Auri looked at the piles of clippings around her. “Why do you have this stuff anyway?”
“History,” her grandfather said, panting from the climb up. He’d brought strawberry sparkling water and handed them each an ice-cold can.
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sybil said.
“Sybil, if you don’t start calling me Cyrus, I’m kicking you out. For good this time.”
She grinned and popped the top on her can. “Okay.”
They had a fan going, but it was getting hot fast. Auri’s grandfather fanned himself and took in all the work they had yet to do. “We’re going to have to pick this up when it cools down in the evening.”
“Oh,” Auri said, jumping up. “Well, I’m okay. Do you mind if I keep looking?” She didn’t miss the knowing glances they exchanged.
“Of course not, peanut.”
“You saved all of this, all of these cases, for history?” Auri asked.
“Sure.” He sat on an old trunk next to his wife. “We’re actually working on opening a Del Sol history museum, and those old newspapers are gold.”
“But these are just clippings from old, unsolved cases. Except maybe the missing persons cases. They apparently caught that guy.”
“Do you believe they did?” her grandmother asked.
Auri and Sybil exchanged glances, too, testing each other’s reaction. “I guess,” Auri ventured. “I mean, it says that they caught this drifter named Hercules Holmes with one of the missing persons’ wallets.”
“So that makes him guilty?” her grandmother asked. “That makes him unworthy of a fair trial?”
“No,” she said adamantly. “Never.” She knew enough about the law from watching her mother scour over cases for years to know things were rarely that simple. She put the report down and looked at them. “You think he was innocent.”
Auri’s grandmother held up her palms. “I’m just asking what you think.”
She pressed her mouth together and thought about it. “The way I see it, he was either guilty and so he escaped or innocent and someone helped him escape.”
Cyrus narrowed his lashes at her, and if Auri didn’t know better, she’d say there was a sparkle of pride in his eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked, coaxing her to go deeper. He did that a lot.
“Well, he magically escapes a heavily guarded jail cell and then ends up dead two weeks later? According to the report”—she bent and read aloud—“he died from a single gunshot wound to the head shortly after escaping.” She looked back at him. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t somehow manage to get himself killed, but right after his magical escape? It seems more than a little suspect to me.”
Both he and her grandmother nodded in agreement.
“And he was a drifter passing through town,” she added. “These cases went back years. Where was he then?”
“Go on,” her grandmother encouraged.
“And what about the boardinghouse?”
“What boardinghouse?” Sybil asked, combing through the clippings for more.
Auri handed her a clipping from just before the drifter was killed. “According to the sheriff’s investigation, at least five of the missing victims were travelers who stayed at the same boardinghouse.” She rummaged around until she found another report. “The Fairborn House.” She stopped and thought about it. “The Fairborn House? As in Mrs. Fairborn? That sweet old lady who confesses to all of the crimes in Del Sol?”
“Really?” Sybil asked her.
“Yep. She’s been doing it for years. Every time a crime happens in Del Sol, she confesses to it. She even confessed to Kubrick Ravinder’s murder.”
The girl’s mouth formed a perfect O. “Did she do it?”
Auri giggled. “Of course not, silly. Can you find anything else on the boardinghouse?”
“I’ll try.”
By the time they looked up again an hour later, her grandparents were gone.
“Sybil, I may have spoken too soon. Maybe she did kill Kubrick after all. I think Mrs. Fairborn was a serial killer before they even called them serial killers.”
“Wow,” Sybil said, just as intrigued. “Wait, what did they call serial killers before that?”
Auri shrugged. “Maybe pancake killers? Bacon-and-egg killers?”
They devolved into a fit of giggles and only sobered when a thought hit Auri like a line drive at a major-league game. “I think we need to investigate,” she said.
“Really? Can we do that?”
“Sure. My mom does it every day. How hard can it be?”
7
Sprinkles are for cupcakes, not toilets.
—SIGN IN BATHROOM AT THE SUGAR SHACK
Sun didn’t hide her disbelief. She frowned at the man sitting across from her. “If I had a nickel for every time someone confessed to killing Kubrick Ravinder …”
Quincy agreed. “He’s the most popular dead guy since Edward Cullen.”
Wynn shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “What do you want to know?”
She took the pen in hand to start taking notes should she need to. “How did he die?”
“Painfully.”
“Does that mean you strangled him slowly?”
A knowing grin slid across his face. “I did, apple blossom. But that’s not what killed him.”
“Sheriff Vicram,” she corrected, only mildly curious as to why he’d referred to her as the flower of an apple tree. She was more interested in his knowledge about Kubrick’s death. While his larynx had been crushed, that was not how the man died.
“Much to my elder brother’s dismay, I put a knee on his throat, slid a knife into his chest, and watched with glee as the life drained out of him.”
It wasn’t often that she heard a hardened criminal use the word glee. There was something primal about the man. Something sharp and commanding and ruthless. The whole shot-caller thing made perfect sense now. His dark blond hair, although slicked back, hung to his shoulders in the choppy style of a man who didn’t concern himself overly much with his daily coif. Then again, what inmate did? His scruffy jaw only added to the look.
“So you and Kubrick didn’t get along?” Quincy asked.
“We took our sibling rivalries like we took our corn whiskey. Very seriously.”
It was no wonder. Moonshine was, after all, how his family had made a living for decades. But anyone could have found out how Kubrick was killed. That didn’t tell her a thing. “How long—?”
“Twelve seconds.” When she paused, he added, “It took twelve seconds for him to die. I counted.”
She began again. “How long was the blade?”
“Long enough to get the job done.”
“How many inches?”
He released a lungful of air and examined his fingernails, as though their questions were growing tedious. But he’d called her. Not the other way around.
“I didn’t measure,” he said, offering his hawkish gaze again. “But if I were to use a body part as reference, I’d say about eight inches. Give or take.”