Board Stiff (An Elliott Lisbon Mystery) (26 page)

“If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…”

“If I’m the killer and I wanted to frame Jane, I would use the most obvious Jane weapon. Everyone knew she hated Leo and that damn trophy.”

“Or maybe, Elliott, she killed him. I have solid evidence.”

“Oh, like the ripped form? Half the island heard her threaten to kill Leo’s project. That’s not evidence.”

“You’re forgetting the best part. Jane was there that night, remember? The neighbor saw her car.”

“Her car, Ransom, not her. Do you know how many black Sebring convertibles are on this island?”

“With a driver wearing a bright scarf?”

“It’s an island!”

I swear he rolled his eyes at me.

And Heaven help me, I pushed him into the pool.

TWENTY-FIVE

It was an accident. Sort of. I only meant to push past him, elbow him out of my way as I righteously stalked across the deck. But I used too much force. And maybe both hands. Man, if you could’ve seen the look on his face, you could’ve sold it.

I rushed back to our table, but it was empty. No Deidre, no Matty, no leftover buffet plates. Not even a lone dinner roll. I checked my watch and gasped. I’d been gone longer than I thought. Most of the guests were now watching a rousing mixed doubles match down on the grass court.

I spotted Tod at the bar.

“Have you seen Matty? I think I better sneak out of here before Nick Ransom climbs out of the pool.”

He raised his eyebrow. “A little overdressed for a dip.”

“It was unscheduled. Matty?”

“He left while you and Detective Handsome were duking it out. Or maybe it was you and Jane. Either way, he’s gone.”

Shit. I screwed up again. “Can you and Carla wrap things up? I’ll owe you.”

“You already owe me.”

“I know, I know. National debt proportions and all that. Just help a girl out, okay?”

He nodded toward the patio. “I see a tall man by the pool. You better scoot. You don’t want to get caught in the car with your top down, so to speak. He might lift you right out.”

I crept around the side of the house as if I was a cat burglar rather than the director. I slid into my car and hustled home, barely slowing down until I parked in my garage. I went into the house and leaned against the door with a sigh. So this night didn’t go so hot. Matty’s pissed, Ransom’s pissed, and I was starving.

I grabbed the phone and pushed the five key, the one for emergencies.

“John’s Pizza,” a low baritone voice boomed into the phone.

“It’s Elliott Lisbon on Spy Hop Lane. I need a Hawaiian bbq pizza stat.”

“Sorry, Elli, I got a driver out sick. It’s gonna be at least an hour and a half.”

My heart sank and tears sprang into my eyes.

“Never mind. I’ll be dead by then.”

I hung up and sullenly whipped open the refrigerator door. I stared inside. A half-gallon of skim stared back. I opened one of the cooling drawers. Two packages of string cheese and a dozen fat free pudding cups. Well, crap. Doesn’t anyone go grocery shopping around here? I checked the freezer. Three boxes of mint Girl Scout cookies and two diet dinners so frozen over, they’d become one with the ice machine.

I snatched the skim milk and poured a bowl of cereal. I ate it right over the sink. Ten minutes later, I dragged my tired butt upstairs and into bed. I had the day free tomorrow and I was going to sleep until noon.

Then come hell or high water, I was solving this murder case and dumping the evidence right over Ransom’s head. We’ll see who’s right, I thought as I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up feeling groggy and hung over, even though I only drank a single Mint Julep. The skylight over my head was grungy like my mood. I burrowed deeper under the covers.

Matty left the party without speaking to me. Probably take more than a picnic lunch with a fruit cup to make it up to him. I may have really blown it and we hadn’t even had one single real date. And I wasn’t winning favors with the police, either. I didn’t even want to know how Ransom explained his impromptu plunge into the pool.

Better not worry about all that now, I thought. If I could just solve the case, prove I’m not a complete bag of air, everything will be peachy.

I finally talked myself out of bed at ten o’clock. Within the hour, I was dressed in cropped cargoes, a sturdy blue tee, and ballet trekkers. Serious crime-solving, get-this-shit-done, run-all-over-town-if-I-have-to gear. I spread out my notebook on the living room trunk table with the last of my cereal and begun theorizing.

I needed to narrow down my suspect list. First: Jane. Did she or did she not kill Leo? I think not. And not only because I wanted Ransom to be wrong. No, Jane didn’t kill Leo because she said she didn’t kill Leo, and I believed her. She never lied, not once. She didn’t make up an alibi, she simply refused to give one. Whatever Owen Dobbs saw that night, Jane did not murder Leo. She was nasty, mean, unpleasant, scalding, blunt, and more difficult than a wet cat in a bathtub, but she didn’t lie.

Which left Chas, Travis, Bebe, Joseph, and Cherry. And wine futures, secret affairs, real estate scams, blackmail, and money—both of the sock-it-away and strike-it-rich variety. I felt as if I had dozens of puzzle pieces, but I didn’t know if they all belonged to the same puzzle and I didn’t have a picture on the box to compare them to. I needed either more pieces, or less.

I wrote the names of my suspects in the back of the notebook. I’d already spoken to them multiple times. I’d spoken to everyone. I flipped through the pages. Well, not everyone. Ransom and I only spoke to one actress, not both. If Jenna’s interview was interrupted, why not Brooke’s? According to my notes, she was due back from Athens yesterday. A drive out to Savannah would at least buy me time until I thought up something better.

The sky remained blanketed in gloomy gray clouds, so I left the top up. I didn’t want to get caught in a sudden storm and ride around all day with my pants in a puddle. Get-this-shit-done pants are less effective when wet.

I cruised over the Palmetto Bridge and into Summerton through light traffic. Vacationers and residents must be tucked in for the day, pushed indoors by the threat of rain and air thick with humidity. Enough that I kicked up the a/c as I hurtled toward Savannah with the case on my mind.

Brooke wasn’t the only one I had yet to talk to. I didn’t call on Gina Beckendinga, Bebe’s roommate at the Scrapper’s convention. Just because Ransom said Bebe’s alibi checked out, didn’t make it true. Ransom believed Travis the first time around, and the same for Mrs. Jones, the neighborhood watch captain and spotter of Cherry’s car in the drive.

Some hotshot investigator he is, I thought. But he definitely knows something I don’t. Something has him clinging to Jane.

And then there’s Buffalo Bill’s. Brandon, the nervous salesclerk, probably wasn’t the only one to hear Joseph and Leo arguing. Any one of the staff could’ve heard threats or promises or any one of a dozen revealing tidbits. I just needed another puzzle piece and a hint or a glimpse to start snapping them together.

I sailed over the Talmadge Bridge into Savannah shortly before eleven. I parked on Jones Street in front of Jenna’s brownstone. I quickly jotted a list of new interviewees in my notebook, then dog-eared the page with Gina’s information on it. She lived in Savannah. I could stop by while I was in the neighborhood, then hit Buffalo Bill’s on the way back. With Joseph and Cherry at the hospital, I bet the staff would tattle like kids in a schoolyard.

I climbed the metal stairs and knocked on Jenna’s door. I waited in the small foyer, then knocked again.

Jenna answered the door in wrinkled sweatpants and a stained shirt. Her braids were unkempt, frizzy strands poking out like she’d slept for a week and forgotten to wash them. Or her clothes. Or her face.

She stared through swollen and runny eyes at me. “Oh, you’re the lady from last week, with the police,” she said when she saw me. A small sob shook her shoulders. “Have you come about Brooke?”

“What about Brooke?” I asked with my hand on my heart.

“She’s dead,” she hiccupped. Fresh tears ran down her face. “Killed in a hit and run four days ago.”

“Oh no, Jenna, I’m so sorry. What happened?”

She opened the door wider and dragged back into the apartment. It smelled like sour milk and basement mold. Every shade was drawn with only narrow strips of light peeking in from the sides. Jenna balled herself up on the couch beneath an afghan and blew her nose. “She was my best friend. Since the fifth grade. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

I sat by her feet and patted her legs. “Tell me.”

“She was staying at her boyfriend’s house, he lives on the UGA campus. She went to dinner with a couple of friends, then drove back to his house, but she never made it.” Jenna hiccupped again. “A car came out of nowhere. They said he was probably drunk, and it was late, so Brooke may have been asleep at the wheel anyway, maybe drifted over a lane. I guess, it was, you know, instant.”

“Did they catch the driver?”

“No. No one really saw much, it happened so fast.” Jenna closed her eyes and pulled the afghan higher.

Four days ago was Sunday. The same day Joseph was attacked. Quite a coincidence, I thought. Athens was no more than two or three hours from the island. But why kill Brooke?

“Would you mind if I looked around Brooke’s room? Just for a minute.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure. Her mom won’t be here until next week. We’re gonna box her stuff up, you know? It’s the door behind me, but I can’t go in there. I don’t think I can take the sight of her things right now.”

“No, no, you just rest. I’ll be right back.”

I picked my way through the apartment and slowly opened Brooke’s door. I stood frozen at the sight. The room was trashed. Clothes ripped and dumped on the floor; the mattress slashed until the old springs popped out; broken DVDs, metal reels, VCR tapes snapped into pieces.

I stepped back. “So Jenna, you haven’t seen this mess?”

Jenna tilted her head back over the side of the couch and looked at me upside down. She tried to smile. “Brooke’s a bit sloppy, I know. She’d always say she was going to clean up on Saturday, but then never did.”

“Jenna, this is more than sloppy.”

She peeled herself off the sofa and slumped over to the doorway. Her breath sucked in so hard, I thought she was choking. “Oh my God!” She slapped her hand over her mouth and started to enter the room.

“Wait. Don’t touch anything. Let me look around, okay? Go sit on the sofa and wait for me.”

Jenna went back to her blanket with her eyes popping out of her head.

I gingerly tiptoed around the mess, not touching a single thing with my hands. I knelt near the clothes, then the mattress. My mind raced. Definitely not a coincidence. But what was the killer looking for? What could Brooke possibly have? And why only search this room, why not the entire apartment?

My heart stopped. Because he finally found what he was looking for.

The room was only nine feet by nine with a frameless double bed against the left wall, a closet on the right, and a desk under the window. I didn’t have to worry about opening the desk drawers because they were broken on the floor, the contents now mixed into the mishmash of Brooke’s meager belongings. I looked through the closet, but there were only clothes. No empty shoeboxes or garment bags. Just tattered remnants of fabric dangling from cheap plastic hangers, rags that were once typical college girl clothes: jeans, sweats, tees. I turned back to the desk. No computer, but no ports either. No leftover power plug or internet cable indicating one belonged there. What else did she have?

I studied the destroyed movie tapes and discs. Only they weren’t movies, they were auditions. Each case marked with the date and time. They started with an audition for a furniture commercial six years ago and ended with a small role in a TV pilot last month.

Leo’s commercial!

My hands shook as I gently kicked through the pile of DVDs. It was missing.

“Jenna, did Leo Hirschorn give you a copy of your audition from Buffalo Bill’s?”

“Yeah,” she called back. “It’s on DVD. We always get a copy when they film it.”

I joined her in the living room. “Do you happen to have Brooke’s tape?”

“No, she kept her own. But I have my copy and she’s on it. I had a techie friend from SCAD dupe a copy for Brooke with just her audition on it, but mine’s the original with both.”

I could barely think straight I was so excited. “Can I borrow it?”

“Sure, I guess. You think Buffalo Bill’s wants it back?” She went into her room and came back a few seconds later with a slim clear jewel case in her hand.

“I’m not sure. But this was never in Brooke’s room, right? Not part of the mess in there?” I tucked the DVD into my hipster.

“No. Like I said, I never opened her door after her mom called to tell me that Brooke, that Brooke…” She sniffed and took a deep breath. “When she called to tell me.”

I led her back to the couch and we sat down. “Listen to me. I need you to call the police and report the break-in. Tell them everything you know about Brooke’s accident, too. It’s important.”

“Break-in?” She hopped to her feet in a panic. “Oh my God, you mean it’s related? Someone, I mean the killer, I mean, oh my God.” She ran around the sofa. “What do I do?”

“Calm down,” I said, but she didn’t hear me. “Jenna! Calm down!” I shouted and pulled her back to the sofa. “I’m not sure someone broke in, but don’t talk to anyone but the police, do you hear me? Do you have a friend you trust who can come over right now?”

She nodded. “My mom’s coming over. She’s worried I’m not eating.” She picked up her cell phone and dialed her mom. “Mom,” she said and started to cry again. “Okay, yeah, okay. Thanks, mom.” She turned to me. “She’s just turning onto Jones now.”