by Karen Pullen
“Fern, please. We both know I just wanted to have sex. And I was only gone a week. Hey, you raised me good.” The police had found us. They weren’t after me, the runaway, but Chuck, who’d picked me up at the State Fair and was wanted for a list of crimes, starting with failure to pay child support. “Ben Parsons wasn’t the worst. This one’s the worst, by far.” I tapped Jax’s photo. “Stay away from him.”
She shook her head. “It’s too bad. He was going to build a chicken house. You sure you don’t have him mixed up with someone else?” She pulled out her knitting. “I’m making him a scarf, see?” The scarf was striped in Carolina blue and white, with matching fringe.
“He isn’t someone you should associate with.” I rinsed our bowls in the sink, and cleared the sandwich wrappings from the table. “I mean it, Fern. He’s very bad news.”
“If you say so,” she said, though I detected a note of regret.
I dropped into Lottie Ember’s chocolate store, Cacao Café, for an informal interview. Lottie’s husband, Evan, had been one of the groomsman at the wedding, and they had been guests at the B&B. The smell of chocolate instantly dunked me into a vat of trufflely anticipation.
Next to the cash register, their child lay on her back in an overlarge stroller, her twisted torso restrained by a quilted harness. She aimed brown eyes right at me in an unwavering stare. She wore a red knit dress patterned with hearts and butterflies; her hair was a froth of black curls. Slowly, slowly she raised a hand in a wave and moaned something like “hello.”
“Hi there,” I said. I patted the child’s foot and she frowned, twisting her neck to catch her mother’s eye.
“Don’t touch her,” said Lottie sharply. “Do you like it when strangers touch you?” Lottie had a heart-shaped face and a fashionably spiky haircut. She got away with it. That haircut on me? People would avert their eyes in horror.
“What’s her name?”
“She can talk. Ask her.”
“I’m Stella,” I said to the child. “What’s your name?”
“Aah-ess,” she said.
“Alice?” I guessed. Lottie nodded. “How old are you, Alice?”
She held out her hand to me and I almost took it until I remembered Lottie’s injunction. Her thumb was folded under. “You’re four?”
“That’s right,” said Lottie. “Alice had a birthday yesterday. We had a party, didn’t we, sweetie?”
“Cake,” Alice said so distinctly I smiled. Then she said something else I didn’t get.
“Presents,” said Lottie. “She got books and a dollhouse. She loves books. Alice can read.”
“Just turned four, and she can read? Impressive.”
Lottie ignored the compliment. “I remember you from the wedding.You’re the SBI agent.”
I nodded. “And I need a few minutes of your time.”
“Do you want to talk to Evan, too? He’s here, in the office.”
“Sure.” I knew Evan was a lawyer—maybe he was here to help Lottie out with her business.
Lottie went down a hallway and poked her head in an open door. I inhaled the store’s intoxicating smells—chocolate, yeast, cinnamon, coffee. She came back, followed by Evan. He was a heavy guy, unshaven, with a dead expression. He didn’t look at me, but sat at a tiny table and stared at his feet.
Lottie wheeled Alice around to face a small TV behind the cash register, and started a movie for her. “Would you like a cappuccino? Or hot chocolate?” she asked me.
I scrutinized the pastry display. “Can I have some of that?” I had spied a three-layer cake labeled Chocolate High that looked dense as fudge. “Just a tiny sliver. As a customer, of course.”
She cut a piece the size of a dozen slivers and slid it onto a doily-covered plate, motioning for me to sit next to Evan. “We’re waiting for my salesclerk to get here,” she said, “so I can take Alice swimming. What do you want from us?”
“I’m following up with the wedding guests who stayed at the inn.” I took a bite of the cake. Oh my.Velvety as only cocoa butter can be, not too sweet, with a hint of raspberry.
“Ingrid told me Justine was poisoned.” Lottie stared at me with her vibrant brown eyes. “How are we supposed to help?”
“Do you remember anything unusual about the morning? Anything said, arguments, that sort of thing.” I took another, larger bite.
“We all had breakfast together, except for Mike’s parents, and his aunt Delia. She wasn’t feeling well. It was buffet style and we all ate the same things. The breakfast was pleasant, a treat for me. Alice enjoys being around people.” Lottie spoke with energy, glancing at her husband now and then. He sat expressionless, contributing nothing, his dull gaze fastened on the pastry cooler.
“And afterward?”
“Evan and I took her outside. We walked around for a bit with the stroller, then we found some chairs on the porch and read. It was nice to relax. Around noon we came in to get ready for the wedding. I gave Alice a snack but we didn’t eat because there was going to be plenty of food after the ceremony.”
“How about traffic up and down stairs, after noon?”
“Our door was shut most of the time. Excuse me a minute.” She went over to a customer in the back of the room who wanted to pay.
While she was busy, I tried to get a word out of Evan. “You hang out much with Mike Olmert?”
He shook his head, staring at the floor between his feet.
“How well did you know Justine?”
Evan raised his gaze from the floor and stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head. Lottie got a bottle of water and sat back down. She took her husband’s hand and squeezed it but he didn’t respond. “Evan’s a little depressed,” she said gently. “He lost his job a few weeks ago.”
“There’s a lot of that these days. Cutbacks and layoffs,” I said.
“Evan was fired for cause.” She said it like he wasn’t listening, and indeed, he appeared not to be. “He is clinically depressed.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. But to be honest, I wouldn’t have hired him for traffic court.
“He tried to hide it. That’s the irony. If he’d come right out and told them, he would have gotten treatment and a disability check. Instead he didn’t say anything, just got less productive until clients complained. Isn’t that right, sweetie?”
Evan blinked.
“How did you know Justine?” I asked.
“Evan’s known Mike Olmert for about ten years. They were in the same fraternity at NC State. A bunch of them and their families got together a few months ago for a picnic. Mike brought Justine, in fact he proposed to her that day. They went for a canoe ride and when they came back Justine was wearing a gorgeous ring. But then a terrible thing happened—this woman died. Did anyone tell you about it?”
“Emma McMahon, you mean?”
Lottie nodded. “Her death is the main thing I remember about that day. I’ll never forget it. Emma was eating at the picnic table with the rest of us, then she got this panicky look and started gasping. Her husband was frantic, trying to get medicine out of the car, but it was locked and he couldn’t find his keys. Within minutes she was dead.” She shook her head as if to dispel the image. “Mike tried CPR for a long time but apparently her airway was closed. It was awful.”
“An allergic reaction, was it?”
“She came up in hives all over and her husband said she was probably stung. Poor girl. But you want to know about Justine.”
“What was she like?”
Lottie paused. “Well, she was nice enough.” She looked over at Alice, who was singing along with the movie, musically and on-key, but the words were indecipherable. “Pleasant. Very, very attractive. Some of the women were annoyed about it.You know, she didn’t have to wear such tight clothes. Oh, and she was an amazing cook. She brought a big pot of chili that could have won awards, in my opinion.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“She and I had a brief conversa
tion about Alice, actually a disagreement about obstetrics. Probably I started the argument. She was a midwife. I told her I wished we’d had a real doctor when Alice was born. Right, sweetie?” She turned to Evan, touched his arm. He stared ahead as though lost in his thoughts.
I was taking notes and my mouth was full of cake or I’d have said something. Instead I raised my eyebrows and nodded encouragingly.
“Instead of the incompetents at the stupid birthing center.” She looked at her daughter, who was rocking her head side to side along with the beat of the music. “I try not to be bitter. Just deal with it. It’s too easy to be angry, but I have to be care-ful—Alice knows what I’m feeling. She’s quite sensitive.”
I didn’t know quite how to ask what was wrong. “Was she born with this condition?”
“No one can say.The birth was routine but Alice had seizures almost immediately. She stopped breathing. God save me, I wish I’d been in a hospital.” She looked over at her daughter. “When you have a baby, you know your life will change. But not like this.”
I put down my fork. It felt rude to be shoveling in cake at that moment, and besides, my arteries were clamping shut. I murmured something about how difficult it must be.
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t resent what I have to do. I’m her mother, it’s a pleasure. I resent on her behalf. For her limitations.” She looked out the window. “There’s our salesclerk. Say ‘good-bye,’ Alice.”
“Goo-eye, Aah-ess,” the girl groaned, thrashing her body on the stroller to look at me.
Lottie and I laughed. “A comedienne, too,” I said. “See you later, gater.”
Alice smiled. “ ’Ay-ter, ’ay-ter.” Outside, Lottie talked briefly with her salesclerk, then together they lifted Alice’s stroller into the van. I put money on the table. What had I learned? Alice was smart, Lottie was a saint, Evan was depressed. Justine wore tight clothes. No one unusual had been seen going upstairs in the B&B. Though Chocolate High had added to my hips, none of this added up to murder.
Kate’s rocketing return of serve drew the man to center court and he returned the ball with an overhead smash. She lunged and caught the ball on the tip of her racquet, flipping it just over the net. He rushed up and tapped it back. She killed it with a drive down the sideline. “Love-thirty,” he called, and retrieved the ball. Kate bounced from foot to foot and spun her racquet, as focused as a predator on the incoming serve.
Watching from the sidelines was a woman I recognized as rectangular Ingrid, the maid of honor who’d first heard Justine’s cries through the locked door of the Falkirk room. Today Ingrid was preppy in khaki slacks and a pink polo shirt.
“She’s an amazing tennis player,” I said to her. I had arranged to meet Kate, Mike Olmert’s sister, at this tennis club where she was the pro, to pick up a copy of her video taken during the rehearsal dinner.
“She’s retired,” Ingrid said.
“Yeah, right.” Kate looked about thirty.
“From competition. She still coaches. This guy’s paying two hundred an hour to play her.”
“Will she win?”
Ingrid grinned at me. “She will. She’ll let him take a few games, to keep his hopes up.” She sneezed. “Pardon. Allergies. Here’s the video.” Ingrid handed me a DVD case. “How’s the investigation coming?”
“It’s a tough one.” That was an understatement. We didn’t have a single suspect, not even a person of interest.
With a final thwack Kate cemented her win and shook hands with her client. She trotted over to us and Ingrid handed her a bottle of water and a towel. Kate patted her face and neck, then drained the bottle.
“How’s your brother doing?” I asked her.
“He’s devastated,” Kate said. “He could hardly bear to go back to their townhouse but he had to take care of Justine’s cat and fish.”
So Mike and Justine had been living together. Sleeping together. There was much I didn’t know. “Got a minute for a few questions?”
Kate looked at Ingrid, who shrugged her square shoulders. “Yeah, I guess. What do you need?”
“Somewhere we can sit?”
Kate led the way, through the clubhouse, furnished like an English drawing room with fat chairs dressed in faded chintz and walls of salmon pink and willow green, out the other side to a swimming pool.We sat down at a wrought iron table. A couple of diehard swimmers performed slow laps in the clear blue-green water. It was sweater weather, and the breezes were laden with pollen. A few yellow leaves floated on the pool surface.
“Kate, how well did you know Justine?”
Her elbows flew up and she ran her fingers through her hair. “I wasn’t close to her if that’s what you mean. We were different as night and day. I like to be outside, hiking or climbing or skiing. She was always inside perfecting her eye shadow or shopping for lingerie. Nothing in common.” Kate rotated her torso left and right, then rolled her shoulders. She raised both her legs straight in front of her and flexed her feet, then pointed her toes. Flex, point, flex, point.
I asked her when she first met Justine.
“A year ago, when Ingrid and I moved in together.” She nodded toward Ingrid. “We had a party, and Ingrid invited her. They were old friends.”
“You two are roommates?”
“We’re partners,” Ingrid said, smiling at Kate and squeezing her hand.
Aha. I spent a second trying to put this revelation together with her mother’s homophobia and Justine’s gender change, and gave up. “And Mike came too, right? He said he met Justine at your place.”
“We invited everyone,” said Ingrid. “Our families, our friends, everyone. Remember the quail eggs, Kate? And the tiny chocolate cupcakes?”
“You did a wonderful job with the food.”
“I wanted them to like me.” Ingrid looked wistful.
Kate frowned. “Geez, Ingrid. Screw them.”
“I wished they’d given me a chance.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked.
“My parents,” Kate said. “They’ve never approved of our relationship.”
“No matter what I do, how hard I try,” Ingrid said. Tears filled her eyes and she looked away.
Kate patted her hand. “Sweetie, it isn’t you. They’re horrible bigots.”
Ingrid sighed. “I know. I just keep hoping . . .”
“Mike met Justine there?”
“He fell hard,” Ingrid said. “He wouldn’t talk to anyone else. Remember?”
Kate nodded. “Well, she was absolutely beautiful. You’ll see, on the video I took.”
I wanted to know what Justine had looked like in better times. She’d not been beautiful on Saturday, or yesterday on a rolling cart. “The morning of the wedding, do you remember anything unusual? Any arguments?”
“I was the last person to see her alive,” Kate said. She rolled her shoulders with an audible crack.
“What?” Kate surely had an astonishing way of putting things.
“After I put on that awful dress—remember, the red taffeta?—I went in her room to get help with makeup. She had insisted, because she knew I lacked that gene.”
“What time?”
“Around twelve-thirty. She put some stuff on my face, not much, because I wasn’t used to it. I didn’t like the way I looked, all painted up, and I wiped some of it off. Geez, I feel bad now, because she was disappointed.”
“You looked fine, Kate,” Ingrid said. “Natural.”
But nature sometimes needs assistance. Mascara had been invented for blond eyelashes like Kate’s. “Did Justine say anything, do anything, that in retrospect . . . ?”
“Provides a clue? No.” Kate raised her arms overhead in a giant stretch. Ingrid watched her, seeming to wonder what she would say.
A swimmer emerged from the pool and dripped his way into the clubhouse. The sun slid behind a cumulus cloud resembling a camel. Kate shivered and rubbed her arms.
“You’re catching a chill,” Ingrid said. “Go and sh
ower.”
“Will you please excuse me?” Kate asked. She raised her arms and made flappy wings as she walked to the clubhouse.
Ingrid watched her and chuckled. “What a nut.”
“Ingrid, did you know Justine was transsexual?”
She opened her eyes wide as if astonished. “How . . . ? Oh yeah, the autopsy.You know, I always think of her as a woman. I mean, she’s been a woman for—gosh, seven years? Yeah, I knew. I went to school with her—him—in Wilmington. Johnny and I were really good friends. I always knew he wanted to be a girl. It seemed natural to me that he’d make the change, once he could afford it. And he—she—didn’t want anyone to know, so I promised not to tell. I told only Kate. Justine trusted me.”
“Not even Mike?”
Ingrid flushed pink. “She trusted me, like I said.”
I wondered whether she was lying. “Did Kate tell Mike?”
She turned to watch the swimmers. “Kate and Mike don’t talk. He disapproves.”
“Disapproves . . . ?”
“Of us. He came to our party, figured out we were gay, snagged Justine, and left. We didn’t see him again for a year, until last Friday night.”
“So he wasn’t close to his sister, yet the two of you were asked to be in the wedding?”
“Oh, that was Justine’s idea. She thought the wedding could bring Mike’s family back together. If Mike got to know how wonderful I was, he’d support Kate and me as a couple. Stop thinking we were going to fry in hell.” She pushed her hair behind her ears, revealing them to be round as an Oreo. Square face, square glasses, squared-off shoulders. Geometrical Ingrid.
“Why would anyone want to harm Justine?”
“I can’t imagine.” She sounded weary.
Her obtuseness irritated me. “Of course you can. Revenge, fear, jealousy, control, anger, greed. Have I forgotten anything?”
“Accident, self-defense, insanity.”
“Any of those apply in this case?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “What’s hearsay?”
“Rumor. Or testimony concerning what someone said, not under oath.”
