Circled

by Anne McAneny

  Whenever Mrs. Elbee had been under the weather—her euphemism for depressed—I’d do her grocery and drug store shopping. Even though I’d known her since I was eight years old, she never failed to count the change to make sure I didn’t cheat her. Never bothered me; it was just her way. Although I considered her my closest neighbor, we still lived one mile and several social strata apart—me where the land stayed wet and the regulations required stilts, her on a beautiful lot that overlooked a wide expanse of river. When I was in high school, she and her husband had hired me to walk their collie while they took international trips. The phrase, in my mind, had sparked images of George and Grace Elbee donning royal clothing and riding camels through exotic lands. Having later seen pictures, I learned that it just meant tacky t-shirts, overpriced cocktails, and cheesy photos with a tour bus in the background.

  “See anything unusual?” Chad asked as we stepped in.

  I glanced around. No overturned furniture, broken windows, or spattered blood. No strange smells to indicate the presence of a stranger. Just a well-kept house decorated by people who’d become suddenly rich twelve years ago. They’d pulled decorating ideas straight from trendy magazines but had gone too far, making the place feel prematurely dated. I squatted down and ran a gloved finger along the foyer floor and first two stairs. “There’s dirt here, like someone might have tramped up the stairs in shoes.”

  “Is that odd?”

  “Mrs. Elbee was fastidious. Vacuumed every day and made me take off my shoes when I came over.”

  Chad pulled out an evidence bag and brushed the dirt into it. “We’ll run it through the lab.”

  I followed him into the kitchen. He sniffed, four short snuffs. “Onions, garlic, a bit of fish,” he said. “Three days old, maybe four.”

  “Strong work, McGruff. Case solved.”

  “Hey, you grow up hungry, you learn to savor smells.” He turned around and checked the low counter where Mrs. Elbee kept a phone, notepad, and, apparently, her collection of amulets. I could see now why Rafe collected them; they were beautiful and varied with striking details and jewels, most containing carved symbols I didn’t understand.

  “This reminds me,” I said, pointing to the amulets. “We’ve got to tell Sherilyn that Mrs. Elbee might want to be buried with the amulet she was wearing.”

  “Did she mention that to you?”

  “No,” I said, pretending it was my idea. “But she killed herself while wearing it. She might be trying to ward off evil spirits in the afterlife.”

  Chad gave me a strange look but let the topic go. He pressed the blinking red light on the answering machine. Only one message: from a telemarketer offering life insurance.

  “Should have answered that one,” Chad murmured while scrolling through the Caller ID. “She got a bunch of calls from California, always around noon on even days of the month.”

  “Probably her son,” I said.

  “Drying out in L.A. this time?”

  “The best that lottery winnings can buy.”

  “Easy to find him, then.” He jotted down the number in the tiny notebook he always carried and kept scrolling. “You know anyone named LeGrange? First name starts with M?”

  I whirled around. “What did you say?”

  My clenched jaw and wide eyes told him he’d said far more than he thought. “M. LeGrange. It’s on the Caller ID. He’s called six, no seven, times recently.”

  I rushed over and looked at the display. “It’s not a he,” I said. “It’s Macy LeGrange.”

  “Macy? The little girl that got killed on her bike?”

  “What’s the number?” I asked.

  “South Carolina area code and a Beulah exchange, but could be a telemarketer from Timbuktu these days. They make the phone display say anything they want.” He wrote the number down. “I’ll check it out. If an M. LeGrange did speak to Mrs. Elbee recently, she might know something.”

  Transfixed, I scrolled repeatedly through the seven calls from M. LeGrange.

  Chad touched my arm, the way he used to when I drifted into one of my dazes. “Chloe, it’s just a name on a display. Not like there’s only one M. LeGrange in the world.”

  I tightened my face. “Macy and I were friends. Good friends.”

  “I guess in a town this small, you knew every kid your own age, huh?”

  His question was part filler and part ongoing investigation of what a normal childhood entailed. It was easy to forget how he’d missed out on the basics. “I knew every kid in town,” I said, “probably well enough to blackmail them.” I leaned against Mrs. Elbee’s clean granite countertop and shook my head. “Macy was the type all the girls should have been jealous of, but none of us could get there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was beyond adorable. Blond hair, big dimples, huge blue eyes. But sporty and cool at the same time.”

  “A Shirley Temple jock.”

  “Exactly. The boys loved her, but she barely noticed. And she was funny without being catty or gossipy. Just . . . so damn happy, grinning at life even when it didn’t grin back.”

  Chad smiled wistfully and then started toward the stairs. “Come on, let’s check out the bedrooms.”

  The second level of Mrs. Elbee’s house smelled musty. Wouldn’t surprise me if mold was painting the backside of her sheet rock with stubborn black grit. Out of some warped obligation to a fellow lottery winner, the Elbees had hired local developer, Richie Quail, to build their dream home. Quail was a gifted salesman who could close any deal, but his real specialty was screwing whoever was on the other end of the handshake—George and Grace Elbee had made the mistake of shaking his hand. Despite the house’s external charms and great location, it was rotten to the core. Dozens of contractors had come and gone over the years, but none had been able to overcome Quail’s shoddy work.

  Chad and I entered the master bedroom. A slight whir of tension gripped me as memories of our own times in such rooms flooded back. I avoided looking at him—even if part of me did want to jump his bones.

  The room was tidy, although the rumpled bedspread seemed out of place, and, upon closer inspection, the small clumps of dirt near the side of the bed seemed odd. I pointed them out to Chad.

  “Maybe she went outside to find a rock to weigh her body down with,” he suggested, “and then tracked dirt back in here to get something—or to leave a note.”

  We looked around. No note. On her nightstand was a paperback, bookmarked three-quarters of the way through: Return From Death. I glanced around, worried Mrs. Elbee might have already cashed in her return ticket and been hovering above us. After making sure Chad wasn’t looking, I gave a quick smile and wave to the empty air above her bed, just in case.

  As Chad bagged the second sample of dirt, I turned my attention to the tall dresser in the corner and checked out the happy family photos: Grace and George smiling in sunglasses and hats while floating on their boat; Eric, the son, waving as he opened the door to a new car; the three of them arm-in-arm in front of the house. The images were only a mirage, though, a creation of the life Mrs. Elbee had felt she deserved.

  While I surveyed, Chad moseyed into the bathroom. “Whoa!” he said upon entering. “Now that’s a little weird.”

  That registered as high emotion for Chad, so I hustled over to the all-white, marble bathroom. Even before entering, I could smell the mold that was multiplying aggressively in Mrs. Elbee’s absence. Once in, I followed Chad’s shocked gaze to the mirror above the sink and gasped. For a long stretch, I forgot to breathe.

  I finally inhaled enough to speak. “That wasn’t just an M on the Caller ID, was it?”

  Chapter 11

  “Macy LeGrange,” Sheriff Ryker read from the mirror.

  “Weird, right?” Chad said.

  Strike Ryker stood between Chad and me as he repeated Macy’s name. It was scrawled on Mrs. Elbee’s bathroom mirror like some horror movie message, but instead of a drippy, blood-red font, the name reflected back at
us in cheery, aqua shades of toothpaste. It was composed in tidy cursive, except for the L, which was somewhat smeared.

  “That’s definitely Mrs. Elbee’s writing,” I said. “That’s how she wrote her big G’s.”

  The stout sheriff rotated his head to me. His aggressive stance and accompanying frown made me wish I’d said capital G instead of big G, but too late now. Either he was still reeling from my morning antics during Boyd’s arrest or he was simply being himself. Strike Ryker had to be the only lottery winner in history who’d grown crankier with each dollar of accumulated interest.

  “We found an M. LeGrange on Mrs. Elbee’s Caller ID,” Chad said, gesturing to Macy’s name on the mirror. “Seven calls over the last few weeks. Mrs. Elbee’s phone kept track of call lengths, too. Looks like she answered the final call and talked for a while.”

  The sheriff grunted. “Take her answering machine in, and—”

  “Already got it bagged,” Chad said. “And I put in a request for all of her outgoing phone records.”

  The sheriff gave a subtle nod of approval. “Wasn’t Macy’s mom’s named Melanie?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered.

  “She left town shortly after Macy’s funeral,” he said.

  “Didn’t leave so much as get booted out,” I said. “Rumor has it that Richie Quail kicked her out of her place just two weeks after Macy was killed.”

  The sheriff waved that sorry aspect of Beulah’s history away, not in an uncaring way, but in a one-issue-at-a-time sort of way. He turned to Chad. “Probably Melanie LeGrange calling Mrs. Elbee, don’t you think?”

  “But the calls came from a local number,” I interjected. “I dialed it with my cell while we were waiting for you to arrive. It’s disconnected.”

  “People change numbers,” the sheriff said unconvincingly.

  “Any chance Mrs. LeGrange moved back here?” Chad said.

  “I feel like we’d know if she had,” the sheriff said.

  “I’ll track her down,” Chad said. “Either of you know where she moved to?”

  The sheriff and I both shook our heads.

  “I’ll find her,” Chad said.

  “Maybe Grace Elbee and Melanie LeGrange were commiserating over Richie Quail,” I said. “Quail not only owned the duplex development where Macy and her mom lived, but he also built this house.” I glared at the sheriff like it was his fault. “What a piece of work your friend is, Sheriff.”

  He turned and got right in my face. When questioned or accused, Strike Ryker had a way of sizzling before skewering. It didn’t have to be a deep question, either. With a simple, How do you take your coffee?, his skin would crinkle and crisp while he searched behind the question. Then he’d spit out an answer like a dragon shooting fire. Black would have been the answer to that one because Strike Ryker, steadfast keeper of law and order, would always take it black—even if he preferred it light and sweet.

  I stood my ground and held eye contact.

  “Richie Quail is no friend of mine,” he said, his voice even and slow. “You’d do well to remember that, Chloe.”

  Instead, I remembered something that Chad had once told me: Strike has limits, and you’ll always find out what they are. I’d just pressed up against an interesting one.

  “You played the lottery with him,” I said. “Figured you must be friends.”

  The sheriff’s left eye narrowed to a razor-thin line, making his right one appear demonic. “Quail and I happened to be in Boyd’s General at the same time that morning, along with Adeline DeVore. We all chipped in for Grace’s ticket. And yes, we won, but that hardly established a basis for friendship.”

  “You know, Sheriff, I’d know all these details if you’d returned my calls last week. I still need to interview you for my article.”

  “Write it without me. I don’t like that Lucky Four label and I don’t like being called rich.”

  “No problem. Built-in Thesaurus on my computer. Plenty of other words for rich. But either way, you’re in the article. You’re pivotal to every event that happened that week.”

  He looked startled. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You won the lottery. You found Macy’s body. You called the ambulance for Avis Whitaker. You even visited Avis in the hospital every day”—the sheriff turned a mild shade of crimson upon learning that I knew that detail—“and you ordered the dredging of the swamp to find Hoop. And now, with Boyd’s basement, you might be pivotal in finding out what really happened to him. You’re every up and every down of that week, Sheriff. I don’t have a story without you.”

  I glanced again at the name of my childhood friend—the one who could do more hula-hoop twirls than me but would tell everyone I did it with lots more style. Desiccated sections of the toothpaste had begun to chip off and float down to the sink. With the slow leak around the faucet, a bluish green puddle was forming around the brass fixture. I returned my gaze to the sheriff. “I don’t know how this story ends, Sheriff, but given today’s events, my article is shaping up to be a lot more interesting. I’m talking to Richie Quail this afternoon, and Adeline DeVore in the morning. That covers three of the four lottery winners. You’re the only one left.”

  He looked taken aback, one jowl sinking lower than the other, his head jutting farther forward than usual. “I do not want to be the central point of your story.”

  “You won’t be, if you agree to an interview.”

  His radio crackled. Chad and I exchanged a smirk. Strike Ryker was the only person in Beulah who refused to carry a cell phone—and that included the homeless-by-choice ex-banker who camped outside the firehouse offering raw hot dogs to passersby.

  “Ryker,” the sheriff barked into his radio.

  The reedy voice of Annika, the department receptionist who still reveled in her Miss Beulah County title, came through the radio. “Sheriff, we got some mighty impatient FBI fellers here who are asking to see you.”

  “Details, Annika.” The sheriff was not one for teasers or drama, preferring black-and-white versions of everything, including movies and squad cars.

  “Something to do with Boyd’s alleged goings-on in the basement,” Annika squeaked. “Apparently, they’d been keeping an eye on him and they’re none-too-happy that you interfered. That’s all I got.”

  Chad and I exchanged a surprised glance that Boyd Sexton could rank on anyone’s surveillance list, but maybe he’d done something stupid like cross state lines with his drugs or sell to an undercover agent.

  The sheriff shook his head; he didn’t need this particular brand of headache right now. “I’ll be right over,” he said into the radio, and then turned to me. “Did you interview Mrs. Elbee for your story?”

  “Yes. Last week. I recorded it.”

  “Gonna need a copy of that for the investigation. Maybe she said something that will shed light on”—he nodded toward the mirror—“this.”

  “I’ll email it to you.”

  He sneered. “Can’t you just bring me a tape?”

  I smiled at Beulah’s adorably old-fashioned sheriff. “I’ll bring it over first thing in the morning—if you agree to an interview.”

  “Dang it all, Chloe. I’ll just take possession of your tape by force if I need to.”

  “But that would require a warrant, Sheriff. Much easier if I just hand it over willingly after our interview tomorrow.”

  He sizzled. “Fine. I gotta give a talk at the high school in the morning. Come by around nine.”

  “I remember those this-is-your-brain-on-drugs and this-is-your-butt-in-jail spiels you gave, Sheriff. They stuck with me.”

  He grunted and turned to go but then craned his head back. “Ever think maybe your story’s cursed, Chloe? Maybe you oughta just leave well enough alone.”

  “Thought you knew me better than that, Sheriff. That’s exactly why I won’t leave it alone.”

  Chapter 12

  Four Days Before The Thump

  “Chloe!” Macy shouted. “Over here!
”

  Fourteen-year-old Macy LeGrange waved her friend, Chloe Keyes, over from across the road, intermittently pointing to a group of kids who’d gathered on the cleared field behind Boyd’s General. Chloe glanced around to make sure no cars were coming, and then she shifted her weight until her longboard made a smooth arc across the pavement. She glided over to where Macy was standing in frayed jean shorts, a gray baseball shirt, a blue cap, and formerly white tennis shoes.

  “We’re getting a softball game going,” Macy said. “You up for catching?”

  “Getting too tall to catch anymore. Hurts my knees.” Chloe had grown four inches in the past year and, in her eyes, had become more awkward than pretty. Her mother kept reminding her that ugly ducklings turned into swans, but Chloe had despised that story as a four-year-old and really couldn’t stomach it as a teen.

  “No problem,” Macy said. “Hoop oughta be by any minute. He don’t mind catching. Think you can handle second base?”

  When Chloe heard that Hoop was coming, she lit up. Heck, she’d have played ump if she had to. “Second’s cool,” she said. “I’ll put Pete Rose to shame.”

  “Think he kinda did that to himself,” Macy said, “but I hear ya.” She smacked Chloe on the butt as she ran past. “Get out there, girl.”

  Chloe joined the ten other kids milling about. As she glanced at her teammates, she realized she knew enough about each of them to populate a cheesy novel. There was Ronnie Fields who farted whenever he got nervous or laughed hard. His mom shoplifted the occasional steak and his little brother, Andy, still wet the bed. Casey stood next to Ronnie. Casey’s dad gave his mom a black eye about once a year, usually around Christmas. Casey himself had cheated on every math test since second grade and recently claimed he’d felt up Katie Wossack twice. Katie denied it; said it was only once. There was Rory, with his gorgeous eyes, who couldn’t read or spell but could fib his way out of anything. Maxine, approaching Ronnie, had stuffed her bra since fifth grade. And Lissette, who was retying her shoe, had a chemistry teacher for a mom. Lissette’s mom had allergies—or a drug problem—that made her nose drip, along with a tendency to flirt with Maxine’s dad, the history teacher. Chloe knew the other kids viewed her as that girl from New York whose crass but likeable father had moved the family here to escape the wrath of a powerful enemy. Apparently, while running his butcher shop in Manhattan, he’d refused to pay protection money to dangerous men. “When’s the last time you heard of a knife-wielding butcher getting held up for a side of beef?” he’d argued. They’d responded by pressing his hand to a chopping block and removing the tip of his pinkie finger. Which is how a little girl who’d asked the Times Square Santa for a pet gerbil at age three had ended up in tiny Beulah, South Carolina, rumored to own a pet alligator.