Page 26 of Dirty Valentine (A J.J. Graves Mystery #17)

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I think I need to break up with her. I hate breaking up with women.”

“You’ve had to break up with women a lot?” Cole asked.

“Oh, sure,” Sheldon said. “I’m not ready to settle down yet, and women get attached to me pretty quickly.”

“Huh,” Cole said.

“Has Leena asked any questions about the investigation?” Jack asked. “Tried to get information from you about suspects or anyone we’ve talked to?”

“Not so much that,” he said, chewing thoughtfully. “But she told me about markings on other graves, and about how she wanted to see the engravings because Bridget might be sending a message and only another witch can read it.”

“Sounds like we’ve got a leak in the department,” Martinez said, scowling.

“Leena hears from the other world,” Sheldon said. “It’s kind of creepy. But sexy too.”

“Did she hear from Bridget?” Lily asked, curious.

“No, that’s why we went to see Evangeline,” Sheldon explained like we were all simpletons. “Bridget has a supernatural force field around her, so an apprentice witch like Leena can’t get through.”

Cole nodded with all the seriousness in the world. “That’s a job for a professional witch.”

“Exactly,” Sheldon said. “But Leena told me that Bridget had been betrayed by the very people she trusted, and then she said that those bloodlines needed to be cleansed.

Cole leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “Cleansed how?”

“I don’t know,” Sheldon said, his voice shrinking to a whisper. “She said she’d call me later and hung up. And then I looked out my bedroom window and there was this car sitting across from my house. It was raining so it was kind of hard to see, but I could tell someone was looking straight at me.”

“What’d the car look like?” Jack asked.

“It was a nice car,” Sheldon said. “Black sedan, looked expensive. Mercedes, I think. The one with the silver emblem on the front.”

Martinez got out his phone and pulled up the DMV records. “Victoria Mills drives a black Mercedes E-Class. That what you saw?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Sheldon said, nodding. “I remember thinking it was too nice a car to be sitting in my neighborhood.”

“No hits on the BOLO?” Jack asked.

“Nothing,” Cole said.

“What time did you see the car?” Jack asked Sheldon.

“Well, after I got sent home from work I went home and took a shower and a nap. And then I got up at one and had some SpaghettiOs. The kind with the little wieners in it. And then I went back to my room and turned on that new documentary about that funeral home that was embalming people while they were still alive. Preserved in Silence .”

“Oh, yeah,” Lily said. “I watched that. Very creepy. I’m going to get cremated when it’s my time.”

“What made you go to the window?” Jack asked, his patience everlasting.

“I had a feeling,” he said. “I think the Baba Yaga warns me about things sometimes. And there was this crazy-loud thunder and a lightning strike that was so bright it lit up my room. I went to the window to see if anything had been barbecued.”

“Baba Yaga,” I said.

“Call in Sheldon’s address,” Jack told Martinez. “Let’s see if we can get footage from stoplights and see what direction the car went. That was only a few hours ago.”

Something was bothering me about Victoria Mills, and I didn’t have a good feeling. “Seems strange for a woman to pack her bags to get out of town and then drive around the town you’re escaping from, skulking about at gas stations and people’s houses.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “That’s just one of the many issues with this case. Let’s send someone to pick up Leena.”

“Good luck with that,” Sheldon said. “She’s like smoke—here one minute, gone the next. And then you wake up naked in her car.”

“You didn’t tell me you were naked,” I said.

Sheldon’s cheeks turned pink. “It didn’t seem relevant at the time.”

“I’ll have a couple of deputies go by her apartment,” Cole said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Even witches need to get something to eat and take a shower.”

We cleaned up the kitchen and then ambled back into the office, taking seats around the conference table. Lily grabbed her backpack and settled in one of the overstuffed chairs by the fireplace.

Potts pulled out her iPad and said, “I hear you’ve got state-of-the-art technology here. Can I connect? I’ve got the photos and evidence documentation from the Mills house. CSI finished processing the scene about an hour ago.”

“Absolutely,” Jack said, moving to activate the wall-mounted display system. “What’ve you got for us?”

The large screen came to life, and Potts began swiping through crime-scene photos with the methodical precision that made her so good at her job.

“Dr. Mills’s house tells a story of interrupted escape.

Her bedroom shows she was packing in a hurry—drawers opened, clothes missing, closets’ contents reduced.

But then there are clear signs of a struggle in the living room and kitchen. ”

“So she was trying to leave when someone surprised her?” Martinez asked.

“That’s what it looks like,” Potts said, pulling up photos of Mills’s home office. “She was gathering important documents when her attacker arrived. Her desk was partially cleaned out, and I found indentations on a notepad that show she wrote down a phone number.”

She displayed an enhanced image showing faint impressions on paper. “Lab enhanced this. The number traces to a burner phone purchased two weeks ago with cash at a Walmart in Richmond.”

“Untraceable,” Cole said. “Someone who knows how to stay off the grid.”

“There’s more,” Potts continued. “I found additional blood evidence in her garage. This was inside, where her car should have been parked.”

“Could belong to her or the attacker,” I said.

“Still waiting on DNA confirmation, but the spatter pattern suggests someone was injured in her garage. Could be where the attack started before moving into the house.”

Martinez was taking notes. “Any security cameras in the area?”

“Checking on that. Most of these older neighborhoods don’t have much coverage, but there’s an intersection camera about two blocks away that might have caught something.”

Cole stretched in his chair, wincing slightly as his ribs protested. “So we’ve got Mills on the run, but we still don’t know if she’s running from someone or running because she’s guilty.”

“All solid possibilities,” I said. “But we’re missing something. The timeline doesn’t quite work.”

Potts looked up from her tablet. “How so?”

“Thomas died from cardiac arrest, but his appointment book shows he was supposed to meet someone with the initials JMH for dinner the night he died. But according to the woman at the insurance office we interviewed, she saw Victoria leaving her medical practice next door around five thirty in a hurry. Said she was loading some bags in her trunk and then she took off.”

Jack nodded, picking up the thread. “Here’s what doesn’t add up,” he said.

“The neighbor at the insurance office said she saw Mills loading bags into her trunk at five thirty, looking scared. But what if Mills never made it out of town? What if someone intercepted her at her house, staged it to look like she’d fled, then used her car for Thomas’s murder? ”

“That would explain the blood in the garage,” Potts said. “Someone attacks her there, forces her into her own vehicle.”

“Or into the trunk,” I added, feeling sick at the thought.

“But we also know Victoria’s vehicle was caught on camera at the gas station that night on two separate occasions. The most damning being around the time Thomas Whitman was murdered and laid out at the cemetery.”

“So by those pieces of information,” I said. “We can assume Victoria was actually the first one to be attacked.”

Jack continued. “But what we don’t know is where Thomas was taken from or where he died.

All we know is someone took the time to lay him out on Bridget Ashworth’s grave and move those heavy stones.

We also don’t know where Victoria would have been during that time.

Was she being held somewhere? Was she already dead? Still in the trunk?”

“That would have been a crowded trunk,” Cole said. “Maybe Mercedes should think about that for a new slogan— Trunks big enough you can fit two bodies. ”

“It sounds like we need to find JMH,” Martinez said.

The room fell quiet as we all considered the implications. If our killer was working through a list, we needed to figure out who else might be targeted.

“We should run those initials against everyone we’ve interviewed,” Jack said. “All the family names, current and historical.”

“Good idea,” I said. “There has to be a connection we’re missing.”

“I’ll start tonight,” Martinez said, pulling out his laptop. “DMV records, voter registration, university directories. Someone with those initials had dinner with Thomas, and they might be the last person to see him alive.”

“Check the historical society membership too,” I suggested. “Thomas was connected to all those circles.”

Potts was packing up her equipment with her usual efficiency. “I’ll have the DNA results on that garage blood evidence by tomorrow morning. Should help us figure out what happened there.”

Jack’s phone rang, cutting through the quiet of the evening. The caller ID showed dispatch, and the room went silent.

“Lawson,” he answered. His face went stone cold as he listened. “Female? What’s the condition?” A pause. “God. Yes, secure the scene. We’re on our way.”

He hung up and looked around the room. “Body dumped at Rappahannock River boat launch. Female victim, signs of violence.”

“Mills?” I asked, though my gut already knew this case was about to get worse.

“They can’t make a visual ID. The face is…” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Damaged.”

We all started gathering our things. Lily looked up from her textbooks. “I’ll stay here with Sheldon,” she said. “Someone should keep an eye on him.”

“Good thinking,” I said, looking over at Sheldon. He’d fallen asleep on the couch sometime during our briefing. “Don’t let him leave. And just in case, don’t answer the door for anyone. We’ll lock the front gate and be back as soon as we can.”