Polished Off (17 page)

“Oh, I’ve still got that,” Barnes said slyly. “I’ve been in this business too long not to have a backup. I downloaded it last night, as soon as I got back to the hotel.”

“Great,” Dillon said. “I’ll send a patrol officer over to get a copy.”

“You got that court order?” Hostility simmered in Barnes’s eyes, replacing the pain. “It’s worth even more now. Think of the publicity this will generate.”

Dillon snapped his notebook closed. He looked like he wanted to thwap it up against Barnes’s thick skull. “If you turned it over to us, the killer would have no reason to try to steal it, if, in fact, that’s what happened. You’d be safe.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Barnes said as the EMTs trotted toward us.

 

 

AGENT DILLON MOVED OFF IN DISGUST AND I followed him, still clutching Rachel’s damp bathing suit. He took long, angry strides and I’m not even sure he realized I was with him until he reached the door of the men’s room two corridors away from the auditorium. Pulling plastic gloves from his pocket, he slipped them on before pulling the door open. “You stay here,” he told me.

Obediently, I stood at the door, propping it open with my back, while he moved into the white and blue tiled space. A bank of urinals marched across the right side of the bathroom and three stalls with graffiti scratched into the doors lined the left side. Sinks with soap dispensers sat under a small window set high on the wall. The fresh scent of pine cleanser spoke of a conscientious janitor and the two-month absence of teenage boys. Three or four small drops of blood glistened red on the tile beneath one of the sinks.

Standing just inside the door, Dillon surveyed the scene without moving. I tried to see what he did, but my brain didn’t work the same way. Nothing seemed out of place to me except the string mop propped in a corner. There was no sign of a struggle that I could see: no cracked mirrors, no blunt instrument left conveniently on the floor, no broken tiles. Only the small drops of blood.

“If Barnes was at the urinal when he got clobbered, why is the blood by the sink?” I asked.

Dillon didn’t answer; he just moved into the room and pulled a slim digital camera out of his pocket. He took several photos of the blood and more of the room from different angles. He peered into each of the urinals and then bent to examine the underside of the sinks.

“Maybe someone was hiding in one of the stalls,” I suggested as he tapped each door open and looked inside.

“What would be the point? No one could know for sure that Barnes would have to take a whiz, so why hide in here?”

“Maybe the robber wasn’t after Barnes specifically. Maybe Barnes was just a target of opportunity—wrong place, wrong time.”

“Possible,” Dillon said in a voice that told me he wasn’t convinced. “But if it was a simple robbery, why didn’t the thief take Barnes’s wallet and watch?”

He had me there.

While I tried to construct another scenario, Dillon moved to the silver trash can under the paper towel dispenser. He reached in—yuck—and pulled out a crumpled paper towel. He studied it for a moment and then said, “Blood.”

“Barnes probably cleaned himself up a bit before he came back to the auditorium. That would explain why the blood drops are by the sink, too,” I said.

“He didn’t mention it.”

“Confused? Rattled by the attack? Didn’t think it mattered?”

“I’m sure that’s what he’ll say.” Without explaining his own thinking about the incident, Agent Dillon flipped open his cell phone and asked for a crime scene tech to bring some luminol.

“What’s that for?” I asked when he hung up.

“Showing blood. Even minute traces left after someone thinks he’s cleaned up.” Tucking the paper towel into a Baggie he pulled from an inner pocket, Agent Dillon swept past me into the hall. “Coming?”

I scooted after him, letting the bathroom door bang shut behind me. We hadn’t gone three steps when a clamor from the front entrance quickened Dillon’s pace. Sam Barnes, a bandage around his head, stood under the sabertooth mural, one hand uplifted to silence a small crowd of reporters, some with microphones, some with notebooks, who were shooting questions at him.

“What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Dillon muttered. We stood shoulder to shoulder just inside the hall, out of Barnes’s line of sight.

“No one can steal the truth, or quash it, or keep it from coming out,” he proclaimed as the group quieted. “Today, someone thought he could bury the truth about my wife’s death by attacking me and stealing my camera. Well, he was wrong. The camera might be gone, but not the truth. I will not be cowed by attempts on my life!” He lifted his chin and struck a noble pose.

Whoa. His wife? Was he still talking about Audrey? I looked at Dillon and he shook his head, anger tightening the muscles in his jaw.

“You and Audrey Faye were married?” A young woman with ginger curls corkscrewing around her face wrote furiously in her notebook.

“We divorced many years ago,” Barnes said, “but our spiritual connection was still intact. She was the love of my life. And I will see her death avenged.”

“What are you talking about?” a reporter in too-short chinos and a short-sleeved shirt asked. “Do you have film of the murder?”

“Not of the actual murder,” Barnes admitted. “But when my documentary
Ugly: The Other Side of Beauty Pageants
is released, a lot of people will see truths they’d rather stayed hidden.”

Talk about ambiguous. Barnes had clearly gone to the politician’s school of How to Answer Questions without Answering Them. “How did the Jacksonville station get here so soon?” I asked, nodding at a cameraman with the familiar News9 logo on his camera.

“Good question,” Dillon said. “A very good question.” He simmered beside me, his mouth thinned into a line. I didn’t envy Sam Barnes his next interview with Agent Dillon.

One of the reporters spotted him and called out, “Special Agent Dillon, can you update us on the investigation into Audrey Faye’s death. Is today’s attack related?”

“The GBI is following a variety of leads,” Dillon said. “Other than that, I have no comment on an ongoing investigation. Mr. Barnes, when you’ve finished here, I have a few more questions for you.”

Barnes looked from the pack of reporters to Dillon, clearly annoyed with Dillon for ripping him away from the limelight but unwilling to look obstructive in front of the media. “Absolutely, Agent Dillon,” he finally said. “Anything I can do to help catch Audrey’s killer.”

“Great!” Dillon said with a smile as false as Barnes’s. “Then I’m sure you’ll be happy to loan the GBI your film so we can analyze it and put your
wife’s
murderer behind bars.”

Checkmate. Barnes couldn’t refuse without looking like a self-promoting, lying fraud. I underestimated him, though. Turning back to the media, he said, “That’s it for today, folks. I’ve got to help the police with their investigation. I hope you all will come to the premier of
Ugly
.”

Barnes walked toward us, a triumphant smile on his face. Before he could say anything, Agent Dillon said, “I think this conversation will go better at headquarters. If you’ll excuse us, Miss Terhune?” Avoiding the journalists milling in the lobby, he escorted Barnes to a side door.

“Freedom of the press . . . unlawful search and seizure . . . lawyer . . .” Barnes was sputtering as the door wheezed closed.

I FOUND RACHEL WAITING FOR ME IN THE AUDITORIUM. Everyone else had gone. She stuffed the bathing suit I handed her into a blue gym bag after examining it for blood.

“No biggie,” she said when I apologized for ruining it. “It’s not like I was ever going to wear it again. It had, like, a
ruffle
. My friend Willow said it would work for the pageant, though, so I bought it. She wants to be a stylist. You know, one of those people who put together outfits for stars so they don’t look like they’re color blind and two months behind the latest trend.”

Emerging into the parking lot, I blinked as the sun assaulted my eyes.

“Ice cream,” Rachel said, beelining for the Good Humor truck still parked across the street.

When we each had a treat—a cup of chocolate ice cream for me and a Heath ice cream bar for Rachel—we wandered into a small park and sat on the swings. No kids were out in this heat so we had the place to ourselves. I told Rachel about Darryl’s arrest and asked if she could think of anyone associated with the pageant who might have wanted to harm Audrey Faye.

“Elise’s mother,” she said promptly, biting off a corner of her ice cream bar. “Mrs. Metzger.”

“What did she have against Audrey?”

Rolling her eyes, Rachel said, “Like, everything. She was in there arguing with Ms. Faye at least six times a day. To hear her talk, you’d think Ms. Faye was doing everything she could to make sure Elise didn’t win: choreographing dance numbers that didn’t show Elise at her best, giving Elise a less advantageous spot in the talent show lineup, letting Elise’s evening gown get ruined by the sprinklers. She, like, never let up. She threatened to sue.”

“How did Audrey react?” I pushed off with one foot and let the swing arc gently.

“She banned her from rehearsals,” Rachel said.

“Did that upset Elise?”

“Heck no. I think she was relieved. I get the feeling Elise isn’t too into the pageant scene.”

I’d gotten the same feeling.

“And she fought with that Dr. Yarrow, you know, the guy who organized the protestors.”

“Mrs. Metzger did?”

“No, Ms. Faye.”

I stilled my swing and faced her. A dot of chocolate lurked beside her mouth and I pointed to the same spot on my face. She swiped her tongue out. “What did they fight about?”

Rachel shrugged. “Don’t know. I was late leaving after rehearsal on Monday night and I heard Dr. Yarrow shout something about ‘hold you responsible’ and Ms. Faye came back with something like, ‘does the college know about Berkeley?’ Whatever the heck that means. But she sounded all ‘I’ll tell on you’ when she said it.”

I had no idea what it meant, either, but it made me uneasy. Yarrow was easily twenty years older than Audrey Faye, so it was unlikely they’d been classmates. Had he taught at Berkeley before coming to St. Elizabeth? It seemed unlikely that a professor would willingly trade a berth at one of the most prestigious universities in California for a job at a Georgia community college. Unless he was forced to. I swung silently for a moment. This promised to be a sticky wicket. If Althea’s new beau had a shady past, did she know about it? If not, how would she react if I dug up some dirt on him? Worse, if he did have something to do with Audrey’s death, was Althea in danger?

“Anything else, Rachel? Who do the contestants think killed her?”

“Whoever she was going to toss out of the contest,” Rachel said promptly.

“Hayley, right?”

“Maybe. But no one thought it was Hayley until she confessed today. Most of the girls thought it was Tabitha, but that’s probably just because they don’t like her very much,” she said shrewdly. “I was thinking it might be Brooke.”

“Really? Why?” I thought Brooke was one of the more together girls in the pageant.

Rachel shrugged. “Don’t know. She just seems like the kind of person who would have a secret.”

Interesting. A slight breeze kicked the scent of cypress toward us. I looked up to see dark clouds scudding the sky. Hallelujah. Rain would cool things down, at least temporarily.

As if reading my mind, Rachel said, “We should do a rain dance.” A huge grin split her face. She leaped from the swing and grabbed my hands. Over my weak protests, she started around in a circle, dragging me with her.

“Rain, rain, make us wet. We’re so tired of our sweat,” she sang to the tune of “Rain, Rain, Go Away.”

“Rachel and Grace want lots of rain; the heat is driving us insane.” My improvised verse set Rachel laughing so hard she plopped down in the mulch cushioning the playground. I pulled her to her feet and offered her a ride home as the first fat drops splatted into the mulch, sending up little poofs of dust.

 

 

I PULLED UP AT MY APARTMENT HOPING FOR PEACE and quiet, but got my landlady. Genevieve Jones was in her mid-eighties but had more get-up-and-go than your average teenager. On a normal day, she might start off with tai chi in the park, serve lunch to housebound people with Meals on Wheels, and play four hours of bridge before dining with a crony or one of her many nieces or nephews. With a frill of white hair that made her look like a crowned crane, she was thin and long-legged, which only enhanced the resemblance.

I lived in the one-bedroom carriage house that was her son’s. He’d never married and had died of cancer the day before he turned sixty. She rented the place to me when I came back from Atlanta. Living with Mom wasn’t an option and I liked the cozy apartment and Mrs. Jones. I checked up on her and did some gardening in return for a break on the rent. Lately, though, I’d been thinking a place of my very own—a house—would be nice.