Wedding Day of Murder (13 page)

They wrestled for a while, each one
landing a few good blows. Jason would be sore and bruised tomorrow. Right now
the blows felt cathartic, the best sort of stress reliever. For a moment,
Michael had the advantage. He was on top, Jason’s face mashed to the floor, his
arms pinned behind his back. “Calm down,” Michael said.

Had that phrase ever worked in the
history of mankind? When someone was irate and losing all sense of reason “calm
down” was the worst possible thing to say. This case was no exception. The
words fueled Jason’s anger to the point where he broke free and pinned Michael.
Unlike Jason, Michael was face up. Jason was just about to smash a fist into
his freckles when Michael spoke again. This time the words worked like magic.

“I’m not in love with Lacy,” he
said.

Jason’s fist hovered and halted.
“You are.”

“No, you are. If you promise not to
break my nose, I’ll explain.”

“Explain what?” Jason asked.

“The way it is,” Michael said.

“What are you talking about?” Jason
asked. He eased away and dropped his fist. Maybe it was a ploy, but he didn’t
get the sense Michael was about to spring on him. Maybe because he sat up and
wrapped his arms around his knees as if they were in the middle of a deep,
philosophical chat.

“I’m not in love with Lacy,”
Michael reiterated.

“That’s not possible.”

Michael dropped his head to his
knees and banged it a couple of times. “Save me from the lovelorn. Just because
you’re in love with her doesn’t mean the rest of the world is. Did you ever
think that you’re viewing her through different lenses than the rest of us mere
mortals?”

“No,” Jason said.

“I’m telling you that’s the case.
You think everyone feels the same about her that you do, but they don’t.
I
don’t.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Jason
said, defensive now.

“Nothing. She’s perfectly lovely.
I’m honest enough to admit that when I first saw her, I was intrigued. But I
thought her innocence was a front. I believed no one who looks like she does
could be so guileless. She must be false.”

“She’s not,” Jason interjected,
absurdly angry all over again. First he was upset because he thought Michael
was in love with her, and now he was upset because he wasn’t. What was wrong
with him? He was acting like an out of control idiot, like the worst sort of
cop. And at the moment, he couldn’t care less.

“After trying and failing to
provoke her into dropping the façade, I realized that she was genuine. Then for
a bit, I did fancy myself in love with her. She was different than anyone I’d
ever met. I was a bit captivated by that. So I kissed her.”

“What? When did that happen?” Jason
said.

“I believe it was when you were in
the hospital,” Michael said.

“I was nearly bleeding to death and
you tried to steal my girlfriend?”

“She wasn’t your girlfriend then,
but yes, I did. And it wasn’t good. There was nothing there. That was when I
realized that the odd sort of attachment I have to Lacy isn’t love, at least
not the romantic sort. Rather I feel a sort of protectiveness for her that I’ve
never experienced. Lacy needs a bit more looking after than most, and we’re
friends. It’s nice to have the sort of friend you can count on in a pinch. I
like to annoy her because it’s fun to see her riled, but I genuinely care for
her, and I believe she cares for me. Having that type of relationship with a
woman is new for me.”

Jason stared at him, dubious.

“I can tell you don’t believe me,”
Michael said. “But the truth of it is that if I wanted her, there’s nothing you
could do to stop me. I would pursue her, and I’d have her. The fact that I
don’t pursue her should tell you I’m not lying.”

“You flirt with her,” Jason
accused.

“I also breathe and have a Y
chromosome. Combined, those things make me a living male.”

“What do you know about the
protesters?” Jason asked.

“Just what I’ve told you. I had a
date with Rain. When it ended, I planned never to see her again. Imagine my
chagrin when she showed up here. Some women can’t take a hint.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Jason
said at last. The evidence against Michael was compelling, albeit
circumstantial.

“If it helps, I told Lacy about the
murder arrest. I’m shocked she didn’t tell you. And, honestly, I’m rather
heartened by her loyalty,” Michael said.

“Does she know the other stuff?”
Jason asked.

Michael looked down, quiet for a
few beats. “No. I would prefer that she doesn’t; in fact, I would prefer that
no one here knows. I came here to get away.”

“So, as far as she’s concerned,
you’re Michael O’Donnell, innocent musician from Minnesota,” Jason said.

“I suppose that’s a fair
assessment.”

“And you of all people feel
compelled to protect her. That’s like the fox guarding the hen house.”

“I’m turning over a new leaf. So
sue me.”

They sat in silence a few minutes.
Jason’s chest was still heaving, a testament to their recent brawl. As his mind
began to clear, he was horrified by his behavior. He had broken into a shop and
fought with its owner. Michael could sue him; he could have his badge. Unless
he was guilty, in which case Jason had rightfully targeted a murderer. His
instinct, which had heretofore been so sure of Michael’s guilt, now told him
the man was innocent. The duality proved how little his gut could be trusted.
He needed facts, cold, hard facts. He could take Michael in and question him,
but then everyone would know what had happened. There was no way to explain
what he had done tonight.

Michael sat quietly with a vague
sort of smile. He seemed to understand Jason’s conundrum. Worse, Jason was now
dependent on the man’s silence. What if he was a killer? How would that play
out? The situation was a mess, and it was a mess of his own making. Why had he
been such a hotheaded moron? He was the worst sort of fool, and he had nothing
to show for it. He wasn’t any closer to solving the murder or finding Lacy.
Instead he was now a few steps closer to the unemployment line. He couldn’t
think, and part of the problem was the incessant clanging coming from the wall.

“What is that noise?” he asked,
mashing a hand over his ear.

“The pipes,” Michael said.

“Do they always do that?” Jason
asked. If so, it was a wonder the man hadn’t gone stark raving mad.

“No,” Michael said. His face
morphed into a puzzled frown. He got up and put his hand on the pipe. “It’s
vibrating a little; I don’t think it’s clogged.”

“Would a clog cause that clanging
noise?” Jason asked. A small part of his brain noted the insanity of discussing
plumbing problems when so many more pressing issues awaited them. On the other
hand, it was nice to be able to focus on something innocuous, on a problem with
a possible solution.

“No,” Michael said. “It’s almost
rhythmic. It’s almost like…” He paused, listening. For both of them, it
registered at the same moment. The tapping wasn’t from the sound of water
rushing through the pipe. The tapping was from someone who was actually tapping
on the pipe.

They raced up the stairs, following
the pipe to the second floor. Nothing was there. On the third floor, the pipe
was locked in one of the doctor’s offices. Jason was prepared to break in
again, but Michael held him back.

“Let’s check the fourth floor
before we do anything rash,” he said. “And if we do anything rash, let me do
it. No offense mate, but your burgling skills are not up to par.”

They jogged up to the fourth floor
and flipped on the lights. The makeshift bathroom door was open, but Jason
stepped inside anyway.

“Empty,” Michael said, turning in a
slow circle in the vast space.

“Where’s the pipe?” Jason said. He
stared at the wall where it should be, but it wasn’t there. Instead a small
soffit stood out from the brick wall, covering the pipe. He walked forward and
looked at it. “Where’s the opening to get to the pipe?”

Michael walked around it. “I don’t
see one. Has it always been like this? I don’t remember?”

“Neither do I, but I’m not leaving
until I see that pipe.” After another walk around the soffit, they found a
small door. It stuck to the point where Michael had to help him open it. When
the little door was finally open, they saw Lacy lying on the floor, staring up
at them. In one hand she held a piece of brick she had pried from the wall.
Absently, she tapped the pipe with it. She squinted, shielding her eyes from
the glare of lights.

“Is dat Jaime and Bobby Deen?” she
asked.

“Who?” Michael said.

“Paula Deen’s sons,” Jason
explained. He knelt beside Lacy and did a quick inspection. She looked
miserable. “We’ll be anyone you want.”

“Dat’s sweet,” she said. “But I
have a boyfwend.”

“You sure do, baby,” he said. He
gathered her close, pulled out his phone, and called Mr. Middleton.

Jason was a bull in a China shop.
Worse, he didn’t care. After Michael helped him get Lacy downstairs and into
his car, he slipped into the back seat uninvited. Jason didn’t ask him to
leave, and he didn’t analyze why. They arrived at the hospital and the same
doctors greeted him as the night before. They wanted to admit Lacy. He wouldn’t
allow it.

“She has an infection. She’s been
through a trauma. I really think…”

“I don’t care what you think,”
Jason said. “I gave her to you before, and you lost her. Give her medicine, and
give her back. I’m taking her home.”

The doctor studied his expression, made
fiercer by the traces of his fight with Michael, and gave in. If he wasn’t a
cop, they probably would have thought he was a gangster or wife beater. If he
wasn’t a cop, they undoubtedly would have called the cops on him.

They didn’t want her to have food.
Jason would have fought them on that, but Michael appeared with Jell-O as soon
as the doctor left the room. Jason woke Lacy and fed her. The next battle came
over pain medication. He refused it. He felt like an ogre for that one, but she
had been out of her head for too long.

“I’ll give her something over the
counter,” he promised. “Whatever you’re giving her in the IV is making her
nuts. I can’t have her wandering anymore, and she needs to stop hallucinating.”

Realizing that Jason was
intractable, the doctor gave in. They administered an IV with an antibiotic,
handed him a prescription for more, and let her go. Michael was nowhere to be
found. Jason wasn’t sure at what point he had vanished. He felt uneasy about
the whole situation but determined to put it out of his overburdened mind. He
hadn’t eaten since breakfast and had only slept seven hours of the last forty
eight. Tomorrow he would have a fresh perspective on everything; he would deal
with the situation then. For now he had tunnel vision on Lacy.

She was awake on the drive to her
house, though not necessarily alert. She peered at the landscape as if seeing
it for the first time and followed him quietly inside when they arrived at her
grandmother’s.

Everyone was there—Mr.
Middleton, Mrs. Craig, Frannie, Tosh, and Riley. Their presence grated on
Jason’s already overwrought nerves. Frannie rushed forward and gave Lacy a hug.

“Honey, I’m glad you’re all right.
Let’s get you to bed,” she said.

“No,” Jason said, and the room came
to a standstill as everyone looked at him. “Lacy’s not staying here. I came to
get some clothes and toiletries. She’s coming home with me until she’s back to
normal.”

“Jason, that’s a nice sentiment,
but I don’t think that’s a good idea. She needs to be here with her family.”

It was happening again; the short
leash on his self-control was slipping, and there was nothing he could do to
stop it. He opened his mouth, but common sense prevailed in the form of Mr.
Middleton. “Frannie, let’s let the boy take her home. He’s the one who’s had
the brunt of responsibility for her the last couple of days. He needs to
reassure himself she’s all right. We’ll reevaluate the situation tomorrow after
we’ve all slept and eaten.”

Frannie frowned, petulant over Mr.
Middleton’s interference, but she didn’t argue. Everyone was tired, Jason
realized. It had been a trying few days. He led Lacy to her bedroom and asked
her what she needed.

“Dis,” she said, picking up a
necklace. It was the shiniest thing in the room. He let her look at it while he
packed a few essentials in her overnight bag. When he tried to take the
necklace from her, she jerked it away. “No, I need dis.”

“All right,” he said. “Keep it.” He
led her back to the kitchen, back through the maze of staring relatives, and to
his car. At his house, he warmed a can of chicken noodle soup, fed her the
broth, and ate the noodles. He was still hungry, but he was too tired to make
anything else. They drank water, changed their clothes, and went to bed. Jason
had just fallen asleep when he woke with a start. Lacy was gone.

He ran through the house and found
her in the kitchen, rifling his cupboards. “Where do you keep your Oreos?” she
asked.

“At the store,” he said. He opened
a drawer and withdrew a collar he’d bought when he briefly thought about
getting a cat. It had a bell. He fastened it on her ankle and led her back to
bed. She lay down and held her ankle up in the air.

“Dat’s nice,” she said, shaking her
leg to make it jingle.

“Keep that thought for when you’re
lucid again,” he said. He put his arm over her, yawning. “Go to sleep, woman.”

For once, she did what she was
told, not waking until a few hours later. She sat up in bed. He did, too.
“Where am I?” she asked.

“At my house,” Jason said. Vaguely,
he registered the thought that she sounded like the swelling had gone done.

“How did I get here?”

“I brought you.”

She felt for his face, caressing
his cheek. “Jason?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She snuggled close and they
lay down together. Lacy fell back asleep. Jason, despite his exhaustion, lay
awake for a long time, holding her. He hadn’t needed her disappearance to make
him realize how much he cared about her, but the experience did make him
realize how indelibly linked to her he was. His emotional stability was
dependent on her, and he didn’t like that; he didn’t like who he had become
without her. He had no idea it was within him to break the rules or lose it so
completely.

Her fingers trailed his stubbly
cheek again. “Mountain man.”

“I need to shave,” he agreed.

“You’re still pretty,” she said.

He smiled, kissed her palm, and
fell asleep.

When Lacy woke again, Travis was
there. He sat beside the bed using the iPad she’d bought him for Christmas.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Helping angry birds ease their
aggression,” he said.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“It’s my turn to watch you.”

She sat up and looked around. “I’m
at Jason’s. Why am I here? Why are you here? Why am I wearing a bell on my
foot?”

“You’ve given us a run for our
money the last couple of days. I’m surprised Jason didn’t have you micro
chipped,” Travis said, not looking up.

“What happened? And where is
Jason?”

“Duty called,” Travis said.

“Travis,” Lacy said.

He finally looked up and did a
double take. “Wow, your hair is…special.”

“What is going on? Why are you
here? Why am I here?”

“You don’t remember anything?” he
asked.

“It’s a little blurry,” she said.

“You had your wisdom teeth
removed,” he said.

“Okay. That’s vaguely familiar.”

“It didn’t go well. You disappeared
twice.”

“From where?”

“Once from your house and once from
the hospital. You don’t remember?”

“I remember snippets of things,
images, people. But it’s like a movie montage, everything is mashed together in
no particular order.” She flexed her jaw, rubbing. “Ow.”

“If you think you feel bad, wait until
you see how you look. And Jason kissed you goodbye. Love is blind,” Travis
said. He returned to his game.

“I’m going to shower,” Lacy said.
She struggled to get out of bed.

“Good idea. Need some help?” He
paused his game and looked up. “Getting to the bathroom, I mean. Once you’re in
there, you’re on your own.”

“I can do it,” she said with more
confidence than she felt. Everything was stiff and sore. Why did her body hurt
if it was her teeth that had been removed? The shower felt heavenly. She used
Jason’s toiletries, which were less luxuriant than her own, but being clean
felt so good she didn’t care. When she was finished, she remembered to wash his
shampoo and conditioner bottles and line them up according to order of use.
Next she scrubbed the shower, knowing full well that he would redo it later so
that it would be up to par. But the thought and effort counted for something,
she hoped.

She searched through the toiletries
he had packed for her, smiling when she found her anti-frizz serum. He might say
that he didn’t care how she looked, but she found it interesting that he had
remembered the only hair product that worked to tame her mass. And he had
packed her makeup. Not only that, but the items were neatly arranged in her
case like a game of Tetris. If she had tried to organize them so precisely, it
probably would have taken the better part of an evening. Jason did it without
thinking in less than a few minutes. She missed him, which was odd since she
had apparently been with him all night, but she didn’t remember any of it. She
felt like she hadn’t seen him in days.

When she emerged from the bathroom,
Travis was asleep in the chair. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he had
probably come straight from work. She put her hand on his shoulder, and he
jumped. “Travis, go home.”

“Are you insane? If I left you here
alone, Detective Incredible Hulk would rip my head off with his bare hands.”

“Jason’s been grumpy, huh?”

“The worst,” Travis said. “He’s gone
off the deep end for sure.” He yawned and glanced longingly at the bed.

“At least lie down,” Lacy said.

“I can’t sleep in Jason’s bed. He’s
my senior officer. That’s weird.”

“Then lie on the couch,” she said.

“Only if you put the bell back on
your foot,” he said.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not. You’ve had a bad habit of
disappearing lately. You seem better now, but who knows? If you wandered away
on my watch…” He trailed off, but she got the point. Jason would kill him.

“Fine, but I’m doing this under
duress.” She sat and fastened the cat collar around her ankle again. Travis
grinned as he watched her.

“Relationships,” he muttered,
shaking his head.

She smiled and ruffled his hair.
Together, they walked to the living room. Travis lay down on the couch. Lacy
went to the kitchen and tried to find something non-nutritive to eat. It wasn’t
easy, both because Jason liked healthy food and because her jaw ached. In the
end, she decided on a glass of milk.
Skim
milk. She had to hold her nose to drink it. At her house, they drank whole
milk. Milk should not be blue, that much she knew for certain.

She sat in the chair and picked up
Jason’s book. He was reading a political thriller set in the Middle East. Three
pages in, she fell asleep. When she woke this time, Travis was gone. Instead
her grandfather sat on the couch reading the paper.

“Your turn to watch me?” Lacy
guessed.

“My privilege to watch you,” he
said.

She chuckled. “Charmer. How’s
grandma?”

“Better at handling medication than
you,” he said. “She’s fine; her pain is gone, and she gets the eye patch off
soon. I’m going to miss it. Lucinda’s looked downright exotic lately.”

Lacy laughed and clutched her jaws.
“Ooh.”

“Do you want some aspirin? Jason
left precise instructions that I should mash it up in a teaspoon of jam if you
have trouble swallowing, as if you’re a puppy and not a grown woman. The boy’s
gone out of his gourd.”

“That’s what Travis said.”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t sure
which one of you I should worry about more—you because you were missing
or him because he was losing his mind.”

“Jason can be intense,” Lacy said.

“That’s one word for it,” he
agreed. “Are you hungry? Your grandma sent a feast.”

“Lead on,” Lacy said. She followed
him to the kitchen and found that he wasn’t exaggerating. He had carried in an
entire laundry basket filled with food. Better still, it was all soft
food—chocolate pudding, bread pudding, banana pudding, Jell-O, soup,
noodles, applesauce, and yogurt.

“There’s ice cream in the freezer,”
he said.

“I’ll start there and work my way
up to pudding,” Lacy said. “It’s best not to start with the hard stuff after an
illness.”

“You are your grandmother’s child,”
he said. He poured himself a cup of coffee, grimacing at the staleness.

They sat at the table. “So, how bad
was it?” Lacy asked. “Tell me everything I missed.”

“I would say your mother and Jason
can spend about thirty more seconds with each other before turning to
fisticuffs,” Mr. Middleton said.

Lacy groaned. “Was it that bad?”

“Worse. Jason was dismayed by your
mother’s total self-involvement, and she couldn’t understand his
overprotective, proprietary attitude. I think she was certain that the two of
them would be on the same side. To realize that they’re adversaries was a
confusing blow for her.”

“Poor Mom. And poor Jason. I should
talk to him. Or her. Or both of them.”

“I would let it play out,” Mr.
Middleton said. “If you run interference now, you’ll always be doing it. Let
them establish their boundaries early and get it over with. Now tell me what
you remember about the last few days.”

“Not much,” Lacy said.

“Do you remember the murder?”

“Sort of. Is that why Jason had to
leave this morning?”

“Yes. I think he’s been under a bit
of a strain.”

“They’re not exactly staffed to
handle a murder,” Lacy said.

“That may be true, but I think his
stress comes from somewhere else. It turns out that the man who was killed was
a reporter. He had talked to your mom.”

“He talked to Mom? About what?”

“About you. I think he was working
on a story about you when he was killed, and then you found him and called it
in. He hasn’t said as much, but I think Jason’s afraid you’re going to be
somehow implicated in this mess.”

“But I didn’t have anything to do
with it! I didn’t even know the man. I had never seen him before the protesters
arrived,” Lacy said.

“I know that, and Jason knows that,
but there are people who might not see it that way.”