by Ada Bell
See? I was an excellent detective.
A smile crossed the woman’s face when she spotted me. “Aly? I had a feeling you’d be coming in.”
A feeling? And how did she know my name? We’d never met. I glanced around and lowered my voice. “How do you know who I am? Do you have…. ‘feelings’ the same way Olive does? Special feelings?”
She laughed. “No. I wish. I recognized you from Olive’s description. I’m Maria, obviously.”
“Right. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too. I figured that, after everything that happened, you’d be dropping by. Call it women’s intuition. Or, I don’t know, maybe my wife is starting to rub off on me.”
“Well, it would be great if you could rub off on her,” I said. “She’s not terribly worried about being suspected of murder. Saying things to the police that make her look guilty.”
“That’s my girl. As honest as the day is long, always wants to believe the best in people. She won’t even let me teach her a few moves to keep her safe. Says I can protect her if needed.”
“That’s sweet. Naive, but sweet.”
“You’re telling me.” She shut her eyes for a moment before shaking her head. “How can I help you, Aly?”
Quickly I outlined the conversation between Olive and Officer Matthews, ending with a plea that she talk to her wife about hiring a lawyer, especially if she intended to speak to police again. Kevin could refer her to someone if they’d let him. After Olive took a chance on me, gave me a job, I felt obligated to help her. I also hated the idea of such a nice person getting blamed for something she didn’t do.
Once Maria promised to talk to Olive, I asked her if she’d seen Earl after he left Missing Pieces. Of course she hadn’t. I’d been the only person on Main Street when he zoomed off, because no one wandered around outside in January if they could avoid it.
“There’s something that’s been bugging me,” I said. “How did the killer get in and out without anyone seeing them? Thelma said she spent the entire day cooking, and if I know that woman, she’s got her nose pressed to the window every second she’s home.”
“You’re right about that,” Maria said. “But surely she goes to the bathroom sometimes.”
Especially when she drank tea for two hours every afternoon. Too bad we couldn’t call and ask Thelma for her urination schedule. “Does she have a smart doorbell? That would show anyone who walked by. We might see something.”
Maria snorted. “No. Thelma doesn’t even have a cell phone. She’s perpetually reliving her glory days on As the Hospital Guides Our Lives.”
Well, that wasn’t helpful at all.
“Does Earl’s house have a back door?”
“Yeah. Those properties back up against the golf course. Big yards, largely shielded from flying balls by the trees that gave this town its name.”
“So anyone could walk through the trees, cross Earl’s backyard, and enter without being seen from the street?”
She nodded. “Yes, as long as Thelma’s not in the kitchen. Her window faces Earl’s backyard.”
But Thelma had been in the kitchen, all day if she was telling the truth.
If.
Chapter 10
After leaving I Will Survive, I turned left. At the end of the block, the wooden planks making up the sidewalk gave way to the more standard concrete. Second Street still displayed the wooden signs and quaint features of Main Street, but it lacked the cobblestones and raised sidewalks that gave Shady Grove that old time feel. Cutesy business names, however, remained. Thankfully.
We All Fall Down sat two blocks over. Most things in Shady Grove could be found about two blocks over. The white brick building sat at the back of a parking lot that would be considered tiny in most places, but was more than adequate by our standards. Big red letters stood out against the white exterior, beside a wooden bowling ball and pins.
Earl was an avid bowler, and that competition for the number one spot in this town was fierce. How fierce, exactly? Was it worth killing for? To me, that sounded absurd, but so did wearing rented shoes. It sounded like the bowlers knew each other pretty well, so this seemed like a great spot to find my next lead.
When I entered the bowling alley, I stopped in my tracks at the sight of the guy who was at On What Grounds? with Thelma behind the counter. What was he doing here? Hopefully he wouldn’t scream at me until I ran out of the building the way she did.
At the moment, he leaned against the counter, chatting easily with a woman who sipped brown liquid from a large tumbler full of ice. She had short black hair cut in a bob, sharp brown eyes and perfectly shaped eyebrows. Let me tell you: eyebrows had to be pretty darn perfect for me to notice them.
Her pink and blue floral bowling shirt identified her as a member of the league, but not the same team as Kevin. Too bad. I’d like to see my brother in a shirt with giant pastel flowers on it. Maybe I could pay the woman who made them to “accidentally” slip the L back into his name when she stitched it on the front pocket.
I approached with what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Hi, I’m Aly.”
Benji grunted. “I remember you.”
The woman smiled. “Benji, be nice. I’m Wendy. Are you here to bowl?”
No. Not even a little bit. The last time I tried to bowl—heavy emphasis on tried—I somehow managed to bounce my ball across the lane into the one beside it, where it landed on this giant balloon that was there for some reason, promptly deflated it, and got stuck. When I went to retrieve my ball, someone screamed at me over the loudspeaker. The sound made me jump about three feet before falling over backward onto my butt. To make matters worse, I split my pants doing it.
“Thank you, but no.” Wendy, Wendy. That same sounded familiar. She lost the bowling tournament to Earl because of her dog. Probably not the best conversation starter. I grasped at the most convenient excuse I could think of to get them talking. “My brother wanted me to check and see if his bowling trophy came in. Kevin Reynolds.”
Benji shook his head. “Sorry, not yet.”
“Not yet?” Wendy asked. “I thought they were due on Tuesday morning.”
“Shipping delays. You know how it is.”
I took my opening. “Did you win a trophy, too?”
“Yeah. I took second place,” she said. “Earl Parker won. Such a shame what happened to him.”
Trying not to look excited that she’d taken the conversation exactly where I wanted it, I shook my head sympathetically. “You knew him?”
Behind me, Benji barked out a laugh. “Did she know him? Hell, she’s been chasing him for years!”
Whoa. Earl was starting to look like quite the ladies’ man. Both Wendy and Thelma were after him? I dredged up a mental picture, but didn’t see the appeal. Especially when, based on my limited experience, he did not have a great personality. I reminded myself that he was Rusty’s favorite uncle and also dead.
“Gross. Don’t make it sound like that.” Wendy gagged, which relaxed me. “He’s the top bowler in our league. I’m number two. But only because I missed the last game of the tournament. Poor Fluffykins will never know what she cost me. If I’d made it to the final game, I would have easily beaten him.”
“What happened to your dog?” I asked.
Wendy shook her head sadly. “I don’t know. When I came home to change before the finals, she was in the backyard. She didn’t come inside to greet me like usual, so I went to find her. Spotted the poor thing lying on the ground, eyes shut, next to a pool of vomit.”
Aww. My heart went out to the dog. “That sounds terrible! Is she okay now?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. The vet thought it must be something she ate. I don’t know what, since I haven’t changed her food in years, but maybe she caught a sick squirrel or something.”
Or something. The people in Shady Grove were serious about bowling. Serious enough to poison a dog to win? And if so, would Wendy have killed Earl
for doing it? “Could someone else have come into the yard and fed her something bad?”
Benji chuckled. “You’ve never met Fluffykins. That dog won’t let anyone but Wendy within about forty feet.”
“She’ll attack?”
“She’ll hide. Biggest ‘fraidy dog I ever met.”
“She’s not afraid, she’s discerning,” Wendy said. “Just because she doesn’t like you…”
This conversation was fascinating, yet completely off-track. “Is there any chance someone entered your yard to make Fluffykins sick on purpose?”
She shook her head. “No. The gates are double-locked because my neighbors have little kids. Fluffykins is the sweetest creature alive, but that girl is a terror. I can’t risk her coming in when I’m not around to protect my dog.”
Okay, scratch that. Earl couldn’t have gotten in to make the dog sick. Even if he somehow did, I didn’t get any indication Wendy suspected as much. Meaning if she did kill him, it was about the bowling and not about the dog. That made me way less sympathetic.
My mind went to the fertility statue. “So you weren’t interested in Earl? Do you know if he had feelings for you?”
She snorted. “Lord, no! He’s been dating Thelma for years.”
Yes, that’s what everyone told me. It didn’t explain why he wanted a love statue. Maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe it was just the obvious, that he had the woman and needed the, er… functionality of the statue.
Gross.
Oshun was the goddess of many things. Earl could have gotten her to ask for rain to fill the rivers. Or anything else.
Benji eyed me. “You think Earl was cheating on Thelma?”
Wendy gagged again. “Not with me, he wasn’t.”
“To be honest, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just wondering what happened to him. I always thought Shady Grove was a safe place to raise my nephew. Thelma’s telling the whole town Olive killed Earl, and I know she didn’t do it.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Thelma killed him herself,” Wendy said. “She’s got one heck of a temper. If she saw another woman leaving his house, she might snap. There’s the danger of dating your neighbor. Especially in a small town. No one has any secrets in Shady Grove.”
No one except, apparently, the killer.
“If Earl were two-timing his neighbor, wouldn’t he be smart enough to go to the other woman’s house?” I asked. Both of them stared at me. “What?”
“Guessing you didn’t know Earl,” Benji said. “Smarts weren’t exactly his strong suit.”
My lips twitched. “I only met him once.”
“Makes sense.” Wendy nodded. “You wouldn’t be asking that question.”
Sigh. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Time to be more direct. “Benji, you were here when Earl died, right?”
“Why? You get hired by police after one day in retail?”
My cheeks grew warm. I cast about for any reason I might be asking questions. “I’m a student. Doing research.”
“Oh, yeah?” Wendy said. “Where do you go?”
“I’ll be starting at Maloney College in a couple of weeks.” Because molecular biologists spent a lot of time looking into murders. Remembering a show I’d streamed last fall, I said, “I want to be a true crime podcaster. One of my classes is on research and investigation. This seemed like a good opportunity to practice.”
“So you want to fake interview me for a class you haven’t started yet?” Benji asked.
“Yeah.” It sounded dumb when he put it that way. “Is that okay?”
He shrugged. “Sure, I guess. Yeah, I was here on Wednesday night.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Other than all my customers?” He picked up a glass and started rubbing it. “We’re open until ten every weeknight. At four-thirty, I’ve got a high school kid who runs the shoe rental counter and helps out in the arcade a couple nights a week.”
Right. I’d seen a teenage girl behind the counter that time Kyle and I played here during Kevin’s practice. I made a mental note to come back and talk to her before turning to Wendy. “What about you?”
Her face turned bright red. “On Wednesday evening? I was here, right, Benji? Bowling as usual. Just like your brother.”
He met her gaze levelly. “You came in late this week. I remember because you tracked salt from the parking lot all over the carpet.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that,” she said.
“You were late?” I asked. “Why?”
“Fluffykins needed a little extra time outside, since I thought it might snow again. Anyway, my break’s over. I need to practice.” She pushed her now-empty glass across the counter to Benji and turned back toward the bowling lanes. “Thanks for the tea.”
It didn’t escape my notice that “I was with my dog” wasn’t exactly an alibi. I couldn’t call Fluffykins and ask if her owner was telling the truth. Before I could prod further, Wendy headed toward the lane. She definitely wasn’t telling me something. After a moment, she turned back.
“Sounds like a fascinating class,” she said. “Maybe I’ll sign up.”
“Are you a student?”
She grinned at me. “No, I manage the Maloney College bookstore. They give me a discount on classes.”
The expression on her face left me praying that the school really did have a journalism department and a class on podcasting true crimes. But, I mean, if they didn’t, they should. Those things were huge right now.
Benji took Wendy’s dirty dishes and put them under the counter. “Anything else?”
“Do you think Earl was having an affair?”
He shrugged. “We didn’t talk much. He came in, he bowled, he left. League nights were busy, so I didn’t pay attention to who spoke to who. Most people stuck with their own teams. Oh, except that girl who runs the coffee shop. Sometimes he’d hang around the counter, talking to her while waiting for his nachos.”
“Julie?” Funny how her name kept coming up. She was tiny. She surely didn’t have the strength to bash someone’s head in. Except… without knowing what the murder weapon was, I couldn’t possibly reach that conclusion. The amount of force required would depend on the item. Also, some people were stronger than they looked. Simone Biles was tiny, too, and she was a powerhouse.
“Yeah.”
The conversation I’d overheard at Maria’s came back to me. “Did she look afraid at all?”
“Of Earl? Nah. Mostly, she looked like the pretty girl at the coffee shop humoring some old dude who’s wasting her time.”
Having been that girl more than once in high school, I knew exactly what he meant. Still I added Julie to my mental list of suspects. She was taking self-defense classes; she was afraid of someone, and she wasn’t anymore. Even if Earl thought he was just flirting with her (or using a love goddess on her?), that didn’t mean Julie wouldn’t feel threatened. And it didn’t mean another man watching them from a distance would see her fear.
On the other hand—what if Earl really was innocently flirting with her…but Thelma noticed? On What Grounds? was the only place to get a good coffee in Shady Grove. The town’s resident caffeine junkies were there at least twice a week, if not every day. It was completely reasonable to assume that he’d gone into the coffee shop at least once or twice. The possibility of Earl flirting with Julie in front of his girlfriend gave some support to my “jealous lover” theory. She could have been afraid of Thelma, not Earl. Or both of them.
Either way, with Earl dead, there wouldn’t be any reason left to be afraid.
“Anyway, it was nice to see you again.” Benji’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I’ll call your brother when the trophies come in.”
“Right.” I’d almost forgotten my excuse for dropping by in the first place. “Thanks.”
Oh, well. Another dead end. A glance at the time on my phone told me that it was time to get to work. Olive wouldn’t appreciate if I arrived late for my se
cond day on the job, even though I’d spent the entire morning trying to prove she wasn’t a murderer. Really, I should get overtime.
Lost in my thoughts, I tripped over the garbage can on my way back to the sidewalk. Awesome. It clattered to the ground, spilling a battered mess of wood and twisted metal onto my feet. Ouch. My knee and toes throbbed.
Given my murky control of my newfound powers, the last thing I wanted was to have a vision while picking up a stranger’s garbage. Some things were personal. I didn’t have any gloves, and I couldn’t exactly use my shirt to cover my hands while I dug through the trash. Apparently Benji had tossed the old trophies to make way for the new, and I didn’t need to see old bowling memories. Everything would have to stay where it was for now. Sorry, Benji. I’d love to be able to pick up my mess, but it’s not happening.
With a glance over my shoulder, I quickly walked away, hoping no one would call me back.
Chapter 11
The jail/police station was located next to Town Hall, in the block between We All Fall Down and Missing Pieces, so that was my next stop. According to my brother, police reports were supposed to be public record, but I sincerely doubted anyone would hand it over without asking why I wanted it. Still, I had to try. If nothing else, the police report could give me important information about the type of injury, which might help me figure out what kind of item was used. Finding the murder weapon could tell me exactly who killed Earl.
To my surprise, I spotted Julie exiting the police station about half a block ahead of me. This time of morning, she should be at the coffee shop. She walked with purpose, glaring at the ground, tears streaming down her face. Before I could think about it, I stepped in front of her. “Julie? Are you okay?”
Her face went white at the site of me. “What are you doing here?”
