She left, and Michael ate, lost in the deliciousness of the food he hadn’t known he’d wanted prior to it showing up in front of his face.
I waited until he hit a lull in his cheesecake eating before venturing in with any questions. “Rita told us about her relationship with Doug.”
Go big or go home, that’s what they say, right? I hoped my direct, no-holds-barred question would trigger an unfiltered reaction. I wasn’t disappointed.
Michael’s expression transitioned from wide-eyed with a dropped jaw and open mouth to squinting with pursed lips and everything in between.
“She… He… It’s been three years. She’s good… now.” His blink was slow and exaggerated, like he was hoping the closing and reopening of his eyelids would clear his brain of all the beer he’d soaked it in.
“We want to hear your side of the story,” Zoey prompted.
“What thstory?” he asked, slurring his words together.
“The one that includes the two of you traveling all the way here from another state just to show up at his new place of employment.” I knew exes sometimes became stalkers. I’d never heard of anyone involving their father though.
The expression on Doug’s face came back to me. We’d all come around the corner as a group—me, Joel, the newlyweds, Mama Hendrix, Rita, and Michael. I had assumed Doug’s shocked expression was because he’d been caught chewing out his subordinate in a manner that completely lacked professionalism. But his taken-aback expression hadn’t been from that at all. It’d been from seeing Rita, and maybe from having seen Michael. Very unwelcome blasts from the past.
“No, no,” Michael said, waving his arms wildly in front of him like an umpire calling a runner out. “You got it wrong. He followed us! He wanted to mess with us. It wasn’t enough that he almost ruined us, and that Rita—” a spontaneous sob escaped from his throat through closely pressed lips “—almost died. Dan didn’t care about any of that.”
Michael was so drunk, he was getting Doug’s name wrong.
“So you didn’t know he was working at the B&B before you came?”
“No! I’d’ve been here to kill him years ago if I’d known he was here.”
Ohhhhh…
It was time to go in for the proverbial kill. “Why’d you plant him upside down in the orchard, Michael?” I asked.
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know what. He was planted head down in the orchard. Why put his body that way?”
“I didn’t kill him!”
“But you just said you did.” It’s not what he’d said, but I was feeling hopeful his drunk butt would fall for the assumptive logic.
“I didn’t kill him!”
“If you didn’t, then Rita did,” Zoey pushed.
Michael stared back and forth between us with his mouth slack and his palms flat on the table. “But I could’ve killed him. I could have killed him dead a bunch of times. Me. All me. Rita’s Rita. She couldn’t do this. Wouldn’t. She—she can’t hurt anybody but herself. I did it. I killed him.”
Zoey and I looked at each other.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Call the cops? Let him give an official confession?”
No, this wasn’t right. First, he claimed to be innocent, then after pointing one flimsy finger at Rita, he said he’d done it. He was trying to protect his daughter. It was an admirable quality to see in a father, to say the least. But it stank like a great, big lie.
“Michael,” I said, “tell us about Rita and Doug’s relationship.”
“What’s there to tell? They were engaged, and then they weren’t.”
Engaged! Rita had described herself as being sweet on Doug and Doug as having been sweet on her. No, scratch that. She’d described him as maybe having been sweet on her but then changed her story to that she wasn’t sure how he’d felt about her.
That did not add up to an engagement!
“Who called off the wedding?” I asked. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but I needed Michael to confirm my hunch.
“Call off? Pffffttt,” he huffed and then guffawed in a too-loud-for-public laugh. “Nobody.” He lifted his beer to his lips before slamming it back down on the table. So much of the amber liquid was gone that it didn’t even slosh out of the glass.
“Wait a minute,” I said, confused. “They got married?”
“Are you really that dumb?” he sneered. “The jerkwad didn’t show up for his own wedding!”
Oh. My. Gosh… Oh! My! Gosh!
I’d have killed my ex-husband if he’d done that to me. Literally. I would have killed him dead on the spot.
I imagined poor Rita waiting at the church. All of her family and friends would have been in attendance. She would have spent hours getting ready for her big appearance. She would have spent weeks agonizing over whether she’d found just the right gown and whether the refitting would be done right and on time. She would have spent months on the planning! Catering would have been arranged; food would have been overflowing the tables. There would have been a tiered cake with a tiny figurine of a bride and groom on top. And there Rita would have been, dressed in her gown, waiting… and waiting… for a man who didn’t show.
I picked up Michael’s beer mug and downed the rest. I slammed the empty glass back down on the table and announced, “The man deserved to die.”
That same man had found someone else and had emotionally moved on. I bet Rita hadn’t moved on.
“We letting this murder slide?” Zoey asked.
I thought about the ramifications of that question. Someone had brought an end to a man in the prime of his life. That required a callous coldness few possessed. If they did it once, who’s to say that wouldn’t do it again?
But the guy had deserved to die!
I groaned as the two opposing viewpoints warred within me.
“Get his car keys and let’s go,” I told Zoey.
Michael swore loudly and glared at us.
Michael’s rental car was leaning decidedly to one side when Zoey drove us out of the parking lot. Both driver’s side tires had brand new switchblade-sized punctures.
“Think you can keep the crime geeks under control?” I asked.
“Probably not,” Zoey answered. “Why? Don’t tell me you’re going to pull them back into this after what they just pulled. They’ll do something worse.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Chapter 16
It was a little unnerving to see the geek squad all gathered back together under one roof. They looked much the same as the first time I’d seen them, save for the extra facial bruising and odd limp here and there.
We were in the tent, and I was standing in front of the group. Two guys were comparing airline ticket availability with plans to leave early. Three more had their noses an inch in front of their phones and looked to be reading. Another guy kept glancing over his shoulder as if expecting someone to be after him.
“What’s this about?” Gaunt-Faced Paul demanded to know.
“It’s about finding someone who doesn’t exist,” I said.
That earned me some interested looks. A small murmur between them grew.
“Keep talking,” invited the guy keeping an eye out for his own personal death stalker.
“The guy’s name is Dan. He might or might not exist, and he might or might not have been engaged to Rita.”
“Dan? There hasn’t been a Dan at the B&B while we’ve been here.”
“Call it a hunch,” I said, although I supposed it could be better described as a slip of the tongue. While a drunk man might not be the most trustworthy source for information, I was giving it the benefit of the doubt.
“What about the people who actually do exist?” Paul challenged. “What us to pretend that there isn’t a soul-sucking killer among them? Want us to imagine we’re all safe and that our mommies are going to tuck us into bed tonight and read us a story?”
All eyes turned to Paul.
“Uh, you can im
agine that about your mommy if you want,” I offered.
A few snickers followed. Paul’s laughter wasn’t among them.
“You do make a good point, though,” I continued. “The other people who exist… We need to know everything there is to know about them.”
A guy sporting a black eye from Tim’s elbow snorted. “We can tell you the name of someone’s kindergarten teacher in ten minutes flat. I thought this was about to get interesting.”
“I want to know about people’s online lives,” I interjected quickly, then paused, “and I want to know about people’s offline lives.”
“Offline, how do we do that?” the same guy asked.
“You talk to people,” I said, then shrugged. “And maybe in a few circumstances,” which was every circumstance here, “you go through a person’s personal belongings.”
“Who’s going to let us search their personal belongings?” another guy scoffed.
“Who said anything about letting you?” I let some very pregnant silence that followed hang in the air. It took a moment for what I was saying to connect with the Citizen’s Justice League members, but they eventually got there.
“Ohhhh,” elbow-eye said. “You want us to break in.”
“I didn’t say that.” I nodded my head. “I never said that.” But then I nodded my head some more as if to say yes, that was exactly what I’d said. “I can’t tell you to break into anybody’s room or distract them while you steal their phones and look through their personal info. I definitely can’t tell you to plant any listening devices. No, I definitely can’t tell you to do that.” More head nodding.
The gleam was back in their collective eyes. Manic smiles soon followed.
“Anybody put a bug on mine or Zoey’s room, though, and—”
“I’ll make you beg to be allowed to go to prison,” Zoey finished for me.
Those sitting nearest to her inched away.
The newly formed Crimes R Us League jumped into action. Okay, they didn’t jump so much as stare at each other, stunned and giddy. When they did get going, they milled around aimlessly a bit, but their chaos slowly took form. About two-thirds of the group headed out of the tent to pursue deeds best unnamed. The remaining one third clustered in front of the bank of computers and tv screens.
I sat at the middle table as Zoey led the cyber charge with her cohorts. I put my head down for a minute. At least that’s what it felt like. A shake to my shoulder an hour later, though, had my swiping away a spit trail from my chin with the hope that nobody else had noticed.
“What’s up?” I asked, still pushing my way through the mental cobwebs left over from sleep.
“You tell us,” Zoey said from where she sat in front of the monitors. The guy who had woken me up returned to lounge near her side. “Check it out,” she said.
The big monitor in front of her filled with Doug’s image. His pallor was still good, and he had a smile on his face that had nothing to do with a death grimace.
“What’d you find out about Doug?” I asked.
“This isn’t Doug?” elbow-eye said.
I studied the image some more. “Does Doug have a twin?”
“Nope,” Zoey said. “Doug doesn’t exist.”
I paused a tick. “Someone might want to let the coroner know.” I was pretty sure he’d dispute that statement.
“This,” Paul said, slashing his arm through the air to point at the monitor, “is Dan.”
I blinked. I stared. Then a slow smile stretched my lips. “Dan’s real?”
“Yeah,” Zoey said, “and Doug’s not, at least not further back than a few years.”
“He changed his identity?”
“Abandoned it is more like it,” she said. “But that’s not to say that Dan hadn’t been busy in his new identity.”
“What’s he been up to?”
“Doug owned the rights to Mama Hendrix’s orchard, although not the land itself. He owned all the land’s resources.”
“Ohhhh.” My mind reeled. Mama Hendrix was passionate about her place. I frowned as I thought some more. She was very B&B focused in her work. It could be that she was simply overwhelmed by the management of both the orchard plus the B&B after the death of her husband. It definitely required another conversation with her. But then my brain stumbled onto a legal hiccup. “Wait a minute. If Doug didn’t exist, could he even own anything?”
Zoey shook her head. “Technically, no. But that’s not all we found.” She returned her attention to her keyboard, and more images filled the screen.
“That’s Rita,” I murmured as I studied the dated, slightly out of focus image. Then a new picture appeared, this time with Rita and Dan, aka Doug. “They were together!”
“We had to search hard for this,” Zoey said. “They got someone to scrub the internet for them, someone actually worth their pay.”
“Scrub the internet?” The only scrubbing I’d ever done was with a brush and lots of soap bubbles. “How’s that even possible?”
Zoey shrugged. “Anything’s possible, for a price. If I hadn’t have done the same job myself for… a few, I doubt I would’ve found it.”
“Found it?” I was sounding like a four-year-old. I felt like one, too. All I knew about technology was how to search for new recipes on YouTube. That was the most advanced thing I ever did.
“This stuff,” Zoey said. She went back to typing and clicking, and the whole screen filled up with layer after layer of windows. “We dug up stuff from all of the major social media sites. Got our hands on a few text message logs. And then there’s this.”
I squinted, reading a long text message sent from Rita to a friend labeled RJ. “Hellooo,” I said when done. The message was a rant, detailing how badly Rita wanted to end Doug’s life. “She gets pretty explicit.”
“And inventive,” Zoey said, “but she never mentions burying him alive.”
I propped my chin on my palm. “But he wasn’t alive, was he… He was dead. Did she mention drowning anywhere?”
Zoey shook her head. “But we did find more.”
New pictures filled the screen, this time of Michael.
“Michael’s in financial trouble,” Zoey said.
“We knew that,” I said. “They told us that… yesterday.” Had it only been one day? It felt like we’d been here for weeks. “He and Rita came here to get a better understanding of Mama Hendrix’s business model combining the orchard’s goods with the income from the B&B.”
“Here’s pictures of their orchard,” Zoey said. The image of a lush wooded landscape came up. It was gorgeous! “Or rather, that’s how it looked just over three years ago.”
Another image filled the screen. “This is from last year.”
This time there were only a few large trees interspersed with hundreds of baby trees. The trunks of the young trees were spindly and thin, and they each had wire ties connecting them to four surrounding ground-sunken posts.
“Oh my gosh.” My mind flashed with the memory of finding Doug, I mean Dan. Ah, to heck with it. Dougie Dan. He’d been head down in the ground. His torso, legs and hips had been above ground, and there had been lines connecting him to posts. Those lines had kept him upright, just like the posts and lines supporting all those baby trees.
“And this is Michael and Rita’s orchard?”
“It is now.”
“What happened? It’d been so, so… mature.” The trees in the earlier picture had all been big.
“This happened,” Zoey said, bringing up a series of pictures. “These are from just under three years ago.”
My mouth fell open. What I saw was devastation. The ground was covered in white that looked like snow yet didn’t look like snow. Or maybe it was ash. There was something not right about it, but I couldn’t figure out what.
A bunch of the trees had been chopped down, and smoke trailed up from huge burn piles. Of the remaining trees, more than half were stripped bare of any leaves. Others had yellow leaves. Even the ones that had
survived the initial problem were in the process of dying. Only a few looked as though they might survive.
It was like seeing Eden turned into a wasteland.
“This had been Michael’s place?”
“Yeah,” Zoey said.
“What happened to it? Did someone torch the whole orchard?”
“Not sure yet.”
Silence filled the tent before I asked, “Do you think Dougie Dan might’ve done it?” Stood Rita up at the altar and destroyed a livelihood that had taken decades to develop? Yeah, I could see killing the guy. If Rita or her dad had killed him, I was feeling really bad about the prospects of finding them out and getting them sent to prison. Didn’t seem right.
“That’s not all we found,” Gaunt-Faced Paul said.
“There’s more?” I wasn’t sure I could take more. Rita and Michael had lost so much already.
“The handyman doesn’t exist either,” Paul announced in a braggart’s tone.
“Lucas?” I asked.
“One in the same.”
Things were getting weirder and weirder. Joel hadn’t taken me to a romantic B&B. He’d stolen me away to an episode of the Twilight Zone!
“And check it out. These are pictures we’ve managed to collect since being here,” Paul continued. The entire wall of screens filled with pictures of Rita. Lucas was visible in nearly three-quarters of them. “Lucas is stalking her!”
“Oh my God.” I felt sick. How much could this family endure? Then I remembered Michael’s concerns about his daughter’s health. “Were any of you able to find any info about Rita getting sick?”
“She had to be hospitalized for a while,” Zoey said. More new pictures flooded the screens.
I covered my mouth with my fingertips, and my eyes welled up with tears. The images were of Rita, but if her tall form weighed more than a hundred pounds, I’d have been shocked.
“What happened to her?” I asked in a whispered, hushed tone.
“Eating disorder,” Zoey said. “She almost died.”
“And that was after the orchard, and after being jilted at the altar?” Dougie Dan had jilted Rita, and I’d be willing to bet he’d destroyed the orchard, too.
A Berry Horrible Holiday Page 10
