Loving Again: Book 2 in the Second Chance series (Crimson Romance)

by Bird, Peggy

  Sam ran down the list of the evidence they’d collected: The handgun they’d found next to the bodies. Shreds of latex gloves spotted with blood discovered in the parking area. The contents of Kane’s pockets and Jordan’s purse. The list of phone calls to and from both victims’ cell phones.

  “And there’s this.” Sam handed a lab report to Angel. “They lifted prints from the gun before it was sent for testing. There were partials on the barrel, nothing on the rest of it, a different set on the remaining cartridges. The partials were identified as Amanda St. Claire’s. No match yet for the other set.”

  “Amanda St. Claire? I know that name.” Angel paused for a moment. “Oh, shit, the goddamn Webster case. I hoped I’d never hear any name from that case again,” he said, almost growling.

  Sam shook his head, wishing like hell he didn’t have to say what he was about to say. “If you’ll look on that list of phone calls you’ll see Kane made a call to St. Claire’s number early in the evening. And there was an incoming call from her phone later, after he was dead.”

  “I hate to ask — does she have a connection with Kane?”

  “Other than the fact both are glass artists, yeah. He caused a scene in Bullseye recently, accusing her of stealing his designs. Threatened her with a lawsuit.” He shifted uneasily in the chair. “She also heard that Kane was trolling the DA’s office to see who’d bite on his story about intellectual property theft.”

  “When you talked to her about this did you find out where she was last night?”

  “Haven’t talked to her yet.”

  “Then how do you know the details of her dispute with Kane?”

  “That’s why I came to see you as soon as I found out about the fingerprints and phone calls. I think I need to get off this case. We’re involved. Amanda and I, that is. She told me about her Kane problem when it happened.”

  “Think you need to get off? Jesus Christ, Sam, of course you’re off. How much of the evidence has your name on it?”

  “None. Danny and one of the uniforms took care of that. I did interviews.”

  Angel fiddled with a pen for a moment, then stood up. “Does Danny have the addresses of St. Claire’s home and studio or wherever she works?”

  “Not sure.” He broke eye contact with the lieutenant.

  “The way you answered that tells me there’s something else I’m not going to like. Is it where she lives or where she works that’s making you nervous?”

  “She lives in Alameda. Her studio is in southeast Portland, about half a mile from Bullseye.”

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Angel bounced the pen off the top of his desk. “We have a possible motive for St. Claire, she may have been nearby, and her fingerprints are on the murder weapon.”

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  “You won’t be the one finding it.” He paused, forcing Sam to look at him by the power of the silence. “You’re not on leave like last year. You’re working for me. And you’re off this case.” There was another long, hard silence. “Am I clear here?”

  “Got it, L.T.,” Sam said.

  • • •

  It had been a terrible morning for Amanda. She’d started out sleep deprived after a restless night. Then the news this morning. Then when she got to her studio she found they’d been broken into, for the second time in a week. The first time the desk in the office had been rifled. This time it was more like last year when Tom Webster had trashed a year’s worth of her work because he’d discovered she’d found evidence of the drug-dealing going on in his club.

  Whoever broke in the night before, however, had made no distinction between her work and that of her studio mates. Thousands of dollars of finished or almost completed work as well as hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of sheet glass had been smashed and heaped in a huge pile in the middle of the studio.

  But there was something worse in the office. Thank God she was there first because on the desk, in an envelope addressed to her, was a note from the person who broke into the studio.

  The same person she’d seen the night before at Bullseye.

  He said that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, there would be consequences for her and for “her cop.” He also enclosed a copy of a letter signed by Tom Webster and addressed to “Buddy.” Before she could read the second letter, however, Giles and Leo arrived. She jammed the letters back into the envelope and went out to join them in the outrage about what had happened. Once they’d vented about it, they began the cleanup.

  An hour later, Amanda looked up from sweeping to see a strange woman standing in the middle of the GlassCo studio. Tall and fit looking, her dark blonde hair was cut in a short, attractive wash-and-wear style. Dressed in navy blue trousers, a white scoop neck knit shirt, and a lightweight blue and white tweed jacket, she held a zippered leather case the size of a file folder and projected the message that she expected to own any room she entered.

  Amanda wasn’t sure how long the woman had been there. With loud music playing and the noise of sweeping up and dumping piles of glass, the sound of the door opening or the woman’s heels had been lost. The stranger could have been there for a long time, just watching. She looked like that’s what she was up to, just watching.

  “Can I help you?” Amanda asked.

  “Amanda St. Claire?” Without waiting for an answer, the woman said, “I’m Danny Hartmann.” She flipped out a badge. “Detective Danny Hartmann.”

  “Sam’s new partner? I didn’t know … ”

  “ … I was a woman? Easy mistake. Danny seemed like a better name for a cop than either Danita or Rebecca, the choices my mother gave me.” Hartmann paused for a few seconds longer than Amanda liked, looking around. “I’d like to talk to you. Is there someplace private we can go?”

  Amanda felt her eyes widen and the blood leave her head. “Oh, God, something’s happened to Sam, hasn’t it?” She held onto the broom she’d been using with a death grip hoping it would hold her up if this woman had come to tell her that the consequences of what she’d seen the night before had already played out.

  “No, nothing like that. Sam’s fine. I just need to talk to you.”

  As the tension left her body, Amanda felt herself deflate. “Then he didn’t — ” She stopped to take a deep breath. “Right. Talk. We can go in the back.” She propped the broom against a table before leading the detective to the office.

  “What’s going on out there?” Hartmann asked as she sat in the chair Amanda offered.

  “Someone broke in last night. Second time in a week. This time it’s a freaking disaster — an expensive, freaking disaster. And there was … ” she let it trail off and broke eye contact with Hartmann. She realized she was playing with the envelope that held the two letters. Not sure yet what she was going to do about them, she did know she didn’t want Detective Hartmann getting curious so she slid the envelope from the desktop into a partially open desk drawer and closed it.

  “You report it to the police?”

  Amanda looked up, wondering how Hartmann knew about the letters, then realized that wasn’t what she meant. “Oh, the break-in? Yeah, I guess I should. Usually it’s … you know … just addicts looking for money although this seems different. More like the time my work got destroyed last year. But, I’ll worry about it later. What is it you wanted to talk about?”

  “Eubie Kane. You heard he was killed last night.”

  Amanda took a sharp breath. “Yes … I … ah … heard it on the radio this morning and saw it in the paper. Eubie and poor Robin.” She looked away from the other woman, biting her lip, picked up a pen and clicked the cap off and on a few times before quickly looking back at the detective.

  “Eubie called me last night and asked to come over here to see me. But he never showed up. I didn’t know why until I … until this morning when I heard the
news.” She slid back in her chair. “Why do you want to talk to me about him?”

  Without answering, Hartmann brought a photograph out of her leather bag. “Do you recognize this?”

  Amanda took the photo, looked at it for a moment and shook her head. “It’s a gun. Should it mean something to me?” She looked at the photo a second time before handing it back to the detective. “One of my studio mates keeps something that looks like it in the desk for protection.”

  “We found this next to the bodies. It’s being tested to see if it’s the murder weapon but I’m assuming it is. It’s registered to a Leo Wilson. Is that the name of your studio mate?”

  Amanda stifled a gasp. She nodded. Barely.

  “Your fingerprints are on the barrel.”

  “My fingerprints? How?” She moved in the chair as if the place she was sitting had suddenly warmed up. “The only time I even touch it is to move it out of the way when I go into his drawer. Leo’s drawer is the only one with a lock of sorts on it so we keep petty cash there and the stamps.”

  “A lock of sorts?”

  “You can open the drawer with a knife. Maybe even a paper clip.”

  “When did you see his gun last?”

  “See it? A week or so ago.”

  “When was the last break-in, did you say?”

  “I didn’t. It was about four days ago.”

  Hartmann paused to write a few things down in a notebook. Then she looked up and asked, “Where were you last night between say, seven and ten?”

  “I was mostly here.” Amanda moved restlessly again. “Mostly alone. Leo and Giles left about seven. I was working on pieces I wanted to fire today after I unloaded the kilns this morning so I stayed late.”

  “Did you see or talk to anyone while you were here?”

  Amanda sat up straight and squared her shoulders. “Eubie called me about seven, I think. Leo was gone. Giles was still here. Eubie asked to meet with me. I told him I would be in my studio until about ten and he was welcome to come talk to me.”

  “Giles — which one is he?”

  “The blond. Leo’s the dark-haired one.”

  “And he was here when Kane called?”

  Amanda nodded. “I was talking to him, planning what we were going to do with kilns for the next couple of days. My cell rang and I took the call.”

  “I heard Kane accused you of stealing from him. Why’d you agree to meet him?”

  “I figured it couldn’t hurt to try to settle this thing between us. But I finished earlier than I expected. I called him. Told him I was going home. I got voice mail and left a message.” She picked up the pen again and played with it.

  “I’ll need a statement from you about what you did yesterday. Want to do that now?” Hartmann asked.

  Amanda hesitated for a moment. “Well, I have all that mess out there, but okay. The mess will be here when I get back.”

  Giles interrupted. “Amanda, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “I think we better do this privately.” He cut his eyes toward the detective.

  Amanda shook her head. “Whatever it is, let’s get it out in the open.”

  He produced a neatly folded white towel with red stripes and dark splotches of what looked like dried blood on it. “I found this under that big pile of broken glass.”

  “That’s not one of our towels,” Amanda said.

  “No,” Giles said, “it looks like the ones Bullseye instructors use to clean glass in the classroom.” He carefully unfolded the towel. Inside was a clip of bullets. “This was wrapped in it. It looks like the one for Leo’s gun. How do you think … ?”

  Hartmann interrupted. “You found a clip you believe came from Leo Wilson’s gun in a Bullseye towel here?” She stood up and reached for the towel. “I’ll take it. I want to talk to you and Leo, too. Will you be here for a while? Amanda and I are going to the precinct. Should be back in a couple hours.”

  “I’m here until seven. I’ll make sure Leo doesn’t leave until you talk to him.”

  • • •

  When Amanda and Detective Hartmann returned to the GlassCo studio from Central Precinct, there was an urgent message from Felicia Hamilton at Bullseye. Felicia had opened the big Paragon kiln. Instead of the sample pieces for Robin Jordan’s class she expected to find, she discovered what might have been Eubie Kane’s work. “Might have been” meaning that it had been laid up incorrectly and was ruined, but Hamilton thought she recognized it as Eubie’s work from what remained. Unfortunately, some of Amanda’s work may have been involved, too.

  Although she tried to get out of it, Amanda accompanied Detective Hartmann to Bullseye. She hung back near the worktables at the center of the room, trying not to look at the crime scene tape still in place, while the detective and Felicia Hamilton peered into what looked, to the uninitiated, like a cross between a coffin and a tanning bed. Inside the kiln was a large piece of glass completely covering the surface of the shelves. Glassy icicles hung from the sides of the shelves and the bottom of the kiln was dotted with glass puddles.

  “So, tell me in language I’ll understand what happened here,” Hartmann said.

  Felicia said, “Whoever laid up this glass in the kiln — put the work on the shelves — didn’t know how to do it. Assuming this was Eubie’s, his work is nine to twelve millimeters thick. Glass holds its shape at the temperatures we fire to if it’s six millimeters thick. Any thicker and it flows out as it becomes molten, trying to even out to six millimeters. So, when we fire a project that’s designed to be thicker, we use dams and bricks to contain it while it fuses and cools. Whoever put the glass in here didn’t do that. Eubie, of course, would have.”

  “So, you’re saying that Kane didn’t put the glass on the shelves.”

  “I don’t think so. But the controller,” Felicia pointed to a box with three rows of buttons on the side of the kiln, “that automatically raises and lowers the temperature of the kiln, seems to have been programmed correctly. If it hadn’t been, the glass wouldn’t have fused and cooled without thermal shocking, breaking from changes in temperatures. Glass doesn’t handle temperature changes easily.”

  “Kane?” asked Hartmann.

  “Just guessing, but I’d say, yes. And this morning I was asked to identify a piece of paper one of your officers found under another kiln,” Felicia said. “It looked like a firing schedule.” She answered the question before the detective could ask it. “The directions for the controller. It looked like a firing schedule for thick blocks like Eubie’s and it was in what looked like Eubie’s handwriting. He always makes — always made — his sevens like European ones with a cross on them and made little curls on his zeros.”

  Hartmann looked back into the open kiln. “So Kane’s work was wrecked.”

  “And apparently two pieces of mine.” Amanda had moved closer to the kiln and finally spoke. “Yesterday I left four pieces on that workstation over there to be fired when a kiln was available. I rent space here when all our kilns are in use. There are only two pieces left over there. If the person who loaded the kiln knew what they were doing, Eubie’s work, along with the dams and bricks supporting it, would have filled the shelves. Looks like whoever did this piled in Eubie’s work and used my stuff to take up the remaining space.”

  Hartmann looked to Felicia. “So, the kiln was loaded wrong but programmed right.”

  Felicia nodded.

  Amanda’s curiosity had gotten the better of her and she was inspecting the piece in the kiln. “If you need more proof that whoever did this doesn’t understand glass, look at this.” She pointed to marks on the surface of the glass. “That looks like fingerprints.” The manager pulled her glasses down from the top of her head, looked carefully at the glass and agreed.

  “Fingerprint
s? You mean the glass shows fingerprints even after it’s fired?” Hartmann asked.

  “It can. Don’t know if you could convict someone on the basis of what’s left but it’s clear enough to screw up a project. That’s part of the reason we clean pieces so carefully before we fire them. Whoever put this in here didn’t do that,” Felicia said as she reached to pull at the piece of glass.

  “Don’t touch it,” Hartmann said. She pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling the crime scene guys back to process it as evidence.” Inspecting the glass piece she asked, “How big would you say this sucker is?”

  “The shelves measure twenty-six by fifty-two inches,” Felicia said. “How long will it take to get this kiln freed up? One of the techs will have to dig all that glass out of the bricks in the bottom before we can use it again.”

  “Sorry, but don’t count on having access to it for a while.” When she finished the phone call, Hartmann turned to Amanda. “Let’s go back to your studio. We need to talk some more.”

  • • •

  After Danny Hartmann left the studio, Amanda went to the back office and shut the door, telling her studio mates she had to work on the books and asked them not to interrupt. But it wasn’t account books she pulled out of the desk drawer. It was the envelope left by the intruder. This time she carefully read both letters. The one she’d already read was a clear threat. But the other one, a copy of a letter from Tom Webster, seemed to explain why someone was trying to get into her house.

  She had to think this through. Figure out what to do. She pulled out her phone to call Sam. He’d know.

  Wait. That’s exactly what the first letter said not to do. If she called Sam, she put him in danger. Maybe she could just tell him about the second letter. But how would she explain how she got it? And why she didn’t tell his partner about it.