Coached to Death

by Victoria Laurie

  Sunny gave a startled laugh. “That’s diabolical!”

  “Quite,” I agreed.

  The kettle began to whistle, and Sunny turned away to tend to it for a moment. Shepherd and I waited patiently, because it was obvious that Sunny was also trying to think back to that slumber party and remember who was there.

  “The sleepover was fairly small, from what I remember. Only about six of us in attendance, so that leaves me, and Heather, and Sara Goodwright—she lives in D.C. now and wasn’t at the luncheon. Then there was . . .” Sunny tapped her lip thoughtfully as she poured the hot water over the infuser. “Um . . . Carol Tee-gan, I heard she’s now living in California, and then there was Pamela Hartnet—she’s in New York, and . . . oh, who am I forgetting?”

  Sunny stared at us blankly, and both Shepherd and I shrugged.

  Sunny tisked. “I can’t remember the last girl there,” she said. “Drat!”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “No,” she said, fiddling with the mugs. “It’s not. It’s this stupid pregnancy brain. I can’t seem to remember things or concentrate on things.” Looking at her brother, she said, “Tell me again why I fought so hard for so long to get pregnant?”

  “Because in spite of how often that idiot you married takes off to parts unknown, you refuse to leave him, and you’re hoping that having a baby will finally make him settle down.”

  I sucked in a breath, and Sunny winced. “Ouch!” I said angrily. “I know she’s your sister, Detective, but could you be a little less of a jerk?”

  “It’s all right, Catherine. He’s absolutely right. I am hoping that having a baby will keep Darius home more. It’s a gamble, but I’m hopeful. And, of course, now that I am finally pregnant, I kinda can’t wait to meet the new man in my life.”

  “I still think you should name him Steve,” Shepherd said.

  Sunny rolled her eyes. “I would never give him the namesake of someone so annoying.”

  Shepherd laughed, and I did too.

  A little later, as we were leaving, I had a thought and turned to Sunny to ask, “What about the girl who hosted the party?”

  “I’m sorry?” she said, obviously confused.

  “You said that you couldn’t remember the sixth girl at the slumber party, but did you name the girl who gave Heather the pills?”

  “Oh!” Sunny said. “Yes, of course! How silly of me, and I think the reason I drew a blank is because Cora died in her teens.”

  “That’s so sad,” I said.

  Sunny nodded. “She went swimming one summer morning and drowned. A rip current got her and took her way out to sea. It was a terrible tragedy.”

  On that very sad note, we left and spent much of the next ten minutes in silence. I broke that silence only when I noticed Shepherd had passed Heather’s house and was on the way to mine. “I thought we were going to hunt for that bullet that the Angel shot at Carmen?”

  “I got a text from my commander. He wants a status update, so I have to head back to the station for a while. We can go later, say around five?”

  “Six would be better,” I said. I missed the boys and owed them a call. Five o’clock was that sweet time between homework and mealtime when we could usually catch up.

  “Six it is,” he said.

  Something was still bothering me about Shepherd’s interaction with his sister, however. I didn’t like how mean he’d been to her during a time when I knew she was vulnerable and lonely. As I was getting out, I said, “You know, you were a bit hard on your sister back there.”

  He seemed taken aback. “You mean the bit about how she was hoping to keep her husband around more by bringing a baby into the mix?”

  “Yes. I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but I remember how close to the surface my emotions were when I was pregnant.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right. But at least Sunny knows that I’m only hard on her because I love her.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that you’re hard on all the people you love?”

  He offered me a crooked smile. “No. Sometimes I’m hard on the people I like too.”

  In that instant, there was a sort of crackling of chemistry between us, and it was my turn to be taken aback. “Are we having a moment?” I asked softly.

  “Maybe a little,” he admitted, adding a wink.

  “Well, then,” I said, gathering up my purse, “I best be off before we have ourselves a full-blown flirtation.”

  “Yeah, probably a good idea.”

  Still, I sat there.

  And he sat there too.

  And we had ourselves something a tad more than a little moment. . .

  Until my phone beeped with an incoming text. I jumped at the sound and wiggled my phone. “I’ll see you at six.”

  “Six,” he agreed.

  I got out of the car and struggled not to look back as I heard his car backing up behind me. And I made it all the way to the door of Chez Kitty before I peeked over my shoulder and caught him staring back at me. Another moment passed between us, until I waved and went inside.

  Chapter 16

  “Where have you been?!” Gilley shouted at me the second I came through the door.

  “Hello,” I said nonchalantly. “Nice to see you too, Gil.”

  “Cat,” he snapped, crossing his arms and taking up the angry stance of a mother hen. “You don’t answer texts, which is totally uncool given that we’ve got a serial killer in our midst!”

  “Assassin,” I corrected.

  “Tomato, tomassin!” he shouted. “What’s the damn difference?”

  I sighed. “I guess not much. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your texts. I was busy.”

  “With your new boyfriend?” he sneered, obviously still miffed at being ignored.

  “Gil,” I said gently. “Truly. I’m sorry. Now can we please sit down and talk? I have lots to share.”

  Gilley shook his head slightly, his arms still crossed in front of him. I knew he’d eventually give in and forgive me, and it was almost comical how he was trying sooooo hard to stay mad. I waited him out and merely stood there until he appeared calmer.

  “We can have a snack,” I suggested. “News is always better with a tasty snack.”

  “What kind of a snack?”

  I walked to the pantry. “I could make brownies.”

  “But I’m on a diet,” he said. I thought his protest sounded a bit weak.

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” I said, adding a wicked smile.

  Gilley’s eyes gleamed with eager anticipation. “Without nuts but with chocolate chips?” he said.

  I pulled out the box and wiggled it at him. “Duh.”

  “Good. And I want all the corner pieces.”

  As the kitchen filled with the mouthwatering scent of baking brownies, I filled Gilley in on all that’d transpired since hanging up with him that morning.

  Then he filled me in about Carmen and Erma. “Erma’s been sending me an update every hour on the hour.”

  “What do the messages say?”

  Gilley lifted his phone to read the screen. “Four p.m. All okay.”

  “Riveting.”

  “Yeah, I have this image of her standing to the side of her curtains peering through a set of binoculars at the traffic outside.”

  “I’ll bet you’re not far off the mark. I hope Carmen doesn’t have a problem staying with Erma.”

  “Are you kidding? She also texted me that she loves Erma’s place. It’s much bigger and cozier than she expected, and Erma has been doting on her like a concerned nanny. Last I checked, Carmen was hanging out on the couch, watching Netflix and enjoying a turkey sandwich with a milkshake chaser.”

  “Oh, my. That must be a welcome change for her.”

  “Right? But we can’t impose on Erma forever. We gotta solve this case, Cat.”

  “I know, I know. But I’m out of ideas, Gilley. I thought I’d finally nailed down a good lead with the fact that only the girls that attended t
hat slumber party would’ve had any inkling about Heather’s allergy. But Sunny said that all the girls from the slumber party now live in other states and weren’t at the luncheon. Well, except for one. A girl named Cora. She was the one who gave Heather the pill for her leg cramps, and I thought she could be our number-one suspect, but it turns out that she drowned twenty years ago.”

  Gilley pulled his tablet close. “The rip currents around here are treacherous. You’re going to have to watch the boys when they come home and you guys head to the beach.”

  The timer on the brownies pinged, and I got up to check them. Over my shoulder, I said, “I’ll definitely keep an eye out. I can’t even imagine losing a child so young. The girl’s parents must have been devastated. I mean, how do you ever get over something like that?”

  Gilley made a noise like he agreed, but I could detect that his focus was elsewhere. After taking the brownies out and setting them on a wire rack to cool for a few minutes, I turned back toward the table, where Gilley had his nose close to his tablet and was obviously reading something. “What’re you looking at?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure . . . ,” he told me, “but it’s weird. I feel like I know someone whose daughter passed away the same way.”

  “You do?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Gil said, tapping his finger on the face of his tablet. “There’s something about that story that’s familiar.”

  “Connected to Heather?”

  “I’m not sure, but I want to say yes.”

  I turned back to the brownies and began slicing them. I didn’t want to distract Gilley from his efforts to remember the connection, but there was something that he’d said—about the story sounding familiar—that also rang a bell with me.

  The silence in the room stretched out as I cut each brownie and placed it on a plate, arranging them in a small pyramid, and allowing my thoughts to simply float around the idea that I knew that story, or something about it without really looking too closely at it, lest I push the memory too far away.

  It was as I was setting the very last brownie on the plate that it finally came to me.

  The gasp behind me let me know that Gilley had figured it out at the exact same moment.

  I turned around to look at him, and our eyes met. We both said, “Joyce!”

  I hurried over to Gilley’s side as he began to tap earnestly at his tablet. At last, he had her Facebook page pulled up, and among the photos of pretty flowers and idyllic nature settings was a small plaque set in a garden that read, “In memory of our beloved Cora, who was pulled out to sea and took our hearts with her.”

  “It was subtle,” I said, staring at the plaque. “I remember seeing it and thinking she’d lost a pet or something.”

  “Exactly,” Gilley said, switching over to his search engine. “Let me see what I can find out . . .”

  While Gilley searched, I got up again and headed back to the brownies. Bringing him two corner pieces, I set them down next to him with a glass of milk and waited for his eyes to stop darting back and forth across the screen. “Here’s the article from the East Hampton Chronicle on July seventeenth, nineteen ninety-five,” Gilley said, and then he began to read. “ ‘Cora Burke, age sixteen, was caught in a rip current this past Tuesday and drowned. According to her parents, Cora often got in an early-morning swim before her job as a lifeguard at the East Hampton beach. On Tuesday morning, when Cora didn’t show up for work, and her parents hadn’t seen her all morning, the police and beach patrol were alerted and a search effort mounted. Cora’s body was discovered some four hours later, approximately three miles down the coast.”

  “That’s so, so sad,” I said.

  Gilley’s eyes continued to dart back and forth. “It is. She was their only child.”

  “But what could Heather have had to do with it?” I said. “Assuming, of course, that Joyce was the one who slipped the quinine into the punch?”

  “I think that’s an answer only Joyce can give us,” Gilley said.

  “Yes. First, though, we should talk to Sunny again. She never mentioned that Joyce was there, and surely she would’ve remembered that, wouldn’t she?”

  “Call her,” Gilley said. “I’m going to do some more digging.”

  While Gilley worked his computer magic, I texted Shepherd that I needed his sister’s phone number.

  Why? he texted back.

  I could’ve told him why, but it would’ve taken too long, and I was impatient to talk to Sunny, so I simply said that I wanted to ask her out to lunch, and he immediately sent the number over.

  She picked up on the second ring. “Hello?” she said tentatively.

  “Sunny? It’s Catherine Cooper. Listen, I’ve just discovered something that might be a huge clue in this case. Do you by chance remember Cora’s mother being at the luncheon?”

  “Cora’s mother?” she said.

  “Yes. Joyce McQueen.”

  “Wow. I never knew her first name was Joyce. Truthfully, Catherine, I probably wouldn’t have recognized her even if I’d bumped into her. After that incident at the slumber party, word got around that Cora was free with her mother’s medication, and none of our mothers would let us hang out at her house again. Cora was transferred to a private school the following fall, and we never really hung out with her again. And I only have the vaguest of memories of her mother. Also, Cora’s last name wasn’t McQueen. It was Burke.”

  “She could’ve remarried,” I suggested.

  “True,” she agreed. “Most women around here are on their second or third marriage anyway.”

  “So you don’t remember her at the luncheon,” I said, wanting to make absolutely sure.

  “No. I’m really sorry. But I didn’t really take note of everyone there. If Joyce had attended, and I didn’t recognize her outright, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t remember her being there.”

  “What if you saw a photo of her, would that help?”

  “It might,” she said.

  “Are you near your computer? Can you look her up on Facebook?” I motioned to Gilley to get his attention, then I mouthed, Pull up Joyce on Facebook.

  He nodded and tapped at his tablet in earnest.

  Placing my phone on the table, I hit the SPEAKER button so that Gilley could hear Sunny.

  “Okay, I’ve pulled up her profile,” Sunny said after a few moments. “But her account is private.”

  I looked at Gilley; he shrugged. “Try sending her a friend request,” I suggested. “Maybe she’ll approve it and you can search her photos.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  Gilley rolled his eyes and nodded vigorously.

  “It couldn’t hurt,” I said to Sunny, keeping my fingers crossed that she’d send the request.

  “That’s true,” she said. There was a slight pause while we waited, and then Gilley’s tablet gave a soft ping to announce Sunny’s friend request. He approved it immediately.

  “Oh, well, would you look at that!” Sunny said. “Joyce and I are now Facebook friends.”

  “Wow,” Gilley said, with a secret roll of his eyes to me. “So cool that she was online and accepted it!”

  I tapped the MUTE button on my phone, and said, “Can you not oversell this?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Guys?” Sunny asked. “You there?”

  I tapped the MUTE button again. “We’re here. Did you find something?”

  “Well, I’m in her photos and looking at her face, and it’s no wonder I don’t recognize her. She’s gotten so old!”

  “Her profile told us that she’s in her early eighties,” I said, just to speed things along.

  “Wow,” Sunny said. “I guess I never realized how much older Cora’s mom was than my own mom. But then, Cora was an only child, and I’ve tried for years to have a baby and only recently got pregnant, so it probably makes more sense to me now. Still, looking at her photos here, I don’t remember seeing her at the party, but I know of a way that I may be able to verify that she
was there.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Letty Ergen—one of Heather’s only good friends—was at the party, and she took tons of photos. She uploaded them about two hours before we all heard that Heather had died. Let me hop over to her page and take a closer look at the photos.”

  “Great! We’ll wait.”

  I hit the MUTE button again and said, “Can you get to Letty’s account? Is she friends with Joyce?”

  Gilley tapped at the screen. “She’s not friends with her, but the photos in question were made public, so we might be in luck.”

  I leaned over his shoulder as he scrolled through the photos of women at the luncheon, standing around with their drinks in hand, dressed in their jewel tones, appearing to all be having a marvelous time.

  “Oh!” Sunny suddenly said.

  I untapped the MUTE button and said, “What is it? Did you find something?”

  “Yes, I think I did!”

  “Sunny, we’re on Letty’s page. She made the photos public. Which image are you looking at?”

  “It’s the one with the four women gathered around Heather. The one where she’s obviously telling a joke and they’re all throwing their heads back and laughing. Do you see it?”

  Gilley found the photo, and I couldn’t help but feel a small tinge of anger as the thought crept into my mind that Heather was probably talking about me, and they were all laughing at my expense.

  Shaking off the feeling I said, “We found the photo, but I don’t see Joyce.”

  “If you look over Rachel Tepper’s shoulder—she’s the one in the bright yellow dress—you’ll see a woman in a silver-blue jacket and matching skirt, right?”

  I squinted at the screen. “She’s out of focus. I can’t tell who it is.”

  “True, but if you go back to Joyce’s photos, you’ll see that same jacket and skirt combo in the photo of her at the Art in the Park community event.”

  Gilley switched windows and quickly scrolled through Joyce’s photos, landing on the photo in question on the third swipe. “Bingo,” I whispered.