A Deadly Discovery

by J. C. Kenney

  “I’m convinced the DNA from the bloody bandage they found in the bag didn’t match Valerie’s DNA. That means a couple of things. First, the sample couldn’t be Phil’s. Valerie would have shared about fifty percent of her DNA with him since she was his daughter. If the sample contained Phil’s DNA, Valerie’s DNA would have showed up, too.”

  “Sweet Jesus, when they never found her, I became convinced Phil had killed her. How could I have been so wrong?” Connie covered her mouth with her hand as a tear ran down her face.

  “You mustn’t blame yourself.” I gave her free hand a squeeze.

  Her reaction reminded me of the self-recrimination I felt for not being by his side when Dad died. As deep as that pain had sliced into me, I could only imagine the pain the woman across from me must be confronting. I could totally empathize with it, though.

  “We can’t change the past. We can use this information to change the future, though. Your husband’s name will be cleared, once and for all.”

  A tiny voice in the back of my head said that until the killer was caught, a cloud of doubt would hover over Phil Briggs. While it was true, there was no way I was going to burden Connie with that issue.

  She bit her lip, then took a drink of her tea. “You’re right. It will give me something good to tell Annette.”

  “How is she coping with all of this?”

  I hadn’t reached out to Valerie’s younger sister. My gut told me any contact from me would only make the situation worse for the woman. She had her reasons for leaving Rushing Creek and never coming back. I could respect that, so I decided I wouldn’t contact her unless I had no choice.

  Hopefully, now that her father was in the clear, she’d be willing to return. Even if it was only for Valerie’s funeral, it could be the beginning of a long-overdue healing process.

  Despite my cynical nature, I always had room for hope.

  “It’s hard to know with her two thousand miles away. She’s happy her sister’s been found. We’re having a funeral on Friday. She’s coming in town for that. Some people are planning a public memorial on Saturday and we’ll be there, too. It would mean a lot if you joined us.”

  Annette had been severely damaged, both literally and figuratively, while living in Rushing Creek. It was understandable that coming back would be hard for her. That was reason enough to double my resolve to catch Valerie’s killer.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “What about Ron Spade? Will they test his DNA?”

  The thought of raining on Connie’s parade made my heart sink. I had to be honest with her, though.

  “If his DNA is already in a government-supervised database, I’m sure the police will check to see if it matches the sample from the bandage, if they haven’t done so already.”

  “He went to jail for molesting that girl. Wouldn’t they have taken some of his DNA then?”

  It was a fair question. While I didn’t have the answer, I was pleased that Connie was processing what I was telling her.

  “I would think so, but I don’t know for certain. If they have his DNA on file and it matches the sample they found, I’m sure they’ll arrest him. If they don’t have his DNA on file, the police can’t arrest him without probable cause. They also can’t make him give a DNA sample without the same.”

  “So, you don’t think he did it.” Her tone was flat, like someone who’d lost too many battles to count and had lost yet another one.

  “I don’t. This isn’t a bad thing, I promise. It’s like taking a captured chess piece off the board. My search is narrowing. I’m making progress and I’m going to keep digging until the job’s done.”

  Connie forced a smile, but there was no heart in it. I got up and gave the poor woman a hug. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in tight. Her tears dampened my shirt as I held her.

  “Thank you, Allie.” She gulped a lungful of air as she wiped her eyes with a tissue. Then she chuckled. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  I gave her forearm a friendly squeeze. “You don’t have to say anything. If you want, we can have a nice long chat over lunch when this is all finished. My treat. How about that?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “It’s a date, then.”

  As we exchanged goodbyes, Connie smiled. This time her heart was in it. It was a pleasant smile that made her look years younger. Hopefully, I’d restored her faith in the world. Even a little bit would be okay.

  That was more than enough to keep the search going until I restored it completely.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ursi was sitting by the door when I got home. She yowled at me before marching straight to her bowl. Then she fixed me with an unblinking stare.

  “All right, already.” I refreshed her water bowl and gave her some diced turkey bits for dinner. “How you’re able to stare at me like that without having your eyes dry out is beyond me.”

  She flicked one ear backward before her meal. I think that was her way of saying, “Whatever, Mom.”

  While Ursi ate, I munched on a snack of celery sticks and peanut butter and updated my case notebook. When I finished, I sent Brent a text asking if I could bring him dinner. He replied almost immediately that he needed to ask for a rain check.

  “It’s you and me tonight, girl.”

  Ursi, who was in the midst of an after-dinner grooming session, gave me a quick glance, then returned to licking a foreleg.

  “Ignore me at your peril, young lady. You may recall I promised you a walk. After you’ve finished making yourself gorgeous, of course.”

  A little while later, Ursi led me down the stairs, but instead of waiting for me to push the door open, she turned left into Renee’s bookstore. Never one to turn down a chance to spend time in an all-time favorite location, I followed her lead.

  And almost ran straight into Ozzy Metcalf. The sourpuss, who was one of the banes of my existence, almost dropped a stack of used paperbacks on Ursi.

  “What’s this?” He sneered as he stared at me as if I was a piece of cat poo. “I thought you ran a respectable business, Renee, not an animal shelter.”

  “I do.” She pointed to a sign posted next to the cash register. “All are welcome here. That means cats, too. Now, are you going to buy those books you’ve been carrying around all afternoon or are you just going to make me reshelve them?”

  With a huff, he put them on the counter. Facedown.

  Despite my better judgment, nosiness prevailed, and I peeked at the spines of his selections. I expected Zane Gray or Larry McMurtry. What I saw made me let out a low whistle.

  “Kristan Higgins, Courtney Milan, Nora Roberts. I had you pegged as more of a Western or Thriller man, Ozzy.” I winked at Renee as I yanked the man’s chain.

  “These are for Shirley. I thought you’d know that since you claim to be her friend.”

  Shirley was Shirley Price, the owner of Soaps and Scents, the place where I purchased my aromatherapy products.

  “Just because I don’t know what she likes to read doesn’t mean we aren’t buddies.” Maybe I’d taken the antagonistic approach too hard. I extended an olive branch. “Can’t deny those are some great choices you’ve got there. Amazing authors.”

  “Milan is Shirley’s favorite and Roberts writes darn fine police procedurals as J. D. Robb.” He pointed a bony finger at me. “Not that you’d know anything about a writer of her stature.”

  So much for my attempt at diplomacy. Then again, Ozzy and I were the human definition of oil and water. It hadn’t helped our relationship when I accused him of murder a while back. Without Shirley to run interference, the crotchety old Ozzy was back.

  I opened my mouth to fire back with a witty retort, but something stopped me. It was an image of Connie after I told her Phil wasn’t Valerie’s murderer. The sorrow mixed with regret was like a punch to the kidney. It was too late for her to take back the things she’d said about her husband.

  It wasn’t too late for me to be nice to Ozzy. There was no h
arm in it at all, as a matter of fact.

  “I got to meet Nora at a book signing. She was so kind. I have an autographed copy of New York to Dallas I’d be happy to share.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then rubbed his chin. “I haven’t read that one. Let me think about it.”

  With a smile, I told him to contact me any time and strolled toward the children’s section. I hadn’t bought the twins any books in a month, which meant I was way overdue.

  I was debating getting a Captain Underpants book for Tristan when someone nearby cleared their throat. I turned to find Ozzy standing there.

  “I hear you’re sticking your nose where it shouldn’t be again.”

  I chuckled. The man certainly had a way about him. “I don’t know that I’d put it that way, but yeah, I am.”

  “The Briggs girl. I remember her. She liked to hang out at my shop and watch me work. She wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t a bad kid, either. Not like some of those rich kids from back in the day.”

  Despite my cool feelings toward the man, there was no denying that Ozzy was a true woodworking artist. When tour buses came to town, the passengers would congregate at the front of Ye Olde Woodworker to watch Ozzy turn a nondescript block of maple into a stunning candlestick or jaw-dropping cardinal, the state bird of Indiana.

  He wasn’t known for his patience with others, so if he let Valerie stick around, she’d earned the privilege. It was gratifying to hear someone say something nice about her, too.

  The comment about the rich kids also piqued my interest. I was tempted to ask him who he was referring to, but I didn’t want to push the issue. It would be easy enough to confirm who were the better-off kids in Valerie’s class. And who among them would have been likely to want to hurt her.

  “She wanted to be a social worker. Did you know that? She was going to help kids who were in bad spots like hers.”

  “Thank you for telling me that. I’m doing everything I can to find out who killed her.”

  “Good.” He looked down. Ursi was curled up at my feet. “You do that, and I’ll make you a carving of that cat of yours. It’s pretty.”

  Too shocked to respond, I simply nodded as he walked away. A moment later, Renee appeared by my side.

  “I heard your little exchange. Can you say surprised?”

  “Totally.” I handed her two books, one for each of the twins, and asked her to save them for me. “Ozzy also said something intriguing about the case. I need to mull it over.”

  Ursi and I made for the exit. While my feline companion wanted to enjoy the August sun and heat by sitting in every soft spot of grass we passed, I needed to walk to think.

  With each step I took, I reviewed the time line in my head. If my assumption that Valerie returned to Rushing Creek to confront the father was correct, what exactly did that mean? Was it simply that by then she would be far enough along that her pregnancy couldn’t be denied? That seemed logical enough, but there was a puzzle piece missing.

  Why, specifically, spring break week?

  We made our way toward the high school. I was hoping that looking at it might provide me with a brain blast. The campus was quiet, which wasn’t surprising for a Sunday afternoon. As we ambled alongside the single-story brick-and-concrete structure, a repeating tink, tink, tink sound drew Ursi’s attention.

  “I don’t know what it is, either. Lead the way.”

  I followed her to the athletic fields. As we approached the baseball diamond, the source of the noise became evident. A group of boys were taking batting practice. It was the sound of an aluminum bat hitting a baseball.

  Apparently satisfied that the mystery was solved, Ursi stopped by the outfield fence, plopped down, and began licking a paw.

  While my companion groomed her gorgeous tortoiseshell coat, I watched the ball players. There were four of them—one pitcher, one batter, and two fielders. After the batter took ten or so swings, they rotated positions, so everyone got to take some swings.

  During one break to gather the balls, a memory of Luke in his white and blue home uniform, playing on this same field, came to mind. He was in the outfield and a towering fly ball was hit in his direction. With a graceful ease, he loped to his right and caught it without breaking stride.

  The crowd rose to its feet in a raucous cheer as he jogged to the dugout, flipping the ball toward the pitcher’s mound on his way. The memory made me smile. Even though I wasn’t much of a sports fan, it had always been fun watching my brother play ball in front of a cheering crowd.

  Then it hit me.

  The baseball team had a rule that the players weren’t allowed to leave town during spring break. While families went on vacations and seniors took off for Florida, Rushing Creek baseballers stayed home and worked out to make sure they met the required number of practices to start playing games.

  Valerie’s return during spring break suddenly made perfect sense. The father was a baseball player.

  No doubt about it.

  She showed up so there would be fewer classmates around when she confronted him. In a frightful twist of fate, that must have also made it easier for him to dispose of her body without being detected.

  Diabolical, indeed.

  “Come on, girl. I want to look at something.” I gave a tiny pull on Ursi’s leash and we made as rapid of a return to the apartment as our short legs would allow.

  The afternoon was getting on, but I was hot on the trail. Nothing else mattered. The three messages I’d received from authors over the course of the afternoon weren’t urgent, so I set them aside for Monday morning.

  I opened my case notebook to the suspect list and pulled up the time line on my computer. Between the bonfire photos from the yearbook and the conversations I’d had with folks in the past week, I’d determined six baseball players had attended the relevant bonfire.

  The murderer was one of those six. I knew it as well as I knew my own name.

  As I studied the names of the ballplayers in question, my thoughts went back to the games I attended in high school. The final scores didn’t matter to me. I was interested in the atmosphere surrounding those contests.

  Students, and often the community at large, loved the varsity athletes. The star football and basketball players were worshipped by some as gods, but it was different with the baseball team.

  Even with Bobcat no longer part of the program, the team that took to the diamond for Rushing Creek High School Valerie’s senior year was good. It was so good it won the conference tournament and reached the state finals. The baseball team had something no other team at the school had.

  It had respect.

  People rooted for the other teams, both boys and girls. But, across the board, the Rushing Creek Ramblers came up short on the scoreboard more often than not. Because of that, the games were social events as much as anything.

  Not with the varsity baseball team.

  The results on the scoreboard mattered. The bleachers were full every home game. And local boosters made sure the team lacked for nothing, from matching cleats to the latest in protective eyewear.

  Yes, the baseball players were the type of kid Ozzy mentioned.

  So, where did this leave me?

  Six young men. Six entitled athletes. They all attended the bonfire. They all had an equipment bag like the one Valerie was stuffed into. I was now faced with one unanswered question.

  Who had access to the rope used in the murder?

  Once I figured that out, I’d have the killer. Unfortunately, answering that question would have to wait. My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number on the screen. My finger hovered over the Answer key as I debated whether I was safe taking a call from a stranger.

  I pressed accept.

  “Hi. I’m trying to reach Allie Cobb. I have information for her about Valerie Briggs.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I stared at the phone, unable to decide what to do next. Part of me, the paranoid one, wanted to hang up, assuming the person on
the other end of the line was a prank caller. Another part of me, the sensible one, wanted to refer the caller to the tip line the police had set up. The third part, the curious one, couldn’t resist the temptation of information.

  “This is Allie. How can I help you?”

  “This is Star Rockwell. A friend of mine said you might want to talk to me.” There was a pause. “About Valerie.”

  Boomer had been true to his word and passed my message along. I couldn’t say yes to meeting Star fast enough.

  Ten minutes later, I was shaking hands with a woman not much taller than me. Her brown hair was styled in a bob that called to mind the inimitable Phryne Fisher. She had an easy smile, but her dark chocolate eyes had an unmistakable sharpness to them. Nothing got by this woman.

  “Thanks for meeting with me. It’s nice to know someone is taking Valerie’s murder seriously.”

  We were in the park across the street from the library. She gestured for me to join her on a bench under the shade of a sweetgum tree.

  “V-Blade loved this place. The four of us hung out here a lot. The less time she had to spend at home, the better.”

  “V-Blade?” I’d not heard Valerie referred to that way.

  Star chuckled. “It was her official Four Horsewomen nickname. We all had them. It was our way to be cool and separate ourselves from everyone else. We took our initials and added a weapon. I was S-Rocket. Looking back, it was pretty juvenile.”

  “Not at all. It’s cool to me. I imagine it was a way to make your years growing up a little less lonely. In fact, I wish my bestie Sloane Winchester and I had come up with nicknames for each other like that.”

  We chatted for a few minutes, mostly about the trials and tribulations of growing up in Rushing Creek. I sensed Star was feeling me out, like Ursi the first time she met Brent’s pup Sammy. Since she didn’t know me, she was being cautious; no doubt she wanted to determine if I was trustworthy.

  I couldn’t blame her. I was doing the same thing.

  Eventually, she decided to broach the subject by asking how the investigation was going. I told her I was making progress but still had a way to go.