A Grave Issue Read online

  I did feel like Luke did about Verbena. Even if I hadn’t wanted to move back, it had always been home. “Our little town has changed so much. Fast food. Marijuana growers. Eco-friendly car washes.” I twisted again to see Professor Moonbeam get into his truck and drive away with it still unwashed. “Vandalism at the bank. Did you ever figure out who did that, Luke?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. I must have looked at the security video a dozen times too.”

  I perked up. “There’s video?”

  “Yep. Even in Verbena, Big Brother is watching you,” Jasmine said.

  “Could I see it?” I asked.

  Luke looked at me, his blue eyes narrowing down to a squint. “Why?”

  “Don’t you think you should have looked at it again?” I asked. “Someone writes ‘Die, Banker. Die.’ And then the banker dies? Doesn’t that seem like something to check out?”

  “Come by the station tomorrow, Death Ray. I’ll show it to you. There’s nothing to check out. You can’t see who it is. Plus, I’ve already got the person who killed Alan in jail.”

  “No. You don’t. I’ve told you that.” I leaned forward to make my point.

  “You’ve told me that, but you haven’t given me any proof. I go by the evidence, not by how I feel about people.” He moved forward too. He wasn’t going to give an inch.

  Sadly, he was right. I hadn’t given him anything concrete. I needed to give him more than feelings. I shook my head. Mark came back with Jasmine’s credit card. She signed the bill. “I’m going to go home and check on Donna and get out of these clothes.” I gestured down at my heels and hose.

  Luke choked on his beer. “See you ’round, Death Ray,” he said as soon as he could breathe again.

  I got up and straightened my shoulders. “Stop calling me that,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Stop. Calling. Me. Death. Ray. Which of those words don’t you understand?” I gripped the edge of the table.

  He flushed. “I understood all the words. I didn’t know you were so touchy about an old nickname.”

  I let go of the table. “Well, I am. So cut it out,” I said.

  He held his hands up in front of himself like a traffic cop. “Message received. No more Death Ray.” His brow furrowed.

  I hugged Jasmine and left. I went back to where I’d parked my car near the Civic Center. Half a block away, I could see the envelope tucked under the windshield wiper of the Element. A freaking parking ticket. I swear, Luke Butler waited around for me to park one inch over a line. It wasn’t a ticket, though. It was a plain business envelope, the kind you buy by the hundreds at Costco. I opened it up and a photo slipped out.

  I knew the photo. It was of Kyle and me when I was in eighth grade and had to build a catapult for my World History class. Dad was hopeless with tools, and Uncle Joey must have been busy. Kyle had stepped in. I’d dreaded working on it, but he’d made it so fun. The photo showed the two of us testing out the catapult. Our faces were next to each other’s and so serious. I knew that minutes later, the two of us were laughing our butts off as the marshmallow we’d put in the catapult’s cup had sailed yards farther than we’d imagined.

  I couldn’t count the times that Kyle had stepped in when Dad couldn’t be there for Donna or for me for some reason or another. He’d driven carpools, attended meetings, brought forgotten lunches and sports equipment to school. He’d always been there when we needed him.

  I thought about all the things I’d seen at Alan’s funeral that day, from people taking photos of him in his casket to Marie spitting on his grave. And what about the vandal that wanted him to die? Someone else was responsible for what happened to Alan. Someone had set Kyle up for it. Kyle needed me to prove that, and I wasn’t going to let him down. I’d lost one dad; I wasn’t going to lose another.

  I got in the car and blasted the air-conditioner, and then I called Lola. “Is there any way Marie Ruiz would have access to your house? Has she ever visited or anything?”

  “Sure. She cuts my hair, and when I was laid up with that broken ankle last year, she would come out and give me a trim. Such a sweet girl.” Then she paused. “Why?”

  “Who else has been at your house in the past year?” I asked.

  “Half the town when we were a stop on the garden tour.”

  “You had a garden tour at your house?”

  “It wasn’t just us. We were one stop on it. People mainly came to see the rose arbor. It’s very popular.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Donna and Greg had gotten married beneath it. The pictures looked like a spread from a magazine. “Who all goes on garden tours?”

  There was a pause. “Pretty much anyone interested in gardening, Desiree.”

  “Just rose gardening?”

  “Oh, no. All kinds of gardening.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  After I got home and changed, I went into the living room and sat on the floor next to the couch where Donna was stretched out.

  “What’s up?” she asked, her fingers flying with her crochet hook.

  “Will you teach me how to do one of those video things you do?” I asked. One of the things that Donna had added to the Turner Family Funeral Home menu was memorial videos. Family members could give her videos and photos and she would create a montage to be shown during either the viewing or the wake. The family could have it as a keepsake afterward. She was great at it. Me? Not so much. I was more of a word girl than a visual image girl.

  “Why do you want to know?” she asked.

  “So I can start making them.” It seemed like a pretty obvious answer.

  “Why would you need to do that? That’s my job.” I didn’t think it was possible, but she actually started crocheting faster.

  “Totally your job, but since you’re not supposed to be doing your job right now, I thought it would be a good idea for you to show me.” I nudged her with the laptop.

  She didn’t set down her yarn. “It would be more work to show you how to do it than to just do it myself.”

  I felt like this was one of those “teach a man to fish” moments. Yes, it would take longer in the short run to teach me, but it would save time and trouble in the future. I turned to make this argument to Donna but then saw something on her face.

  It was a tear.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What’s going on here?” She was not crying over memorial videos. Okay, she sometimes cried over memorial videos, but then it was over sweet images of fathers cuddling babies or of grandparents teaching a grandchild to fish, not about who got to do what (or who had to do what) around here.

  She wiped at her cheek. “I don’t know. I had this moment, you know? Like you were going to take over everything, and I’d lose the baby, and then I wouldn’t have anything.”

  I got up on my knees and put my arms around her. “You’re not going to lose the baby.”

  “You can’t know that.” She hiccupped against my shoulder.

  Damn it, she was right. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. It was one of Dad’s primary rules about how to conduct yourself. “Okay, how about this? There’s no reason to assume you’re going to lose the baby. You’ve got a great doctor who’s being cautious and careful.”

  She grabbed my arm. “What if there’s something wrong with me?” Her blue eyes looked huge in her face.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you.” I paused, knowing how empty that promise was. I regrouped. “If there is something wrong, Dr. Chao will find it, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

  “What if it’s not a physical thing?” Her chin trembled.

  I sat back down on the floor. “What kind of thing are you worried about?”

  “What if I’ve been around death so much I can’t make something live?” Her voice sounded clogged, as if she was trying not to cry.

  I tried to work through what she was getting at. “Do you mean the chemicals and stuff downstairs? Do you think they caused some kind of permanent damage?”

  She shook
her head again. “No, not the chemicals. All the death. Mom died so young. Now Dad is gone too. We’re around death all the time. What if there’s something about being surrounded by death that makes a little life not want to continue?”

  “You read all the funeral director information. Have you heard of anything that indicates women who work in the industry have more problems having babies than any other group?” A statistic like that would be the first thing I would look for as a reporter.

  “No. I haven’t, but maybe it’s because nobody talks about it. Like it’s one of those things that nobody wants to acknowledge.” Her hand went to her belly.

  I drew my legs up and rested my chin against my knees and thought for a moment. “First, I think if there was something like that, it wouldn’t be a secret. People would talk. Second, Dad always said that he didn’t think about what we did as being death-centered. He said it was about being part of the whole big circle of existence. Without death, there can’t be new life.”

  She sighed. “That sounds a little Lion King.”

  “Do you want me to sing? Because I will if it’ll help.” I smiled, knowing what the answer would be.

  She struggled into a sitting position. “No, that’s quite all right. No singing necessary.”

  “And I don’t want to take over everything. You know that.” I had made that pretty damn clear in my teens.

  “I don’t know that anymore. I don’t know what you want.” There was snuffling, and I wondered if I was going to have to take another shower to wash snot out of my hair.

  “Well, that’s only because I don’t know what I want. As soon as I figure it out, we’ll both feel a whole lot better, right?” I thought for a moment. “How about we ask Dr. Chao if you can do work that lets you stay on the couch. You can put together the videos and make phone calls to suppliers. Then you can stop crocheting baby blankets at Olympic speeds and stop worrying about me taking your job.” And I could stop screwing up orders and making crappy videos with bad editing. Win-win as far as I was concerned.

  “Do you think she’ll let me?” She blinked away tears.

  “I think if you tell her your stress level is higher from not working than it was from working and that you’re in danger of drowning in a sea of yarn, then I do think she’ll let you.” I paused for a second. “What about Greg?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s pretty worried about you. Will he be okay with this?” Honestly, Greg’s stress level was nearly as concerning as Donna’s. Lately, he had that wild-eyed look about him that horses get when they smell smoke.

  “Let’s do it first and tell him about it later. It’s hard to argue with something when it’s already done.” She set down the blanket.

  “Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” Another one of Dad’s adages.

  We fist-bumped and I handed her the computer. “I need a video for Ms. Stratton. Everything the family gave me is in a folder on the desktop.”

  “Got it.” She took the computer from me like a man in a desert taking a glass of water, reverently but greedily. “Oh, thanks for the yarn, by the way.”

  I had not gotten Donna more yarn. It seemed too enabling. “I didn’t get you any.” A weird feeling slithered up my spine. “Where did you find it?”

  “Greg found it.” She looked up. “On the porch.”

  “The porch where he also found the baby crib charm?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I pulled out the photo of Kyle and me and handed it to her. “This was on my car tonight. Something’s not right.”

  “I agree it’s weird, but so far it’s been nice stuff, right?” She flipped open the computer.

  “That doesn’t make it any less creepy,” I said. Maybe Jasmine wasn’t the only one with a stalker.

  “Mm-hmm,” she replied, clearly already involved in her plans for Ms. Stratton’s video. “Creepy.”

  I was about to leave when her head came up. “You got some packages, by the way. Uncle Joey put them in your room. There’s a bunch of them. What is it?”

  “Oh, just some things to freshen it up in there.” I hurried to my room. My new drapes, comforter, and sheets had arrived. Suddenly I felt a lot perkier. I stripped the bed down and made it with the new linens. I took down the lace eyelet curtains with the pink ribbons and put up the floor-length drapes. Everything in soft shades of gray and sage green. Not a heart or a flower on anything.

  I turned and looked around. Better. It was better. But now the old rag rug clashed with everything. I got on my laptop and started looking at area rugs.

  There was always something new to work on, wasn’t there? What was it that Janet had said to me? We’re all a work in progress?

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Verbena Free Press

  THURSDAY, JULY 18

  Hearing Scheduled for Murder Suspect

  A hearing will be held in the matter of the murder of Alan Brewer on July 18 at the Verbena Courthouse. Formal charges are being brought against Mr. Kyle Hansen of Verbena. Judge Gunderson will preside.

  Mr. Hansen is being represented by Janet Provost. Ms. Provost again has claimed that Mr. Hansen is absolutely not guilty of the charges brought against him and feels that his name will be cleared and the charges will be dropped very soon.

  The next morning after making sure that Donna didn’t need anything, I went back to the police station. “I’m here to see Detective Butler,” I told the cop at the desk.

  He hadn’t even finished dialing when Luke popped his head out. “This way, Death . . . I mean, Desiree.”

  I followed him back to a cubicle. He sat down at a computer monitor and started hitting buttons. A grainy image of the front of Verbena Union Bank popped up with a time and date stamp from April. In jerky motion, a figure wearing a hoodie pulled up over its head pulled out a can of spray paint and went to work.

  “I have five more nearly identical segments of tape,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “One from each time the bank was vandalized in the past year.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked, still trying to process the information.

  “It means someone really didn’t like Alan,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that whoever vandalized the bank killed him.”

  “Do you know who it was?” I couldn’t tell anything from the video. It was too grainy, and the person was too covered up.

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “They keep their face turned away from the camera. There is one thing, though.”

  “What?”

  He rewound to when the figure first walked into view. “Check out the shoes.”

  I leaned in to get a better look. High-top Chucks with a design. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Hearts.”

  “So here you have someone painting death threats to Alan on the front door of his business, and you have Kyle locked up for killing him?” I sat back again in my chair.

  “I didn’t arrest Kyle on a whim, Desiree,” he said. “It’s where the evidence pointed.”

  “Then the evidence is wrong, Luke.” I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling both frustrated and disappointed all at once. I wanted there to be an answer on that videotape. I wanted it to be Marie Ruiz so I could give Luke a suspect. I also wanted to cast Luke as the villain in all this. Make him the incompetent local law enforcement. He wasn’t, though. He may have settled on Kyle as his suspect too quickly, but I could see how he got there. It was just like high school all over again. It was a mistake to discount him.

  Another thought occurred to me. “Are there any other places with security cameras in town? Places that would give you access to the tape?”

  “Like where?” he asked.

  I bit my lip. “Like the Civic Center.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Someone left something on my car. I wanted to see who it might be.” Maybe there’d be some videotape and I could find out who was leaving little things on my car.

  “What kind of something?” His eyes na
rrowed. “Something nasty? Do you need to make a report?”

  “Just a photo. I wondered who had left it, though.” His sudden serious tone made me smile.

  He tapped on the keyboard and peered at the computer screen. “They have a camera, but it’s only one angle, and they don’t keep the tape long. When would it have been?”

  “Last night while I was at Tappiano’s with you.”

  His mouth made a little O. He tapped at the keyboard again and an image of the Civic Center came up. You couldn’t see my car from the angle of the camera, but you could see the parking lot. Luke rewound until the time was for just a bit before I would have left the reception. We watched as various people, some more recognizable than others, left the building and walked into the parking lot. Then something caught my eye. “Wait,” I said. “Go back.”

  He rewound a little.

  “Now stop.” In the upper corner of the image I could see some legs walking through the parking lot. Long legs. The person was tall. I squinted at the feet. Deck shoes. Half the men in the area wore those. Dad had had at least three pairs. Whoever it was hadn’t come from the Civic Center but from somewhere behind the building, and it had been at a moment when no one else was coming or going.

  “Just legs and shoes, again,” Luke said. “And there’s no guarantee they’re going to your car. Here’s when you left,” he said, fast-forwarding.

  I saw my legs and Jasmine’s legs as we went to our cars. I wouldn’t have known it was us if I hadn’t known what shoes we were wearing. I sat back, even more disappointed than I’d been before, but this time with an idea on how to go forward. Then another pair of legs walked past in the exact same direction that we had gone. “Who’s that?”

  Luke shrugged. “How should I know? Whoever it was came after you left. They couldn’t have left anything on your car.”

  He had a point. It still made me uneasy somehow, but then a squad car pulled through the parking lot. “Look,” Luke said. “It’s Officer Haynes. It’s all good.”