Grave Risk. Hannah Alexander
left, Junior Short came by to talk to Dad.”
Junior Short. Another bad memory—possibly another connection? Austin had been buddies with Junior Short and Sheena’s father, Jed, when they were in high school. Edith had been the high-school principal at the time.
A vague unease stirred in Jill’s mind, but she dismissed it. Those three had been deeply involved in a high-school scandal, but that was far in the past. “Your dad and Junior are still friends after all these years?”
Sheena’s face scrunched up in a good imitation of her mother’s look of distaste. “I guess. I see them drinking coffee together sometimes at the bakery. He never comes around the house because Mom can’t stand the man.”
Jill nodded. Junior could be obnoxious. It was a trait he’d carried with him into adulthood and passed on to the next generation—a tendency to pick fights easily, and just generally irritate everyone around him. Possibly Jed felt sorry for him. Junior didn’t have many friends.
“I don’t suppose Cecil Martin came by for any reason?” Jill asked. “I thought I saw him walking from the direction of the spa when I passed him on the sidewalk on my way here that day.”
“Now that you mention it, he probably did come by to see Miss Edith.” Sheena grinned. “You know, I think those two might have been sweet on each other.”
“Sheena,” came a warning call from one of the doors near the end of the short hallway of massage rooms. Mary Marshall, Sheena’s mother, stepped into the hallway, wiping her hands with a paper towel. “Don’t start any rumors.”
“They’d been spending a lot of time together lately, Mom.”
“They were friends.” Mary strolled down the hallway and tossed her towels into the trash can beside the reception desk. Her gray-blond hair was pulled back in a tight knot, as if to draw taut the wrinkles that now marked her once-pretty face. Her makeup made her look washed-out, and her clothes did nothing to enhance barely existent curves on her slim frame.
Jill decided that if Sheena wanted to do a makeover, she could begin with her own flesh and blood.
Mary nodded at Jill; no smile of welcome touched her face.
Jill knew better than to take it personally. When Mary was in a mood, no one was spared her sharp words or brooding silences.
“Why do young people always have to make up some silly storybook romance for everything?” Mary complained to her daughter. “Like such a thing even exists.”
Jill studied Mary’s drawn expression in silence. Sheena’s mother was talking like a bitter old woman, not the wife of a man who seemed to still love her, and with whom she had a beautiful grown daughter.
Do I sound like that sometimes? Will I be a bitter old woman someday? Though Jill hadn’t been blessed with a long-lasting relationship, she did enjoy seeing evidence of love in the eyes of others. Cheyenne and Dane, for example. Or Karah Lee and Taylor. Noelle and Nathan.
“Like you always say,” Sheena murmured, “friendship is the best foundation for a marriage.”
“Can’t a man and a woman just be good friends without everyone in town making a big thing out of it?” Mary grumbled.
Jill found herself wondering the same thing. In spite of herself, a thought of Rex intruded. Jill and Rex had become friends soon after they started working together. The romance had developed some time afterward, hadn’t it? Or had she actually felt an attraction to him immediately?
Man, oh, man, how wonderfully the romance had developed. She dismissed a memory of his kisses with some difficulty. The worst part of their broken engagement wasn’t only the failed romance. Could be the very worst part was losing someone who had become one of her best friends. Maybe even the best of her friends. She’d certainly felt as if she had become the most important person in his life.
“So what’s with the twenty questions to Sheena?” Mary asked Jill. “We all know what happened to Edith. I saw her here late Saturday morning, and she was happy and chattering a blue streak to Noelle. If you’re trying to say someone upset her enough to cause her to have that heart attack—”
“I’m not,” Jill said.
“Then why are you grilling Sheena?”
“Mom, it’s okay. She’s not—”
“The only other person I remember coming in that morning besides clients was Fawn Morrison,” Mary said. “No one caused any problems. Don’t go stirring things up or pointing fingers where they shouldn’t be pointed.”
Jill pressed her tongue to her teeth for a few seconds to keep from snapping back. “I’m not pointing fingers. Fawn was here?”
“She came to talk to me,” Sheena said. “She and I hang out sometimes. You know, when you’re single in a town like this, you won’t find a lot of single girlfriends your age. All my high-school friends moved on.”
“At least you have the good sense to stay where you belong,” Mary said.
Sheena grimaced. “Fawn’s smart for a kid, and I’m trying to talk her into going to cosmetology school like I did. Then she can learn massage while she works as a hair stylist. She’s already really good at it.”
“So unless you think Fawn might have had something to do with Edith’s heart attack,” Mary said with emphasis, “you’re probably wasting your time here. I know you loved Edith. We all did. But the only closure you’re going to find is at the funeral this afternoon, just like the rest of us.”
“Has your husband said anything about why Austin Barlow’s back in town?” Jill asked Mary.
The woman frowned. “Not a word. I put an end to their good-old-boy carousing years ago, Jill. They don’t come around the house, and Jed knows how I feel about them. He wouldn’t tell me if he did know.” She gave a quiet sigh, glancing at her daughter.
With that glance, Jill was touched by the wealth of tenderness she saw pass between mother and daughter.
Disappointed, she thanked Sheena and Mary and left the spa. If Mary did know something, she wouldn’t give it away.
Jill thought about the visitors who had been at the spa the day of Edith’s death.
What was it Edith had said? S…cool. And something about a jet bomber—what on earth could she have been talking about?
By that time, of course, considering the difficulty Edith was having, she might simply have been hallucinating due to lack of oxygen in the brain.
However, she did mention records. And possibly instead of saying cool, she might have been talking about school. Interestingly enough, almost all the visitors Sheena had mentioned were somehow connected to school, and had known Edith there. Maybe that was why she’d mentioned school to begin with. Could be she was simply reminiscing.
She might have seen Austin and Junior, and the sight of them had brought back memories. Just as the sight of Rex and Austin on Saturday had brought back memories for Jill.
She hadn’t expected to search out Edith’s nemesis in one little interview, but she’d hoped to find some kind of evidence that pointed to what had really happened to Edith the day she died.
So far, no such evidence. Would Austin, Jed or Junior be more forthcoming? Or would she just make herself look like more of a fool if she approached them with questions?
The lab tests she’d had run on Edith’s blood had turned up nothing. Grilling Sheena had turned up nothing. And yet, Jill knew she couldn’t just leave things as they were. Her instincts—and Noelle’s—compelled her to keep searching for an answer.
Chapter Eight
After Edith’s funeral on Wednesday, Fawn Morrison practically ran from the cemetery, desperate to escape the heavy shadow of grieving that seemed to loom over