RG2 - Twenty-Nine and a Half Reasons Read online

  The unspoken like me hung in the air, even more ominous in its silence. My chest filled with dread. Violet and Mike were one of the happiest couples I knew. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Okay, Vi. I’ll think about what you said.”

  Mike carried in a giggling Ashley and we sat down to eat. Without mentioning the details of the trial, I told them about my day at the courthouse, leaving out my vision in the men’s restroom. Violet would have had a stroke that I’d gone in there in the first place, and if she found out I’d been so close to a potential murderer again, she’d probably try to send a note to get me excused. I had a feeling no matter my age, Violet would always see me as the little girl who needed protecting from the world.

  I went home sad and confused, and even more eager to talk to Joe. I tried him again at ten o’clock with no answer. Just as I was starting to get worried, he texted.

  I can’t talk right now. Still working. I miss you, too.

  Joe told me little about his job, but he rarely worked this late, and he always called. The only time he’d had irregular hours like this since I’d know him was when he’d lived next door and worked undercover. But Joe told me he wasn’t working undercover this week and he promised that he’d never lie to me. I desperately clung to my belief in him.

  Chapter Six

  The air conditioning was still out in the courthouse the next morning and tempers were short. Mr. Deveraux called Detective Taylor back to the stand to finish his questioning. He didn’t ask about the lapel pin the detective found in the safe. Perhaps it was out of concern that I might pass out again, but more likely he thought it unimportant. My only hope was Mr. Yates would ask about the pin in cross-examination.

  Mr. Deveraux took up his usual pacing. “Detective Taylor, did you find any fingerprints at the scene?”

  “We found multiple prints and ran them all. Most belonged to store employees, but we also found Mr. Decker’s. We had his prints on file, seeing how Mr. Decker has a lengthy record with the Henryetta police department.”

  “So you proceeded to question the defendant?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Deveraux paused and turned to face the jury. “And how did you know where to find Mr. Decker?”

  Detective Taylor looked at the defendant. “I got his last known address from his parole officer.”

  “Objection, You Honor!” Mr. Yates shouted, his face reddening beyond the pink flush he already had. “The counselor is trying to sway the jury with the details of my client’s past instead of focusing on the facts at hand.”

  “Overruled.” The judge frowned. “The details of your client’s past are how the police linked your client to the crime scene.” He looked down at Mr. Deveraux. “Proceed.”

  “So you went to Mr. Decker’s home and questioned him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened during the interview?”

  “Mr. Decker seemed exceptionally nervous. Nervousness is to be expected considering his past record—”

  “Objection!”

  “Overruled.”

  The corners of Mr. Deveraux’s mouth lifted slightly as he titled his head toward Mr. Yates. “Go on, Detective. You were mentioning the defendant’s overly abundant nervousness.”

  Detective Taylor cleared his throat. “Yes, as I was saying, a certain amount of nervousness is to be expected from a repeat offender such as Mr. Decker, but his was more so than the usual.”

  Judge McClary pointed his gavel at Mr. Yates, whose mouth had dropped open about to protest. He pressed his lips together in an angry grimace.

  “I pushed harder with my questioning about Mr. Decker’s whereabouts the night before until he contradicted himself. He first stated that he’d been home all night then said he went to the Short Stop convenience store on the corner.”

  Mr. Deveraux began to pace in front of the jury box, stopping in front of the stinky man to my right. “Stopping at the convenience store is hardly a suspicious activity, Detective Taylor. What made you question his story?”

  “The convenience store was closed for parking lot resurfacing that night.”

  A satisfied look filled Mr. Deveraux’s eyes, and he nodded his head toward the jurors. “So… Mr. Decker was lying?”

  “Yes.”

  A woman behind me mumbled under her breath. “Um, mm, mm.”

  “Did Mr. Decker confess?”

  “No, and even though we knew he was lying, we didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him at the time.”

  “Yet here he is in our fine courtroom. You must have discovered evidence to tie him to the crime.”

  “Yes, sir. An anonymous tip was called in informing the police that Mr. Decker had the murder weapon on his premises. The informant said they saw Mr. Decker place an object under his house after the murder. We procured a search warrant and found a bloody crowbar in Mr. Decker’s crawl space.”

  I was all too familiar with anonymous tips and planted evidence. When Sloan, a bartender I’d met at Jasper’s restaurant, had been killed, Joe planted a gun in my shed and called in a tip that the murder weapon was on my property, trying to protect me from Daniel Crocker. Luckily, I’d seen him do it and was able to avoid arrest, which was good, since I’d had nothing to do with Sloan’s murder.

  But even though I wasn’t swayed by Detective Taylor’s testimony, the jurors around me were. Mrs. Baker gasped at the news, and the man to my right pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes while turning to examine Mr. Decker.

  Mr. Deveraux presented the crowbar in a plastic bag, still bloodstained, as evidence. “And did you conduct DNA analysis of the blood on the crowbar, Detective Taylor?”

  “Yes, the blood was determined to be a ninety-nine percent match for Frank Mitchell’s. Mr. Decker’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon as well.”

  Mrs. Baker shook her head. The woman behind me mumbled again.

  I had to admit, Mr. Deveraux made a good case. The jury seemed to believe it. If I hadn’t had my vision, I might have bought his reasoning, and maybe even got past the point of wondering how Bruce Wayne could pick up a crowbar, let alone whack someone with it.

  Bruce Wayne Decker sat in the same chair as yesterday. He’d been doodling on the legal pad, gripping his pen in his right hand, but when Mr. Deveraux started asking about the crowbar, Bruce Wayne put down his pen and began to fidget. It was funny how the day before, I’d thought of him as Mr. Decker, but I felt a kinship to him now. I couldn’t help wondering if his dad had an obsession with Batman. Bruce Wayne wore a short-sleeved shirt and a tie and kept sticking his fingers between his collar and neck, trying to widen the gap. He looked like a man who was slowly strangling.

  Then again, I guessed he was.

  Mr. Yates began his cross-examination, displaying the image of the victim again. He glared in my direction, probably checking to see if I was going to pass out a second time. The heat intensified my irritation. I hadn’t passed out because of the picture.

  I studied the image just to prove it didn’t bother me, even though my stomach churned enough to make a batch of butter. Staring at the dead man’s head, I wondered how the murderer swung the crowbar hard enough to bash in the victim’s right temple.

  Watching Bruce Wayne, who’d resumed his doodling, I realized he was right-handed. I imagined him picking up the murder weapon and striking. It would have hit the victim on the left side, not the right. A left-handed person would have hit him on the right side.

  The man in my vision was left-handed.

  A clue. I squirmed in my seat with excitement, only to get frustrated when Mr. Yates didn’t bring it up in his questions.

  Mr. Deveraux called the coroner as the next witness to declare that the victim had died from blunt-force trauma to the head. Mr. Yates had little to ask.

  Judge McClary adjourned for lunch, growling about the heat. “If they don’t get this goddamned air conditioning fixed soon, I’m gonna start arresting people for contempt of court.”

  As soon as Mar
jorie Grace dismissed us from the juror room, I went outside to call Joe while I waited for Neely Kate. I still hadn’t heard from him and I was starting to worry. His phone rang twice before a woman answered, breathless. “Joe’s phone.”

  I froze, recognizing the voice.

  “Hello?” she asked.

  Why was Hilary answering Joe’s phone? My throat closed off and I had to push out the words. “I need to speak to Joe.”

  She laughed, low and sexy. “He’s taking a shower right now. Can I take a message?”

  Fear and anger mingled into one unnamed entity. Finally, I choked out. “Tell him Rose called.”

  “Oh! Rose!” she exclaimed in mock surprise. “I didn’t know Joe still kept you around.”

  I bit back several ugly things hanging on the tip of my tongue. “Just tell him I called, please.”

  Neely Kate found me sitting on the courthouse steps in the shade of a Corinthian column, blowing my nose into a tissue while tears streamed down my face. “Hey, what’s going on? Did you pass out in court again?”

  I shook my head, amazed at her casual all-knowing attitude. Then I realized that finding out about my faint yesterday wouldn’t have been that difficult. Turns out, the Fenton County Courthouse would have aced the telephone game.

  “No,” I wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Nothing like that.”

  She sat next to me, touching my arm. “Hey, what happened? Was it Deveraux? Did he do something? That man—”

  I wished. “No, it’s Joe.” Just saying his name brought a fresh batch of tears. “He didn’t call me last night, and when I called him a few minutes ago, Hilary answered and said he was in the shower.”

  Neely Kate stiffened momentarily then relaxed, rubbing my arm. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation. Was everything okay that last time you talked to him?”

  “Yeah,” I sniffed. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “But Hilary still has a thing for him?”

  “I think so.”

  She threw out her arms and stood. “Well, there you go! She’s jealous and she’s trying to break you up. I’m tellin’ ya, Rose, if Joe wanted to be with her, he would have been with her before he started going out with you. Now let’s go to lunch.”

  I stood and brushed the dirt off the back of my legs. “You’re probably right.”

  Laughing, Neely Kate linked her arm in mine. “The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”

  At the moment, I wasn’t about to argue.

  “If you like, I’ll ask my Great Aunt Opal about it the next time I see her. She’s psychic.”

  My feet stopped of their own volition and my jaw dropped. “What did you just say?”

  Neely Kate scrunched her nose. “You mean about my Great Aunt Opal?” She shrugged her shoulders and gave my arm a tug. “Everybody on the western side of Fenton County knows she’s got the sight.”

  “What…” My mouth had suddenly dried out and my tongue refused to work. I swallowed and tried again. “How do you know she’s psychic?”

  “Because she knows stuff nobody else knows.”

  “Like you?”

  She grinned and winked. “I’m her protégé.”

  I spent the rest of lunch wondering if Neely Kate’s Great Aunt Opal actually had the sight or if she merely had extra-perceptive powers like Neely Kate. I suspected the latter, but I couldn’t let it go.

  “How is your aunt teaching you to be psychic?” I wasn’t so sure being psychic was something a person could learn. I’d simply been cursed with it. I’d give anything to unlearn it.

  “She’s teaching me all her ways. Tarot cards, horoscopes. But her specialty is reading tea leaves.”

  I tried to hide my disappointment. Her aunt was a fraud.

  “I can practice reading your tea leaves if you like.”

  I forced a smile. “So you can predict my future?”

  With a laugh, she lifted her eyebrows. “Don’t you be hatin’ on the ways of the mysterious and mystical, Rose.”

  If she only knew.

  Neely Kate dropped the subject and turned out to be the perfect distraction once again, telling me about her upcoming wedding and all the drama she was dealing with her fiancé’s family, who lived in the Texas Panhandle.

  “They want the groomsmen to dress up as cowboys, spurs and all. Can you even imagine?”

  No, but the most recent wedding I’d attended was Violet’s and Mike’s, and thinking about it made me sad. Maybe they just needed a night out together. I could volunteer to watch the kids overnight and they could plan a romantic getaway. The thought cheered me up. Finally, I’d found something I could do something about.

  I was desperate to talk to Joe, now more than ever. I decided to listen to Neely Kate and trust him, but I had to admit that hearing Joe deny being with Hilary would make me feel better. Mostly I needed his advice on how to handle what I knew about Bruce Wayne.

  When we returned to the courtroom, Judge McClary was fit to be tied that the A/C problem hadn’t been fixed. “This court is adjourned until morning!”

  And I suddenly had my afternoon free. I considered heading to work but just couldn’t bring myself to go there. The county was paying me for the day, no matter how long I was at the courthouse. That was good enough for me. Even if it was only eight dollars.

  My cell phone rang as I walked to my car and I dug through my purse to find it. Violet’s name showed on the screen. “Hey, Vi.” I couldn’t hide my disappointment.

  “Don’t sound so happy to hear from me.”

  “Sorry, I just thought maybe you were Joe. I haven’t heard from him since yesterday.”

  I could almost hear her happiness in her silence.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said, feeling the need to defend him. “He’s just tied up with work is all.” There was no way in God’s green earth I was going to tell her about Hilary. “Hey, I was thinking, maybe you and Mike would like go out soon and I’ll bring the kids over to my house to spend the night.”

  “Yeah…maybe…” Her voice brightened. “But right now, I’m calling about tonight. You’re home alone and last night was a bit tense, so I thought maybe you’d like to come over and we could grill out.”

  Grilling out in this heat sounded like asking for heatstroke, but Lord knew Mike loved his smoker like a duck loved water. And spending the evening alone with my worries didn’t sound very appealing. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  “Great, see you at seven. Not a minute sooner.” Then she hung up.

  Seven? That was odd. Usually dinner at Violet’s house was around six and I never arrived at a specific time. I just showed up.

  The boys next door were running around their house, digging up the azalea bushes under the kitchen window. A wave of melancholy washed over me. My daddy and I had planted those for our neighbor back when I was a little girl. Gardening was the one thing we shared that Momma couldn’t take away from us.

  One of the boys turned to look at me and chewed on the side of his lip. He tugged on his brother’s arm. “Andy Junior.”

  “What?”

  The boy tugged harder and Andy Jr. glanced over his shoulder, the shovel dropping to the ground.

  The first boy squinted. “How come you look like you’re about to cry?”

  “I was just thinking about my daddy.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in heaven.”

  The boy’s mouth dropped open into an O.

  The topic of death caught Andy Jr.’s attention. “What happened to him?”

  “His heart gave out.” Although now I wondered if he died of a broken heart. I suspect Daddy never recovered from the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of my birth mother. “Daddy and I planted those bushes when I was about your age.” I looked to the first boy. “Your name’s Keith, isn’t it?”

  His eyes widened with fear. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I smiled even though I didn’t feel like smiling. My own heart hurt
too bad. “You know, Keith, I don’t have kids of my own, but I have a niece around your age. The next time she comes over, maybe you can play with her.”

  Andy Jr. scoffed his distain. “I ain’t playin with no girl.”

  “Well, nobody invited you, did they?” I asked, aware I had just sunk to the level of a six-year-old but too cranky to care. “I was talkin’ to Keith.”

  Keith beamed, his huge grin revealing a gap in his bottom teeth.

  I decided to head inside before I stooped even lower than I already had. Walking into the kitchen, I tried to shake myself from my reverie. I needed to quit dwelling on sad things.

  By the time I left for Violet’s, I still hadn’t heard from Joe. My discomfort had turned to fear. What if something had happened to him and Hilary hadn’t told me?

  I pulled in Violet’s driveway, surprised to see an unfamiliar car parked in front of the house. I’d barely made it to the porch when the front door flew open. Violet stood in the doorway, dressed in a skirt and sleeveless blouse, and wearing a cute pair of sandals instead of her usual barefoot style. That should have been my first clue to turn around and run.

  “Rose, honey, come on in.” Her voice was overly bright and cheerful, then her smile fell and her voice lowered. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  I looked down at my blue capris and gauzy white blouse.

  She waved her hand and stumbled as she moved out of the opening. “Never mind. You look very bohemian.”

  Shaking my head in confusion, I walked past her. “Violet,” I whispered. “Have you been drinkin’?”

  She laughed, a melodious sound I’d always been jealous of, like everything else in her life. Only now it sounded brittle. “Maybe. Just a little.”

  Now I was really confused. Violet rarely drank and never on a weeknight.

  She pushed me out the back door and onto the covered patio, the overhead fan working overtime to stir up the air. I stopped two steps out, Violet slamming into the back of me and making me stumble.