by Kylie Logan
“Why?” Eileen wanted to know.
All Jazz could do was shrug. “We’ll let Detective Lindsey figure that out.”
He mumbled what might have been an agreement, but he had a suspect in the other room, and more information to find out before he talked to Eddie.
“So up in the attic today…?”
“There was something inside that door out to the roof,” Jazz told him. “And someone, maybe Eddie, who came up there this morning and took it away. I’d say it was about…” She held her hands about a foot apart. “Probably about that big from the shape of the dust marks on the floor. Whatever it was, maybe it has something to do with Bernadette’s death.”
“Maybe,” Lindsey conceded, but it was all he would say. He called the station and asked for backup and a tech who could look over the attic again, and when he was done he went into Eileen’s office and closed the door behind him.
“Eddie?” Eileen’s voice shook, and she dropped into the chair behind Jazz’s desk. “I know Loretta always said he was a screw-up, but a murderer? It’s hard to believe.”
“It is. Still, you’d be the first to tell me none of us can ever know the secrets of another person’s heart,” Jazz reminded her. “Sometimes there’s great good hidden.”
“And sometimes, great evil.” Eileen shook her head. “And he attacked you?”
“It sure looks that way. Whatever he was hiding up there in the attic, he didn’t want to take the chance of me poking around and finding it. I was asking questions, and I guess he thought he could scare me off.”
“You should have called me Friday night when it happened.”
“I called Nick.”
A smile lightened Eileen’s expression. “See, sometimes good things can come out of bad.” A car door slammed outside and she glanced toward the door. “Go and let the other cops in, will you, Jazz?”
She did, and when she let Lindsey know the cops were there he instructed them and the tech who arrived soon after to go up to the fourth floor. Jazz led the way, unlocked the door for them, but knew better than to butt in where she didn’t belong.
She got back downstairs just in time to see the two cops haul Eddie out of Eileen’s office. This time, there were handcuffs around his wrists.
“It was just a little weed, man!” Eddie’s voice was tight, desperate. “And yeah, sure, so I did jump Jazz. I didn’t really hurt her, and I didn’t kill nobody. I swear, I never laid a hand on that crazy teacher.”
He was still saying it when they hauled him out of the school, and as she watched them go a thought hit Jazz out of the blue. “Eddie’s the one the girls have been hearing walking around upstairs.”
Eileen sucked in a breath. “The haunted attic! We should have known. You don’t suppose…” She made a face. “He wasn’t the angel Bernadette heard?”
“I think Taryn spilled the beans about that. She told me to ask Cammi and Juliette about the angels. It was them. That explains why they weren’t doing what they were supposed to be doing at Drama Club. They’d wait for Bernadette to go up to the chapel after school, cut out of play practice, and—”
“Whisper so that the walls caught their voices and Bernadette thought it was angels.” Eileen sighed. “It was cruel.”
“And I have no proof,” Jazz admitted.
“But I’ll bring them in anyway. Along with their parents.”
“Bernadette knew it!” Jazz thought about the prayer cards that had been destroyed, about the day she found Bernadette distraught outside the chapel. “It’s why she lost her faith.”
“Poor thing.” Eileen shook her head. “She thought she was communicating with heaven and she found out it was just a prank. If they admit what they’ve done—”
“You’ll forgive them?”
Eileen’s jaw tightened. “I’ll expel them. There’s no excuse for being that mean. We should have looked into it more. We should have checked the attic when the girls talked about ghosts.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. There was never any reason. But if Eddie was stashing drugs up there…” Jazz let the thought float around in her brain for a bit. “I don’t suppose it’s odd he never found Bernadette’s body. It was in that little room and that’s not where he was hiding the drugs.” Thinking it through made her brain hurt, and Jazz scraped her hands through her hair. “Why would Bernadette want a key to the attic? And if she had one…”
She thought back to coming down from the attic earlier that day, to finding Sam Tillner waiting in her office.
“He could have gotten hold of it,” she said. “Sam Tillner. If Bernadette had the key, and if Sam found it…”
“He claims he never saw her. That they never spoke, except for the day he delivered the pizza.”
“There is that.” Jazz’s shoulders drooped along with her spirits. She looked over at the grocery bag Tillner had brought with him that morning. “He delivered more of Bernadette’s things.”
“Worth looking through?” Eileen wanted to know.
“Probably not,” Jazz admitted, but she got the bag anyway and dumped it on her desk.
The blue and cream note cards fell out first. They were unused, and she set them aside. Eileen paged through the book of daily devotions, but except for a prayer card from Bernadette’s mother’s funeral, there was nothing in between its pages.
“A stub from a movie ticket. The twentieth-anniversary showing of Agnes of God. Why am I not surprised?” Jazz set it aside. “A printout from the library. She took out a book…” The print on the receipt from the library was faded, and Jazz squinted to read it. “A book about forensic investigation. That’s weird, considering.” She set that aside, too.
“Here’s a note from Odessa Harper.” Eileen held it up for Jazz to see. They both knew the name, the attorney Bernadette was consulting about suing the school. Eileen read over the note quietly, then passed it to Jazz.
“‘I had no idea. I need to explain,’” Jazz read the note aloud. “‘Can we talk?’” It was dated three years earlier, two days before Christmas break.
She looked at Eileen. “You think there’s any chance Odessa Harper was the woman Sam Tillner saw in Bernadette’s office when he delivered the pizza?”
There was a clock on the wall opposite Jazz’s desk and Eileen checked it. “It’s not five yet. I bet she’s still at the office. I hear attorneys keep long, lousy hours. Kind of like school principals.”
CHAPTER 19
For the second time that day, Jazz made a trip to downtown Cleveland. The offices of Forestall, Clemons, and Stout were located just at the spot where downtown dipped into what was known as The Flats, the area on both the east and west banks of the Cuyahoga River that was once the city’s industrial heartland and these days was all about clubs, restaurants, and upscale real estate.
The building had stood looking over the river for more than one hundred years. It was solid and strong. No doubt that’s why the law firm had decided to anchor itself there. Solid and strong was good for business.
The law offices were on the third floor and the reception area featured a window that looked out over the slow-moving boat traffic on the river, a way to entertain waiting clients, no doubt, especially when an ore carrier went by, guided down the impossibly twisting river by a hardy tug. The maneuver always fascinated Jazz—a little technical prowess, a little magic—and she wouldn’t have minded waiting and hoping for a freighter to come through, but she never had a chance.
“Odessa Harper?” she asked at the receptionist’s desk. The nameplate said she was Miranda.
The girl was young and eager looking when Jazz walked in, but at the mention of the name her brows dropped and her mouth pursed. “Who?”
It had been a long and eventful day, so Jazz congratulated herself when she managed to keep her smile in place. “She’s an attorney. Her office is here.”
“I don’t think so.” A woman in a trim dark suit walked into the reception area and Miranda called her over. “Ms. Hyland, thi
s woman is looking for someone named…” She glanced at Jazz.
“Odessa Harper,” Jazz told Ms. Hyland.
The woman was whip thin and stood as upright as if there was a steel bar in her spine. She had iron-gray hair and a pinched mouth that at the mention of the name puckered even more. “Ms. Harper? Hasn’t worked here in years,” she said. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Jazz bit back her disappointment. “I hoped to talk to her about one of her former clients, Bernadette Quinn. You might have heard about her on the news; Ms. Quinn, she was—”
“The skeleton!” Miranda was a news watcher. Or a news reader. She flushed the color of strawberries. “Wow! Are you a cop or something?”
Her question dissolved into a burble at an uncompromising glare from Ms. Hyland.
The look might have been enough to intimidate poor Miranda, but it wasn’t about to stop Jazz. “Ms. Harper sent a note to Bernadette Quinn, asking for a meeting. I just wondered if you had any idea if that meeting actually took place, and what they talked about.”
Ms. Hyland’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “Attorney-client privilege” was all she said before she turned away.
“Except her client is dead. Murdered.” Jazz took a step toward Ms. Hyland and stopped when she did. “If you could just tell me where Ms. Harper is working now, I can contact her there.”
Ms. Hyland turned and gave Jazz the same look Miranda got when she dared to show some interest in the purpose of Jazz’s visit. “I have no idea where she’s working. And there’s no use asking anyone else. I’m the office manager. If anyone knew, it would be me. You did the right thing asking me about this matter, Miranda.” She turned to the receptionist. “And the wrong thing injecting lurid sensationalism into the discussion. See me in my office. Now.”
Ms. Hyland sailed on and Miranda, still red-faced but no longer from excitement, scampered after her and disappeared into the first door down a long, paneled hallway.
“So much for that,” Jazz mumbled to herself. She’d already turned to leave when the door of the reception area popped open and Mark Mercer walked in.
“You!” His expression said he knew Jazz; he just couldn’t say from where. At least not at first. “I met you at the cemetery.”
“That’s right.” She closed in on him. “I just stopped by to talk to Odessa Harper, only I found out she’s no longer with the firm. Ms. Hyland couldn’t tell me where she’s working now, but you worked side by side with her, right? You must know.”
Mercer glanced down that long hallway to the door of the office, now shut.
“It’s a beautiful afternoon,” he said.
It took a second for Jazz to catch on. “Nice enough for a walk.” She slipped out the door and rode the elevator to the first floor. She stood out on the sidewalk for a minute or two, and just when she was finally convinced Mercer had given her the slip he stepped out of the building, put a hand through her arm, and walked her around the corner and into the alley between the building they’d been in and the Spanish restaurant next door. He was right, it was a beautiful afternoon, but in the shade of the stone building it was chilly. Jazz untangled herself from him and stepped back.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing. Honestly. But if Hyland the Harpy found out I’d talked to you at the cemetery…” He whistled low under his breath. “There are some things she’s better off not knowing.”
“And some things she’s better off not knowing you know?”
He nodded.
“Like the fact that even though she was a client, you and Bernadette had a relationship?”
Mercer’s shoulders shot back and his mouth twisted. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
“Except you went to the cemetery to pay your respects.”
“Yeah. Well.” A moment of bluster was all he could maintain. He shuffled his feet and looked at the pavement. “I…” When he looked back up at Jazz again, there were tears in his eyes. “We didn’t know each other very long, me and Bernadette. But there was a real connection, one I’ve never felt before with anyone. I loved her.”
Somehow, she’d never thought of Bernadette as a woman who could be loved, and Jazz took a few moments to align this new reality with what she knew about Bernadette. She hoped for a cheery comeback. Something like How wonderful! or I’m so happy for you. But all she could manage was “She could be difficult.”
“Yeah.” Mercer chuckled. “It was one of the things about her that was so adorable.”
Adorable was another word that did not come to mind when she thought about Bernadette. Jazz tried it out for size. “Adorable. Right. That’s why you came to the school to see her.”
He nodded.
“Then why did you argue?”
“Because she was adorable. And difficult.” Two men in suits walked by out on the sidewalk and Mercer stepped farther into the alley and stood as still as a statue until they passed, and when they did he let go a breath. “Forestall and Clemons,” he said. “They’d wonder what I’m doing out here by the Dumpster talking to you.”
“You could tell them you were explaining. About the woman you loved and why you fought with her.”
“Because she…” He threw his hands in the air, turned, and walked as far as the door that led into the kitchen of the restaurant next door, then came back again in Jazz’s direction. “I wanted to marry her.”
“And she…?”
“She said it was sudden. She said it was too soon. But then, she said yes. I can’t tell you how happy it made me! Bernadette was everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman. She was dedicated to her work and she was so loving. She really cared about her students.”
Jazz remembered what happened at the cemetery, how Mercer had turned tail and run at the mention of Maddie’s name, so she moved to the very center of the alley, blocking his means of escape. “She cared about one of them a little too much.”
He glanced out to the sidewalk, but Mercer knew he didn’t have a chance to get by her, not without bowling her over. He wasn’t the type, Jazz knew. No man who could actually be in love with Bernadette Quinn would ever be that nasty.
“Maddie Parker, yes.” Mercer nodded. “She loved Maddie.”
“Why her?”
“Because she knew…” Mercer’s mouth twisted. “The secrets, they belong to Bernadette.”
“But maybe if you share them, we can find out what happened to her.”
“Really?” There was a flash of hope in his eyes, but it lasted only a moment before it faded, then flared into fear. “You don’t think I killed her, do you?”
“You fought with her.”
“It was about Maddie,” he admitted. “Bernadette had been warned by the school. She wasn’t allowed to tutor Maddie any longer. She came here to see Ms. Harper. That’s how I met her. We discussed her case. She explained how the people over at the school wanted her to keep away from Maddie and how she couldn’t. She said Maddie really needed a friend.”
“Because…?”
“Well, because of her family situation for one thing.”
“The mother and father who are doctors? The big home in the suburbs? The chance to have an experience living in a foreign country this coming year? To attend the college of her choice?”
“Bernadette knew Maddie’s parents were successful. She thought that was good. Of course she thought that was good. But she also knew there was a thread of sadness in Maddie, a feeling of not being connected. You know, because she’s adopted.”
Jazz didn’t know, but she made a mental note to ask Eileen about it. “You fought about Maddie being adopted?”
“We fought because I suggested to Bernadette that maybe she should back off a little. Give Maddie some space. Let things cool down at school. Not rock the boat. I knew how much she loved teaching, and I didn’t want her to lose her job. And she told me—” His voice broke. “And she told me she could never abandon Maddie. She told me that if I didn’t understand that, then
I was not the man she thought I was. That was right before she told me she never wanted to see me again.”
“She broke up with you? Over Maddie?”
Jazz could barely believe it, but then Mercer couldn’t, either. Now, like it must have done when Bernadette broke the news, heartbreak etched his expression. “I told her that if she toed the line and kept her job at St. Catherine’s, well, maybe she wouldn’t be tutoring Maddie every day, but they could still see each other. Bernadette could still offer the girl encouragement. I pointed out that we’d have children of our own, but that didn’t matter to her. And now, with Bernadette gone, none of it matters.”
Jazz was afraid he was right. All that mattered now was the bones that had once been a woman, the killer who needed to be held accountable. All that mattered was finding out the truth.
“Where can I find Odessa Harper?” she asked him. “I think she might have met with Bernadette shortly before the murder.”
Drawing himself from the past, Mercer twitched his shoulders. “No one knows.…” A breeze zipped down the alleyway and Jazz shivered. “She left,” he said, as simple as that. “One day she was here, and the next day she was gone.”
A curl of uneasiness coiled in Jazz. “Wait a minute, you’re telling me that first her client disappears, then Ms. Harper does. And no one thought anything of it?”
“No, no. It was nothing like that. Nothing mysterious or anything. Ms. Harper, she sent a resignation letter.”
“Just like Bernadette did,” Jazz murmured.
“Well, I guess that’s not all that unusual, is it?” Mercer asked. “If you’re unhappy with your job—”
“Was she? Unhappy? We knew Bernadette was; that’s why we never questioned her leaving. But Ms. Harper, was she unhappy here?”
Mercer made a face. “Do you know attorneys? Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they have hearts and souls. Knowing if they’re happy or unhappy is way out of my league.”
“She never said anything to you? About leaving?”
“Well, she wouldn’t. Not to me. I’m only a lowly paralegal.”
“And she left when?”
