Homecoming Homicides (7 page)

“I asked them.”

“You talk to them?”

“Yes, of course. They’re not monsters. They’re human beings.”

“You’re a soft touch, Flippy. I’m surprised you haven’t offered to take them home with you. I’m going to have to insist you stop associating with the homeless people.”

“Insist?”

“Strongly recommend.”

“Why?”

“For the obvious reasons,” Luke answered. “What if one of them is the killer disguised as a homeless man? What if he’s biding his time, waiting right outside your door until you’re alone, waiting for the right moment before he grabs his next victim? There’s a very real possibility you could be in danger.”

“Why do you even care?” Flippy inquired.

“I don’t.” Luke fidgeted with a photo on the desk and did his best to look aloof.

“Well, then let’s drop this whole protection façade. And tell me why you’re really here. It’s not to babysit me or to protect me, as you claim. You’re pumping me for information, information I don’t have or don’t remember.”

“You let me be the judge of that.”

“You don’t even want me on this task force. You’d like the campus police to disappear. You don’t even want to be here.”

“I sure as hell don’t want to be here babysitting a bubble-headed bimbo.”

“Bimbo?”

“I’m not the one who goes to bars, gets hammered, and picks up the first guy she sees.”

Flippy frowned. “Are we back on that tired horse again? I told you, you need to get over that.”

“And I told
you
I’m already over it. I don’t
need
you. You’re all wrong for this assignment, and I’m going to tell the chief that.”

“You don’t think I have the brains to be on this task force, do you?” Flippy challenged.

“I never said that.” Luke’s belligerent stare said it all.

“Not in so many words. You called me a bimbo.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking. Are you a mind reader now, like Crystal Ball Kate?”

“When it comes to you, yes. You’re pathetically transparent.”

Luke narrowed his eyes and pierced her with his steely gaze. “You don’t have the sense you were born with. Take the homeless men. What you’re doing is breaking the law. Did you know Graysville just passed an ordinance against homeless drifters? You’re not allowed to feed them. No more soup kitchens or homeless shelters. We’re trying to clean up Graysville. You could be fined.”

“Then let them fine me. I think it’s shameful that the city is trying to shut them down.”

“You need to call the police about them,” Luke smirked, in his best back-to-business voice.

“I thought
you
were the police. And I did call the police to see if there was some kind of homeless shelter that could take them in. You know what their advice was? Turn on the sprinkler system and hose them down. Even if I didn’t deem it cruel and unusual punishment to douse a poor, unfortunate homeless person, the campus police department can’t afford a sprinkler system. So I let them stay. Anyway, I like having them around. There’s safety in numbers.”

Luke examined her like she had a screw loose. He probably wouldn’t understand that she found a measure of comfort in the presence of those homeless men who slept in the generous shade of the box hedges that lined the front of her office window. And now a growing number of them were making their home in various-sized cardboard boxes, jockeying for position and settling in for a long winter.

One man had told her he’d been drawn to the smell of the rosebushes outside her office, that the smell of roses reminded him of home.

“A couple of those guys are pretty scruffy looking,” Luke said. “Have you seen the way they just walk up and down Main Street, wearing all the clothes they own on their backs? They carry all their possessions in large plastic black garbage bags, and they reek. Some of them probably haven’t bathed in months.”

“But the smell from DaVinci’s kind of masks the scent.” Flippy laughed, not wanting to admit to Luke that she was getting used to their odor.

“You mean the stench,” Luke said. “When I got here, one of them was trying to sniff freon out of your air-conditioning unit.”

“Why?”

“To get high, Miss Crisis Management, Homecoming Queen Runner-Up, who doesn’t know what’s going on right outside her own office.”

“I know everything that’s going on.”

“You need to get a lock put on that valve,” Luke argued, like he was talking to a recalcitrant child.

“I’ll get Misty right on that. Breathing those fumes can’t be good for them.”

Luke shook his head and his face grew serious. “Look, there’s a meeting of the parents of the victims down at the Graysville police station this afternoon. Chief Bradley would like you to go, to reassure the loved ones that we are doing everything possible to find the killer.”

“Is it a press conference?”

“No press allowed. Just family. If there were media, do you think the chief would miss the opportunity to grab the spotlight away from the FBI?”

“Why does he need me, then?”

“Because you’re one of them.”

“One of them?”

“You know, a beauty queen.”

“Not technically. I was a first runner-up last year.”

“You know what I mean. You’re beautiful. Their daughters were beautiful. They will relate to you.”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

“Those girls are a different breed,” Luke explained.

“They’re just people,” Flippy said. Luke wasn’t the only person who harbored that misconception about beauty pageant contestants.

“Beautiful people,” Luke said stubbornly. “Like you.”

“You think I’m beautiful?” She knew it wasn’t an appropriate time to fish for compliments, in the middle of a murder investigation, but her bruised ego needed reassurance.

“Well, hell, you know you are,” Luke said angrily. Then he closed up tighter than a clam. A second later he blurted out, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

“Do I look like I’m having fun? Luke, we’ve got to find this guy. We have to do whatever it takes. I don’t want one more girl to be sacrificed because maybe I missed something. What are we missing?”

“If we don’t leave now, we’re going to miss the meeting at the station. By the way, Crystal Ball Kate and her husband are going to be there.”

Flippy’s face lit up. “I can’t wait to meet them. You know, you could learn something from them.”

Luke sneered. “This case needs more than hocus pocus. We don’t have time to play psychic games. They’re just the flavor of the month. But hey, we don’t have much else to go on. So maybe a little help from the cosmos isn’t such a bad thing. It can’t hurt.” Luke gathered up the photos scattered around Flippy’s desk and replaced them in the manila files before he grabbed Flippy’s hand and led her out of her office.

“Misty, your boss will be down at the Graysville police station for the rest of the afternoon,” Luke instructed. “You have a file drawer around here with a lock on it? I need you to lock up these photos and the files on Flippy’s desk until we get back.”

“You can’t order my receptionist around,” Flippy said, frowning.

“You can order me around anytime, Officer Slaughter,” Misty remarked, tossing her blonde curls and gazing into Luke’s eyes as she angled her body to give him the best view of what she had to offer.

“In fact, you can take me into custody any time you’d like,” she continued, holding out her hands submissively in front of her and slipping a note into Luke’s back hip pocket.

“Call me,” she mouthed.

Flippy twisted her face in exasperation. How her receptionist managed to stuff that shapely body of hers into so little clothing was a mystery. And the blatant flirting? Totally inappropriate in the office. She was going to have to have a serious talk with Misty.

Luke straightened and made his best effort not to stare at Misty, but he couldn’t help strutting out of the office like a peacock.

Men. They’re all alike. They are all cheaters. Just like my father.

When she and Luke left the office, the homeless guys were fast asleep in the bushes, the blankets she had brought them wrapped around their frail bodies, empty beer bottles lined up around them, propped up like a protective glass army. They had been careful to avoid crushing the rosebushes.

“Jesus, Philippa. You’ve got to get rid of them.”

“Ssh, they’ll hear you,” she cautioned.

“They’re passed out,” Luke said. “Dead to the world. Don’t you know anything? Your bleeding heart is going to get you into trouble one day.”

Chapter Five

Flippy knew she was in trouble when, earlier that day, she was summoned by her boss, Elizabeth Beckham, director of campus security, to her office at Tanner Hall. Waiting outside the director’s office reminded Flippy of the day she had been tapped for the Homecoming Homicides Task Force.

Then, too, students were milling around, huddled in corners, holding on to each other. Talking in whispers. Talking about the missing girl. Flippy took a deep cleansing breath. This couldn’t be good. She had never been summoned to the director’s office before. Had she screwed up somehow? Was she going to get fired? She’d tried to operate under the radar, to keep her head down, but when she applied for a job with the Homecoming Homicides Task Force, she knew she was opening herself up for scrutiny. Defeated, Flippy had visions of going back home to Atlanta a failure. And having to listen to her parents tell her “I told you so” again. She knocked on the director’s door.

“Come in.” The director’s gruff voice.

The director was an imposing, but attractive, African-American woman, her hair more salt than pepper, who didn’t tolerate nonsense from anyone. Born in England, she had the most beautiful British accent. When she spoke you felt you were being addressed—or dressed down—by the Queen herself, and she was rumored to have balls like Patton and the sterling credentials of Sherlock Holmes Meets Scotland Yard.

What she was doing in this backwater college town was a great mystery. The university had probably paid boatloads of money to get her here, and now their investment was paying off, because she was someone you’d definitely want on your side in a crisis.

The director had picked up Flippy’s resume, riffled through it, then looked straight at her.

“You have excellent grades, impeccable references, impressive internships. Tell me, Philippa, why do you want this job?”

“I’m a Public Relations major but I minored in Criminology. This job would allow me to utilize my skills in both areas.”

“That’s a pretty answer, an answer I’d expect from a beauty queen, but why do you
really
want this job?”

Flippy hesitated and stiffened her spine.

“I need this job,” she blurted. “My rent is due at the end of the month, and I don’t have the money to pay it.”

“Can’t your parents help you out?”

“I pay my own way. I paid for my education myself.”

“I see,” said the director.

But she didn’t see. Not really.

“It says here you’re from Atlanta. Why don’t you go back there? Why are you staying in a small town like Graysville?”

Flippy could ask the director the same question, but it was hardly appropriate. The director was not on trial here.

That’s a question her parents had asked her dozens of times. Graysville was a great college town, but why would anyone consciously choose to stay there after they graduated?

“I don’t, that is, I can’t go back,” Flippy said.

“Can’t or won’t?”

Flippy thought about telling the director her story. Her pathetic story. But she didn’t want to air her family’s dirty laundry in her boss’s office. That wouldn’t elicit much sympathy. No one felt sorry for a beauty queen who not only had the looks but all the other advantages in life. No one could see what was wrong with that idyllic scenario. In Flippy’s mind, going home was tantamount to giving up.

“I didn’t want to take any money from my parents,” Flippy said.

The director’s doubtful look indicated a realization there was more to the story, that it wasn’t just about the money, but she had the grace to let it go as she ruffled through her papers again.

“It says here you were the university’s homecoming queen last year.”

“Well, I wasn’t really the homecoming queen. I was the first runner-up, and when—” Flippy tried to swallow the big lump forming in her throat and hold back the Niagara Falls of tears threatening to spill over.

“As I recall, the homecoming queen was killed,” the director said. “That was before I got here. It was actually the reason I was recruited. That case was never solved.”

“No.”

“But there was talk, there were rumors, that you might have been involved, since you were in line for the crown, is that right?”

Flippy was suddenly tired. Her shoulders sagged and the bluster seeped right out of her, like from a defective balloon. She should have known she would never get away from the cruel accusations, the snide remarks, the speculation, the headlines casting doubt on her innocence. The jokes about Philippa Tannenbaum, the Susan Lucci of beauty pageants, who’d finally found a way to win the crown.

Of course, she hadn’t killed Melinda Crawford. Anyone who knew her knew that was utter nonsense. Melinda Crawford had been a first-class bitch who’d connived her way to the crown, spreading lies and stabbing the competition in the back on her way to the top, but Flippy hadn’t hated her enough to kill her. She hadn’t even wanted the crown. Her mother wanted the crown, and Flippy had suffered the indignity of every beauty pageant since grade school to please her mother.

It was ridiculous for anyone to even think she was capable of murder. She had the opportunity and the motive, but that’s as far as it got. Luke Slaughter had been there, too, supposedly shepherding them through the homecoming parade and the crowning ceremony on the field at halftime during the homecoming game. Melinda had died on his watch. If anyone should be blamed, it should be him. She supposed he’d paid for his mistakes. He’d been busted down to giving out traffic tickets to students who parked illegally on campus, and after a couple of months his application with the city police department had come through and he’d taken the job as a city cop. Then somehow he’d wangled his way onto the Homecoming Homicides Task Force. He had been given another chance. Didn’t she deserve one?