by Libby Howard
That was totally unfair. Miles was starting to get a bit of an early-onset, childless man, dad-bod but that wasn’t my fault. And he was hardly going to be breaking scales. Although carrying a few extra pounds to this lean-mean-fighting-machine was probably a worse crime than murder.
“I’m Kay Carrera with Pierson Investigation and Recovery Services,” I announced, deciding to ignore both the muffin lady comment and the one about my enabling Miles’s weight gain. “Deputy Pickford tells me you’re in charge of the Mary Allen case?”
He shot me a narrow-eyed glare. “Keeler warned me about you. Stay out of my case.”
We were clearly off to a good start. Why couldn’t homicide detectives be more like Miles?
“Too late. The family of David Driver has hired me to find out who was responsible for desecrating their loved one’s grave with the body of a murder victim. I have information. You have information. We could both solve our respective cases a lot quicker if we cooperated. And, not to bribe an officer of the law, but there might be some pastries in it for you sometime in the near future.”
The glare never wavered, but I got the feeling he was far more interested in information having to do with his case than any apple spice muffins I might be bringing by in the future.
“Okay. You go first,” he told me.
I hesitated, then realized I wasn’t going to hold back even if he decided to be a jerk and not answer my questions. Ultimately, I wanted the murderer and his or her accomplices caught and justice delivered and withholding information wasn’t the way to see that happen.
“Mary Allen was David Driver’s fiancée.”
There was a moment of silence. I felt rather smug that I’d managed to actually impress Chuck Norris.
“We knew there was a boyfriend and were actually considering him as a suspect, but I guess not if he predeceased her.” He nodded as if he were conceding a solid blow from a sparring opponent. “We hadn’t even gotten his name yet. These Narcotics Anonymous people take that anonymous thing pretty seriously it seems.”
“You have to admit, this changes things,” I told him, pushing my luck on the impressing-Chuck-Norris front. “David Driver’s grave wasn’t just a conveniently open spot to dump a body. They were connected. There’s a reason the killer chose to put Mary Allen’s body there instead of leaving her in the woods in a shallow grave.”
“Or it was the perfect place to hide a body, and the killer was amused by the irony of it all.” Detective Norris sat on the edge of his desk, still looking like he might at any minute get up and throw someone across the room. “We’ve been pursuing that there might be a connection though. They were both recovering addicts. Mr. Driver died of an overdose and although we don’t have tox screens back yet, it’s not a stretch to assume we’ll find some trace of narcotics in Miss Allen’s remains as well.”
“Possibly,” I admitted. “Ms. Driver did say she seemed a bit out of it at the funeral.”
His eyes widened—just a fraction, but I noticed it. “Mary Allen was at the funeral?”
“Funeral graveside service and the reception at the church following. By Ms. Driver’s estimation, she left around 3pm.”
And now his eyes narrowed to slits. “How did Ms. Driver feel about this girlfriend of her son’s, given that she probably contributed to his renewed drug usage and subsequent overdose?”
I rolled my eyes. “She felt sad and sorry for the girl. DeLanie Driver didn’t kill Mary Allen. She was shocked and shaken to find out the woman was dead. She’s hardly the sort of person who would desecrate her beloved son’s grave by murdering his fiancée and throwing her body on top of his casket. And besides, why would she agree to exhume her son’s body if she’d dumped a body on top of it?”
“Maybe she murdered the girl and thought it was a sick sort of justice to bury her with the son she believed Mary killed. Maybe she murdered the girl and whoever found the body knew and thought it was poetic justice to put the body in the grave of the murderer’s son.”
Instead of calling the police. Right. I was beginning to wish Desmond Keeler had this case after all. He was a jerk, but at least he wasn’t an idiot.
“Uh, no. DeLanie Driver isn’t a murderer. Mary Allen left the reception at the church around three. DeLanie was still there, and I’m willing to bet she wasn’t alone until long after dark. Mary Allen died sometime after three o’clock and was in that grave by the time the contractors arrived to fill it in—which was most likely between eight and nine at night. That’s a pretty short window of time, and I’ll bet my socks that DeLanie has a rock-solid alibi. And Ford as well.”
Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned Ford. Although I did want to help the police catch this murderer.
“Ford?”
“DeLanie’s cousin’s husband. He was upset that David was dating Mary and was worried she was going to make him relapse. He’d talked to David about his concerns a few weeks before he died and evidently went into the parking lot after Mary Allen left to confront her.”
Chuck clicked his pen and pulled a notepad toward him. “And where can I find this Ford?”
“At the funeral home. He’s the one who died last week. The one they were excavating David Driver’s remains for, so he could be buried in that plot. And it wasn’t him. He’d been ill for a while before the funeral and shortly after was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.”
“Doesn’t take a lot of strength to shoot someone,” Norris commented.
“It does to dispose of a body,” I shot back.
He shrugged. “Maybe his wife helped him.”
“Sarah? She’s the one who insisted David’s remains be relocated so Ford could be interred in the grave plot. She’d hardly do that and uncover where she’d stashed a body, would she?”
Man, this guy really was an idiot.
“Maybe not.” Detective Norris sighed and shook his head. “Guess I’m back to tracking down other junkies as suspects.”
“That’s all you have?” I scowled. “Maybe if you find out who partially filled in that grave before the contractors got there, you could catch the killer?”
“I already spoke to the contractors and the cemetery manager. And not only did I review the camera from the main gate, I’ve spoken to everyone who came and went between the time of the Driver funeral and when the gravedigger guys arrived.” He stood and made a motion with his hand as if he were pushing me toward the door. “There’s no smoking shovel pointing to any of the three dozen people who had access to that cemetery so far, so I’m pursuing other angles. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.”
This time it was me who narrowed my eyes and glared at him. The jerk. He wasn’t an idiot after all. The detective had totally played me. I’d just given him all my information and got zip in return.
“One last thing,” I said as the detective herded me toward the door. “Two actually. The ring Mary Allen was wearing is a family heirloom. As she’s deceased, Ms. Driver would like to have it returned. And can you please ask her parents when they come down if they’d meet with Ms. Driver? David and Mary were engaged, and she’d like to at least make their acquaintance and express her condolences.”
“The second one, yes. The first one, no.”
I bristled, hesitating even though the detective was beginning to invade my personal space in an effort to get me through the door. “Why not? Because it’s evidence? Personal effects to be returned to her family? Should Ms. Driver ask them directly for the ring?”
Detective Norris gave me that heavy-lidded, stern look the actor was so famous for. “No, because the victim wasn’t wearing any rings. Well, beyond earrings, that is. Thank you for your help, Mrs. Carrera. Have a nice day.”
Somehow, I was outside the station, on the sidewalk, staring through the glass doors at the detective’s retreating form.
No ring. They’d left her with a wallet that included ID, credit cards, and cash, but had wrestled a ring off her finger—a ring that although an heirloom,
it probably wasn’t all that valuable. If a killer was going to rob her, why go halfway? Or not even halfway?
There was only one reason—that ring meant something to the murderer. In spite of my protests to the contrary just a few minutes ago, that fact made me shift my thinking completely around. The ring meant something to the murderer—and the only people I could think of that would value an old antique ring with a small, moderate-quality diamond would be the family it came from.
Chapter 15
It couldn’t have been DeLanie that killed Mary Allen. It couldn’t have been.
Or could it?
Maybe she was bullied into moving David and pretended her shock and surprise when Mary’s body was found. She did have motive. Her son’s relationship with Mary might have led to his taking up drugs again. But why bring my attention to the ring if she was the murderer? Why make a big deal of it and ask to have it returned if she’d yanked it off Mary’s finger after killing her? It didn’t make sense. No one would have thought twice about the ring or even known about it if she hadn’t told me.
Ford? I had scoffed at the idea of Sarah helping him, but surely the man had other family and friends who could assist him in covering up a crime. There was one hitch in that theory, though. My experience with men was that most of them couldn’t tell one piece of jewelry from another. Maybe Ford was different, but I doubted he’d seen that ring and known it was his wife’s aunt’s. And why would he care about a piece of jewelry that had belonged to his wife’s aunt anyway? It seemed implausible, even if he’d been the sort of man who appreciated women’s jewelry.
Who then? Aunt Sarah? I couldn’t imagine she’d be distraught enough over David’s death to kill his fiancée in some sort of revenge for luring him back to drugs and then go on to insist that David’s remains be removed, uncovering her murder victim’s remains. No, Sarah didn’t seem a likely murderer either.
Olive’s parents? They’d grown up with Sarah and DeLanie, but I had no idea their names or their relationship with their family beyond Olive saying her father really didn’t want any of the grave plots.
Or…. David’s father wasn’t named on the birth certificate, and according to Olive, he’d vanished out of DeLanie’s life before his son was born, but what if that wasn’t the truth? Maybe he’d recently discovered that David was his and had been secretly meeting with his son, only to be so devastated by his death that he killed the girlfriend that led his boy back to drugs.
I felt a bit sick that all of my scenarios so far had the motive of Mary’s killing as revenge for David’s death. Honestly, I had no idea if she’d even been using again, in spite of Detective Norris’s confidence in what the tox screen results would be. Perhaps she had started using again and her dealer offed her for not paying or some other drug-gang reason. Or maybe she was clean and I was maligning the poor woman’s memory. Maybe there was someone else who wanted her dead and was angry enough to throw her into David’s grave—like an unstable ex-boyfriend.
Suddenly my imagination was filled with ideas of an ex discovering Mary’s engagement and assuming once David overdosed that she’d return to him. He’d confronted her after the funeral, but instead of falling into his open arms, Mary had said “no”. And he’d killed her. And thrown her body into the grave of the man she’d preferred.
Oh, that was a much better scenario than a mysterious father or one of Olive’s relatives. And an ex-boyfriend who knew about the engagement might rip the ring off Mary’s finger, not to keep it for sentimental reasons, but to take from her the one thing that linked her to David.
Yeah, there were some bumps in that theory, like why take the ring and put her in David’s grave? Unless the final revenge was for him to hock it at a pawnshop for a dollar, like the mythical jilted wife and the husband’s Porsche.
Starting my car, I pulled out of the station parking lot feeling a bit better. Detective Norris may have gotten the upper hand in our conversation, but I had some ideas and a clear course of action right now. I was going to break the sad news to DeLanie about the ring and ask her the details of which recovery meetings David liked to frequent. And while I was at it, I was going to ask her some uncomfortably personal questions about David’s father.
DeLanie cried when I told her about the ring. Her tears were so genuine that any doubt I’d had about her innocence was laid to rest.
“It was my mother’s ring,” she told me with a sheepish and somewhat watery smile. “It wasn’t worth much, but my father had scraped and saved to buy her that ring and she cherished it. So did I. I know it’s silly, but the thought that some murderer took it off the hand of the woman my son loved….”
“I know,” I told her. “I feel terrible about that.”
“If they find the murderer, do you think they’ll find the ring?” she asked.
I winced. “I hate to crush your hopes, but there’s a good chance the killer threw it away or sold it at a pawn shop. I’m so sorry. I just don’t want you to think it’s going to turn up only to be upset when it doesn’t.”
She nodded. “Then I hope the murderer sold it at a pawn shop and someone loved it and bought it and is enjoying it right now. The important thing isn’t the ring; it’s finding out who killed Mary and put her in David’s grave. That’s what matters the most.”
I took a breath and decided to delay the most difficult question for last. “I’m going to try and see if I can find any of David and Mary’s friends, people who knew them best. Do you know which recovery meetings he went to? And was there anyone there he spoke about? Someone that might be willing to talk to me?”
DeLanie thought for a moment. “He told me once he liked the meetings over at the Lutheran church on Tuesday and Thursday nights the best. There was a leader there, Rudy, that David said he connected with. He always went at seven in the evening. Gave him time after work to change and get a bite to eat before heading over.”
“Rudy. Was there anyone else he mentioned? Did he have a sponsor?”
“I’m sure he did, but he never mentioned his name. Maybe this Rudy was his sponsor? He lived here with me after he got back from this last rehab, but he’d gotten his own place over on Wilford Avenue a month before he died. A grown man needs his privacy, you know? Not living with his mother.” DeLanie smiled. “Although I loved having him here. I always felt less anxious when he was under my roof. I felt like I could keep an eye on him, see him before he left for work and when he came home, and see him on the weekends. I could intervene if I thought he was having a hard time staying clean. I wanted to keep him safe, just like I did when he was a little boy. But of course he wasn’t a little boy anymore, and I needed to have faith, not just in God but in David too—faith that he could take care of himself without me clucking over him all the time.”
“Were there any other meetings he liked to go to?” I asked. “You said he went five times a week.”
She nodded. “The ones on Tuesday and Thursday with Rudy were his can’t-miss meetings. The others he just went when he had the need. I know some days he’d drive out at lunch to one. Weekends he’d find one in Milford or wherever he happened to be at the time. I think if Rudy would have had seven meetings a week, David would have gone to them all. But the other ones outside of Tuesday and Thursday were just to keep him toeing the line.”
I took a breath, steading myself for the hard question I could no longer avoid asking. “Who was David’s father?”
A look of grief flitted across DeLanie’s face. “It don’t matter. I raised him with help from some caring family. That’s what’s important.”
“Did his father know he had a son? That you’d been pregnant with his child?”
“He knew about David. It doesn’t matter who he is. It’s not important. The only important thing was that David had people that loved him in his life—lots of people.”
“But what if after all these years he suddenly decided to come into David’s life? What if you didn’t know that he’d been secretly contacting David? If I jus
t knew his name—”
“He died, Kay. He died and there’s no need to dredge all this up, to name names or anything like that. David’s father had nothing to do with Mary Allen’s death.”
Well, there went that theory, although it had been a weak theory amongst other weak theories.
But with that theory gone, I was a bit concerned that I was rapidly approaching a dead end.
I headed back to the office and my skip trace work, but throughout it all, I couldn’t help but think of David Driver and Mary Allen. At three o’clock I put on another pot of coffee and pushed my files aside, retrieving the guest book from David’s funeral as well as the photo album DeLanie had loaned me from my car.
I was looking for either a woman who might have wanted Mary’s ring, or an ex-boyfriend with a grudge, because I seriously doubted an angry drug dealer would have killed Mary and yanked the ring off her finger, only to leave cash and a bank card in her wallet. Opening the guest book, I pulled out a notepad and began to jot down any names that might be a possible murderer.
I should have just jotted down the names that obviously weren’t the murderer because that would have been easier. I didn’t know ninety percent of the people who’d signed this book. Some of the signatures were illegible. I was sure a good number of them were people who’d attended the viewing and were co-workers or possibly distant family friends paying their respects. This was not the way I was going to narrow down a suspect pool.
I eyed the skip trace files, but picked up the photo album instead. It was heartrending to go through all the pictures. DeLanie as a young woman. Her with a group of other children, who from the resemblance I assumed were Sarah and Olive’s father. Her and her parents. Her and an adorable baby David, her face full of joy and love as she held her infant close. The rest were all David with his cousins. I recognized Olive in a few pictures.
