It was noon by the time we left Gabe and Walker and headed toward Marilee Hedgepeth’s house. As far as we knew, she was Nina’s only friend. Or at least someone she spent a regular amount of time with. Roy hadn’t known her full name, but she was a Bloody Mary resident, so it hadn’t been hard for Jack to track her down. No one had called to tell her about Nina’s death, so Jack had been the one to break the news to her.
My mood had only darkened since we’d left Chance Walker and Gabe Roland. This whole case felt wrong. Maybe it was because the shadow of my dad was clouding the whole thing. But I didn’t think so.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked. “I kept watching your face while we were in there, and I started to wonder if punching people was going to become your norm.”
“No, I’m reserving all my violent tendencies for Floyd. But that doesn’t mean I can’t imagine it.”
“Babe,” Jack said. “We’ve talked about this. When you imagine things, it shows up right there on your face. It’s why I told you for years to stop playing poker.”
“Yet you took my money anyway,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“I can’t help it that you’re stubborn. And it’s not like you didn’t benefit. I used almost all the money I won off you at poker to pay for our wedding.”
“Hilarious,” I said. “And just because we’re talking doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you.”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “One issue at a time,” he said.
“You heard them,” I said, feeling myself getting worked up. “Just to recap, Roy has a habit of treating women badly. He’s a cheater. He’s a liar. He married Nina for her money so he and his friends could open a business. He’s got anger issues and punched his girlfriend in the face. He was so controlling he made Nina live like a slave in her own home, and he got upset if anything was ever out of place. But he’s a good guy because he’s got their backs when they’re fighting fire. That’s some ridiculous bullshit right there.”
He opened his mouth out of habit.
“And if you say swear jar, I’m going to lose my mind,” I said. “Not one person gives two craps about Nina Walsh. She was a possession. She was just there to serve Roy. It’s textbook abuse. He kept her isolated. Controlled her. Demeaned her. And I bet if we check the florists in town, he buys her flowers pretty regularly. And yet, somehow, everyone is worried about Roy, even though statistics show he’s probably the one who killed her.”
“You’re not wrong,” Jack said. “Roy is a class-A asshole. His friends know it, but it’s the first responder culture. I wish we could change it. It’s part of the reason I went back to graduate school. I wanted to understand why people who wanted to serve the community, and hold others to a certain standard, couldn’t seem to live by that standard themselves. The divorce rate is higher. Unwanted pregnancy is higher. Domestic abuse is higher. And alcoholism and drug use are higher.
“It’s completely messed up. If first responders spent more time encouraging each other to do the right thing instead of promising to cover up for each other, you’d have a lot tighter, more accountable, and more trustworthy brothers. Those are the people I’d want watching my back. But it’s a lot easier to keep things the same than it is to change it. That’s just human nature.”
“Well, it sucks,” I said, sitting back in my seat. “You haven’t heard anything from Nash?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It’ll take time. We’ll talk to Marilee Hedgepeth and see if we can put more of the puzzle together. I’d like for Roy to be guilty just as much as you.”
“But you don’t think he is,” I said.
“The truth will come out. It always does,” he said. “And we know that Nina wasn’t completely alone. After talking with Marilee on the phone last night I can tell you they were close, and she mourns Nina, even if no one else does.”
It did make me feel better. “What about the daughter? Do you think Roy called her and told her the news?”
“I don’t know, but I called and left a message with my contact information,” Jack said. “Just in case he didn’t. I want to get her impression of Roy too. It’s probably not coincidental that Nina’s relationship with her daughter fizzled after she and Roy married.”
Jack’s phone rang and we both looked at the caller ID to see if it was Nash. It was a Washington number, but not one I recognized. Jack put the call through Bluetooth, so it came out through the speakers.
“Jack Lawson,” he said.
“Hey, Jack. It’s Michelle.”
“How’d the surgery go?” he asked. “Jaye’s in the car with me.”
“Hi Michelle,” I said.
“Hey,” she said. “The surgery went really well. He goes in for another around three o’clock.”
“Make sure you get some rest in between,” I told her. “Stay hydrated and off your feet when you can.”
“I just got the same speech from Ben’s surgeon,” she said. “They moved a recliner into his room for me, and my feet are up as we speak. I wanted to let you know I spoke to Doug’s mother. She’s headed this way to see Ben, so it actually makes sense for Doug to come with her and have an excuse to be in the area.”
“Oh,” Jack said. It had never dawned on either of us. “I guess it does.”
“He’s glad to help,” she said. “He said it had been a while since he had a challenge, so he’s looking forward to it.”
“Glad we can give him a challenge,” Jack said.
“Remember that when he gets to your house. Joanie’s going to stay at the hotel by the hospital, and I told her I’d stay with her, so Doug can have the guest room at your place. I figure it’ll be safer for him to stay put rather than traveling back and forth.”
“Good thinking,” Jack said. “What time should he arrive? I want to make sure we’re at the house and I’ve got a couple of officers in place. I don’t want to take any chances with him.”
“Joanie will appreciate that,” Michelle said. “Doug has a tendency to leap first and look later, so she pretty much lives in a constant state of stress. They’re about an hour out.”
“I’m really looking forward to meeting Doug,” I said.
“Joanie would probably let you adopt him without having to persuade her too hard,” Michelle said. “Oh, I almost forgot. Someone from the FBI came by while Ben was in surgery. They’re wanting to get some information about the crash. He seemed especially interested in where Ben’s computer was. I told him last I saw it Miranda was at home.”
“You get a name?”
“Clay Hawke,” Michelle said. “He’s out of Ben’s unit, but he’s a junior agent. He’s sniffing, hoping he can find something that’ll make him rise through the ranks. I told him it was just an accident and there was a search for the hit-and-run driver. But he’s probably going to track you down. He’s not stupid, and he’s got a good gut.”
“Always a dangerous combination,” Jack said, smiling. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“I’ll send you Joanie’s number so you can give her your address.”
“Good,” Jack said. “Get some rest.”
We were back in Bloody Mary by the time he disconnected, and I noticed he was turning down a familiar road. We’d spent a lot of time driving down Oleander this past week, and I breathed a sigh of relief as we passed by Foxglove Court. The people who lived on Foxglove were probably breathing a sigh of relief too. They’d seen way too much of us lately, considering that’s where Rosalyn McGowen had been murdered and eaten by her cats.
He drove to the next street and took a right onto Wolfsbane, and he stopped in front of the first house on the corner. All the houses in this part of town were built in the fifties with the exception of a few.
Marilee Hedgepeth lived in a blue craftsman house with white trim and a screened-in porch. Her flower beds reminded me of Nina’s, and I wondered if the two women shared a love of gardening. Now that I thought about it, Nina’s flower beds were the only inviting thing about the whole house.
A woman was standing on the front porch holding the screen door open for us before we could get out of the car.
“Sheriff Lawson?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said. “Thank you for seeing us. I know this has to be a difficult time for you.”
Marilee was probably a good twenty years older than Nina. She was a handsome woman, with wavy hair that was silver at the roots and turned dark toward the ends just above her shoulders. She wore pearl earrings and an oversized denim shirt and jeans.
“I appreciate you calling me,” she said. “The thought of Nina being gone breaks my heart. You’ll never meet a sweeter woman. But I can’t say I’m surprised she’s gone.”
“This is Dr. Graves,” Jack said. “She’s the coroner for the county.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “I recognize you. Y’all got married a couple of months back, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“You don’t have that newlywed glow,” she said, looking me up and down. “Y’all have a fight?”
I couldn’t help but smile at her straightforwardness. “Yes, but it’ll pass. Hazards of the job.”
“I imagine it must be hard, doing what y’all do,” she said. “I was married for forty years before my husband passed on a few years back. He worked at the sanitation department all his adult life, so our conversations weren’t as exciting as I’m sure the two of yours are. I never had to worry about him bringing his work home with him,” she said, chuckling.
Jack and I both laughed, and we followed Marilee into a sunroom. She already had a pitcher of iced tea and some cookies sitting on a platter waiting for us. The room was bright and sunny, and white fans spun lazily from the ceiling.
“Y’all have a seat,” she said. “The tea is sweet, and the cookies are snickerdoodle. I made them fresh this morning.”
“They smell amazing,” I said, taking a seat in a white wicker chair with a yellow and blue striped cushion. Her backyard was a showpiece designed around two big oak trees. There were flowers everywhere, and a pond with a small waterfall in the back corner. It was peaceful to look at and probably the devil to maintain.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about Nina last night after you called,” she said, taking the seat across from us. “I want to do whatever I can to help. Nina deserves better.”
“How long were you and Nina friends?” I asked her.
“Oh, I’m guessing more than ten or so years now,” she said. “I kept seeing her at the nursery, buying up all the flowers.” Marilee stopped and smiled as she reminisced. “She’d get lost in her own little world. She was always happy around her flowers. Talked to them and everything. She could make anything grow.
“That’s what I do, by the way,” she said, looking at us expectantly. “I own the nursery over on Elizabeth Street in King George. Been there thirty years, but I’ve got a manager to run the day-to-day things. I’m enjoying retirement.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling. “The Secret Garden. You always have those lovely hanging baskets out front. I love the colors.”
“Bougainvillea,” she said, nodding approvingly.
“I’m always tempted to stop by and get some, but I know I’d kill them. I don’t have a green thumb.”
“Flowers are meant to bring joy,” Marilee said. She poured the iced tea and then pushed the plate of cookies toward us. I happily took one. I was starving. “And if they die, then they die. And you appreciate the joy you had for a short time. You can always buy new ones.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said. “Maybe I’ll stop in after all.”
“There’s a girl,” Marilee said approvingly. And then she looked back at Jack. “I suppose you want to know about Nina.”
“I’d like to know why you weren’t surprised to hear about her death,” he said.
“Like I said,” she started. “Nina was the sweetest thing. Tiny as a fairy. And she had this naïve innocence about her. She looked like she was barely out of school, but she had a teenager she brought with her some days. Looked just like her. Lord, it broke Nina’s heart when Hailey stopped talking to her. She’d already been through so much when she lost her husband, and Hailey was her last connection to him. But Roy Walsh made sure he killed every bit of happiness Nina had.”
“Did you meet Roy before they married?” I asked.
“No, Nina never asked me to,” she said. “I think she knew deep down that she was making a mistake. I’d pick up on little things she’d say in conversation. I think she was lonely. Hailey was away at college, and Nina was left to ramble around the house she shared with Daryl by herself. She was a loan officer at the bank then. I think that’s where she met Roy. He came in with his buddies wanting to get a loan for a business, and he charmed her right into marriage and giving him every penny Daryl had left her. He made her quit her job, so she only had him to rely on. It all happened so fast. There was nothing I could do but be here and listen.”
“What happened with Hailey?” Jack asked.
“He got better at the abuse the longer he did it,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “In the early days, I don’t think he realized how delicate Nina was. She was a fragile thing. She came by the house one day, and she was helping me out front in the flower beds. When she pushed her sleeves up, I could see perfect imprints of his fingers where he’d bruised her. And then there was another time I noticed because Nina rarely wears makeup, and she had on a full face of it to hide the bruise on her cheek.
“I confronted her about it then, and she broke down. That was about the same time she and Hailey had a falling out. I guess Hailey threatened to call the police on Roy, and Nina wouldn’t let her. Hailey’s no pushover, and she confronted Roy about it too, and told him to never lay another hand on her mother.”
Marilee paused and took a drink of tea, looking out to her backyard. It was a beautiful space. Peaceful.
“Well,” she said. “As you can imagine, that didn’t go over too well with Roy. He told Hailey to get out and that she wasn’t welcome there anymore. And he said if he ever found out that she and Nina were communicating there’d be hell to pay. Nina didn’t do anything to contradict him, and I think in that moment Hailey was just as angry with her mother as she was with Roy.”
“They didn’t talk after that?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Not really. Nina would send Hailey gifts for Christmas and her birthday. Hailey would sometimes do the same. But Roy found one of the boxes Hailey had sent once, and Nina paid for it. Though he got a lot better about not leaving bruises on her after those first few months. But you can just tell. The woman I’d once known was completely gone. Even after Daryl died and she had the sad, helpless look in her eyes, I could still see Nina in there, and I knew she’d be okay. She just needed time to heal and to grieve. But after she met Roy, I never saw that woman again. So no, I’m not surprised at all that Nina’s gone. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Roy’s the one responsible.”
“Did she say specifically that she was ever in fear for her life?” Jack asked.
“No,” Marilee said. “This was her escape. We’d visit twice a week like clockwork. She’d come on the days Roy was on shift, so she didn’t have to worry about getting home and making sure the house was ready for him. You never saw a man so prissy in the way he liked things. He was like a drill sergeant, giving orders and checking to see if there was dust on the windowsills or if a bedspread was wrinkled. He was just looking for an excuse to punish her.
“But she’d come here, and we’d talk about flowers and everything but Roy. I was careful not to bring it up because I knew it upset her. But sometimes she’d say things to let me know what was going on. Or if she got something from Hailey. She started making sure she hid those gifts better.”
“You’ve been a big help, Marilee,” Jack said. “I’m glad Nina had a friend like you.”
“Me too, Sheriff,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. “Do you happen to have Hailey’s number? I’d like to reach out to her if I could. I don’t want her to think her mother will be forgotten.”
“I’ll make sure you get it,” Jack promised.
“Thank you,” she said.
We both stood, and Marilee moved to stand with us. “Y’all can go out back here,” she said, opening the sunroom door that led into the backyard. “Just follow the path around to the side of the house.” Then she looked at me and smiled. “Come see me, Dr. Graves. I might be able to help you find your green thumb.”
“I’d like that,” I said, shaking her hand.
I followed Jack around the side of the house thinking about flowers and Nina Walsh. And I felt lighter of heart because Jack was right. Nina hadn’t been completely alone. There were at least two people who loved her and who would keep her memory alive.