“I knew his grandmother pretty well. And of course I remember all the scandal during his trial.”
“Trial?” My voice rose, and a few people glanced toward us. Oh well, anyone who overheard probably just thought I was talking about Lisa’s future like everyone else. “Why did he have a trial?”
“I guess you were too young to remember.” She paused and tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Well, maybe you weren’t even born yet. I’ve lost track of the years, but it happened a long time ago.” She settled her napkin in her lap. “I don’t think he served any time.” Again she paused. “Hmm. Maybe just probation since he was a minor.” If this were anyone but Marge, I would think she was drawing this out on purpose to frustrate me.
“So what’d he do?” Mama was right. Too much curiosity could drive you crazy.
She glanced around the diner. “This isn’t the best place to discuss it.” She lowered her voice. “You can ask your mother or dad later. I’m sure they remember.”
They probably did remember, but Mama had distinctly asked me not to get involved in this investigation. So asking them was out of the question.
Just as I opened my mouth to reply, I heard a loud crash behind me. I spun around. Debbie stood with her hand to her mouth. Broken plates and the remains of more than one daily special littered the floor. Except for the part that was spread down the front of Grimmett and one of his friends.
“Excuse me, ladies. I think I’m needed over there.” I snatched a stack of napkins on my way over to the mess. Debbie’s lips were trembling, and tears welled in her eyes as she tried to wipe chicken and dressing off Grimmett’s shirt. He pushed her hands away and took a napkin from me and handed one to his friend. Debbie stepped back.
Alice hurried out of the kitchen with two damp towels. She handed one to Debbie, who took it and started wiping at the food. Alice bent down beside her and helped. Marco rushed over with a tray, and he and I picked up the broken plates.
Grimmett and his equally unlucky friend got most of the food off their shirts. He turned back to his buddies as if we weren’t there. “So like I was saying. . .I heard she caught him in that little sports car with another woman and shot him.”
Marco and I exchanged a skeptical look as we finished up cleaning. Right. Parked behind the Dumpster with his secret love. How romantic. And even if he were, where was this mysterious other woman when I found the body?
Grimmett must have had the same thought. He glanced down at me. “Is that true? Since you found the body, you oughta know.”
I rose to my feet and dusted my hands off over the tray. “I didn’t see anyone else.”
“I’m going to try and clean some of this off my apron.” Debbie’s tears had dried some, but she was still ashen. “Can you cover my tables for a few minutes?”
I looked around the crowded dining room. “I’ll try. You go ahead.”
I was really busy, but once again Marco and I were able to cover Debbie’s tables as well as our own. By the time I realized she wasn’t coming back, our shift was over. Now I’d have to run her phone by her house again.
I walked into the break room to gather my things and smiled when I saw Harvey and Alice there drinking a cup of coffee. Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. I poured myself a cup and sank down beside them.
“How’s everything going?” I asked conversationally.
Harvey nodded. “Pretty good.”
“Still planning to move to Florida after you finish helping Carly?”
Alice tilted her head as if she could see through my casual questions. “Planning on it.”
“I need to ask y’all a question.”
“Ookay,” Harvey said.
I smiled. “Marge told me to ask my parents for the details, but frankly, Mama’s already lectured me about staying out of this murder investigation, so I thought I’d ask you two instead. It’s about J.D.”
Alice jerked, and her hot coffee splashed down her hand and onto the table.
“Oh no.” She clutched her hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked quickly.
Harvey jumped up and grabbed her. “Here, hon, let’s get some cold water on that.” He bustled her out of her chair to the staff bathroom while I wiped up the mess.
I went to get a damp rag from the kitchen, and when I came back, the couple was nowhere in sight. Had Harvey taken Alice to the ER for her burn? Or were they hiding out to avoid any further questioning? Maybe the whole town was in on some sort of cover-up about J.D.’s past. Or maybe I’d been watching too many old movies.
*****
After Alice’s strange reaction, if it was a reaction, taking Debbie’s phone back shifted to second on my priority list. First, I had to find out what Marge had been talking about. With that in mind, I looked up her number in my address book. After all, Marge hadn’t said she wouldn’t tell me; she’d just said the diner wasn’t the place to discuss it. Maybe her house would be. One phone call later, I’d been invited by for a glass of tea.
Ten minutes later, still smelling like the lunch specials, I walked up to Marge’s door. Had it only been a year ago that I’d stood on this same porch holding a green bean casserole after Hank’s murder? So much had changed. Some for the better, some for the worse. I reached out to ring the doorbell, and the sun glinted off my engagement ring. One change in particular was a definite improvement.
Marge opened the door and motioned for me to come in. I stepped past her into a house that only remotely resembled the one she and Hank had lived in. Just as she’d done with her personality since she’d become a widow, Marge had opened up the house to sunshine and light. Bright cheery colors replaced the drab beige walls, and as she ushered me into the living room, the plastic-covered couch was nowhere to be found. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” I murmured as I sank onto an overstuffed red chair.
Her face lit up. “Really? Tiffany helped me. She and I had so much fun picking everything out. We even did most of the work ourselves. But the ideas and the planning were all hers. She’s a genius with colors.”
I shook my head as I thought of Tiffany’s drab wardrobe, dull frizzy hair, and scrubbed face. Behind that costume, she hid a flair for colors and design. That girl had learned a long time ago how to choose her weapons in the perpetual battle with her mother. “It’s wonderful, Marge.”
She beamed and sank down onto the loveseat. “So what are you curious about this time?” She took a sip of her tea.
“You mentioned J.D.’s ‘trial.’ And I couldn’t ask Mama and Daddy.” I told her quickly about Mama’s warning to me to stay out of the murder investigation.
She nodded and went to set her tea glass down.
“So I asked Harvey and Alice.”
Marge jostled her glass and almost dropped it. Tea splashed onto the coffee table. She jumped up and snatched a tissue from a dispenser on the end table. “Oh, good heavens, Jenna! Why would you ask Harvey and Alice? They were the very reason I didn’t tell you in the diner.” She wiped up the liquid and gave me a measured look. “How’d they react?”
I nodded toward her tea. “Alice reacted just like you did, actually. Only hers was hot coffee.”
“Ouch,” Marge mouthed. “Is she okay?”
“I think so. When I came back from getting a cloth to wipe up the spill, they were gone.”
“Of course they were.”
“Why? What is J.D. to them?”
She leaned her head back against the chair and stared at the tri-fold screen as if seeing the past unfolding on it. “Harvey and Alice’s only daughter was killed in a car accident.”
“When?” I’d known they had one child who died young, but I’d never heard details.
Lost in thought, Marge counted on her fingers then brought her gaze back to me. “Next month, it’ll be thirty years.”
“What does that have to do with J.D.?”
“He was the one responsible for her death.”
And obviously he had a trial. “So he did time?”
Marge shrugged. “I don’t remember, exactly. I think they put him in some kind of lockup, but he was a minor, so it was probably a place for juvenile delinquents. Believe it or not, we never talked about him again after his trial.”
“Never?”
She shrugged. “Hank put a few articles about his case in the paper, even though I begged him not to. Now I can see that he had no choice, but I was younger then and more naive.”
“But the rest of the town just acted as if he didn’t exist?”
“Everyone thought that the best thing for Harvey and Alice was to just put it behind them and pretend the accident never happened. Even J.D.’s own grandmother—God rest her soul—felt guilty the rest of her life.” She stood and grabbed another tissue. “Back then not talking about it was how people dealt with grief.” She wiped her eyes. “It was probably the wrong thing, but it was all we knew to do.”
“What happened exactly?”
She considered my question then pushed to her feet. “Honey, I’m just not willing to dredge up the past. We’re talking about wounds that are as old as you are. And any healing that has been done is tenuous, at best. Far be it from me to stir things up again.”
I could tell I was being dismissed, so I reluctantly stood. Sure enough, she walked toward the front door, and I followed. “But now with J.D. murdered. . .”
She held open the front door and shook her head. “I refuse to think that anybody killed that boy because of what happened thirty years ago.”
Out on the porch, I considered her parting statement. “I wish I could be so sure,” I murmured to myself as I walked slowly to my car. “I just wish I could be so sure.”
Chapter Twelve
Your chickens will come home to roost.
“So basically, what you’re saying is that you want me to drive the getaway car?” Carly asked.
I plopped down in the chair with my mail on my lap and started slitting envelopes. “That makes it sound like I’m doing something wrong. All I want to do is give Debbie’s phone back to her.”
“And find out why she was meeting J.D. the night he died and why she didn’t come forward with that information.” Carly’s flippant tone came through my little phone loud and clear.
Before I could answer, she continued, “Oh, and ask her why exactly she put the phone at the bottom of the trash.”
“Basically,” I said in a small voice, looking at an invitation to Tiffany’s wedding shower at the country club.
“Sure,” Carly said, apparently resigned to life with my avid curiosity. “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
“Thanks.”
When she pulled up in front of my house fifteen minutes later, I was on the porch waiting. I ran out and jumped in the passenger seat. “You’re late.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Hey!” I protested with a grin. “Just because I’m trying to do the smart thing and take someone with me when I go to confront a person who may or may not be a homicidal maniac. . .”
The word homicide reminded me of the disturbing news I’d learned from Marge earlier, and my grin faded. I quickly filled Carly in.
She wiped at tears with one hand and drove with the other. “How awful for Harvey and Alice.”
“I know,” I said quietly, handing her a tissue. “And I wonder how taking a life, whether accidentally or on purpose, affected J.D. It must have changed the course of his life.”
“Yeah,” Carly agreed. “Especially if even his grandmother didn’t mention his name anymore.”
“Ironic that he came back for her funeral and ended up getting killed, isn’t it?” I wondered again if trouble had followed him to our sleepy little town of Lake View. Or if it had been here waiting for him all along.
*****
I knocked on the door of Debbie’s tiny house and cast a glance over my shoulder to where Carly waited in her car with the engine running.
When Debbie opened the door a crack, I shoved the cell phone toward her. “I accidentally got your phone again.”
She recoiled and shook her head, still not opening the door all the way. “That’s not my phone.”
“It’s the phone you had at the diner the other day.” I held it up again to show her. “Remember when we got our phones mixed up?”
“That doesn’t belong to me.” She opened the door a little more. “I’m telling you, it isn’t mine.” Her voice rose.
“I know why you don’t want to claim it. You might as well come out here so we can talk about it.” I really didn’t want her to invite me in. I was so jumpy these days, I was seeing a killer on every familiar face.
She hesitated, and for a minute I thought she might slam the door shut and dead bolt herself inside. But slowly, she opened the door and stepped outside.
Her hair was matted on one side and her face creased. I could tell she’d been sleeping, or more likely from the looks of her red eyes, lying in bed crying.
Whatever the truth of the situation was, my heart ached for her. “You need to take this phone to John and explain where you got it.”
“No, Jenna. I can’t do that.” Debbie sounded near hysterics. “You just don’t understand.”
“I think I do. You and J.D. were seeing each other behind Lisa’s back, right?” I checked again to make sure Carly was still there.
“Not really.”
“He gave you a cell phone to call him on, but you weren’t seeing each other?” I’d figured that much out on the way over, when I’d realized that the one number in the phone that was put in as “Me” had to be J.D.’s. He must have added it in himself and given Debbie the phone. The police had questioned Lisa about whether she had another phone. No doubt they’d found the text messages on J.D.’s phone, but since this phone was also in J.D.’s name, the police didn’t know who had it.
“We. . .” She choked out the words. “We kept telling ourselves we were just friends and that Lisa just wouldn’t understand us hanging out. But the truth was I was falling in love with him. And I think he was with me, too.”
“So why didn’t you just tell her?”
“Neither of us wanted to hurt Lisa.” She blinked rapidly against the tears filling her eyes, but they spilled down her cheeks anyway.
My guess was that J.D. didn’t want to lose his job at the health club, but I could have been wrong.
“We were going to tell her Sunday, but he got killed before we got the chance.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“So you threw the phone away?”
“Yes,” Debbie spat out the word. Then her voice broke. “And it tore my heart out to do it.” She cried harder. “It was my last link with J.D.” She was sobbing so hard now, I could barely understand her. “If Lisa killed him, it’s my fault.” She dug a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her nose.
“Debbie, how could it be your fault?”
“Maybe Lisa found out about us and got mad and killed him.” Debbie sobbed.
“If she did, John needs this phone. You should take it to him and tell him about you and J.D.”
“No,” she said flatly. “I won’t. If Lisa doesn’t already know and she found out, it would ruin our friendship. And I’m the only friend she has left now.”
“I’ll have to take it to John. How long do you think it will take for them to find out it was yours?”
“That’s just it. It wasn’t mine. Like you said, it belonged to J.D.” She wiped her eyes again. “I was just using it. You can’t prove that I ever had it.”
“They already know about the phone, Debbie.” I tried my most reasonable voice. “It would be better for you if you just took it to them voluntarily.”
“Look, Jenna, don’t you see? They’re getting ready to arrest Lisa. This will just be the last nail in her coffin.” She looked at me. “But what if she didn’t find out about me and J.D.? What if she didn’t kill him?”
“John will find out.” I sounded confident, but I couldn’t help remembering how I
felt when Zac was a murder suspect. Even though I knew John was conscientious and did his best, I also knew he hadn’t had all that much experience with murder.
“As long as they don’t have this phone, they’ll keep looking. If they have it, they’ll just say, ‘Here’s our proof. J.D. and Debbie were cheating behind Lisa’s back, so she killed him.’ They won’t look for anybody else.” She sniffed. “If you give them the phone, what are they gonna do? Arrest her immediately. That’s what. Put her in jail and throw away the key. Is that what you want?”
“No. Of course not.” She might be right. Lisa could end up in jail. And unless they found another suspect, she could go to trial. Especially if there was a bloody towel in her car.
Debbie interrupted that awful thought. “Why don’t you go talk to Lisa? Try to find out if she knew about us. If she didn’t know, then the phone doesn’t matter. If she did know, then take the phone to John.” Now Debbie was the one using her most reasonable voice.
Just what I wanted to do. Confront yet another person who might be a murderer. “I guess I could at least go see her. But if I can tell she knows about you and J.D., I’ll have to take the phone to John. And even if she doesn’t, I think one of us will have to take it anyway.”
“Just wait and see what she says,” Debbie pleaded.
I turned the phone off and slipped it back into my pocket. It didn’t look like I’d be getting rid of it today. But I knew someone would have to take it to John. And soon.
*****
“Well, from what you told me about Jolene,” Carly said, as we lazily paddled around the lake using foot-power, “Debbie’s more J.D.’s type than Lisa is.” She neatly turned our paddleboat away from a collision course with the twins.
I smiled as I cycled with my feet, too. “Wait until you meet Jolene. She makes Debbie look like Princess Di. But you’re right. Of the two, Debbie is more like Jolene than Lisa is.”
“So why didn’t he just tell Lisa?”
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