Liv nodded.
Giving the thickened mixture a measuring glance, Harriet said, “It’s done and let’s rest this case. Your dad loved you as I do. You steam over my inaccuracy with dates; I hate the way you stir the porridge. Live with it. Now, turn off the burner, cover the rommegrot so the top stays soft and I’ll go out to check the salmon.”
“The last time we had rommegrot was September 14th, an overcast Saturday. I wore coral,” Liv said as she switched the gas to ‘off.’
Harriet chuckled. “And the pudding was perfect. Remember that, too.”
****
“Ice,” Parker said as he watched a hunk of ice, a bergie the size of a piano, flowing south on Wrangell Narrows. Chilled by an early morning breeze, Parker zipped his coat and picked up his pace. “Now that we’ve read over Tilly Grant’s ledgers, I’m interested in the cannery’s ice sales to the fishermen, quantity as well as the mode of payment.”
Nilson hurried to match Parker’s stride. “You’re thinking Olson sold ice and kept the money? I’m not sure that would add up to much.”
“From what I understand, only the big fishing boats make their own ice; all the rest buy it. We’re talking tons of ice.”
At The Smiling Coho, Parker pushed the store buzzer, which also rang in Liv’s apartment. Through the glass of the store’s front door, he watched her descend the stairs at the same time she put on an Australian-type raincoat, oiled for shedding water. She opened the door, a little out of breath from rushing, and her face pinked up. But this morning he couldn’t study her, admiring her smooth, shiny hair or watching her clever, slim fingers button up her coat, set her collar just so, and push her hood up over her head. Not if he was to keep his distance. He conjured an all-business tone. “Thank you for joining us, Liv. We wouldn’t have bothered you during your writing time unless it was important. Tilly won’t let us talk to her without your presence.”
Her eye contact with him was so brief that Parker almost missed it. “I don’t mind. You have questions about her accounting, I’m guessing,” Liv said as the three walked abreast toward the cannery.
“Yes. We’ll start with Tilly, then ask the same questions of Robert Halley. You won’t have to stay for our visit with Halley.”
“Have you noticed any changes in the way Ms. Grant has spent money lately?” Nilson asked.
“You mean big purchases.”
“Trips. Jewelry. Dinners out, more than usual,” Parker said.
“No.” She chewed on her lip. “We shopped together in Seattle, but she didn’t buy much those two times. No new wardrobe or recent vacations, that I know of.”
Nilson and Parker stepped aside to let Liv lead the way, single-file, on the raised walkway to the cannery. Liv took her time, taking care to land on the composition roof tiles with every step. Parker was second-in-line, poised to help her if she caught a boot heel in the gaps between the planks. Nilson trailed behind Parker.
“What’s my role with Tilly?” Liv asked.
Nilson made a dismissive sound. “Try to lower her hostility level.”
“You know her, Liv,” Parker added. “Watch what questions make her uncomfortable, when she’s hedging, how her statements about events don’t jibe with your reckoning of them.”
Liv came to the big glass doors of the cannery office and turned around. Parker was so close to her he could smell her perfume and see a few drops of rain on her face. His urge to thumb away the moisture was so strong, he made himself place both hands on the door, jostling her a bit in the process. Her eyes opened wide for a moment, then she smiled, probably guessing his discomfort. Then she said, “Well, special agents, I don’t relish playing secret lie catcher with my friend while I watch you bad-cop her. But we all want the same things: to find the person who shot me as well as the person who might have ended Everett Olson’s life. Let me go in to see Tilly first. You knock on the door in five minutes,” she said without checking for their assent.
Parker opened the front door for Liv and ushered her in. The receptionist, smiling nervously, lifted the section of the counter hinged for entry so Liv could walk through the opening to Tilly’s office.
She paused at Tilly’s Do Not Disturb sign: “I WANT TO BE ALONE WITH MY NUMBERS. DO NOT ENTER!” and knocked on the door. “Tilly?”
No answer.
Liv frowned and with a “what’s up?” gesture to the receptionist, knocked again and said “Tilly?” louder.
She turned the knob and opened the door slowly. “Tilly?”
Parker’s trouble-antennae went up. She knew we were coming at 8:00. He shouted, “Don’t go in, Liv!” but she barged in anyway and was well into the room by the time Parker wrenched up the hinged counter section and sprinted for Tilly’s office.
“Oh, hell,” Parker said at the sight of Liv on her knees next to Tilly’s body.
“Call for an ambulance,” Liv shouted.
He yanked his cell phone out of his pocket and made the call, tortured all the while by the sight of Tilly sprawling on the floor in a pose he recognized from his past.
Liv turned from Tilly’s body to Parker, her agonized expression stopping his heart, the same way life seem to stop for him that day two years ago when he watched Bernadette die.
****
Oh, Tilly. Why?
The three-word refrain took root in Liv’s brain and wouldn’t go away the whole time Parker administered CPR, tag-teamed five minutes later by two paramedics. Ivor served as gatekeeper. “This could be a crime scene, people. No one comes in except the paramedics. Period.”
Ivor watched with Nilson, Liv, and Parker as the paramedics struggled to bring life back into Tilly’s limp form. Liv prayed Tilly would jump up, snap her gum and say “Pah! I was just messin’ with you!” But this was a rag doll version of Tilly, arms and legs flapping unnaturally as they worked on her, eyes open and mouth stretched wide, seeming surprised that her heart wouldn’t pick up a beat, her lungs refused to suck air, and her bladder released, filling the air with the odor of urine, mixed noxiously with Tilly’s tropical air freshener. When the paramedics packed up their bags and cleared out of the room, Liv began to cry.
Parker led Liv away, but not before she saw the bottle of pills on Tilly’s desk, open, lying on its side, long white capsules spilling out, pointing to the body on the floor. As Parker sat Liv down in Robert Halley’s office, she said, “Did Tilly commit suicide over what was in the ledgers?”
“We don’t know if this is a suicide, Liv. True, we don’t see marks on her body, but we didn’t find a note, either.”
Halley, white-faced so his fish-thick lips glowed red, paced behind his desk. “Dammit, I should have checked on her when I came in this morning.” The secretary sobbed unceasingly in the main office. After Parker locked Tilly’s door and Ivor and Nilson went off to corral and question witnesses, he took Liv’s hand. “You okay here? Want me to have someone take you home? I could call my dad.”
Liv shook her head. “I’ll stay. I can help.”
“No, I—”
She closed her eyes as dates tumbled into her consciousness, each one begging to be valued and sorted like kindergartners competing for the attention of their teacher. When Liv gasped and opened her eyes, Parker kneeled next to her chair, his expression full of concern.
“What’s wrong, Liv? Are you going to be sick?”
Pinching the skin on her forehead and closing her eyes, Liv said, “No. No. I have to think. This is all wrong. Tilly. She…she…we…I.”
“I’m calling your mother,” Parker said, rising.
Liv grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back to his knees. “No. Take me back to her office so I can think about Tilly.”
“You’re in shock, Liv. It won’t do any good to see her.”
She stood up, abruptly, flicking away tears and startling Parker so much that he teetered on his knees before he rose. “I have to get these things out. The stuff in my head.” She covered her ears with her hands to stop the throbbing. “I have
all these dates. They’re important, I think. But I have to go to Tilly’s office to get them out. Paper. A pencil.” Liv zeroed in on Parker’s eyes. “Help me. Please.”
Parker’s expression showed alarm, but Liv shook his concern away. “Now,” she demanded, as she thought of her mother’s surprising idea Liv could have been a lawyer. “We go in Tilly’s office together. I can help you with dates.”
“Dates?”
All of a sudden her kindergarten of dates lined up perfectly in her mind and her consciousness gave an audible sigh. Good. She’d been able to order events instead of spewing a tsunami of rambling detail to poor, unsuspecting Parker.
“Yes. I’m good with dates. You need me.” She took a breath and wiped away tears, steeling herself for a second sight of Tilly’s still form lying on the floor. Taking Parker’s hand, she added, “And I need you.”
****
Fuck protocol. Parker walked with Liv to the door of Tilly’s office, feeling the stares of Halley and his secretary. Liv seemed to be talking nonsense, but she was in some kind of zone that gave him hope, for the first time. And she said she needed him, words that, in the passionate way she said them, extended way beyond today. He was about to turn to Liv and ask her about her concept of forever when Ivor and Nilson rushed over.
The chief planted himself in the open doorway and said, “No one enters the office until I’ve had a good look around.” He cleared his throat. “Tilly might have been here all night. Her ‘do not disturb’ sign was up when the receptionist arrived at six a.m., and she knows better than to bother Tilly when she’s got the sign on her door. Night security says she could have come in any time without him seeing her. Only a morning shift this time of the year, so no employees were around. She’s got a key and she can disarm the security system in her office without the guard knowing because it’s an old system without tracking technology. She could have had a light on in her office, but because her window faces the water, security wouldn’t know it was on.”
“Hasn’t been dead long; no rigidity,” Nilson said, angling his head to view the body.
“Why on the floor like this?” Parker asked.
Ivor looked at the body and its distance from the office exit. “Going for the door, maybe. Going for help? Changed her mind?”
“Going for help,” Liv said, firmly as she gazed at Tilly’s body. “She didn’t kill herself.”
The three men stared at her. Ivor asked, “And you know this because…?”
“On October 18th a rainy Friday at exactly 9 p.m. in my store, Tilly told me she was never going to work in her office at night again in her life.”
Liv gazed at Tilly’s window wall, where she had an expansive view of the marina and Wrangell Narrows. “She described this office at night as horrid. In the daytime she could twirl around in her chair for a look at the Narrows, and the skylight she made them put up there…” she pointed, “…brightened the room most of the work day. But at night, she was a prisoner in this room, a canned fish, the stink overwhelming.”
Parker nodded. “She told me she hated the smell of the cannery.”
“Dissatisfied with her job. Cause for suicide?” asked Ivor.
“On November 3th at noon in my apartment, Tilly explained she’d failed at her friendship with me because she went to bed with Tuck before I’d made up my mind about my own feelings for Tuck.”
“Despondent and ashamed. More reasons for suicide,” said Nilson.
“She figured out my friendship with her was a sham. I take blame for that. But I do not believe she committed suicide and I’m convinced she came to this office last night against her will.”
“The ledger. The accounts. Something about our meeting with her this morning,” Parker said.
Liv nodded.
“Another support for the suicide,” Ivor said.
Shaking her head, Liv said, “I couldn’t sleep last night, so by 5:00 a.m., I decided what the hell, why not do some writing instead of stare at the ceiling. I didn’t turn on my desk lamp because it’s cozy at my desk that way, my lighted screen and me.” Parker squeezed her hand. “Tuck walked up the stairs to his apartment at 5:30 a.m. It was dark outside and raining hard, but his porch light was on so I could see it was Tuck. When he opened the door, he hesitated and turned toward my window, but I’d quickly shut my computer so it couldn’t reveal my face. I’m pretty sure he didn’t catch me looking.”
“You think that’s evidence he had a part in this?” Nilson pointed to Tilly’s body.
She looked out the window. “I’ve been watching Tuck’s comings and goings for two years. The only time he ever came home that time in the morning was last year, February 6th, at 6:00 to be precise. If you wish, I could write down all the dates and times of his comings and goings…the ones I witnessed from my desk.”
“Jesus,” Ivor said.
Nilson frowned. “Impossible.”
Liv turned to Parker. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help sooner. I didn’t…I couldn’t…I’m not used to...” She hunched her shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
Parker moved his eyes from Tilly’s body to the pills then back to Liv. “We’ve got to get you out of town. Now.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I’m all right,” she assured him as she settled in front of the Halley’s computer. “Bob will stay with me. Go.” When Parker wouldn’t leave, she said, “I need to concentrate on dumping these dates out of my head in a semblance of order.” She paused. “You do what you have to. I’m fine here.”
“You seem…” he hesitated, “…you seem unhinged.”
“I am, and I’ll stay that way unless I get this,” she pointed to her head with a whirling gesture, “on paper.” Liv sat at Bob’s computer, hands poised over the keyboard. “I need time. Go.”
Parker walked to Tilly’s office where crime scene tape was draped across the closed door. Ivor stood with his arms crossed, guarding the door. Nilson ranged nearby, stiff with tension.
“What’s up?” Parker asked.
“I’ve explained to SA Nilson this is my scene in my jurisdiction. I work it first,” Ivor said.
Nilson frowned. “The crime is related to a Federal investigation.”
“We don’t know that, yet,” Ivor answered. “I’m used to working the grid alone and quietly so I can think and I don’t miss anything. Once I’m finished, you guys can have at it.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’ll compromise the scene,” said Nilson, his face ruddy with frustration.
Parker held up his hand to Nilson. “You and I will re-interview witnesses while Ivor works the room. Give us the high sign when we can come in, Ivor.” He glanced into Halley’s office to see Liv typing steadily, her expression a study of concentration.
By noon, Liv was printing copies, Nilson had a notebook full of witness comments and Ivor allowed the coroner to take away Tilly’s body. Parker surveyed Tilly’s office one last time, saddened by her fake palm tree standing sentinel and something tropical puffing from the plug-in air-fresheners. The room was bright and didn’t smell fishy at all. He shook his head at a life lost in a place carefully ordered for shutting out ugliness. “She didn’t kill herself,” Parker mumbled, closing Tilly’s door and re-hanging crime scene tape over the front of it. “Liv’s right.”
Bob Halley sat at his desk, shoulders hunched, devoid of energy after cancelling the day shift and sending all of his office employees home. Parker said, “We need to talk to you.” He gestured for Ivor, Nilson, and Liv to sit in chairs circled around Halley’s desk. “Let’s discuss the ledgers.”
“I trusted Tilly. You’re telling me I shouldn’t have?”
“We have a theory we can’t test out until you show us accounts from the years before Tilly worked for you.”
Halley rose from his chair and walked to a file cabinet behind his desk. “How many years back?”
“Depends. You said the cannery can process more fish today than ever before.”
“Correct. Machines even mor
e advanced than the Iron Chink make the gutting, cleaning and cutting easier than ever, costing us fewer man-hours. Plus we’ve got a growing demand for fish in the U.S. including flash-frozen cutlets for sushi. And, of course, we’ve learned how to maximize the pet food market.”
“But you also said that fish aren’t as plentiful in some years as they are in others.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve decided to focus on ice sales to fishermen.”
Halley hands stilled on the top of the cabinet.
“Cash ice sales,” Nilson added.
“Tilly was your accountant for ten years. We’ll take the ledgers for ten years previous to her employment.”
After Halley piled old ledgers in front of Parker, Ivor held up a black object. “What the hell is that?” Halley asked.
Ivor foisted the thing in Halley’s direction. “It’s a bug. I found it under Tilly’s desk.”
“You think I listen in on my employees? Jesus Christ. What do you take me for? I have no idea how that thing got there.”
Parker stood to get a better look at the device.
“One of yours?” Ivor asked with an edge in his voice.
“We did not tap Tilly Grant’s office. I recognize the device and we do use them, but we didn’t place that one.” Parker glanced at Nilson.
“We’d get creamed for using an illegal wire-tap,” Nilson said. “Can’t help that the stuff we use is the same brand civilians can get a hold of.”
“Better take a good look at Tilly’s apartment, Ivor. Who in the hell would be listening in on Tilly?” Parker turned to Bob Halley. “Susanna?”
Halley’s face went rigid with worry. “What about her? You think she was taping Tilly because of Everett?”
Parker said, “Maybe. Maybe not. You have to step in, sir. She won’t talk to us, but we know she’s hiding something. We must use your influence on her.”
He went back to the rummaging. “Mine field,” he grumbled.
“She doesn’t respond to scare tactics, but maybe if you dangle a sizeable amount of money in front of her, she’ll tell us what we need to know.”
Lie Catchers Page 15