Dead in a Flash

by Brynn Bonner

  “You call us if you need anything, even if it’s just somebody to talk to, okay?” Esme said, wiping the last vestiges of tears from beneath the girl’s eyes with her thumbs.

  Emma thanked us and slipped back into the room. I wondered if anyone would even notice she’d been gone.

  As we walked to the bank of elevators, I saw Ken Dodd tapping on Chelsea’s door and calling her name in a low voice.

  I debated whether to say anything, especially since I’d only met Ken once in passing. I wasn’t sure he’d even remember who I was. He knocked again and pressed his forehead to the door, calling her name a little louder this time.

  “She’s probably sleeping,” I said. “They gave her something to help her rest.”

  “Oh,” he said, recognition dawning as he studied my face. “That’s good. She must be losing her mind. I know I am.”

  “I understand you and Lincoln were friends,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Ken nodded. “We went way back,” he said. “He was a good guy. Maybe too good.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Linc was a principled guy, you know,” Ken said, clearing his throat and plainly struggling to keep his emotions in check. “He’d stand his ground for what he thought was right. Good thing, right? Except Linc never learned the art of compromise and that’s a premium asset in life.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Do the police have any theories at all about who killed him, or why he was killed?”

  “We don’t know any more than you,” Esme said. “But the investigators are doing everything they can.”

  Ken nodded and took a couple of steps backward. “Yes, I’m sure,” he said, sounding dubious. “I’d better get back to my mother now. She’s sort of coming apart, too.” He turned and walked the few steps to his mother’s door.

  “We should just make a little sign that says ‘We don’t know any more than you do,’ and hang it around our necks,” Esme said. She narrowed her eyes as Ken let himself into his mother’s suite. “What do you think of that guy?”

  “I haven’t really talked to him. He seems okay. A little tightly wound maybe. But the work he’s doing sounds pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Esme said, continuing to stare, though the hallway was now empty. “Except we all know lots of cases where people do the right thing for the wrong reasons.”

  “You sound like Patricia,” I said. “She’s quite snarky when it comes to Ken.”

  Esme smiled. “She’s snarky about a lot of things. Doesn’t mean she’s wrong, but it makes it hard to listen to her. That poor husband of hers has his work cut out for him. Seems like she goes out of her way to be disagreeable.”

  “Yet it was Lincoln, the nice guy, who was murdered. Where’s the sense in that? Or the fairness?”

  “Nowhere to be found,” Esme said.

  five

  THE HOUSE SEEMED PRETERNATURALLY QUIET, as if the structure had prepared itself for our sorrow. Esme headed for the kitchen to put on coffee and I went into the workroom and turned on every light to dispel the gloom in the room—and inside me.

  The landline rang and I squinted at the number on the display. Marydale.

  “What in the world is going on back there?” she asked. “We go away for a week and now Morningside is in the national news, and not for something good. What happened, Sophreena?”

  I thought of reciting Esme’s imaginary sign inscription, but we actually did know more than Marydale and Winston. I filled her in.

  “Wait,” Marydale said, “is this the boy you’ve been working with all this time you were gathering the senator’s information?”

  “Yes, though he isn’t—wasn’t—a boy,” I corrected. “He was about my age, mid-thirties. But I think they all thought of him, affectionately, as their boy. They’re in total shock.”

  “What’s Denny saying?” I heard Winston ask from the background.

  “Not much yet. It’s early. No theories about motive and no suspects as far as I know.”

  “Do they even know for sure the poor man was murdered?” Marydale asked. “The news is saying foul play hasn’t been ruled out, but they didn’t say it had been ruled in either.”

  “The medical examiner hasn’t issued the official report,” I said, “but Denny’s saying it was murder.”

  “Cyrus Hamilton must be terribly upset about this,” Marydale said.

  “Cyrus Hamilton?” I repeated. “You know him?”

  “Yes, I know him. Back when he submitted his proposal for the hotel/spa complex, I was on the citizens advisory committee, remember? He had many, many questions about Morningside and I became his unofficial guide. This was years ago; that spa was a long time in the making. And now, only a few short weeks after the grand opening, there’s this terrible tragedy. Why does it always seem so much worse when they’re young? All that lost promise, I guess. In any case I feel bad for Cyrus, too.”

  “I didn’t realize you moved in such rarefied circles, Marydale,” I teased.

  “There’s nothing rarefied about Cyrus Hamilton, Sophreena. He’s as plain as an old shoe.”

  When Esme came into the room, I clicked the speakerphone button and we moved on to lighter talk. Marydale regaled us with their tourist activities, then asked for other news from Morningside.

  “We’ve got no idea what’s been going on in town since we’ve been holed up like fugitives working on the senator’s project,” Esme said.

  “Well, you can venture out into the open now,” Marydale said. “The senator’s birthday has passed. But, oh heavens, what a terrible way to end the celebration.”

  “It was,” I agreed. “But we’re still on lockdown.” I told her about the two projects we’d taken on.

  “What are you two trying to do, invent a whole new profession, forensic genealogist?” Marydale asked. “I wish we were there to help.”

  “I’d say genealogy is always forensic. After all, we gather and evaluate evidence with every job,” I said.

  “I guess that’s true,” Marydale said. “Listen, I know someone who might get you some leads for looking into that fire. She was a first cousin of Martin’s. Or should I say is a first cousin of Martin’s. Does the relationship remain when half of it has passed on?”

  “I guess that depends on your belief system,” I said. Martin Thompson was Marydale’s first husband; he’d been gone for many years now. She had loved him dearly and had stayed close to his family after his death.

  “Well, anyway, her father was a deputy sheriff in Quinn County for a time. He died several years ago. I can’t tell you when he was in office, but she might be able to help. I’ll send along her number when I hang up and call to give her a heads-up to expect your call. She doesn’t answer her phone if she doesn’t recognize the number.” After a few more minutes of chatting we signed off, wishing Marydale and Winston more well-deserved R & R.

  I set up my drawing board with pots of ink, my calligraphy pens, and a large sheet of hot-pressed paper, then took up a sketchpad and started to rough out how I wanted Conrad’s tree and the nameplates to look. Esme settled at her computer and took over the search for more info regarding the house fire.

  “I must be losing my edge,” Esme said after she’d been clicking around for a while. “I saw some of this information on the fire when we were doing the senator’s history, but nothing jumped out at me as being controversial or peculiar in any way. It was a tragedy I hope to the dear Lord I’ll never know the likes of, but I never even realized it was such a hot button.”

  “Me either,” I said, “but we didn’t spend a lot of time on the senator’s early childhood.”

  “True,” Esme said. “Still, it seems to me I should’ve picked up on something just from the fact that they were putting off having a conversation about it until the very end.”

  “What’re you thinking, Esme? Are you getting one of your feelings about this?”

  “Maybe,” Esme said, letting out a sigh.
“For as long as I’ve been aware of my gift, it’s always come in strongest when somebody’s died leaving something unresolved, and that sure seems to be the case here, at least the way that reporter was describing the parents’ reactions. But nothing’s really coming to me except for a distracting buzz in the back of my mind.”

  “Well, maybe you’ve just got to let it develop. You’re always telling me you have no control over this thing and that it seems to be bestowed rather than bade? And by the way, it’s not nearly as useful as you pitched it to me when we became partners.”

  I’d meant it as a joke but I saw Esme wince. “You want to dissolve the partnership?” she asked. I could tell she was straining to keep her voice light.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “I’m stuck with you now, fickle gift and all.”

  I should’ve known Esme couldn’t brook any teasing right now. As the time came closer for her to move, we’d both become more emotional about the pending separation. Esme was dealing by finding piddling reasons to delay and I by picking at her. Neither approach was doing a solitary thing to help with the adjustment.

  “Well, anyhow, I’m not finding much more than you did about the case,” Esme said. “But now I understand why the senator is so thorny about it—the early articles make the parents look like conspiracy nuts. I did find a few newspaper headlines that look promising, but we may have to go old school and actually go out to the newspapers’ morgue to get them. They haven’t gotten that far back with their electronic archiving.”

  “It always astounds me that people seem to think you can find everything in the written history of mankind on the Internet,” I said, studying my sketch and making an adjustment to a tree branch. “They don’t stop to think about the bazillions of documents that haven’t found their way to a scanner yet. Though I do love to fantasize about the day everything will be available from my computer chair. I know my allergies would appreciate it. No more dusty books and papers.”

  “Alas, not in our lifetimes, Sophreena,” Esme said. “And nothing on the Internet will ever displace talking to actual live people, or in my case, some dead ones. I’ll call Marydale’s cousin tomorrow.”

  “Good,” I said, meaning it both for Esme’s plan and the sketch, which I now found satisfactory. I stood and stretched, flexing my hands and shaking out my arm and shoulder muscles vigorously. I knew it looked like I was having some kind of conniption, but Esme was used to my rituals and didn’t comment.

  I dipped my calligraphy pen and made the first broad stroke to create one side of the tree trunk, trying to manage the tension that comes with concentration against the need to keep my muscles loose and movements fluid. I dipped my pen again and just as I was about to touch nib to paper, my cell phone rang, vibrating across the desktop near my computer.

  I knew it was unfair to be annoyed with whoever was on the other end just because they’d almost caused me to ruin a sheet of expensive paper, but still I was irked. I checked the display and saw an unfamiliar number, but with all that had gone on today I decided to answer.

  “Sophreena?” came a breathless voice. “It’s Emma.”

  “Emma, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and I could hear a sniffle. “Everything. Could I talk to you in the morning? Someplace not here; anyplace not here. Is there a coffee shop or maybe a park?”

  “There’s both, Emma, but won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I just need to talk to someone and everybody around here is, you know, like busy. But if you can’t that’s okay.”

  “Of course I’ll meet you,” I said, wincing as I glanced around the workroom and considered how much we had to do yet. “Top o’ the Morning is our regular coffee shop. Shall I pick you up?”

  “No, that’s okay, I can take my mother’s car. I’ll meet you there at eight.”

  I disconnected and frowned at the phone. “Huh,” I said to Esme. “Emma’s upset. She wants to talk to me. Why me?”

  “Plenty of reasons. You have a sympathetic ear and she admires you.”

  “Why would she admire me? She’s one of those pretty, popular girls. I was a nerd at her age, still am.”

  “Maybe she’s got higher aspirations than just being pretty and popular. Ever thought of that?”

  I thought of Emma’s sobs when we’d talked this afternoon in the hallway. She was a girl alternately doted on and ignored. “No, I guess I never did,” I said softly.

  * * *

  The next morning, Emma was waiting at an outdoor table at Top o’ the Morning, her thumbs working little staccato punches on her phone. The place was quiet now, but later the after-church crowd would be jockeying for tables. When Emma saw me, she smiled. It was a weak, tepid smile and it seemed to have required some effort, but I took heart from it.

  I offered to go inside for our order and had to ask her to repeat hers—twice. “Soy latte with an extra shot, cream, light caramel drizzle,” I muttered over and over until I got to the counter and regurgitated it. This earned me an eye roll from Kate, the morning barista, who was accustomed to my standard order, which is a large coffee, light roast if you’ve got it or whatever. But as uncomplicated as I am about my coffee, I’m super picky about my pastries. I want my apple fritters at the peak of freshness. I scrutinized them while Kate stood by with a plate and tongs at the ready. “They came out eight minutes ago,” she said. “I knew you’d ask if you came in.”

  “Perfect,” I said, and ordered two to go.

  Emma couldn’t seem to find a way in to what she wanted to say, so we chatted about neutral topics for a bit. My leg was bouncing under the table, but I tried to act like I had all the time in the world. I told her a little about the town and asked how she was coming along with studying for the SAT test, which she was about to take for the second time, hoping to increase her score. We talked about the college campuses she was planning to visit in the upcoming year, though she had her heart set on Chapel Hill already. As we chatted, she relaxed and eventually worked her way toward the purpose of our meeting.

  “I have a moral dilemma,” she announced. “I know something that will make someone I like look bad, so I don’t want to tell anybody about it. And anyhow, how I know will get me in trouble. But on the other hand, it might be important and I probably should tell someone. Can you see any way I could tell but not have it come out that it was me who told?”

  “I don’t know, Emma,” I said. “I’d need more information. Can you at least tell me what this is about? Is this something to do with one of your friends?”

  Emma sighed. “No, it’s not teen drama or anything. This is serious.”

  “Emma, does this have anything to do with what happened to Lincoln?”

  “I don’t think so but it might. That’s the thing. I don’t think what I know would help anything and it’ll for sure get me in trouble. Big trouble. So I was thinking I’d tell you and then maybe you could help me decide if I have to tell anyone else. But you’ll have to agree not to tell unless I say so.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t make that promise, Emma, not without knowing more. I’ll try to help you if I can, but I can’t promise to keep it to myself if I think it’s important for someone else to know.”

  Emma tipped her cup back and downed the last of her coffee. I thought she was getting ready to leave but instead she drew in a deep breath and let out a growl.

  “Fine,” she said, “I figured you’d say that. But if I get my phone taken away and I’m locked in my room until I’m as old as you, it’ll be all your fault. It’s Chelsea. I like Chelsea; I really like her. And she’s always so nice to me. I don’t want to make her look bad, and after what happened to Lincoln, I worry if I tell what I saw she’ll become a suspect or something. But she’s so, like, hysterical they’re keeping her drugged and I’m afraid by the time they let her come out of it she’ll forget everything that happened. And maybe she saw something. Or heard something. Or knows something.”

  “Saw something when, Emma?”
I asked. “Where?”

  Emma puckered her lips and again I thought she was going to clam up. When she spoke, her voice was a monotone. “She and Lincoln had a big fight on Friday night, when they say he died. I mean a total blowup. Like epic. But couples fight, right? I mean it’s normal to fight and then make up just as passionately, isn’t it? My folks never fight, but it’s like they were born married to each other. They’ve got like one brain, so I can’t go by how it is with them.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m no expert but I believe it’s normal to disagree, maybe even forcefully, for some couples anyway. But Emma, how do you know Chelsea and Lincoln fought?”

  “I saw them,” Emma said, her body sagging. “Out on the exercise trail near that overlook where he, you know, fell.”

  “And when was this?” I asked, my leg now bouncing like crazy.

  “Late,” she said. “That’s the sticky part. I was supposed to be in bed, but I was going stir-crazy up in that room. I wanted to call my boyfriend, but my mom was reading in bed while I watched TV in the sitting area. Mom’s got like supersonic hearing and she has some ‘reservations’ about my choice of boyfriend.” She gave the word the two-finger quotes. “She doesn’t like me calling him every day, or six times a day,” she said with a quick grin. “So I waited until she was asleep and went down to the lobby to call him, but the night clerk kept looking at me funny, so I decided to go outside. Once I was outside I just wandered around while we talked. It felt so good to have a little freedom.”

  “And you went out on the exercise trail?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I didn’t mean to go out that far, but I just sort of wandered off. I’d been out there that afternoon, and it’s really cool and peaceful and there’s nobody around.”

  “Didn’t you get caught in the rain?” I asked, hoping to get a time frame.

  “Later on, yeah. It wasn’t raining when I went outside, but it had been. Everything was wet, but I didn’t mind. Everything looked and smelled fresh, you know? There was lightning, but it was far off and I wouldn’t have gone out that far and gotten caught in the rain if I hadn’t heard Chelsea and Lincoln. I didn’t know it was them at first. I just heard people yelling. I went off the path and into the woods so I could see what was going on. I listened for a while and watched and I thought it was Chelsea and Lincoln but I couldn’t be sure, so I moved closer. Then this huge flash of lightning came and for a second the whole sky lit up and I could see them clear as day. They were waving their arms around and screaming at each other. I was worried something might happen.” She looked up quickly. “I don’t mean like Chelsea killing him or anything, I just mean like, well, I don’t know what I thought exactly, but it looked scary, like they were out of control. So I ducked deeper into the woods and moved up even closer to try to hear what they were saying, but by then the thunder was booming and there was more lightning and I was afraid they’d see me if I went any closer.”