“They had work visas, and they applied for asylum. But the application was denied. Benny married a young refugee woman and they have a child—a little girl.”
“She was born here?” I glanced up.
“In this building.”
“I didn’t think they could deport people if they had a family member who was a U.S. citizen.”
“They keep one parent with the child. Benny doesn’t want his wife separated from her, so she’s been naturalized.”
I sighed. Ship sailed.
“Why hasn’t he? Can’t he take a class or something?”
“It’s more difficult than the politicians would have you believe.”
“Why is that?”
“I haven’t exactly studied up on it, but he says the requirements are way beyond taking the class. That he tried many times and failed. And then they started with the hearings.”
“What hearings?”
“They sent him a court summons to go to Los Angeles—all the way on the other side of the country—to appear before a judge and plead his case. He bought a plane ticket and went. When he got there, they told him his hearing had been held the day before and he’d missed it, and he was scheduled for deportation.”
“He missed it?”
“They say he had the date wrong. He swears he didn’t, but he didn’t keep the letter, either.”
I put one hand to my forehead. “Okay.”
“Now his mother is sick, and he’s supposed to report to L.A. in a week to be sent home—I did read about that. Look it up. He’s facing years in a prison camp, and that’s if they don’t kill him. His mother is dying. I don’t want anyone to know he’s here. They have to find him to kick him out of the country, right?”
“There’s no one else we can talk to?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t begin to know who.”
“Let me see what I can find out.” In all my copious spare time. But what else was I going to do?
She smiled, gratitude oozing from every pore. “Thank you.”
“Sure. Can you tell me what the heck all this has to do with the Ellingers?”
She nodded. “Benny was hiding in the med room that day.”
“The one where the woman was shot?”
She nodded. “Behind two shelves in the corner. The police were gone before he came out. No one but Dr. Lessing and I saw him.”
Leaping. Louboutins.
I forgot to breathe. “Did he shoot her?”
“I’m not sure he’d know how to work a gun if you gave him one. He’s the nicest man. And he didn’t say anything—not to anyone—for days. I didn’t tell the police he was in there because I didn’t think he knew anything that would help. He said the door was open, and Stephanie was hiding behind it, peeking out around the corner. Then she got shot. And now I’m afraid they’ll arrest him for keeping quiet and the INS will send him off to prison or execution.” Her eyes welled with tears again.
I kept control of my voice, though I’m not sure how.
“But he does know something. What did he see?”
“Another man with a rifle. In the empty room across the hall.”
Jesus, was Aaron going to owe me.
“Did he recognize him?”
“No. But he took a picture with his phone. He didn’t think anyone would believe him, and he says he likes the Ellingers.”
I rolled my head back and shot a silent thank you to the heavens. “Did you recognize the shooter?”
“The picture is…not good.”
“But there was another gun on the floor.”
The impossible. Caught on camera. Thank God for cell phones. My brain whirred forward in twenty directions. From a phone, it should have a date and time stamp, and a GPS location. Aaron would have to admit Ellinger wasn’t guilty and find this other gunman. Other gunman who had a clear shot at the victim.
There were seventy hows and what-ifs zinging around my head. The stickiest ones: how’d he know where to be to get a clear shot? How’d he go unnoticed getting in and out? And how in the world did he know about Tom?
I tapped a foot and turned my attention back to Alisha.
“I need the photo.”
“You can’t tell the police where you got it.”
“Confidential source only.” If I played it right, I wouldn’t get tossed in a cell for obstruction. Probably.
She nodded and reached over to squeeze my hand. “Thank you.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You’re willing to try, and I appreciate that.”
I squeezed back. “In that case, you’re welcome.”
It took fifteen minutes of back and forth with Benny’s limited English, but I left the hospital with a grainy, dark photo in my text messages—and a thousand pounds on my shoulders.
I wanted to help the Ellingers. Finally, I had something that would, at least a little. Hostages were better than murder, both in court and on Tom’s conscience.
And now there was this poor man who needed to stay here with his family. Alisha had dropped heavy doses of pleading into the conversation we had with him. He ran a successful restaurant, paid his taxes, took care of his family. But some spreadsheet somewhere said he had to leave, and whoever held the stay or go stamp couldn’t see the person for the paper.
Government makes very little sense to me a lot of the time.
First things first, Nichelle.
Six days.
The two murders were connected. Though someone had taken huge pains to make sure it didn’t look that way.
I’d stopped to ask Tom if anyone knew about his plans that day, but he was sleeping such that I wondered if he had a narcotics stash. I’d go back later.
Killer first. If I could untangle this mess, surely the INS would be little more than a bump in my morning.
I rushed to my desk and wrote up the trial day one, plus a follow on a serial flasher at a rest stop on the north side of town. I emailed both stories to Bob and dug a cable out of my desk to connect my phone to my laptop.
Pulling up the photo, I moved it to the computer, crossing my fingers under the desk as it loaded.
Dammit.
If anything, the image was grainier and harder to make out than it had been on Benny’s phone.
I stared at it ’til it blurred into a big black-brown blob, not sure even Larry’s wizardry could save my bacon this time.
“Worth a shot,” I muttered, copying the image file to a thumb drive and hopping up.
I found my favorite photographer in front of his bank of giant computer monitors, clicking through photos of a fall festival parade.
“Sometimes I wish cute kids and animals on the front page didn’t sell so damned many papers,” he said without turning around. “I get tired of having to hunt people down and get releases for the kids’ pictures. Used to be, people were excited to see their kid in the paper. Now they want to sue someone over every damned thing.”
“The times they have a-changed,” I said, stopping next to his chair. “Were you talking to me or the universe in general?”
“I can always hear you coming from the other side of the building. It’s the shoes.” He looked up and grinned. “You find out any more about our old friend Elizabeth?”
“Only that she’s not a murderer.”
“Why is it we’re not saying much about what’s going on here? The headline is usually the prize in this game, but you’ve had like three on this case in a whole week. Hell, you’re not even giving up the guy’s name. Charlie Lewis is running some bullshit every morning, and we’re sitting on information. Did Bob tell you to back off?”
“This whole thing is fishier than a trawler just back from a three-month salmon run,” I said, pulling out
the thumb drive. “I’m not losing to Charlie, because she’s rehashing the same nothing over and over. I have the exclusives with the shooter and his family from inside the hospital, so Andrews is mostly staying in his office. I’m not printing a damned thing I don’t have to until I have it nailed down.”
“That’s a luxury you don’t get too often.”
“And I’m taking full advantage.”
“Hope you don’t get burned by some jackass on Twitter.”
“Girl Friday is the thing I’m worried about, but so far she has less than Charlie.” And from the increasingly hostile tone of her posts, she wasn’t happy about it.
“What’s on that thing? Picture of your murderer?” My eyes popped wide and Larry laughed. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Actually, I think it might be,” I said. “But it was taken with a crappy cell phone from far away in the half-darkness.”
He rolled his eyes so far I couldn’t see anything but white. “I was kidding, Nichelle.”
“One photo restore for all the marbles.” I waved the drive in his face. “Want to be the hero? I’ll interview you and everything.”
“Seeing my name in the paper isn’t the thrill it once was,” he said dryly, snatching the memory stick out of my hand. “But I do love a challenge.”
He pulled up the image. Aw, hell. It looked worse on his screen than it did on mine.
“You’ve gotta be kidding.”
He spun the chair to face me.
“Sorry.”
He lifted his Generals cap and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “You’re lucky it’s a slow week and I like you so much.”
I patted his shoulder. “Thanks, Larry.”
“Don’t thank me yet. If I can do anything with this, it’ll be a miracle.” He turned in the chair and shook his head. “I can tell you right now, I’m not getting a face out of that.”
“Of course not.” Why would it be easy? I smiled. “I have utter faith.”
Larry chuckled. “Kinda sorry it wasn’t Elizabeth. Bob might’ve fought you for the Telegraph’s seat at the trial.”
I grinned. “Me too, but I just don’t see it. Whoever that is,” I gestured to the screen, “killed Stephanie Whitmire. Whoever killed her killed Maynard. I’m sure of it.”
“Why?”
“Money.”
He snorted. “What else is new?”
“Money or sex. Almost every time.”
With Elizabeth Herrington crossed off my suspect list, I was pretty sure this one was the former.
I was halfway to Carytown, thinking early arrival for this particular meeting could be a good thing, before I realized what I was missing.
Elizabeth planned Maynard’s funeral. If she didn’t kill him, she was my best in.
Way to catch up, Nichelle.
Clock check: creeping up on four.
I made an illegal U-turn on West Broad and sped toward the river.
31.
Scratching the surface
I smiled and waved at Jeff, who was chatting with a tall man in an expensive suit, and ran for the elevators before he could ask where I was going or when I wanted to get coffee.
I knew Elizabeth was Maynard’s neighbor, but upstairs, I found a choice of three doors. I crossed my fingers and picked the middle one. No answer.
I tried the one on the left. Light footsteps stopped on the other side of the door. I smiled at whoever was looking out the peephole.
After a long minute, the latch slid back and the door swung open.
“What do you want?”
It was Mrs. Eason—but the sweet old lady act she’d given Jeff was nowhere in sight, the face in front of me shrewd and suspicious.
I took an involuntary step backward. So much for surprise. Or creating a comradeship. Her expression said she’d just as soon spit on me as tell me what time it was.
Regroup. Parker. What would Captain Charisma do? Pasting on a bright smile, I stepped forward and put out a hand. “I’m Nichelle. I was hoping we could talk.”
“You’re Bob’s golden girl. Why the hell should I want to talk to you? That bastard made the last few years of my career miserable and then fixed it so I couldn’t get work covering sand beetles in Timbuktu.”
My temper bubbled. Deep breath. My job today wasn’t to defend Bob. It was to make her talk.
“It looks like things have worked out pretty well.” I waved a hand to the luxe surroundings, keeping the smile and the sugary tone.
“No thanks to the Telegraph.”
“Really? The press pass into society events isn’t part of what got you here? Just between us girls of course.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”
I returned the stare. She might not be the nicest person I’d ever met, but she wasn’t stupid. And she knew the business. So what was in this for her?
If Maynard was really her friend, seeing justice done might get me in.
I let my face fall, leaning forward with a conspiratorial tone and a glance in the direction of the crime scene tape still hanging from Maynard’s door. “Honestly? The cops have squat, and it’s been more than a week. I’ve been around crime and courts long enough to know every day that goes by lessens the chance they’ll catch whoever did this.” I left a long pause, looking around the hallway. “Which means whoever it was will still be around.” A bit of fear for personal safety didn’t hurt.
Her eyes widened as she took a long look up and down the hallway. She clamped a hand around my wrist and yanked me into her apartment, shutting the door and slamming two locks home behind us before she turned to me.
Recovering my balance, I rubbed my wrist. She was strong for such a little thing. It was hard to see through the layers of designer clothes, but I had a feeling the figure I’d written off as frail was more wiry. Interesting.
She waved to the long white sofa and I took a seat. Perching on the mahogany and horsehair wing chair across from me, she twisted her legs around each other like a length of rope. I stared a bit longer than I should’ve, fascinated at the way they wound around. There’s thin, and then there’s circus-y.
“I worked crime at my first job,” she said. “Three-stoplight town in Northern Maryland. The cops didn’t ever seem to know much about what was going on—there was one murder while I was there, and they let the guy get away. It sounds like the big city guys aren’t much smarter. I don’t give one damn about helping Bob Jeffers, and I’ll throw a party the day the newspaper goes under—but I can’t sit by while David’s killer walks free.”
“My cops are generally pretty smart guys, but this has them stumped. Have you spoken to them?”
“Of course. I told them everything I could think to tell them about David. He never talked much about his work, but I gave them lists of people he knew. People who might have been jealous.”
“You don’t happen to still have a copy of those lists?”
“Sure. I can print it for you. Most of the names are probably searchable in the newspaper’s society archives. Though I understand they did away with the section altogether when I left.”
“They rolled it into Lifestyles and Features. Cutbacks are such fun. But I’ll ask around. Thanks.”
“So what else can I tell you?”
No forced entry.
“Who had a key to Dr. Maynard’s condo?”
She didn’t flinch. “I do. I think his assistant did. And the building management has a key to everyone’s door.”
Hmm. Didn’t Kyle say the assistant had a fit about them searching the office?
“Did he have a habit of leaving the door unlocked?”
“Nope.”
“Friends? Did he see other doctors socially?”
“Of course. They see each o
ther outside work just like reporters do.”
What if he’d told someone else in the field what he was working on? “Anyone he might have confided in?”
“There were four of them who went for drinks and poker every Thursday night. David, Dr. Shoyner, Dr. Reyes, and Dr. Vine.”
I jotted the names down. Worth checking into.
“You said he didn’t talk about his work much?”
“I found it horrifyingly depressing.” Her tone was so dismissive it set my teeth on edge.
Not that he didn’t talk about it. That she didn’t want to hear about it.
I nodded, tapping my pen over top of the names of his doctor friends. It was something I hadn’t had when I walked in here. That plus the assistant could equal time well spent.
Hauling in a deep breath and blowing it out slowly, I stood. “Thanks so much for your time, Mrs. Eason. My condolences for your loss.”
She nodded. “You don’t want to know anything else?”
“Is there something else I should know?”
“He was paranoid about someone stealing his research. Became obsessed with computer security in the past three months.”
“Why did he think someone would want to steal his research?”
“To corrupt it, he said. He was a fine man. Brilliant doctor. But a bit crazy.”
“Since he ended up dead, I’m not so sure I’d rush to that particular judgement.” I checked the clock on the mantle and turned for the door.
It was ten after five, and I had an appointment to keep.
I pulled into the back lot at Cary Court at five twenty-eight, wondering if I was brilliant or stupid for showing up. On one hand, whoever my mystery caller was, they knew something because they’d used Maynard’s name. On the other…parking lot meetings with mysterious sources haven’t exactly gone well for me in the past.
My hand drifted to the back of my skull and I sucked in a deep breath, backing the car into a space and locking the doors, leaving the engine running. I wouldn’t make the mistake of getting out this time. And it was still daylight, though fading fast, but there were plenty of people in the shopping center just a few feet away.
Cover Shot (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 5) Page 25