Chapter

19

About an hour later, after fortifying my body with a stale doughnut from the Harker convenience store, I went to school. Specifically, Harker Elementary. The school housed kindergarten through fifth grade. It was technically inside Harker city limits but allowed students from Gett too.

I’d gone to grade school inside the small but brightly painted schoolhouse. I’d loved Mrs. Crest’s music class, even though I still couldn’t sing a lick. Loved the way the schoolhouse smelled too, like disinfectant and promise. Inside the building seemed much smaller than I remembered. Tiny mutant chairs sat along each wall. Mary stood in the middle, looking a bit frazzled, her hair and clothes in disarray.

“Hi,” I ventured with a wave. “Do you have a minute to talk?”

Before she could respond, Mrs. Crest herself walked into the room. She looked exactly as she had almost two decades before, gray hair piled on top of her head frozen in place by a lacquer layer of hairspray. She was the very reason for the hole in the ozone, I was sure of it. “Well, if it isn’t the pride and joy of Gett,” she said.

Oh, no. Not again. That damn water tower.

She held her arms wide. “You were so good on NCIS. We were all so proud. I thought for sure you were a real corpse.”

I grinned with relief. I recalled how undead I’d felt during the shoot, after my character was killed off in the second scene. Nothing like laying on a cold, steel table, naked except for a small towel covering one’s naughty parts to sear a memory into your mind. I’d fought off a cold for two weeks after. “Mrs. Crest, so good to see you.” I hugged her, and then stepped back.

“What brings you by, sweetheart?” she asked, a frown wrinkling her forehead.

I motioned to Mary. “I had a couple of questions … About Roger’s memorial and such.”

“Such a terrible thing.” She dabbed at her dry eyes. “We set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for his final expenses.”

I tilted my head, trying not to let anger show on my face. “Is that so? I thought he had some money stocked away.” Lucky Whiskey’s money, to be precise.

Mary spoke up, her voice cold. “Who told you that?”

“Guess I heard it around town.” I hesitated, wondering the appropriateness of asking a grieving girlfriend about her lover’s theft. Had our situations been reversed, I wouldn’t be nearly as polite. I vowed to tread carefully. “It’s not true?”

“I wish,” she said. “He barely had enough to cover our rent each month. I told him he needed to start saving for a rainy day.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I never … expected … this. Poor Roger.” She began to cry.

I grabbed her hand, squeezing tightly. “I am sorry.”

She pulled away, as if she couldn’t stand my touch. “Why would Jack do such a thing?” Rage laced her words. “Roger thought the world of him.”

I caught myself mid-snort. “Jack isn’t responsible, no matter what Danny Gett says.”

Mrs. Crest’s gaze went to the floor.

My heart broke as I realized neither Mary or Mrs. Crest quite believed me.

I beat a hasty retreat soon after the awkward silence in Mary’s classroom. No closer to the missing money, I considered my next move. In the movies, at the darkest moment, a clue or some sort of sign would literally land at the investigator’s feet.

I glanced down.

Nothing. My eyes swept the empty parking lot of the school for inspiration. Any inspiration. Heck, I would’ve grasped at a straw if one had been within reach.

One thing was in sight. A place I’d vowed never to set foot in again.

Harker High. The bane of my teenaged existence.

Unable to stop myself, I wandered toward the red brick school that housed about four hundred or so hormonal teens. A vibrant green (even in our current drought) football field sat in the back lot. People in Collier County took their high school football seriously. Some even took bets on the games.

Was that how Evan had lost all that money to Roger and Boone?

Before I took another step, the whoop of an ambulance sounded a few blocks away. As far as signs went, it wasn’t biblical by any means, but it beat a walk down acne-riddled, Brodie Gett–tortured memory lane.

But I took what I could get.

I jumped into my car, shoved it into drive, and took off.

A few miles up the road the ambulance pulled to a stop in front of the Gett Diner. The meatloaf was enough to send anyone to the hospital. Or the morgue, considering the lights and sirens were now oddly silent.

I pulled next to the vehicle. Lester, the paramedic who’d picked up Roger’s corpse, struggled to get his lanky frame out of the driver’s seat. “Oh, hey, Charlotte.” He gave me a smile and a wave.

“Is everything … okay?” I motioned to the diner. “Somebody sick?”

He laughed. “Naw, I’m just real hungry.” I had to smile at his innovation. Though I did worry about his sense of taste. “Care to join me for lunch?” he asked, his large Adam’s apple bobbing nervously.

“Sure,” I said, happy for a friendly face after my encounter with the grieving girlfriend and my old school teacher.

Together we walked into the grimy-windowed diner, packed with the lunch crowd. Men and women who worked at Gett Whiskey sat opposite their counterparts who I employed. I chatted up a few of them and waved to others as Cindy Mae sat Lester and me at a booth way in the back. She promptly took our order and headed off. The kitchen door smashed into the edge of the seat every time someone opened it.

“Nothing but the best,” Lester said with a grin as the door struck the booth again, shaking the glasses of water Cindy Mae had graciously dropped off.

I chuckled. “There are open seats at the counter. Would you like to move?”

A loud crash of dishes obscured my words.

“Can’t.” His thin blond hair fell over his eyes. “Cindy Mae says I scare the customers, so I have to sit back here.”

“What?” I rose, indignant on his behalf. Lester couldn’t help his creepy looks.

Before I could make a scene, he held up a hand. “Please sit down. She’s not saying it to be mean. It’s true.”

I shrank back in the seat. “I don’t understand. Did you do something to piss the town off?” Like, oh, I didn’t know … paint a certain water tower?

“Nothing like that.” He gave me a knowing smile. “It’s my job. It freaks people out, especially when I get blood on my uniform.” He motioned to a stain I had, for my stomach’s sake, believed to be ketchup.

“Folks don’t like to talk about death.” He picked up the grilled cheese sandwich Cindy Mae set in front of him as she slid quickly by. “Let alone like to be reminded of it while eating diner food.”

I picked up my own sandwich. Droplets of grease slid down the cheese and onto the plate, where an oily puddle formed. I set it back down. Opting for safer topics, I asked, “Do you … um … like what you do?”

He smirked and I saw the boy I’d once gone to school with. The joker, always looking to make everyone, including the teacher, laugh. “I wouldn’t trade it for any other job in the world.”

“Good for you.”

“Isn’t that how you feel about acting?”

I had, at one time. Or maybe I was lying to myself? I wasn’t sure anymore. Besides, for the time being, my life was here. Whether I liked it or not. And the jury was still out on that too. Rather than come up with a plausible lie, I said, “Do you work with Danny Gett often?”

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Any time there’s a suspicious death.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “He’s okay.”

I needed more than a vague he’s okay. Jack’s life might very well be in his hands, for even if I found another suspect (other than his brother, that was), I would have to rely on Danny to believe me enough to arrest the bad guy. Two things I had my doubts he’d willingly do. “I’m worried Roger’s killer will get away with murder …”

“Ah.”

“What?”

“Explains the rumor I’ve been hearing.”

“Which is?”

He lowered his voice. “That you’re investigating Roger’s murder with Brodie.”

“Who told you that?” While I was, indeed searching for a killer, I wasn’t doing so with Brodie. Sure, he’d helped me a little bit. But we weren’t chummy. I didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. Linking any Lucky with a Gett was bad for all involved.

“Does it matter?”

I shook my head.

“So it’s not true?”

I winced. “The Brodie part isn’t true. The rest …”

He nodded, a wide smile on his face. “Good.”

“I thought you and Brodie were friends …”

“We are.” He washed down his grilled cheese with a long drink. “It’s … just …”

“Spill it.”

He sighed, loud enough the diner at the next table glanced our way. “The night I took Roger away …”

“Yes?”

He paused, as if weighing his words. Words that might change everything for Jack. “A cell phone fell out of his pocket as I was moving him into the morgue,” Lester said.

My brow wrinkled as I pictured the crime scene. “But Danny found his cell phone. It was in the bottom of the cask.” Danny had passed the phone to one of his cops before Lester had removed the body. The screen was cracked, as if it had been close to the impact of the gunshot.

Lester appeared thoughtful, chewing his lip along with the remnants of his sandwich. “Burner maybe?”

“Why though?” Twirling the fork on the table, I considered the reasons a man would need a burner phone. None of them were good. “I don’t understand it.” In my admittedly limited experience, burner cell phones were strictly for those up to no good, like drug dealers. Or cheats.

Had Roger been stepping out on Mary? Or had he only done so after finding out about her and Brodie? I wasn’t sure if I believed Brodie when he said he and Mary weren’t involved. Though, if either of them had been cheating, keeping it secret in a town this size was near impossible.

Someone would have known.

Was that someone Roger’s killer?

“Got me.” Lester picked up a pickle from his plate. It drooped sadly. He looked at it but didn’t take a bite. Apparently he’d considered the cheater angle as well. “Roger would have had to be a fool to cheat on Mary. She’s perfect.”

A memory from my high school days flickered in my mind. Lester had talked about Mary nonstop for a full year, until she broke his heart on the night of homecoming when she went to the dance with an older guy from Harker. The memory of Lester’s dejected face when he first saw her with her date had stuck with me for some time.

“I have something to admit,” he said. “Before I handed it over to Danny, I took a quick peek at the call list.”

“You did?” I clapped my hands. My first real clue. “Please tell me Roger put KILLER into his contacts.” It would make my life so much easier. I smiled at that bit of whimsy.

Not a flicker of humor crossed his face. “No.”

“Then what?”

Looking to the left and then the right, he lowered his voice as if sharing a juicy state secret. “The phone had only one number listed in both incoming and outgoing calls.”

I leaned in, my spine tight. If he said the number was Jack’s, I’d scream. Up to right now, every bit of evidence I found put more dirt on Jack’s metaphorical grave. I couldn’t overcome much more. “Whose was it?”

Silence grew between us. In the end, his gaze dropped to the tabletop. “Gett.”

My stomach dropped. “Which one?”

“You misunderstand.” Lester shook his head. “Roger called Gett Whiskey. A lot. I wonder why?”

My hands clenched into tight fists as Brodie’s lying face filled my head. The blood pounding in my ears muted whatever Lester said after that. Not that it mattered. I now knew who had killed Roger and why.