Death in Reel Time (13 page)

“Well, like I said, it probably had nothing to do with the case. I know you've got to be inundated with tips.”

Denny barked a sour laugh. “We need a big-city police force to run them all down. Phones are lit up like a Christmas tree. Unfortunately we've only got two officers to sift through it all. So far it's been wild rumors and crackpots mostly. We're still hoping Beth will get at least some memory back. That's our best hope. Though it might behoove her to hang on to her amnesia. There's something really troubling there, but I can't get at it.”

“You're not telling me you suspect Beth, are you?” I said with a half laugh.

Denny looked up at me for a long moment, his face serious. “I'm not saying that, but I'm saying something was wrong with the scene at her house. I haven't figured out exactly what yet. I admit it's been a while since I've done yard work. I've lived in an apartment for a few years now. But I think I remember how it's done. There was something in that yard that was out of place, but I can't put my finger on it. It frustrates me no end. You ever have that happen where you know there's something you're supposed to be understanding, but it's just too slippery or too convoluted for your mind to get hold of?”

“Happens to Esme all the time,” I said, earning myself an over-the-glasses glare from Esme.

The front door opened and Jack called “Soph? You home?”

I called back and Jack headed to the kitchen by echolocation. “Well, here's your lawn care expert,” I told Denny. “Maybe he can help you out.”

“You got a big job for me?” Jack asked.

“Not unless you'd consider a windowsill with a half-dead aloe plant a job,” Denny said. “But maybe you could help. If you've got time, that is.” He nodded toward the stack of folders Jack was carrying.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Jack said, hefting the folders. “Nothing urgent. It's my family history stuff and they're all still dead and not going anywhere. I just need Sophreena to double-check some things for me. How can I help you?”

“Okay,” Denny said, “I know I don't need to remind any of you that I wouldn't want what we talk about here to get out.”

“Have we not earned your trust by now?” Esme asked, her voice brittle.

“Yes, you have, Esme,” Denny said, reaching over to cover her hand with his—a thing not many men could do. “But the heat on this one is intense so I needed to say that out loud, okay?”

“All right then. You said it. Go on,” Esme said, not entirely mollified.

Jack pulled up a chair and I poured him a coffee, doctored it the way he liked it, and slid it in front of him.

“You all know firsthand how Beth was behaving that night. She can't remember much about that entire day, but she does remember she was doing yard work that afternoon. And there's something about the scene as we found it that doesn't make sense to me.”

“Such as?” Jack asked.

“I'm not sure. That's the thing. Do you have any clients up on Crescent Hill?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “There are a few, like Beth, who enjoy doing it themselves, but most folks up there hire it out.”

“So could you walk me through your procedures, tell me what you'd do this time of year?” Denny asked, taking a small notebook and pen from his pocket.

“Sure,” Jack said. “We do quite a bit of trimming in the fall, cutting back shrubs and hedges, but a lot of it is leaf management. Blowing, raking, and bagging or composting the leaves so they don't smother the turf.”

“Anything special about how you'd handle a job up on Crescent Hill as opposed to other houses in town?” Denny asked.

Jack frowned. “Yeah, that terrain is a little different. There's usually what I call the upper and the lower property. Most of the houses, Beth and Blaine's included, have a fenced-in backyard that's mostly grass, with maybe a few trees for shade or ornamentation. There's always a gate somewhere along the back of the property with a walkway or trail that leads down to the lake. Those areas are generally not manicured at all. The leaves are left to compost naturally.”

“And what do you do with the leaves from the fenced part of the backyard?”

“We blow them or rake them onto a tarp and, depending on the client's preference, we either drag them out to the natural area beyond the gate, or around to the front if it's about time for the leaf sweepers to come around, or else bag them for pickup.”

Denny nodded. “Beth says she remembers she was raking
leaves in the backyard, and we saw that she'd trimmed some of the shrubs near the foundation because she hadn't picked up the trimmings, and her loppers were lying there on the ground.”

“What else?” Jack prompted.

“There were two rakes, both of them lying on the ground as well, and a leaf blower, still plugged into the wall outlet.”

“First off, I don't approve of treating tools like that,” Jack said, touching his lips to the rim of the coffee cup to check the temperature before taking a sip.

“That doesn't sound like Beth to me,” I said. “She's usually very meticulous.”

“That's what I'd expect, too,” Denny said. “Though I imagine we can blame that breach on her falling and knocking herself senseless.”

Jack nodded, now quaffing coffee. “So under normal circumstances,” he said, “the tools should have been attended to, the lopper and trimmer blades wiped, any debris cleared from the blower and the cord wrapped, the rakes hosed off and hung to dry, and the tarp folded and stowed.”

“There was no tarp,” Denny said. “There was no tarp,” he repeated slowly, digging his phone from his pocket. “Where'd the tarp go?” he asked, the question obviously not meant for us. He swiped through a series of photos, then turned the phone's screen toward Jack. “What'd you see here?” he asked.

Jack squinted at the display. “I see where a tarp
was
,” he said. “That perfect voided corner in the grass there with the leaves all around it, that's not organic. Maybe she'd already put the tarp back in her shed.”

“Nope,” Denny said, swiping to another photo. “Here's the shed interior. No tarp.”

“Maybe she'd dragged it out to the natural area and hadn't brought it back in?” Jack suggested.

Denny shook his head and swiped through more photos. “No tarp.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Esme asked.

“No idea,” Denny said. “But I gotta think it means something. A tarp would've made a very handy conveyance for a body. I told you there were several samples of blood collected from Beth's backyard. Could be all the samples will turn out to be from her injuries, but somehow I don't think that's the case. At any rate I'm gonna be waiting at the lab door for those results.”

“What does that mean for Beth?” I asked, feeling a tightening in my chest.

“I don't know,” Denny said. “That's the problem. Maybe she witnessed something, maybe she was attacked, too, and her brain has just shut it all out. In which case she may be in danger. Or maybe it means something else entirely. Maybe she
did
something she's suppressing. I don't like it, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to take off the kid gloves with her.”

“Well, I don't like it, either,” Esme said. “Not one bit. You know that young woman didn't kill her husband. She's not capable of something like that.”

“Esme,” Denny said softly, “you never know what people are capable of given a particular set of circumstances. At this point even Beth herself doesn't know what happened. Sometimes people do things in the moment they regret for the rest of their lives.”

Esme rubbed at her temples. “Sometimes longer than that,” she murmured.

*  *  *

“I thought I'd be happy when I finally found this,” Jack said. He nodded to the folders stacked between us on the sofa. “I mean this is the whole reason I started my family history search to begin with, to find out if I really was descended from Robert Ford. And now I've got the proof right there.” He tapped the folders and his face puckered as if he'd tasted something vile. “It seems I'm in the direct line of descent from the man who shot his friend and fellow outlaw, Jesse James. I don't know how to feel about that.”

“Conflicted is a good choice,” I said. “We've talked about this before: Our ancestors were flesh-and-blood human beings with all the glorious and ignominious traits humans are capable of, sometimes within the same person. Have you got everything nailed down?” I opened a folder but Jack reached over to close it.

“Let's not do this right now,” he said. “It doesn't seem so important after that conversation with Denny. I hate to even say this out loud, but I wonder if he's right about Beth. Something
was
wrong with her that night.”

“Yes, she had a concussion!” I said, hardening into defensive mode. “Listen, I've idolized Beth for practically my whole life. Once when I was with her at the grocery store she told the clerk to add a nickel to her bill because she'd sampled a grape to make sure they were ripe. If she wouldn't filch a grape, she's sure not going to murder her husband.”

“Maybe it's
because
you've had her up on a pedestal you can't look at this with a clear head. I like Beth and I'm not questioning her moral compass. But from what Bonnie's told me I'm not sure everything was as rosy at the Branch house as they wanted people to think.”

“Maybe not,” I allowed. “I, of all people, know family relationships can get awfully tangled up.” I pointed a finger at him. “Which does
not
mean I think Beth's guilty of anything. And friendships can be complicated, too.” I told him about the altercation I'd witnessed between Alan and Peyton and about what I'd overheard between Alan and Bonnie.

“I don't know how Peyton fits into the group,” Jack said, “but the others were all college chums. They were all in the same little posse; you know how that goes in college.”

I did. I was still tight with a number of friends from my undergrad days. There's a natural clumping mentality at that life stage. Most kids are away from home for the first time and while they enjoy their first taste of real freedom, they also need the security of a structure akin to family.

Jack went on. “It was Blaine, Alan, Bonnie, a guy they called Neutron, don't know his real name, but he lives in Silicon Valley now. Then there was Sarah somebody, who married a doctor and moved off to Minnesota or Wisconsin or some cold state, and another guy, whose name I forget, who moved to Australia.”

“Wow, you and Bonnie must talk a lot,” I said, not particularly pleased.

“More lately,” he said. “She was sitting out on her deck a couple of nights ago when I was putting up a motion sensor light on mine. There's a rude little neighborhood raccoon
who seems to think my planter pots are there for his entertainment. Anyway, Bonnie looked lonely and when I called a hello she invited me over for a glass of wine. She seemed to need to talk, so I mostly just listened. She was all nostalgic about their college days. Simpler times, I guess.”

“Beth wasn't part of their crowd? You didn't mention her.”

“I take it Beth was sort of on the fringes. She was a more serious student than the rest of them. From the sound of it they were all playing musical chairs with the relationships. Bonnie went out with Blaine for a while herself, but it never went anywhere. Ditto Alan. And Alan had a thing for Beth before Blaine started going out with her, though he never actually made a play for her, and Blaine moved in.”

“Wow, regular little Peyton Place, wasn't it?” I said.

“Yeah, there was more him and her and she and him—they and them, for all I know. I think I sort of tuned out at some point.” He stretched and stifled a yawn. “I'm beat and I've gotta get up early tomorrow. I'll leave this stuff here with you. Look it over when you get a chance to make sure I haven't screwed up somewhere along the way and my documentation is square. Would you?”

“Sure,” I said. “And as far as your ancestor goes, maybe you should give Robert Ford the same understanding you so freely give others. When people get hemmed in they have to make a call right on the spot. Sometimes they own it and sometimes they regret it.”

Jack nodded. “I'll keep that in mind. How about you? You got any further on the search for your mother's people?”

“A few bread crumbs to follow,” I said. “I've found an elderly couple who were friends of my grandparents around
the time of my mother's adoption. They're in an assisted living facility in Kansas City and their memories aren't the sharpest, but their daughter's agreed to help me do a virtual interview with them soon. Maybe I'll learn something useful. I'm sure my mother's adoption was illegal, maybe
highly
illegal, which is why there's no paper trail and no one wants to talk about it. But my grandparents are gone now and so is my mother, so what difference does it make?”

“Legally, probably none, but to you it seems to make a lot of difference, else you wouldn't still be pursuing this like a terrier after a rat.”

“Lovely image,” I said. “You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

“I'm a sweet talker,” Jack said, rising with a half grunt. “Lunch tomorrow at the diner? Maybe I can think of a more flattering comparison after a night's sleep.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to suppress an answering yawn. “Noon at the diner.”

“Good night, Soph,” he murmured, then leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of my head. I felt his lips on my scalp, even through my mass of hair.

Well. This was new.

E
SME WAS ALREADY IN THE
workroom when I got up the next morning. She was holding her head, a sure sign she was being hectored from another dimension.