My cell phone buzzed on the table next to me. I checked the caller ID. It was Dan. Safe to answer.
“Hey,” I said. “I think I figured out some of the diary code.”
“Congratulations. Who do you think your secret Nazi is?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think his initials are going to be EV.” I knew it didn’t sound like much, but it was a step in the right direction. I was nearly sure.
“Doesn’t exactly narrow it down,” he observed.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m going over to the library. They have phone books for Grand Lake going back to the 1910s.” I’d seen them when Juanita had taken me to the microfiche. “I’ll look through the Vs and see how many Es are there, too.”
“Very clever. How will you narrow it down from there?”
I wasn’t sure about that. It would depend on a lot of factors. How many EVs there were. How many of them could be eliminated in one way or another. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“Well, before you cross that bridge, I think we have another one to cross. Two more city council candidates have dropped out of the race.”
I sat back in my chair. “Who?”
“Chris and Taylor. Want to go chat with them to see if it’s part of the rest of this fiasco?” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Really? You want me to come with you?” I could barely contain my glee.
“Absolutely. You might see something I miss. Will you help me?”
“You bet. I’m at Garrett’s office. I can be at City Hall in five minutes.”
“Sit tight. I’ll pick you up.”
Ten minutes later, I was back in Dan’s cruiser with Sprocket in the back. “Did you get a chance to look at those videotapes?” I asked.
“I watched the one from City Hall. You can just see Janine’s bike. No one goes near it. Security at the Fairview Building didn’t want to release their tapes without a court order. Something about protecting the privacy of their tenants. I had to get a subpoena from Judge Romero.”
“How long will that take?”
“I’ll have it tomorrow, if not sooner. Huerta’s walking it through for me. That should expedite the process.” He put the car in drive and we headed out.
We went to Taylor’s office first. Her secretary’s eyes got big when Dan showed her his badge. “Is Taylor expecting you?”
“No.” Dan didn’t explain further.
“I’ll just see if she’s available.” She picked up the phone. Dan put his hand over hers and hung the phone back up.
“She’s available for this.” He turned and went through the door into Taylor’s office.
“So commanding,” I whispered behind him.
“Make sure to tell your sister about it,” he murmured back.
Taylor was at her desk, but it didn’t look as if she’d been working. It looked like she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and a pyramid of crumpled tissues had been constructed on her desk, laced with wrappers from the tiny candy bars that had undoubtedly come from the open bag at her elbow. They were piled like a shrine in front of a photo of Taylor with her husband and their three-year-old son. Her hair, however, looked fantastic. Blond and smooth and shiny. “What do you want?” She sniffled.
Dan slowed his steps. He sat down across the desk from Taylor and leaned forward. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice soft and low.
Dan was a caring sort of guy, but this was impressive. He’d gone from take-charge, barge-into-the-office to sensitive-guy-who-just-wants-to-help in two steps. My respect for his abilities went up a notch or two.
Taylor shook her head. “No. I’m not really okay.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Dan asked, motioning for me to sit down next to him in the other chair.
I slipped in quietly, but Sprocket made his way around the desk directly to Taylor. He put one paw up on her leg and looked up at her. I knew that look. I knew those big melting brown eyes that made it feel like he was looking right into your soul. I knew how much solace it could bring.
Taylor burst into tears and buried her face in Sprocket’s fur.
Dan and I waited until the storm passed. Taylor finally hiccupped herself back into some form of self-control. “Uh, why are you here?” she asked.
“We need to ask you some questions,” Dan said. “Why did you drop out of the city council race?”
Taylor’s head shot up, blond hair bouncing like a shampoo commercial. “Why do you need to know?”
“We’re concerned that someone’s been targeting the candidates for the open city council seat. We wanted to know if someone has threatened you or made you feel like you needed to drop out of the race for your own safety.”
Two bright circles of pink formed below Taylor’s freckles. “Nothing like that. No. It was just taking so much more time than I thought it would. I felt like it would be better to drop out than get in any more over my head.”
Dan didn’t respond. He sat there. He didn’t tap his foot or drum his fingers or jiggle his knee. He sat.
The pink circles spread across Taylor’s cheekbones. “You know, I already have a full-time job and a family. It didn’t seem like the whole city council thing was going to work for me. Plus, there were other people running who would do a good job.”
Dan still didn’t say anything.
Taylor turned to me. “You understand, don’t you?”
I glanced over at Dan, who gave an ever so imperceptible nod of his head. I was on. “You know, Taylor, we think the poisoned popcorn might be part of this effort to attack the candidates. Someone died here. Maybe it wasn’t the person who was supposed to die and maybe it wasn’t someone that anyone liked very much, but Lloyd McLaughlin was a human being. If whatever made you decide to get out of the race is related to what happened to Lloyd, you may have information that could lead to his killer.”
Taylor squeaked and put her hand up to her mouth.
“You also might be in danger,” I pressed on. “If the killer thinks you might know something incriminating, that person might decide to get rid of you. They’ve killed before. They could kill again.”
Tears began to well up in Taylor’s eyes. “I told Chris we should have told the police. I told him so.”
“Told us what?” Dan asked, his voice a little sharper than it had been before.
“I can’t.” The tears started to spill down her cheeks. “Not without him. Let me call him.”
Dan’s eyes narrowed for a moment and then he nodded his assent. Taylor pulled out her cell and pushed a button. Chris was apparently on her speed dial list.
“Sheriff Cooper and Rebecca Anderson are here talking to me about why I dropped out of the city council race,” she said, and then waited a moment.
“No,” she answered. “I said I couldn’t without you here.”
She waited again and then looked over at the two of us. “I think they’ve probably guessed most of it already.”
I certainly had.
She hung up and said, “He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
He was there in five.
• • •
Chris’s tie was askew when he ran into the office. He glanced at Dan and me, but went around the desk to stand directly next to Taylor. “What did you tell them?” he asked, his voice low and terse.
Taylor shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing yet. But, Chris, they think it’s related to the poisoning. They think we might be in danger.”
“Or they’re telling you that so you’ll talk.” Chris turned to glare at Dan. Dan did not budge.
“You have to admit,” I said. “It does seem like someone’s out to get anyone who’s running. Whoever it is has already killed once. How many other people might get hurt? If you have information that might help Dan stop whoever it is before they harm another person, can y
ou live with yourself if you don’t give it to him?”
Chris paced the room. “Can this stay between us?”
“I can’t guarantee that,” Dan said. “I’ll do my best to be discreet, but what you tell us could end up being evidence in a murder trial.”
“You’re serious about that?” Chris stopped. He shoved his hands through his hair.
“Serious as a heart attack,” Dan said, then winced at his own words. “We can get a subpoena if we need to, but that’s one more way that word could get out.”
“Yeah. I get that.” Chris looked over at Taylor. “It’s not like what we were doing was illegal. We won’t go to jail for it. Go ahead. Tell them.”
Taylor took a deep breath. “The only reason we were running in the first place is that it gave us both excuses to be out of our houses and with each other. Away from our spouses. Neither of us really cared about winning. We just . . . we just wanted to be together.”
Chris came over and put his hand on her shoulder, his wedding ring on show. She put her hand over his.
“So how did whoever did this convince you to drop out of the race?” Dan asked.
Taylor reached into her desk, unlocked a drawer, lifted out some books and pulled out an envelope. “By sending us these.”
Chris put his head in his hands. “You kept them? What were you thinking? Someone else could have found them.”
Taylor shrugged. “There was that one where I looked really good. I thought maybe I could crop it and use it as my profile picture.”
He stared at her. “You have got to be kidding.”
“No. I’m not kidding. It was a good pic.” She smiled up at him.
Dan opened the envelope and slid out a stack of photos. Taylor got up and reached over his shoulder and plucked out one of them. “See? If I crop you out from behind me there and make sure I don’t show anything below my shoulders, I look really good.”
“You can’t use a blackmail photo as your profile shot on social media!” Chris exploded.
“Says who? I don’t see any rules about that anywhere.”
Chris opened his mouth to argue, but Dan held up his hand. “I’m glad you kept them, Taylor. These could help us track down a killer.”
Chris flung himself down on the couch. “Do you think they’ll help me track down a good divorce lawyer? Because I’m going to need one if those photos get out.”
• • •
As I buckled myself into the cruiser, I said, “Taylor might not have been a bad city council person. You know, the fact that she wouldn’t tell us without Chris’s permission speaks to a certain amount of integrity.”
“Yep. Tons of integrity. Except for that part where she was cheating on her husband.” Dan made a face. He’d always hated cheaters. He got suspended in junior high for punching Roland Blair in the nose for cheating at dodgeball. He still thought it was worth it.
I won’t lie. I didn’t mind one bit that a person who hated cheaters was married to my sister. It gave me a certain amount of confidence in their relationship. I turned the photos over so I wouldn’t have to see everything there was to see of Chris and Taylor, and the pictures showed pretty much everything there was to know about the two of them. There was a date and a time stamp on the back of the photo.
“Dan, did you see this?” I held up the photo so he could see the back.
He nodded. “I did. That’ll be the date and time the photos were printed.”
“If we can figure out where, we might be able to figure out who printed them out.” I sat up, excited.
“That’s why we’re on the way to Costco right now. We’ll ask them to pull up a record of people who had photos printed around that time. There should be some kind of record.” Dan turned onto the highway.
“How do you know it’s Costco?” I asked.
“We’ve gotten photos printed there. I recognize the printing. I could be wrong, but it’s a place to start.”
“We’re going right now?” Talk about being a man of action.
“You got somewhere else to be?” he asked. “Besides, I bet your chances of running into Antoine at Costco are somewhere between slim and nil. That should be a plus, considering how you’ve been dodging him.”
I cringed. “Was it that obvious?”
Dan thumped his chest. “I am a trained investigator, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed, all right.” I thought for a moment. “What if whoever it was paid cash?”
“Won’t matter. You have to give them your membership card when you pay.” He leaned back in his seat. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since I’d seen him look so relaxed.
I hadn’t thought of that. “Won’t you need a warrant or something to get that information from them?”
“Possibly. Sometimes flashing the badge is enough. You’d be surprised how many people want to cooperate. If they don’t want to, then we’ll go through the hassle of a warrant.”
Dan was right. He flashed his badge and people were falling over themselves to help out, especially the manager, who also was nearly falling over because she was fluttering her eyelashes so fast at Dan I was worried she might give herself a seizure. I think all he would have had to do was flash his smile and she would have dropped everything for him, panties included.
“Hey, Dan,” I said. “Maybe we should pick up dinner while we’re here. You know, so your wife who’s home with your two small children won’t have to cook? I could text her right now.”
The manager’s eyelashes slowed to a more stately speed. “I’ll be right back. I should be able to pull up the information you need pretty quickly.”
Dan looked over at me after she left the room. “Was that really necessary?”
“Uh, yeah. I think it was.” If there was one thing I had in life, it was my sister’s back.
“You really think I’d step out on Haley with someone to get a list of people who printed photos on a specific day at the local warehouse store?” He fixed me with those bright blue eyes of his.
“No. That was for her. Better not to get her hopes up.” I did know better. Dan was about as likely to cheat on Haley as he was to grow wings and fly. It was good for Little Miss “Anything for You, Sheriff” to know that, too.
“Oh. And yes, we should pick up dinner. Text Haley and see what she wants.” He took out his phone to check something.
By the time Warehouse Supervisor Barbie returned with the list in the form of a computer printout, we’d settled on a dinner of roasted chicken, salad, rolls and pie for dessert.
She handed the list to Dan. “I hope this helps.”
By the expression on Dan’s face as he glanced over the list, it had.
“Can I see?” I asked.
“Later,” was all he said. He thanked Supervisor Barbie, got a cart and picked up dinner, paid and then went back to the car. The only questions he would answer during that time were about what kind of salad dressing he preferred (vinaigrette, as if I didn’t know) and what kind of pie he wanted (he surprised me by not wanting pecan). Oh, we also picked up diapers. Lots and lots of diapers.
Finally, we were back in the cruiser. Dan started the car, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the list and handed it to me.
I scanned it quickly. One name jumped out at me instantly.
“Justin Cruz? Justin? He printed out the photos of Chris and Taylor doing the desktop tango and sent them to them? He’s the one who’s blackmailing people?”
“We don’t have any proof of that yet, Rebecca. What we know now is that he printed out some photos at about the same time that someone printed out photos of them.” Dan stared straight ahead.
“But, Dan, that makes no sense. If he’s the one who’s going after city council members, who blackmailed him? And why would he nearly poison himself?” My head was spinning.
&
nbsp; “He didn’t poison himself. He poisoned Lloyd McLaughlin,” Dan pointed out.
I thought back on the long list of city council candidates who had been in trouble. “Do you think he’s the one who sent the information about Cathy to the Sentinel, too?”
“It’s a stretch, but I think we ought to consider it.” Dan pulled back onto the highway to head home.
“But wait. If Justin’s the blackmailer, who blackmailed him?” Now my head was definitely spinning. “We should investigate the blackmail attempt on Justin. Just because it backfired on the blackmailer doesn’t mean it’s not part of this overall attack on all the council candidates.”
“It was kind of a dead end.”
“You already investigated it?”
Dan sighed. “Rebecca, what is my job?”
I sank down in my chair. “Oh, yeah. You investigate crimes.”
“That’s right. Blackmail is a crime. I went to see Justin after his press conference. He gave me the DVD the blackmailer sent him. The envelope it came in, too.”
I hung my head. “I’m sorry, Dan.”
He sighed. “I know. I just wish you’d give me a little credit.”
“I do! I give you tons of credit!”
He shook his head. “Whatever. It didn’t come to much anyway. There were no fingerprints on the DVD or the envelope except Justin’s. Whoever sent it must have worn gloves. There weren’t any labels on it or anything that would help us figure out who sent it.”
“How did it get to Justin?”
“He said it showed up in his mailbox. There wasn’t a stamp, though. Whoever was blackmailing him must have slipped it into the mailbox him- or herself.”
“Have you seen it? The DVD?” I asked.
“I watched it. It was just Justin walking in and out of the back door of the church. There wasn’t much to see.”
I chewed on my lip. I’d been around Antoine’s set enough to know that there was a lot more that went into taping something than what was happening in front of the camera. “Any shadows that you couldn’t explain? Any sounds that might give a hint as to who was taping it? What about where the camera was positioned? Could that maybe tell us something?”
Assault and Buttery Page 20