by Parker, Ava
“Don’t worry about it, Clara. I would’ve done the same thing. Plus, it must have something to do with all of this” – she searched for a word –—“shit.” She stood there for a moment. “How did he make a deposit into my account without my knowing? We all have access to the accounts for Dovetail, but he doesn’t have my personal bank information.”
Ben and Clara exchanged a look. “I think you’re going to hear a lot of lecturing over the next few days, but you can’t keep a detailed printout of all your accounts and passwords in your desk drawer,” said Ben.
Her mouth formed an O. “Right. It still doesn’t make sense, though. Eddie has been in my apartment, what, maybe twice? And both times were shortly after I moved in. It would have taken a lot of foresight to have stolen my passwords back then. Plus, he was never here alone. Double-plus, I would have noticed if my trusty password list was missing and I had to replace it.”
“He could have taken a photo of it with his phone. That would only take a second. Or he could have taken your spare keys from Michelle and come by while you were gone,” said Clara. “It would have been easy.”
“You’re still assuming he had knowledge of the list.” She thought for a minute. “And I just don’t think he did.” She sat on the sofa and Bea jumped into her lap; Maddy’s eyelids drooped heavily. “I need to sleep. Will you be okay on the couch, Clara? You can sneak through to the shower if you want, a train couldn’t wake me. Ben, you’re welcome to stay with her. It does pull out into a double bed.” She smiled sleepily and got up to go to bed, giving them each a long hug before she did. “Thank you, both of you. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come…” There were tears in her eyes as she turned and went to bed.
Clara turned to Ben and raised an eyebrow. “I have to take a shower and change my clothes,” he said regretfully.
“Me too,” she replied and leaned in to kiss his neck.
“I could come back.”
“Baby, I’ll be asleep before you get out of the shower. Besides, we can’t be greedy.”
“Clara, when all of this is over, I have every intention of being greedy.” And with that, he left.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After a steamy shower, Judy Carlisle crawled into bed next to her husband. She rested her head on the pillow, pulled the down comforter up to her neck and curled into his warm body. It felt wonderful to be in bed. It had been a long day and she was exhausted, but she knew that sleep would not come quickly. She couldn’t get the image of that horrible cellar out of her head, and there was something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on. And then she knew what it was. Something she had remembered when Ben asked about Susan’s boyfriend. She thought briefly of calling Kincaid, but there was nothing to do about it now, and she was so tired.
Sunday morning broke with a clear blue sky over Elliott Bay. The smell of coffee woke Clara from her sofa-bed slumber and she turned to see her sister sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, pouring hot milk into a mug of steaming brew. She checked her phone for the time. Not even eight o’clock.
When she noticed Clara’s blonde head popping up from the pillow, Maddy smiled. “I tried not to wake you.”
“You did too try to wake me,” said Clara, smiling back. “Can I have some of that?” Maddy made another latte while Clara made up the pull-out couch and they sat down together by the coffee table.
“Sun’s out,” said Maddy wistfully. “Such weird weather.”
“It’s been out since I arrived.”
“Really?” asked Maddy sadly. “God, Clara, I didn’t even know. The only light I had down there was indirect morning glow, and then it was dark again. I had to do everything by touch. And it was so quiet; I felt suffocated by the silence. I talked to myself just to hear sound.” She shuddered. “When I found that toolbox I was so hopeful and when I realized that it was only a lid, I was crushed.” She talked for a few minutes without pause and Clara just listened. Maddy had been so strong through her ordeal, but she needed to let it out and Clara was grateful that she was starting now.
“The thing that’s killing me, totally eating me up, is that I don’t remember who put me down there. That, and the finger is pointing at someone I’ve known and cared for and trusted for years.”
“I can’t believe Eddie didn’t carry any evidence away with him from Susan’s murder, or leave something of his in that cellar or in the house.”
“Me neither,” said Maddy. “He’s not known for precision.”
“And that’s on a good day,” said Clara. “I’ve seen him several times in the last two days and he’s only been close to sober one time.”
“He’s been drinking a lot lately. Michelle has mentioned it a few times.”
“Have the two of you been getting along?” asked Clara.
“Eddie and I?”
“No, you and Michelle. A few people mentioned that there was some tension between the two of you.”
Her sister didn’t respond for a while. She stood, picking up their coffee cups and walked to the kitchen. “’Nother?” Clara said yes and waited for her to come back. Maddy expertly pulled two espressos and topped them off with milk she had heated with a steamer. She handed Clara her cup and said, “No. Michelle and I haven’t been getting along well. Working together has been really hard on our friendship. Besides the stress of running a restaurant and little differences of opinion on management things, the last two reviews we’ve had mentioned ‘Madeline Gardner, brilliant chef,’ and didn’t use Michelle’s name at all. It’s not fair and I understand why Michelle got upset, but it wasn’t my fault.”
She picked Bea up from her spot on the rug and put the cat on her lap. Yawning and stretching luxuriously, she curled up and went back to sleep. “The thing is, when we opened the restaurant Michelle wanted days. She wanted to be the one to manage budgets and price menus. I was going to be the creative one. I design the menus and plate the food and shop the markets. I have a lot of managerial jobs too, but I’m the head chef. And I’ve gotten more attention than she has, right or wrong. I can’t figure out how to fix it.”
She took a sip of milky coffee. “A few weeks ago I did an interview for the Sunday edition of the Seattle Times and I talked about Michelle through the whole thing. I said that she’s a brilliant manager, incredible chef, the backbone of Dovetail. And you know what the headline was?” Clara shook her head. “‘Maddy Gardner: The Modest Genius Behind Dovetail.’ Michelle was livid. I was afraid to even cross her path for a while.”
“I had no idea,” said Clara, surprised by the revelation.
“Yeah. I was going to talk to you about it but I kept hoping it was just growing pains, you know? Something we would go through and emerge stronger and better. I can’t imagine what this is going to do to our relationship. I can see all of my dreams crumbling around me and I can’t figure out how it happened.” She looked her sister straight in the eyes. “But I’ll tell you one thing, this may hurt me and I’ll probably have to deal with that in counseling, or meditation or yoga or whatever, but I will, and I will keep going. Stronger and better.”
Clara beamed. “I never doubted it.”
Maddy excused herself to take another shower. “I can’t get the smell of dirt and mold out of my nose. Hey, call your boyfriend and ask him to bring us some breakfast.” She winked at her sister and turned on her heel.
Clara found her phone and called Ben. “I thought you’d never call,” he said.
She felt a little giddy. “Are you up?”
“I’ve been up for hours. Well, one hour.”
“Wanna come over?”
“Are you two getting hungry?”
“You read my mind.”
Clara hung up the phone and got dressed in the same blue jeans and her trusty grey cashmere sweater. She needed to do laundry. Or jus
t raid her sister’s closet.
Maddy emerged in black cotton trousers and a deep blue T-shirt. In one hand she carried a hoodie and she was using the other to towel dry her golden brown hair. “I’m starving!”
“Ben is on his way.”
Maddy sidled up to her sister and nudged her in the ribs. “In all the confusion I haven’t even asked. What do you think of my friend Ben?”
Clara reddened. “I like him.”
“Have you gone all the way?” she asked, barely containing her laughter.
“Stop it!” Clara was laughing too.
“I knew it! When? Where? Not in my bed!”
Now Clara looked a little guilty. “At Eddie and Michelle’s country house.” Maddy’s mouth dropped open. “Just before we found you in the cellar.”
Maddy started tickling her sister. “You mean that while I was lost and alone and deprived of fresh food, you were having sex with your hunky new boyfriend?”
Clara was giggling and trying to get away. “That desperate act of desire led directly to the discovery of the map that led us to the old root cellar where we found you!” she gasped and laughed as Maddy finally stopped tickling her. “If we hadn’t had sex, we would never have known that cellar was there.”
“Then I guess it’s okay, young lady.” They both dissolved in laughter. “It has to be a good sign that I can laugh at having been kidnapped, right?” Clara nodded and hugged her sister and when Ben arrived a few minutes later with two bags of groceries from Ralph’s, they were still snickering.
“I’m glad you woke up happy.”
“Good morning, Ben,” said Maddy, bussing his cheek, “what did you bring us?”
Clara planted a big kiss right on his lips and turned to watch Maddy unpacking groceries like it was Christmas morning.
“I have been dying to cook!” She made them each a latte, paused, decided to make another for herself too, and went to work on breakfast. Clara looked on in wonder as her sister whisked and whipped and chopped and grated, finally presenting them with plates of a delicate cheese and herb omelet, crispy bacon, and fried tomato salad. She buttered toast and poured orange juice and they all sat on stools at the counter and ate.
Then a telephone rang. It was Clara’s cell. And from that moment on, the happy note the morning had brought to them was shattered.
“Clara,” said Detective Carlisle, “listen to me. Someone leaked the information that Maddy has been found alive. Maybe someone at the hospital – we’ll probably never know. It just went out on the local news. They called us for a comment and Kincaid told them she was found alive and still receiving treatment at Skagit Valley Hospital, so you’ve got some time before the press gets to you in Seattle. We’re going to keep a patrol car downstairs and an officer will come by and check on you. Stay home today.” She paused and took an audible breath. “And there’s something else…”
Clara hung up and turned to her companions. “Eddie Perkins is dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The call had come through emergency dispatch early that Sunday morning and eventually the news made it to Iverson, only a few hours after he’d gotten home from last night’s interrogation. Climbing back into yesterday’s suit, still hanging over a chair in his bedroom, he called Tanaka. After they had arrived at the scene Tanaka called Carlisle and Carlisle called Kincaid. Eddie Perkins had been officially pronounced dead on arrival by the Medical Examiner after revival attempts by the EMTs had failed.
“What the fuck?” was the first thing out of Detective Kincaid’s mouth when he saw the homicide detectives. “Did he kill himself?”
“Yeah,” said Tanaka, “but I don’t know if he did it on purpose.”
They waited for an explanation and Tanaka went on, “His wife slept on the sofa at their restaurant last night and when she came home this morning, she found him passed out in bed with an empty bottle of vodka on the nightstand. She showered, changed, drank some coffee, ate some toast, and decided to wake her husband and give him a piece of her mind. This time she noticed drool coming from his mouth and upon closer inspection saw that his eyes were not completely closed. She dialed nine-one-one and the paramedics found him dead. He was officially pronounced when the ME got here.”
“What killed him? Vodka?” asked Carlisle.
“Vodka, Vicodin and Xanax.”
“That’ll do it,” said Kincaid.
“He had a lot of pill bottles in the bathroom and on the nightstand,” said Iverson. “None of them were empty, like he dumped a bottle into his mouth and washed it down with booze, and there was no note, but under the circumstances, suicide is a strong possibility. Suicide or overdose. Either way, it saves the city the cost of a trial.”
“You’re taking this as an admission of guilt?” asked Carlisle.
“We’ll do a few more interviews, wrap things up, but I think he knew he was caught and going down for first-degree murder and kidnapping. He spends the night alternating booze and pills, his system slowly overloads, and he nods off into the sweet hereafter,” Tanaka summed up with a grimace.
“What did Michelle have to say?” asked Kincaid.
“She wasn’t surprised to find him passed out. She was surprised to find him dead. She claims she had no idea he was in trouble when she first came home. In fact, she was pissed off. Get this, she had no idea we brought him in last night. He never told her.”
“Why didn’t she come home last night?”
“She took your advice and started checking the books. There’s a lot of money missing. They’re not in the red, but the savings account they keep for bad times is nearly empty. She said they had almost a hundred grand in there. She was furious and she didn’t know if Eddie had done it, or Maddy, or both of them together.”
“So she spends the night at the restaurant, comes home in the morning, finds her husband passed out and when she finally decides to get him up she finds him dead,” said Carlisle. “That’s nice and neat.”
“Sometimes it turns out nice and neat, Judy,” said Tanaka.
“A confession would have been nice,” she said.
“A confession is always nice,” said Tanaka again, “but this is the closest we’re going to come.”
“Did Michelle see the news? Does she know we found Maddy Gardner?” she asked.
Now Tanaka smiled at her. “She didn’t say anything, so neither did we. Thought we’d leave that little gem for you, detective.”
Iverson announced that they had some interviews to take care of before they could finish the paperwork on Susan Burns’s murder.
“Hey, did you ever follow up with the bartender, Joe Bailey? He had some dirt on Eddie and Susan, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Iverson. “We got tied up with Eddie’s interview and didn’t get back to him. We’ll get to it.”
“I think we’ll hit him too,” said Carlisle.
“Keep us posted,” said Iverson as Carlisle and Kincaid left the homicide division.
“What are you thinking, Judy?”
“Joe Bailey cast suspicion on Eddie and Susan’s relationship, and he said that Eddie was spending an unusual amount of time in the back office of Dovetail. I just think we should talk to him.”
“When did you start thinking about Joe Bailey?”
“Just before I fell asleep last night. Remember when Tanaka and Iverson said that he deliberately drew a connection between Maddy’s disappearance and Susan’s murder?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“And he’s the one who first mentioned an affair between Susan and Eddie?” She shrugged. “I have a feeling he knows something, that’s all. I want to talk to him again.”
“Okay, Judy, I know what it means when you get a feeling. Do we have his address somewhere?”
“We’re goi
ng to get it.”
They went back to their desks and looked up the address Joe Bailey had listed on his driver’s license. “Better get Harry’s address too,” said Carlisle, “for good measure.”
Kincaid offered to drive and they got into an unmarked. “Who do you want first?” he asked.
“Let’s start with Harry.” They drove to Harry’s address in Queen Anne. He lived in a narrow townhome on a steep hill with a tiny but well-tended garden of ornamental grasses and bluebells leading to the front steps.
When Harry answered the door he was wearing black gabardine trousers and a black sweater, no socks or shoes, and his dark hair, slicked back so severely the first time they’d met, was mussed and curly around his pale face. The five o’clock shadow at nine o’clock in the morning completed the picture of a brooding man in his own home.
“Detectives?” he said, not exactly surprised, but not expecting their visit either.
“Carlisle and Kincaid,” she reminded him.
“Of course, of course, please come in.” They followed him into a bright living room, past a tidy dining room and into a small but comfortable kitchen. “Coffee?” Evidently they had interrupted him just before he pushed the plunger on his French press.
“That would be great, thanks,” Carlisle answered for both of them.
Harry finished making the coffee, got milk from the fridge and a sugar bowl from the counter and set everything on a small, round table by the window overlooking a tiny back yard full of budding flowers. “Have a seat.” They did and he served their coffee. “What can I do for you?”
“Eddie Perkins was found dead this morning. Apparent overdose,” said Kincaid without ceremony.
“Good Lord!” said Harry. “What the hell is going on in that restaurant?”
Kincaid gave it a moment to settle in and went on, “He was brought in for questioning last night regarding Susan’s murder and then released. He died sometime early this morning.”