The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  I forced a brief laugh. “Do people give you such a hard time when you investigate?”

  “No, but then I have a badge. And a gun.”

  “I can see how that might help. Maybe I need to get deputized.”

  “I wish you’d leave the detecting to me. Tell me what you know and let me get on with it.”

  “Know? I know nothing, except that I might be losing my marbles.”

  “Have you been letting your imagination run wild?”

  “Maybe.”

  But, increasingly, I didn’t think I was.

  He stepped closer — too close — tucked a wet strand of my hair behind one ear, and dipped his head to drop a soft kiss on my forehead.

  No!

  Had I thought that? Or had it come from that other voice? Either way, for me this was a no — with an olive and a twist of lemon. I was leaving town in a couple of days’ time, and not up for any romantic complications. Plus, it would feel like cheating on Colby. Even though that was totally ridiculous. Always and forever didn’t extend into the afterlife, did it?

  I jerked my head back.

  “Too soon?” Ryan asked.

  I nodded. Explaining the real reasons would take too long and make me sound batshit bonkers.

  “Can I at least give you a hug?”

  “Sure.”

  I stood, awkward and stiff in his embrace, until he released me, saying, “Okay, then.”

  “Yeah, I better get home and freshened up before the local law enforcement mistakes me for a street wino.”

  I had my hand on the gallery door, ready to go fetch my handbag, when a car screeched into the handicapped parking bay outside the gallery, and Judy Dillon, together with three little girls in pink pajamas, nightgowns and overcoats, spilled out. Judy’s hair stood out in a halo of wild frizz, she wore a mismatched assortment of clothes — like she’d grabbed whatever came first to hand — and she looked frazzled. The very antithesis of Jessica’s well-groomed, overly thin elegance.

  “Stay with me, girls,” she said as she hurried toward the gallery.

  Whining that she was hungry, the oldest girl deliberately stepped on the heels of her younger sister so that her over-boots came adrift, and the smallest one picked her nose and curiously examined the contents.

  “Mrs. Dillon, you can’t park there,” Ryan said. “It’s reserved for people with handicaps.”

  “What would you call having a missing husband, three kids under ten, and not a drop of booze in the house?” she snapped. “Is Pete in there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Then I remembered where I’d seen him last, and with whom. “You‘ve got your hands full with the girls. Stay here and I’ll go get him for you.”

  “Fine,” Judy said.

  The smallest girl, who had climbed onto Judy’s booted foot and now clung to her calf like a barnacle on a boulder, freed one hand to wave and say, “Hi!” to someone to the left of me.

  I glanced sideways. No one was there. Maybe the kid was squint.

  “What are you looking at, sweetie?” I asked her.

  She transferred her gaze to me and opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Judy said, “Look, are you going to get Pete, or am I going to have to go in there and make a spectacle of myself?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Inside, the noisy crowd jostled me from every side as I made my way to the back of the gallery. I passed a closed restroom door and a small kitchenette, where I grabbed my handbag from the row of handbags neatly lined up on a counter. Right at the back was a closed door labeled storage.

  Feeling like an idiot, I pressed my ear against it. The sounds I heard made me want to turn tail and run away, but Judy might grow impatient and decide to come find her man. I’d never been her friend, but I couldn’t do that to her. I knocked on the door. No response. I opened it and peered inside. Pete had Jessica pressed up against a rack of shelves, his lips slanting across hers, his hands running over her ass. She had one hand behind his neck and the other inside his pants. Both of them were groaning loudly.

  “Pete? Pete!” I tapped his shoulder. He spun around, already zipping his pants. “Your wife is here. She’s out front.”

  “Fuck.” Pete barged past me.

  Looking embarrassed but also defiant, Jessica smoothed her hair and wiped a finger around her mouth, checking for smeared lipstick. “Don’t you judge me, Garnet McGee. We don’t all get what, or who, we want.”

  “I wonder if any of us do,” I said to her departing back.

  I got my car keys and phone out of my bag and, on my way back through the gallery, pretended to be checking messages to avoid meeting anyone’s eye. Ryan was waiting for me outside, watching the headlights of Judy and Pete’s car disappearing down Main Street.

  “Right. Now that I’ve pissed off just about everybody here tonight, I think it’s time I went home and hit the sack. It’s been a very long day, and I’m exhausted,” I said, knowing full well I wouldn’t catch a wink of sleep until I’d examined and made notes on every single bit of information in Colby’s phone.

  “Would you like me to drive you home?” Ryan offered.

  “Thanks, but it’s not necessary. I have more wine on me than in me.”

  “At least let me walk you to your car.”

  “Sure, it’s a whole half a block away. You never know what might happen to me.”

  A minute later, we were at my Honda.

  “So, can I take you out for a drink sometime? Maybe dinner?” he asked.

  I opened the car door, held it between us. “Last time I knew you, back in 2007, you were dating Vanessa Beaumont.”

  He nodded.

  “You and she didn’t work out?”

  “No. Things were different after Colby died. She was different.”

  I could relate to that.

  “And now?” I asked. “Is there a Mrs. Jackson?”

  “There was. We got divorced three years ago. She lives in Texas now.”

  Hugo had gotten that right, then.

  “And a girlfriend?” Why was I even asking these questions? I didn’t care about the answers. I did not.

  “I’m a free agent, Garnet. Frankly, I’m a little insulted that you feel the need to check whether I’m cheating.”

  “No offense intended. It’s just been that kind of night,” I said, tossing my handbag into the car and getting ready to climb inside, but Ryan held out a hand.

  “The phone, please. Now.”

  I looked him straight in the eye and lied. “I don’t have it with me. I’ll bring it in first thing tomorrow, I promise.”

  He looked set to argue; a distraction was necessary. I stood on my toes, leaned over the top of the door and kissed him on the lips. Then, before he could recover from the surprise, I jumped into my car, backed out into Main Street and drove off. As soon as I was out of sight, I pulled over, keen to plug the old phone into the car’s charger.

  I stuck my hand into my cardigan pocket. And pulled out a stainless-steel calculator.

  36

  NOW

  Thursday December 21, 2017

  Pitchford Police Station looked much the same as the last time I’d seen it, except that the walls were a soothing putty color, rather than the old mint green, and Ryan Jackson now sat behind the desk in the chief’s office. There were no photos on his desk; in fact, I saw no personal touches in the room at all.

  “Colby’s phone?” Ryan said eagerly.

  Confession time.

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  Ryan’s face fell; his eyebrows knitted across the bridge of his nose. “Gone? Gone where? What do you mean?”

  “It’s missing. Just like my own phone, which disappeared last night between the time I left the gallery and the time I got home. Seems Pitchford is a regular den of thieves!”

  “Is yours a silver Samsung with a cracked screen protector?”

  “Yes. What …?”

  Ryan opened a manila envelope on his desk and slid out a phone. My p
hone.

  I snatched it up and turned it on. “Where did you get it?”

  “Someone found it, and because he is an honest and upstanding citizen” — here Ryan gave me a hard look — “he handed it in immediately.”

  “You need to work on that judgy attitude of yours, Chief,” I said, relieved to see that my phone was still in working order. “And who was this paragon of honesty?”

  “Samuel Wallace.”

  I tried to remember if my old chemistry teacher (and father of creepy Lyle) had been one of the guests at the gallery last night. He could have been. Or maybe he’d gotten my phone via his son.

  “Where does he say he found it?”

  “In a parking bay near the gallery — where you probably dropped it as you were getting into your car.”

  It was possible, I supposed. I’d been juggling my keys, bag and phone at the time, and I’d been focused on Ryan.

  “I want to know about Colby’s phone, Garnet. Now,” he said, clearly pissed off with me.

  “Keep your shirt on, Sheriff, I’m getting there.”

  I explained how I’d had the old iPhone in my bag and then moved it to my pocket, where I’d had it for the rest of the evening — or thought I had. At some point after that, someone had pickpocketed it and replaced it with Jessica’s calculator, presumably in the hope that I wouldn’t immediately notice the absence of its weight.

  As soon as I’d discovered the switch, I’d returned to the gallery. Ryan was already gone, but Lyle had been lurking outside. Had he been there, somewhere in the darkness earlier, when I’d been outside drying off from my Zinfandel shower? When Ryan had hugged me.

  “Hey, Lyle, we met in Hugo’s store this morning, remember?” I’d said.

  “I know who you are.”

  “Right. Did you happen to find a cell phone anywhere around? Mine is missing.”

  He stepped up to me, close enough for me to see the anger in his dark eyes, to smell the rank odor of his body. “You accusing me of stealing?”

  “Me? No, I– I just wondered if you’d found anything. Or seen anything.”

  “I seen lots of things.”

  Me too, buddy. I was still baffled by the sight of Jessica getting it on with King Ding-a-ling. How could she possibly still burn hot for Pete? He no longer had the good looks he’d once had, and his personality had always been grade-A asshole.

  “You seen Cat?” Lyle asked.

  I shook my head. He turned and melted back into the darkness, whistling a low call.

  Inside the gallery, I discovered some of the guests — Roger Beaumont and my parents among them — had already left, but I braved Jessica, Nico and Michelle’s glares to ask around about the old iPhone. No one admitted to seeing or finding anything; I hadn’t really expected anyone to.

  When I left for the second time, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I shivered, peering into the darkness beyond the street and gallery lights. Was Lyle still out there, or was someone else keeping an eye on me? Or — as Ryan had suggested — had I just let my imagination off the leash?

  When I got home, I double-checked my handbag, on the remote chance that I’d put Colby’s phone there and forgotten that I’d done so. But instead of finding his, I’d realized the absence of mine. Panicking, I searched the various zippered pouches and compartments, before tipping the bag upside down and shaking out every last penny and lint-covered cough sweet. Then I’d checked my car. But my Samsung was gone. I’d figured it had been stolen, too — that whoever had taken Colby’s phone wasn’t taking any chances that I might have stored information, or called numbers from it, or taken screen shots on my own device. If only I’d been that smart.

  I felt really bad as I recounted the previous night’s events to Ryan, because there was no doubt it was my fault that a crucial piece of evidence — possibly the first break in the case in a decade — was missing. If I’d handed it in immediately, or when Ryan had asked for it, this wouldn’t have happened. But, just like Doc Armstrong had said, I’d thought I could do better.

  Still glowering at me from across his desk, Ryan asked, “Any idea who took it?”

  “It could have been anyone,” I said.

  It could have been you, I thought.

  He’d known I’d be coming in this morning to hand in the phone. If he had some reason for not wanting the phone to be officially entered into evidence and examined, he’d have needed to get it last night. And he could have, as easy as winking. He might have dipped his hand into my pocket while we were outside, when he’d hugged me. That would have been the best opportunity. My lips twisted at the suspicion that it was the reason why he’d hugged me, that the affection had been faked — a mere ruse to distract me and get close enough to stick his paw into my pocket.

  Men. You couldn’t trust a one of them. If I never kissed another man, it would be too soon.

  “Anyone,” I repeated, trying to fathom whether the frustration that tightened Ryan’s features was real or feigned. Surely someone truly cut out for life as a psychologist should be able to read people better.

  “Like who?” he asked.

  “A bunch of people heard or could’ve overheard that conversation about me having the phone and filched it later. Jessica was near me a lot of the time, and her mother seemed eager to separate me from my bag and cardigan. Roger Beaumont had a chance — he had his hands on my cardigan when I was distracted. But, honestly, it was such a crush, anyone could’ve done it. My folks could’ve done it.”

  I said the last bit in an attempt at levity, but I couldn’t summon a laugh. Instead, unwanted thoughts about my father flickered through my mind. His obsession with murder, the storage container in the basement, how he regularly went out of town on fishing trips but always arrived back with no fish. He said he practiced catch-and-release, that the fun was in the hunt — in landing the fish, not in killing them. Now the unwanted thought that those trips could have been for entirely different reasons popped into my mind.

  Suspecting your own father of being a stone-cold killer? Nice one, Garnet.

  I was being absurd again. Dad was a kind and gentle person, a good father, a patient husband. An absolutely normal man. I trusted him. I was just anxious — clinically so. The same anxiety that had me biting my fingers and peeling my skin also blasted me with crazy, intrusive thoughts from time to time. Especially when my stress levels were elevated, as they most assuredly were now.

  “Any specific theories as to why any of those people would have wanted Colby’s phone?” Ryan asked.

  “It’s a funny thing, but the last time I was questioned here” — I gestured to the office around me — “Chief Turner asked me if I knew whether anyone had a beef with Colby, and I couldn’t think of a single person. I figured everybody loved Colby, because I did. But now it seems to me like half the town was upset with him.”

  “Go on.”

  “Suspect number one” — I held up a finger — “Michelle Armstrong. She’d put the moves on Colby and—”

  “She’s admitted that?”

  “—and he rejected her. And she was angry about that. Seriously. Pissed. Off. And humiliated.”

  “When we chatted before, I mentioned that as a possibility, and you seemed surprised. But now you seem to know all about it. Who’ve you been speaking to?”

  I ignored his question. “And methinks MILFy Michelle over-protested muchly last night when I confronted her about it. Maybe she even planned the wine incident with Roger Beaumont — who was certainly quick and eager to get his hands on my cardigan — because suspect number two, or suspects number two” — I held up a second finger — “are her and anyone else involved in that golf estate land deal. Including the Beaumont brothers.”

  Ryan gave a snort of laughter. “You think his own father and uncle killed him?”

  “Someone did,” I snapped. That shut him up.

  I nibbled at the hard ridge of skin above my gnawed thumbnail.

  “What’s the golf estate got t
o do with Colby?” Ryan asked.

  I explained about the rumors that the estate had been built on wetlands unfit for development.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Hugo,” I admitted reluctantly.

  “That old conspiracy theorist from the hardware store? Give me a break.”

  “Just because some of what he says is rubbish doesn’t mean all of it is. Besides, Colby knew there was something fishy about that deal. He overheard Michelle Armstrong and Roger Beaumont arguing.”

  My vision was going funny, speckled with dots of light, like the start of a migraine. Images and words flickered behind my eyes.

  “Get the hell out of my office. And keep walking, you’re fired.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I just did. And you’d better remember that according to your employment contract, anything you’ve heard or read, any information you’ve come across in the course of your work, is confidential. Don’t let me hear you’ve been telling tales outside of class, young man.”

  I bit down hard on the edge of my thumb, using the pain to pull me back into the present.

  “And she knew he’d overheard stuff,” I said. “She tried to shut him up. She threatened him!”

  “How do you know this?” Ryan asked, looking bewildered.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Garnet,” he said, an edge of warning in his voice.

  I held up three fingers. “Then there’s Blunt — Jessica was definitely hiding something about him last night. Back then, Colby was angry that Blunt was maybe trying to sell drugs to the kids. He had a fight with Jessica about it that last day at school, so she was angry with Colby, too. Maybe she felt the need to protect her brother, or her family — they were always crazy-proud.”

  I showed Ryan four fingers, but he merely shook his head at me, like my theories were insane. Good thing he didn’t know the truly weird things that happened in my head.

  “And number five: that homeless guy, Lyle Wallace,” I continued. “He was there last night, lurking around outside the gallery.”

  “Lyle’s harmless, just a bit odd.”

  “That’s what people always say about their weirdo neighbors — until they find the bodies in the basement.”