Little Shop of Homicide (32 page)

“About a half hour ago. Just after I got back from St. Louis.” Jake looked around. “Where’s Birdie?”

“She claimed to be tired and went to take a nap.” I raised a brow, indicating my doubt, then asked, “Kitchen or living room?”

“Living room.” Jake winked. “You told me Birdie’s bedroom is next to the kitchen, and we wouldn’t want to disturb her rest.”

“Right.” We settled on the sofa, and I asked, “How did the trial go?”

“We convicted the scumbag.” Jake’s voice was almost savage in its triumph.

“That’s great.”

“Yeah. It felt really good hearing that guilty verdict.” Jake smiled widely. “He was a bad one.”

We sat in another awkward silence for a while, and then I said, “Hey, did you hear Woods is in trouble?” When Jake shook his head, I explained. “Internal Affairs is looking into both his
and
his immediate supervisor’s behavior during the murder investigation. It turned out Woods’s supervisor also lost money with Stramp Investments, which is why he did nothing when Boone called him regarding Woods’s bias against me.”

“We should have guessed that.” Jake stretched out his legs. “I tried to talk to Woods after we brought Anya Hamilton in, but, as Tony would say, he had a lot of bull for somebody who doesn’t have any cattle.”

Snickering, I felt myself relax. Jake must have noticed, because he tried to take me into his arms, but I
moved out of his reach. I knew that once he touched me I’d be lost, and I still had a lot of questions for him, some of which I doubted he could answer.

I started with an easy one. “Hey, why do you think no one ever asked us why we were talking to them about Joelle?”

“For the most part, I don’t think anyone cared. She didn’t have any true friends, and her death barely made a ripple in Shadow Bend.”

“That’s really sad.” I thought about it for a minute, then moved to the harder issue. “You mentioned that your ex-wife was the one who left the marriage. What happened?”

“Do we have to discuss this now?” He frowned, clearly unhappy. When I nodded, he said, “Fine. Eighteen months ago, I was involved in a case where a seventeen-year-old girl who was on trial for killing her stepfather escaped from her guards. I found her. She convinced me she was innocent, and I tried to help her. Turned out she was a sociopath and she shot me with my own gun.”

“Oh.” I was silent for a moment, then asked, “Is she the one who caused your current injury?”

“Yes.” Jake nodded. “Between the multiple surgeries and rehab, it’s been over a year since she shot me.”

“But what does that have to do with your marriage?” Had he had an affair with the girl?

“After the first surgery, when I was still groggy from the anesthetic, Meg told me she couldn’t stand being married to a cripple. She walked out of the hospital and filed for a quickie divorce.”

“What a bitch!”
Oops!
I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“I found out later the doctors told her that I’d be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.”

“Obviously they were wrong.” I thought about what I’d overheard and Meg’s actions, then asked, “Does she want you back now that you’re able to walk?”

“Maybe.” Jake shrugged. “But I’m not interested.”

“Even if you’re able to return to active duty?” I highly suspected that Meg would do her damnedest to win him back, and if Jake was with her every day at work, she’d have ample opportunity to seduce him.

“No.” Jake’s tone was firm and he scooped me into his lap and whispered into my hair, “Because I’ve found someone so much better.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, savoring his words and the warmth of his embrace. But in the back of my mind, a basketful of niggling doubts remained. What would happen with Noah now that he was available and I had good reason to believe he still loved me? What would happen if Jake left Shadow Bend to resume his old job? Would Jake and I turn out to be like Gran and Tony? Why hadn’t she waited for him?

My last thought before Jake’s lips claimed mine was that I was glad Gran was in the next room. I could enjoy this moment and think about the rest tomorrow, but having a seventy-five-year-old chaperone a few hundred feet away would keep me from going too far.

S
chool psychologist Skye Denison stamped her bunny-slippered foot on the black-and-white-tiled floor of her newly remodeled kitchen and shouted, “If you keep doing that, I won’t be able to convince Wally we should live here once we’re married.”

Silence greeted her threat. Not surprising since she was the only person in the house. At least the only living person. Which was the problem.

Although Skye’s fiancé, police chief Wally Boyd, claimed he didn’t believe in ghosts, it was kind of hard to ignore the fact that nearly every time he and Skye started to get intimate, something in her house blew up, burst into flames, or broke into a thousand pieces.

Skye’s gaze flitted from the granite counters to the stainless-steel fridge, and came to rest on the cherry-wood cupboards. She’d been renovating the house since she’d inherited it from Alma Griggs more than two and a half years ago. There was still a lot to do, and the process so far had been both frustrating and costly. But there was no way she was selling the place and moving into Wally’s bungalow.

“Do you hear me, Mrs. Griggs?”

There was no response.

“Fine.” Skye blew out an annoyed breath and grabbed
the broom. As she swept up the shards of what
had
been her Grandma Leofanti’s Jade-Ite cookie jar, she muttered under her breath, “You’re leaving me no choice.”

Skye had tolerated the situation for as long as she could. While they were engaged, it was all well and good for her and Wally to confine their lovemaking to nights spent at Wally’s place. But once they were married, he needed to be able to move into her house without fear of some disaster forcing them out of bed just when things were getting interesting.

Like this morning, when Wally had stopped by to tell her that his annulment was in the final stages, and Father Burns had assured him that it would be completed by the end of April. Skye had been on Wally’s lap, celebrating the good news with a lingering kiss, when the cookie jar flew off the counter and smashed at their feet. It was a miracle neither of them had been injured by flying glass or Oreo shrapnel.

Wally had blamed Skye’s cat for the incident, but she knew Bingo wasn’t the culprit. The chubby feline had tried and failed on several occasions to leap onto the counter. It was too high, and he was too portly. Besides, there was no food sitting out, and without the enticement of something edible to motivate him, Bingo rarely moved farther than the next pool of sunlight.

Skye stepped out onto her back porch. “I’m giving you one more chance,” she said, shivering in the cold March wind and rain, as she threw the sharp fragments of the dearly departed cookie jar into the trash can. “If so much as a door slams shut the next time Wally and I start to make love here, I’m getting rid of you.” It was time to put an end to Mrs. Griggs’s reign of terror—one way or another.

Marching back into the kitchen, Skye grabbed a thin folder from where she had hidden it at the bottom of her junk drawer, sat down at the table, and stared nervously at the blue file. Just as she inserted a finger beneath the tab, the telephone rang, and she jumped back. Could Mrs. Griggs be phoning to apologize?

Skye giggled at her own silliness. It was one thing to believe the spirit of the house’s previous owner was present, but quite another to think the woman could call from the great beyond.

Halfway to her feet, Skye sank back in the chair. It was probably the same annoying telemarketer that had been pestering her for the past week. A company claiming they could lower her credit card rates had been calling her three or four times a day, and she’d finally resolved to let her answering machine act as a buffer.

Skye knew that at ten a.m. on a nonworkday morning, her best friend, school librarian Trixie Frayne, would still be fast asleep. Despite being married to a farmer, Trixie was not an early riser, so the call wouldn’t be from her.

And it wouldn’t be Wally since he was on his way to Springfield to begin the last part of the Illinois police chief certification program. The first stage had required only documentation of his extensive law enforcement experience, including leadership abilities, education, and training. But for this final phase, he had to complete written tests that would take all afternoon and several hours the next day. He had told Skye that although the accreditation wasn’t required, he felt it was important for him to have it in order to be a good role model for the officers under his command.

When the phone stopped ringing, then immediately started up again, Skye frowned. Maybe it wasn’t the telemarketer. She doubted a computerized system would continue to redial again and again.

It couldn’t be her brother, Vince. Saturday morning was the busiest time at his hair salon. The usual suspect would be her mother, but she and Skye’s father had left last night for a weekend stay at Ho-Chunk Casino near the Wisconsin Dells.

Who did that leave? Skye’s godfather, Charlie Patukas, would just hop in his Cadillac and drive over if he wanted to talk to her that urgently. Which meant….

Shoot!
It had to be either Frannie or Justin, or both.
During their high school years, Frannie Ryan and Justin Boward had been coeditors of the school newspaper, which Skye and Trixie sponsored. Although they were no longer her students, Skye had remained close to them, and since they were attending Joliet Junior College and lived at home, they still frequently asked her for help.

Skye groaned in surrender, pushed the file aside, and rose from her chair. Figuring out how to get rid of Mrs. Griggs’s ghost would have to wait a little longer. Peering at the phone where it hung on her kitchen wall, Skye focused on the caller ID—something she should have done several minutes ago.

The words BUNNY LANES appeared on the little screen. That was odd. Granted, Frannie worked there as a waitress in the grill, but the town bowling alley didn’t open until the children and teen leagues started at eleven.

Crap!
Could her persistent caller be Bunny Reid—former Las Vegas dancer, current bowling alley manager, and mother of Skye’s previous boyfriend? There was only one way to find out.

Snatching up the handset, Skye pushed the ON button, and said, “Hello?”

“Ms. D, thank God you’re home.” Frannie’s desperate voice was shrill in Skye’s ear. “There’s an emergency at the alley. Can you come right away?”

“Emergency? Are you okay? What happened?” Skye gritted her teeth in aggravation when Frannie hung up without answering her questions.

No one responded to Skye’s repeated attempts to call back, and after a couple of frustrating minutes she gave up. As she slipped on tennis shoes and grabbed her jacket, purse, and keys from the coat stand, she told herself at least she was dressed in nice jeans and a sweater, had French braided her hair and put on a little makeup. Usually, in a crisis, she was caught with a naked face, wearing a baggy sweatshirt, and with her chestnut curls in a bushy ponytail.

Happy that for once she looked presentable, Skye
ran out of the house and jumped into her 1957 Bel Air convertible, a tank of a car that her father and godfather had rehabbed for her several years ago.

Skye stomped on the accelerator, and the Chevy flew down the blacktop, its windshield wipers at full speed to keep up with the pouring rain. Six minutes later, Skye squealed into the bowling alley’s parking lot and skidded to a halt on the wet asphalt.

What in the world? Why was the lot filled with cars and trucks, and…. Skye squinted through the deluge, trying to understand what she was seeing. Was that a row of RVs lined up like cows at the watering trough? Had Bunny opened a campsite? More to the point, did her son, Simon, know about it?

Three years ago, Bunny had reappeared in Simon’s life after a twenty-year absence. And although he had already been the owner of Reid’s Funeral Home and the coroner, he had bought the town bowling alley in order to provide his mother with the job and permanent address she needed to avoid going to jail for misusing prescription drugs. Simon had never admitted that he’d purchased the business solely to help Bunny, but Skye knew that had been his true motivation.

Although Simon and Skye were no longer a couple, she and Bunny were still friends, and Skye hated to see the flamboyant redhead damage the relationship she had finally forged with her son by getting involved in something he wouldn’t approve of.

With that in mind, Skye flung herself out of the Bel Air, sprinted to the bowling alley’s entrance, and shoved open the glass doors. As she stepped over the threshold, a wave of noise swept over her like a tsunami, nearly pushing her back outside.

Skye paused in the entryway. Because of the way the place was designed, she couldn’t see beyond the coat racks and the rows of cube-shaped lockers where the bowlers kept their equipment. Tilting her head, she tried to figure out what was going on.

The din she heard wasn’t music; it was a cacophony of mostly indistinguishable voices, but every once in a while numbers were announced over a loudspeaker. What was happening in the rest of the alley? Could Bunny be holding an auction? But what could she be selling?

Deciding the best course of action would be to find Frannie, Skye took a left, heading toward the grill, which was the young woman’s most likely location. Skye had planned to cut through the bar, but the door was locked. Peeking through the round portholelike window, she saw that the bartender was absent and the room was empty of customers. The cocktail tables were lined up in rows rather than placed in their usual scattered arrangement, and a digital countdown board had been set up on the stage next to a gigantic gong.

Skye gnawed on her lower lip. Was Bunny planning on some sort of game night?