“And about her being involved in a murder?”
“I don’t know, Lina. It looks that way.”
“How can it be? It’s impossible!”
I wanted to talk openly to her, Gretchen’s oldest friend, but didn’t know if I could trust her not to blab to Mandy or someone else. I needed to see her in person to gauge her attitude and her integrity. I looked out the window, past my maple tree. A misty drizzle had settled in. The whitewashed church appeared gray.
“I know. I agree. It seems incredible,” I said.
“Gretchen can’t be a killer!”
Listening to her was like reliving my own doubts and disbelief. “Lina, by any chance, are you free for a cup of coffee?”
“Sure. The alarm system is in, and I don’t have to go to work until eleven thirty.”
It was just after ten. “How about meeting at the Sunshine Café in half an hour? That’s near your store.”
Another moment’s silence. “I can get there by then. Thank you, Josie.”
Downstairs, I told Cara and Fred that I was going to run an errand and would be back by noon. I drove through thick fog, praying Lina had news.
Lina was sitting at the counter, her hands circling a steaming mug as if she were absorbing its warmth. Her shoulders were bowed.
“Hi, Lina,” I said as I approached. “Shall we grab a booth?”
She jerked up, startled. “Oh, hi. I didn’t hear you come up.”
Once we were sitting across from one another, I was able to see that her Ginevra Benci face was lined with—what? Worry, maybe. Or perhaps she was merely distracted. The waitress came and took our order and was back almost immediately with my coffee and more hot water for her tea.
“I’m so frightened,” she whispered as she gave the tea bag a dunk. “It’s Mandy.”
I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
“What about her?” I asked.
“I think she knows something. I don’t know what. It’s about something I overheard last night. She was talking to Vince.”
I wondered why Lina was making me drag the story out of her, sentence by sentence.
“And?” I asked.
She took a sip of tea, then said, “She and I were at her house, just hanging out, listening to music, you know? Vince called and asked to come over. He brought Mandy a framed stained glass window for the hall. He said it was an antique. Anyway, while he’s hanging it from the top of the window, Mandy asks him in a kind of whisper if he still thinks she shouldn’t tell. She didn’t know that I could hear her—I’d gone into the kitchen to refill my wineglass, but I could hear every word. Don’t you think that she must know something that relates to either Gretchen or the murder or the break-in at your place?”
“She could have been referring to anything. Maybe she and Vince are planning on eloping.” I shrugged. “Did you speak to her after Vince left?”
She shook her head. “I went to bed before he did.” She sighed and gazed out the window. “I don’t know if I should tell the police or just mind my own business. Mandy’s a good friend of mine. If she knows something that might help find Gretchen . . .” Her voice trailed off. She turned freshly moist eyes in my direction. “But if Gretchen will get in trouble, maybe I should leave well enough alone. Except that it’s not well enough, and I know it. I just don’t know what to do.”
“We need to find Gretchen no matter what. She might be in real trouble, Lina. If you know anything that might help, you’ve just got to tell. You’ve just got to.”
“If I tell, the police will talk to Mandy, and it’ll come out that I told on her, and Vince will go ballistic.”
I nodded. She was right. “The police are aware of his volatility,” I said, selecting my words carefully. “They’ll be discreet.”
Her lips came together, and for a moment she looked defiant. “I was the only other person there. There’s no way the police can hide where they got the information.” She shook her head. “I’m seeing Mandy in about half an hour at work, and I feel guilty and sad and bad already.” Her voice caught, and she angrily wiped away tears. “I’m scared, Josie. I’m scared for Gretchen, and I’m scared for me.”
“Would you like me to call Detective Brownley for you?”
She wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “It doesn’t seem fair for me to get you involved, too.”
“I’m glad to do anything I can to help. If I talk to Detective Brownley before you do, she’ll be prepared when you talk to her.”
Lina looked unconvinced and didn’t respond.
“She’s smart, Lina, and she’s cautious. She’ll investigate fully, but in a nonconfrontational manner.”
“She may think her manner is nonconfrontational, but Vince won’t. He thinks everything is confrontational.”
“He’s on probation, Lina. He’d have to be crazy to turn nothing into something. Even if he finds out—which I don’t think he will—it’s a classic ‘he said, she said’ situation. Detective Brownley will investigate around the edges, seeking out what Mandy might have been referring to without letting her know that she’s looking into anything at all. What she won’t do is say to Mandy, ‘Lina said you said.’ I mean, why would she? Mandy would respond, ‘Lina misunderstood. Or she misheard. Sorry, but I didn’t say anything even remotely like that.’ Then Vince will back her up and it’s two against one. I’m telling you, Lina, it just won’t happen that way.”
She was listening hard, wanting to believe me, wanting to help Gretchen.
“I’ll talk to Detective Brownley and explain everything,” I said. I felt confident that the rapport Detective Brownley and I shared was substantial enough for me to offer her word with confidence. “She’ll understand your concern. I guarantee it.”
“Okay.” Lina sighed again. She looked as if she bore the weight of the world on her shoulders. “I hope I’m doing the right thing.”
“You’re doing the only thing.”
She glanced at her watch. “I have to go,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “Thank you, Josie.”
I smiled a little. “It will be okay. You can trust Detective Brownley.”
She nodded and left. I watched her thread her way through parked cars, cross Bow Street, and enter the store. I paid the bill, left the tip, and stepped outside. The temperature was dropping, and the drizzle had thickened into something close to freezing rain. It was bone-chillingly raw. The sky was solidly gray. The storm wasn’t passing. I was glad I’d found a parking space close by, and once I was inside my car, I turned the heat up high.
Vince’s black Jeep passed me and double-parked about a hundred feet from where I sat. After a minute, Mandy stepped out of the car, holding her coat closed tight to her throat. She jogged into the Bow Street Emporium, and Vince turned into Islington.
I followed him, not on purpose but because I was going the same way.
I was driving to my office and had planned to take the back roads. I didn’t know where he was going. We turned right onto Greenland.
He didn’t get on the highway. Neither did I. We both stayed on Greenland.
Even though my being behind him was happenstance, I stayed in the right-hand lane, out of his direct line of vision, and at least two cars back. I didn’t want to get on his radar. He wouldn’t believe that I wasn’t tailing him, and I could only imagine his reaction if he spotted me.
He was heading inland, so he wasn’t going to his Rocky Point job site. I could have peeled off, but instead I decided to stay with him. He turned onto Route 33 heading south, then merged with 108, and then we were in Exeter. He turned onto Oak Street, and I sailed on past, glad to be away from him. I turned around and wove my way back to my office.
I was almost there when I slowed to a near stop, then pulled onto the shoulder and set my blinkers. Disparate facts clicked into place like a jigsaw puzzle: the hand-painted light fixtures and the stained glass window Vince gave Mandy, the glass doorknobs, Phil’s wife, and Oak Street, and then I realized
that there was a better-than-even chance I’d just discovered who’d killed Morgan Boulanger—and how to prove it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I
called Detective Brownley.
“What’s up, Josie?” she asked.
“I need to tell you—” After so many dead ends, false starts, and failures, I finally sensed that I was onto something—and that, with any luck, my realization would lead us to Gretchen. “I think I know who the killer is. There’s too much to tell you on the phone, and it’s too important to delay. I’m about half an hour away. Can we meet?”
After a short pause, she said, “Why don’t you come here? I’ll set up the video so we can talk.”
Her words brought back more than one uncomfortable memory of other interviews with the police. “Of course,” I said, my voice sounding surprisingly unruffled. “I’ll call Max Bixby, my lawyer, and see if he’s available.”
Another pause. “Good. I’ll expect you here in half an hour.”
Max was leaning against the Rocky Point police station door, protected from the rain by the portico, gazing into the eastern sky. Just seeing him boosted my confidence and made me smile. Max was kind and gracious, and I trusted his judgment completely.
I parked as close to the building as I could and dashed through the now steady freezing rain to join him. He stepped forward to greet me.
Max was tall, probably an inch or two taller than Ty, and thin, lean like a runner. Under the leather duster he wore with flair, I saw a brown nubby tweed jacket and a green bow tie. He wore dark brown slacks and cowboy boots. His leather cowboy hat sported a green feather.
“Hey, Max. Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
“Glad I was available.” He smiled and pulled open the door. “Ready?”
I nodded without enthusiasm and walked into the station house. Words Emily Dickinson wrote came to mind:
If in that Room a Friend await
Felicity or Doom . . .
“Thanks for coming in,” Detective Brownley said, extending her hand to me, then to Max. “Good to see you again, Max.”
“You, too, Claire.”
“Shall we head to the back? I got us set up in Room One.”
She turned left and headed down the corridor. “I see it’s still raining,” she said as we walked.
“Cats and dogs,” Max said. “Have you heard the forecast?”
“Yeah. It’s supposed to stop overnight, but we’re getting a bucket-load before then.”
Detective Brownley opened the door to the depressingly familiar interrogation room. I sat with my back to the cage, a nasty-looking, single-person-sized, wire mesh cell. Ty had told me years ago that it was used to control unruly guests. The room was unchanged since my last visit. The table was wooden and scarred. The chairs were cold metal and uncomfortable.
Now that I understood that this was a formal police interview, I knew what I was supposed to do. It was my job to wait until I was asked a specific question and then answer it without embellishment.
Max, relaxed as ever, sat next to me, opened his briefcase, and pulled out a lined legal-sized pad and two small bottles of water. He unscrewed the cap on one and slid it over to me. “Talkin’s thirsty work, little lady,” he said in an undertone. “Thought you might want to wet your whistle now and agin.”
“Thank you, Max,” I whispered, touched beyond reason.
He winked at me.
Detective Brownley pushed the RECORD button and spoke into the microphone. She gave our names and the date and time, then said, “Thanks for coming in, Josie. You called me this morning and said you had information about the murder that occurred in Gretchen Brock’s apartment, is that correct?”
“Yes . . . well, sort of . . . I mean, I don’t know that . . . what you said . . . that it’s related to the murder.” I paused to gather my thoughts and choose my words. “I called because I had information that, to my mind, cast doubt on Vince Collins’s alibi. I don’t think he was where he says he was at the time that man, Morgan Boulanger, was killed.”
I glanced at Max’s profile, worried that I was overexplaining. Max once told me that one-word answers to official police questions were good. He sensed that my eyes were on him and turned his head to look at me. He nodded reassuringly. Whew, I thought.
“Why don’t you tell me about it,” Detective Brownley said, leaning back in her chair, at ease and ready to listen.
I took a deep breath. “It was the stained glass that got me thinking. I had a cup of coffee with Gretchen’s friend Lina this morning. She mentioned that Vince had brought an antique stained glass window over to Mandy’s last night.” I looked from Detective Brownley to Max and back again. “Where did he get it?” I asked rhetorically. “From the project he’s managing. The company he works for tears down old houses to put up new ones. Vince doesn’t own them. He’s an employee. Don’t you see? If he’s taking architectural remnants, well, that’s stealing.”
Detective Brownley looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked, “Besides the stained glass, what items has he allegedly stolen?”
“Another stained glass window I bought this morning, the two light fixtures in Mandy’s mudroom and Gretchen’s hallway, glass doorknobs, and antique locks. Probably more.”
“So I can understand the context of what we’re discussing, how much are these things worth, would you estimate?”
“The stained glass window I bought would sell at auction for about four thousand. I don’t know about the one Lina mentioned—I haven’t seen it. The two light fixtures, probably about three hundred dollars each. The other items are worth less than fifty dollars each, but there are scores of them, so it really adds up. I should specify, that’s retail. He probably got a quarter of that amount, maybe less.”
“I’m a little confused. What makes you think he stole these items?”
I nodded. “It’s circumstantial. Let me explain. I was driving to Phil’s Barn in Exeter when Vince’s Jeep passed me, coming from that direction.”
Detective Brownley started to speak, and I held a hand up to stop her.
“I know, I know, there’s nothing illegal about driving in Exeter. It’s not that. It’s the timing. Phil said they acquired the doorknobs on Wednesday—after he went home sick at lunchtime. He apologized for making me take another trip. I’d already had the antique locks picked up, and he said if his wife hadn’t made him stay home with his cold, he could have saved us a trip.” I shrugged. “Look at the time line. If what I’ve been hearing on the radio and reading in the paper is right, Vince’s alibi just got busted. He was at Phil’s on Wednesday, sometime after Phil left for the day.”
Detective Brownley asked, “What time did he get to Phil’s?”
“I have no idea,” I replied.
“Seems like asking Phil a few questions is in order,” Max said.
“Thank you, Josie, for reporting this. What else did Lina tell you?”
I glanced at Max, and he nodded. “Before I answer that, I need to communicate her very real, and I think completely reasonable, concern. She overheard a conversation between Mandy and Vince, and she’s scared to death that he’ll find out that she’s the one who told you about it, and he’ll explode the way he does sometimes. Since only the three of them were present, if they get wind of it, they’ll know who told you.”
She nodded. “We’re pretty deft at investigating so no one knows our sources.”
“I know you are, and that’s what I told her.”
“Okay then. Point taken. So, what did she overhear?”
“Mandy asked Vince if she should tell.”
“Tell what?”
“Lina didn’t hear, and she says she doesn’t know. We talked about how it could be anything. Maybe Mandy’s pregnant and was asking Vince if he thought she should tell. Maybe Mandy’s got a new job. There’s no way to know, but I thought Lina ought to report it, in case it does, in fact, relate to the murder or Gretchen or my break-in.”
; Detective Brownley tapped her pen for a four-beat, then said, “Okay, then. We’ll check it out.”
“Anything else we can tell you while we’re here?” Max asked, slipping his pad into his briefcase.
She turned off the recorder. “Nope, that about covers it.”
“Anything you can tell us?”
She shook her head. “Thanks for coming in, Josie.”
She walked us out, and at the front door she shook my hand and said, “You hear anything more, you let me know, okay?”
“Sure.”
Outside, under the overhang, I said, “I think it was smart to have you join me.”
Max nodded. “It can’t ever hurt to have your lawyer present.” He stared out over the dunes toward the rain-shrouded ocean. “I get the sense that there are many layers to this investigation.”
There are many layers, I kept thinking as I drove back to work: two murders, a missing woman, and a break-in; too many people with fake IDs; a thief and, maybe, a liar. There are many layers of deception.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
C
hip Davidson called as I was walking into my upstairs office with the bag containing my deli lunch.
“Josie,” Chip said, and I could picture his smiling eyes and appealing grin and neon-blond hair. “I’m glad I got you. How ya doing?”
“I’m good, Chip. You?” I replied, glancing at the phone, ready to jot down his number. The display told me it was private.
“Fine, thanks. Listen, Josie, I just heard about Gretchen. I’m completely shocked. Do you know anything about it? Is it for real that she’s a suspect in two murders?”
“I’ve heard the same thing,” I replied. “Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
“One thing, Josie. I’m her friend, not the cops, so if she needs some help, well, you can tell me, you know?”
He was openly suggesting to me, a relative stranger, that we conspire to hide a fugitive. He was willing to lie. My father had warned me about people like him: “Once a liar, always a liar.” I chased the memory away. Chip was waiting for my response to his offer to help Gretchen.
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