Third Strike

by Kathi Daley

“True. But we know she stayed at the resort. We don’t know for how long, but she hid possessions that must have had great sentimental value to her in the wall, so she must have stayed in the cabin longer than just a weekend.”

  “Probably,” Brit agreed. “But even that’s an unknown. Maybe she knew Tom was coming home and didn’t want the things she’d hidden in her house, and also couldn’t bring herself to destroy them, so she rented a cabin for the weekend and hid them there. There are a lot of variables to consider.”

  The group fell into silence. I could see that all the women in the room had been pulled into the mystery. It seemed likely we’d never have the rest of the story, but I assumed it was possible I could find a local old enough to remember someone who remembered Francine, or Vikki’s FBI friend would find the man in the photo, who I assumed was Paul, in a military database. In the meantime, we had the death of a local baseball player to solve. It looked like everyone was finished with their meal, so I decided it was time to get on with the brainstorming session.

  ******

  “Before we begin the sharing of information, I have some general announcements,” I said. “First, Brooke Johnson is organizing volunteers for the annual Christmas tree lot that benefits high school sports. I told her I’d pass along the information and ask you all if you’d be willing to help. I have Brooke’s number if you want to call her.”

  There was a general murmur in the room and it seemed as if everyone was at least considering getting involved.

  “Second, while I’m pretty sure you already know Garrett will be joining us on Thanksgiving, I also wanted to mention that he’s considering moving back to the resort at some point in the future. I’m sure you all noticed the ramp in front of the house and the work Jack is doing on the first-floor bedroom and bathroom doorways, but just in case you haven’t gotten the whole story, the rest of the first floor of the main house at least will be made accessible as well. Garrett’s returning home won’t affect what we’re building here in the least. He’s very much on board with the idea of the writers’ colony. Those of you who haven’t met him yet will find he’ll fit right in.”

  “I for one am thrilled he may be able to move home,” George piped up.

  “No place like home, no place like home,” Blackbeard joined in.

  “That’s right.” I glanced at the colorful bird. “There really is no place like home.” I returned my attention to the group. “And finally, I wanted to let you know we’ll have a new resident on December 1. We talked about her briefly at our last meeting; her name is Nicole Carrington and she’s a true crime writer. I’ve since finalized things with her. I think it’s likely she won’t be interested in becoming a member of this group, but I’m sure we can welcome her with open arms; perhaps eventually she’ll want to become part of our family.”

  “I’m anxious to meet her,” Brit said. “Did she talk to you about the project she’s working on?”

  “No. Nicole seems to be a very private person. She told me she wasn’t moving here to socialize but to do research for her project. I’m not sure how long she’ll be staying and I think her plan is to keep her work to herself.”

  I paused a moment to see if anyone else had questions before I moved on. “Before we focus in on the case, does anyone have anything they’d like to share that isn’t related to it?”

  “I have something,” Brit said. “I know I’m here to work on becoming a writer, which is going slowly, but I also decided to try my hand at acting, so I joined the community theater group.”

  We all congratulated her.

  “Anyway,” Brit continued, “my first production with that group will be the annual production of A Christmas Carol on December 21, 22, and 23, and I’d like you all to come. I have tickets, so you can buy them directly from me.”

  “I’ll take one for sure,” I said.

  The others agreed.

  “Anyone else?”

  No one responded.

  “Okay, then, back to Trey Alderman. Jack and I have worked out three lists in which we’ve grouped those we spoke to by the likelihood they spiked Trey’s drink: suspect, not a suspect, and maybe a suspect. Our up-to-date lists are on the whiteboard. Keep in mind, the lists are based strictly on the impressions Jack and I have gathered. I’m sure some of the names will be moved to other categories during the course of this meeting; this is just a starting point. I also want to add that I had a conversation with Detective Savage, who informed me that Trey may have consumed a large quantity of caffeine and other energy enhancers the day of the game.”

  “He isn’t sure?” Alex asked.

  “No. There are conflicting reports. A local doctor got hold of the toxicology screen, and he was the one who felt Trey consumed energy enhancers on the day of the game that may have contributed to his death. The investigator in charge of the case didn’t agree with his assessment. It doesn’t look like the matter was ever conclusively resolved, but I think we should keep that possibility in mind as we discuss things now.”

  I pointed to the lists on the board. “This is what we came up with. Let’s see if we can narrow it down.”

  Suspect:

  Candy Dickerson

  Coach Cranston

  Rena Madison

  Jett Strong

  Not a Suspect:

  Heather Granger

  Hudson Dickerson

  Parker Wilson

  Portia Sinclair

  Maybe a Suspect:

  Dexter Parkway

  Quinn Wilson

  I turned the floor over to Alex, who began to fill us in on the outcome of the interviews he’d conducted on his trip.

  “I met with Parker and Quinn Wilson on my first day in New York,” he began. “Both seemed to be forthright in their answers to my questions. If you remember, Parker was on Trey’s team in college, and although he was a very good player himself, he didn’t get the local or national attention he would have had Trey not stolen the limelight. Both Parker and Quinn attended the party thrown in Trey’s honor as guests of Trey’s girlfriend, Rena Madison. Rena and Quinn were best friends at that time, despite the fact that Quinn hated Trey.”

  “It seems odd to me that Parker and Quinn would have attended a party thrown by Trey’s friends in his honor, even if Rena did invite them,” Brit said. “I mean, it isn’t like they knew anyone else who was going to be there. The game was in Charleston, and most of the players were staying there. Charleston is a great town with an abundance of nightlife. Why travel to Gull Island to attend a party for a man neither cared for?”

  “I agree with Brit,” Vikki said. “It doesn’t make sense they’d go even if Rena invited them. What possible motivation could they have had?”

  I thought about the photo of Quinn flirting with Jett while Parker looked on. “Unless they somehow knew Jett was going to be there and attended to meet him,” I suggested.

  “Why was Jett there?” Jack asked. “That makes even less sense than Parker and Quinn being there.”

  I looked at Alex. “Did you ever track Jett down?”

  “He’s in California, but I did speak with him on the phone. He told me he went to the party to meet Coach Cranston. It seems the coach and Jett’s dad had spoken to each other and the coach was supposed to give Jett something he was to pass on to his father, but when Jett got to the party, Coach Cranston said he’d changed his mind. According to Jett, he left shortly after that; he didn’t know anyone and wanted to turn in early to be rested for the game the next day. I asked him if he knew of a plot to drug Trey and he said he didn’t, though he admitted that when Trey first went down, his reaction was joy intermingled with relief. He said he’d been chasing Trey his entire career and had built up quite a resentment against him.”

  “Did he say what it was the coach was supposed to give him for his dad?” I asked.

  “He claimed he didn’t know. His father and Coach Cranston seemed to have hatched up some sort of plan, but Jett said that ever since he was a little boy, his father had bee
n extremely aggressive about making sure he came out on top. He knew he’d crossed the line in the past, but he felt helpless to do anything about it, so he’d learned to turn a blind eye and not ask questions he didn’t want the answers to.”

  The room fell silent.

  “Okay, what do we know?” Jack began at last. “We know Coach Cranston spoke to Jett’s father at the game in Charleston thanks to the photo from the parking lot. We also have a photo of them standing side by side after Trey went down. Given the fact that Mr. Strong didn’t arrive in Charleston until the night before the game and we have no reason to believe he visited Gull Island at any point, we have to assume he isn’t the one who put drugs in Trey’s drink. He isn’t on any of our lists, and I don’t see a need to add him. If Jett went to the party to pick up something Coach Cranston had for his father, it sounds like the coach might have had something up his sleeve, but it most likely wasn’t drugging Trey.”

  “Maybe he had an agreement with Mr. Strong that would have allowed him to get back at Trey for dumping him as his agent. But by the time Jett showed up at the party, he’d changed his mind about the original plan, deciding to drug him instead,” George suggested.

  “Good point,” I jumped in. “And it sounds like Coach Cranston lied about knowing or having spoken to Mr. Strong. He said he didn’t recall when Jack and I spoke to him, but I’m still not buying it.”

  “Okay, wait,” Brit interrupted. “We started off talking about Parker and Quinn.” She looked at Alex. “Did either mention what Quinn was talking to Jett about?”

  “I hadn’t seen the photo of Quinn talking to Jett when I first interviewed them, so I didn’t ask about it. I asked Jett what he was talking to Quinn about and he said she wanted him to get her into a party he’d been invited to back in Charleston but they weren’t. He told her he wasn’t going, that he just wanted to go back to his hotel to get some sleep.”

  “What does your gut tell you?” I asked Alex.

  “That while Jett, Parker, and Quinn all had reasons to want to see Trey fail, none of them drugged him. I haven’t personally spoken to Coach Cranston, but it does sound like he might have been cooking something up with Jett’s dad. It also sounds like he changed his mind. At this point, I don’t have a strong feeling that any of them are the person we’re looking for.”

  “What if there were two people who gave Trey drugs?” Brit asked. “I realize we aren’t completely sure Trey took energy enhancers on game day, but what if he did and someone slipped them to him without his knowledge the night before? Would that someone have to be Parker or Jett by the process of elimination? I doubt the others would have had access to Trey on game day.”

  We all took a minute to consider the possibility.

  “Brit has a point,” Jack eventually said. “Because we don’t know if Trey was slipped energy enhancers on game day, maybe we should focus on what we do know: that Trey consumed drugs on the night before the game, most likely at the party. We haven’t conclusively ruled out the idea that he took the drugs voluntarily, although most of the people Jill and I have spoken to have said he would never have done such a thing the night before a big game.”

  “Okay,” I said, marker in hand. “Should we move both Jett and Quinn to the not-a-suspect list?”

  There was some discussion before we decided that, for the purposes of this discussion, we should.

  “That leaves Rena, Candy, and Coach Cranston on the suspect list. What about Dexter?”

  Alex paused before he answered. “I spoke to him, and while he certainly didn’t say anything to incriminate himself, I did pick up an odd vibe. He’s brilliant, but he’s still socially awkward.”

  “Still?” I asked.

  “Yes. He has friends and he seems to be doing very well in his field of choice, but there was something about the way he wouldn’t quite look me in the eye when he spoke to me. We met in his apartment and I noticed a photo on the shelf of Trey tossing a baseball. I asked him about it and he said Trey had been his friend and he kept the photo as a reminder of the person who’d once been an important part of his life. He seemed sincere, but then George told me about Melanie Carson. I remembered seeing a photo of a woman with a baby on the shelf too. I’d asked Dexter about it and he said it was of his best friend and his goddaughter. Now, I’m no relationship guru, but it seems to me that if Melanie and Dexter really are that close, Dexter would be furious at Trey after what he did to her. It doesn’t fit that he’d have a photo of him on his shelf to this day.”

  “And Dexter would have had the knowledge to mix a drug cocktail that would make Trey sick the next day,” Vikki reminded us.

  “He does fit the profile of a person who would adopt the persona of C. Menow,” Clara mused.

  “I think we need to move him from the maybe list to the suspect list,” I said.

  The others agreed.

  I stood back and looked at the whiteboard. “We have no one left on the maybe list. Heather, Hudson, Parker, Portia, and Jett and Quinn are all now on the not-a-suspect list. Does anyone see a reason to move any of them to the suspect list?”

  Everyone agreed that, for now, the individuals were fine where they were.

  “We have Candy, Coach Cranston, Dexter, and Rena still on the suspect list. Does anyone have cause to move them?” I added.

  “While Coach Cranston and Rena certainly had motive to want to hurt Trey, my money is on Candy or Dexter,” Clara stated. “There’s something off about them. I think we should take a second look at both of them.”

  I looked at Clara. “When you saw the photo of Candy watching Rena, Heather, and Portia, you said she was scared. It’s occurred to me that she knew Trey was going to be drugged and who was going to do it.”

  “That would be my guess as well,” Clara confirmed.

  “Dexter is up at Harvard, but Candy is right here on the island. I suggest we follow up with her to see if we can get her to tell us what she knows,” Alex said.

  “And someone really should try to figure out whether Dexter is C. Menow. If he isn’t, who is? Jack added.

  “I’ll do that,” Brit volunteered. “I’ve mapped the social media accounts of all the suspects already, so focusing in on one person will be easy. I’ll look for any similarities between the C. Menow account and the accounts under Dexter Parkway’s real name. If they’re the same person, I’ll find a way to prove it.”

  “Okay, great. I’ll talk to Candy again,” I said. “She wasn’t very open to speaking to us the first time, but maybe she can be persuaded.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Clara offered. “I may be able to help.”

  “And I’ll contact Melanie Carson again,” George offered. “Maybe she knows something she didn’t mention the first time we spoke.”

  “I’ll have a chat with Coach Cranston,” Alex said. “Maybe I can find out what he was up to with Mr. Strong.”

  “I’ll go with Alex,” Vikki volunteered. “I do have a way of getting men to talk. And I’ll ask Rick if he knows anything more than he already told Jill about the doctor’s report.”

  “Okay, great. Let me know right away if Deputy Savage gives you a clear answer one way or the other about the possibility of drugs being taken on game day. That piece of information could be a game changer.” I glanced at the board, then back at the group. “It looks like we all have something to do. Should we meet again between now and Thursday?”

  “It would be nice to get this wrapped up,” Clara said.

  “I agree. Let’s plan to meet back here tomorrow night. Even if we don’t have all the answers, we may be able to get a tighter focus.”

  I hoped Jack would stay for a while after the meeting was over, but he told me he’d been spending so much time working on Alex’s case that he needed to put in a couple of hours this evening if he wanted to get the newspaper out on time. Vikki left to go over to Rick’s, and Alex, George, and Brit all returned to their cabins, leaving me alone with Clara, who seemed to be having a conversation with Bla
ckbeard.

  “No, dear, I don’t think that’s quite right,” Clara was saying to the bird.

  “Sick sister, sick sister,” Blackbeard seemed to be insisting.

  “What are the two of you arguing about?” I laughed.

  “This silly bird is trying to convince me that we need to find out about a sick sister,” Clara answered. “I’ve tried to tell him there aren’t any sisters involved in the mystery, but he’s quite adamant.”

  “Blackbeard uses words and phrases he knows to communicate his thoughts. ‘Sick sister’ doesn’t seem like a logical clue, but it might behoove us to keep it in mind.”

  “Very well. Agatha and I are going up to our room. We’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Clara.” I turned and looked at Blackbeard. “Are you ready to be tucked in as well?”

  Chapter 13

  Tuesday, November 21

  The next morning, Vikki called me to say she had news. She wanted me to meet her in town for coffee. I asked her why she didn’t just walk over to the main house and we’d have coffee here, but she said she wasn’t at home. It seemed Vikki’s plan to take things slowly with Rick had been abandoned in favor of speeding things up, but Vikki sounded happy, so I decided not to worry about her having spent the entire night with him. We met at Marina Coffee, a coffee bar that served the designer coffees Vikki preferred. After ordering our beverages as well as a couple of muffins, we took a seat in the back, where we wouldn’t be overheard.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I heard back from my friend at the FBI.”

  “And…?” I leaned forward in anticipation.

  “He wasn’t able to track down Paul through military records, but he found Francine through police records.”

  I frowned. “Police records? She had a record?”

  “Not exactly.” Vikki placed her hand over mine. I could see the tears in her eyes. “Francine died. More accurately, she was murdered.”