“I’m as shocked as you are,” Evergreen said, “And I haven’t heard a word from B.J. I’m sure she’s very busy. But I have to say that this explains why the girl wasn’t looking after her child. Poor thing.”
“Yes, I thought of that, too,” Ingrid said. “I wonder if that little boy saw what happened and how long he was wandering around on his own.”
“Now don’t get all broody,” Evergreen said. “Maybe he didn’t see a thing, and if he did he’ll forget. Besides, Lady probably showed up as soon as there was trouble and stayed with him the whole time.”
“I hope so, but don’t say that to Benton,” Ingrid said, sounding a little less worried, “What are you doing today?”
“I’m going to take some cookies and sandwiches for the children around to the Wellstons’ house,” she said, “And then I’m going to visit Marcilla Trice.”
“Have you sent in your RSVP for that luncheon?” Ingrid asked. “I just remembered to mail mine and it was a day late, I think. I don’t know why they don’t just let us make phone calls.”
“Oh, I was happy to send the card back in the mail,” Evergreen said, “I responded that I could not attend. It was nice not to have to do that on the phone and make up some silly excuse, but I also called Fitzpatrick’s and arranged to have a place setting of that absurdly expensive china sent from the Tinsley family. It’s from all of us.”
“Thank you for that,” Ingrid said, “But are you sure you don’t want to go? I’ll drive. You know Fulton Chase is a friend of Benton’s, and of course the groom’s father was one of a close friend of his.”
“One of us representing the family is quite enough,” Evergreen said. “I just cannot abide country club luncheons, and I cannot abide Floramae Hegley, even if Pinky Brayburn is a dear and probably paying for the whole thing. You know they’ll have that terrible chicken a la king in the little puff pastries that have to be cut apart with a knife.”
Ingrid laughed, which was always a good thing to hear.
“When Meg gets married someday, I hope you will come to all of her showers and luncheons,” she said.
“I’ve already advised Meg to elope when the time comes,” Evergreen answered. “And promised her a spectacular party afterward if I approve of the young man.”
B.J. had skipped her morning run to spend that time with Darby. Their plan, once they arrived at work, was to arrange to have a one-on-one talk with Roger Wellston. That plan was stalled when Champ Brennan called.
“I would have called you last night if my sister had let me know,” he said. “She didn’t tell me until this morning. Did somebody really murder Kasey? Is Logan okay? I heard that he was outdoors on his own.”
He sounded earnest and concerned, but B.J. reminded herself to think of him as a person of interest.
“Logan’s fine,” she said, “He wasn’t hurt at all and he’s with his aunt and uncle.”
“Good,” he said. “How can I help?”
“We understand that you were living with Kasey Hill for several months, and we need to talk with you. You can have a lawyer with you if you like,” B.J. said.
“A lawyer? I don’t need a lawyer! Are you thinking I had something to do with this?”
His voice was rising.
“You want to know where I was when that happened. I’ll tell you where I was. I was working all day Saturday. You want my supervisor’s number? He’s Brad Hackett. He’ll tell you. That’s why I’m off today, because we all put in time and overtime on Saturday.”
He ran out of breath, and then came back, still sounding frustrated, but steadier.
“You call Brad! He can tell exactly you what we were doing while that storm was going on. So can about ten other guys, but that’s beside the point. I never would have hurt Kasey. I never once raised a hand to her, and anybody who knows me can… and besides that,” he wound down. “I was really over her.”
“I’ll be happy to call Mr. Hackett,” B.J. broke in. “But it will still help us to talk with you. There’s a lot we don’t know about Miss Hill, and we need all the information and insights we can get.”
“That’s what I thought you’d want,” he said after seeming to catch his breath. “Sorry if I yelled. I just don’t want anybody thinking I had anything to do with Kasey getting killed, and I sure wouldn’t have let Logan go running around outside by himself like I heard he did.”
“So we’ll see you at ten?” B.J. asked politely.
“Yeah, are you going to call Brad Hackett first? I don’t want y’all putting me in handcuffs when I get there.”
“I will call him right now,” B.J. said. “Would he be at work today, or at home?”
“At work more than likely. You just ask him. He’ll tell you. Let me give you his number.”
Evergreen arrived at the house on Linnet Lane at half past nine and drove around the block twice before she found a good parking spot. She got out, holding the big bag full of still-warm oatmeal cookies in one hand, and reached for the tray of sandwiches with the other. Then she needed a free hand to shut the door. It was a careful balancing act.
A little blonde girl came running down the steps to help her. Evergreen thought she might be four.
“Hi!” she said. “I’m Anna. Everybody’s bringing us food because our Aunt Kasey went to heaven in the tornado.”
“Well, I brought cookies,” Evergreen said. “Would you like to carry the cookie bag?”
A second older little blonde girl came down the steps.
“Anna,” she said. “Mom said we have to play with Logan. He’s crying again.”
“This lady brought cookies,” Anna said, opening the bag. “They smell SO good.”
She looked up at Evergreen with wide blue eyes and asked, “Can I have one now?”
“Just one for now,” Evergreen said. “I brought them for you and your sister, and for Logan.”
“Logan likes cookies,” Anna said. “And he’s really fussy. Isn’t he, Wendy?”
“He can’t help it,” Wendy said, her hands on her hips. “He’s just fussy now because he lost Bo-Bear,” So he has a hard time going to sleep, just like you would if you lost your silly blue blankie.”
Anna had her mouth full of cookie, and didn’t respond.
Wendy looked up at Evergreen.
“It’s very, very sad,” she said. “Kasey has gone to heaven forever and Logan will be our brother now. He’s used to being with us most of the time, but he wants his Bo-Bear. My mom thinks maybe the tornado blew Bo-Bear away. My daddy’s looked for him over where that big tree fell on the trailer.”
“Bo-Bear started out blue but he got all gray,” Anna said, “He’s lost part of his stuffing and one of his ears is gone, and he was in the tub once and he dried all crookedy. We’re going to get Logan a new bear.”
“But I don’t think Logan will like a new bear as much,” Wendy added, looking wise. “We’ve tried to give him all our stuffed toys and he hit them and cried. It’s very, very sad.”
“That does sound sad,” Evergreen said, “Now why don’t you girls take these cookies and this plate of sandwiches inside for me.”
“Aren’t you coming in?” Wendy asked, taking the tray of sandwiches. “It’s all cleaned up and there are flowers and lots of food.”
“And lots of other old ladies,” Anna said, reaching into the bag for another cookie. “Some came yesterday, and there’s more today.”
“I have some errands to run,” Evergreen said, smiling at the girls. She had just seen Floramae Hegley’s old Buick and wanted to make a quick getaway.
“I’ve checked with his supervisor,” B.J. said to Darby, after relating the earlier exchange with Champ Brennan. “He was definitely working. He sounded like he wanted to be helpful.”
“Grieving?” Darby asked.
“I’m not sure I’d put it that way. He sounded concerned
. He did ask about Logan.”
“Maybe she told him who the kid’s father is,” Darby said. “I’ve been thinking that this Champ guy was probably supporting her and the kid. Once he moved out, she might have been going after the real father again.”
“If he’s even real,” B.J. said.
“Let’s see what Champ tells us about the family stuff and that arrangement,” Darby said. “With him out of the picture, the brother-in-law is the one who interests me the most. Their financial situation is better with Kasey gone. Maybe the killer wasn’t the visitor she’d planned on.”
When Evergreen got home, she went straight upstairs to the small room that had once been Benton’s nursery and now served as her study. Her cat, Loki, was already there. He was an aging Persian, solid black and set in his ways. He had been sulking upstairs since the visit from Max.
She swept around her small wooden table with a sage broom, and then cast a circle around her small wooden table using a rock, several peacock feathers, four quartz crystals and an old matchbook. Once it was done, she stepped inside and lit the four candles that stayed on the table.
North. South. East. West.
She sat down on the old cane-bottomed chair that had been her grandmother’s and said in an entirely practical voice, “This must be solved.”
Loki watched with half-closed eyes as Evergreen sat there waiting for an answer.
After a long wait, she smiled and said, “Yes. Of course. I should have thought of that myself!”
She blew out the candles, stepped out of the circle and went downstairs on a determined search.
She found the ancient chewed up tennis ball in the bottom of the seldom-used china umbrella holder, and took it to the back deck. She made her request and found—to her delight—that she could still throw a ball so straight and fast that it would disappear.
Champ Brennan wasn’t what most people would call good-looking. His hair was receding early and he had it cut very short. He had the scars of teenaged acne, but, more noticeably, he had the muscles that come from daily physical work, and working out at the gym. His handshake was bone-crushing.
B.J. found herself seeing him as one of those good guys going to all his kids’ games when he had some.
She introduced him to Darby who explained that they would be recording the discussion.
“I talked with Councilman Tackett,” B.J. said. “That’s all settled. We know that you worked through bad weather the first part of the afternoon, and were hunkered down with everybody else during the tornado warning.”
“Glad you got that straight,” Champ said. “I’m real sorry about Kasey and I want y’all to get whoever did it, but I was outta there and over her. I mean I was over her even before I was outta there.”
“I understand that you lived with her for a few months.”
“Yeah,” Champ said. “I had just started working at the lumber yard—moved down here from Forsythe to take the job and live with my sister and her husband until I got my own place. I met Kasey at the Big-Pig barbecue cook-off. We had two dates, and I really fell hard. My brother-in-law grew up here, and he told me Kasey was kinda wild, but it looked to me like she was over that. Anyway, I had a fight with him and my sister. I thought I was in love with Kasey and I’ve always liked kids, so I moved in with her and Logan.”
“Why didn’t it work out?” B.J. asked.
“You really need to know that kind of personal stuff?”
“Neither of us knew her,” B.J. said. “We’re trying to understand what she was like and why somebody might have killed her.”
“Just anything that would help us find her killer,” Darby said. “What problems was she having?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Champ said, relaxing a little. “One thing I know is that unless Holly and Roger were helping her, she was probably broke. She didn’t make all that much at Chloe’s even with the tips, and then she got paid on Friday but whatever she had just disappeared.
“She was always buying clothes for herself or something for Logan, and when a bill showed up, it was like she didn’t know what it was. She had a checking account but she never knew what she had in the bank, so she’d bounce checks. It was like she was still a kid and her paycheck was her allowance. I wound up paying all the power and water bills while I was there, and buying the groceries. I’m not complaining about that, but the thing is that it probably hit her hard when I moved out.”
“So she’d have money problems,” Darby said. “What else?”
Champ bit his lip.
“She had started drinking again, and she was hanging around with a kind of wild crowd, when she got a chance.”
“Drinking again?” Darby asked.
“Yeah, she had stopped drinking when she found out she was pregnant, and I guess that was the end of the partying, too. But she was starting all that up again.
“While you were living with her?” B.J. asked.
“Yep,” he said, “I turned out to be a built-in bill payer and a built-in babysitter bein’ made a fool of all at the same time. That’s why I got myself outta there. You know the Red Barn up near McFall?”
B.J. could sense that he was ready to tell the whole story, now.
She and Darby both nodded. The Red Barn was a bar with a dance floor that was best known by the Sheriff’s Office as a source of trouble. It was a place where drunk driving started and fights broke out in the parking lot. Darby knew that there were occasional drug sales in that same parking lot. B.J. had always been thankful that it wasn’t in her jurisdiction.
“I guess I might as well tell you the whole story,” Champ said, “Because enough people know it that you’ll probably hear it sooner or later. This was the last night I lived in that trailer.”
He shook his head and frowned.
“See, it was a Friday night and she wanted to go out, but I was tired and was working that Saturday, and I told her I wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t think we should go dumping Logan on Holly and Roger again, so Logan’s asleep, and I’m watching TV and I hear her car pulling out of the driveway.”
“I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer, so I just figured there wasn’t a thing I could do. Logan was asleep and I sure wasn’t going to wake him up and go chasing after her. Anyway, that was about nine, and I didn’t hear a thing until close to eleven thirty when the manager out at the Red Barn calls me and says I’d better come pick Kasey up, because he had taken her car keys and she’s collapsed in one of the booths. He sounded like he wanted her outta there, and nobody seemed interested in driving her home.
“Anyway,” he frowned at the memory. “I had to get Logan up, and of course, she had the car seat in her car, so I’m driving ten miles up there in my truck, breaking the law with this half-asleep kid in my lap, and I get there and I had to take him in with me. There’s no way you could leave Logan in a truck by himself. He gets into everything.”
He was on a roll now, and B.J. thought to herself that it was probably the first time he’d told the whole story to anybody.
“Anyway, I walk in holding onto Logan in his pajamas, and there she is, out cold in a booth by herself. So I finally get her up with one arm, and out we go. Everybody there is looking at me like I must be the world’s biggest fool. So then I’ve got her in the truck, and I’m holding Logan, and he’s getting sleepy and cranky and wanting this bear of his.
“When I got home, I just left her in the truck until I could get him settled down with that bear and then when he was asleep, I went back and got Kasey inside and dumped her on the bed and I started packing my stuff up so I could leave first thing in the morning. I had everything I owned in the back of that truck, but I still couldn’t leave Logan alone with her, ‘cause she was throwing up and then falling back in bed, and not making any sense.”
Darby was nodding as if the ending of the story seemed right to him.
/> “And that’s how I wound up making Roger mad, just in case he’s got something to say about it,” Champ said. “See, I had to be at work by seven thirty, and Logan was awake and running around, and Kasey was out cold. I got him dressed and gave him breakfast, and I just figured whether they liked it or not, the kid would be okay at their house, so I took him there.”
He grinned a little.
“Turns out Roger was the one who came to the door, and he never liked me anyway, and I told him what happened and he just got madder. You know what he was mad about besides being waked up? He was mad ‘cause I left Kasey’s car out at the Red Barn and that car’s still in Holly’s name and he knew they were gonna have to go get it.”
“Did you talk with her after that?” Darby asked.
“No. Like I said, I was over it. She called me that night just carrying on about my taking Logan over there, and how Roger was mad about the car and because I woke them all up. She wanted to know when I was going to be back, like she hadn’t even noticed all my stuff was gone, and I told her I wasn’t coming back. Anyway it wound up with me hanging up and that was it. She called me a few times after that and I didn’t answer or call her back. I just didn’t want anything to do with any of them—except maybe Logan. He was my buddy.”
They sat silently until he broke the silence.
“But I sure wouldn’t have killed her,” he said. “And I hope you catch whoever did.”
“Thanks for telling us all that,” Darby said. “It helps us understand her a little better. Did she ever tell you who Logan’s father was?”
Champ shook his head.
“No. She just got mad when I finally brought it up, got on a high-horse and asked me if I wanted another man supporting her and Logan, and how that was all in the past and she had her reasons for not telling anybody. Oh, and she turned it all around like I was saying something bad about Logan, and I must think she shouldn’t have had him, and on and on. That was the first fight we had, and I didn’t bring it up again.”
Who Killed Kasey Hill Page 5
