Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 04 - Any Port in a Storm (12 page)

I slid in, and he got in the driver’s side and started the car and made for the exit.
“If you hadn’t said we were nosy I’d have opened the door for you.” He grinned, eyes on the traffic as he pulled across the road, where I was directing him into the drug store lot.

“That was kind of a strange funeral,” I said.
“Not too many people, either, given it was such a young person.”

“You heard all the touching stories of Hayden as a cub scout, maybe the one the teacher told about the teen camping trip in Yosemite?” George asked.

“I only heard a bit when the lady in the third pew wasn’t honking her nose and the robes weren’t smothering me,” I answered. “Thanks for pointing to them, by the way.”

“Sure.
Did you hear any stories after he was maybe sixteen?” George had pulled into the parking space next to my car.

“Huh.”
I thought for a few moments. “Not one.”

“So we need to find out what he was up to the last few years, not just the last few weeks,” George said.

We.

George invited me to coffee, but I said I had to wash my hair a lot and made him promise not to tell Scoobie or anyone else that he’d seen me.
I didn’t mention I used Ramona’s name. After he extracted a promise to talk more later and stopped laughing about how many times I’d have to wash my hair, George drove off. I was ten miles outside of Perth Amboy before I remembered to turn back and get Jazz.

WITH SUCH A SCANTY obituary, I knew next to nothing about Hayden. Unless Megan had learned more, Alicia was my best bet, but I had no idea if she’d talk to me or attack me. I’d seen her with her friends, but didn’t really know any of them. Besides, I couldn’t go talking to high school kids. Their parents would freak. The only other person I’d seen her even talk to was the grocery clerk at Mr. Markle’s store. True, he was probably in high school himself, but he certainly talked to a lot of customers.

I walked through the automatic door into the cool store.
It was hot for September, and I was warm after going through a vacant house that had the AC off. It’s a small store, as older, in-town grocery stores tend to be, so it only took me a minute to wander across the front of the store, checking every aisle.

“Jolie?”
Mr. Markle and his constant clipboard companion were in the freezer aisle. “Buying or begging?” he asked.

I smiled.
“Neither. I wondered if…”

“Then I know what you want,” he interrupted.
“Corporal Johnson said Claude worked with that group of teens at your pirate thing, and I’m not to let you talk to Claude.”

“Crud!”
I slapped my hand over my mouth. “Sorry.”

“Humph.
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you did it.” He looked in one of the open freezers, counted something, and made a note.

“Thanks.
You, uh, see a lot of people. Do you hear anyone speculating about other suspects?” I grimaced as I said the words.
You aren’t a real suspect.
I hoped so, anyway.

“Do you count Elmira?” he asked.
Then he gave a smile, rare for him. “You wouldn’t like what she said, anyway.”

“I shouldn’t have told her I think she’s a busybody,” I said, glumly.

“So that’s why she talks about you a lot.” He nodded and walked down the aisle toward the back of the story.

So, the clerk’s name was Claude.
I knew who could talk to him. I called George.

“You know,” he said, “you do still owe me a cell phone.”

“You shouldn’t have had it in your pocket when you fell in.” This is perhaps my favorite memory of a prior Harvest for All fundraiser. As he sputtered I continued. “Come on, you said we’d have coffee.”

“Better make it the
IHOP by the highway.” He hung up.

When he walked in George was carrying a piece of paper, which turned out to be a printed email from Sgt. Morehouse.
All it said was “nice shoes.”

“So, now he’s pissed at me because he thinks I brought you up there.”

“You didn’t tell him about my hair, did you?”

“Nobody gives a crap about your hair.”

I ordered iced tea and he did the same. “Why are we outside of town?” I asked.

“Because Morehouse told me, in no uncertain terms, I might add, that I’m not to help you if you’re being a busybody.”

“What about this freedom of the press stuff?”

“You know how it is here, Jolie.
It’s why I let him take my data card for a day. It’s not Washington, DC, or even Lakewood.” He paused for a second. “If we want to report on local crime we can’t be enemies with the police.” He gave a grim smile. “Besides, my editor wouldn’t have run a photo of the body.”

“So if Morehouse says butt out, you will?”
I asked.

“I think if we put our heads together we’ll figure this out faster.
I get a good story, you get your reputation back. Such as it is.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and he pulled a very small camera from his shirt pocket.
I raised my hands in surrender.

“The thing is, if he goes to my editor, I have a problem.
I have to be careful.”

I thought about that for a moment, then stuck my hand across the table.
George solemnly shook it. I felt myself flush and withdrew my hand.

George gave me a funny look as he released my hand, and he opened his notebook.
“Okay, he graduated from Central High School, but he finished high school in one of those drop-out prevention programs, where kids can take most of their classes on line.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“The second guy who talked was a high school science teacher. I called him.”

“And he talked to you?” I asked.

George shrugged. “I told him the next time we wrote about the murder I wanted to be able to say something about Hayden’s life. He didn’t want to talk much, but he did say that Hayden had hit a ‘rough patch’ his senior year, and he was the one who got him to do just enough to graduate.” George stopped when he saw the expression on my face. “What?”

“I’m surprised a poor student had such loyalty from a teacher…” I began.

“Very smart student,” George said.
“Think about it. Why would Hayden have liked science?”

I stared at George for a moment.
“You learn experiments. You get to dissect frogs, play with Bunsen burners…oh. Do you learn how to turn marijuana plants into pot?”

“Probably not in the class,” George said, dryly.
“But if he was already into drugs, science classes might have had a special interest for him. Or not.”

“But there’s three years, at least, since he got out of high school.
Do you know where he was?”

“I’ll get to that in the next couple days.
The only thing the teacher said that was useful was that Hayden was close to one of his sisters. The one whose last name is now Bruno.”

“It’s a start,” I said.

GEORGE AND I SPLIT A TO-DO LIST, and by ten Friday morning I’d already hit the library computers looking for records.
We decided that, given police instructions, I couldn’t go around overtly nosying into people’s business as George put it. At least not in Ocean Alley.

All I could find was a very short article about an accident on the New Jersey turnpike in which a teenage girl was injured.
Hayden had been the driver. It told me he was reckless, but I already knew that.
Not everything makes the papers.

I was by myself in Harvest f
or All late the in the afternoon when Alicia came in. She held the door open and stared at me. Her eyes weren’t red-rimmed, but they looked almost blank. She shut the door.

“I’m sorry you’re hurting, Alicia,” I said.

“Why did you do it?” she whispered.

I shut my eyes for a second and looked at her, tears now welling in both our eyes.
“Why don’t we talk, as long as you like, about what happened that night and where I was. I promise you, I didn’t kill Hayden.”

In a wooden tone, she said, “I’ll never believe you.”

“And I can’t make you.
So I’ll just have to prove that I did not kill Hayden.” I kept looking into her eyes.

Alicia half-turned to go.

“You know you want someone punished for his murder. It’s not going to be me. You can help me figure out who did it.”

She paused, hand still on the newly repaired door.
“My mom said the police will find out.”

“Did you tell them everything you know about where Hayden was the last week?
What he did? Who he hung out with?”

She flared.
“It’s not your business! And it’s not for the police either!”

“So you just want everybody to pretend he didn’t really die?
That way we don’t have to find out anything about how he lived?”

She glared at me, but there were tears on her cheeks now.
Good, I’m getting through.

“I don’t…I can’t…,” she began.
“He said I couldn’t tell.” Alicia said this in a whisper.

I knew every word I said had to be chosen carefully.
“And maybe if he were still alive that would be the right thing to do.” Wrong. “But he’s gone, and you’re here, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Footsteps were coming down the hall from
the church itself. We both looked toward the door that led to the community room area, and then our gazes met again.

“I’ll think about it,” Alicia said, and walked out the front door onto the street.

I’d learned from the All-Anon meetings that you can’t make someone do anything. I don’t totally buy it, but I knew now was not the time to try to convince Alicia of anything.

The interior door to the food pantry opened, and Reverend Jamison stepped in.
“I saw Alicia from my office as she was about to walk in.”

I nodded.
“I think she’s moved from thinking I’m a murderer to considering the possibility that someone else might be.”

He nodded slowly.
“It might be better not to talk to her too much without her mother.” He walked closer and handed me an envelope. “Apparently I’m your mailing service.”

“You’re right.
Thanks.” I took the envelope, and he nodded and left. I knew he was one-hundred percent right about talking to Alicia only with Megan present. I also knew she wouldn’t open up at all if her mom was              around.

I glanced at the letter as I walked back to the counter where I’d been unpacking several boxes of food that a Girl Scout troop had collected.
The letter was addressed to me, courtesy of First Presbyterian, but it didn’t have the Harvest for All name or a return address. I slit it open with the edge of the box cutter kept in the pencil jar under the counter.

The typed letter said, “You think you’re so smart.
You aren’t. Leave it alone.”

AT LEAST I KNOW I’m onto something.
No one in the First Prez office knew who had dropped off the note. Not that I told them what it said. I told Reverend Jamison’s uptight secretary that it was a thank-you note for food.
First lie of the day.

I got in my car and drove toward a house a mile or so out of town.
My camera batteries died yesterday, and I needed to take outdoor pictures of the house I planned to use to compare prices before writing up the appraisal for one of Lester’s sold houses.

The sun was shining brightly, but we’d gotten to the stage of early fall when the heat was less intense.
I turned off the air conditioner and lowered my window a few inches.

I was getting close to a roadside picnic area when a black sedan of some sort started riding my bumper.
I pulled to the right a bit so it could pass and was rewarded with a strong jolt to my rear bumper. My head snapped forward and then hit the back of my seat. “What the…”

They did it again!
This was no accident. I sped up, knowing I’d soon get to a small cluster of houses just beyond the little park. The final hit was a full-on ram, and it knocked my hands off the steering wheel for a second. Just enough time for me to slide off the road into the drainage ditch at the side of the road. As my car bumped down the grassy slope I heard the black car roar past me, but I was shaking so hard I couldn’t get my neck to obey my command to turn around and look at the car.

Another car came to a stop on the pavement and a door slammed.
I was shaking too hard to try to run, and the man’s face was at the driver’s side window of my car in less than five seconds.

“Are you okay?”

I gave a tiny wave and leaned forward to turn off the car engine. The automatic locks clicked open and the man opened my door.

“Stay seated,” he commanded.
“There’s no fire or anything.”

I hadn’t really looked at him, so I couldn’t tell much more than he was black and maybe sixty years old.
He dialed 911 and I heard him tell the dispatcher he saw someone hit my car and that they should send an ambulance and tow truck.

This can’t be random
. A dozen thoughts came to me, the first being to say a silent prayer of thanks that I wasn’t on a highway going sixty miles an hour. The second thought was that an accident like this would bring George to the scene, and I would actually be glad to see him.

I heard a siren in the distance, and the man stooped beside me and smiled.
“You have some color in your face now. You’ll be okay.”

I turned toward him without moving my neck, and the tears coursed down my cheeks.
“Thank you.”

He patted my arm. “I saw him hit you.
I’ll tell your insurance company.”

That was the least of my worries.

My savior said he was going to flag down the police car, and I gave myself half a smile. The car sticking up out of the ditch would be a clue.

The ambulance driver radioed to the hospital and the ER doctor gave them permission to put in an IV and give me a dose of morphine.
That was enough to let the paramedics put a cervical collar that had to be made of boards on my neck and help me out of the car and onto a stretcher without me wailing at every movement. I could tell I wasn’t seriously hurt, but every inch of me hurt.