Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Lacy was innocent. I knew this because she was my best friend, and I’d known her almost my entire life.
In second grade, I’d told her my biggest secret at the time: I had a crush on Joe—yes, the Joe Larson—primarily because one day on the playground he’d found a baby bird that had fallen from a tree and gently wrapped it up in a napkin, climbed the tree, and put it back.
I’d had no idea that I wouldn’t think about Joe in that way again until our junior year of high school when he asked me to prom.
Our “relationship” had lasted until three weeks later when he burped the national anthem at a softball game, and I just couldn’t see him like that anymore.
Back in second grade, though, I would draw very bad pictures of horses and give them to my friends.
After the baby bird incident, Trudy Livingston had found one I’d made of me and Joe as horses with hearts around our heads and, during math center time, she’d passed it around for the entire class to see.
When seven-year-old Lacy had realized what was circulating, she’d snatched it out of a kid’s hand, stood on a desk in the middle of class, and begun to passionately belt out “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.
It was Katniss volunteering as tribute, it was Abraham sacrificing his son, it was beautiful.
The rest of the day had been spent talking about Lacy’s song, discussing whether it was brave or the s-word (stupid), and forgetting about the lovey-dovey horse versions of me and Joe.
I would always remember how Lacy had helped people turn their attention to her instead of pointing fingers at me, and now I needed to ensure that she wasn’t unduly accused. So as not to withhold evidence, I would show Charlie the footage, but I would watch it with him, arguing her case as needed.
I made my way to the stage and got Charlie’s attention, lifting the camera bag up for him to see.
“Mina said they were getting shots of the room when Brett started coughing. There’s footage of the death.”
Charlie took it from me and glanced around. “This way.”
He led me to the sound booth and closed the door behind us. It was the first time we’d been alone all evening without a dead body in between us.
Methodically, Charlie removed the camera from the bag, and familiarized himself with the controls.
I tried to keep my hands still and my heart from exploding as he found the video and pressed play. I wanted to see the footage, but I didn’t want Charlie to view it the way Lee obviously had—as if Lacy might be to blame for Brett’s death.
The small screen came to life with familiar figures. There was Lacy, her and Brett dancing as the camera panned past them to take in the full length and breadth of the Primrose Ballroom.
For several slow seconds, the lens lighted on Jemma singing her heart out, on the paper-mache flowers hanging from the ceiling, on the disco ball hanging above the center of the dance floor, on Presley heading toward the back of the ballroom as if she had other business to attend to.
Then, it was back to Brett and Lacy, her arm draped over his shoulder, her hand dangling over his cup.
Brett turned toward her, a big grin on his face, and spoke into her ear for several seconds.
As he talked, Lacy’s body language shifted, and though I couldn’t see her face clearly, I was fairly certain that she elbowed him in the stomach before responding.
A figure’s hand entered the screen. Then, half a head made an appearance. It was Anton. It seemed as if he was about to step onto the dance floor, but Lacy looked straight at him and shook her head. Anton stayed where he was.
Oh, Lord.
I made myself keep watching, hoping that Charlie was somehow seeing all of this differently than it first appeared.
There were other people milling about on-screen, confusing the eye. Valerie stood on the outskirts of the dance floor next to Will Hurt, her arms crossed. Mina held a light meter a few feet from their subject. Joe spoke to a passing server. Jemma kept on singing.
Brett bounced to the beat of the music and tried to put both of his hands on Lacy’s hips. She pushed him off and took one step back. He laughed and then he was downing his glass in one gulp.
Seconds later he began to clutch at his throat.
Presley came back on-screen at Brett’s first wheezing cough but didn’t immediately rush over.
Lacy, her eyes wide, scanned the room and backed away from Brett as his hand went to his neck and he began clawing at his throat.
Less than thirty seconds later, the camera fell, the world tilting sideways as the crowd made a circle around Brett. It was hard to see much of anything clearly anymore, but I could vaguely hear myself telling Lacy to call 911 as I started CPR.
The camera caught the sounds of me compressing, counting, and breathing into Brett’s mouth before Lee picked up the device, looked straight into the lens and cursed.
Then, the screen went dark. That was the end.
I didn’t want to be the first to speak, so instead I took the camera from Charlie’s hands and restarted the video. My heart hammered a steady rhythm.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked, his brows furrowed as if he thought I might delete the footage.
“Playing it again,” I said, sure that the late hour and my pounding headache had clouded my thinking, certain that I had to have missed something.
“You saw it too?”
“What do you mean?” I feigned ignorance. “What did you see?”
“Lacy,” Charlie answered, his tone heavy and resigned. “Her hand, and the way she backed away when Brett started making noises.”
I didn’t answer as I peered down at the camera, watching the terrible tableau unfold again, pausing it every two or three seconds.
“I have to question Lacy again, maybe even detain her,” Charlie said, sounding more and more official with each word.
I clenched my jaw. Did Charlie always have to act immediately? Couldn’t his conscience take a half-hour break? Couldn’t his reactivity wait until morning?
“She obviously had opportunity,” Charlie mused. “Motive too, with their past relationship.”
I looked up from the video and into his eyes. “What do you know about their past?”
“When I interviewed her earlier, she mentioned that they’d dated,” he said, staring back at me. “Things ended badly.”
That was an understatement.
“They were eighteen, and lots of relationships end badly,” I said in her defense. “Anyway, Brett was the one who would have a motive against her, not the reverse.”
“Why is that?”
“She was the one who left,” I answered, my tone implying it was obvious. The one who got away, I thought, but didn’t say.
“He ended up going away to school that fall too,” Charlie argued back.
He was right, of course. I remembered Lacy telling me back then that Brett had gotten off the waitlist at Virginia Tech at the last minute. With the amount of partying he’d posted on Snapchat, admission to college had seemed to heal whatever wound their breakup had inflicted.
“Maybe Lacy regrets letting a reality TV star escape?”
“If you think Lacy cares about fame, you don’t know her,” I scoffed.
“That’s the thing: I don’t really know her,” Charlie said, and for perhaps the first time in our relationship, I realized that was true.
Charlie, as they say, wasn’t from around here.
He didn’t know my friends, and I didn’t know his.
I’d never heard of his former partner, the gorgeous new deputy, until I happened to run into them at the diner months ago, and I hadn’t met her properly until tonight.
In the brief span of our relationship, with half a dozen trips to visit one another and snatches of time on the phone, we’d only ever had time to get to know each other, and now I was beginning to wonder how well we’d done at that.
“Look, Dakota. I have to do what’s in the best interest of the law.” Charlie’s voice was both preparing me and pleading with me to understand.
I hushed him with a wave of my hand. “Give me two minutes, that’s all I ask.” I let out a long breath and continued watching the video, and that’s when I saw Brett’s cup tilt, something long falling from the glass.
“Did you bag this up?” I asked, pointing at the screen.
Charlie studied the image. “The garnish? Yeah. I had one of my officers test it before sending it to the lab.”
I thought back to the drinks Joe had been serving.
My chat with Joe at the bar. My FaceTime with Aunt DeeDee.
Two images came to mind: the thin stalks sticking out of Joe’s drink concoction and the pile of leaves near the sink while Aunt DeeDee stirred the contents of her mixing bowl.
“It must be rhubarb. I saw mounds of it in the kitchen, and Aunt DeeDee said the caterer over-ordered.”
“And Joe was the caterer?”
I nodded. Charlie already had his phone out and was looking up the plant even though I knew what he would find.
“The leaves are poisonous,” I told him. “But it only causes stomach upset if ingested in bulk.”
“There’s no way it could’ve poisoned him so fast,” Charlie muttered almost to himself.
“Regardless,” I said firmly, “with this footage and with the rhubarb garnish you found in Brett’s drink, you should probably focus on questioning Joe, don’t you think? He was the one making the drinks, after all.”
“I have questioned Joe,” he said. “And I see what you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I said, with faux innocence.
I longed to escape to any room with a bed and sleep for the next twelve hours.
Charlie shot me a curious look. “I’ll talk to Joe again, but afterward I need to confront…” His words trailed away.
Neither of us wanted him to finish that statement.
“I’m sure we’ll have more sufficient evidence soon enough.” I said the words with more confidence than I felt.
Instead of bustling out the door, Charlie leaned back against the wall and rubbed a hand across his brow in a childlike gesture. His usually bright eyes were tired and his shoulders were weighted with the burden of a man’s death, but he still needed my help.
Maybe that was enough for now.