Die Buying (25 page)

“His wife knew about you?”

“Oh, please. She’d have had to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know. I was just one in a long line. I had no illusions that I was the end of the line, either. Jackson had the attention span of a mayfly—here today, gone tomorrow. It was fun while it lasted, and I’m sorry he’s dead, but I’m off to the Big Apple next month—I got a part dancing in an off-off-Broadway play—and our . . . liaison was coming to an end, anyway.” She drew out the word “liaison” as if she liked the feel of it on her tongue.

“How did you two meet?”

“I went out with Robbie a couple of times when we were in high school.” Tears sprang to her eyes, but she dashed them away. “I can’t believe he’s dead. He was a nice boy, really liked me, but he always seemed kind of lost, you know? Anyway, I ran into Jackson at a charity thing last fall and, well, one thing led to another.”

“What did Robbie think about that?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” She looked genuinely puzzled.

“That you’d moved on from dating him to dating his father. That would rile a lot of guys.” To say the least. It might drive some men to murder. Was that what Robbie Porter had wanted to tell me—that he’d killed his father? Maybe his conscience got to him and the overdose was suicide, not an accident and not murder.

“Robbie and I were never that serious,” Velma said dismissively. Pulling a pink cardigan from her dance bag, she shrugged her slim arms into the sleeves. “And Jackson, well . . .” She trailed off, as if unsure how to characterize her relationship with Jackson Porter, or unwilling to. “Look, I’ve got to go.” She slung the dance bag over her shoulder.

I followed her out of the small studio. After threading our way through knots of bumblebee-costumed preschoolers, we reached the lobby. “Porter got your mom the job at Diamanté, didn’t he?” I asked.

“Yeah? So?” She waved to the woman behind the counter and pushed open the door, letting in chilly air.

“So what did she think of your relationship?”

Velma turned to face me on the sidewalk fronting the parking lot, the wind tugging strands from her loose ponytail and blowing them across her face. “Where do you get off being all judgmental about what Jackson and I had together? ‘What did Robbie think? What did your mom think?’ Who cares? It was between me and Jackson. Period. We enjoyed each other’s company. We had great sex. Get over it.” She gave me a condescending once over. “Maybe you just need to get laid.”

She beeped open a dark blue Honda CR-V parked in front of us, flung her bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. Without a word of farewell, she backed out and drove away.

I stood as if rooted to the sidewalk, shocked by her words. Was I judgmental? I sorted through my thoughts about Velma and Jackson, colored by Finola’s description of him as a “sugar daddy.” Yes, I had to admit their relationship seemed more like a business transaction than a love affair to me, but it wasn’t my business. I had no right to judge Velma. Or Jackson Porter, for that matter. I drifted toward my car, annoyed with myself for letting my personal feelings influence the interview. I’d never learn anything more from Velma. Remembering her last words made me bang my hand against the steering wheel. Was it really so obvious I hadn’t had sex in the modern era?

 

 

“Yes,” Kyra said
unequivocally when I asked her that question as we ate dinner at a Thai bistro before her roller derby bout. I’d swum with Joel and dressed in my favorite midnight blue sweater. “You might as well be wearing a chastity belt over your clothes.”

I choked on a pepper that seared my mouth, and swallowed half a glass of water. “You’re exaggerating,” I said when I could talk again.

Kyra just grinned in a know-it-all way. “Tell me you’ve gotten laid since moving to Vernonville.”

I shoveled a forkful of noodles into my mouth to account for my silence. Truth was, I hadn’t had sex since the night before my unit shipped out to Afghanistan, almost three years ago. My boyfriend at the time, Ross, had spent that last night with me, and we’d parted tearfully in the morning. Then had come the long, celibate eleven months in Afghanistan—Ross had sent me a “Dear Jane” email two months into my tour—followed by months in the hospital and more months in rehab for my knee, then more time getting settled in Vernonville. Since then, it just hadn’t come up, so to speak.

“I haven’t been in the mood,” I told Kyra. “With my knee—”

She blasted a laugh that had the tiny Thai waitress shooting us a worried look. She lowered her voice. “Since when do knees play a part in S-E-X? You just need to get your mojo back, girlfriend. Find an attractive man and let nature take its course. Stop thinking so much. I guarantee you that not one man in a hundred gives a damn what your knee looks like. You’re the only one with hang-ups about it.” She sat back in her chair. “There. I said it. I’ve been thinking it for months, and now I’ve said it. Are you mad at me?”

I tugged at the neckline of my sweater, which had a habit of slipping off my shoulder. “No,” I said finally. “I’m not mad. You’re probably right.” Knowing she was right didn’t mean I could move past it immediately, though. I’d grown up in the Hollywood culture that defined women by their physical beauty, where birthmarks were lasered off, cheekbones surgically enhanced, and cellulite thighs suctioned. Even though I’d escaped into the military, which valued a body for how many push-ups it could do or how fast it could run a mile, not how it looked, I couldn’t completely ditch the cultural indoctrination of my younger years. And besides, now my knee would get failing marks from both my worlds: it looked like crap and crapped out when I needed it.

Apparently satisfied that she’d said enough, Kyra resumed eating. Her long kinky hair fell forward into her noodles, and she flipped it back impatiently. “So do you think Velma could have killed Porter?”

“Maybe, but I don’t see why she would. Her mom looks like a better bet to me—maybe she had the hots for Porter herself, or she was mad at him for taking up with Velma.”

“Sounds to me like Velma is well able to look after herself,” Kyra said, chasing a mussel around her plate with her fork.

“Yeah, and so is your buddy, Dyson Harding,” I said. “He struck me as someone with a real capacity for violence. And he’s seriously perturbed about that development going in and burying his precious fluted whatevers.”

“Flutes?” Kyra knit her brow. “He found instruments?”

“Something to do with arrowheads, I think,” I said. “Or tools. I didn’t stick around for the lecture. The point is, he’s rabid on the subject.”

“What about that girl who said she found blood in her backyard and that her mom killed Porter?”

“Marcia Cleaton,” I said slowly, realizing I’d let Julia Cleaton’s mother drift off my radar after telling Detective Helland about her. “I’ll see if I can get Helland to tell me what she said when he interviewed her.” Fat chance. When I’d learned about Cleaton, the police still thought Gatchel killed Jackson Porter. I wondered if Helland had followed up after we’d found Weasel’s body.

My cell phone rang and I glanced at it. “It’s Grandpa,” I said with an apologetic look at Kyra as I answered it.

“Emma-Joy, I’ve got ’em.” Grandpa Atherton’s excited voice greeted me. “We’re going south on I-95 and just passed the first Fredericksburg exit.”

“ ‘Them?’ You’re chasing the taggers?”

“That’s affirmative.”

“You were just supposed to get a license plate number!”

“My hidden camera caught them as they spray painted a van, but their license plate is covered with mud and I couldn’t get the number. So I decided to follow them.”

“But you’re not supposed to be driving.”

“Oh, I’m not,” he said. “My friend is.”

What friend? Before I could ask who was with him, he said, “Oh, they’re getting off.”

He read me the exit number, promised to keep me updated, and told me to get my fanny on the road.

“On my way. Don’t—” He hung up before I could tell him not to try to confront the taggers on his own.

 

 

Twenty-five minutes later,
I pulled my Miata up behind the dark blue van Grandpa Atherton told me he’d borrowed for “the op,” and took stock of my surroundings. We were parked on a quiet residential street in Fredericksburg, lined with 1980s-vintage two-story houses with two-car garages and well-kept yards graced by mature trees. That was about all I could make out in the dark. Getting out of my car, I closed the door quietly and advanced on the van. When I reached the driver’s window, I rapped lightly on the tinted glass. The window buzzed down, and I found myself looking into the amused face of Theresa Eshelman, the mall-walking day care center owner. The silver strands in her short gray hair stood out, and she wore a red cashmere sweater.

“Wha—” I started.

Grandpa Atherton leaned forward from the passenger seat. “You know Theresa, don’t you, Emma-Joy? Theresa, this is my granddaughter, Emma-Joy Ferris.”

“EJ,” I said, shaking hands awkwardly through the window.

“We met that morning I was asking about Robbie Porter,” Grandpa said. “She offered to help me with my wheelchair. This is our first date.”

“You really know how to show a gal a good time, Grandpa,” I said drily.

Theresa laughed. “Your grandfather is the most interesting man I’ve met in years,” she said.

“ ‘Interesting’ is one word for him,” I agreed. “Where are the taggers?”

Grandpa pointed out his window to a house on the north side of the street. I noticed he’d ditched his gauze mitts but had bandages strapped around his palms. The house was pale—white or tan—and the garage door was up a bit more than a foot, maybe to let a cat in and out. “Stay here,” I told Grandpa and Theresa, “and call the police if I’m not back in fifteen minutes.”

Without waiting for an answer, I crossed the street. The house was quiet. Light leaked in thin stripes through blinds and slipped past the edge of drawn curtains on the ground floor, but didn’t provide enough illumination to make out much. Shadows moved behind the drapes of what I took to be a living room or family room. I hesitated on the driveway. Knock? Or check out the garage? The convenient gap between the garage door and driveway called to me. It struck me that maybe not being a police officer bound by rules and regulations and the need for probable cause and warrants could be a good thing. With a flash of regret for my sweater, I dropped to the ground and scootched under the door on my back, turning my head sideways to avoid scraping my face on the rubber gasket edging the door. I stood and brushed off my clothes as best I could before pulling a mini flashlight from my pocket. I kept it in the glove box of the Miata for emergencies.

Turning a slow three hundred sixty degrees, I ran the beam over the bare walls and gray-painted floor of a standard-issue suburban garage. A red lawnmower hunkered in one corner, a bicycle hung from an overhead rack, and an old Frigidaire hummed near the door I presumed led to the kitchen. Most of the space, however, was taken up by a white van with ELMER’S ELECTRICAL SUPPLY stenciled on the side. I peered through the passenger window, spying a pair of paint-stained work gloves in the foot well and sunglasses clipped to the visor. A partition separated the seats from the back of the van, and I couldn’t see anything incriminating. I tried the windowless back door. Locked. However, the sharp smell of spray paint seeped from the van, and I stifled a cough.

Something nudged my shin hard, and I stumbled against the van, eliciting a dull clang. My heartbeat tripled, and I swung the flashlight toward the floor, ready to use it as a weapon if I had to. The beam picked up the tricolor coat, heavy muzzle, and long ears of a basset hound, who regarded me hopefully from a pair of brown eyes. His tail whisked back and forth across the garage floor. He nosed my shin again, then sat.

“Nice dog,” I whispered. “Nice, quiet dog.”

He apparently took that as an invitation, because he stood on his hind legs, put his forepaws on my thighs, and snuffled vigorously at my slacks, no doubt smelling Fubar. Reaching out a tentative hand, I patted his bony head, mentally cursing myself for not having taken the time to scope out the place before I rolled under the door. I was lucky I hadn’t been attacked by a Rottweiler or pit bull, or ratted out by a Yorkie or Chihuahua.

“Woooo.” My new buddy pointed his nose up and howled.

I didn’t know if that was hound for “Let’s play fetch,” “You smell like a stupid-ass cat,” or “Come quick! There’s an intruder in the garage.” I clapped my hands around his muzzle to shut him up. “Ssh.”

He looked up at me dolefully from his droopy eyes and wagged his tail, apparently not offended by my attempts to silence him. I dug in my jacket pockets, thinking I might have a leftover energy bar or something I could bribe him with while I slipped under the door. All I found was a lintcrusted cough drop that had worked its way out of the wrapper. I offered it to the hound on the flat of my hand, and after a moment of snuffling, he licked it up. With a final pat on his head, I hurried toward the gap under the door.

I was almost there when the door to the house squeaked open and a bar of light pierced the garage. I flicked off the flashlight and dropped to my haunches behind the van as a young man’s voice called, “Dolly? Are you back?”

The basset hound—who I guess was a her, not a him—trotted over, tags clinking, to investigate the new game I was playing as I huddled against the rear of the van. She thrust her nose toward my face and gave me a comprehensive lick. I made shooing gestures. “Go see your daddy,” I whispered.

“Woohr. Whuf!” she said.

“Dolly?” Footsteps clopped down the two stairs into the garage. “Did you do your chores?”

I gave Dolly a shove, barely budging her. Who knew bassets weighed so much? After a long moment, she ambled away, responding to the man slapping his hands against his thighs. With a sigh of relief, I heard him greet the dog. “Good girl,” he said. Footsteps climbed the two steps again, accompanied by the clicking of the dog’s toenails, and I tensed myself to duck under the garage door as soon as the man closed the house door. Before I could move, a motor hummed and the door rattled toward the floor, trapping me in the garage.