Drip Dead Read online

  “It’s just for my own use. Make sure I remember everything correctly.”

  “Of course,” Mom answered.

  The sheriff went through his ritual, a process that had become all too familiar to me over the last couple years. It was all new to my mother.

  I logged in to the laptop and brought up the mail program. I didn’t need to listen; I knew what was coming.

  I deleted several messages from my junk folder offering to check my credit score, enlarge body parts, or find long-lost schoolmates, and reset my spam filters. It was the kind of work I could do without much thought, a good idea since I couldn’t completely tune out the voices in the living room.

  I managed pretty well though, until my mother’s voice rose. “Sheriff. You must be mistaken! That simply isn’t possible.”

  Mom didn’t sound upset so much as she sounded offended. It was the same tone she had taken with Sheriff Mitchell when he questioned me as a possible suspect in the murder of Blake Weston, an implication that her boyfriend—or her daughter—simply couldn’t be involved with something as unseemly as murder.

  While I didn’t share her absolute belief in Gregory, I did share her desire not to be involved. Not that it mattered what we wanted. Blake Weston’s death had made that clear. When someone you’re close to—or someone you used to be close to—is murdered, you’re involved whether you want to be or not.

  The sheriff spoke softly, offering his apologies for the questions he had to ask, while pressing ahead with his interview.

  He asked about her relationship with Gregory, which she insisted was happy. She told him there was no problem with the wedding plans, and that she was already moving into the new house Gregory had purchased.

  “This house—” I heard him riffle through the pages of the small notebook he carried as a backup to the recorder. “You say Mr. Whitlock built it?”

  “He had a mortgage, of course,” Mom answered. “But yes, he built it.”

  “And did you have a financial interest in the property?”

  Mom didn’t answer immediately. The sudden silence drew my full attention, and I sat still, listening.

  She laughed, as though trying to dismiss the question. “I did cover part of the down payment and closing costs,” she admitted. “And I certainly expected to pay my share of the expenses. I hardly expected Gregory to support me. I’m perfectly capable of supporting myself.”

  That was a change that had come about in the five years since my father’s death, and Mom had become fiercely proud of it.

  “And the incident at Dee’s?”

  “Incident? You mean that little disagreement?” I heard the pitcher clink against the table and the sound of pouring water. “It was just a misunderstanding, Sheriff. More embarrassing than anything. I would have preferred we have the discussion in private, but Gregory was insistent we resolve the issue while we ate breakfast.

  “It was over in a few minutes. The rather public nature of the conversation made me lose my appetite.”

  Ah, yes. Never argue in public. One of Mother’s rules.

  The conversation continued on that track for several minutes and I went back to my computer. I hadn’t heard anything I didn’t already know.

  Even the part about the down payment on the house had been spelled out in the prenuptial agreement, and Mom had insisted I read every word.

  “I don’t know anything about boxes!” Mom raised her voice, and my attention was drawn back to the living room. “I didn’t know they were there. I don’t know what was in them, and I don’t know when or why they were put there. And I only have your word that they belonged to Gregory. For all I know, they could have been anyone’s.”

  “They were addressed to Mr. Whitlock at his home,” the sheriff said. His voice was patient, but I could hear the strain. Talking to my mother was often difficult under the best of circumstances. Which this definitely wasn’t.

  “Do you know what was in them?” Mom challenged.

  “The way this works, Mrs. Neverall, is that I ask the questions and you answer them. Not the other way around.”

  “If they were under my house, Sheriff, no one told me.”

  “Who has access to your house, Mrs. Neverall?”

  “My housekeeper, Penny. My daughter—and you can’t possibly suspect her. Again.” Sarcasm dripped from the last word. She still hadn’t forgiven the sheriff for suspecting me in Blake’s death.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Gregory, of course.” She paused. “No one else.”

  “Did anyone lose a key? Or would any of those people lend their key to someone else? Is there any way someone other than those three would have access to your house?”

  Mom sighed. “No, Sheriff. No one else. I doubt Georgie has used her key at all since she’s been back, except for her visit to check the pipes.”

  “And the housekeeper?”

  “She wouldn’t let that key out of her sight if she cares about her job. Which, I have to say, she does. I pay her well, Sheriff. You must always respect the people you allow to care for your home.”

  The implication of her words finally sank in. My mother had a housekeeper! The woman who nagged and sniffed at my lack of domestic skills paid someone to clean for her.

  A grin spread across my face as I realized the leverage she had just provided me. No more looking down her nose at my dusty bookshelves and jumbled closets. No more snide remarks about the dog hair in the carpet.

  “So what was in those boxes, Sheriff?”

  “Wine,” the sheriff replied. He waited for a response from my mother and when he didn’t get one he continued, “It seems odd, don’t you think, that Mr. Whitlock would put several cases of wine under your house when he had a very nice wine cellar in your new house?”

  “I have no idea, Sheriff. Perhaps he put it there before we finished the new house and he hadn’t had time to move it yet. Maybe it was a surprise for our wedding. I really can’t even guess as to why he did something I didn’t know about.”

  “But you did know about the wine cellar, didn’t you? Did you know Mr. Whitlock was amassing a large wine collection?”

  “Of course I knew there was a wine cellar. As for Gregory’s wine collection, as you call it, he had been buying wine for a long while. I’d hardly call it a collection.”

  Mom’s voice strained just as mine had earlier in the day. “Are we through here?”

  She got the same hesitation and eventual answer I had.

  The sheriff agreed they were through for the night, but he warned her he would have more questions, and she would need to sign a statement.

  And he told her not to leave town.

  He was adamant about that last part.

  Make sure you rotate the handles on your plumbing shut-off valves twice a year. The valves to your toilets, to your sinks, to your house, to your washing machine, to your dishwasher and so on—all of them can degrade and seize up if they aren’t turned regularly. You’ll spot any issues early, if there are any, and prevent most problems from happening in the first place. Turn the valves off and on when you change your batteries for your smoke detectors. I do this when daylight saving time starts and stops. It makes the semiannual task easy to schedule and remember. This small precaution means that when you really need to turn off one of these valves in an emergency, you’ll know where to find it, and it will be in working order. If you don’t know where these valves are, ask your plumber to show you the next time he visits your home.

  —A Plumber’s Tip from Georgiana Neverall

  chapter 11

  I stayed in the kitchen until Mom closed the front door behind the sheriff and I heard his car pull away from the curb.

  Sheriff Mitchell had a point. It did seem odd that Gregory would put wine under Mom’s house when there was a wine cellar in his new house. Especially wine that he’d bothered to have shipped from Europe to his new home. You didn’t pay international shipping for a thirty-dollar Bordeaux or Pinot Noir.

  An
d there had been several cases of wine.

  What had he been up to?

  I was about to start a Web search for information on expensive wine, when Mom stomped into the kitchen, her stiletto heels beating an angry tattoo against the aged linoleum on my floor.

  She pulled the dinner plates from the refrigerator, along with a bowl of salad and a small jar of homemade dressing. For a fleeting moment I was impressed by her preparations, but my awe was quickly replaced by amusement. I knew her secret now.

  She had a housekeeper.

  Made it a lot easier to look like a domestic goddess when someone else did the mundane work.

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said, swapping plates in the microwave. “You need to go wash up.”

  I shut the laptop and went, as if I were ten years old again.

  Dinner was a strained affair. She didn’t bring up her interview with the sheriff, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to admit I had overheard most of their conversation, although I was sure she knew I had.

  I told her about the progress on the McComb job, and she nodded and made appropriate polite noises, just as though she gave a flying fig.

  We were clearing the table when she stretched elaborately and covered a yawn with her hand. The diamond in her engagement ring flashed, and I worked at not noticing that she was still wearing Gregory’s ring.

  “I think I’ll take a bath and turn in early,” she said.

  “Just let me in there a minute, and it’s all yours,” I answered. At least for one day the morning bathroom traffic jam would be averted, if I showered tonight.

  The dishwasher was loaded and the table wiped down when I returned. Mom gave me a little hug and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving me alone with the rest of the evening in front of me.

  I was still dressed, it was early, and I caught myself pacing around the kitchen like a caged animal. Daisy and Buddha seemed to pick up on my tension, padding from their beds to the kitchen and back.

  I scribbled a note to my mother, telling her I was going to walk the dogs. She’d worry no matter what, but at least I tried. I left the note in the middle of the bare kitchen table, where she couldn’t miss it.

  “Come on, guys,” I said, heading for the front door. “Let’s get out of here for a while.”

  I grabbed the leashes and clipped them to their collars. Just walking the dogs. That was all I was up to.

  Once outside I glanced over at the Beetle snuggled up against Mom’s Escalade. We might be moving soon, after all, and it couldn’t hurt to let the dogs explore their new neighborhood, could it? It was just a get-acquainted walk in the place where we might be living.

  Daisy and Buddha were always up for a car ride, and they piled enthusiastically into the back of the Beetle. It had taken me a long time to convince them dogs ride in back, but they had finally stopped trying to sneak into the passenger seat.

  Most of the time.

  “Daisy,” I said warningly. She looked up at me, the picture of innocence, from her perch in the front seat. Her expression was one of befuddlement, which I totally did not believe. “Backseat!” I ordered.

  With a big doggy sigh, she threaded her way between the front seats and settled into the back.

  I parked around the corner from Mom’s house and let the dogs out. I headed away from the house, as though to reinforce the argument that I was just exploring the neighborhood.

  We circled around a couple blocks, the dogs stopping every few feet to sniff a strange bush or mark a tree. This was their new territory and I gave them plenty of time to acquaint themselves with it.

  I needed the time to orient myself, too. I had lived here when I was in high school, but that was several years ago. It was full dark, with lights burning in the windows of houses set well back from the edge of the road.

  I stayed on the roadway, not trusting the shoulder in the blackness. Eventually I would learn, but for tonight this was unexplored territory.

  We turned another corner and I could see Mom’s house in the next block. Well, I could see the one house with no lights, a dark hulk against the darker night. It wasn’t a comforting sight.

  Between here and there was Harry Hamilton’s place. Harry was the quintessential neighborhood gossip. He seemed to spend most of his days, and evenings, drinking coffee in the living room with the drapes wide open to a view of all the houses on the block. If anything happened on this street the odds were Harry had seen it. Harry was the one who’d called my mother the day Gregory was killed.

  I crossed the street in case Harry was watching, thankful for the dark. It was a public road, and I had every right to be there, but I didn’t like being watched. It was something I should have thought about before I agreed to buy the house. I was going to have Harry Hamilton for a neighbor.

  I glanced over at Harry’s place as we hurried past, a sigh of relief escaping my lips at the sight of closed drapes.

  We crossed the side street passing under the lone street light on the block and approached the dark spot that was Mom’s house.

  On the other side of the street a blue glow in the Gordens’ living room showed they were watching TV. A faint light came on in their kitchen window and I could imagine Mr. Gorden opening the refrigerator for his nightly beer. It was a ritual he’d observed since I was a grade school kid doing homework at the kitchen table with his daughter, Melissa. Melissa had moved to Colorado several years ago according to my mother, but the Gordens sill lived in the same house and kept to the same schedule they’d always had.

  Next door, Mrs. Sweeney’s kitchen window was dark. She hadn’t lived next door to Mom for very long, and I didn’t know much about her.

  No one took any notice of me.

  I passed the house and continued to the end of the block before turning around and coming back. I watched the other houses for any sign that someone was interested in what I was doing, but I didn’t see anything.

  My heart sped up as I drew closer to the driveway. No one guarded the house, and the only sign that it was a crime scene was a couple strands of yellow tape hanging from the hinges of the back gate.

  The sheriff had told Mom not to go back inside until they were done, but he hadn’t told me I couldn’t go in. For that matter, the front door wasn’t even marked with crime-scene tape. Not that I intended to go inside, but it couldn’t hurt to take a look around. I knew how things should look, and the sheriff didn’t. Maybe I could spot something he hadn’t noticed.

  As I got closer to the gate I realized it wasn’t latched. The sheriff’s department must not care very much if anybody went in the yard, since they didn’t bother to close the gate.

  The dogs stopped at the gate, sniffing all around the area trampled by so many official boots just a couple days earlier. They took a long time to sample everything before they were ready to go in the yard.

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm the racing of my heart. I was just going in my mother’s backyard. Nothing more. I was going to make sure everything was okay. I had every right to be there, and no one had said I couldn’t go in.

  So what was I waiting for?

  I took another deep breath and blew it out, fluttering my too-long bangs against my forehead. I’d have to take care of that over the weekend.

  “Come on guys,” I whispered. All the neighbors were inside with the doors and windows closed against the chill of the evening, yet I felt a need to speak as quietly as possible. “Let’s check on Grandma’s yard.”

  Sandra Neverall would have had a fit over my calling her Grandma to the dogs. She was still holding out for grandchildren—plural—and was not going to settle for grand-dogs anytime soon. But as I slipped past thirty and started the glide toward forty, it was becoming clear she wasn’t going to have a choice. The possibility was still there, but the odds grew longer with each passing year.

  The backyard was completely dark. The moon was a narrow crescent high in the sky, and the glow from the streetlight on the corner didn’t penetrate the fenced
enclosure. The back of Mrs. Sweeney’s house was as dark as her kitchen window.

  I had a small high-intensity flashlight in my jacket pocket. I made it a habit to carry it with me whenever I took the dogs out.

  I wrapped my fingers around the metal case. It was warm from resting next to my body, and I gripped it tightly. But I didn’t take it out and turn it on. No matter how much I told myself I had every right to be there, I didn’t want to draw any attention to my presence.

  I might believe I was right, but I didn’t relish the thought of arguing that point with the sheriff. We’d had that debate before, the discovery of Gregory’s body being the latest in a growing list of incidents.

  What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.

  I stood still just inside the gate for what felt like an eternity as I waited for my eyes to adjust. I could feel my pupils straining to trap every bit of light as the yard slowly turned from a single dark pit to a dim landscape of grays and blacks, like an old movie with the brightness turned way down.

  At last I could see enough to avoid running into the fence or the house in the dark. But I couldn’t see much more.

  The dogs strained against the leashes, anxious to check out every inch of the yard. I let myself be dragged along behind them toward the back fence.

  An unpaved alley ran along the other side of the fence. Once there had been a gate from the yard to the alley, but when my father replaced the fence he’d eliminated the gate as a security measure. I’d noticed several missing boards and put them on my to-do list, but for now the fence wasn’t providing much security and I wondered if the dogs were after some animal in the alley.

  We were a few feet from the fence when a car turned into the alley, its headlights blinding me. Instinctively, I flattened myself against the fence and ducked down. I tugged on the leashes, forcing the dogs into the shadows with me, and hugged them tight against my pounding chest.

  A couple houses over I heard a dog bark, just as I had the day Gregory was killed. I whispered a warning to Daisy and Buddha to stay quiet, and for once they obeyed a command.