“I suppose. I touch all sorts of paper all the time. We use card stock for promotional postcards and produce them in-house. Except I don’t generally touch the raw material. I delegate.”
He nodded. “Transferring fingerprints is called ‘spoofing.’ You roll a receptor material over the prints to pick them up, then roll it again over the receiver.”
“What’s a receptor material?” I asked.
“Play-Doh. Paraffin wax. A hard-boiled egg.”
“You’re saying someone rolled a hard-boiled egg over my fingerprints, then took that egg and rolled it over the love note?” I asked, incredulous.
“Something like that, assuming you’re telling the truth.”
“Unbelievable,” Max said.
“How can fingerprint evidence ever be admitted in court?” I asked.
“You don’t convict someone on fingerprints alone.” He leaned forward, his eyes peering into mine with such ferocity it was as if he were trying to see inside me. “So … since it now seems evident that someone is, in fact, trying to frame you … who is it?”
I paused, my mind tangled by conflicting emotions, unable to sort through what was real and what I only thought was true. I felt as if I’d been dumped into the middle of a stormy sea on a starless night and told to swim for shore. Ellis and Max were waiting, monitoring my expression, alert for clues that I’d recognized the handiwork of a devil.
“What makes you think it’s personal?” I asked, mortified. “Maybe I’m just a convenient target.”
“Who would think you’re a convenient target?”
“No one I know.”
“It has to be someone you know.”
“Why?”
“How else could they have gotten your prints?” he asked.
“That’s true, isn’t it?” I asked, skeevied out. “It’s disgusting. Literally, I feel sick.”
“Think, Josie. Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Keep thinking about it,” Ellis said. “Someone set you up. We need to know who.” He turned to Max. “I’m going to ask Josie to help with an interview. Do you need anything else from me to wrap up this part of the investigation?”
“No, assuming I have your assurance that you won’t ask her any further questions outside my presence.”
“You have it,” Ellis said. He turned to me and smiled. “Will you help me, Josie?”
I looked at Max.
“It’s up to you, Josie. Ellis can’t ask you anything else unless I’m with you. As a citizen, if you can help him, you should.”
I turned to Ellis, still reeling, still raw with mingled fear and relief. “All right.”
Ellis thanked me and said he’d be back shortly, meanwhile, I could wait in his office. Max stood up and patted my shoulder. I stayed seated while Ellis escorted him out, reminding myself to breathe slowly, to calm down.
Someone took Play-Doh or wax or an egg and captured my fingerprints. Someone hated me. Or considered me expendable.
I took in a to-my-toenails breath and exhaled slowly. Instead of asking unanswerable questions, I focused instead on thinking about something that offered the promise of providing useful information. I tried to recall more about the Winter Festival, about who might have taken my phone.
Specific moments stood out. A funny remark from Ty. Mimie’s spectacular bundt cake. Seeing Suzanne for the first time. Thinking how beautiful Gretchen looked in green, how it brought out the emerald sparkle in her eyes, matched her creamy complexion, and complemented her red hair. Laughing at a joke Zoë told, I couldn’t remember what, and a myriad of other moments, the small pleasures of an evening out among friends. Other details had slipped away, leaving in their wake nothing more than an overall impression. I’d had fun, and that was that. No way would I ever be able to remember who’d been near my bag.
When Ellis returned, his mood had changed again. He’d put on his let’s-get-it-done hat, informing me that Zach Moore and Andrew Bruen had been picked up for questioning. He was ready, he said, to interview Andrew Bruen, and was hoping I would help.
* * *
Ellis’s plan was to approach Andrew Bruen as an ally in the murder investigation, not a suspect.
“I’ve already set the groundwork,” he said, “getting him comfortable in the interview room, letting him know about the videotape, and so on. Darrell is with him now. He goes by Drew, so that’s what I’ll be calling him.”
“Was he angry?” I asked.
“Frightened more than angry, I think. You know how it is. Some people, men especially, when they get scared, they get loud. I think he’s pretty calm at this point, but we’ll see. I told him I need his help with some antiques questions. Zach is with Detective Brownley. I know they haven’t been talking long, but so far, he still won’t say a word about that secret. What I’m hoping you’ll do is get Drew talking about the contents of that storage room. I want to know why he was bidding on it in particular. So far he’s not answering. He’s just saying he wanted to give abandoned-storage-room auctions a whirl and that one looked good. Which we might have believed until you connected him to Zach.”
“It might actually be a coincidence,” I said. “Maybe Zach mentioned that one of his patients had a storage room locker, and it got Andrew thinking.”
“It’s possible.” He shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
Ellis and I walked into Interview Room Two together. I nodded at Darrell, took my customary chair with my back to the cage, and smiled at Drew. Ellis asked Darrell to activate the video recorders and stated who was present for the record.
“I don’t think you’ve ever met Josie Prescott, have you, Drew? You saw her, though, at Crawford’s.”
“Hi, Drew,” I said.
“Josie is an antiques expert,” Ellis explained, “an appraiser. I asked her to join us to help me figure out whether the locker Henri Dubois won is somehow related to his murder. Since you were bidding on it, I figure you must know something about the contents.” He held up his hand, anticipating Drew’s objection. “I know you said you bid on it because it looked good, and that’s it, but I’m thinking there must have been something you saw that got you interested. Maybe you’d heard something and forgot to tell me.” Ellis smiled, man to man. “Happens to me all the time.” He turned to me. “Josie, how about you? What did you think about that locker?”
“I saw that mahogany table and I was hooked.” I turned to Drew and smiled. “What made you decide to bid on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you a collector?” I asked.
“Just cars.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind?”
“Mustangs. I like vintage Mustangs.”
“My dad had a red 1966 convertible,” I said. “I loved that car.”
“Did he rebuild it?” Drew asked.
“No. He bought it from a guy like you.”
He nodded. “I sell about two or three a year.”
“Is that your primary job?”
“Yeah. Sort of. I do body work at Best Bodies over on Ipswich Drive. He lets me use his tools and stuff and keep my parts there. It works out.”
That explains the grease stains, I thought. Drew’s a car guy. “Sounds perfect for you. Were you thinking of adding a little income by buying abandoned storage lockers?”
“No,” he said, then reconsidered his answer. “Maybe.”
“Have you bought any others?” Ellis asked.
“No.”
“Did you know that unit had belonged to Lester Markham?” Ellis asked.
“I’d heard something about it.”
Ellis nodded. “From Zach.”
“I guess.”
“When we ask him about Les Markham, he won’t say a word. He’ll only say that he promised he wouldn’t tell. Did you make him promise something?”
Drew shrugged and looked down.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s time t
o release him from the promise.”
Drew didn’t reply. He kept his eyes on the table. From his expression, he could have been considering anything from ways to avoid war to whether he felt like pizza for dinner.
“You guys live together?” Ellis asked, changing the subject.
“Sure. With our mom, too, until she died about a year ago. Now it’s just us.”
“Oh, I hadn’t realized you were brothers.”
Drew shrugged again. “My dad died at Heartbreak Ridge on Grenada was when I was three. He was in the army. My mom married again a couple of years later, and that’s Zach’s dad. It didn’t work out. He walked when Zach was one.”
“I hear Zach’s a real good worker,” Ellis said, changing the subject again.
“The best. Never late. Never skips a shift. Takes everything seriously.”
“And I bet he doesn’t get half the appreciation he should,” Ellis said.
“You got that right. They pay him squat for doing what’s got to be one of the worst jobs in the world, taking care of those old guys. I mean, he changes their diapers, you know? I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. But he likes it. He likes his patients.”
“From what I hear, they appreciate him a lot.”
“Management does, I guess. I mean, the pay isn’t great, but he gets regular raises, you know? Vacation pay, health insurance, everything. It’s the patients that are the problem.”
“Lester Markham didn’t appreciate him?” Ellis asked.
“Five years Zach took care of him, and what did Zach get when he died? Besides an old computer, more like a paperweight, if you ask me, a big fat goose egg.”
Ellis shook his head sympathetically.
“It’s not like I’m greedy,” Drew said. “It’s not like we’re stealing.”
It wasn’t a glib answer, but he had the words ready. I got the impression we were hearing his side of an argument he’d had with Zach, probably more than once.
“You’re just trying to get what’s due,” Ellis said, nodding empathetically.
“Zach will never say a word, that’s just not his way. If I don’t stand up for him, no one will, and he’ll be taken advantage of forever.”
“You’re a good brother.”
Drew looked down. “I promised Mom I’d look after him.”
“And when Lester talked about how much stuff he had in his locker, it only seemed right that Zach get something for all his trouble.”
Drew met Ellis’s eyes for a three-count, then nodded. “Yeah. We didn’t do anything wrong. I tried to buy it, that’s all.”
“It just sold for more you expected.”
“Exactly.” He lowered his eyes again. “I let Zach down. I took all the money we had.”
“You did the best you could,” Ellis agreed, “which is more than a lot of people do. Was it the posters that you were hoping to get?”
“Yeah. Old movie posters. Les told Zach that one of his dad’s posters sold for fifteen thousand dollars just a few years ago. Zach was real impressed that his dad drew paintings that sold for that much money. Les said he had four of them and one from some other artist. He got that one, according to Zach, from a student of his, and it was worth even more. I figured if his dad’s posters were worth fifteen thousand dollars each a few years ago, they had to be worth at least that much now. That’s sixty thousand dollars. The other one was worth more, I figured maybe as much as twenty thousand dollars. I was looking at eighty thousand dollars, a fortune.” He shook his head. “It was worth a shot.”
“How did you know about the auction?”
Drew opened his mouth, then closed it. “I kept my eye out for notices.”
“Zach knew Les’s locker was at Crawford’s,” Ellis said. “He knew the room number.”
“Sure. Les mentioned it a couple of times. When the newspaper ad came out last week, well, there it was.”
“After Les died, you closed his bank account, didn’t you?”
Drew’s eyes opened wide and he froze.
“The bank has security cameras,” Ellis said.
He didn’t mention that he hadn’t seen them, and wouldn’t be able to until the subpoena came through.
“It was for Zach,” Drew whispered.
“That’s what I figured,” Ellis said, his tone communicating interest and understanding. “How much did you get?”
“About eighteen hundred.”
“Where is it now?”
“Mom set up a retirement account for Zach. An IRA, it’s called. I put it in there.”
“Why did you close the account? Why not just empty it out?”
“If it’s closed, they don’t send statements.”
“Got it. That way, no one would be alerted that an account existed.”
Ellis looked at me and raised his eyebrows, silently asking if I had any other questions. I shook my head.
“You’ve been very helpful, Drew.”
“Can we go now?” he asked.
“Soon. We’ll need to talk some more about that eighteen hundred dollars.”
He nodded, resigned. “I want to see Zach.”
“Let me see what I can do.” Ellis stood up. “Josie, you can come with me. Darrell, you can turn off the machines. You want a soda or something, Drew?”
“Yeah … thanks.” Looking like a puppy who’d chewed his master’s shoes and knew he was in trouble, Drew repeated, “I did it for Zach.”
* * *
“Does Drew have an alibi for Henri’s murder?” I asked Ellis as we headed to the lobby.
“You know I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with you, Josie.”
“Does he?”
“Josie!”
“I bet he was working on a car. He got mad at losing the locker, went and blew off some steam by working, then went back for his deposit. Other people would have seen him working.”
“Lots of guys coming and going at a body shop like that. Regulars who might notice whether Drew was there or not.”
“Am I right?” I asked. “He’s got a good alibi?”
“What’s your point, Josie?”
“You didn’t ask him about the murder, so he must be out of it.”
“Maybe I just didn’t ask him yet.”
I shook my head. “Drew is safe … what about Zach? He must have an alibi, too. You heard what Drew said. Zach never misses a shift.”
“And that sort of alibi is easy to confirm,” Ellis said. “He clocks in and out; he’s with half a dozen patients; he’s seen by nurses and other aides; it’s about as good an alibi as you can get.”
“So, they both are okay?”
“You’re a piece of work, my friend.”
I smiled and play-punched his arm. “Do you think Zach’s secret is that he knew Drew took money from Les’s account?”
“That would be a logical assumption, but until he tells, we have no way of knowing.”
“He’ll never tell.”
“Probably not.”
“What’s going to happen to Drew?”
“My guess is that it will depend on the family. If they want to prosecute, we’ve got a confession.”
“You should let it go.”
“He stole money from a dead man.”
“For his brother.”
“You’ve spoken to Markham’s relatives, his sister and nephews. How do you think they’ll feel?”
“Empathetic.”
“I’ll talk to the prosecutor. I suspect that if he returns the money and apologizes, he might walk away from this one.”
“Give him a break, Ellis. Zach needs him. Let him offer to return the money. It’s all in how you broach the subject. I think they’ll follow your lead.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you’re a good egg, Josie.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I was starving. I stopped at a sub shop en route to my office and picked up a turkey sandwich.
The wind chimes jingled as I stepped into the front office,
surprised to see Cara at her desk.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “It’s almost seven … what are you doing here?”
“Welcome back!” Cara said with her comforting and familiar smile. “I’m writing a letter to my cousin and thought I’d finish it here, in case you needed me for something.”
My eyes filled and I closed them tightly for a moment. “Thank you,” I managed, then turned to Fred, reading something on his monitor. “Hi, Fred. Everything under control?”
“You bet,” he said, flashing a quick grin. “Smooth sailing on all fronts.”
“How are you holding up?” Cara asked me.
“Medium to good. Are there any cookies left? That would definitely give me a much-needed boost.”
Cara smiled. “I made a fresh batch.”
“You’re an angel,” I said.
She removed the lid from a blue plastic tub. The aroma, rich chocolate, with a hint of spice, nutmeg, maybe, brought me back to my childhood, to the days when I’d come bounding in from school, and milk and fresh-baked cookies would be waiting for me in the kitchen. I took a cookie.
“Thanks, Cara. These smell unbelievably delicious.”
“You know my theory—cookies cure all.”
“A theory we’ve proven to be true for years now. Thanks again, Cara. I’ll be upstairs.”
I hurried toward the spiral stairs and had just started up the steps when Hank came skittering across the concrete, meowing imperatively, clearly asking why I hadn’t called for him, why I hadn’t let him know I was back.
“Hi, Hank,” I said. “I’m having a hard day.”
He rubbed my leg as we climbed the steps.
“Thank you, baby. I love you, too.”
I sat at my desk, relieved as always that my staff was able to work independently. Nothing required my immediate attention, which meant I was able to sit quietly and eat and think. Hank asked for, then demanded, a cuddle.
“In a minute, Hank,” I said.
He meowed, Now. Now. Now.
Once I was situated, I invited him into my lap. I did face petties with my left hand while eating with my right, and he began to purr.
Ty called, and as soon as I heard his voice, I felt a sense of calm come over me, as if I’d been steering a ship through rough waters and had finally reached safe harbor.
Lethal Treasure: A Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery (Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries) Page 24