Killer Cousins (2 page)

“
What?
You got me here because of stupid candles and cards?” I said and mentally slapped myself. I’d made last-minute changes in my flight to Acapulco. I came and got involved in Stevie’s situation—just because she’d foreseen difficulty in chunks of
glass
?

Our investigator wrote. Stevie obviously noticed his eye rolls. “My gift of foretelling has helped lots of people,” she snapped at him. “Even the police.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How did you do that?”

“I helped your department locate a young woman’s body. I told you all where to look in the woods.”

“When was that?”

“About eight years ago.”

“Before my time, ma’am.” He faced me. “If you arrived from the airport, why did you come through the back gate instead of the front door?”

“I rang the doorbell a while, but Stevie didn’t answer. I thought she might be out back, so I drove around there.” I faced Stevie. “Where were you when I rang the bell?”

Immediately I wished I hadn’t asked. She probably hadn’t been taking a shower, since her long hair wasn’t damp. And it didn’t look like she’d just blown it dry and styled it. In fact, Stevie’s hair, for the first time I’d ever seen, had no style at all.

She gave me an angry glance. “I was meditating.”

“You can meditate so hard a doorbell won’t disturb you?” I asked, then slapped my hand over my mouth. My tongue often worked before my thoughts. Sure, I’d like to learn to meditate. But my question in front of this policeman made it sound like I didn’t believe her.

“I could meditate even if the walls came crashing down around me,” she said.

The note-taker wrote. I stood beside the counter, fiddling with the newspaper folded there. I curled its corners, then smoothed what I’d curled. An ad in the corner sped up my heartbeats.
Please join us for our grand opening. Cajun Delights specializes in seafood and Cajun dishes.

The restaurant would belong to my ex-lover, Gil Thurman. Intimate parts of my torso woke up.

I tugged at the neckline of my naturally wrinkled periwinkle pantsuit and gave an innocent closemouthed smile to the officer staring at me. I certainly didn’t want to think about sex now, and couldn’t believe my thoughts had strayed there. Probably my mind needed to escape this whole surreal experience and return me to a more pleasant place.

I let go of my clothes and the officer turned back to Stevie, who was answering his questions. My fingers slid over the ad. Okay, I had given in to my urges concerning Gil a few days ago. But then I’d promised myself and told him I never would again. Lusting for Gil always made my mind quit working. With my mind disabled, I’d never get on with my current life’s mission.

I now discovered Stevie’s kitchen had heated.

Detective Renwick stood. “That’s all for now. We’ll probably want to talk to you again. I’ll ask both of you not to leave town.”

“But I wasn’t planning to stay long,” I shot back.

He pulled his dark glasses down over his eyes. “Is there any reason you can’t stay?”

Only that I’d never really liked Stevie much. Recently she’d made me needlessly fear for my grandchild Kat when I’d visited Kat and my son Roger in Chicago. Stevie had always been ditzy, and since she’d grown considered herself rather psychic, and that made me really uncomfortable. She used to pull my hair when we were kids and kept her hair short so I couldn’t pull it.

I smiled at the cop. “I just made a quick stopover on my way to Mexico.”

“We want you to extend your stay in our area a little while. You’ll be free to go once we determine exactly what happened here.”

Stevie walked him to the back door. She turned and stared at me.

I could reach up and yank her hair now. But its gray color and thin texture destroyed my desire. Her eyes drowned me in their omniscient stare, making me decide she might discern every thought germinating in my brain.

I didn’t really believe she could, but wiped my mind clean, just in case.

“I don’t think the man died of natural causes,” she said. “I think somebody killed him.”

She had ways of knowing things. She’d gotten me here under false pretense. And now I couldn’t leave until a stranger’s death was resolved?

I’d get right to work to discover why he died. Then I would take the next flight out of town.

Chapter 2

Stevie splashed more coffee into her mug. “Want a refill?” she asked me.

“No way.” Too many jitters already from caffeine and a dead man. My shins ached. I imagined his unmoving legs beneath them. Something else bothered me. “What’s wrong with you today? You’ve hardly smiled at all.”

Sure, a corpse lay in her yard, but even that would never have worried Stevie enough to keep her smile away. I was ordinarily cheerful, too, but her smiles usually lasted for days. She often laughed like a hyena that couldn’t catch its breath, and I always feared I’d have to resuscitate her. “You seem so tense,” I said. “All of your movements look nervous.”

She dropped to a chair at her table. Lifted the corners of her lips. Pressed her arms against her sides. “This okay?”

“That smile’s not real. What’s the problem?”

She opened her mouth.
Rap-rap-rap
sounded from the front door, and two sets of quick footsteps approached.

A sliver of a woman darted in. “The cops came and questioned me.” Her voice was the one I’d heard booming over the phone earlier. I had imagined her to be a larger person. A strong gust could blow her away. She stopped, a mop-headed girl of about three at her side. “Oh, you have company. I thought everybody left,” the young woman said.

“The investigators are outside,” Stevie replied. She gave the child a smile that lit even her eyes. “Cherish, come give Aunt Stevie a big hug.” Stevie wasn’t really the child’s aunt.

Cherish crossed her arms. “I wanted to keep watching
Scooby-Doo
.”

“You can watch it in my room.” Stevie ran with the child toward the bedrooms and let loose her annoying cackle. The girl’s mom grinned at me and blew a pink bubble with her gum. Cartoon characters screamed. Stevie returned. “That’s my favorite cousin, Cealie Gunther,” she said.

The bubble backed into the woman’s mouth. “Stevie told me a bunch of stuff about you. I live next door. I’m April McGee.”

Her comment surprised me. Stevie and I had had very little contact in years and weren’t ever close. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

“How did that man die?” April asked Stevie.

“Maybe he just walked in my yard and had a stroke or a heart attack.”

“You think so?” April shoved aside a section of her silky all-one-length black hair that dropped over part of her baby blue eyes.

Stevie spread her hands. “Who knows?”

“But why would a stranger pick your yard to come into to die?” I asked.

“Maybe he walked by and started to feel bad. He could have wanted to use a phone to call someone.”

April nodded. “Sounds logical.” She plopped her capri-clad seat down on a chair.

“But,” I said, “he had a cell phone clipped to his belt.”

“Oh.” April zipped her head around toward Stevie, who thrummed blunt fingernails on the table.

“I can’t explain everything.” Stevie shoved up to her feet. “How can I know why a stranger chose my gate to come through when he was ready to die?”

From the TV in her bedroom, a character called for Scooby Doo. Stevie glanced there, looking even more annoyed.

Uneasy, I nudged the newspaper closer. Most ads in this section glared for notice. Not Cajun Delights.

Recently, when we were near Chicago, Gil told me he’d be coming to this area to open another restaurant. I wasn’t sure when. But if he came around this town now, I’d avoid him.

I
would
.

Stevie opened the refrigerator. She grabbed a canned diet lime drink for April. Then sat, looking calmer, and sipped her coffee.

April swallowed lime drink over the gum in her mouth. “Cops came and asked me things, mainly if I knew that dead man or saw anything strange at your place. I didn’t.” She grinned. “Cherish used the potty again all by herself.”

Stevie laughed. My interest drifted. I’d fought the attraction to Gil, but then a few days ago, gave in.

But no more. I tightly cloaked myself inside my mantra:
I am woman! I can do anything—alone!
I needed to avoid Gil so that I could rediscover myself.

Still, I recalled our sweet lovemaking. Satisfactory. No, much more than that. With my body spooned against Gil’s, I’d felt like I was in the most natural place in the world. And thinking about Gil comforted me more than considering what was outside or in here.

Women’s voices swirled around me. I peered at Stevie and her neighbor, still discussing Cherish and laughing.

I smiled as though I were invested in their stories. My imaginings drifted to a sweeter scene involving Gil and me twisted together.

April raised a question that snagged my attention. “What if somebody came in your backyard and killed him?”

“Who?” Stevie asked, snapping to her feet. She topped her coffee mug from the decanter and grabbed another diet lime drink for April. “Who knows who could have passed my house or followed that man to murder him?”

April popped her bubble gum. “I do.”

“You do?” Stevie and I asked together.

“Uh-huh, and I told the cops.” She yanked the gum from her mouth, set it on the table, and cracked open her second lime drink. She swallowed some. “I was swinging on my back porch, catching up on
The Soap Opera Digest
while Cherish played in her sandbox in the yard. I glanced up every time somebody passed. I saw who came behind our houses.”

“Tell us,” I said, ready to solve the mystery. The people who loved that poor man needed to know what caused his death so they could have closure.

Stevie looked like a tent standing beside her miniscule neighbor. “Who’d you see pass by?”

“Those two women who walk together all the time.”

“The ones with white hair?” Stevie asked, and April nodded. “They didn’t kill anyone. Who else?”

“The mailman.”

Stevie responded with an annoyed sound rolling through her throat.

“And then,” April said, returning the used gum to her mouth, “there were those other guys.”

“What guys?” I asked.

“It’s over!” Cherish dashed in. “Momma, I wanna go home.”

Stevie grabbed Cherish and cuddled the child on her lap. “Was your show good?”

Kinky brown curls wobbled with her nods. “I wanna see it again.”

Stevie’s nose scrunched, and her cackles followed. “I don’t have a tape of the movie, but I’ll try to buy one for you.”

“Okay.” Cherish slid down. “Let’s go, Momma.”

“All right.” April held her hand.

I stood in their path. “But who else came around these houses today?”

Bubble gum popped, making me jump. “That guy who walks his dog and the one who checks our gas meters.” April tugged Cherish’s hand. “Tell Aunt Stevie and her cousin bye-bye.”

Cherish gave us a hand flip.

“Come back and see me,” Stevie said, walking them to the back door.

“You haven’t smoked yet?” April asked, and Stevie shook her head. “Good for you.” April looked through the glass on the door. “Oh, they’re still here. Come on, baby, we need to go through the front.”

She and Cherish let themselves out, while I determined what had seemed especially unusual. Stevie hadn’t smoked!

I hadn’t even seen signs of her ashtrays. Normally ashtrays cluttered the house and held mountains of smashed butts that made the place smell like a barroom.

“You quit,” I said, smiling. “When?”

Stevie stared out at all the people still milling back there, her hands shaky against the screen door. “Today.”

“Maybe today’s not the best day to try to quit,” I said.

No wonder she seemed so uptight. Nicotine withdrawals. And the death. That dead man had parents, grandparents, friends, maybe children. And now something or someone had snuffed out his life. Heat built up behind my eyes.

“No time is best to quit.” Stevie’s cloudy gaze told of her longing for the nicotine that had been her best friend and enemy for at least three decades.

“But with what happened today, couldn’t you smoke only a few and then totally quit another time?” I suggested.

She gazed across the top of my head. “You don’t know anything about giving up smoking. Today’s the day my group chose to quit.” Her strange eyes fixed on glittery objects dangling above her window.

“Oh, you have a support group. Good.” I had no idea how to stop a person from smoking besides saying, “Don’t do it.”

“We met last night and said we wouldn’t smoke today. We’ll meet again tonight.”

“Do you think any of the people April mentioned could have killed that man?”

“Probably not.”

My anger sprang up. I shoved my fists on my hips and spoke with attitude. “So you really made me come over here because you imagined scary things in a stupid deck of cards and some candles?”

Her forehead creased. She looked scared. “Cealie, I really think someone’s out to get me. I—” She flung her hands over her chest and looked pale.

“Are you okay?”

She lowered her hands. “I’m just…really glad you’re here. And I’m not ready to tell the police anything else now.”

I rubbed her arm. “Then here’s what I think we should do. Let’s go on your back porch, watch who passes by, and possibly come up with an idea. Lots of murderers return to check their victims, sometimes because they’re proud.”

“You really think someone killed him?” she asked, voice soft.

“Who knows? But we’d better go and see what we can find out. First I need my things out of my rental car, especially my new friend, Minnie. She’s a cactus.” I grinned, content with all the plant knowledge I’d recently acquired. What I’d learned brought Minnie back from the verge of death.

I’d never kept any type of plant alive before I chose Minnie, and felt pleased with myself for at least learning to care for a cactus. I’d learned about the numerous types of cacti and that I could never teach in a public high school today unless I was allowed to carry something to use to defend myself.