This Old Homicide (5 page)

“Sorry, Mrs. Higgins,” I said, with an eye roll for Jane. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”

Mrs. Higgins coughed when she seemed to realize she might’ve come across as a bit bloodthirsty. “I mean, it would be a fitting memorial to his, er, memory, that’s all. I was his closest confidante for the past many years, don’t you know?”

“That is true,” I said, nodding.

“Of course you were,” Jane murmured sincerely.

Mrs. Higgins was a touch addled, even on a good day.

I hesitated to ask the next question but realized the woman might actually know something important. “Mrs. Higgins, did you notice anything strange going on at Jesse’s house recently?”

“Strange?” When her eyes widened, I knew I’d just spoon-fed her a great big scoop of potential gossip, but what else could I do? I needed information. Her nose was practically twitching as she wrapped her housecoat more tightly around her. “Like what, for instance?”

“Oh, you know. Strangers coming and going. Cars parking on the street that you don’t recognize. Loud noises.” I figured if a thief had used a sledgehammer to pound a hole in Jesse’s wall, somebody must’ve heard it.

“Noises,” she said flatly. “There’ve been plenty of noises. A car engine was so loud the other night it woke me out of a deep sleep. I heard some pounding late last night, too, but I think it might’ve been coming from the marina.”

The Lighthouse Cove Marina was two blocks away and we could hear late-night party noises occasionally. But I’d never heard pounding coming from over there.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “Four days ago we talked for a few minutes, but before that, it had been well over a week.”

I could remember seeing Jesse and Mrs. Higgins talking every day. What had changed? “Was he out of town?”

“No, just too busy for an old friend.” She tried to sound blasé, but I could tell her feelings were hurt.

“Was anything different the last time you talked to him?”

“No, unless you count Jesse being overly jolly. That can get on a person’s nerves, I don’t mind saying.”

“Jolly?”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked.

Mrs. Higgins frowned. “You asked for strange and that’s what I’m telling you. He was practically giggling half the time I saw him. I thought maybe he’d been smoking some of that reefer the kids are into.”

Jane just shook her head. There was no way Jesse would ever smoke marijuana. He was as straight-arrow as they came. But giggling? Jesse? That was weird, all right.

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Higgins,” I said briskly. “Do you want me to help you outside so you can watch the police activity?”

“No, you girls go along. I’ve got to make up my face and curl my hair before I go out and see those policemen.” She wiggled her eyebrows provocatively.

Jane and I jumped up from the couch and left her sitting alone, smiling to herself.

“Wow,” Jane said as we crossed the street. “She’s a piece of work.”

“I know,” I muttered.

“Assuming she was telling the truth, it does sound strange to hear that Jesse was giggling so much.”

“Would dating a hottie cause him to giggle like that?”

Jane actually giggled. “Probably. But I still don’t believe it.”

“So you never heard him giggling? Never saw him in a jolly mood?”

“Not really. I mean, he laughed and stuff, but jolly? He was mostly a curmudgeon. And crafty. Smart and snarky sometimes. But not jolly. What do you think?”

“I agree. I can think of a lot of ways to describe Jesse, but jolly isn’t one of them.”

She chuckled. “Definitely not.”

“So, when did you last talk to him?” I asked, and wondered if she noticed that I sounded like a cop.

She gave it some thought. “It was Thursday. Four days ago.” She smiled softly at the memory. “He was thinking about going on another scuba diving trip with his buddies.”

“Since the last one was so lucrative?” I asked, tongue in cheek.

“Oh, wasn’t it?” She laughed. “He loved telling that story, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning despite the tears that sprang to my eyes. That was happening a lot today.

Two years ago on Jesse’s seventy-fifth birthday, he and his old navy buddies, Bob and Ned, had celebrated the occasion by going scuba diving off the coast of Lighthouse Cove. They had gone down to explore the
Glorious Maiden
, an infamous clipper sailing ship that had been lost in rough waters off the coast almost one hundred and seventy-five years ago.

For months after that scuba trip, Jesse had bragged that while he was down there, he’d discovered an old necklace burrowed down behind a wallboard. When Jane finally called his bluff and demanded to see the necklace, he grinned and admitted that he’d been pulling her leg the whole time. He never brought up the subject again.

“I’ll miss his tall tales.” She sniffled and gulped back tears.

“Me, too.” So many memories. But they were good ones. I had a feeling they would help us both get through the next few days.

Jesse was always telling stories to anyone who would listen. He’d go on and on, describing in dramatic detail some exciting adventure he’d experienced or some intriguing person he’d met. Many of his exploits had happened while he was in the navy, assigned to exotic ports on the other side of the world.

He liked to tell us about the time he found a big, fluffy chicken on a dirt road and he picked it up to deliver it to its owner. The local chieftain thought Jesse was stealing his prize chicken and had his warriors chase him all the way back to the ship. He had to run for his life and barely made it. It sounded as though he almost got killed from the spears thrown by the warriors running after him. But then he described the delicious chicken stew he whipped up for the crew that night and Jane and I groaned out loud.

He told that story every time he made his famous chicken stew.

I sometimes thought he made up stories just to entertain Jane, who had lost her parents at an early age. For a while, the court wasn’t sure who would get custody of her. Her grandmother lived in town, too, but Jesse knew the high-strung woman wouldn’t be able to handle the sad little girl and make her laugh again. So he made the decision and stepped forward to take Jane into his home.

That bittersweet thought reminded me that I’d lost my own mother when I was eight and Jesse had been there for me, too. The week after Mom died, Jesse planted two rosebushes along our fence, a red one for me and a white one for my sister, Chloe.

“Whenever you look at the roses,” he told us, “you’ll remember that your mama is always with you.”

Those bushes grew and flourished and flowered no matter how much we neglected the garden. And when Chloe moved to Hollywood after high school to try her luck in showbiz, she rented a funky but charming duplex near Venice Beach. The first thing Dad and Jesse did after they moved her stuff in was plant a white and a red rosebush in the tiny side yard to remind her of Mom. Those roses grew like crazy as well, and everyone in her neighborhood came by for cuttings.

I would have to remember to call Chloe tonight to let her know about Jesse. There would be more tears.

I tried to lighten the conversation. “Remember when Jesse started that betting pool at the pub over whether I’d go home with my blind date or not?”

“Yeah, he bet you’d kick him in the… you know.”

“That did not end well,” I muttered.

“Maybe not for your date, but Jesse won the bet.”

True, I thought, but my blind date ended up dead. So much for lightening up the conversation.

Jane sighed. “Remember how he used to talk like a pirate?”

“Aye, matey,” I said, and we both smiled.

Jesse had always been a little rough around the edges and his speech could be a bit salty. Maybe because of all his years in the navy, he had perfected the pirate routine. He liked to put on a tough-guy act, but he had a heart of gold and was always looking out for me and Jane.

My dad once told me that the day Jesse graduated from high school, he ran away to join the navy. He’d grown up here on the coast, so he’d been surfing, swimming, sailing, and diving his whole life. The navy made good use of his abilities, assigning him first to the Underwater Demolition Teams that were beginning to operate in Southeast Asia, then transferring him to the newly established SEAL Team One in the early ’sixties. He was deployed to Vietnam, first to train their soldiers and later to conduct unconventional warfare in the rivers and deltas of the country. After Vietnam, Jesse moved to Coronado and became a SEAL team trainer until he retired and moved back to Lighthouse Cove to reconnect with his family. Three years later, Jane’s parents died and that was when Jesse stepped in to raise her himself.

Jane smiled. “I think that scuba weekend was one of the highlights of his life—not counting all his years in the navy.”

“I think so, too. If he wasn’t reminiscing about the good old navy days, he was talking about that trip. Those guys had a blast.”

Jesse and his two friends had scuba dived for three days straight and camped out on the Sandpiper Islands at night. He still talked blissfully about the fish they fried each night, how it tasted better than any fish he’d had since.

Jane’s expression fell. “I hate the thought of calling Bob and Ned.”

I grimaced. His two best navy buddies were going to be heartbroken when they heard the news.

“If you’d like, I can be with you when you make the calls.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll think about it.” She sat back in her chair. She looked exhausted and it was barely ten o’clock in the morning.

I was glad Jane hadn’t yet seen the worst of the destruction inside the house. It would only upset her more.

If all that damage had been caused by Jesse, I hoped he’d found what he was looking for. But if someone else had broken into his house looking for valuables, then I hoped the police would track them down to the ends of the earth. Because somehow something had gone terribly, tragically wrong.

I couldn’t think of anything of real value in the house, nothing worth tearing it apart. A crook might’ve taken the television set and the few electronics Jesse owned. But the television had still been there.

Whoever had broken into Jesse’s house wasn’t a conventional burglar. So who was it? And what were they looking for? If Jesse had died because of it, I called that murder.

*   *   *

While Jane met with Eric to answer some questions about Jesse, I waited on the porch with too much time to think. I had convinced Jane to spend the night at my house and had contacted Emily and Lizzie and Marigold to come for dinner. Jane wanted to be around people and I knew the girls would want to be with her. And I wanted a chance to talk about Jesse’s mysterious death.

After watching the coroner take Jesse away, I was overwhelmed with sadness again. I had more questions than answers and kept trying to recall if I’d seen Jesse at all over the last week or two. Was there really a hottie girlfriend? And if so, why had I never met her before? And when had Jesse stopped visiting Mrs. Higgins? It was his regular habit to walk across the street to kibbitz with her whenever she was in her garden, which was daily. They had been friends forever and enjoyed catching each other up on the latest gossip. They were a neighborhood staple. What had happened to change that?

And now the guilt seeped in because I had no room to judge Jesse for not being around lately. I hadn’t been, either. In the past few months, I hadn’t bothered to take the time to slow down and chitchat with my neighbors. Ever since I volunteered for the Festival Committee, I’d been pulled in every direction possible.

And in case anyone forgot, I did have a day job. Recently I’d taken on two new construction jobs that were starting to occupy what little time I had left in my day—not that I was complaining. Emily would close the deal on the old Rawley Mansion in a few days and she and I would conduct our first official walk-through. Even without the walk-through, I had already promised she would be able to move in within four months. That meant my crew and I would have to kick things into high gear and quickly but expertly renovate her kitchen, living room, and master bedroom and bath, and also make the exterior presentable enough for her to live there without shuddering every time she looked around. Once she moved in, we would continue renovating, one room at a time.

The only thing that would slow us down was if the ghost of Grandma Rawley decided to play tricks on us. I refused to jinx the project by mentioning that out loud. After all, there was no such thing as ghosts.

Emily was thrilled with my timeline, even though I’d warned her that after she moved in, my guys would continue working on the other rooms and the exterior until she was well and truly sick of us.

The second job promised to be just as challenging, although not quite as time-sensitive. MacKintyre Sullivan, the famous mystery writer, had moved to Lighthouse Cove a few months ago and purchased the old lighthouse mansion two miles north of the pier. The property, though long abandoned, was considered a treasured monument by the townspeople, which meant that I had to submit numerous permits, plans and blueprints and have every single inch of my work preapproved by the town Planning Commission before I could start the job.

Things weren’t starting out on a positive note, though. I’d just called the Commission office a few minutes ago to cancel my first meeting with them. Vesta, the secretary who’d been working at City Hall for as long as I could remember, answered the phone. As soon as I explained about Jesse’s death, she’d sympathized. But then she had scolded me for disrupting her schedule.

I had no idea how old Vesta was, but she was considered by some to be another treasured town monument. Somewhere in her fifties, I’d guess. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, with blond hair flowing down her back and a face that never seemed to age. She was a walking encyclopedia of town knowledge. People in Lighthouse Cove knew who to talk to whenever they had a question about town history or some obscure law or ordinance. “Go see Vesta,” they’d say. I’d known her most of my life and was aware of her obsessive-compulsive disorder, so I’d made my phone call with some trepidation. Any little ripple in her schedule hit her like an 8.5 earthquake, so for her sake, I acted suitably chastised when she reprimanded me for changing my appointment. I figured she’d get over her pique as soon as we ended the call and she could start spreading the news about Jesse, no doubt with the velocity of a Doppler radar signal.

I wrote myself a calendar note to call her back later in the week to reschedule my meeting with the Planning Commission. Happily, there wasn’t a lot of urgency to get the plans approved since Mac Sullivan was currently living in one of the comfortable apartments over my garage and seemed in no big rush to move to his new home next to the lighthouse. And truth be told, I was in no hurry to see my ultra-attractive neighbor leave my area.

I had other active jobsites, of course, and over the past month, I’d hired three new workers. My guys and I had recently finished the last of the exterior work on Hennessey House, Jane’s elegant new bed-and-breakfast. She had inherited the grand old Victorian from her grandmother. Actually, she and Jesse had both inherited it, but he had immediately signed his share over to her, and Jane and I had worked on renovating it for almost three years. Hennessey House would open its doors to the world in just a few weeks, and the whole town was excited to attend the grand opening celebration.

It was just so sad that Uncle Jesse would miss it. And if I thought about that too much, I would tear up again and I was tired of crying. Instead I replayed the brief, private conversation I’d had with Eric a few minutes before he met with Jane.

It was nice to know he agreed with me that Jesse had probably been the victim of a burglary. Whether Jesse had been dead or alive at the time of the break-in, though, was for the county coroner to determine. One positive note was that Jesse himself hadn’t appeared to have been attacked physically. But that meant that the coroner would also have to determine if the shock of seeing an intruder had brought on a heart attack, or if something else had happened.

I figured it was murder either way.

I wasn’t about to share my thoughts around town, though, and whether Eric agreed with me or not, it wouldn’t change his methodology. He would play by the rule book, as usual, gathering evidence, interviewing neighbors, and waiting for the coroner’s autopsy report before drawing any conclusions. It was frustrating, but I was confident in his ability to track down the person responsible for Jesse’s death and bring him to justice.

*   *   *

At six o’clock that night, Lizzie showed up at my house with Emily and Marigold and food. Since the three of them owned shops along the town square, it was convenient for them to stop off at Capello’s for pizza and salads. I knew the Capello family through their daughter, Luisa, who was a grade behind Jane and me back in high school. Capello’s made the best pizza in town.