Free Death at the Day Lily Cafe by Wendy Sand Eckel Page B

just made sense that it could have started in high school.”
    â€œWow,” she said, eyes wide. “My sister is right. You’re good at this.”
    â€œHow good?”
    â€œI’ll show you.” She went inside the house and returned with a stack of three books. She sat down and opened one. The aged, gray cloth was topped with faded blue letters that read, Devon County High School, The Blue Herons, 1981 . The corners had begun to curve inward. She flipped through the pages until she came to one titled Homecoming . She slid it onto my lap. “I was crowned my senior year.”
    I looked down at a photo of Lori in a sparkling tiara, a bouquet of long-stemmed roses in her arms, standing on the fifty-yard line grinning hard. Her arm was looped through a tall football player’s, a helmet tucked under his other arm, his knees dirty from the first half. “You’re lovely.”
    Lori leaned over and peered down at the photograph. “I wasn’t bad back then. But it’s just Devon County.” She laughed a little. “It doesn’t take much to become homecoming queen when there aren’t many girls to choose from.”
    â€œYou would have stood out at any high school.” I studied the picture. “Your date is very handsome.”
    She looked up at me. “You mean you don’t recognize him?”
    I glanced back at the picture. Dark thick hair. Longer, though, not a pompadour. I already knew before I read the caption: Crowned queen, Lori Westcott, and her escort, Joey Wilgus.
    â€œHe was the quarterback,” she said. “We went to prom together that year. You should see what he wrote next to my senior picture. He always believed we would marry one day.”
    I looked over at her. “So where does CJ fit in?” I folded my hands atop the open book and waited for her to form her response. An owl hooted eerily in the distance.
    â€œCarl James started coming over to my house that spring. He had quit high school and was making a lot of money learning the flooring trade. He bought a big old convertible and kept coaxing me out for rides. Joey and I were going steady, but he was applying to the community college and I never wanted to bother with more education. I didn’t like school. I mean, I liked the social stuff. But studying gave me a headache. Sometimes I think I have some sort of learning disability, you know? But teachers didn’t really pay attention to that back then.
    â€œAnyway, I felt like Joey was distracted, focusing on his future and all.” She exhaled. “I found out I was pregnant right after prom.” She combed her hair back from her face. “Carl James was so persuasive. I couldn’t resist him.” She peered over at me as if to check my reaction.
    â€œWhat happened when you told Joe?”
    â€œOh.” she shivered. “He was so angry I thought he would explode right there. And then he went after Carl James. The way I heard it, the fight was brutal. They both ended up with broken noses. Carl James said Joey pulled out a knife at some point and they finally stopped. The cops said they didn’t find a knife on either one of them, but one of the cops was probably Joey’s dad.”
    My mind was reeling. “And so you and CJ got married? Did you have the baby?”
    â€œYes.” She clenched her hands into fists. “I was so sure it was Carl James’s baby. But then Jamie was a month premature.”
    â€œWhat are you saying?”
    â€œJamie weighted nine pounds six ounces. Nothing preemie about him.”
    â€œSo…” I placed a hand on my forehead then looked up at her. “Could Jamie be the sheriff’s baby?”
    â€œShush,” she said, with her index finger over her lips. “Jamie is home for the funeral. He’s upstairs in his bedroom.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œAnyway,” she said in a softer voice. “I never breathed a word to Carl