Taking the Fall (11 page)

16

The paint was too smudged to give a clue as to shoe-type, but I snapped a picture of the first blob with my phone anyway. I did the same with the second smudge.
Please, please,
I begged silently.
That can’t be all
. I examined the sidewalk, trying to look casual, and I’m sure, failing just as miserably at that as I was at spotting any more of that green paint.

I wasn’t ready to admit defeat, so I just kept walking up the hill, hoping for anything that might end this mess. When I came to the opening in the sidewalk, the paved expanse that led to the deck and the park below, I turned. Why was I drawn here again? It had a strange, hidden, empty feel. A calmness, a silence that was just a little beyond peaceful. I’d expected, in the daylight, that it would feel different. More open. But I found myself wishing I hadn’t left Blythe behind. I should go. There was nothing here. Nothing except a strangely bright green spot on one of the rhododendron leaves!

I touched it and was rewarded with a lime-green fingertip.
Wet paint! Ha!
I wanted to shout.
I’ve got you now.
I combed the deck area for more paint. Nothing. I stared at the shadowy staircase leading to the park below. No, I wasn’t ready to go there. Not yet. Not unless I really had to. I backed up, giving the paved area another look over. I dared to take a couple of steps into the alley. It was barely wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, and it wound crookedly behind backyards, walled on both sides by everything from wooden fences to dense shrubs, to the backs of sheds. The houses these belonged to had been built on streets facing opposite directions. Their backyards would have met in the middle if not for this passageway, which was shaded by their trees—everything from willow to cypress.

Most of the backyards seemed to have gates that opened into the alley. It was on one of these gates that I found one more bit of paint. It was such a little smudge, at first I wasn’t sure if it was the same paint. It was a thin layer, barely the size of a dime, and it was already dry. Still, it was definitely a similar hue, and it was completely out of place on the black gate handle.

I held my breath as I slowly lifted the gate handle.
Don’t do anything stupid
, I recalled Blythe saying. Well, this might be stupid, but I hadn’t exactly promised her I wouldn’t, had I? I pulled the gate open. It caught on the uneven concrete with an awful scraping noise. I froze, waiting. For what? The killer to whack me? I shook off my fear and lifted the gate a little as I pulled this time. It opened the rest of the way with relatively little noise. Well, at least now I knew this gate’s quirks, just in case I ever needed to trespass onto a dangerous criminal’s property again.

I found myself on a broken-up concrete path running along the edge of a grassy backyard dotted with a few too many dandelions. The dandelions contributed to the demise of the path, competing with the thistles sprouting up through the cracks. It pains me to say that my bare feet discovered the thistles. But I bit my lip and gingerly stepped forward. I glanced back at the gate, and decided to leave it open in case I needed to make a quick escape. Hopefully the homeowner wouldn’t look out the window and notice it was ajar. Then again, if anyone looked out the window, I was pretty much doomed. This yard offered no cover whatsoever for my covert operation. I was hardly small enough to hide behind the smattering of toy dump trucks, and my butt was a bit too round to flatten myself to the ground behind the classic plastic turtle-shaped sand box.

Was this the killer’s house, or had he or she merely chosen this as part of an escape route? I had to look for another clue. Or at least find out who lived here. Even if it wasn’t the killer, chances were this house was known to them. I didn’t know what else to do, so I darted to the side of the house and flattened myself against it. At least, if anyone was inside, they wouldn’t see me. That’s why they do that in all the spy movies, right? Or was that just to avoid stray—or not so stray—bullets? Either way, it made me feel better than standing by the fence.

But now what? I studied my surroundings as best I could without actually moving. No sign of green paint, as far as I could tell. I edged closer to the window. Maybe a peek inside would provide another clue. The window was open to the spring air. On the other side of the screen, yellow curtains wafted back and forth in the breeze. With the slope of the yard, I had to pop up on my tiptoes to get a glimpse inside. So, this was the kitchen window. I spotted a sink full of cereal bowls. I don’t know what I’d expected to see—a bloody spatula floating among the soggy Fruity-Os, which forensics would discover was the real murder weapon, thanks to me and my sleuthing?

I could hear distant murmurs within the house. Someone was home! But the sounds seemed like they were coming from upstairs. There was no way I was going in there while someone was home, and there was little chance of spotting anything useful through the windows, especially without getting caught. Thinking about the occupants on the second floor brought to mind the obvious—the neighboring house was a two-story, too. The occupants would have no trouble looking over the apple tree in their yard and into this one, and seeing me lurking around like a criminal. Getting arrested for snooping would be just as bad for our newly forming reputation in Bonney Bay as that graffiti declaring us murderers. The backyard was just so open. I opted to try slipping out the front first. There were some garbage cans there, and a decent-sized evergreen bush. I just had to hope there was a gate at that end, too. I scurried toward the front of the house, feeling like a rat. It was so unfair. I told myself I wasn’t a rat, but I sure smelled one around here.
 

Yes! Just past the garbage cans, there was a gate leading to the front yard. I hurried to open it and slip out. I couldn’t help noticing the shiny red Prius in the driveway. I knew that car. I’d watched Stacey Goode get into it with her little terror of a son, right after Riggins broke up her and Rebecca’s bullying attempt in the dance studio parking lot.
 

My heart slammed against my rib cage. I knew it! And then the door slammed. Not the house door; the car door. Holy moly! I crouched down and ducked back behind the gate.

17

“Leo! Let’s go!” a woman said.

Definitely Stacey. Thank God, she hadn’t seen me. Still in a crouch, I peeked around the gate. I had to see if there was anyone else with her, an accomplice maybe.

“I’m looking for my new truck. I wanna show it to Sam!” Leo called. I could hear the threat of tears in his whine. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

“I’m going to be late for work! Get in the car!”

“I know! I left it out back!” Leo said.

Faster than I could crab-leap back from the gate, little footsteps skidded toward me.

Stacey was still screaming at the kid to get in the car, but he ignored her. I crawled behind the garbage cans, wincing as my hand pressed down on something alarmingly squishy. It stank so bad back there I could hardly breathe. Stacey
More-than-Likely-the-Murderer
came striding through the gate after her son, and that didn’t exactly do anything to help me breathe easier. The trash can only partially obscured the view of my snooping self; I hadn’t had time to hide completely, and now I didn’t dare risk making a sound. Leo was pretty focused on that truck, but Stacey had that shrewd look about her, like not much got past her. I squatted there in an awkward position, pain shooting through my knee, not daring to move, while Leo retrieved his truck and Stacey chased him back toward the car.

Halfway there, Leo paused, looked back, and held out his hand to Stacey. “Come on, Mom. I don’t want you to be late.” For a second there, the little terror actually looked sweet.

Stacey squeezed his little hand, sighed, and kissed the top of his head. “It’s okay, Leo,” she said. Like a normal mom with her son, not like a dangerous criminal.

As soon as I heard both car doors shut, I straightened my bad knee out. I waited until I heard them pull out of the driveway before I dared to stand up.

I wiped what I could only guess to be rotten peach pulp from my hands, onto the grass. I kept seeing Stacey kissing her little boy, then picturing her beating Ellison with Blythe’s hairbrush. I wanted to throw up. What would happen to Leo if Stacey went down for this? Maybe his dad was a great guy. Still, the kid would have to move again, and he’d have to live with knowing his mother was a murderer.

Maybe she wasn’t the murderer. The paint, the note, they might have nothing to do with the murder at all. But I didn’t want to believe that any more than I wanted to believe the mother of a five-year-old was a killer. Those threats were the only real clues I had to go on.

I walked down the hill, trying to look casual. As though every grown woman went walking around Bonney Bay barefoot. I turned back into the deck area to retrieve my flip-flops. Maybe I should wear real shoes more often, like Blythe had been telling me to for years. Flip-flops seemed to keep causing me trouble. But they made me feel comfortable. I’d practiced judo so often, for so long, and they were the easiest footwear to remove and put back on by the side of the mat. After all, we don’t wear shoes for judo, and footwear on the mat is a big no-no. Flip-flops made me feel like
me
.

For some reason, knowing that Stacey wouldn’t be anywhere nearby didn’t make me feel much better entering that shadowy nook. I got out of there quick, and flip-flopped my way back to the studio. Alice was still there, but she was packing up her things. A tarp had been hung over the defiled windows, secured with duct tape. Blythe gave me a wide-eyed look as she folded up a step stool.

“What?” I mouthed.

She looked me up and down. I looked myself up and down. Oh, dear. My jeans were smeared with grass stains and garbage juice. I’m pretty sure I smelled like a dumpster.

Blythe gestured toward the back. I hurried away before Alice could see or smell me.

Blythe was on the stairs, right on my filthy heels, in no time. “Brenna! What happened?”

“I had to hide, in a hurry.”

“What happened!”

“Nothing really, except I discovered our little trail of lime vandalism led to Stacey Goode’s house.”

Blythe might’ve clapped her hands, if they weren’t balled up in fists. “Stacey Goode! I knew it!”

“Let me get a quick shower, and then I’ll tell you everything.”

I ended up telling Blythe all about it while I was
in
the shower. When I told her about the pictures, she got my phone and took a look. “We’ve got to show these to Officer Riggins!”

I pulled the shower curtain back and popped my half-shampooed head out. “Not yet! She’s getting sloppy and reckless, threatening us like that. I don’t want her to know anyone has their eye on her just yet. Let’s give it just a little while longer and see what she does, and what we can find out.”

“I guess you’re right. I can see the police just dismissing the whole thing. Anyone could’ve run through her backyard. And what about the little boy? Would she have taken him with her?”

“She could’ve plopped him in front of some cartoons with a bowl of cereal, run over to our place, and done the deed. She could’ve even done it before she woke him up.”

“If she’d kill, she just might leave her son alone for a few minutes.” Blythe paused, thinking. “We’ve got to find out more about Stacey Goode,” she concluded. “As much as I don’t appreciate the threats, this thing is never going to get solved if she gets tipped off and starts lying low.”

“Well …
 
” Did I dare say it? “She
has
gone to work for the day.”

I could just imagine Blythe narrowing her eyes at me on the other side of the shower curtain. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the house is empty.”

“Brenna Battle, we are
not
Breaking and Entering!”

But it’s the perfect opportunity!
I wanted to argue. Instead I said, “You’re right. But we could keep an eye on her and see what she does, couldn’t we? Maybe we’ll catch her meeting with an accomplice, or throwing out the empty paint can … ” I got out and wrapped myself in a towel, then took my phone from Blythe and started searching social networks. “Ha! Found her. She works at the Bonney Bay library.”

“So?”

“So maybe we need to get library cards now that we’ve moved to Bonney Bay. Maybe while we’re there, we’ll find out a thing or two.”

18

The library was a modern brick building on the outer edge of Bonney Bay—on the end of town that pointed toward civilization. A few cars were already parked in the best spots right in front of the building, next to the reserved handicapped spots. Mothers emerged from them, unbuckling small children and loading up their arms with infants and all their paraphernalia. I felt a little twang of jealousy as I listened to a mother tell her toddler how they were going to go to story time, then meet up with Daddy for lunch and an ice cream sundae.

Sure, her eight-month-old was pulling out locks of her disheveled hair and chewing on them while she and her eldest chatted, but she was handling it like a pro. I used to dream of a great guy and a couple of kids hanging off my arms, but now … I’d given up on that kind of thinking. Giving up was easier.

Wow, thinking of it that way was a real blow to the gut. I was not a giver-upper!
I’m not giving up
, I told myself.
I’m just doing something different
.

I held the door open for the families, then Blythe and I approached the desk. A slender woman with shoulder-length dark blond hair greeted us. I recognized a slight German accent in her hello, and almost greeted her back in German, before I remembered I had no desire to engage a conversation about how I knew German. I’d learned good, conversational French and German, as well as some essential phrases in Spanish, Japanese, and Russian, during my travels as a judo player. Judo is a much bigger sport in the rest of the world than it is in the U.S., and once you get to a certain level, you need to go to lots of training camps overseas in order to improve and learn how to fight the different styles of foreign players. I also had to compete all over the world in order to earn the points I needed to make Olympic and World teams.