by B. T. Lord
“You think Jace went over there to have it out with Eli because of the fight?”
“Possibly. That and the one thing that links the two of them together.” Doc lifted a finger and pointed it at Cammie. “You.”
She gave Doc a brief explanation of Jace’s whereabouts the night before. When she was done, she saw Doc’s eyes widen with surprise.
“My goodness, sweetheart. You’ve got yourself a regular Peyton Place here.”
She snorted. “I just can’t see Jace writing those notes to Eli. That’s not his style. Nor would he have taken the Night Hawks Championship Trophy. He’s got a closet full of those things. And he certainly wouldn’t have taken the picture of Eli and I. If anything, he would have ripped it up and left the pieces on the living room floor.”
“You’re forgetting the animal.”
“Jace has had major arguments with his Dad because he refuses to hunt. He hates any kind of cruelty or needless slaughter of animals. He can’t even bear to look at road kill.”
“Does he own a gun?”
Cammie shook her head. “Just an old rifle his father insisted on giving him. I’m the one who keeps it handy in case predators get too close to the cabin.”
“Does he even know how to shoot?”
“Up here, you’re practically born with a gun in your hand.”
“So where did he get the 38?” Doc asked.
“I don’t know.” She paused, trying to fit all the pieces together. “We know Jace left Zee’s with Carolyn. I’ll talk to his friends who were there with him to nail down the approximate time of their departure. When I arrived at Eli’s close to midnight, he already had the bruises on his knuckles. For argument’s sake, let’s say Jace and Carolyn left Zee’s around nine, nine thirty. There’s a fight with Eli. Because Jace is so drunk, Eli is able to beat him up pretty badly. He and Carolyn go to her house. Maybe she tries to clean him up. Maybe other things happen.”
“You would know best about that.” Doc leaned over the table. “Is Jason able to perform after he’s had a few?”
As uncomfortable as the question was, Cammie had no choice but to consider it. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never seen him as drunk as he was last night. When the Night Hawks won the championship last year, he did get a good buzz on.”
“And?”
She glanced at him from beneath her brow. “Let’s just say the spirit was willing to celebrate, but the body couldn’t quite get there.”
“Alright then. He and Carolyn go to her house. Because of his level of inebriation, he is a disappointment. What then?”
Cammie thought hard for a moment. Then she brightened. “Carolyn’s hated me since high school. She had this enormous crush on Eli and always hoped he’d ask her out.”
“Why didn’t he? If my inclinations went that way, I wouldn’t hesitate asking her to dinner.”
“You know Carolyn as she is now. However, in high school, she weighed close to two hundred and fifty pounds. And her face was one huge pimple.”
Doc cringed. “Ouch.”
“It didn’t help that she was just as bitchy. She had a chip on her shoulder that wouldn’t allow any of us to get close to her. I know how cruel kids can be, especially with an overweight girl. But a lot of us felt sorry for her and tried to include her in things. She always turned us away.”
“It’s possible she thought you were setting her up for some kind of humiliation.”
“We weren’t, though I’m sure she’ll never believe that. Anyway, I ended up dating Eli. She’s probably been waiting all her life to get back at me for that. When she saw Jace drunk as a skunk, she saw her opportunity and went for it. When Jace couldn’t do anything except snore in her bed, she drove over to Eli’s.” A memory fell into place and she suddenly sat up. “The night Eli died, I teased him about the suit he was wearing. I asked him if he had a hot date with Carolyn. He called her a slut.”
“And that’s news?”
“You don’t understand. He said it with a disgust I’ve never heard before. Yeah, she was always a pain in the ass, but he was never that insulting towards her. I had the impression that he felt sorry for her. Who’s to say she didn’t go over there, somehow lure him into the bedroom and when he was in a vulnerable position, shoot him? That at least would explain the lack of defensive wounds on his body.”
“How does Jason figure into all this?” he asked a second time.
“Carolyn’s not stupid. She’s going to need a fall guy. Somehow she gets him into her car. Maybe she lied to him and told him she was taking him home. He passes out. She can then do whatever she wants with him and he wouldn’t know a thing. Maybe she staged it so Jace would look like the murderer.”
The more she thought about it, the more plausible it became. Excitement started to flow into her and the weariness quickly ebbed away. It took Doc’s practicality to bring her back to earth.
“You honestly think Carolyn would have the strength to haul an intoxicated six foot three inch, two hundred and twenty five pound man in and out of a vehicle?”
“She must have done it at Zee’s.”
“He was still coherent at Zee’s. If he hadn’t passed out by the time they arrived at Eli’s, do you think he would have been so drunk that he wouldn’t have realized what she was doing?”
She reluctantly shook her head. “I guess not.”
“And if Eli truly felt Carolyn was a slut, I doubt he would have gone anywhere with her, much less allow her into his bedroom.”
“Damn,” she muttered.
Leaning forward, she covered her face with her hands. “What a mess. Not only do I have the pressure of trying to solve Twin Ponds’ golden boy’s murder, but I may have to arrest Twin Pond’s current favorite son on suspicion of that murder. Meanwhile I have to walk on egg shells so no one thinks I’m biased because the perp just happens to be my live-in boyfriend.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine it getting any worse than it already is.”
Doc cleared his throat. She glanced up at him and saw something in his eyes that made her sit up. Before she could ask what was wrong, he looked at her and asked, “What exactly happened between you and Eli Kelley all those years ago?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“You’ve never fully resolved it. I could see it in your face when I asked what happened between the two of you last night. Cammie, if you have any chance of not destroying yourself emotionally as this case progresses, you need to let it out.”
“Is that a professional opinion?”
“As your physician, it is. As one of your dearest friends who, despite his thorny exterior, does care about you, it is as well.”
Cammie idly played with the coffee cup as she thought it over. Maybe Doc was right. She thought she’d healed it all, but the past few days had shown that what she’d done instead was throw the oozing mass of seeping emotions into a hole and cover it with a thin, porous lid that could no longer hold the contents. Perhaps another set of eyes could make sense of what she no longer could.
She took a halting breath and slowly began to release the roiling mess one baby step at a time. “As you and everyone in Twin Ponds knows, Eli and I were once involved. We went through school together, but it wasn’t until we began playing hockey for the Night Hawks in our sophomore year of high school that we became close.”
“You too were a whirling dervish on the ice?”
She smiled. “That’s the part you forgot. There are three things to do during the winters here. Gossip, fornicate and play hockey. I got to be pretty good. In fact, Eli and I became the team’s top players. We spent hours talking about what we were going to do with our talent. We wanted to do more with it than just spend the rest of our lives playing for the Night Hawks.”
There was a faraway look in her eyes as she skipped back through the years to one special night she knew she would never forget. “It was our senior year and we’d just won the division title. We’d been after it for three years and finally clinched it. Everybody in tow
n went wild. You can imagine the celebration. I think it went on for days. Right in the middle of the festivities, Eli pulled me aside and proposed two things. One was the idea of opening up a hockey camp.”
“And the other?” Doc asked, finding himself drawn into the story.
“To get married as soon as we’d graduated.” She lowered her head as her voice caught. “He didn’t have any money for an engagement ring, so he slipped the top off a soda can onto my ring finger.”
God, she hadn’t thought about that in years. She fought against the rising sentiments, and with great effort continued in a hushed voice. “Heading into the championships, we found out an NHL scout was coming to check us out. Or rather, check Eli out.”
“And that screwed up your plans.”
“Big time. I wasn’t so foolish to think I had a chance to play in the NHL no matter how well I played here on local ice. Still, I wanted an opportunity to prove to the scout that I was good. If I could at least do that, I could parlay it into the hockey camp and get more girls involved. I was already a bit of a role model throughout Clarke County and I wanted so much to pass my love of the game onto them. However, when the big night came, I suddenly found myself benched. Coach McIntyre never offered any explanation. He decided to bench his number one player just like that.”
Cammie closed her eyes and saw herself sitting on the bench, engulfed in humiliation and rage, as she watched the inferior players on her team skate past her, getting that one-in-a-million chance to play before an NHL scout. She watched them miss shots she could have made in her sleep. The old feelings of shame and anger clenched at her stomach and she found herself taking in deep breaths of air to dissipate the still enflamed emotions.
“I was so stupid, you know? So trusting. I never suspected in a million years that Eli had anything to do with my benching. He was very sympathetic, telling me how he’d gone to bat for me, but couldn’t understand why Coach was being so unreasonable. He even told me that if he got the NHL contract, he was taking me with him. I completely fell for it.” She noticed her hands were shaking and she clasped them together. “As you know, he did get the contract. He was going to start with the Philadelphia Flyers. Each time I asked him about us, he kept reassuring me that I was going with him. It was the signing agent who was supposed to be working on getting my plane ticket. On the night before he left, I ran into the agent down at Zee’s and asked him about my ticket.”
“Let me guess. He looked at you as though you had two heads.”
“Pretty much. It was then I realized I’d been duped. There never was a ticket. I was so furious, I drove to Eli’s house and had it out with him in the backyard. He continued to lie, swearing up and down that the agent was working on my travel plans. That I was going with him. That he’d never ever dream of leaving me behind. He was so insincere, I wanted to throw up. Instead, I picked up a shovel and brained him across the forehead.”
Despite himself, Doc laughed. “So that’s the scar on his eyebrow. What I would have paid to see that.”
“It wasn’t until Eli was long gone that Coach finally broke down and told me the whole sordid story. About the deal Eli had made with him the night the agent came to see us play. Eli knew that without me on the ice, he’d have the agent’s undivided attention. In exchange for benching me, he promised to take Coach with him when he made it to the NHL.”
“Which of course he didn’t.”
Cammie nodded. “Once Eli left Twin Ponds, it was as though we’d never existed.”
“What happened to this Coach McIntyre?”
“When he realized how beautifully Eli had played him, he started drinking. It got worse after--” She abruptly stopped.
“It’s alright, Cammie. I know about Harlan.”
Cammie sighed. “Part of all the gossip, no doubt.”
“It’s a compelling story.”
Doc watched her eyes go opaque, as though she’d stepped back in time to a moment in her life she would rather forget. And with what he’d heard around town, he didn’t blame her. Having had his share of painful, regrettable moments, he felt deep compassion for her.
“So whatever happened to this hockey camp?” he gently asked.
His words brought Cammie back. She glanced at him and shrugged. “It went nowhere. When Eli left, he not only turned his back on all of us, he also turned his back on the camp. Thanks to his having me benched on the biggest night in the history of the Night Hawks, I was completely discredited.”
“But you were an excellent hockey player.”
She gave a cheerless smile. “That didn’t mean squat when the impression everyone had was that Coach McIntyre and my teammates had no confidence in me. Who wants to be taught by someone like that? So Eli went off to the NHL and Coach and I sank into a drunken stupor. When he saw what Harlan--” She paused for a long moment. “— what the effects of what he’d done, not only to me but to him as well, his drinking got worse. He couldn’t deal with the guilt and the realization that he’d been played so easily by Eli. His wife left him. The school finally had no choice but to fire him. Everything went down the tubes. After he confessed why he’d benched me, he disappeared. God only knows what happened to him. Or if he’s even still alive.”
“Where were your parents in all of this?”
Cammie waved her hand, batting away Doc’s words. However, her gesture was enough for him to understand. And refrain from going down that path.
She leaned forward and rubbed her tired eyes with the palms of her hands. “It’s funny how you think you’ve finally got your life straightened out and all your scars healed, or at least put away so they don’t bother you so much anymore. Then bang. Something happens and you realize it’s all been one big lie. That in fact, you’re still as screwed up as you ever were. It’s just that you’ve become a better actor than even you thought possible. I really thought --”
As Cammie spoke, she looked over to Doc. There was a strange look in his eyes, a look he quickly tried to cover up when he noticed her looking at him. He started to get up from the table. With her instincts screaming, she reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“What is it, Doc? There’s something you’re not telling me.” There was a long, silent pause. “Doc, if this information has anything to do with my case, you need to tell me. Now.”
She felt his reluctance. Her heart crashed against her ribcage. Whatever it was he didn’t want to tell her, she knew it wasn’t good.
“I think it’s best if we wait for the lab results,” he finally said.
“Tell me now,” she countered.
They stared at each other before Doc broke eye contact first. He pulled his hand through his hair, then heaved a heavy sigh.
“Mind you, I will need confirmation from toxicology.”
To her surprise, Doc rested his hand over hers where she still held onto his wrist. He was not a demonstrative man, preferring logic to emotion. This gesture frightened Cammie more than anything she’d encountered so far. She unconsciously held her breath as he patted her hand.
“My dear, Eli was in the advanced stages of liver cancer. By the looks of it, I’d say he had about three to six months left to live. He had enough oxycodone in his system to stop an army. It is my professional opinion that Eli Kelley was close to death when he was shot.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Back when Cammie worked as a private investigator in Boston, one of her more unpleasant jobs was to track down and photograph cheating husbands and wives. It paid well and if there was one thing she needed at the time to keep her fledging business afloat was money. But she hated it and always came away feeling dirty, as if the uncovering of sordid secrets left her covered in its seediness.
One night she was caught by a wayward husband and his girlfriend, who didn’t take kindly to being spied on. While Cammie tried to keep her camera from being wrestled away by the husband, the girlfriend, a tough redhead from Charlestown, sucker punched Cammie in the stomach. She went down in a hail of choking pa
in and it took her almost a week to fully recover.
Sitting in Doc’s pristine kitchen, she felt as though she’d been sucker punched again.
“I wasn’t sure I should tell you without corroboration from the lab.”
She shook her head numbly, her thoughts lost in a maelstrom of shock, pain and guilt. Especially guilt. It took her a long moment to gather herself together enough to speak. “No…no. I’m glad you told me. It saves me racking my brains trying to figure out why there wasn’t much blood at the scene, or why he didn’t put up a fight.” Without thinking, she curled her fingers around the now cold cup of coffee as if it were a life jacket. “Did he--” She had to force the words out. “Do you think he tried to commit suicide?”
“Again, it’s all conjecture. But I’d say so.”
A fleeting thought ran through Cammie’s mind and disappeared just as she reached for it. It was important. She knew that. Once again, it took a few moments for her to grab onto the thought and drag it back into her consciousness. “Where’s the bottle?”
“Pardon me?” Doc asked quizzically.
“I don’t recall forensics finding any medicine bottles,” she replied slowly, mentally going through the day, recalling the techs collecting evidence and bagging it. “If he did overdose on the oxy, we should have found a bottle. It doesn’t make sense that he’d swallow the pills, then care enough to get out of bed, go down the corridor into the kitchen or the bathroom and throw the bottle out.” She shook her head quietly to herself. “Maybe they did find something in the wastepaper baskets and neglected to tell me. I’ll have to call tomorrow.” She paused and once again forced herself to speak. “If he hadn’t been shot, how long do you think it would have been before he died?”
“Five to ten minutes, if that.”
“Is that why the house was so hot? I’ve been trying to figure out why he had the heat on so high.”
Doc nodded. “Cancer patients, especially those who have been through chemo, feel temperatures more acutely than we do, especially the cold. What to you and me felt like a sauna was probably just comfortable for him.”