Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2)

by Gillian Roberts

  Gavin nodded, his eyes focused on his folded hands.

  “Want to tell me why you’re fond of them?”

  He looked up. “Aren’t you?”

  “Me? Of course, I—but—”

  “Everybody likes animals except the people who hurt them, and they’re bad people.”

  “But you maybe more than just everybody? I mean I heard that you don’t just like them, you care for them, help them, do things for them. Not just for your pets, either.”

  “It’s my job.”

  That made sense. In fact, he made more sense than she’d anticipated. “Okay. I know, for example, that you worked at the Marine Mammal Center.”

  “No. They didn’t let me stay.”

  “Only because you loved those animals more than it was going to be good for them. They were afraid they’d love you back and not be able to return to the wild.”

  “They didn’t let me stay.”

  “How about other places like CoXistence when they were protesting—” With every word, she worried about what he did and didn’t understand, and suddenly resented not being more prepared. Surely, if Michael believed something tangible would come from this he should have given her a handle on Gavin’s abilities, told her how best to speak to him. But he’d sent her out unprepared, patronized her.

  Or, she realized with a small start, perhaps she was the one being patronizing, to Gavin. Maybe there wasn’t anything for which to be prepared. She’d speak normally and to hell with such worries. “When they protested certain animal traps, and a condo that would occupy wetlands, and pretty much anything that might harm animals. Is that right?”

  She waited, then watched the obligatory nod. “Those people you worked with have a high opinion of you, a good opinion of you. But we don’t have enough of their names, so let’s think of all the names of whatever groups you recall and, still better, the people you liked in them.”

  His expression was sorrowful and direct. “I liked Tracy.”

  “You were in the groups first though, right?”

  He nodded. “I like animals.”

  She took a deep breath. “I understand. You and Tracy were friends for a long time.”

  “Since fifth grade.”

  It was an amazing and unusual relationship, but Billie could understand its strength and evolution. First, Tracy had provided protection for the social misfit, and then, perhaps, Gavin had provided a listening ear, a protector, a trustworthy confidant.

  “Maybe there were other people in the groups who knew you, too.”

  He blinked, looked about to speak, then simply, silently, looked worried.

  His disability wasn’t visible, but it was audible. Something blocked his words, dammed them up.

  “Who were your friends?”

  He shrugged. “Friendly people, not friends. Except for Tracy.”

  No more patronizing from this camp, she decided. He knew the score. “Did you have any favorite times at these groups?”

  “I liked the meetings. Sometimes we had parties, even at my house.”

  Gavin must have been an easy mark. Or was she being cynical now that she’d given up being patronizing? “Who came to the parties?” She felt ever less confident about her ability to fish for answers. Why had she expected that Gavin Riddock would reveal, for her ears only, information that would make all the difference? She was embarrassed on her own behalf.

  “Different people.”

  No more names for her list, then. “Did Tracy come?”

  “Once. When she belonged. Not before. She had a good job,” he said.

  And animal rights and caretaking, as he’d said, was his job. “Tell me about it.” Billie had applied for a travel agency job when she was in search of a way to make a living, and it sounded mostly like sitting at the computer, checking fares and space availability, handling complaints, and living in terror of how much of the information people bought from her could now be found for free on the Internet.

  The shrug again. “She got to go places for free.” That had been the perk the owner of the agency dangled, but as a single mother, Billie wasn’t going to be able to use it to much advantage. “Once,” he continued, “on a ship to, um…” He sighed and scratched at the back of his neck, then his expression brightened. “South America.” This sigh was one of relief. “Mexico, too. She went there.”

  “That must have been wonderful,” Billie said automatically.

  “She saw things,” Gavin said softly. “Monkeys and parrots in the trees. And, um…” He scratched at the back of his neck again and looked distressed. “An animal that hangs from a tree.”

  “A snake?”

  He shook his head. “She showed me a picture. She said I should think of slow. A sloth!” He pronounced it as “slowth.”

  Hadn’t Gavin’s wealthy family taken him anywhere? They could have shown him that sloth and those parrots, but instead, they kept his world cottage-sized, as if he were an unattractive accessory, better left home.

  “She worked too hard,” Gavin said with more energy than he’d shown so far. “She was going to find a new job.”

  “So I guess maybe those free trips weren’t good enough,” Billie said, but Gavin didn’t seem to get her meaning this time. “Did her husband ever come to your house?” she asked.

  “One time.”

  “For a party?”

  “Her car broke. He came to get her. Robby didn’t like me.”

  “Did Tracy tell you that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you like him?”

  “He didn’t like me,” he repeated, as if that were an answer and, possibly, it was.

  “Did Tracy talk about him?”

  He looked surprised and amused, as if this was a silly question.

  “We talked about everything. She said everything. Except…the bad thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  He clasped his hands and looked near tears. “She said she’d tell me what to do, but she didn’t. I would have done it.”

  She could hear him swallow hard, and she thought she’d come back to this when he was calmer. “I know you would have,” she said softly. “So…what kinds of things did Tracy say about her husband?”

  Another of his shrugs. Open-ended questions didn’t work. Only specific ones did. “Did Tracy ever say Robby hurt her?”

  “One time her arm was black-and-blue. She said he grabbed her.”

  That wasn’t the fender-bender. Maybe Veronica was right. Or maybe, in the heat of their splitting up, Robby Lester had simply grabbed his wife’s arm with too much pressure.

  “She was afraid,” Gavin said.

  “Of him?”

  “I guess.”

  “Why do you say she was afraid?”

  “Tracy said that.”

  “When?”

  “When we were running.”

  “I meant…” She tried a new tack. “Did she say anything more about being afraid?”

  He put his hand back in the remembering gesture at his neck. “She said she did something bad, made somebody angry.”

  “Was that around when she had those black-and-blue marks?”

  He looked upset. Didn’t bother to scratch his neck. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, then was it only that time she talked about being scared?”

  He swallowed hard, and folded his hands on the countertop, his thumbnails flicking one against the other while he watched them. When he spoke, his voice was low and almost inaudible. Billie leaned closer to the glass. “She said I could help her.” He stopped studying his fingernails and looked up at Billie. “I didn’t hear her right. I listen to the air sometimes when I run. I didn’t hear her. She said I would know what to do but I didn’t. I didn’t help her and then she was dead.”

  “Remember when she said that?”

  “We were running. It wasn’t raining.”

  “And you hadn’t run in a while because of the rains?”

  “Then we could, and I said I
would help her, but I didn’t.” He looked near tears.

  “But you couldn’t, if she didn’t tell you how, and that doesn’t mean you hurt her,” Billie said gently.

  His expression grew distant again. He didn’t believe that. He believed that by not doing what he might have, he’d killed her, or at least was responsible for her death.

  “Did you run every day with Tracy?”

  “It rained a lot.”

  It had indeed, for ten days in a row until two days before Tracy died. Billie remembered it because of Jesse and cabin fever. But it meant that Tracy was talking about being fearful right before she was killed, because only then could they run together.

  “Tracy went to the gym, too,” Gavin said. “But we were…she was training. Run for the animals. And it was dark before she went to work, so she liked to run with me.”

  “So all those winter mornings—when you were with her—you were sort of protecting her,” Billie said.

  He nodded and looked down at his knuckles. “I brought a flashlight, too. Then she would shower and change at my house and make coffee and then go to work.”

  “Is that why you went to Blackie’s that morning?” Billie asked.

  “It wasn’t raining, but Tracy didn’t come to my house, so I went to run.”

  The police had made much of the entire relationship, of the odd couple, a quick-witted, attractive woman spending much too much time with a sweet but slow companion. They didn’t believe it couldn’t be sexual, if not for Tracy, then surely for Gavin.

  He thought that by not understanding what Tracy meant him to do, by not saving her, he’d caused her to die. What muddled words had he used to express that belief when questioned and how much of what the police now believed had grown in the spaces between Gavin’s words?

  He looked at Billie now, his eyes a soft gray-green. “I loved her,” he said.

  It made no sense to assume that Gavin Riddock killed Tracy Lester. Not one person accused him of violence. Or believed him capable of doing conscious harm. He was too easy a target: arriving at the scene of the crime by force of habit, then bloodstained because of concern for his friend lying there. Given that, Gavin the runner literally raced into position as the prime suspect. And if he needed any more bad luck, it was there in the form of his disabilities plus a community that had been angry with his family for a long time.

  “Gavin,” she said, leaning close to the glass that separated them. “Tell me. You can tell me. Did you hurt Tracy?”

  He looked at her for too long, barely blinking, then he nodded. “I didn’t help her.” She saw the glint of pooled tears at his bottom lid.

  “That isn’t the same thing. You didn’t hurt her,” Billie whispered.

  The gray-green grew deeper. “Are you sure?” He touched the glass lightly with his fingertips, and she felt it on her flesh.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sure.” The truth of it welled inside her, pushing aside the anxious, self-centered person who’d entered this place.

  This wasn’t about her and her reactions to a jailhouse or her pressures to succeed. This was about this ill-equipped man in a fight for possession of his life. A man who, she was sure, did not belong in prison.

  “Let’s see what I can do to find other people who are sure of that, too,” she said. “Is that all right with you?”

  He pursed his lips and frowned, then nodded. “All right,” he said.

  “I’ll see you again, Gavin.” She could promise that much.

  Fifteen

  Marlena Pugh loved the idea. She tapped a long fingernail—hot pink today—on her cell phone.

  “Don’t,” her friend Paige said. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Too late. I’m already thinking about it,” Marlena said. “That’s why I told you about it. And I’m thinking it’s a pretty fine idea. You have to seize the moment, you know? Like I told you how that PI was in?”

  “The one asking about the murder?”

  Marlena nodded. “It made me think—I mean look at Tracy Lester. Did you know I met her? She was in the office a few times. It gives me the creeps to think of that, then think of her dead. Over, like that. Life is going on one day and you’re wasting time, waiting for things to happen and then”—she snapped her fingers—“you never know. So there’s no point waiting for things to happen to you. You have to make them happen. Follow your star, your dream.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, you’re not talking about some dream, you’re talking about screwing your boss.” Paige lowered her voice and hissed the last word.

  “So?” Marlena said. “And don’t make it sound cheap. It’s not about sex, it’s about love.”

  “Right.” Paige finished her beer.

  “People marry their bosses, you know. It isn’t going to make the Guinness Book of Records. I know he’s interested in me. A girl can feel it. He can pretend and bluster and do whatever he wants to, but I know what he really means. Like he asks me about my ‘wild’ weekends, what I did. I don’t say, I let him think they’re pretty hot. But I know why he wants to imagine it.”

  “Has he done anything whatsoever about it? Maybe he’s a pervert. Somebody who likes to watch, or be told about it.”

  “He’s probably afraid. Thinks I’m too young, or that I’d sue him for harassment—it’s a problem for executives, you know? I read an article. So it’s up to me. He needs a push, is all.” She smiled again, partly to make Paige go nuts. She was so easy.

  But the other part was the thought of giving that push. She was sure it wouldn’t take much and then David Vincent would be free. She knew he wanted her, felt his eyes on her bottom, on her boobs whenever he thought she wasn’t looking. “His marriage stinks,” she said after signaling the bartender that they both needed new beers. She wished she could have a cigarette, but the damn laws forbade it even in a bar, which struck Marlena as ridiculous. You could drink yourself to death, but smoking was too unhealthy to be allowed. She didn’t want to go outside where it was raining again. Even the weather was against her and made everything harder on her.

  “How do you know so much about his personal life?” Paige asked. “Like you’re suddenly his shrink or something?”

  Marlena wasn’t always sure why she hung around with Paige. Paige wasn’t smart about much, and was definitely dumb about men. But she was convenient. Most of the girls Marlena knew worked in the city or down in Silicon Valley, and the few who were still in the county worked at high-tech places or the malls, and their hours were unpredictable and long. But Paige worked at the T-shirt store on Bridgeway, and her fiancé worked nights, so she was always available for a drink after work. Not that this bar did much with TGIF or anything, but there were snacks, and sometimes interesting people—not just tourists—came in. It would feel too weird sitting at the bar alone, anyway. Looked cheap. Paige came in handy.

  “Listen,” Marlena said as patiently as she could manage, because she hated explaining. She’d been in such a great mood, but it was fading fast. “First of all, I answer the phone, and all I can say is that his wife sounds like a bitch. Lots of time, he’ll take the call, then close the door to his office, and I can hear—not the words, but the tone. Trust me, they aren’t lovebirds.”

  Their fresh beers arrived.

  “I don’t think that’s much,” Paige said. She thought she knew everything about men because she was engaged. “They might have been talking about something a kid did,” she continued, “or why he didn’t bring home milk like she asked him. Besides, married people don’t talk to each other like dating people do.”

  “My husband will,” Marlena said. “You have to establish standards, is all.”

  “Did she ever come in?” Paige asked.

  Marlena nodded. “She’s…nothing. Letting herself go. Her stomach pooches out.”

  “She’s had kids. That happens.”

  “Not if you take care of yourself,” Marlena snapped. “And her hair didn’t look good and there’s no excuse for that. And she wa
s in a rush and all impatient with me. I didn’t like her attitude.”

  “What’s second?” Paige asked.

  “What?”

  “What is the second thing? You said first of all you answer the phone. So if there’s a first, what’s the second?”

  Marlena couldn’t remember what she’d meant.

  “Because, frankly, so far, that isn’t much,” Paige said. “And I don’t know why you aren’t happy with guys your own age. They’re more…appropriate, you know?”

  “They’re children.” Like Paige’s fiancé Jason, the dinner manager at a burger palace, was the definition of a grown-up.

  “It’s about money, isn’t it?”

  Marlena wouldn’t dignify Paige’s attitude with an answer. What if she liked men who proved they could be successes? Paige was going to wind up in a trailer. All she cared about was how buff Jason was, and she had no idea there could be more to life than that.

  “You still haven’t said what the second thing is.”

  Marlena ate a handful of the trail mix out on the bar. The nachos were too far away, and she didn’t want to ask the guy near them to pass the bowl because he’d think she was starting something.

  She remembered the second thing. “It’s that I’m sure he already plays around. So that proves about his marriage, anyway.”

  “And about him. He’d play around on you, too, is what my mother says.”

  Marlena waved the comment away.

  “Besides, how do you know? Is he such a creep that he has you make his love nest reservations?”

  “He goes on these trips—not long ones—and they can’t be far. It’s not like he packs a big suitcase or anything. He has a clean shirt and underwear and a toothbrush and razor in his briefcase. He says it’s for business, but it isn’t like he comes back with work for me to do, and wouldn’t he, if it really was business? Besides, how much out-of-town, face-to-face business does a moving company do? Me or Heather takes the orders over the phone or in person, and sure, somebody has to go out to give the estimate and look the stuff over, but that isn’t an overnight. And if it’s really out of town, then somebody in that town checks them out. We don’t travel for that.”

  “All the same,” Paige said after an overlong pause—she was incredibly slow, and it was a real shame she was all there was at this hour in this town. “All the same, what you’re talking about is wrong. Immoral.”