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  “What the hell are you accusing me of ?” he demanded again.

  Nell took a moment to calm herself and pretended to glance at her notepad. At least if the sheriff took a swing at her, Jacko would get a picture of it, she consoled herself. “I’m not accusing you of anything, but I am questioning you about letting a prisoner in your custody be sexually assaulted and possibly murdered. I’m questioning why you insist that he killed himself but seem to have no concrete evidence to that effect.”

  “Just him hanging in his cell. Not likely that anyone else put that sheet around his neck.”

  “I’m questioning why you won’t answer my questions, and why you threw Jacko out of your office using his sexual orientation as a pretext to avoid answering those same questions from him.”

  “Thom wouldn’t of caught me here on the steps going home, peppering me with questions like this,” Sheriff Hickson retorted.

  “Thom’s not here anymore, Sheriff. That’s something we both will have to deal with,” Nell replied, fixing him with a cool stare. Don’t you dare use my dead husband against me, she silently accused.

  Perhaps Sheriff Hickson got the message, or perhaps he just decided that getting to that beer waiting from him at Ray’s Bar was more important. He changed tack and said, “Well, Miz McGraw, we’re in the middle of looking into all this, and I’m gonna answer the taxpayers’ questions, but in due time. Just give us time to do an investigation before you run all this speculation on the front page. You got any last questions?”

  A last question … she could only think of one. “What if Ronald Hebert was innocent?”

  “You really think that?” the sheriff demanded.

  “I don’t know. But I know that the law of the land gave him the presumption of it.”

  Sheriff Hickson just looked at her for a moment, then down at the steps, a sudden weariness crossing his face. “I hope to hell he did do it … to hell. If he didn’t, this would cut so deep it’d never heal.” With that, he stepped around her and down the steps.

  Nell let him go. She could think of no more questions.

  She met Jacko at his car and told him it was time to go home. He nodded but didn’t start the car, looking off into the distance. Nell started to say something but no words came. Maybe there were none. She left him to go home to her children.

  She had a moment of guilt at realizing her cell phone was sitting on the seat on the car. That changed into concern when she realized that either Lizzie had forgotten to call as arranged, or Josh hadn’t come home yet. The worry carried her almost all the way home, until her headlights revealed a boy on a bicycle. She followed Josh into the driveway, glad to be there and that her children were safe.

  After taking care of mother things, like fixing something to eat that contained a few elements of something vaguely healthy and making sure that Lizzie really had done her homework (although she did forbear going over it with her editing pencil), Nell finally had a moment to assess her day. She decided to call Doug Shaun.

  She wanted to see what he knew about the death of Ronald Hebert. She was still uncertain about what she wanted out of a relationship with the chief—and realized that calling him in the evening sent a signal she wasn’t sure she wanted to send—but she felt she owed it to Jacko to see if she could find out anything.

  First she called his home number; it rang three times and then the answering machine came on the line. Nell hung up. She wanted to talk to him, but not enough to leave herself in the position of waiting for him to call her back. Instead she tried his cell phone, but she got an “out of service area” message. She called again fifteen minutes later and got the same message. Nell decided to leave it at that. She would call again tomorrow—both Doug Shaun and Sheriff Hickson, she decided. She wanted to make sure the sheriff’s investigation into what happened in his jail cells was progressing satisfactorily. Or even progressing.

  Then Nell made the phone call she really wanted to make, to Marion Nash, partly to find out what she’d decided to do about the defaced book, but also to have someone to talk to. Again, she was met with only an answering machine. I must be the only one at home tonight, Nell thought to herself.

  twenty-six

  “Nell, you have to find out what really happened” was one of the last things Nell expected to hear from Mrs. Thomas McGraw, Sr., and certainly not during breakfast. She hadn’t hesitated to pick up the phone—the morning presaged nothing more than a call about school events or who would pick up whom and where.

  “What’s going on?” Nell asked.

  “Are the children there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Call me the minute that they leave.” Adding nothing further, Mrs. Thomas hung up.

  Annoyed, Nell put the phone down, wondering what it was that Lizzie had done now. She was aware that her mother-in-law didn’t much approve of the way she was raising Josh, either—bikes instead of football or little league—but didn’t meddle as much because she didn’t think any single woman, even herself, should be raising a son.

  The children in question were involved in their usual school-morning chaos, locating books and the all-important purse that Lizzie never seemed to ever put in the same place. Josh was biking to school, so he was out the door first, and then Lizzie followed him. She was being picked up by her friend Janet and wanted to be on the curb waiting, as she considered that more adult than hanging out in the kitchen. Nell also wondered if Lizzie was operating on the belief that if her mother didn’t see her using her cell phone to chat with the friend almost at her door, then it was okay. But the world of bills would catch up with her.

  Nell took a moment to gather her own things, then called Mrs. Thomas, Sr. back.

  “Nell?” She answered on the first ring.

  “Yes,” was all Nell got out before the woman continued.

  “I’m on my way to Erma Nash’s right now. They think she may have another stroke … and maybe she should. Maybe she should just go.”

  “Why? What’s happening?” Nell asked with a glance at her watch. She wanted to be at work early.

  “The sheriff was just at her place. I was the next person he called. He knew that Erma needed someone to be with her.”

  “To be with her? Where’s Marion?”

  “No mother should outlive a child,” Mrs. Thomas, Sr. said softly.

  “Mother, what’s going on?” Nell demanded, but the chill was already in her bones, as if a part of her could hear the echo of metal screaming into metal, the death of her husband.

  “Marion,” Mrs. Thomas, Sr. answered. “It’s Marion. They say she was murdered.”

  “What!?” Nell exclaimed, the chill slamming into ice that numbed her. “No, oh, no! Not … not murdered. How?”

  “I don’t know. Only what little the sheriff told me. I’ve got to get over there. You will find out what happened, won’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.” Nell mumbled agreement, too numb to take umbrage to the preemptory note in Mrs. Thomas’s request.

  “Good. Call me later, I’ve got to go.” The line went dead before Nell was able to reply.

  She stood, frozen, her mind screaming that this was a bizarre mistake. The women she’d hugged yesterday in the coffee shop couldn’t be dead. But Nell also knew that Thom’s mother wouldn’t be spreading rumors or racing ahead of the facts. And she had no sense of humor, certainly none as bizarre as this.

  “Goddamn it!” Nell said to the empty kitchen as she slammed the phone down. “I’m just supposed to fucking investigate my friend’s death because you fucking want me to.” The curse was unlike her, but it felt good to flout her mother-in-law’s rules and the task she had dumped on her, even if Nell was the only one to hear it.

  “Marion can’t be dead,” she added, as if words could chip away at the stark reality.

  But she could be.

  Slowly the numbness lifted
and Nell felt her thoughts begin to churn. The word that burned across her consciousness was “murdered.” How? And why? She quickly gathered her things to head to the office, but she couldn’t still her mind enough to avoid wondering what had happened. Could Marion and Kate have had the kind of fight that can escalate into violence brutal enough to leave one of them dead? That seemed impossible; that was not the people she knew. Or was it just some random horror, a burglary gone wrong or a drunken brawl that had spilled over on the wrong person?

  As Nell got into her car, another dread came to her. The book Marion had shown to her—could she have been murdered because of that? And if so, did it tie into the murders of Rayburn Gautier and Joey Sayton? The dread coalesced into a wavering certainty. Improbable coincidences did happen, and that was why they made the papers—because they were so unlikely. Two and possibly three children were murdered, Marion Nash had evidence that seemed to indicate someone in a uniform had had a hand in those murders, and Marion Nash was killed. They have to be related, Nell thought. Nothing else made sense.

  Be a reporter, she admonished herself. This is all speculation and no matter how likely it seems, I can’t let it blind me to other possibilities.

  The people and the traffic seemed to go at their normal morning pace, as if no one understood that the world had been pushed further askew.

  As she pulled into the lot near the Crier, Nell wondered how people go on. When it isn’t something you can walk past, but a death in the heart of your life, how do you get up every day? Suddenly she remembered her mother-in-law’s words—no mother should outlive a child—and her even-more-haunting suggestion that it might be better for Mrs. Nash to fall into oblivion than live with the knowledge of her daughter’s death. As much as Mrs. Thomas, Sr. rankled Nell, the woman had lost a child. And although Nell loved Thom and missed him, she’d always lived with the knowledge that one of them would leave the other behind, that death was unlikely to be kind and wait until they were old and take them together. But Thom’s mother had always thought she would outlive her son.

  As Nell entered the office, Dolan called out a cheery hello.

  Nell couldn’t return his greeting, instead said, “I just heard Marion Nash was murdered.”

  “What?” Dolan said, all cheer gone from his face.

  “That’s all I know. I’m on my way to see if I can find out more.”

  “Oh, God, Nell, that’s too much. This town can’t take so many murders.”

  Nell merely nodded and went to her office. She paused there only long enough to see if she had any phone messages, but there were none.

  “I’m going over to the police station. Tell Carrie and Jacko we’re doing a story conference at ten and I want them here,” she instructed Dolan. Then she added, “If you see them, that is.”

  “Poor Mrs. Nash,” Dolan said. “Who’s going to take care of her now?”

  Nell didn’t answer; instead she headed out the door and across the green to talk to Doug Shaun. She briefly wondered if that was where he was last night when she couldn’t reach him—investigating another murder. But the timing didn’t make sense, if she thought about it. They wouldn’t wait overnight to tell Marion’s mother. Or maybe they would. She sighed. Maybe they thought Mrs. Nash could handle it better in the light.

  She felt an irrational stab of anger at the “boys in uniform” and their way of arranging the world. Not so irrational; she reminded herself of Lizzie seeing that “creepy cop” again when Boyce Jenkins was supposed to be anywhere but here.

  “Is the chief in?” Nell asked at the front desk.

  “Hi, Nell, I’m here,” Chief Shaun called, sticking his head out of his office as if waiting for her to come by. “Come in.”

  As Nell seated herself across from him, he said, “I gather you’ve heard the news.”

  “About Marion Nash? Yes, I have, although only that she was murdered. No details.”

  “How did you find out?” he asked, but it wasn’t in the accusing tone that the sheriff might have used. It seemed more a question about what had happened to Nell.

  “My mother-in-law, Mrs. Thomas McGraw, Sr., is very close to the Nashes. She called me this morning as she was on her way to sit with Mrs. Nash.” Nell didn’t add the part about being told to find out what had happened.

  “Bad news moves quickly,” Doug said. “This is … well, I came here to resolve teenage boys joy riding in cars, not murders like this.”

  There seemed to be a genuine sorrow in his eyes. Nell wondered if he’d known Marion. He probably knew her at least by sight—the library wasn’t far from the police station. Nell also realized that Doug Shaun had beautiful eyes for a man.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked, to get her focus away from wondering about the man and if there was something between them or if she was just needy and his shoulder was available.

  “I don’t know much. As usual, the sheriff and I are jockeying over jurisdiction. I think we owe it to Marion’s family—and the people of Pelican Bay—to do the best investigation we can.”

  “So was she killed outside of town?” Nell asked. She felt the comfortable mask of her reporter identity slip into place.

  “Yes. You know that motel out on Highway 90? The one about a mile beyond the city limits?”

  Nell shook her head.

  “No real reason for you to notice it. I don’t think it’s a place you’d recommend to your friends. It’s the kind of joint truckers crash at for a few hours, or some of the guys on the oil rigs stay when they’re between jobs. And the place where the good folk of Pelican Bay meet to ensure that they’re not seen by their neighbors.”

  “You mean it’s a prostitute hotel?”

  “More of an affair hotel. Most of the working girls are over in Biloxi around the casinos, but I’m willing to bet the late-night desk clerk knows the right phone numbers.”

  “What the hell would someone like Marion be doing in a place like that?” Nell asked. It wasn’t quite the proper reporter’s question, but Doug didn’t seem to notice.

  “It’s only a guess, but she was probably there for the same reasons most folks go there. Except for her, things somehow got out of hand.”

  “Got out of hand how?”

  “She ended up dead.”

  “You’re saying this was some sexual escapade that took a horribly wrong turn?”

  “Maybe. It’s possible they were playing on the rough edges. We don’t know who the guy was, but if the sheriff’s crew doesn’t bumble it up, there should be semen and blood samples.”

  “From the … person who killed Marion?” Nell asked. She’d been wondering if Marion and Kate had decided on a hotel tryst, but any semen would rule that out. While she’d been surprised to discover that Marion and Kate were a couple, that had been nothing more than having her complacent assumptions proven wrong; now, she was genuinely shocked at the idea of Marion engaging in tawdry affairs that took place in cheap, out-of-the-way motels.

  “I suppose it’s possible that she had sex with some guy and then, after he left, someone else came in and killed her,” the chief replied. “There could be the sickos who get off on spying on these kinds of hotels and after seeing the man sneak out, go after the woman. But I don’t think that’s likely.”

  “Why are you so sure it was a sexual encounter? Could it have been a rape/murder?” Nell asked. It was hard for her to accept that Marion was dead, and harder still to accept that she’d been killed in such a manner.

  “Anything’s possible. But how did she end up at that motel? If she was abducted, would she have quietly sat in the car while the guy checked in and then not yelled her head off at those flimsy walls? I know it would be easier to still think she’s the person you thought you knew, but I’d be surprised if it played that way.”

  “What should I print in the paper?” Nell asked the question more of herself than
of him.

  “I don’t know. Depends on what you want her family to read.”

  “Not that their daughter was a tawdry …” Nell couldn’t say the words used to describe such a woman. She couldn’t even think it. Not Marion.

  “Even if it’s true.”

  His phone beeped, then a voice said, “Chief, Harold Reed is here to see you.”

  “Send him in.”

  “Doug,” Harold Reed said by way of greeting. Then he noticed Nell. “Nell, hello. I can guess why you’re here,” he added grimly.

  “I’m trying to find out what happened,” she said.

  “So are we,” Harold replied, “so are we. I need to talk to the chief.”

  “Without a reporter listening in?” Nell said. She stood up to indicate she would leave and give them their privacy. She wondered how much of his desire for her to leave was based in not wanting a reporter there and how much in not wanting a woman to hear the details of Marion’s murder.

  “Thanks, Nell,” Doug said. “I’ll keep you updated.”

  “I’ll keep you updated, too,” Harold said. “Just as soon as I run it by Buddy Guy and his focus group.” Then added, “Unless you promise not to quote me directly.”

  “Thanks, gentlemen,” Nell said with a nod to Harold indicating he was safe from being quoted. “I’d appreciate anything you could get me before our deadline today.” She left the office, closing the door behind her.

  Nell slowly walked back across the town square. She hadn’t found out much, and what she had was disturbing. She had held back from mentioning what she knew about Marion’s sexual orientation—Jacko’s honesty had accomplished nothing, and she wasn’t sure that exposing Kate to the same kind of scrutiny would have a different result. Marion had clearly wanted their relationship to be secret when she was alive; was there any compelling reason to violate that secret now that she was dead? If the police knew that Marion was in a lesbian relationship, it might give weight to the theory that she had not just casually picked up some strange man and been killed by him. But Nell realized that that was only the way she saw it. Others might be more likely to assume that if Marion stepped outside one sexual boundary, she could easily cross others.