A Tangle in the Vines

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “If you repeat one word of this, I’ll charge you with obstructing justice.” Dahlia jumped up out of her seat and leaned across the table.

  “Sit down, Dahlia,” Rikki ordered. “Everyone at this table is on our side. I’m most concerned about the boy.”

  “Lily, I don’t believe Billie should set foot in his house again—not until we’ve caught the Numbers Man, or maybe never, depending on what Children’s Services learns.” Rikki addressed Diane next.

  “I’d like Jim to accompany you to Billie’s house to collect the library books, his notebook, schoolbooks, and whatever else you believe Billie needs while he’s away from home. You’ve relocated children like him before, so you know how to do that efficiently. Plus, you already know what’s going on.” Diane cut Rikki off.

  “Some of what’s going on. I don’t know how the murder of Lydia Wainwright makes the Numbers Man a serial killer, do I?”

  “I stand corrected. You already know some of what’s going on—probably more than you should know. For your own safety, I’d keep this completely quiet. As far as anyone is concerned, you’re visiting Billie’s house because he has no one at home to care for him. I know Lily is willing to offer him temporary foster care here. If you can make that happen, it would be much better than placing him elsewhere, which would involve sharing sensitive information with more people.”

  “As soon as we’re done here, I’ll call Judge Brinkley and ask for his help. He’s an old friend of Letitia Morgan, so he’s already familiar with Lily and the setting in which Billie will be living if he’s allowed to remain here,” Diane asserted.

  “That’s good because we briefed Judge Brinkley earlier about the discoveries made here at the vineyard and in the nearby woods. You won’t have to explain any of that to him.”

  “That is good, because I couldn’t do it without sounding like a babbling idiot, could I?” Diane paused and poured herself more water from a jug in the middle of the table.

  Austin and I exchanged glances. I assumed Colin Brinkley had been briefed because of his involvement, two decades earlier, in the disappearance of Penney Lincoln. He was a lawyer then, not a judge, so I wondered what role he’d played.

  “I’m sorry to be snippy about this. When I arrived this morning, I expected this to be an ordinary child welfare investigation. Nothing in Lettie’s life was ever ordinary, was it?” Diane did the kindest thing then. She reached out and squeezed my hand as she spoke to me.

  “Mostly, her life was extraordinary and in a good way—especially the part of it she shared with you. I have her word for that!” Then Diane spoke to us all.

  “Finding out that Lydia Wainwright is dead, and was murdered by a serial killer, is a huge shock.”

  “You may find this hard to believe, Diane, but we’re all shaken by this too.” It’s funny how a simple gesture of kindness appears to change the dynamic in a situation. Dahlia morphed into the thoughtful, caring human being she can be at times. “My nephew was in her class with Billie last year. He and his sister will be devastated to learn that she’s dead.”

  “I don’t envy you trying to keep all this from becoming a public spectacle that disrupts your ability to find a killer. There’s already plenty of scuttlebutt about Ms. Wainwright’s failure to report for duty. Most of it is rather nasty—even coming from her family. Good luck keeping a lid on this for long.”

  “I’m glad you understand what we’re up against,” Rikki said. “We’d like to apprehend our suspect before word leaks to the community that there’s a serial killer on the loose. If we’re all on the same page, let’s see if Billie has any more bombshells to drop before we move on. We still have to interview Lily and Jesse.”

  “Where is Billie?” Dahlia asked. That was a good question. I jumped from my seat and ran to look for him. Austin was right behind me.

  10 Boy Crazy

  When I opened the door, I almost tripped over Billie. For a split second, I worried he was dead. Crazy, I know, but murder in real life is still new to me. At the stage we’re at now, I’m in hyper-paranoid mode. I dropped to my knees.

  “Billie, sweetie, are you okay?” He sat up, bleary-eyed.

  “I guess I fell asleep. I do that sometimes.” I could understand that if he was roaming around in the woods most of the night instead of sleeping.

  “What were you doing out here?”

  “I was waiting for someone to invite me in. There’s no chair in the hall like outside the principal’s office or at Children’s Services. So, I sat on the floor. It’s more comfortable than I thought it would be. You need to add some splinters or something.” He grinned at me, and I could see those dimples.

  “Come on in. They’re almost done with you—then they’ll be grilling me.”

  “Really, what did you do?” Then his eyes widened. “They don’t think you had anything to do with killing Ms. Wainwright, do they?” My heart sank.

  “What else did you hear?” I asked as we walked into the dining room and sat down.

  “Nothing. Honest. I guessed about Ms. Wainwright by the way everyone sucked in air when I said her name. We all know she’s absent. I almost got into a fight with a kid who said she ran off with someone’s husband. I told him that couldn’t be true, and to take it back. Before I could punch him, this big girl with lots of long braids, stepped in between us. She told him to shut up because Ms. Wainwright was one of the best teachers she ever had, and her boyfriend isn’t married. Then she said the only reason she’d ever ditch school was if she was dead.”

  “You must mean Brandy Lewis, the ninth-grader.”

  “Yes, Ms. Constantine.”

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “Keith said ‘sorry.’ I couldn’t tell if he meant it, or if he was afraid Brandy would get him into trouble with the principal for saying bad things about a teacher. A few of her friends were standing around and heard him say it too. I guess it doesn’t matter what he said, does it?” Billie appeared as if he was really upset. “Did the Numbers Man kill Ms. Wainwright? Is it my fault because I told her someone should check on him?”

  “Of course not, Billie!” I turned his face toward me and made direct eye contact with him. “What happened to Ms. Wainwright has nothing to do with you. I’ll tell you a secret I learned recently. When we lose a person we care about, some of us come up with reasons that it’s our fault. That way, we can make believe that we can keep bad things from happening by changing the way we act. What other people do, is about them and not you. That’s true about the person who killed Ms. Wainwright and about adults who do terrible things to their kids.” Several big, fat tears rolled down Billie’s face. My heart went out to him given all he was facing. Not to mention, all that he’d already gone through.

  “What’s going on in here?” Zelda asked as she burst into the room wearing a black mask and a cowboy hat. “You made him cry, didn’t you?” Then she whipped out a bright pink water pistol and squirted Dahlia in the face. Rikki laughed until Melody bounded into the room, dressed in the same getup, and squirted her. The surprised look on Rikki’s face was priceless. Billie had a twinkle in his eyes even though his face was still red and splotchy.

  “Come on, Billie, your posse has arrived. Ma Tucker sent us to break you out,” Zelda added.

  “That’s Judy, to you,” I told Billie.

  “Do we need to tie them all up?” Julie asked as she and Carrie stepped into the room with lassos. They were both having trouble delivering their lines without laughing.

  “Don’t make us haul you off to jail or we’ll be forced to dress you in prison orange.” Carrie whipped out big orange trash bags like I’d worn last night. “Do you want us to share pictures like these with your colleagues?”

  “Oh, no!” I said as they threw wanted posters on the table with me in Slimy Chic. “That’s more horrible than I ever dreamed.” Maybe it was the belligerent expression on my face or the disgusted look on Hazmat Man’s face before he’d donned his mask, but the posters were a
wful.

  “At least you don’t stink. Woo-wee, that was rough!” Austin added grinning. I swatted at him and he ducked.

  “Let him have it!” I said, and they nailed him with the squirt guns.

  Jesse strode into the room and did a double-take. He acted as if he was in the wrong place, stepped out of the room, and checked both ways before returning. Totally deadpan, he commented.

  “I take it the proceedings are in recess.” That set off another round of laughs.

  “Okay, that was witty, but it’s time for the law to take charge,” Rikki announced. “I’m ordering you to clear out before Jim calls a paddy wagon to take you all to the…uh. I don’t know, somewhere that’s not here.” Jesse turned to leave.

  “Not you, funny man,” Dahlia quipped. “Sit!”

  Billie was the first one out the door, giving Zelda a high five up high and down low. I was mopping up the water on the table as Diane gathered her belongings.

  “I repeat, nothing’s ever ordinary around here,” Diane said. “I assume I’m free to go?”

  “Yes, thanks for all your help,” Dahlia said. “I’d like someone to interview Brandy Lewis. Would you be willing to arrange it and sit in on it with her? If she knows who Lydia Wainwright’s boyfriend was, that could be important.”

  “When would you like to interview her?”

  “The sooner, the better, Diane,” Rikki added as she stopped reorganizing the files in front of her. “You nailed it when you said we’re not going to be able to keep any of this from going public for long. The more information we can get before that happens, the less chance we have that people will confuse what they know with what they think they know because it was on television or in social media. Later today or the first thing tomorrow would be best.”

  “What do I tell Brandy and her parents?” Diane asked.

  “Tell them we’re interested in speaking with Ms. Wainwright’s students given the sudden change in their teacher’s behavior,” Rikki said.

  “If you want to use the reading room to make your calls, make yourself comfortable. If you call Judge Brinkley while you’re still here, I can answer any questions he might have. Or if you need to, you can put him on the phone with Rikki or Dahlia,” I added.

  “Okay, that makes sense,” Diane agreed.

  “They’re welcome to come here for the interview if you can explain why the police want to question Brandy at the Calla Lily Vineyards.”

  “They might not care where we meet,” Diane responded. “Brandy was such a big fan of Lydia, I’m sure she’ll be happy to help. Here’s an idea. Brandy also has an interest in drama, so if I can offer her a tour of the theater in exchange for being willing to meet on such short notice, that might make all of this more bearable for her.”

  “That would be fine,” I said as I had her follow me to the reading room. I gave her a fax number for Judge Brinkley to use. “The bathroom is that way, and you know where the kitchen is. Help yourself to pop or milk and cookies. Whatever you need to make this work for you. If you have a question, you know where I’ll be for the next half hour or so.” When I closed the door, I turned around to find Austin standing there.

  “Lily, Rikki wants me to get going. She might bring it up, but if not, I don’t want you to worry. I’m visiting a prison inmate who claimed he had information about Penney Lincoln’s disappearance years ago. Nothing much came of his testimony because he asked to use it to make a deal on charges he was facing. Nor was anyone very impressed that he’d seen a homeless man speaking to Penney. It may not amount to much, but maybe he got a look at the guy’s face or caught a name.”

  “Why you? Can’t someone at the prison ask him?”

  “I picked him up as a fugitive a few years ago when he wandered away from a work detail. We made a connection. Rikki’s hopeful that he’ll talk to me and if he tries to snow me with a bunch of bull, I’ll know it.”

  “Okay. I get it. Why don’t you take a box of cookies with you?” I asked.

  “I sure will! I’ve got a long drive ahead of me, so they’ll come in handy.”

  “Nice try, Marshal, but they’re not for you. I was hoping you could use the cookies to put your prison pal in a more cooperative mood.”

  “Do you want to get me locked up for bribery?” he asked, pulling me close.

  “Where did she go?” That was Dahlia’s voice. She’d be after me any second now. I grabbed Austin’s hand, pulled him behind me into the kitchen and, opened the pantry. We only had a few boxes left. Oh, what the heck! Judy and I were going to have to start over baking for the Thanksgiving Harvest Festival organizers.

  “Here, take these. One for you and one for the ex-fugitive. Drive safely, save some cookies for the hardened criminal, and get back here as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and kissed me. Then he touched the ring on my finger. “It’s a promise.”

  “I thought I heard your voice,” Dahlia said. When I shut the pantry door, she spotted Austin.

  “What are you doing in here? You’re supposed to be on your way to prison.” She smirked at her comment.

  “I was arming him with a secret weapon.” I held up the boxes of cookies.

  “Yeah, right. Let’s get this done, so Jesse can get back to tending the fields or whatever else he does around here.”

  I gave Austin’s hand a squeeze as he took the boxes of cookies from me. Then, I swept past Dahlia, slipped into the dining room, and sat in a chair next to Jesse.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked before Dahlia could take her seat. Jim Brady had left, so only the two women remained.

  “Austin told us you were both acquainted with Penney Lincoln, and you have information about her that runs counter to her mother’s statement that she didn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “When you put it like that, maybe she wasn’t trying to mislead anyone. From what I heard, she didn’t have ‘a’ boyfriend; she had lots of them. I was new to the area, so I didn’t know Penney well. She was in the same class as me in middle school—cute, funny, but not a good student. She didn’t seem too interested in being a good student, and she was in trouble from the day school started. Then one day, not long after school had started, I heard she was gone.”

  “I’m going to tell you the same thing,” Jesse said. “Because I was a couple of years older than Penney, I didn’t know her personally. I recognized her when I saw her, and most of what I can tell you is from gossip. There was plenty of it once she disappeared, but even before that, I heard more than one person call her ‘boy crazy.’”

  “Maybe no one wanted to challenge her grieving mother,” I murmured. “That’s too bad because if they had, someone might have figured out that she wasn’t ever coming home because one of her boyfriends had killed her.”

  “Maybe not, Lily. If the police had asked me, I would have told them she ran away with some guy. That wouldn’t have helped find her either. In fact, it’s almost too easy to use that as a reason not to carry out a more thorough investigation.”

  “Jesse’s made a good point. ‘Possible runaway,’ is noted in her record. The investigators don’t mention a boyfriend, but her mother told them she’d run away before.”

  “Running away with a boyfriend would make more sense if she was sixteen or seventeen, but she was Billie’s age—twelve or thirteen, right?” I asked.

  “Kids even younger than Billie runaway, but most of them are older. In Penney Lincoln’s case, she was a few days shy of fifteen. That she was a poor student is an understatement. She failed the second and sixth grades, so she was closer in age to you, Jesse, than to Lily.”

  “Okay, well I saw her hanging out after school with boys my age. I don’t remember a specific one, but I guess she didn’t mind if they were younger than her.”

  “Or older,” Jesse added. “More than one person told me she was going out with a ‘college boy.’ I assume that meant a man in his twenties.”

  “Did you ever see her with an older guy?” I as
ked.

  “I saw her get into a car with a male at the wheel. I didn’t see him, but he had an expensive, nice-looking car. A black Camaro that was in great condition—almost as if it had just been driven off the lot. I doubt it belonged to some high schooler.”

  “Thanks, Jesse,” Rikki said. “Was he on the school grounds at the time?”

  “No. He was waiting for Penney on the street in front of the school.”

  “That’s too bad. I was hoping he was someone known to the administration.”

  “Maybe a teacher or someone in charge noticed. I wasn’t the only one ogling the car. He got plenty of attention, especially when he burned rubber driving away. Good luck finding someone who’s still around twenty years later and remembers an incident like that. I was a kid who envied the guys who could afford cars.” Jesse shrugged.

  “When Penney’s mother told the police she’d run away before, did she give them a reason? Had she reported her disappearance to the police?” I asked, just wondering out loud since it was none of my business.

  “We’ve only had a short time to review the old case,” Dahlia said. “So far, I don’t see a previous missing persons report. There’s something vague in her mother’s statement about Penney not being happy about the rules at home.”

  “If you prepare her for another shock, you could enlist Diane to review the Children’s Services records, if they go back that far,” I suggested. “Even if they don’t, she might know someone who was around then who was familiar with the family and any problems they had with Penney. You’ve already contacted Judge Brinkley. Didn’t he confirm what we’ve said about Penney’s boyfriend problems?”

  “I’m not sure what he can tell us since he was representing Penney’s mother and stepfather at the time. Contacting him was a courtesy call because his name is in the record and I didn’t want him to be surprised by a nosy reporter. What makes you so sure he knew about her boyfriend problems?” Dahlia used her fingers to make those little quote marks as she repeated my words.