“Detective Loncar did that for your safety. I don’t think that’s as much of a concern in this case.”
“I agree. You should be watching out for Cat, not me. Have you talked to the security guards? And the staff? And George’s employers? I know you talked to Mr. Kenner but have you talked to Mr. Winn? I could try to arrange a time for everybody to come here so you can follow up with them.”
“Mr. Winn is out of the country. He has travel papers and passport stamps and hotel confirmations to back that up. His alibi is sound.”
“Oh.”
“Ms. Kidd, I appreciate your help. I’m sure your friend appreciates your help too.” He looked behind me. “But I can’t help wondering if you aren’t trying to help your friend out a little too much?”
“Cat didn’t do anything. I was with her the whole night. Even if she did fight with her husband, she didn’t have time to kill him.”
“You were with her the whole night? You didn’t, say, leave her alone at the party while you went to the mall bathroom? Or after the party to retrieve something from the bushes outside?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Or go to the fitting room to try on dresses while she was inside the store? That was your statement. You were in a fitting room at the time when Mr. Stevens could have been killed?”
“I was in the fitting room while somebody smashed the jewelry case and stole a bunch of Cat’s jewelry.”
“You’re right, that is what you told me.”
“Cat couldn’t have done this. You don’t think George would have struggled while she was strangling him? He’s not the most physically fit person in the world but if he were fighting for his life, he’d be able to overpower her.”
He crossed his arms. “They told me about you. The other officers. Said it was only a matter of time until you made a call to us. I thought that kind of thing only happened on TV, like in that Jessica Fletcher show. My mom loved that.”
“Detective Madden, if the other officers told you about me, then they must have told you that I’ve helped the city, not hurt it. Detective Loncar approved my application to Citizen’s Police Academy shortly after my birthday in May.”
“Have you attended?”
“Not yet. I finally got a job and haven’t had a lot of spare time.”
He grinned. “Maybe you should thank Loncar for that too.”
“I got that job on my own merits, thank you very much,” I said. It occurred to me that in the short distance from the front of the store to Cat’s office, our conversation had gotten derailed. “Detective, with all due respect, I think when you see what I found inside Cat’s office you’ll realize there’s something very off about this case.”
We stopped outside the closed door. He tried the knob but I’d locked it. I unlocked it and stood back, gesturing with an open palm for him to try again. He opened the door and stepped inside. I peered over his shoulder. Everything was as I’d found it: the mess of necklaces that had fallen from the ceiling now scattered on the floor behind the desk. The ceiling tile slightly out of place. The chair pushed back, away from the desk, into the bookcase behind it.
“I came in here to—well, I needed a moment alone—and I heard something coming from the ceiling.”
Madden looked up. “Is that how you found it?”
“Not exactly. I climbed onto the desk and put my hands on the ceiling and the tile shifted and all of this jewelry fell out.”
He stood back. “Can you show me how you did that?”
“Right now?” He nodded. I went to the side of the desk and climbed on, and then stood up. I stretched both arms up over my head and, using my fingertips on the ceiling tile, lifted it and shifted it slightly out of place. “I did this,” I said, “and then all of that stuff fell on me.”
“Why is it on the floor?”
“Somebody came to the office and I didn’t want them to catch me, so I flung the jewelry to the desk and kicked it to the floor.”
“Who?” he asked. He never looked away from my face.
“Jim Insendo. He used to own the store. And he’s strong—strong enough that, unlike Cat, he could have overpowered George. Do you need me to spell his name for you?”
“Not necessary.” Madden looked up at the ceiling and then at the desk and the floor, and then back at me.
I was still standing on the desk with my hands on the ceiling tile above me. “Can I get down now?”
“Sure.” he said. He held his hand out to offer assistance, but I squatted and then shifted and then climbed down the same way I had the first time.
“This changes things, right? Whoever stole this stuff the night of the murder got back in here and tried to hide the evidence. They know if you follow the theft you’ll likely find them, so they found a way to get the evidence back so you can’t make that connection anymore.”
“I suppose that is one way to look at it,” he said.
“Have you narrowed down the suspect pool now that you have that footprint in the carpet? Maybe you’ll find something in here. Do you want to seal the office so you can dust for fingerprints? I’ll watch the door if you need to go to your car for equipment.”
“There’s no need for that,” he said. “Ms. Kidd, I applaud your loyalty to your friends. That’s what I said to the officers who told me about you. It’s rare to find someone who is so willing to stand up for people she cares for.”
“Thank you,” I said. Despite his words, I couldn’t help the ominous feeling that crept over me. “It is important for me to help my friends. Especially someone like Cat. She has enough to deal with right now. She doesn’t need this.”
Detective Madden leaned close to me. “I’m pretty sure you set this up to incriminate someone who works for Ms. Lestes. The jewelry in the ceiling, the surprise discovery when nobody else was around. You just demonstrated how easy it would be for you to have done it yourself. Like I said, I applaud your motivation, but that doesn’t change things.”
“I’m not sure I like what you’re implying.”
“Then I’ll come right out and say it. I think maybe there was no burglary. I think you helped Ms. Lestes hide that jewelry in her ceiling to make it look like there was another crime in play. But if that’s the same jewelry that you claim was stolen the other night, I’ll have no reason to believe anything except that she stole it herself to cover up the evidence that she killed her husband.”
“Why would she kill him?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to deal with alimony and child support. As a widow, she gets sympathy and access to her husband’s benefits.”
“She’s not like that. She wasn’t sitting around plotting how to strangle her husband. Besides, how could she physically have done it?”
“Easy. George Stevens was shot. The pearls around his neck had been added after he died.”
The gun. That’s why he’d asked if she owned one. “But I was there. I saw him and there wasn’t any blood.”
“Ms. Kidd, I’m afraid the details of the murder are part of an ongoing investigation, and I can’t share anything else with you.”
Great. Detective Madden’s Good Cop act was slipping.
23
MONDAY, EARLY EVENING
Traffic around Ribbon had been gradually thinning out over the past week. Vacations starting early, people heading out of town. Once I escaped the magnetic pull of the shopping mall, it was smooth sailing to my house.
The temperature in the house was cool. I kept my jacket on and went downstairs to check the pilot light on the furnace. My dad had a routine with the appliances in the house. Put the instructions in a Ziploc bag and tuck them into some nook or cranny close by. This way, in case of emergency, anyone could have access to the original operating manuals. Besides, in the case of a house with a previous basement flooding problem, the Ziploc baggie protected the instructions against the elements. I felt around the front and side of the furnace until I found the yellowed plastic package and quickly scanned the di
rections to learn what I needed to do.
A set of hinged metal doors were hidden on the lower left of the furnace. Inside I saw a small piece of pipe—no larger than the width of a cigarette—that the instruction manual identified as the pilot light. Apparently, this was supposed to be throwing off a blue flame. I wasn’t brave enough to stick my fingers underneath for confirmation, but there certainly wasn’t a blue flame, or anything else, coming from that little piece of pipe.
I consulted the instruction manual again, wondering how exactly I was supposed to go about lighting anything without burning my fingers or potentially setting the room on fire. Their drawing suggested that I was to use a super long match. Now, where exactly was I supposed to find one of them?
A couple of expletives later, I found a small matchbook, a long stick, and a fire extinguisher. There was probably a better method than the one I was about to embark on, but I’d played the scenario out in my head and it seemed like this would work. A quick look at the heavens, or ceiling as the case may be, a short request for the help of St. Jude, patron saint of impossible situations, and I implemented my plan.
I talked to St. Jude a lot.
One more review of the plan. Light the match. Light the stick. Light the pilot light. Blow out the flame on the stick. Use fire extinguisher if necessary.
Now: action.
Match lit, check.
Stick lit, check.
Pilot light lit, check.
Flame blown out, check.
Of course, I forgot to turn the opposite way when I blew out the fire on the stick so I blew out the pilot light too.
Second attempt.
Match lit, check.
Stick lit, check.
Pilot light lit, check.
Turn around to blow out the stick.
Drop the stick when I see Dante leaning against the door watching me.
OOPS! Now I need the fire extinguisher!
While I fumbled to remove the pin he crossed the room and stamped down on the flame. It hadn’t had a chance to do anything but burn further down the shaft of the stick since it had landed on the exposed concrete floor.
“How long have you been standing there?” I demanded.
“Long enough.” He stepped closer to me, took the matches, and lit the pilot light. “I think you’ll be surprised with what I found on the computer tablet.”
“You found something? Good. Because we have a new problem.” I told him about Detective Madden’s reaction to the pearls in the office. “He seems to think that Cat and I lied about the burglary, and if we lied about that, then what else did we lie about? And he’s tricking Cat into thinking he’s a nice guy but if he arrests her he is definitely not a nice guy. Not.”
“Come with me.” He headed up the stairs and I followed. When we reached the kitchen, he turned and went up the next flight of stairs and turned left toward my spare bedroom. “I set up a second camera on top of the cabinet behind the desk. It picked up the file cabinet where the original camera was, plus the door and a little of the desk area. You want to see what I found? Other than the shot of you disrupting our surveillance.”
“It was an accident.”
He picked up a photo that showed me looking directly into the camera with my hands on either side of it. The angle made my hands look like those of a giant.
“I needed a moment of privacy.”
“It’s private here,” he said playfully.
I felt myself stiffen. It was the same feeling I’d had from the first time I’d met Dante, only different. Him as cat, me as mouse. The nervousness, the unsettled feeling, the sense that he’d gotten under my skin when I least expected it.
“How did you program your number into my phone?”
“Okay, we’re switching gears.”
“My cell phone. When I left it at Cat’s house there was one number in it. You brought it to me and there were two. How’d you do that?”
He smiled, and then, realizing that I actually wanted an answer, crossed his arms. “I found an unlock code on the internet. It was a joke.”
“I know. But what’s the deal with us, Dante? You show up here when it’s convenient for you. You don’t keep in touch and you say it’s because I didn’t call you. How come you never call me?”
“You’re in a relationship.”
“If that fact meant anything to you, you wouldn’t have programmed ‘Hot Man’ into my phone. Face it, you’re a loner. You want to show up, crash the party, get what you can, and then vanish. Nothing’s real.”
“You think nothing in my life is real?”
“How would I know? You dole out information about your life like you’re dealing a hand of poker with a marked deck. You let me know what you want me to know.” Being around Dante felt unstable—like how I’d felt so many times while trying to get my footing on this new life. Trying to find my place in the world. I’d cycled through being a person who knew how to handle things in New York to a person who could barely keep it together in Ribbon. Holding Cat’s hand through her ordeal had reminded me what it was like when I knew who I was.
“How many new friends have you made since moving back to Ribbon?” Dante asked. “Do you know your neighbors? Have you been to a town hall meeting or gotten involved in any local events? When’s the last time you saw your family?” He studied me for a second. “If one of us is a loner, it’s you. I’m going to let you sort out the photos while I check on my sister. Don’t make any rash decisions, Samantha.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It means I serve a purpose in your life and we both know it.” He put his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me toward him, crushing my lips with a long, hot kiss.
I pulled away. This wasn’t the first time Dante and I had kissed, but if I said yes to Nick, then it would be the last. My pulse raced and I had trouble keeping my balance.
Dante left the room and went down stairs. I stayed behind and swiped through the pictures on the tablet, not able to concentrate. I set the tablet on the desk and followed him downstairs. Dante opened the front door. The Nick Phone rang in the background.
“Let me know if you find anything,” he said, and left.
I went to the kitchen and grabbed the phone from the charger. It was Cat’s store. “Hey, sorry. What’s up?” I said. There was silence. “Hello?” I was about to hang up and call her back when her strained voice spoke.
“Are you with Dante?”
“No, he just left. I’m at home.”
“Can you get to the store as soon as possible?”
My blood went ice cold despite the warmth of the newly ignited furnace. “Is everything okay?”
“Not exactly,” she said. Her voice wavered. “There’s been another murder.”
24
MONDAY 6-ISH
“Who—where—when?” I asked.
“Aguilar. He was in my office—in my chair,” Cat said. Her voice shook.
“How did he get into your office without you knowing?”
“I don’t know, Sam, but the police are here and they have questions that I can’t answer. Detective Madden said he wanted to talk to you. Can you get here too?”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Police cars and an ambulance were parked willy nilly by the curb outside of Catnip. Lights swirled and uniformed professionals moved about. A crowd of onlookers had formed on the sidewalk, but police kept them from seeing much. It was safe to say that Cat wasn’t going to be doing any more holiday business today.
Detective Madden stood outside of the store on the sidewalk with Cat. Today’s necktie was light blue. Cat had a thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her makeup was gone. I parked and approached them.
“Sam,” Cat said. She dropped the blanket and threw her arms around me. I felt her shoulders shake. I looked at the detective. He nodded at me.
“What happened?” I asked. “I thought you were going to stay at home and relax.”
“I had to g
et out. I kept staring at the package that you found in the fireplace and thinking about George, about why he told me he was leaving me. It didn’t make sense. I kept sitting there, trying to make it work in my mind but I couldn’t. And I knew you were with Dante, so I came here. I thought maybe I could work on something to take my mind off things.”
I bent down and plucked the blanket from the ground and then held it around Cat’s shoulders. “Can we go inside?” I looked at Madden. “I think she should be sitting down.”
“She wanted fresh air,” he said.
“Sam, it was horrible. I went to my office to work on next month’s schedule and he was just sitting there in my chair. His face was puffy and red and there were pearls tied around his throat, just like George.”
“But the pearls—” I looked at Madden. “I thought you collected them as evidence when I found them earlier.”
Cat looked back and forth between our faces. I’d called Dante to come and get the camera, and I’d called Detective Madden. None of us had thought to tell Cat about the merchandise showing up or what the detective implied when I told him. I honestly couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“The necklace around his neck was from the Kenner & Winn shipment,” she said. “It was a long strand of black pearls. The ones you asked me to hold for you.”
“How do you know?”
“The hold tag was still attached to it.”
A unformed officer poked his head out of the store and called the detective over. He excused himself and walked just slightly out of earshot.
“Sam, why is this happening? What did I do?” Cat said.
“Shhh. Did you talk to Dante?”
“Not recently. Why?”
“Okay, I have to talk fast. When I came to the store today, I went into your office and one of the ceiling tiles was out of place. I moved it and a whole bunch of pearl jewelry fell on top of me. I called Dante. He took the cameras and I called Madden.”
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