Death of a Batty Genius (Stormy Day Mystery #3) (35 page)

“Christopher’s not winning,” I said. “We’re only three and a half hours in. It could still be anyone’s game.”

Peggy asked, “Where’s Dion?”

“He’s cooling off,” I answered.

“Did you really put him in the walk-in refrigerator with the body?”

“We gave him a warm jacket.”

“Fair enough.” She glanced around. “Where’s his sister? I need to arrest her, too.”

“Della? But she’s already been through so much.”

Peggy turned to Kyle and said, gruffly, “What’s your call, Dimples? Do you want there to be a rumor flying around town about how a young woman got the drop on you and took your service revolver? Or do you want to press charges and make the front page of the Misty Falls Mirror?”

Kyle gave me a sheepish look. “A rumor’s fine,” he said.

“We need to speak with the young lady,” Peggy said.

I rolled the dice for my turn and told them, “Della’s in the room at the end on this level. She was up all night, and I’m guessing ten hours is too long for her to wear one fabulous outfit, so she’s probably doing a costume change.”

Peggy raised her eyebrows. “When this goes to court, I’m sure her testimony will be very colorful. Now, about the matter of the gun.”

I reached into my purse and retrieved the revolver, which I had placed in a sealed sandwich bag, just to be thorough.

Peggy thanked me and passed it to Kyle.

“That’s not an official evidence bag,” I said. “But it’s a fresh one, never used for sandwiches.”

“Good job, Detective Day.”

I smiled. I really liked the sound of that.

Peggy went off to find Della, while her partner Kyle excused himself to go check on everything we’d stored in the walk-in cooler.

Butch and Marie got up from the board game and went with him, because they had the combination for the lock we’d used on the door. Butch had one tattooed arm protectively around Marie’s waist, the sight of which made me smile even wider.

In the hours following all the excitement, the group of us had done what people are supposed to do at a mountain resort. We’d shared stories, bonded, cried, laughed, and even sung a karaoke song or two.

As the sun came up, Della apologized to everyone for being suspicious of the wrong people. She even confessed to Marie that she really had thrown herself at Butch, and he’d insisted they stop.

Aside from the question of who’d kissed whom, Butch had already redeemed himself in her eyes. He’d shown his true colors by jumping in to draw Della’s rage away from Marie and toward himself.

Was that love? Being willing to take a bullet for each other?

I couldn’t imagine caring for someone that much, but then again, I’d never been married.

As we watched Butch and Marie walk away, Christopher reached over and patted my knee.

“We’ll all be back home soon,” he said.

“We will,” I agreed.

Chapter 37
 

In criminal cases,
eyewitness accounts are sometimes the weakest form of evidence. Each time we access a memory, we overwrite it just a little, degrading the truth, like a photocopy of a fax of a photocopy.

That’s why Peggy had us give her our statements while we were still at the lodge.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, she finally released us, saying, “Best you drive back home now while it’s daylight, because once that sun sets, you’ll realize you’re not in your teens anymore.” She shook her head and muttered about the foolishness of us staying up all night playing board games.

Christopher had already packed his things, so Jessica and I returned to our room to get our bags and the stowaway cat.

Jessica rolled her clothes, item by item, and packed everything into her suitcase as though arranging sushi rolls.

“You and Christopher are looking romantic,” she said.

“Is that so?”

I wasn’t really paying attention. I ruffled the back of my hair and then tried to roll my sweaters the way she’d shown me, so they’d be
happy
sweaters. After everything we’d been through, it felt good to worry about something silly, such as getting my clothes rolled just right.

“Christopher regrets letting you leave him.”

I snorted. “He didn’t
let
me leave. He helped me pack.”

“I can’t believe you two broke up over a spider.”

I raised my eyebrows and paused mid-sweater roll. “He told you? I thought he’d be too embarrassed.”

“He says you trapped a huge spider under a bathroom cup on purpose, just to terrorize him, but he forgives you.”

I scoffed and went back to rolling my sweater. “How generous of him to forgive me for something I didn’t do on purpose.”

“Honestly, it’s his fault,” Jessica said. “I don’t know how anyone can see an upside-down cup and
not
assume there’s something awful hiding underneath, but then again not everyone grew up with my brothers. If it wasn’t a spider, it was fake dog droppings, or a plastic snake. One thing never changed. There was
always
something hiding under the bathroom cup.” She laughed. “And they even got you a few times, too, when you stayed over.”

“They did?”

Suddenly, I remembered. I’d just brushed my teeth at Jessica’s house, then picked up the bathroom’s plastic cup to find an enormous, hairy tarantula the size of my palm staring back at me.

“They got you with Tito, their fake tarantula,” she said. “When Christopher told me about the spider incident, I didn’t tell him you learned that trick from my brothers. I was already having a tough time keeping a straight face.”

“Tito,” I said. “I remember that stupid plastic thing, with its glow-in-the-dark eyes.” I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my forehead. Jeffrey climbed onto my lap to tickle my face with his tail.

I stroked his soft gray fur while a terrible realization washed over me. Now that Jessica had mentioned it, I could clearly remember the Kelly brothers’ plastic spider under the bathroom’s opaque water cup. I could see their freckled faces, hear their boyish laughter.

My cheeks felt hot. Maybe Christopher was right, and I had left the spider under the cup on purpose to scare him.

As an eyewitness to my own life, I wasn’t as reliable as I thought.

How well did I really know myself?

The night of the spider incident, we’d been fighting throughout the day. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember how it had started, but I could see myself getting furious, fists clenched, like an angry woman in a movie.

I’d already gotten changed for bed, and it was late. We had a big meeting in the morning with some investors, but he was doing something on the computer and wouldn’t come to bed. Each time I looked at the clock, I got more annoyed at Christopher for making my insomnia worse. I brushed my teeth furiously, making my gums bleed. And then… I saw the spider. I got the idea to scare him, to even the score for how much he’d annoyed me.

Or did I?

There was an alternate movie in my head. In this one, I could see myself from a distance, like a stranger. This woman trapped the spider and went looking for a sheet of paper, so she could escort the unwanted houseguest outside. Before she could complete the task, she got distracted and wound up in the bedroom. She didn’t forget about the spider, though. When she climbed into bed, she remembered, and imagined how its discovery would alarm her fiancé. She considered returning to her search for a sheet of paper, but her pillow was so soft. And she didn’t exactly
hate
the idea of her fiancé screaming.

The second version was as bad as the first.

I searched my memory for a third version, in which I legitimately forgot, but there wasn’t one, because how can you have a vivid recollection of yourself being absent-minded?

We finished packing and then loaded the car.

Christopher offered to drive, saying he’d taken one of his cousin’s pills and would be more than alert for the next few hours. I thanked him and climbed into the back seat with Jeffrey and my thoughts.

As I went over and over my memory of the night that ended our engagement, I only made it messier, like a bad photocopy of a fax of a photocopy.

We got home after sunset. Logan’s side of the duplex was dark and his truck wasn’t in the driveway. While we unpacked the car, I sent him a brief text message to let him know I was home. He replied immediately, saying he’d be back by dinner the next evening.

Jeffrey did a frantic patrol of his house, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, then gobbled down a full bowl of stale kitty kibbles, then tossed them back up again into Christopher’s shoe.

I apologized and took the shoe to the bathroom to clean it while Jessica searched through the refrigerator for dinner ingredients.

I looked up from the wet shoe to find Christopher standing in the bathroom doorway, an unreadable expression on his face. His hazel eyes locked on mine.

“You’d make a good mother,” he said.

I nearly fumbled the shoe into the toilet. “Because I’m great at washing barf off things? Thanks.”

“Because you’re great at everything.” He fidgeted with the light switches on the wall, flicking the fan on and off. “I mean it, Stormy. Is there anything you can’t do? The way you handled things up at the lodge was almost surreal. I know I was there, but now it all feels like a weird dream.”

“How many of Butch’s pills did you take?”

He pinched the top of his nose and closed his eyes. “I guess everything will make more sense in the morning.”

“Sleep will help.” I gave his shoe another rinse, then started stuffing the interior with a towel.

“Is there anything I could do or say to convince you to pack your things and drive to Seattle with me tomorrow morning? Your cat can come.”

I swallowed. “I don’t think my cat wants to leave Misty Falls.”

He held very still in the doorway. “Your cat could give it a shot, maybe for a few months.”

“My cat already knows what he likes.”

“The Seattle house has an incredible view, and a beautiful garden. It’s in a great neighborhood, quiet and peaceful, like living in a small town, but close to everything. Jeffrey would love it.”

“Christopher, I—”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say no. Promise you’ll sleep on it and decide in the morning.”

I nodded and continued stuffing the towel into his shoe.

A quiet moment passed, then Jessica called to say dinner was ready.

Christopher turned to leave, but I stopped him with my hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry about the spider,” I said. “My memory might be rearranging things, but I’m pretty sure you were right, and I did leave the spider under the bathroom cup on purpose to annoy you.”

“Pretty sure? Can you give me a percent?”

“Seventy percent. No. Eighty. Eighty-five.”

My hand was still on his arm. He slipped his hand around mine and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Thank you,” he repeated.

Christopher slept on the couch.

He was gone before I got up in the morning.

I’d known from the way he was acting after dinner—quiet, polite, not making eye contact—that he would leave without talking to me. Christopher hated to hear the word no, and would walk away from business deals when he sensed a rejection was coming.