The Double Wedding Ring

by Clare O'Donohue

  The ambulance pulled up as we stood in the snow, and Jesse let the EMS workers take over. They quickly determined there was nothing they could do and we all stood helpless in a circle around the dead man.

  He looked to be in his late thirties, maybe five nine, slim even in a leather jacket. He had sandy brown hair, cut short, and his clothes looked neat, though not expensive. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. Death changes a person’s face, leaves it waxy and pale.

  I wanted to look closer, but Jesse had my arm. It wasn’t unusual that he wanted to keep me from a dead body. In our year together he’d tried to keep me from several of his investigations. What was unusual was that he wasn’t examining the body. He was just standing, holding my arm, and looking down the street.

  “Jesse . . .” I started. “Who’s Roger?”

  As I spoke, two squad cars from the Archers Rest Police Department pulled up, and four officers joined us.

  “Everything okay, Chief?” Greg asked, as he stamped out a cigarette and gave me a quick “I’m going to quit” eyebrow raise. Greg had an innocence about him, but he also had great instincts. He was getting too good to be second in command in a small-town police force, and both men knew it. But sometimes Greg got a little ahead of himself, which irritated his boss. I could see that he was trying hard to do the right thing now without overstepping Jesse’s authority, a difficult balance considering the situation. “Why don’t you both go inside and I’ll take it from here?”

  Jesse bit his lip. I could see that he was shaken, but he wouldn’t give in to his emotions nor would he walk away from a case. When a crime had to be investigated, Jesse was all business. He took a deep breath and looked at his detective.

  “It’s okay, Greg. I’m still the chief here. This man seems to have been parked out in front of the house all night. He must have died from exposure.”

  I pulled away from Jesse’s grip and leaned closer. On the left, where his hair had been more exposed to the elements, there was a crusting of ice, but on the right side there was no ice. And yet I could see that the hair on the right side was clumped together as though it had gotten wet. I ignored Jesse’s warning to move back and examined the hair. “I don’t think he died from exposure, Jesse.”

  “He’s frozen solid, Nell.”

  I pointed to a small hole on the side of his head, near the back. Jesse walked toward me and examined it. He seemed suddenly pale, as if he might faint. I took his hand. He squeezed it, then let go.

  “How could I have missed that?” Jesse asked.

  “You were trying to save his life.”

  He nodded but didn’t look satisfied. Jesse prided himself on being a good cop, and that meant being unemotional and keenly observant. At the moment, he was struggling with both. “This is a crime scene, Greg.”

  Greg nodded and headed toward the body. “I’ll check his pockets for ID.”

  “You don’t need to.” Jesse’s voice was deep, solemn. “His name was Roger Leighton.”

  Greg looked at the dead man’s face. “Was he from town? He doesn’t look familiar.”

  Jesse shook his head. “No. He wasn’t from here. I’m the only person in Archers Rest who would have known him.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Ihave to call Anna.” Jesse was pacing in his kitchen; his hands were shaking.

  We’d waited in the cold until the coroner’s office came and removed the body and the car had been examined for evidence, then towed to the police parking lot. By the time we’d come in, I was freezing. And worried.

  “You still haven’t told me who he is.”

  Jesse sat at the kitchen table. I put a cup of hot coffee in front of him and he drank about half of it before looking up at me. “I met him right after I got out of the police academy. He’d been on the force for maybe ten months when I arrived, but he called me ‘the rookie’ whenever we saw each other.” Jesse smiled at the memory. “Later, when I made detective, we became partners.”

  “You worked in vice.”

  Jesse didn’t talk about his days working in the New York City Police Department very often. Unlike me, he’d grown up in Archers Rest. He attended college nearby and married Lizzie, his college sweetheart. His dream had always been to be a New York City police detective, so they moved to the city. Within a few years, Jesse had everything he’d wanted: a beautiful wife, a newborn daughter, and a detective’s badge. Then Lizzie was diagnosed with cancer. They returned to be near family and live a quieter life in Archers Rest. Months later, Jesse was a widower and the chief of police of a small upstate New York town.

  “Did he say anything to you?” Jesse asked.

  “Last night? No. Not a word.”

  “But you’re sure he was alive.”

  I nodded. “He was smoking a cigarette. I couldn’t see much, but I could definitely tell that.”

  “He said he’d given that up when Lizzie was diagnosed with breast cancer. Roger and Anna both. They said they didn’t want to smoke around her, so they both stopped.”

  “I guess he started again. Unless . . . all I really saw was that it was a man. I didn’t look that closely. I didn’t know I’d need to. Besides it was freezing and you were waiting inside.”

  He nodded and then, more to himself than me, he asked. “Why didn’t he just come to the door? Why didn’t he call? It must have been important for him to drive all the way here. If he had just come to the door . . .”

  Jesse was doing what we all do after a tragedy, torturing himself with the “what ifs” and the “whys” that never find satisfying answers. I had a theory about why Roger hadn’t come to the door, but I hesitated to say it. Maybe he wanted to speak with Jesse alone about some problem, working up the courage with a cigarette. Then, when he saw me go into the house, he might have sat in the car and waited for me to leave. But I didn’t leave, and whatever trouble he was running from caught up with him as he waited. That was my “what if”—what if I had left instead of spending the night, would Jesse’s friend still be alive?

  “Was he involved in anything that might . . .” I tried to say it gently, but it was a hard question to ask about a friend.

  Jesse seemed to be thinking the same thing. “He was very straight and narrow when we worked together. Everything by the book,” he said. “He was a good guy. He was the best cop I ever worked with.”

  “Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with work. He might have driven up here looking for someone he could trust.”

  “Well, he obviously didn’t come to the right person.” Jesse leaned back in his chair. “I need to call my mom and tell her to keep Allie a little while longer. I don’t want her coming back to crime scene tape.”

  “I already called,” I assured him. “She’s taking Allie to the movies. She said she can keep her another night if you like.”

  He sighed. It was just after nine a.m., and the day was already too long. Jesse looked ready to collapse into bed, and I wished he had the freedom to do that. But I also knew he wouldn’t.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Roger?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. A couple of years ago, maybe longer. We lost touch. We had . . .” There was a catch in his throat. “We had a falling out.”

  “About what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  That hurt a little, his shutting me out, but I tried not to take it personally. “Is Anna his wife?”

  “I think so. I mean I’d heard through friends that they were separated. I don’t know if they got divorced, though. They were always breaking up and getting back together. Lizzie used to say she never knew whether to address the Christmas cards to Mr. and Mrs. Leighton, or just Current Occupant.”

  “And you don’t know why he would be parked outside your house?”

  “No idea. The last time he was in town was for Lizzie’s fune
ral, and that was more than three years ago.”

  “But someone knew he would be here. Or else how would the killer have found him?”

  “Why didn’t he just call me?” As he said the words, Jesse grimaced. It was as if he knew why but couldn’t say the reason out loud.

  Maybe a change of subject would help, I thought. “Did you open the back door this morning? Or forget to lock it last night?”

  “No. Wasn’t it locked?”

  “It was wide open when I came downstairs.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing. Just a faulty lock and a good wind.”

  “But the alarm . . .”

  “We were distracted.” He smiled. “And when Allie’s not here I’m less paranoid about safety.” He got up and put his coffee cup in the sink. “I should go to the station and see if Greg has come up with anything.”

  I stood in the doorway. “Jesse, I know you’re used to being strong and doing everything on your own. But we’re together now. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

  He stared at me, tears welling up in his eyes. For a moment, I couldn’t tell what he was going to do, but he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me toward him. We held each other for a long time, saying nothing. I could feel his tears on my shoulder so I held on as tightly as I could.

  After he left, I stayed behind to clean up. We’d left the bed unmade and last night’s dinner dishes in the sink. It was very little, but I wanted Jesse to come home to a clean house after what I knew would be a very tough day. But even after the house was sparkling, I still lingered. I found myself wandering into the living room, looking at the photos he kept there. There were two of Jesse and me together, at a carnival over the summer, and with Allie at Christmas just a few weeks ago.

  And there were photos of Lizzie. She was very pretty. She was petite, maybe five foot three, with short blond hair and a bright, beaming smile. They’d made an interesting couple to look at. Jesse was over six feet, dark hair, glasses, and had the serious expression of a man much older than he was.

  As I looked at a photo of the two of them on a beach vacation somewhere, I felt a little inadequate. I knew it was the natural thing to do after someone has died, but no one had ever said a bad word about Lizzie. All I ever heard was how friendly, how patient, how understanding . . . how everything she was. And how much in love Jesse had been with her.

  I put the beach photo down when another caught my eye. I hadn’t spent much time looking at it in the past. It was Jesse, Lizzie, and another couple at a party. The woman was a dark blond, very stylishly dressed. The man had his arm around her. He looked happy. This was where I’d seen Roger Leighton. Both couples were smiling, celebrating something. It had been taken maybe five years before and already two of the people in it were dead.

  “Well, that’s an unhappy thought,” I said to myself.

  I put the photo back where it was and looked around for my things. I had to go to work, and I had lots of calls to make about the wedding. The wedding—just the idea of it made me smile. My grandmother Eleanor, after decades of being a widow, had fallen in love. She was a nervous and excited bride, and I was the maid of honor. Not many women get to help plan their grandmother’s wedding, but she was more than that to me. She was my friend, my employer, and my housemate. It was too happy an occasion to be ruined by anything. Even by this.

  I grabbed my coat and got ready to leave for work, but there was something else I had to do. I walked to the back door and checked it once again. The lock certainly seemed sturdy to me, but that door was definitely open when I’d come downstairs a couple of hours ago. I knew it had been locked the night before. Jesse is the king of careful. But when I mentioned it, he hadn’t been concerned. May-

  be I shouldn’t be either. Except I was. I looked for scratch marks around the key, or a sign of a break-in at the doorjamb. There was none, which should have reassured me. But I couldn’t erase the nagging fear that someone had walked into the kitchen last night while Jesse and I were asleep upstairs. The alarm on the panel next to the door was switched off. Had we really forgotten to set the alarm when we went upstairs? Or had someone else done it? The code was Allie’s birthday, not something an ordinary burglar would know. But nothing was taken, so ordinary or not, Jesse hadn’t been robbed. Another thought crept in. Could it have been Roger’s killer? What did he want? And would be come back? A chill went down my back.

  As I left Jesse’s house, triple-checking that the door was locked behind me, I looked around. The car was gone; the street was quiet. I walked over to the burned-out streetlamp that prevented me from seeing into the car. I couldn’t get a great view of it, but I could tell one thing: the bulb under the large glass cover wasn’t burned out. It was missing.

  CHAPTER 4

  I’d only been quilting for a little over a year and I’d already tried my hand at most techniques—from hand appliqué to longarm quilting. I’d carefully re-created quilts from patterns as old as the Civil War, done more than a few traditional pieced and appliquéd quilts, and had even started dying my own fabrics for mixed media art quilts, with photographs and painted touches.

  And while I loved both the traditional designs and the innovative patterns that we stocked for sale, lately I’d been coming up with ideas of my own. I’d made several quilts that hung around the shop, all my own design, though they borrowed from previous traditions. I liked building on what had come before—seeing what was old in a new light, and paying homage to the women, and the men, who had been creating quilts for centuries.

  At the moment, I was playing with a new idea, a quilt that combined the clean, geometric lines of the modern quilt movement with William Morris–inspired appliqué. When I was playing around with the design on paper I was worried it would be a mishmash of styles, but as I cut the fabric I could already tell it would work. I’d cut squares out of several shades of solid gray in sizes from four inches to twelve. I’d arranged the pieces on a design board to make a top that seemed like randomly placed squares of varying sizes, but was in fact a carefully planned puzzle. Then I cut large flowers from solid purples, blues, and greens that I intended to appliqué over the squares. What was a very simple, very modern quilt top would soon be something entirely of my imagination.

  Twenty-four hours earlier I imagined I would spend the day behind the counter happily hand-appliquéing my flowers, helping customers, and passing the day quietly. But I’d already given up on that plan. I knew word of Jesse’s friend’s death would get out, and Someday Quilts would be the go-to place for everyone who wanted to be the first to know.

  All the information I could provide was what I had seen—cigarette smoke last night and a dead man this morning. Beyond that, I wasn’t going to be much help to the curious. Jesse’s years in New York and his marriage to Lizzie were big blanks in our relationship. I knew about his childhood and about his life now, but that period—the time in New York City with Lizzie—he glossed over as if it were too painful to discuss. I didn’t ask him about it. I guess I’d always been afraid of his admitting that his life now paled in comparison to those years.

  I stopped by the house to change clothes and get the keys. Eleanor had been distracted by the news, so thankfully she didn’t give me a hard time about letting the shop door lock behind me. She just handed the keys over and told me that she’d be at Someday later, once she’d done some shopping. She was doing a lot of shopping these days, but who could blame her? It was nice to see her so happy.

  I drove to Main Street, parked, and got out, but somehow I wasn’t ready to walk the few feet to the shop. Instead I stood quietly, breathing in the cold, crisp air and readying myself for the day. I felt overwhelmed, unprepared for Jesse’s grief, and maybe even a little uncertain of the memories it would bring back for him. At twenty-seven, I was only a few years younger than Jesse, but I was definitely out of my league in life experience. A broken engagement, a move from New York City
to Archers Rest, and a reboot of my career from magazines to art school was big for me, but it could hardly compare to his responsibilities and the sudden, irrevocable changes he’d been forced to endure.

  I wanted to help him. And while I could do my usual snooping, being the town’s Miss Marple wasn’t going to be enough this time. What would be enough, I wasn’t sure.

  After a minute I forced myself to move toward the shop. I was being overly dramatic, I decided. Jesse and I were fine; nothing had changed between us, or would. Whatever part of his past had come looking for him last night, it wouldn’t get in the way of his future, and that was with me.

  The certainty felt good for a moment, the day seemed a little brighter. I was in charge of my life again. But that didn’t last. I put the key into the lock of the shop’s door, and pushed the door open. I assumed everything would be just as I had left it except for the one pile of easily righted, overturned fat quarters from the night before.

  But it was a mess.

  “What happened?” Natalie was suddenly behind me as I opened the door. Natalie was my age but had already been married for six years and had two kids. And the tone in her voice was the same one she had whenever her kids got into trouble.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “I left the shop neat and tidy, like always.”

  “And then a hurricane went through it?”

  She was right. Just yesterday Natalie and I had spent several hours making fat quarters, an oddly soothing and repetitive job. Once a fabric got low on the bolt, we’d cut the remainder into half yards of fabric, then cut that piece into half vertically, making pieces that were eighteen inches by twenty-four, instead of the normal quarter yard of nine by forty-four. The yardage is the same, but for many quilt projects the rectangle works better than a long, narrow strip.