Gayle Roper - Caught Redhanded

Jolene nodded. “Our Mac. He and Martha went together from high school until well into college. Then when he came back to town to work at The News, they dated again, sort of off and on when he wasn’t chasing someone else. He sort of broke her heart.”

That sounded like our Mac.

Jo shrugged and looked thoughtful, always a circumstance guaranteed to bring an unexpected insight. “Or maybe she broke his. Who knows? She dated other guys a lot.”

Now there was an interesting thought. Mac, a ladies’ man through and through, reaping his own whirlwind.

“And in a fit of frustrated passion—” she waved her arm in the air like she was banging something against the back of a head “—he…”

I frowned at her. “Don’t even go there, Jolene Marie. You know Mac is changing. And even the old Mac would never have done something so violent.”

Jo actually blushed. “Yeah, you’re right.” She leaned over Martha, I thought because she was too embarrassed to look at me. Accusing one’s boss, even in thoughtless speculation, isn’t the done thing.

Jo tensed. “Look. She’s got a tattoo on her left shoulder.”

I looked. Sure enough, sticking out from under the edge of her sleeveless running shirt was the curve of one side of a red heart.

“It has a name in it,” Jo said. Before I realized what she planned to do, she reached over and slid the shirt to the side.

“Jo! Don’t touch!” I could picture the unhappy face of Sergeant Poole of the Amhearst police.

Jolene ignored me just as she ignored anything she didn’t want to hear. “It says M-A-C. MAC.” She looked at me. “Our Mac?”

Yikes. The very thought made me uneasy.

“Even if it is, it doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Jolene hastened to say, obviously trying to undo her previous suspicious thoughts. “He’s going with Dawn Trauber now.”

He wishes. Dawn was the director of His House, a residential ministry to teen girls in trouble, most of them unwed mothers. She was also a strong Christian and Mac wasn’t. I didn’t think he was any kind of a believer, strong or weak, committed or un. Therein lay their problem. In spite of mutual attraction, Dawn was holding tough against too deep an emotional attachment. At least she was trying hard. It was a case of unequally yoked.

“It looks new, doesn’t it?” Jo asked, still studying the tattoo.

I knew nothing about tattoos except that they were permanent and that it hurt to get them. Oh, and that as you aged and your skin sagged, so did your tattoo.

The first response team arrived in an amazingly short time, swarming the area, cordoning off the crime scene with yellow tape. My friend Sergeant William Poole led the police contingent.

“What is it with you two?” he asked, his furrowed face curious as he studied Jo and me. “You turn up at an inordinate number of homicides, especially you, Merry.”

I gave him a sickly grin. “You think I enjoy it?”

He smiled kindly, his furrowed face wrinkling like a shar-pei’s. “Of course you don’t, any more than I do.” His eyes took on a teasing glint. “But I think you love the stories.”

I couldn’t deny that, ghoulish as it made me seem. For a reporter everything is a potential story and bomb-shells like local murders are guaranteed to interest readers. I looked at the crime-scene investigators hovering over Martha. “The stories may be great, William, but I’d rather not have them. They hurt too many people.”

I thought of Martha’s family. Were her father and stepmother about to be devastated? Or wouldn’t they care? Did she have more siblings than Tawny and Shawna, perhaps ones who shared the same mother? Had Martha been close to her much younger half sisters? Where was her mother now? Had Martha had contact with her or had she disappeared completely from her daughter’s life?

Oh, Lord, they’re all going to need your comfort. Be there for them.

William nodded. “This one definitely hurts. I watched her grow up.” He sighed. “Her family lives down the street from us.”

“What kind of a young woman was she?” I asked. There I went, story-writing again.

“Most of the time she was great. When she was in high school, she babysat for our kids. At college she went a little wild for a time—a couple of DUIs, a bust for pot—but she straightened herself out.”

“Did she still live at home?”

“No.” He and Jolene said it together.

“She had her own place,” William said.

“Over in those new condos off Chestnut Street,” Jolene said.

I knew the condos she meant. They were nice, moderately priced units, built about four years ago. They didn’t begin to compare with the luxury condo that Jolene shared with Reilly, but then, not many did. Not many people had an income like Jolene’s. Twenty-five thousand dollars a month for twenty years. She and her late husband, Arnie, had hit it big in the state lottery.

“Did she live alone?”

Jo shook her head. “Her latest boyfriend is Ken Mackey. They share.”

“Mackey?” William cast an unhappy eye in her direction.

Jo nodded but for once kept her mouth shut. Hmm. Definitely something to be learned there. Between Jo’s silence and the way William said Ken Mackey’s name, we had an issue with a capital I. When Jo and I were in the office, I’d nail her for the scoop on old Ken.

“You two can go home and get ready for work,” William said. “Just stop at the station today and give a formal statement. If I’m not there, ask for Officer Schumann.”

We nodded and turned to leave. I paused and took a few shots of the men and women working the scene. William saw me and gave me an unhappy look, but he didn’t forbid me. I appreciated his trust.

Poor Martha appeared to have trusted the wrong person.

As William suggested, I went home and showered. I ran my mousse-globbed hands through my hair, trying to make it look stylishly spiked instead of like I hadn’t bothered to brush it today. I put on navy slacks, a pink wide-strapped camisole top and a white sheer blouse covered with pink flowers. I liked the way the pink in the cami made the pink flowers in the sheer blouse so vivid. And I immediately felt guilty for thinking about something so frivolous with Martha lying dead.

With a sigh I snuggled Whiskers, my much-pampered cat, for a moment, then went to the kitchen. I kept one eye on the clock as I toasted a couple of slices of Jewish rye nice and crisp. I slathered them lavishly with real butter and ate them with a Diet Coke as I drove to the office, all too aware that deadline was looming. I needed to do my piece on Martha.

This wasn’t the first time I’d written about a crime with which I was intimately connected and I disliked it this time just as much as the first time I’d inadvertently found death. My heart bled for the lost life, for the lost opportunities, the lost joys and sorrows, and most deeply for the lost chances to know God intimately. My soul shriveled at the audacity of someone who thought that the right to decide life and death was his. How heinous, how prideful, how offensive. How evil. It was Cain and Abel wearing modern garb, man killing man for power and greed, love and hate. It was proof positive that mankind had not changed though we dressed better and enjoyed luxuries those biblical brothers could not even imagine.

And there were those left behind who through no choice of their own were forced to share Eve’s sorrow and loss, compelled to forfeit part of their lives, too. I’d seen their faces and their pain. I’d written about it, attempted to comprehend their great bereavement and make readers feel it and understand that as the victim had been robbed of so many possibilities, so had those who loved that person.