“Mm-hmm,” he answered as he carefully pulled up the flap of the wallet and shone the light at the inside. I watched as his mouth dropped a fraction and his brow lowered while he reached over to his toolbox again and extracted a small plastic tent from inside and laid it next to the wallet. He stood up and looked back at me, his face a little frightening in its serious expression. Tossing me his phone he said, “Abby, hit speed-dial two; ask for Dan Jennings; tell him I said to get a unit over to the Valley Hill Country Club and take my sister into custody, pronto!” And with that he dashed forward to the door of the shack.
“What is it?” I asked as I caught the phone, but Duffy was already reaching for the handle. I hit the speed dial and listened to it ring just as Duffy opened the door to an odor so nasty it sent me reeling back a few paces.
“Hey, Duff,” a male voice said from the cell.
“Hello,” I said, and coughed into my sleeve. “Is this Dan Jennings?”
“It is,” came the reply.
“This is Abby Cooper; I’m a friend of Duffy McGinnis’s.” My eyes were intent on the wallet Duffy had opened. Something about it had caused him to panic about Ellie, and I wanted to see what it was. Breathing only through my mouth, I moved forward while I was talking to Jennings, bending low to get a better look.
“What can I do you for, Abby Cooper?”
“Duffy needs you to go to the Valley Hill Country Club and take his sister into custody,” I said.
“What?”
I shone the beam of my flashlight down on top of the license within the wallet and my heart began to thump loudly in my chest as panic coursed along my limbs. My eyes focused on the face that even in the dark I could recognize smiling out from the license inside. “You need to get Ellie McGinnis from the Valley Hill Country Club right now!” I said, my voice becoming shrill as I stood up and watched the light from Duffy’s flashlight bouncing inside the shack. A moment later it lingered on the floor, and from where I stood I could very clearly make out the top of a blond head and beside it one hand curled into a tight fist. “We’re at Colonel Pentwater’s shack!” I squealed. “A woman’s been murdered and Ellie’s fiancé’s wallet is at the scene of the crime! You need to take her into protective custody now!” I finished, and ran away from the shack into the weeds to throw up my dinner.
Hours later I was still sitting in Duffy’s Mustang, the engine humming and the heater on high. I was shivering even though it must have been eighty degrees inside. Condensation was forming on the window I was looking through, and I kept having to wipe it away with my arm. Duffy’s clock read a little after midnight, but it felt as if it were much later to me. I’d been watching the CSI techs come and go from inside the shack while Duffy and several other deputies worked the scene. Colonel Pentwater arrived in his army-green Jeep and gave his statement to one of them.
We now suspected that what he’d heard a week ago hadn’t been kids with firecrackers at all, but Gina’s killer as he pumped three rounds into the center of her chest. Duffy had walked me back up the hill, and he’d told me that it was evident Gina had been shot. He said she was naked, and he suspected she’d been sexually molested, but it might be hard to tell given the condition of the body and the length of time it had been exposed. I’d taken a big gulp and tried not to imagine the mental picture he’d painted.
While we waited for the other deputies and CSI techs to arrive, Duff and I had talked a bit about the circumstantial evidence pointing to Eddie as Gina’s killer. Neither one of us was ready to convict Eddie, but the fact that his wallet had been found at her murder scene and the bloody surgical scrubs found in her car made Duffy extra cautious about his sister’s safety.
With sirens closing in from the distance he’d asked me, “Does your sixth sense weigh in on this?”
I paused before answering him, wanting to feel out the answer. “I would love to tell you that my intuition says there’s no way Eddie could have shot Gina. But there was a part in Ellie’s reading where my crew insisted he’d done something bad enough to land him in jail.”
“Like murder?”
“In my gut I want to say no,” I said as I got a heavy left-sided feeling. “But my feeling is that whatever Eddie did to break the law, he had no choice in the matter. It’s like he was forced into it.”
“Think I did the right thing by taking Ellie into custody?”
“Until we know for sure that Eddie had no part in this? Hell, yeah,” I said.
Duffy nodded and gave my arm a squeeze, then headed off to meet the arriving cavalry.
Jennings had picked up Ellie from the country club, bringing her to the station, and word came back to us that she hadn’t gone willingly. Another car had been dispatched to keep a close eye on Eddie until they could get a search warrant for his home, which one tired judge had signed not fifteen minutes earlier. While a separate team was sent to search Eddie and Ellie’s condo, he was “asked” to accompany a deputy to county headquarters for questioning. I had learned all this from the radio squawking loudly in Duffy’s car. Most of the police codes I couldn’t decipher, but I’d learned some of the information from the comings and goings of deputies and other officials as they stood on the road near Duffy’s car, taking a break in between gathering evidence and working the scene.
About an hour after the CSI techs arrived, Cat called me on my cell. She’d seen Jennings come to get Ellie, and she wanted to know what had happened. I filled her in on everything I knew, and her reaction had been horrified but strong. She’d told me to stick close to Duffy so that she could be sure I was safe and said she’d head over to the station to offer her support to Ellie and the McGinnises.
A while later she’d called me back to say that Ellie had been released to her parents’ custody with instructions that she was not have contact with Eddie until Duffy had given the okay. Cat said Ellie had been quite colorful about what the deputy who delivered that particular message could do with himself. Still, Nina and Jimmy had convinced her to come home with them, and Cat learned that a patrol car had been dispatched to watch over the house for the time being. Cat left me, saying she was going back to her hotel and she’d call me in the morning.
Much later, and just as my eyes began to feel droopy, Duffy moseyed up the hill toward the car. He gave me a tired smile as he approached, and I returned it with equal enthusiasm. “Hey, kiddo,” he said when he opened the door on his side and got in.
“Hey, yourself,” I said. “You done or just taking a break?”
“I’m done,” he answered with a sigh as he clipped on his safety belt. “Come on; let’s get outta here.”
“How’s Ellie?” I asked as we pulled a U-turn and headed down the road.
“Mom’s with her, but I doubt she wants to hear from me tonight. The timing of this thing totally sucks,” he said with a growl.
“Poor Ellie. I feel so bad, Duffy. I mean, I feel like it’s all my fault.”
“Hey,” he said, turning to look at me, his face hidden in shadow. “You did nothing wrong, Abs. Hell, if it turns out that Eddie was responsible for Gina’s death, you may have saved Ellie’s life.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about this, and I just don’t think he murdered her.”
“I hope you’re right, Abs.”
“You’ve known him awhile. Do you think he did it?”
Duffy sighed again, and this time it was a sad sound. “I don’t know what I think. I want to believe that Eddie had nothing to do with this. I want to believe that some bad guy stole his wallet, then happened to come across Gina, thought she was really pretty and tried to get her attention but failed and then things turned ugly. I want to believe that she didn’t suffer much, and that a total stranger did this, because as bad as it is that Gina’s dead, it’s a thousand times worse to me that the killer might be someone I know.”
As he talked about some anonymous stranger happening across Gina, I felt my left side grow thick and heavy. “Damn,” I said, realizing that Gina definitely
knew her killer.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said, not wanting to add more of my two cents. “It’s just I feel so bad for Ellie. I wish there were something I could do.”
“There is,” Duffy said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“What?” I asked.
“You can help me find Sara next.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, and my depression grew. “I had almost forgotten about her. How shallow is that?”
“You’ve had a long day. Cut yourself some slack, would ya?”
Just then we pulled up in front of Aunt Viv’s house. All the lights were out, and it looked like no one was home. Duffy and I got out of the car and headed to the front door. He tried the handle but it was locked. “Do you think she’s home?” I asked, looking at my watch and noting it was almost one A.M.
“She’s probably staying over at Mom’s helping her comfort Ellie, and in the commotion she forgot all about you. Did she leave you a key?”
“No.”
“Come on then,” he said as he walked back toward his car.
“Where are we going?”
“My place. You can sleep there.”
“Ah,” I said, thinking about what that might indicate.
“I have a spare bedroom, or you can bunk with me, but if you bunk with me I can’t be held responsible for any sleep-induced groping.”
“Sounds good,” I said as I trailed after him, and then felt my cheeks grow hot when he looked back at me over his shoulder and I realized what it sounded like I had just agreed to. “I mean, the spare bedroom. It sounds good. Not that bunking with you would be bad. Not that it was bad…What I mean is…” I stammered.
“Abby,” Duffy said as he paused in front of the car.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up before my ego takes any more punches, ’kay?”
“No problem,” I mumbled, and hurried into the car.
A few minutes later we arrived at Duff’s and headed in. He sweetly helped me off with his coat and sat me on a chair in the kitchen, where he poured me a glass of wine, then hurried into the direction of his bedroom. A minute later he came back out with some sheets, a comforter and a pair of men’s sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt. “Sorry, I don’t think I have anything in your size,” he explained as he lifted the clothes off the top of the pile.
“These will be fine, thanks,” I said, still a little embarrassed by my faux pas earlier.
“Why don’t you head into the bathroom to change and I’ll set up your bed,” he said as he began walking down the hall to a separate bedroom.
“Great,” I said to his back, and got up off the bar stool with a tired sigh. I headed into the bathroom and tried on the clothes. They were huge on me, but I was secretly pleased to be wearing Duffy’s things. I looked in the mirror at the oversize T-shirt that bore a Broncos logo, and a memory drifted up to my mind of a time recently when I’d been staying with Dutch and wore one of his T-shirts to bed. It had been just as large and felt just as comforting.
I turned away from the mirror as I felt that familiar pang of sadness over the loss of that relationship. What the hell was I doing getting involved with Duffy so soon after my breakup with Dutch? And on that note, were Duffy and I even involved? I shook my head as these thoughts tumbled through my mind. This was the last thing I needed to be thinking about right now. Ashamed of myself, I quickly washed my face, used my finger for a toothbrush and then gathered up my clothes and headed back to the kitchen, where I looked around for any sign of Duffy.
He came out of the bedroom a moment later in a pair of boxer briefs and a T-shirt similar to the one he’d given me. “Bed’s all made,” he said, grinning as he looked at me in his clothes.
“Thanks again.” I tried to not ogle him in his undies.
“Anytime. Did you want to hit the hay or sit with me for a bit and talk?”
“I could sit,” I said, hoisting myself back up onto the bar stool. “What’s on your mind?”
“That sketch you drew of where we could find Gina. Do you think you could do it again to help us find Sara?” he asked as he went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine.
“So you think she’s dead too?”
Duffy nodded as he took a seat next to me. “While you were in the car I had a deputy go over to her house. One of Sara’s best friends is a gay guy she’s been rooming with since college. He said he’d been away at his boyfriend’s for a couple of days and came home to find the house empty yesterday. He hasn’t seen or heard from her in a couple of days, which he said is unusual for her, because she always checks in with him. He’d tried calling her several times but her phone went straight to voice mail. He told the deputy that tomorrow he’d planned on calling around to her friends to try to find her.”
“Too bad he waited,” I said as I thought about how much sooner we could have been alerted if we’d only known she was missing.
“Yeah, everyone wants to respect everybody else’s privacy these days,” Duffy agreed. “So back to this psychic sketch stuff. Do you think you could whip out another one of those?”
I smiled a little ruefully. He made it sound as if it were a piece of cake. “I could try,” I said, taking another long sip of wine and closing my eyes. While I focused I asked, “Can you bring me some paper and a pen?”
“On it,” he said.
While Duffy shuffled around in the kitchen to get my supplies, I concentrated on where I thought Sara might be. I called out to my crew for assistance and asked for their help in letting me see where she was and what had happened to her. After a moment a picture formed in my mind’s eye. I clearly saw thick trees and undergrowth surrounding a small clearing. I looked around the clearing and noticed that to my left were cobblestones laid out in a cross. In front of the cross was a mailbox, and on the mailbox my first name, ABBY, was written. I waited for more clues to form but nothing else came into focus. I realized with a jolt that this was the second time a mailbox with my name on it had bubbled up from my subconscious. Deciding to dwell on it later, I then asked for a little direction on what had happened to Sara, and immediately felt three thuds to the center of my chest.
With a startled intake of breath my eyes flew open. “Oh, God,” I said as my hand came up protectively to cover my heart.
“What is it?”
“She was shot too. Three times in the chest. Boom. Boom. Boom,” I said, holding my hand like a gun and firing over my heart, under my right collarbone and then in my breastbone.
Duffy’s jaw dropped a fraction. “Whoa,” he said when I’d finished.
“What?”
“That’s exactly where Gina was shot.”
“Here, here and here?” I asked, retracing the pattern.
“Exactly,” he said.
“Same killer,” I said, feeling a little clammy.
“Sounds like it.”
“Hang on,” I said, and reached for the pen and paper. Quickly I jotted down my vision exactly as I’d seen it and swung it back to Duffy. “Here, this is where her body is,” I said, pointing to the sketch.
Duffy examined it for long moments. “I don’t know where this is,” he said. “But the stones are in the shape of a cross. Maybe this is some religious nut?”
My left side felt thick and heavy. Nope. I shook my head and replied, “No. I don’t think that the cross is literal.”
“Huh?”
“I think it’s a metaphor. I think it symbolizes a place, but is not the actual form of the place.”
Duffy scratched his head and looked back at my sketch. “Why’d you write your name on the mailbox?”
I turned my head to look at the drawing again. “I’m not sure. I had this same image in a dream this afternoon, and I know it fits in this sketch, but I don’t know how.”
“Like the star on the roof of the shack,” Duffy said, and I nodded. “Okay, I’ll make some copies of this and pass it around. Maybe it will spark someone’s memory and we can figure out where
the heck it is.”
I yawned and stretched my arms above my head. I was so tired I was ready to drop. “Can we pick this up again in the morning?” I asked.
“Sure, go get some rest. You deserve it.”
“Peace,” I said as I hopped off the bar stool, then shuffled down the hallway toward the spare bedroom.
“If you need anything,” I heard Duffy call behind me, “like an extra blanket, or a glass of water, or a back massage…” He let that last bit trail off until I paused to look over my shoulder at him. “Just holler,” he said with a wink.
Hoo-boy. I gave him the Boy Scout salute and sashayed away, afraid that if I opened my mouth I actually might do just that.
Chapter Twelve
My cell phone woke me the next morning. Climbing out of bed and trudging over to my purse, I pulled out the small device and took a quick peek at the caller ID. I was secretly hoping it was Dutch, but the indicator said my sister was trying to hunt me down. “Hey, Cat,” I said, my voice sounding froggy.
“Where are you?” she demanded.
“Good morning to you, too,” I said woodenly. “I slept well, thanks for asking. And yourself?”
“I’m serious, Abby. You have no idea what I’ve been through in the past twelve hours. After I got off the phone with you I was practically accosted by a mob at the hotel!”
“What? What mob?” I asked, a little alarmed.
“Several of the hotel guests are attending the wedding. They were gathered in the lobby when I got in last night and wouldn’t let me go to bed until I’d told them everything I knew. I explained to them that your sixth sense had led the police right to Gina’s body, and that there was some incriminating evidence that pointed to Eddie as a suspect.”
“Cat,” I moaned. “Why couldn’t you have simply said, ‘No comment,’ and left it at that?”
“They were relentless, Abby! I had to tell them for fear of bodily harm!”
I rolled my eyes and asked, “So then what happened?”