by Liliana Hart
I unlocked the front door and felt the tension leave my shoulders. The house was still, the hush of quiet overwhelming as I tossed my keys in the little bowl on the entry table. The kitchen was empty, so I headed upstairs, bypassing the second floor.
The entire third floor was the master suite, and I immediately kicked off my shoes and changed out of my clothes. I could see Jack out on the balcony, putting steaks on to grill. He’d already showered and put on a pair of gray sweats and a T-shirt. He had a beer in his head and his earbuds in, and I could see his mouth was moving. He was on the phone with someone.
I chunked my clothes in the hamper and turned on the water in the walk-in shower to blistering hot. Steam billowed out of the open doorway. I didn’t linger, but washed quickly and then turned off the water. I grabbed the towel from the rod and dried off, wrapping the towel around my head while I went in search of clothes. I opted for gray sweats like Jack’s and an old U of V T-shirt that was threadbare in places.
I hung the towel back over the rod and ran fingers through wet hair, deciding to let it dry on its own. I opened the sliding glass door from our bedroom and stepped out onto the balcony, inhaling the fresh scent of trees and listening to the water of the Potomac rush against the rocks below.
Jack was just hanging up the phone when I walked over to him. He put an arm around my waist and I leaned into him, kissing him hello.
“Mmm,” he said. “Hello to you too.” And he kissed me again, a little longer, a little deeper this time.
When I pulled back, my heart was pounding in my chest, and I knew if we kept going the steaks would end up forgotten. There was a small outdoor kitchen on the balcony outside of our bedroom and a table and two chairs. There were heat lamps for the winter and fans for the summer. We spent a lot of time outdoors. The large patio with an upscaled and upsized version of everything was for entertaining others, but this space was just for us.
I went to the small fridge built into the kitchen and got out a bottle of wine. I knew we had work left to do, but one glass would hit the spot. Jack handed me a glass and I poured generously.
“That was Nash on the phone,” he said. “The safe is locked in the conference room. We’ll call the manufacturer in the morning for the override code.”
“Maybe whoever killed her didn’t get the laptop,” I said. “Maybe they didn’t know about the safe.”
“You really think Janet Selby was able to keep that secret?” he asked.
No, I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure anyone on that street would be able to keep a secret if you sewed all their mouths shut.
Jack flipped the steaks and my mouth watered as they sizzled. The day was starting to catch up to me.
“Things aren’t looking good for someone on Foxglove Court,” I said. “They knew her habits, her schedule, her potential worth, and they knew she had a safe. Makes it almost improbable for it to be a random killing. Especially when you factor in time of death.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “We need to look deeper.”
He put each of the steaks onto a plate, and then pulled a salad bowl from the fridge. I could’ve done without the salad, but Jack liked a balanced meal. And I could always drown it in dressing. I carried the salad bowl to the table along with my wine and then went back for the plates while Jack dealt with the grill.
We both dug in and I was about to swallow the first, delicious bite when Jack said, “You looked like you might pass out when Janet asked if we had kids.”
“Technically, that’s not true. I almost passed out when you said not yet.”
He chuckled and took a swig of beer. “Touché. Do kids scare you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I’ve not been around any. But this conversation kind of scares me.”
“It’s not like we’re going to have a baby right now,” he said.
I took a drink of wine. And kept drinking.
“Relax, Jaye. There’s no hurry or pressure. You want kids someday, right?”
“Right,” I said, letting out the breath I’d been holding.
“Me too. But not right now. We’ve got some years for just the two of us before we bring someone else into the mix.”
I cut my steak into little pieces, but didn’t put any into my mouth. “What if I’m not good at it?” I asked. “Having kids, I mean.”
Jack stared at me from across the table. He was so handsome. His face backlit by the waning sunlight. Dark eyes that could always see the real me, even when I tried to hide.
“Why would you think that?” he asked. “You’re amazing. You have more kindness and compassion than anyone I’ve ever met. Look what you do for people you’ve never met before, and for the dead that are brought to you. You’ll be an amazing mother when the time comes.”
“I don’t know how to be that,” I said. “Look how I was raised. Look who raised me.”
“Bullshit,” he said, leaning closer across the table. “Your parents and how they raised you means nothing in this. Because you had good parents. My mom and dad, for example. Vaughn’s parents. Hell, even Mrs. McGowen. You’ll never be what your parents were. I have no doubt in my mind.”
I felt tears prick my eyes and looked down at my plate, hurriedly putting a bite in my mouth.
When we finished, Jack stood and took my plate and put everything in the sink. I still wasn’t used to having a housekeeper. I’d never had one my entire life, and I spent most of my time cleaning things up before Molly came so she wouldn’t think we were complete slobs.
“Come on,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Have you started on the board yet?” I asked.
Jack was visual and needed to lay out all the information on the murder board before the pieces started falling into place. Before we were through, we’d know everything about everyone on Foxglove Court.
“No, not yet,” he said. “But that’s not what I meant about having work to do.” He kissed the side of my neck, and chills pebbled on my skin.
“Jack…”
“Ssh,” he said, turning me in his arms and kissing the corner of my mouth before planting his lips squarely on mine. I sighed and leaned into him.
“But what about work?”
He backed me slowly toward the bedroom and through the sliding glass door.
“I’ll be quick,” he said. He pulled the shirt over my head and released the drawstring on my sweats.
“Not too quick, I hope.”
He chuckled against my neck and fell back with me on the bed. “Not too quick. I promise.”
Chapter Nine
By the time we got dressed and downstairs, it was a little after nine o’clock.
It was weird having such a big house with only the two of us living there. There were several rooms that went unused—spare bedrooms, the music room, the formal dining room. When we had company, it was close friends or Jack’s mom, and we weren’t formal about anything, so those rooms usually had the doors closed. And neither of us played the piano, and no one wanted to hear me sing, so that door remained closed as well.
That wasn’t the case for the office. It was a masculine room, more so than the other rooms in the house, but I loved it. The floor was hand scraped wood, the furniture was leather, and heavy wooden beams supported the ceiling. A big stone fireplace sat in the middle of the wall facing the door—an imposing statement—and floor to ceiling windows flanked each side. The electric shades were pulled down over the windows, but in the daytime, it showed the view of the trees.
It was a peaceful room, and I liked to come in and read in one of the oversized chairs in front of the fireplace, even when the fire wasn’t on. The wall adjacent to the fireplace was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and there wasn’t any space left. Jack had always been a big fiction reader, and his tastes were eclectic—from Steve Berry to JD Robb—and he didn’t care that the books weren’t all hardback first editions. Many of the paperbacks had cracked spines from been read so often. I’d alw
ays been a big non-fiction and academic journal reader, but we’d had a lot of time to do nothing but relax on our honeymoon, and I’d found myself devouring one novel after another.
There was a rectangular table with no chairs, and a desk with a desktop and a laptop on it. Behind the desk was the giant map of Kind George County Vaughn had talked about. To the side was a large white board.
The process of creating a murder board was time consuming, but the visualization was necessary. I’d learned after my first investigation that the things people said got confusing after a while.
“Can you sing?” I asked Jack randomly. I’d known him my whole life and never remembered hearing him sing.
He looked a little startled by the question, and stared at me with brows raised. “I can’t even imagine what spurred you to ask that question.”
We had printed photographs of everyone in the neighborhood and we were placing them in order of where each person lived on the street.
“I was just thinking about the music room,” I said. “We never go in there. No one plays the piano. It’s just weird.”
“I play the piano,” he said, putting up Robert and Carl’s photos.
“I’m sorry, what?” My mouth dropped open in surprise. “How can that be?”
“I took lessons as a kid. I just don’t play often anymore. Honestly, I forget we even have a piano.”
“Do Vaughn and Dickey know you play?” I asked, eyes narrowed.
“Not that I know of.” He grinned at me and put up another picture. “I always told them I had a golf lesson every Thursday. Piano lessons didn’t go with my image.”
“Lies,” I whispered. “A web of lies. Are you telling me you don’t golf? All these years I thought you were some golf pro hotshot.”
“I hate golf,” he said. “I don’t have the patience for it. Never took a lesson in my life. I was just less embarrassed about golf than I was about piano. What did I know? I was eight. And then I was fourteen and I really didn’t want anyone to know. If I’d known earlier how much women love musicians, I would’ve played in public all the time.”
“You’ve never played for me,” I said, hands on hips.
“No need to impress you now. We’re married.”
I tossed a pen at his head and he ducked, laughing.
“You’re going to play for me at some point. It’s one of those marriage rules. No secrets. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you changed the subject away from your singing.”
“The fact that I changed the subject to something no one around here knows about but my mother should be a pretty good indicator of how well I sing.”
“I guess you have a point.”
Once the pictures were up, Jack started making a timeline of events.
“Did you get the report from Chen and Martinez?” I asked.
“Yeah, I looked over it briefly. It’s in my email if you want to print it out.”
I opened the laptop and logged into his email, and then I scrolled down until I saw the attachment from Martinez.
“What happened at the senior center?” I asked.
“About what you could expect,” he said. “In my experience, seniors don’t get too excitable about death. Especially past a certain point. And they certainly don’t hold back what they’re thinking. George Martin told me he’d miss the homemade donuts, and Helen Brubaker told me she’d finally have a chance at winning at dominoes now that Roz was gone.”
“What about the infamous Hank?”
“He admitted that he and Rosalyn had gotten into it a time or two, but he said he was really sorry to hear that someone had gone and murdered her. And then he followed it up by saying he wasn’t surprised because she was a she-devil in disguise.”
“So depending on who you talk to, Mrs. McGowen was a saint or a sinner.”
“Hank’s exact words were that she baked like an angel, but was as mean as the devil. But he would miss the old girl.”
“Sounds like love to me,” I said, shaking my head.
“What we’ve got is an eighty-five-year-old woman who was financially comfortable and loved by everyone. She’s got no next of kin. We’ve got the search warrants for her bank accounts and life insurance beneficiaries, as well as her will, so we should have all of that in the morning. Without family, it’s anyone’s guess who she’s left things to.
“We know she was murdered in the early morning hours of Monday. Sometime between five and seven o’clock, give or take a half hour. There’s always the possibility she was already dead before the members of the running club took off. The killer could have been inside the house as they were running by.”
I looked down at the printed report. “We’ve got a street of thirteen houses. It’s a diverse street—Hispanic, black, white, gay, single, old, young, kids, no kids, financial struggles and prosperity. Nine of the houses are married couples. Three of the houses—Mrs. McGowen, Abby Clearwater, and Doug Roland—are singles. One house is vacant. Four houses have school-aged children. Katie, Robert, and Frank and Edna Bright are home consistently during the day. JoAnn Taylor is a wildcard since she volunteers at various places, but her schedule is flexible. Plus, she’s a real…jerk.”
“She’s nothing compared to Harrison,” Jack said. “I’d rather have a root canal while having a prostate exam than have to talk to him tomorrow. He’s going to make our lives hell.”
“How come you get to swear?” I asked. “That’s not fair.”
“I’m a cop. We’re supposed to swear. Besides, hell is a place, not a swear word.”
“Hilarious,” I said, narrowing my eyes, remembering I’d said the same thing to him earlier.
“What about Tom and Lynette Miller? Aren’t they retired?”
“Tom has said he was going to retire for several years, but he still rents an office in the city complex. He’s doing taxes for most of the businesses in Bloody Mary. Lynette started working part-time at the pharmacy once her kids graduated high school several years back. We still need to talk to them, but my mom said they make frequent trips to Atlantic City, so they’re gone at least one long weekend a month. And apparently, Lynette is a frequent attendee at the bingo hall. They’ve got two grown children, but both live out of state.”
“You talked to your mom today?” I asked.
“She called on my way home. She asked if we wanted to come for dinner Sunday.”
My lips twitched. “She wanted to find out about Mrs. McGowen?”
“That too,” he said, smiling. Jack grabbed a red marker and turned his attention back to the board. “The running club is consistent, so let’s start with that. They meet at the same time, same place, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Monica Middleton, Jenson Davis, Abby Clearwater, Janet Selby, Harrison Taylor, and Robert Planter.
“According to Robert, Harrison never stays with the group. He’s back well before the others, so that leaves him unaccounted for during the window of Mrs. McGowen’s murder. Robert, Abby, and Janet all run together, and then Monica and Jenson bring up the rear.”
I flipped through the pages of Martinez’s report. “Martinez said Monica and Jenson did about a mile and a half total and got back to their respective houses before seven. Monica has to be at the hospital by eight o’clock, so she has to get back in time to shower and change. Jenson owns the State Farm agency in King George.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But I heard he’s opening a branch in Bloody Mary in that shopping center across from the funeral home.”
“Huh,” I said. “It’s becoming a downright respectable street since you busted Denny Kasowski.”
“Don’t think I don’t hear the judgment in your tone,” he said.
“I’m just saying, the man was doing a service to the community. With the price of insurance and drugs, it was helpful to be able to get my birth control pills for less than ten dollars a month. And I have a full six-month supply.”
“Which makes me feel so much better that you’ve been using discount birth control pills.
They could be rat poison for all you know.”
“I haven’t gotten pregnant, have I?” I said, hands on hips.
“No, and you’re not going to either because I’m not touching you again until you throw those away and go to a real doctor.”
We’d started out joking, but I could feel my blood pressure elevating. I wasn’t good at being told what to do. And I really didn’t react well to ultimatums.
“I’m sorry…what did you just say?” I took a step forward and the scar in Jack’s eyebrow turned white. “I thought you wanted to have children.”
“I also want to have children not hopped up on whatever drugs are in your system. I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation.”
“Denny was a doctor. He had access to real medicine and he helped a lot of people. How many senior citizens have died because they couldn’t afford their meds since you arrested him?”
“First of all, Denny was a veterinarian. Second of all, I’m going to pretend like you’re not completely off your rocker right now and focus on the murder at hand.”
“Oh, instead of all the murders of the elderly not getting their meds?”
“Name one person who’s died because of Denny’s arrest.” Jack said.
I hated it when Jack got mad. He got quieter and his tone more reasonable. It drove me insane. Even when he was wrong, and I’m not saying one way or the other whether he was wrong this time, he presented himself in a way that made him look right.
“Glenda Murkowski,” I said.
“Glenda Murkowski was a hundred years old and died in the nursing home,” Jack said, his expression incredulous. “How did Denny’s arrest affect her?”
“Mrs. Murkowski was the picture of health. Denny came to visit her once a month and kept her stocked for her heart and blood pressure meds because the nursing home would sometimes forget to give them to her. They’re overstaffed and underpaid, so that happens all the time. Denny gets arrested and Glenda is dead a week later.”
“What was cause of death?” Jack asked.
