Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (17 page)

“Hey, Rita,” he said as he approached the checkout, “who taught you that bagging technique? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

She turned icy blue eyes on him. “What do you want?”

“Just need to talk to you for a few minutes. Can you take a break?”

She folded her arms and leaned a hip against the counter. “I don’t get many breaks and I don’t want to waste one of them. Do your talking right here and now before another customer comes through.”

“You’ve heard about Shelley Beecher’s death?”

“Who the hell hasn’t? I’m sick of hearing about the poor sweet angel. A whole month of that was enough.”

“Did you have something against Shelley?”

“Hey, now wait a minute.” Rita drew herself up straight. “I know how you cops think. If you’re desperate for suspects, go look somewhere else. I didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“But you didn’t like her.”

“I didn’t hardly know the girl, but she was making a damned nuisance of herself. I was tired of her pestering me. I know it sounds awful to say it, but I was kind of relieved when she went missing, because she wasn’t bothering me anymore.”

“What did she want from you?”

Rita ran a hand under her hair and lifted it off her neck with a self-conscious movement she’d probably perfected in front of a mirror before she hit puberty. “What do you think? She wanted me to help her prove Vance was innocent. Her big cause.”

“Why did she believe you could help?”

Rita expelled a long sigh. “She had this idea that if I kept going over and over what happened, I’d remember something she could use. But I don’t know anything I haven’t already told the police.” She leaned a little in Tom’s direction, and her voice dropped to a confidential tone. “Don’t you think she could’ve been killed by some man she hooked up with? Maybe they were together, you know, and things got a little rough—I heard she had marks like she was strangled, and you know some people go in for that kind of thing when they’re—”

“No,” Tom said, stifling the desire to strangle Rita. “We’re sure that’s not how it happened. She was abducted. She was murdered. I’m trying to find out why.”

“Well, we’re right back where we started, I guess. I don’t know a thing that’s gonna help you.” Settling her hip against the counter again, Rita folded her arms, looking both casual and defensive at the same time.

“Did Shelley say she had evidence against somebody else for Brian’s murder? Did she name anybody?”

“Oh, she was sure she was gonna prove somebody besides Vance did it, but she was real cagey about it, you know? I kept trying to find out who she had in mind, you can’t blame me for being curious, but she’d just smile or she’d say,
You’ll find out soon enough. Wait and see.
”

“Did you believe her?”

“What, that she was gonna clear Vance and get him out?” Rita shrugged. “I didn’t know what to believe.”

“Do you believe Vance killed Brian?”

For a moment Rita said nothing, avoiding Tom’s eyes as she brushed specks of lint from her smock. “I hate that he’s locked up, that’s all.”

“I hear he’s doing okay,” Tom said. “He stays out of trouble and nobody bothers him.”

“Yeah, because he’s a teacher. He helps guys write letters and study for their GEDs, stuff like that. I heard he even taught a couple of guys to read. He’s doing something for them, so they let him be.”

“Sounds like you keep in touch. Do you visit him?”

“I’ve been to see him now and then since they moved him closer to home. The place gives me the creeps. And the guards look at me like they’re taking my clothes off in their minds. I get these awful nightmares afterward, every single time.” She shook her head. “I’d go crazy if I was locked up.”

“Were you involved with anybody else back then, besides Vance and Brian? Was there anybody else who might have had it in for Brian?”

Rita gave a harsh laugh. “Believe it or not, two at a time’s my limit.”

“It must have been…uncomfortable, all of you being in the band together.”

“To tell you the truth, I thought it made us better. Lots of sparks flying around on stage when we played.”

“That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”

“You don’t understand. You have to give the music everything you’ve got. It has to come out raw, you know? That’s what made us special. We didn’t get up and sing pretty little mountain folk songs. We mostly sang what Brian and Vance wrote, and we really tore into it. We got the audience buzzing like we’d thrown a live wire at them.” She broke off with a sigh. “We were special. Everybody said so.”

“Why did you stop singing after Brian’s murder? You could have gone to Nashville or wherever and gotten started on your own. You could go on one of those TV talent shows and become a star overnight.”

Eyes downcast, Rita pulled a cloth from under the counter and wiped away a wet spot left by the last customer’s sweating ice cream carton. “I don’t know. I was good with the band. I was part of something special with them. By myself I’m just one more wannabe girl singer. I’d get lost in the crowd.”

“I’ve heard you sing, Rita. You don’t need Brian Hadley’s band to make you sound good. And your looks will always make you stand out.”

A faint smile tugged at one corner of her mouth, but she said, “I couldn’t make it on my own. Like Jordy says, if you don’t know when to cut your losses, you’ll never be happy.”

“Jordy Gale? Are you back with him again?”

Her cheeks flushed and the look she gave Tom mixed defiance and shame. “I don’t need to hear your opinion about it. I hear enough of that crap from my mother.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“He’s the only man in this county who doesn’t treat me like trash. I can’t even walk down the street without some creep sidling over and brushing up against me. Even men coming through the grocery line whisper dirty stuff at me while I’m ringing up their beer and junk food.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tom said.

“Jordy treats me with respect. He knows what it’s like when people won’t give you a chance. Last time he was in rehab, back in the winter, he got fired from his job in Manassas, can you believe that? They said they couldn’t have a junkie working for them and going into people’s houses and maybe stealing from them.”

“That’s a legitimate concern with an addict,” Tom said. “I like Jordy, but if I thought he was using again, I wouldn’t let him in—”

“You’re as bad as everybody else!” Rita cried. She glanced around as if afraid customers had overheard, but nobody was nearby. She went on in a quiet, urgent tone. “Can’t you give him credit for trying to change and do better? He stayed in that damned hospital two whole months the last time. He’s back home now, so I can help him stay clean. God knows his mom and dad won’t. They’re just fine with him working and making money for them, but he has to live over the shop, they don’t want him living at home.”

“I hope things work out for both of you.” Tom had his doubts about that, but at the moment he wasn’t interested in either Jordan Gale’s drug problem or Rita’s social status. “To get back to the subject, did anybody besides Vance have problems with Brian? Not over you or the record contract, but over anything at all?”

“I don’t
know
,” Rita snapped. “So you might as well stop asking. Go ask Saint Grace what was going on with Brian. She was always snooping on him, keeping tabs on everything he did and who he did it with.”

“Saint Grace? Brian’s wife?”

“Yeah. That was his nickname for her, not mine.” Rita glanced past Tom, and her face brightened with relief. “Here comes a customer. I can’t talk to you anymore.”

She turned her back on Tom and gestured to a woman who hesitated at the entrance to Rita’s aisle.

Tom left with more questions than he’d brought. Taking Rita’s advice, he set off toward Grace Hadley’s house.

***

Good timing. Grace Hadley was turning into her driveway when Tom approached her house from the opposite direction. He pulled up behind her car and parked. Grace got out and held the rear door open for her young son and daughter, but she was watching Tom with that baleful
What do you want?
expression he’d seen a lot of lately.

The kids scrambled from the car, dragging book bags behind them, and Grace shooed them toward the house as if she wanted to get them away from Tom. She wore white nylon pants, white athletic shoes, and a gaudy flowered tunic, her uniform as a dental hygienist. With her brown hair scraped back and caught in a clasp at the nape of her neck and her pale face lacking makeup except for lipstick, she appeared tired and older than her late twenties.

“Hey, Grace,” Tom said as he rounded the front of his cruiser. “Got a few minutes to talk to me?”

“I’m just bringing Mark and Lucy home from school. They’ll need a snack now.” The children had reached the front porch.

“I don’t mind waiting,” Tom said.

Grace’s lips formed a hard red line, and for a second he thought she was going to argue with him, but instead she wheeled around and marched toward the house. Tom took that as an invitation, however grudgingly extended, and followed her up the steps and inside.

The living room of the small house looked like a toy store in the aftermath of a tornado. Stuffed toy pandas and penguins crowded the couch and chairs, and a miniature truck, a six-car train, a helicopter, and three green plush dinosaurs scattered on the rug rendered foot traffic nearly impossible. Grace kicked the train aside and said, “I’ll be back in a minute. Find a spot and sit down.”

That sounded like an order, but Tom ignored it and trailed her to the kitchen, which opened off the living room.

When she noticed him leaning in the doorway, Grace paused with a gallon jug of milk in one hand. “Can’t you give me a minute to get the kids settled?”

“Go right ahead. Pretend I’m not here.”

“As if,” Grace muttered. She plopped the milk jug onto the wooden kitchen table between the boy and girl, grabbed two glasses from a cabinet, slammed the door shut, retrieved a box of oatmeal cookies from another cabinet. The house didn’t seem to have a dining room, so this must be where the family ate every meal.

The children’s placid faces showed no surprise or concern at their mother’s agitated behavior. They must be used to it, Tom realized.

When the children had full glasses of milk and the cookie box lay open between them, Grace pushed past Tom into the living room. She scooped a family of five pandas, large and small, off a chair. “Sit down.”

Tom waited for her to sit first, but she stayed on her feet. With her arms full of black and white bears, she moved to a plastic bin in a corner and tried to lift the lid with the toe of her shoe. Tom stepped in to raise it and got a glare for his trouble. Grace dumped the pandas into the bin, on top of a jumble of other toys.

“Will you
please
sit down?” she said.

“If you will. Come on, aren’t you tired? Haven’t you been on your feet all day at work?”

Grace rubbed at her forehead with her fingertips as if she had a headache. Tom pushed toys aside on the couch and Grace sat in the cleared space without acknowledging his gesture.

He took the chair she’d cleared for him, across the coffee table from her. Trying a wry grin, he gestured at all the toys. “I’m guessing overindulgent grandparents?”

Her little laugh came out sour and hollow. “You have no idea. I don’t know how to stop them. And there’s more of this junk over at their house. Well, you saw for yourself. What do you want? I’ve got a million things to do before I start dinner.”

“I need to know what contact you’ve had with Shelley Beecher and what the two of you talked about.”

Grace grabbed a plush dinosaur from the couch and began plucking at the raised plates along its spine. As if speaking to the toy, she said, “I never had a real conversation with her because I didn’t have anything to tell her. I couldn’t make her leave me alone, but it was all one-sided. I hated her raking up that stuff and trying to drag the rest of us into her stupid little—”

An angry squeal from the kitchen cut her off. With the toy still in her hand, Grace jumped up and rushed to investigate.

Sighing, Tom sat back and waited. Maybe he should have gone to see her at the dental office, pulled her away from work for a private talk. But then she would have been hurried and annoyed that he was throwing off her schedule.

After a couple of minutes of hushed instructions to her children, the words inaudible but the no-nonsense tone unmistakable, Grace closed the door between the two rooms and returned to the sofa. She stroked the plush dinosaur absentmindedly and spoke before Tom had a chance to say anything. “You know what I think about Shelley? I think she was one of those girls who get a kick out of being involved with a man who’s in prison. She might have started working on Vance’s case to get some legal experience, but it was pretty clear she got real involved with him on a personal level.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. Nobody else had said anything remotely like that. “What made you think so?”

“It was the way she talked about him, her whole attitude. She said she’d gotten to know him and she believed he had the soul of an innocent man.” Grace snorted. “The
soul.”