Tagged for Death

by Sherry Harris

  “It was by the fence. Someone had cut a hole in it. Probably got on and off base that way. They must have dropped it when they were fleeing. Maybe you found Jessica sooner than anyone planned.”

  First I’d found the bloody shirts, then CJ’s ID card, and now this. “Or someone left it deliberately. It looks really bad for CJ and me. Like we’re involved.” I paused. “Like we did it.”

  “Why you?” James asked.

  “It was my statue.”

  “Tiffany ended up with it.”

  “I guess you know Jessica and I were in Tiffany’s room the night you saw us in the dorm.”

  “I’d figured that out. You both looked guilty.”

  “Someone might think I took it the night we were in the room. Jessica can’t tell anyone I didn’t.”

  James waited to see if I had more to say. “You have to tell Special Agent Bristow.”

  “I will.” We sat silently for a few minutes. Outside we could hear voices calling to each other.

  “James, how come you were at the thrift shop? If you were on a routine patrol, why would you and the other officer come racing up and yell at me to stop? Did you know Jessica was there?”

  James leaned back in his chair.

  “If you had been on a routine patrol, you would have been driving slowly. You might have rolled the window down and yelled a ‘hello’ or something. You wouldn’t run and yell at me to stop.”

  I watched James mull my comments over; lines formed around his eyes as he thought.

  “You had to have prior knowledge of some sort,” I said. “How?”

  “Someone called in. Reported a problem at the thrift shop and hung up.” He started tapping his foot. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this.”

  “A man or a woman?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t take the call. Just the dispatch. I was in the closest car. That’s all I’m saying. It’s all I can say.”

  It still didn’t explain his yelling at me to stop, but I was more concerned about the timing. It was as if someone knew exactly when I would arrive at the thrift shop. Like someone wanted me to be found there.

  CHAPTER 15

  Agent Bristow drove me to the Ellington police headquarters, again. This time he didn’t ask if it was okay. He’d told one of his agents to drive my car to the station. I tried to figure out why Bristow was handing this one off to the EPD. It was, obviously, a military member this time.

  I asked. Agent Bristow didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken. Maybe it was because of the similarity of the two head wounds. I couldn’t have been the only one to have noticed that.

  CJ’s car was already parked in the lot when we arrived. We settled into the same interview room. As Agent Bristow faced me, I noticed his shirt could use a good ironing. He didn’t offer me anything to drink or ask if I was okay. I started jiggling my foot as soon as I sat down.

  “No one bagged your hands? Have you washed them?”

  “Yes, after I used the bathroom at the thrift shop.”

  He shook his head, mumbling something that included the word “sloppy.” Then he said, “Just because everyone around here knows you doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”

  “I didn’t. How could I?” I was about to spill that I knew the fence had been cut, but I didn’t want to get James in trouble. “The statue wasn’t anyplace near me when James pulled up.”

  Bristow was a lot more on edge than he had been the last time we’d talked. Was I trying to kid myself? It hadn’t been a talk, no matter how gentle he’d been. It had been an interrogation. Now I was all set for another one. I might as well just spill what little I knew.

  “Jessica texted me earlier today. She asked me to meet her. I was going to base, anyway. I told her to meet me at the thrift shop.”

  “How did you get on base?”

  “Jessica said she’d sponsor me on.”

  “Why were you coming on base?”

  “I was bringing stuff to the thrift shop. A friend had a garage sale today. I brought the things she didn’t sell.”

  “Why did Jessica want to meet you?”

  I let out a long breath. I might as well fess up. Protecting Jessica was stupid at this point. If it meant finding her killer, I had to tell the truth. No matter how bad I looked.

  “Jessica said she would try to contact some of Tiffany’s friends and family back home. She was looking into Tiffany’s disappearance. When she texted me this morning, she said she had some information.” I handed my phone to Bristow, showing him the text.

  “How did you two cook up this plan?” Bristow asked.

  This wasn’t going to go over well. I looked at the two-way mirror for a moment or two before continuing.

  “I was in Tiffany’s room three nights ago with Jessica.”

  “Tiffany Lopez? The missing girl?”

  “Yes,” I said, shifting in the chair.

  Bristow frowned. “How did you get in?”

  “Jessica let us in.”

  “She had a key to the room?”

  I shrugged, what did it matter? “She opened the door with a credit card.”

  “So the two of you broke into a missing woman’s room? A woman who is intimately tied to you in a very distressing way.”

  “Yes.” I left it at that. Looking back, I realized it was a very stupid thing to do. If our actions led to Jessica’s murder, it was way beyond stupid. I could tell Bristow I’d told Jessica not to try to hunt down any additional information. But it would just look like I was trying to shift blame away from me. I wanted to take full responsibility for what happened. I had to, with CJ hiding the truth about the bloody shirts.

  “What are you thinking about? Something that would help the investigation?” Bristow asked.

  “No. I was just thinking about that night. If anything happened that could be linked to Jessica’s . . . death . . .” I took a deep, shaky breath. “I can’t think of a thing.”

  “Does anyone else know you were in Tiffany’s room?”

  “Not that I know of. Someone rattled the doorknob. No one saw us going in or out. We saw James, but not until we were in the hall. We were a couple steps from Tiffany’s room.” Since we’d talked at the thrift shop, James now knew that Jessica and I had been in the room. However, Bristow had told us not to talk. I didn’t want to get James in trouble.

  “Why go in there?”

  “I just wanted to see if I could figure out what happened to Tiffany.”

  “Again, why?”

  I couldn’t say because if Tiffany was dead, if those had been her bones behind the Dumpster, there was a very good possibility that CJ would be suspected of murder.

  “I . . . I don’t have a good reason. I just wanted to help.” It sounded piss-poor, even to me.

  Bristow leaned back in his chair. “You can go. Don’t discuss any of this with anyone.”

  At home I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Bristow had told me not to, anyway. Calling my mom and trying to pretend nothing had happened held no appeal. I couldn’t concentrate on a TV show, let alone sit still to watch one. Rain tapped against my windows. Walking didn’t sound good. I roamed my apartment, moving a table this way, a chair that. I wiped away tears.

  I looked at my windows. I’d yet to put up curtains, relying on the ugly window shades that came with the place, even though perfectly nice curtain rods were up. It wouldn’t chase the thoughts of Jessica’s death away, but it would at least keep me busy.

  I crawled under the eaves and dug around until I found a box marked as Curtains. Almost every military spouse has a box packed to the gills with curtains from different assignments. What worked in one house didn’t in the next, but they might in the one after that. I dragged the box into the living room. The curtains on top, a beautiful blue silk I’d bought at a garage sale, came from our last house. No way I wanted to use those.

  I kept digging until I found a set my mom had made for me out of a vintage tropical print I�
��d bought at the Santa Cruz Flea Market. The beige, pink, and green didn’t exactly scream “New England,” but they were cheery. Next I found a vintage apple print for the kitchen, also made by my mom. In the bedroom, I hung simple white, which went well with my cobalt-blue-and-white comforter.

  As I finished, someone knocked on my door. Maybe company wouldn’t be so horrible, after all. I hoped it was Stella with some wine or that scotch she’d mentioned the other day. Maybe I’d even tell her what happened. Although knowing Ellington gossip, she probably already knew. I whipped it open. CJ stood in the hall. I really needed a peephole or a security chain or something. The same push/pull of emotion swept through me as it did every time I saw him. One part of me longed to feel his arms around me; the other part was repulsed because those arms had held Tiffany. I steeled myself.

  “How could you?” we both started to say. We paused, stared, and said, “You gave our honeymoon statue to Tiffany.” My version came out angry, and CJ’s sad.

  “Oh, come in. I’d rather not hash this out in the hall.”

  “What were you thinking snooping around after Tiffany disappeared? You broke into her room,” CJ said.

  “I was thinking you were up to your eyeballs in it ever since I found your shirt and Tiffany’s. That maybe I could look at things from a different angle and find something out.”

  “Why do you even care?”

  That shut me up. Carol had asked me the same thing the other night. Maybe our marriage had ended with a stroke of a pen. However, my feelings, good and bad, hadn’t. I had wanted to hold on to the anger and hurt, but it wore me down. This morning I’d started feeling happy again, a bit like my old self.

  CJ took a step toward me. I backed away and sat in my grandmother’s rocker.

  “Tiffany must have taken the statue at some point,” I said. “I didn’t give it to her.” I couldn’t talk about my bundle of feelings right now. Fear and sorrow commingled with my feelings of loss and horror like strands of spaghetti heaped in a bowl. This was no time to try sorting one from another. “She must have taken it from your place.”

  “She’s never been there.”

  If I had been an eye roller, my eyes would have done a three-sixty. As it was, I just looked at CJ, wishing I could arch an eyebrow to indicate my skepticism.

  “I mean it. Other than that one god-awful night, she’s never been to my place.”

  I didn’t point out that god-awful night occurred at our place. I had to move beyond that for the moment. Rehashing wouldn’t help Jessica. The part of me that had trusted CJ for the past nineteen years—half of my life and half of his—still wanted to. The part of me that didn’t trust him at all knew he was a fount of information. I’d better access it while I had the chance.

  “Arguing over who gave away our statue—that is now a murder weapon—isn’t important when Jessica’s dead.” The last came out shaky. It was easier to argue with CJ than to think about Jessica’s death.

  “You’re right.” CJ settled on the edge of the sofa. “Do you have any idea what Jessica wanted to tell you?”

  “No. She sent me a text in the middle of Carol’s garage sale. If only I’d taken a moment to talk to her.” I paused, playing the alternate ending in my head: Me talking to Jessica. The two of us giving the information to CJ and Special Agent Bristow. The bones identified as someone other than Tiffany. Jessica and I hailed as heroes. A great Hollywood ending. “If I’d done that, Jessica might not be dead.”

  “You can’t second-guess your decisions,” CJ said.

  That might be the most truthful thing he’d said to me in months. “Jessica told me she was going to look online, make some calls. Maybe there’s information on her computer or phone.”

  “Both are missing. They can track some of her computer records through servers.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t see why someone would kill her. What could she have found out? Unless it’s about where Tiffany is and who she’s with. Or if the remains are Tiffany’s, then who it was that killed her. Why is it taking them so long to figure that out?”

  “It’s only been a week. There are backlogs and priorities,” CJ said. “Did you see anyone when you were driving to the thrift shop? Not a lot of traffic on Wright.”

  He had a point. A practice area for the base fire department and an FAA access gate to Fitch Field, the joint military and civilian airport, were the only things back there.

  “After I pulled onto Wright, I don’t remember seeing anyone. You know how quiet base can be on a Saturday afternoon.” Sometimes the place was like a ghost town, especially when the weather was nice. “After what happened with finding Tiffany’s . . . the bones, I’ve been extra alert every time I go to the thrift shop.”

  I told him what James had said about the call coming into dispatch. “I think someone wanted me to be found there.”

  “Anyone could have driven by and found Jessica.”

  “No, they couldn’t. The lift was down. It covered her completely.”

  “How would anyone know you’d go to base or at what time?”

  “Through Jessica.”

  “Bristow has someone trying to track down what she did for the past couple of days. They’ll look at her phone records. It will take a while.”

  “I’ve thought about who, besides Jessica, would have known when I would be at the thrift shop. I had to get a pass at the visitors’ center. Anyone checking in when I did would have known I was on base and heading to the thrift shop. A couple of other people got passes at the same time I did. I didn’t pay any attention to them.”

  “I’ll ask someone to see who came in at the same time you did. And who was working when you came through.”

  “Thanks.” We sat pondering for a couple of minutes. “I guess someone could have followed me from town to base and made the call.” It was possible; although with the number of times I’d been pulled over, I was usually aware of who was behind me. “I didn’t notice anyone, though.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “Worry about who killed Jessica. That’s more important.” I tried to shut out the image of Jessica’s body. I could hang a thousand sets of curtains and the image of her lying under the lift would still be with me.

  “Maybe you should go visit your mom.”

  “Oh, that would look good. Find two bodies, leave the state.”

  “You don’t have anything keeping you here.”

  I stared at him. “Get out.” Maybe he wanted me out of the way so I wouldn’t interfere with his relationship with Lexi. Not that I would. Seeing him with someone would kill me. Even if I didn’t want him, I didn’t want to see him with someone who did.

  “I meant a job. You don’t have a job keeping you here.”

  I walked over and opened the door, infuriated with myself for feeling hurt. “I do have a job.” Maybe doing a garage sale for someone wasn’t a real job, but it sufficed for now.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, CJ. Please go.”

  “I’ll call you if I find anything out.”

  I closed the door a bit more firmly than necessary.

  CHAPTER 16

  I’d expected to hear from some of our kids last night after CJ left. No one showed up. Not one of them called. Maybe they were with CJ. Going to sleep had been next to impossible. Finding Jessica haunted me, and the guilt over the “would have, should have, and could have.” Light poked through my newly hung curtains before I fell asleep.

  This morning snow fell lightly, giant flakes drifting slowly down. I wanted to drag my comforter to the couch and watch old movies or read favorite books. I checked my phone. Betty Jenkins had left me a message about her garage sale. Maybe I could run over, look at her stuff, and figure out what to charge her. I needed to do something that would keep me busy enough that I wouldn’t have time to think about Jessica. I called her back.

  “When did you want to have your sale?” I asked.

 
; “Next weekend would be perfect. Can you work me in?”

  That wouldn’t be a problem, but I wasn’t about to tell her. “I need to see what you want to put in the sale and make sure I have time to price everything. A lot of Patriots’ Day events are next weekend.”

  “Do you think that’s a problem?” Betty asked.

  “It could go either way. Lots of tourists will be in the area. Who knows if they will want to go to a garage sale?”

  Betty lived in a rambling yellow farmhouse off Great Road in Bedford. It looked like each generation had added on another section, putting their stamp on the property. Betty was the complete opposite of her house, neat and small. She looked like the kind of woman who should be out biking or hitting a tennis ball.

  Betty led me to an oversized shed next to the house. “What about using this for the sale?” she asked. The space was spacious, but not cavernous.

  “It looks perfect,” I said. A peach-colored cat jumped on a stool next to me.

  We went into her garage. It was stuffed with furniture. Wardrobes, chairs, side tables, dressers, and a couple of old iron beds. Not so long ago, I would have wanted to keep most of it for myself. If this was what she wanted to get rid of, what was in her house must be exceptional.

  A few minutes later, I found out, more of the same—a lot more—plus sets of dishes, mostly depression era, and lots and lots of knickknacks.

  “This is from the Alcott family,” Betty said, pointing to a washstand.

  In this area, many people claimed they had things that had once belonged to the Alcott family. The Alcotts had lived in Concord. One of their homes, Orchard House, is a wonderful, historical museum. If everyone I’d run into who claimed to have something of the Alcotts actually did, they would have needed a much, much bigger house.

  “One of my relatives helped at Bronson Alcott’s Concord School of Philosophy. In lieu of pay, he gave her this.” She must have sensed my skepticism because she opened a drawer, pulling out a letter in a protective sleeve. The letter thanked Chloe Jenkins for her dedication and was signed by Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father.