Cheryl Bradshaw - Black Diamond Death

“Maybe for good. It’s time to move on with my life. This town reminds me too much of Charlotte. It’s hard to drive around and see a real estate sign with her face plastered on the front of it in someone’s yard. I know they will all come down, but I feel like I can’t move forward if I stay here.”

I felt that way a few years back except Audrey was leaving for the same reason I stayed.

“Will you come back?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Any idea where you’ll go?”

“Do you want to know something interesting? A couple days ago I gathered Charlotte’s mail that had piled up since she passed away and I opened a letter from a woman in Haiti. She said she was looking forward to Charlotte and her sister arriving next month to assist with the reconstruction project they started there.”

“Wow.”

“Do you know what that means? Charlotte never planned to transfer to another agency, or maybe she did at first, but not at the end. She wanted to leave this place, and she was going to take me with her.”

“I’m sorry I never got the chance to meet your sister,” I said. “She was an amazing person.”

“If she talked to me about this when she was alive, I can’t say whether I would have gone with her. But now, I feel I owe it to her to go, and there’s nothing I’d rather do.”

“If there is anything you need––”

“There is,” she said. “I want to put Charlotte’s place on the market. I’ve sent some movers over to pack it all up for me, and in the meantime, I’ve listed it with Vicki.”

“What can I do?”

“I’m on my way to the airport and I didn’t have time to drop the key off to her before I left. Since I gave you a copy I hoped you could stop in and do it for me?”

“That won’t be a problem.”

“Thanks for everything. I know I wasn’t the easiest person to deal with.”

“Take care of yourself.”

I pressed the end button on my phone. The news of Parker’s death came as a sense of peace for Audrey. So why didn’t I feel a sense of resolve too?

Lord Berkeley’s ears perked up as Nick walked in with dog treats in one hand and daisies in the other. He opened the bag and placed a treat on Boo’s nose.

“For the Lord,” he said.

Boo wiggled his nose and snatched it up and looked at Nick for a second. Much to his dismay Nick turned toward me and extended the flowers.

“For the Lady,” he said.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Do I need one?” he said.

“I guess not.”

He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed.

“We’ve dropped the case. The ME’s report came back and it’s conclusive. Parker committed suicide.”

“What else did the report say?” I said.

“The latent prints we lifted from the gun matched Parker’s and no other prints were found on it. There is one caveat though.”

“What’s that?”

“Before the ME’s report came back, I checked out the gun and it wasn’t registered to Parker or anyone else for that matter. And Parker’s father said he didn’t own a gun.”

“So where did he get it?”

“Good question,” he said.

“What about the note?”

“We compared it to some handwritten papers we found in his desk and they were an exact match.”

I put the daisies in a vase and then walked over to the couch and sat down.

“I can’t believe it,” I said.

“Now you can put it behind you and move on.”

“I guess so.”

I wanted to feel a sense of relief, but there was something about it all that bothered me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to Parker’s death than what it seemed.

CHAPTER 47

An hour later I sat on a red velvet sofa shaped like a peanut eating a cup of chocolate gelato and tried to forget it was a mere nineteen degrees outside.

Maddie took a bite of wildberry and angled her plastic spoon at me.

“What’s your deal?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“No you’re not. You’ve got that look on your face.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“Don’t make me pry it out of you.”

“All I wanted was to clear my mind and to spend the day without any thoughts about Charlotte or Parker or the case, but the harder I try not to think about it, the more I do.”

“Why think of Parker at all? He’s dead, and I don’t see too many people unhappy about it.”

She finished the last bite of gelato and set her plastic bowl on the table. It was yellow and reminded me of the set of colorful pastel Tupperware bowls my mother used in the eighties.

The remnants of Maddie’s melted gelato dripped off the side of the cup and onto the table. She didn’t notice. I let it go for a few seconds and then, when I couldn’t sit still and watch it drip any longer, I snatched a napkin and wiped it up.

“It’s just that I remembered something,” I said.

“Do tell.”

“I think Parker was left handed.”

She opened her eyes all the way.

“Fascinating.”

“Okay smart ass,” I said.

“What made you think of that––about him being a leftie?”

“The first time I met him in the lobby downtown he handed me a flower with his left hand. And then later in his apartment he held a glass in his left hand. When he pinned me up against the wall––”

“I get it, left hand.”

“I broke the fingers on his left hand,” I said.

“So what does that mean?”

“The evidence said Parker shot himself with his right hand.”

She slanted her head to the side.

“Maybe he’s ambidextrous. You ever think of that?”

“And maybe I’m the Princess of Wales,” I said.

“What did the coroner’s report say?”

“Nick said the ME results were conclusive, he shot himself. They found no other prints on the gun, and there’s no way I can get access to the report. The chief has me on some type of time-out while Parker’s daddy is in town.”

“What a prick.”

“He’s not such a bad guy, Maddie. He’s just doing what he needs to do. Besides, I don’t know what made him madder, the fact that I broke into Parker’s house, that my prints were all over the crime scene, or that I discovered Parker’s body before they did.”

Maddie walked over to the drinking fountain and slurped some water and then came back and plopped down next to me. She wiped the water that dripped from her face and stuck a piece of purple gum in her mouth and slouched down in her seat.

“Who’s the coroner?”

“Whitley,” I said.

“Stan Whitley?”

“Know him?”

She bobbed her head up and down a couple times and grinned.

“Do I ever.”

“Now it’s your turn to spill,” I said.

“He’s got the hots for me.”

“Who doesn’t?” I said.

“Don’t I know it.”

She twisted a finger around a piece of her hair.

“It’s hard being me.”

I took my cup and hers and threw them into the trash receptacle.

“I imagine so.”

“Oh give me a break,” she said. “You can have any guy you want.”

“And I do,” I said.

“The having isn’t the problem though, is it? It’s the holding.”

“It makes me feel––”

“Trapped.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“You’re just scared.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Hell no. I’m not the marrying kind. I don’t need a man to tie me down so that I can sit at home and pop out babies every other year for the next ten years of my life.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” I said.

“Oh no, what about Ben?”

I almost forgot about Ben whose fondest wish was for them to wed. And she almost did until he told her about his plan for her to stay at home and make a tribe of little Ben’s. He made it clear he wanted no less than six of them. Maddie, on the other hand, wanted a career so that was a deal breaker.