33. Chapter 33
Chapter 33
Dylan
W here the heck was Elise? When practice had started without her, I’d known something was wrong. No matter how many times I called, she never picked up. Two miles into our ten-mile-run, I decided to turn around and figure out what was going on.
Since I was actually closer to her house than the school, I headed straight there.
I was still wheezing from my sprint when she answered the door. Without saying a word, I wrapped her into the biggest, sweatiest hug ever.
“Are you… okay; what… happened?” I covered the top of her head in kisses, then paused to lean against the wall.
“You’re the one who seems like they’re not okay.”
“I’m…fine. I just… need to catch…my breath… You weren’t… answering…your phone.”
Elise cringed. “Sorry. I always keep it on silent mode during my classes. I must have forgotten to turn the sound back on. Here, come into the kitchen, and I can get you a drink. We have some Gatorade in the fridge.”
“You’re an angel.” I followed her on unsteady legs into the living room.
Three older ladies, including mine and Elise’s grannies, sat around the folding table with cards in their hands.
“Hello ladies.” My voice was so raspy, I sounded like a chain smoker.
“I’ll get that drink and be right back.” Elise squeezed my arm, then headed for the kitchen.
Since they probably didn’t want their couch covered in body odor, I sat on the floor, leaning my back against the nearest wall.
Grannie just shook her head. She was used to my post-workout coma. Elise’s Grannie and Edna, their forever grumpy friend, watched me with obvious worry.
I gave them a weak smile and waved my hand like it was a soggy noodle. “I’m fine. Trust me, this happens all the time.”
Grannie wagged a finger at me. “Young man, you are in the presence of four ladies. Stop flashing everyone and put on a darned shirt.”
That’s right; she hated when I went around shirtless. Groaning, I pulled the wad of fabric I’d held in my fist over my head.
A second later, Elise returned with my drink and sat beside me. I twisted off the cap, then gulped down the sweet life-giving elixir.
“What happened; why weren’t you at practice?” I asked after downing the whole bottle.
“Time to tell us what’s going on,” Edna chimed in. “You’re smart enough to know Lola didn’t call us over here just to play pinochle. She’s worried about you. And after that, you can explain your shiner.” She used her cane to gesture to my bruised cheek and eye.
Elise pushed out a breath. “I’m sorry, Grandma; I wasn’t trying to scare you when I rushed into my room and refused to come out. I was just so upset and confused.”
“Well, out with it, girl. What’s all this about?” Edna shook her cane, startling the cat that had been resting in her lap.
It jumped down and stalked toward the kitchen, eyeing me with an evil glare. Why didn’t it claw Edna like it had clawed me? Was it saving all its pent-up frustration? I pulled into a tighter and more defensible ball.
“It’s Pete. He was part of the doping back when Dad and Kelly were on the team, and I think he’s been doing it ever since, or at least as long as he was competing. Now, he’s using the drugs on Sophie, his daughter. I caught them doing it today, so, I quit. I don’t want to run for a cheater.”
I wrapped an arm around Elise and pulled her against me. “I’m so sorry,” I murmured into her wisps of hair.
Of course we could easily get Pete fired for this, and she could come be part of the team again if she wanted. This could all, or at least mostly be fixed, but not until she was ready to fix it.
It was too bad that Pete was stupid enough to use drugs, especially ones that he’d known could kill. Even worse, he’d used them on his daughter. Did fame do that to a person, make them think they were invincible, or that their choices would never catch up to them? He hadn’t been famous when he’d started using drugs. Then again, it did sound like the whole team had been forced to use them.
Not until Grannie got up, did I notice her almost purple face. “What kind of a man intentionally gives something like that to his daughter? He saw what that stuff did to my Kelly. He should be strung up by his toenails.” She tossed her hand of cards against the table so hard that they sprayed into Edna’s face and across the floor.
“You did that on purpose,” Edna growled, but Grannie ignored her.
Finally, Elise’s grandma spoke up. “So, Dave had used drugs. That’s what killed him.”
Elise shook her head. “The drugs didn’t kill him. Some sick person did.”
The older woman didn’t seem to register her words.
“Come on, Dylan and Elise,” Grannie announced, standing. “This has gone far enough. We’re going down to the police station right now, and we’re not leaving until this whole thing’s sorted out. It’s time for those dirty coaches to pay the piper.”
Grannie was in the entrance, lacing up her tennis shoes, when the doorbell rang.
She jerked the door open. “Oh, hello, Detective. You’re just in time. Please come in.”
Elise and I exchanged a glance. Grannie didn’t know how much of a moron that detective really was. Well, she was about to find out.
“Is Elysium here?” he asked when he stepped into the house.
Elysium, was that Elise’s full name? She stood and slowly crossed to the man, saying nothing.
He hitched his belt up over his round belly, keys jangling in his pocket. “Miss Sudbury, new evidence has come to light in the Tara Freeman case, and I need to ask you some additional questions.”
“Go ahead,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
“Elise, aren’t you going to ask the man to sit down; where are your manners?”
Oh, Grannie, can we worry about hospitality later? I got up and moved to stand beside Elise.
“Mr. Harper, isn’t it?” The detective said. “Weren’t you also there that night? I’ve left you about five voicemails, and you haven’t returned any of my calls.”
Whoops. “Sorry, I don’t answer calls from unknown numbers, and I don’t usually check my voicemail.”
Detective Jerkface gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me.
He cleared his throat and pulled out a notepad and pen. “When you found Mrs. Freeman, were there any signs that she’d been in a struggle?”
“Uh, I don’t know. I was more focused on helping her because when we found her, she was having a seizure,” Elise answered.
“The room we found her in was pretty empty,” I added. “There wasn’t much to knock over or anything if someone would have attacked her.”
The only sound in the room was the scratching of the guy's pen against paper. “And what about on Mrs. Freeman’s body; did you see any evidence of a struggle there?”
“I mean she’d been thrashing around. Her hair was a mess,” I said.
Elise narrowed her eyes. “What are you getting at, Detective?”
The man’s gaze shifted from focusing on me to Elise and back again. He was sizing us up.
Grannie squeezed between us and Detective Jerkface. “Honestly, how can you two be so rude, leaving the man standing here? Follow me, Sir.” She brushed past us and headed toward the living room, joggers swishing. Shrugging, the guy followed.
Elise and I joined Grannie and Jerkface in the living room while Edna and Elise’s grandma stayed where they were at the card table. It wasn’t until after he’d sat down that the detective noticed the furry nightmare perched on the back of the couch a foot away from him. The cat gave a low moan and glared at the guy who scooted to the very end of the couch to avoid the thing. That did nothing to stop the cat’s throaty whine.
Detective Jerkface seemed to wonder whether he should stand or stay sitting. Maybe that cat wasn’t so bad after all. I’d like it even more if it decided to rip into this guy the way it had ripped into me.
“As I was sayin’, or to get to the point,” the guy’s focus shifted between us and the cat, “Miss Freeman’s wrists have some welts on them, like she’d been tied up that night.”
Elise sat up straighter. “I knew it. That’s why I called the police in the first place. I knew that guy was going to hurt her somehow. Was there anything else?”
The detective frowned, tapping his pen against the notepad. “You tell me. What else do you think we found?”
“Hey, don’t you try to spin this to make Elise look guilty.” I laid an arm across her legs, as if I could shield her from this guy's idiocy. “She did everything she could to keep Tara safe, even though you guys didn’t seem to give a crap until after Tara was attacked. She’s done way more to figure out what’s going on with all of this than you have, Detective.”
That did it. The dude jumped up and pointed an angry finger at me. “How’d you like to spend a night in jail, pal?”
I stood as well. “For what, telling it like it is?”
Both Elise and Grannie stepped between us.
“This isn’t helping,” Elise hissed in my ear. “Sit down and let him say what he came to say. Don’t let him bait you into an argument.”
“Fine,” I grumbled.
Grannie was watching us with a confused expression, probably trying to sort out why the detective was acting like such a scuzzball.
When Jerkface returned to the couch, Snowball hissed and swiped at him before returning to her spot with an annoyed moan. What did I need to do to convince her to go in for the kill? Maybe cover the dude’s face in catnip.
“What else did you find, Detective?” Elise asked.
“Needle marks.” He watched our reactions closely
“So Tara was poisoned by injection?” Elise bit her lip. “I guess that makes sense.”
“And whoever did it must have been good with a needle because they injected the agent right into her vein.”
My mind jumped to the image of Tara jerking on the floor. Crazy that someone could do such a horrible thing to another person. Of course, they hadn’t stuck around to see the fallout. We were the lucky ones that got to see that show.
As if it could erase the memory, I shook my head.
“Mr. Harper, I’ve done some digging into your past. Seems you’ve had some experience with drugs. Maybe enough experience to know how to hit a vein with a needle.”
I was up again. “I have never touched a drug in my life. What got me into trouble was alcohol. I don’t know a thing about needles. In fact, I hate them. Just ask my mom. They have to call in two extra nurses to hold me down anytime they want to give me a shot at the doctor’s office.”
“Are you sure about that?” Jerkface asked, brow raised.
Grannie got up and swished toward the man. “I’ve heard enough. Detective, you should be ashamed of yourself, hounding these kids when all they’ve tried to do is help.
“And another thing, my grandson has done everything he can to turn his life around. If you want someone to peg this on, you need to be looking into two very dirty coaches who are tied to this Tara woman and the death of my daughter.”
The detective’s eyebrows shot up. “When did your daughter die, and was her death investigated?”
“It was almost thirty years ago, and unfortunately, it was never investigated.”
And Jerkface’s brows lowered. His pen stayed where it was. Nothing of what Grannie said was going on his notepad.
“There’s more,” I chimed in. “Pete, the current coach of Cal State Del Ray’s Cross-Country team, was running with my Aunt Kelly when she died from doping. The drug she was using can cause heart attacks, which is how she died. Tara also ran on that team with them. Both Pete and their old coach, Mr. Carter, could have had a reason to kill Tara to keep her quiet about their doping.”
Write this down, dang it. Why was Jerkface just staring at me?
“He’s right,” Elise added. “We know Tara was using the doping to blackmail my dad and Pete. I bet Tara was blackmailing Carter as well. Don’t you see how it’s all connected?”
Finally, the dude jotted down some notes.
“You said Mr. Carter had athletes who were using…what was it again?”
Elise spelled out the name of the drug.
“Is there any evidence the man was forcing his athletes to use the drug?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Clive, another guy who ran for him that you’ve already questioned, told us he pressured them to use it. I’m sure you can ask Pete as well. Hopefully, he’ll be more up front with you than he was with us the first time we asked him about it.”
“What about Pete? Does he drug his runners?”
“Not most, at least I don’t think,” I answered. “I’m on the team, and I’ve never heard of or seen any drug use before today.”
I squeezed Elise. This was her story to tell.
She bit her lip. I bet she wasn’t any happier to throw Pete under the bus than I was. It stunk, but it wasn’t our job to protect him from his stupidity.
“So today, I walked into his office and saw him with a syringe in his daughter, Sophie’s, arm,” Elise started. “They acted really weird about it. Pete stashed the stuff he was using in a bag, then told me it was just insulin since Sophie has type one diabetes.”
Jerkface stopped writing. “Giving a diabetic insulin is a pretty normal thing.”
Elise shook her head. “Not before a workout. We were going to do a distance run today. Giving a diabetic insulin before an endurance workout is a horrible idea. It would make their blood sugar go seriously low. That would be dangerous, and both Pete and Sophie have years of experience with this disease. They know how stupid of an idea that would be.”
Still, the detective didn’t write any of what she told him about Pete and Sophie down.
“Beyond this incident and the fact that he was on the team you believe was doping many years ago, do you have any evidence that Pete had a history of drug use?”
“Um, I guess not.”
“Alright then, thank you for your time.” He rose, hitching up his belt. “Mr. Harper, I need you to stay in town for the next little bit.”
“I have a race four hours north of here in a week and a half…”
“Now wait a minute,” Grannie interrupted. “Are you still treating him like a suspect, even after all they’ve told you?”
“We’re just keepin’ our options open for now, Ma’am.”
Grannie wagged her finger. “Don’t you give me that nonsense. These kids just told you about two NCAA coaches who are playing Russian Roulette with their runners’ lives and you couldn’t care less.”
“I’m a homicide detective, ma’am.” He headed for the door, tossing the words over his shoulder. “Drugs aren’t really my concern.”
Grannie stalked after him. “And you don’t call giving someone something that can cause heart attacks, telling them to go run three miles, then shrugging your shoulders when they die, murder? And what about the woman in a coma? Why are you investigating stuff for her when she’s still alive?”
He turned to face her. “Ma’am, I’m not opening an old case like that without a whole lot of concrete evidence, and as for Mrs. Freeman, the chief put me on the case because she was obviously attacked and is probably going to die soon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do.” Before Grannie could argue, Jerkface let himself out.
“That man should lose his badge,” Grannie huffed.
“Want me to pour sugar in his gas tank?” Edna called.
“Count me in,” I added.
Grannie popped her fists on her hips. “What good would that do, you two? Besides, I’d like to see you hobble over to the police station and pull that off without the both of you getting hauled to jail.”
“Did any of you hear the detective say if he knew what the woman was poisoned with?” Elise’s grandma interrupted.
We all shook our heads.
“I don’t know if they can get lab results back that quickly,” I answered.
Elise’s Grannie tapped her hand of cards to her chin. “Elise, I don’t want you going anywhere you don’t have to until this killer is caught.”
The Sea Lion Invitational was this Saturday, and our team, along with Pete, was in charge of it. Staying tucked away wasn’t really an option right now.
Elise avoided her gaze, squirming in her seat. “Okay, Grandma.”
The girl was still a horrible liar.