The instant he was out of the building, I set the pies down and circled the front desk.
The apartment building still ran on an old system, which meant things were written down on Rolodex cards as opposed to a computer system.
Unfortunately for me, it took three minutes to find Angie McConnell in a system that was sorted neither alphabetical or by date of arrival.
Finally finding her name, I muttered the room number. “One fifty-seven,” I said to myself, as I grabbed the master key from behind the desk and ran toward the stairs, knowing I had less than ten minutes to go through the entire place.
23
Now I had never been the type of person to do this sort of thing. Breaking into someone else’s home and rifling through their belongings had always struck me as wrong, and for good reason. I hated the idea of people going through my things. After I had come back from the dead, one of the things that irked me the most was the idea that all my things had been rifled through and all my unspoken secrets had been exposed to the world in the form of my stuff.
Under normal circumstances, I would never want to do that to another person. I wouldn’t dream of it, but these weren’t normal circumstances. These were abnormal, to say the least, and that says a lot coming from a reincarnated pie maker.
Also, if Angie McConnell was the one who stole the flash drive from the pie shop, then hadn’t she already done the same thing to me? Hadn’t she rifled through my stuff and stolen something?
If it wasn’t her though, if there was another reason behind her lies, then I would definitely owe her an apology. And she would get her apology…in the form of an email or something.
I made my way up the stairs, huffing and counting the seconds until I was sure Richard would return with a boatload of boring home movies and an intense desire for me to like them.
Not only did I need to get out of this room before he got back, if I wanted to save myself the torturous experience of listening to Richard relive and embellish his best days over a slice of pumpkin pie cheesecake, I needed to be clear of the entire building.
I made my way to the apartment, slipping the master key into the slot and pushing the door open.
I expected to find a lot of things in this apartment, mementos of Angie McConnell’s life of detective work and various other accomplishments. She had probably been valedictorian, prom queen, head cheerleader, and whatever other clichés perfect people have to check off their bucket lists before they considered themselves fulfilled.
At the very least, I imagined there would be boxes. She had just moved, after all, and only the most anal retentive of people (like me) would have been completely unpacked so quickly.
Still, I was stunned when I run into the room to find…absolutely nothing.
The studio apartment was completely bare of everything, save for a mattress on the floor covered with a homemade patchwork quilt, and a desk with an open computer sitting on it.
Okay. So this would be easier than I thought. If the drive was here, it could only be in one place.
I ran to the computer, picking it up, checking all the ports, and finding it empty.
Drat. I was really hoping it would be there. Setting the computer down, I turned my attention to the desk. I pulled at the drawers. One by one, I found all of them empty. Pulling at the last drawer, I found I couldn’t open it.
It was locked.
Well, that’s promising.
I sat on the ground, level with the drawer. I pulled it hard again, giving it one last try, and finding it unmoving.
Sighing, I did what I always did when things got out of hand. I tried to think outside the box.
Pulling the clip from my unruly red hair, I bent it onto itself and stuck the pliable metal into the lock.
I hadn’t done this sort of thing in quite awhile either. The last time I’d picked a lock was in junior year when Peggy and I needed to get back into her house during a sleepover without letting her parents knew we’d snuck out in the first place.
Still, I was hoping it was like riding a bike. One pull, one push, and then it would click and just like that-
I heard a pop, and the lock turned. I pulled the drawer open.
Maybe I should try riding a bike next.
I pulled the drawer open, hoping I would find the flash drive. Instead, I saw a smartphone sitting face up, vibrating as a text rang through it.
I picked it up. Tapping the screen and reading the text.
It came from someone named Cooper and read:
McConnell. Tell me you got the flash drive.
The breath caught in my throat. I hadn’t found the drive, but my instinct had been right. Angie McConnell was responsible for stealing it from the pie shop, and now it looked like I was close to having proof of that. All I had to do was show Darrin, and together we could confront her with it, and hopefully get to the bottom of what happened to Lionel, giving Wanda the peace she deserved.
“Drop it!” A voice sounded from behind me.
I froze, hoping against hope that it was only Richard, that he had returned and was heartbroken to find I had other motives for coming here than just to watch him warm a bench, however spectacularly he might have done it.
I knew better than that though. The voice was too feminine. It was too hard and driven. It was too aloof and, after having my dog for as long as I did, I could tell that it was just too McConnell.
I turned to find my dog’s great, great granddaughter staring at me. She had a gun in her hand, pointed at my chest, and the look in her eyes told me she didn’t mind the idea of having to use it.
“I said drop the phone,” she said, breathing hard.
I wasn’t backing down that easy, not after all I had been through. “You have a lot of explaining to do,” I growled.
“Me?” she balked. “You’re the one who was just caught breaking and entering.” Her eyebrows danced upward. “Oh yeah. I forgot. You, Rita Redoux, are under arrest.”
24
“Get those cuffs off of her,” Darrin said as he strode into the interrogation room of the Second Springs Police Department and saw me sitting at the table, cuffed hands on my lap.
I felt like I was in some kind of parallel universe. Growing up, I had seen my father bring so many people in this room, clasped with handcuffs. As a kid, I was never actually allowed to watch what happened in here and, since I never got to be a police officer, much less a detective, this room had remained a mystery for a long time.
I never thought that, when I got in it, it would be as a suspect. I never thought I’d be on the wrong end of this table, my hands bound and a redhead staring back at me from the mirror.
“Are you really going to jump to her defense about this?” Angie asked, narrowing those irritatingly beautiful eyes at him in disgust. “She broke into my home, Darrin. She destroyed my property and then tried to steal from me. Those are offenses, and I don’t plan on forgiving them unless a judge does.”
Beads of sweat began to form at my hairline. She was going to press charges. I was going to have to stand before a judge in open court and try to explain the reasoning behind why I charmed my way into a near complete stranger’s apartment, picked the locked on her desk, and attempted to leave with her cell phone.
Something told me the truth wouldn’t go over too well.
“I didn’t destroy anything,” I answered. “I just picked the lock. I’m sure it’ll still work.”
“Now is not the best time for you to be splitting hairs, Rita,” Darrin said flatly, before turning to me. “You can pick locks?”
There was a small bit of admiration in the admonishment that would have made me smile in any other circumstance.
“Skills of a misspent youth,” I explained, shrugging.
“Enough of this,” Angie said, glaring from one of us to the other. “I couldn’t care less about how charming your banter is. You committed a crime, Rita, and you’re going to pay the price for that.”
My heart sped up, thinking ab
out the aforementioned payment. I wasn’t exactly the ‘jail’ type. Growing up as the daughter of a sheriff, I was never shielded from the sorts of things normal kids might have been. I knew what criminals looked like. I knew how they acted and, more than that, I knew I never wanted to be one.
Here I was though, cuffed in an interrogation room, fruitlessly blowing unruly red hair from my eyes and hoping against hope I might be able to find a way out of this.
I wasn’t the only one with something to hide though. The entire reason I’d gone into Angie’s apartment in the first place was because I thought I might find some stolen merchandise in there myself, and I had.
I might be the one cuffed, but I didn’t start this, and I wasn’t going to let her get away with it.
“You seem big on justice, Angie,” I said, my jaw tensed.
“It comes with being a cop,” she answered, shaking her head at me judgmentally.
Darrin shot me a look, as if to warn me to keep my mouth shut. I couldn’t blame her. I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him what I’d found in Angie’s apartment, and he probably thought I was up a creek without a paddle with this one. Antagonizing the arresting officer probably didn’t look like it was in my best interest. But, if I had learned anything since coming back to life in a body I didn’t recognize, it was that looks could be deceiving.
“That’s very altruistic of you, Angie,” I answered, standing up, my hands still bound in front of me. “Too bad you can’t back it up.”
“Sit back down,” Angie said, moving toward me with gusto.
I flinched but found Darrin between us. He threw his hands out as if to block us from each other.
Turning to me, he said, “Sit.” There was no room for contestation in his tone. So I did as he asked.
“This woman is out of control, Darrin,” Angie said, pointing at me. “I mean, I always knew you liked them feisty, but this is ridiculous.”
A flush rose on Darrin’s face, but it might have been out of anger, given what he said next.
“What I do or do not like is not the point, Angie,” he said tersely.
“It’s the only point, Darrin,” she spit back. “Otherwise, why would you let an obviously unhinged woman have free range over a town you are sworn to protect?” She shook her head. “Rita Redoux is not a detective. She’s not a police officer, and she obviously has no regard for the the law. She needs to be dealt with and, if you won’t do it, then someone has to.”
“You’re one to talk!” I shouted and almost stood again, but one look at the way Darrin’s head snapped toward me convinced me to keep my seat.
“Rita, you need to let me handle this,” Darrin warned.
“No Darrin,” I answered. “You need to listen to me.” I took a deep breath. “I know I shouldn’t have broken into her apartment. It was wrong.”
“It was illegal,” Angie interjected.
“I had my reasons,” I answered.
“Reasons have nothing to do with the law,” she answered.
“They do in this case,” I contested. “Or, at least, they should.” I cleared my throat and continued. “Something was stolen from my pie shop the other night, something I had no idea was even there in the first place.”
“This hardly matters,” Angie said.
“I went looking for it,” I continued. “I knew what you told me about Angie, Darrin, about the way she’s been keeping things from you.”
Angie’s face lost color as she looked from Darrin to me and back again.
“What have you been saying?” she asked, obviously hurt and a little shaken.
“You were let go, Angie,” he answered flatly. “You were fired, and you didn’t tell me.”
“That isn’t true,” she answered, shaking her head.
“I talked to our old captain,” he said. “He told me what happened.”
“He told you what he thought happened!” she shot back.
“I’m tired of these lies!” Darrin answered. “You and I were partners, Angie. I thought we were friends, but you’ve been lying to me ever since you got here.” He turned to me. “Was it there? Was the flash drive in her apartment?” Darrin looked at me hopefully.
“No,” I admitted, and watched his face fall. “But she has to have it, Darrin. I found a hidden phone and read a text she received from a man named Cooper. He asked her about the flash drive. It can’t be a coincidence.”
Darrin walked toward me, brandishing his keys. He took them to my cuffs, freeing me from them.
“What are you doing?” Angie asked, glaring at him.
“I’m letting her go,” he said, nodding at me.
I grabbed my wrists, rubbing the place where the cuffs had been, thankful Darrin knew me well enough to know I wasn’t a danger even without them.
“She broke the law,” Angie said defiantly.
“So did you,” Darrin answered. “That flash drive wasn’t your property. It belonged to a man whose murder is still unsolved. So, I’d like you to tell me the truth about whether or not you stole it and-if so- how you even knew it was there in the first place.” He shook his head. “I’d also like to know who Kaitlyn is.”
Angie blinked hard. “I can’t do that.”
Darrin grunted loudly in frustration. There was more hurt and betrayal in his face than I had ever seen in it.
“Are you serious right now, Angie?” he asked, blinking so hard it looked as though he was trying to keep tears from forming. “Are you really involved in whatever Lionel got himself mixed up in? How could that even be? You were a good cop. You cared more about the law than anyone I’d ever met in my life. You were an inspiration to me. I looked up to you, and now…”
His voice trailed off, and he shook his head.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he repeated, demanding her to spill her guts.
“Sorry Sheriff,” she said, holding her ground. “I can’t.”
Something about her tone and word choice struck me as strange. There was regret in her voice too, and she didn’t say she wouldn’t tell Darrin the truth. She said she couldn’t, like someone or something was holding her back.
I narrowed my eyes as the pieces began to click together in my head. Darrin was a good cop and if he was so taken aback, so surprised by the idea of Angie turning to the wrong side of the law, then maybe there was a reason for that.
Maybe I wasn’t seeing everything. Maybe there was something that would make all of this make sense, but what? What reason would Angie have for stealing incriminating evidence of illegal activity and hiding it from the town sheriff?
My mouth quirked to the side as it came to me. She didn’t come here to work for him. She came here to work, and he happened to be here. She was working through him.
“That’s it,” I said, gasping and standing up again. “It was all a ruse. Kaitlyn’s a fake name, one you were assigned with. You,” I said, pointing to Angie with my newly freed up hands. “You’re undercover, aren’t you?”
25
Angie’s eyes went wide, and I knew I was right. Of course, being right and having the undercover police officer you just outed admit you were right are two different things entirely.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Angie said, shaking her head. “Now get back in that chair. Darrin might have released you, but I haven’t.”
“You don’t work here,” Darrin said, his eyebrows knitting together as he thought about the accusation I had just leveled. “And now I know why.”
Angie turned to him. “You don’t actually believe this woman, do you?” She looked back over at me. “She’s not making any sense.”
“She’s the only one making any sense,” Darrin said, sighing loudly, almost like he was relieved to finally be able to put a reason behind what Angie was doing. “I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t resolve the person I knew you to be with the things I knew you had done, but now it all makes sense. Now it all fits. You’re not a criminal. You’re not a horrible person, and you haven’t turned your back on t
he law. You’re just working a different angle; one you couldn’t tell me about.”
Angie waited a beat, and then looked from Darrin to me and back again. “If you’re right, and I’m not saying you are, what makes you think that I could tell you about it now?” She shook her head. “If I was undercover, it would mean that I was onto something that brought me here. I wouldn’t be able to compromise that.”
“What if you can?” I asked, refusing to sit back down. “A man is dead, Angie. Another one was threatened, and I’m not entirely sure it’s over. Lionel got into something after he lost his money. You know what that is, don’t you? You know what he’s been doing. It’s what you’ve been investigating. If I knew what that was, if I could just figure out what it was he was up to, maybe I could figure out who killed him. Maybe I could stop whoever it was from killing anybody else.”
“That’s not my job,” she answered flatly, shaking her head. “I wasn’t brought into this to solve a murder. I’m sorry, but this is bigger than that.”
I moved forward, swallowing hard. She had finally quasi-admitted to being in on what was going on here. I needed to keep pushing. I needed her to tell me the truth about what Lionel was into. Otherwise, I might never solve this.
“Bigger than that?” I asked, my mouth turning downward. “How could anything be bigger than the death of an innocent man? His killer needs to be brought to justice.”
“Innocent?” Angie asked. “Is that what you think?” She shook her head. “Rita, I get it. You’ve got a big heart, and you think it’s your responsibility to fix the world’s problems. Let me tell you something. There’s more than one kind of problem in the world, and I have one I need to deal with.”
“Then let me help,” I answered. “I have no doubt that whatever your working on is important, and I’m sure you’re more than capable of dealing with it yourself, but don’t count me out. Darrin can vouch for how good I am at this sort of thing. I might just be a pie maker, but I’m astute. I promise you, Angie, open yourself up just a little, and I’ll make it worth your while. I will figure this out for you.”
Twice Dipped Murder: A Rita Reincarnated Cozy Page 13