“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not the girlfriend. Just the partner,” I said in an attempt to clear things up.
“So I wasn’t wrong. I knew I heard something different in your voice, Alex. You sound like a man who’s finally let himself love again.”
I watched Alex roll his eyes at all of Ken’s talk of romance, and my chest contracted for a second at the mention of him loving again. Loving Bethany? Epiphany or not, I hated the sound of that.
It didn’t make Alex happy either, if the way he was cringing was any indication. Shaking his head, he leaned down toward the phone and said, “Enough about me. Do you have a few minutes to talk about your favorite topic, Ken?”
The phone went silent for a few moments and then Ken Bryer made a noise that reminded me of how children sounded when they gorged themselves on chocolate. He certainly must have loved knives.
“You know how to get me off a topic you clearly don’t want to talk about, Alex. I’ll agree to let you pick my brain about whatever you want if you agree to tell me about what you’re up to these days with such a sweet Irish girl.”
I mumbled about not exactly being a sweet Irish girl while Alex agreed to Ken’s terms. “Okay, but there’s not much to tell. I’m back to police work up here in Sunset Ridge. Poppy’s my partner, and she’s definitely easier to work with than Gary. Remember him?”
Ken laughed and started to tell a story about this Gary person Alex had been partners with back in Baltimore. This pathologist certainly loved to talk. I tried to imagine how the man I knew ever spent much time with Ken Bryer since they were like night and day.
“Okay, okay, enough about Gary. I did my time with him, but now I need your help. Quid pro quo, my friend. Time to let me ask some questions of you.”
“Shoot. What do you want to know?”
Alex flipped through his notebook to the first page of his notes on the Canton Walters’ murder investigation. “I remember you telling me once that killing someone with a knife wasn’t as easy as everyone thinks. I’ve got a murder victim who was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife.”
Ken whistled into the phone. “A kitchen knife? That’s a hard way to kill someone.”
Curious, I asked, “Why? It’s a knife into skin. Wouldn’t it just cut through some artery and kill the person?”
“Not as easily as you’d think. TV and movies make it seem like it’s as easy as jabbing a knife into a loaf of bread, but the human body isn’t like that. Skin, tissue, muscle, bone…they’d all fight against a kitchen knife.”
Alex and I looked at each other as Ken explained how our murder was even more difficult than we’d thought. “Ken, our coroner says the wound is consistent with someone being right handed and at least five foot eight. We’re wondering if a female that tall could kill like this.”
After he thought about it, Ken answered, “I can’t say, but I will say this. She’d have to be a very strong woman to stab a man in the back and kill him.”
Thinking aloud, I said, “I don’t think Delilah fits that description. She’s tall enough, but I’d call her frail, if anything.”
Alex nodded toward me. “I think you’re right.”
“The problem is that anyone aiming to kill someone by stabbing them in the back has to be even more than strong. They have to be lucky. Most of the time, even if they get the knife in deep enough, they won’t hit anything that will kill the person. It’s why most knife attacks don’t end up as murders.”
Flipping through his notepad until he reached the last page of our investigation, Alex showed me what he’d written and said into the phone, “Ken, my coroner tells us the knife hit the pulmonary artery, and that’s why our victim died.”
“Wow. That’s either incredibly lucky or your murderer knew where to slice into your victim. The odds of an average person hitting the artery would be astronomical, especially if it was a crime of passion. I’d say you’re looking for someone who knows a thing or two about the human body.”
Alex and I looked at each other and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. As he promised Ken he’d come back to visit him soon, I wondered if he’d take Bethany along for that visit. That could wait for later, though. Right now, we finally knew who killed Canton Walters. Now we just had to prove it.
Chapter Nineteen
I sat in the passenger seat of the cruiser beside Alex as we waited for Judge Harlow to return from his lunch. We’d been outside his office for nearly an hour hoping to catch him so we could get him to sign a search warrant for the Roberts’ house, and I saw the sluggish pace of Sunset Ridge’s small town justice had begun to wear on Alex’s patience.
He shifted in the driver’s seat for the fifth time in as many minutes and sighed. “I should have gone to a county judge. This guy spends more time lost in the bottle than doing his job.”
Judge Reginald Harlow was really more a local magistrate than a real judge, but he was a friend to the police, so when they could, they always used him to get search warrants. The problem with that plan, though, was depending on him to be sober enough to issue said warrants.
“It’s going to be okay. We’ll have more than enough time once Harlow comes back from his liquid lunch to get over to the Roberts’ house.”
Alex leaned back against his seat and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the pace things happen around here. Back in Baltimore, I’d already be in that house looking for evidence. As it is, I’m stuck sitting here waiting for Judge Lush for going on an hour. Ridiculous!”
Seeing some distraction was desperately needed, I asked, “So that Ken guy, how long have you known him? He seems like he knows you pretty well, if that conversation was any indication.”
Staring straight ahead with his eyes peeled for the judge, Alex answered, “I know what you’re saying, but he doesn’t know me that well. He and I worked together on a lot of cases back in Baltimore. That’s it.”
“So he doesn’t know how you take your coffee or what your favorite drink is?” I asked with a smile. Something about the way Ken had been so interested in Alex’s love life told me he knew far more about him than I did, no matter what my partner claimed.
Alex tore his gaze from the judge’s office door to look over at me. Knitting his brows, he said, “He probably knows the drink answer.”
I playfully tapped his shoulder as he scowled. “I’m serious. Who is this guy, other than some coroner with an obsession with knives? You never talk about your friends, so I was surprised to hear him be so familiar with you.”
“Ken’s always like that with me. We both worked the same cases a lot of times and he’s that kind of guy. I used to tease him that he tried too hard with the living because he spent too much time with the dead.”
This Ken Bryer person intrigued me. I couldn’t imagine Alex being that comfortable with anyone, but he’d obviously let Ken in.
“So you guys became friends over death. Sort of creepy but I like knowing there’s the possibility we may be like that someday.”
He turned away and went back to watching the judge’s door as he said in a flat voice, “I don’t think that’s possible. He and I got close when we were chasing the same woman. I won, but we stayed friends.”
The same woman? I’d never heard Alex talk about any women from his past. My curiosity piqued, I pressed for more information. “Really? Well, the plot thickens. He must be an okay guy to accept defeat like that. Most men don’t give up so graciously.”
“I think her saying I do pretty much sealed it for him.”
And with that, Alex mentioned his wife for the first time in all the months we’d worked together. That he hadn’t even said her name seemed odd. I wasn’t sure I should continue, but my need for some details about her won out over decorum.
“What was her name?”
He swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob, and said in a low voice, “Helena.”
The hollow sound when he said her name made me regret asking
anything. His expression never changed, but I knew from the way he answered that her death still haunted him. “I’m sorry, Alex. I shouldn’t have pried.”
“You didn’t ask anything wrong. Talking to Ken made everything come back anyway. He was a good friend through all of it. The good times and the bad. He even helped me try to find out who killed her, and when all the leads went cold, it was Ken who sat me down and made me realize I had to let it go or it would make me crazy forever.”
For one of the few times in my life, I didn’t know the right words to say. I thought back to when my mother died and remembered all those kind sentiments everyone expressed never changing the simple fact that ruled every minute of my days and nights then. Someone I loved dearly was gone. Death was something that took over those left behind, and nothing anyone said or did could change that.
The only remedy for that pain so acute sometimes I didn’t know if I could on to the next day was time. I saw that same pain on Alex’s face now and knew time hadn’t finished its job with him yet.
“I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
He turned his head to look at me and smiled, but in those dark brown eyes I saw it. The look that lingered in the survivors’ eyes even when they thought they’d moved past all the sadness. It was a look of grief so complete it made my breath catch in my chest. Of all the times I’d stared into his eyes looking for some clue as to what he was thinking, I’d never so clearly seen his emotions telegraphed like I did at that moment.
Then he somehow switched off what he was feeling and became the man I’d known for months. Quiet and thoughtful but nearly emotionless.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Judge Harlow stumble along the sidewalk to his office. Thankful for something to break the tension in the car, I pointed toward him. “There he is!”
Alex’s head snapped forward, and in a flash, he was out of the car and practically accosting the judge as he opened the office door. The shocked look on his face faded as Alex made his case for the warrant, and when I saw him turn around to let the judge use his back to sign the paper, I knew he’d gotten what he wanted.
He climbed into the car and handed me the warrant. “I’m going to have Craig meet us there. Delilah isn’t going to be a problem, but if that husband of hers comes home to find us searching his house, he might lose it. I’m not sure you should be there, though. Things sometimes go bad in cases like this.”
I knew what was going on. His memory of losing his wife had made him think twice about putting me in danger, but he was overreacting. Delilah Roberts and her husband, no matter how difficult he was, weren’t going to try anything that would get me hurt.
In an attempt to make Alex realize that and lighten his mood, I chucked him in the shoulder as he started the car. “This is Sunset Ridge, partner. We’re talking about a housewife who has sex toy parties. What’s the worst that could happen? Is she going to throw a vibrator at me?”
He didn’t want to smile, but he couldn’t help it. Throwing his arm across the back of my seat, he rolled his eyes at me as he looked behind the car before backing up. “Let’s hope that’s the worst she does.”
As we sped away toward the Roberts’ house, he radioed for Craig to meet us there and I joked, “You better warn your buddy there, though. Craig’s pretty innocent, so getting a sex toy thrown at him might freak him out.”
Again, he rolled his eyes at one of my comments, but he also smiled, which was the whole reason for me making a joke of this. I knew the danger involved in working with him on cases like this one. I also knew I didn’t like seeing him so sad about the past. I’d been there at that place he still lived in and remembered how hard it was to find anything to smile about when the pain of missing my mother settled into my heart. Anything that got me out of that place, even for a brief moment, was priceless. That’s what I wanted to give Alex, and if joking about sex toys did the trick, then I wasn’t above that.
Craig met us at the Roberts’ house, and as we walked up to the front door, Alex explained that if we didn’t find what we were looking for there, the warrant also gave him the right to search Dr. Roberts’ chiropractic office too. He knocked on the door as I let my imagination wander to that possibility. Dealing with Delilah was one thing, but Alan Roberts had a nasty temper.
“What’s wrong, Poppy?” he asked as we waited for her to answer.
“I was just thinking about Dr. Roberts unraveling like a cheap suit if you have to search his office.”
Alex thought about it for a moment and nodded his head toward Craig. “That’s why he’s with us. There’s still time to change your mind and go back to the car.”
“No way. We’re partners, so where you go, I go.”
The door opened and Delilah’s genteel smile she often wore dropped into a frown as Alex explained our reason for being on her doorstep. Holding up the warrant for her to see, he said, “Please move aside so we can search your house, Mrs. Roberts.”
We walked past her and put on our crime scene searching gloves, as I affectionately called them, as she pelted us not with sex toys but with questions about why we were doing this and what we could be looking for. The heartbreak in her voice signaled to all of us she was frightened, but I couldn’t decide if it was because she was guilty or if it was just the mere presence of two policeman and myself preparing to rummage through her house.
Craig took off upstairs to check the bedrooms for any items of clothing with blood on them while Alex and I checked the downstairs. In addition to clothes that would put her or her husband at the scene of the crime, we were looking for any evidence that would tie her or the doctor to Canton Walters.
Delilah sat on the couch with her head in her hands as we looked through the desk near the French doors in the living room. Thankfully, both she and Alan were obsessively neat, so the papers we found were organized into tidy piles inside the drawers. I noted a stack of what looked like receipts and sat down in a chair opposite her as Alex grabbed them before continuing to search the desk.
After a few long minutes, Delilah asked, “What are you looking for? I told you I didn’t kill that man. Why would you do this?”
I looked at her and didn’t know what to say. Her life was coming apart in front of her eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to be in that position.
“I’m sorry, but we have to do this,” I answered, hating how lacking my words were.
I returned to where Alex stood rummaging through the bottom drawer of old bills. “Find anything? This stack just looks like old utility receipts.”
He shook his head and frowned. “No, not yet. Don’t stop looking. We need something to connect them to that hotel and that room.”
Just then, I looked over and saw Delilah’s earrings. Gold hoop earrings. Turning to Alex, I said, “I’ll be right back. I want to see something upstairs.”
I tore up to the second floor and ran to the master bedroom to find Delilah’s jewelry box. On her dresser, I saw a teakwood box and called for Craig to open it. All she kept in it were necklaces and bracelets, but no diamond earrings. Looking around the room, I saw nothing else that would hold an earring, so I instructed him to open the drawers to search through her bras and panties. If what we’d been doing downstairs felt intrusive, it was nothing compared to what rifling her undergarments felt like.
But my hunch told me that diamond earring was hers and it was still in the house. “Run your hand along the bottom of the drawer, Craig,” I said.
He did as I told him to, and in just a few seconds his eyes lit up. “I feel something like a bump.”
Moving aside the clothes, he showed me the back of the center drawer and I saw a piece of masking tape covering a small portion of the wood. Craig peeled it off to reveal a single sparkling diamond earring that looked like the match to the one Alex had found in Canton Walters’ suit pocket.
Craig bagged it, and I ran down the stairs to the main floor to find Alex holding a single piece of paper
that had written on it Room 307 in the same handwriting as the note we’d found in that very room. Interestingly, it wasn’t in the same handwriting as the list Delilah had written out for Alex. Showing it to her, he asked, “Been to the Hotel Piermont lately?”
“Look what we found!” I said breathlessly. I held up the bag with the diamond earring and said proudly, “I’m willing to bet this has a match waiting for it at the station.”
“So we have a note that corresponds to where the victim was murdered and a diamond earring that matches one we found there.”
Delilah jumped up from the couch. “No! It’s not like that! You don’t understand.”
I turned toward her and asked, “Then why did I find this earring taped to the back of one of your drawers in your bedroom dresser. You were hiding it.”
“No! It’s not what you think. My grandmother always taped her most expensive jewelry to the back of the drawer. She didn’t want to misplace an earring like that. I learned that from her. I wasn’t hiding it. I swear.”
“Where’s the other one then?” Alex asked in that forceful policeman voice he used when he thought suspects were lying to him.
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “Mary wore them one night and she only gave me one back. She told me she’d look in her car for the other one.”
Delilah’s explanation sounded iffy at best. As we stood there waiting for her to continue, Craig walked into the living room holding a pair of gloves. “Found these in the bottom of the closet behind some shoe boxes. They look like they have blood on them.”
Terror filled Delilah’s eyes as she stared at the gloves. “I’ve never seen those gloves before in my life. I have no idea where they came from. You have to believe me!”
Craig brought over the gloves to be bagged, and just then Alan Roberts stepped into the room and bellowed, “What the hell is going on here?”
Everyone in the room turned to look at him, and for a moment, it felt like we were all frozen to the floor. Then Delilah ran over to him sobbing and explaining how we were accusing her of killing a man, and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders like he wanted to comfort her.
After Hours Page 21