The Scent of Murder--A Mystery

by Kylie Logan

  “Please tell me you didn’t drag me over here to lecture me about my love life.”

  “We didn’t drag you,” Hal insisted.

  “And since you don’t have a love life, that doesn’t count.”

  “Look who’s talking.” Her steady gaze on Owen, she crunched a pita chip. While Hal and Kaitlyn had dated for three years, the women in Owen’s life came and went like leaves blowing down the street in a crisp fall breeze. “Who is it this week?” she asked him.

  He answered with his mouth full, but Jazz knew exactly what he’d said.

  “Lori Simms? The girl I went to high school with? The one with the buckteeth?”

  “Not anymore,” Owen told her. “She’s a hottie now. She works as a bartender over at Great Lakes in Ohio City.”

  “Really?” Jazz didn’t have to pretend to be interested. She remembered that Sister Eileen had told her about the knock-down, drag-out fight between Florie and Grace Greenwald at that pub. Her smile was genuine. “I’ll have to stop and see her sometime.”

  The pierogi arrived, and they waited until they’d eaten it all until they finally settled on dinner. Owen ordered a cheeseburger. Jazz knew he would. Hal went for the Italian sausage meatloaf and swore her to secrecy when he said he knew it would be “better than Mom’s.” Jazz opted for the shrimp and grits, consoling herself for the indulgence with the fact that after the pierogi and the nachos, she was certain she’d end up taking at least half of it home.

  They talked about work, about the slow days at Hal’s station and the late-night runs at Owen’s and the fact that for Jazz, another school year was ending and wasn’t it funny how fast time went. They looked at their calendars and came up with a Sunday when they’d all be available and agreed they’d take food over to their mom’s and have a cookout and let Mom put her feet up and do absolutely nothing. They asked about Luther.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll have him. It depends on how long Greg is in Florida.”

  Owen had ordered another—different—craft beer, and he sipped, wrinkled his nose, sipped again, then decided it wasn’t half-bad. “You going to train with him?”

  Jazz had just taken a bite of shrimp, so she nodded, chewed, swallowed. “I’m meeting the team tomorrow out at the old Geauga Lake.”

  “Oh, abandoned amusement park!” Hal hooted. “It’s like something out of a bad book.”

  “It’s a great place to train. Lots of buildings so we can practice urban searches. And lots of overgrown fields, too, for a more rural environment. And speaking of that…” She touched a finger to her phone, checking the time. “I should get moving. We start training at nine.”

  “You can’t leave. Not yet.” Hal put a hand on her arm. “You can’t walk home alone.”

  “Really?” The question dripped sarcasm, and that should have been enough for Hal to let go. He didn’t. “Come on.” She shook him off. “I walk around the neighborhood by myself all the time. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “On a Saturday night? Too many strangers around.” To emphasize the danger, Owen gave an exaggerated shiver. “Besides…” He waved over their waiter. “We’re going to walk you home. But not until we have another beer.”

  They had another beer, and as long as Jazz was their prisoner, she had another one, too. It wasn’t until they were nearly finished and the bill had been paid by Owen, who insisted on treating (which was plenty fishy in and of itself), that Hal reached down and picked up the brown paper shopping bag he’d brought along.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve asked you all here today.” He was going for funny. It actually might have worked if there wasn’t a little catch of nervousness in his words.

  Jazz sat up like a shot. “You finally asked Kaitlyn to marry you?”

  “Really?” It was Hal’s turn to sound just as skeptical as Jazz had when she asked the question. “You don’t think I’d announce that at some sort of family party?”

  “Well, you’d want us to know first,” she insisted, and she knew she was right. “You’d want to make sure we were okay with it.”

  “Are you okay with it?”

  “Is Kaitlyn going to want you to move?” Jazz asked him, because Kaitlyn was always talking about a home in the far western suburbs, and Jazz didn’t like the thought of Hal living farther away than he already did, in a neighborhood called Kamm’s Corners near their parents’ house, about a twenty-minute ride in good traffic.

  “I’m not moving,” he assured her.

  “That’s what they always say.” Owen spoke in a stage whisper directed at Jazz, but meant for Hal. “Once Kaitlyn gets that ring on her finger—”

  “She’s not getting a ring,” Hal insisted. “Not anytime soon, anyway.”

  Jazz’s gaze traveled to the bag in her brother’s hand. “Then what…”

  “What, you thought I brought an engagement ring in this big ol’ bag so I could show it off to you?” He laughed. “You’ve got an overactive imagination.”

  “And you’re stalling,” she shot back. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be hanging on to that bag like there’s a bomb inside it. Give it to me!” She made a grab for the bag, but Hal was faster and held on tight.

  “Patience,” he advised. “There’s a story.”

  “It’s about Dad’s softball team,” Owen added.

  Her hand on her beer glass, Jazz froze and swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat. “What about it?”

  “Well, you know Dad loved softball!” Owen did his best to lighten the mood with a laugh.

  “He was a damn good catcher.” She didn’t need to remind them, but she did, anyway. “But what does the team have to do with…” Again her gaze traveled to the brown bag.

  Hal sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “It’s like this,” he explained. “Last year, well, Dad’s team, they were pretty broken up by what happened.”

  He didn’t need to explain that particular what. The memory hung over all their gatherings, its terrifying reality still painful after a year.

  “They dedicated last season to Dad and they filled in game by game with any catcher they could find.” With a shake of his shoulders, Owen did his best to dispel the shadow that settled over them. “And this year, they’ve got a new catcher.”

  “Ramirez,” Hal told her. “From Station Thirty-one. He’s a good man.”

  “And a decent catcher,” Owen said.

  “And they needed a place for Ramirez to put his things.”

  “And they hadn’t bothered to clean out Dad’s locker at the field last year because they felt funny about it and—”

  When Jazz gave the brown bag another look, her heart beat double time and her mouth went dry. “And now they did.”

  “Yeah.” Hal reached inside the bag and came out holding a slim stack of papers. “Score sheets mostly.” He put them on the table. “And there’s a grocery list, too. I don’t know if he was buying for Mom or buying so he could cook at the station.”

  Jazz shuffled through the papers until she found what he was talking about. “Twelve pounds of ground beef? I think he was making his world-famous chili for the station.”

  “Man, I wish he would have left the recipe for that!” Owen licked his lips. “If I could make chili like that, I’d be the most popular guy in the department!”

  “He also left this.” Once again Hal reached into the bag, and this time, he brought out a present wrapped in birthday paper decorated with red, yellow, and blue balloons. There was a card taped to the front of it Snazzy Jazzy.

  Her dad’s silly nickname for her.

  Her dad’s distinctive, unadorned, no-nonsense handwriting.

  The lump in Jazz’s throat got bigger.

  Hal set the gift on the table. “He must have bought it for you early,” he said. “He put it in his locker and was waiting for your birthday in May.”

  But he died at the end of March.

  Jazz stared at the cheery paper, at the card, for she didn’t know how long. She only knew that wh
en she shook herself back to reality, they all had shots of Jameson on the table in front of them.

  “We gotta toast,” Owen explained.

  They did.

  “To Michael Patrick Ramsey, best dad, best firefighter,” Hal said.

  “Best catcher,” Owen added.

  Jazz bobbled her shot glass, recovered. “Best dog trainer on the planet,” she said, smiled, and knocked back the shot.

  The whiskey hit the back of her throat, and heat exploded all the way down to her stomach, and once it hit in a splash of fire, she said the only thing she could say.

  “Wow.”

  At least the pain helped her forget the gift on the table.

  For a few seconds, anyway.

  Owen nudged the package nearer. “You gonna open it?”

  She was tempted to say “No.” Instead, she slid the present nearer. It had sat in a locker for a year in a building that was used spring and summer and locked up tight in the winter, and the tape that held the card on the package was yellow and brittle. One second it sat amidst those cheery balloons on the wrapping paper, and the next it was clutched in her fingers. She pulled in a breath.

  “You need another shot?” Owen asked.

  “Absolutely not.” She turned the card over. “Does Mom know about this?”

  “I didn’t tell her.” Hal put up one hand, fingers folded, Boy Scout–style.

  “I sure never said a word,” Owen insisted. “We figured you could tell her.”

  She gave them a sour look. “Thanks.”

  She slid her finger under the flap of the card and pulled it from the envelope. There was a drawing of a slobbering, smiling dog on it.

  DON’T WORRY ABOUT YOUR BIRTHDAY. Jazz read the text above the drawing before she flipped open the card. IN DOG YEARS YOU’RE JUST A PUP.

  It was signed Love, Dad.

  “Here’s to that!” Owen raised his empty shot glass and pretended to take another drink.

  “You gotta open the present now,” Hal told her.

  One more breath for courage, and she did, picking at the tape and ripping away the paper.

  Inside was a framed eight-by-ten photograph—Dad with Big George, Jazz with Manny—taken the day Manny had passed the final test that made him a certified human remains detection dog.

  “It’s—” Her voice clogged, and Owen took the opportunity to butt in.

  “That was a few years ago. You look like a baby. Maybe you’re not so much of a pup after all.” He poked a finger at Jazz’s face in the picture. “I don’t know, little sister, I don’t think you’re aging well.”

  Just as he expected, she gave him a sour look. Right before she laughed.

  “This is…” She gathered the card and picture and held them close. “It’s great. Thank you both.”

  “Hey, take the shopping bag,” Hal said, and passed it across the table to her.

  “And you might as well take this other stuff, too.” Owen shoved the papers, scorecards, and grocery lists at her. Among them was the business card printed on heavy white stock.

  “SEAN INNIS.” She read the name embossed on it. “REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER.”

  “You think Dad was going to do some investing?” Owen asked.

  “Or maybe he was finally going to build that summer home by the lake he always talked about,” Hal said.

  Jazz didn’t know. She only knew that when she put the card in the bag with the rest of Michael Ramsey’s things and the gift he had given her from beyond the grave, she saw something written on the back of it.

  The handwriting was unadorned, no-nonsense.

  Ask Darren Marsh, it said.

  CHAPTER 11

  The good news was that Jazz was able to call Greg late on Sunday and tell him how well Luther had done at training. The shepherd had found a vial of blood hidden inside a storage building in no time flat. It took a little longer for him to locate a scapula that one of her fellow trainers had tucked into an overgrown flower bed, but it was a breezy day, and a few of the younger dogs had trouble with scents. With a little encouragement, Luther eventually succeeded. The bad news was that Greg’s mom was still in an iffy state, healthwise, and Greg wasn’t sure when he’d be home.

  But maybe that wasn’t such bad news, after all.

  The next morning, just about to straighten the birthday-present photo on the shelf in the living room where she’d given it a place of honor, Jazz paused when the thought hit, and a wave of guilt washed over her.

  Of course it was bad news about Greg’s mom. But with Greg still in Florida, she got to keep Luther a little while longer, and having Luther around …

  Automatically, she looked to where the dog was settled on a nest of blankets next to the couch. Luther thumped his tail.

  It was nice to have a dog in the house again, she admitted, even when that dog would never be the dog of her heart like Manny was. It was good to walk morning and evening with a dog padding along at her side. It was great to train on Sunday and be among friends, some of them working on their human remains finding skills, others, like Matt Duffey, concentrating on search and rescue.

  Naturally, thinking about Matt made her think about Darren Marsh, the firefighter who had killed himself at the station and whose life Matt had fought like hell to save, the one whose name was written on that business card she’d found in with her dad’s things. Whatever Sean Innis, the real estate developer, and her dad were working on, whatever her dad was going to ask Darren about it, it didn’t matter anymore. Not to either one of them.

  It was the way of things.

  She knew it.

  That didn’t mean she had to like it.

  One more look at the photo, one more bittersweet smile, and Jazz left for work.

  Like all Mondays, this one walked the fine line between frantic and crazy. After a weekend, there were parents calling in for girls who were sick, and Jazz made note of every one of them and entered the information in each girl’s file. There were girls who didn’t have the right clothes for gym, girls who forgot it was the last day to put down their deposits on prom and were as dramatic about it as only teenage girls could be, girls who lost their bus fare to get home, felt queasy after lunch, couldn’t find their English lit books. She handled it all.

  Jazz couldn’t wait for the bell to ring so she could take a breath and catch up on the administrative work she’d never had time to finish.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have the chance. The bell sounded and girls hurried past her door, a blur of navy-and-gray plaid. One of them was Dinah Greenwald.

  “Dinah!” When Jazz called out to her, Dinah stopped dead in her tracks, and her cheeks flushed. But then, that was the kind of kid Dinah was. Studious, meticulous, shy. Dinah was everything her older sister, Grace, was not.

  Jazz walked into the hallway. “How do you get home?” she asked the girl. She suspected she knew the answer. She hoped she was right.

  Grace was elegant. Dinah was short, squat, and plain. She had a broad face that looked even rounder thanks to her black-rimmed glasses. She pushed them up on the bridge of her nose, and when she ran her tongue over her lips, her braces flashed. “Sometimes … uh … my mom picks me up.”

  “Every day?”

  “Not on … uh, Mondays. Mom has yoga on Mondays. On Mondays, Grace comes for me.”

  Jazz bit back a smile. It was what she remembered from earlier in the year when she’d helped with pickup. Meghan Greenwald’s black Audi on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays. But another car on Mondays, a red Mustang.

  Grace’s car.

  “Thanks, Dinah. You can go to your locker now.”

  When the girl did, Jazz hurried to the back door of the school and scooted around the long line of girls waiting for their rides. When Tremont was first established, its streets marked off and its homes and stores and churches jammed one up against the other, no one had imagined modern traffic. Space was limited. Streets were narrow. Pickups and drop-offs at St. Catherine’s were carefully control
led, with cars coming past the school from one direction and one direction only, going through the parking lot in one direction and one direction only. Girls lined up to watch for their rides and had orders to move quickly. The whole process had been choreographed by Eileen and was supervised by teachers who took turns at the assignment, and already looked frazzled when Jazz stepped outside, even though the first cars had yet to be allowed through.

  Two steps led down from the back door to the main parking lot, and Jazz paused at the top of them, thinking maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her.

  But then, Billy DeSantos was hard to miss.

  All black leather and tattoos, he stuck out like an ugly duckling at a swan party in a place where the most unconventional thing they usually saw was a girl who’d neglected her laundry—and the school’s strict dress code—and showed up in a white blouse instead of a blue one. But even the fact that he didn’t belong wasn’t as mind-numbing as the reality that intruded on Jazz’s consciousness.

  He knew where she worked.

  He’d followed her from the film festival.

  For the space of a dozen heartbeats, the thought froze her in place. She liked to think she was cool enough, strong enough, confident enough to walk over to where DeSantos leaned against a tree and ask him what the hell his problem was, but before she had a chance, Jerry Tomascewski, the local beat cop who made it a point to keep an eye on the girls every day at dismissal time, hurried DeSantos on his way. He disappeared in a streak of black leather at the same time Jazz saw a red Mustang pull into the drive, and she took off in that direction.

  Grace was behind the wheel, texting, her gaze glued to her keyboard.

  Jazz opened the door and slipped into the passenger seat.

  Grace didn’t bother to look over. “What, the geek is actually breaking the rules for once? I said you could get away with it, didn’t I? I told you to get out of line and into the car and Eileen would never know. She’s not going to bite your head off, loser.”

  “That’s not exactly something I’m worried about,” Jazz told her.

  At least Jazz had the satisfaction of watching Grace suck in a breath. The next second, though, the girl hid her surprise behind a monumental eye roll. The car in front of them inched forward and Grace did, too. “I’m waiting for my sister.”