Drop Dead Beauty (19 page)

He walked over and spent a few minutes climbing through brush and broken fencing to access the car and then rummaged through the wreck before returning with her handbag and the Ziploc bag containing Jane’s diary.

“Do I even want to know what the book is all about?” he asked her, handing it over.

“Probably not.”

On the way to the hospital, Sadie called Maeva and explained the situation. By the time she was at the ER, her friend was already there with an expression of dismay and worry.

“You shouldn’t be sneaking around trying to solve murders. You should be doing your job and going home to rest. That’s it,” Maeva admonished her.

“You sound like Zack.” Sadie sighed.

“You talked to Zack?”

Sadie explained how one of the officers who attended the accident thought Sadie and Zack were still together and had called the ex-cop to let him know.

“The fact that he showed up is a good sign,” Maeva said. “He hasn’t been able to just forget about you because you’ve got someone else’s baby inside of you. He still yearns for you.”

Sadie smirked. “I think
yearns
is too strong a word. It’s probably more accurate to say I’m a thorn in his side that he hasn’t been able to remove yet.”

But Sadie liked the idea of the word. Zack “yearning” made her feel a tiny nugget of sparkling hope.

An ob-gyn came in to examine Sadie, and Maeva waited beyond the curtain until they were done.

Afterward Sadie told her friend, “They’re going to do an ultrasound just to make sure everything’s okay.” She swallowed nervously. “Do you think I hurt the baby?”

“I think that baby is probably just as stubborn and tough as you are,” Maeva said with an encouraging smile.

“Thanks.” Sadie sniffed.

Sadie went off to have jelly spread all over her belly, and for the first time she heard the baby’s heartbeat. It sounded a lot like galloping horses and almost caused her own heart to stop beating.

It was a couple hours before she was released into Maeva’s capable hands. Her friend was more than happy to take her straight home after a brief stop for tacos.

When she pulled into the driveway, Maeva offered to come inside for a while.

“It’s late and you should get home to your family,” Sadie said. “Besides, I still have to deal with Petrovich.”

“He’s still hanging around?” Maeva frowned. “You need to leave investigations to the police and Zack now. Once you explain to him everything that just happened to you and how you’ve been risking your life and that of your unborn baby, I’m sure he’s going to realize you’ve done more than enough.”

“Sure,” Sadie said, still feeling like she hadn’t done enough. “If you get a chance tomorrow, do you want to come with me to see Rudie? He’s gotta tweak my new conjure bag.”

Maeva agreed to call her in the morning after she knew what her schedule was like at work.

Sadie walked inside and scooped up her bunny rabbit for some cuddle time. Hairy squirmed in her arms and was much more interested in hopping to the kitchen, where he thumped his hind legs impatiently for yogurt yummy treats.

“You look like hell,” Petrovich told her. “Did someone punch you on the chin? You’re all bruised.”

“No. There was a disagreement between my car and a big truck. The pickup won.”

The soreness was beginning to settle into her neck and shoulders. Although the doctor had assured her she could take over-the-counter pain medications, Sadie opted for an ice pack from her freezer and a couple antacids from a roll on the counter. She sat down at the kitchen table with the ice on the back of her neck and dropped her purse to the table with a thud.

“I got the journal,” she told him, chomping on the antacids. “I’ll read through it tomorrow. Jane’s place was like Grand Central. First, Emilio was inside but he left in his Prius. Someone else went through the place, also using a key, but I was hiding in the laundry room. Could’ve been Emilio coming back, but I don’t think so.”

“The truck followed you after you left Jane’s place?” Petrovich asked. “That’s gotta be the killer covering his tracks!”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sherlock,” Sadie grumbled. “I know you’ve been detecting for decades but you’re a little too close to this situation to see clearly.”

“Then what’s your take on it?”

“The truck guy followed me from that suicide clean in Auburn first. After that, I saw the truck at the home-invasion cleanup too, remember? I suspect he was the one who slashed the tires on my van and the car.” Sadie blew out a tired breath. “So my conclusion is, sure, it’s probably whoever killed Jane or whoever hates me at this very moment. I’m hoping that’s Martin Brun. I asked Zack to look into it and, at the very least, find out what Martin drives.”

“He works at a car lot,” Petrovich reminded her. “Chances are good he could get his hands on any vehicle he wanted.”

“A very good point, but for now that’s all I got. I’m going to bed.” She got up from the table and took the journal with her.

Sadie crawled under the covers, closed her eyes, and thought about babies, ghosts, lunatic car salesmen, and deviant estheticians. Then she thought about making herself a smoothie. To distract herself from all those thoughts she opened the plastic bag on her bedside table and took out the journal. She flipped through the thick book and saw that Jane was meticulous about putting dates in the upper-right corner of each new entry. Some days she’d written a page or two, while other times there were only a few lines.

The first entries in this journal had been written two months earlier. Sadie read the first few pages. Jane’s writing documented her feelings of unhappiness with Martin, calling him lazy and complaining that even though he’d never been helpful around the house, at least before he’d been a good lover—but now even that area of their life was limp. She appeared to have been indecisive about breaking up with him. One day she was sure it was time to let him go and the next she held hope things might get better between them. Jane was every woman in the world stuck in the limbo of an ambivalent love life.

Early on in the journal Jane mentioned going to Jonelle’s Spa for a back massage after receiving a gift card from a friend for her birthday.

“Aha!” Sadie proclaimed.

She eagerly read about Jane’s first spa visit . . . the lavender-scented oils and Jane’s aching, knotted muscles that were untied under the masseuse’s expert ministrations. And then . . . nothing. Emilio failed to make any special deliveries to Jane’s lady garden. Jane described in flowery prose every aspect of her birthday, including how much she was looking forward to her evening with boyfriend Martin. She’d been hoping Martin would go all out to make her birthday celebration special. She wrote that the massage was relaxing, but she’d been revved up to spend time with her boyfriend.

“I just bet she was,” Sadie smirked.

In bold capitals, Jane wrote that Martin gave her a coupon to get her oil changed and had his mother bake her a cake. Then he’d sat on the sofa and watched a ball game.

“Loser,” Sadie muttered.

Jane had ended that day’s entry with a frowny face.

With a sigh that turned into a yawn, Sadie turned the page, hoping the next entry described a brighter day in Jane’s life.

It didn’t. The next couple days were all about her work, and the only excitement was a coffee date with Dean where she’d agreed to stop cashing his alimony checks. She’d even mentioned Sadie’s name, writing that she’d been surprised to learn from Dean that Sadie was some kind of psychic.

A couple pages later, Sadie hit pay dirt in the journal. The page was an endless doodle of rainbows, happy faces, and flowers all surrounding one name in beautiful, loopy cursive:
Emilio!!!

At the bottom of the page under the decorative drawings were just a couple sentences where Jane described receiving a call from the masseuse, offering her half off her next massage. She’d taken him up on his offer and booked a time that very day to help make up for Martin’s crappy birthday celebration. Jane had been rewarded by Emilio’s attentions and wrote,
Emilio said he couldn’t keep his hands off me!!!

Jane had continued onto the second page, describing a few details with many more exclamation marks that caused Sadie to blush.

“Okayyy.”

The weeks went into months and it was obvious that Jane was spending a helluva lot on those Jonelle massages and also tipping Emilio quite heftily. Toward the end of the entries, Jane had begun to describe a relationship with the masseuse outside the spa. Although she was still seeing and paying Emilio at Jonelle’s, they’d taken their relationship beyond the spa. Dean was annoyed with her about continuing to cash checks and Martin had no money coming in. Jane described her and Emilio sneaking around and hiding their affair so as not to be caught by Martin. Sadie opted to skip ahead in the journal to the last entry that Jane had written the day before she was killed:

Is it possible to be in love with three men?

Jane had ended one day asking her journal that question, but it was the next day when she proceeded to answer it:

I love parts of both Martin and Emilio, but I think it’s Dean who is my fish that got away. He’s the one I think of the most. I want him back but he’s going to kill me!

Chapter 14

Sadie didn’t sleep much after that. Her mind was racing as if she’d consumed a box of chocolates and washed it down with a dozen shots of espresso. She sprang from her bed, thinking she should talk to Dean about all that she’d read, but there were obvious problems with that. She couldn’t very well tell Dean that Jane wrote in her diary that she thought Dean would kill her. Especially when she read through the rest of the diary and realized Jane’s concern mostly surrounded the fact that she wanted to break it off with Martin and Emilio and, hopefully, reunite with Dean. If she turned the diary over to the police, they might read that Dean felt threatened by the fact that Jane wanted to reunite with him.

Finally, her rambling thoughts drifted away from Jane’s murder and toward the counting of livestock and she fell into a fitful sleep. The next morning Maeva called and told Sadie she’d get her early to head down to the Pottery Hut. Sadie’s body was achy and sore from the car accident. She had a hot shower to soothe her bruised body and then sat with Dean in the kitchen and talked about reading the journal.

“So does she say she was afraid of Martin?” Dean asked.

“No. Not really. She did say he was a jerk and that part of her loved both him and Emilio. Lots of entries said she was torn between wanting to make things better with Martin or breaking it off.”

“Damn.”

“A bigger part of her seemed to want to get back together with you, but she was worried how you’d take it.” Sadie watched Dean’s face and the detective scowled.

“I was pissed.” Dean folded his arms across his chest. “I was done . . . long done with the two of us being together. I’d asked Jen to marry me, for God’s sake. Jane and I had our time together and she opted to play hide the salami with Car Boy.” He shook his head and blew out a breath. “She was one confused woman,” said Sadie.

“Are we back at square one then?”

“Maybe . . .” Sadie tried to sound noncommittal. “I’ll need to read it some more. There are lots of details in there. She was pretty wordy.”

“Got that right.” He laughed. “It was the way she described Martin doing it to her that drove me crazy.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t confront her about her affair at the time,” Sadie said. “Reading about it must’ve hurt like hell.”

“Yeah, it did. It made my head want to explode.”

Sadie was grateful Maeva rang the doorbell at that moment. She didn’t want to think about exploding heads. Particularly when, in the end, it had been Jane’s head that had exploded all over that treatment room at Jonelle’s Spa.

“This was on your front step,” Maeva told Sadie when she opened the door. She handed Sadie a potted plant thick with pink flowers. “The note is from Zack.”

“You read the note?” Sadie shot her friend an annoyed look.

Maeva shrugged. “You took a while to answer the door.”

Sadie frowned at the plant. “I understand red roses mean love and yellow mean friendship. What does it mean when you’re on-again-off-again boyfriend brings you a potted plant?”

“It’s an azalea,” Maeva said. “I think it means roses will wilt and die within days but this is a plant that will live forever and bloom like our love.”

“You are so making that up.”

Sadie laughed anyway and she brought the pot inside, placing it on her coffee table. She took the small card from the envelope.

Thinking about you. Zack

She left the house with Maeva.

“He didn’t exactly profess his love, did he?” Sadie grumbled as she climbed into her friend’s car.

“No. But he came to get you when you were hurt in an accident and then took the time to drop off flowers,” Maeva pointed out. “That’s a helluva lot more than most men would do for a woman after finding another gardener had planted a seed in what he considered his personal fertile soil.”

“That’s a disgusting analogy,” Sadie said, buckling her belt.

“Sorry. I have a group reading at a gardening club this afternoon. I’m trying to get in the mood.”

They arrived at the Pottery Hut to find the blinds drawn and a crooked
CLOSED
sign hanging in the window.

“Huh. That’s weird.” Maeva glanced at her watch. “He opens at ten. It’s ten thirty.”

Sadie didn’t think it was weird at all. If she spent her day selling ceramic bowls and vases she’d probably try to liven things up by sleeping in once in a while too.

“I’ll just call him,” Sadie told her.

She dug around in her purse for her cell phone and then, suddenly, a loud commotion sounded from inside the shop. There were shouts followed by the sound of breaking glass.

Maeva began pounding on the door.

“Rudie! Are you okay in there?” she demanded.

Sadie glanced through the slits in the blinds just as a large colorful bowl sailed across the room and smashed against the window in the spot she was looking in. She jumped back.

“Maybe this isn’t a good time.”

Maeva banged even harder on the door.

“Rudie! Open up!”

And then the door did open and little Rudie zipped outside and snatched it shut behind him just as a ceramic cup smashed against the glass.

They jolted in shock.

“Are you under attack? What the hell’s going on in there?” Maeva demanded.

“Should we call the police?” Sadie asked.

Rudie ran a shaky hand through his hair and hooked his thumb in the direction of his shop.

“It’s the hex.” He swallowed audibly. “I misplaced my banishment conjure bag and she—she appeared.”

“Wow, she’s pissed,” Sadie said, her eyes wide.

“She’s going to kill me!” Rudie cried. “And destroy my store!”

Maeva whirled to face Sadie. “You’re good at dealing with spirits and making them move on. You need to go in,” she told her.

“Whoa. No way. First of all, I don’t want to get knocked out by a flying soup bowl. Second, I’ve got that problem, remember? Whatever killed her will knock me on my ass before I can help her.”

“It was cancer.” Rudie took an uncertain step toward Sadie. “You can’t catch cancer just by talking to her, and she was feisty right up until the end. She was talking about killing me with her last breath and, I was told, she never looked like she was in pain. Just pissed off. You wouldn’t have to worry about feeling pain.” He nodded and a slow smile crept across his face. “This might work. If you could convince her to move on, I’d owe you big-time for the rest of my life.”

Sadie figured you could never tell when it would help to have a potter who dabbled in voodoo Wiccan magic indebted to you for an eternity. She reluctantly agreed to try and talk to the Hex of Strife.

“I need a name,” Sadie told Rudie. “I can’t very well go in there calling her the Hex of Strife.”

“It’s Polly.”

“Okay. Fine.” Sadie nodded and took a big gulp of air. “I’m going in but you’re my backup.” She pointed at each of them. “If things start to go sideways, you gotta get me out.”

Maeva and Rudie nodded in agreement.

When she stepped inside the Pottery Hut everything was still. Not a spirit was stirring and not a pot was whirring to smash against her head. Sadie whistled softly as she stepped across broken bits of ceramics until she was in the middle of the room.

“Hello, Polly.” Sadie cleared her throat. “You don’t know me, but I understand we have a lot in common.”

There were a few beats of silence and then a womanly shape appeared across the room leaning casually against the wall. Once the shape fully emerged from the spirit side, Sadie couldn’t believe her eyes. She may have been the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen: tall with a sheet of dark hair that fell midway down her back, pale skin, and amazing big eyes that watched Sadie with a mixture of fire, brimstone, and laughter.

“Oh really? What is it that we have in common?” the spirit asked with a throaty chuckle. “Do you hate Rudie too?”

“Wow. I don’t mean to stare.” Sadie shook her head. “I’m sorry but I guess I’m a little surprised because you’re so beautiful.”

Polly threw back her head and laughed.

“Was,” the spirit corrected. “I
was
beautiful and now I’m just . . .” She stepped backward until her shape was absorbed by the wall and disappeared. A moment later she was back in the room. “And now I’m just nothingness. A vague wisp of air to some. A cold chill to others. How come you can see me? Are you one of my ex-husband’s many metaphysically enhanced clients?”

“Yes, I guess I am.”

She tilted her head. “So if you don’t hate Rudie, what do we have in common?”

“Man troubles.” Sadie sighed and took a seat at one of the kiddie tables. “I’m pregnant but I’m not in love with the child’s father. It was a onetime thing and we thought we were careful, but we weren’t careful enough, so one energetic sperm changed my life. Then there’s Zack. I love him . . .” She frowned. “At least I think I love him but I’m pregnant with another man’s baby, so that’s going nowhere and—”

“Is this going to be all about you?” Polly asked with a world-weary moan. “Because I’d rather just think of ways to murder Rudie in his sleep. I was thinking of slicing his throat with a shard from one of his favorite ceramic pieces that we received as a wedding gift. Poetic justice, don’t you think?”

“I don’t get it. Why are you doing this?”

“Because he’s an asshole who dumped me.” She looked pointedly at Sadie. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have the love of your life look at you like you’re something he stepped in? Treat you like you’re a heap of last week’s trash? Do you have any idea what that did to my ego?”

“Yes. I think I have a pretty good idea.” Sadie tilted her head and stared. “I know the heart wants what the heart wants, but I’ve just gotta say this: You’re stunning. You could’ve had anyone. Sooo . . .”

“I know!” she shrieked. “You’ve met Rudie so you know the man is a frickin’ troll! A pint-sized version of a circus freak!” Her voice had taken on an ethereal power that caused the remaining dishes in the room to vibrate. “But I loved him. He made me feel beautiful on the
inside.
When we met, it was like he saw beyond what I looked like on the outside to see the real me.” Polly was flying around the room with agitation, and then abruptly she stopped and said, “You know what he said to me once?”

“What?”

“He told me that he could imagine kissing every wrinkle on my face when I was a hundred years old and that I would be even more beautiful to him then.” Her voice shook with emotion.

“What happened to change that?”

“That’s what I’d like to know!” she yelled. “One minute we’re living happily ever after and the next he dumped me!”

Sadie was beginning to feel achy and fatigued and knew it was only a portion of what Polly had felt toward the end as cancer took its toll on her body. She didn’t want to feel the rest. She needed to speed this up.

“Aren’t you curious about what’s beyond?” Sadie asked, trying to gain control. “I mean, this whole thing with Rudie must be getting old by now.”

“Nope. I’ve got nothing better to do.” She checked her manicure nonchalantly. “Besides, he broke my heart. He deserves to die, and then we’ll be together. It’s quite simple really.”

“Ohhh.” Sadie nodded. “You still love him.”

“No I don’t!” Polly shouted. “I despise the man. I hate the very air he breathes!”

“But you just said you want him to die so you can be together.”

“Well, sure. So I can torture him on the same level. This way it’s not fair at all. He just puts a stupid sack around his neck and voila, I can bluster ’til the cows come home and he feels nothing. It’s like I’m not even there!”

“Hmmm.” Sadie tapped her finger on the little table in front of her. “You know what might be better than him coming over to your level? What if he was to live his entire life, and at the end he discovers that the biggest mistake he ever made was letting you go and not spending every second with you before you passed away? Wouldn’t that be better? Then on his death bed his biggest regret is not being with you and his dying wish would be that you would appear to help him go over to the other side, and then you could be together for an eternity on the same level spiritually and romantically.”

“Wow.” Polly nodded appreciatively. “You’re good.”

“So you’ll go with that plan?”

“You’re not
that
good.”

“It was worth a shot,” Sadie said. “Let’s forget about Rudie for a minute. Tell me what I can do to help you. It’s gotta suck being so angry all the time.”

Polly began pacing back and forth.

“You know what I really want? I want to know
why
. I never got a straight answer out of the guy about why he wanted a divorce. He said things weren’t working out and he didn’t want to be married anymore. That’s all he said!” She grabbed the end of a table and heaved it over so that it flipped on its side with a crash. “That’s not an answer.”

“You’re right.” Sadie glanced around and went to a front window. She unlatched the lock and cranked the window open, then told Polly, “You stay here and listen. I’ll be right back.”

Sadie went out the front door, thinking this could all go horribly wrong.

“Well?” Rudie and Maeva asked together.

Sadie waved them both over to the side of the building near the open window.

“Polly wants to know the real reason why you divorced her.”

Rudie rolled his eyes. “She knows why.”

“I don’t think she does. You just said things weren’t working out. For a woman in love, that’s not a real reason. Simply telling her you don’t want to be married anymore isn’t a real reason.”

“That’s what you told her?” Maeva punched Rudie in the shoulder.

“Ow!” Rudie rubbed his bicep. “Well, it was the truth.”

“There’s gotta be more to it than that,” Sadie said. “Was there someone else? Did Polly snore? Do you like guys?”

“What? No, no, and no!”

Sadie fisted her hands on her hips. “Then explain to my why a guy like you leaves a woman like that?” Sadie turned to Maeva. “Polly is movie-star beautiful.”

“I know; I was at their wedding.” Maeva frowned at Rudie. “And everybody there said you were the luckiest guy in the world. I was stunned when I heard you were divorcing her. She adored you.”