by Sharon Pape
Travis proved to be right about the security cameras. Abracadabra and Tea and Empathy were among the few businesses that didn’t have them. When Morgana had reluctantly added the alarm system, cameras had seemed like overkill. She’d read Orwell’s 1984 at least a dozen times in her youth and abhorred the idea of what she called “big brother cameras.” However, if asked her opinion of them now that New Camel had had its first homicide, I suspect she would reconsider the idea, much as I was.
I contacted every shop owner in town and asked if I could view the video footage of the day Jim was murdered. Not a single one refused. They told me the old footage was stored by the security company for a month, in case it was needed in an investigation or lawsuit. Nearly all the systems had been installed and were monitored by Third Eye Security. The company had apparently offered a group discount at the time, but Morgana and Tilly had declined.
When I called Third Eye, I had to go through a receptionist, a low-level sales rep, a customer service rep, and a harried woman from the billing department before finally reaching a supervisor. For the fifth time that morning, I introduced myself and explained what I wanted. The supervisor tried to brush me off, saying that the police had already viewed all the video from that day. I told him that since I had the necessary waivers from their customers, I wanted to see the footage for myself. We went back and forth about it for another minute, until he snapped at me to be there at ten the next morning and hung up.
Tilly was free to take over at Abracadabra for me. She only did readings three or four days a week, because, as she put it, she needed to spend quality time in her own head too. Then I called Elise to tell her about the incident with Lolly and the security footage I was going to see.
“Let me come with you,” she begged. “I need to do something constructive. I’ve already cleaned out every closet, twice. I know I’m driving the boys crazy, and they have enough to deal with.” Her voice cracked on the last words.
How could I say no? With her help, I’d be able to get through the tapes more quickly. She might even catch something I missed. It was a win/win situation. But by the time we agreed to meet at Third Eye the next morning, my stomach had twisted into a painful knot and I knew exactly why. I still hadn’t figured out how to tell her about Jim’s infidelity and Ronnie’s betrayal. As much as I wanted to protect her from the added distress, I had no right to keep the information from her. If only magick could rewrite the past.
Chapter 27
I picked up Elise on the way to Third Eye Security at nine-thirty in the morning. Their headquarters were located between New Camel and Watkins Glen, a twenty-minute trip from her door. According to the large white sign with green lettering at the driveway entrance, Third Eye was the only occupant of the one-story brick-and-glass building. Petunias and marigolds, in eye-catching purples and yellows, crowded around the base of the sign, bobbing their flowery heads at us as we turned in. I followed the driveway into the parking lot, which faced the front entrance. The back of the lot was full, most likely with employee cars. In the front row, two spaces were designated for the handicapped. The next three bore signs that said they were reserved, although not for whom. Then came the visitors’ spaces, all of them empty. They clearly didn’t get much walk-in trade. When I’d checked out the company website, it was easy to see why. Their homepage said they’d be happy to make an appointment to come to your residence or place of business to give you a free estimate on the best security system to fit your needs.
I pulled into the first visitor spot, and Elise and I entered the building through a standard set of double glass doors, without so much as a buzzer system to stop us. I’d expected some sophisticated security setup to impress potential customers with the need for protection. If Third Eye had no qualms about their own safety, why should anyone else? If I’d been running the show, I would have tricked out the place with every technological gadget at my disposal to show people what they needed in order to rest easy.
The receptionist hadn’t been told to expect us, which didn’t surprise me, given how poorly the company had handled my phone call. We waited fifteen minutes while the young woman tried a dozen extensions in her effort to locate the supervisor. When he finally appeared, he produced a syrupy smile at odds with the chill in his blue eyes. He introduced himself as Scot Avery, the man I’d spoken to the previous day. I said I was Kailyn Wilde, but before I could finish introducing Elise, he turned on his heel and asked us to follow him. I opened my mouth to tell him he could use a course in public relations, but Elise caught my eye and shook her head. She was right, of course. It wasn’t the best strategy to antagonize the person who was about to show us what we wanted to see. It still took a lot of restraint on my part not to say anything and even more not to tiptoe over that old black-magick line to give him some richly deserved comeuppance. Something simple like making him slip on the polished tile and crack his tailbone, a very painful injury for which there is no cure but time. I knew a lot about it, because Tilly had cracked hers the first and last time she went ice skating.
Avery showed us into a cubicle that was too small to have been anyone’s work station. It was possible they used it for storage, because there were file boxes and folders stacked high along every wall. In the center of the space was a table you couldn’t rightly call a desk. It was more like the folding tables people keep in their basements for times when there are too many people to squeeze around the dining room table. Avery had provided us with two chairs, positioned side by side in front of a computer monitor. When we’d talked on the phone, I’d given him the date and the specific hours, three p.m. until seven p.m., in which we were interested. Since Jim wasn’t murdered until the late afternoon, it would have been a waste of time to look for his killer earlier in the day. Avery had the requested footage ready to go and, after showing us how to access the time period in question, he left us to it. At least he wasn’t going to be hovering. With the three of us in the room, along with his hefty attitude, it felt like there was barely enough air to breathe.
With Elise at the controls, we found images of Duggan’s black Jeep driving along different segments of Main Street around four thirty, the time Lolly said he went speeding by her. We couldn’t find any convincing evidence that he was doing more than the posted limit of thirty. The Jeep did appear to be moving slightly faster than the few other vehicles around it, but one had to keep in mind that Main Street, New Camel had never been a hotbed of speeders or drag racers. Most locals were content to obey the posted speed limit, and tourists tended to crawl along, scoping out the shops and looking for a place to park. It was possible Lolly had looked down at her phone for a second and when she looked up again, the Jeep seemed to come out of nowhere. But speeding aside, we wondered why the detective had been in town at all that day. He didn’t live in the vicinity and he didn’t ordinarily have reason to check things out at the precinct substation in town, at least not until after Jim was murdered. Of course it was pure conjecture on our part. We had no way of knowing if Duggan had come into New Camel for other, perfectly legitimate reasons.
We moved on to the footage from the camera outside Jim’s building. The ME was the first one we saw entering after three that day. Four fifteen by the time stamp. We didn’t see Jim or Dr. Silver enter, presumably because they’d come to work in the morning. But right before four o’clock, Elise popped into view, carrying her purse and a manila envelope. I hadn’t expected to see her in the video. Before I could ask her about it, she hit pause and slumped back in her chair. “It still doesn’t seem real,” she murmured. “I didn’t go to Jim’s office a lot, but that afternoon when he was getting ready for your appointment, he realized he’d left some of your paperwork at home. He called and I dropped it off. Everything was so normal, so ordinary. He asked me what I was making for dinner.”
I put my arm around her shoulders for a one-armed hug. “If this is too hard for you, I can drive you home and finish up here by myself.”
“No, no, I’m fine, re
ally,” she said, sitting up and squaring her shoulders resolutely. “I need to be doing this.”
I didn’t try to change her mind. If she was determined to stiff-upper-lip it, I would support her choice. “Okay then, back to work,” I said, all business. But after a couple of minutes, the screen went black. We exchanged a brief look of bewilderment, before she hit fast forward. The recording didn’t resume until four fifty-five. We watched Tilly and me arrive shortly afterward. But by that time, Jim was already dead.
“What the hell happened there?” Elise said. “Some kind of power outage?”
I shook my head. “That would have to be the most convenient power outage I’ve ever seen. And the most localized. I didn’t lose power at my shop, and the traffic light on Main was working when Tilly and I drove over there.”
“Then someone’s responsible for shutting down the security camera and turning it back on.”
“If we can find that someone, we may have our killer.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “What about Duggan? And Beverly. We didn’t see them in the footage.”
“You’re right. I didn’t consider the possibility that the killer might have entered and left while the camera was down.”
“You still think Duggan’s the one, don’t you?” Elise asked.
“As far as motives go, revenge is a powerful one.”
“So what’s next? Where do we go from here?”
“We have to narrow the field somehow,” I said.
“Westfield, Silver, Beverly, and Duggan—is that it?”
I opened my mouth to add Ronnie’s name to the list, but managed to swallow it in time. I’d been so preoccupied with the video footage, I’d actually put the whole sordid mess out of my mind while we’d been in Third Eye. I couldn’t keep procrastinating, waiting for a good time. There was never going to be a good time. I had to tell Elise today.
“It might help to find out if Westfield was in the building for a dental appointment,” Elise mused.
“That’s a good idea,” I said, trying to refocus on the work at hand “It won’t be easy with the HIPAA privacy law. Let me see what I can do.”
“If we’re done here, we ought to get going,” she said.
“You mean before Mr. Personality comes back to kick us out?”
* * *
“You’re an evil temptress,” Elise said with a smile. “Who has a chocolate shake for lunch?”
I pulled out of the drive-thru lane and into the parking lot. “Protein and calcium,” I replied. “What’s wrong with that?” I’d suggested stopping at the fast-food place on the trip back to town. I needed courage for what I had to tell her and my comfort foods were ice cream and chocolate. Put them together and you had a shake. My Aunt Tilly had introduced me to the concept of ice cream for lunch when I was seven and even my conservative grandmother saw no harm in the occasional indulgence. I found a shady spot under an old elm tree to park, opened the car windows and turned off the engine.
“I guess, when you put it that way,” Elise said, taking her first swallow and groaning with pleasure. “My boys would have a fit if they knew what I was doing.”
“You’ve never let them have anything a little crazy for lunch?” I asked. I knew she’d always been careful about what she gave them, but I didn’t realize how strict she’d been about it.
“Does pizza count?”
“Nope. It’s not fried or filled with sugar.”
She took another long pull on her straw. “I’ve got to do this with them one day,” she said when she came up for air. “I want to see their reactions when I tell them what’s for lunch.”
We drank in silence for a minute, then I set my shake down in one of the cup holders between us. “Listen,” I said, “we have to talk.”
Elise let the straw pop out of her mouth. “Uh-oh, now I know how my kids must feel when I start a conversation like that.” She put her shake into the other cup holder. “What is it?”
I was having trouble getting the words past my lips. Elise was finally beginning to show a spark of life after Jim’s death, and I was about to snuff it out. It didn’t help to remind myself that I was merely the messenger. The result was going to be the same.
“Kailyn, you’re beginning to scare me,” she said.
“Jim was having an affair,” I blurted out. I hadn’t meant to say it quite that bluntly, but I couldn’t ask for a do-over.
Elise sat there strangely still, with no expression on her face. I’d expected anger and tears, a full-blown storm of emotions. She’s in shock, I told myself. This is what shock looks like. “Are you okay?” I asked, which had to be one of the most inane questions ever. How could she possibly be okay after what I’d told her?
“How did you find out?” she asked, bypassing my question. Her voice was tight, but steady.
“Ronnie told me.”
Elise’s face remained blank, unreadable. “Did she tell you who the woman was?”
“She admitted being the one.”
Elise didn’t speak for a moment. I waited, giving her time to absorb it all. “Have you told anyone else?” she asked finally.
“No, of course not.”
She nodded, as if confirming something to herself.
“You’re handling this awfully well,” I said cautiously, still expecting the inevitable meltdown.
She uttered a sharp, grim laugh, more like a bark. “You should have been there when I found out.”
“What?” It was my turn to be shocked. “You already knew?”
“Yes. Jim thought he was covering his tracks. But wives know. I think we always know, if we’re willing to admit it to ourselves. To be certain, I hired a PI. He took photos of Jim going into her condo, others through the half-open blinds of her bedroom. You get the idea.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around this unexpected turn of events.
“I was afraid if I told you, if I said the words, the dam would burst and I wouldn’t be able to stop it. I had to stay strong and get all my ducks in a row, before Jim found out I knew. I had to put money away, retain a good divorce attorney. I was going to tell you before I told anyone else, before I served him with the divorce papers. But then the bum went and got himself killed, and I didn’t dare tell anybody.” Tears flooded her eyes and cascaded down her cheeks. The dam had finally burst.
“You know my lips are sealed,” I said solemnly. I would resort to black magick without hesitation if that was the only way to keep my promise.
Elise was fumbling in her purse for tissues. She pulled one out of a travel pack and blew her nose. “That was never my concern. At that point, I wanted to keep you as far out of the loop as I could, so that if the police suspected me, they wouldn’t think you were complicit in Jim’s death.”
She certainly had a right to her qualms. Duggan would arrest her in a second if he learned that she knew about the affair. He already had the gun with her prints on it. Opportunity was a slam dunk. She wouldn’t have had any trouble finding a time when Jim was alone in his office. All Duggan was missing was a motive. And this would give it to him on a silver platter.
I dropped Elise at her house, after making her promise to call if she needed anything. She assured me she’d be fine; she had to be for her boys.
On the drive back to my shop, I tried to sort out my thoughts. There was one huge question I had to ask myself, although it was repellent. Was it possible Elise was the killer? The answer was immediate. No way. I’d known her most of my life, and she’d never shown the slightest inclination to violence. Not that she was a saint. She got angry like everyone else, said and did some things she wasn’t proud of. But to the best of my knowledge, she’d never intentionally hurt anyone, with the exception of that ex-boyfriend when she was in her teens. As a child, she’d been known for rescuing every stray animal that crossed her path. Her mother used to complain that they were supporting the veterinarian. The Elise I knew was simply not killer material. However,
it was easy see how anyone else looking at the evidence might come to a different conclusion. The clock was ticking down. I had to find the killer and soon.
Chapter 28
Tilly and I paid Beverly a surprise visit at five thirty in the afternoon based on the assumption that she was more likely to be home around dinnertime. I needed to find out if she had an alibi for the time of the murder. If she did, I could drop her from my suspect list. I took Tilly along, because she knew Beverly far better than I did and might be able to provide some insight on what she told us.
Beverly came to the door in shorts that were too short and a tank top that was too revealing. To her credit, though, she looked better in the outfit than a lot of women her age would have. Tilly gave me a quick roll of her eyes.
“Sorry to drop in on you like this,” she said to Beverly, “but we were in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by to warn you.”
Beverly fell back a step as if the unexpected words had knocked her off balance. “Warn me? About what? I don’t understand.” She sounded frantic.
“Maybe warn is a bit strong,” I said. “Give you a heads-up is more like it.”
“Well okay, please come in.” She held the door open. “A heads-up about what?” she asked, her voice still shaky. The fragrant smell of frying chicken instantly enveloped us. Although Tilly had wanted to take the lead, she seemed distracted by the aroma. Beverly’s eyes were flitting back and forth between us as she awaited an answer.
Since I couldn’t get my aunt’s attention without being obvious, I took over. “We were out running errands and overheard some people speculating about whether you were a suspect in Jim’s murder.” We hadn’t heard anything of the kind, but it was the most expedient way to ferret out the information I wanted. Although I didn’t like lying, given the serious business of murder, I’d decided I could live with it.
“Me? Why me?” Beverly exclaimed, her hand pressed to her chest. “What motive could I have? Jim wasn’t even my attorney anymore.”