by Sam Reaves
“Is everything OK?”
“Oh, God, I wish I could tell you. It’s all about . . .” Abby waved it all away. “I’m waiting for them to arrest this killer.”
“Well, at least they’re not saying it was us Mexicans anymore. Oh, God.” Natalia stiffened, looking over Abby’s shoulder.
“What?”
“Here’s my brother. He was supposed to bring some guys to help out.”
A dark-gray car pulled in off the street and skidded to a halt near the entrance to the store. The doors opened and three young Mexican men got out, one of them Luis. The two Abby had never seen nodded at the women and went into the store. Luis started to follow but halted and turned to come toward them, eyeing Abby with a sullen expression.
“You happy now?” he said. “No more Mexicans on the block.”
“That’s not what I wanted,” said Abby.
Natalia exploded in a torrent of Spanish, leaning toward her brother. His expression darkened and he said something back that failed to stop the tirade. He made another couple of attempts to interrupt but finally gave up and listened, scowling, as Natalia shouted at him. Abby tensed as Natalia reached out and gave him a hard shove, but he merely staggered back a step and growled something. Finally Natalia fell silent and folded her arms, tears at the corners of her eyes.
Abby drew breath to beat a retreat but Luis froze her in place by muttering, “I’m sorry if I got the wrong idea. Thank you for helping my sister.” He made brief eye contact with Abby and then turned and stalked toward the store.
Abby did not especially regret anything regarding Luis or his father, but she felt a response would be politic. To his back she said, “I’m sorry you lost the store.”
Luis stopped and turned slowly to face her. “Yeah, well. Don’t worry about it. I know who snitched on us, and I’ll take care of it.”
Abby and Natalia watched him go inside. “That’s just talk,” said Natalia, wiping her eyes with a finger. “That’s just my brother talking big.”
“I hope so,” said Abby.
Abby’s calculus section went well, considering the distracted state she had been in when she arrived on campus. She felt she was reaching the people she needed to reach. Any class contained some people who would learn no matter what she did and some who would never get it. A teacher earned her salary with the ones in between, who were capable but needed guidance. She had built a good esprit de corps, which had tottered a bit but recovered now that Ben was no longer in the class. Cole was back to being the class clown instead of an arm breaker, and Giselle had nailed the last quiz and started to look like a serious math student.
I might be able to do this, Abby thought, watching Giselle guide a classmate through a problem on the board. This could be my life, for two years at least. “Well done,” she said. “Who can differentiate that hairy-looking function in number six?”
After class she worked in her office for an hour, the door open, students and colleagues passing in the hall, making the old wooden floor creak. It seemed the least sinister place on earth. She finished her grading, dealt with e-mail, made a to-do list, pulled her research notes out of the drawer, and went to the student union for lunch.
She saw Graham holding forth at the faculty table and chose to sit by herself, looking at her notes. She had finished eating and was starting to gather her things when she looked up to see Graham approaching.
She tried to maintain a completely blank expression as he pulled up at her table. “I owe you an apology,” he said.
Abby just blinked at him, thoughts racing. “For what?”
“For presuming to butt in to your personal life. For letting petty jealousy make me into an old gossip. For failing to keep things professional between us.”
He looked completely sincere, attitude and self-regard under wraps. Abby exhaled. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“I hope we can be good friends and colleagues.”
After a moment she granted him a restrained smile. “Me, too.”
He escorted her to her car parked behind the library. “I’ve got a meeting out at the steel plant this afternoon. They won’t listen to anything I have to say, but they’ll have gone through the motions of getting expert advice, and I’ll get paid, so it’s a win-win deal.”
“Well, it sounds more interesting than writing a test for my analysis class.”
He hesitated for a moment before saying, “Are you still at Lisa Beth’s?”
“For the moment. Hoping for some good news from the police soon.”
Graham nodded, frowning. His expression eased and he said, “OK. Give my regards to Lisa Beth.”
When Abby let herself in she was surprised to hear the clicking of fingers on a keyboard coming from the study. She looked in and saw Lisa Beth at the desk, typing furiously at her laptop. “Working from home today,” Lisa Beth said. “Jerry has the car up in Lafayette, seeing doctors.”
“Is he OK?”
“Other than the high blood pressure, the cholesterol and the angina he’s in the pink of health. Just routine stuff. Me, I’m on a roll here. I’ve got almost all of it in place.”
“All of what?”
“The story. About why Rex Lyman and Jud Frederick got killed.”
Abby watched her stab at the keyboard. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly. I can’t tell you who that thug was who you saw that morning, but I think I have a pretty good idea who hired him.”
Astonishment froze Abby in place for a few seconds. “Have you talked to the police?”
Lisa Beth looked up at her, intent. “Oh, I will. But I don’t have anything that meets a legal standard as evidence. I just have a credible outline of the big picture. Everybody involved will have great deniability. And there are a couple of pieces I don’t have yet. But I’m going to put it all together. Soon.”
“So . . .”
“So whodunnit?” Lisa Beth leaned back on her chair, a deep frown on her face. “Rather than start throwing names around, let me finish this write-up. Then you can read it. OK?” Her look softened. “I want you to follow my reasoning. And it’s not quite all there.”
Stunned, Abby nodded. “OK. I’ll be in the den.”
Abby tried to work but couldn’t concentrate. If she listened hard she could hear the faint noise of Lisa Beth’s fingers on the keys, up front in the study. There were long periods of silence, once a murmur, Lisa Beth’s half of a phone conversation. Abby sat with her face in her hands for a while. Up front, Lisa Beth spoke again, inaudibly. Then after a pause her footsteps sounded in the hall, coming back toward Abby’s den.
She rapped on the door frame and leaned in. “Abby, sweetheart, I am so sorry to bother you. I’m in a bit of a fix.”
“What’s up?”
“I just got a call from a source that wants to meet me, like right now, at the Azteca. Would it be too much to ask for you to run me out there, ten minutes of your time? Just to drop me. You wouldn’t have to hang around. I have no idea how long this will take.”
“Um, sure.” Abby shoved away from the desk. “Why don’t you just take my car? I won’t need it.”
“Are you sure? That is so good of you. I will owe you forever.”
Abby reached for her purse. “It’s parked right out front.”
Lisa Beth took the keys. “Thank you so much. You are a sweetheart. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.”
“Do what you need to do. I’m not going anywhere.”
Turning away, Lisa Beth halted for a moment. She said, “I think this is going to be the final piece,” and then strode off up the hall.
Abby gave up on the test and made herself a cup of tea in Jerry’s immaculate kitchen. She poked tentatively into the rooms on the ground floor, looking at books, pictures, knickknacks. On a shelf she found an astonishing wedding portrait of Jerry and Lisa Beth, both of them with fewer years and much more hair, Lisa Beth with a dark, severe beauty, clutching a bouquet.
Abby went back into the den
and was finally able to settle to work. Time passed. Outside, the shadows began to lengthen. In the distance, a siren sounded, faintly.
Abby looked up from the computer screen. She stared out the back window at tree branches shifting lazily in a light breeze. Abby thought she heard a second siren join the first. It swelled and she was sure; for a moment they made a weird, disquieting harmony before they died away. She pushed away from the desk and sat rigid on the edge of the chair, her heart rate accelerating, drawing deep breaths. “Go away,” she said out loud to the vivid image of Rex Lyman in the flames, pushing at the edge of her awareness. The sirens died away again. She listened for a long minute but there were no more. Her heartbeat subsided. She closed her eyes for a long moment and returned to work, fiercely mustering her concentration. Outside, the leaves reflected the golden light of early evening.
Steps sounded on the back porch, the kitchen door opened and Jerry called out, “Attention, ladies. Man on deck.”
Abby went into the kitchen and greeted him. “Lisa Beth went off to meet a source. She didn’t know when she’d be back.”
Jerry smiled, looking skeptical. “Depends on how many drinks she has, probably. You like seafood? I’ve got some shrimp thawing.”
“Seafood’s good. Can I give you a hand?”
“Oh, no, thanks. Everything’s under control. Just relax. Lisa Beth will come wandering in eventually.” He reached for his apron on its hook, and Abby, finding nothing to say, went back into the den. She finished writing her test and picked up her phone. She commented on pictures Samantha had posted of the baby, listening to clatter and Jerry’s soft humming in the kitchen. The doorbell rang.
Abby heard Jerry marching up the hall. She heard him open the door, heard soft voices, heard Jerry’s voice raised in sudden distress. She put down her phone and stood up, her heart pounding. She went to the door of the den and looked up the hall to the front door. Jerry stood there in his apron; beyond him she could see a Lewisburg police officer in his black uniform standing on the porch.
Jerry turned at the sound of Abby walking up the hall. He looked as if he had taken an unprovoked punch to the face. He met Abby with wide eyes and said in a tone of baffled wonder, “Lisa Beth’s been shot.”
Abby knew; she had known from the moment she had seen the policeman at Jerry’s front door. She had known as she held Jerry’s hand in the back seat of the patrol car racing up Lafayette Road toward Mercy Hospital. Rising from a chair in an office just off the emergency room as a doctor in scrubs came in, she realized she had known the instant she heard the sirens swelling in the distance in the late afternoon. She began reaching for Jerry even before the doctor opened his mouth and hesitated for an instant, looking from her to Jerry, before saying, “I’m sorry.”
Jerry must have known, too; as Abby’s arms went around him he said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so,” said the doctor. “She probably died instantly. Her injuries . . .”
“Don’t tell me,” said Jerry, pulling away from Abby and collapsing onto a chair, knocking it back against the wall. “I don’t want to hear it.” He sat with a dazed, despairing look, focused on nothing. “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”
Abby sat beside him and slipped her arm through his. The policeman had come quietly into the room behind the doctor and now he said, “Detective Ruffner’s on his way. We’re going to need you to identify the body.”
Abby looked at him, feeling a deep, incandescent rage beginning to build. “I have things to tell Detective Ruffner,” she said.
“It’s all on her computer. She was working on the story when she got the call to go meet her source. She had it all figured out. Look on her laptop.”
Ruffner put a hand on her arm to steer her back into the office where she and Jerry had waited. The detective looked harried and distracted, having just entrusted a dazed and shambling Jerry Collins to two patrolmen who were to take him home. He closed the door and turned to Abby. “Did she mention any names?”
“No. She said she didn’t want to throw names around until she had all the pieces in place. But she said she had figured out who was behind it. Who paid the killer. And then she . . .” Abby had to stop. Her throat had seized up and she could barely breathe. She closed her eyes, managed to take a breath. “And then she got the call.” Abby could feel the first waves of grief pounding against the barrier of her shock like a storm surge against a seawall.
She opened her eyes to see Ruffner giving her an anxious look. “Why don’t we sit down,” he said gently. “You don’t have to do this now.”
“I’m all right.” Abby drew a deep breath. “Tell me what happened to her.”
Ruffner gave her a long look before he answered. “She was shot in her car, in the parking lot. She was shot at close range. Once in the head and once in the neck.”
“So it was quick.”
“Instantaneous, I’d say. Now tell me something.”
“What?”
“What was she doing in your car?”
“I let her borrow it. Jerry had their car up in Lafayette.”
“I guess I don’t have to spell out the implications of her getting shot sitting in your car.”
Abby shook her head. “I wasn’t the target.”
“Why not?”
“Because of that phone call. She was set up.”
“Did she tell you who was on the phone?”
“No. She just said it was a source. She said she thought it was going to be the final piece of the story.”
Ruffner thought for a second and said, “If the killer was looking for a woman with short brown hair in a Ford Focus, Lisa Beth fit the bill. But that could be your description, too.”
“If I was the target it would have happened somewhere else. There were plenty of chances. If they were looking for my car, they would have picked it up at my house, or at the college. I’d have been shot behind the library, probably. Lisa Beth was shot at the Azteca because somebody told her to go there. I think this was all about her. I don’t think I was ever in danger. If that man didn’t care that I saw him that morning, he doesn’t care now. He’s never cared.”
Ruffner held her eyes for a long moment. “Did she say anything about a Mexican angle? Because of where it happened, we’re back to thinking about that.”
“No. She thought the whole Mexican thing was nonsense. But if somebody wanted to get the police thinking about a Mexican angle, setting her up there would be a good way to do it.”
“Maybe. It was a good way to produce a bunch of witnesses who suddenly forgot how to speak English, that’s for sure.”
“Somebody must have seen something.”
“Yeah. We found a customer who was in the restaurant, by a window. She noticed Lisa Beth because she pulled up and parked, but she never got out. Then after a while another car pulled in next to hers, but headed the opposite way, window to window. Like the driver wanted to talk to her, the witness said. The next time she looked, the other car was gone and she couldn’t see Lisa Beth anymore. She thought she’d just gotten out of the car. Then somebody else pulled in and saw the body, slumped over. That’s when we got called.”
“So she saw the killer?”
“Not much of a look. She thinks it was a man. Driving a dark-colored car, maybe a Honda. No plate number, but that would be asking a lot.”
Abby felt the rage pushing against the lid. “If you take me back to her house I can show you the computer.”
Ruffner frowned at her. “What I’d like you to do is come to the station with me and give me a statement. Then we’ll see about the computer. I’ll need her husband’s permission or a warrant for that. OK?”
“Let’s go,” said Abby.
Abby thanked the policeman who dropped her in front of 6 Hickory Lane and got out of the patrol car. Night had fallen, the electric sound of the crickets pervading the cooling air. An unfamiliar car was parked in Ned’s driveway. Abby had intended to go into her apartme
nt directly through the back door, but when she went up onto the porch she pulled Ned’s key out of her purse. She hesitated and then rang his bell.
He opened the door and stiffened, surprised. “Hey.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to just barge in.”
Ned stood back, pulling the door open. “Please.” He watched her closely as she came in. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right. You heard about Lisa Beth?”
“We heard. I’m sorry, it’s horrible.”
“Who’s here?”
“Everett. We were just talking about it. Come on in.” He led Abby into the kitchen.
Everett Elford sat at the table, one plump forearm resting on it. A bottle of bourbon and two glasses sat in front of him. “Hi,” he said. He wore a deep frown.
Ned pulled out a chair. “You want to join us?”
Abby was paralyzed for a moment. Did she? She decided it was better than being alone. “Thank you,” she said, and sat.
“Want anything to drink?”
“Water.” She hung her purse on the back of the chair. “Please.”
Ned opened the refrigerator. Elford said, “Lisa Beth was a pain in the ass sometimes, but she did her best to make that crummy little paper a real news outlet. Even a place like Lewisburg needs somebody to keep the politicians honest and get out the vote. I thought she took herself a little too seriously sometimes, but I give her credit. She made that paper better, and that made this town better.”
Ned set a glass of water in front of Abby and sat. He took a drink of bourbon. “Pretty good epitaph.”
Abby settled for saying, “She was a good friend to me. My first friend here.” Her voice had gone husky.
They sat in silence for a time. Elford emptied his glass, uncorked the bottle, and poured himself two more fingers. Ned waved off the bottle and said, “Have you talked to the police?”
“I just got done with them. They have a witness.” Abby halted, poised to tell them about the computer, about Lisa Beth’s story. She said, “Somebody saw it happen, from the restaurant. That’s all I know.”
