Die Job (11 page)

I pulled the door wider in silent invitation and preceded him to my compact kitchen. In my search for a house, I’d learned that “compact” was Realtor-speak for “smaller than a gumdrop.” I’d also learned it was all I’d be able to afford, unless I was willing to settle for appliances that predated the moon landing and “mouse” holes in the walls big enough to admit a puma. I was afraid to ask what brought Dillon here; that’s why my mind kept leaping to inconsequential things. Nuking two mugs of water, I plopped Irish breakfast tea bags into them. It felt like I’d been making hot beverages all night. Okay, technically it was morning, but it still felt like night.

Dillon blew on his tea and took a long sip. Finally, I could stand it no longer.

“What?” I prompted, leaving my tea untouched on the counter. “Is Mrs. Jones okay? Is it about the exploding pumpkin? Because if it—”

“I understand you have evidence in a murder case. I need it.”

“Wha—Oh, no! Mrs. Jones died? She said she felt okay. Her niece was with her! She—” Tears started to my eyes.

“Whoa!” Dillon grabbed my shoulders and gave me a little shake. “Mrs. Jones is fine, as far as I know. It’s Braden McCullers.”

“He died?” My brain was swirling, trying to absorb the news. I paced around my kitchen, working out my agitation. “When? What happened?”

“Last night. Someone smothered him in his hospital bed.”

His grim tone shocked me into stillness. Grabbing up my mug, I held it to my chest, trying to absorb its warmth into my sudden coldness. “So you think his fall was a murder attempt, too,” I said, my brain beginning to function again. “You want the sheet. Hank told you about me and Spaatz finding the sheet.”

“Right.”

I tore a paper towel from the roll and dabbed at my eyes. I didn’t know Braden that well—hardly at all—but his death saddened me, largely because it would devastate Rachel. I wondered if she’d heard. “Do you have any leads on who did it?” I asked. “Surely, someone saw something in the hospital.”

“It was a werewolf,” he said.

I threw the crumpled paper towel at him, but it drifted ineffectually to the floor between us. “It’s not something to joke about!”

“Do I look like I’m joking? The nurse on duty walked into Braden’s room to take his vitals and saw a werewolf holding a pillow over his face. She grabbed at it, but it shook her off and bolted for the stairs. Whoever it was, was long gone by the time she tried to revive Braden and raised the alarm.”

“A Halloween costume,” I said, catching on.

“Right.” He drained his mug and set it on the counter. “The sheet?”

“It’s in the trunk of my car,” I said. “Let me get my keys.”

While I was in the bedroom fetching my keys, I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and ran a brush through my hair. A glance in the mirror told me it wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. Dillon was poking through the box on my table when I reappeared. I raised my brows at him.

“Occupational hazard,” he excused his snooping. “Are you switching careers? Changing from beautician to historian?”

I explained why I had the box.

“Interesting. My mom gave me some letters my great-grandfather wrote to my great-grandmother during World War
I and they were fascinating . . . They made history more personal, somehow.”

Having found myself getting attached to Clarissa after only one letter, I completely agreed with him.

“I’ll need a statement about Saturday night,” he said as I led him out to my car.

“Okay.” Unlocking the trunk, I pulled out the sheet. “I’m afraid we probably messed up any evidence,” I apologized. “Spaatz and I both handled it, and we pulled it out of the drawer and—”

“Get over it,” Dillon said, flapping open a large plastic bag to contain the sheet. “This case isn’t going to go unsolved because of anything you did or didn’t do. You’ve been watching too much
CSI
. Hair and fiber and DNA evidence aren’t of any use until we have a suspect.”

“Thanks.” I smiled slightly. “Do you know who all’s been told about Braden’s death? I mean, some of the students—”

“We let the high school principal know. He’s making all the usual arrangements for grief counselors and what-have-you. No memorial, though; the parents have said they don’t want one for a while. In fact, the McCullers family has left town for a week or so to come to terms with their loss.” Dillon tossed the sheet onto the passenger seat of his brown Crown Victoria. “My investigators will need to talk to everyone who attended the ghost hunt to see what they might have observed, and to kids who were close to the vic.”

We made arrangements for me to give my statement later that afternoon and said good-bye. As he drove off, I walked toward my apartment to dress; I wanted to get hold of Rachel before she heard about Braden’s death on the news or, God forbid, via the public address system at school. I could hear it now: the Pledge of Allegiance would be
followed by announcements about the lunch menu, an upcoming swim meet, and the death of a classmate. Not the way to learn that someone close to you has died.

“Grace!”

A voice brought my head around as I opened my door. Varina stood on Mrs. Jones’s veranda, waving. Darn, I’d forgotten to tell Agent Dillon about the exploding pumpkin.

“I made banana nut muffins,” she said, holding one up, “and Aunt Genny would like to talk to you if you have a mo.”

“Sure,” I said. “Just let me throw some clothes on.”

I approached Mrs. Jones’s house fifteen minutes later, showered and dressed in dark-wash jeans and a lightweight yellow sweater. I looked around, noting the large chunks of pumpkin strewn across the veranda and into the yard, as well as what looked like plastic bits from a soda bottle or something similar. What on earth had Lonnie and crew—if it had been them—used to make such a mess? Something thunked onto my shoulder. I brushed off a yellow orange clod. It was raining pumpkin. Looking up, I saw globs of the former jack-o’-lantern adhered to the veranda ceiling.

“I called the police this morning,” Varina said matter-of-factly when she opened the door. “TPing a few trees is one thing; this”—she gestured to the veranda and yard—“is something else. I didn’t quite get the extent of it last night in the dark. Aunt Genny’s lucky she wasn’t injured by the explosion—it had to be a pretty big one. Anyway, the police said it might be a few hours, but that they’d send someone over.”

She led me back to a breakfast nook off the kitchen where Mrs. Jones sat, dressed in neat navy slacks with a pink blouse. Her color was much better than last night and her eyes twinkled like usual as she greeted me. The scent of warm banana bread filled the room.

“I hate to eat and run,” I said, accepting a large muffin from Varina, “but I have to do something before work.” I told them about Braden’s death and my desire to break the news to Rachel.

“Oh, my, trouble certainly comes in threes, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Jones said. “That poor McCullers boy, and my incident last night, and now that hurricane is bearing down on us, they say.” She shook her head.

“What, exactly, happened last night?” I asked, sliding into a chair. Real butter tempted me from a china butter dish, but I passed it up. I’d been doing well with diet and occasional gym visits since helping out at the Miss Magnolia Blossom pageant in August and I didn’t want to undo all my hard work. The muffin was evil enough.

“Well, I don’t know what time it was because I was asleep,” she said, “but the doorbell rang. I couldn’t think who it might be at that hour, but I got up to answer it.”

Varina shook her head at her aunt’s foolhardiness.

“Don’t look at me like that, Varina. I’d like to know where you’ll find a safer town than St. Elizabeth.” Mrs. Jones took a swallow of orange juice. “When I opened the door, there was no one there. Just as I was closing the door, my poor jack-o’-lantern went ka-blooey!” She flung her hands wide apart. Her frill of hair quivered. “Next thing I knew, you were standing over me. Did I say thank you?”

She held out her bony hand and I took it. “You’re very welcome,” I said, squeezing her cool fingers gently. “Did you see anything else? A person? A vehicle?”

A frown crinkled her brow. “Now that you mention it, I think there was a truck or an SUV—something big—parked at the curb.”

That fit with the squeal of tires I’d heard. “Well, you tell the police
everything when they get here, Mrs. Jones. I’m so glad you weren’t seriously injured. I’ll hose the pumpkin guts off the veranda for you when I get home.” I rose, brushed muffin crumbs off my jeans, and said good-bye. I was going to have to hustle to catch Rachel before she left for school.

HALF AN HOUR LATER, HAVING BROKEN THE NEWS TO Rachel and her mother and feeling like I’d been up all night, I dragged myself into the salon and told Mom, Althea, and Stella. As if sensing my distress, Beauty, Stella’s white Persian who usually doesn’t consort with lowly humans, leaped onto my lap and purred while I absently stroked her head.

“I hope you told Rachel not to come in today,” Mom said.

“I told her not to come in all week if she didn’t feel like it, but she said she’ll be back tomorrow.”

“I’ll bet Rachel’s really freaked out that one of her friends is a murderer,” Stella said with a shiver.

The three of us stared at her.

“Well, it has to be, doesn’t it? There weren’t any tourists at Rothmere on a Saturday night, so it must have been one of
the kids who pushed Braden. Or a chaperone.” She looked questioningly at me.

“You’re right,” I said slowly. I hadn’t gotten around to puzzling through who might have done it. “But the kids were all paired up. And as for the chaperones . . . I can’t imagine a reason why Glen Spaatz or Coach Peet or the other woman—she was some girl’s mother—would want to kill Braden. Oh, and Lucy was there, too, but she was in her office.”

“That woman’s a few pecans shy of a pie,” Althea said.

“Thinking she’s the reincarnation of Amelia Rothmere doesn’t make her a murderer,” I said. Beauty jumped off my lap and went to intimidate squirrels with her evil cat glare through the front window. I brushed long, white hairs off my jeans. “Although, if she happened to see one of the kids damaging the house or its contents in some way, there’s no telling what she might do. I thought she was going to slap me for using the parlor drapes to keep Braden warm.”

“That was good thinking.” Mom nodded approvingly. “And Lucy’s harmless. Just a little . . . eccentric.”

Althea looked unconvinced. It was opening time so I unlocked the front door and greeted Euphemia Toller, an octogenarian who came weekly to have Mom set and curl her thinning hair. She was a small woman with a dowager’s hump that threatened to topple her over.

“I’m leaving early to help the school with their fund-raising head shaves,” I reminded Mom as she fastened a violet cape around Mrs. Toller’s hunched shoulders.

“I’m leaving, too,” Mrs. Toller said in the overly loud voice of the near-deaf. “My son’s driving over from Albany to take me back with him this afternoon. He says he doesn’t want to have to worry about Horatio blowing me away.”

“You’re lucky to have such a loving son,” Mom said.

I pulled up the wooden blinds and stared at the sky. It was leaden today, a surly gray, and the wind had picked up. I knew there’d be whitecaps on the sound. My first client came in and I tried to focus on cutting and coloring for the rest of the morning, but my mind niggled at the mystery of Braden’s death whenever I wasn’t talking to someone.

I left shortly after noon to keep my appointment with Agent Dillon at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Regional Headquarters building in Kingsland, a town a few miles south of St. Elizabeth and just west of I-95. The familiar single-story building with narrow windows not much bigger than arrow slits in a medieval castle sat in a square of grass that almost matched the tan brick. Shrubs clipped by someone with a ruler and a level stood between the windows like prisoners lined up against an execution wall. The inside was not so grim: standard waiting room fare, a reception desk, and doors leading to interior offices. Propped against the desk and holding a mug of coffee, Agent Dillon was talking to Officer Kent, an earnest young cop with jug ears who hero-worshiped his boss.

“Marshal, how’s it going?” I said by way of greeting, watching the tips of Officer Kent’s ears turn red at what he took to be a slur on his hero. Dillon sighed at my
Gunsmoke
joke, clapped Kent on the shoulder, and led me to a conference room. It consisted of a long table, rolling chairs, a window looking to the lot behind the building, and photos of former special agents in charge hung on the walls. Bureaucratic blah. He’d interviewed me in his office in the past, and I raised my brows as he indicated blueprints spread on the table. I stepped closer to examine them, brushing past Dillon and catching the male scent of him, spiked with a lime aftershave and soap. I flushed and made a show
of shifting the documents on the table to get a better view.

“Rothmere,” Dillon said. “I need you to show me where everyone was Saturday night. I understand the students were supposed to be paired up, but our interviews at the high school yielded surprisingly few hard and fast alibis. Only a couple of the teams stuck together the whole time and could alibi each other.” Frustration sounded in his voice. “It seems everyone had to use the bathroom at some point or wander off to chat with a friend stationed in another room, or go outside to watch the damned fireworks. I’m hoping you can help.”