The Scent of Murder--A Mystery

by Kylie Logan

  “And I need to talk to you. I know you’d hate to slow the line for everyone else, so maybe you should pull over into that parking space over there.” She pointed.

  “Take a reserved parking space? That would be breaking the rules.” Grace’s protest was as overblown as her wide-eyed look. “I might get a detention.”

  “It’s my parking place and I walked to school today so nobody’s going to care. Go ahead.” Jazz’s words were mellow. Her tone told Grace she wasn’t messing around. “Park.”

  Grumbling, Grace pulled into the space at the back of the building and turned off the car. She pivoted in her seat, the better to give Jazz what she thought was a fierce look. Poor Grace; she was too young to know that the blond hair and the blue eyes, the golden eyeliner stylishly smudged, the peach blush, and the lipstick applied to appropriately plumped lips pretty much negated the fierce.

  Besides, Jazz didn’t intimidate easily.

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, for one thing, an apology. You were supposed to meet me at North Coast last Tuesday. I hear you went out for linguini and clam sauce instead.”

  Grace had the kind of smile that can only be achieved through years of expensive orthodontia. She did her best to dazzle Jazz with it, and when Jazz didn’t fall under her spell like so many countless others had, she huffed out a breath. “I forgot.”

  Jazz settled herself against the leather seat. “Then it’s a good thing we’ve got this chance to talk now.”

  Grace slid her a look. “About what?”

  “Come on, Grace. What else would I want to talk to you about? About Florie, of course.”

  Grace flipped down the visor, peered in the mirror there, and skimmed one finger over her bottom lip. “What about her?”

  “She’s dead. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  She flicked the visor back up. “I’m not stupid.”

  “You’re not sorry, either.”

  “Why should I be? It’s not like we were friends.”

  “Really? Not even for a couple years when you were here at St. Catherine’s?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jazz saw Dinah approach. When the kid saw Jazz in the car, she instantly backed off, plastering herself to the building, looking faded and fidgety against the old sandstone.

  Grace saw her, too. “I really need to get my sister home,” she insisted.

  “Then we’ll just finish up. You were saying … about you and Florie being friends here at St. Catherine’s . .?”

  Grace shot Jazz a look. “I wasn’t saying that. Because she wasn’t my friend.”

  “That’s not how other people remember it. They say she was. Before you two turned on each other.”

  Grace pouted. “It was years ago, what difference does it make? And why would I want to be friends with a scholarship girl, anyway?”

  “Florie told you she was on scholarship?” It didn’t line up with what Jazz knew about Florie, about how she hid her poverty, her need.

  “She didn’t have to tell me. God, the clothes that girl had! And did you ever smell her? She ladled on perfume every day. Cheap perfume. It was disgusting. You’d have to be dumb not to know Florie was trash.”

  “Do you think all the scholarship girls are trash?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said Florie was.”

  “She was.”

  “Why?”

  “What difference does it make? It’s ancient history.”

  “Apparently not. I heard about what happened over in Ohio City not long ago.”

  Grace’s back went rigid.

  “What were you fighting about?” Jazz wanted to know.

  Grace’s smile was as thin as the blade of a stiletto. “She bumped into me and spilled my coffee.”

  “You should have let her buy you another one.”

  “I wasn’t in the mood.”

  “I hear you were asked to leave.”

  “The bartender should have handled it the minute Florie got out of line.” Grace pouted. “Isn’t that what people like that are paid for? She should have tossed Florie’s skinny ass out of there, but instead, she didn’t do a thing. I had to put Florie in her place.”

  “By causing a scene.”

  “Is that what it was?” Grace whooped out a laugh. “I kind of like the idea of causing a scene.”

  “Is that why you and Florie fought while you were filming the commercial for the horror film festival? To cause a scene?”

  “You have been busy, haven’t you?” Grace made it sound almost like a compliment. “Believe me, it wasn’t my idea. Brody put Florie on the team.”

  “Why?”

  The look she gave Jazz was pointed. “Word was she needed extra credit.”

  “Her grades were down.”

  “Yeah, most of them.”

  “But not all of them?”

  Grace let go a long, impatient breath. “I don’t know why you care about all this.”

  “Because I care about Florie.”

  “Do you? Did anybody? Don’t you remember, her parents didn’t even show up at graduation.”

  Jazz had never noticed and a curl of ice formed in her stomach. She should have paid more attention. “Maybe that’s all the more reason we should care about her,” she suggested.

  Grace bit her lower lip. “Maybe,” she conceded. “But what difference does it make now?”

  “Some. None. I don’t know.” The frustration—the helplessness—built, and Jazz rubbed her hands over her face. “I’m just trying to get a clear picture of what happened. Like it or not, Grace, you’re part of that picture.”

  “Look…” Grace sat back, her shoulders sinking into the leather upholstery. “All I can tell you is we were friends for a while here at Cat’s. But then I found out what trash she was and so we weren’t friends anymore. You know that. But you should also know I barely saw her at North Coast. I keep plenty busy with my work and I have lots of friends to hang with. Florie … well, she’d disappear after classes and no one would see her again until the next day. Besides, she was in photography. I’m in video. And yeah, the photo kids have to do a video project. And the video students have to do a photo project, and so yeah, early this semester I sometimes saw her around when she was working on her video, but it’s not like we were best buds or anything.”

  “Tate Brody never mentioned that Florie made a video.”

  “He wouldn’t, would he?”

  Grace let the question hang in the air so Jazz had no choice but to ask, “What do you mean?”

  “You want to know the truth? Are you sure? Then listen to this. That video Florie shot, that was the only A she got this semester.”

  “Good for her.”

  Grace shook her head, a sure sign that Jazz was too dense to see the truth, even if it was staring her right in the face. “Don’t you get it? She tanked all her other classes. Florie was not the brightest bulb in the box. Sure, if all she had to do was take pictures, she was pretty good. But if she actually had to think … if she actually had to learn something new … That’s what the video project was. Something new. And she wasn’t happy about it.”

  “But she obviously got through it with flying colors. An A, that says a lot about her talent and her hard work.”

  “You think so?” It wasn’t so much a chuckle as a laugh of derision. Grace glided one finger over the steering wheel. “I happened to bump into Florie the night before the project was due. It was not a pretty picture.”

  “You mean her video.”

  “I mean Florie. She was a mess. Frantic. Panicking. She didn’t usually give me the time of day, but that evening…” Jazz didn’t like the smile that crossed Grace’s face. It was way too self-satisfied. “She just about gushed the minute she saw me. Burst into tears. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She didn’t just not know how to make her video good, she wasn’t even sure she could finish it on time. She begged for my help.”

  “And you said—”


  “I told her no one helped me with my photo project.”

  “So you left her to hang out to dry. Not exactly what we teach the St. Catherine’s girls.”

  “I’m not a St. Catherine’s girl. Not anymore. And neither was Florie. Don’t you get it?” She slapped the steering wheel. “The night before, she’s in a panic. The day the project is due, she turns it in. The next thing you know, she’s got an A.”

  It did seem odd. Unless …

  Jazz remembered what Parker Paul had told her about Florie, about their relationship, and Florie’s threats. Like she’d been sucker punched, she sucked in a breath, but she refused to rise to the bait Grace dangled. She needed more information.

  “On the night she died, Florie went back to where you filmed the commercial. Tate Brody was shooting B roll and Florie was taking stills.”

  “I’ll just bet that’s what they were doing together in that building in the middle of the night.”

  “You’re telling me something else was going on? That they were having an affair?”

  “Damn!” As if it truly was a shame, Grace shook her head. “You’re not that much older than me, Jazz. You need to get out of this buttoned-down school where everything’s all sweetness and light and remember there’s a real world out there. Florie and Brody hooking up? It’s the only thing that explains how she could turn in crap and get an A from the same guy she’s hanging out with on a Saturday night. Shit, I wish I would have thought of it at the beginning of the semester. Brody’s not half-bad to look at and I bet he’s plenty lively in bed.”

  “But Florie…”

  But what, Jazz wasn’t sure. In fact, the only thing she was sure about was that what Grace suggested was a definite possibility, especially in light of what she’d learned about Florie from Parker Paul. But how any of it fit in with Florie’s murder, she didn’t know.

  “Are we done now?” Grace tapped a hand against the console between the two front seats. “Because I think I’ve pretty much told you all I’m going to tell you.”

  “You haven’t told me where you were on Saturday night at the time Florie died.”

  Even Jazz couldn’t believe she’d had the nerve to bring it up.

  Apparently, Grace couldn’t, either. She opened and closed her mouth, sucked in a breath, sputtered out a curse. “You think I’m the one who killed Florie? Why? About some crazy shit that happened in high school? I’ll tell you what, lady, you’ve got plenty of nerve, and if I hear you’ve been flapping your jaws and mention this half-assed theory of yours to anyone else, you can be sure I’ll tell my parents. I hope you’re ready to look for a new job.”

  Jazz popped open the passenger door, but she didn’t get out of the car. Not just yet. “Crazy shit that happened in high school, huh? What, exactly, was the crazy shit that turned you and Florie against each other?”

  “None of your business.”

  “And where were you the night she was killed?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” Grace shot back. “You think because I didn’t like the girl, I could have killed her? For one thing, I was out at a club that night, and the fifteen friends from school I was with can vouch for me. For another … well, me killing someone, even someone I thought was trash? That would never happen. I would never take the chance. Just for the record, I look lousy in orange.”

  * * *

  That Monday evening, Jazz tried to console herself about the way she’d bungled things with Grace by getting a turkey, double tomato, and pesto sandwich from La Bodega, and ended up picking at it, giving part of the turkey to Luther, and putting the rest in the fridge.

  Why did she have the feeling that if only she’d handled things with more finesse, Grace might have told her something useful?

  “Then again, she’s still Grace.”

  Luther did not seem especially impressed with this information. He gave Jazz exactly one moment of attention before he went back to chewing a tennis ball.

  She flopped down on her couch. “Grace, in case you don’t know,” she informed Luther, “was never one of the nicest girls at school. That’s what happens when a family has more money than they know what to do with. The kids are spoiled.”

  Luther offered his opinion by way of a yawn.

  “Well, Dinah isn’t,” she said, rubbing a hand over the dog’s head. “Dinah’s a nice kid. I wonder if she’ll always be a nice kid, or if one of these days she’ll realize she’s a Greenwald and she lives in the stratosphere above us common humans and—”

  Luther was up on his feet and standing at attention before Jazz ever had a chance to finish being philosophical. The dog’s ears pricked. The hair on his back stood on end. He let out a low, throaty growl before he raced to the front door and barked.

  Startled, Jazz sat up. Ice prickled over her spine.

  At least until she came to her senses.

  “Damn it, Nick.” She got to her feet nearly as quickly as Luther had and went to the front door. “I can’t believe a man who’s supposed to be professional and mature can have mush for brains,” she mumbled and yanked open the door, yelling now. “Nick Kolesov, if I see you around here one more time—”

  When all the air rushed out of her lungs, her words dissolved. Her hand tightened on the doorknob.

  It wasn’t Nick she saw racing shadow to shadow away from the house.

  She’d recognize the pierced face and the black leather anywhere.

  Billy DeSantos.

  CHAPTER 12

  If Jazz thought about it—really thought about it—she was sure the panic would eat her whole and she wouldn’t be able to stop shaking, not to mention picturing every horrible thing that could have happened if Luther didn’t alert her to the hulking presence of Billy DeSantos.

  So she refused to think about it.

  The hell with fear. She decided instead to be royally pissed.

  Pissed that he’d obviously followed her from school to her house, and pissed that she’d never noticed.

  Pissed that he thought he could …

  What?

  It was the what that ate at the edges of Jazz’s composure, so she shoved it aside. Still, it was all she could do to get through the next morning at work.

  Even before the lunch bell finished ringing, she was out the door, and a few minutes later, she was glaring at the poster of the monster man with the claw fingers. She didn’t bother trying the front door of the building the horror film festival called home. She went right around to the back.

  It was the kind of dull, gray afternoon that is a Cleveland specialty in the spring. The alley between the festival building and the bar next door was pocked with puddles, and she zipped around them and into the small backyard. There was a maple tree in one corner, its branches still bare but the catkins on it just bursting to life, vivid green stems topped with fuzzy blooms that looked too bright and cheery against the slate sky.

  She paused where building met backyard and realized she was in luck—at least if she could hang on to her adrenaline and her anger—and push aside her fear.

  Billy DeSantos had pulled a red plastic milk crate onto the pitted sidewalk outside the back door and sat on it, hunched over his phone, his back to her.

  She dared a few steps closer.

  From there, she could just make out what he was looking at, blurs of color on the phone screen that he scrolled through with one finger.

  Pictures.

  Two more steps, and the smudges came into focus.

  Florie in her short black skirt and high black boots.

  A close-up of Florie, her eyes rimmed with kohl.

  Florie handing around brochures in a crowd that included more than a couple people who looked like they didn’t have the nerve to get too near her.

  Florie in the office sorting papers.

  Florie here in the backyard, a camera slung over one shoulder.

  Florie sitting in the office in the chair that belonged to Laverne, her elbows propped on the desk, her eyes focused on the compu
ter screen in front of her, that monster looking over her shoulder.

  Jazz was pretty sure she didn’t make a sound. It would have been hard, considering the fact that she was convinced her heart had stopped and her breaths were suspended. Still, DeSantos knew she was there.

  He spun around.

  One look at the metal studs in his cheeks, one instant of remembering how the streetlights had gleamed against them the night before, and every last little morsel of fear, every little bit of hesitation, went up in flames.

  “What the hell were you doing outside my house last night?” she demanded.

  DeSantos rose to his feet. Her brief encounter with him a few days earlier and the glimpse of him she’d had at school had left her shaken. Now she remembered why. He towered over her, all bulk and black leather.

  “I thought—”

  Jazz stepped forward, invading his personal space. She was more than a little gratified when he swallowed his words and took a step back. She set her jaw and raised her chin.

  “I don’t care what you think,” she told him. “I do know that if I ever see you anywhere near my house again, I’m letting the dog out, and if he comes home with his mouth full of leather and your blood on his teeth, just remember, I told you so.”

  She didn’t give him a chance to respond. She turned on her heels and, keeping her head high and her arms tight to her sides, she left the yard.

  It wasn’t until she was back at St. Catherine’s that she allowed herself to collapse into her chair and brace her hands on the desk. She wasn’t the least bit surprised they were shaking.

  * * *

  When it came to the bar scene, Tuesday nights were not exactly hopping.

  Jazz supposed that was why there was a skeleton crew behind the bar at Great Lakes Brewing when she stopped in.

  Lori Simms was not one of them.

  She was there on Wednesday night, though, when Jazz returned, and eyeing her, Jazz slipped around a group of middle-aged guys tasting beers and praising them to the high heavens, and climbed up onto the barstool nearest where Lori was washing glasses.