death?
“Aunt Branigan? What are you thinking?”
Branigan wrenched her attention back to Charlie. “I’m thinking you have done amazing work, young lady. But it doesn’t sound like you kept to your pinky swear.”
“Dad knew where I was. And I was in a public place the entire time.”
Branigan eyed her skeptically. “While you’re on a roll, I wonder if you’d have better luck with Anna Hester than I have.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s a sophomore Kappa Ep and a reporter for the Rutherford Lee newspaper. I think she knows something and she’s writing it up for this Saturday’s student newspaper. I even wonder if she has Ralph’s cell phone.”
“How would she?”
“Sunday night I went to see her. Before she knew I was there, I saw her answering one phone and then looking at another one as she was writing. And she knew Maylene Ayers, which is a strong connection to Ralph.”
Charlie knew Branigan was assembling her thoughts as she talked, so she let her continue.
“I got the feeling she knows a whole lot more than she was saying. Like maybe she’s trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat and beat the police and everybody on this thing. But being the only one to know something can be dangerous. I tried to get her to share what she knows with Detective Scovoy.”
“You want to go right now?” Charlie asked. “I don’t have to check in with Dad’s car until noon.”
“Sure. Let’s take my car and talk strategy on the way over.”
Chapter Twelve
Malachi stayed in his motel room until noon on Tuesday, enjoying the rattling heat and television and stash of Vienna sausages, Slim Jims, Saltines and beer he’d brought with him. He’d had two hot showers in two days.
But now he was getting antsy. He pulled aside the curtain and looked out at a pure white sky. Weatherman wasn’t calling for snow, but that’s what it looked like.
He pulled on his coveralls and backpack, and headed to Jericho Road.
Once Dontegan let him into the basement, he groped behind the water heater until he found the plastic grocery bag containing the maintenance uniform with the name “John” stitched above the shirt pocket. He took a quick sniff. It’d do.
He changed in the half-light that came through a cobwebbed window. Ol’ Charlotte woulda been at home down here, he thought. That got him thinking ’bout sitting with his granny by the fire on days like this, days too cold to farm, days made for readin’. Pop would be out tending the animals, but Granny knew the best use for a day in February. “That boy is goin’ to college,” she always told Pop, “the way he loves books.” It hadn’t worked out like that, though.
Malachi pulled a heavy jacket from behind the heater and switched his coveralls for it. If these coveralls got gone, he’d regret doing this,
sure ’nough. But Pastor and Dontegan kept the basement locked unless someone wanted a bike. Malachi would chance it.
He yanked his backpack onto his shoulders, Slick’s unreturned tools clanking inside. He grabbed his bike and wheeled it into the late morning cold. Most days, as a homeless man, invisibility came his way unwanted, unsought.
Today he was counting on it.
* * *
After stashing his bike and down-filled jacket behind the towering shrubbery alongside Rutherford Lee’s student center, Malachi retraced his steps of Sunday night. Through the side alley door and up the stairs. On a weekday morning, the second floor offices were open, and staff and students walked the carpeted hallway. No one paid attention to the maintenance man carrying a wrench, hammer and who-knew-what.
Malachi pushed through the second floor door into the unheated stairwell where he’d peeked after losing Harry Carlton two nights before. This time, he went all the way to the third floor, quickly eyeing the signs above each office.
From what Miz Branigan had said, that girl she’d been with Sunday worked for the student newspaper. Yep, there it was: The Swan Song. Must have something to do with all those birds on the lake.
Malachi knocked, and when no one answered, he looked both ways down the hall, then slipped a long pick from the tools in his hand. Seconds later, he was in the office, door locked behind him.
The room had desks and filing cabinets on three walls, a worn leather couch on the fourth. He turned to his left and went to work.
Chapter Thirteen
On the drive to Rutherford Lee, Branigan suggested that Charlie call Detective Scovoy and fill him in about Jones Rinehart dating Janie Rose Carlton. “It may not mean anything,” she said, “but he needs all the information available.”
She listened as Charlie placed the call, heard Chester’s questions through the phone. As their conversation wound down, Branigan whispered, “Tell him about Jones being in your room, too.”
Charlie related that story, rather haltingly and full of caveats, to the detective. She listened a moment then handed the phone to Branigan. “He wants to speak to you.”
“What do you make of Charlie’s story?” he asked.
The Cover Story Page 21