Dead in a Flash

by Brynn Bonner

  It didn’t take me long to rue that decision. Yvonne told it with all the tenderness a hammer has for an anvil. There were gasps and protests and shocked silences. But Yvonne plodded on as if reciting a grocery list. “And so, all this fuss over a little biology. I was your birth mother, Conrad, but Marie and Herbert raised you and they were your parents. And lucky you were to have them. Lord knows I wasn’t cut out to be a mother.”

  “But I remember the day he was born,” Dinah Leigh protested. “My mother was pregnant with him when she left Quinn County.”

  “You remember the day we told you he was born,” Yvonne said. “Your mother lost that baby and I was already in trouble when y’all got there. We made the agreement and she stuffed her shirt and kept up the plan. I was a big-boned girl back then and I was able to hide my condition even when I was well along. And then I took leave from work to take care of my sick sister. At least that’s what I told people. We had to make a little adjustment in the baby’s age, so that’s why I kept him at my house for the first few months, so we could keep him out of sight.”

  Conrad spoke, his voice constricted. “So I wasn’t a sickly baby?”

  “You were fit as a fiddle,” Yvonne said.

  “But I saw him,” Dinah Leigh said. “I saw him when he was a newborn.”

  “You saw him through the window at my house,” Yvonne agreed. “We told you he was too frail for you to see him close up or hold him. You saw a baby’s face. We had him all wrapped in blankets. You were young and anyway, you didn’t know anything about babies; you’d never been around any. And everything worked out fine for everybody, so I don’t see why everybody’s getting so het up over this.”

  “So,” Conrad said, “Dinah Leigh, we’re actually cousins, not siblings at all. They lied to us all those years. I feel I’ve lost something. Something very precious to me.”

  “Me, too,” Dinah Leigh said, wiping at her eyes with an already sodden tissue. “And I’m angry about being deceived. But in the end it doesn’t change anything between us, not really. We’ve been brother and sister all our lives.”

  “What,” Patricia said, injecting herself into the conversation with such force some of us jumped, “does any of this have to do with Marc taking my mother’s jewelry?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Yvonne snapped before I could reply. “Herbert went soft in the head in his last days and left a letter to Conrad telling you all this, which Marie and I never wanted another soul to know. I don’t know what got into the man. I didn’t know the letter existed until these two told me,” she said, jerking her head toward Esme and me. “I was hoping they’d honor my wishes and not tell you about any of this, but they showed up here saying Chelsea was going down to get that letter for them. So I called Marc and told him he needed to get to it and burn it. Patricia, this would not be good for your career if it came out to the public. Marc was looking after you like he always does.”

  “By attacking Chelsea?” Patricia cried.

  “He didn’t hurt her,” Yvonne said. “But I trust he got that letter and did away with it and now nobody outside the family needs to know about any of this.”

  “Idiot!” Patricia spat. “He didn’t think getting arrested for assault would hurt my career?”

  “He hasn’t been arrested. Chelsea won’t press charges—whatever else you can say about her, she’s loyal,” Yvonne said with a swat. “So there you have it.” She spread her gnarled hands as if ending a presentation. “You all know every bit of it and meteors didn’t fall, the seas didn’t dry up, and the world didn’t end. No one else knows other than these two, and I understand they have to keep mum. That only leaves one weak link,” she said, turning a hard stare on Phoebe.

  Phoebe clutched Conrad’s arm. “As long as you don’t try to make me call you my mother-in-law, I’m fine with whatever Conrad decides. But let me go on the record as saying I think you’re terrible.”

  “Duly noted,” Yvonne said. “Can’t say I’m deeply wounded. I’ve got no apologies to make, so if any of you are waiting for that, you’ll be waiting until they’re pouring frozen margaritas in hell. If I had to make the same decision over again I wouldn’t do a thing different. Except maybe visit Herbert more often in his dying days and make sure he couldn’t get his hands on pen and paper.”

  “You had no right to destroy that letter,” Conrad said. “It was meant for me. What did it say?”

  “I don’t know,” Yvonne said. “God knows what was going through the man’s mind. But it doesn’t matter. Now you know and you can all just wallow in this, or you can accept it was all for the best and get on with your lives. I don’t have much life left, so I’m surely not going to squander it fretting about something that happened way back then.”

  I looked around the room. Yvonne was right in one respect. It was all out there now and the world hadn’t ended. But there was pain traced on every face; even Yvonne’s eyes were dark.

  I began to feel like an intruder, and judging by the way Esme was shifting in her chair, she felt it, too. I asked to speak with Dinah Leigh privately and we stepped out into the hallway. “I’m really sorry about this. I wasn’t going to tell you until after the wedding,” I said. “And I’d hoped to break it a little more gently, but I couldn’t hand over research I knew to be false. I’m so sorry for the pain this is causing.”

  “You did your job,” Dinah Leigh said, and I noticed her hands were trembling. “Don’t apologize for that. This will take some getting used to, but we’ll be okay.”

  She slipped back into the room to be with her family, in whatever form that family had rearranged itself into, and Esme and I headed home.

  I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.

  * * *

  Esme and I were so demoralized by the time we got home, we decided to withdraw from the senator’s project as well. It was depressing. Two failed jobs at once; that had never happened to us before. Though technically we hadn’t failed on Dinah Leigh’s job, it had just blown up in our faces.

  There are times you just have to take your losses. We’d be okay financially. We had several small jobs waiting and if we started in tomorrow, we’d be able to wedge those in before our next big job, which would take us to Louisiana, Esme’s old stomping grounds, in about a month. That would give us some time to lick our wounds over these failures and get our mojo back.

  But more important than our business failings, Lincoln Cooper’s murder remained unsolved and that was casting a pall over everything. We’d been so busy since his death we hadn’t had the time to properly mourn the passing of a friend. It seemed to hit me all at once. He was probably killed by someone he knew. And there was a good chance it was someone we knew, too. That thought made my skin crawl and I found myself in the weird position of rooting for Chad Deese to be a killer. This was wholly unfair, since I’d only met the guy once, but if the choice came down to him or Chelsea, J.D., Damon, Ken, or any of the others we knew from Lincoln’s world, the rude reporter got my vote. Now if Denny could just find some way around his pesky alibi.

  We started packing up the materials from the workroom. “I wish I could’ve read that letter,” I said as I put the Nelsons’ memorabilia into an archival file box to be delivered back to Dinah Leigh. “Now I’ll always wonder what it said.”

  “Me, too,” Esme said. “It must’ve been hard for Herbert Nelson to write. I mean psychologically and physically. And judging by the headache I’ve come down with, I don’t think he’s too happy somebody interfered with his message to his son.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair. Yvonne got a chance to confess to her part in the story, if you could call what she had to say a confession,” I said. “But Herbert never had a chance to tell his side.”

  “And now he never will since Marc destroyed the letter. Denny called while I was getting the boxes from the garage. They found burnt paper bits in the wastebasket in Marc and Patricia’s bathroom.”

  “Enough to reconstruct?” I asked, hopeful.

 
; “Tiny bits,” Esme said. “And a few in the toilet bowl. He burned it and flushed it. He really didn’t want that thing getting out and that’s all he had time to do. He had to know shoelaces weren’t going to hold Chelsea long.”

  “No, but that’s what was available on the maid’s cart,” I said, remembering I’d seen it in the hallway when we came to the room. “She had her spray bottles hooked onto the cart by shoelaces. So while he was helping himself to the pillowcase he took shoelaces, too. What I don’t understand is his level of desperation. I guess I am jaded. It probably would’ve caused a minor scandal if Patricia’s family background had gotten out to the public, but I don’t think it would have been an insurmountable one. Politicians have overcome much worse chicanery by their relatives than this.”

  “You forget the candidate,” Esme said. “Benson’s already fighting an uphill battle trying to mold Patricia into somebody likable.”

  “Yeah, well, the incline just got steeper.”

  fourteen

  I FELT FREE AS A bird the next morning as we left the hotel, having resigned both jobs and submitted zeroed-out billing statements. I knew in the days ahead I’d start to dwell on these defeats, but at that moment I was happy to be rid of the burden.

  Lenora and the senator had been very understanding. They’d insisted on payment for the work we’d already done and in turn we’d insisted on a reduced fee.

  Dinah Leigh, on the other hand, flatly refused any reduction. “You did your job, and you did it well, maybe too well,” she said with a rueful smile. “Just because the result is troubling for us doesn’t mean we deserve a refund.”

  “How are you doing with it all?” I asked.

  “We’re still in shock,” she said, “but we’ll be okay. Aunt Yvonne was right, about one thing at least: Chelsea declined to press charges against Marc, though I wouldn’t have blamed her one bit if she had, and I told her so. Cyrus was so upset he wanted Marc evicted from the hotel, so he’s gone on ahead to where we’ll be staying for the wedding in Raleigh. Patricia’s not speaking to him right now and has decided to stay on here with me. I’m so angry with him I don’t want him in my sight. That was a reckless stunt. He could have hurt Chelsea.”

  “It wasn’t the soundest judgment,” Esme said.

  “That’s a generous assessment,” Dinah Leigh said. “Right now, I’m trying to concentrate on the upcoming wedding and Phoebe and Conrad’s impending parenthood and on my happiness for the brother I’ve always loved with all my heart. The rest I’ll deal with later.”

  “Good approach,” I said.

  She held up our bill. “Chelsea’s gone. She left last night. She’s taken a few days off with my blessing and encouragement. I think she’s more upset than I am. She seems to think I blame her for something. That it came to light at all or that she didn’t tell me sooner. I don’t know which. I told her I don’t hold her responsible but that I’m still absorbing everything and I’m not ready to talk about it yet but we’ll straighten it all out when she gets back. She’ll take care of this then,” she said, waving the invoice. “Or I could see if I can find the checkbook. I’m sure I still remember how to write a check.”

  “It’ll wait,” I said. “I hope Chelsea has someone around to look after her. She’s been through a lot.”

  “Oh yes,” Dinah Leigh said. “I wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone, even if she thought that’s what she wanted. She’s gone back out to spend a couple of days with Lincoln’s father.”

  “That’ll probably be good for both of them,” I said, wondering if Lincoln’s father lived near a body of water.

  * * *

  Once we were out in the sunshine with the sweeping front steps before us, I suddenly wished I knew how to tap dance. It would’ve felt so good to do a Ginger Rogers down those steps in a little swirly costume. I had to settle for bunny hopping all the way down.

  “I’m glad you’re so happy,” Esme said. “But you do realize we totally bombed on these jobs.”

  “But our clients aren’t mad, at least not at us. Yes, we took a little financial hit but if it means getting out from under these two cursed projects, I’ll happily eat ramen noodles for a month, cut my own hair, and ride my bike to save gas if that’s what it takes to make up the loss.”

  “Preach it, sister,” Esme said. “Except for the noodle part. That’s just disgusting.”

  Denny came by that evening and he, too, seemed to have more pep in his step. “I can’t stay,” he said, “I’m on a food run. We’ve got Chad Deese in custody. The hotel’s security records show his car was in the visitor lot the night Cooper died, and the tiny hole in his alibi has turned into a big rip. Security video at the gym shows him leaving the weight room and going out the side door just after midnight. He was AWOL for at least forty-five minutes. Enough time to make it to the hotel and back. We brought him in and while we were questioning him, the ME called. He’d found skin scrapings under Cooper’s fingernails. It wasn’t much, but enough to get DNA and the results had just come in. It’s a match for Chad Deese.”

  “Why is he on file?” I asked.

  “He tried to infiltrate a cult out in the mountains a couple of years back to do an exposé. There was a mishap in one of their more bizarre initiation rituals and somebody died. They took DNA from everybody they could round up during that investigation.”

  “What’s he saying?” Esme asked.

  “The usual—he didn’t do it, he’s wrongly accused. But he hasn’t lawyered up yet. We’re trying to keep him talking, see if we can’t give him enough rope to hang himself.”

  I couldn’t decide what to do with this news. Part of me felt relieved, but another part felt guilty for ill-wishing Deese. When I expressed this out loud I got a huff from Esme.

  “Sophreena, much as you’d like to believe in the power of your thoughts, they don’t influence anything that’s already been done. If Deese killed Lincoln he deserves whatever he gets. If he didn’t I trust Denny to get to the truth.”

  “Appreciate the vote of confidence,” Denny said.

  “Keep us posted,” Esme said, handing over a foil-wrapped package that I suspected contained the leftover pineapple upside-down cake she’d made the day before. I watched wistfully as he thanked her and left with the package.

  Another small loss. I love pineapple upside-down cake.

  * * *

  We spent two days in a blessedly normal daily routine. Walks to the coffee shop in the morning, work on several easy-peasy jobs during the day. Esme was cooking. I was spending lots of time with Jack. Denny was feeling better because they seemed to be building a solid case against Chad Deese.

  Esme finally got around to getting some moving boxes and we moved more of her things. The plumber, a friend from Esme’s church who was giving her a deal by working on her house on the side, finished repairing her upstairs shower. The window people were slated to put in new windows on Monday.

  Life was good again. Or should have been, but I’d started stewing. The failures weren’t sitting well with me. I’d made myself a promise not to look at anything about the fire for at least a few months and come at it fresh again. I did, however, plan to contact Chelsea and ask her to try to reconstruct from memory as much as she could remember about the letter Marc had destroyed. It was really bothering me that Conrad never had a chance to know what his dying father wished to tell him.

  I’d decided to pamper myself the next morning by sleeping in, so I hadn’t set the alarm. I was righteously irked when the doorbell rang at seven freakin’ thirty. I knew Esme was already up because I smelled coffee, so I snuggled back under the covers and tried to will myself asleep again. But two minutes later Esme came knocking.

  “Up and at ’em, Sophreena, we’ve got company,” she said. “Make it snappy.”

  I groaned and asked who it was, but Esme had no mercy. “Hurry up and come down dressed,” she said, giving my door one last pounding.

  I found Chelsea, looking rested and more together than I�
�d seen her since before Lincoln died. She was sitting on the sofa in the family room and Esme had brought her a cup of coffee, which she doctored with cream and sugar with calm precision. She was placid. Serene. Spooky.

  “Chelsea would like to discuss something with us,” Esme said, “and she’d like Denton to be here.” She gave me raised eyebrows. “He had a late night; I woke him up. He’ll be here shortly.”

  “Would you like to give us a clue?” I asked Chelsea.

  “I’ll wait until Detective Carlson gets here. It’s complicated and I want to make sure I tell it clearly. I’m sorry; I’m not trying to be mysterious. I just need to wait.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’ll just grab a cup of that coffee.” I jerked my head toward the kitchen and gave Esme the wide eyes.

  “I’m gonna get a warm-up. Can I get you anything else, Chelsea?” Esme asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said, sounding about four ticks below the lowest register of fine.

  Esme whispered furtively in the kitchen. “If this turns out to be just a rehash of that whole situation with the Nelson case, Denton is not going to be happy with me. He was exhausted and he’s only had three hours of sleep.”

  “Has Deese admitted anything?”

  “Through his lawyer,” Esme said. “He says he and Lincoln got into a wrangle earlier that night and Lincoln scratched him when he tried to grab him by the collar. But he’s still claiming Lincoln was fine when they parted ways.”

  “What do you suppose she wants?” I asked, nodding toward the family room. “She was really outraged at the idea that Aunt Yvonne wouldn’t pay for her hand in the forgeries and all that, remember? Do you think she’s going to push Denny to look into it? The false papers, I mean? That’s not even in his jurisdiction.”

  “I guess we’ll find out shortly,” Esme said.

  Denny arrived a few minutes later, looking exactly like a man who’d gotten only three hours of sleep.

  After he’d been supplied with a cup of wake-up, he sat across from Chelsea in the big armchair Esme had bought especially to accommodate his body. It would soon be going down the street to its new abode and I had the thought I might get a Jack-sized chair to replace it.