“Up early today, Pratt? I wasn’t expecting to see you. Arthur said you’d be in tonight to help him interview Luna Sheppard.”
“Couldn’t sleep, I guess,” Priscilla lied, giving him a weary smile. “How are things?”
“As well as can be expected with a murderer on the loose. The press is breathing down our necks again, and Holly Burke nearly took a swing at me when I showed up at her doorstep at seven this morning.”
Priscilla whistled, leaning against the open door of his office. Jack had been sitting down, looking at something in his lap when she’d come in.
“She didn’t react quite as badly when I went over the other night. She must be less of a morning person than I am.”
Jack chuckled ruefully. “I suppose so. Or maybe she just didn’t want to be up at an ungodly hour on a weekend. She gave me short yes and no answers until I left. The only thing I managed to get from her besides the stink eye was this.”
He held up a photo album that had lain in his lap. It was well-worn, with deep creases in its spine. The red cover had faded almost to pink over the years. Priscilla stared at if for a moment before raising an eyebrow in inquiry.
Jack shrugged. “I asked if he was close with anyone or had been arguing with anyone lately. She said she didn’t really run with Aaron’s crowd of friends and gave me this. She said he was pretty meticulous about detailing who’s who in here.”
He laughed suddenly. The sound was rich, warm, and totally unexpected. “Only, I can’t seem to recognize anyone in these photos, even if I recognize the names.”
“What do you mean?”
Jack cracked the book open and perused the pictures for a minute. He selected one and pulled it from the plastic sleeve. He held it up for her to examine.
The man in the picture was huge. She’d thought Jack, big and broad as he was, was the biggest man in Bellmare. She’d been wrong. This man looked like he ate a jar of protein in the morning and then spent the rest of the day pumping iron. And with the costume he had on, he belonged in a movie about barbarians. His beard was long and going prematurely gray. His hair was held back from his face with only a leather strap. He had so much hair. His arms, his legs, and what little of his chest was visible beneath the shirt he wore were covered in the same brown hair as his head. But that wasn’t what caught her attention.
He appeared to be wearing some kind of pelt around his shoulders. A coyote or a wolf, perhaps. Priscilla hoped it wasn’t real. She didn’t really care for hunting, or the wanton slaughter of animals to make a fashion statement. The man’s shirt was artfully torn, and stained with some sort of red juice she thought was meant to be blood. She could have told them that it was too dark for that. Fresh blood, arterial blood, was surprisingly bright. Blood that came from the veins was dark, but didn’t spurt like the pattern on the shirt would have suggested.
“Who is that?” she wondered. “And why is he dressed like Conan the Barbarian?”
Jack chuckled again. “That’s Garrett McKnight. He used to be a linebacker when he was in school. I watched some of his games. He had a lot of talent. It’s a shame his knee blew out before he could get a scholarship. I never figured him to join a group of LARPers.”
“What’s lurping?”
“LARPing,” Jack corrected. “Live action role play. Think of it sort of like a reenactment, but without all the cannons, and a lot more rules.”
“Bizarre,” Priscilla muttered, handing the photo back to Jack.
“It can be fun, or so I’m told. My son participates in one every Thursday, but not this group. It’s a little too much, even for his tastes.”
“What are they doing?” she wondered. What, exactly, was it a reenactment of? There hadn’t been any major battles near Bellmare except for the Battle of Bunker Hill, which the rebels had lost.
“It’s an … older game. It’s been out of vogue for a while now.” Priscilla noticed the hesitation, and that Jack’s smile was a little too innocent. She didn’t press, sure she didn’t want to know. Maybe Jack was trying to politely say something about her age and it was going over her head.
“Well, good luck with all of that,” she murmured. “I was actually hoping you could loan me Jamie, if he’s awake. I’m going over to see Luna Sheppard with some groceries and thought that Arthur would want an official police presence there while I speak to her.”
Jack leaned back in his seat and looked around uncertainty. “I’m not sure she’ll appreciate that, Priscilla. She’s been pretty vehement about refusing help.”
“And she’ll continue to be prideful until she’s out on the street,” Priscilla sniffed. “I don’t mean to sound judgmental, Jack, but there’s a point at which you have to intervene to save people from themselves.”
He sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But if she calls us about you, I’m having Jamie put you in the back of a squad car, agreed?”
“Agreed.” It wouldn’t be the first time, and at least this time she could hold her head up high while she did it.
Jack stood, strode to the door and stuck his head out. “Jamie!” he barked, then ducked back in.
Priscilla didn’t even have to strain her ears to make out the audible sigh from the other room. Jamie pushed away from his desk, presumably, and appeared in the doorway seconds later. He looked almost as rough as Jack did, with dark circles beneath his eyes. Priscilla wondered if he’d spent the night talking with Anna and had lost track of the time.
“Yes, Captain Riggs?” he asked wearily.
“I want you to accompany Priscilla to the Sheppard house. If Luna doesn’t want visitors or gets upset, take Priscilla off the property. If there’s a scene, arrest her.”
Jamie’s brow furrowed but he didn’t argue. “All right, sir.”
Jamie shuffled away. Priscilla watched him go with mounting concern. “He should be asleep.”
“So should you,” Jack pointed out. “But it hasn’t happened yet. Don’t worry about him, Priscilla. He has the day off tomorrow. He’ll catch up on lost sleep.”
That may have been true, but it didn’t save Priscilla from a wave of guilt. She couldn’t help but feel like she was costing Jamie rest.
He was donning a coat when she joined him in the lobby. The weather outside had been fairly mild for February, so Priscilla hadn’t bothered with anything but a light jacket. She’d adapt to the outside temperature soon enough, in any case.
“Are you all right, Jamie?” she asked in an undertone as they stepped out into the early morning air. The sky was bleak and gray, with storm clouds moving in. It was a mixed blessing. Less light to blind her and make her sick, but it also meant they were due to get nasty weather soon.
“’M fine,” he mumbled. “Just tired.”
“Please tell me you didn’t have another fight with Anna,” Priscilla said as they made their way to one of the squad cars. Jamie fumbled with his keys for a few seconds rather than look at her. He popped the trunk and helped her begin to load the groceries into the squad car.
“We broke up,” he mumbled.
It felt like a slap. Priscilla took a step back from him. “You what?”
He slotted the key into the driver’s side door, still not looking at her. “She says it’s impossible to deal with her dad. She doesn’t want me to quit my job, or move, which is what it would take to make things work out. If things could even work out from here.”
“What do you mean? Of course you can make it work,” Priscilla said. “If you need me to talk to Arthur, I can—”
“Priscilla, there’s nothing to be done. That’s not the only issue we were having.”
Priscilla was floundering. Anna and Jamie had seemed perfectly content with one another only last month. What had changed? Why had Anna broken things off with her steady boyfriend?
“What could it possibly be?”
“I wanted to move further, and she … well, she didn’t.” Priscilla could hear the pain in that admission. Jamie ducked into the car and Priscilla followe
d suit, closing the door behind her hastily.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m twenty-eight, Priscilla. I want to settle down. I want to have a life and a family. Anna’s not quite twenty-two. She doesn’t want to have kids for another three or four years, and I’m not sure I want to wait that long.”
“It’s only a few years. What’s the difference?”
He gave her a sad smile. “I wouldn’t expect you to get it, Priscilla. You’re going to be young forever, and from what I hear you never really wanted kids.”
Priscilla said nothing, though somehow she felt she’d been insulted. So what if she didn’t want to have or raise kids? She didn’t expressly hate them. Why did everyone seem to think that she couldn’t understand? She knew kids were an integral part of life for most people. She didn’t understand his urgency. If it were the plague-ridden olden days she might have understood the concern. But the average life expectancy rate was well over forty these days.
They rode in moody silence to Luna Sheppard’s house, each lost in their own thoughts. It surprised Priscilla to learn that Luna’s house wasn’t one of the shabby little numbers in Larsonburg, but that she lived in one of the rather large houses not too far from the square. The lime-green house looked considerably more cheerful than any she’d visited recently, and the only clues that Luna Sheppard was suffering financially at all were subtle and infrequent.
A familiar little boy opened the door when they knocked, and blinked up at them in shock. His hair looked even redder in the early morning light than it had when she’d first seen him at Grant’s office.
“Am I in trouble?” he blurted when he spotted Jamie.
Jamie finally cracked a smile. “No, kid. There’s no trouble. I just need to talk to your mom. Can we come in, and could you show Priscilla where your kitchen is? She wants to unload a few things.”
The boy nodded and stepped aside to let Jamie in. Then, bold as could be, he took Priscilla by the hand, not seeming to mind the temperature at all. “Come on, the kitchen is this way.”
She followed him into the kitchen. It was easier to tell that Luna was suffering while inside the house. Bills had stacked up everywhere and the television was collecting dust, presumably because it hadn’t been turned on in a while to conserve energy. The clear plastic containers that would normally have held flour, sugar, or rice, were bare, and Priscilla could only assume it was because there was nothing left to fill them. When she had access to her shop again, she’d give Luna a pound of each. She could afford to do so it, and there was a lot that could be made with just flour and sugar alone. Homemade bread would keep this family fed, if nothing else. She’d be sure to send a recipe easy enough for Luna to follow.
Priscilla began unloading the groceries quickly. She set a box of store-bought cookies on the counter. It had been almost physically painful to do it, but she had no access to her bakery and wasn’t going to wake Anna or her father to make a batch of chocolate chunk cookies so early in the morning. So Landry’s generic brand would have to do. She saw the little boy eyeing them hungrily.
“Can I have one?” he asked sheepishly, when she caught him looking.
She examined the boy. He couldn’t have been much over seven, if that. Priscilla detached a banana from the bunch quickly and handed it to him. “Fruit first, dessert later. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, snatching the banana. Then he disappeared down the hall.
It took Priscilla a few minutes to figure out where everything went. Luna had a meticulous system in place, but not one Priscilla was familiar with. When she’d finally put away everything, she stepped back to survey her work. It wasn’t much, but it was at least all of the five food groups. It should last for at least a week. With any luck, Luna wouldn’t notice it until she and Jamie were gone.
So, with a quiet spark of satisfaction glowing in her chest, Priscilla returned to the living room to find Luna and Jamie already in conversation.
“I don’t see what this is about, officer,” Luna said in a quiet voice. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I’m not here to arrest you, Mrs. Sheppard. I just wanted to speak to you about the recent death of Aaron Burke.”
Luna shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “What do you want to know?”
“He was your husband at one time, correct?”
“My first husband, yes,” she said. “I’m really not sure what this has to do with me.”
“We’ve been investigating his death. When was the last time you saw him, Mrs. Sheppard?” Jamie asked.
Luna’s thin shoulders tightened with the stress. “I don’t understand. What’s the relevance of this?”
“You were recently … implicated in the death of your ex-husband, Mrs. Sheppard. I’m just here to get your alibi.”
Luna shot to her feet as if propelled by a rocket. “Alibi? You don’t think I did that, do you?”
“Mrs. Sheppard, please calm down. Nobody’s accusing you of anything. I need to know where you were the morning of the fourteenth, and what your last interaction with your ex-husband was.”
Luna crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “I don’t have to tell you anything. I didn’t do anything to Aaron, and that’s the truth.”
“If you aren’t guilty, then there’s no harm in telling us,” Priscilla said, taking a seat primly across from Jamie in an armchair. Luna’s glare wasn’t the first she’d seen this month, nor was it the most impressive. Priscilla found she could shake off Luna’s disapproval fairly easily.
“This is private,” Luna hissed, keeping her voice down as her son came barreling into the room. To Priscilla’s dismay, he was clutching the empty banana peel in his hand. Luna spotted it and snatched it away.
“Where’d you get this?” she asked.
The little boy smiled and nodded to Priscilla. “She brought some. Hey, Mom, can I have a cookie? She brought some of those too.”
Luna’s smile was horribly forced, but the boy didn’t seem to notice. “Sure you can, sweetie. Please stay in your room after you’ve gotten one, okay? Mommy needs to talk to the grown-ups.”
“Okay,” he chirped, and bounded into the kitchen to retrieve a sugary snack.
This time, Priscilla’s stomach did an uneasy roll when Luna glared at her.
“You didn’t,” she hissed.
“I’m not going to apologize,” she said.
“Just how much did you get?” Luna whispered.
“Some bread, lunch meat, soups, and more.”
Luna’s face contorted in sudden fury. “You had no right!”
“Mrs. Sheppard, your cupboards were almost completely bare. You only had a heel of bread and enough chicken bouillon to make soups for another week. I doubt you’ve eaten anything in days. You needed food.”
“It’s not your place!” she hissed. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
“Then you should have let the church help you,” Priscilla countered, and a steely note crept into her voice. “What are you going to do, throw it all out? Your son needs to eat, Mrs. Sheppard. I know you’ve been feeding him everything left in the house, but a boy can’t live on chicken broth alone.”
“What do you know about anything?” Luna’s voice shot through three octaves and suddenly she was shouting. “You don’t know anything about my life.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded. “But I do know a little something about your circumstance. You see, when I was a little girl growing up in Plymouth colony, my father’s stores of food were wiped out in an unfortunate accident. But rather than tell his neighbors that his children had nothing to eat, he let the entire family starve for a time, until he could afford to buy some.”
Priscilla leaned forward. “I’m not trying to shame you, Mrs. Sheppard. I’m just saying that your pride should not come before feeding your child.”
For a minute, she thought Luna would shout at her again. Then the young woman burst into tears. Jamie looked flummoxed, and Priscilla felt abruptly guilty for
making her cry. Perhaps she’d been too harsh.
“Mrs. Sheppard, I’m sorry …”
“I’m trying,” she hiccupped. “I’m trying so hard. But no one is hiring me and it’s because she blacklisted me.”
“She?” Priscilla asked.
“Holly Burke,” Luna sniffled. “She works with a temp agency. After Cooper left, I tried to get a job. I really did. I know I’ve only got a high school diploma, and I’m not as fancy as she is, but I can still work. I have never called in sick a day in my life. I didn’t understand why at first.”
Jamie leaned over, snatched a tissue from a box on the end table and offered it to her. She took it with a grateful nod and blew her nose.
“Why would Holly do that?” Priscilla asked. “I imagine it’s illegal to discriminate based on her personal relationship with you. Did you report her to the head of her department?”
Luna’s lip wobbled. “I tried. But she got to him first. I can’t even find part-time work in Bellmare. I can’t pay my bills, and I can’t feed my son. I don’t have the money for gas to even get to an interview, let alone the first two weeks’ commute. What am I going to do?”
“I’m sure you could carpool with someone,” Priscilla offered. “Do you know why Holly did that?”
Luna snorted. “That’s no mystery, is it? She’s jealous of me.”
“Why?”
“Because I had Aaron’s son, and she didn’t.”
Priscilla was stunned into silence for a moment. She glanced over at Jamie to see a similar look of astonishment on his face. This was news to him too.
“Aaron’s son?”
Luna’s eyes trailed to the hallway that her son had disappeared down. “Yes. Andrew is Aaron’s son.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Jamie asked.
“We were in the middle of divorce proceedings,” Luna said, wiping at her eyes. “What was I supposed to say? He was unhappy, and I wasn’t going to tie him down with a kid.”
Blood in the Batter Page 10
