by Dixie Davis
And now Trey was going to pay the price.
Lori looked back at the black SUV. “That’s not Trey’s car,” she managed. “He drives a beat-up little sedan.”
Her brain kicked into gear again. If it wasn’t Trey’s car, that meant the modus operandi was different than last night, at least a little. Yes, it was apparently still a hit and run where the driver had abandoned his car and actually run on foot, but this time, he hadn’t been able to talk the victim into handing over his car.
Maybe the murderer wasn’t someone Trey knew.
But Trey being killed the day after his high school friend, in the same way? Seemed unlikely the two events weren’t related.
Lori met Ken’s eyes again. His gaze was just as grim and worried as she felt.
Chief Branson had been right to focus suspicion on the group of friends. Now only three of them were left to be suspects.
And one of them had left his car at the scene of the crime.
Lori nodded to Ken. “I’m going to go.”
“Good idea.”
Lori wasn’t sure whether he meant her leaving or her investigating was the good idea, but she’d take the endorsement for both.
She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do now — but Brett had just moved ahead of Serena on the interview list.
Lori hurried back to the inn. Serena was nowhere to be found — again — and apparently hadn’t done anything for the few minutes she’d bothered to pop in.
Lori headed to her office and found the pad of paper that had all the phone numbers from the night before on it in her drawer again. Brett’s was there just below Val’s. Lori pulled out her cell phone and typed up a text message. Knowing Brett a little, she figured the best route for her right now would be to look like she knew everything and let him spill his guts to her. He seemed passive enough to fall for it.
I know what happened, Lori typed after her brief introduction. We need to talk.
It only took a few minutes for Brett to text back. What happened? What are you talking about?
Lori frowned at her phone. She hadn’t expected him to confess via text message, but that sounded less like a denial and more like pure cluelessness.
I know where your SUV is, Lori attempted.
This time, the pause was a little longer — and this time, instead of a text message, her phone rang.
“What happened to my car?” Brett demanded. Or as much of a demand as he could muster in his mild voice.
“Um.” Was she really the right person to be telling him this? Should she warn him the police might be on their way?
Lori heard some sort of motion and shuffling on Brett’s end of the line. “It’s not — it’s not out front?” he asked.
He was asking her? “No, I guess it’s not.”
More shuffling carried on the line. “No, no, no,” Brett muttered. “Keyes, Keyes, Keyes.”
Lori hesitated. Was he trying to place her, remember how they’d met? “Yes, I own the Mayweather House, next door to Salt Water Bakes. You came here last night?”
“Hm?”
“My son Doug is dating Annie Allbright.”
“Annie? Annie Allbright? Oh no.” Brett seemed truly grieved to hear about her, then fell into muttering Lori’s surname again.
Oh, merciful heavens — he wasn’t trying to figure out who she was. He was looking for his keys. Lori leaned back in her office chair and mentally kicked herself. Wasn’t the first time she’d looked like an idiot in a misunderstanding about her name.
“Where could my car — you said you know where my car is?” His voice sounded like his focus had shifted from searching back to Lori.
Lori debated with herself. Should she tell him exactly where she’d just seen a car like his? But, then, she couldn’t even be sure it was his. “Do you drive a black SUV?”
“Yeah, a Ford Explorer. Did you see it?”
“Uh . . . yes, I saw it.”
“Where?”
What was she supposed to do, send him to an active crime scene where it looked like he’d fled after murdering an old friend? “Hey, Trey mentioned something about meeting you for lunch today. You didn’t drive over to see him?”
“Is this a prank?” The stress level in Brett’s voice immediately receded. “Trey’s messing with me, isn’t he?” He sighed. “Thought it was so hilarious in high school. Still isn’t funny.”
Lori cringed internally. She couldn’t tell him what she’d just seen. If he was innocent, knowing about the accident would make him look more suspicious to the police. If he was guilty, she’d wait for him to slip and show he knew something about it.
“Did you talk to him? Any idea how long he’s planning on keeping it?”
“I talked to him earlier this morning.” Lori bit her lip, picking up a pencil to tap on the desk. How long could she keep up a bluff like this?
“Did you see where he stashed it? Can I just walk over and get it?” He sighed and added under his breath, “The jerk.”
“You know, I’m not really sure that’s going to be possible right now.”
“Please tell me he didn’t do something stupid, like push it in the river or something.”
Lori figured she’d better change the subject now while she could. “But wait — you were meeting him for lunch, weren’t you?” Trey hadn’t lied to her about that, had he?
“Uh, yeah, I think he said something about that. I . . . I haven’t really been able to get out of bed after everything that happened last night.”
Lori closed her eyes. The poor boy — and it was only going to get worse.
Merciful though it might have been to get it over with now instead of postponing the inevitable, Lori knew it wasn’t her place to tell Brett. After all, it could have been anybody’s black Ford SUV. Or Trey might get better.
Most of all, she couldn’t find the words to tell Brett what had happened.
Instead, she opted to address the other part of his statement. “It’s always hard to lose a friend like that. So suddenly.”
Brett said nothing.
Lori gripped her pencil, waiting for his response. Was she getting through to him or not? “Whatever you’re feeling,” she tried again, “that’s okay. There’s no right way to handle this.”
“But there’s a wrong way,” Brett murmured. “At least if you ask my dad.”
Over the months, she’d gathered that Brett lived at home from her conversations with Val, but she didn’t realize that was more than just not being able to afford a house payment. Not that he couldn’t take care of himself — although right now he couldn’t — but that the relationship with his parents hadn’t changed since . . . probably since high school.
“Um,” Brett broke the silence, “thanks and everything, but if you don’t know where my car is, I really need to go.”
Lori fought that internal battle once again. Tell him or not?
The easier path won out: “I understand,” Lori said. “Can we talk a little later?”
“Um . . . I guess.”
“Mind if I bring you by something to eat? Say in half an hour?”
“Sure,” Brett said. It sounded more like he was trying to get rid of her, so Lori only hoped he’d still be home when she got there. Fortunately, she didn’t need his address — she already knew where Val lived.
Lori ended the call and immediately dove into the kitchen and the cookbook shelf. What could she put together that fast? Nothing baked — not only would it take too long, but the man was the son of an amazing baker. They probably got quite a bit of day-old treats at the Cromley household.
Then Lori had a stroke of genius. She opened the fridge. Right there in front was the rest of Trey’s cheesy grits. Lori swallowed a sad sigh. She knew he probably wasn’t going to be around to eat the leftovers, but not for this reason.
She scooped a serving into a bowl and heated it in the microwave. Hopefully Brett liked his grits cheesy, too. Once they were piping hot, Lori grated a little extra cheese on top
. She wrapped the bowl in a clean kitchen towel, reminding herself to tend to the towels in her storage closet soon. Then she hurried out to her car and set the bowl of grits on the floor of the passenger side.
As soon as Lori was on her way to Val’s — Brett’s — house, she began to doubt this decision. She’d already had confronting a killer go horribly wrong. Her foot answered with an ache at even the oblique reference to the fall that had cracked two bones there. She couldn’t be sure what she was walking into. Val was almost always at the bakery at this time of day, and Lori didn’t know what her husband’s schedule was like.
And then there was Brett himself. Going into a house alone with someone who might be a murderer — again — was not on Lori’s bucket list, and if it was, it would have to be the very last item. If they were alone, Lori might be in danger.
Even if they weren’t alone, however, Lori was bringing a dead or dying man’s food to Brett, who might have been the one to kill him. That had to cross some ethical and moral lines, didn’t it?
It certainly didn’t feel right to her. Lori frowned at herself. If she didn’t hurry, though, the police would definitely get to Brett first. And she wasn’t really sure Brett would know how to stand up to the police if they said something he couldn’t refute.
Last night, he couldn’t even give an alibi. He might be in serious trouble today.
Lori nodded. She was doing this to help him. Because he needed it. Not because she was working the case or anything like that. This was purely altruistic. Noble, even.
If Brett wasn’t a murderer.
Lori took one last bracing breath. Please, she practically prayed, Brett couldn’t be a murderer. He had to be safe — and so did she.
She put her car in gear and pulled out.
Hopefully not to face a murderer.
Lori reached Val’s cute bungalow with a wide porch, and she couldn’t say she was surprised to not see any cars out front. She had to assume that meant Val’s husband wasn’t home now, either.
Assuming Brett was driving his car. He didn’t have any reason to lie to Lori on the phone — he hadn’t even actually lied, just the way he’d reacted, hunting for his keys, everything said he had no idea what had happened to his car.
That probably meant he was innocent of Trey’s murder — but what if he was taking Nate’s death so hard because he’d caused it?
And if that were the case, could she really rule him out for today’s follow up crime?
Lori gathered up her offering of grits. Did detective work always have to be so mentally exhausting?
She steeled herself and hurried to the door. It couldn’t take long for the police to track down the registered owner of the vehicle. They could be here any second.
Lori knocked at the door and waited. It took a minute — a minute she didn’t have — but Brett finally pulled the door open. His hair, fashionably spiked up last night, poked in every direction in a way that was less I just woke up looking this good and more I just rolled out of bed. His wrinkled T-shirt and shorts seemed to echo the sentiment from his hair.
“Hi,” Lori said gently. “I know this can’t be easy for you. I brought you some grits.”
Brett nodded and accepted the bowl when she offered it. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She tilted her head, trying to give him an encouraging smile. “Would you like to talk about it?”
Brett regarded her for a long moment before he finally nodded and stepped back so she could come in. The house was as neat and well decorated as ever — quite literally a place for everything and everything in its place, even if that meant every square inch of the walls was covered in trinkets and mementos. The décor was cute and cozy and matching. Val was one of those people who had everything together.
That made it a little surprising that her son seemed to be the opposite.
Lori followed Brett to the living room, with a detour through the kitchen for a spoon. Brett slumped into a brown recliner that didn’t seem to have any give. Lori managed not to cringe, though it hardly looked comfortable.
She settled on the pillowy soft couch. “So, you’d known Nate for a long time.”
Brett nodded, focused on stirring his grits. Lori managed to hold in an impatient sigh. She’d already put up with enough of her subject using the grits as a distraction or a cover.
However, Lori also had a secret weapon. People had always stopped her in the street or a shop to share their own personal sob story, but once she started looking into suspicious deaths, suddenly this quirk became one of the most important arrows in her quiver. So Lori waited for Brett to come around.
It took him a minute, but once he’d enjoyed a couple bites of the grits, he began to warm to her, as if the warmth of the grits was all it took to get him to thaw and talk — even though it was a June afternoon that really didn’t require any additional heat.
“I was friends with Trey first,” Brett said, his voice soft. “It wasn’t until Trey dated Serena and then Annie that I kind of fell in with them.” He sighed, conveying the extra air into blowing on a steaming spoonful of grits. “Never would have imagined myself with that crowd before that.”
“Why’s that?” Lori prompted gently.
He shrugged. “They were popular. Look at me.”
Lori sincerely doubted that you could judge a person’s high school career at a glance ten years later, but she nodded as if she understood. “Did that bother you?”
“Not at the time. After being ignored all those years to suddenly be at the center of everything? I’d arrived.”
Lori realized she was waiting for him to snort with silent laughter as Trey had, but Brett only twisted his lips to the side, not even a partial smile. Actually, he looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“Brett, is there any reason the police might think that you were the one who killed Nate?”
“You mean aside from the fact that I don’t have a real alibi?” He shook his head. “I’ve hardly seen the guy in the last ten years.”
“Oh? This morning, Trey made it sound like you were all still getting along great now, other than Annie.”
“‘Great’? Not the word I’d pick.”
“Hm. Strange.” Lori played with a tassel on the nearest pillow, feigning innocence. “Trey was speculating about Nate and Serena secretly dating all this time.”
Brett scowled. “Pretty sure we’d know if something like that was going on.”
“He was worried about the awkwardness with their past.”
Brett rolled his eyes at his grits. “It wouldn’t have been awkward — Trey dumped Serena for her friend over a decade ago. Why would dating Nate, her real high school sweetheart, be awkward for any of them?”
“Then why didn’t they end up together?” Lori asked.
“Nate wasn’t interested. He’d been there and done that. Once he told me — back in high school — that he really liked Serena, but he could just never look at her the same way again after how she’d dumped him for Trey. We both thought it was just deserts when Trey dumped her back.”
“Trey said Nate was the one who made peace for you all afterwards?”
Brett curled his lip but shrugged, stuffing another bite of grits in his mouth. “Mostly Nate. I helped, too.”
After hearing Trey’s version of events, it was interesting to get a slightly different take. “Were you two the peacemakers of the group?”
“Nate even more so than me. More confrontation than I wanted to deal with.”
“Can’t blame you.” Lori offered him a patient smile, a cover for her next tack: trying to get his alibi for the morning. “Did you hear about the memorial this morning?” she asked.
“Yeah. Couldn’t go, though. Didn’t feel up to it.”
Lori nodded. She wasn’t one to mourn for everybody else to see, put her emotions on display as an attention-seeking tactic. “What did you do instead?” she asked.
“Watched TV in my room until my dad left, then I came down to use the tele
vision.”
“What were you watching?”
Brett stared at the dark screen now. “Old Judge Judy reruns.”
“I love that show,” Lori said. “Which episode did you see?”
Though Lori had definitely not seen enough Judge Judy to make her an expert, once Brett started describing the case, she realized that was one of the few she’d seen.
The man might have an alibi for today after all — unless he remembered the plot of Judge Judy episodes better than Lori did. She tried another question to check the story. “What time did Judge Judy start?”
“I dunno. I turned it on at about eleven?”
Lori wasn’t familiar enough with daytime television to know whether that was a valid answer, but it seemed good enough for now. She’d definitely double-check his alibi when she got home.
So Brett seemed to have an alibi for today, and seemed genuinely surprised when she’d asked about his car. “Brett, if you were here all morning, who might have driven your car somewhere?”
He shrugged. “I guess Mom or Dad? Sometimes Dad helps out with deliveries when I can’t.”
Lori studied the display of plates on the nearest wall a moment. Would either of his parents have a reason to kill Trey and leave Brett’s car at the scene? Even if they were acting from a severely misguided protective impulse, neither of them would have just left Brett’s car there for the police to find.
If Brett hadn’t driven his SUV into Trey, was he being framed? Who would want to do that? Obviously, the rest of his group of friends seemed like the most likely suspects. If someone had murdered Nate, and his good friend from high school was killed the same way the following day, it seemed pretty likely they were dealing with the same killer, didn’t it?
With Brett ruled out as a suspect, that left only Annie and Serena. Between last night’s receipts and the memorial, Annie had a pretty good alibi. Meanwhile Serena was exactly who Trey had not-quite pointed at as the most likely suspect. Could Serena be less clueless than she seemed?
On the other hand, just because the two murders looked related didn’t necessarily mean one person had committed both of them. Today could be a copycat murder. Brett could still be a suspect in Nate’s murder if he hadn’t killed Trey. “Brett?” Lori waited until he met her eyes to continue. “Did you kill Nate?”