Moving Is Murder Read online

  “It’s Cass.” My voice was breathless. “In the ditch,” I said more strongly.

  “She’s hurt?” Gwen reached for her purse and drew out a cell phone. “Damn, the battery’s not charged and I don’t have the power cord. It’s in Steven’s truck.”

  “Dead.” I whispered the word. I hadn’t needed to check for a pulse to know.

  Gwen looked up, shocked. “I’ll go to the gate. They can get …” her voice, raspy now, trailed off and she accelerated away.

  I rested my head on the steering wheel. Should I go back down? There was nothing I could do. I thought of Joe. Someone would have to tell him and her family. Tears gathered in my eyes when I thought of her little girls. I prayed silently for them. It was the only thing I could think of to do.

  “Ma’am? You found a body?” I started. A man wearing fatigues and a beret stood in the “V” of my open car door. Security Forces was printed on the car parked across the road from me. I hadn’t heard him drive up.

  A body? “You mean Cass?”

  “You knew her?” He asked.

  “I met her a few days ago. Her husband’s in the same squadron as my husband. She’s down there. In the drainage ditch.”

  “Wait here.” He was gone for a few minutes, then returned.

  “What was her last name?” he asked.

  Was. Cass was dead. I felt cold and clicked the air conditioner down to low. I paused and eventually came up with it: “Vincent.”

  “Your name?” He had out a notebook and waited pen poised.

  “Ellie Avery.”

  “Address and phone number?”

  I looked into his dark eyes in his coffee-colored face as numbers jumbled up in my mind. 14486 East Palm Drive. No. That’s the old address. I dredged up our latest address. “Umm, 3415 West Nineteenth. We just moved here. I can’t remember my phone number,” I said helplessly.

  “You’re in shock. Do you have a blanket or a jacket?”

  I nodded. “In the back.” He went to get it, unhooking my keys from the ring and handing them back when he returned with the green blanket. He put it around my shoulders and said, “You sit tight. Put your head between your legs if you feel dizzy. I’ll be right back.”

  His words seemed to prompt the foothills to spin around me. My stomach clenched. I slid out of the car, sat down on the ground, and put my head down, intently studying the cracked dirt and clumps of tiny grass. Dirt. Dirt caked on Cass’s face and hands, like she was clawing her way up the slope. My stomach heaved. Stop it. I concentrated on the stubble of green blades growing out of a split in the dirt.

  Gwen dropped down beside me and talked to me, her words flowing like water from a faucet, but I didn’t take any of them in. Cars arrived and parked at odd angles. Traffic crept through the narrow opening in the road. An ambulance arrived. It was quiet. No lights. I felt detached, as if I were watching a movie.

  At some point Gwen left and I climbed back into the driver’s seat. I repeated what happened to different people. I pulled out my ID card and handed it over. Borrowing a cell phone, I called Mitch, but he wasn’t in the squadron. I finally found my phone number on a slip of paper in my wallet.

  A government-issue four-door car with a squared, finlike attachment on the trunk drove up. One of the bigwigs from the wing. I vaguely remembered Mitch saying something about it being for radio communications between command post and various base VIPs. I didn’t know exactly how the slender rectangle worked. But when I saw a car with the attachment I knew it was someone from the elite leadership ranks of the base and I steered clear of the car and occupants, like a swimmer avoiding a shark.

  Livvy’s cry split the air and, instantly, I was grounded and out of the fog.

  I glanced at the Cherokee’s clock: twelve forty-three. Only thirty minutes since I left the squadron, but it seemed endless. Livvy would definitely be hungry now and there was no way I was going to feed her here, where this awful thing had happened, not to mention the people milling around. I motioned over the Security Police officer who had arrived first. His name tag read NOTT.

  I reached backward and shook the car seat gently. Sometimes that motion lulled her back to sleep. Her screams intensified, basically conveying, “Nothing doing, Mom. I’m seriously hungry.”

  “I need to go,” I said to Nott.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but Colonel Witson has to talk to you first.”

  “I’ve already told three different people what happened.”

  “I’m sorry, but he says he will get over here ASAP.”

  “What caused her death?” I hadn’t seen any obvious wound, just swollen, inflamed patches of skin. Did she have some sort of medical problem?

  “Couldn’t say, ma’am.”

  I slouched back in the seat and rocked the car seat, not so gently this time. After thirty seconds of continuously escalating screaming I muttered, “This is insane.” I jerked a notepad out of my purse and scribbled my name, address, and phone number with only the slightest of pauses before the zip and phone number. I slammed out of the Cherokee, jerked open the back door, and with greater care, extracted Livvy from her infant seat. Her screams went down a notch when she emerged into the open air in my arms, but then, like the future opera star she could be, she hit her previous high note and carried it as I wove my way through the crowd in the direction Nott indicated when I demanded Colonel Witson’s location.

  Colonel Witson watched my approach with a smile on his beefy face. He was bulky with black hair going gray. His comb had left furrows in his hair styled with a poof over his forehead, à la Elvis Presley. He wiped his forehead with his hand and replaced his beret.

  “Colonel Witson”—I thrust the note page at him and shouted over Livvy—“I’m Ellie Avery. Obviously, I need to leave. Here’s my contact information. I’ll be happy to talk with you later.”

  “And who is this?” He leaned toward Livvy’s face, smiling, but antagonizing at the same time. She gulped, studied his face, and then squeezed her eyes shut and cried again.

  “This is Livvy. She’s tired and hungry.”

  “Well, then, you’d better get her home, Mrs. Avery.” I marched back to the Cherokee and drove home with sweaty hands. What had gotten into me? I had heard about the fierce mother-bear-protecting-her-cub syndrome, but I’d never acted like that before.

  I pulled in our driveway, which sloped down to our basement two-car garage. I got out, heaved open one door and drove in. Then I dragged myself and Livvy up the stairs and left the door unlocked for Mitch. My burst of angry adrenaline had burned off, leaving me drained. I picked up my huge water cup that the hospital had given me after Livvy was born. I guzzled the water. In Livvy’s room, I changed her diaper and then fed her. After a few cries to let me know she was still not happy, she latched on and gulped down the breast milk. After I burped her, I cuddled her on my chest and ran my chin back and forth over the soft fuzz of her hair. She wasn’t a baby who liked to cuddle, but she only wiggled for a few seconds and then fell asleep. I closed my eyes, rocked, and stroked her back. The even rise and fall of her back steadied me. I held that bundle of life tight in my arms.

  Mitch arrived home as I reluctantly settled Livvy in her crib. For once, she didn’t awaken. She must be exhausted from her crying. Mitch dropped his gym bag on the hall floor and waited until I closed her door. I went straight into his arms.

  “You heard what happened.” I could tell from the tight look on his face. His usual relaxed smile was gone.

  “Colonel Briman told me they found Cass dead on the road to the back gate and you were there.”

  “I called you.”

  “I know. I got your message. I wish I hadn’t gone to the gym. What happened?”

  “I found her,” I said as we walked back into the living room and I told him what happened. “But it seems surreal, it couldn’t have really happened.” It didn’t seem real, except when I thought of her vacant eyes.

  Stop thinking about it. But the vivid mental picture didn’t go
away.

  Okay, focus, I told myself as I surveyed the living room later that day. Mentally, I shut the door on Cass’s death and concentrated on our mountain range of boxes.

  It has to get worse before it gets better, I told myself. Flattened boxes sagged drunkenly against the dining room wall. A few had slid under the table. Piles of crumpled paper in the corners of the living room almost reached the windowsill.

  I’d just switched the fan dial to high and angled it to blow right on Livvy in her crib during her late afternoon nap. I’d paused, watching her sleep while I wiped the sweat off the back of my neck. I wanted a shower, but I’d be soaking again five minutes after I toweled off.

  Slanting the bedroom door half closed, I moved stealthily down the hall on my tiptoes. When the golden oak floor creaked, I held my breath. Blessed silence. I relaxed and walked normally through the shoulder-high maze of cardboard boxes. With Mitch on a run to the store for diapers and batteries for Livvy’s swing, I had about forty-five minutes, an hour, at the most. Where to start? I rewound my sagging hair and replaced the clip in it. Immediately, half of it slipped out. In a fit of optimistic prenatal time management I had cut my shoulder-length hair to a bob at my ear lobes. It was growing out, but I couldn’t do a thing with it. I tried to tuck it back up into the clip as I looked around the room.

  A sense of strangeness assailed me, like the feeling of waking in a hotel room and seeing the doors and windows in the wrong place. I was off kilter. Everything was changing, from the trivial things like my hair and my body to the more significant things like our marriage and where we lived. I felt this way every time we moved, but this time it seemed magnified. I tried to shrug off the sense of strangeness and told myself to get to work. It just takes some time to get adjusted. And I knew I was shaken from finding Cass in the drainage ditch.

  I dragged my mind back to our unpacking. We’d found the silverware, but no plates or glasses. So, I’d look for plates. And the rest of the towels, I reminded myself. I was ready to have more than a few emergency towels. And the answering machine.

  In the kitchen, I grabbed a few Hershey Kisses—for energy, of course—then I found the utility knife and slit the butterscotch-colored packing tape. The box contained only one thing, our DVD player, well cushioned in layers of spongy padding. I closed my eyes briefly. How can someone be so vividly alive one day and gone the next? I pulled the DVD player out of the box and twisted it around. It looked great, not at all like Cass’s. At the coffee, she’d glanced down at the DVD player to check the time and then made a disgusted sound. “I can never remember that the movers scratched it so bad that I can’t read the clock.”

  “Wow,” I’d said, “I hope our DVD player doesn’t look like that when we find it.”

  I slid the DVD player into its slot under the TV and took a deep breath. Then I moved on to the next box. Focus. I had to concentrate or I wouldn’t get anything done. After opening three boxes marked “Kitchen—Dishes,” and finding only placemats, napkins, and couch throw pillows, I grimly decided whoever packed and labeled the boxes had a warped sense of humor. I ripped into the next box, taking out my frustration on the tape. I removed Mitch’s cordless drill case and pulled out a heavy bundle wrapped in blank newsprint. Now we’re making progress. I yanked the paper back. It crackled like a gunshot. A soft whimper answered from down the hall. I sighed. The plates would have to wait until after Livvy’s nap.

  I grabbed the utility knife and hurried into the living room, checking my watch. Only fifteen minutes had passed. As I heaved boxes around, the sweat trickled down my forehead.

  Elsa, our realtor, had stood in this room on an overcast day two months ago and waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, you don’t need air-conditioning in the inland Northwest.” I’d raised my eyebrows and looked at Mitch. Air-conditioning was a must-have where we came from. But it seemed Elsa was right. We looked at thirty-one houses during that whirlwind home-buying weekend and none had air-conditioning, even the new construction. In realtor-speak, houses here didn’t have air-conditioning so you didn’t need it. Until a freak heat wave smothered the city in August, it was fine.

  Lowering a box to the floor, I found the thermostat. It was pegged out at eighty-five degrees. How could Livvy sleep? Her room was at the back of the house and shaded, but it was still sweltering. I gave up on the boxes and chipped at the fresh paint on the dining room windowsill. If I could get one window open below the decorative leaded glass there might be a cross breeze through the kitchen screen door.

  I leaned against the wavy, aged glass and sliced the globs of dried paint around the lock. The rest of the neighborhood was quiet. In our side yard, the pine branches swayed in the breeze beyond the window. Where was everyone? Sweltering inside their houses? More likely, they were at work in frigid offices, I decided, after studying the closed windows on house after house.

  The lock finally released and I pulled, but the casement wouldn’t budge. I went back to work with the knife, searching for seams of paint that hadn’t been cut. I tried the window again without success. I needed a bar of soap. In the kitchen, I started another list on a scrap of packing paper. Livvy whimpered, breathed huffily, and then transferred to a wail. I glanced at my watch. An hour was gone and what had I accomplished? Nothing. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the cabinet. Don’t cry. It’s just the post pregnancy hormones. And the move. But I still started sniffling.

  When Mitch came in the kitchen door, I wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands. I tried to pretend I was just wiping the sweat off my face, but Mitch put a plastic grocery sack on the one square foot of open counter-top and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  I gestured vaguely at the boxes. My throat tightened again. “Livvy’s been down for an hour and I didn’t get anything done, except open a few boxes and try to open a window that was painted shut. And now she’ll be hungry again. How are we going to get anything done?”

  Mitch went over, examined the window, and heaved on the sill. “You need some soap.”

  “I know I need soap,” I said sharply. “I don’t have any.” Now I was wailing, too.

  Livvy’s cries went up another notch. Mitch crossed the room and enfolded me in his arms. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll get it done. We’ll buy some soap, too. Don’t worry. I can work my schedule for the next few days to be here and unpack most of the day.”

  I pressed my face into his sweaty white shirt and nodded. “I know. I’m just stressed.” I leaned back in his arms, and he kissed my forehead. “You’re too hot to hold.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  I laughed. “Too stinky, you mean.” I broke out of his arms, found a roll of paper towels in the grocery bags, and blew my nose.

  ‘You’re probably hungry, too. I brought dinner. It’s in the Cherokee. I know how cranky you get when you need to eat.” He smiled. It was a little joke between us. I always wanted to eat.

  “There’s nothing wrong with eating every few hours. It’s called having a meal, you know. Just because you can go for days without eating, there’s no need to rub it in,” I retorted, but I was smiling, too.

  “I’ll get Livvy and distract her for a few minutes while you eat,” Mitch said.

  After I found the Wendy’s sack and two large drinks, I pulled out the blanket we kept in the back of the Cherokee and spread it on the grass under the pines in our backyard. The breeze wasn’t cool, but it was enormously better than in the house. I left Mitch’s grilled chicken sandwich in the bag. He eats such healthy food it makes me feel guilty sometimes, but not today. I unwrapped my crispy chicken sandwich, thought briefly about whether it would upset Livvy later when I breastfed her, but then I decided I was starved and it was the only food in sight. Livvy had done fine so far with whatever I ate. I took a big bite and hoped the trend would continue. I felt a little better after a few bites.

  It was great Mitch would be off, but his idea of unpacking was to pull everything out of a box and toss it in a closet or a drawer. If I let him unpack I m
ight never find the Christmas decorations, much less the juice glasses. I grabbed a handful of fries. How would I take care of Livvy, feed her every two or three hours, and unpack several thousand pounds of household goods?

  A brown grocery bag thudded onto the blanket.

  Chapter

  Four

  Abby plopped down across from me. “Hi, there. You doing okay? Jeff called me and said you’d found Cass. That she’d died?” Her voice made it a question. I nodded. Abby’s face was a mixture of puzzlement and concern. “Wow.” She pointed to the bag. “I was finishing up dinner, so I brought you some. Grilled chicken pasta salad, bread, and some cookies for dessert. And”—she reached in the bag and pulled out a Mason jar filled with a thick gold liquid—“honey. Straight from Jeff’s mom in Oklahoma. She FedEx-ed it.” A portion of the honeycomb tilted inside the jar. “I figured you wouldn’t feel like cooking, but it looks like you’ve already got dinner right here,” Abby said as she replaced the jar and scooted around to grab a few fries.

  “Thanks, Abby.” I felt the tears gathering in my eyes again. She waved away my thanks. “Since I’m breastfeeding, I’m always hungry. I’ll be ready to eat again in a few hours.”

  “It’s too hot to cook all the time, so I made a big batch. Jeff and I will be eating it for a week. So what happened? The squad’s buzzing, but no one seems to know anything.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Well, you know how it is. The grapevine in the squad is as good as the one back home in Erick, Oklahoma. And just about as accurate, too.”

  I recounted the story while she nibbled on my fries. A touch of genuineness set in every time I told what happened. Like a mist clearing, the edges of reality were bleeding into the unreal experience of finding Cass’s body. “She was the center of attention just a few minutes before and now she’s gone.” I shrugged.

  “God. This is terrible. And now I feel kind of bad. I mean Jeff was furious with her, but it seems so insignificant with her dead. Dead. I can’t really believe it. You know?”