I called Holman and told him I’d be another thirty minutes to an hour. He said that was fine and didn’t even ask where I was. I took that to mean that he was in the zone writing the article. Or he trusted me. Or possibly both.
If I was going to help Ash figure out who came in pretending to be Justin Balzichek’s next of kin, I was going to have to go into full-on list-making mode. It was a trait I got from my mother, who made lists for everything, from what groceries to buy to what books she wanted to read to which clothes she was going to bring on vacation. I got out my notebook and turned to a new page and wrote “Things We Know about Justin Balzichek” at the top.
Ash took another approach. He pulled a bottle of bourbon from the bottom drawer of Franklin’s desk. “Drink?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Is that yours or PopPop’s?”
“PopPop knew there are some times when ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ doesn’t cut it,” Ash said and looked down. “I remember being here once after a service—this man had just buried his wife of fifty-seven years and he just couldn’t bring himself to go home. All the mourners were gone, the service was long over, and this man just sort of wandered around the place looking for last-minute things he could do. He read through the guest book, collected the leftover leaflets, brought the flowers into the entryway. PopPop knew he was lost, that he didn’t want to go home, and so he brought the man in here and the two of them finished an entire bottle of Bowman’s while the man told stories about his wife. It was such a compassionate thing to do.” His eyes glistened at the memory.
“Franklin sure has a way about him, doesn’t he?” I lifted the glass he’d poured for me. “To PopPop.”
Ash tilted his glass toward mine, then drained it in one long swallow.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. I knew this wasn’t a particularly helpful or insightful comment, but sometimes it helped just to hear someone say it. I thought now might be one of those times for Ash.
“You think?” he asked, his light brown eyes glassy from emotion or the bourbon, or both. Either way, it triggered my empathy response. I found myself wanting to comfort him, but we didn’t have the luxury of time for comfort. And I figured the best way to help him was to focus on solving his current problem.
I went into work mode. “Okay. Let’s talk theories. Why would someone want to take Balzichek’s seemingly worthless personal effects?”
“Hell if I know,” Ash said, running a finger along the rim of his glass. “He’s been dead for almost two weeks and we haven’t been able to get anyone to even acknowledge they knew him, let alone claim him. I can’t figure it out.”
“Let’s start with what we know. His parents are both deceased, correct?”
Ash nodded. I jotted this down. “And his only sister is currently serving a lifetime prison term in Fluvanna for drug charges, right?”
He nodded again. I made another note, and as I wrote, I noticed Ash’s eyes were starting to fuzz out a little as he absently lifted a second shot of bourbon and knocked it back. Then he said, “The sheriff’s office kept all of his personal effects as evidence. Javier said Justin came in naked as a jaybird. He put him in some of the extra clothes we keep for these kinds of situations.”
“All right,” I said, making more notes. Out of my peripheral vision I saw Ash lift the bottle and pour himself a third shot.
“Listen,” I said, trying to keep any prickliness from my tone. “I don’t mean to judge, but you might want to keep a clear head if we’re going to solve this.”
He raised his lion eyes to mine and without breaking eye contact, Ash drained his glass.
“Okay, I guess not,” I murmured. I wasn’t his mother. If he wanted to get drunk, I supposed that was his business, but there was something unsettling about the way he flip-flopped between a sensitive soul asking for my help to an arrogant jerk who doesn’t care. I pushed my irritation aside; I had my own reasons for wanting to break this story. Not only would it make me feel less guilty for printing the details that helped whoever did it, but the person who came here tonight must have had a damn good reason for it—and that reason was almost certainly tied to why Balzichek and Greer Mountbatten were killed.
“Let’s think of who it could have possibly been,” I said, mentally ticking through everyone who had a stake in this case. Rosalee was the obvious answer as far as females were concerned. And she had been missing for the past twenty-four hours. It occurred to me that Ash had probably never seen her. She could have easily walked into Campbell & Sons and pretended to be Sofia.
I took out my phone and scrolled through until I found an old picture of Ryan and me with Rosalee from the summer before our senior year in college. It was the day Rosalee taught me to make a croissant, and the picture was of the three of us proudly showing off my slightly lumpy creation. I held the phone out to him. “Does she look familiar?”
Ash leaned forward to get a better look. “Nope. Never seen her before.”
Damn. That would have been the perfect kind of proof to show Holman that Rosalee wasn’t the angel he thought she was.
Ash sighed and leaned forward in his chair. The bourbon had clearly begun to take effect and he was noticeably more relaxed. “The timing is suspicious too…”
“How so?”
Ash stood up and walked over to the file cabinet at the back of the room and pulled out a manila folder. He moved like molasses, slow and unhurried. He walked back over and threw the file onto the desk in front of me. “Take a look. See anything odd?”
I opened the folder and saw the Proclamation of Death signed by the Richmond medical examiner, the death registration form, signed by the Tuttle County recorder. The cause of death was respiratory failure due to cyanide poisoning, like Carl had said. I continued to flip through the paperwork in the folder but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
He walked up behind me and leaned over my shoulder. I could smell the bourbon on his breath and feel the heat coming off his skin. The sensation wasn’t altogether unpleasant. He flipped through the folder to a blank form that was bracketed inside the back cover of the file. “Here.”
I read it out loud. “Cremation Authorization Form.” I scanned the document. “Signed by Sheriff Haight.”
“Like I said, the cremation was scheduled in the morning,” he said, straightening up. “Standard procedure in cases like this is to bury or burn religious items along with the body. It’s why the sheriff’s department gave us the rosary instead of keeping it like they did with the other things.”
“So,” I said, turning to face Ash, “the person who came here was after the rosary?”
“I guess it’s possible.”
It was a bizarre theory, but it made as much sense as anything else. Somebody was clearly after something of Balzichek’s; I supposed it could be his rosary. But then a thought hit me like a smack to the face.
“What?” Ash said, reading my expression.
“I just remembered something…” I said slowly. “I interviewed Balzichek’s childhood pastor for the profile I’m writing about him.”
“So?”
“Pastor,” I said, emphasizing the word. “Not priest. Balzichek wasn’t Catholic.”
Ash’s face went slack. We looked at each other silently until he finally spoke the question we were both thinking, “Then what was he doing with a rosary?”