Love the Sinner Read online

  “I can and I will.” Suddenly I didn’t feel very well. This was just more information than I needed on top of everything else today. Panicky energy made me stand up, and my facial expressions must have conveyed my feelings.

  “The ladies’ room is right next to where you had your prints done. I’ll send Jeannie after you. Don’t wait for her.”

  Finally, some compassion from this detective. That was a good thing, because I needed it now. I couldn’t have waited for Jeannie or anybody else without causing a lot more ruckus than I’d already been part of today.

  Fifteen minutes later I was still shaky, teary and I wanted my mom. But I was out of the bathroom and back into the hallway with Jeannie. “Don’t worry about coming back too soon,” she told me, handing me another lemon-lime soda. “Ray brought the other lady in to talk to, and told me to make sure you didn’t leave, but to be nice to you. He must feel bad about something. That’s the only time he says that.”

  “And it can’t be very often, from what I’ve seen already,” I grumbled.

  Jeannie raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding. Ray’s a teddy bear compared to most of the detectives. And he’s probably the best closer in the county.”

  “Closer? I only know that as a real estate term, and I have a feeling that isn’t what you mean.” We were strolling back down the hall to the Detective Division.

  Once we got there, Jeannie motioned to the padded side chair next to her desk. “You look like you could use a more comfortable chair. Those plastic things are awful. I meant ‘closer’ as in ‘case closer.’”

  “So he gets results?” She nodded. I sank down into her chair. Jeannie was right. This was a lot better on my back than the plastic things. But then again, a rock would have been better than those other chairs.

  I just wanted to sit and sip my cold drink and recover some shreds of sanity for a while. Jeannie appeared to have enough work at her desk to let me do just that. When her phone rang I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Good afternoon. Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, Detective Division.” She listened a moment. “He’s in his office. Who can I tell him is calling? All right, just a moment.” She gave me a speculative look, then shrugged and punched a couple buttons on her phone. “Ray? One of the women you asked me to put through is on the phone. Yeah, that’s right. Okay.”

  Hanging up, she had almost a guilty look. I wasn’t sure if it was for hiding information from me, or for saying as much as she had with me sitting there. Given that she worked for the sheriff’s department, it had to be for what she might be giving away. Still, I decided to try my luck. “Please tell me that is my motherin-law, Edna Peete.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not allowed to give out information like that to anybody but the detectives. Ray would skin me if I actually told you who it was on the phone. Although I don’t imagine he could do much if I told you who it wasn’t.”

  “Which means it wasn’t Edna. Which is just nuts. I can’t imagine where she went. The woman is seventy-six years old and will be beside herself when she finds out about Dennis.”

  Unless she already knew. It was an idea I hadn’t considered before, somehow. With everything else that had happened today, I hadn’t stopped to think about Edna being truly involved in whatever had happened in that room. But then, if Heather hadn’t done anything to Dennis, and the only other two women who’d been there were gone, they probably left together.

  So if the person on the other end of that phone talking to Fernandez wasn’t Edna, it could be Becca. It could also have been a lab tech, maybe. I glanced over at Jeannie’s phone console in time to see the solid light blink out. On the systems I was familiar with from my previous jobs in a Missouri grade school and a junior college, that meant the call was terminated.

  It was more difficult now to sit and try to relax and sip a cool drink. My mind was racing again with all kinds of possibilities. And Heather was still in there with Fernandez.

  In a few moments she was out, still looking pretty shaken, but at least she was upright. She was pale, but didn’t show any signs of needing to throw up again, so maybe she was getting a little better. If this had been a horrible day for me, I couldn’t imagine how much worse it had been for Heather.

  Ray Fernandez didn’t look that great himself by now. He came out of the inner office rubbing his temples like a man with the beginnings of a nasty migraine. The tightness around his eyes looked like another symptom of the same thing. Maybe I’d been too hasty before when I thought he was glaring at me.

  “I’ll save you asking any more questions. That call was your stepdaughter, Ms. Miller. She claims to have left the care center about one-thirty this afternoon in the company of her grandmother. According to her they drove to the restaurant where they’d both had breakfast, she picked up her own car from that parking lot and went to work. She says she has no idea where her grandmother went from there. Ms. Miller claims she just now arrived at her mother’s house where my message to phone in was waiting.”

  “Now you know that’s already wrong, because Edna and her purse were still around the care center an hour after that. And Heather saw them both after two anyway.” I looked at her for confirmation.

  “I sure thought it was after that. I could have been wrong, I guess.”

  I wanted to scream. Didn’t this woman have any backbone at all? My biggest worry right now was that she was going to accommodate herself into a stay in the lockup, and possibly take me along for company. I couldn’t imagine how anybody could hold either of us for anything right now, but after the rest of today’s events, anything could happen.

  “I’m aware of what you’ve already told me, and what Ms. Taylor has said, as well. And before long there should be some initial reports from the crime lab to tell us more about what happened, from their point of view. In the meantime, Ms. Miller is going to come back here and give us some fingerprints.”

  Something about her timetable finally struck me. “Did you have to tell her about Dennis? Because if she really had left when she said she did, she would have no idea…”

  “That he was dead? The thought had occurred to me, too, Ms. Harris. As had the idea that if she was right about the way things happened, her grandmother would surely have gone straight back to the care center. I checked there again just to make sure that she hadn’t made an appearance.” His expression was firm enough that he didn’t need to verbalize the answer. Edna was still on the loose somewhere.

  “So, can we go now?” Perhaps that wasn’t being as cooperative as possible, but I was so incredibly tired.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to need more information from both of you. It would be easier to get if I requested that you stay here for a while longer, and you agreed.”

  The way he phrased that told me that there wasn’t any way for him to hold us legally. I decided to press my luck just one more time.

  “Look, Detective Fernandez, I promise I am not going anywhere besides home. And unlike my motherin-law, I will answer any telephone call made to me, hopefully in three rings or less. I’ll even bring Edna in here to get her fingerprints taken and make a statement, should she show up there. But this has been a long, horrible day and I’m getting very tired of public institutions.”

  His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You and me both. I don’t know why I should trust you, but I’m going to. Don’t leave town. Don’t even leave that house unless you have a very good reason. And count on me calling no later than tomorrow morning.”

  “It’s a deal. Thank you so very much.” I hoped that sounded as grateful as I felt. Maybe Jeannie was right after all. Maybe behind the wolverine exterior I’d seen before, Ray Fernandez was hiding some teddy bear qualities.

  Edna’s house was empty when I got there. It was hard to think of it as home anymore. It hadn’t ever felt much like home, and now that I knew that Dennis was never coming back to it, this house would never feel like home to me.

  It was almost seven
in the evening, which meant that it was almost nine in Missouri. At least I knew that my mother would be home, unless she’d talked Ben into taking her somewhere. She hated driving at night, so that was one of their arrangements. She packed his lunch and did most of the laundry; he did the night driving. I didn’t really want to know what other deals the two of them had made.

  When the phone was on its fourth ring I almost hung up. Then just as my mom’s voice on the answering machine kicked in, so did her normal voice, sounding a little rushed and breathless. “Just a minute. Don’t hang up.” The recording stopped and Mom was back again. “All right. Hello.”

  “Mom?”

  “Gracie, honey? What’s the matter?”

  The tears came fast and furious now, and I slid down to sit on the floor in Edna’s kitchen. It was just too far away to walk over to the kitchen chairs. “Wrong? Everything. It’s awful, and an unbelievably long story.”

  “Are you okay? I must sound funny because Ben’s looking at me wanting to know what’s going on. We were just walking in the door from getting ice cream.”

  That made me almost smile. I backhanded tears off my face and got up on my knees to snag a paper towel for my damp cheeks and runny nose. “I’m okay. Physically at least.” I could hear her sigh, then reassure Ben. “It’s Dennis.”

  “Now you told me yourself that you didn’t think he was going to come around.” There was true sorrow in her voice and I knew why I’d gone straight for the phone to call my mother. Even though she had never liked Dennis, she felt bad for him and for me and for all of us. “Do you want me to tell Ben, or do you want to do it yourself?”

  “I’ll tell him what I know, after I talk to you.” There was an honest-to-goodness wail building up from deep in my chest, and I fought to push it back. Even as bad as things were, I didn’t want to scare my mom over the phone. “But I don’t know that much yet. And the stupid part is, Dennis actually was starting to come around, and then he died. Mom, the police think maybe somebody killed him.”

  “Ben went in the other room. Maybe you shouldn’t tell him that part.” It made me shake my head. My mom was protecting her grandson, even though he was now taller than she was by at least a foot.

  “I won’t right away.” And I wasn’t about to tell either of them that I’d seen the inside of a police station. “As soon as I know more I’ll call you back and give you details. Now I guess you ought to let me talk to Ben.”

  “I will. But you take care of yourself, will you? Is Edna there? At least you can look out for each other.”

  I didn’t want to get into all of that yet, even with my mom. Maybe I was protecting her as much as she wanted to protect Ben. “She’s still out taking care of some business. But she’ll be back.” At least I hoped so.

  “Good. And I’ll tell Ben that when he’s done not to hang up, that I want to talk to you again.”

  Now I knew Mom was rattled. Normally she was so conscious of long-distance spending, even on somebody else’s nickel, she didn’t want to waste a word. It was the first time all day anybody had been overly concerned about me. I was going to need the whole roll of paper towels before this conversation was through.

  5

  The next morning I sat nursing coffee and dreading to hear the phone ring. I figured the detective would be calling once he got into the office and got his act together, and I had no idea what to tell him. I felt pretty clueless about a lot of stuff right now. I should be planning what I needed to do, both for myself and in preparation for whenever they released Dennis’s body to the family. There was a pad of scratch paper in front of me where I was trying to get organized enough to make a list. Any semblance of organization was slow in coming.

  I’d slept little the night before, waking up to worry or listen to strange noises probably a dozen times. None of the strange noises were Edna coming home, which was also the biggest of my worries. I couldn’t imagine where she was, or why she was gone for this long a time. She and I hadn’t ever gotten along all that well, but I was still worried for her. It just wasn’t like her to stay away from home this long for any reason.

  Nothing was appearing on my notepad. Maybe I could start with a list of names of people I needed to get in touch with today. Edna topped the list, but I had no idea where she was, so even writing down her name was useless. Carol would be good, as would Becca. I had a few questions for both of them. It would be good to talk to Heather, assuming that she’d left the sheriff’s department after I did. I felt a pang of guilt for not hanging around to make sure they released her, too. It wasn’t a huge pang of guilt, because I couldn’t have done anything to help her at that point, and I wasn’t helping myself by staying anywhere near Ray Fernandez last night.

  The person I really wanted to talk to the most was Linnette. She’d been such a sympathetic soul so far and I needed more sympathy. I also needed somebody with a clearer head than I had right now, and more detachment from all this. Before all the ruckus broke out at the Christian Friends meeting, Linnette had mentioned a roster list that she handed out to group members after their first meeting. Of course things got so confused that the roster never materialized. That was a shame, because it sure would have helped to have it now.

  I needed something besides coffee and the echoes of an empty house. What sounded best was a doughnut…or three. On the chance that Edna would show up the moment I left to get some, I knew that I didn’t dare bring a bakery box back into the house. She was a real health fiend when it came to sweets; it wasn’t just cookies she kept a watch on. Anything with white sugar involved was Edna Peete’s nemesis. A bakery run sounded better and better, though. In a few minutes, the thought of sprinkles and chocolate energized me enough to put on my tennies, leave a note for Edna and put in a call to the sheriff’s department. It was too early for Detective Fernandez to be in, thank goodness, but I left a message that I’d be available on my cell phone and headed out the door with it.

  One of the odd things about California, at least for me, is the fact that while you can get a wheat grass smoothie on almost every corner, the smoothie store is probably next door to a doughnut shop. And a Star-bucks, for that matter. But that’s not just California. For someplace that is otherwise so concerned with youth, fitness and looks, there are an inordinate number of places to get junk food in Southern California. Those pink bakery boxes are everywhere.

  Of course that’s another shock to my Midwestern sensibilities. Who decided that bakery boxes were pink? Back in the Old Country a thousand miles in all directions from oceans, bakery boxes are plain white. The first time I saw a pink one out here, I thought it was a marketing gimmick. Then I discovered a second bakery and found out that out here, virtually anything Edna bears a grudge against comes in a pink box.

  A brief three-block walk from the house was the closest cluster of pink boxes. There was also a market where one could acquire wheat grass, tofu and lots of grain and bean products in large bins. A nail salon, a few other shops and a restaurant or two rounded out the offerings in the plaza.

  I stayed on the unhealthy side of the strip mall and got myself a sedate white bag with a few goodies in it. With only one of me to buy for, I couldn’t justify an entire pink box. I got a cup of coffee, a glazed doughnut and a maple bar (which any sane Midwesterner would call a long john, but it’s a maple bar out here).

  It was too sunny to sit inside anymore. Just outside the doughnut shop was a large flat patio with benches on the edges all around, flanking the parking lot. The close-up view wasn’t too scenic, but the mountains in the distance made up for it.

  I sat with my coffee and ate one of the doughnuts. Even though this wasn’t all that different from what I’d been doing at the house, it felt so much better. Here I was surrounded by people and activity and sunshine. All that almost felt good enough to abandon the sugar rush from the remaining doughnut.

  A van pulled up in the parking lot and an older couple got out. With a shock of recognition I saw the woman was one of the Christ
ian Friends ladies from Wednesday night, Dot. She and the man were wrestling a couple of big dogs out of the back of the van, clipping leashes to harnesses. A shepherd mix and something darker, maybe in the Lab family, hopped down to the pavement.

  I tried to decide whether to say anything or not, given the way I’d torn up the meeting, but Dot made the decision for me by noticing me and calling my name as she went by. She walked over to my table and stopped and her dog, the Lab, happily plopped itself down at her feet, looking for all the world like it smiled hello.

  “Hi. Buck, wait a minute,” she called to the man and dog cruising on toward their destination. I had stood up by then and she hugged me, leash and all. “Are you okay? Linnette called me yesterday. I thought about you and Heather all night. What a mess!”

  “You can say that again.” I was beginning to be glad that a lot of Californians were huggers. It made up for my reluctant family. I told her why I was there and she gave me another hug for good measure.

  The man and second dog were back by us now, and I could see that the old adage about people looking like their animals fit in this case. Dot’s companion was a burly guy who might have looked stern if he wanted, but his blue eyes looked soft instead. He had a full head of sleek dark brown hair going silver and a mustache that was more silver with a few streaks of dark brown. All in all, he had the same coloration as the shepherd on the other end of the leash. “Honey, this is Gracie Lee, from our meeting the other night. The one I told you about.”

  “Ah. Hello. Buck Morgan.” He held out the hand that wasn’t holding a leash and shook my hand. “And this is Hondo.” The dog’s ears perked up at the mention of his name and his bushy tail beat time on the pavement.

  “Glad to meet both of you.” He had a nice handshake, and Hondo, once I held out a hand for him to sniff and had been accepted, had a great head to pat.

  “Don’t love on Hondo too much unless you want eighty pounds of dog leaning on you. He’s a sucker for affection,” Dot warned. “Seriously, though, are you all right? If I’d had your number I would have called.”