by Sarah Kelly
Nadine nodded. “But what about the porch? Or at the back of the house?”
India had been beginning to relax, but her mind quickly filled with images of men climbing up drain pipes or peering in at windows. “Wanna wake Xavier and your dad, just to check?”
Nadine still looked terrified. “Yep.”
CHAPTER 3
Xavier and Mark crept round the house with baseball bats raised while India, Nadine and Valerie stood together at the top of the stairs, Nadine jumping at every tiny creak or blow of wind.
“Oh, you scaredy cat,” Valerie said, squeezing her in a side hug. “It’s probably nothing to worry about. Just some animal or something.”
“Let’s hope so.”
India even started when the shadowy figures of Mark and Xavier appeared at the bottom of the stairs, then put her hand on her chest, giggling with relief.
“There’s no one there for sure,” Mark said, coming up the stairway. “Everywhere’s secure, there’s no way anyone could get in. I’ve got to get up early, so I’m going to head right back to bed.”
Valerie and Mark went to their bedroom. “Night, kids,” Valerie said.
Nadine was still a bit jumpy as she walked across to her room. “I don’t care, I’m still sleeping with the light on.”
Xavier laughed, but not unkindly. “It’s fine, I swear. You know we have those special unbreakable panels over the window, so if anyone tries to smash the glass, it won’t break apart. All the little shards stick together and they can’t get in.”
“That doesn’t help against ghosts, though, does it,” Nadine said, half joking by then. “Anyway, night.” After going into her room, she then poked her head back around the door and wagged her finger. “And no kissing.”
Once she was gone, Xavier rolled his eyes and kissed India on the lips.
“Was that just to be contrary to your sister?” India asked.
“No.” Xavier bit her bottom lip gently and pulled her forward by it, like they did to each other sometimes. “Because I love you beyond all sense. And having you here with my family, and how you are with them…” He looked at her face with a searching softness in his eyes, like he was trying to find the right words for how good everything was. “It’s just… You’re incredible to me.”
India snuggled into him in a hug, feeling warm and safe. “You’re the best, Zave.”
“No, you’re the best,” he muttered into her hair.
India felt like she could have stayed there forever, held secure in his strong, loving arms.
*****
Mark’s face was drawn, and his eyes popped as he stood at the open doorway.
Valerie turned from her dusting toward where the sound of steps on the porch had sounded. “Honey? You’re home so early?” Then she peered at his facial expression and turned fully, chucking the duster on a nearby chair. Lines creased her eyes as she frowned. “What’s up, hon?”
He kept shaking his head over and over.
India and Xavier looked at each other, eyes wide.
“I’ve found a body,” he said eventually.
Next to India, Nadine dropped the hand whisk in the bowl of batter, and let it sink into the brownie gloop, handle and all. “What? What?”
“Oh my gosh,” Demetria said from her frosting station. “Where?”
Mark’s hands shook and he clasped them together. “In the back of my truck.”
Everyone made a sharp intake of breath, in unison.
“I just got up this morning and went to my truck,” he said, his voice shaking. “I never look in the back. Why would I? But when I get to work and climb on the back to unstrap something, I nearly fainted and fell off.”
Valerie rushed to him and touched his arm with a gentle tenderness. “Hon… do you know who the body was?”
Mark shook his head again. “It was face down. But maybe…” His voice caught in his throat. “Maybe… The back of his head… It looks like…”
“Who?” Demetria said, running out of patience.
He looked up at them all, his eyes full of what looked like numbness. “Jim Quinn.”
Everyone gasped again, and that seemed to set Mark off. He wobbled on his feet, trying to grip the doorway to steady himself but not quite able to. His legs buckled beneath him, and Valerie lunged forward to catch him. Since she was a slight woman, she couldn’t manage to lift him back up, but she cushioned his blow and helped him to sink to the floor without getting hurt.
Xavier rushed over. “Come on, Dad,” he said. “Let’s help you up now.”
Nadine had grabbed India’s hand, and India didn’t pull away. They were family, after all, and she felt like she’d known them a lot longer than a mere day. Then a thought crossed her mind. She waited until Mark seemed to have recovered himself, Xavier having helped him onto a chair and Valerie having run to the cabinet to get him a stiff drink. “Mr Bradford,” she said in a gentle voice. “If you don’t mind me asking, where… where is the body now?”
He stared through the coffee table. “Outside. In the truck.”
Demetria looked like she was about to collapse then, leaning heavily on the counter, and India and Nadine led her to another chair.
Even Valerie looked visibly shaken. She placed a glass of whiskey in her husband’s hand but he shook his head and put it on the table. “Did you call the police yet?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I… I dialed the number but… when she asked me what I wanted to report, no words… I couldn’t… Damn.”
“Let’s call them right now,” Xavier said, getting out his phone and dialing 911.
Less than five minutes later there was a knock on the open door. “Hello,” a confident male voice rang out.
“Come in, come in,” Valerie said, rushing to the doorway.
A short, muscular man with a blond buzz cut stepped in, followed by a slightly taller brunette woman with a ponytail and a side fringe she kept flicking out of her eyes. She looked a little nervous, and lifted her hand to wave. He scanned the room with cold, suspicious eyes.
“So you have a body?” he said. “And signs of foul play?”
Xavier stepped forward to shake their hands. “Yes, sir, we do. I’m Xavier Bradford, I’m a cop back in Benton Point, Florida. I’m just here visiting my family.”
“Great story,” the man mumbled under his breath, so quietly India couldn’t hear, but could read his lips. She was astounded by his lack of professionalism. “I’m Detective Morgan,” he then said loudly to the room, then nodded back carelessly toward the woman. “And that’s Officer Rogers.”
“I’m Va—” Valerie began.
“Where’s the body?” Detective Morgan cut in.
Xavier stepped forward. “On the truck outside. Would you like me to show you?”
“I think even Officer Rogers is capable of finding her way to the huge truck right outside the door,” Morgan said.
She took that as her cue to leave.
“I,” Morgan announced, sitting on the chaise longue in the most inelegant way, “want to hear what you have to say. Well, come on. Who found it? When? Where? Is the victim known to you?”
India’s dislike of him was growing by the minute.
“And I want to know who each of you is and what you were doing last night and early this morning.”
“I found the body,” Mark said. He seemed to have recovered from the shock a little. “When I got to work. Face down in the back of the truck. He is… he was our neighbor. Jim Quinn.” He leaned over to look out the window and pointed out the Queen Anne mansion. “That is… was his house.”
India’s mind began to tick. Maybe the noise she and Nadine had heard the previous night was not someone trying to break their way into the Bradford house. Perhaps they were getting into the Quinn house, then snuck up inside and murdered Jim. But then why would they drag the body all the way out of the house and put it in Mark’s truck? To frame him?
“This doesn’t look very good for you, does it?” Morg
an said to Mark, his tight features dry and void of emotion.
Valerie bristled. “But why would he come straight home and call—”
“I don’t believe I was talking to you, ma’am.” He said the ma’am with such acid that everyone paused for a moment, barely able to believe his attitude.
Mark looked at Morgan in the eye for the first time. “There’s no need to be rude to my wife, Detective. I have no reason to kill Jim Quinn. I did not kill Jim Quinn, and my conscience is clear.”
“Then why is his dead body on the back of your truck?”
“I don’t know.”
“How convenient.” Morgan cast a glance over at the mansion. “He have any family?”
“A wife Anita and a grown up son Rodney,” Mark said.
Morgan got out a pad of paper and began to scribble in a loose sprawling hand. “You seen them this morning?”
Everyone looked at each other, the same possibility dawning on them.
“No,” Mark said.
“Do you think…” Xavier said. “Do you think… they might have been targeted as well?”
Morgan pursed his lips together as he wrote. “I’m a detective, not a psychic, boy. I’m going over there now. No one go anywhere. And someone make me a coffee for when I get back.”
India had asked about coffee herself that morning. None of Xavier’s family really drank it, but Valerie had told her where the local store was where she could go pick some up. Having gotten deeply involved in the start of a wedding cake the ladies were making to accompany the cupcakes, she’d forgotten about it. “Sir, we have no coffee,” India said. “The store isn’t far. I could just run down there and get some?”
He looked her up and down, and she tried to put on her most innocent face. “All right,” he said eventually. “But straight to the store and back, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
India timed her exit carefully. She wanted to make sure she’d pass the gothic house at the moment the door was opened, if it was opened at all. That way, she could see who was still alive, and what their reactions were, without having to squeeze information out of that uptight, and downright rude, detective.
“I’ve got a good mind to report him,” Xavier kept saying. “How dare he talk to people like that?”
“Such a cheek,” Demetria agreed as she went about continuing her frosting. “Zave, you should come down here to work as a detective and get that guy kicked out of his post. What a horrible way to be treated after finding a… after everything that’s happened.”
“See you in a couple minutes,” India said, then gave Xavier a quick kiss on the cheek before hurrying outside. She passed Officer Rogers, who looked pale and out of her depth. “I’m just going to the store to get coffee, the detective told me it was okay,” India said.
“Oh, okay… Sure.”
India guessed she was probably somewhat new to the role, and had been put under Detective Morgan’s wing. Poor woman. India watched as Morgan crossed the street, and adjusted her pace so she’d be outside the front of the house a little while after he’d knocked. She timed it well, and saw Anita answer the door, a smile on her face. India kept her pace slow as could be, across the other side of the street, so she was unobtrusive but could see everything. Detective Morgan evidently explained what had happened, and Anita fell into a crumpled heap, her head in her hands. At that point India felt intrusive, and she hurried along to where the local store according to Valerie’s directions.
*****
India and Xavier sat in the car, staring out the windshield at the crowd swelling in the road in front of them, a mixture of residents and teens and reporters. Jim Quinn was well known in the community. Well hated, but well known.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to get out,” India said.
Xavier shook his head. “This is crazy. I’m so sorry we’re getting all mixed up in this.”
“It’s not your fault,” she rushed to reassure him.
The police had taped off the gothic mansion and the sidewalk where the truck had been parked, and seized the truck itself. Anita and Rodney had gone to stay in a hotel, according to Demetria’s husband Eric, who happened to run into them as they left in a taxi.
Xavier and India had decided to head out for a meal that evening. They didn’t feel like making reservations, so had decide to meander around in the Ford until they found something interesting. Pizza, maybe, or Chinese. But the street was so jam packed with people it looked like an impossibility. India’s belly growled. “Oh, man, I wish they’d just move. Let’s go see if there’s any way to get through.” She got out of the car and Xavier followed suit.
They pushed through into the crowd and soon realized it was no use at all. “Is there a bus service around here?” India asked.
Xavier shook his head. “It comes like every two hours and we won’t be able to get back. Maybe we should order takeout and meet them at the end of the street.”
“Good idea,” India said. “I kinda had my heart set on our usual. Comfort food, you know?” Their chicken and pineapple pizza was a tradition they’d started at Frankie’s in Benton Point, on their first ever time out together. It had endured for three years.
Xavier slipped his left hand into hers and took out his smartphone with his right. “I’ll make the order right now. They’ve got this new app thing.”
“Why don’t we eat it outside somewhere,” India suggested. “And we can talk about how we’re going to solve this case.”
Xavier looked up from his phone. “You know, normally I would say you’re crazy, but that’s exactly what we have to do. That Morgan guy wants to pin it on my dad so bad, I can see it.”
“Me too.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that,” a voice said behind them.
They spun around to see an Asian American teen boy looking at them. He was well built, with wide shoulders, and arms so bursting with muscle India thought he must spend every waking moment at the gym. But his face was soft, with a real friendly handsomeness about it. He was the kind of guy everyone in India’s high school would have drooled all over. The beginnings of a moustache darkened his upper lip.
“What do you mean?” India asked.
He gestured for them to come with him. India looked back at Xavier and he shrugged. They followed him through the crowd back to where it was more sparse. “Look,” he said. “I have video.”
“What do you mean?” Xavier asked. “You have video of the murder?”
“No, of the house. My family just moved in there.” He pointed to a house across the main street from the gothic house, that looked like the beginning of another subsection. “I want to be a filmmaker, right, and that house really captured my imagination. So I set up my iPhone there to record for like a couple days straight. Then I was gonna speed up the footage, you know how they do, fast motion. To show a long passage of time in a couple seconds. But when I was editing it, I found someone messing around outside the house, then they go in back and I can’t see them anymore.”
“Who?” India said, feeling her heart beat faster. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know his name,” the young man said. He looked at Xavier. “But the other white guy that lives on your street.”
“Maurice.”
“I guess,” the young man said. “Looks like he’s got a fashion sense.”
Xavier nodded. “Yep, that’s him. Listen…”
“Joey,” the young man said. “Joey Xiang.”
Xavier shook his hand quickly. “Xavier.”
“India.”
“Joey, when can we watch this tape?” Xavier said.
Joey shrugged. “Now, if you want. You can both come up to my room. That’s cool with me.”
“Sure,” India said immediately.
As he led the way back to his house, he said, “It’s totally crazy, like, I was gonna do a movie about a haunted house or whatever, or even some kind of murder mystery, I wasn’t even sure yet. And then the guy just goes
and dies? I almost… I know it’s crazy, but I almost feel like I brought it on. Like I imagined it, then it happened.”
“Of course not,” India said. “No way. Thoughts are just thoughts, that’s all. They don’t have much power.”
Are you sure about that, mami? Luis popped into her mind.
India was annoyed. Are you trying to tell me this teen boy killed Jim Quinn with his mind?
She heard some kind of cosmic laughing. No, stroppy. I’m just saying thoughts have so much power you don’t even realize.
For some reason, India felt indignant. Like what?
You’ll see, Luis sent over to her. She got a flash of him in a cold place somewhere. That happened sometimes, that she could get a tiny glimpse of where he was. In due time.
CHAPTER 4
Joey’s living room was packed high with boxes, and they had to weave their way through precarious looking stacks to make their way to the stairs. He’d asked India and Xavier to slip off their shoes, and India watched as her stripy socked feet sank into what was obviously a brand new carpet, soft and the color of mulberry. She wondered how they were going to decorate the room to complement the bold shade.
“We just moved from Houston,” Joey said. “I wanted to stay there – there’s nothing to do here - but you know how it is, parents run the show.”
Xavier chuckled. “Yep, until you’re paying the bills for yourself.”
As they went up the stairs, Joey made a humph sound, obviously annoyed with Xavier’s comment. “Yeah, well, I would just quit school and get a job and stay in Houston, but I wanna go to college to do filmmaking.”
“Wow, that’s a really interesting choice,” said India. “I’ve never met anyone who’s done that degree.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve never met me before,” Joey said as they reached the landing at the top of the stairs, which was also an obstacle course of boxes and plastic crates. He then opened a door and ushered them inside. The room was sparse and bare, with only a single bed made up with a white sheet, and a couple of outfits strewn across the floor. However, a desk had been neatly put together, along with a whole computer set up that looked like it had been painstakingly organized. Joey even smiled when he saw it. Leaning over and grabbing the mouse, he said, “I just put it on my movie maker program here. One sec.”
