by Alt, Madelyn
“Yes?” she asked, tilting her head at us in confusion. “Can I help you?”
“Um, hi there. I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Maggie O’Neill, and this is my friend, Marcus Quinn. I just wanted to let you know that my friend thinks she might have dropped her cell phone while we were here at the fundraiser earlier today, and we were hoping to be able to look for it. Do you mind?”
“Who is it, Emily?” a strong female voice called from farther back in the house.
“Nothing, Mother . . . just a couple of people who lost something at the fundraiser and were wanting to look for it,” she answered over her shoulder with an apologetic glance toward me and Marcus. “I was just about to go out with them to help them look—”
The unseen female bustled around the corner. It was Letty Clark; I recognized her from earlier, even without her all-encompassing straw hat. “Don’t be ridiculous, dear, you’ll do nothing of the sort. You’re exhausted from today. I’ll go out with them.” She was already grabbing a big, black flashlight and throwing a light sweater over her shoulders. The flashlight would come in handy, but she needn’t have bothered with the sweater; though the sun was now dipping down toward the horizon, the blazing temperatures of the day certainly hadn’t dropped by much.
“Well . . . if you’re sure you don’t mind . . .”
“Of course I don’t mind, dear. You’re my daughter, and you know as well as I do that you’re unwell. It’s my job to take care of you.”
“I’m much stronger than you think I am,” the woman fussed with a small frown, but she still gave her mother’s arm an affectionate squeeze as she passed by.
“Nonsense. You’ve had your bath, and I’ve made you a cup of tea. Chamomile. It’s cooling for you on your bedside table. You go on and get in bed. I’ll send Bob in when he gets back.”
Letty accompanied us along the walkway toward the front of the church. “Do you know where you need to be looking, dear?”
“Well, the girls have gone out to the excavation site, and Marcus and I thought we’d—”
Letty interrupted me. “They shouldn’t be out there alone, with that hole, in the dark! They could get seriously hurt. We don’t even know if the ground is stable yet. We’d better go and get them out of there.”
I wasn’t quite sure where that would leave Tara if we didn’t find her cell phone elsewhere, but we’d have to cross that bridge if we came to it.
With Letty in the lead, Marcus and I followed her rather speedy trajectory along the concrete path leading around the church. We had just reached the corner of the church when my own cell phone rang. Letty continued on while I paused to locate it in my purse. The screen on the outside of my phone read, “Tara-Cell.”
I flipped open the case. “Oh, good, you found—”
“Maggie?” It was Evie’s voice, trembling and urgent. “Maggie, you’ve got to come quick! Ohmigod. Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.”
My eyes flew to Marcus, but his gaze was already searching mine out. In the background, I heard Charlie’s and Tara’s voices, all running together over the airwaves. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Calm down, honey,” I said to Evie. “Take a deep breath. What’s wrong?”
“Just come over here, Maggie. At the construction site around the churchyard. Come over here—quick.”
The phone call ended. Marcus touched my shoulder. “The girls?”
My gaze searched out his, urgently. “At the construction site.”
I didn’t even have to tell him that we were needed. He took off like a shot, outpacing Letty in seconds and leaving the two of us to follow in his wake. Running was okay so long as we were on the concrete pathway, but once we left it, the roughness of the field made a faster pace treacherous. The beam from the flashlight was flaring crazily this way and that, jostled by our gait. Up ahead I made out the darker shapes of the girls and Marcus. I headed in that direction, using their shadows as a focal point to guide us.
I was panting by the time we arrived by Marcus’s side. “What is it?” I asked.
Marcus didn’t answer, but asked Letty, who had kept up admirably for a much older woman, if he could borrow the flashlight. She cradled the heavy light protectively against her body for a moment as though she worried he might leave her stranded out there in the dark, then handed it over.
“Stay here,” he told me. Letty seemed to think the command applied to her as well, for she remained by my side, wringing her hands.
Evie rushed to my side and threw herself at me. “Oh, Maggie, thank God you and Marcus came out here with us. And Charlie, too. I don’t know what I would have done if Tare and I had found this on our own,” she babbled against my shoulder. “I really, really don’t. Oh, it’s awful. Just awful.”
Marcus was down on his knees in the dirt, poking about while Charlie held the flashlight for him, with Tara cradled securely against his left side. They were behind the ropes that had been erected, closing off the excavation site from the chance interloper. In fact, they seemed to be right on top of where the payloader had accidentally broken through the crust of earth.
I took a gentle step backward, holding Evie out at arm’s length and prompting her to look at me. “What is it, Evie?” I asked quietly. “What did you find?”
“A-a woman,” Evie said, sniffling. “Oh, Maggie—her hair is just full of blood, and she’s not breathing. Charlie called the police, but . . . she’s dead! I know she is!”
Letty was wringing her hands, suddenly looking very much an old woman. But she surprised me then by stepping forward and putting her hands on Evie’s shoulders, gently turning her away. “Come along, dear. Let’s just go sit in the garden and get away from this for a while, hm? You shouldn’t have to be seeing all of this.” She raised her eyebrows at me, looking for my approval. I nodded, sending her silent thanks with my eyes.
“I’ll send Tara up in a few moments to sit with you, all right, Evie?” I tried to sound as reassuring as possible.
“All right.” As she allowed herself to be lead away, I heard her tell Letty, “I should probably call my parents. They’re gonna have a cow . . .”
My nerves were all a-jangle. I gave myself a mental shake and took a few deep breaths to ground myself and send the excess energy back into the earth where it could do some good. With that done, there was nothing else to do but to duck under the rope myself in order to meet up with Marcus, Tara, and Charlie.
Tara was glued to Charlie’s side, but all of her concentration was drawn and focused on Marcus, still crouching down several feet away. I touched Tara to get her attention. “Evie’s in the garden sanctuary,” I told her, my voice barely above a whisper. Hushed, in honor of the dead. It seemed only right. Even the summer cicadas seemed to have silenced themselves for the occasion.
Tara pressed her lips firmly together. “I’m staying here with Charlie.”
I nodded, knowing she was not going to be swayed. Stepping carefully, I picked my way over to Marcus’s side. He turned and peered at me, his mouth grim. Off in the distance, sirens wailed, making their way closer.
Wordlessly, I put my hand on Marcus’s shoulder and leaned down to see what we were talking about here. Charlie obligingly manipulated the light beam.
Oh my stars and garters.
It was Ronnie.
“I saw her, earlier today,” I told Marcus once I had found my voice. “Here, at the fundraiser. Was she . . . was she killed?”
His lips moved in a kind of wry smile that brought no joy to his eyes. “Well, if she wasn’t, then she’d better have one heck of a good explanation in a suicide note somewhere, because inquiring minds are gonna want to know.”
The beam from the flashlight caught in the sticky red gleam in her hair. I winced.
“There appear to be bruises on her throat, too,” he added. “Not a nice death.”
Not nice at all.
The sirens and popping lights from emergency vehicles screamed along the same country byway we’d traveled less than a h
alf hour ago, pulling into the area with the kind of speed and precision customarily reserved for high speed chases and dead-drunk idiots with no ability to comprehend their own looming near-death experience. They were all over us within seconds, a swarm of movement, searching lights, squawking radios, and barking voices. I had expected Tom to be among the new arrivals, but there was no sign of him amidst the men and women assessing the body and setting up a perimeter.
“What about it, Dawson? Anything?” It was Jim Johnson, one of Tom’s departmental cohorts, putting the question to the EMT who had taken up Marcus’s post next to the body.
The EMT pulled the stethoscope from his ears. “Nothing. Not a blip, not the faintest breath. Zero vitals. I would say we’re too late, but by the looks of that”—he nodded to indicate the wound to her skull—“I would say she never stood a chance. Off the record, mind you. The ME will have to determine all of that.”
Johnson nodded and turned to the four of us. “I’m going to need you all to step away from the area.” He indicated the line of trees along the walk. “Over there would be fine.”
“A friend of ours is waiting in the garden with the pastor’s mother-in-law,” I mentioned.
“That would be fine, too.”
“Jim—” I waited until he turned to look at me before asking the question on my mind. “Where’s Tom? I thought he’d have come out, too.”
“Not on duty, and must be out of range ’cause I can’t reach him.” Voice neutral, without judgment. “It happens. I’ve left a voice mail for him. I’ll do the preliminaries for him and hand it over as soon as I can.”
I didn’t quite frown, but I couldn’t help wondering where Tom had disappeared to. No wonder I hadn’t heard from him.
The four of us stood along the tree line for a while, watching in silence while the emergency and police crews did their thing. With Tom absent, it didn’t surprise me at all when more police and sheriff’s department cruisers pulled up. Lights only, no sirens. I was glad for that—I was getting a splitting headache.
I recognized Chief Boggs, that twenty-plus-year bastion of the old guard and frequent customer at Annie-Thing Good, as he hurried toward the roped-off area. And was that the county sheriff trying to elbow him aside to take the lead? I’d heard buzz before that there was no love lost between the two, despite (or should that perhaps be because of ) the fact that they shared space in the Municipal Building in town. Boggs was always in the spotlight, giving press conferences for the Stony Mill Gazette and actually calling them “press conferences”; Sheriff Reed had been rumored to view his colleague as being far too forthcoming and rash.
“It’s my crime scene, Boggs, not yours,” the sheriff was saying as they passed twenty feet from us.
And never the twain shall meet? Arguments already—not a good sign.
“Fielding works for me, not you. I have every right to be here.”
“It’s county business, not town business. And Fielding’s supposed to be cross-departmental, or had you forgotten that a portion of my budget goes toward his salary as well? Not to mention the fact that he’s not here, in case you hadn’t noticed. I have another deputy on the way. He’ll take over from Johnson, then get with Fielding.”
At least there was no question between the two of them that Tom was the man for the job. That was good to hear. Despite the issues that stood between us, I was still proud when someone spoke of him with respect. He deserved that.
The night was so quiet that even from where we stood, the ongoing conversations could be easily heard.
“Another murder. Christ. What in God’s name is this town coming to?”
Reed relented in his annoyance long enough to say, “Just the state of things everywhere, I guess. No one’s immune. Not even Stony Mill.”
“We can’t even chalk it up to gangland shootings or some such nonsense,” Boggs fussed. “What is it? Drugs? Drink? What has gotten into people? Christ, I’m gettin’ old.”
“Good people gone bad, I guess. Maybe it is time for you to retire.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
Bickering aside, they were right. They knew enough by now to realize that things were going very wrong in our small town. They just didn’t have a clue how wrong.
And for all of the gifted intuitives the N.I.G.H.T.S. could boast among its members, neither did we. We had worries. We had feelings. We had fear. We had doubts. What we didn’t have was proof, and neither did we have a true understanding of where everything was headed. While the sheriff himself worked the crime scene, Chief Boggs and Jim Johnson headed over to us for questioning. Evie and Letty Clark came down to where we were all congregating.
Boggs spoke first. “Which one of you found the body?”
Charlie hesitantly raised his hand.
“Put your hand down, son. We’re not in a classroom. Mind telling me what you were doing here? Looks like the party down the way ended a while ago.”
Charlie nodded. “It did. I’m on the excavation crew. We found the . . . the hole that the . . . the woman is lying in.”
“Well, it wasn’t the hole that did that to her, I gotta say. What did you say you were doing here?”
“I didn’t, I guess,” Charlie said, looking confused. “I came to help Tara here, my girlfriend”—Tara hugged him closer at that—“find her cell phone.”
Boggs nodded, his eyes watchful. Despite the Mayberry cop persona he liked to purvey most of the time, I got the impression that he didn’t miss as much as people might think. “Now—forgive me if you were about to tell me this, but—why would her cell phone have been here?”
“I dropped it, I guess,” Tara said, uncharacteristically deferential. “Earlier today. Evie and I were visiting with Charlie here at the church fundraiser before the work crew got started.”
“Evie, huh?” Boggs said. “Which one of you’s—”
Evie raised her hand to breast level and gave it a weak, royal wave.
“Ah. Another high schooler.” He squinted at the three of them. “I take it the three of you were together when you found the body?”
Charlie shook his head. “Not really, sir. I found it—her, I mean—a couple of minutes before the girls got here.”
“And then you called us.”
“And then I called you.”
Boggs stared him up and down a moment longer, then gestured behind him for Johnson. “And you three,” Boggs said. “What’s your business here?”
Letty Clark drew herself up and sputtered, “Why, I live over at the parsonage, officer.”
“Chief.”
“Chief, then. My son-in-law is the pastor of this fine church. I came over to help these young people find the girl’s cell phone. It was only as we reached the church that we received the call from . . .” She looked to me.
“Evie,” I supplied. “The kids had just found Ronnie out there and called for me and Marcus to hurry over and . . . help.”
Boggs’s attention caught. He peered at me. “How did you know her name?”
Uh-oh, Maggie. Explanation needed. It wouldn’t do to be listed as a person of interest, even temporarily, given Tom’s already testy views of my so-called knack for sniffing out trouble. Of course I didn’t actually sniff it out. It just had a way of finding me, over and over again. Why? I wish I knew.
Just lucky, I guess.
“I saw her here at the fundraiser this afternoon,” I explained. “A couple of times, actually.”
“And what time was this?”
I thought back. “Well, the first time was fairly soon after our arrival. No later than two, I would guess. Maybe even earlier than that. Sorry I can’t be more specific—I wasn’t exactly watching the clock.”
He nodded, working his jaw as though he was chewing an unseen amount of tobacco. “What was she doing when you saw her?”
“Arguing,” I told him.
I had his interest, that much was clear. “Arguing, eh? I don’t suppose you know who she was arguing
with?”
“She called him Ty. He was an employee for the construction . . . crew.”
As one, we all turned to look at Charlie, who gaped back at us in openmouthed surprise. Gradually understanding dawned. “Ohhhh. I think you mean Ty Bennett?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m pretty sure that was his name.”
“And what was the nature of their disagreement?” the chief pressed.
“Well . . . it was personal.”
Chief Boggs just looked at me. “Miss . . . ?” He let the question trail out for me to fill in.
“O’Neill.” He must have forgotten that we’d been introduced not just once but a couple of times over the last eight months by his very own Special Task Force Investigator.
“Miss O’Neill. This woman’s life was taken by someone tonight. Do you really think that anything in her life can be considered personal and off-limits at this point in time?”
Well, when he put it that way . . . “I suppose not.” I glanced shyly around at everyone in our little group. “I would just prefer that it goes nowhere else. If everyone can agree on that . . .”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone,” Evie promised.
“Me, either,” both Tara and Charlie said at the exact same moment.
One by one everyone nodded, right down to Letty Clark. I cleared my throat, ready to fulfill my part of the bargain. “They were arguing about their broken relationship. She was very bitter and fierce with him, ordering him out of the church. Her church. She said he had no right to be there.”
Letty looked troubled by the revelation that the woman who was killed was presumably a part of Grace Baptist’s own congregation, but she said nothing.
“The argument got quite physical. She was pushing against him and hitting him with her fists. They broke it up when I made my presence known, but . . . well, I guess you had to be there. I was scared for a minute that I wouldn’t be able to stop them from going at each other.”
