Текст книги "The Murder Pit"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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THIRTY TWO

I went into the church and the 4-H meeting was just wrapping up. They’d gotten together for a community service project and the tables were littered with two hundred bird feeders made of various recycled materials. I knew they were planning to deliver them to the senior center in town during their next regular meeting.

The kids were milling around and didn’t look quite ready to go yet, so I took a seat and pulled out my phone. I was deleting all of the junk emails when Carol Vinford approached me.

“Hi Daisy,” she said. Her voice was high and thin, like she’d just swallowed a mouthful of helium. “How are you?”

I hadn’t spoken to her since the co-op sign-up day when everyone had avoided my class.

“I’m alright,” I said, tucking my phone away into my purse. “You?”

“Okay,” she said, still smiling. “I think the meeting is just about over.”

I glanced at the kids. “Yeah, looks that way.”

She looked around the room. I could tell she wanted to say something to me but I wasn’t going to make it any easier on her by asking.

She took a deep breath. “So,” she finally said. “Co-op.”

“Mmhmm.”

“We have sort of…an issue.”

I sighed. “Carol, I know no one wants to sign up for my class. It’s fine. I told you we can just cancel it. I’m not going to force anyone to spend time with me if they don’t want to.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, no. That’s not the issue.”

I wondered if they were worried that we’d start bringing dead bodies to class. “What’s the issue then?”

She sat down in the chair next to me, scooting it away just a bit. “Stella Bogard had to cancel her class about nutrition. Her husband was laid off and she had to go find a job.”

I frowned. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“And Violet Tumbledrag had to cancel her math class because she broke her ankle,” Carol said, wringing her hands slowly in her lap. “Shoveling her driveway, don’t ya know.”

“Oh, that’s rotten.” At least she hadn’t ended up like poor Sally in the mortuary.

“For sure, yeah,” Carol said. “So we’re down two classes, unfortunately. We’re supposed to offer a minimum of ten. Losing those two, plus yours? Well, that puts us at nine. If we’re under ten we can’t run the co-op because we won’t have enough registration money to cover the building rental.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly pull mine, Carol,” I said. “It seemed pretty clear that no one wanted to take it. You yourself indicated that your kids weren’t interested. After you said they were,” I added.

Carol winced and clasped her hands together. “Right. Right. Well, here’s the thing. I have another mother who is willing to teach a class. On Minnesota history. That would give us ten if she’s able to.”

I nodded, unsure where she was going. “Okay. Well, then it sounds like the problem is solved.”

She started wringing her hands again. “Not exactly. The woman who has offered to teach?” She hesitated and then, in a small voice, said, “She’ll only do it if your kids aren’t in her class.”

I waited a moment. “Excuse me?”

“She’s worried about, I don’t know, I guess the drama that might be involved,” Carol said quickly. “With the investigation and all. She thinks it might be a distraction if your kids are in her class. So she wanted an assurance that they wouldn’t sign up.”

I looked away from her for a moment to compose myself. The anger I’d felt toward Thornton was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. Carol was sitting next to me, calmly telling me that my kids were being blackballed from a class they hadn’t signed up for because of a crime they had nothing to do with. It was the most cowardly thing I’d ever heard.

I stood and spotted Will on the other side of the room. I called out to him. “Will. Grab the girls. We’re leaving.”

“I know this is hard,” Carol said, standing. “I know it doesn’t seem fair.”

“That’s because it’s not,” I said. I turned to her and the expression on my face made her shrink away. “You all are acting like morons.”

She cast her eyes downward but not before I saw a look of guilt blossom there. “Well, I don’t know if—”

“I do, Carol. I absolutely know that you all are behaving like morons. And you’re being unbelievably unfair to my kids.” I stared at her. “And I’m not gonna take that.”

Her neck flushed red, the color quickly traveling to her cheeks. “Daisy, you’re taking this all the wrong way.”

I swallowed hard. “How exactly should I take it then? Tell me.”

Her lips pursed and she didn’t offer anything.

“You tell whoever your replacement teacher is that she has nothing to worry about,” I said. “My kids won’t set foot near her class.”

Carol’s hand rested over her heart. “Oh, well. Thank you for being so understanding. You know how much we all value your—”

I cut her off. “My kids won’t be setting foot in any of the classes.”

She blinked at me. “What?”

“We quit,” I said. “All of us.”

Her eyes widened. “But Daisy. You can’t. We need you. You know that. You handle our finances. And our master calendar. No one else knows how to do those things because you’ve done them for so long.”

“We quit,” I repeated, enunciating each word. “You don’t want us around, we won’t come around.” I shrugged. “Easy as that.”

She started to say something else, but I held up my hand to stop her.

“Not another word, Carol,” I said, shaking my head. “You can just shove all your issues. Right up your big, fat butt.”

THIRTY THREE

“Jake!” Grace yelled when he walked through the door. “Carol has a big fat butt!”

Jake set his keys on the table. “Well, that’s excellent to know. Thank you for sharing.”

Grace bounded off the couch and headed for the stairs. “Mommy told her she had one!”

I was checking on the casserole in the oven and turned back around to find him staring at me.

“So,” he said. “How was your day?”

I closed the oven door. I didn’t believe in obscene gestures but at that moment my middle finger twitched in his direction. “Fine.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And why exactly were you informing Carol about the size of her ass?”

“Because she is an ass,” I snapped.

He kicked off his boots. “Should I go ask Will for his interpretation of what happened or are you going to tell me?”

I pulled the plates from the cabinet and set them on the counter without smashing them. Then I recounted my run-in with Carol.

“So you quit?” Jake asked, when I was done. “You really quit?”

“Yes!” I said. “What else could I have done? They’re blackballing us!”

He frowned.

“What?” I asked, watching him. “You disagree?”

He pulled a diet soda from the fridge and leaned against the closed door. “I think people are overreacting.”

“Oh, you think?”

He held up a hand. “Don’t get mad at me. But, yeah. I think all of the people there are overreacting to something they know nothing about.” He paused. “And I think that rather than creating enemies, it would be better to just sort of ignore them.”

I pulled cups down from the cabinet and let the door slam shut. “They banned the kids from the class.”

“No,” he said, his tone measured. “One idiotic mother doesn’t want them in her class. Which is, very stupid. But would they want to be in that class anyway?”

“I have no idea,” I said. I pulled on the fridge door handle and Jake slid out of the way. “And neither will they since they aren’t allowed to take it,” I added bitterly.

He shifted so he was against the counter instead. “Did you ask them if they wanted to quit the co-op?”

“No, of course not. When Carol told me, I freaked out.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are there other classes they want to take?”

“Probably,” I admitted. “But that’s not the point.”

He held up his hand again. “Hold on. Listen to me.”

I made a face and filled the water pitcher at the sink.

“If there are other classes they want to take…and that they are welcome in…is it worth yanking them out of the co-op completely because of one lunatic?” he asked.

I watched the water drip into the plastic pitcher. I hated it when he was so calm and rational. And made too much sense. It completely countered my superpowers of freaking out and irrationalness.

“If you want to take them out, I’m cool with it,” he said. He brought the can to his mouth and took a long drink. “But I think if it’s going to be something they’ll really miss, then we need to think about just rolling our eyes at the nutjobs and tolerate them for awhile.”

“Thornton has a girlfriend,” I blurted out.

“And we are changing the subject ever so smoothly,” Jake said, smiling. “Thornton has a girlfriend. Excellent. Or is it?”

“Sure.” I set the water pitcher down on the dining room table and Jake followed me in there.

“And is she a taxi driver or heroin dealer or kleptomaniac or something else this time?”

“Be nice,” I said. He’d brought the plates with him and I took the stack, dealing them out around the table. “All I know is she’s apparently a singer.”

His mouth twitched. “For his band, no doubt.”

“Yes. Babette’s Insane.”

“How do you know? You haven’t even met her yet.”

“No, that’s the band’s name,” I corrected. “However, it is also her first name.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Okay. Great. I assume you spoke to him today and this is how you gleaned all of this info?”

I told him about his showing up in the parking lot at 4-H. By the time I finished recounting our encounter, Jake wasn’t smiling.

“Are you kidding me?” he said, frowning. “He’s telling us what’s best for those kids? From a guy who can count the minutes he spends with them on his fingers and toes?”

“I know,” I said. “I set him straight. He backed off pretty quickly.”

Jake shook his head, still irritated. “Yeah, well, good for him. The next time we need parenting advice from him will be never. And you can tell him that. Or I will.”

I’d gone back into the kitchen and grabbed a potholder off the counter. “And now who’s overreacting?”

He waved a hand in the air. “Entirely different thing.”

I chuckled, opened the oven, and pulled the glass dish out off the rack. I closed the oven door and set the dish on the stove top to cool. “You say so.”

He opened the fridge, pulling out a beer this time. He yanked the top off of it, taking a long pull from it. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” I smiled. “Thornton has a knack for driving us both i

“Still.”

I took the beer from him and took an equally long drink. I handed it back and hugged him. “It’s okay.”

He grunted, but hugged me back.

“I went to see Olga again today.”

“Olga?”

“Olaf’s sister,” I reminded him.

“Right. The mortician.”

“Yes,” I said. “I saw her work on a body today.”

“Really?”

I pressed my ear to his chest and listed to his heart thump. “Really.”

“And did she make that poor person look like a clown? Maybe that’s what she specializes in.”

I smiled and shook my head. “You know, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t even want to stay in the room while she worked. But…she was like a magician.”

“Yeah?” Jake’s voice mirrored the surprise I’d felt while watching her.

I nodded. “She was so…careful with this woman. So tender and loving. Like she really cared, you know? It was one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen.”

“Nice, huh?” Jake digested this for a minute. “But still a little creepy?”

“A little,” I admitted.

His free hand rubbed my back. “And what did Olga the mortician have to say?”

I pressed into him and arched my back, trying to maneuver his hand where I wanted it to be. “Well, nothing new really. But I think I’ve been going about this all wrong.”

“What is all this and what was wrong?”

I pulled away so I could see him. “All this is Olaf. And I was looking at it from the wrong angle.”

He smiled. “Do tell, Sherlock.”

I swatted at his chest. “Stop. I mean I think I’ve been focusing on the wrong thing.”

“I’m still not following because I don’t think this is the part where you tell me I was right for asking you to not play private investigator.”

“I’ve been focusing on who killed Olaf,” I said. I opened the freezer door and dug around for a bag of mixed vegetables. I found it and took it over to the counter and cut through the plastic with a pair of kitchen shears. “What I should be focusing on is who would want to make it look like I was the one who did it.”

“Okay,” he said. “But I didn’t know you had an archenemy.”

“I don’t.” I dumped the vegetables into a small glass bowl and carried it over to the microwave. “At least I don’t think I do.”

Jake raised his eyebrows. “Be weird if you find out you do.”

“I didn’t know Olaf well,” I said, ignoring him. “So trying to figure out who might have wanted to hurt him is next to impossible. But I could easily figure out who might want to cause me trouble. Or at least think about reasons people might be upset enough with me to make me look bad.”

He set his beer down and eyed me. “Okay. So like who?”

I tapped the number pad on the microwave and pressed the start button. “I honestly have no clue.”

“Mom!” It was Will yelling from upstairs. “Is dinner almost ready?”

“Five minutes,” I called back. I turned to look at the casserole cooling on the stove. It was a simple pasta bake, penne noodles and sauce and a variety of cheeses and spices mixed together. Something Will would actually eat.

Jake spoke again. “Or maybe you were just an easy target.”

I touched the sides of the casserole dish, testing it. The ceramic had cooled a little so I grabbed the handles and quickly carried it to the table. Jake was ready with a hot pad and slid it underneath. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it seems as if everyone in town knew about your date with Olaf,” he said. “Except me, of course.”

I frowned at him.

“So let’s say whoever killed Olaf knew about that date,” Jake explained. “And they wanted to make it look like someone else killed him. If they knew you had a connection to him, that would’ve made you a good cover.”

I thought about that. It made some sense. I did have a connection to Olaf, no matter how miniscule. I didn’t have a motive to kill him, but we’d had dinner and everyone apparently knew about it. I couldn’t hide it.

“Maybe we had a common enemy then?” I said, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. “Someone who had something against both of us?”

Jake shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”

The microwave dinged, signaling the vegetables were done, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was another sign, too. A bell literally going off, telling me I was finally looking in the right direction.

THIRTY FOUR

Making a list of one’s enemies is a humbling chore.

I had to think of all the things I’d done over the years that might piss people off, no matter how small.

But the truth was, I couldn’t think of a single person who might be angry enough with me to try and set me up for murder. I always tried to be nice to people I met. I was always the first one to volunteer for something when no one else was willing. I was the one piling kids in my car to run them home when their parents had somewhere else to be. I was usually the one trying to placate everyone when tensions grew.

It didn’t mean I didn’t ever rub people the wrong way or have people irritated with me. I immediately thought of the real estate agent Thornton had hired to sell our McMansion. Bambi Riggs. Thornton had thought her name was cool; little did I know he’d also been dating her. She’d produced black and white brochures riddled with misspellings and refused to correct them; she then tried to get us to sell to the first person who put in an offer—at thirty percent below our asking price. I’d told Thornton that if he didn’t fire her, I would. It had been tense, but I didn’t think Bambi had the intellect to concoct something as complicated as framing me for murder.

I thought harder. There was the Wal-Mart greeter who constantly asked to see my receipt when I bought unbaggable items like toilet paper and giant jugs of orange juice—and who I always refused. The school nurse who flew off the handle when she saw I’d exempted Emily from the chicken pox vaccine. The homeschool moms who constantly invited me to Bible Study and my kids to youth group, and who we’d politely turn down. There were always frowns and shaking heads when we said no, over and over again. Emily’s English teacher this year, with whom I’d exchanged several curt emails as I struggled to understand why, in Honors Lit, they still hadn’t read a novel and it was already well into the second semester.

None of those people were enemies. They were just every day problems and nuances that people dealt with on a daily basis.

I sighed. I wasn’t going to say I was perfect, but I just didn’t make enemies.

I was staring at the blank yellow legal pad without any enemy names when Sophie walked into our room, rubbing her eyes.

She yawned. “Is my dad asleep?”

I smiled and pointed at him. He was flat on his back, his mouth open, snoring quietly.

“Okay,” she said.

“You okay?” I asked.

She stood there, still rubbing her eyes, then shrugged.

“Come here,” I whispered.

She came around to my side of the bed and I held out my arms. She climbed up onto the bed and laid down on me. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her.

I’d worried the most about her when Jake and I got married. She was the one who was being uprooted and being thrust into a family that was completely different from what she’d known before. A new state, new siblings and new friends. Everything was new to her, including me. So I’d worried about  her and how she was going to feel about her new life.

But she was like Jake. She was even-keeled, accepting, easy going. She was a happy kid and she didn’t seem to be fazed by being thrown into the fire that was our new family. Jake told me over and over again how much she wanted to come to Minnesota, to have siblings and a stepmom, but I’d remained dubious..

And now? After she’d gotten here and settled in?

It felt like she’d always been here.

“Bad dream?” I whispered.

“Kind of,” she admitted. She looked at me, her blue eyes wide. “There were these dragons and they were trying to get into our car.”

“And that was just kind of a bad dream?”

She giggled. “Well, I couldn’t tell if they were friendly or not. But then one of them set the garage on fire. That’s when I woke up.”

“I’m glad you woke up,” I said, squeezing her and kissing the top of her head. “You wanna sleep in here with us?”

She wiggled against me. “My dad always says he likes it better when we sleep in our own beds.”

I knew he did. I’d always had an open door policy for my room and the kids were used to rotating through like it was a revolving door. Sometimes there’d be one in the bed with me and sometimes all three would pile in. It never bothered me. Jake was a different story. He preferred our bed to have two people in it: me and him.

“Look at him,” I whispered in her ear. “I don’t think he’ll even know.”

She raised her head up and giggled again. “Okay.”

She slid off of me, in between me and her dad, but she kept her arms around me. I pulled the blankets over us, switched off the light, and snuggled up next to her.

Maybe I did have enemies I couldn’t place or name or remember.

I was just glad that Sophie wasn’t one of them.

THIRTY FIVE

I woke up before the sun, my mind still spinning, trying to figure out who might have it in for me.

I couldn’t come up with a name, so I focused on Helen again.

And before the sun came up, I had a plan.

Sort of.

Jake was up and out of bed early, rolling his eyes when he saw Sophie buried under the sheets. I just shrugged and smiled and extricated myself from her arms. I headed downstairs to get a cup of coffee while Jake showered. Twenty minutes later, he was dressed and herding Emily out the door so he could drop her off before heading to an early morning meeting at the plant.

I waited for Jake’s car to round the corner before I went back upstairs. I peeked in on Sophie; she was splayed out across my bed. I glanced into the room she shared with Grace. She was dead asleep, her mouth hanging open, her bedraggled stuffed teddy tucked under her arm.

I crossed the hall, wincing as the floor squeaked under my feet. I sat down on the edge of Will’s bed and, after a moment’s hesitation, touched his shoulder. He made some unintelligible noise and burrowed deeper under his blankets. I touched his shoulder again, shaking him a little this time. He cracked one eye open and frowned at me.

“Good morning,” I whispered.

“Why are you waking me up?” he grumbled.

“I need your help.”

He stared at me blankly and then closed his eyes.

“Will. Did you hear me?”

“Okay,” he said, pulling the blanket over his head. “Give me a couple minutes.”

I knew a couple minutes meant a couple hours. And I didn’t want to wait.

I peeled the corner of the blanket back. “No. Like, now.”

He sighed under the blankets. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Ten,” I said, relenting. “I’ll be downstairs. And don’t wake up your sisters.”

His response was to grab his pillow and put it over his head.

I was in the kitchen, nursing my second cup of coffee and waiting for a bagel to finish toasting when he stumbled downstairs.

He crashed on the sofa, pulled his knees to his chest and grabbed the cream-colored afghan draped over the armrest. “I should not be awake,” he complained.

“I know,” I said, sitting down on the couch next to him. “I’m sorry. But I really need your help.”

“Right now? You need my help right this second?”

“Yes.” The bagel popped up in the toaster and I stood up and walked back into the kitchen.

I buttered the bagel and brought it over to Will. “Here you go.” I thrust the plate in his direction.

He stared at the bagel. “Who eats this early?”

“People who are awake.”

He sighed and righted himself on the couch. He took the plate and, after a minute, picked up the bagel and took a bite. I went back to the kitchen, poured him some orange juice and brought it over to him.

He finished the bagel and drained the juice. “This is freaking me out,” he said.

“What is?”

“You letting me eat breakfast in the living room.” He stared at me. “You never do that.”

I shrugged.

He eyed me suspiciously. “Did someone else die?”

“No,” I said. “No.”

“Well, it must be something big if you’re making me breakfast and letting me eat on the couch.”

Little punk.

“I just need some help,” I said.

“You said that before,” he said, pulling the blanket up to his neck. He looked like one of the Lost Boys, with his sleepy eyes and hair standing up on end. “With what?”

“With computers.”

Will was the undisputed computer expert in the house. He could build them, he could reprogram them and he could find nearly anything on the Internet. He loved video games and he was constantly playing around with writing his own software and creating his own games. He had a following on YouTube where he posted videos about the games he played. I didn’t understand most of it, but I knew he was good at it and I had no doubt he was going to end up doing something professionally with computers.

“Are you locked out of yours again?” He stifled a yawn. “I told you. All you have—”

“I’m not locked out,” I said, mildly irritated. I’d gotten locked out of my laptop one time and now anytime I had a problem, he immediately went to that. “It’s…more than that.”

He yawned again and closed his eyes.

I sat down next to him, accidentally coming down on his feet. He groaned and shifted away from me. “How hard is it to get into someone’s account?” I asked.

He opened an eye.“What do you mean?”

“Like, how hard is it to find someone’s password to get into their account?”

“Do you know the username?”

I paused, then shook my head. “No.”

“So you need a username and a password,” he said. He closed his eyes again and I thought he was done dispensing advice. But, with his eyes still shut, he said, “What kind of account?”

“It’s from a dating website.”

His eyes flew open. “What?”

“Not for me,” I said quickly. “I’m just…I’m looking for some information.”

“Is this about the dead guy?”

I hesitated, then nodded. “Could you do it?” I asked. “If I asked you to?”

“You want me to hack?” The corner of his mouth turning upward.

“No.”

“Well, that’s what I’d have to do if you want someone’s username and password. It’s totally hacking.”

I hated the sound of that word. It just sounded bad. He used it all the time when people were cheating at games or modifying software. He was usually critical of it, too. He had my sense of fairness and rule-following.

Most of the time.

“Let’s not worry about what it’s called,” I said. “Could you do it?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Probably. As long as the encryption isn’t totally brutal, I can probably figure it out. And even if the encryption is crazy—”

I cut him off. “Alright, alright,” I said. I didn’t think I wanted to know just how much my thirteen-year old knew about the cyber world. “So you could do it. I need you to do it.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “What’s in it for me?”

“You got to eat in the living room.”

He made a face. “That’s not a fair trade. You want me to hack some website for you. I could get in trouble.”

“Ten bucks,” I said. “And you won’t get in trouble. I’m your mom and I’m giving you permission.”

“Fifty,” he said. “I’m not worried about you. What if the police find out?”

I was pretty sure Detective Hanborn wouldn’t care that an underage kid had hacked a dating web site. In fact, I was pretty sure no one would care. “Twenty-five,” I countered. “And I’ll take the blame.”

“Forty,” he said. “It’ll take me awhile and I might have to download some new software to do it.”

I sighed. “Thirty. And that’s my final offer. Take it or I’ll make you do it, anyway. And you’ll get nothing.”

He frowned, ready to argue but he must have noticed the look on my face because his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Okay. Thirty bucks. Deal.”

We shook hands.

“How long will it take you?” I asked.

He kicked off the blanket. “I’ll grab my computer. Write down the site and what you need. Maybe an hour. Probably less.”

I grabbed a piece of paper from the printer and scribbled down the web address for Around The Corner and Helen Stunderson’s name. He came back downstairs with his laptop and his gaming headphones, a black and green pair that looked like something the ground crew would wear at the airport. He set his laptop on the dining table, powered it up and glanced at the sheet of paper.

“So what is this about, exactly?” he asked. The screen lit up and he typed in his password. His eyes flew back to the paper in front of him. “Isn’t this the same last name as the dead guy?”

I didn’t want to go into details, especially when I wasn’t sure what I was looking for in the first place. “I’m just trying to figure something out,” I told him. “Find a missing piece.”

He glanced at me. “Like a puzzle?”

“Exactly.” I nodded. “And, uh, let’s not mention this to anyone else.”

He nodded and slipped his massive headphones on over his ears. “Gimme a little bit.”

I knew how much he hated it when his sisters watched him play games over his shoulder, so I did my best to busy myself and kill time while he worked. I did the first round of breakfast dishes and brewed another pot of coffee. My phone rang and, when I saw it was Brenda, I picked up and we made plans for getting together the following week. By the time she and I hung up, a half hour had gone by and Will was still parked in front of his computer, studying the screen, a look of intense concentration on his face.

I went back in the kitchen and started hauling out ingredients for a chicken crockpot recipe I’d found online. I chopped celery and carrots and onions and cut chicken into bite-size pieces and dumped them into the pot. I added broth and seasonings and was just settling the lid on top when I heard Will’s headphones hit the table with a thud.

“Done.”

I hurried over to the dining room table. “Yeah?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m in.”

A ridiculous thrill ran through me. I went to my wallet and pulled out a twenty and a ten. I handed over the money. “Write down the username and password.”

He folded the money into his hand. “You don’t want to just get on right now?” He gestured at the screen. “I’m already in for you.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need to wake your sisters up,” I told him.

But it was more than that. I hadn’t been lying when I’d told him earlier that he wouldn’t get in trouble for doing it.

He wouldn’t.

But I needed to make sure the illegal snooping I was about to do was done on my computer, not his. Just in case Detective Hanborn got wind of it.