Yellow Rose Mysteries 02 - A Wedding to Die For (16 page)

15

The next morning, while I was still trying to wake up, Jeff brought me a fresh ice pack. He was on his way to work and kissed me good-bye after telling me he’d written down the name of the man he considered the only decent criminal defense attorney in Houston. Then he pounded down the stairs, leaving me wondering if I really needed a lawyer. Surely Fielder would screw her head back on this morning and figure out I had no reason to kill the Beadford brothers.

Jeff’s footsteps reached the front door, but after I heard the door open, the word “shit” echoed up the stairs.

Okay. Something was wrong. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and got up to see what was the matter. The room spun for a second, and I had to keep myself from toppling over by clutching the corner of the nightstand.

Jeff strode back into the bedroom and came over to help me. “When you get your sea legs, the press is waiting for you, Abby.”

“The press? Why are
they
here?”

“Because there’ve been two homicides, and somehow they’ve learned you’re involved. Get with the lawyer and tell Quinn Fielder exactly what happened last night so those buzzards will leave you alone.”

“And what about the rest of it? Should I tell her everything I learned in Jamaica?” The wood floor was cold on my bare feet and I shivered.

He picked up my bathrobe off the chair and draped it around my shoulders. “What do you mean by
the rest of it
?” But before I could speak, he held up a hand. “No. Should have known better than to ask that question. I’m still a cop and—”

“Why does that make a difference?” I lowered myself with his help and sat on the edge of the bed. I’d set a bottle of Motrin and a glass of water on the nightstand last night just in case and now spilled three pills into my hand and gulped them down.

“This is Fielder’s case, and it involves your client. The less I know about it, the less I can say if she asks me.”

“She’d ask you?” I realized how naive that sounded as soon as the words left my lips. “Yeah, she would. So I shouldn’t tell you anything?”

“Not now. To Quinn, you’re a suspect, and she seems bent on proving you have something to do with these murders. I know her pretty well, and considering she didn’t leave HPD willingly—”

“Hold on. Maybe it’s my messed up head, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

He sat next to me. “I told you she and I had a history. What I didn’t tell you is that after our relationship ended, Quinn got a little weird, made some pretty bad calls in the field. A few of her collars fell through even though the perps were guilty. She didn’t do the groundwork and paperwork to make them stick. Made a lot of bad assumptions and, well, the department suggested she get a fresh start somewhere else.”

“So she got fired. Happens all the time.”

“But she blamed me. She said I
distracted
her. Now I’m wondering if she’s venting her old anger toward me on you.”

“She blames you for her incompetence, and to get even she wants to make me look guilty even if I’m not?” I said.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but my guess is she wouldn’t mind making your life miserable.”

“And one way to do that is leak to the press that I was right there when Graham got pushed off that balcony?”

His face tight with anger, he nodded slowly. “I can see her doing that. Especially since there are some extenuating circumstances.” I read worry in his eyes.

“How extenuating?” I said.

“She called me about that sketch artist and—”

“I know that.”

He reached for his gum. “What you don’t know is that she also asked me to meet her for dinner.”

I felt my neck and shoulders tighten and that made my face throb. “And did you?”

“Yeah. She said she needed to talk through the case.”

This was a three-sticks-of-gum confession, and I wasn’t sure I wanted the details—but I was going to get them anyway. “So what happened?”

“She was feeling vulnerable, overwhelmed by the biggest case of her career. She drank too much wine . . . started getting a little personal under the table and—”

“One thing led to another?” I said quietly.

He grinned. “Now who’s jumping to conclusions? Her hand on my crotch led me to walk out on her—for the second time in her life.”

I smiled even though it hurt. “So she’s the one with the green-eyed monster on her back now?”

He nodded. “The less I know about the case, the less she can involve me. And that’s better for you.”

“She’s no problem for me.”

“Tell her the truth, okay? Just make sure the lawyer is there.”

“I’ll be happy to tell her the truth,” I said. “If she’ll listen.”

When Jeff left the house, he must have said something persuasive to the reporters because when I came downstairs, I saw only one car parked down the street and a lone van from a local independent network. Someone sat in the driver’s seat of the white car. A stubborn reporter, maybe?

I needed coffee, preferably strong enough to walk into the cup, so I headed for the kitchen. But before I could grind a single bean, the phone rang. Maybe the press thought a telephone call might work better than hanging around the neighborhood. I let it ring while I took a bag of French roast from the freezer. But when Megan’s voice came on the answering machine I rushed over and picked up.

“Hey, I’m here. What’s up?”

“Will you be home for a while?” she said. “Because I’m almost to your place. I need your help.”

“Is this about your uncle Graham?”

“In a way, yes. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She disconnected.

Before she arrived, I debated whether to tell her what I’d learned, that her parents must have surely known the identity of the child they adopted. But when Megan showed up looking as pale and sick as I’d felt yesterday, I knew now was not the time.

I was carrying my mug when I let her in and offered her coffee as we came into the living room. She refused.

“You look pretty spent,” I said, sitting down.

I gestured for her to join me, but she started pacing by the fireplace. “Courtney’s missing. She’s probably passed out in a crack house somewhere. I don’t think she knows Uncle Graham is dead.”

“I talked to her last night outside the funeral home, and though she didn’t seem all that wasted, she might have been before the night ended. I could tell she had plans.”

Megan chewed on her lower lip. “Roxanne was trying to call the
America’s Most Wanted
producers this morning to see if they could find her, if you can believe that. I stopped her. And then I thought of you. I know you’ve done so much already, but—”

“I’ll do whatever I can,” I said.

Megan, already no more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, looked like she’d lost weight. And the fire in her eyes that I remembered so well from our first meeting was dying little by little. Too many bad things had happened too fast.

I stood and blocked Megan’s path when she turned in my direction. “Let’s slow down,” I said. “Make a plan.”

She blinked, then stared at my face. “Abby, my God. What happened to you?”

“Just a little argument with a door.”

“I was so wrapped up in my own problems I didn’t even notice. Is this my fault? Did this happen in Jamaica? Did you get—”

I gripped both her shoulders and looked into her tired eyes. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“I can’t think about food now. We have to do something about Courtney. She needs me. They all need me. Even if they’re weird and crazy, they’re still my family and—”

“And you can’t help them if you don’t take care of yourself.”

Her eyes welled. “I probably can’t help them anyway, but you can. Find out who killed my father and my uncle, Abby.”

“I don’t know, Megan. I haven’t been doing this PI thing all that long. I’m not sure I have the skills to investigate murder. Maybe Angel can get more involved in your case. He’s had loads of experience.”

“I’d rather have you. You certainly couldn’t do any worse than that policewoman. She doesn’t tell us anything, and she was so abrupt with my mother and me last night. Almost cruel.”

“She’s trying,” I said, not believing I was actually defending Quinn Fielder.

“I don’t trust her, but I absolutely trust you,” she said.

“So you want me to find Courtney or the murderer-slash-murderers or all of the above?”

“All of the above,” she said, nodding decisively. “I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

“We’ll figure that out later, but first off, the two of us are going to sit down in my kitchen and have some Frosted Flakes. I need some brain fuel even if you don’t.”

A half hour later, after Megan joined me in a bowl of cereal, a big glass of orange juice, and coffee, she seemed a little more like the young woman who’d walked down the aisle such a short time ago. I felt better, too. My face still hurt, but my insect bites were almost a memory and my stomach felt normal for the first time in twenty-four hours.

I’d decided Jeff might be a good resource to help us locate Courtney, but before I could phone him, Megan’s cell rang.

She flipped it open and answered, then mouthed, “It’s her.”

Gee,
I thought,
easiest detective job I’ll ever have.

Megan listened for a second, then said, “It’s not your fault, Courtney. Someone pushed him. You couldn’t have stopped that from happening.”

I heard Courtney’s voice—her loud, slurred voice—saying, “It’s all my fault. I want to die, Meg. I want to die!”

“Don’t say that,” Megan said. “No one else needs to die.”

“Ask her where she is,” I whispered.

“Tell me where you are,” Megan said firmly. “I’ll come to you. I’ll pick you up.”

Megan listened intently for what seemed a long time. Then her face relaxed. “Okay. I’m coming. Don’t leave.”

She closed the phone and looked at me. “She’s at the Starfish Motel near Galveston.”

“I’ll Mapquest it and we’re on our way,” I said.

On the drive south, Megan asked me about the Jamaica trip. I hedged, told her I had a few leads but nothing solid to report yet. Thank goodness she was consumed by the current situation and thus didn’t press me. She needn’t know her birth mother might be an embezzler and a fugitive or that other giant secrets had been kept from her. At least not until the DNA sample I’d sent off came back in a few weeks. I changed the subject by offering my version of what happened at the hotel last night and how guilty I felt about arriving too late to help Graham.

“Oh my God, Abby,” she said after I finished explaining. “I didn’t even know you were there.”

“If I’d arrived a minute earlier, I may have prevented Graham’s death.”

“Or gotten yourself killed. I mean, look at you.”

“I prefer
not
to look at me. By the way, your uncle phoned me when I was in Jamaica and said he wanted to talk about something that would interest me. I’m worried that whatever he wanted to discuss had something to do with his death.”

“Why would he call you rather than the police? He hardly knew you.” She began twisting her wedding ring.

“My point exactly. But that call will probably show up on some phone record and make Fielder even more suspicious of me.”

“Suspicious of
you
? What reason could you possibly have to hurt my uncle or my father? You didn’t even know them before the rehearsal dinner.”

“Ah. A voice of reason in the wilderness. Refreshing, Megan. So what about Roxanne and Courtney? Would they have any motive to want Graham or James dead?”

Megan hesitated, probably realizing for the first time that “finding the killer” meant looking close to home. “I—I don’t know. Both of them seem to have more personal problems than the last time I saw them. But murder? I can’t even think about them like that.”

“I got a taste of some genuine animosity toward their dad last night when I talked to them at the visitation.” I glanced down at the map I’d printed off the computer. We were getting close to the exit.

“From what my dad told me, Uncle Graham and Roxanne did have a blowup about six months ago.”

“A blowup?” I merged right and exited the freeway a few miles before the Galveston causeway.

“My cousins lost their mom to cancer about ten years ago,” she said.

“Sylvia told me.”

“Anyway, Roxanne reacted by pulling closer to Uncle Graham, becoming more like a mother than a daughter. And Courtney totally rebelled. So Roxanne became the favorite, until she got that odd boyfriend who played in the Dallas symphony.”

“Violin, by chance?” I asked, remembering Roxanne clinging to one of the musicians the day of the wedding.

“How did you know?” said Megan.

“She was stuck like a cocklebur to the violinist at your reception. Anyway, what happened with the boyfriend?”

“I think it was the only time since they dissolved their business that Dad and Uncle Graham joined forces on anything. Apparently the boyfriend had been treated for bipolar disorder and would call up in the middle of the night or come over and play his violin outside Roxanne’s window. When he got Roxanne to max out one of her credit cards, Uncle Graham called Dad for help. A few weeks later the guy ended up with a new position in Boston.”