by Sara Rosett
I set a clean and ready-to-go Nathan on his feet and went to help Livvy. A quick scan of her room didn’t reveal a hidden shoe.
“Mom, I don’t want to be late.”
“We still have a couple of minutes,” I said as I opened her closet door. “Look, here it is, right where it’s supposed to be. Amazing!”
An hour later I rang Bonnie’s doorbell, quickly flipping through the folder of pictures she’d given to me at the supper club. My go-to sitter was on a field trip to the science center, so I had to break down and call my neighbor Dorthea. I hated to impose—it was such short notice—but she’d been thrilled with the idea of Nathan spending an hour with her. Nathan loved to go to her house. I think it had something to do with the ice cream bars she handed out.
The glossy pages Bonnie had torn from magazines were all of slick, minimalist-style rooms. Not the easiest thing to achieve in base housing.
Bonnie opened the door. “Hi, Ellie. I’m so pleased you could make it today.”
“Glad it worked out, too. I was looking through the photos you clipped,” I said, stepping inside as Bonnie closed the door. I followed her, flicking to the last sheets at the back of the folder, which were white copy paper. Maybe she’d made some notes of her ideas.
I slowed my steps. No, the papers were copies from a book with dense text and lines highlighted in yellow. I frowned. The section heading STRANGULATION seemed to jump off the page. I skimmed the page, more amazed at each word. Hanging. Ligature. Manual strangulation. Garroting. The words jumbled together in my mind.
“So what do you think?” Bonnie asked.
I snapped the folder shut and swallowed hard. The pages had to be from a forensic-type book. Why would someone have that info with the section on strangulation highlighted?
“Ellie?” Bonnie asked.
“What?” Why hadn’t I looked through this folder at home? Why had I waited until I was on the doorstep?
“What do you think?” She pointed at the folder. I stared at her. “Of the magazine pages,” she said pointedly.
“The pictures. Right. Ah—they’re great ideas,” I said, playing for time. I realized I was gripping the folder so hard I was bending it. I made myself relax my grip. I put the folder in my Kate Spade tote bag. I couldn’t run out the door a few seconds after I’d arrived. That would look odd and I didn’t want to do anything that might let Bonnie know that I knew she had an unhealthy interest in the details of strangulation. I had to stay for a few minutes, but I vowed this would be the quickest consultation ever.
I pulled out the paperwork I needed to get started with the consultation. “Here’s my brochure,” I said.
“Do you want a cup of tea or coffee before we get started?” Bonnie asked.
“No,” I barked. I realized I sounded odd and tried to moderate my tone. “No, thanks. I have another appointment so I can’t stay too long. In fact,” I extemporized, “I’m meeting Mitch.”
“Okay,” Bonnie said uncertainly. I told myself to calm down. Obviously those papers weren’t supposed to be in that folder and Bonnie didn’t know I’d seen them.
“Well, why don’t we start in here,” Bonnie said, motioning for me to sit down on the couch. I dropped the tote at my feet and perched on the edge of the cushion, feeling as skittish as a kid in a doctor’s waiting room. Why would she have those copies? If you wanted to know something about strangulation, wouldn’t you just go look it up online? Well, probably not. You especially wouldn’t do that if you didn’t want anyone to know what you were researching. Everything left a trail on a computer. Probably the only place you could go and not leave a trace was the library, especially if you didn’t check the books out, just made copies of the relevant information.
“So what do you think?” Bonnie asked again, bringing me back to the conversation.
“Right. Living room.” I had to buckle down and concentrate on organizing for about ten minutes. “Well, the style you like might be more of a challenge to achieve in base housing with the tight quarters. We’d have to find ways for everything to do double duty with the storage. You know, things that function for storage and as furniture, too, like hollow ottomans.”
“I like it. What else?”
“Well, if you want to totally change your decorating style, you’re going to have to do some thinning. The looks you like are very streamlined and clean,” I said, glancing around the heavily furnished and knickknacked room.
Bonnie looked at the bookcases doubtfully. “I don’t know. What would we do with all of these books?”
“Well, you’d have to decide which ones were essential, the ones you really wanted. Then we’d find a place for those. The rest you’d give away, maybe to a library, or you could sell them online.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice small.
“What I usually do at this point is ask you some detailed questions and look at what you want organized, so I’m sure we’re on the same page. I’ll write up an estimate for you,” I said, pulling out my paperwork, ready to make notes. “So tell me, what areas of your life and home would you like to be more organized?”
“Um…” Bonnie looked around the room, frowned, and then said uncertainly, “Well, everything, really.”
“We’ll need to narrow that down a bit. Think about the different areas of your house. Are there any areas that don’t function well for you?”
The crease between Bonnie’s eyebrows deepened. She had that panicky look of a game show contestant who doesn’t know the answer to the question. The air conditioning clicked on and it was so quiet I could hear the air whooshing out of the vents. It was the longest I’d ever seen her go without talking.
“There’s no right or wrong answer, just think about what’s working in your house and what isn’t,” I prompted.
“Well, there’s the dining room. It isn’t really a dining room anymore,” she said at last. “Rich has taken over in there. Here, I’ll show you.” She jumped up and I followed her into the room.
“See, it’s only been a week since Rich cleaned up his mess and he’s already dragged it all out again.”
I hadn’t been paying attention last night to the dining room. I only remembered Bonnie had drinks set up in here, but now the long table was covered with stacks of paper and books. A laptop was positioned on the table with a printer near it. More thick books, reams of paper, and boxes lined the baseboard on the far side of the room.
“So you’d like this room to function as a dining room?” I said, pacing around the table.
“Well, yes…although we usually eat in the kitchen at the bar,” she said uncertainly.
“Do you have another place for a home office?”
“No, it’s just a three bedroom, so there’s no spare bedroom.” She pulled on the hem of her lemon shirt.
I glanced quickly around the house. There didn’t seem to be any extra space for a home office. The living room was cramped as it was and space was already at a premium in the kitchen. “We could probably come up with some way to use this room as an office, but still have the option of using it as a dining room, too,” I said, thinking of concealed storage spaces and a drafting-type desk that folded down from the wall. Maybe something that could fold back up and attach to the wall with artwork on the bottom so that it looked like a painting when it was folded up. Something unframed and very modern would fit the look she liked. But before I got too excited about my idea, I asked, “So this is Rich’s work area?” Bonnie nodded and I said, “Well, I’ll have to talk to him before I do anything in here.”
I felt the surge of excitement that came with the first glimmer of an idea at the beginning of a project, but I didn’t want to get too deeply involved here, especially in light of the copies I’d just found.
“Oh, sure,” she said as she tugged at her collar. “He’ll be home for lunch so you can talk to him then.”
“I can’t stay,” I said quickly. “Let me ask you the rest of my questions and then I really have to go. I’ll talk to him
later.”
Bonnie moved some stacks of papers and we sat down at the table. I ran through my list and got more rambling answers from her. Except for the dining room—and she’d been vague even about that area—she really didn’t know what she wanted. She liked the idea of being organized, but she couldn’t pinpoint another specific area that she wanted help with.
“What about routines? Are there times of the day or week you’d like to be more organized, like the rush in the morning or paying bills?”
Bonnie shifted in her chair and straightened the hem of her yellow shirt again. “I don’t know,” she said almost irritably. “Everything seems to work okay with those things. Do we have to go through all these questions? Can’t you just make my house look like those pictures?”
I put my pen down. “Bonnie, I think you need an interior designer.”
“What?” Her hands dropped to the table, motionless.
“For a completely new look, you need to find an interior designer.” I had a knack for organization, but I knew my limits. Bonnie really didn’t want me picking out furniture for her. “I can help you thin your belongings to fit your new style.”
Bonnie sat there, frowning, and I could tell it wasn’t the answer she wanted. She wanted her new look and she wanted it now. Bonnie always did move at warp speed, so I was slowing her down and she wasn’t happy about it. “Well, do you have any names?”
“I can have some for you by the end of the day,” I said, thinking of my online network of organizers. They would have contacts with interior designers I could pass on to Bonnie. And I also had business cards from several people I’d met at chamber of commerce meetings.
“Fine,” Bonnie said, standing abruptly. “I’ll check into it.” Her cell phone rang. She hurried into the kitchen, saying, “Sorry, but I have to take this. I’ve been waiting for this call.”
I stood and shuffled my papers together. So much for a new client. I doubted Bonnie would call me back after I gave her the interior designer names. I gave a mental shrug and told myself it was better not to have a client than to take on a job without clear goals. I gazed at the dining room table, thinking I would have enjoyed the challenge of the office-slash-dining room. I mentally tucked away the fold-down desk idea for future use and capped my pen. I really didn’t want to be interacting with Colonel Barnes right now, so it probably was better that the Barneses weren’t going to be my next organizing job.
Bonnie chatted on the phone, confirming a time. I picked up a stack of typed pages, one of the piles of paper she’d moved earlier, and put it back on the table, figuring I’d do a little cleaning up while I waited for her. I grabbed another stack and replaced it, only to stop and stare at it after I put it on the table.
More yellow highlighted text caught my attention. It was another photocopy from a book with the subheads highlighted. The page on top of the stack was about poisons.
Chapter Twenty
I flicked through the rest of the stack, my gaze skipping from one yellow stripe of highlighting to another: poisonous plants and toxic drug combinations. Bonnie said these were Colonel Barnes’s papers. What was he doing with all this information? Why did he need it? And why was he methodically highlighting this stuff, as if he was studying it? I wanted to run, get out of there, but it was like knowing I should stop eating so much chocolate. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t step away. With a sick feeling, I thumbed through the rest of the stacks. Gun specifications, blood spatter patterns, bomb components.
“Ellie,” Bonnie called, her voice cheery. I could hear her shoes tapping toward me from the kitchen as I dropped the papers back into place and patted the edges to line them up, with trembling fingers.
“I am so sorry, but I have to go. That was a client, an orthodontist. We have some great products that I know he’ll love. I’ve been trying to get in to see him for ages and ages, and he’ll only see me today in half an hour, so I have to leave.” She shrugged into a black jacket that went with her pants and I had to push away thoughts of bumblebees.
“That’s fine.” I grabbed my papers and pen, then picked up my tote bag from the living room. It had fallen over and I shoved the loose papers that had spilled under the couch back inside with one hand. “I need to leave, anyway. I have an appointment, too,” I said, practically sprinting toward the front door. “No, you don’t have to go with me. I know the way. I’ll e-mail you,” I called, already on the porch. I shut the door firmly behind me as she said good-bye.
Once in the minivan, I took a deep breath to try and calm down. I pulled out my cell phone and called Mitch. Of course, he didn’t answer. He was probably in a meeting. I left a message for him, telling him about the papers, and said I’d be at the Base Exchange, if he wanted to meet for an early lunch. Then I called information and got the phone number for the county sheriff. As I was being transferred from one extension to another, Bonnie pulled out of the driveway in her black Volkswagen GTI and zoomed by me with a wave.
It took a while, but I finally got through to Waraday’s voice mail and left him a message about the papers I’d seen in the dining room. “I have some of the pages. I’m not sure how they got in the folder Bonnie gave me.” I described what I’d seen, then left my phone number.
A car pulled up beside me and I was relieved to see it was Jeff. I rolled down my window as he powered down the passenger window on his car. “Hey, Ellie. How’s it going?” he asked.
“Oh, fine,” I said, with forced cheerfulness. “Just making some phone calls.” I waved my phone.
“Yeah, don’t drive while you’re talking on the phone. The no-cell-phone policy on base has been pretty hard on Abby. She always forgets about it. She’s gotten two warnings in the last month.”
“So what are you doing?” I asked, inhaling the scent of freshly cut grass.
“Home for lunch. I’ll let you get back to it,” he said, pulling away. He drove a few houses down and pulled in the driveway.
I decided I’d better try and call Montigue as well. I knew the phone number for the base operator by memory, thank goodness, so I started with that and began the convoluted process to get her extension at the OSI office. Two women I recognized from the squadron walked by on the opposite side of the street. They were in workout clothes, their arms and legs pumping as they power-walked. They waved to me. My window was still down, so I waved to them, glad they didn’t stop.
I began to see why Mitch hadn’t wanted to live on base. Could you do anything without someone noticing?
An airman transferred my call and then a crisp voice said, “Montigue.”
“Agent Montigue, this is Ellie Avery. I’ve just left a message for Detective Waraday about some papers I have that belong to Colonel Barnes.”
Over the clatter of a printer and a cavalcade of voices, she said, “Papers?”
“Yes, from Colonel Barnes. He’s been doing…I guess you’d call it research, into strangulation, poisons, guns, explo—”
“You have these papers in your possession?” she asked sharply.
“Yes,” I said, reaching for my tote bag. “Well, I have some. Bonnie—that’s Colonel Barnes’s wife—she wanted me to do an organizational consultation for her. She gave me a folder with pictures and sketches from magazines…well, never mind, that’s not important. What is important is that in the back of that folder were some papers, photocopies from a book about…strangulation…” I said, my words slowing down as I shifted through the papers in my tote bag. I didn’t see the file.
“Strangulation? Exactly what does it say?” Montigue’s voice was still sharp, but there was a layer of interest that hadn’t been there before.
I pulled out my brochures, my notepad, my calculator, then dug through my billfold, sunglasses, toys, a plastic bag of animal crackers, and a single spare diaper.
I fell back against the seat with a thump. I didn’t have it. It had to be under Bonnie’s couch in the living room. It must have slipped out when the tote bag fell over and I didn’t see it in my r
ush to get out of there.
“Mrs. Avery, are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here, but I don’t have it with me. It’s inside their house,” I said, frustrated. “But there’s more in the house. I saw more copies from books about poisons and guns and—”
“We searched Colonel Barnes’s house and car, Mrs. Avery,” Montigue said, and I could tell she was losing interest. “I don’t know what you think you saw, but there was nothing like that in their house.”
“It’s there now. Can’t you search again?”
“I’m afraid not. I can’t get a search warrant for what you think you saw, at least not from the person I’d have to go to.”
“So you’re not going to do anything?” I asked, amazed.
“Unfortunately, I can’t, Mrs. Avery, and at this point we have other persons of interest that we have to pursue. Thanks for your call, ma’am. I’m making a note of your information.”
She hung up and I snapped the phone closed. They were focused on Denise. I bet they were waiting for analysis of the circular needles they’d taken from her house last night. If they could prove any of the cords connecting the knitting needles had been used to kill Colonel Pershall, then Denise was in deep trouble. With the evidence of her divorce preparations, she’d look guilty, never mind that Colonel Barnes could have planted the murder weapon.
I dug out a chocolate kiss from my purse and popped it in my mouth. There had to be some way to get those papers back.
I chewed my lower lip for a moment, considering alternatives. I could drive away and try to forget about it, but I didn’t want to do that. What if Colonel Barnes found the folder later and Bonnie told him she’d given it to me? Then he’d know I’d seen it.