Death Comes to Suburbia (Book 2 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 3

  “Tommy. I’m surprised you’re here already.”

  “Can’t do anything at the Saunders residence till I get a search warrant. It’s a little matter called ‘expectation of privacy.’”

  I stared at him blankly, not having a response to his statement, and not knowing when to begin to explain everything that had happened.

  “So, Ms. Masters.” Tommy began, flipping open a notepad he’d taken from his pocket. Apparently, since he’d addressed me so formally, Tommy wanted to waste no time getting my statement.

  A nurse came up to me and asked if my name was Molly Masters. To my nod, she explained that Stephanie Saunders was in an observation room nearby and had asked to speak to me immediately. The nurse then gave me instructions on how to get there.

  Tommy led the way. He pushed the door open and muttered to me, “Just what you always wanted, right? A police escort.”

  We entered a small, brightly lit-room with white walls and maroon linoleum flooring. Everything was on wheels: the monitors, the cart of medical supplies, the baby’s clear plastic bassinet, Stephanie’s cot.

  Tommy greeted Stephanie solemnly and ignored the infant sleeping in the bassinet beside her. The instant I laid eyes on him, it was impossible to look anywhere else. The baby was sleeping on his side, his perfect, pink lips slightly parted. A tuft of blond peach fuzz peeked. out from below a white stocking cap with a blue-is-for-boys band.

  “Molly?” Stephanie said quietly.

  I reluctantly turned away from the adorable infant and met Stephanie’s gaze. She looked exhausted yet, amazingly, still attractive.

  Apparently accepting the fact that Tommy was going to eavesdrop, she said, “I’ve decided to name my son after you.”

  I waited, but when she didn’t go on, I asked, “You’re going to name him Molly?”

  “I’m naming him the closest male alternative to Molly I can think of. I’m naming him Michael.”

  I winced. “Michael? As in long for Mike?”

  “That’s right. Michael Saunders.”

  My stomach knotted. I desperately didn’t want this angelic baby named Mike, forever to remind me of “Mike” Masters. “Gee, Stephanie. Thanks. But…Morrie is much closer to Molly than Michael.”

  “Michael has the ‘L’ sound of Molly.”

  “True, but not the ‘ah’ sound. What about Mollter? Or Mollster?”

  She shook her head.

  “Couldn’t you just make Michael his middle name? Call him Preston Michael Sanders?” I paused. “Never mind. That would make his initials PMS and you wouldn’t want to do that. How about Preston Junior?”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’ve made up my mind.” She smiled lovingly at her child. “This is Michael. My little Mike.” She looked at Tommy for a long moment, then cleared her throat. “Could I have a minute alone with Molly, please?”

  “No can do,” Tommy said. “I have to talk to each of you separately first. I need to get both of your statements.”

  “Please, Tommy,” Stephanie said. “This is urgent, and it has to do with the care of my baby. Nothing whatsoever to do with my husband’s murder.”

  Tommy’s gaze went from Stephanie to me and then back. “I’m putting myself on the line here ‘cuz of our friendship. So I’m warning you. Don’t say one word about what happened in your house till I’ve had a chance to talk to you privately.”

  “I won’t.” Stephanie held up three fingers and flashed her Miss America smile. “Scout’s honor.”

  Still maintaining her perfect smile, she watched Tommy leave. The instant the door swung shut behind him, her expression changed to a sneer. “Like I was ever a Scout.” She studied my face. “Molly, I have a confession.”

  My stomach muscles tensed. Oh, no. You have an infant who needs you! Don’t be the killer!

  “You were right,” Stephanie said quietly. “There was more to the story than what I told you. On Saturday, Preston caught Tiffany and her boyfriend in the act. Preston said he was going to file statutory rape charges and…I’ve never seen Tiffany so out of control. She threatened to kill him.”

  “When I came downstairs and saw Preston, he was still alive. He said, ‘Tiffany.’ And then…he was gone. I wanted to make it look like I’d killed him. That’s why I called you, of all people. I was sure you’d testify against me.”

  She started crying softly. I had a lump in my throat. I felt horrible about myself.

  “Now, I’m next to this tiny person that’s a part of me, and I realize, I can’t go to jail. I didn’t kill him. I swear to you as a mother. I swear on the life of my baby. I didn’t kill Preston.”

  “I believe you. But Tiffany was Preston’s child,” I said. “Maybe he was just thinking of her. He might—”

  I broke off. From her frequent babysitting stints at my house, I was well aware that Tiffany had been at odds with her father for some time now. She’d continued to defy his orders and date Cherokee Taylor. All along, I could see both Tiffany’s and Preston’s perspectives. But this time I could empathize strictly with Preston. Tiffany was only fifteen! Heaven forbid, seven years from now, I were to discover my daughter…I shuddered.

  Stephanie gently took my hand. “Molly, if she killed her father, I want you to help her. If she didn’t, I want you to find out who did so he can be brought to justice. I’m never going to tell anyone what Preston said. I know that regardless of the fact you and I have had our differences, you’re the one person in this world I know I can trust to always do the right thing.”

  “But, I—”

  I stopped and turned as the door squeaked open. A nurse leaned into the room and smiled at Stephanie. “The doctor needs to examine you now, Mommy.”

  My head was spinning from this emotional roller coaster I’d suddenly been flung onto.

  “Promise me, Molly. Please.”

  I looked at Stephanie. For all our shared experiences during our lifetimes, this was one of the very few times I knew unequivocally that she was being utterly sincere. I nodded and left the room. I felt stunned. My babysitter a murderer? No. It just couldn’t be. She was flaky, self-centered, high-strung. In short, she was a typical fifteen-year-old girl. Not a killer. Now she was supposed to cope with her father’s murder and her own mother suspecting her?

  I had to help Tiffany.

  Tommy Newton was waiting for me in the hospital corridor just outside Stephanie’s room. “What’d she say?” he promptly asked.

  I forced myself to meet his eyes. “She just wanted to thank me for helping her with the birth. And to help Tiffany, now that her father’s gone.”

  “Did she tell you who did it?”

  “No, I swear. She just thanked me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Tommy and I knew each other well. Though he’d since broadened considerably; back in high school he had been the runt of the graduating class in which I’d been class clown. Last fall, he had erroneously arrested Lauren, my best friend. Tommy knew from that painful incident how single-minded I could be when the situation demanded it. I learned that Tommy deliberately gave the appearance of having a whole lot less on the ball than he actually had.

  I studied his lightly freckled face. Despite his blank expression, something about his physical bearing indicated he knew all too well that I was lying. He had used me as bait to eavesdrop on. Stephanie. I clenched my fists. “You listened in on our private conversation, didn’t you?”

  Chapter 4

  Across the Sands of Time

  Y’all promised not to talk about the murder,” Tommy replied. “What exactly was said during your ‘private conversation’?”

  “Give me a break, Tommy. ‘Y’all promised?’ We both know you’ve lived in upstate New York your entire life. That good-ol’-boy routine of yours is just a technique you use to interrogate suspects. And I’m not a suspect.”

  “You’re not, eh? Glad to hear it.” He put a hand on my elbow and tried to lead me down the hall. “S’pose we take a seat in the lobby? You
can tell me exactly what happened from the get-go.”

  “First I want to check something.” I headed in the opposite direction from where Tommy wanted me to go. He followed. Just a short distance away was a nurses’ station. As I suspected, from an unseen speaker somewhere in the station, I could hear Stephanie’s voice cry, “But I don’t want my uterus massaged! It hurts! It’s my uterus, isn’t it? Massage your own blasted—”

  “I knew it!” I whirled and leveled a finger at Tommy. “That was a rotten thing to do! Neither Stephanie nor I knew you were listening, so it’s not admissible!”

  “Prob’ly not,” Tommy answered calmly, his face blank, his eyes trained right on mine. “That is, if I were listening in on you, which I’m not saying I was. But, just in case, how ‘bout you tell me exactly what was said? That way we won’t have to worry ‘bout me drawing the wrong conclusions.”

  I stormed past him, hoping I could find my way out of the hospital despite my horrendous sense of direction.

  “Where you goin’?” he called after me.

  “Home!”

  “You still haven’t given me your statement.”

  “I know. But I don’t feel like talking to you right now, Sergeant. And I need to get home to my children.”

  Feeling a small moment of personal triumph, I pushed through a set of double doors and found myself exactly where I wanted to be; the emergency waiting room. I marched past the officer still in the same seat he’d occupied when I’d first spotted Tommy.

  I pushed through the glass exit doors, then realized how minuscule this “personal triumph” truly was. My car was still parked in Stephanie’s driveway. I had no purse, no money for bus fare, no cellphone. No choice but to turn and go back inside.

  Why couldn’t life be like the movies? Why couldn’t I make a good exit, just this one time?

  Knowing the longer I stood on the sidewalk, the greater my embarrassment would be, I straightened, turned on a heel, and reentered. As I’d feared, Tommy now stood next to the other officer. Both sets of eyes were on me. The seated officer was grinning, but Tommy maintained his typical placid expression.

  “On second thought,” I said evenly to Tommy, “if your partner here could give me a ride afterward, I’d be happy to tell him exactly what happened this morning.”

  By the time I got my car and drove home, followed by Officer Tommy, it was mid afternoon. I felt exhausted and emotionally drained. Given half a chance, I would climb into bed, curl into the fetal position, and do my best to pretend this day never happened.

  My pretty, petite daughter, Karen, home from second grade, met me at the door to the garage. I gave her a hug and kissed her soft cheek.

  “Guess what, Mom? I can spell Mississippi and Massachusetts backwards!”

  “That’s great, sweetie, just so long as you can spell them forwards.” Karen skipped along behind me as I trudged through the house toward the front door to await Tommy’s arrival. The oval-shaped cherry-wood coffee table was a tad dusty but otherwise clear. Jim had, as asked, removed the box, magazine, and check. “Where are Nathan and your daddy?”

  “I think he’s in his room. He says he doesn’t want to be in this family anymore.”

  “Nathan?” If she meant Jim, my husband was more perturbed about my weird emergency phone call than I’d hoped.

  Karen nodded and said, “Mm-hmm,” her fine, light brown hair bobbing, then she launched into an animated description of the latest “Daddy’s Mad at Nathan Because…” She said something about Nathan hammering nails into tires, but by then Tommy had arrived and Karen’s voice drifted off as she fell into her usual awed silence at the sight of him in full uniform. Maybe I should get a police uniform myself to wear around the house.

  Jim emerged from the basement, no doubt having been working in my office. He was thin and six feet tall, and had brown hair now flecked with white, and soft brown eyes that could melt an ice maiden’s heart, as well as mine, even after twelve years of marriage. He was wearing brown wing-tips and the gray slacks from his suit, but he’d changed into a green plaid flannel shirt, a triangle of white undershirt showing at his neckline. A handsome man, but a lousy dresser.

  “I thought I heard you come in.” His eyes darted from mine to Tommy’s. “Hello, Tom.”

  True to form, Jim shook Tommy’s hand and chatted about his current troubles with Nathan, who had indeed flattened one of the radials on the Jeep by hammering a nail into it. Granted, that was bad behavior on our six-year-old’s part, but it paled in comparison to Preston’s murder, and the fact that somewhere in this house was possible evidence. Jim’s social graces were so firmly entrenched that, even if Tommy were currently in the process of reading me.my rights and handcuffing me, their friendly exchange would’ve gone much the same way.

  Ever since his wife had died two years ago, Tommy was single-handedly raising two boys, and he assured my husband that his sons had gone through a destructive stage that lasted “thirteen years and counting.” This led to Jim asking what his sons were “up to these days.”

  Thankfully, Tommy opted not to offer a lengthy response and merely answered, “Just fine. Growing like weeds. I hear you’ve got some things for me to take back to the station.” He was being vague out of sensitivity to the fact that Karen still stood just a few feet away, watching us wide-eyed.

  “Yes, they’re in the laundry room,” Jim answered. “I put everything in plastic bags.”

  Just then, Nathan slunk down the stairs toward us. He was the portrait of self-pity: red eyes and pink cheeks, chin down, lower lip protruding, his curly hair every which way. He flopped onto the bottom step in a puddle of despair. Then he caught his first sight of Tommy.

  “Hello, big guy,” Tommy said.

  Nathan’s expression changed to one of sheer terror. He scrambled up the stairs and raced into his bedroom.

  Both Jim and Tommy looked at me, perplexed. “He thinks you’re here to arrest him for putting a hole in the tire,” I explained to Tommy. “Jim, I’ll go get the stuff from the laundry. Could you please go assure our son you didn’t call the cops on him?”

  As he went upstairs, my vision drifted to Karen. She was listening to all of this, utterly fascinated.

  “Don’t you have some homework to do in your room?”

  “Already finished. Um, Mom? What did Daddy put in our laundry room?”

  I gave her a quick kiss on her forehead and said gently, “Go upstairs and see if you can figure out how to spell Connecticut backwards. I’ll quiz you on it in five minutes.” Karen had been on to all of my diversionary tactics for a good four years now. She rolled her eyes, in practice for her upcoming adolescence, but then acted her age by following my instructions.

  Tommy and I went to the laundry room, not the neatest room in the house, but then I’d been remiss in my cleaning duties of late so all rooms were competing for that honor. In fact, my mother would faint to see her house and its antique furnishings in this unkempt state. The laundry room had built-in shelves opposite the washer-dryer. The STOP box and contents were on the top shelf, along with the magazine and check, all sealed into individual Ziploc freezer bags. As I handed them to Tommy, it occurred to me I hadn’t written down the address and phone number for Between the Legs and needed to resolve the problem of the contract that Preston had supposedly signed for me.

  “Do you need all of these things?” I asked.

  “Yeah. For now, at least. Can’t even let you keep the fertilizer. We’ll have to get that analyzed.”

  Analyzing dog waste? Now there’s a great job. “Judging from the size, my guess is the perp’s a German shepherd, though I’m no expert. But what I’m wondering is, do you need the magazine and the check? They probably won’t tell you anything about Preston’s killer.”

  “We’ll need to have ‘em fingerprinted, just in case.” He eyed me. “Don’t worry. You’ll get to cash it, eventually.”

  I accompanied him to the front door. Seeing the box from STOP again reminded me of someth
ing that had puzzled me about the second box. “Did that box I found in Stephanie’s closet have… stains in it?”

  “Can’t examine it till we get the search warrant, which’ll be any minute now.” He paused in the doorway and narrowed his eyes. “Got a friendly warning for you, Molly. Don’t go pokin’ your nose into this.”

  “That’s an interesting figure of speech, considering you’re carrying dog doo-doo.”

  He turned and called over his shoulder. “Don’t leave town. I’ll be in touch.”

  Now wearing sweats and sneakers, Jim headed back down the stairs, holding Nathan’s hand. “Nathan and I are going to fix the tire. I’m skipping the rest of my meeting so I can get some real work done at home on my computer.”

  This was pure Jim-speak. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was too worried about me to go back to the office. I smiled lovingly at him. Jim gave Nathan a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Go on ahead. I’ll be right there.”

  Nathan rushed off, nearly jumping for joy at the chance to atone for his wanton hammering. Jim promptly gave me a big hug. He seemed to be trembling slightly. Then, as Jim held me even tighter, I realized my body was actually the one trembling. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Did Stephanie do it?” Jim asked, releasing me from his warm embrace.

  “Do what?”

  “Kill Preston.” He furrowed his brows as he stared into my eyes. “Did she?”

  “No, but she’s afraid Tiffany did it.”

  “Tiffany? Our babysitter?” Jim’s face paled. We shared the dreadful, unspoken fear that someone we’d trusted to watch our children could be a murder suspect. “Did Stephanie witness the—”

  The heavy door to the garage creaked open, and, after a clatter and a bang. Nathan rushed in, carrying a crescent wrench. “Is this what we need, Daddy?”

  “That’s too small. But you’re on the right track.” He followed Nathan toward the garage, then, as he opened the door for Nathan, turned and said, “Let the police handle this.”