Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“Yeah, but this time she sounded serious.” He glanced at the building and then shook his head. “Look, I’ve probably said enough. Sandy did the best she could with that girl, worked her heart out. Christ, she must have been on the phone two or three hours before things went bad.” He leveled a stubby finger at me. “So if you’re sniffing around for a lawsuit, I can tell you right now you’re on the wrong trail.”

Then he huffed, grunted, and waddled towards the Better Way Foundation’s front door. I thought about following, but I wasn’t sure why. Something seemed wrong about him, but what? And what did it matter? I couldn’t quite imagine Freddy McFarland slipping away to murder Lea Washburn before she... did what? Killed herself and caused Sandy McAllister more pain? That made a lot of sense. Still, Sandy had said she’d spoken to Lea for an hour and Freddy said two or three. But so what? People lose track of time, and in their business it had to be hard to admit failure. When I fail, a bail skip runs loose a few days, maybe deals a few more ounces of weed. When these people failed, someone died. That couldn’t be easy to live with. God knew it was a job I couldn’t and wouldn’t do.

Two nights later I was still looking for answers and still certain that I wasn’t going to find them when I drove by Lea’s building and spotted the light in her apartment. I told myself the apartment might have been rented, and almost kept going but then I hit the brake, pulled into the parking lot, and dug through my glove compartment for a Memphis PD badge that I’d stolen from a civic fund-raiser nearly a decade before.

I made it upstairs without having to flash my badge or confront Mrs. Reynolds. The door to Lea’s apartment was unlocked so I stepped inside and prayed I didn’t blunder upon a frightened woman spending her first night in her new apartment. But the apartment was as barren as it had been on the day I visited. There was a light on in the bathroom so I headed that way and then stopped when I saw a broad-shouldered young man in sweatpants and a hoodie pull a plastic bag from the toilet tank.

“I need to ask you a couple of questions.”

He spun, stared at me with wide, deer-in-the-road eyes, and then reached behind him. I knew what was coming, imagined myself pulling my gun from my jacket and barking something calm and commanding. But I’d barely gotten my hands on the butt of my gun when he hit me with the tank lid. My hands went to my temple, and my knees buckled. I was on all fours, trying to pull myself up, defenseless as he lifted the lid again and pulled it back over his shoulders. I shut my eyes, waited for him to hit me. Then he dropped the lid, fell back onto the rim of the tub, and put his hands to his eyes. I realized I wasn’t dead when I heard him weeping.

“I killed her,” Ryan Beatty said. “God help me. I killed Lea.”

Two hours later we sat in an IHOP and shared a carafe of coffee. Ryan was down to the occasional snivel now. I had a headache. Even worse, I was more certain than ever that Ryan Beatty was only guilty of being a few watts short of bright and of loving Lea Washburn too much for his own good.

“You didn’t kill her,” I said, angrily.

“I broke up with her. Two days before... before she jumped, I told her we were through.”

I refilled my cup with coffee I didn’t need or want. “Why?”

“I caught her in bed with this guy who works at the health food store on campus.”

“So you shouldn’t have broken up with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did what any guy would do.” I lit a cigarette despite the sign that said this was a Smoke Free Environment. “How many times had you broken up with her before? After catching her with another guy, I mean?”

“Four. No, five if you count that weirdo chick that lives across the hall.”

I swallowed hard, raised an eyebrow. “The graduate student?”

“She’s majoring in Lezzie if you ask me.”

“But you always came back to Lea.” I ignored an angry glare from an overweight woman at the next table. “Was she stupid?”

“Lea was the smartest person I ever knew.”

“Then she knew you’d take her back. You didn’t kill her.”

As much as I wanted to believe that he had murdered Lea, it wasn’t true. The kid could have killed me when I was on my knees, but he couldn’t do it and he seemed genuinely heartbroken over Lea.

“Why did you hit me?”

He reached in his pocket, pulled out a plastic baggie that held a half-dozen medicine vials. “I thought you were after these.”

“Drugs?”

“Growth hormones. Muscle builders like you wouldn’t believe.”

“You deal steroids.”

His face and ears reddened but he shrugged. “You know how much I get paid for bouncing? I got to eat.”