Death in Reel Time (27 page)

Peyton gave us a murderous look, then grabbed his jacket off the sofa and stomped past without a word of either greeting or farewell.

“Are you okay, Beth?” I asked. “Is he harassing you?”

“You should call Denny,” Esme said. “You want me to call him?”

“No!” Beth said, moving toward us with outstretched hands. “No, he's just—he doesn't know the whole story. It's a misunderstanding, that's all.”

The front door opened and Olivia came in carrying a bag from Keepsake Corner in each hand. “Was that Peyton I saw
leaving?” she asked as she came into the room. “He didn't even say hello.” She nodded to us, then noticed Beth's state of distress. “What has he said to you?”

“It's nothing, Mother,” Beth said. “Really. It'll be fine. Did you get all the supplies?” She forced a smile and pointed to the bags.

“Yes, I got everything we need and then some,” Olivia said, still eyeing Beth with concern.

“And here are the last two boxes of your family things,” Esme said.

Olivia put her arms around me and squeezed. “I thank you for this, both of you. I really do. It's been a wonderful gift. I never did like that word
closure
. I always thought it was new-age babble, but I see now what it means. I'm glad to know what happened to my father even if it was a tragic story. It's hard to move ahead when you're constantly looking over your shoulder and trying to understand how things that happened in the past are hindering you.” She turned to look at Beth, and Esme and I both turned with her. Beth burst into tears and Olivia stepped over to put her arms around her daughter. She stroked her hair and shushed her as if she were a child. “It will all come out what happened to Blaine, too, one day,” she said. “And when it does we'll square our shoulders and deal with it head-on.”

*  *  *

In contrast to the emotional scene at Olivia's, the rest of the afternoon was filled with the most mundane of activities: returning library books, getting prescriptions filled, a pickup from the dry cleaners. We fell behind schedule and had to
settle for stopping at the grocery store deli for a veggie platter as our contribution for the evening, which Esme would normally have found a criminal offense.

As the other four arrived they added their food offerings to the coffee table and took their customary spots in our living room. All except Marydale and Winston. Marydale usually takes the chair closest to the doorway, since she's forever jumping up and down to fetch things from the kitchen. Today she settled by the side window. Winston always takes one end of the sofa, but today he sat next to Jack by the front window. It was a trifling thing, and certainly we didn't have assigned seats, but it seemed indicative of some more consequential shift.

We chatted about our completed report on Olivia's genealogy as we ate. Everyone had heard bits and pieces, but this was the first time we'd gotten together since we'd found Celestine's description of what happened to Johnny Hargett.

“And you and Esme saw this trestle when you went out to Crawford?” Winston asked.

“We saw it,” Esme said flatly.

“It looks Gothic, or maybe like something you see after the apocalypse,” I said. “Or maybe it just looked that way to me because I know what happened there.”

Then the talk turned to the investigation of Blaine's murder and I had to carefully consider my words. I could see Esme was doing the same, so I was surprised when next she spoke.

“The police are bringing Tony Barrett in for questioning again tomorrow. And if that doesn't go well they'll probably be coming around to talk to all of us about that night again.
Now, I'm not trying to tell anybody what to say—we've all got to tell the truth as we see it—but I want you all to know I'm one hundred percent sure that boy did
not
kill Blaine Branch.”

I was astounded, and so was everyone else, judging by the looks on their faces. They all knew about Esme's gift and, like me, they'd progressed through skepticism to various levels of true belief over the years. Esme trusted them completely with her secret, but she'd never before been this blatant about influencing them with what she'd learned through this channel.

“I know he's been in trouble before,” she said, “and I know his whereabouts for that day can't be completely accounted for, but I'm asking y'all to trust me on this. He didn't do it and if we can find any way to help him I hope we will. Now that's all I have to say about it.”

As we cleared the food Marydale's two Westies got frisky. I stopped to play tug-of-war with Sprocket with a squeaky toy and Gadget took that opportunity to launch a raid on Sprocket's bed and steal the biscuits he buries under his covers. Then we walked the few blocks to Keepsake Corner to work on our own heritage scrapbooks and exchange our latest findings. The ritual was routine and familiar, but I couldn't shake the feeling something was off somehow.

After we'd pulled our boxes from the shelf in the back room and settled at the table we went around the circle. Jack and I were the only ones with anything new. Jack told how he'd found proof of his being descended from Robert Ford. And when it was my turn I pulled a manila envelope out of my bag. “This came in today's mail,” I said. “I haven't
even had a chance to open it yet, so we'll all learn about it together. You all know how long I've been searching for my mom's natural family. Well, while this isn't about her specifically, I'm hoping it will tell me some things. I had an in-depth DNA profile run and these are the results.” I put the envelope to my head like Carnac, that old soothsayer character Johnny Carson used to do on his show. “I predict my profile will come back fifty percent European and forty percent Asian, with about ten percent something
other
thrown in.”

“Should we start a pool?” Coco asked.

“I can't wait long enough for you to put down bets,” I said, ripping the flap of the envelope. I shuffled through the sheaf of papers and scanned through the scientific text until I came to the part written in plain English. “Drumroll, please,” I said. “I'm forty-eight percent European, northern European to be more exact. I'm six percent other and I'm forty-six percent Polynesian, from a subgroup identified in the Marshall Islands. Wow!” I skimmed through the remaining pages. “Then there's all this stuff about three subgroups and the various theories about their migration from Asia. And a map! For the first time in my life I can point to a map and say this is where my mother's people are from!”

“Cool,” Jack said.

“Way cool,” I agreed. I was excited—and apprehensive. I wondered if this was how Olivia felt when we started exploring her family history, and look how that had turned out. Still, always better to know. And anyway, I was already calculating how I might fund a research excursion to the North Pacific.

“N
O MORE PROCRASTINATION,
” E
SME SAID
sternly, setting a cup of coffee in front of me as I tried to clear the cobwebs from my head. “We leave tomorrow. We've got to pack.”

“I know,” I said, “but I hate leaving Morningside right now with all this stuff going on.”

“I don't like leaving, either,” Esme said. “But we're not going to the back side of the moon. We can be back here in less than three hours if need be. Hey, did you hear back from that woman, the granddaughter of Charlie Martin's friend, what was his name?”

“Hershel Tillett, and no, she hasn't called me back. You know how that goes. I'll have to pester her again but there's no urgency.”

“You lost interest already? Yesterday you were all in a tizzy about it.”

“Oh, I still want to do it, but we won't be able to get any more interviews in before we leave town. And anyhow,
Charlie hasn't agreed to do it and I have a hunch Tony's gonna have a hard row to hoe talking him into it.”

“Assuming Tony's able himself. I'm nervous as a cat about what Jennifer Jeffers is going to do after they talk to him today. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if she's harassing him just to get at me 'cause she knows I'm fond of the boy.”

“Wow, paranoid much? First off, I think your fondness for the boy is a
very
new development, which I didn't even realize until yesterday. And second, maybe we don't occupy Jennifer Jeffers' thoughts as much as you seem to think.”

“You know she hates us,” Esme said. “You know it. And I can't for the life of me figure out what I ever did to her. Other than become friends with her partner.”

“I think you and Denny are a little more than friends,” I teased, expecting her to sputter.

Instead she frowned. “He's a good man, Sophreena. I like him more than I probably ought to.”

“Why would you say that?” I asked. “You two make a great couple.”

“Um-hm. Until he finds out I'm a freak. And how long do you think it'll be before I slip and he figures it out? You can't have this thing I've got and a normal relationship, too. I'm going to have to give him up before he finds out.”

“Are you out of your mind? Look, you have perfectly normal relationships with me, Marydale, Winston, Coco, and Jack, and we all know. What makes you think it would be any different with Denny?”

“He's a cop, with a cop's mind,” Esme said wearily. “You're too young to remember Jack Webb on TV saying
just the facts, ma'am,
but that's a cop's way of looking at the world.”

“Don't you have one of your mother's homespun expressions to cover this? Like not getting your cart before your horse or something?”

Esme considered. “Well, she used to say, ‘Don't trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.' ”

“Okay, that one makes my brain hurt a little, but it sounds like good advice.”

We'd gotten our computers, scanners, recording equipment, and other gear packed up and ready to go by the time Jack called to ask me to lunch. I wasn't about to turn that down. I promised Esme I'd be back soon to pack my clothes and load the car so we could get on the road early the next morning.

To borrow from Esme's line of patter, I enjoyed passing time with Jack probably more than I ought to. Over the past months my determination to keep my true feelings from him had grown ever stronger. But so had my confusion. Sometimes things he said or did gave me a faint hope he might feel the same. Then I'd realize it was only wishful thinking on my part.

When I heard Jack's truck pull into the driveway, I went out to meet him. He had his boat in the back of the truck and he'd gotten out to adjust one of the bungee cords holding it in place. “You'll be happy to hear I'm gonna repaint her,” he said.

“Oh, I don't know if you should,” I said, running my hand along the upturned hull. “I kind of like her the way she is.”

“Good,” Jack said, sheepishly. “Because I really don't want to repaint, but I do have to make some repairs.”

“What's this from?” I asked, looking at a hole, surrounded by some splintered wood that had been water soaked and weathered into a gray patina.

Jack smiled. “Bullet hole. When I was about nine or ten my dad shot at a muskrat that was burrowing under our dock. His shot ricocheted off a rock. Muskrat one, boat, zero. I repaired it from the inside but can't bring myself to cover it entirely. Every time I see that hole I remember my dad's face that day as he watched the boat slowly sink.”

I rubbed my finger in the indentation. “I saw something that looked just like this at Beth's,” I said, half lost in my own thoughts. “In the side of their shed. I forgot to tell Denny.”

“Why would you need to tell him?” Jack asked. “Blaine wasn't shot. And I doubt it was a bullet hole anyway.”

“I'm pretty sure it was,” I said, fishing my phone from my bag. “And the wood around it was still light colored; it hadn't weathered. I don't know that it had anything to do with Blaine's death, but if there was a gun, if Blaine had a gun then maybe—” I caught myself before I said any more out loud.

Jack gave me a peculiar look, but he didn't ask questions. We got into the truck and he drove slowly toward the diner. I called Denny but he was unavailable so I texted a message. “I hope that means he's in the interrogation with Tony,” I said.

“Yeah, about that,” Jack said. “I got a call from Detective Jeffers this morning asking if Tony had ever been to my place, my business, I mean.”

I groaned. “What did you tell her?”

Jack shrugged. “That yeah, he'd been over and filmed a little, though he was mostly interested in asking about the golf course and its operations since that's our biggest client and a huge player in Morningside's development.”

“What else did she ask?”

“Nothing,” Jack said. “I was holding my breath figuring she was going to ask if he'd ever been back where we keep the tarps, but she didn't.”

“Had he?”

Jack shrugged again. “I suppose. He'd been all around the place, but I couldn't tell you if he took any particular notice. And anyway, after what Esme said last night I wasn't going to volunteer anything.”

I wished Esme could hear him say that. No hesitation. As if whatever Esme said could be taken to the bank.

“I'm still freaked out about that tarp being found at my place,” he said. “I've been turning this over in my head for days. I'm convinced somebody put it there to hide it in plain sight. A tarp's harder to get rid of than you might think. Up on Crescent Hill there are no commercial properties, so no Dumpsters. I suppose somebody could have put it into a trash bag and slipped it into someone's trash can, but they'd need a trash bag handy, right? And they couldn't dump it in the lake with the body. It would've floated to the surface and attracted all kinds of attention.”