Deadly Deceptions (13 page)

I couldn't have gotten that information off the Internet; it hadn't been made public. While she was probably about a furlong short of convinced, I'd caught her interest.

She let me in without a word. Turned and led the way into the living room. The shrine Justin had mentioned flickered eerily on the mantel over the fireplace, and the tabletops gleamed. The tile floor was spotless, and there was no clutter, anywhere. Obviously, when Mrs. Braydaven wasn't mourning or doing credit card billings in her home office, she cleaned. Frenetically.

“I saw you on TV,” she said. “You're that little girl who was kidnapped down in Cactus Bend, after your parents were murdered.”

I wasn't a little girl by anybody's standards, of course. Semantics. I merely nodded.

“It must have been awful,” Mrs. Braydaven said.

Our separate tragedies gave us common ground. “It was,” I agreed softly. My gaze drifted to the candlelight dancing on the mantel, amid framed photographs of Justin, taken at various stages of his boyhood. The Scout badges were displayed on a velvet backing, protected by glass. “But no worse than losing your only child.”

Tears filled Mrs. Braydaven's eyes. “Sit down,” she said.

I sat. Pepper laid his muzzle on my lap, and I stroked his graying head with a light hand.

“Would you like some bottled water, or maybe a cup of coffee?” Mrs. Braydaven asked. I knew she needed a moment alone, out of sight in her kitchen, maybe to force back the tears, maybe just to catch her breath.

“Water would be nice, thanks,” I replied. When she was gone, I looked down into Pepper's limpid brown eyes. “I'll do my best,” I whispered.

I
T'S PECULIAR, HOW YOU CAN
avoid the truth all your life, not because you're a liar, but because it's just too painful, and then suddenly find yourself in a position where nothing else will work.

Mrs. Braydaven handed me a bottle of cold water, then took a seat in one of her living-room chairs, near where I was sitting, but not too close. Pepper still rested his head in my lap.

I realized the blinds were drawn, and felt a craving for sunlight.

“I've seen Justin,” I said bluntly.

I couldn't read her expression. “Ms. Sheepshire—”

“Sheep
shanks,
” I corrected politely. “Please call me Mojo, Mrs. Braydaven.”

“Angela,” she said with a distracted nod. “My name is Angela.” She leaned slightly forward in her chair, studying the dog, then raised her gaze to my face. She looked skeptical—no surprise there—but not frightened. “What do you mean, you've seen Justin? He was killed six years ago.”

“I know,” I said carefully. “In a drive-by shooting, after a concert.”

“That's public information,” Angela said. “Anyone could find that out in five minutes, just by going online and running a search.”

I glanced down at the dog, stroked his head again, very lightly, trying to convey by touch what I couldn't say aloud—that it was okay to let go and follow Justin.

In the instant after I looked up again, Justin appeared, standing behind his mother's chair. Watching me with an expression of desperate hope.

I made eye contact without thinking, and Angela turned to see what I was looking at. I knew by the sag in her shoulders that she didn't see Justin, but she might have sensed his presence, because she gave just the tiniest shiver, not afraid, but suddenly alert.

“But I couldn't have known about the mono,” I said.

“You might if you knew some of his friends, or one of his middle-school teachers.”

“Remind her how she still filled a Christmas stocking for me every year,” Justin put in, “even after I was too old to believe in Santa. When I was seven she put a little compass in the toe, because we'd moved over the summer and I was going to a new school for second grade and I was scared of getting lost.”

I repeated the pertinent information. Getting lost seemed to be a theme with Justin.

Angela Braydaven's eyes widened, then narrowed. “Why are you here?” she asked. Her hands lay, fidgety, in her lap.

“Because of Justin. He—he asked me to come.” I looked nervously at the shrine over the fireplace, briefly at Justin and then back to Angela. She seemed tense now, as though she might be wishing she had a phone handy, so she could dial 911, or calculating her chances of escape before I went berserk and struck her down with a lamp or something.

“That's impossible,” she said. “He's dead.”

“Not really.”

Angela flushed with anger. “I saw his body. I buried him. If this is some kind of con…”

I shook my head. “I don't want anything from you, Mrs. Braydaven. I'm just here because Justin asked me to tell you—”

“That I love her,” Justin said quickly, stretching his arms far from his sides. “This much. All the way to forever and back.”

I put the water bottle—still unopened—down on a coaster on the coffee table and mimicked the gesture. “He loves you this much,” I said. “All the way to forever and back.”

Angela began to cry, softly, silently, and with a desolation that made me want to weep, too.

“And then she'd always say back,” Justin went on with an eagerness that tore at my heart, “‘I love you
twice
that much.'”

I choked up a little, repeating that part.

Angela cried harder, and then she asked essentially the same question Helen Erland had when I'd told her I could see Gillian. “Why isn't he in heaven? He was such a good boy.”

“He's waiting for Pepper,” I said, my eyes wet. So much for the artfully applied mascara.

“Pepper?” Angela echoed.

“The dog wants to die,” I said. “He's old, and he's in a lot of pain. But he's hanging on because—because you need him so much.”

Angela sat in silence for a few long moments. Then she spoke to the dog. “Pepper,” she said gently. “Come.”

He lifted his muzzle off my lap and walked stiffly over to her, tail wagging slowly. Even that seemed to be an effort.

Angela Braydaven took his head between her hands and looked deep into his eyes. “If you have to go,” she told him quietly, “it's all right. I'll be fine on my own, I promise.”

Now Justin was crying, too, and so was I.

Angela caressed the faithful old dog's ears for a while, then eased him back a little so she could stand. Without looking at me—I might not even have been there—she made a slow, complete turn. “Justin, are you here?”

“Tell her I am,” Justin urged.

“Yes,” I said. “He's here.”

Angela spread her arms wide. “I love you this much,” she said. “All the way to forever and back.”

“Tell her I love her twice that much,” Justin said.

I did.

Angela nodded, as though resolving something within herself, turned, went to the mantel, took the votive candles in her hands, one by one, and blew out the flames. Stood with her back to the room, spine straight, staring at the assembled memorial to her son.

I rose, patted Pepper on the head once more and left the house as quietly as I could. Justin stayed behind. He couldn't speak to Angela, but it didn't matter. There are goodbyes that run too deep for words, and this was one of them.

 

“W
HAT HAPPENED
to you?” Jolie demanded when I got back to Greer's place and let myself into the main house. She was dressed for work, purse and cell phone in hand. “You've got mascara all over your face. And what's with the loan-officer getup?”

“Never mind,” I said. “How's Greer?”

“Not good,” Jolie replied. “And I can't sit with her today or tonight, Moje. Sweetie's probably digested my new couch by now, and I
do
have a job.” Sweetie was Jolie's dog, a mixed-breed pound fugitive roughly the size of a Shetland pony and possessed of a profound dislike for yours truly.

I swiped self-consciously at my cheeks with the backs of my hands and sniffled, still making the emotional shift from the Braydaven visit to Greer Central. “Chill,” I said. “I'll take it from here.”

Take it where? That was the question of the hour.

To Shiloh, Montana?

It was, as Alex had maintained, the logical place to start. I guess I knew, even then, that Greer wasn't going to be forthcoming with any helpful details, and, besides, if she really was a suspect in Alex's murder, she wouldn't be allowed to leave Arizona. There was still the funeral to get through, too, and I couldn't leave Gillian.

What I needed, I thought, pushing back my bangs, was a
paying
client. I get cynical when I'm stressed.

“Where is Greer?” I asked, trying to sound like a person who could cope.

“On the patio, crying,” Jolie said. “The erstwhile Mrs. Pennington called first thing this morning. She wants to make all the funeral arrangements. I say, let her. But Greer's in a state. In fact, I think she's working herself into a nervous breakdown.”

I nodded grimly. Squared my shoulders and headed for the patio.

I hadn't even gotten all the way across the entry hall, though, when Jolie stopped me with a tersely whispered, “Wait a second!”

I stopped, turned.

Jolie took a few steps toward me. “Something else has happened,” she said, eyeing me with suspicious concern. “You look as though all the blood's been drained out of you and replaced with skim milk.”

I swallowed, already rifling through my personal issues, trying to decide what to share and what to keep to myself. Jolie knew I saw ghosts, and she was a believer, due to a direct experience with Nick in the kitchen at my apartment, not to mention my dead cat, Chester, but it wasn't something we talked about a lot. “I saw Alex Pennington this morning,” I said, sotto voce. “He believes his son, Jack, killed him, using a gun that belongs to Greer.”

For a moment I expected Jolie's two jillion shining mahogany braids to stand out from her head as though electrified, shooting blue sparks.
“What?”

“Don't make me repeat it, Jolie,” I said. “It was hard enough to say the first time.”

By then, Jolie was practically nose-to-nose with me. “What
else
did he say?”

“That he died broke,” I said. “And that he knew about the blackmail.” I left out the part about Shiloh, Montana, and diagnosis: borderline sociopath.

Greer was self-absorbed. She was definitely high maintenance. But she
wasn't
a sociopath, borderline or otherwise.

“There's no money?” Jolie asked.

“No money,” I confirmed. “He went through a chunk of it trying to get Greer out of the jam she's in. Had some tied up in real estate investments, overseen by
Jack
Pennington. There may or may not be a life insurance policy—Jack is going to collect on one—but according to Alex, Greer'll be a bag lady when the fiscal dust settles.”

Jolie took a few minutes to absorb the implications. “Sistah,” she said, “is
not
coming to live with Sweetie and me!”

“If Tucker can't prove Jack Pennington shot Alex, Greer may wind up in the state penitentiary,” I said pointedly. “Let's get past
that
before we start arguing about who has to take her in.”

“Mojo?” Greer's voice sounded small, tentative and very nearby. “Is that you?”

“I'm out of here,” Jolie said, and booked it for the front door.

“It's me,” I called back to Greer as cheerfully as I could. It was only about ten o'clock, but I already felt wrung out and used up—relaying I-love-you-this-much messages between a dead boy and his mother will do that to a person. And don't even get me started on the dying dog.

Greer appeared in one of the three eighteen-foot arched doorways trisecting the entry hall, the dining room behind her. She wore jeans, a T-shirt with one sleeve cut away to accommodate her cast, and the kind of plastic flip-flops Walgreens sells for $1.99.

I hadn't seen her dressed like that in years, and frankly, the sight took me straight back to the bus-station coffee shop in Boise, where, with Lillian, I'd first met Greer. She'd worn her hair in a blue Mohawk then—a look that definitely wouldn't fly in Scottsdale—and she'd had piercings, too. But some element of her appearance, besides the wardrobe, was the same.

I decided it was the look of pure terror in her eyes.

I heard Alex's voice again.
But if I had to hazard a diagnosis, I'd say she's a borderline sociopath.

He'd been wrong about that. He
had
to have been wrong. Was there a
Damn Fool's Guide to Identifying the Sociopaths in Your Life?
I was pretty sure there wasn't, but I had skimmed a convincing book once, wherein the author maintained that one out of every four people qualified.

It shed a new light on neighborhood poker games and garden clubs. Not to mention Brownie troops and church socials.

I jumped off that thought train and rolled down the metaphorical bank beside the tracks, dizzy when I landed.

“You okay?” I asked Greer, because nothing more sensible came to me right away, and it was my turn to talk.

“How can I be ‘okay'?” Greer demanded, flailing her one good arm. “My husband is dead. And the police probably think
I
killed him.”

I'm not proud of it, but I wondered in that moment if I'd have to spend my recently acquired nest egg on defense lawyers for Greer. If what Alex had said about her financial condition was true, and I had no reason to think it wasn't, she wouldn't be able to raise the money.

Then I decided I was getting ahead of myself.

Greer
wasn't
the killer.

Jack Pennington was.

Probably.

All I had to do was make sure somebody—preferably Tucker—proved it.

“You haven't been formally charged with anything, Greer,” I reminded her, approaching and taking her by the elbow to steer her back out to the patio. She and I needed to talk about Shiloh, Montana, and about the blackmail, whether she liked it or not. “The police question everybody when someone is murdered, especially those closest to the victim.”

Greer's eyes were awash in tears.