Gone to Ground (8 page)

One thing I did know. Next time I took to wantin to bake for somebody I was gon think twice. Never know what kind a mess it could get you in.

At 5:30 I finished with the day's last customer. Betsy
Luvall's gray hair was perfectly coifed for another week. My head ached, my feet hurt, and my mind turned like a whirlwind. I waited with Betsy while her husband came to get her—he wouldn't let his wife go anywhere by herself, even in the daytime. Then I locked the door while I counted the day's money.

I wished I could go home and be alone. After a day's work I was always talked out. People thought I could chatter forever. That it came naturally. They were wrong. Unless I was nervous, talkin was simply a part of my business. Folks expect it from their hair stylist.

But Trent Williams had called an hour ago, wantin to see me. For him it was part work, part date. Let him dream on. I saw it as an opportunity to gather information. Had anyone seen my brother, or an unknown figure, runnin through the cemetery or down our street? Or worse yet, comin to my door. Chances were good no one had seen a thing. The streets of Amaryllis always did roll up tight after dark, even before the murders started.

Still, what would I do if someone
had
seen Stevie? If he hadn't given
me
an innocent reason for bein covered in blood, he sure wouldn't come up with one for anyone else. Chief Cotter would throw my brother in the slammer and grin while doin it. So would John. Amaryllis folks wanted these murders solved. How easy it would be—finally—to pin em on the town "half-wit."

But what if my brother
was
to blame?

I let myself out of the salon, makin double sure the door was locked. I slipped into my car, parked out front on Main, and drove the five blocks to my house. Supper wouldn't be anything fancy. I told Trent I had some leftover spaghetti sauce—take it or leave it.

Since Trent had come down from Jackson to cover our first murder in Amaryllis, we'd sort of teamed up. He knew I cut about all the white folks' hair in town. (The blacks went to my friend Rochelle's salon. Nothin racial about it. I just didn't have the trainin or equipment to do black hair.) And the white folks who weren't my clients likely came into my salon for Patsy, so either way I heard their talk. The only white people who never darkened my door were the three Caucasian members of the Incompetent Five—the Amaryllis police force. Not that I wanted em in my salon anyway. My ex-husband, Officer John Cotter, and his father the chief would have to be crazy to let me stand over them with a pair of shears. And with the Chief tellin all his men what to think, say, and do, it was no puzzle why Ted Arnoldson wouldn't set foot in my place either.

A block before my house I drove by the Amaryllis cemetery, rememberin the game Stevie and I used to play as kids. "Hold your breath till it's passed—or you're dead!" I'd elbow Stevie in the back of Mom's car. He never was any good at not breathin. He died a thousand deaths passin that cemetery by the time he was ten.

Once, when I was eleven and we drove by the cemetery at night, I could have sworn I saw the Amaryllis ghost. It was floatin between headstones in the middle of the grounds. I screamed and pointed, but at that moment the ghost melted away. I've never seen it since.

At home I locked the front door and checked to see my two guns were in their places and loaded. Call me obsessive, but I checked them every day. I put the spaghetti sauce in a pan to warm and started heatin water to boil some fresh pasta. I hadn't been home ten minutes when my bell rang.

"Hello?" I called through the closed door.

"It's me."

Trent's voice, deep and kinda sulky. Frankly the man's voice was the sexiest thing about him. On looks I'd give him a five. His brown hair was good—better when he was in town and I could cut it. But his face was thin and long, and his jaw line weak. Total opposite of my hunky ex. But then, John Cotter had plenty other issues.

Click, click
went my multiple locks. I opened the door and stood back. Trent was dressed in khaki pants and a short sleeve blue shirt. The fabric set off his blue eyes. Stickin out his front pocket was the ever-present small spiral notebook and pen. Always the reporter.

"Hi there, Deena." He leaned down his lanky frame and gave me a hug. His half-day growth of beard scratched my face.

"Hi, Trent. Been a long time since I've seen you." Christmas, to be exact. He'd come home to Amaryllis to spend the holiday with this sister and brother-in-law.

"Too long." He looked meaningfully into my eyes.

Uh, yeah.

"Come on into the kitchen. Water's about ready to cook the pasta."

I led him back, my brain churnin. This had to go right. Trent had always been open with me, especially two years ago when Chief Cotter had tried to pin Sara Fulgerson's murder on Stevie just because my brother had raked leaves in her yard the day she died. Of course he'd left fingerprints on her back door—she gave him lunch that day. Trent had told me everything the cops had on Stevie—nothin more than the print and a boatload of speculation. Trent didn't believe Stevie could've killed Sara, or Martha a year earlier. But now after four more killings, if someone had whispered to Trent about Stevie runnin around all bloodied on the night Erika died, would Trent tell me?

I had to find out what time Erika was killed.

In the kitchen Trent leaned against a counter, one foot crossed over the other. Without askin, I fetched him a Dr. Pepper with plenty of ice. That's all Trent drank, mornin, noon, and night. Probably took showers in it.

I dumped spaghetti in the boilin water and stirred the sauce in the other pot.

He sniffed. "Smells good."

"Yeah. Always better the second day." I set the red-stained wooden utensil on the spoon rest. "So. You got here yesterday, I hear."

"Not till mid afternoon. I was way on the other side of Jackson when I heard the news. I'd been there with Zeke, covering another case since Tuesday morning."

Zeke was his supervisor. "Yeah, I know." Trent's sister, Sally, and I had both left messages on his cell phone Wednesday mornin. "Sally told me she finally got through to Zeke, askin him where you were. He said you and he had been up all night Tuesday followin leads on your story, and then you had to run to a court session for all day Wednesday."

"Yeah, that's a crazy case. But the minute I heard about Erika I begged off to come here. Just had to stop by home first for some extra clothes."

He'd probably broken every speed limit gettin to Amaryllis. "You write another article for tomorrow?"

"Yup. Barely made my deadline after the autopsy."

"The chief'll love it." If anybody in this town hated Trent, it was Chief Cotter. "What's it gonna say?"

Trent slid a forefinger up and down his glass. "I talked to my contact at the facility in Jackson after Erika's autopsy. Of course toxicology will take awhile, but like the other murders, I doubt they'll matter. Erika's pending cause of death is from the same kind of wound—a stab to the neck that cut the carotid artery. In fact he said the single stab was done exactly like the other victims—same precision, same placement. Which means it had to be the same perpetrator."

Which also meant, like the others, she bled out in just a minute or two. Must have been an awful lot of blood.

I stirred the sauce, keeping my eyes averted. "Did he tell you what time she died?"

Trent set down his glass. "How much do you want to know? It gets kind of technical. And . . . gory."

I shivered. We were talkin about a person I knew. As much as I'd disliked Erika, I wouldn't have wished this on her. I steeled myself. "Tell me."

A shadow dropped down Trent's face. "They can never tell time of death exactly. But I did learn the condition of the body when the coroner got to the scene around 10:00 a.m. She was nearly in full rigor mortis, which normally takes about twelve hours—but there are all kinds of variances to that."

Hope lifted its head. Could Erika have been killed as early as 10:00 p.m.? Stevie was still at work.

"But the pathologist said Erika had one kind of partially digested food in her stomach—brownies. Food normally goes through the stomach in four to six hours. I'd gotten a tip that a woman had been eating brownies with Erika, maybe as late as 10:00—"

"Who?"

Trent shook his head. "Anonymous source."

"Oh, come on, Trent."

"I can't. Maybe later."

My heart kicked around. "So she was killed sometime between 10:00 and 4:00 in the morning?"

"Well, based just on stomach contents. But when they put it together with everything else like rigor mortis and body temperature, they narrowed it to between 11:00 and 2:00."

No.

The sauce started to bubble. So red. Why hadn't I cooked somethin else? I turned off the burner, fightin to look calm. "You sure she ate a brownie at 10:00?"

"That's what I heard. But that doesn't mean she didn't eat one after that. The visitor left at 10:00, so who's to say what happened later. Still, when you look at all the factors, the timeline looks pretty good."

No it didn't. It looked
horrible.

I threw a glance at Trent and nodded. The expression on his face snapped my eyes back to him.

He surveyed me. "Why are you so curious? You never asked me this about any of the other murders."

"No reason."

"You sure?" He tilted his head.

I couldn't relax around Trent, not tonight. He was too keen on gettin his story. "Of course."

The noodles looked nearly done. I busied myself with pluckin one out to sample. Al dente. I turned off the burner and lifted the pan to the sink to drain. I could feel Trent's eyes borin through my back.

"If you know something, Deena"—Trent's voice had gone quiet—"I need to hear it."

"What could I possibly know?"

"You tell me."

I set down the drained pan of noodles none too lightly and turned around. "Is this the only reason you're here, to find out what I know? I thought we were friends."

He flicked a look at the ceilin. "We
are
friends. And there's no need to be dramatic."

"Fine then. Let's eat."

"Fine then."

If I hadn't perfected my motor mouth I don't know how I'd have made it through the rest of that evenin. Trent and I talked about all the murders, goin over everything we knew, which wasn't much. All the while my mind chanted,
Stevie could have killed her. Stevie could have killed her.

If Trent noticed I was on edge, he didn't let on.

With supper done and dishes in the sink, I was talked out. We moved into the livin room. I took the rockin chair, leavin the couch for Trent. No use sittin close to him and gettin his hopes up.

"I need to tell you something." He stretched his left arm across the back of the couch.

"Shoot."

"I'm moving to New York."

I gaped at him. "New
York
?"

A smile crept across his face.

"Why? How?"

"The
New York Times
wants me to come write for them."

The
New York Times
? "Trent, that's amazing! That's the big time."

His gaze dropped to the floor. Slowly he nodded. "Yup."

What was he holdin back? "Why aren't you more excited?"

"I am excited. Guess I'm just trying to soak it all in."

"Is it because of your feature on Amaryllis?"

"Gone to Ground" was wonderfully written, capturing the heartache, the questions, and the sense of fate in Amaryllis after the murders started. It painted the picture of a small town turned upside down—and still lookin to turn itself aright. Trent started work on the article after the murder of Carla Brewster. After the piece ran in
The Jackson Bugle, Zeke
submitted it for a Pulitzer Prize in the feature writing category. And lo and behold, it won.

Trent rubbed his long fingers against the couch. "That's what they said. I was blown away when I got the call. But now I'm just wondering what a Southern boy like me's gonna do in New York."

"Show em what you've got, that's what."

Trent took a deep breath and licked his lips. Sat up straighter. Clearly he was about to say whatever was eatin at him. My heart did a two-step. Was it Stevie?

The air around us changed.

"What is it, Trent?"

He hesitated. "You want to come with me?"

Relief hit me, followed by shock. I stared at him. "
Me
?"

He nodded, color tingeing his cheeks. He picked at his shirt, one foot in a nervous pump.

I let out a tinny laugh. "What would a Southern girl like me do in New York?"

Trent raised a shoulder. "Explore the city. Think of it, Deena." He leaned forward. "All the sights of New York. The Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. Central Park. The neighborhoods and stores and crazy places you can't even dream of in Amaryllis. We could get married. You'd get away from the killing here. Be safe."

Married.
Married
. "Like New York is safe?"