The Trouble with Tulip (43 page)

“If I can,” he replied.

“If Edna Pratt didn't pass out from fumes,” Jo said, “then that means she was pushed down where she hit her head against the window. Am I correct?”

“Not exactly. She had no other bruises or marks that might indicate she was pushed. So my theory is that she was bludgeoned on the head with something dull and square. I made some good drawings of the fatal head wound when I was doing the autopsy, and though at the time I felt certain the shape matched that of the windowsill, further study has shown that perhaps it was something else squared-edged, like a piece of wood or metal. Obviously, once she was dead, the killer hit that same implement against the widowsill, to make it look as if Edna had fallen and hit her head.”

“Could a woman have done it?” Jo asked.

“Not an older woman, unless she was abnormally strong. But a young woman, certainly. Especially in the heat of the moment.”

Jo thanked him and hung up, a sudden image coming into her mind. She recalled walking with the police through the crime scene, explaining the different oddities in the house. Jo closed her eyes, remembering the felt-covered brick on the coffee table.

Simon heard the truck before he saw it. As it came around the bend, he stood, heart pounding at the sight of the familiar purple-and-orange logo.

The money was here.

He walked to the edge of the driveway, watching as the driver put the big truck into park but left the motor running. The man climbed down from his high seat, went around back and reached inside, leaving the doors open. Then he came around to Simon, an envelope in his hand.

“Howdy,” he said. “Are you Simon Foster?”

“Yes, I am,” Simon said, reaching out to take the envelope.

Once he took it from the guy, he saw that there was a gun in the driver's other hand, aimed directly at him.

“Then you're under arrest.”

Suddenly, five men in full SWAT gear spilled out from the back of the truck, each of them with guns trained firmly on Simon. He put his hands into the air, wondering for a moment if he were still asleep and this was just a dream.

Then they had him down on the ground, one foot against his back, two men pulling his hands together behind him for the handcuffs.

Simon felt a crushing weight in his chest, more than just the weight of the cop's foot. It was the weight of betrayal and lost dreams and a dead sister.

It was the weight of his own greed.

When Jo arrived at Edna's house, she left Chewie in the yard and ran inside to dig through some boxes, trying to remember what she had done with it. She finally found it in the bottom of a trash bag: a brick, wrapped in green felt, with some steel wool affixed to the bottom.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed the police station. Once she identified herself, they put her directly through to the chief.

“Miss Tulip?”

“Chief!” she cried. “I may have found the murder weapon.”

She went on to describe the item, reminding him of what she had said at the crime scene, that Edna was probably using the brick as a sander while fixing the water rings in her coffee table.

“It's heavy, it's square, it's dull, and I bet you anything it was sitting nearby when someone came here to kill her.”

“Have you touched it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “On Saturday, and then when I came here to clean out the house for Sally Sugarman. It's in a box now.”

“It's covered in felt, you said?”

“Yes. Green felt.”

“Probably wouldn't hold a print anyway, but it's certainly worth a look.”

He asked if she could bring it straight to the coroner's office, which was downtown about a block from the police station.

“The coroner can measure it, at least,” he said. “Compare it to the measurements of the wound site. And you never know, there might be some latent prints there.”

She agreed to bring it right over, and then they hung up. She ran into the kitchen, retrieved a plastic bag, and carefully put the brick inside.

Before leaving, Jo ran out back to check on Chewie, dismayed that he had turned over his water bowl yet again. Pausing to think, she ran back into the sewing room, pulled out Edna's bundt pan she had put in the yard sale pile, then brought it into the kitchen, and filled it with water.

“Here you go, boy,” she said, carrying it outside. She set it down on the grass, grabbed a wooden stake from Edna's tomato plants, and drove it into the ground right in the center hole of the pan. “Just try to knock that over.”

In the car, Jo realized that life with a dog might yield all sorts of new possibilities for her column. Already, she had dealt with several frustrating situations, using her ingenuity to solve each one.

“That's why they call you the Smart Chick!” she said out loud to herself.

Then she drove as quickly as she could to the coroner's office.

28

R
egeneration finished their set to enthusiastic applause. They took their bows, and then Danny slipped off to the side to close the curtain. The women's group was going to have a meeting now, so the family would have to dismantle their equipment quietly and carry it from the stage through the back exit.

He had some spare time before he had to be at the studio, so he helped his sisters with all of their stuff before loading his own. By the time everything had been put away, his mother was standing in the parking lot, divvying up the love offering the women had given them.

Each share came to only forty-three dollars, and Danny wondered briefly if it had been worth it. Considering the time and trouble they'd gone to—not to mention the quality of their music—they were worth much more than that.

Aggravated, Danny told his family goodbye and climbed into his car. Before he could pull out of his parking space, however, the passenger door opened and his mother plopped down into the seat next to him.

“Wait a minute, Danny,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

“What is it, Ma? I have to get to work.”

“What's going on?” she asked. “You seem upset.”

He put the car in park, hesitated, and turned off the key. It was a cloudy day, dark and oppressive, and he wondered if his life would always be like this—lots of hard work for very little money and some big dreams that were never going to come true.

“How do you do it, Ma?” he asked her. “How do you collect these penny-ante love offerings when you know what our shows are really worth? How do you keep plugging away with the band when you know that your goals and dreams are never going to come true?”

That was probably more than she had expected to hear, Danny realized. But he was tired and frustrated, from the situation with Jo to his career as a photographer. Soon, something somewhere was going to have to give.

“You're right,” his mother said softly. “I did have big dreams when I was younger. I just had to rethink things, is all.”

“Rethink
things? How do you reconcile your desire to be a big music star with the knowledge that you just made forty-three dollars from a morning's worth of talent and hard work? It's crazy.”

“Yeah, it is,” she admitted. “I guess I just tell myself that the Lord knows what He's doing. Maybe you need to surrender.”

“But how?” Danny demanded. “How do you surrender something you want with every fiber of your being? How do you give something over to God's control when you still have to spend every waking moment trying to make it happen for yourself?”

She exhaled slowly, reached out, and patted his hand.

“Ah, Danny,” she said, “it's so hard to explain. Part of the peace I have comes from knowing that God is using me, no matter how limited the fashion. Given the choice, I would rather have performed this morning for an audience of thousands. But today God put me up in front of about sixty women, and so that's what I did instead. Hopefully, a song we sang or a story we shared touched someone in there in ways we can't ever understand. Don't you see? That's much bigger than anything I might have planned because that's letting God use me for His purposes.”

Danny closed his eyes, wondering if he could ever be as surrendered as she was.

“But why would God give me the desire to be a professional photographer if He wasn't going to let that dream come true?” he asked softly.

“You
are
a professional photographer, Danny.”

He shook his head.

“You know what I mean. I want the big leagues, Ma, the
Scene Its
and the
National Geographics
and the recognition and the respect. Do you know how hard it is to snap pictures of drooling babies all day and pretend I'm making some kind of art?”

“You're touching people's lives, honey. Can't that be enough?”

Touching people's lives
. Danny thought of the kid in the wheelchair and how he had stood up to the boy's mother. Maybe in some small way, he was doing some good in the world. But what about doing good for himself, for his career?

“As a man, I can't let this go,” he said slowly. “My dreams are just too big. Too important to me.”

He expected her to sympathize. Instead, she simply pursed her lips and then opened the door.

“You need to surrender your ambitions,” she said. “And while you're at it, you need to surrender your relationship with Jo as well.”

He looked at her, surprised that she knew.

“What?” she asked. “You didn't think your sisters would tell me? Like they had to? I've known for a long time.”

He had to laugh, hating that the women in his life seemed to know him better than he knew himself.

“What if I tell her I love her and she says she doesn't love me back?” he whispered.

“Sur-ren-der, Danny,” his mother replied slowly. “God will work it out.” Then she climbed out of the car and got into her own and drove away, leaving him there in the parking lot, alone.

“I believe we have a match,” the coroner said, peering into his microscope. “Good job, Miss Tulip.”

Her hunch had been correct. The killer had used the brick to kill Edna. Chances are, the coroner said, this brick had also been used to make the dent in the windowsill as well.