Small Town Spin (13 page)

“Have you ever watched a Lifetime movie?” I glanced at his puzzled expression and laughed. “Probably not. I don’t know about this particular teenage girl, but is it theoretically possible? Abso-freaking-lutely.”

“How do we find that out?”

“Well, I’m going to start by hoping the girl is at this big social event they’re having Friday night and try to chat her up.”

“You always have a plan. Need help?” he asked, then snapped his fingers. “Oh. Wait. I think we’re going to a play Friday night.”

“Got it covered. Kyle’s coming. But thanks, Joe Hardy.”

The more I thought about it, the more I leaned toward the girl, just because the empty pill bottle and liquor pointed to someone conniving, someone who knew enough about TJ’s every move to know he had a fresh bottle of pills in his pocket. Of course, that assumed there was foul play. I needed the tox screen to have a better idea of what I was dealing with. I couldn’t see a cheerleader force-feeding a boy as strong as TJ a whole bottle of pills. But according to the sheriff, there were no obvious signs of trauma, so the blood test results had to hold the key.

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, my thoughts tangling up again. This whole thing was so damned convoluted. Every time I thought I had a new puzzle piece, it was just irregular enough that I couldn’t find a place to make it fit.

“Was there anyone else Ashton talked about?”

“Not really.” Parker shrugged. “She said she was sure he wasn’t universally loved, but the girl was the only one who was weird.”

I nodded. “Nothing about the boy from the baseball team? Luke?”

“I talked to Tony about him. He said that kid was jealous as hell, but he didn’t mark him as a killer. Said the family is nice. Mom is the PTA president, Dad’s super involved with the booster club.”

Hmmm. “I don’t know, Parker. I’m a total stranger, and he leapt right to ‘I get to pitch now’ with me like, the day after TJ died. That’s a little narcissistic.” But the M.O. didn’t really fit with a jealous boy, in my opinion. I’d be more likely to go there with some kind of blunt force trauma, or even a bullet, being the cause of death. On the other hand, it would be harder to make those look like suicide.

“Tony said TJ told him Luke was really nice when he offered to take over for the second half of the football game after TJ got hurt. But TJ said he could still play, and the coach let him go back in. They talked over the winter. Neither of them played basketball.”

“Huh. Were they friends, then?” I couldn’t shake the peculiar look on the boy’s face out of my head, even as I asked the question.

“Eh. They hung out with the same kids, but in a town this size, almost everyone hangs out with the same kids, don’t they?”

“They still have cliques. It’s a high school. They’re just smaller cliques.”

I pulled off the freeway and turned toward West Point. Parker cranked up the stereo as I lost myself in this crazy, blurry puzzle. The tox results would really help. But Sheriff Zeke had no lab of his own and zero pull with the one in Richmond, so it could take weeks—hell, months—to get them back.

Kyle could maybe light a fire under someone on that front. I wanted to call him, anyway, and that was a better excuse than any I’d come up with. The pull I’d felt toward him Saturday night had knocked me for a loop, especially when I was so attracted to Joey.

I glanced at Parker when I turned toward the island, my throat tightening when I saw him staring out the window, tears flowing over his bronze cheekbones.

“I’m sorry,” I said, patting his hand.

“It just...” His words choked off before he could finish the sentence, and I squeezed his fingers.

“Well and truly sucks. I know.”

Yesterday, I’d talked to my mother for five minutes. I rushed her off the phone before she could ask what I was working on.

I turned into the parking lot at the church, tall stained glass windows crafted with the kind of artistry you don’t see any more marking the century-old sanctuary.

A small handful of cars dotted the parking lot, but I recognized Tony’s Land Rover. 

I followed Parker through a side door and stopped by the back pew, studying the windows—there were twelve, depicting different scenes from Jesus’s life—as Parker walked to the front and pulled Ashton into a hug. She fell into him, clutching his shoulder like a lifeline.

I walked back out to the welcome center and looked over the display Ashton had obviously spent days piecing together. There was a table full of TJ’s favorite things, from his first little league trophy to his iPad and a handful of XBox game cases.

His football and baseball jerseys hung from a makeshift clothesline. Another table was covered with photos.

Baby pictures of him coming home from the hospital, grinning with his first tooth, sitting on Tony’s Redskins helmet holding a football. Every birthday, up to him holding a set of keys and grinning from the driver’s seat of a Mustang convertible.

“Sweet cartwheeling Jesus,” I muttered, tears blinding me as I turned for the door. I’d seen so much tragedy in my career I’d be in therapy eight hours a day if I took it all to heart. But these people were Parker’s friends. They were burying their baby, and didn’t know why. I ran out into the sunshine and gulped air, silent sobs shaking my shoulders.

I closed my eyes for a ten count and took a slow, deep breath, wiping my cheeks before I spun on my heel to go back inside. I had one hand on the doorknob when three satellite trucks pulled into the parking lot behind me. The doors opened in unison and network-made-up Johnny Goodhairs in three-piece suits disembarked, carrying mics and racing for the best place on the lawn.

I slipped quietly into the church and strode past the photos and mementos, making a beeline for Parker when I spotted him sitting with Tony and an older couple in a hallway off the sanctuary.

I dragged Parker a few feet away. “Houston, we may have a problem,” I said, pasting on a smile and hoping my waterproof mascara hadn’t let me down.

A worried line creased his brow. “What’s that?”

“The press is here,” I said, the irony of me sounding that warning not lost on me. “Three network guys, already fighting for space on the lawn. All in dark suits. Want to bet on which one tries to slip inside the church first?”

He nodded and walked back to Tony, leaning over and murmuring to his friend. I hung back a few steps.

“Damned vultures!” an older man, who had that debonair look handsome men get when they age that always struck me as so unfair, exclaimed.

“Dad, they’re just doing their jobs,” Tony said, throwing me an apologetic look.

“This is a funeral, not a media circus,” Mr. Okerson, senior, practically spat.

I shifted my weight, trying to blend into the floor. While Parker had asked me to be there, Bob had, too. And I was writing a story about the service. I didn’t want to upset the family even more.

“Thanks for the heads-up, Nichelle.” Tony stood and put an arm around me. “And thank you for coming, and for everything you’ve done for us. Ashton filled me in. I can’t tell you...” His green eyes filled with tears and he paused. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate.”

I nodded, trying to focus on the moment and the words and not the fact that Tony Okerson was hugging me. He wasn’t a celebrity. Not today. He was a guy who was grieving a terrible loss, and I wanted to help.

“Y’all want me to go watch the door?” I asked.

Parker and Tony exchanged a look.

“Body combat or no, I think someone a little more intimidating might be better.” Parker patted my arm.

Tony pulled out his cell phone. “Lucky for me, the same thing that makes them want to be here,” he held up his hand, one Super Bowl ring glinting in the light, “gives me friends who are handy for intimidation. Excuse me for a second.”

He walked back toward the sanctuary, holding the phone to his ear. Parker smiled and introduced me to Tony’s parents.

“That article you did about our baby was just beautiful,” Verna Okerson said, sniffling and squeezing one of my hands in both of hers.

“I’m so glad you liked it.” My voice caught and she squeezed tighter. We chatted, Parker checking the heavy stainless Tag Heuer on his wrist every two minutes, until Tony returned.

“Thank God, traffic was light.” He glanced toward the heavens. “There’ll be two linebackers on the front door and one suitably-scary teammate on the other entrances in twenty minutes.”

Parker and I watched as Tony showed his parents the display in the welcome center. Verna nearly collapsed looking at the photo table, and I turned away.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a funeral with bouncers,” I said.

Parker raised his head and grinned. “Welcome to professional sports.”

“Sad that they should have to worry about this today.”

“It goes with the territory. Tony understands that. You want to be famous and have media coverage of the stuff you want them to cover, you have to manage them trying to get a piece of things you don’t want them in.”

I nodded.

People started to file in not long after Tony’s friends showed up. I watched the back of the sanctuary carefully, but didn’t see anyone who looked to be overtly recording anything. Most of the pews were packed with teenagers, their faces every variety of red and tear-streaked imaginable. I recognized a lot of folks from the school’s faculty and staff, too.

Parker looked around. “I bet the whole high school is here,” he whispered as the pastor closed the opening prayer.

I bet it was more like the whole town. Even Elmer was in a far right pew, looking somber in his starched gray shirt and shined shoes.

I scanned the crowd as the football coach took the podium and launched into a eulogy about what a hard worker and determined kid TJ was. He was followed by the baseball coach, the high school principal, and two teachers. I hung in there pretty okay until the pastor called Tony’s name.

Parker’s head snapped up as his friend made his way from the front pew to the red-carpeted stage. “How is he going to do this?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.”

Tony leaned his big hands on the sides of the podium and took a deep breath. “I came up here today to talk to you folks about who my son was. But now that I’m standing here looking at the faces of the people who miss him so much, I’m glad I made notes. My wife, Ashton, myself, and our parents would like to thank you all for being here.” He picked up a few sheets of printer paper and held them up.

“This is what I had planned to say. And I apologize for putting him on the spot, but I wonder if I might ask my friend Grant Parker to come say it for me.”

“Shit. I’m going to cry,” Parker said.

“You’ll be great.”

Parker stood and made his way to the front of the room, swiveling heads following his progress up the aisle. I reached for the tissue box. As I turned toward it, my eyes lit on a young blond girl, lithe and pretty, shrinking into the end of the pew across and one behind from where I sat. She was wearing a black sundress, her slight shoulders caved over as she sobbed. By the time Parker started talking, her whole body was shaking.

Was this Evelyn the stalker? The description fit. Not that she was the only blonde in the place, but she was tall and pretty like Ashton said, and she was certainly more upset than the rest of the girls I could see.

Watching her saved me from losing what little control I had during Parker’s impromptu eulogy, which started off with teaching TJ to throw a baseball and moved on to Tony’s comments. The speech focused on the fact that TJ was a happy, helpful boy with a big heart who just happened to have a good arm. That’s how Tony and Ashton wanted their son remembered.

“For the way he lived, not the way he died,” Parker said. “We love you, Teej. We’ll miss you every day.”

Suspected-Evelyn sobbed hardest when Parker said the last words, and I dabbed my eyes with a Kleenex, keeping them on her.

I passed Parker the tissue box when he took his seat, then stood and sang along with “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art.” Bowing my head for the closing prayer, I couldn’t resist stealing glances at the girl as the pastor’s soft tenor carried through the church.

She was a hot mess by the time she stood to file out to the reception, which was through an annex in the community room. We lost her in the crowd, but I had a hunch I knew where to look.

“I’ll catch up,” I whispered to Parker, squeezing his hand. “I think I might have spotted stalker girl.”

He raised an eyebrow. “She’s here? That’s brave, if she killed him, don’t you think?” His voice was quiet, but loud enough to turn the heads of the people immediately around us.

“Parker!” I shushed him.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

I ducked into the ladies room. There was a line of three women who moved through and did their business quickly, anxious to get to the smells wafting from the community hall. Nothing like a funeral to bring out the inner Aunt Bea in folks. I leaned on the wall and watched the door that didn’t open for three cycles through the stalls. When the room was empty, except for me, the blonde girl came out, her makeup smeared and face swollen.

She stepped to the sink, but spotted me and flinched before she managed to get cold water on her face. “I thought I was alone,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I just need to wash my hands.” I stepped to the sink. “I’m sorry for your loss. It seems like TJ was a great guy.”

“He was the best. At everything.” She sniffled, turning the water on.

“You were friends?”

“I—” she splashed water on her face, tiny droplets clinging to her lashes when she looked up at me. “Yes. He was special.”

I dried my hands and put one out. “I’m Nichelle.”

She shook my hand. “Evelyn. Nice to meet you.” Bingo.

“It’s very nice to meet you, too.”

I followed her to the community hall, trying to make small talk about school and getting nowhere. When the doors opened, she slipped inside with her head down, muttered a goodbye in my direction, and scurried to a corner like a mouse in a roomful of emaciated lions.

“Nothing going on there,” I muttered, watching her grab a glass of iced tea and sip it as she played with her hair.

“Where?” Parker asked from behind me.

I turned and found him holding a Dixie plate piled with fried chicken, ribs, half a dozen kinds of casserole, and three biscuits.