Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Chapter 23

"What am I going to tell Meghan?" Timmie asked no one in particular.

In a room packed to the ceiling with police, evidence technicians, and paramedics, no one thought to answer. So Timmie didn't bother to ask again.

Jason was dead. Jason, who had been the focus and fuel of her life for the last ten years. The man Timmie had attracted, loved, loathed, left, and tried to survive, who had gone from designing her engagement ring to selling it for cocaine. Lying on her floor, his wide blue eyes still seeming to accuse her of her failings, as if she should have been here to prevent this somehow.

His wide blue eyes that had been so perfectly reborn in Meghan. Who didn't know. Who slept at Mattie's, still expecting her father to sweep back into her life and reclaim the family he'd thrown away. Well, he'd sure as hell swept back into their lives.

"Here, baby," Mattie crooned, easing into the chair next to Timmie's. She had a jelly glass in her hand half filled with something amber, the smell of which Timmie could have recognized at forty yards. The two of them had taken up position at the far edge of the dining room, as far away from Jason as they could get while a photographer snapped pictures and the transport crew leaned against the stairs, waiting their turn.

"Where'd you get that?" Timmie asked, not bothering to take the glass.

"At the back of your kitchen cabinet. Come on."

Timmie shook her head. "I thought I'd found all his bottles. Thanks, Mattie, but I don't drink."

"Neither do I," Mattie reminded her. "This is shock medicine. Goes down easier'n Thorazine and don't leave you so fuzzy."

Timmie took it to make Mattie feel better. "What am I gonna tell Meghan?"

Mattie sighed like the mother she was. "I don't know, baby. Let's ask Walter later. Now, drink that."

Timmie just nodded, her attention on the movements of Micklind and his crew where they worked in her living room. They were measuring, comparing, nodding to each other. Pointing to the gun, to the blood-spatter pattern on her wall, to Jason's feet.

Timmie wondered vaguely why Murphy hadn't found his way here yet. Wasn't he the one with the legendary nose for news? Couldn't he see the strobes all the way across town? Didn't he know she needed his good sense right now?

Timmie vaguely noticed a commotion at the door and looked up. It was only Van Adder. Evidently rousted from bed, he hadn't bothered to button his Mobil shirt over his pajama top and jeans. He caught sight of her at about the same time. "You know what this is probably doing to your daddy?"

Timmie damn near laughed. Even if her father had been in mental attendance, he probably wouldn't have thought much more than that it served Jason right. Joe Leary had not had the time of day for Jason Parker.

"So, what's she gotten herself involved in now?" Timmie could hear Van Adder ask Micklind.

Mattie just about bolted to her feet. Timmie held her back. "He's on the board of the hospital," she reminded her friend.

"I don't care if he the only man on earth can give me a job," Mattie declared. "He got no right!"

"Ah, see, that's the funny part," Timmie assured her with a pat to her knee. "I could care less. He's a fat, lazy, white racist who can't tell his putz from a peashooter. We'll get him."

There was another disturbance by the door, and Timmie thought maybe this time it was sure to be Murphy. It wasn't. It was Cindy.

"Timmie?" she yelled, shoving cops out of the way to get to her. "Timmie, are you all right?"

Timmie just sighed. Cindy spotted her and threaded her way through the crowd in the living room. No wonder the cops had stopped her. She was dressed in what looked like cowboy drag tonight. Rhinestones and Lycra and snakeskin boots. Blue eyeliner and earrings that hung almost to her shoulders. She wasted no more than a second reacting to what was on the floor, then headed straight for where Mattie and Timmie sat in the corner.

"My God," she said, crouching at their feet. "What happened?"

"Whatchyou doin' here, girl?" Mattie demanded. "Don't you know it's damn near two in the mornin'?"

"I was on my way home from a date, and saw all the lights over here. God, I thought the house was on fire." She laid a metallic blue-nailed hand on Timmie's knee. "Are you okay?"

Stupid question. "Yeah. Just trying to figure it out."

Cindy just kept patting. Recognizing the anxiety to help in Cindy's eyes, Timmie managed a vague smile. It wasn't Cindy's fault, after all, that she reminded Timmie so much of her less favorite sister.

"You want to tell me?" Cindy asked, her attention straying to where Micklind was regaining his feet after closely inspecting something on the floor.

"It's her ex-husband," Mattie said simply.

Cindy's eyes widened almost comically. "You're kidding. Oh, my God, Timmie, you said he should be next. You didn't..."

Mattie glared. "No, she didn't. He did."

Cindy let her breath out in a rush. "Oh, Timmie, I'm so sorry. You know I'll do anything I can to help. After all, I know... I mean..."

Timmie ignored her. She couldn't quite look away from that gun on her floor. That gun that had been hidden away in her closet behind the fireman's hat. She remembered telling somebody where. She just couldn't remember who.

"What are you going to do?" Cindy asked, pulling over a third chair and planting herself on it. "What can I do to help?"

Timmie shook her head. "I don't know."

She had to call Murphy. Past that one thought, she couldn't come up with a damn thing except the fact that when the sun came up she was going to have to try and explain all this to her daughter.

"What can you tell me?" Micklind asked in a soft voice.

Timmie hadn't even noticed him approach. It seemed that Mattie had lent him her chair, though, and he perched on it like a third-string player on an empty bench.

"I can't tell you much of anything," she admitted. "Do you have a time of death yet?"

He shrugged, doing his best to stay physically between her and Van Adder, who was rattling around her house like a master reminding the rabble of just how the craft was practiced. "Nope. But with rigor and livor, I'd say he's been in the same position about four hours now. He died where he's lying."

"And nobody heard anything?"

"One neighbor did, but she thought it was backfire down the street. She didn't investigate." Micklind paused a second, his attention caught by the flash of Cindy's attire. "You are?"

Leave it to Cindy to already show tears. "Cindy Dunn. I'm a friend of Timmie's, so don't even think I'm going to leave. My husband was a cop, after all."

As if that explained everything.

"Don't go there, girl," Mattie suggested sternly.

Cindy just lifted her eyes heavenward and hushed. Micklind watched her for a second longer, then returned his attention to Timmie.

"What can you tell me?" he asked.

Timmie rubbed at exhausted eyes. "Four hours," she said. "I was chasing the Sheena bobsled team."

Micklind blinked. "Pardon?"

She shook her head. "I was at work. Got there at three. Lots of witnesses."

"I'm one of them," Mattie said.

The cop raised an eyebrow at Timmie. "You telling me you should be considered a suspect?"

Timmie smiled sourly. "I seem to remember telling you I had something like this in mind. And that is my gun. My dad's, anyway."

"You what?" Cindy demanded.

Micklind didn't spend more than another look on her. "This Jason Parker was your ex-husband. That correct?"

Timmie couldn't take her eyes off those shiny loafers on her floor. "I haven't seen him in almost two years."

"Until tonight."

"He's called a few times. Said he was in town. This is the first time he's made an appearance."

"He seem depressed or having trouble with alcohol or drugs?"

"I don't know."

Mattie leaned forward. "There was that message he left on you answerin' machine 'bout makin' you know how much you hurt him."

Timmie couldn't seem to do much more than stare at her.

Mattie grimaced. "Barb told me. She was so mad about it."

Cindy nodded. "Yeah, I was there, too. We just figured he was talking about taking you back to court, though."

Timmie frowned, wondering what else her friends had all shared. Guilty all over again at the thought that she was angry, when they just wanted to help. Hell, she talked as much about each of them with the others as they probably did about her.

Micklind just jotted down notes. "I'll check up on it. I don't think it'll go much farther than this, though. He's got tattooing and gunshot residue on the right temple. No signs of a struggle, gun within reach of his hand. We'll probably find blowback on his shirtsleeve and his prints on the weapon. Which means that it looks like he broke into your house to commit suicide where you'd find him."

"It does look like that, doesn't it?" she said, and finally took a sip of the whiskey, so that it would burn all the way down to her stomach and help her focus.

Micklind had been all set to go back to his notes. Instead, he refocused on her. "But?"

Her smile was neither pleasant nor amused. "But nobody broke into my house, and my ex-husband didn't shoot himself."

"Don't you tell him anything," Cindy insisted sharply.

Micklind ignored her. "What makes you say that?" he asked Timmie.

Timmie didn't bother to point to the obscene decoration on her wall. "Look at the blood-spatter pattern. Jason is six feet one. That pattern isn't tall enough, and the trajectory is upward, so he was definitely below it when the gun was fired. He wasn't standing up when he died."

Now everybody looked. "So he was kneeling," Cindy said. "Why couldn't he kneel to shoot himself?"

"If he knelt down to shoot himself," Timmie said, "wouldn't he have fallen forward or on his side? He's on his back with his feet stretched out in front of him. I just don't think that's possible."

Van Adder heard her and laughed. "Oh, that's right, Mick. You haven't heard. Miss Leary here is a forensic nurse. She's going to tell us our jobs now. What else do you want to tell us, Ms. Leary? You getting vibes, are you? Messages from the dead?"

Timmie watched as the evidence tech reached down to lift the gun from where it lay, just beyond Jason's outstretched right hand. "Well, there is one other thing," she said.

"And that is?"

She didn't look at Van Adder. She didn't look at Micklind or her friends. "My ex-husband was left-handed."

* * *

Murphy hadn't intended to walk to Timmie's house. But then, he hadn't intended to leave his Porsche across the street from Charlie Cleveland's, either. The ice should have cleared with the sun. Somehow, though, in this particular part of the world, the temperature didn't seem to rise in the morning. Which meant that the ice stayed right where it was, and with it, his car.

So he walked. Three miles. Just to tell Timmie that they still had more than one suspect, and Murphy's favorite was still the golden boy. At least that was what he'd set out to do. All plans changed when he got to her street and saw the crime scene tape. Murphy began to run and ended up sliding halfway down the damn street on his ass.

"What happened?" he demanded of the neighbors who had clustered next door to drink coffee and consider the empty house that was decorated like a Christmas package with shiny yellow ribbon.

One older lady in curlers and moth-eaten mink turned to him with an avid smile badly disguised as concern. "Do you know Timmie? Isn't it terrible? You don't think she'd kill her husband, do you?"

Five minutes later, Murphy was skidding down the street toward Mattie's.

"You out exercising, or you need a lift?"

Too focused on forward momentum, Murphy hadn't even noticed the nondescript Caprice pull up alongside him. But there, leaning across the passenger seat, was the redoubtable Micklind.

"You wouldn't be heading to the Wilson house, would you?" Murphy asked.

Micklind unlatched the door and pushed it open. "You heard, did you?"

"I saw," Murphy said, climbing in. "What the hell happened?"

Murphy had to wait for his answer until Micklind had navigated two turns and a fairly steep street, which he did in first gear.

"Your friend thinks her husband was murdered. I was all set to call it a flashy suicide and go home, when Ms. Leary informed me that the victim couldn't have committed the act himself, and proceeded to point out why." Micklind actually smiled. "To the great chagrin of the coroner, I might add. He doesn't like her much, did you know that?"

"It's okay. She doesn't like him much, either. She a suspect?"

"Hard to be unless she contracted it out, which I doubt she'd go to the trouble of doing and then ruin it by telling us all it was murder. She also has a pretty good alibi for the time. Seems she participated in the Ice Capades at the Med Center in front of about fifty patients and the entire staff."

"Could she have been the intended target?" Murphy asked. "She hasn't been quiet about what's been going on."

"I'd stay close to her if you can," Micklind said. "You can bet nobody's authorized me to. They still want me to bring her in."

"Who do you think did it?"

"Well, now, that's the question, isn't it?"

The Wilson house was a tiny white cottage situated on the same property as the similarly clapboarded Hill of Zion A.M.E. Church. Kids of all colors spilled off the porch in noisy confusion, and the driveway was clogged with vans, all bearing the church's logo in neon purple. Murphy couldn't imagine Leary finding any peace and quiet here after what must have happened last night. But then, Murphy wasn't a big-happy-family kind of guy. He hadn't figured Leary to be, either.

They were met at the door by a man the size of one of those vans, who had a stillness about him that connected him with the church next door. "I'm Walter Wilson," he introduced himself, opening the door to Micklind's badge. "Mattie's husband. I imagine you're here to talk to Timmie."

He led them through what there was of the tiny house to where Mattie stood guard at one of the back bedrooms.

"You go on in, have something to eat," was all she said as she stood there, arms akimbo over an impressive chest and beneath a more impressive scowl. "She be out in a minute."

As he turned to go, Murphy caught a peek in the room and saw why. Leary was seated in an old rocker by the window with her little girl in her arms. The two of them were rocking together, heads close, arms wrapped around each other, Leary humming quietly. The little girl was sobbing herself to sleep. Murphy backed right out and got himself some food he didn't want.

It took Leary more than half an hour to come out of that bedroom. Murphy and Micklind waited in the kitchen with Mattie and her husband, who spent the time wasting their curiosity on Micklind.

"How's my baby?" Mattie asked when Leary showed up.

Timmie looked older than death. "She's had better days."

"At least he didn't do this to himself," Walter said in that quiet voice of his.

"Yeah," Timmie retorted, "but somebody did."

Which was about when she noticed that Murphy was standing not ten feet away, munching on coffee cake. "Where were you last night?" she demanded. "I kept expecting you to walk in right behind Cindy."

"I missed this one, I'm afraid. You okay?"

She grimaced. "Oh, sure. I love funerals. I was just saying the other day that I was still short one for my quota. These things happen in threes, ya know. Guess the town is safe for a while."

"That's where I recognized her from," Micklind said to himself with a little nod. "I kept seeing her at funerals. I wondered."

"Who?" Murphy asked.

"Has to be Cindy," Mattie retorted.

Timmie's grin was halfhearted at best. "I can't tell you how grateful I am you took us in, Walter. It saved me from hearing how hard it was on her when her husband died."

"Even though he didn't kill himself," Mattie added.

Timmie raised a finger. "He didn't look like he killed himself. Even she should be able to get that distinction."

"She has a dead husband, too?" Micklind asked. "What is this, an epidemic?"

"Come to think of it, he was murdered, too," Timmie said, but held her hand up the minute Micklind started looking interested. "It was investigated three years ago. You might have known him. He was a Chicago cop, died on duty. Named John Dunn?"

Micklind considered it. "Three years ago?" he asked, then shook his head. "Doesn't ring a bell. Says something about this job that I can't remember a copper I taped my badge for, doesn't it?"

"If he was anything like Cindy, he probably wasn't that great a cop," Timmie said.

Mattie harrumphed. "Probably shot hisself by accident."

"Mattie Lou Washington Wilson," Walter chastised in his soft voice. "Cindy is your friend."

Timmie felt properly chastised. Mattie flashed her husband a grin the size of a dinner plate. "Which is why nobody but me can talk 'bout her that way."

Walter's chagrined smile said it all.

"Would you mind answering some questions about what happened last night?" Micklind asked Timmie, his voice almost as quiet as Walter's.

Timmie leaned against the counter next to Mattie as if settling in. "I can't say I'd be happy to, but I will."

"Have you had a chance to think about it?"

"Hard to do anything else."

"Y'all want us to leave you alone?" Walter asked.

"She does not," Mattie said, wrapping a protective arm around Timmie's shoulder.

Timmie smiled and rubbed at her chest. "Doesn't matter. This is all gonna have to be said sooner or later."

Micklind didn't bother with tact. "Do you think your husband was just at the wrong place at the wrong time?" he asked.

Timmie sipped her coffee. She looked tired, Murphy thought. Wrung out and hung to dry. But at least the life in her eyes didn't look like it was going to blink out. This was going to be tough, but it wasn't going to break her like that call about her father almost had.

"They doing Jason's autopsy this morning?" she asked.

Micklind nodded. "The St. Charles ME's doing it."

She nodded, contemplated her coffee. "Good. Conrad's already been helping me." Then she just stopped. "God, Jason would be so furious at the mess. He was such a tidy man."

"Do you know why he was at the house?"

"Last night? No. He was in town to see Meghan. To harass me. He'd already served me with one court order."

"Two," Mattie offered. "Remember?"

Timmie's smile was sad. "No, hon. I lied to you guys about that. It was an easy reason to give you for why I was so nuts."

Mattie frowned. "But we all thought—"

"We'll talk about it later, Mattie. Okay?"

Mattie just patted and hushed, probably like she had to Timmie's little girl.

"If he wasn't supposed to be at your house," Micklind said, "could you have been the target and he just got in the way?"

Murphy saw Timmie suck in a breath and Mattie squeeze more tightly.

"Or maybe they set Jason up, knowing you'd be at work," Mattie offered. "Then maybe they'd try and pin it on you."

For a few seconds, there was dead silence in the kitchen. Then, unbelievably, Timmie shook her head. "See, that's where I'm having trouble with all this."

"What do you mean?"

She just sat there for a second, focused on her coffee as if divining answers in it. "Well, if I'd kept my mouth shut about Jason's left hand, everybody else would have closed it as a suicide. Am I right?"

Micklind nodded. Murphy just waited her out.

"Then, why do it that way? Everybody in town knows I hated the guy. Heck, I publicly expressed my desire to kill him... to a cop, no less. Why not make it look like murder and pin it on me?"

"Because nine out of ten women in that situation probably would have just kept their mouths shut," Micklind said. "If you'd followed suit, whoever did this would have had you in the ten ring on the blackmail target."

"But everybody knows about the deaths at the hospital now."

"They don't know who's doing it."

Timmie leaned against Mattie as if her friend could shield her. "What if I said I didn't want to know, either?" she asked miserably.

Micklind offered no comfort. "I think it's too late. Whoever's doing this is feeling cornered, and you're the one they're coming after."

Chapter 24

Timmie had definitely had enough of funerals.

Especially when it was her turn to ride in the limo with the in-laws she hadn't seen in almost five years. It probably could have been a lot worse. Jason's parents were so shaken by the death of their only child that they couldn't find it in their hearts to lay blame anywhere near Timmie's feet. They also clung to their granddaughter with a sort of fragile desperation that actually helped Meghan get through it.

The SSS had all caravaned up to be there. Murphy was there along with Micklind as the line of mourners who owed or loved Jason's parents trudged through the slush to the stone building Catholic Cemeteries used for their grave-site services in St. Louis. No more standing out in the biting wind, staring at your loved one's mortal remains perched over a rectangle of empty air. No long wait while the casket creaked its way into the ground. No chance for the bereaved to fling themselves into the grave, alongside the loved one. Evidently the archdiocese had decided that the pile of fresh dirt next to the flapping tents was just a little too real for a grieving family.

Timmie wanted the dirt. She wanted the hole and the wind and the specter of gravediggers waiting in the shadows to make what they were doing real. To give that awful scene in her living room proper closure. This way it all ended with a few careful words echoing from cold stone and finished with a brisk request to return to cars so the next grieving line could pull up. She hated it.

But then, she hated the whole ritual. The stiff discomfort of survivors, the sloppy disbelief of parents who'd survived the son unto whom they'd entrusted all their earthly dreams. The hollow confusion of the little girl who couldn't quite believe her father wouldn't come through the door smiling just one more time.

They should have been burying Timmie's father, not Meghan's. They could have at least done that with gusto, sharing wild stories and wilder songs over aged whiskey and sandwiches. But there hadn't been enough of Jason to toast. So they'd all filed quietly out and reassembled at the Parkers' tasteful colonial in the heart of Ladue, where everyone but Timmie studiously avoided the fact that Jason had been murdered for no apparent reason.

"You didn't tell me he was a child of privilege," Murphy said to her as they stood near the living room door.

Ladue was the Bel Air of St. Louis, where the obscenely wealthy rubbed elbows with the simply respectably wealthy over dinner parties on manicured lawns and old brick patios, and a former mayor had once gone all the way to the Supreme Court to try and keep political signs from marring pristine front yards.

"He was a spoiled child of privilege," Timmie amended, watching her in-laws cruise the rooms. "This isn't exactly the Wilsons' house, is it?"

"You grow up in a place like this?"

"Nah. Jason and I met in college, where it was romantic to ignore financial disparity. It might have worked if Jason hadn't inherited his father's acquisition gene and his mother's knack for habit-forming behavior. I was a caregiver, first, last, and always."

And Betty and Jason Senior, whom Timmie had so wanted to love her, had settled for her instead. She hoped they'd end up offering more to Meghan, because Meghan needed it much, much more.

"Is Micklind still here?" she asked Murphy, sipping her mineral water.

Murphy's smile was grim. "Since he drove me, he said he couldn't go home till I did. I think he's just here for the food."

Timmie laughed. "Hell, I'm just here for the food."

A tidy little family of four in Lord and Taylor's best paused a moment to press cheeks and murmur something trivial about Jason's life and death before moving on. Timmie sighed and leaned against the wall. "So, what's been happening on the investigation front?"

Murphy sipped his water as if it were a couple of fingers of neat scotch. "You already have a homicide officer attending your ex-husband's funeral. Don't you think you might want to put this off for a while?"

"It gives me purpose, Murphy."

"It's gonna give you a homicide file of your own, if you're not careful. Word's out around the hospital who's been making waves, which means Micklind's right. You're asking to be target du jour, and Walter and I can only watch you so much."

She grinned at him, wanting very much for him to ease the pressure. "Worried about me, Murphy?"

"You bet." He looked away. "Nobody else in this state's even let me suggest meaningless sex."

Timmie was stunned by Murphy's reaction. No one else noticed because Murphy responded in millimeters. But Timmie saw the flash of anger that had escaped into those lazy eyes. She heard the hitch in his easy answer. She wanted him to be funny for her. Not to be afraid for her.

"Humor me, Murph," she all but begged, and he regained control.

"That guy who looks like Truman Capote and sounds like Father Guido Sarducci..." he offered.

She nodded. "Conrad."

Murphy nodded back. "Finished the post on your ex. Said there wasn't anything to see except the gunshot wound, which means he didn't put up a fight, and alcohol both in his bloodstream and stomach, which means he'd probably had something to drink at your house and then been capped."

"My house?" she echoed. "There isn't any alcohol in my house."

But there had been. Mattie had found it at the back of her cabinet, where Timmie could have sworn it couldn't have been.

"Alcohol," she mused, thinking of another death. One in which the victim had been anesthetized. "Much?"

"Probably one to two drinks."

"Which isn't even enough for Jason to notice," Timmie mused, rotating her glass so that the ice clinked. "If you were trying to get somebody in a position to inflict a close-range gunshot wound to the head, how would you hold him still?"

Unfortunately, more than one person heard. Timmie just smiled politely and lowered her voice. "How about a Mickey Finn?"

Murphy turned her way. "Chloral hydrate and alcohol? It'd certainly work. The question still is, who did it?"

"I don't know. Somebody not given to violence, I think."

Murphy squinted at her. "Why say that?"

"Because all the murders have been committed at a polite distance. As if the perpetrator couldn't stand the idea of seeing the victim in pain, or didn't want to be close enough to bear responsibility."

"You don't think a close-range gunshot wound is close enough?"

Timmie shook her head. "Not if he's unconscious. That seriously lowers the personal contact factor."

"Like shoving drugs in the line of a snoozing patient."

"Almost exactly."

"Which would certainly cover your crowd at the hospital."

"Access, method, and motive aplenty." Timmie sighed. "I think I was right. It's everybody."

They thought about it for a moment as a couple lighted next to them long enough to commiserate and comment on Jason's pretty daughter.

"Well," Murphy said, watching them go, "we know that the only person Davies offered to kill was your father."

Timmie leaned back against the wall, rubbed her eyes. Slugged down some water. "Have they questioned him?"

"Who, Davies? Oh, yeah. Micklind says he admitted to making the offer to you, but he swears he wouldn't have been able to go through with it. And he swears that was his only involvement. Says he got the idea from hearing Mr. Cleveland rant about his father."

"Uh-huh."

"They also got the fingerprints off Alice Hampton's vial. Her nurse's, just like you said. The old gal died of a massive digitoxin overdose, also like you said." He sipped a second, watched the crowd.

Timmie opened her eyes again, hopeful. "And the floor nurse said Davies was there around the time we think the medication was switched. I'm telling you, he's looking better and better."

"Is there any reason it couldn't be more than one murderer, just like we thought?" Murphy asked. "Maybe Mary Jane's helping out. She and Davies. Or she and Raymond. After all, Mr. Cleveland couldn't swear the other caller was a man."

"Or Mary Jane and Alex and Davies and all the floor nurses. Or all the floor nurses and Ellen and Cindy and me, because the three of us have been up there, too. Gladys said that the same nurse didn't take care of all the patients who died, so maybe we were working in shifts."

"Could it be?" he asked.

Timmie wanted to laugh. She didn't quite make it. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything anymore."

Except for one thing. Just as much as Murphy had wanted Alex to be responsible, Timmie wanted it to be Davies. Davies, whom she didn't know. Who couldn't disappoint her or hurt her by being selfish and shortsighted and cowardly. Davies, who could kill anybody in town he wanted without making it a personal thing.

"There's something else to consider," Murphy said. "I can see Victor being killed to keep him quiet. I can see Jason being a warning or a mistake. But what about the other murder?"

The fact that it took Timmie so long to make the obvious connection betrayed just how badly Jason's murder had affected her. The fact that she'd been progressively forgetting it over the last couple of weeks betrayed how bizarre this whole deal had gotten.

Timmie had to follow Murphy's line of sight to where Ellen was saying her good-byes to her hosts to remember what had gotten her involved in the first place.

"Oh, God," she murmured, her stomach sliding. "I completely forgot."

Murphy nodded. "Why kill Billy?"

For a moment, the two of them couldn't seem to do much more than stare. "Could that have scared Ellen enough to keep her mouth shut?" Murphy finally asked.

"You mean, was it a message to her?" Timmie shook her head. "It's another one of those perception problems. I'm the only one in the known universe who thinks Billy Mayfield was murdered. And if it was to scare Ellen, don't you think she might have said something when she finally told us she'd been calling you? And if Billy was a present for keeping her mouth shut, why open it?"

"She only opened it surreptitiously. And don't forget, Cindy claims she was the one who called."

Timmie sighed. "Cindy would take credit for the invention of CPR if she could figure out how. No, I think I'd like to talk to Ellen before she leaves."