by Sharon Dunn
She touched the frayed photo album. All this stuff is from the past.
Something had happened to Mary Margret. Now she did have a reason to call the police. Her hand touched the phone just as it rang.
Tossing the light comforter on her sleeping husband, Suzanne Thomas propped herself up on her elbows. Greg’s snoring only bothered her when she couldn’t sleep.
In her rational moments, she knew she was seeing everything through the lens of whacked-out hormones and her own fatigue, but tonight his snoring seemed to shake the bed. The nerve of him sawing logs when she couldn’t even doze. She really wanted to yell in his ear so they could both be awake and miserable. Sweat trickled down her back. Even with the fan running and the window open, she was hot. She rolled sideways, struggled out of bed, and lumbered across the floor out into the hallway.
The baby was doing gymnastics in her womb by the time she made it to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She ran a washcloth under the faucet and patted her neck and arms with it. A glimpse of herself in the mirror reminded her that every day was a bad hair day when you were the mother of three small children with another on the way.
Tonight she had been more restless than usual, but it had nothing to do with the heat or her pregnancy. Since she’d left the church, two trains of thought wrestled in her mind. Both the Saturday cleaning crew and the pastor had been there. No one had seen Mary Margret.
The thoughts doing battle inside her were not unfamiliar. Every time one of her kids disappeared in a department store, the same warring impulses raised their ugly heads. The first thought spoke with reassurance that her child had just wandered away and that within five minutes, he or she would be found.
The other notion appeared in half shadow shaking its head, nagging her about all the terrible things that can happen to children who are not watched closely. It allowed visions of horrible people who hurt children to enter her mind. Images of her and Greg on the news pleading for the life of their child flashed through her brain as she checked under every clothing rack and called her child’s name, her chest getting tighter and tighter and her breathing shallower.
The same type of opposing scenarios rolled around her head when she thought about Mary Margret. One part of her said that by morning this whole thing would be cleared up. And the other more sinister thought made it hard to breathe.
Suzanne leaned on the sink and closed her eyes. Everything Ginger had pointed out about Mary Margret was true. She always left notes or called to let people know what her plans were. The woman was compulsive about it.
On the other hand, Mary was a real estate agent, a grandmother, and a churchgoer. She didn’t have an enemy in the world. No one would want to hurt the oldest member of the Bargain Hunters Network.
Had her waking up in the night been prompted by God? Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the sink and prayed for Mary’s safety. Shopping for a good deal had brought the four of them together, but the bond ran much deeper than gathering for a half price sale. Something beyond her senses told her that Mary Margret was not okay.
The phone in the kitchen rang. Suzanne tensed. She trudged down the hallway and through the living room. It had to be two or three in the morning. Only drunks and people with bad news call at this hour.
She picked up the phone on the fourth ring.
And I don’t know any drunks.
Ginger appreciated the way Earl clasped her trembling fingers in his big strong hand. She was grateful that the female police officer spoke so kindly to her and brought her hot cocoa.
After Kindra had phoned Ginger and Suzanne, they agreed to meet at the police station to get the details about Mary Margret together. They had gone up the stairs to the station house with arms wrapped around each other. She was thankful she didn’t have to do this alone.
But none of it made her friend any more alive.
The officer who said her name was Tammy spoke softly. “We’ll have to notify her next of kin.”
“How did—how did she die?” Ginger knew she was talking, but the voice didn’t sound like hers.
Tammy cleared her throat and shifted in her chair. “I didn’t know if you wanted to hear the details.”
Ginger closed her eyes. “Tell me. She was my friend.”
“A hiker had found her in a forest not far out of town. She was lying in the grass with a head wound…and a hunting arrow sticking out of her back.”
Earl gripped her hand tighter. Suzanne gasped.
Ginger twisted the top button of her blouse and stared at the off-white walls of interview room number two. Hold it together. Focus on what you can deal with. She swallowed. “She has a daughter in California, Mariah…and a grandson. Please let me make the call.”
Her vision blurred. Kindra sobbed beside her, but all noises seemed to be coming through a filter that made everything sound far away. She reached out and patted Kindra’s leg with numb fingers.
“So the last time you heard from Mary Margret was eleven or twelve on Saturday afternoon?” Tammy picked up her pen beside the legal notepad on the table.
“That’s when she must have called.” A chill blanketed Ginger’s skin. “I had a migraine. I couldn’t check messages until—until—later.”
“Thank you for giving me the answering machine tape.” Tammy kept her eyes on Ginger. “You said she sounded afraid on the message?”
Ginger nodded.
“Did she say where she was? Where she was going? Why was she out there in the forest at night?”
The barrage of questions made her thoughts tangle. This was too much. Ginger’s hand curled into a fist. “If only I had checked those messages earlier, maybe—”
Kindra cupped Ginger’s shoulder. Even the warm touch of someone who cared about her failed to shake her from the paralysis.
“I’m sorry to put you through all this.” Tammy placed her pen delicately on the notepad in front of her. “But any time there is foul play—”
“That’s an understatement.” Suzanne’s voice cracked.
“Could it have been an accident?” Kindra squared her shoulders and wiped a tear from the rim of her eye.
“It’s possible someone was out there practicing for bow hunting season.” Tammy tapped her pen on the table. “But it seems like they would have known, would have heard her. In light of the message on Mrs. Salinski’s machine and that Mary Margret’s car was gone and then put back, I think we need to look into this.”
Tammy seemed like a real nice lady. Though her build was like one of those big German women who threw the shot put at the Olympics, she had a pretty face. Her light brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she wore only lip gloss for makeup. But she had a sweet demeanor, more suited to a nurse or Sunday school teacher than a police officer. That’s probably why she had been sent in to talk to them.
This had been the longest night of Ginger’s fifty-six years on earth. If only she had listened to her messages earlier. If only she had been there to pick up the phone in the first place. Her temples throbbed. She’d make this right. Or as right as she could. She’d be a grandma to Jonathon and a mom to Mariah. She’d help the police find out who had done this.
The tingling numbness subsided, and she felt the warmth of a tear trickling down her face. Earl’s thumb brushed her cheek, and she took a ragged breath of air.
Tammy laced her fingers together, resting elbows on the table. “This has been a difficult night for all of you. I know you’re in shock. I’ve got your contact information. I may need to interview you more formally later. I’ll need to know more about Mary Margret’s habits, who might have reason to—”
“Nobody.” Suzanne placed her arms on her bulging stomach. “Nobody wanted her dead. She was the nicest person on this planet.”
Tammy rose to her feet with the notebook and pen in hand. “I’ll be in touch with all of you. I am sorry for your loss.” Tammy walked the few feet to the door of the interview room. “I’ll escort you out.”
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nbsp; As Ginger and the others stood, chair legs scraped abrasively on the floor. She winced. With the numbness subsiding, all of her senses had kicked into overdrive.
Mary Margret’s words ricocheted in her head. “Something terrible, something from the past.”
With Tammy following behind, the four of them walked through the police station, their feet padding softly on the carpet. At the lobby, they returned their visitor badges to the woman behind the glass window. Earl held the door for the women.
They made their way down the huge concrete steps. The rain had stopped hours ago. The air was heavy with that clean, after-rain smell. A gauzy gray with a hint of light to the east covered the sky. Sunday morning, the Lord’s Day.
In a couple hours, I’ll have to fix Earl his breakfast. They would go on with their day, finding safety in the same old routine. But the world had shifted. Ginger placed her palm on her chest. The heaviness was almost unbearable.
They stood at the bottom of the stairs. No one speaking and no one willing to leave. Maybe it was just the veiled light, but both Kindra and Suzanne looked tired and older. All of us are getting older. Time’s passing.
Time’s passing and my best friend is gone.
Chills trickled over her skin when Tammy listened to the Parker woman on the message tape. She rubbed her eyes, then massaged the back of her neck. She’d have to get the tape turned in to the evidence clerk.
She typed the final sentence of her report on Mary Margret Parker, noting that the case was still open and that she intended to question the women further. She clicked on an icon to close the file. If she had known she was looking at a possible homicide, she would have interviewed them separately as procedure dictated. But she thought she would only be informing Mary Margret’s friends about her death.
She usually worked property crimes. They didn’t even have a full-time homicide detective. Maybe Captain Stenengarter would let her work this case.
Her Betty Boop watch told her it was eight o’clock in the morning. Time to go home to her other full-time job. Trevor, her teenage son, had called three times with problems that ranged from burning macaroni and cheese to his girlfriend breaking up with him.
Summers were hard for both of them. She had requested the midnight to eight shift so she could be with him during the day. In theory, Trevor was supposed to be sleeping while she worked. Her mom, who lived next door, checked in on him. Despite her planning, the kid always managed to enmesh himself in some kind of drama when he was supposed to be snoring under his bedspread.
Tammy took her last gulp of Chai tea and tossed the cup in the wastebasket beside her desk. Informing Mary Margret’s three friends of her death had not been easy. Apparently, Captain Stenengarter thought that since she was the token female on the force, she was the best candidate to deal with the emotionally charged situation.
Hoping to clear the tightness in her shoulders, she took several deep breaths. The memory of those three women crying had haunted her all through her shift. Maybe a workout and a hot bath would shake the tension.
After dropping the tape off with the evidence clerk, Tammy clocked out, changed into jeans, and stopped by the coroner’s office on her way out of the station house. A puffy, balding man in a white coat perched behind a desk. A single lamp angled over him. As always, the curtains were drawn.
“Hey, Deaver, what’s the news on the Parker case?”
Bradley Deaver’s skin appeared jaundiced under the dim light. “The news is it was an accident. There’s a practice archery range just up the hill. One of our bow hunters got a little careless and whammo.” Deaver continued to flip pages of his paperwork and write while he talked. “The arrow didn’t actually kill her. The fall did. She hit her head on a rock. The arrow would have killed her eventually, but much more slowly.”
Her stomach clenched. “But she left a panicked message on an answering machine. Her car was taken and returned.”
Holding his precious paperwork in midair, he raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. “Nobody told me any of that.”
“I just found it out from the Parker woman’s friends.” Her stomach tightened even more. “Other than what the college kid told me, I’m not sure how you would prove that the car had been taken out and put back after Parker was dead unless a forensic unit—”
“A full forensic team would need to come up from Missoula. All of that costs money.” Deaver shrugged. “It was a busy night, Tams.” He pushed his pile of papers to one side. “Rain caused a pileup on the interstate, and the drunks are out in full force on Saturday night. We had more than enough dead and predead to deal with. I was told not to dawdle.”
“Who told you to rush it through?” Deaver was exaggerating to appear put-upon. This was Three Horses. It wasn’t like the coroner’s office was wall-to-wall with corpses.
“The muckety-mucks informed me that a full autopsy on the Parker woman wasn’t necessary. All I had to do was determine the TOD, which, by the way, was in the evening.” Deaver pushed a model car he had sitting on his desk back and forth, performing tight turns and wheelies.
Muckety-muck was a term Deaver used for anyone who was his superior, which was pretty much everyone in the department. He was the deputy coroner, not an MD, and most of his job was administrative. Rumor had it that Deaver had flunked out of med school.
“Which muckety-muck?”
“The order came out of Officer Vicher’s mouth, but that doesn’t mean it originated with him.” He parked his car beside the penholder and returned to his stack of papers. “You know this place is a bureaucratic labyrinth. Who knows who gave the original order.”
Tammy glanced at the two books he had on his desk. One was about Ruby Ridge, and the other was a thick reference guide to the Kennedy assassination. “It’s not a labyrinth to everyone, Deaver.”
He shrugged. “I know what I know” His voice held the same ominous tone of a kid around a campfire telling scary stories.
“So that’s it. No more investigation?”
“Really, it was like they’d already determined the cause of death before I did the exam.” He stared at the wall for a moment, then rubbed a mole on his cheek. “I just did what I was told. Talk to the bigwigs if you’re not happy with the conclusions.”
Tammy crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame. “I’m not upset.” So she said. The pinching sensation that started at the back of her neck and worked its way down her spine was like a message from her subconscious. Was this the gut instinct senior members of the force always talked about? A lot about the Parker woman’s death made her uneasy. No matter how hard she tried to talk herself out of it. Being raised in a Christian home had given her a strong sense of justice, and right now she didn’t feel like she was getting it.
“It’s just that what those women said made me think there was more to it. I don’t understand why it’s being shut down so fast.”
“Sorry, Nancy Drew. If you want to get your teeth into some real crime, you should transfer to LA or Detroit.” He moved a paper from one stack to another. A satisfied smile crossed his face. His chair squeaked when he straightened his spine. “Not much happens here in Mayberry.”
“So the case is closed?”
“They are sending up a peon to try and match the arrow to whoever was at the practice range Saturday night. Rain washed away a lot of evidence. Only trace amounts of blood on the rock.”
At least they were doing some investigation. That was hopeful. “How are they going to find out who was at the range?”
“Membership list. A club owns and maintains the range. We might get lucky if they have a sign-in sheet for each day. Don’t ask me who would have been shooting off arrows at twilight.”
Tammy nodded. She had already decided she would ask to be assigned to question the members of the archery club. Deaver cocked his head at her, not unlike an owl preparing to dive-bomb a mouse.
She rubbed her forehead and sighed. Thought of a few hours’ sleep eased the fatigue. “You hav
e a good day, Bradley.”
Deaver’s expression softened. He pushed back his chair and walked to the front of his desk. “My guess is that Captain Stenengarter was the one who wanted things expedited. We all know Officer Vicher is his lackey.”
“Thanks.” The information was Deaver’s version of doing her a favor. He must have been responding to her exhaustion. He did have a human side.
Her shoes echoed down the linoleum corridor. She pushed open the door to exit the station house, took the stairs at a substantial pace, and strode toward her car. Morning sun shone through her window as she drove home to help her son deal with teenage angst and maybe get a little sleep. She hit her blinker and turned into a subdivision where all the houses were pastel colors.
Yeah, it would take more than a workout and a soak in the tub to shake the tightness gripping her shoulder blades.
Trevor and her mom came out to greet her when she pulled into the driveway. Trevor, hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders slumping, trudged toward her car.
Tammy gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. Why was she thinking about the Parker case so much? It wasn’t like she didn’t have enough problems on her plate already.
After the sunny faced teenager slapped some wobbling pink Jell-O onto Ginger’s paper plate, a revelation formed in her brain. Americans do death all wrong. She had just buried her best friend. What on God’s green earth made people think she wanted to partake of tuna casserole at a time like this? Those people in other countries who ripped their clothes and slapped their heads—now they understood mourning.
Suzanne and Kindra, along with Earl, little Jonathan, and Mariah, sat at a far table in the church basement. She shuffled past the table where Mr. Jackson, his business partner Mr. Wheeler, and the other people from Mary’s real estate office sat eating from heaping plates. She recognized them from the pictures on the office wall.
She stared down at the food on her plate. The last thing she wanted to do was eat and be social. What she really needed was to curl up in bed and sleep for a week.
