by Jeff Shelby
“It’s really no problem,” I said.
I stole a quick glance back into the living room. Connor had picked up a magazine—a food and wine one I’d brought home from the dentist a few months back, at Dr. Lin’s insistence—and was still sipping his wine.
I tucked the bakery box into the crook of my arm and grabbed the door handle with my free hand. I pulled it slightly closed, in hopes that this would muffle the conversation I was about to have with Jill.
I hadn’t forgotten my promise to myself or to my daughter. I wasn’t reopening any investigation or rededicating myself to solving any mysteries. But Jill was on my doorstep and there was no reason I couldn’t ask her a few questions. Friendly ones, the kinds of questions any concerned individual might have, especially when it involved the daughter of your significant other.
At least that was what I told myself.
I pasted on what I hoped was a sympathetic look. It wasn’t that hard. I did feel sorry for her because the news of Owen’s death had obviously rattled her earlier in the day.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
Her brow furrowed. “I’m fine,” she said, her answer a little too quick.
I nodded. I wasn’t sure how to bring up Owen, especially since she hadn’t exactly been forthcoming when I’d tried to ask her questions during her earlier visit.
So I decided not to. Not because I didn’t want to ask, but because maybe I could work my way back to that topic via other avenues.
“Your dad is happy to have you back home,” I said.
Her expression softened. “It’s good to be here,” she said. “I’ve missed him.”
I didn’t know much about Gunnar’s relationship with his daughter. He and I were close, of course, but we didn’t spend much time talking about our pasts. Not because we didn’t care about the lives each of us had led before meeting each other, but because our focus was on the present, the now. That had been Gunnar’s mantra ever since our tentative relationship had sprung forward: we weren’t getting any younger and he didn’t want to let opportunities pass him by. He wanted to spend every minute living, not just thinking about living or wondering about what might be or what once was.
That wasn’t to say we never discussed our kids. I was probably a little more forthcoming about Laura than Luke, but I chalked that up to the fact that she called often enough that Gunnar had actually been around quite a few times when she and I had talked on the phone. And he knew that Luke was based in San Francisco, that he was in a band and more of a wanderer than his mother or sister ever would be. And I knew that Jill was Gunnar’s only child, that he and her mother had divorced when she was a teen, and that she’d moved away with her mom shortly after. I knew they’d maintained a good relationship over the years, but that distance dictated how often they saw each other, which was unfortunately not often.
Other than that, there were only a few other pieces of information I knew—she was scared of chickens, she didn’t like caramel sauce on her ice cream, and her dream when she was a kid had been to own a pet salon—that had come up randomly during conversations, little nuggets of information I’d stored away that offered a glimpse of who Jill was but which certainly didn’t provide a full picture.
And the one glaring omission, of course, was Owen, or any other potential significant other.
“I’m sorry again about Owen,” I said. “I know the news came as a bit of a surprise.”
She stiffened, and her gaze dropped to the floor. “Yes,” she murmured.
“I don’t know how the two of you knew each other, but I just wanted to let you know that if you want or need to talk about anything, I’m here.”
Her eyes lifted, and I saw they were full of tears. I didn’t want to make her cry.
“I…” she began, then stopped. She folded her arms against her chest and tucked her chin.
She was close. Close to telling me something. I just didn’t know what.
I peeked through the crack between the almost closed door and the interior of my house. Connor was still thumbing through the magazine and Laura was nowhere to be seen. She liked long showers, especially after stressful days. I was pretty sure she’d consider the events of the day a good reason to extend her shower to almost epic proportions.
“Jill.” I looked at her, at her hazel eyes still filled with unshed tears. “What was Owen to you?”
She drew a shaky breath but didn’t say anything.
“I think you’ll feel better if you talk about it,” I said gently. “And I’ll listen.”
She took another deep breath, a steadier one this time, and blinked a couple of times. “Alright,” she said. “But you have to promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
Her eyes locked on mine. “You won’t tell my dad.”
TWENTY TWO
It wasn’t a promise I wanted to make.
But I made it anyway. “Of course.”
“Owen and I were friends back in high school,” Jill said. Her arms were still folded, and she tightened her stance, almost as though she were hugging herself.
“High school?” I wrinkled my brow. “But didn’t you move? When your parents got divorced…”
Jill nodded. “Yeah, that was the summer of my junior year.”
I winced. That must have been a tough thing to go through as a teenager, especially since it involved moving away.
“So you were friends…” I prompted. I didn’t want to be insensitive or rush her, but I knew I only had so long before Laura stepped out of the shower or Connor looked up from his magazine and wondered where the heck I’d disappeared to.
“More than friends,” Jill admitted.
I tried to keep my expression neutral. “Oh?”
“We sort of started dating my sophomore year,” she said. “At the beginning. He was a year older.”
I wondered if Owen had been different in high school: less abrasive, less obscene. Because if he hadn’t, I had a hard time figuring out what a girl like Jill could have seen in him. Sure, he wasn’t bad looking, but I didn’t think his looks were enough to balance out his awful personality.
“And then you moved?”
“My mom and I moved to Winslow first, into a small apartment near the thrift store in town. But then, at the end of my junior year, she got a job closer to Charlottesville.”
I couldn’t imagine having to switch schools for my senior year. I felt a pang of sympathy for the young woman standing in front of me. It couldn’t have been easy.
“Did you and Owen break up then? When you moved?”
She gave me a weird look. “We weren’t really a couple.”
I frowned. “Oh. I thought you said you guys started dating—”
She cut me off. “We did. But it wasn’t like official or anything.”
“Okay,” I said, but I couldn’t hide the confusion in my voice.
She sighed and jammed her hands into her pockets. “Look, my dad would have never approved. He didn’t want me dating Owen. Heck, he didn’t want me dating anyone. Daddy’s little girl.” She rolled her eyes.
“So he never knew you guys were…a thing?”
She darted a glance down the driveway, as if she thought her dad might be lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping.
“No,” she half-whispered. Louder, she said, “And we were more off than on, anyway, so I wouldn’t really call us a thing, or a couple, or whatever.”
“When you moved to Charlottesville did you guys officially call it quits?”
She toed one of the wooden floorboards with her sneaker. They were surprisingly clean for having trekked to my house on foot and I wondered if the puddles and lingering mud had finally disappeared.
“Yeah,” she said. “But I didn’t want to.” She inhaled sharply, then expelled the breath. “I saw him when I came to visit my dad, snuck out of the house and stuff. And he came to see me a couple of times when my mom was out of town. And then when I went to James Madison, he visited sometimes.”
>
“Visited? Just as a friend?”
Her cheeks colored. “Well, no…”
I asked the question I’d been dying to know the answer to since our conversation had started. Well, one of the questions. The other—did she kill Owen?—seemed a little premature to ask at that point.
“What did you see in him?” The question was blunt, and I knew it.
She glanced at the floor, her eyes fixed on the shoe still poking at the floorboard. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I mean, he’s super hot for one. And he just always seemed like he had potential. Potential to change, to be a good guy. I saw glimpses of it all the time, you know? And I just thought if he grew up a little, or if I spent enough time with him, that maybe he would change. Be the guy I thought he could be.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Jill wanted to save the bad boy. That was the thing that had drawn her to Owen like a moth to a flame.
I’d never been one of those girls. Losers were losers as far as I was concerned, even back in high school. I liked jocks and the smart guys, because I could look at them and see they were dedicated to something. Sports, studies: something had captured their interest and they’d learned to be disciplined in order to get what they wanted. Bad boys? The ones I knew were focused solely on cultivating the chips on their shoulders, or the idea that they were entitled to more than the rest of the world.
“And did he?” I asked.
She opened her mouth to answer but a bright beam of light in my driveway silenced her. A car pulled close to the house and in the darkness, it was difficult to make out who it might be. All I could tell was it was a sedan of some sort.
“Is that my dad?” Jill said, a gasp escaping from her mouth.
I knew it wasn’t—not unless Gunnar had traded his pick-up truck for a sedan—but I didn’t have a chance to respond.
Because the engine stilled and the front door opened and a man stepped out from the car.
A man who looked suspiciously like Sheriff Lewis.
TWENTY THREE
The sheriff hitched his pants as he approached, his ample stomach preventing the belt from staying in place.
He yawned as he made his way to the front porch. “Just who I wanted to see,” he said.
Jill and I looked at each other.
“Sheriff,” I said coolly. “I don’t know—”
He trod up the steps with leaden feet. He squinted at me. “You know it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, right?”
Wordlessly, I nodded.
“I like turkey,” he announced. His moustache twitched. “And I like pie. I like that jellied cranberry sauce, too.” His eyes narrowed until they were just tiny slits. “You know what I don’t like?”
I would have said jellied cranberry sauce—who really does like that, anyway?—but that holiday delicacy had already made it on to the favorite list. “Uh, stuffing?”
He huffed. “I do not like working on Thanksgiving!”
I was pretty sure he didn’t like working any day of the week.
“And I especially don’t like trying to solve a murder on Thanksgiving.”
“Me, either,” I said, and it was the truth. I suddenly remembered my promise to myself: even though I’d spent the last ten minutes quizzing Jill, I was supposed to be done with looking into Owen’s death.
He made a snorting sound and yanked his pipe out of his pocket. “But here I am. Working. On the night before Thanksgiving.”
“You should go home,” I said. “I’ve already told you that I don’t have any information.”
He jabbed the pipe between his lips, working it to the side of his mouth. “I’m not here for you,” he said shortly. He swiveled so he was facing Jill. “I’m here to talk to her.”
Jill made a muffled sound, something between a gasp and a sigh. “Me?”
The sheriff nodded, and his hat dove forward on his forehead. He lifted a hand and settled it back in place. “What’s your connection to Owen, missy?”
Jill swallowed and glanced nervously at me. “Nothing,” she said meekly.
The sheriff glared. “Nothing?”
I cleared my throat. “She really doesn’t have to—”
“Silence!” Sheriff Lewis ordered. “Let the girl speak for herself.”
Jill straightened. “I don’t have a connection to Owen.”
The sheriff eyed her for a long moment, the pipe dancing from one side of his mouth to the other. “No?” he finally said.
She shook her head.
He shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled something out. It caught the light from the porch light, glinting and winking as he held it up triumphantly.
“What is that?” I asked.
He turned his attention to Jill. “Would you like to tell her, or should I?”
Jill paled. “Where did you get that?”
I squinted, trying to figure out what the sheriff was holding. It looked like a chain of some sort.
“I went to your house first,” Sheriff Lewis said, ignoring her question. “Asked your daddy about this. He said it was yours, that he bought it for you as a graduation present.” He smiled, exposing yellowed teeth. “Told him that I was awfully glad I found it.”
I took a step forward, trying to figure out just what the sheriff was holding.
It was a necklace. A long, delicate silver chain with what looked like a “J” charm attached to it.
“I told him I wanted to deliver it you personally and your daddy said you were down here delivering a pie.” He sniffed. “What kind you serving here tomorrow?”
“Pumpkin and apple,” I said. I remembered the pie Jill had brought. “And cherry.”
He nodded. “All good pies. I myself am partial to a little pecan pie. My momma made the best pecan pie in the South. Won a blue ribbon every year at the county fair.”
I did not want to talk about pies or county fairs with the batty sheriff. I wanted to know why he was so obsessed with grilling Jill about the necklace he was holding. The necklace that apparently belonged to her.
“So,” Sheriff Lewis said, his eyes back on Jill. “Is this yours?”
Jill was staring at the floor, and she spoke in a whisper, but I heard her. “Yes.”
The sheriff fisted the necklace, a triumphant smile on his face. “I knew it!”
I frowned. “So you found her necklace. What’s so important about that?” It didn’t seem like it was a case of missing property, especially since Jill didn’t seem to know it had been missing in the first place.
“It’s important because of where it was found,” Sheriff Lewis practically growled.
“And where was that?”
His eyes practically gleamed. “In Owen Nichols’ bed.”
TWENTY FOUR
“In his bed?” I repeated. “Like, his motel bed?”
The sheriff nodded.
Jill looked like she wanted to collapse to the floor.
“So,” Sheriff Lewis said, his attention once again on Jill, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I…I…” she stammered. Her complexion was still pale, but her cheeks were regaining some of their color. “I lost it in town yesterday.”
The sheriff snorted. “You expect me to believe that?”
Based on what I’d just learned about her past relationship with Owen, and the fact that she’d gone to visit him at his motel room, I was having a hard time swallowing that, too.
“I did,” she insisted. Her voice was stronger now. “I noticed it was missing after I stopped in at the Wicked Wich. The clasp is a little loose”—she pointed at the necklace for emphasis—“and I’d been meaning to see if I could get it replaced.”
“So how did it end up in Owen’s motel room?” Sheriff Lewis asked. “And not just in his motel room, but in his bed?”
“I…I don’t know,” Jill admitted.
“I can tell you what happened.” The sheriff’s expression darkened and he sucked on the pipe, creating a whistling sound as he did. “You
went to Owen’s motel room to see him. Things got heated. In multiple ways. And then you murdered him! Suffocated him with a pillow.”
Jill’s hand flew to her mouth to cover her gasp. “I did not!”
I held up my hand. “Don’t say another word,” I said to Jill.
“I am tired of your meddling!” Sheriff Lewis roared.
I tried to remain calm, mostly so that my voice wouldn’t add to his and bring Laura racing out to the front porch. I was already on thin ice, and every minute I was out there was one more minute that she was closer to being done with her shower. “You and I both know this is purely circumstantial evidence. If Jill lost it in town, maybe Owen simply picked it up. Maybe he had plans to return it to her.”
“I highly doubt that,” the sheriff groused.
I did, too. If Owen had in fact found it, he seemed like the guy who would rather hock it for a few bucks than take the time to return it to its rightful owner. Even if that owner was his former girlfriend.
“What other evidence do you have that supports the claim that Jill was there?” I asked. As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Because if the sheriff knew that Jill had been seen there on the night of the murder, it might have been enough to bring her in for questioning.
A small flicker of hope ignited in me when he remained silent.
“Did you find her fingerprints?”
“Fingerprints?”
I raised my eyebrows. “When you dusted the room?”
The sheriff pulled the pipe out of his mouth. “Why would we dust for prints?”
My mouth dropped open. “Uh…to see who might have been in the room? Since you think a crime was committed there?”
Sheriff Lewis studied the pipe in his hand. “We’re gonna do that tomorrow.” And then he shook his head. “I mean Friday. After Thanksgiving.”
I could not believe his incompetency. We were 24 hours out on a possible murder investigation and he hadn’t even dusted the room for prints.
