Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

Carter all along. He certainly had the means; he had explosives experience presumably if he worked for a munitions company who outfitted American soldiers and their Iraqi counterparts. He certainly had motive. His wife had slept with Wilmott. And he had opportunity. One needn’t look any farther than Beans, Beans and what had probably been a chance encounter. The fight was just a sideshow diversion that ended tragically before Carter would have blown up in a bomb-rigged car.
    I downed the rest of my soda and grabbed Trixie’s leash. “I’ve got to go, Jane. Thanks for the soda.”
    *   *   *
     
    We left Jane’s and took a side trip to the next block, Trixie’s favorite watering hole, so to speak. Rather than return home immediately after Trixie’s business was done and her mind on chasing squirrels, I decided to take advantage of this day off and meander around the neighborhood and spend some time outdoors. God knows, once school really got under way, I would be inside a lot.
    I thought about Kevin, still puzzled about what had made him leave without warning. I could only guess that he had gotten on the wrong side of Etheridge once again and that had led to his departure. Kevin and I are always on the wrong side of Etheridge; it was starting to seem as if pissing off the president of the college was our collective goal in life, when in actuality we were pretty hapless. We weren’t determined to make him hate us; circumstances sometimes conspired against us. I got a little worried even going there in my mind. Was I next? Would my next unintended gaffe be his reason for letting me go?
    Even though the day was gorgeous and I should have been in good spirits, a lot of things weighed heavily on my mind. I thought things couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong.
    For when I arrived home, there was another note tacked to my front door, this one more urgent than the last.
     
    YOU WILL DIE IF YOU KEEP THIS UP.
    If I kept what up? Harrassing unsuspecting shoppers in the grocery store? Asking questions about Ginny Miller and Carter Wilmott? Who knew? For some reason, and with everything else going on in my life, getting these notes amounted to a giant annoyance and nothing else. The Catholic-school, Palmer-method handwriting probably contributed to that. If someone had truly wanted to scare me, wouldn’t they have cut out individual letters from magazines, like the serial killers on television did? People who wanted to scare other people into submission didn’t do so with lavender-scented note cards. I suspected that was a general rule in the art of written intimidation.
    My guess was that they were coming from Ginny Miller and I really wasn’t afraid of her. I don’t know how far she would go to protect her husband but I didn’t think whatever she chose to do would involve me. After all, I was just a nuisance. With a black eye and a taped-up wrist. I couldn’t help her because of my strict “no lying” policy, and I couldn’t hurt her any more than I had. Unless she found out that I knew what everyone else seemed to know and not care about: that she had had an affair with Carter Wilmott, an interesting little tidbit that I hadn’t seen turn up in any of the newspaper reporting on the case. Maybe only those closest to all of the players knew about it and nobody else. Because surely that would give George Miller ample cause and motive to beat the heck out of Carter Wilmott.
    I was taking that information to my grave along with a few other items.
    I called the number on the note again and listened to the phone ring and ring again. What kind of organization and/or psychopathic killer puts a phone number on its intimidating notes only to let the phone ring? I fingered the note, taking a deep whiff of the lavender, which had the opposite effect of the note’s intent: it made me relax. I didn’t know who sent the note or what they were referring to. The only thing I did know for sure was that if I spent any more time away from Crawford, I certainly would die. I stuffed the note into my jeans pocket, deposited Trixie in the house with an admonishment against eating anything that wasn’t actually a food product, and got into my car.
    If you’re trying to win your boyfriend-slash-fiancé back, it is probably a good idea to look a little bit better than I currently did. But what the hell? He already loved me, warts and all, despite the fact that he was a bit perturbed with me at the moment. I knew it was a long