Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Chapter Eight

  Ava had arranged for us to meet her friend at the crack of 11:30. We entered the old house-converted-into-a-police-station fifteen minutes late, which Ava assured me was timely bordering on early. Ava, rolling in earthy and sexy, and me, holding back my normal long stride and feeling ridiculously virginal in my white sundress next to her. I took off my sunglasses and snapped them in their case in my purse.

  “Good day,” I announced as we walked into the station. A chorus of “good days” rang out in answer. I nearly laughed. Ava looked to see if I was mocking her, then rewarded me with an approving nod.

  “Good day. We here to see Jacoby,” she said to the female clerk seated at the desk behind the front counter, interrupting her from doing nearly nothing.

  Ava was surrounded by helpful officers within seconds, all claiming to know Jacoby, be Jacoby, or be more man than Jacoby ever would be. They crowded the first-floor lobby, a small room that likely, one hundred years ago, was someone’s front parlor. Now it housed folding chairs and a laminate coffee table covered with well-thumbed magazines and newspapers. I picked up a newspaper while Ava held court, and idly read about the acquisition of the local cell phone company by some big wheeler-dealer on the island. His name was Bonds. Gregory Bonds. I chortled at my secret funny. Ah, yes, this must be Ava’s future husband, the guy with a bad driver. I put it down when I couldn’t stand the reporter’s fawning anymore.

  When the real Jacoby came forward, I was shocked. He was a black Shrek, not the ebony island god I had pictured as a counterpart to Ava’s sultry beauty. Ava let out a girlish squeal—another surprise—and threw her arms around his neck to a chorus of disappointed male murmurs, grunts, and a noise that sounded like someone sucking saliva through their teeth. Yuck. The other police officers dispersed, disappearing behind doors and up a staircase visible through a hall adjacent to the lobby.

  “Katie, this here Jacoby. We school chums from the time we in kindergarten. Jacoby, Katie.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Darren Jacoby.”

  I took it. “Nice to meet you, Officer Jacoby. I’m Katie Connell.”

  Jacoby gestured toward one of the rooms off the lobby, and we walked over. He opened the solid wood door onto a spare conference room with thick interior concrete walls. Built to withstand Mother Nature. There was a folding-type metal table and more folding chairs identical to the ones in the lobby. Again, my mind regressed the room to its roots. A bedroom, I decided. We took seats around the table.

  “So, Ava, I guess I didn’t dream your booty call to me last night,” he said.

  If there ever was an example of hope springing eternal, this was it.

  “You dream it a booty call, but I did ring you up,” she answered. “Katie need some help. Her parents die on St. Marcos last year, when they here on vacation.”

  He tore his attention away from Ava. “I’m sorry, Ms. Connell,” he said.

  “Katie, please. Thank you.”

  He motioned for me to keep speaking.

  Had Ava asked to do the talking? I decided she hadn’t meant it and took over. “The police told my brother and me that our parents died in a car wreck. No offense at all to the St. Marcos police, but, given the circumstances as they were explained to us, it felt all wrong. Unlike them. I was hoping I could talk to the officer who worked on the case, and maybe see the file. Iron out my doubts, come to grips with it,” I explained.

  His eyes narrowed. “Do you know the officer’s name?” he asked.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Collin would. I should have asked him.

  “Their name Connell?” he asked.

  “Yes. Frank and Heather Connell.”

  Without another word, he pushed his chair back. One of the feet had lost its pad, and it made a scraping noise that reminded me of Shreveport, and Nick. Jacoby left the room.

  “That was abrupt,” I said to Ava.

  “They tend to close ranks, especially if you not bahn yah,” Ava said. “That’s why I told you last night you need me with you, and we need to work with Jacoby, at least as much as we can.”

  A thought occurred to me. “I hope he wasn’t the officer on the case. If he was, I just all but accused him of messing up.”

  Ava sat there with a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. The seconds ticked forward around the wall clock behind her. One minute passed, then another, and then another. Ava pulled out her phone and started playing with it. I jerked my hand away from my mouth, realizing too late that I’d ripped the cuticle from my index finger. A drop of blood welled up.

  Then Jacoby was back, his bristles filling the room. He held a folder under one arm and a small piece of paper in his other hand.

  “I talked to my boss, the assistant chief. Tutein. He said to give you this.” He talked in Yank, instead of his earlier Local. He handed me the scrap of paper with fringe along one side that spoke to its notebook origins.

  I read the words written in pencil: Walker, 32 King’s Cross. “Is this the name of the officer?” I asked.

  “No, the officer that worked the case drowned eleven months ago,” Darren said, his voice black water in a dead calm. He didn’t offer any more details. I didn’t ask.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What about the file? Could I see that?”

  He glared at me. “It was just a traffic incident.” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “We have an accident report. I made you a copy. Maybe the coroner has more.”

  He held out the file, then flipped it open. One page. I took it out gingerly, my eyes tracing the names Frank Connell and Heather Connell. I scanned the rest until I got to the name of the responding police officer. Typed neatly, it said Michael Jacoby. Signed in a cramped forward slant, it said George Tutein. Jacoby. But not this Jacoby, because this Jacoby—Darren—was very much alive.

  “Walker is a private investigator, the only one on St. Marcos. Tutein says Walker knows everybody he needs to know on the island, and he works for a couple of the biggest businesses here. Maybe he can help you.” Jacoby started backing away. “But your parents died in a car wreck. There just doesn’t seem like there’s much for you to find.”

  “So there’s nobody here I can talk to?” An angry fire started in my core and spread.

  “Just Michael. And he’s dead.” He looked at Ava. “Good seeing you.” He turned on his heel and was gone.

  My cheeks and ears flamed. Everything about this rang my alarm bells. I opened my mouth but Ava held her finger up to her lips. I shut it and clenched my teeth. She motioned with her head toward the exit, then started toward it, calling out to all within earshot, “A pleasant good afternoon to you.”

  A wall of humid heat met me at the door, but I busted through it, fueled by my frustration. Two officers stepped past us and into the building, and then we were alone. I squinted and dug for my sunglasses.

  Mindful of their friendship, I dialed my temper down. “Ava, I know he’s your friend, but doesn’t it feel like he stiff-armed me? I know I’m not local, but that felt all wrong.”

  Ava’s eyes darted left and right. “Shush, Katie. Things different here than in the states.”

  I opened the car door and clicked the locks open. We got in.

  “Let me see that report,” Ava said.

  I handed it to her. There wasn’t much to see. One car accident, off a cliff and into the rocks below. Driver and passenger deceased. My parents.

  Without lifting her eyes from the paper, Ava asked, “What make you so sure their deaths not an accident?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m a big believer in intuition, and it’s just a feeling I have, from little things that don’t make sense. Like how my mom always wore my grandmother’s wedding ring, but the police never found it. Not on her, and not in her stuff at the hotel. I thought that was odd. Plus, I talked to my parents that night. They’d been to dinner, and they were on their way back to the Peacock Flower. They called me while they were driving. They sounded great. And then they were dead.” Shit. My eyes st
arted leaking.

  “OK, OK. It says here your dad was pretty drunk.” Her speech had become more formal. More Yank.

  “Yes, that’s the other thing that bothers me. My father was a recovered alcoholic. He didn’t sound drunk when I was on the phone with them. And I can’t picture my mother just standing by letting him drink.” Mom had wrangled kindergartners for twenty years, a job she liked to say made wrangling my father a cakewalk. She was two parts tender and two parts steely resolve. Only the surprise gift of Collin had derailed her plans to become a lawyer.

  “Maybe she didn’t know?” Ava suggested.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Anything’s possible.” I made a confession. “That’s what my brother thinks. Collin. He’s a police officer. When my parents first died, he called and talked to an officer here. Collin said he was nice, he was helpful, and that he said they see it all the time on St. Marcos, tourists driving drunk and getting into bad situations. Collin thought maybe Dad had relapsed and was hiding it—the drinking—from my mom.”

  Ava put her hand on my forearm. “I hate to say it, Katie, but tourists and drunk drivers are the same thing to us.”

  That didn’t help my leaky eyes. “But your friend acted so weird. Don’t you think so?”

  She looked at me, and her eyes were soft and sad. “The officer on this case that died? Michael Jacoby? He was Darren’s brother. His kid brother.”

  “I’m sorry. Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’m making everything about me. I—”

  A sharp rap on the window behind my head cut me short. I yelped and jumped in my seat, banging my head into the roof. Ava gasped, too.

  I turned to see Darren Jacoby’s broad face framed in my window. I started to roll it down but the buttons didn’t respond. Only then did I realize that we were sitting in a hot car without the windows down or air conditioner on. I inserted the keys and cranked the engine, then rolled the window down.

  Ava leaned across me, pure Local again. “Jacoby, you scare us good.”

  He didn’t smile. “I wanted to tell her,” he looked directly at me, “to tell you, that I sorry about your parents. I know it hard to lose someone you love. I know it make you ask questions. But my brother a good cop, and I trust him. If he say they die in a car accident, that what happened.” He had switched back to Local speech again.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” I said.

  He inclined his head, eyes down, then met mine again. “Good day, Ms. Connell.”

  I rolled the window up again as he walked away. I was more confused now than I’d been before I came to the station. It would be best to let it go, to trust Collin’s judgment, to look for peace instead of trouble. I knew that. I normally trusted Collin completely, too. But he’d had girl trouble right before Mom and Dad died. His fiancée had dumped him for a woman, and he was just not himself then, distracted with his own stuff. If I had doubts, then I owed it to my parents to do this. I had let them down for a year, letting everything else be more important than my intuition, than them, and as long as a shred of doubt remained in me, I had to keep going.

  I backed out of my parking spot and put the car in drive.

  ~~~