Detective Molino neither confirmed or denied the butterfly knife identification. “Where was this display case?”
“In Michelle’s bedroom. I brought it here for safekeeping. I was careful about fingerprints, so you may want to dust it to see what’s there.”
He stuck his head out the office door and called to one of the deputies to bring a fingerprint kit.
The deputy brought it in a minute later, a flat black kit a little smaller than a fishing tackle box. Detective Molino carefully dusted fingerprint powder on the display case with a small brush that looked as if it would make a fine blush applicator. It didn’t take any expert to see there wasn’t even a smudge of fingerprints on the case.
“I thought there’d be something,” I admitted, disappointed.
“Actually, this is something,” Detective Molino said thoughtfully. “Ordinarily an object will have fingerprints of some kind simply from past use. Because there’s nothing, not even a smudge here, I’d say the case has been wiped clean. Very carefully wiped clean.”
“Same as the knife in Michelle’s back?”
He waggled a finger at me. “Did you really think I’d fall for that and give you information?”
“Worth a try,” I admitted.
“How did you happen to find this?” He indicated the display case.
“Shirley remembered seeing it in Michelle’s bedroom. She showed it to me yesterday. Last evening she told me she thought she was on to something, and she intended to do some more looking. So now I’m wondering if she found something that somebody didn’t want her to find.”
“She was ‘on to something’ where?”
“In Michelle’s bedroom, I suppose.” Although I realized that wasn’t necessarily true.
“Was Shirley a drinker?”
“She liked an occasional glass of wine,” I said reluctantly.
“I’ll see if I can hurry them into doing the autopsy yet this afternoon.”
“To check on her blood alcohol content?”
“That’s standard in a situation such as this.”
“So you want to find out if she died by drowning, or if she was dead before she was put in the water?”
“Now, Mrs. McConnell, you know I can’t discuss matters such as that with you,” he chided, but I was reasonably certain the matter of speed on the autopsy meant murder was a strong possibility.
“Or she could still have been murdered even if she did drown,” I speculated. “If someone pushed her in and held her under—”
“Accidents happen too. More often than murders,” he pointed out.
True. “Anyway, what Pam and I were thinking is that perhaps the person who took the knives still has the second one hidden away somewhere. If it wasn’t already used to kill Shirley?”
No comment from Detective Molino about whether there was a knife wound on the body.
“Finding who has the extra knife now might be pertinent,” I suggested.
He slapped a hand against his forehead. “Brilliant! Thank you, Ms. McConnell, for pointing that out to me. I’m sure that thought would never have occurred to me otherwise.”
I gave him an embarrassed smile, and to my surprise, in spite of the facetious sarcasm in his reply, he smiled back. “Maybe you should think about a job with the sheriff’s department.”
“Maybe I should. I make coffee that’ll knock your socks off. There’s still some in the kitchen if you need it.”
“One thing, did the housekeeper have a friend who might have visited her last night?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. “You mean a male friend she may have invited in?” I paused thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. She never mentioned one. But I don’t know for sure.”
“Just checking.”
“You do think this could be murder, don’t you?”
He gave a theatrical sigh. “You never give up, do you, Ms. M.?” Then he relented fractionally. “I’ve been in law enforcement a long time. I’m a suspicious man. And then there’s your being here, of course, whose presence seems to attract murder like a dog does fleas.”
I squeaked an indignant protest. Calling my limo a “magnet for murder,” as he once had, was better than this comment about my presence attracting murder like a dog does fleas, but he didn’t give me a chance to turn the protest into words.
“You can wait in the living room with the others. Everyone’s going to be questioned.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I thought Detective Molino would have several deputies handle the questioning, but instead he took people one by one into the office and did it himself. This didn’t necessarily signify murder, but neither did it seem routine procedure for an accident scene.
He called Mrs. Steffan in first. Meaningful? Or was Mrs. Steffan chosen first simply because she was standing closest to the office?
When she returned, we all looked at her like pilgrims staring at someone who’s been to the mountaintop, but she said, a bit smugly I thought, “Detective Molino said we shouldn’t discuss the case among ourselves.”
“What does he mean, ‘case’?” her husband growled. “This is a big waste of time over a simple, stupid accident. I’m going to call my lawyer.”
“Then you’d better hurry, because he said to send you in next.”
The Stan Man grumbled, but he went. Mrs. Steffan settled on the sofa and looked rather pleased with herself, as if she’d just aced a job interview. Phyllis and Joe huddled together on the smaller love seat. Pam and I crawled around on the far side of the big living room, still picking pieces of broken orca out of the carpet.
Mrs. Steffan came over and looked down at us. “Why don’t you just use a vacuum cleaner?”
“Well, yeah, I guess we should,” Pam said, and I had to wonder why neither of us had thought of this. Because we had other things on our minds, I suppose.
“Mrs. Steffan, did you see Phreddie last night when Shirley was fixing tea for you?” Pam asked.
“I don’t remember seeing him, no. But he liked to prowl the house at night. I’ve seen him before. He’s such a wonderful kitty, so sweet and friendly.”
My first thought was, what was she doing up prowling on other nights? My second thought made me choke up. Would the person who killed Shirley casually take a cat’s life too, maybe because he got in the way or made a noise? Was poor Phreddie’s body flung in a corner somewhere?
I didn’t mention that to Pam. She was worried enough that Phreddie had simply wandered off, and I didn’t want to add cat murder to her fears. Mrs. Steffan returned to her sofa. I decided to look for the vacuum cleaner.
Pam was onto another worry now. “I need to notify Shirley’s next of kin about her death, and I have no idea who that might be.”
“Wouldn’t Michelle have a job application in her files? Or surely there’s an address book or letters or something in Shirley’s room. I remember her mentioning a granddaughter.”
A granddaughter she’d told me had to work part-time and squeeze in college classes when she could, with a snarky comment about how all Pam had to do was tap her trust fund.
“I guess I’ll have to ask Detective Molino if he’ll let me look for something,” Pam said.
I started wondering if Detective Molino was playing psychological games with us, stretching this out to see if someone snapped when we got on each other's nerves.
I started after the vacuum cleaner, but now Cindy was on her way over, her stride purposeful. She and Uri had been whispering together for some time, but whatever was on their minds, Uri was apparently leaving it up to Cindy because he was just looking out the window now.
“Could I talk to you for a minute?” she asked Pam.
“Sure.”
Cindy looked at me. Again, I took a step to leave, but Pam, still on the floor, grabbed my ankle. Cindy’s eyebrows bunched together, as if she’d rather I went away, but she didn’t actually balk. She got down beside Pam on the carpet and folded her legs into a neat cross-legged
position.
Could I do that? Not as agilely as Cindy, no, but I managed it better than I figured. Only a couple of protesting joints creaked.
“Okay,” Cindy began. “Well, umm, about that hair in the office. The one you taped to the paper?”
“Andi and I found it in a file drawer. We think someone was in the office going through things the other night.”
“Well, it’s probably mine. I guess I should explain. Then you won’t have to mention to the detective that the office had been . . . looked at.”
Looked at. Somehow a much less incriminating term than searched or ransacked.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Pam said.
“If you tell the detective someone was in the office, he might think it had something to do with the murders. Which could cause unnecessary confusion, because it didn’t have. Nothing whatsoever to do with murder.”
I picked up a word buried back there. Murders. A meaningful slip?
Pam also caught the plural, because she asked, “So you think Shirley’s death was also a murder?”
“No! Well . . . maybe. But not necessarily. The way that detective’s acting, who knows? I get the impression he’d be delighted to run us all in and put us in thumbscrews or something.”
Irrelevantly, at least to this moment, I wondered if the fact that Shirley’s body had been in the churning water of that hot tub for some indefinite period would complicate determining time of death. If time of death was important.
“Okay, you were in the office, and you dropped a stray hair in the file cabinet. You alone, or Uri too?”
“Just me.”
“And you were looking for—?”
“I wasn’t doing anything terrible. Not snooping into things that are none of our business. Not stealing anything! We just needed to find something.”
“Find something that is your business?”
“Yes! As you know, Uri invented the exercise machine we’re featuring at Change Your World, the Uri-Blaster. It’s a fantastic invention. Everyone who’s tried it gives it rave reviews.”
“But?” I put in. Because a but obviously lurked in there somewhere, even though I remembered Mrs. Steffan praising the machine.
Cindy didn’t concede a but. “Uri based his ideas . . . only based . . . on a design he brought over from Germany.”
Pam immediately caught the bottom line buried in that slippery statement. “Someone else’s design?”
“Well, partly. Uri worked for this old guy and helped him clarify his ideas, and contributed a lot of his own, too. The old guy is dead now, and he never actually built the machine. He just had this kind of . . . partial design of it. We had a prototype built before we ever met Michelle. So it really doesn’t matter at all.”
“You don’t do a middle-of-the-night search for something that ‘really doesn’t matter at all,’” I pointed out.
Cindy ignored me. “The thing is, Michelle had a copy of that old design. And with her dead, we were afraid the design papers might somehow turn up and cause . . . complications.”
Pam stated the obvious. “Because it might look as if Uri had stolen the design rather than invented it.”
Cindy didn’t confirm that, just said, “We thought it would be best simply to remove anything in her files about the design.”
“And did you find it?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“We destroyed it. I hope this won’t cause . . . complications.”
“Even if Michelle’s copy has been destroyed, couldn’t there be more copies of the design elsewhere—which could be equally ‘complicating’ if they show up?” Pam asked.
“Uri said he didn’t leave anything behind in Germany. The design wasn’t of value to anyone else anyway. The old guy’s heirs wouldn’t know an exercise machine from a can opener.”
“I see. Well, I don’t suppose it will be necessary to bring any of this up to Detective Molino.”
“Thanks, Pam. We really appreciate this. I hope I didn’t, umm, disturb things too much in the office.”
“You locked me out, you know,” I said.
Cindy gave me a blank look. “Locked you out? Of the office?”
“No, the house. When the front door was open, and you locked it after you searched the office.”
Another blank look until she said, “Oh, uh, that. I’d forgotten. I didn’t know you were outside. I’m sorry.”
“Something else I’ve wondered about,” I said. “Uri said he turned off the fog machine at the wedding. But the fog machine operator says he turned it off himself.”
“Uri did think he’d turned it off! The fog was so thick he could hardly see or breathe back there. But maybe he just . . . tightened the valve or something.”
I thought her explanation was a little lame, but it was possible Uri wasn’t deliberately lying. Maybe he really did think he’d turned the fog control off. Or it was also possible, as I’d originally thought, that he’d been murdering Michelle when he claimed to be back at the fog machine.
Cindy went back to her husband, whose back was still to us. She put an arm around his waist and reached up to whisper in his ear.
“So, what do you think?” Pam asked.
“I think Cindy doesn’t know anything about a door, open or locked.”
“I think so too. Which means . . . what? That someone else may also have been in the office that night, and that person locked you out?”
“That seems likely. Grand Central Station in there. Maybe you should install traffic signals.”
“I don’t see why Cindy didn’t just ask me for what they wanted instead of sneaking around. And why did she pretend she’d shut and locked the door if she didn’t?”
“I suppose she really could have forgotten she did it. Prowling in someone else’s files may muddle your thinking.” I spotted another sparkle of crystal and retrieved it. “Or maybe she figured if she didn’t admit she’d done it, you’d start some big investigation about who had been in the office, and she’d wind up with everyone knowing about the design from Germany.”
“But if she wasn’t the one who locked you out, who was?”
“Good question.”
“In any case, I can’t see that this design thing has anything to do with Michelle’s murder. Can you?”
“They didn’t need to get rid of Michelle to keep her from exposing it. She was planning to cash in on it at the fitness center too. And it was certainly no reason for them to kill Shirley.”
With a certain reluctance, I crossed Cindy and Uri off my list of suspects. Although I did it in mental pencil.
“I’m going to call Mike,” Pam said. She pulled out her cell phone and headed outside. I saw that she stopped and grabbed her skateboard “thinking aid” out of the closet as she went.
Cindy was next to be questioned, then Uri. The Forsythes followed, Joe asking to go in with his wife because she was so distraught.
Distraught because she’d climbed into the hot tub with a dead body? Or because she hadn’t counted on having to commit a second murder? Distraught because she was afraid Detective Molino was going to nail her?
I wasn’t giving up my suspects easily. I still figured Phyllis had been dead set–maybe literally–on Sterling not finding out Michelle was his birth mother. Though I had to admit I couldn’t see why this would also require murdering Shirley.
Sleuthing is easier on TV, where every clue is Meaningful. And you have those clever writers figuring out everything. Me, I’m just muddling around on my own, strolling along tangents and jogging down dead ends.
Detective Molino didn’t have a lot to ask me when my turn came, because we’d already talked earlier. While Pam was being questioned, I called the pastor, who said he’d be pleased to do a graveside service for Michelle. When Pam came out of the office, I gave her a number to contact the pastor.
She said Detective Molino had returned the jewels and watch Michelle had been wearing when she was killed, but not the gown, which t
hey were keeping for evidence. She’d already put the jewels back in the safe. She’d also asked Detective Molino if she could take the other items in the safe, because she might need them to talk to the lawyers. After looking the papers over briefly, he’d let her have them. She had a thick, oversized envelope in her hand.
“So he’s going to pick up and go home now?” I asked hopefully.
That hope crashed and burned when Detective Molino appeared in the living room doorway, ominous legal-looking papers in hand.
“Search warrant,” he said. “Deputy Hawks just came from the judge with it.” He handed the papers to Pam to examine.
“Look for the part that tells what they’re looking for,” I whispered. Was the missing knife on the list?
“After the search, you’ll be given a list of any items seized,” Detective Molino said in that formal you’ve-just-been notified tone.
“And what are we supposed to do now?” Stan Steffan demanded. “Sit around here all evening twiddling our thumbs while you jokers pretend you know what you’re doing?”
“This is a large house, and I anticipate the search will take most of the night. You may twiddle your thumbs as much and as long as you please,” Detective Molino said.
“We can’t go back to our room all night?” Mrs. Steffan looked at her husband, and for the first time I saw her taking on the role of big producer’s wife, ready to throw her weight around. “Stan, really, this is not acceptable.”
“I think we’ll go back to the cottage,” Cindy said. “We can manage without electricity for a night.”
“I can go on home too,” I said.
“No, no, everyone, calm down,” Pam said, although she was the one who seemed most agitated. She handed the search warrant back to Detective Molino after giving it no more than a cursory glance. “We need to stick together. I’ll call the Tschimikan Inn. They should have plenty of rooms on a week night. We’ll all move out there for the night, or however long it takes Detective Molino and his men to search the house. Andi, you can take us, can’t you?”
I wasn’t in uniform, but I clicked my heels for my chauffeur’s bow. “Your chariot awaits.”
Here Comes the Ride Page 23