Here is chapter 14 just in time for the holiday weekend. Hope you enjoy. I am thankful for all of you. I think i have the best group of readers out there! Thanks for everything!
http://bleedinghearts.myfsb.com
Chapter 14
Having a real plan and knowing my friends were behind me filled me with a sense of purpose and renewed energy. Having the show behind me and knowing it was a success might have had something to do with the energy though.
The first thing I did the next morning was run by the delivery service again. An older lady with bright blue eyes and a cloud of snowy white hair was working behind the counter.
"Hello, can I help you?" she said with a cheery smile. Her nametag read "Edna."
"I hope so Edna," I said with a smile of my own. I had intended to shoot straight and hope for the best, but now that I stood before this grandmotherly woman I decided a more tactful approach might work better. I decided to improvise. "An old friend sent my a present last Saturday and I'd like to send her a thank you card, but the thing is, we've lost track of each other and I don't even know her married name now. She only signed her first name on the card. Do you think you could help me?"
"Well I'm really sorry but I'm not sure how I could possibly help," she said with a very phony look of disappointment. She could really stand a few acting classes if she was going to try that look often. I wasn't at all convinced that she was sorry. "We don't release that kind of information."
"Oh, well...thanks anyway," I said as I turned to leave. My look of disappointment wasn't fake.
"Unless," she said slowly.
I forced myself to turn back around slowly. I didn't want to appear too eager. I was beginning to get the impression I was dealing with a very sadistic grandma. "Unless?"
"I suppose if I just happened to have the information pulled up on the screen and had to go into the back room for a few minutes I couldn't help it if you looked at the screen."
I blinked in surprise. This was one weird old lady.
"What's your name?" she asked me.
"Will Keegan," I told her.
She hit a few keys on the keyboard then looked up at me slyly and...yes...she winked at me. Then she turned and walked into the back room without another word. I stared after her for a second trying to decide if this was real or if it was possible that I was still dreaming. I shook my head with a sign and leaned over the counter so I could see the computer screen.
"Caught you!" the old bat hollered as she jumped back through the door. I jumped back with a yelp as she cackled merrily. "Just kidding. This job gets pretty boring, you know?"
I decided I was dealing with an escapee from the insane asylum and started edging my way towards the door. I didn't want to turn my back on her.
"Did you get what you needed?" she asked me.
"No, but don't worry about it," I said in a soothing voice.
"Nonsense, you've gone to this much trouble you can't stop now. Here, the name is Joey Taylor. Does that sound right?"
I froze. No it didn't sound right at all. "That's impossible. Joey died a week before that was sent," I said when I found my voice.
Edna's eyes widened. "Well someone used his name to order the delivery."
"Do you remember what they looked like?"
"No, I'm sorry, I really don't."
"Was it a man or a woman?" I asked desperately.
"I don't remember, after a while they all just blur together. Sorry I couldn't be more help."
"Me too," I mumbled under my breath as I left. I hoped the others would make out better with their assignments.
It was Monday before I got to my next assignment, trying to get a coroner's report from Detective Grafton. I got about as far with him as I'd gotten with Edna, except thankfully Grafton didn't jump out of any doors and scare me. He did, however, tell me to stop wasting my time chasing a fantasy and move on with my life. How thoughtful.
Laura called and said that Joey's mom had gone home with one of her sister's for the week and we'd have to put off our visit until she got back. I wasn't too brokenhearted.
All in all I had precious little to offer at our meeting Friday night. It was a small comfort to learn that I wasn't the only one. We gathered in Aidan's and my apartment around a couple extra-large pizzas.
Aidan reported that David Kemp had been so high he didn't even remember the police arriving, let alone if there had been anyone suspicious hanging around. A bull elephant could have gone on rampage in his living room and he wouldn't have noticed. Needless to say he didn't know anything about the necklace either.
Caitlin said that all Joey's ex's had said pretty much the same thing, that he was jerk and they weren't exactly choked up over his death. Only Shelley had been at the party though, and she claimed she had an alibi; she had been with her new boyfriend, David Kemp. Since we had already established that David didn't even know if he'd been at the party, the alibi wasn't really all that strong so we didn't cross her off the list. That may also have had something to do with the fact that we didn't really have a list.
Laura had the most to offer since she'd managed to talk to Blake, the girl who had found Joey in the pool.
"When I talked to her I definitely got the impression that she knew more than she was saying," Laura told us, "At first, she said she just wandered out there and found him but I kept at her and she finally admitted that she was getting it on with some guy in the pool house when they heard Joey talking outside. She got the impression there was someone else with him although she never actually heard anyone. She said she kind of got distracted by the guy on top of her after that and the next thing she remembers is hearing a big splash. Her man finished a few minutes later and of course, once he was done, so were they. She said when they came out of the pool house and saw him floating face down she knew he was dead. She screamed and the guy took off."
"What's his name?" Caitlin asked.
A look of disgust flickered across Laura's face, "She didn't know. She'd never met him before that night and she claims she never even asked his name."
"I wonder..." I said, thinking out loud.
"What?" Killian asked.
"Remember that guy who ran out right after we heard that scream?" I asked Caitlin. She nodded. "I wonder if he could be our Romeo?"
Caitlin turned towards Laura, "Did she say what he looked like?"
Laura made a face again. "She said he was huge if that helps anyone. Oh and she did say that he had 'floppy dark hair that fell over his eyes in the cutest way,'" she said, making her voice go high and squeaky.
I looked at Caitlin, "It sounds like our man. Do you know him?"
"Nope, but I'll ask around."
"We should all ask around campus," Gabe suggested.
"Who says he was from school?" Aidan pointed out, "Will was there and he doesn't go there."
"It's our best shot either way," Laura said, "If he was there he pretty much had to know somebody."
"It's a shot in the dark," Aidan grumbled.
"It's the only shot we have," Laura snapped, "At least I got something."
"Hey, guys, calm down," Killian jumped in, "We're a team, remember? What about Joey's mom?"
"She's out of town," Laura grudgingly, "Will and I will see her as soon as she gets back."
"So what do we do next?" Killian asked, "It seems like we hit a brick wall."
"Give up?" Asher said hopefully. It was the first thing he'd said since Killian and him had arrived. There was a lot of tension between them and I assumed their continued participation in this was not a mutual decision.
"It's way too early to give up," Gabe said, "Will and Laura haven't even talked to Joey's mom yet. And we still don't have that coroner's report. Let me try to get it, it seems to me it should be a matter of public record. Maybe that detective just didn't want you to be playing cops and robbers."
"You mean like we are doing?" Asher asked innocently.
Killian shot him a dirty look. "Why is this report so important?"
"It might...tell us...something we don't know," Gabe finished lamely.
"That wouldn't be hard," Aidan said, which received him a dirty look from Laura this time.
"I mean, it might show if he had head trauma," Gabe said defensively.
"What would that tell us?" I asked.
"That maybe someone hit Joey over the head before he fell in the pool."
"But wouldn't the cops have noticed that?" Aidan argued.
"They might have assumed it happened when he fell in."
"And how would we know it didn't?"
"We wouldn't," Gabe said through clenched teeth, "but it would at least be a possibility."
"Did you ask Blake about the necklace?" I asked Laura, as much to change the subject as anything.
"No, I forgot about that," Laura said with a sigh, "I guess that means I'll have to talk to her again. Talking to her makes me think they could have used a little more chlorine in her gene pool."
"How about if I take a look at David's back yard? You know, to get a feel for the layout of things," Gabe offered, "I know him pretty well. He's a major pothead so I'll just act like I'm trying to score a little weed."
"Great! It sounds like everyone knows what they are doing, let's meet back here again one week from tonight," Killian said.
Everyone cleared out of the apartment pretty quick. Killian and Asher were the last to leave and on their way out I overheard Killian say to Asher, "Are you happy? I'm letting them do all the footwork and we're staying out of it."
To which Asher replied, "I'd be happy if we weren't involved at all."
I hoped my asking them to get involved wouldn't develop into a major rift in their relationship. I would never forgive myself if that happened.
When I got to work the next morning Nikki was waiting. "The reviews come out tomorrow," she announced.
"Don't you ever say hello?" I said grouchily. I hadn't slept very well the night before.
"It's a waste of time and breath. Why not just go right to the important stuff?"
"Did you get any advance copies of the reviews?" I asked her.
"You know," she said absently, as if I hadn't even asked her a question, "You'd better get some more paintings done pronto so we can get them up in here."
I wondered if she was purposefully avoiding my question, and if so what that meant. Were the reviews so bad she didn't want to tell me?
"You know, you've never even asked me how much you made," she said suddenly.
I blushed. I'd thought about it of course, but felt it would be rude to ask. Nikki laughed when I told her that.
"You're going to have to get over that attitude fast, buster. Pushy has to be an artist's middle name or you'll get walked all over. People are sharks in this business. Do you want to know now?"
"Yes, please."
"Pushy!"
"Uh...yes, tell me."
"Pushier!"
"Er...um...tell me now, wench!"
She burst into laughter, "Ok, that was a little much. You definitely need some assertiveness training. Now, about the sales...maybe you'd better sit down."
"Why? Is the news that bad?"
"You decide. I priced your painting between $300 and $500. After my commission that means you pulled down about $6000."
Maybe I should have sat down. I stood staring dumbly with my mouth hanging open.
"Better shut that thing before you swallow a fly," she said with a grin, "Not bad for a month's work, huh? Of course, you can't do that every month. You can only pull off a show like that once or twice a year. The good news, though, is that at your next show your prices will start at $500 and go up from there. We've set a benchmark and it only goes up."
"I've never had that much money at one time before," I managed finally.
"Don't go buy yourself a mansion just yet, Richie Rich. It's not as much as it sounds like, especially if that was all you had to live on. The term starving artist was coined for a reason you know. If, and it's a big if, you become well-known and your prices soar, you might become rich being an artist, but those cases are few and far between. The reviews will have a lot to do with your immediate future, but even if they aren't favorable don't get discouraged. Many successful artists had terrible critical reviews when they were first starting out."
I again wondered if she was subtly trying to tell me to expect bad reviews. I didn't get a chance to ask her, though, because an older couple came in right then looking for a painting for their living room. Something preferably with green and gold in it, the lady said. By the time Nikki had wound down from her lecture on how art should not be bought to compliment the décor, the whole matter of the reviews had slipped my mind. The couple left eventually with slightly stunned expressions and a painting tucked carefully under the man's arm.
Just before closing Laura swept through the door.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"Nice to see you, too," she said dryly, "I came to pick you up. Mrs. Taylor is home and she feels up for a visit."
"I don't know if I feel up for a visit," I said weakly, but I knew it was futile to argue with Laura. I went and told Nikki that I was leaving and we set off for Joey's house in Laura's little red Camry.
"Let me do the talking," Laura said as we pulled into the driveway.
"Great, how about if I just stay in the car then?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Will! Get some balls! Why are you so scared about seeing Mrs. Taylor again?"
"I just don't like dealing with other people's grief," I said, "It's too...real. It almost overwhelms me."
Laura sighed and opened her door, "Come on, Dionne, and bring your psychic friends with you."
"Very funny," I grumbled as I followed her up to the front door.
Mrs. Taylor answered looking about 10 years older than the last time I had seen her. Her hair was a mess and dark circles surrounded her eyes, making her look rather like a rabid raccoon.
"Come on in," she said, "I'm sorry the house is such a mess. I was out of town and then, well I just haven't felt like doing anything since I got back."
"It's fine, Mrs. Taylor," Laura said soothingly, "We're not worried about the house."
We settled in the living room, which still had plastic cups and saucers scattered about the room. After some initial small talk and general remembrances, Laura brought up the purpose of our visit.
"Mrs. Taylor, we're trying to get a better picture of what was going on in Joey's life just before this happened. He seemed...different, somehow and we feel we need to know why so we can move on."
Mrs. Taylor nodded. "He was different, that's for sure. I don't really know what was going on with him."
"Did anything unusual happen in the last few months?"
"No, not really. Well...except...he did get very interested in his father. He wanted to find him."
Laura could barely contain her excitement. "And did he?"
"Not that I know of. I discouraged him, of course. He dropped it after a while."
"Mrs. Taylor, would you mind if we took a look around Joey's room?"
She thought for a moment, "Well, I don't guess it matters much now, does it?" she said at last. "Go ahead."
She followed us to the door but didn't come into the room. Laura and I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. Neither of us had much experience searching a room, let alone with someone watching us. After a few seconds, Mrs. Taylor turned and walked away, taking with her the weight of her sadness. I almost gasped with relief. As soon as she was gone, Laura pounced on the small desk that sat by the bed.
"I feel weird going through Joey's stuff," I said.
"It's not like he's going to care," Laura said as she sifted through a pile of papers.
"Still...it just feels weird."
"Oh! What's this?" she said suddenly as she straightened up.
"What's what?"
"It looks like a letter."
"Lemme see."
Laura held it behind her back, "No, you feel weird going through Joey's stuff remember?"
"Oh, grow up, Laura," I growled. She grinned and produced the page. I read over her shoulder as we both scanned sprawling handwriting.
"I think we just hit the jackpot," she breathed.
It was a letter from Joey's dad.
"Dear Son," it read, "How's my little slugger? Not so little anymore, huh? I can't tell you how much it meant to get a letter from you after all these years. I know I've missed so much. I would very much like to make it up to you if you would give me a chance. How about if you meet me at my boat at the marina this weekend and we can catch up? Hope to see you then. Your Old Man."
"Do you think he went?" I asked.
"I don't know. It's dated October 28th. That would have been the weekend before he was killed."
"What's his name? Is there an envelope?"
"I didn't see one."
We searched the rest of the desk's content, and the rest of the room as well, but didn't find anything more, except that Joey was a slob.
"Should we ask Mrs. Taylor what her husband's name was?" I asked.
"I don't know," Laura said thoughtfully, "It might just upset her to know that Joey went behind her back and found his dad against her wishes."
"So how do we find him? I guess we can assume he's a Mr. Taylor, but that's a pretty common last name. That doesn't exactly narrow it down."
"But how many own boats docked at the marina?"
"Good point," I said. "We can go down there and ask around."
"I can't do it now," Laura said, "This took longer than I thought it would and I'm meeting Gabe for dinner. Maybe you and Aidan can do it tomorrow."
"I can go by myself. Besides I didn't think you liked Aidan."
"I don't think you should go by yourself, you don't know what this guy is like. Maybe he's the one who killed Joey. And why would you think I don't like Aidan?"
"It just seemed like at the meeting last night you, Gabe and Aidan were at each other's throats the whole night."
"It's not that I don't like him," she said slowly, "Ok, maybe I don't really like him. He seems to be a little arrogant, like he thinks he knows everything."
"He does not," I said defensively. "He's just trying to help."
"Look, don't go getting all bristly about this. I wouldn't have even brought it up if you hadn't. It's not a big deal to me, as long as you like him. He's your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend!" I exclaimed, "We're just friends."
"Uh huh, if you say so. Are we done here?"
"Yes, I think we are definitely done here."
We thanked Mrs. Taylor and left. I seethed over Laura's crack about Aidan and I all the way back to my car. I wasn't interested in Aidan in that way...was I? I pushed it out of my mind; I couldn't even think about that right now. I had more important things to worry about, like who killed Joey.
"Do you really think Joey's dad might have killed him?" I said when she pulled up next to my car, "I mean killing your own son?"
"It's happened before. And besides, we don't know anything about this guy. We'll know more after you and Aidan track him down. For now, I'd definitely say he's a suspect."
"Ok, I guess you're right. I'll see you later, Laurie-bell," I said, using her childhood nickname as I got out of the car, "Oh...and I'm not interested in Aidan in that way."
She grinned knowingly, "I think thou dost protest too much." And with that, she reached over, slammed the door and drove quickly away, leaving me fuming in the parking lot.