by R A Wallace
Megan thought about it for a moment then asked Diane to describe the man.
***
Megan found Connie Powers working in her office at a local bank branch. She motioned to the teller at the window that she wanted to speak with Connie. The teller waved her in to Connie’s office. Connie looked up expecting a customer for a bank loan and was surprised when she saw Megan standing in the doorway.
“You aren’t here for a loan, are you?” Connie asked, trying not to show her surprise.
Megan smiled as she sat down. “No, I’m not.” Then she explained the reason for her visit.
“I’m not sure that I can add much,” Connie said. “Of course, I told the police everything that I did know.”
“Did you speak to the twins or Blake?” Megan asked.
Connie nodded slowly. “I was helping Janice in the house and taking things out for the party.”
Megan could sense her hesitation. She reminded Connie that the twins had asked for her help.
Connie sat back in her seat. “Then I’m sure you already know they’ve been arguing a lot lately.”
Megan nodded to encourage Connie to continue but didn’t interrupt.
Connie dropped her eyes. “It was a stressful day, of course. You know the twins have been together, just the two of them, their whole lives. To have one twin marry must have been difficult for them.”
Connie looked back up at Megan and sighed. “They were arguing that day too.”
“About?” Megan prompted.
“Blake, of course. Janice was worried about where she was going to live after the wedding.” Connie shrugged.
“She wasn’t planning to stay with Jill and Blake?” Megan asked. She couldn’t remember the women ever being apart for long. Wherever you saw one, you almost always saw the other.
“Apparently Janice didn’t feel that was an option given her dislike of Blake.”
***
Megan left Connie to speak with Karen Bouchard. Connie had said that Karen was also helping Janice with the party. She found Karen busy working at the small convenience store located inside one of the gas stations in town. Megan quickly explained the reason for her visit. Karen said that she wasn’t able to take a break, but she could answer questions if Megan ordered something from the deli.
Megan placed an order for two sub sandwiches figuring they’d make a quick meal for her and Dan. While Karen fixed the sandwiches, she told Megan what she had heard, but only after confirming that the twins knew what Megan was asking.
“You can’t blame her, of course. It’s her family home. She didn’t think it was fair that she’d be kicked out of it by Blake,” Karen said as she wrapped the first sub and handed it to Megan.
“Do you really think Jill would have let Blake kick her out?” Megan asked.
Karen wrapped the second sandwich and handed it to Megan with a shrug. “Who knows what Jill would have agreed to once she was married?”
Chapter Eleven
Jax stepped from the shower and quickly towel-dried and dressed. He’d promised Trina before dropping her off from work that he’d be over to help her watch Jasmine. Although Trina lived with her mom, Didi, and her mom watched Jasmine while Trina worked, Didi had plans tonight. Jax finger combed his wet hair back and grabbed his keys. Although he would just be next door, he wasn’t comfortable leaving the house unlocked for long periods of time and he also didn’t want to take the chance of accidentally locking himself out.
He found Trina in the back yard with Jasmine. Trina had obviously had time to shower and change before her mom left. It was still pretty warm and Jasmine was enjoying her small pool. It only had a few inches of water in it left. Jasmine had a tendency to splash it all out.
“Hey, kiddo. Where did all the water go?” Jax said to the miniature version of Trina as he crouched down to be at eye level with her.
Jasmine laughed as she splashed more water at Jax.
“Oh, you want to play that game, do you?” Jax laughed as he moved away. He grabbed a small beach ball and began spinning it to get Jasmine’s attention.
Trina watched from the sidelines as Jasmine focused on the colorful ball spinning just out of her reach. “Are you two okay out here for a little while? I can get us some dinner and drinks. We can eat out here at the picnic table. I think my mom made some potato salad and some fried chicken.”
“Sounds great to me,” Jax said as he bounced the ball off the ground one time to draw Jasmine’s attention.
Trina went into the house and began fixing the plates of food. She could see Jax and Jasmine from the kitchen window. As she watched them, she remembered something she had seen at the Swindell’s recently when they’d been there to cut the grass. She didn’t think it was important, but maybe she should check with Jax and see what he thought. She still couldn’t believe someone had been murdered there yesterday. Trina glanced out the window and saw Jax tempting Jasmine with the ball.
Jasmine struggled to reach it from the pool but Jax was just out of her reach. Finally, she climbed over the side of the pool, laughing, and headed toward Jax and the spinning ball, her pudgy arms outstretched and her merry eyes full of intent.
Jax took a few steps away then crouched back down again. “Are you after this?” He spun the ball and held it out for Jasmine to take. Just as she reached it, her face contorted.
Jax watched for what seemed like an endless moment frozen in time as Jasmine tried to make sense of what had just happened. Then her face crumbled, and she began screaming.
“What? Sweetie, come here, what is it?” Jax dropped the ball and scooped Jasmine up. He stood and held her as Trina came running out of the house.
“What is it? What happened?” Trina asked in full panic mode. She knew Jasmine’s cries. Something was seriously wrong. Jasmine twisted in Jax’s arms and turned toward her mother’s voice.
Jax was bewildered. “I don’t know. Nothing. She was fine and then she started screaming.”
“She didn’t fall? Did she get hurt?” Trina heard her own voice rising in panic over the screams of her child.
“No! Nothing! I don’t know what happened.” Jax held Jasmine up facing toward Trina while Trina began to examine her.
“Baby, tell Mommy what’s wrong,” Trina said as she frantically searched for signs of a wound or bruise on Jasmine’s arms, legs, and belly.
Jax stood holding the squirming child, helpless to do anything but hope that Trina could find whatever was wrong quickly, so they could fix it. Jasmine was still screaming but Jax thought he heard a hitch of some sort when she gasped in more air before screaming again.
“Turn her around, let me check the back!” Trina yelled to Jax.
He carefully turned Jasmine around. While Trina lifted the top of Jasmine’s two piece bathing suit to check her back, Jasmine put her feet against Jax’s chest. Looking down, he saw the ugly red swelling. “Her foot, it’s the bottom of her foot.”
Jasmine’s cries continued but she seemed to be struggling for breaths in between them. Jax locked eyes with Trina. “She’s having trouble breathing! Come on, let’s get her to the hospital.”
Jax didn’t wait for Trina to answer. He ran to the front of his house. Trina was right behind him. He went to the passenger’s side of his truck and passed Jasmine to Trina. Unlocking the doors with his key fob, he helped them into the truck, then ran around and jumped in.
The short drive to the emergency room seemed like an eternity while they listened to Jasmine’s labored breaths between screams. Jax threw the truck in park and jumped out, leaving the engine running. Trina was out just as quickly and they both ran inside where the nurse staffing the front desk immediately took charge.
Before they knew it, Jasmine had been whisked away, leaving Jax and Trina standing in the waiting room. Jax put his hands on his hips and took a few steps with his head down as he tried to get his heart beat under control. He’d never been so scared in his life. Turning back to Trina, he saw her standing as still as a s
tatue, staring at the last place she seen her daughter. Without thinking, he walked over and wrapped his arms around her.
“She’s going to be okay,” Jax said. Over Trina’s head, he saw another hospital employee approaching them.
“I’m going to need some information from you,” the woman said.
Jax looked down at Trina. “You okay? Can you give the information? I’ll run out and move the truck and then I’ll be right back in. Okay?”
Trina nodded numbly, then followed the other woman. Jax ditched the truck in the first empty spot he found and returned to the emergency room almost at a run. He found Trina just finishing with the other woman. They both returned to the outer room to wait. Neither one wanted to sit, they were too upset. They remained standing, huddled together, as they stared at the door where Jasmine had been taken.
Justin Dempsey found them there several minutes later. “Hey, you two,” Justin said from behind them.
Trina and Jax turned their heads to look at Justin but didn’t move apart. Justin walked around to face them. “I heard about a baby named Jasmine being treated for an allergic reaction to an insect sting, so I came down to see if it was your Jasmine.” Justin had met Jasmine at Megan’s when they’d all been there for a party recently. He’d been pleasantly surprised at how patient his own children, Mia and Noah, had been with the younger child.
“Did you see her?” Trina asked anxiously.
“Yes, I stopped in there first. She’s doing okay. The doctor said you got her here quickly,” Justin explained calmly. As a nurse, he was accustomed to speaking with family members of patients.
“She’s okay? She’s going to be okay?” Trina asked, her focus on Justin.
The door they’d been watching opened and a doctor stepped through. He glanced around the waiting room and headed toward them. “Are you Jasmine’s parents?”
“Yes,” Jax said as he and Trina moved to meet the doctor. “Is she okay?”
“She’s going to be fine,” he assured them. He looked over at Justin. “You can take them back to see her now. I’ll check on her again in a few minutes and I can answer any questions they may have.”
Justin nodded his understanding and motioned for Jax and Trina to follow him. “This way.”
Chapter Twelve
Jessilyn stacked the dirty dinner dishes into the dishwasher, closed the door, and turned the machine on. She couldn’t hear it running over the sound of the circular saw outside her kitchen window. Seth had the framework of the deck in place and was working on the boards that would make up the floor of the deck.
He had salvaged the wood from another house. It meant he had to make some modifications to his plans based on what he had to work with. But Jessilyn was thrilled with what he had managed to engineer based on what he had. The materials had been technically free, costing Seth’s time to dismantle an existing deck and transport the materials to Jessilyn’s. In the end, they would have a deck that totaled the cost of the nails for Seth’s nail gun and some other minor expenditures.
He had been working on the deck after he finished his job with Anderson Landscaping each day. Jessilyn was amazed at his focus on the project. She knew that his days with the landscaping job were work intensive and often completed in extreme temperatures. But Seth had doggedly given as much time as he could to the deck.
Jessilyn looked out the window and saw six year old Evan helping. She knew that Seth would have been much further along with his project if he were working on his own. His small assistant often hindered more than he helped. But Seth appeared to have a bottomless well of patience when it came to Evan. Jessilyn smiled at the two of them working now.
They were complete opposites. Seth was tall, around six feet two, with dark hair that he kept short with his own hair clippers. The only feature they shared was blue eyes. Evan’s hair was so blond, it was nearly white. Evan was wearing eye and ear protection and was chattering non-stop as he watched Seth systematically nail a board into place.
He had the first several feet of board down near the kitchen door, so Jessilyn stepped out onto it and marveled at how nice it looked already. Seth was flipping some of the repurposed boards over and using whichever side looked best. As a result, some of the boards he’d nailed down already had old stain on them, others just had what had dripped to the bottom side when they’d initially been stained. Seth told her it wouldn’t be a real problem. They’d be staining it all again once he was done and he could smooth out any bad spots with a sander.
She was in awe of Seth’s craftsmanship. He had an image in his mind of what he wanted to do and, like magic, he knew exactly what had to be done to produce it. Seth shot the last nail in the board and set the gun down, then removed his own ear protection. He looked up at Jessilyn and grinned.
“What do you think?”
Jessilyn knew she was grinning like a fool back at him but she couldn’t help herself. “It’s awesome. I just can’t believe we’re getting deck.”
Seth picked Evan up and set him on the completed portion of the deck with Jessilyn then climbed up himself. He took the glass of water Jessilyn passed to him and emptied it. He shot a look at the tree he and Evan had recently planted.
“I sure hope that tree grows fast. We need the shade back here.” Seth wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Jessilyn smiled at the small tree. “I think it will be a while before that happens. I’ll look for an umbrella on sale. It might be the right time to buy one since they’re putting the fall stock out now.”
“Good idea.” Seth sat down on the edge of the deck. Evan immediately sat down beside him, his feet swinging in the air as he looked up at Seth. “We’re going to need some deck furniture too.”
Jessilyn sat down next to Evan just as she saw Logan pop his head through the gate in their yard.
Evan spotted him at the same time. “Mom, can I go next door and play with Logan?”
“Sure, just don’t stay too long,” Jessilyn cautioned. Evan spent most days next door during the summer when Jessilyn worked. Now that the boys were in school, they didn’t spend as much time together.
Seth watched Evan run toward Logan. “Did you hear anything more about that guy getting killed yesterday?”
“No.” She couldn’t believe what Jill Swindell was going though. “Did you?”
Seth shook his head. “No. I can’t believe we were out there working the day before it happened.”
“It has to be awful for them.” Jessilyn frowned and bit at her lip. “I did hear them fighting Saturday when I was running errands.”
Seth turned toward her. “You did? About what?”
“I don’t know for sure. I assumed it was Jill’s fiancé.”
Seth leaned back on his arms. “What did they say?”
“Well, you know it’s hard to tell them apart anyway. And I was trying not to stare at them, so I’m not positive which one said it.” Jessilyn tried to picture the moment in her mind again.
“Where were you?” Seth asked.
“I was standing in front of Togs. They were yelling before they even came out of their shop, but I couldn’t tell what they said. Then one yelled something like He isn’t worthy of you.” Jessilyn shrugged. “It was something along those lines.”
Seth sat up again. “You don’t think one of them did it, do you?”
“What? Killed him?” Jessilyn thought about it. “It doesn’t make sense that Jill would kill him.”
“Why not?”
“If she didn’t want to marry him, she would have just broken off the engagement, right?” Jessilyn asked.
“You think Janice did it?” Seth asked.
“No. I mean, maybe. I can’t imagine either one did, but if one of them did, it would have to be Janice, right?” Jessilyn frowned at herself for even thinking it.
Seth shook his head. “I don’t know. I hope it wasn’t Janice. I love her energy drinks.”
Jessilyn smiled. “I hope it wasn’t either of them.”
; Evan and Logan burst through the gate from Logan’s yard into theirs.
“Mom, can Logan stand on the new deck?” Evan shouted.
“Hey, now I have two helpers,” Seth said with a grin.
Jessilyn laughed as Seth stood up and lifted both boys onto the deck.
Chapter Thirteen
Susan unlocked the front door of her house, stepped inside, and smiled. She had put a pot roast and potatoes in the slow cooker before she’d left to help Caitlyn at the florist shop. It smelled great. She peeked through the glass lid as she first passed through the kitchen. Then she headed to her bedroom to change into comfortable clothes.
Ross was due to arrive at any time. He wouldn’t be upset if she told him that he needed to wait to eat or even if she told him that she preferred to go out instead. He seemed to be flexible enough that he would go along with whatever she decided. They had been learning a lot about each other and, so far, Susan was very happy with what she had learned. It also helped that both Jax and Caitlyn now appeared to be more comfortable with their mother dating Ross.
She was returning to the kitchen after changing when the doorbell rang. She found Ross on the front step holding two bottles of wine. One was red, one was white. Susan couldn’t help noticing how handsome he looked on her front porch. At five eleven, he was a full ten inches taller than Susan. Also in his mid-fifties, his dark hair was sprinkled liberally with gray. Susan thought about her own black hair now showing some hint of gray and wondered again at the irony. The gray on Ross looked dashing. On her, not so much.
Ross looked down at Susan’s striking blue eyes and smiled. “I figured I’d play it safe and bring one of each.”
“Well, whatever we don’t drink tonight, we’ll save for another time.” Susan backed away from the door and led Ross into the kitchen.
“Something smells wonderful,” Ross said as he set the wine bottles down next to the slow cooker. Peeking inside, he left the red wine out and put the white in the fridge for another day.
