by Emily James
Underneath the annoyance in his voice was another note, one I hadn’t heard before. Fear.
When we were together, it was sometimes easy to forget he’d been widowed once already. The situations were entirely different, but the pain of it wouldn’t be. My propensity for falling headlong into dangerous situations despite my best efforts to the contrary could very well give him second thoughts about pursuing anything permanent with me. No sane man would want to experience that level of emotional pain again.
But I couldn’t agree to drop this case. Worse, I wasn’t sure how to explain to him why. It went beyond my sense of duty to fulfill the promise I made to Nancy. There was this piece inside me that wanted to keep going. And that scared me worse than the note did.
I stretched my hand across the seat toward him, and he took it, calling a temporary truce.
We rode in silence the rest of the way to the police station.
One of the Fair Haven officers I didn’t know well waited for us in the lobby. He and Mark exchanged pleasantries as he led us to the chief’s office.
The call to enter came almost in unison with the officer’s knock.
The office seemed to change very little with each new resident. I’d visited it more times in the past half year than anyone who wasn’t a police officer should have. The main change since Chief McTavish took over seemed to be the cluster of small pictures on his desk. I couldn’t see what they were of, but the smart money would be on his family. The rest of the room was stark and clinical, almost like he didn’t want to settle in.
“Show me this note,” he said in place of a hello.
I handed him the freezer bag. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and eased the letter out. He barely seemed to glance at it before sliding it back in, replacing it into the bag, and removing the gloves.
He leaned on the arm of his chair and looked at us without speaking. The tick of the wall clock grew so loud that I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears to block it out.
But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction because I knew the game he was playing. The question was whether he knew that I saw right through him or if he still thought I was some silly glory-hunter.
Two could play at his game. I crossed my legs in a way that said I don’t have anywhere better to be and waited.
At least a minute passed with Mark shifting uncomfortably in his chair and watching our showdown. I could almost hear him wondering if he should say something.
Chief McTavish slid the freezer bag back across the desk. “It’s not a threat. In fact, it’s actually quite polite and sounds worried about you. It could as easily have been sent by someone completely unconnected to the case. It’d be a waste to use up department resources to process this.”
All of Mark’s discomfort vanished, and the capable medical examiner returned. “You don’t really believe that, Chief.”
He turned cold eyes in my direction. “What I believe is that she likely wrote the note herself.”
Mark started to protest, and McTavish held up his hand. “I know your message said you were with her, but she could have planted it earlier.”
I snaked my hand out and grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from the corner of his desk before he could react. I wrote out the same words as were on the letter and ice-skated it back across the desk to him. “Does it look like the handwriting matches?”
I knew I was losing my control, and I could hear all the reprimands my parents had ever given me playing a litany in my head, but this was ridiculous. I wasn’t some sort of crazy person.
Somewhere along the way, we’d both gotten to our feet. I didn’t remember standing up.
Mark rose slowly and patted the air like he wanted to wave a white flag. “I think you two don’t get along because you’re a little too much alike in some ways. She suspected that you’d written the note, Chief, and I had to convince her to bring it in.”
For the first time, McTavish’s composure slipped. He dipped his chin. “I will acknowledge that I might have unjustly accused you of sending the note.” He dropped back into his chair. “I’ve spent most of my career in departments where corruption was suspected or where they’d proven it and someone needed to pick up the pieces afterward. You start to see ghosts after a while.”
Olive branch offered. I was willing to accept it. I sat as well. “It’s the same as a criminal lawyer. You know of so many people who are guilty and pretending to be innocent that you start assuming everyone is guilty of something. But I didn’t write that note.”
McTavish handed the freezer bag to Mark.
My chest hollowed slightly. After all that, was he still sending us away without checking for prints?
“Ask them to log that in and have it dusted,” McTavish said. “I’d like to talk to your girlfriend alone for a minute.”
Mark met my gaze and quirked an eyebrow, an unspoken you okay with that?
I nodded. Somehow McTavish and I needed to find a way to work together civilly. I couldn’t do my job for Holly if he was treating me like someone who was capable of tampering with a murder investigation.
The door clicked softly shut, signaling Mark’s exit.
McTavish ran his fingers across his knuckles. “I looked into you, Ms. Fitzhenry-Dawes.”
The way he sneered my last name seemed to have nothing to do with why most people reacted to my hyphenated last name.
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from sneering his last name in return. I’d already stooped to his level once too often, something Mark had risked pointing out even though I hadn’t wanted to listen. “After looking me up, you still believe I’d be capable of impeding an investigation and fabricating evidence?”
“After looking you up, I believe you’d be capable of anything to win.”
I’d have preferred it if he’d thrown a punch at me. At least I could have tried to block it. His words tunneled right inside and battered my heart into a pulp.
If he knew he’d hurt my feelings, he didn’t let on.
“It’ll be better for everyone if you realize now that I’m not the type of officer to be bullied or intimidated by a lawyer who’ll do anything to free her client, even hurt good people, just like that note said.” He splayed his hands flat on the desk. “Everyone has the right to a defense. It’s part of what makes our legal system great. But that doesn’t mean I have to respect the lawyers who defend clients they know are guilty.”
Queasiness welled up in my stomach. When he said he’d looked me up, he didn’t mean anything I’d done here in Fair Haven. He meant he’d looked up my credentials to practice law, which led him to my parents’ firm, with its reputation for defending people who were clearly guilty.
For a second I considered defending what little honor they had—my parents never tampered with evidence or did anything outright illegal. In fact, they’d have sued anyone for slander who even suggested it.
But their integrity wasn’t the real point here. Mine was. And he didn’t believe I had any.
At least now I understood what I was up against. I’d always preferred that to not knowing.
I slowly rose to my feet. “If you believe that’s the kind of lawyer I am, then you didn’t do your homework well enough.” I nudged my chin toward the copy of the note I’d written. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like a photocopy of the note when you’re finished checking it for prints. You might think it’s a fake, but I prefer not to take chances when lives are at risk.”
14
The only thing that kept me from crying when Mark brought me home after my confrontation with Chief McTavish, or from crying when I was alone in my room that night, was knowing what my mother would say.
Lawyers don’t cry because someone doesn’t like them, Nicole.
To compensate, the next day, I ate too many of the candy samples Nancy wanted me to approve for the gift baskets and completely negated the salad I’d choked down the day before. Not that I had anything against salads normally. It’s just that a salad do
esn’t exactly scream comfort food when you’ve had a bad day. To add insult to indigestion, I’d made too much and ended up having to eat it for lunch again.
As I was loading my dishes into the dishwasher afterward, Daisy called to tell me Holly was awake, but the doctors weren’t allowing anyone to question her yet because of her medical condition. I regretted that for the Northgates’ sake, but selfishly I was glad for a reprieve from facing Chief McTavish again. As much as I wanted everyone to like me, I could handle not being liked. That was inevitable in life for everyone. What I couldn’t stand was unfair criticism. I’d worked so hard to prove I wasn’t like my parents, and he’d whisked it all away like it didn’t matter.
At least Mark had promised to follow up on getting me a copy of the letter if Chief McTavish didn’t. After yesterday’s confrontation, I wouldn’t put it past him to withhold it simply to spite me.
Given my mood, I decided that what I really needed was to take the rest of the day off with my dogs and a copy of the must-read mystery Mandy recommended. I settled in on the couch, and Toby crawled up beside me. As hard as I’d tried to keep him off my furniture, his first owner, Bonnie, had let him sleep wherever he wanted. Today I welcomed the comfort. Velma curled up on the dog bed next to us and laid her head—cone and all—on my feet.
The characters in the book had barely discovered the body when my doorbell rang. Both dogs were on their feet and across the house before I could even close the book.
A little tingle crept up the back of my neck. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and most people would assume I’d be somewhere else on Sugarwood property this time of day. I fished my cell out of the couch crack it’d slid into when Toby launched himself off and took it with me. If it was anyone associated with Drew’s case outside my door, or anyone I didn’t recognize, I could call Mark and keep him on speakerphone until they were gone. Better safe than dead.
I squished an eye to my door’s peephole and received a magnified view of Quincey Dornbush’s bald head and part of his face.
I slumped against the door. Thank goodness.
I unlocked the door—after finding that note, no one was convincing me to leave it unlocked ever—and stepped outside to protect Quincey’s uniform from doggie drool.
He held up a brown nine-by-twelve envelope. “The chief asked me to bring this to you.”
His look clearly said why am I always the messenger? But in a good-natured way. He was probably just grateful he hadn’t been asked to transport my extremely feminine and flamboyant luggage again.
I accepted the envelope and looked inside. It held the photocopy of the note that I’d requested.
He took a step backward as if he was anxious to dispatch his carrier pigeon duties and get back to work. “He also wanted you to know that they didn’t find any fingerprints on it. If you receive any other messages, he’d like you to bring them in.”
Interesting. Mark wasn’t going to ask about the note unless I hadn’t received word by the end of the week. This delivery must have come from Chief McTavish without prompting.
I’d never trusted the old saying of don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Not looking was exactly how the people of Troy lost their city to the Greeks.
All I said to Quincey was, “Thank you. I will.”
He tipped his hat and double-timed it back to his car.
Back inside the house, I laid the photocopy out on my counter. It was a strange situation. The sender knew enough to protect against fingerprints, but they hadn’t taken the extra precaution of printing the note rather than handwriting it. While fingerprints would have been easier and more conclusive, that meant I still had a lead to follow. If I could get a sample of each male tour member’s handwriting, I could compare it to see if it looked similar. I wasn’t a trained graphologist, but I’d always had an eye for detail.
I worried the edge of the envelope. How could I get samples of their handwriting? It’d be a bit obvious to walk up and ask for it. That wouldn’t tip the note-sender off at all.
I did have a small sample of George Powers’ and Ted Marshall’s writing. They’d both signed in to the tour guest book with their name and hometown. Unfortunately, Kristen White signed the book for her family while Shawn was paying. Maybe that wouldn’t matter. I might get lucky and find one of the samples I had matched the note—if you could call it lucky to find out a sick man or a newly married man had killed someone.
I put Velma back in her crate since her incision wasn’t looking any better than it had last week and dressed Toby in the plaid dog coat I’d bought for him. Finding the doggie jackets had been surprisingly challenging. Every pet store sold them for small dogs, but I’d had to special order ones online that would fit my dogs. It was worth it, though, to see them cozy on our walks. If I found the Michigan weather cold in my winter gear, they must, too.
I snatched up the note and set off with Toby toward the rental shop. Tour guests all checked in there to pay and sign the book before heading out.
When we reached the shop, I hooked Toby’s leash to the old-fashioned hitching post out front since I’d learned the hard way that not everyone liked big dogs. The last time I’d brought him into the rental shop, the guests inside shrank back and refused to pass by like they thought he was going to tear away from me and eat them.
It turned out I could have brought Toby inside. The shop was empty except for Dave, his gangly form hunched over a pad of paper, gnawing on the end of a pencil.
He grinned at me around the pencil. “Do you need me for something? I’m in the middle of an exciting scene.”
I waved him back to his work. In the past two months, Dave had given me three different novel beginnings to read. Unfortunately, he kept getting stuck three or four chapters in, and I was left wondering what would happen to all the people he’d introduced me to. It was surprisingly frustrating. If he was making it further on this story, I didn’t want to interrupt him.
I tiptoed around him, snagged the guest book, and brought it to the far end of the counter. Since no tours had run since the one on which Drew died, the entries were the last in the book.
I laid my paper out beside the correct page. The first entry read George and Amy Powers, Fair Haven, Michigan.
George Powers’ handwriting filled the line and spilled over into the next one in big, sloppy loops that almost looked like he struggled to control the pen. Knowing what I did now, he probably had been struggling to control the pen.
That wasn’t the only difference, though. George Powers’ entry connected letters like O, V, and W down low, in a very distinct pattern, whereas the writer of the letter connected them high, more like my own handwriting.
The handwriting on the note I’d been sent was also neater and smaller, with a more noticeable slant to the left.
Mr. Marshall had signed the line below, which was actually two lines below, since George Powers hadn’t been able to stay on one line.
Ted and Janet Marshall, it read. Cincinnati, Ohio.
Not only was his handwriting much too dark for the note I’d received—he’d almost punched through the thick guest book paper with how much pressure he applied—but his letters were all points and sharp edges. The writing in the note had a smoother flow.
Kristen White’s entry, as expected, didn’t match, either, though hers came the closest.
I whopped the guest book closed and flinched. I’d probably frightened Dave right out of his train of thought. When I looked up, he didn’t seem to have noticed, and the eraser on his pencil now lay in pink confetti bits all around his paper.
I bid him goodbye, but his wave was so distracted that I had a suspicion he’d look up an hour from now and wonder where I’d gone.
The note safely back in my pocket, I retrieved Toby. I’d have sworn he looked at me reproachfully for leaving him out in the fresh snow for two minutes while I’d been inside. I brought us home by the long way since the sun actually felt almost warm, and it gave me time to think about my next step.
/> If the person who killed Drew had sent me the note, then I had to work under the assumption that the note writer-killer was also a man on the tour. Since Ted Marshall’s and George Powers’ handwriting didn’t match, that narrowed it down to Kristen’s husband Shawn. The conundrum there was he didn’t have a motive that I’d seen yet, and he’d had his little boy with him as far as I knew. This was beginning to feel like a Sherlock Holmes’ locked room mystery, and instead of Sherlock in this scenario, I was Dr. Watson, stumbling around, unable to see the clues that must be right in front of me.
I supposed that theoretically none of them had done it. Amy did text a drug dealer who might have had a good reason to want Drew dead with the information that she’d be on a tour at Sugarwood. But that brought me back to the original dilemma that we’d have been almost impossible to find out in the bush unless someone knew where to look and had a way to sneak in and out while we were all actively paying attention to our surroundings because we were looking for Riley. Given the spotty cell reception in the area and that Amy hadn’t said she’d communicated with the dealer directly before, that seemed highly unlikely.
So even though I couldn’t yet explain away how Shawn had killed Drew while carrying his son or figure out what his motive was, I still needed to see if his handwriting matched the note.
Kristen had told me Shawn was a high school teacher, so if I hurried, I might be able to make it to the school right as class was letting out and before he’d erased the chalkboard. That’d be a safe place to do it as well. If he was the killer, he wouldn’t risk hurting me in a school teeming with students and other teachers.
If the note writer-killer wasn’t someone on the tour, I’d have a whole new problem on my hands, because even I couldn’t come up with a good enough story to convince Mark that poking into the business of a drug dealer would be perfectly safe and reasonable.
The posted policy on the school door I entered said all visitors had to check in at the front desk. Surely that only meant during school hours. That’d be my excuse if someone questioned me on it, anyway, because I didn’t have time to check in, nor did I want Shawn coming to the office to meet me.