Peony Street Page 3

  After the movie Claire slept, but fitfully. She kept waking suddenly with a nauseating wrench in her midsection, as if her soul had been let out on a long string while she slept and was suddenly reeled back into her body as she was jolted back into consciousness. It felt like waking up on a rollercoaster. Each time she woke she reached for her phone and was grieved anew to remember it was lost.

  When they landed in DC, Claire found her connecting flight to Pittsburgh had been delayed due to an approaching thunderstorm. Claire was used to such irritating developments. She had puppy training pads that Mackie Pea used while traveling, so she had no reason to go out in the gale force wind and sheets of rain that lashed the terminal windows.

  She reached into her handbag for her smart phone before she remembered again that she’d left it in a cab in London. She wondered if the cabbie found it before one of his passengers did. She was sure she’d never see it again no matter who found it.

  Thunder boomed and lightning shot across the sky as the storm set in, but Claire was used to the hurry up and wait atmosphere of filmmaking, not to mention all the accompanying loud drama. She knew how to block out the noise by focusing on frivolous distractions. She bought some fashion magazines and camped out in the gate waiting area.

  The storm moved out within an hour but so many flights were backed up Claire realized it would be quicker to drive. She got her ticket refunded from the polite people at the British Airways counter and then stood in line with several dozen other people who suddenly wanted to rent a car. She was exhausted from her journey but was determined to get home.

  Once on the road in a rental car, as the terrain changed from hills to mountains, nostalgia overcame her and she allowed the repressed tears to fall. Even though it had been several years since she’d been home, she didn’t need a map or a GPS to find her way back to Rose Hill.

  Claire left her car in the middle of the street and ran to the fire station, where she knew someone would be awake. It turned out to be Malcolm Behr, the fire chief, and quite possibly the hairiest man Claire had ever met. Claire could easily imagine him in a kilt with his face painted blue, wielding an ax as he charged across a Scottish battlefield.

  “Claire Fitzpatrick,” he said. “When did you get back?”

  Claire told him what she’d found and Malcolm called Police Chief Scott Gordon. He picked up an EMT kit and a flashlight and followed Claire back to where the body lay illuminated by her headlights. Malcolm checked the man’s pulse and told Claire what she already suspected.

  “He’s dead,” Malcolm said, and then pointed the flashlight at the front bumper of Claire’s car.

  Claire’s father had been chief of police in Rose Hill for thirty years, so she knew where this was headed.

  “I didn’t hit him,” Claire said. “I just drove here from DC after flying there from London, and he’s probably been lying here for awhile. You can check my plane ticket and make a time table; I’ll help you do it.”

  “Time enough for all that,” he said. “That’ll be Scott’s problem, not mine.”

  “Do you know who it is?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t look familiar to me,” Malcolm said. “It’s hard to tell with all the blood.”

  Scott arrived, looking sleepy and rumpled in the foggy glow of the streetlight. Claire, who out of habit always thought in terms of movies and casting, cast Scott in the part of a minor league baseball player and single dad, a romantic anti-hero with a rough exterior that concealed a soft spot for children and dogs. He greeted Claire with a hug and the same quizzical expression Malcolm had given her.

  “I didn’t know you were coming home,” Scott said. “I eat breakfast with your old man every morning and neither he nor your mother mentioned it.”

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” she said.

  Scott turned on his flashlight, squatted down, and looked at the man. He looked a little green around the gills when he stood back up.

  “I don’t recognize him,” he said, and pointed the flashlight at the front bumper of Claire’s car.

  Claire repeated her alibi and Scott nodded as he listened.

  “I guess I better call Sarah,” he said.

  “Who’s Sarah?” Claire asked.

  Malcolm snickered.

  “A pain in the ass is what,” he said. “She’s got it bad for our chief, here.”

  “Ignore him,” Scott said. “She’s the violent crimes investigator for the county sheriff’s office. She gets all our suspicious deaths. We haven’t had many in the past few years.”

  “It reminds me of how Theo was murdered,” Malcolm said. “That was three years ago, January.”

  “Theo Eldridge?” Claire asked. “Mom told me about that.”

  “I don’t think this one’s a bludgeoning,” Scott said as he shone the flashlight on the back of the man’s head. “It looks to me like he was hit by a car and landed on his head.”

  “A hit and run,” Malcolm said. “It was probably some drunk, under-age college kids.”

  “The blood’s congealed so it didn’t just happen,” Scott said. “Plus he’s ice cold to the touch and his clothes are sopping wet.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Claire said. “I’ve got a plane ticket and a rental car receipt to back up my alibi.”

  “I believe you,” Scott said. “But Sarah doesn’t know you like I do.”

  “It’s gonna be a long night,” Malcolm said, “and this weather’s not gonna get any better, I’ll tell you that. We may have snow by the weekend.”

  Scott made a call; Claire assumed it was to the county dispatcher. As soon as he terminated the call he looked at Malcolm.

  “Reckon we should take out his wallet and see who he is?”

  “Sarah won’t like it,” Malcolm said.

  “Let’s live dangerously,” Scott said.

  Malcolm gave Scott some latex gloves from the EMT kit, and after putting them on Scott took the front hem of the man’s raincoat and pulled it back. He could see the man’s wallet in his back pocket; he wiggled it back and forth until he worked it loose. He flipped it open and looked at the license.

  “He’s from your neck of the woods, Claire,” he said. “Los Angeles, California. Chance Tupworth.”

  “Tuppy!” Claire said, and then covered her mouth with her hand.

  She hurried around the body and crouched down to look at the man’s face.

  “You know him?” Scott asked her, and grabbed her arm just as she reached out to touch the body.

  She looked up at Scott, her eyes filled with tears.

  “I do,” she said. “Oh, my God, Scott, I know him.”

  Scott led Claire, carrying a restless Mackie Pea, back to the station house, and called one of his deputies to come and sit with her “just for company” while he dealt with Sarah. This officer turned out to be the grown-up version of a goofy kid Claire had known as “Skippy.” The man, now referred to as “Skip,” could hardly look Claire in the eye, and blushed as he shook her hand. After Scott left, Skip sat down in a chair at the front desk, put his feet up, and fell sound asleep. Claire reflected that he didn’t seem to consider her much of a flight risk, so that must be a good sign.

  The station hadn’t changed much since her father was chief. It consisted of a small main room with a desk facing the front door and one against the wall; a break room with filing cabinets and a kitchenette, a holding cell, a bathroom, and the chief’s office. Now there was a modern phone and computer on each desk, and a large copier/printer/fax machine in the break room, but other than that it was exactly the same.

  Claire entered her dad’s former office. She let Mackie out of her carrier and spread out a disposable pad on the floor. Mackie daintily did her business, jumped up on the couch, curled up in her carrier, and tucked her nose under her back leg. Claire folded up the pad and threw it in the trash before she sat back down.

  The olive green vinyl of the couch was cracked and faded. She could remember sitting on this same s
ofa, balancing a coloring book on her knees, sharpening crayons in the back of their box, and coloring while she waited for her mother to pick her up after she got off work.

  If her mother worked the night shift Claire would go home from school with one of her cousins and stay overnight with one of their families. If her mother worked in the bar all evening Claire would go with her, do her homework in the last booth and eventually fall asleep in the back office, curled up in an enormous arm chair kept there for that purpose. What seemed in retrospect like an unusual childhood had seemed perfectly normal to her while growing up.

  Claire thought about her parents sleeping in their house two blocks away, oblivious to what was going on. She decided to call them, but when she stood up to do so fatigue overwhelmed her, she lost her balance, and fell back onto the couch. It was all she could do to lift her legs up on the seat before her head hit the crackling cushion and she fell asleep.

  After Scott woke her, he handed her a cup of coffee as she sat up. He smiled kindly but his forehead was wrinkled up with worry lines.

  “Sarah wants to question you,” he said quietly. “I told her you wanted your attorney present.”

  “I don’t have an attorney,” she whispered back.

  She tasted the coffee; it was lukewarm and bitter. She handed it back and he set it on the desk behind him.

  “I called Sean,” Scott said. “He’s on his way.”

  Sean was one of Claire’s cousins.

  “Isn’t he a trust attorney?” Claire asked.

  “I’m stalling for time,” Scott said. “I’m trying to get someone from the airline to confirm you were on your flight and it’s not as easy as you might think.”

  “I don’t have anything to hide…” Claire started to say.

  Scott leaned down and put his mouth very close to her ear. A chill ran down Claire’s spine, and not in a bad way.

  “Trust me,” he said. “Do as I tell you.”

  “Alright,” she breathed, and looked around for her handbag.

  “Sarah has it,” Scott said. “Don’t worry. I watched her catalog everything that was in it. You’ll get it and your carry-on back shortly. Where’s the rest of your luggage?”

  Claire told him about shipping her belongings ahead of her flight.

  “I’ll have Skip pick up everything when it arrives,” Scott said.

  “I just have Mackie’s carrier ... Mackie Pea!” Claire said as she noticed the little dog was not inside her carrier

  She looked frantically around the room.

  “She’s okay,” Scott reassured her, and then called, “Skip? Can you come in here a sec?”

  Skip came to the doorway holding Mackie Pea in the crook of his arm. As soon as she saw Claire the little dog wriggled until he put her down on the floor, and then she leaped up into Claire’s arms and licked her face.

  “What kinda dog is that?” Skip asked her. “She looks like a miniature boxer but I’ve never seen a black and white boxer.”

  “She’s a Boston Terrier,” Claire said. “I call her Mackie Pea.”

  “That’s like the thing you say when you wiggle a baby’s toes,” Skip said, and then recited, “Mackie Pea, Penny Rue, Worry Ursle, Mary Thornthistle, and Old Tom Bumble.”

  “It’s so nice to be home,” Claire said, “where somebody knows that.”

  “Doesn’t everybody know that?” Skip asked her.

  “Thank you for taking care of her,” Claire said.

  “I figured she needed to go out, so I took her across the street to the funeral home where there’s some grass.”

  “And she just went with you?” Claire asked.

  “Sure she did,” Skip said. “Dogs just love me.”

  “She’s probably starving,” Claire said. “Her food is in my carry-on bag.”

  “I gave her some of my biscuits and gravy,” Skip said. “My mom brought it down.”

  Claire thought of the organic, grain-free dog food she ordered from a specialty store in San Francisco. It cost about the same by weight as filet mignon.

  “If you need somebody to look after her while you’re here,” Skip continued, “my mom said she’d be glad to do it. She loves dogs.”

  “Thanks,” Claire said. “What time is it?”

  It seemed like a lot had happened while she slept.

  “It’s just past eight a.m.,” Scott said.

  Claire’s mother came through the door, took one look at her daughter, and said, “You always did like to make a dramatic entrance.”

  Claire put Mackie Pea down and stood up to embrace her mother. She couldn’t stop her tears. Her mother’s arms had always been a safe place in which to fall apart.

  At Scott’s behest Delia had brought clothes for Claire to put on so the sheriff’s detective could have the clothes she wore when she found Tuppy. Attired in her mother’s sweatpants, a Fitzpatrick Bakery sweatshirt and hideous puffy white tennis shoes, Claire felt like she had been stripped of her identity.

  “I look like a high school dropout who works part-time as a cashier at the IGA,” Claire said. “Who’s going to believe anything I say dressed like this?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to coordinate an outfit,” Delia said. “But when the chief of police calls to say your daughter’s in jail and needs a change of clothes, formal attire is not a priority.”

  Claire and her mother sat in Scott’s office and talked until Sean arrived. Sean, like Claire, was tall with dark hair and bright blue eyes, inherited from their Irish paternal grandfather’s side of the family. He wore an impeccably cut suit and carried an expensive attaché case. Claire knew her clothing and accessory labels, and Sean’s were top of the line.

  He shook her hand in a formal way and asked everyone else to leave so he could speak with “his client.”

  “Scott filled me in,” Sean said. “Tell me everything that’s happened since you last saw this Tuppy guy alive.”

  Sarah Albright introduced herself to Claire with a glare and flared nostrils. She was petite and striking, with short dark hair and big dark eyes. She was dressed like a TV detective in close fitting but business-like dark pants and jacket, a white blouse unbuttoned about two more buttons than was appropriate, and high-heeled pumps. Claire instantly cast her as a ruthless, corrupt cop with no conscience, able to seduce and then kill her victims without hesitation.

  “You being related to half the people in this town makes no difference to me, Miss Fitzpatrick,” Sarah said. “Being the ex-chief’s daughter doesn’t work in your favor, either. This town’s been run into the ground through lax law enforcement. Anytime I’m called in you can count on the bar being raised.”

  “You can spend your time insulting my client’s family and bragging about yourself, Detective Albright,” Sean said, “but you only have fifteen minutes in which to ask questions pertinent to Mr. Tupworth’s unfortunate accident. After that we’re leaving.”

  Claire was impressed by Sean’s assertive confidence. Scott stood smirking in the doorway. Sarah gave Sean a vicious side-eye, but then produced a notebook, turned on a tape recorder, and formally questioned Claire. Claire responded to each question with facts if she had them but no speculation, just as Sean had instructed. When Claire told her about discovering she’d left her phone in the cab Sarah said, “How convenient for you.”

  After she ran out of questions Sarah curled her lip in contempt.

  “The victim didn’t just show up here and get killed without it involving you somehow,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time before I know why and how.”

  “Charge her with something or we’re leaving,” Sean said. “You have no reason to detain her and she’s not planning to leave town.”

  “We’re keeping her handbag, carry-on, clothes, and rental car,” Sarah said. “It’s all potential evidence.”

  Claire looked helplessly at both Sean and Scott.

  “She can do that,” Sean said. “Sorry, Claire.”

  “Don’t leave town,” Sarah
said, and left the room with Scott behind her.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” Claire asked Sean.

  “Television,” Sean said.

  “What do I do now?” Claire asked.

  “Go home, get some sleep, and try not to worry too much. Don’t talk to anyone about what’s happened and don’t let Sarah question you again without me present. I’ve got a friend in the DA’s office in Pittsburgh and I’ll ask him what we should do next. Meanwhile I’m sure Scott will get this all sorted out.”

  “I wonder why Tuppy was here,” Claire said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Sean said. “All that matters is we can prove you couldn’t have killed him.”

  By noon Claire was in her mother’s kitchen eating tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten white bread, orange-colored processed cheese slices, or soup from a can. It tasted wonderful.

  Claire was concerned about her mother. Delia Fitzpatrick was a tall, willowy brunette who had always worn clothes well. She was very particular about her appearance, modest as her wardrobe budget was. Today her gray roots were showing and the faded cardigan she was wearing was stretched out and baggy over her too-thin frame.

  “How are you doing?” Claire asked her.

  “I’m fine,” Delia said, but without turning around to make eye contact.

  “That woman from the sheriff’s office is scary,” Claire said. “I think if Scott and Sean hadn’t been there she might’ve smacked me around.”

  “Sarah’s aggressive,” Delia said, “but Scott can handle her.”

  When Delia finally sat down, Claire got a good look at the dark circles under her mother’s eyes and the deep lines on her face. Mackie Pea jumped up on Delia’s lap and gave her a quick little lick on the chin before settling down.

  “I always wanted a little dog,” Delia said, “but your father was bitten by a dog as a child and never got over it.”