Die Job (15 page)

“PCSing?”

“Permanent change of station. Navy talk for moving,” she said.

“It feels like half the town is moving north,” I said.

She gave me a puzzled look.

“Lindsay told me she’s going to play volleyball at Maryland,” I explained.

“She’s one of the top ten or fifteen high school players in the country,” Joy said with what sounded like reluctant admiration. “She’s mastered the never-give-up philosophy. Unfortunately, her latest goal seems to be Mark.”

“Don’t you like her?”

She dodged the question. “I think they’re too young to be so serious. And I think getting too attached at eighteen will get in the way of both of them achieving their goals.”

Couldn’t argue with that. Look how hooking up with Hank had sidelined my college plans. No, that wasn’t fair. Hank wouldn’t have minded if I’d finished college before we got married; I was the one who decided two years in that I preferred the chemistry of hair dye to a biology lab, and the art of hairstyling over the history of Renaissance artists. I had no one to blame but myself for not having my degree. Certainly, my mother had encouraged me—strongly—to finish college before going to beauty school or marrying Hank.

I trimmed Joy’s bangs to mid-forehead, opening up her face more, and blew her hair dry. After a few more snips to texturize the crown, I said, “How’s that looking? Want to see the back?”

Shaking her head and watching the hair fall back into place, she said, “I love it!” She took the hand mirror from me as I turned the chair around. She held the mirror up to see the back of her head, and her sleeve slipped down a few inches to reveal a bruise on her right forearm that almost encircled it.

Joy caught the direction of my gaze and shook the sleeve back down. “Ugly, isn’t it? My doubles partner clocked me with his
racket when we both went for the ball. We still won the match. Like I said, never give up!”

“SHE NEVER GIVES UP TALKING, I’LL SAY THAT FOR her,” Mom observed as Joy headed for her car.

The salon was temporarily empty of customers and Stella had stepped into the bathroom. I grabbed a diet A&W from the fridge behind the counter and popped it open. “She was on the chatty side,” I agreed. I watched Beauty whisk her tail back and forth as she debated whether or not to pounce on the pile of hair Mom was accumulating with the broom. “Don’t you do it,” I warned her.

She gave me an affronted “I don’t know what you’re talking about” look and leaped onto the windowsill.

“Have you thought about evacuating, Mom? They’re saying Horatio could be a category—” I started, but footsteps pounding up the stairs and across the veranda interrupted me.

Rachel burst through the door. At first, I thought she had a black eye, but then I realized her mascara had run because she was crying. Flinging herself onto the love seat, she buried her face in a throw pillow.

“Rachel! Honey!” Mom hurried to her side. “Whatever is wrong?”

Sobs were the only answer. Mom looked at me. “Grace, why don’t you make some tea. Put in some of that lemon honey I got at the farmer’s market last week.”

Mom thinks honey, especially in tea, is a cure for almost any emotional distress. She’d have done well to set up her own hive in the backyard when I was going through my divorce. I hurried back to the kitchen and put on the teapot, listening to Mom’s comforting murmurs. When I returned to
the salon, bright yellow mug in hand, Rachel was sitting up, a pile of used tissues on the cushion beside her. Mom sat next to her, patting her hand.

When I handed Rachel the cheery mug, Mom said, “Tell us what’s wrong, honey.”

Blowing her nose, Rachel said, “Mkdz tink,” into the tissue.

“What?”

She looked up with tear-sheened eyes. “The kids at school think I pushed Braden.”

“No way!” I gasped.

“Way,” she said sadly.

Mom put her fists on her hips. “That is the meanest, ugliest, most hateful thing I’ve ever heard. And the most ridiculous!”

“Who said it?” I asked.

“Everyone,” Rachel said. She gulped some tea and coughed. “My friend Willow told me,” she added after Mom pounded her on the back. “Everyone’s saying that I was mad at Braden for, like, breaking up with me and so I pushed him. I was the one who was with him, so I’m the one that did it. Except I wasn’t with him—I was in the bathroom. And I would never have hurt him—I cared about him. He was my friend!” She looked wildly from Mom to me.

“Of course you didn’t do it,” Mom soothed.

“And that’s not the worst of it,” Rachel said. “The police think I did it, too!”

“The police? How did they find out?” I pulled up a hassock and sat in front of Rachel. The magnolia’s branches danced in the rising wind, casting faint shadows across the floor.

“One or more of the kids from the field trip told them about me and Braden breaking up and about how I was, like, his partner for the ghost hunt. They pulled me out of class
today and, like,
interrogated
me for an hour!” She started to breathe in quick, shallow gasps, and I was afraid she’d hyperventilate.

“Deep breaths,” I said, demonstrating.

Beauty sauntered over, looked into Rachel’s distressed face, and jumped onto the girl’s lap. Rachel’s breathing calmed as she stroked the satisfied cat.

“Who talked to you?” I asked.

“Not Agent Dillon,” Rachel said. “Some other agent from the GBI. A woman.”

“Did she read you your rights?”

“No.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. “They don’t really consider you a suspect,” I told her, not sure they didn’t, but wanting to make her feel better. “If they did, they’d have had to Mirandize you.” I had learned a few useful things while married to Hank. “They were probably just trying to figure out where everyone was that night and who had alibis.”

“Well, I don’t,” Rachel pointed out. “I was in the bathroom. I
could
have pushed Braden, but I didn’t!”

“What were you doing when . . . the night that . . .” I was reluctant to put it in words.

“The night the werewolf smothered Braden?” Rachel asked.

I nodded.

“The GBI agent asked that, too. I told her I was in my room studying. She said I could’ve sneaked out of the house, ridden my motor scooter to the hospital, killed Braden, and gotten back without my folks even knowing I was gone. And, like, I could have, because they were out to dinner. But I didn’t!” Tears welled again and Mom silently offered the tissue box.

Anger snaked its way from the pit of my stomach to my chest
and made it hard to breathe. I was going to have it out with Agent Dillon before the day got much older. His agents didn’t need to terrify an innocent teenager to learn what happened to Braden.

“What about the other kids? Do you know where any of them were Sunday night?”

“The party.” Rachel sniffed.

“What party?”

“Ari Solomon had a Halloween party. Everyone went. I was supposed to—I had a Lady Gaga costume—but with Braden in the hospital . . .”

A Halloween party. Costumes. People coming and going. Great. I’d bet none of the kids had a decent alibi. No wonder Dillon was frustrated.

“I don’t want to go back to school,” Rachel said.

“Let’s call your mom,” Mom answered.

“I already tried. She’s in a meeting and not to be disturbed, her secretary said.”

“Well, maybe I can convince them to ‘disturb’ her,” Mom said grimly. “C’mon.” She gave Rachel a hand up and the two of them headed for the kitchen—to refill Rachel’s honey tea, I was sure, and make the call. I felt sorry for any secretary who tried to tell Mom she couldn’t talk to Mrs. Whitley.

A phone call of my own to the GBI netted the information that Agent Dillon was at the high school. Yelling, “I’ll be back soon,” toward the kitchen, I stormed out of the salon without waiting for a response. My anger carried me the six blocks to the high school in less than ten minutes. Spurts of wind dashing dust and pine needles at me matched my mood, and I merely gathered my hair into a ponytail and wrapped an elastic around it to thwart the wind’s attempt to tangle it. Hah!

I straight-armed the high school’s glass door and found myself in an empty hall. Class must be in session. Marching to the office’s Dutch door, I asked the fat woman making copies where I could find Agent Dillon.

“In the gym,” she said, never taking her eyes off the copier. “Damn machine,” she muttered as I left.

I stalked down the hall toward the gym, slamming an open locker door shut with a satisfying clang as I passed. The gym floor was empty, its bleachers collapsed against the wall as I entered. A stray basketball lay under the backboard at the far end. Crossing the slick floor, I turned into the hallway leading to the locker rooms. The sounds of running water and faint laughter, and the scents of sweat, mildew, and soap snapped me back to my high school days. I’d always enjoyed gym class and had played on the volleyball team. I missed volleyball and the camaraderie of a team, I suddenly realized. Maybe after I’d given Special Agent John Dillon a piece of my mind, I’d call around and see if there were any adult volleyball leagues in the area. Passing the locker rooms, I peered into the glassed-in offices that came next. When I reached Coach Peet’s, the door swung open and the coach emerged with Agent Dillon.

Coach Peet frowned when he saw me, and Agent Dillon raised his brows slightly. “Grace? What are you doing here?”

“I’d like a word with you, if you have a moment,” I said as pleasantly as I could manage.

Coach Peet disappeared into his office and closed the door hard, leaving Dillon and me facing each other in the narrow hall.

Wearing a navy suit with a pale yellow shirt and striped tie, he looked tired and severe in the cheerless fluorescent light.

“What in the world do you and your people mean by browbeating a seventeen-year-old girl about Braden’s death? How could you think a teenager would—”

“If you’re talking about Rachel Whitley,” he interrupted me, “she had motive, means, and opportunity, which means I’d be remiss in not interviewing her.
Interviewing,
” he emphasized. “Not browbeating.”

“She didn’t do it.” I glared at him.

“Fine. But before you rip into me about interviewing poor, innocent teens, who do you think did it? Statistically, it’s likely to be a teenager because there were more of them at Rothmere when Braden was pushed than there were adults. The only adults were you, the science teacher, Coach Peet”—he nodded toward the closed door—“and Dr. Solomon.” He leaned close to me as he talked, keeping his voice low with an effort. “You think I like investigating the murder of a teen? Well, think again.” He pulled back suddenly, walked three paces away, then whirled and came back.

“I’m sorry, John,” I whispered. “I wasn’t thinking. Rachel was crying and upset and I reacted emotionally. Of course you have to interview everyone who was there. And I can see how it looks like maybe Rachel is a likely candidate. But I’ve know her for almost four years, since she started part-time at the salon when she was fourteen, and she couldn’t kill someone. She couldn’t walk into a hospital and smother someone in cold blood! And certainly not Braden. Their breakup was amicable and they were still friends.”

“That’s not what the other kids say.” Dillon crossed his arms over his chest and eyed me grimly, his eyes the cold navy they got when he was angry.

“Well, they’re lying,” I said hotly. “I saw the two of them
together that night and they were comfortable with each other—pals.”

“Would you go to dinner with me Friday night?” he asked.

“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. Had he just asked me on a date? Right in the middle of my railing at him?

“I asked if you’d go on a date with me,” he confirmed.

A warm feeling that had nothing to do with anger coursed through me, making my fingertips tingle. “What about the hurricane?” I asked stupidly.

“What about it? It’ll be blown out by then, or on its way to the Carolinas.” He smiled, his teeth a flash of white in his tan face, his eyes lightening to a marine blue. “Well?”

“Okay.”

“Just ‘okay’?” He arched his brows quizzically.

“I’d like to go to dinner with you, John Dillon,” I amended. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Much better.” He leaned forward, catching me by my upper arms, and before I could move, he pressed a hard, brief kiss on my lips. “I really like the way you’re so passionate about your friends.”

And before I could react—kiss him back? push him away?—he had turned and was striding down the hall. The bell rang and the hall flooded with students, hiding him from my sight.

I STOOD IN THE HALL, AN OBSTACLE THE STUDENTS flowed around, for a good thirty seconds. In that time, my mind flitted from the zing I’d felt from Dillon’s two-second kiss, to the way his eyes changed color with his moods, to wondering what I should wear on Friday. I should’ve asked where we were going. Ye gods, you’d think I’d never been on a date the way I was letting it disrupt my thoughts. As students filtered into the locker room behind me to dress for gym, I knocked on Coach Peet’s door. If Agent Dillon thought asking me out would distract me from clearing Rachel’s name by figuring out who really killed Braden McCullers, he had another think coming.