Down the Drain, page 4
Jody cocked zir head to the side. “Why wouldn’t we be able to with him here? Your brother-in-law seems like a decent guy.”
“Yeah,” I drawled. “Think about that. My brother-in-law. Married to my older brother. Who gets protective if he thinks I could get into trouble. The last thing I need is my family meddling more in my life.”
“Is Papa Carsley still trying to set you up with Matthias?” Cordelia batted her eyes at me.
“Please do not tell me you’re encouraging him when I’m not around. You know how Dad is. He doesn’t know when you’re joking.”
“Who said anything about joking? I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“He doesn’t look at me in any way,” I insisted. “I’ve hardly seen him since Josiah went away.” Except for earlier today. I thought it better to wait until everyone arrived before mentioning that. “There’s nothing there. Trust me on this.” I almost blurted out what he’d told me earlier that summer. Even though I’d trust Cord not to blab, and doubted Jody would either, it wasn’t my place. “Just drop it, Cord. And don’t say anything else to Dad about it.” He might be ready to let it go, despite whatever that phone call earlier had been about.
“Consider it dropped,” Cord said after studying my face for a long moment. “You know I didn’t mean anything.”
“Thank you.” If Cord said she’d drop it, she would. For now, at least. “Let’s get the snacks to the living room,” I said, “and dig out that board you left here, Cord. We’re going to need it.”
Chapter Six
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“Damn straight.”
I peered at Deke at that last one, and he shrugged. “It might be the only thing that is straight in this room right now. I’m the most likely suspect, and I don’t want to go down for it. I didn’t kill her.”
“We know you didn’t,” Quin said.
I glanced at Lucie. She was the only one who hadn’t declared support for what we wanted to do. She bit her bottom lip and looked from Jody to the rest of us.
Jody squeezed her hand. “Nobody will make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with. Will they?” Jody asked sharply, taking us all in.
“Of course not. Luce— “
“It’s not that I think he did it.” She looked over at Deke. “You’ve always been nice to me. I can’t see you hurting anybody.”
“I didn’t,” he insisted.
“I know, but this scares me. The last time, Lou, you were nearly killed. I’ve only been part of the group a couple of months, but I think of you all as my friends. I don’t want anything to happen to you. It’s not that I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want any of us to be involved. I’d say let the cops handle it, but I know how often they bungle things. Especially when...” She shook her head. “The victim wasn’t queer, was she? Maybe that will make a difference.”
I looked at Lucie, whose hand Jody still held. Whatever relationship they’d been dancing around must have clicked into place. Something more was going on here. Like Lucie was trying to say something without saying the words. I didn’t know what happened to her before she came here. Had she told Jody, who seemed to know what she meant?
A part of me wanted to defend Matthias. Sure, we’d been opposed during the last case. I thought he wasn’t doing enough to catch the killer, but he’d been set on finding the person who did it, not the easiest scapegoat, as I’d once accused him. This wasn’t about his capabilities. The guilty person wasn’t always the one who got arrested. I’d watched enough true crime shows to know sometimes innocent people went to jail. I did not want Deke to be one of them.
“I trust Matthias.” Several pairs of eyes lasered in on me. “To, you know, find the actual murderer. But, he spoke to me earlier today. He’s been taken off this case. His partner, Brian Morein, is leading the investigation.”
“Former partner, you mean,” Cord said. She was frowning but didn’t seem too surprised. Maybe she had seen this coming even though I hadn’t.
“I wondered why he had someone different with him that day,” Deke said. “What’s the story there?”
“According to the first responder grapevine, after everything that happened earlier this summer, Matthias filed a complaint with the department. Plenty of theories bouncing around about what went down, some pettier and more illogical than others. The only thing anyone really knows is Matthias was assigned a new partner, and Morein went somewhere else.”
“I swear, I don’t know how you hear these rumors.” Matthias had said something about that, but I’d been too focused on him not being the one investigating.
Cord flashed a quick grin at me. “Told you. The first responder grapevine, louder than any alert system.” Her eyes narrowed. “If they’re putting Mudbrain on the case, that means we need to figure out what happened.”
I groaned. “As if it isn’t bad enough I had to deal with his little brother earlier this week.”
“You didn’t say he was bothering you again.” I waved that away, but she said, “Don’t think we won’t discuss you dealing with that creep.”
I hadn’t thought about it since I’d gone right to answering Deke’s call, not until I realized what this would mean. I turned back to Lucie. “If you don’t want to do this...”
“No, you’re right,” Lucie said. “If your Officer Lindert was working the case, then maybe we could trust that.”
“He’s not my officer.” They laughed as I moved the white board so they could all see it. Apparently no one would ever believe me.
“Okay.” I uncapped a marker and stepped to the board. This helped Cord and me bring the details we’d known together the last time. Maybe the board would come to our rescue again, and sooner. “This is what we know so far.”
I wrote Mayra’s name on the board. “She didn’t live in town, but she rented a house here for the Woodside Academy reunion. She stayed beyond the weekend’s events. Do you know anything about that, Deke?”
He shifted in his seat, bringing one foot up onto his knee then setting it back down. His arms crossed over his chest then went back down beside him. This was not the way I was used to Deke being. He’d always seemed so comfortable in his own skin, but now it was like he didn’t know what to do with any part of himself.
I wasn’t sure he would say anything, the way his lips were pressed together and his brow scrunched. Finally, he pushed his glasses up his nose. “She said she was writing a book. That’s hard to believe, knowing her.”
“Not the literary type?” Jody asked.
“Not the type to do her own work. I’m not sure how many papers she charmed me into writing in school. If she was writing a book, someone else was doing it for her.”
“Did she say what this book was about?”
“Once she threatened to release my secrets if I didn’t do what she wanted, I stopped listening. She would tell Uncle Albert I was gay. He wouldn’t employ me once he knew,” Deke said with a bitter laugh. “I told her he knew I was bisexual. He was one of the first people I’d come out to that summer before college. He’d given me a job, anyway. Which took some wind from her sails. Then she said there were other facts she could tell him.”
“What other facts?” I asked.
“I walked away from her then. If it’s that I smoked some pot in high school, who cares? A lot of kids did. And is something else Uncle Albert already knows. He’s the one who caught me and told me if I kept doing it, he’d rat me out to my dad. I stopped. I’d never really liked it, anyway.” He shrugged. “There’s not much else, unless she invented something. I wouldn’t put that past her.”
“What else can you tell us about her?” Cord grabbed another marker. “Who would want to kill her?”
Deke snorted, then covered his mouth. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t think you have enough room for that list.” He gave a little shake of his head. “She could be sweet. As long as you were doing what she wished and giving her the appropriate amount of attention. Once you stopped, that’s when she’d turn on you. Only she knew what that amount was, so again, I’ll refer to my initial statement.”
Cord’s lip twitched, and her teeth bit into it for a moment. That one muscle in her cheek kept twitching though, and I knew she was fighting back a smile. “Let’s start with the obvious. Exes, besides you, of course.”
“Besides me?” He shrugged. “I haven’t talked to her much in the last ten years. She’s emailed me, but they’re condescending messages, so I ignore them. Mayra didn’t tell me who she dated. Letting me know she’d moved on would mean she didn’t get to play the victim any longer.”
Maybe we could learn more from another source. “What about what she did? Did she talk about that at all?”
“She loved rubbing that in my face, or that’s how she saw it. I was just a newspaper guy, and she didn’t have to work. I love what I do, but she could never understand that.”
“So, she came from wealth?” Cord asked. “Or she was coming into money?”
“Nearly everyone who went to my school came from wealth. I had a partial scholarship, but my parents paid the rest of the tuition. They aren’t rich by any means, but they’re well off. She said something at the reunion, like, soon she’d be ordering the peons around. I thought it was more of her big talk. She always thought she was more important than anyone else in the room.”
“You know nothing else about what she meant?”
“Could have been the book deal, if she was writing a book. I tried to avoid her, so I don’t know who else talked to her that night. Probably everyone. She would have worked the room.”
“Whitney,” I blurted, remembering the woman I’d spoken to. “I don’t recall her last name, but I talked to her when I went up for drinks. She made comments about Mayra. I don’t know if it was a run-in that night or resentment left over from school, but she did not like her.”
“The only Whitney I remember from our class was Whitney Buren,” Deke said. “She followed Mayra like a puppy. Would have done anything to get even a tiny bit of praise. It made me a little uncomfortable to watch her beg for scraps.”
“Maybe she tired of doing that.” I wrote her name on the board.
At least this was somewhere to start. All we had to do was figure out why someone wanted her dead, and which of them had the opportunity to see it through.
I hoped none of that pointed to Deke. There might be more to him than I thought I knew, but he couldn’t be a killer.
He just couldn’t be.
Chapter Seven
I slammed my door and trudged to Cord’s house. I had a long day, but I promised to come over as soon as I was done with work, so we could make sense of the stuff we knew, if that was possible. Also, she would hopefully have her uncle’s official autopsy report on Mayra’s body and we’d be able to add to our board. I still had to get over to my parents’ for the dinner Dad was so worried I’d miss.
I just wanted to sit down and not move for the rest of the night.
“You look exhausted,” Cord said when I stepped into her kitchen.
“Gee, thanks,” I said. “Love you, too.”
She handed me a beer without even asking if I wanted one. Which I did. Did this woman know me or what?
I opened the bottle and took a drink. “Even with that program Quin and Jen came up with, I was having trouble getting from job to job on time.”
“Wasn’t the program supposed to help with that?”
“I said the same to Jen earlier today. She informed me it wasn’t capable of inserting more minutes into the day, just helping me make efficient use of the ones I already had.”
Cord laughed, then she turned away. Well, that was strange. She’d tell me if she wanted to. So, I drank my beer and waited for whatever she had to tell me. I almost finished before Cord said, “Uncle Bobby finished the autopsy today. He hadn’t been sure he’d get to it, but I guess the police department put pressure on him. Which means they’re getting pressure from someone even higher up to close this case fast.”
“Like who? We should put those names on the board, too.”
“Good idea. I’m guessing her parents. The great Starneses.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them.”
“It was slow this morning, so I looked them up. Her mother owns several boutique shops in the area. Has made a name for herself in the local media. Her father’s some big name banker guy. They moved away from Coalville when Mayra, their only child, graduated.”
“Okay,” I said, filing that away. “Who else?”
“Her fiancé, Duncan Morrau.”
“Name’s not ringing any bells.”
Cord huffed out a breath. “Of course not. They don’t manufacture any of your tools. They do make bells, though, well, alarms.”
“Like alarm clocks?”
Cord arched a brow.
“I guess not,” I said. “Security alarms?”
“That’d be it. You’ve never heard of Morrau Monitoring? Their commercials are always on TV and radio. They aren’t just local, but a nationally known brand.”
“I don’t pay attention to that stuff. Is he a suspect?”
“If Deke is, I can’t believe her current lover wouldn’t be. I imagine his family would want to cover up the scandal.”
“His family?” I asked. “Not him?”
Cord shrugged a shoulder. “From what I’ve heard, Duncan’s the black sheep. Doesn’t attend all the pretentious events, gives a lot of his money to charity, doesn’t work for the family business. He doesn’t shy away from scandal, so I doubt another one would bother him.”
“Unless the media is claiming he’s the one who murdered his fiancée. I can’t imagine that would be good for him, let alone his family.”
“No, it wouldn’t. From what I’ve seen online, I’d like to say he’s not the type to do this, but I know Deke isn’t. Between the two of them, I’d go with Duncan.”
“What exactly have you seen?”
“Just him standing up for the rights of the marginalized. I assumed he was a decent guy.”
Well, decent wasn’t how I’d describe Mayra, and Duncan had been with her. “Is there anyone else?”
“Not that I know of, but we might learn more. Right now, we know Mayra died from blood loss. Uncle Bobby didn’t find any wounds other than the ones on her wrists. It doesn’t look like she fought her attacker. Does that seem likely to you?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Unless she was sleeping?” I’d never fallen asleep during a bath, not that I took many, I preferred showers. But, I was sure it happened.
“I’d wake up if someone cut my wrists, no matter how deep I was sleeping. Uncle Bobby theorizes she was drugged. I’d have to agree. Even when someone does that to themselves, there’s a sign of hesitancy, a recoil at that first instance of pain, even if they do then go further. There was none of that.”
“Did he test for anything?”
“Of course. All the usual sedatives.”
“What did he find?”
“Doesn’t work that way. He collected the samples, but he has to send them out to be tested. Could be days or even weeks before he gets the results.”
“Are you serious?”
“That’s the way it goes, Lou.”
“All the shows—“
“Need to have a case solved in forty-three minutes. They take certain liberties to do that.”
I blew out a breath. “Right. What do we do now?”
“What we do best. Investigate.”
“Matthias would argue that,” I retorted. “That he’s the one with the training.”
“He’s not on this case anymore,” Cord reminded me. As if she needed to.
“Right. I don’t see what it will hurt to ask a few questions. It’s not like the last time. I had nothing to do with Mayra, so why should they look my way?”
Even I wasn’t sure I believed that. Before Cord could point out the flaws in my rationalization, my phone buzzed. “Who’s that?” Cord asked. “Matthias?” She batted her eyelashes.
I rolled my eyes back at her. “He doesn’t text me. It’s a notification for an emergency job.”
Cord stiffened. “You aren’t going.”
“Of course I am. It’s an emergency, and this is my job.” I read the text alert that had been sent to my phone. A burst pipe in someone’s kitchen. Water is shut off currently. The address was around the corner from my house. It would probably be a quick job, then I’d go home and change before dinner.
“The last time you went on an emergency job, you got your head bashed in.”
“That wasn’t the last emergency job I did, and that will not happen again,” I assured her.
“I’m going with you.”
“That’s unnecessary. I can handle a job on my own. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I don’t want to follow an ambulance carrying my best friend to the hospital. I’m going.”
It wasn’t worth arguing. I strode to my truck, glad I hadn’t finished the one beer, and headed over to the job.
Cord was being ridiculous. She had her phone pressed to her ear as I drove up to the house. Cord didn’t talk and drive. Or do anything and drive. She must be really worried to have called someone on the way over here. The question was who. Ross or Matthias. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
I got my tools from the back of my truck. The small toolbox should suffice for most jobs. I might have to come out if I needed something else, but this would be good to start.
Cord had her window down but didn’t step out as I passed. At least she didn’t think she had to follow me into the house. I was well past needing a babysitter. Still, I heard her say, “Yeah, we’re over here. All the lights are on. I don’t see anyone waiting inside with a wrench or anything.”
You get hit in the head once by a killer, and they never let you forget. I turned my back to her and walked to the house.
This situation was the exact opposite of the time Cord kept referencing. Then, I’d thought the power had gone out, or someone had been hurt. Maybe even both.
