by V. M. Burns
He held up a hand to stop my tirade. “She does know it, and it means a lot to me that you believe in me.”
“We both do,” Nana Jo said.
He nodded. “Thanks. But she said the case against me is pretty strong. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence and the district attorney wants to show the community he’s tough on crime.”
“Why that two-bit, lily-livered, attention grabbing, snake oil salesman,” Nana Jo sputtered. “He’d arrest an innocent man just to get his name in the paper. I’ve got half a mind to march down there and give that young whippersnapper a piece of my mind. I—”
Dawson held up both hands. “Whoa. Hold on there, Mrs. T.” Dawson fought back a smile. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think making the district attorney mad is going to help.”
“He’s right. As much as I hate to admit it, he’s just doing his job.”
Nana Jo wasn’t one to go down without a fight. “No, he isn’t. His job isn’t to arrest innocent people. His job should be to get to the truth. I guess that’s just too much for those pea brains.”
Something Dawson said had been niggling at the back of my mind. “Wait, why are you going to stay on campus? I don’t understand.”
He avoided eye contact. “If I’m going to be arrested, I think it would be better someplace else.”
At first I thought he was saying he would be embarrassed if Nana Jo and I were there to see him arrested by the police, but something in his eyes told me there was more to the story. “Dawson, I can’t lie and say it wouldn’t make me sad to see you arrested. But knowing you’re innocent makes it easier. If you’re worried about me and Nana Jo, please don’t be. We’re a lot tougher than we look.”
“Darned straight,” Nana Jo added.
Dawson still avoided eye contact and shuffled his feet around. “It wouldn’t look very good for the bookstore to have one of your employees arrested.”
I got up and walked around the counter and lifted his head so he looked me in the eyes. “Dawson, I appreciate your concern, but I don’t give a flying fig what people think. This is your home and you don’t have to leave it for fear of what people might say.”
His eyes filled with water, and he looked like he wanted to say something but wasn’t able to find the right words.
I gave him a hug, and he put his head on my shoulder and wept.
We stood there for several moments and then he stood up straight and wiped his face with a dishcloth. “Thank you, Mrs. W. Thank you both.”
Nana Jo had been weeping into a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Now that we’ve gotten that off our chests, it’s time to get busy. If the authorities won’t figure out who killed that . . . girl, well, then, I guess we’ll just have to do it for them.” She took another sip of her coffee.
As much as I hated to admit it, Nana Jo was right. Jenna would do everything she could to protect Dawson legally. However, the police and Detective Pitt weren’t going to look for another murderer when there was so much evidence against Dawson. Unless we stepped in and found the killer, an innocent man would go to jail.
The rest of the day went by in a daze. My mind was only half engaged on books. The other half of my brain scrambled to think through what I knew about Melody Hardwick. Several months ago, when the realtor who listed this building for sale was killed in the back courtyard and the police thought I was the murderer, Nana Jo and her friends from the retirement village helped me find the real killer. The girls used their vast collection of family and friends to get information to solve the crime. I wondered, was it merely luck that helped us put the pieces together or could we do it again. We were scheduled to meet for dinner tonight, so time would tell.
Tuesday was Senior Citizen’s Day at Randy’s Steak House. Half-priced meals, at least for my grandmother and her friends, had become a ritual. The host knew us by name. I was only in my thirties and didn’t qualify for the discounted meal, but I racked up frequent diner points and was only one meal away from a free dinner.
“Alright, ladies. You know why we’re here. Let’s get this party started.” Nana Jo took one last bite of her hot banana pudding and pulled her iPad out of her purse. “Why don’t I start?” She looked around and saw no opposition. “I called Freddie and filled him in on the situation.”
“He’s a hottie, that Freddie. I’d sure like to fill him in on a thing or two.” Irma Starczewski broke into a coughing fit. Irma was a petite woman in her mid-eighties. Her voice was deep and raspy from decades of chain-smoking and she had a mouth like a sailor.
Nana Jo looked over her glasses and down her nose at Irma. “I’ll bet you would. Fortunately, he has better taste. Now, if I may be allowed to continue.”
Irma stuck her tongue out before another coughing spell hit. She looked around discreetly, then pulled a flask out of her purse, and took a swig.
“As you all know, Freddie’s son, Mark, is on the state police. He said the little gold digger had a record a mile long, and Melody Hardwick wasn’t her real name.”
“Nana Jo. Just because you never liked Melody . . . or whatever her name was, doesn’t mean we want to jump to conclusions. We have to try and be as open-minded and fair as possible.”
Nana Jo looked at me with the innocence of a babe. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m merely reporting the facts.”
I smiled. “So, you’re telling me Mark really called her a ‘gold digger’?”
“Well, I might have added that bit myself, but you’re missing the important part. Melody Hardwick isn’t her name.”
“I wonder if Dawson knew.” I looked at Nana Jo, who shrugged.
“Are you going to tell us what her real name is? I’ve got a hot date tonight with a guy who used to work at MISU and I intend to ask about her.” Dorothy Clark was six foot, three hundred pounds, and looked like a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. She was also a helpless flirt with a black belt in aikido. She had a way with men and they melted at her feet. She could give classes. If there was any information to be gotten out of her date, I had no doubt Dorothy would get it.
Nana Jo scanned her iPad. “Elizabeth Mae Simpson.”
Dorothy took a pen and wrote the name on a napkin and passed it to Irma and Ruby Mae.
“Apparently she used different aliases too. Beth, Lizzy, Bessie. Twenty-two, brown hair, brown eyes, and one hundred fifteen pounds.”
“What did she get arrested for?” Ruby Mae pulled her knitting out of the bag she always carried. Ruby Mae was my favorite of Nana Jo’s friends. She was a soft-spoken African-American woman. I thought she was in her eighties, although her skin was so smooth it was hard to tell. She was born and raised in Alabama and she spoke with a southern accent, even though she’d spent most of her adult life in Chicago, where she single-handedly raised her nine children after her husband walked out on them.
“He called her a grifter,” Nana Jo said.
Ruby Mae frowned. “What’s a grifter?”
“I googled it and, I quote, ‘a grifter is a con artist who swindles people out of their money through fraud.’ ”
“Well, I’ll be d—”
“Irma!” everyone yelled.
“Sorry.” Irma put her hand over her mouth and burst into a coughing fit.
“Sounds like that little girl was up to no good.” Ruby Mae knitted. “Looks like our boy, Dawson, dodged a bullet.” Ruby Mae looked up from her knitting. “I’m sorry. Poor choice of words.”
“We know what you meant.” Nana Jo patted Ruby Mae’s hand. “And for the record, I agree. He definitely dodged a bullet.”
“What about the other guy you told us about?” Dorothy asked.
Nana Jo put her reading glasses back on and went back to her iPad. “Oh, yeah. Virgil Russell. Mark didn’t have time to look him up.”
“I’ve got a call into my great-grandson, Ernie. He’s a realtor. He knew about this Virgil Russell person. He’s a bad mother—”
“Irma!”
&nbs
p; “Sorry. Ernie says he’s a slumlord.”
“Did he have any details?” Nana Jo typed into her iPad.
Irma coughed. “I’m having lunch with him tomorrow. He said he’d ask some of his associates. I’m sure he’ll have some information for me.”
“Great.” I was always amazed at how quickly these ladies could spring into action and tap into their connections to get information.
“How is Dawson holding up?” Ruby Mae asked.
I got teary eyed, but now was no time for weakness. We had a job to do. I took a deep breath and told them what Dawson told us this morning.
Ruby Mae sniffed and dabbed her eyes. Irma swore under her breath before breaking into another coughing spell that required a swig from her flask. Dorothy looked stoic and determined.
“Well, things don’t look good, but we can help. We need to get as much information as possible.” Nana Jo spoke like a general rallying her troops.
“I’m going to call Jenna,” I said. “I’m hoping she can tell us whether the autopsy is done. There might be some useful information in there.”
“Good idea.” Nana Jo typed. “I’m going to check with Freddie and see if there is anything else Mark can tell us about Virgil and his business dealings.”
“My granddaughter, Jillian, goes to MISU,” Dorothy said. “I don’t know if she knew Melody or Elizabeth Mae.”
“I think it’ll be easier if we continue to refer to her as Melody.” I glanced around and received nods from everyone. “It’ll be less confusing.”
“Good. I’ll ask my granddaughter about Melody. If she didn’t know her, maybe she knows someone who did,” Dorothy said.
“Sam, I can see your wheels turning,” Nana said.
She knew me so well. “I’m going to the campus too. I want to talk to the athletic director about Dawson.” I looked down. “It would be horrible if he lost his scholarship because of this. I thought I’d go to the student center and look around too.”
Nana Jo stared. “What for?”
I took a moment to formulate my thoughts. “Remember when that foreign exchange student drowned in the Thomas River last year? There was a memorial service on campus. Lots of students came together and set up a makeshift memorial with flowers and keepsakes.”
“I remember. The newspapers and television cameras interviewed all those kids,” Dorothy said. “There were some really sad stories about his life in Kenya and how his family had such high hopes for him.”
“I was thinking there might be something like that for Melody. If so, maybe I could talk to some of her friends, find someone who knew her really well.”
Nana Jo nodded. “Good idea.”
“Well, it looks like we have a plan of attack.” Dorothy started to rise. “I’ve got to get ready for my date.”
“Just one more thing,” Nana Jo said. “We’ve got to work fast on this one.”
We all looked at Nana Jo with puzzled expressions.
“MISU has a bye week this Saturday, but if we’re going to a bowl game, we need to clear Dawson before the next game.”
Chapter 6
After dropping Nana Jo and the girls at the retirement village, I swung by Jenna’s house. My sister and brother-in-law were both successful attorneys who chose to live in North Harbor, rather than in a South Harbor McMansion. At one time, North Harbor was the place where the elite showed off their wealth, with large Victorian mansions set back from the street with expansive lawns behind wrought iron fences. When the lucrative automotive jobs moved south, so, too, did the wealthy. Those who stayed left their older homes and moved to working-class South Harbor.
Jenna and Tony bought an older, dilapidated Victorian mansion for one dollar from the city and lovingly and painstakingly renovated it. The house was large, at close to four thousand square feet but felt warm and cozy inside. My sister turned the front turret into her home office with a curved desk and one of the house’s seven fireplaces; it was a cozy space which overlooked a lovely rose garden. When I pulled in front of the house, the light in the turret showed my sister at her desk. Jenna must have seen me. By the time I climbed to the top of the porch, she was waiting with the door open.
“Come in.”
I laid my purse on the table inside the door and followed my sister into her office. “Where are Tony and the twins?”
“Tony had to work late and the twins went to a poetry reading.”
I must have looked as surprised as I felt because Jenna laughed.
“I know. I was as surprised as you look. Quincy Troupe is doing a reading and they have dates.”
“Ah . . . okay, that explains it.”
I didn’t read a lot of poetry, but I was familiar with Quincy Troupe. He wrote a biography on jazz musician Miles Davis and a poem about former basketball hall of famer, Magic Johnson. If the twins went to a poetry reading, Quincy Troupe would be the poet.
She returned to her chair behind her desk, and I sat on the Victorian love seat we’d picked up at a yard sale and she’d reupholstered. Every time I saw that love seat, I smiled at the memory of Jenna and I trying to cram it into the back of my SUV without damaging it more than time and generations of wear and tear already had. The ornately carved mahogany wood with its overstuffed velvet seat, tufted back, and rolled arms wasn’t my taste, but it fit the house and room perfectly.
“I would ask what brings you here, but I’m sure I can guess.”
“I just came from dinner with Nana Jo and the girls. Any updates?”
She looked at the papers on her desk. “Things don’t look good.” She picked up a file. “She was strangled.”
“Do they know how?”
“Based on the bruising, the killer probably used his hands.”
“Which means . . . ?”
Jenna nodded. “It was probably a man or a very strong woman.”
“When?”
“The coroner believes her death occurred between midnight and two thirty Monday morning. Dawson claims she banged on his door until midnight, although the police won’t take his word for that.”
“Does the medical report say anything else useful?”
Jenna shook her head. “Not really. She’d eaten last around eight.” Jenna scanned the document. “She had sex with someone within the past day. The police are going to want a DNA sample from Dawson.”
“He was her boyfriend. That doesn’t mean he killed her.”
Jenna looked down. “No, but once we give the DNA sample, they’ll know it’s his skin cells under her fingernails and only Dawson’s word for it she was alive afterward.” She nodded. “They’ll arrest him.”
I took several deep breaths to steady my breathing.
“I’m going to take Dawson tomorrow for the cheek swab. We’ll wait downtown. Most likely, they’ll arrest him shortly afterward. The district attorney was a classmate of mine. He’s not the sharpest tack in the box, but he’s no fool and owes me a favor. We’ll have a bond hearing tomorrow afternoon.”
“Do you need any money?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve got a bail bondsman I work with a lot. He’s going to take care of everything.”
No matter how much I blinked, I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my face.
Jenna reached behind her desk and pulled a box of tissues from a shelf and brought them to me.
I took the tissue, wiped my eyes, and blew my nose.
“Sam, I’m sorry. I know how much Dawson means to you, but I want you to be prepared. This is going to get worse before it gets better.”
I looked up. “What do you mean?”
Jenna paced. “The media have already started calling. They’ll show up at your bookstore and stick microphones and cameras in your face. Some may try to follow you. I can prevent them from entering, but I can’t prevent them from setting up their cameras outside on the street. I recommend you don’t make a statement. Let me handle all of that.”
I nodded. “Is there anything we can do?”
“Yeah. Find out as much as you can about her. Normally, I work with an investigator, but he’s knee-deep in other higher-priority cases.” Jenna smiled at me. “Besides, I’m pretty sure even if I told you to stay out of it, you wouldn’t.”
I smiled. “You’re right.”
Jenna looked serious. “Sam, be careful. There’s a murderer out there. Don’t go off on your own. Normally I don’t condone guns, but Nana Jo should keep her ‘peacemaker’ ready. Whoever murdered Melody thinks he’s gotten away with it. He won’t take kindly to anyone who gets too close.”
* * *
Jenna’s words stuck with me throughout my drive home. At home, I let Snickers and Oreo out and stood in the courtyard and watched while they sniffed for the appropriate places to do their business. I noticed Dawson’s light on in his apartment. I found that light comforting and couldn’t help wondering how many more times I’d see it. The tears started again, and I had to shake myself to prevent a breakdown.
When I went back inside, my mind was restless and I knew sleep would be elusive. I avoided the struggle and distracted myself with a trip to the British countryside.
Thompkins entered the library of Wickfield Lodge and stood very stiff and straight in the doorway. He coughed and then announced, “The Duke of King fordshire, Lord James FitzAndrew Browning.”
James entered the library.
“Excellent. You’re just in time for tea.” Lady Elizabeth looked to the butler, who nodded, stepped back, and closed the door.
James was a freckled, fair haired, good natured man with broad shoulders and a stocky build. The Marshes met him six months ago when he came to help his longtime friend Victor Carlston avoid swing ing for a murder he didn’t commit. After the real killer was apprehended, he was best man at the wed ding of Victor and Lady Penelope Marsh. Since then, he’d made many visits to Wickfield Lodge and had become very attentive to Lady Daphne.
“James, I’m so glad you’ve finally come. Now maybe you can tell us what this whole thing’s about,” Lord William announced in his loud, but good natured tone.
Lady Elizabeth shot a glare at her husband. Lord William frowned and pulled out his pipe.
