Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries) (16 page)

Wallace looked up at me in a way that said she wasn’t going to be good.
 

“I’ll get something for you in a minute.” I felt eyes on me. The table to the right was staring at me. I guess they didn’t see women talking to their purses all that often. “Hello.”
 

It might’ve been my imagination, but they swayed away from me. Great. I almost showed them Wallace to prove I wasn’t nutty, but they might report me to the manager and get me kicked out. I couldn’t always be lucky as I proved multiple times a day.
 

I put my Wallace purse over my arm and took a deep breath.
 

Just go. You can do sympathy.
 

Aaron trotted out of the kitchen before I made it two steps. He held a tray of steaming mugs. “How many?”
 

“How many what?”
 

“Friends?”
 

I glanced at the glum group. “Four at the moment.”
 

Aaron tilted his head, pondering something that I couldn’t guess at. “They need spice.” And he trotted off.
 

The nervous table raised their eyebrows. I guess they didn’t think they’d want to drink or eat anything that Aaron brought out. He didn’t exactly exude competence with his permanent case of bedhead, stained Conan the Barbarian tee, sweatpants that should’ve been put out of their misery long ago, but still their sneers irritated me.
 

“He’s a genius,” I said. “Unfortunately, you will never know why.”
 

I picked up the tray and headed over to Rory’s friends, running through a dozen charming, sympathetic openers and ended up saying, “Hi.”
 

They stared up with red-rimmed eyes, but didn’t respond.
 

“I’m Mercy Watts. Did Rory mention me?”
 

The guy on the left with brown hair and a small neck tattoo of an owl came to life first. “Hey. Um, no. He didn’t say anything about you. Sorry.”
 

I set down the tray. “I’m sorry, too. I met Rory briefly last night. We had some business to attend to. Does that ring a bell?”
 

“He said he was meeting someone for his dad,” said one of the girls. She was wearing an artfully torn tee that said expensive despite the rips. I guess that was the point.
 

“Lyndsay?” I asked.
 

“How’d you know?”
 

“Eddy mentioned you. May I sit down?” I didn’t wait for an answer but snagged an empty chair.
 

The quartet shifted in their seats. Their expressions said go away. Not something I was terribly used to, unless you count Raptor. She’d been wishing I’d disappear for years.
 

“I don’t want to disturb you, but I have a problem and Rory was the solution. I need your help.”
 

“What was Rory going to do?” asked Lyndsay, perking up a bit.
 

I got Keegan’s picture out of my pocket, but held it in my lap. “You know about Rory’s father’s business?”
 

“Yeah,” said the other girl. “He grows pot to help kids with epilepsy.”
 

“We have a winner.” I put a mug in front of her. “This will cure what ails you.”
 

“What is it?”
 

“It’s a mystery. My friend is a restaurateur in St. Louis. He made these for you all.” I gave out the rest of the mugs.

Lyndsay was the first to take an experimental sip. “Oooh. It’s wonderful. I’ve never had chocolate like this.”
 

“Aaron has a gift,” I said.
 

I let them sip and pictured the warmth of Aaron’s brilliance spreading through them, comforting and oh so delicious. When they began to look droopy-eyed, I brought out the picture. “This is Keegan.”
 

“He’s a cutie,” said Lyndsay.

“He’s dying.” Being blunt often gets the result I wanted and it worked this time. They froze and stared at the picture of a beautiful little boy. “Can I trust you?”
 

I asked, but I really had no choice. I needed information and anyone of them could have the oil stashed away.
 

“I guess,” said Lyndsay.
 

“Shut up, Lyndsay,” said the other guy, who’d been silent up until then. “You don’t know who she is.”
 

“And you are?” I asked.

“I’m Austin and that’s Mark and Kera. What the hell do you want? Our friend is half dead in the hospital and you’re in here bothering the shit out of us.”
 

I heaved a sigh and affected a chagrined look. Maybe not honest but necessary. If they had Keegan’s oil, I had to get it. “I apologize. I know what you’re going through.”
 

“No, you don’t,” said Mark, his voice tight with emotion.
 

My hands went sweaty. I hated doing this, but they were young. We needed a connection, a good one. I laid one of Dad’s business cards on the table along with my driver’s license. “That’s where you’re wrong. You’ll rarely meet anyone like me.”

“Cause you look like Marilyn Monroe?” asked Austin. “Drag queens can do that.”
 

Okay. That stung a little, but I couldn’t afford to get huffy. “Very true, but it’s not about the face. It’s about the life. Look me up. You have smart phones, don’t you?”
 

They didn’t move.
 

“I’m Mercy Watts, daughter of Tommy Watts. If you google my name and David Jackson, it will explain everything.”
 

Mark yanked out his phone and typed so fast his fingers were a blur. Then he blinked and looked up.
 

“What is it?” asked Kera.
 

“Probably a picture of me when I was sixteen in a courtroom about five seconds after a man was convicted of murdering my boyfriend and two of my friends.”
 

Mark passed around his phone and they gave me the looks that I’d forced myself to get used to. That picture was my first experience of fame, the worst kind of fame, notoriety. I was the girl who was supposed to die but by a twist of fate wasn’t in the car with David and our friends. I’d been grounded for hosting an unauthorized sleepover in The Girls’ left conservatory while they were visiting Lawton in California. So David drove to his football playoff game without me, only he never made it there and was never seen again.
 

“Oh my god,” said Lyndsay, staring down at my picture.
 

My throat was dry and the bar’s clamor got tinny and strange. I tried not to think about that moment in the courtroom or the reason I was there. I forced that pain down into a little box I rarely opened. I’d never used David to get close to anyone before and I didn’t know how I felt about it. Dad would say it was alright. That David would understand and that if his death could help me, so be it. I couldn’t think of David that way, as someone to be of use. He was supposed to be the love of my life, not only my first love. I didn’t know how big the world was until David disappeared into it. Our plans disappeared with him. I didn’t go to Notre Dame or major in Sports Medicine. David’s death had shaped my life and it was more than anything else private.
 

“Are you okay?” asked Austin, his brows cinched together.
 

Not really.

“Yes. I just don’t like to think about it is all,” I said.
 

“They caught the guy,” said Mark. “That’s good.”
 

“Yes.”
 

People thought a conviction changed things. It didn’t, not for me anyway. There was no closure, whatever that means. That may have been Dad’s fault. He wasn’t allowed to get anywhere near David’s case, but he never believed Terry Hunt did it. I’m too much my father’s daughter to doubt him.
 

Mark picked up Dad’s card. “What do you want us to do?”
 

Before I could answer Aaron came up and plunked an iron skillet in the middle of the table. He trotted back into the kitchen. Under the pile of peppery arugula and diced tomatoes was a bubbling mixture of cheese and sausage.
 

“He always knows,” I said.
 

“Who was that?” asked Kera.
 

“Aaron, food genius, and this is his fundido, designed to make you want to help me, I suspect.”
 

Mark put his hand on my shoulder, grinning. “You didn’t need the food, but it’s rocking.”

Aaron ran back out and put a basket of freshly fried chips and a mug in front of me and ran back into the kitchen. We dug in and any inhibitions Rory’s friends had melted like the cheese.
 

“So,” I said. “You were with Rory last night. When did you last see him?”
 

Austin glanced at me. “The bar closed at one and we went back to the condo.”
 

“All of you together?”

“Yeah. We were, you know, partying.”

I scooped up an obscene amount of fundido. No crab and plenty of chorizo. “Define partying. Beer, pot, what are we talking about?”
 

They got wary and started looking around the room.
 

“I really don’t care what you did. I care about Rory’s condition. How high was he?” I fished out a piece of chorizo and fed it to Wallace.
 

Kera peeked in and smiled. “So cute.”

“She bit me,” I said. “About Rory?”
 

Austin put his elbows on the table and looked me in the eye. “He was pretty crispy.”

“But up and walking?”

“Hell, yeah. He can handle it. We were watching X games footage and talking about what runs we were gonna shred today. He was cool.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.
 

They looked at each other, clearly uncertain.
 

“Did you ever leave the condo?”
 

“No way. I fell asleep on the sofa,” said Lyndsay. “Rory was still there.”
 

“What time was that?”
 

“Around three, I think.” She turned to Kera. “Didn’t you go to his bedroom?”
 

Kera blushed and the pink cheeks were charming on her face, making her appear younger and less world-wise.
 

“So you went to bed with Rory around three,” I said. “That’s good. We’re zeroing in on the time he was attacked.”
 

Kera murmured something and Lyndsay put her arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. She’s not going to tell anyone.”

“Certainly not your parents, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said. “Here’s the deal. Rory was going to deliver Keegan’s oil to me. He got stabbed in the neck and now the oil’s gone. I care about two things: the oil and who stabbed Rory. That’s it. End of story.”
 

“I never saw any oil,” said Kera. “We were, ya know, together. I went to sleep. When I woke up Rory was gone.”
 

“What about the rest of you. Did you see the oil?”

They shook their heads in unison. Then Mark spoke up, “Rory had this bag that he carried when he delivered for his dad. I think he had it with him when he got here, but I don’t remember seeing it, since it happened.”
 

“What’s it look like?” I asked.
 

“Kind of like a little laptop bag. Black. Nylon. I really didn’t pay much attention to it.”
 

I’d looked through everything in Rory’s condo and I definitely didn’t see that bag, but I couldn’t let them know that. Breaking into Rory’s condo was a violation. I couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t, no matter why I did it.

“Could you take a look for me and see if it’s really gone?”
 

“Okay, but I’m sure it’s gone.”
 

“Let me get this straight. Rory was in the condo at three. Kera, you went to bed with Rory and then what?” I asked.

She dabbed her eyes with a crumpled tissue, smearing her heavy eye makeup. “Nothing. I woke up and he was gone.”

“What time was that?”

“Seven. He always sets his alarm for seven.”
 

“His phone alarm?”
 

“No, the bedside clock.” She blew her nose and appeared to be on the edge of losing it.

“Have you seen his phone? Any of you?”

Again they shook their heads.
 

I reached over and patted Kera’s hand. A weak gesture at such a time, I know, but it was all I had. “Can you guess at what time you went to sleep?”
 

“Maybe three-thirty. I don’t know for sure,” said Kera.
 

“That’s okay. We’ve got a timeline. Somewhere between say three-thirty and seven, Rory left the condo with his phone and the med bag with Keegan’s oil in it. Presumably he was meeting someone to make a delivery or he wouldn’t have taken the bag. It wasn’t me, so who else could he have been meeting? Did he mention anyone else?”
 

“No way,” said Mark. “He took his dad’s business seriously.”

“Yeah. He never told me any of the patient’s names,” said Kera. “And I asked.”

Lyndsay shook her head. “He told me that patients and their guardians signed confidentiality agreements.”

“I saw that on the website,” I said.
 

Kera burst into tears. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. I wanted to help. He didn’t trust me.”
 

“Patient confidentiality isn’t about trust.”
 

“If I’d gone with him, he’d be okay. It wouldn’t have happened.”

“Maybe or maybe you’d both be in a coma,” I said. “We’ll never know.”

Mark, who had been controlling his own emotions by blinking a lot and staring at his phone, said, “So your dad’s a famous detective and so are you.”
 

“I wouldn’t say that. Not even close,” I said.
 

He flashed me the CNN bikini page.

“There was an incident on Roatan. It doesn’t make me a detective.”
 

“But you’re asking us about Rory. Are you investigating?”