"Damn. I shouldn't have said anything. It just slipped out. It's not public knowledge, but Peter says they think he was murdered."
"Why do they think that?"
"Because he was left-handed and Luthor was shot on the right side. And he avoided guns. And I think he would have been too chicken to pull the trigger anyway."
"Oh."
"Don't tell anyone, please? Peter thinks someone here at the park did it. He says you have to know this place to think of it as a rendezvous point, and they had to know me to steal my cell phone. Someone sent Luthor a text from my phone right before he came here that night."
"We're all suspects?" Jim asked, troubled.
"I'm not, at least Peter says I'm not. I guess I should be. He's only got my word that I lost my phone. I don't know what they think about anyone else."
"That's a lot of people. What reason would anyone have had for killing Luthor?"
"Peter thinks it was a psycho. But we don't have any psychos. Kooks and eccentrics, but no psychos unless you want to count the weird guy who used to bring his Akita last spring."
"How long have you been carrying this around?" he inquired, now concerned.
"Peter told me almost three weeks ago. I'm afraid, Jim. If it's a crazy person with no motive except they're crazy, doesn't that mean they can do it again?"
"Are they certain it's murder?"
"Certain enough to have Peter investigating. I keep thinking they're mistaken, but then I remember about that text message they say came from the phone I can't find. If he shot himself, then where's my phone, and who sent that text? There's no other explanation. I don't want to look at my friends and wonder if they shot my boyfriend. Right now, you're one of the only people I trust. I hate feeling this way."
"Who have you told?"
"Just you, Jim. Didn't mean to, it sort of busted out. I despise secrets, and I'm sorry I dumped this on you. Look, you won't tell anyone, will you?"
"No, I won't, unless you say it's okay."
Just then CarGo and Rufus bounded up, tongues hanging out in canine good cheer that refuted Lia's mood. Lia ruffled CarGo's neck as she watched Anna and Nadine approach. Jealous, Fleece crowded in.
"So serious over here!" Nadine announced. "What are you two cooking up on the back side of the park?"
"Lia's wrestling with some devils today," Jim responded.
"I'm so sorry, can I hit one of them over the head for you? Bean him with CarGo's tennis ball?" Anna offered.
"This must be about that nice detective," Nadine said.
"How'd you guess?" Lia asked.
"You young girls. It's always about a man, and with him around, who else could it be?" Nadine patted her on the knee.
"If you're so smart, what am I feeling bad about?"
"Well, I'm sure you haven't done anything truly heinous. I think it has something to do with your back-to-the-Mayflower Puritan roots."
"What are you talking about, Nadine?" Anna inquired.
"Lia's feeling bad about feeling good."
"Uh . . . well . . . it's just not that simple," Lia mumbled.
"Sweetie, feel bad about Luthor if you need to. But don't let that stop you from feeling good about Peter," Anna advised.
"It's awfully confusing."
"Of course it is," Nadine sympathized. "But do you really want to tell the charming detective to go away until you figure it out? Do you suppose he'll still be twiddling his thumbs when you've tidied your life up?"
"Nadine," Jim interjected, "that's not fair to either of them."
"Nadine's right," Anna asserted. "Life isn't fair. But Lia, don't let bad timing get in the way of your happiness. Don't make an obstacle out of Luthor dying."
"You think Luthor dying is an obstacle?"
"He made you unhappy when you were together. Don't let him continue to make you unhappy now that he's gone."
"He's not gone, dammit, he's dead! Sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you. I just need some space." Lia pushed off the table and called Honey and Chewy to her as she stalked back towards the woods.
"Oh, dear. I seem to have missed the mark."
"You're usually more tactful, Anna."
"Yes, Jim, I usually am."
~ ~ ~
Lia was halfway down the gorge behind the dog park when Kita ran up the path and play-bowed to Honey. Honey barked and bowed back, then chased Kita back down the hill. Lia heard Bailey calling to Kita from the bottom of the trail. It looked like company was inevitable. She made her way carefully down the steep incline. When she reached the bottom, she found Bailey sitting on a log by the creek with a book.
"Hey, what are you reading?" Lia asked as she joined Bailey on the log.
"It's a book about reincarnation and soul-groups."
"Soul-groups? What are those?" Lia asked, glad to have something to talk about besides Peter Dourson and her personal life.
"Soul-groups contract to support each other by performing certain roles in various incarnations," Bailey launched into her explanation.
"How does that work?"
"Families are often soul-groups. In another lifetime, your mother might have been your sister or your child, or even your husband. Sometimes it's kinda crazy."
"How so?"
"The harder the life, the more you can learn. So sometimes souls decide to come into life handicapped in some way, physically, economically, emotionally."
"I can see that."
"So you decide you want to experience living in squalor in a war-torn third-world country. Some of your soul-group is likely to come along with you."
"You mean instead of opting for a life of leisure on the Riviera."
"Exactly. So souls are choosing to go into situations that are toxic and even dangerous to support each other."
"That would be a true friend," Lia commented.
"Now suppose someone wanted to increase their compassion by having a traumatic experience, say, being a rape victim."
"Someone would volunteer for that? Sounds harsh."
"And brave. Well, they would then contract with a member of their soul-group to be the rapist."
"You're kidding me," Lia said, appalled.
"Truth. According to this book anyway," Bailey shrugged.
"But wouldn't the rapist be messing with their own karma?"
"I haven't gotten to that part of the book yet, but I think they might get special dispensation, since it's a soul agreement that serves the higher good."
"So you're saying that someone who gets raped literally asked for it? That's whacked!"
"Not all the time, only sometimes, and that's over-simplifying."
"I don't know about that book, Bailey."
"I haven't made up my mind yet. It's certainly thought-provoking," Bailey responded.
"So you're saying we might have asked Catherine to come into our lives to make us crazy?"
"Very possibly."
"Geezlepete."
~ ~ ~
Something's up. I don't know what it is, but things are not settling down the way they should now that Terry's out of the picture. Is it just Lia's confusion about Detective Dourson, or is there more to the story? There's too much gossip at the park, people hanging out without anything else to do but take small inferences and blow them into raging tsunamis of rumor. Perhaps this was a dangerous pool for me to dip in. Nothing can be done about that now, but keep still and watch. Then again, maybe there's another way to look at this.
Chapter 17
Wednesday, June 1
This time the pot sitting outside her studio door held a cactus with a single coral bloom. She sat it on her table, pulled up a stool and sat down. She glowered at the spiny plant, jerked out her phone. Peter answered on the fourth ring.
"Are you suggesting I'm prickly?"
"Hello to you, too. How are you?"
"I'm wondering what it means when a guy gives you a cactus."
"You don't like it?"
"I don't know yet."
"I though
t it was pretty cool when Alma told me how rare it is when they bloom."
"Hmmm."
"She also told me about that plant at Krohn Conservatory that blooms every hundred years and stinks like rotting meat, but I didn't think you'd go for that one."
"It wouldn't fit in my studio, anyway. They had to pull out part of the roof last time it bloomed."
"If you don't like the cactus, I'm sure Alma wouldn't mind taking it back. She has a big heart for rejected strays."
Lia gently brushed the tips of the spines with her finger. "Are you an Indian giver now?"
"I can't win, can I?"
"Probably not."
"Will you paint this one, too?"
"Maybe."
"If I buy you lunch, will you tell me what's wrong?"
Lia sighed. "I really like you, Peter."
"But?"
"I keep freaking out about Luthor being murdered. I hate what I'm finding out about him and what that says about me. And I can't take looking at all my friends and wondering who's going to pull out a knife. Everything is really squirrelly, you know? It makes it hard for me to think about dating."
"I wish I could make it go away. I'm almost sorry I told you about Luthor. But I couldn't stand to see you blame yourself."
"What about your investigation?"
Now it was Peter's turn to sigh. "It's going nowhere. I've been told to stop spending time on it, since there's no physical evidence at the scene to link to a suspect. We've got nothing unless your phone shows up. And if he was as smart as I think, he pulled the SIM card and tossed it."
"Will he do it again?"
"I don't know. I wish I could say it isn't likely, but since we don't know the motive, we can't speculate when, where or even if he'll strike again. It would be a very good idea to never agree to meet someone alone in an isolated area, especially if the invite came by text message."
~ ~ ~
The painting, when it was done, had an edgy feeling to it. Delicate tissue petals set against vicious spikes. A Jeckyll and Hyde kind of thing. Translucent reds and oranges against dull, dense greens. A study in contrasts. Lia thought it summed up how she felt, the tension of jagged edges of pain and mistrust against fluttery warmth.
Time made things no clearer to her. She felt awkward about Peter, about having jumped him on impulse and now having to deal with him. He wasn't hard to deal with, exactly. She just didn't know him and wasn't sure what his expectations were, or what she wanted. It had been a mistake, that afternoon in the studio. He was cute, but not exactly her type. He seemed to be a picket fence kind of guy. What did they have in common? After everything she found out about Luthor, maybe she shouldn't be with her type anyway. But what did it say about her that she hadn't been aware of the things Luthor had been up to? That she had been attracted to Luthor in the first place? Maybe she had no business being with anybody.
~ ~ ~
Lia finished the meditation bench and helped Bailey plant the garden while Jose excavated the pond and compacted sand on the twisting path. Next they would set in edging, lay the stones, then spread crushed limestone over the empty spaces in the path. She welcomed the long days and hard, sweaty work. It kept her from thinking about Peter too much.
She wasn't thinking about Peter . . . much. She was thinking about his warning. She turned to Jose and had a long talk about personal protection. Somehow she couldn't see herself carrying a taser all the time. Or a gun, or a snap-out baton. Surely she didn't need to be afraid, did she?
Then there was the problem with Bailey. Catherine was Catherine. And Catherine's frequent oversight was setting Bailey's nerves on edge. Not that Catherine wouldn't set anyone's nerves on edge, but in the past, Bailey had been able to toss off a joke, roll those protuberant eyes of hers, and stay focussed. Now she was moody. Lia worried that she was going to blow up on the job. Some days she was pumped up and raring to go, others she seemed like she could hardly crawl out of bed. And some days, her mood turned on a dime, usually after a visit from Catherine. Bailey said it was just Catherine, and as soon as they finished the garden, she'd be better. Lia decided to take it on faith and let it go. Catherine was more inclined to talk to her anyway. So she buffered the two as best she could, and crossed her fingers that they'd make it to the end.
She saw Peter at the park. They had lunch, caught a Christian Bale movie, and by tacit agreement did not mention the afternoon they'd spent rolling on the floor in Lia's studio. Peter figured they were just catching up, doing things they should have done before rolling on the floor, and when the time was right they'd get back around to it. Peter had hunted as a young man in the Kentucky hills. He knew the value of waiting.
Peter had been pulled off the Morrisey case to chase down car-jackers operating on Hamilton Avenue. "Cheeky bastards," he said. "District Five is less than half a mile away."
"Do Kentucky boys say 'cheeky'?"
"They do if they've spent any time around Terry. How is he?"
"No change. Donna goes to see him every day and she reads Bernard Cornwell to him." Peter gave her a quizzical look. "Medieval war novels," she explained. "She keeps slipping in deviations from historical facts. She's hoping he'll bolt up and call her on it."
"I don't know if that's sweet or sad. What's the prognosis?"
"The swelling's gone down. So far, no obvious signs of long term damage, but with the brain it's hard to say. At least that's what they tell me."
~ ~ ~
For the hell of it, Peter read the fifth Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix. He decided Cho Chang was a twit and told Brent so.
~ ~ ~
Tuesday, June 7
Terry's eyelashes fluttered. Donna's heart stopped. Frantic, she ran to the nurses station and demanded a doctor. By the time one arrived, Terry's eyes were open and he was talking.
"Sir," the resident asked, "Can you tell me what year it is?"
"Gregorian, Julian, Mayan, or Jewish?"
Confused, the resident doggedly continued. "Sir, can you name the president?"
"You mean that fellow who let a serial killer babysit his children?"
The neurological resident looked bewildered. "Sounds delirious," he muttered to the nurse. "Sir, can you give me a name?"
"Comrade Urkel? How about asking me something worth answering, like the Pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty, in order?" Tears ran down Donna's face. "Now, that was a government worth talking about. Ramses I, Seti I, Ramses II, Merneptah, Seti II, Amenmesse, Siptah, ah, and we must not forget little known and under-appreciated Queen Twosret." He punctuated the last name with a pointed index finger.
"Sir, you aren't making any sense."
"Only due to your limited intelligence. Fetch me a doctor with a real education."
The resident noticed Donna smiling through her tears and realized that she was not at all upset by his patient's behavior. "Is this typical?"
"Terry is never typical. But this is normal for him."
~ ~ ~
All wasn't normal. Terry could recite the periodic table. He could calculate pi to twenty decimal places in his head. This he chose to do instead of counting backwards from 100 by three, as requested by the doctor. He named all the prime numbers under 500. He could not remember falling, or even being on the roof. They told him it was expected to have some memory loss of the events preceding a concussion.
Terry was bothered. He suspected that somehow, he'd forgotten something important.
Chapter 18
Saturday, June 18
Bailey twitched the mosquito netting in place on their improvised butterfly house.
"It's a bit much, isn't it?" Lia asked, eyeing the plethora of hanging baskets full of Fuchsia and Tuberous Begonias. Pots of Geraniums in every color were stacked around the pavilion's support posts and along the perimeter of the tent.
"But it's made her so happy. Our Catherine loves overkill. The butterflies will certainly be entertained. They aren't native, but they will make a lovely splash of color, and she can dec
orate her deck with these after the party's over."
"I'm so impressed. You've got her being smug about her plants not being jammed in like sardines."
"It just took citing a few eco-conscious Hollywood types who've gone the native plant route, giving her a few names to drop. She now knows she's in exalted company."
"Lia! Bailey! Have I told you how wonderful this is?" Catherine picked her way across the stepping stones in her 'koi moat' to the little island. Lia watched her totter across the creek in her spike-heeled sandals and mentally shook her head. "How brilliant of you to come up with a canopy of mosquito netting so the butterflies would have sunshine. Is everything ready to let them loose?"
"Whenever you say," Lia responded. "We've placed extra pots of flowers for them to feed on while they're in here."
"It looks lovely! I thought about waiting until everyone was here later this evening, but then I thought, why keep them cooped up any longer? Their lives are so short, they should get all the sunshine they can."
"If you want, you can sit in the tent and open the hatchery. You'll get to watch them come out, and you can spend some time alone with them."
"What a marvelous way to get ready for the party!"
Lia pulled the hatchery out from under the bench. "We'll leave you, then. Just be sure to close the netting all the way when you come out." She showed Catherine the strips of magnets designed to ensure the flaps sealed securely.
They left Catherine to enjoy her island paradise and strolled the path, savoring bright splashes of blossoms. "It turned out well, didn't it, Bailey?"
"I'd say so. Maybe some of Catherine's society friends will want one of their very own."
"You going to be okay now?"
Bailey sighed, "For a while I was wondering if I was going to be able to see it through. Thanks for running interference."
"Hey, what are friends for? I could wait awhile before we tackle another one. I swear, I'll never agree to such an insane schedule on a big job again."
"It's like childbirth. They tell me you forget all the pain and that's the only reason anyone ever does it again."
"Yeah, you're right. I get in the middle of some huge project and I promise myself I'm never going to do it again and then I turn around and make a proposal for something twice as big. Come on, girlfriend, let's go put on our party shoes."
~ ~ ~
"Detective, Officer, I'm so glad you both made it." Catherine's smile was bright and impersonal as she ushered Peter and Brent into her side yard. "Have you seen the labyrinth? You must walk it. There's food and drinks by the back deck. Don't forget the sushi bar." She wafted off, the lavender and cerise silk of her caftan fluttering behind her. Peter suspected she had decided to take the butterfly theme to heart.