Ticket to Ride

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Chad looked like hell and he knew it. He’d just looked at his reflection in the mirror before he’d come to the sun room to see Lieutenant Reeves. He hadn’t slept well. And when he had slept there had been horrible nightmares. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t soon forget them.

With dark smudges under his bloodshot eyes and his blond hair on end, he knew he looked a fright. Like some addict on a binge or something. He’d still been in bed when his maid, Magdalena, came to tell him Reeves waited for him.

Chad threw on a wrinkled pale blue shirt he’d found on the floor of his bedroom and some tattered jeans with holes in the knees and one on the butt. While he dressed he told Magdalena to take the police detective to the sun room. It was Chad’s favorite room. Sunny and bright, it was painted a blinding white and had giant windows overlooking the ocean.

Lieutenant Reeves, who had been sitting on the yellow cushions of his white rattan couch, rose when Chad entered the room.

“I’m sorry,” Chad said, grasping the man’s offered hand. “I overslept. Have a seat. Can I offer you some coffee?”

Even as he asked, Magdalena came into the room with a tray containing a silver carafe of coffee, a couple of cups, and cream and sugar.

“Thank you, yes,” Reeves said, sitting on the couch again.

Chad sat on a matching rattan chair and waited as Magdalena poured them coffee. Really the older woman was more than a maid. She acted as a housekeeper for him. She’d been with him for years and took good care of him.

He studied Reeves and decided he liked what he saw. The man was handsome in an outdoorsy, rugged sort of way with his close cropped hair, square jaw, and five o’clock shadow. He’d dressed in an olive green button-down shirt and casual brown slacks. He’d clipped his badge to his belt. He had friendly brown eyes. Considering the circumstances, though, Chad tended to doubt he was all that friendly.

“Gracías, Magdalena,” he murmured to her as she set the cups of coffee in front of them on the glass coffee table. She’d already fixed his, adding the cream, but she set the cream and sugar next to the detective’s cup and then left the carafe there. She slipped out of the room without a word.

Lieutenant Reeves added cream and sugar to the coffee and then took a sip, nodding. “It’s good.”

“Thank you.” He waited. The questions would come now and already his stomach twisted and his heartbeat increased. He had nothing to hide. He hadn’t killed Mark. He wouldn’t.

Reeves took out the same notebook he’d had with him the day before. “Who was Mr. Walters’s next of kin?”

“Oh, um. Well, let’s see. He has…had a brother in Baton Rouge and a sister in Louisville. His mother passed away a couple of years ago, but his dad still lives in the house he grew up in over in Glendale. I called him last night.”

Reeves gave him a long stare, but said nothing for a moment. Before he’d left last night, Ron had told Chad that Reeves was gay. Chad wasn’t so sure he believed it. Not that you could tell by looking at someone or anything. But the man reminded him of Hollywood’s idea of the rugged cop character.

“I have some other questions about your relationship with the victim, but first, why don’t you tell me about the exact events of yesterday.”

Chad knew he would have to relive it, but that didn’t make it any easier. “Okay, well, I saw Mark yesterday morning when I first got up. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen.”

“Yesterday? When I asked you yesterday you said you’d last seen him the night before.”

Chad swallowed and twisted his hands together. “Yeah, I remembered after you left that I saw him more recently. On the d-day it happened. Sorry.”

The lieutenant narrowed his eyes. “Did you speak?”

“Yes. We’d known each other too long for the silent treatment or anything. I asked him if he was ready for his flight and he said mostly. He asked me what I was up to and I said I was having breakfast with Parker.”

“Parker?”

“Parker Riley. He was my guitarist in Lightning. We’d planned weeks ago to meet for breakfast.” Chad chewed his lip. “I said good-bye and told him I’d probably see him before he left for the airport.”

“Did you?”

“No. I had breakfast with Parker and then he came to the studio with me. He did some guitar work on one of the songs I’m recording. I didn’t get back to the house until about three.” Chad looked away from the detective and out the window toward the sea. His stomach felt a little queasy. For a moment his vision blinded him with a sea of red and he shook his head, clearing it of the horror. “The house was quiet when I got here. Magdalena does the grocery shopping on Tuesday afternoons. Mark’s suitcases were in the front hallway so I went looking for him.”

* * * *

“Hey, Mark? Where are you?” Chad called out. He went down the hallway to the room Mark had been sleeping in. The bed was made. No Mark.

He continued looking through all the usual rooms of the house Mark could be found in and when he came up empty, he went to the backdoor slider.

Chad slid the door open and stepped outside. He shielded his eyes from the bright afternoon sun. “Mark, you out here?”

Sometimes, though Chad didn’t think he would right before he was to leave, Mark went swimming alone. He never liked that he had no one watching him while he swam, because anything could happen, but Mark usually didn’t care about Chad’s opinion. But he stepped down from the steps leading into the backyard and turned toward the pool.

Mark lay face down in the pool surrounded by bloody water. Chad opened his mouth and screamed.