Scrubbing his face with his fists, he asked, “Dev, what are you doing here?”
“Uh.” Noah didn’t seem happy to see me, and for a split second, I wondered if maybe I should have waited to talk to him until Jake returned.
“Dev?” Noah’s voice had warmed up, and now it held a hint of concern. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry. I’m fine.” Mentally, I gave myself a good shake. This was Noah. He was not on drugs. And he wasn’t any threat to me. I’d probably just woken him up. “But I do have a couple more questions for you. Can I come inside?”
“Sure.” Noah tried to hide his confusion. “Come on in.” He moved out of the doorway so I could enter. “Let’s sit in the den.”
This was the first time I’d been in Noah’s home, and as I followed him a few feet down the hall, I wondered what the rest of the place was like. The little I could see was beautifully decorated, but appeared cold and uninviting. Was Noah as lonely as his house implied?
Noah interrupted my thoughts. “Would you like something to drink?”
I declined his offer of refreshment and settled on one of the leather club chairs facing the sofa. A tan Chihuahua stared at me from his place on the matching chair.
Noah must have noted my interest because he explained, “Lucky was Joelle’s. She named me his guardian in her will.”
Although I already knew that, I pretended not to, and said, “He seems like a nice little dog.”
“Yeah.” Noah plopped down on the couch. “It’s been tough on him. Chihuahuas are one-person animals, so he’s still adjusting to me.”
“Poor thing.” I noticed the remains of a frozen dinner on the coffee table. The food was barely touched, but the beer bottle next to the white plastic tray was empty. “Well, anyway, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because an issue has come to light since Jake and I spoke to you about Joelle’s murder, and I wanted to hear your side of it.”
“Sure.” Noah reached for the remote and turned off the TV set, which had been playing a National Geographic special on the wildebeests of the Serengeti. “What’s up?”
Noah still seemed foggy, and judging from the pillow and afghan lying at one end of the couch, I was betting he’d been awakened from a deep sleep. It finally dawned on me that it had been only ten days since Joelle’s murder, and because her body hadn’t been released yet, there hadn’t been a funeral. To Noah, it probably felt as if she’d died just yesterday.
A part of me sympathized, but the other part, the one Woods was trying to convict of murder, said good. It’s easier to get the truth from someone who’s vulnerable. And although I didn’t think Noah was guilty, he might have information about the person who was.
“Actually there are two things.” I forced myself to relax against the back of my chair.
“Yes?” Noah’s pearl gray eyes met mine, and a sliver of our old chemistry feathered up my spine. “What do you want to know?”
I hoped none of that attraction showed in my expression as I gazed steadily back at him. “Your nurse told Jake that you let your entire staff leave last Saturday while you were waiting for your emergency patient to show up. That seems odd to me.” I tilted my head. “Why would you do that? Weren’t you afraid you’d need assistance?”
“A little.” Noah twitched his shoulders. “But by the time I let Eunice go, it had been over a half hour since the call. I think I already suspected the patient would be a no-show.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I hated to keep her from her holiday plans for a false alarm.”
“Really?” I deliberately injected a modicum of skepticism into my tone.
“Really.” Noah tapped his fingers on the arm of the sofa. “You said you had two questions?”
“I did.” My voice sharpened. “The other matter is a bit harder to explain away.”
“Yes?”
I sat forward. “How come you told us that you didn’t arrive at the Parkside until seven thirty last Saturday night, but hotel records show you parked in the garage well before six?”
I watched carefully for Noah’s reaction. He had never been a very good actor. In high school, drama was about the only class in which he didn’t excel. I was sure I could tell if he was lying.
“I have no idea.” He frowned. “I hadn’t even left Shadow Bend by six, so there’s no way it could have been me. Maybe the Parkside had a computer glitch.”
“There’s no evidence of that.” I willed him to come up with the same explanation I had.
“There must be some mistake.” Noah wrinkled his forehead, thinking hard. “I just don’t know.”
I waited, hoping my guess was right, but reluctant to put words into his mouth.
Abruptly he smacked his forehead with his palm. “In fact, I never parked in the garage at all. The police had the whole area cordoned off when I arrived. I had to park on a side street and walk to the hotel.”
Yes! If he was telling the truth about his arrival time, that was exactly what I figured must have happened. “Do you have any proof of that?” I asked, knowing Noah’s word alone wouldn’t convince Jake. “Did you see anyone before leaving Shadow Bend?”
“No. The area around the clinic was deserted.” Noah slumped. Then a moment later he jumped to his feet, walked to the desk, and handed me several yellow slips of paper. “I got three parking tickets. I didn’t have any change and planned to go back and feed the meter once I got some. But—” He stuttered to a stop and swallowed hard.
“That’s interesting.” I glanced at the tickets and saw the seven forty-five time stamped on the first, eight forty-five on the second, and nine forty-five on the third. “Though it doesn’t explain why the records show you parking in the garage from five forty-five until eleven the next day.” This was the part I hadn’t been able to figure out before, but now an idea popped into my head. “Is it possible someone switched key cards with you?”
“I suppose.” Noah’s eyes lit up with a hint of hope. “Joelle left the key card for me at the clinic’s appointment desk. My receptionist, Madison, called me on the intercom and told me the key was there. I told her to leave it on the counter and I’d get it when I had a chance.”
“So”—I beamed at him approvingly—“it sat on the counter, in plain sight, for several hours?”
“I suppose so… until I walked out the door.” Noah’s smile matched mine. “In fact, I almost forgot it. You could confirm it with Madison.”
“You don’t still have the key card, do you?” I asked, thinking the police had probably taken it or Noah had turned it over to the hotel when he left.
“I might. I just might.” Noah nodded slowly. “I put it in my jacket pocket that night, and I don’t remember ever taking it out.”
“You’ve had it in your pocket all this time and never noticed it?” I asked.
“I wore my leather jacket last Saturday, and I’ve been wearing my wool coat since then,” he explained. “Let me check.”
He disappeared down the hall, with me trailing him. It took only a few seconds for him to find his coat in the foyer closet, and when he faced me, he was triumphantly waving a white plastic rectangle.
Why was my life always full of more speed bumps than a church parking lot? Although I was pleased to have proven Noah’s innocence—at least it would be proven as soon as the KC police confirmed his story with Madison and the key card in his possession was shown not to open the door to the suite the night Joelle was killed—I was no closer to removing myself from Woods’s Most Wanted list. I needed to find him a viable suspect soon, or I would end up in jail becoming acquainted with a woman named Bad Betty in an up-close-and-personal way.
When I arrived home, a note on the kitchen table weighted down by a cupcake-shaped saltshaker didn’t improve my mood. Gran had gone to bed with one of her sick headaches, but she wanted to remind me that I had promised to take her to see my father Sunday afternoon.
I never went into the prison to visit him myself, but I always drove Gran back and forth. In view
of my current precarious position with the law, I really didn’t want to be anywhere near a penitentiary, but a promise was a promise, and I certainly couldn’t let her go alone.
After a quick bite to eat, I plopped down on the couch and spread my notes on the case all around me. There had to be something I was missing. I had been at it for about an hour, and was going over the hotel’s garage parking data again, when I finally spotted it.
According to that list, early on the evening Joelle was murdered, at five forty-five p.m.—the same time Noah supposedly arrived— someone named Etienne Aponte had parked in the hotel’s garage. The e-mail that Irene had seen on Joelle’s computer had been from an Etienne.
Considering that Etienne was an extremely unusual name, at least in the Midwest, it was unlikely that an Etienne who was unrelated to the case chose that day to stay at the Parkside Hotel. This Etienne had to have had something to do with Joelle’s death.
My first inclination was to call Jake, but after some thought I decided to e-mail him with my discovery instead. I wanted to include all the information I had gleaned from my visit with Noah, and I knew Jake would be unhappy to learn I had talked to my ex-boyfriend alone. My hope was that he would have cooled off before we spoke on the phone.
My cell rang the next morning at seven. Thankfully, I was in my car driving to the store early in order to work on several basket orders, because I didn’t want Gran overhearing what Jake had to say. Especially since the first few minutes of the conversation were an unpleasant replay of yesterday’s call.
“What part of ‘Do not talk to Underwood without me’ did you not understand?” Jake’s fury throbbed through the little phone’s speaker.
“I understood your order; I just chose not to follow it.” I barely stopped myself from saying because you’re not the boss of me. “Nobody likes to be told what to do, least of all me.”
Jake grunted, or maybe growled. I know I heard teeth grinding.
Finally I said, “As you must know, since you obviously saw my e-mail, I was sure Noah was innocent and now I have proof.”
“The only reason you were convinced he was innocent is because you wanted him to be.” Jake’s words seethed with exasperation. “Just admit you’re still in love with him.”
My annoyance matched his, but I ignored his taunt, held on to my patience, and asked in as civil a tone as I could muster, “What about Etienne Aponte? Were you able to find out anything about him?”
Jake was silent for a couple of seconds, then grudgingly said, “He’s Joelle’s husband.”
“What!” I shrieked before I could stop myself. “But she was going to marry Noah.”
“Not legally.” Jake’s voice held a hint of satisfaction. “Your precious doctor was about to enter into a bigamous union.”
Instead of responding to Jake’s crack about Noah, I demanded, “Tell me everything.”
“Joelle Ayers is really Jolene Aponte. About a year and a half ago she won half a million in the Louisiana lottery and disappeared.”
“Wow.”
“Yep,” Jake agreed. “She spent the next nine months or so transforming herself. She bought colored contact lenses, dyed her hair, had plastic surgery to enlarge her breasts and remove her wrinkles, and took speech lessons to improve the way she talked. Once she was transformed, she assumed an identity that was ten years younger than her real age.”
“How did you find all this out so fast?” I had sent him the info only eleven hours ago.
“Etienne Aponte filed a missing persons report when his wife vanished,” Jake explained. “Once we found that, the rest unraveled quickly.”
“What rest?”
“It turns out Etienne’s fingerprints are in the system because he applied for a job as a bank security guard.” Jake paused, then delivered the coup de grâce. “And they matched the print found on the champagne bottle stuffed in Joelle’s mouth.”
“Oh, my God!” Now I remembered that Woods had never answered my question about whether there were other prints besides mine on the murder weapons. “Why didn’t they run those prints right after the murder?”
“They did, but Aponte’s prints are what they call ‘civil fingerprints,’ so they’re not in the criminal databank.”
“Oh.” After thinking about it for a minute, I asked, “So how did they find them now?”
“The FBI doesn’t advertise this, but they’ve started to retain the fingerprints of employer-conducted criminal background checks.” Jake lowered his voice. “So, when I heard that Aponte was a security guard, I called in a favor and asked a friend at the bureau to run the print on the bottle through those records.”
“And it was a match.” I blew out a long breath of relief. “Which means Aponte is the killer, right?”
“That’s the way the KC cops are figuring it. Joelle ran away rather than divorcing Aponte so she wouldn’t have to give him half the money from her lottery win. According to her friends in Louisiana, she always dreamed of living a different life, of being a country club lady with designer clothes and fancy cars.” Jake took a breath. “And since Joelle’s will is not in her real name, and she’s still married to Aponte, he’s her legal heir. The theory is that he tracked her down and killed her for the money.”
“Wow!”
Jake added casually, “I made sure the info went to Woods’s chief of detectives so he couldn’t bury that evidence.”
“Thank you.” Those two simple words didn’t seem sufficient, but they would have to do until I saw Jake in person. “So, I’m no longer a suspect?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Were there any prints on the shoe?” I knew mine hadn’t been on the stiletto because it wasn’t part of the basket’s contents.
“Let me check.” Jake rustled some papers. “Nope. It was wiped clean.”
As I pondered why one weapon was wiped clean and one had prints, Jake was called away. He hung up before I could say more, but I didn’t care. Joelle’s killer had been identified. And it wasn’t me.
At the end of our conversation, Jake had sworn me to secrecy, so I couldn’t share the good news with Poppy or Boone, but he had allowed me to tell Gran. He understood that it wasn’t fair to let her keep worrying about me.
On my way home from work that night, I stopped at the grocery store and bought two filet mignons with all the fixings, and she and I celebrated my freedom. But after supper, as we watched TV together, questions began to plague me.
How had Etienne found Joelle? If law enforcement couldn’t trace her true identity, how had he located her? Someone in town must have tipped him off, but how had that person known who she really was?
Four people would benefit if Joelle’s secret was revealed, and all of their motives revolved around preventing her from marrying Noah. Nadine didn’t think Joelle was good enough for her son, the mayor wanted Joelle for himself, and Anya and Gwen each wanted Noah for herself.
Nadine and presumably the mayor had alibis, but not Anya or Gwen. My money was on one of them. During the next commercial, I told Gran I was going to the bathroom, and then phoned Jake.
Once I had run my theory past him, he said, “Even if you’re right, and one of those two women told Aponte where he could find Joelle, it isn’t important right now. The police have him in custody and he’s been charged with his wife’s murder.”
“But how about Noah’s key card? Shouldn’t someone check it out to see if someone really switched cards?”
“Yes. An officer from Kansas City has already picked it up from Underwood and talked to the doc’s receptionist, who confirms his story.” Jake’s tone was soothing. “I’ll pass your theory about Anya or Gwen informing Aponte about his wife’s whereabouts on to the KC cops so they can strengthen their case, but you’re in the clear. You can leave the rest of the investigation to the police.”
CHAPTER 26
I woke up the next day smiling. I was a free woman. I had been instrumental in clearing my name, and I hadn’t waited for
a man to rescue me. To top it all off, Jake was coming back to Shadow Bend. He’d said he’d probably get into town around one, but he wanted to check on Tony and do some chores at the ranch before picking me up at six to celebrate my newfound freedom.
Since the store closed at noon on Thursdays, I used the afternoon to work on baskets, take inventory, and pay bills. Although only the first task was fun, I found myself singing along with Lady Gaga on the radio while doing the others. I even boogied a little. And believe me, I never dance.
It was almost two o’clock when my cell signaled that I had a text. Once I found the phone hidden under a stack of order forms on the counter, I saw a message from Poppy that read: 911… GC… NOW!
Oh, my God! What kind of emergency could there be at Gossip Central?
Instantly, I grabbed my coat and purse, locked up the store, and texted back: OMW. Then I was in my car heading to Poppy’s bar.
What in the world could have happened? It couldn’t be man trouble. Poppy wasn’t involved with anyone currently. If she was being robbed, she’d have called the county sheriff. Maybe she’d had an accident, phoned for the ambulance, and been told it could take a long time for the EMTs to arrive since they were already tied up with another emergency.
It had been snowing for a couple of hours, and the temperature hovered a few degrees below freezing, making the roads slick. Shadow Bend had only three ambulances—and the news of one being in the garage for repairs had made the front page of the paper. If there had been a multicar crash, the other two units would be unavailable. I just hoped that I could make it to Gossip Central without becoming another weather-related casualty.
Torn between the need for speed and the knowledge that my little car wasn’t built for icy conditions, I finally compromised by going faster than was completely safe but slower than I wanted to go.
When I turned into the bar’s parking lot fifteen minutes later, Poppy’s SUV wasn’t in sight. In fact, the only vehicle in the lot was a bright yellow Corvette that I didn’t recognize. Maybe someone had stopped by, seen that Poppy was sick or injured, and driven her to the hospital in the Hummer, which could handle the bad weather a lot better than a ’Vette.
Little Shop of Homicide: A Devereaux’s Dime Store Mystery Page 22