“Not so fast. We need to look around in here.”
“Now? You’re shivering. Oh, all right,” she muttered. She slipped off her jacket and draped it around my cold shoulders.
I didn’t protest. I clutched the jacket around me with one hand and pointed to the desk with the other. “There’s Michelle’s file about the wedding.”
A few pages spilled out of the thick folder. A couple of legal looking agreements, lists, and lots of magazine clippings of floral arrangements and wedding cakes. From the amount of material in the file, going through it all would take considerable time.
With one finger, I pulled the top drawer of the desk open. It held neatly arranged office supplies: pens, tape, paper clips, rubber bands, staples, brass letter opener, computer paper in the back section. Nothing looked touched. But then, a particular size of rubber band probably wasn’t what the intruder was searching for.
Pam turned to the filing cabinet. She seemed reluctant to touch it, so I pulled a drawer open.
I felt a tingle of excitement. Someone had been in here! Michelle would never have left the files in such sloppy condition, pages sticking out, some bent or crumpled when the drawer had been shoved shut. And a hair! A short, dark, curly hair caught on the edge of a manila folder. I carefully extracted it, got a sheet of white paper from the desk, and laid the hair on it.
Pam and I stared at it.
“Definitely not Michelle’s,” I said.
Pam touched the neckline of her own curly, dark hair. “I guess it could be mine,” she said reluctantly.
“But you said you haven’t been in here since Michelle was killed.”
“I’d forgotten until now, but after I thought I saw Mike at the wedding I was wondering who Michelle had hired for the fog machine. So I came in and poked around.”
“Why would you look in that drawer? The wedding file is on the top of the desk.”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what I did. I was kind of . . . dazed, I guess.”
I’d decided early on that Pam had nothing to do with Michelle’s murder, and I still believed that, but this inconsistency about being in the office made me uneasy. She’d also been slow to tell me Mike had been at the wedding. What else was she holding back, intentionally or otherwise?
“Pam, I can’t help you if you give me misinformation.” I didn’t make any effort not to sound severe. Although a moment later I guiltily realized she was under no obligation to tell me anything.
“I’m sorry. But until right now I honestly didn’t remember coming in here that one time. I was so afraid Mike could have killed her.”
“They do DNA testing on hair, right?” I asked.
“Yes, but I think the root has to be attached. I looked up some information about it for my book. But it’s expensive and takes time, and it’s the same situation as the fingerprints.”
Not something Detective Molino would leap on with glee. And, as with the fingerprints, even if the hair could be identified, anyone could come up with an innocent explanation for its being in here.
Even Pam.
Pam definitely wasn’t the person who’d been prowling in here tonight, however. The hair, though interesting, probably wasn’t of much value as a clue. Although all I had to go on was Pam saying she was just now getting home. . . .
Pam, much too observant, noted my mental waffling. “You’re still wondering if I did it, aren’t you?”
“No, I don’t think you killed her. You can search the office any time you want. You don’t have to do it in the middle of the night.” And the hair wasn’t really as curly as Pam’s. I turned back to the filing cabinet.
Had the person found what he or she wanted? Or had the drawers been angrily shoved shut, crumpling some of the papers, because the sought-for paper wasn't found?
Neat labels identified the files. The top drawer covered house and property matters, records on the remodeling, bills and receipts, vehicle and health insurance. The next one, in which I’d found the hair, appeared to be health club files; the drawer below looked like mostly income tax returns and legal papers. I spotted one folder labeled Pam’s Trust Tund, another Gerald’s Estate Tax Records. The bottom drawer was about Michelle’s movie career, with some old contracts and a lot of clippings.
Although it had been done fairly tidily, which went along with the neat-freak door locking, the office had definitely been searched. Again I wondered if the person had found what he or she was looking for. Or was this a general fishing expedition just to see what might turn up?
“I suppose I’ll have to go through all this stuff sooner or later,” Pam said reluctantly. She turned and looked at the dark screen of the monitor. “The computer too.”
I reached over and touched the computer, but I couldn’t tell if it had recently been used.
“Did Michelle leave a will naming heirs and an executor? If there’s an executor, you can probably turn everything over to that person.”
“I don’t know. Probably. She was pretty well organized.” Pam sounded hopeful about this possibility. “There’s a safe in here somewhere, but I have no idea where it is." She turned in a tight circle, still not touching anything. “Maybe someone was looking for her jewelry.”
That thought hadn’t occurred to me. I’d assumed this search was connected with the murder, but maybe it was someone simply hoping to rip off the family valuables. Although murderer and jewel thief weren’t mutually exclusive.
“Did she have expensive jewelry?”
“I know Dad gave her a diamond necklace and an emerald ring. Emerald earrings too. She didn’t wear her engagement and wedding rings anymore, so they’re probably in the safe. Plenty of stuff worth stealing.”
“What about the necklace and earrings she was wearing when she was killed?”
“Detective Molino said everything would be returned after the autopsy.”
“Well, whatever they were after, we know the search was done by one of the five people here in the house. Sterling’s parents, the Steffans, or Shirley.”
“Seven.”
“Seven? You’re including you and me?”
“No, but a few minutes after you left last evening, Cindy called. She said something was wrong with the electrical system at the cottage, and they didn’t have lights. It was too late to get an electrician, so I suggested they spend the night here in the Starlight Room. It’s the one next to Michelle’s bedroom.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“You mean an electrical problem at the cottage? Not that I know of.”
So, there’s an unusual electrical event. Uri and Cindy . . . afraid of the dark? . . . rush to the house for the night. Michelle’s office is stealthily ransacked.
What does it take to create an electrical event?
Hmm.
“Maybe we should try to locate the safe,” I suggested.
“Yeah, maybe.”
She made no move to do so. I squeamishly lifted the edge of the leopard hide and looked behind it. Nothing. Also nothing behind the African masks or the painting of an African landscape.
“What’s going on here?”
Pam and I both jumped.
Shirley stood in the open doorway, plaid bathrobe cinched over blue nightgown, three pink curlers in her hair, rolling pin clutched in her hands, fire blazing in her eyes.
She lowered the rolling pin and blinked. “I’m sorry. I thought it was, uh, someone who didn’t have any business being in here.”
Shirley, unlike yours truly, obviously didn’t hide in a closet when she suspected strange activity. She came out armed for battle. I should be so prepared. Although a rolling pin isn’t exactly the kind of weapon you conceal in your bra.
I didn’t go through the whole long tale of someone being in the office and my getting locked out. Instead, without giving any reason for the unlikely hour, I just said, “We’re looking for the safe.”
She hesitated, then pointed under the desk to the area covered by the plastic mat. “It’
s down there, under the floor.”
The hesitation, I suspected, was because she wasn’t eager to admit she knew where the safe was located. Probably not part of a cook-housekeeper’s job specifications.
I slid the mat aside, revealing the line of a square in the polished floor.
“Press on the top right corner.”
I did, and the square of flooring popped up. A black metal safe lay underneath, only the door and the knob of a combination-type lock visible.
“I’ll probably have to get a locksmith to open it.” Pam sounded as if she still figured Michelle was watching disapprovingly.
“Maybe the numbers for the combination are in the desk,” I suggested.
“I doubt Michelle would leave something like that lying around. Besides, she had an incredible memory. She knew lines from movies she’d been in years ago. She’d remember the combination without writing it down.”
“Twelve, sixteen, seven, twenty-nine, nineteen,” Shirley said.
“She told you the combination?” I asked, surprised.
“No. It’s written on the underside of the center drawer. But it doesn’t look like Michelle’s writing. The seven is made that peculiar way, with a little line through it.”
“That’s how my dad made sevens.” Pam knelt under the desk and scrunched her head around so she could see the bottom of the drawer. “Yeah, it’s right here.”
“I just happened to run across it one time when I was cleaning. I clean very thoroughly, you know,” Shirley added, her tone defensive.
But what I was thinking was that her remembering the numbers also suggested a rather remarkable memory. No senior moments here.
“But maybe the numbers are something else entirely. I never tried them to see if they work.”
I wouldn’t vouch for the accuracy of that claim, but neither did I intend to question it. I thought sharing the numbers with us, rather than trying to protect herself with pretended ignorance, was generous of her. The thought occurred to me that if anyone knew anything about a knife collection tucked away somewhere, it would be Shirley.
Pam unwound herself from the awkward position staring up at the underside of the drawer. Then, as if she felt she were reaching into a snake pit, she turned the knob to the first number. Twelve. But a small commotion at the door startled us all, and Pam bumped her head on the underside of the knee hole as she hastily slammed the panel shut and scrambled out from under the desk.
Uri and Cindy stood there in matching blue-and-white shorts and T-shirts with the Change Your World logo blazoned across the back, both looking all bright-eyed and perky even at this hour. Uri was bareheaded, but Cindy wore a visored cap over her hair. I stared at her hair. Short. Dark. Curly.
A match for the hair taped to the paper.
But then, I rather tardily realized, that although Shirley’s hair was mostly gray, there were still some dark strands in back, and they, too, were curly from a perm.
“What’s this? A party we didn’t know about?” Cindy asked.
I was certain she’d seen the hair displayed on the paper, but apparently she intended to ignore it.
Uri ran in place, like some racehorse chomping at the bit, but I saw his eyes dart to the knee hole of the desk, from which Pam had so hastily exited. Had they both been prowling around in here? Were they now mentally kicking themselves for not looking under the desk when they searched the room? Or had they been innocently sleeping in the Starlight Room, and this was just a generic curiosity about this peculiar little daybreak gathering?
Cindy’d be a door locker, I decided. Yet even if they had been in the office, the search wasn’t necessarily related to the murder. The hair had been in the health-club drawer, and maybe they were just after something to do with the partnership. Although surely they could have chosen a less sneaky way to get it.
“You’re going running now?” I asked.
“We like to go at sunrise,” Uri said. “There’s something almost spiritual about seeing the sun come up while you’re running. It gets the day off to a right start.”
Shirley, ever the conscientious food provider, asked, “Will you be here for breakfast?”
“We eat only whole grains at our morning meal,” Cindy said. “No meat or eggs. And we prefer guava juice.”
“I’m afraid we’re fresh out of guavas.” Shirley spoke blandly, though I suspected that, like me, she couldn’t identify a guava if it squirted her in the eye.
“We’ll probably just grab something at Heavenly Health, then, when we go up to the fitness center. Some exercise mats are supposed to come in today. We’ll pick up the things we left in the room later.”
“I’ll get an electrician over to the cottage as soon as I can,” Pam said. “You can stay here again tonight if you need to.”
Pam hadn’t re-locked the front door behind us, so Cindy and Uri didn’t have to turn the deadbolt to get out. I shoved the drapes aside and watched them jog toward the beach. Pam looked over my shoulder. They made a great looking pair, like some glossy ad extolling the beneficial marvels of the Uri-Blaster Extreme Body Builder. The rising sun enveloped them in a golden glow.
“The family that runs together stays together?” Pam murmured.
Maybe. Although a more ominous thought occurred to me. The family that murders together stays together?
Chapter Twenty-One
Pam knelt to open the panel under the desk again, but now we had another visitor. What was this, old home week?
Phyllis Forsythe peered in the door, demure in white shorts, pale blue blouse, and white sandals. Her hair, though limp as ever, was neatly brushed in place. “I heard voices and wondered if something was wrong?”
I resisted an urge to tell her to drop that whispery little voice and speak up. And maybe use some industrial strength mousse on that hair. Then I felt guilty. She was so nice, and I shouldn’t be thinking unkind thoughts.
“Everything’s fine. I’m sorry we disturbed you so early,” Pam said.
“Oh, you didn’t disturb us. I've been waking up early. We’ve been down in the hot tub—Joe's still there.”
In spite of her immaculate outfit, she didn’t look nearly as perky as Uri and Cindy. Her eyelids sagged, and her fingers worked nervously at a loose thread on the belt loop of her shorts. Of course, if she’d been up in the middle of the night pawing through Michelle’s files . . .
Oh, c’mon, timid little Phyllis?
Timid little Phyllis who was ready to do battle with the deputies when she thought her son was threatened.
But what could she possibly want to find in Michelle’s office?
I wasn’t surprised when Pam decided the safe-opening would have to wait until later. She briskly herded everyone into the hallway and shut the door.
“Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” she said.
Phyllis and Joe Forsythe, Pam, Shirley, and I all ate an early breakfast in the kitchen. Bacon and eggs, biscuits and jam. Plain old orange juice, straight from the Minute Maid container. I wanted to ask Shirley about the possibility of a valuable knife collection around somewhere, but right after breakfast Mrs. Steffan showed up, and she and Shirley were deep into a biscuit discussion while Shirley prepared more breakfast for her.
***
Pam said she was going to call the lawyers who handled the trust fund and set up a meeting with them as soon as possible. I halfway expected her to ask me to accompany her, and I was pleased when she didn’t. I hoped it meant she was moving into a take-charge mode. Maybe I could be out of here by tomorrow.
I decided to run over to my duplex and catch up on things there. I’d talk to Shirley later. On the way out the front door I stopped at the closet and put my fur-collared sparring partner back on a hanger.
My nosy neighbor, Tom Bolton, was clipping the hedge in his yard when I pulled into the driveway at the duplex. He came to the chain-link fence and motioned me over. He was wearing shorts, in one of his usual strange plaids, with the tail of a blue shirt hanging over his pau
nch.
“Your renters moved out. Looked like they took a lot of furniture with them.”
“That’s okay. Their rent was paid up, and it was their furniture.”
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed.
I wouldn’t call Tom mean-hearted, but he’d rather give you bad news than good.
“One of the newspaper photos about the murder at the wedding showed the back end of your limo. All that murder stuff must be hard on business.”
“There were a lot of photographers around. But business is fine, thank you.”
“Pretty gruesome stuff, huh? Woman getting knifed right in the middle of a big wedding.”
I ignored his fishing for juicy details. “Your yard is looking very nice.”
“Some woman was here looking for you. I talked to her.”
As if someone looking for me was any of his business, but I managed not to say that.
“She said she was interested in renting your place.”
“Really? I haven’t even advertised it yet.”
“I think she saw those people moving out and thought it might be for rent. She was wearing one of those peculiar tent things. She didn’t look like someone who’d have good references.”
I wasn’t sure what a “tent thing” was, but I didn’t ask for a fashion explanation. “Young woman? Old?”
“Not young. But younger than you.”
Good ol’ Tom. Call ’em like he sees ’em.
“I asked if she wanted to leave a number where you could call her, but she said no.”
“Maybe she’ll come back when I advertise, then. I should be home within a few days.”
“Your lawn needs work. It’s getting scruffy looking. And you ought to do something about that dead limb out back. It’s a hazard.”
I gritted my teeth. The limb wasn’t visible from Tom’s yard. He’d have had to go around back of my house to see it. Too bad the limb hadn’t fallen on him.
No, no. WWJD. People had talked at Bible study about using that What-would-Jesus-do question to guide your actions. What would Jesus do about a nosy troublemaker like Tom Bolton?
Here Comes the Ride Page 18