Murder Sends a Postcard (A Haunted Souvenir) (13 page)

I HAD TO DO SOMETHING. SHOUTING AT PETER WAS A
clue I was far too stressed out, and my usual treatment for stress was activity.

I patted my pocket, checking for keys. “Want to go for a ride?” I asked Jake. “I promise not to drive like a crazy woman. Honest.”

He shoved the last of the leftovers in the refrigerator, a task he’d started while I was on the phone. “Where we going?”

It was all the answer I needed.

“I want you to meet Bridget’s brother.” It was only part of the reason. I also wanted to take a look at the house where I’d been just a week ago.

The house where Bridget died.

We were already in the traffic of the main drag when I realized I hadn’t called Bradford McKenna to tell him we were coming. I dug in my pocket for his card and handed it to Jake, along with my phone. “Can you dial this for me?”

I spoke briefly with Bridget’s brother, and he said he’d be glad to have some company. Who wouldn’t, stuck out there in an empty subdivision with no one else around? I wasn’t exactly a city girl—Keyhole Bay wasn’t exactly a city, just a small town—but just being out there for a couple hours had given me the heebie-jeebies. And that was when Bridget was still alive.

On the drive out to Bayvue, I distracted myself from thoughts of Bridget by filling Jake in on Peter’s latest scheme. “I can barely keep up with one store. How am I supposed to take on a second one?”

“He has no idea how much work is involved,” Jake agreed. “And you really would be better off to buy him out.” He stopped, as though deep in thought. “Have you ever considered,” he continued, “getting a different partner? One that actually understands what you’re doing?”

“Sure. And I also wanted a pet unicorn. I think I’m just as likely to find one of those. I mean, who do you trust? Where do you even look?”

I turned off the highway onto the county road.

“Right here,” Jake said quietly. “I might be looking for another investment, and Southern Treasures has a lot going for it. Including a really good manager.”

The offer, and the compliment, stunned me. Jake wanted to invest in Southern Treasures? He was willing to help me buy out Peter?

“You, uh, well, um. It’s a lot of money,” I stammered. “Not that I mean to say you can’t do it. I have no idea what your situation is, and, well, it’s none of my business how much money you have and what you do with it.”

I was handling this badly, and I couldn’t seem to find a way out of the corner I’d put myself in.

I turned off the county road, driving between the brick gateposts, lonely sentinels with nothing to guard but bare land scraped clear of any sign of life.

I pulled up in front of the model home where a single light shone in the kitchen window. The house next door where Bridget had stayed loomed in the dark, a menacing presence in a deserted landscape.

It was like the setting for a slasher movie. I just hoped there wasn’t a guy with a hockey mask lurking somewhere.

Before I got out of the truck, I turned to Jake. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. I appreciate it. Truly. But I don’t want you taking any chances on account of me.”

“Like I said, I may be looking for another investment.” He held up his hand and ticked off his points on his fingers as he continued. “The bookstore is doing okay, I’ve discovered I like what I’m doing, I’ve got some money, and I think Southern Treasures is a good bet. So can we talk about me helping you buy out Peter?”

I nodded, then realized he might not be able to see the gesture clearly in the darkened truck cab. “We can talk,” I said. “No promises. But we’ll talk.”

He shook my hand, a move that felt somehow more trusting and intimate at that point than a kiss. We had crossed some kind of invisible line, as though much more than a simple financial conversation was promised by our decision.

No porch light illuminated the front door. I leaned across, opened the glove box, and took out a sturdy flashlight. I did a lot of treasure hunting in old barns and storage sheds without enough light to see what I was buying. I needed—and always had on hand—a good flashlight.

The bright beam lighted our way across the hard-packed dirt of the front yard.

The door opened, faint light spilling out. “Miss Martine, Glory, it’s good to see you.” Bradford invited us in.

“I haven’t had time to make the place habitable,” he said, leading us into the kitchen. A coffeemaker and toaster that matched the cheap ones I’d seen at Bridget’s rested on an identical granite counter. The layout was different, but the atmosphere was the same: an open floor plan with lots of space, high-end appliances and cabinetry, everything finished in stone and natural wood.

That is, everything that was visible. Papers were scattered across most of the flat surfaces, and two laptops sat open on the far end of the counter.

I introduced the two men and they shook hands.

“Buddy to my friends,” Bridget’s brother reminded us. “So what can I do for you?” He looked at me, curiosity clear in his expression.

I hesitated. Why had I decided to come out here? What had I hoped to accomplish with this sudden excursion?

When in doubt, stick as close to the truth as possible.

“I don’t really know,” I admitted in what I hoped was a lighter tone than I felt. “It just felt like there was more you wanted to tell me this afternoon, and I cut you off.”

“Not at all,” he said. He bustled around, starting a pot of coffee, as though anxious for something to do. “Not at all,” he repeated. “You had work to do. Actually I owe you an apology for the interruption.”

“Oh no! It was sweet of you to even think of coming to thank me at a time like this. You have so many more important things on your mind right now.”

Buddy’s visit to Southern Treasures hadn’t bothered me, but I had been a little freaked out by his intensity. Under the circumstances, though, I could understand. Memaw would have been proud of my graciousness. My mother probably wouldn’t have believed me capable of it, but her early training had taken hold far deeper than she ever knew. I liked to think I had outgrown the surly teenager who refused to write thank-you notes.

“But yes, there was something more,” Buddy admitted. “Bridget said she thought you might be a good source of background information.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” I said. “You mean she thought I knew the local gossip.”

He winced at the blunt description, but a tiny twinkle lit his eyes. “You sound like her,” he said. “She was direct, said what she thought. You do that, too.”

I blushed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t very nice of me.”

“Actually, it’s refreshing. It reminds me of Bridget. In a good way.” His voice broke but he quickly regained control.

The coffeepot hissed, signaling the end of the brewing cycle. Without asking, Jake took three foam cups out of a package on the counter, filled them with steaming liquid, and handed one to each of us.

“Thanks,” I said, touching his hand.

Buddy nodded his thanks, too, and continued. “Bridget did a lot of audits, and she specialized in small-town, family-owned institutions. A lot of times the personal background of the people involved told her more than the paperwork.”

He sipped his coffee and winced at the near scalding temperature. “This wasn’t her first rodeo, Miss—Glory. She had a regular routine when it came to her investigations. She did her formal job, and did it well. But she also tried to make friends with someone she could count on for reliable information about the community.

“She generally looked for a woman without a close connection to the bank. An independent. A woman, in her words, who was too smart for her own good. I’m afraid,” Buddy said, “that three marriages left her with a pretty low opinion of men.”

He glanced from me to Jake and back again as though assessing our relationship. I wondered what he concluded, since I wasn’t sure myself.

“I’m not sure how to take that,” I said slowly.

“I assure you, Glory, it’s a compliment. Bridget said understanding the community was good for business, and her track record speaks for itself. But she never thought she knew everything. She wanted to be sure she got it right. Having someone she could trust helped.”

He shrugged. “I’m probably putting it badly. And for that I apologize. But the bottom line was that she liked you and thought you were smart. That’s a pretty big plus in my book.”

I SIPPED MY COFFEE AND TRIED TO SWALLOW PAST
the lump in my throat. Bridget’s good opinion of me shouldn’t really matter. I had barely known her. Still, I was touched by her brother’s words.

And more determined than ever to find out what really happened to her.

“What do we know?” I asked him. “Was she on some medication she could have mixed up, or taken wrong?”

Buddy reached for a large sealed envelope off one of the piles on the island counter. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The bank pulled some strings and got a copy of her medical records before I flew down here, in case the faxed copies didn’t get to the medical examiner.” He held up the envelope, wide tape with large red letters reading CONFIDENTIAL stretched across both sides. “But the doctor said he had everything he needed, and I honestly forgot I had these until I was going through the records tonight. I just don’t know if I can make sense of them.”

Jake reached for the envelope, but I got there first and took it from Buddy’s hand. “She’s dead,” I said. “It can’t hurt for us to look at these now, don’t you think?”

Buddy put the envelope back on the counter and slowly pushed it toward me. “I have no idea what’s in there, and I’m not sure I want to know. But if there’s something in there that could help . . .” His voice trailed off, but his meaning was clear.

I picked up the envelope, carefully removed the tape, broke the seal, and pulled out the papers inside.

I skimmed the pages, grateful for modern technology. Instead of a cramped illegible doctor’s scrawl, there were neat lines of computer printing detailing the notes from each medical interaction. There weren’t very many.

Jake relented and moved to look over my shoulder. As I turned the pages, I could feel him leaning closer, his interest engaged in spite of himself.

As we turned the final page, he stepped back. “Nothing,” he said with authority.

I shot him a questioning look, but I had to admit I agreed with him. “I didn’t see anything either.”

“So it wasn’t an accident with a prescription,” Buddy said. “Not that I expected it to be.

“And there’s no indication in her records of any recreational drug use? Not that people don’t lie about that,” he added hastily. “But they usually don’t lie to their doctor.”

“No. Which means,” I said, “she got something accidentally, maybe in her food or something.”

“That isn’t likely either,” Buddy said. “The doctor told me it was an injection. It hit her fast, and she fell and banged her head.”

“There’s nothing accidental about an injection,” Jake said. “You don’t trip and fall on a needle.”

“Where . . .” I stopped and swallowed hard, then tried again. “Where did they find her?”

“She was in the kitchen. She’d hit her head on the edge of the island. The detective told me the kitchen was a mess, but they could recommend someone to do the cleanup. Said they should be able to release the scene of the accident over the weekend and I could get started.”

“I want to go look.”

“Glory,” Jake said warningly. “It’s dark out, and there aren’t any streetlights around, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I know. But I have a good flashlight, and there’s another one still in the truck. I want to see where they found her.”

I couldn’t explain exactly why; I just knew I had to look. And none of Jake’s arguments were going to change my mind.

“The house is locked,” Buddy warned. “And there are seals on all the doors and windows.”

“I won’t go inside,” I promised. “There are big windows in the back, just like this place. I won’t touch anything, and I won’t open any of the doors or windows.” I remembered Memaw’s saying I’d heard a few days ago. “I will look with my eyes,” I said, “and not with my hands.”

“If you’re going, I’m going,” Buddy said. “Let’s go get that other flashlight.”

Jake wasn’t happy with my decision, but he insisted on coming with me. “I don’t want you out there wandering around alone,” he said as the three of us went out to the truck for my second flashlight. I resisted the temptation to remind him that Buddy had already said he was coming with me.

We worked our way around the side of the house, using the twin beams of the two flashlights to illuminate the occasional clumps of spindly grass and the sticker bushes that brushed against our legs.

In the dark, the flashlight beams sent shadows dancing across the barren yard. The light caught in the glass of the back doors and reflected into the inky black of the night.

I swept the beam across the yard and into the emptiness beyond, the light fading by the time it reached the tree line at the edge of the development. I had flashlights designed for seeing into tight corners of crowded buildings, not illuminating a wide landscape or the distant trees.

I caught the flash of eyes in the distance. There were lots of nocturnal animals in the panhandle. It could be a fox, or a possum, a coyote, or a raccoon. But whatever it was, it hurried away from the light.

We moved carefully, trying to avoid the potholes and divots left by the construction equipment. At the back of the house, an excavation marked the position of a planned patio, or perhaps a screened porch—what the developer would call a Florida room.

A snort of disgust escaped my lips before I was able to stop it.

“Glory?” Jake’s voice was loud in the surrounding silence. He lowered it to a whisper and continued, “Are you okay?”

I played the flashlight beam around the hole in the ground. “Looks like they were planning to add another slab,” I said, illuminating the initial construction of the forms for the concrete. “Probably screen it in and call it a Florida room. Like that makes it so much better than a screened porch, and they can charge three prices for it.”

“I’ve never heard that expression before,” Buddy said. “What does it mean?”

“It just means charging a lot,” I answered. “Paying three times what something is worth.”

Our conversation felt like nervous chatter designed to take our minds off what we were doing.

We stepped over the concrete forms and into the shallow hole where the patio was supposed to go. At least this small portion of the yard was reasonably level, as opposed to the lumps and holes we’d been walking through.

Ahead of us, yellow tape printed with the words CRIME SCENE looped across the glass doors and through the handles. Wide tape covered the gaps where the doors met the frames, and a large notice on the door informed us that we were not to enter the building or disturb the seal.

I had no intention of doing either one.