“What did you expect?” I asked. “He couldn’t say much, even if he has a good working theory.”
“I expect,” she said, coming to an abrupt halt. “I expect that nearly a week after a woman is shot on her own property and left clinging to life that the police would have a clue what happened. I expect that after three years, they’d know what happened to my husband. Not some theory, or vague speculation. And I expect you to be on my side.”
Though there was a fine tremor in her voice and her eyes filled with tears that did not fall, her anger and her sense of bitter betrayal came through loud and clear.
Not what I had expected at all.
Twenty-One
Augustus Caesar reportedly wore a garland of bay and bryony leaves to protect himself from lightning.
LAUREL MARCHED ACROSS THE LAWN TO THE PLAYGROUND where she sat on a bench, arms folded, jaw set. In the dusk and the shade of the big trees, I couldn’t see the steam coming out of her ears. But I had no doubt.
On the other side of the big windows, Stafford was taking questions. I crossed the courtyard and leaned against the side of the pool building.
To me, the key question was why Maddie had gone to the old grocery Thursday morning. The assumption had been that she was clearing it out, getting it ready for demolition, or whatever came next. Maddie was hands-on, yes, but not like that—she and Kristen met weekly for a manicure.
What if she was meeting someone? Someone who hadn’t expected her builder, who’d shown up late and found her. A subcontractor? A potential future tenant?
Someone who brought a gun. Who would take a gun to a discussion about a construction project?
Movement caught my eye. The meeting had ended and people stood, clustering in twos or threes, or heading for the doors.
Lindy Harmon emerged, with the tall man I assumed was her husband.
“Oh, yes, I saw you come in with Laurel,” Lindy said when I reminded her that we’d met, and introduced her husband. “Barry and Pat worked together closely in Neighbors United. First on reducing the impact of the highway bridge expansion on the wetlands, then on voicing our concerns about the redevelopment proposal.”
Barry Harmon shook my hand. “A neighborhood belongs to the residents as much as to the city or the commercial property owners. Our goal is simply to have a voice in how it changes. If there’s no place for the kids to buy a Coke or to stop for milk on the way home, it’s hardly a neighborhood.”
“I live next door to Glenn Abbott, the city councilman, and he would agree wholeheartedly,” I said.
“Pat was a fierce champion for the cause. When he was—” Barry stopped, swallowed hard, then continued. “When Pat was killed, the cops interviewed everyone in the group. There had been some disagreements, but nothing significant. Now they’re going down the list, talking to each of us again.”
“About Maddie’s shooting?” I asked.
He nodded. “I was out of town last week. Soon as I showed them the boarding passes on my phone, they were done with me. I just wish they’d tell us more about what they’re thinking.”
“Me, too. Is that what you wanted to ask Detective Tracy?”
“I can be a bit blunt at times. My wife wisely stopped me.” One side of his mouth curved, and he gave her a quick, appreciative glance. “But the group fully supports Maddie’s proposal. It’s just what the neighborhood needs.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve known Maddie since kindergarten. I haven’t known Detective Tracy nearly as long, but I trust him. They’ll do everything they can to find the shooter”—I barely managed to stop myself from saying “the killer” and confirm Barry Harmon’s hunch that the police had evidence connecting the two crimes.
We said our goodnights and nice-to-meet-yous, and the Harmons angled across the lawn, hand in hand, toward home.
I turned back to the meeting room and saw Tim and Mrs. Petrosian talking with the detectives, then make their way toward the exit. Several people stopped them for a word, a quick hug, a handshake.
By the time they got outside, only a few people remained, chatting on the sidewalk or drifting toward the parking lot.
“Tim,” I called and stepped forward, my hand out. “Mrs. Petrosian. It’s Pepper Reece. I’m so sorry. Thank God she’s going to be okay.”
Mrs. Petrosian took my hand in both of hers. Maddie’s parents were older than mine, and age showed on her widowed mother’s face. “Pepper, of course. And it’s Miriam. Tim said you stopped by the hospital today. Thank you.”
“She’ll come back stronger than ever,” I said. “You know she will. She’s a fighter.”
“Always has been,” Miriam agreed.
“I flipped through one of the photo albums you brought in. Such great old pictures. There was one of a brick building and a cool old panel truck, from the early ’30’s, maybe? The sign said Gregorian and Son, or something like that. Grocers. Your family?”
“No,” Miriam said. “The Gregorians were my late husband’s grandparents, on his mother’s side. The first generation in this country. So many Armenians immigrated at about that time, after the genocide. My family came here then, too.”
In high school, when we studied World War I, Maddie and another girl with Armenian ancestry had brought up the topic of the genocide, although I’m not sure we called it that back then. After centuries of turmoil, the Turks had gone on a last-ditch effort to preserve the Ottoman Empire and rid themselves of the Christian Armenians. Armenians were driven from their homes, and one of Maddie’s great-grandmothers, at only fifteen, had led a group of children through the desert to safety. Hundreds of thousands were killed. The Turks continue to dispute the term “genocide,” with its implications of a systematic campaign, and the tensions still affect regional and international politics. Maddie had told her family story and I’d been so intrigued that I’d read the nonfiction account of the period she brought in, Passage to Ararat. The horrors, and the bravery, were permanently stuck in my mind.
“So that was your husband’s maternal grandfather. Maddie’s great-grandfather,” I said, puzzling out the names and genealogy. “With his son, your husband’s uncle?”
“Yes, Haig,” Miriam replied. “I never knew either of them— they both died when David was a boy, long before we met. So good to see you, Pepper.”
I had more questions, but I also had sense enough to tell when a woman who’d traveled halfway around the world to get to her daughter’s bedside was running out of steam.
“Good to see you,” I said, “despite the circumstances. Tim, I’ll try to get in to see Maddie again later in the week.”
“Your visit did her a world of good,” he said as we brushed cheeks. Given her frustration at all she’d wanted to say but couldn’t, I was not so sure.
I watched them leave, the worried husband, the anxious mother. I’d been wondering why Maddie was so intent on pursuing her vision for the property, sure that it meant more to her than another notch in her tool belt or more rental income in her family’s bank accounts. Why, though, I’d had no idea until I spotted the picture in the album, and the brief conversation with her mother gave my theory some credence: What if that property had belonged to her family, and she’d been trying to get it back?
It was kind of a delicious thought, Maddie Petrosian going around someone, undermining their plans, to get what she wanted. Who’d have thunk she had it in her?
But had it gotten her shot?
And how was it tied to Patrick Halloran’s murder? I let out a long, slow breath and headed for my friend on the park bench.
“Forgive me,” Laurel said as I sat beside her. “I’m being an idiot.”
“Kinda nice to hear somebody else saying that. It’s usually me.”
Her lips curved in a humorless smile. “One of the few things I know for sure in all this is that you are on my side.”
I squeezed her hand, then fished a water b
ottle out of my tote and passed it to her. She popped it open and took a long drink.
“Have you ever discovered something,” she asked, “that changed your entire view of someone?”
Just today, I thought, about Maddie, though I didn’t yet know how that would play out. And three years ago, when I tripped over Tag’s infidelity.
“But you knew it would change everyone else’s view, too,” she went on, “and you weren’t sure you could stand that, so you kept your mouth shut?”
“Are we talking about Patrick?”
She nodded. I waited.
“Patrick was supposed to go on the soccer trip with Gabe. He always went. By high school, the kids had professional coaches, so he was a parent chaperone, and he loved it.” One hand gripped the top of the bottle while the other hand twisted the bottom. “Two days before the trip, he said he couldn’t go, he had to work. That left the team short a chaperone, so I rearranged my schedule and I went.”
“But you’ve never thought his murder was connected to his work, because he hadn’t brought home any files. Or his office laptop.”
“Right.” She hesitated, then went on. “It was a small house. One bath on the main floor, between the living room and our bedroom. Another in the basement, off the family room, next to Gabe’s room. Not like a modern house with a powder room for guests and a full master bath.”
My loft only had one bath, too, accessible from the bedroom or the living room. I wouldn’t mind a powder room for guests.
“He was killed in the mudroom, but the police searched the entire house for evidence of an intruder or an altercation. No fingerprints, no nothing that shouldn’t have been there. They walked me through the house and one of the officers pointed out a tube of lipstick on the floor in the bathroom, behind the toilet. It must have rolled there.”
I had a terrible feeling I knew where this was going. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you wear lipstick.”
She tightened her lips and gave a tiny shake of the head. “The police assumed it was mine. I said yes. But I had cleaned that bathroom the day before we left.”
“Whose do you think it was?”
The look she gave me cut deep. “No, Laurel,” I said. “Not Maddie.”
“She wears a very distinctive shade. And they knew each other.”
“But she didn’t even own the corner grocery yet. Although she did go to some of the NU meetings.” If her family had once owned the property, and she wanted it back, of course she was interested.
Laurel took another drink of water. “I kept it. It could still be tested for fingerprints or DNA or whatever, couldn’t it, after all this time?”
“Depends how and where you kept it, but probably, yeah. Laurel.” I turned to her, the blue-white glow of the lamplight casting an eerie shadow on her face. “It’s one thing to suspect they were having an affair, another to think . . . You withheld evidence. Physical evidence, and information that might have been critical.”
“I know.” Her voice was pained, breathy. “But it wasn’t evidence of murder. I am not accusing Maddie Petrosian of murder. I never have, and definitely not now.”
“But if the same gun shot them both,” I said, “and Maddie was there that night, she might know something. It could be important.” If the only connection was the gun, that would be like lightning striking twice.
“If Maddie knew something important, she’d have spoken up,” Laurel said. “She didn’t, and that was enough for me. I didn’t want to destroy my dead husband’s reputation, not without any proof. I had Gabe to think about. And I didn’t want to cause trouble for her. If—if they were involved, then she was grieving, too.”
“You’re a far more generous woman than I. I wouldn’t have cared about protecting her feelings one bit.”
“Never in a million years did I think Patrick would cheat on me. I have turned myself inside out, trying to come up with an innocent explanation. But sometimes I wonder if I ever really knew him.”
That was a gut-puncher. The risk of relationship. “You’ve held this in, all this time.”
“I suppose,” she said, “I thought if I never told anyone, then I didn’t have to admit it might be true.”
“We might be able to catch Tracy and Armstrong, if we hurry.” I started to stand but she pulled me down.
“Did you know?” she asked. “About Tag, I mean?”
For half a second, I’d thought she was asking if I’d known about Pat and Maddie. Thank heavens I hadn’t; I’d have hated to bear that bad news. “I suspected. Little clues—last-minute changes in his work schedule. His phone buzzing with a text at strange times.” It had been all I could do not to check his phone when he was asleep. I exhaled, glad she couldn’t see my face clearly. “I even followed him one night to a bar near Green Lake, certain he was meeting ‘her,’ whoever ‘she’ was. Turned out to be a couple of guys he’d known since high school, like he’d said.”
After that, I’d been mortified. How low could I stoop?
“But you were right. Everyone thought you were being hasty when you left him, but you were prepared,” she said. Meaning she hadn’t been.
It was getting late and I needed to pick up my dog. But I had to ask her about something else she hadn’t mentioned.
“Did you know that Pat was part of the team that investigated Bruce Ellingson for fraud?”
“Yes. And before you ask why I didn’t tell you, the case was closed with a confidential settlement.” She angled toward me. “I wasn’t supposed to know, not until it came up in the murder investigation. Even then, I wasn’t supposed to talk about it.”
“They looked at all his cases, they and the FBI, like they’re doing now. And there’s a guy with major motive, right next door.”
“Pat wanted to prosecute, but his boss decided the case was too weak, and they should let the regulators handle it. Bruce must have known Pat was on to him.”
“The real tension behind the spat over the compost pile,” I said. “But they never seriously suspected him of murder?”
“No. I think because he found Pat, or said he did—he called 911. If he was the shooter, what did he do with the gun? Anyway, I couldn’t keep living next door to them, not under the circumstances.”
My head was spinning. No wonder she’d moved. All this time, she’d never said a bad word about Pat; how she managed, I had no idea.
“Speaking of the Ellingsons. Their son works in the Market and he applied for a job with me. Any reason I shouldn’t hire him? To help with deliveries?”
“No,” she said. “Cody’s a good kid. He just had trouble living up to his dad’s expectations. Gabe always looked up to him.”
The police may have eliminated Bruce Ellingson from their inquiries, but I hadn’t.
When we reached the parking lot, Detective Armstrong was loading boxes into the trunk of April Stafford’s car. The extra brochures and pamphlets, I assumed. A few feet away, Officer Clark was listening to Detective Tracy and typing into her phone. Instructions? What was her role, anyway? I still hadn’t heard why the police were guarding Maddie, though Greer had insisted they weren’t.
“Don’t tell me the two of you have been down at the water’s edge, feeding the ducks,” Detective Tracy said.
“Just catching up,” I replied. I held out my hand to Officer Clark. “I don’t think we’ve ever met. Not formally. I’m Pepper Reece.”
She took my hand and this time she didn’t blush, for which I gave her great credit. “Kim Clark.”
A flicker of—what? Amusement? Curiosity?—crossed Tracy’s face. He had to know about Tag’s affair with the woman. Blessedly, he said nothing.
Stafford drove off and Detective Armstrong joined us.
“Detectives, Officer,” I said, “Mrs. Halloran has a piece of information that didn’t seem important three years ago, but that she thinks might be helpful now.”
All eyes turn
ed to Laurel, who explained about the lipstick tube and her suspicions. I expected Detective Tracy to explode, and his eyes did simmer, but he managed, against all odds, to keep a civil tone when he replied.
“Have you told this to anyone else?” When she shook her head, he continued. “Officer Clark will follow you home and take custody of the lipstick. You will be in my office at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, and you will tell me everything you know or think you know about your husband’s murder and about Maddie Petrosian, whether you think it matters or not. Understood?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “You might want to bring a lawyer. I’m sure Mr. Gardiner can suggest someone, but keep in mind that he himself is a witness, and what you’ve just told us puts our entire understanding of the timeline the night of your husband’s murder in doubt.”
The Solace of Bay Leaves Page 18