Casey Mayes - A Killer Column

“It wasn’t my meeting,” she said.

“I know that, but surely you have an opinion about what just happened. Come on, spill.”

“I think Kelsey Hatcher has more motive than the rest of you to have killed Derrick Duncan.”

I nodded. “I was just thinking the same thing. She certainly changed a great deal in one day.”

“I wonder,” Jenny said.

“Trust me, you didn’t see her before. Yesterday she was this mousy little assistant, and now she walks in here like she owns the place, giving orders left and right.”

“I’d like to see that contract,” Jenny said.

“Mine’s in Asheville, sorry.”

“I wonder how it’s worded, exactly.”

“I wish I could help. What do you think about the revelation about Mindi Mills?”

“It doesn’t surprise me one bit, based on what I’ve heard about Derrick Duncan’s life so far.”

I looked around the dining room. “There’s no use hanging around here anymore. We’ve gotten all we’re going to out of those two.”

“Three you mean. Kelsey’s as viable a suspect as the other two.”

“Three,” I agreed. “But I’ve got a problem now.”

“You sure do,” Jenny said. “You’ve got a puzzle to create.”

“I’m not worried about that,” I said.

“Maybe you should. Tell you what. Let’s go back to my place. You can come up with a new puzzle, and I can catch up on paperwork. Then we can put our heads together after we knock all of that out and start doing a little more digging.”

I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but I knew Jenny was right. With Kelsey in charge, I didn’t know what to expect. I’d come too close to losing my job to jeopardize it now.

I’d better get a puzzle together before the deadline.

Chapter 6

BACK AT JENNY’S, WE WERE BOTH CLEARLY RELIEVED TO find no more flowers or notes by her door, though neither one of us said anything about it. I wasn’t going to just forget about it, but there was really nothing else I could do until Zach got back from Richmond. The second he returned, I planned to dump the entire thing in his lap. Jenny was too important to me—a sister I never had—and I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her if I could help it.

“Would you like some coffee?” she said as we walked back inside her house.

“I’d love some sweet tea, if you’ve got it.”

She smiled at me. “I made a batch day before yesterday.”

“You are an angel.”

I got my briefcase and pulled out some of the paper and the pencils that I love. “I feel guilty working here. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry about me, Savannah. I’ve always got a backlog of paperwork on my computer.”

“You shouldn’t have to do that on your vacation.”

Jenny laughed. “Trust me, none of this time is going to be counted as vacation. I’m going to be billing my hours the instant I get to work. Do you need anything before I get started?”

“No, I’m set.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it.”

After she disappeared into her office, I started thinking about how brave she was being about her stalker. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle it if I were in her shoes.

After a few hours, I had a puzzle ready, granted not a very complicated one, but I was satisfied with it. Now all I had left to write was my snippet for the day. Letting my mind wander, I tried to come up with a theme that would justify the simplicity of the puzzle. After a few minutes of pondering different possibilities, I wrote,

Puzzles can provide us with many more answers than the ones we seek on the grids we love to play. Many times the events in our lives present puzzling challenges to us, and it is only after we see the patterns within them that their solutions become clear. As you work this puzzle, try to bear that in mind, and look for the patterns in the world around you. You might just be astounded by what you find.

And that was it. I looked at what I’d done, made a few tweaks on the snippet, and then I was ready to send it to Kelsey.

The only problem was that I didn’t have my fax with me, and I’d purposefully left my computer at home. How on earth could I have known that I would need it?

Maybe Jenny had one. I walked down the hall and tapped gently on her door. I’d learned when we’d been roommates that if she was engrossed in what she was doing, the small taps wouldn’t interrupt her train of thought, but if she wasn’t deep into something serious, she’d hear me and respond.

After a moment, I heard her say, “Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but do you have a fax machine by any chance?”

“Hang on.” Thirty seconds later she opened the door. I could see that she’d been crying, and though she probably would have liked me to ignore it, I couldn’t do it. “You’re really rattled, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “I’m trying not to let it get to me, but it’s hard.”

I decided to tell her that I was calling in reinforcements. “We’re telling Zach the second he gets back from Richmond.”

Jenny shook her head. “Savannah, he’s got enough on his mind getting you out of this murder investigation. I’m sure he doesn’t have time to deal with this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. He’ll be happy to do it.”

She started to protest, and then finally nodded. “It would really help my peace of mind if he could help put a stop to this.”

“Trust me, he’ll find this guy.”

“I hope you’re right.” She wiped away another errant tear, and then said, “My fax is over here. It’s one of those combination units. I couldn’t live without it.”

“How does it work?”

She took the puzzle and snippet from me, and the card Kelsey had given me. “We’ll have this sent in no time.”

“Excellent,” I said. “What should we do after that? Do you have much more work to do?”

“I’ve always got something on my plate,” she said. “But there’s nothing that won’t wait. What did you have in mind?”

I started to say something when we both heard someone pounding on the front door. Jenny dove into her closet and grabbed a tennis racket.

I asked, “It’s an odd time to want to play, isn’t it?”

“Hey, I don’t have a baseball bat, so it’s going to have to do. You know how I feel about guns.”

“Come on, let’s see who’s at the door.”

We walked out into the hallway together, and the banging on the door continued as we approached.

Jenny was going into her backswing when I called out, “Who is it?”

“It’s Zach. The doorbell must be broken. Let me in.”

Jenny lowered her racket, and I opened the door with relief.

Zach knew instantly that something was going on. “What happened? Did I miss something?”

“Someone’s been stalking Jenny,” I blurted out.

Zach’s brow furrowed as he walked in. “Tell me about it.”

We sat together on the couch as Jenny recounted what had happened so far, all the way up to the most recent note and roses she’d just gotten.

When she was finished, Jenny said, “I feel foolish when I lay it out like that.”

“You shouldn’t. You have every right to worry. I can’t believe Murphy hasn’t done more to catch this guy.”

“How do you fight something like this?” Jenny said.

“I have a few ideas. Let me check something first.”

He walked out the door, looked down at the doorbell, and then retrieved his pocketknife. After a few moments working on it, he pulled out a sliver of wood. “Someone jammed a toothpick into the doorbell so it wouldn’t work. He’s getting more aggressive, isn’t he?”