Ken and I toss and turn all night. Daylight cannot come early enough. Robotically, we go about our morning hygiene until it’s time to meet at the kitchen table. He tells me, as he fills his thermos, that he’s going to bounce around to check on several quotes and talk to people that are on the fence about getting some work done before winter. He’d then finish some trim work upstairs. His major rehab client probably got a text that Ken wouldn’t be tearing things up today. I understand why for two reasons. First, he doesn’t want to be around heavy-duty power tools when he’s exhausted. Second, he learned a craftworker died by either carelessness or at the hands of a killer. I imagine it’s hard to concentrate on skilled labor today either way.
My mind had spent all night in overdrive, churning the clues and recalling my conversation with the State Police detective. I know also that my daughter will give me an update on the Stillman twins. A decision will have to be made. I see myself staring at Mabel and Sharon at different times today, telling them about Brian’s death. Both Brian and Jake’s families will receive the life insurance benefits. That won’t bring their boys back, but a million bucks with help them salvage something from this terrible week. I will go to Brian’s memorial service. Knowing that I may have been the last person he talked to weighs heavily on my mind. To think that twenty-four earlier, he was my number-one suspect in the murder of his best friend. Seeing his dead eyes staring at me made me question why I was even thinking that I could investigate a suspicious death. How do I offer my condolences to his family? Gee, Mr. and Mrs. Yelito, I am sorry for your loss, but at least I eliminated your darling son as a murder suspect. At some point, I will talk to Becky Steele and close out that last lead, if only for my curiosity.
Then there is the thought that my curiosity, my grandiose thinking that I could solve Jake’s murder, may have led to Brian’s death. Somebody had to get to him before he told me something incriminating about them. That thought bounces around my head for hours as I try to dispassionately review all the facts. Did Jake’s killer know that I was foraging for clues and that killing Brian would stop my progress?
“You look like crap,” Ken says to me.
I don’t take the truth as an insult. “I feel like crap.”
“What’s your plan for the day?”
“I’m waiting to hear from Erin. She will give me a quality intelligence briefing on the Stillman twins. If there is something there, I will turn everything over to Detective Shafer, and if he’s not responsive, then I’ll take it to his boss. I won’t let him push us aside.”
“You let him know last night that you are no pushover. I don’t know what bothered me more, finding the dead kid or watching you play hardball with a guy who just happens to carry a badge and a gun around here.”
I push back gently, “C’mon Ken, you’ve seen me get that way in school when I knew something wasn’t right.”
“Yeah, but school principals and administrators are just bigger goldfish in the fishbowl. You were swimming in a shark tank last night.”
“Or maybe I’ve been swimming with sharks since I decided to look into Jake’s death.” My toast pops and I slather jam on it. Sugar always helps, and this morning I can use the dopamine hit.
“Meaning?” he asks.
“In the wee hours of the morning, while we were both twisting and turning, I had the thought that by sticking my nose where it didn’t belong, I may have caused Brian’s death.”
“How?”
“Everybody was satisfied with the obvious. Jake shot himself. The cops don’t care why. The cops were satisfied that the evidence pointed that way. The only person to offer a motive is the bride’s maid of honor, who said Jake put a bullet in his head rather than marry his childhood sweetheart the next day.” I take a breath, then continue. “I saw the insurance policy and the argument over the Stillman twins as Brian’s motive for killing Jake. By not accepting his death’s official ruling, I kept the ball in play. I made a nuisance of myself with the Milford Police and the State Police. Word got around that Jake’s kindergarten teacher, who has nothing better to do, is asking questions. What does Brian know that got him killed? What did I do to get him killed?”
I can’t hold my feelings in any longer. The tension from the previous evening. The sleepless night. Ken being a witness to something terrible that he will never forget. It all causes me to release a flood of sobbing tears.
He comes around to my side of the table and lets me cry into his shoulder. He holds me gently and doesn’t let go until my phone buzzes on the table. We both look to see a picture of Chuckles the cat on my screen.
“It’s Erin, I gotta take it.” I walk upstairs as I answer and open my composition notebook. I had put nothing in there about last night. I may never.
“Hi, Mom,” Erin says. “How are you doing?”
“Well, I just told your father that I got Brian Yelito killed.”
“That must have been some breakfast conversation,” she says.
“What did you get on the Stillman twins?” I ask as I stare out the window. I tap a blank page in the notebook absentmindedly.
“They are into that prepper stuff big time. Simon is the big talker on social media. He is an influencer in their movement. They travel around country, and they are sought-after expo speakers. It looks like they are resellers of high-end stuff that the preppers buy like crazy, and they also do affiliate marketing from their websites. You know those corrugated shipping containers you see the big rigs pulling on the interstate?”
“Yeah,” I say, wondering where this is going.
“These guys will ship you one that is completely tricked out to survive World War III. It’s their brand, and they own the market. All the gadgets are American made, and they do the assembly in Mobile, Alabama from discarded containers they buy as salvage. They get the prospects to talk to sales professionals who close the deals on a pure commission basis, who then hand off the contract to their fulfillment center. They act and talk like good ole boys, but they are grossing a couple mil a year. I’ll send you the link to the last expo where they showcased their containers.”
“What do your friends say about them?” Erin has friends in high places—like FBI headquarters.
“I sent the intel along and made a query. Said it was to do with a couple suspicious deaths of the owners of a body shop where they were having a Mustang rebuilt.”
“What about the cars?”
“That’s what I had to wait on ‘til this morning. Besides their trucks and a couple travel trailers and old-school Harleys, they don’t show any Mustangs bought or sold in the last five years.”
“How can that be?” I ask. I toy with the string on the corkboard connecting Brian and Jake to the Stillmans.
“Open titles, Mom. They buy the cars and never put their name on the title as the buyer because they never register them. That is the answer I got. If the body shop recorded any of the VIN numbers, you’d see that the Stillmans bought the wrecks and shipped the cars to the buyers with the open title for their buyers to fill in their names on the title. You won’t see Simon or Jason’s names on the titles.”
“What does that tell you, Erin?”
“The cars can never be traced to the Stillmans. Jake and Brian were the only links to them.”
“And now they are dead.” I sob again as I close my notebook and drag down the strings from the board.
She waits for me to stop. She’s a good daughter.
“I can’t disagree with you, Mom,” she says. Two can play my game of using double negatives.
“Why’s that, honey?”
“We knocked over a hornet’s nest. What do you want to do about it?”
“Can you get the motor vehicle records showing that the Stillmans didn’t own any Mustangs?”
“Why?”
“I want us to bring everything to Shafer, and if he won’t listen to us, to Shafer’s boss, so we can lay all our cards on the table.”
“Including the missing gas tank?”
“Including the missing gas tank,” I say.
“Why?” she asks
“Why? Maybe because you are a stay-at-home mom that home-schools her adorable children, and I am a recently retired kindergarten teacher who looked into the blank stare of a murder victim yesterday. We are not homicide investigators. I never thought I’d be looking at dead bodies in the flesh.” I say it to myself as much as to Erin. It finally hits home. I witnessed by first murder victim in the flesh yesterday.
Erin is telling me about the rest of her Stillman research as I walk downstairs. Ken has left for the day. I will catch up with him around lunchtime and tell him my decision.
I step outside into the misty drizzle of a gray morning. There are a few cucumbers and peppers ready to be picked in my garden. I reach for my basket, then interrupt Erin. “I’m sorry, honey, but I think we found the motive for both Jake and Brian’s deaths. They figured out whatever the Stillmans were up to, and they died because of it. I can tell Mabel and Sharon something after we talk to Shafer. We forced him to reopen an apparent death by suicide and a supposed accident as homicides and we are pointing him at the logical suspects. Our work is done here, Honey.” I ring off without telling her to love and hug my adorable grandchildren.