RG2 - Twenty-Nine and a Half Reasons (7 page)

“I’m sorry! But I
really
need to call Joe.”

Muffy laid on the floor and set her chin on her paws with her
you always say that
look. Okay, so maybe I did, but this time was really important.

Joe’s phone rang until it went to voice mail. I almost left him a desperate-sounding message, but I worried that he’d drive down to check on me instead of just calling back. He was already in enough trouble with his job. Instead, I tried to make it light. “Hi, Joe. The good news is I got out of work all day at the courthouse.” Tears burned my eyes. I really needed to talk to him. “The bad news is I miss you.” My voice broke. “Call me.”

After I took a shower, I laid on the sofa to watch TV, hoping to take my mind off of Bruce Wayne Decker. I pictured him sitting in his empty concrete cell on a cot, a toilet in the corner. It hit me that it could have been me there if I hadn’t proved my own innocence in Momma’s murder. I could be sitting in jail right now waiting to go to trial so Mason Deveraux could prosecute me in front of a jury of my peers while William Yates defended me.

Who was going to prove Mr. Decker’s innocence?

I checked my phone for the twentieth time, wondering if I’d somehow missed Joe’s call. Sitting around my house moping wasn’t doing any good, so I decided to go to Violet’s house early.

The new neighbors were still moving in furniture when I pulled out of the driveway with Muffy. I had no idea how they planned to get all that furniture and those kids into such a tiny house, not that it was any of my business. I’d let Mildred worry about it.

My niece, Ashley, met me at the door with squeals of delight. “Muffy!”

“Hey,” I protested, watching her and Muffy race for the back door. “What happened to the days of you shouting
Aunt Rose
?”

“That was before you agreed to share your dog with her.” Violet called from the kitchen. I found her wearing a pink ruffled apron with “Happiness is Homemade” embroidered across the top. She was making a salad while Mikey sat on the floor eating cheese crackers from a small plastic bowl.

I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of sweet tea.

Violet focused on chopping carrots. “How was your day?”

It was a trick question. If she’d heard about my courthouse drama, she’d want details. If she hadn’t, she’d be angry I hadn’t told her. I decided to test the waters. “I got picked for jury duty.”

Her head popped up and her eyes focused on me. “I didn’t know you had jury duty.”

I shrugged and grabbed a tomato. “I plumb forgot about it until Joe found my jury notice this morning.” I pulled a knife from her drawer and sliced the tomato in half on a cutting board. “Did you know you can get arrested for not showing up for jury duty?”

A frown puckered Violet’s mouth. “Joe was at the house this morning?” Her tone was accusatory.

I sighed. While this particular conversation was new, it was really a rehash of several previous arguments. “Yes, Joe was there, seeing how he spent the weekend with me, which you
knew
since we saw you at the park on Saturday and we were
together
.”

If possible, her lips pinched even tighter.

I stopped cutting and glared. “We’re not having this conversation again, Violet.”

Violet’s husband, Mike, walked in from the garage and ducked his head. “Don’t mind me. I’m heading back to change clothes.” He shot past us and down the hall.

Violet peered around the corner, her scowl deepening. “For heaven’s sakes, don’t come out in clean clothes, stinkin’ to high heaven. Take a shower, Mike!”

The shower water turned on down the hall.

Violet whacked the poor carrots with her knife as though she was beheading them. “Fine by me, Rose Anne Gardner,
I’ll
do all the talkin’ because I’ve already heard everything you’ve had to say.”

“And I could say the same, Vi.”

She blew a strand of hair out of her face, rolling her eyes. “Rose, Joe is your first boyfriend.”

“Yes, Violet, seeing how I don’t suffer from either short-term nor long-term memory loss, I’m very well aware that I never had a boyfriend until I was twenty-four.”

“Which means you’re inexperienced.”

Looking up, I grinned. “Not anymore.”

“
Rose Anne Gardner
!”

I crossed my arms. “Well you were the one who suggested a couple of months ago that I sleep with someone.”

“And I also said you shouldn’t sleep with just anyone. You need to find a boy with a nice solid family.”

“You don’t know anything about Joe’s family.”

She pointed her knife at me. “No, and neither do you, or you didn’t at least last time I heard. Has that changed?” Tilting her head, she waited with a smirk.

Her question sobered me. “No.” Joe refused to say much about his family other than he had a sister in Little Rock and his parents lived in El Dorado. In fact, he hardly said anything about his life before me. “Besides, what does it matter what his family’s like? I’m datin’ Joe, not his family.”

“A man’s family becomes important when you get married.”

“Nobody said
anything
about getting married.” I hadn’t let my mind wander that far into the future. I didn’t want to jinx us.

Violet’s face softened. “Look, Rose. Joe’s the first man you’ve dated. You’re young. Have some fun.”

“But Mike was the first boy you ever dated and look at you now.”

The shower water turned off. Violet stared at me for several moments before she put her knife down and opened the back door. “Ashley, come inside and wash your hands for dinner.” She picked Mikey up from the floor and set him in the high chair. Pausing, she looked around the kitchen, then turned to me, a sadness creeping into her eyes. “Give yourself a chance to explore your choices, Rose. Just don’t settle, okay?”

The unspoken
like me
hung in the air, even more ominous in its silence. My chest filled with dread. Violet and Mike were one of the happiest couples I knew. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Okay, Vi. I’ll think about what you said.”

Mike carried in a giggling Ashley and we sat down to eat. Without mentioning the details of the trial, I told them about my day at the courthouse, leaving out my vision in the men’s restroom. Violet would have had a stroke that I’d gone in there in the first place, and if she found out I’d been so close to a potential murderer again, she’d probably try to send a note to get me excused. I had a feeling no matter my age, Violet would always see me as the little girl who needed protecting from the world.

I went home sad and confused, and even more eager to talk to Joe. I tried him again at ten o’clock with no answer. Just as I was starting to get worried, he texted.

I can’t talk right now. Still working. I miss you, too
.

Joe told me little about his job, but he rarely worked this late, and he always called. The only time he’d had irregular hours like this since I’d know him was when he’d lived next door and worked undercover. But Joe told me he wasn’t working undercover this week and he promised that he’d never lie to me. I desperately clung to my belief in him.

Chapter Six

The air conditioning was still out in the courthouse the next morning and tempers were short. Mr. Deveraux called Detective Taylor back to the stand to finish his questioning. He didn’t ask about the lapel pin the detective found in the safe. Perhaps it was out of concern that I might pass out again, but more likely he thought it unimportant. My only hope was Mr. Yates would ask about the pin in cross-examination.

Mr. Deveraux took up his usual pacing. “Detective Taylor, did you find any fingerprints at the scene?”

“We found multiple prints and ran them all. Most belonged to store employees, but we also found Mr. Decker’s. We had his prints on file, seeing how Mr. Decker has a lengthy record with the Henryetta police department.”

“So you proceeded to question the defendant?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Deveraux paused and turned to face the jury. “And how did you know where to find Mr. Decker?”

Detective Taylor looked at the defendant. “I got his last known address from his parole officer.”

“Objection, You Honor!” Mr. Yates shouted, his face reddening beyond the pink flush he already had. “The counselor is trying to sway the jury with the details of my client’s past instead of focusing on the facts at hand.”

“Overruled.” The judge frowned. “The details of your client’s past are how the police linked your client to the crime scene.” He looked down at Mr. Deveraux. “Proceed.”

“So you went to Mr. Decker’s home and questioned him?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened during the interview?”

“Mr. Decker seemed exceptionally nervous. Nervousness is to be expected considering his past record—”

“Objection!”

“Overruled.”

The corners of Mr. Deveraux’s mouth lifted slightly as he titled his head toward Mr. Yates. “Go on, Detective. You were mentioning the defendant’s overly abundant nervousness.”

Detective Taylor cleared his throat. “Yes, as I was saying, a certain amount of nervousness is to be expected from a repeat offender such as Mr. Decker, but his was more so than the usual.”

Judge McClary pointed his gavel at Mr. Yates, whose mouth had dropped open about to protest. He pressed his lips together in an angry grimace.

“I pushed harder with my questioning about Mr. Decker’s whereabouts the night before until he contradicted himself. He first stated that he’d been home all night then said he went to the Short Stop convenience store on the corner.”

Mr. Deveraux began to pace in front of the jury box, stopping in front of the stinky man to my right. “Stopping at the convenience store is hardly a suspicious activity, Detective Taylor. What made you question his story?”

“The convenience store was closed for parking lot resurfacing that night.”

A satisfied look filled Mr. Deveraux’s eyes, and he nodded his head toward the jurors. “So… Mr. Decker was lying?”

“Yes.”

A woman behind me mumbled under her breath. “Um, mm, mm.”

“Did Mr. Decker confess?”

“No, and even though we knew he was lying, we didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him at the time.”

“Yet here he is in our fine courtroom. You must have discovered evidence to tie him to the crime.”

“Yes, sir. An anonymous tip was called in informing the police that Mr. Decker had the murder weapon on his premises. The informant said they saw Mr. Decker place an object under his house after the murder. We procured a search warrant and found a bloody crowbar in Mr. Decker’s crawl space.”

I was all too familiar with anonymous tips and planted evidence. When Sloan, a bartender I’d met at Jasper’s restaurant, had been killed, Joe planted a gun in my shed and called in a tip that the murder weapon was on my property, trying to protect me from Daniel Crocker. Luckily, I’d seen him do it and was able to avoid arrest, which was good, since I’d had nothing to do with Sloan’s murder.

But even though I wasn’t swayed by Detective Taylor’s testimony, the jurors around me were. Mrs. Baker gasped at the news, and the man to my right pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes while turning to examine Mr. Decker.

Mr. Deveraux presented the crowbar in a plastic bag, still bloodstained, as evidence. “And did you conduct DNA analysis of the blood on the crowbar, Detective Taylor?”

“Yes, the blood was determined to be a ninety-nine percent match for Frank Mitchell’s. Mr. Decker’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon as well.”

Mrs. Baker shook her head. The woman behind me mumbled again.

I had to admit, Mr. Deveraux made a good case. The jury seemed to believe it. If I hadn’t had my vision, I might have bought his reasoning, and maybe even got past the point of wondering how Bruce Wayne could pick up a crowbar, let alone whack someone with it.

Bruce Wayne Decker sat in the same chair as yesterday. He’d been doodling on the legal pad, gripping his pen in his right hand, but when Mr. Deveraux started asking about the crowbar, Bruce Wayne put down his pen and began to fidget. It was funny how the day before, I’d thought of him as Mr. Decker, but I felt a kinship to him now. I couldn’t help wondering if his dad had an obsession with Batman. Bruce Wayne wore a short-sleeved shirt and a tie and kept sticking his fingers between his collar and neck, trying to widen the gap. He looked like a man who was slowly strangling.

Then again, I guessed he was.

Mr. Yates began his cross-examination, displaying the image of the victim again. He glared in my direction, probably checking to see if I was going to pass out a second time. The heat intensified my irritation. I hadn’t passed out because of the picture.

I studied the image just to prove it didn’t bother me, even though my stomach churned enough to make a batch of butter. Staring at the dead man’s head, I wondered how the murderer swung the crowbar hard enough to bash in the victim’s right temple.

Watching Bruce Wayne, who’d resumed his doodling, I realized he was right-handed. I imagined him picking up the murder weapon and striking. It would have hit the victim on the left side, not the right. A left-handed person would have hit him on the right side.

The man in my vision was left-handed.

A clue. I squirmed in my seat with excitement, only to get frustrated when Mr. Yates didn’t bring it up in his questions.

Mr. Deveraux called the coroner as the next witness to declare that the victim had died from blunt-force trauma to the head. Mr. Yates had little to ask.

Judge McClary adjourned for lunch, growling about the heat. “If they don’t get this goddamned air conditioning fixed soon, I’m gonna start arresting people for contempt of court.”

As soon as Marjorie Grace dismissed us from the juror room, I went outside to call Joe while I waited for Neely Kate. I still hadn’t heard from him and I was starting to worry. His phone rang twice before a woman answered, breathless. “Joe’s phone.”

I froze, recognizing the voice.

“Hello?” she asked.

Why was Hilary answering Joe’s phone? My throat closed off and I had to push out the words. “I need to speak to Joe.”