“Neither. I’m wonderin’ how being on opposite sides will affect our relationship.”
I stepped back. “Are we on opposite sides? She’s a suspect. That’s it. We both want the same thing here. Justice. If she’s innocent, all that matters now is finding the truth.”
“There is no we when it comes to this case. I can’t help you.”
“I never asked for your help. Look, client or not, whatever I find out, whether it exonerates her or condemns her, I’ll do the right thing. I’m not ready to let her hang just yet. And you shouldn’t be either.”
“We found Wren’s cell phone, the one she said the killer snatched from her.”
“Where was it?”
“Beneath June’s body.”
“And?”
“We ran it for prints, only found Wren’s. We ran the knife too. Same outcome. And someone came forward today, saying June and Wren had a rocky relationship.”
“Who came forward?”
“I can’t say. Not right now. Not with you doin’ what you’re doin’.”
It was clear to me that Wren was being set up. What I couldn’t understand was … why wasn’t it clear to him?
“You’re letting the facts of the case sway your opinion,” I said.
“And you’re lettin’ the emotions of a woman sway yours.”
The comment stung harder than it should have, wounding me. I turned. He reached out. I jerked back.
“Sloane, don’t. See, this is what I was afraid of happenin’. I didn’t mean to—”
I turned and walked to my car, letting his words trail off behind me. Whatever he had to say now, it could wait. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to hear it.
Something foul was in the air, and I intended to find out what.
CHAPTER 7
Barbara Fisher wasn’t what I expected, and part of me wondered if I was at the wrong house at first. At an approximate height of five foot eleven, the woman standing in front of me was the perfect example of what people referred to when they said sixty was the new forty. Whatever moisturizer she was using, I wanted to find it and bathe in it.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Are you Barbara Fisher, June’s neighbor?”
She nodded, her perfectly coifed, buttery hair bobbing up and down over her shoulders.
“You’re the woman who stopped Wren Bancroft from leaving June’s house the other night?” I asked.
She nodded again, and yet, I still couldn’t bring myself to believe it. I expected Annie Oakley, and instead, I was met with a much taller version of Ginger Rogers, who looked like she was more likely to spring into dance than point a pistol.
“Is … everything okay?” she asked.
“I was hoping I could speak to you about Wren Bancroft.”
Although subtle, unless my eyes were deceiving me, the gap in the space of the open front door was becoming narrower.
“Oh. I see. Why?”
“You were the only person who saw her fleeing the house after June died.”
“What I meant was, why do I need to talk to you? I already talked to the police.”
She was right. She didn’t need to talk to me.
“I’m assisting with the case,” I ventured.
She squinted, stared at me for a long time, then said, “I recognize you. You were the woman who found those kidnapped girls a couple years back, right?”
I smiled. The front door swung all the way open, and her facial expression changed. Instead of viewing me as a nuisance, I had now garnered the esteem of an A-list celebrity. Her speech quickened twice as fast as before. “Everyone in town still remembers what you did for Noah Tate a few years ago. You found his daughter when she went missing. Come in, come in!”
I went in. We walked to the dining room, sat at the table.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Anything at all?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“What about a glass of wine? I’ve got reds, whites … what’s your pleasure?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?”
I nodded. She continued.
“Who hired you?”
“Will Bancroft.”
She frowned. “Oh.”
“I just want to find out the truth, Mrs. Fisher.”
Barbara fiddled with the placemat in front of her, curling the edge of it around one of her fingers. “The truth is, she killed June. I know how hard it is to believe. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen it happen.”
“You didn’t see it actually happen though, did you? You only saw her fleeing June’s house with a bloody knife in her hand.”
“Doesn’t that make her guilty?”
“It makes her a suspect. It doesn’t convict her of the crime. You didn’t see her kill June. No one did.”
She laughed. “How on earth could she be innocent?”
I switched gears. I wouldn’t allow this to turn into a debate.
“Why were you up so late Sunday night?”
“Since when is eleven o’clock late? Most nights I’m lucky if I’m asleep by two a.m.”
“Where were you when you saw Wren?”
“In my bedroom.”
“What do you remember?”
“It was a quiet night. I heard … at least I thought I heard … a woman scream. I looked out the window, didn’t see anything. The lights were out at June’s house and also at my other neighbor’s house who lives a bit farther down the road. I couldn’t tell where the sound originated from, so I remained at the window for a few minutes, waiting for something to happen, anything to explain what I’d heard.”
“And then?”
“Nothing. I stood there ten, fifteen minutes maybe. Then I went to the dresser and pulled my husband’s gun out of the drawer.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was unnerved. My husband was working, and I was alone. It may not have looked like anything was wrong, but something was off. I could sense it.”
“What did you do next? Return to the window?”
“I sat on the bed, tried to calm myself down, convince myself I hadn’t heard anything. Then it happened again.”
“Another scream?”
She nodded.
“How much time passed between the first one and the second?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. At least ten minutes.” She leaned back on the chair, eyes glazed over like she’d taken herself back to that night. “You know what? It was longer. I’d say twenty minutes or more between the first one and the second.”
We were getting somewhere. Finally.
“Did the first scream and the second scream sound the same?”
She screwed up her face, looked at me like I’d just asked an absurd question. “A scream is a scream, isn’t it?”
I’d witnessed plenty in my line of work. Unless it was the same screamer both times, no two were ever the same. “If a person is being murdered, you’re either going to hear one scream or a series of screams, all happening in rapid succession. It’s unnatural for a murder victim to scream once and then again after so much time has passed.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“My guess? June was already dead, or close to it, when you heard scream number two. How long after the second scream did Wren flee the house?”
“Less than a minute. She ran out, glanced over her shoulder a couple times, and I saw the knife in her hand.”
“You saw a knife from this distance?” I stood, walked over to the window, stared down the pathway leading to June’s house. “Your eyesight must be amazing, because from where I stand, I’m not sure I could make out a knife even now, in broad daylight.”
“I was, uhh, looking through binoculars. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a nosey neighbor or anything. It’s just, when I heard that second scream, I needed to know what was going on.”
Or wanted to know what was going on. Not tha
t I blamed her. I would have been out the door after scream number one.
“You said Wren looked behind her when she ran out. Why would she do that if the only other person in the house was June, and June was already dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“How well do you know June?”
“Enough to borrow a cup of sugar when I need one.”
A cup of sugar wasn’t the same as bonding as friends. “And her family? How well did you know them?”
“Not well at all. We only bought this house nine months ago. The only one I ever met was Simon. Cute kid. Messed up though.”
“In what way?”
“One morning I was taking out the trash, and I saw him sleeping on June’s front lawn. He was wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. He’d driven his motorcycle through her lawn, and it looked like he’d crashed it into her tree. Didn’t seem to be hurt though.”
“Any idea why he did that?”
“None. Like I said, I’m not a nosey neighbor. It was none of my business.”
And yet she’d just admitted to casing the neighborhood through a pair of binoculars. I grabbed my keys off the table and stood. “Thanks for answering my questions.”
“Wait, don’t you want to know what happened after she ran out, when I confronted her? Aren’t you going to ask me if I think she’s guilty?”
“She isn’t.”
“There’s no way for you to know she isn’t.”
Not yet, there wasn’t. But my gut instinct had never led me astray before. Besides, a window of opportunity had just opened up, and I had every intention of using it.
CHAPTER 8
The police car backed out of June’s driveway, sailing up the paved road like a sports car on a racetrack. I watched it disappear around the corner and then glanced around, looking for an opportunity. June’s front door was covered with so much police tape it looked like it had been vandalized. I slid a strip of tape to the left, tried the handle. It was locked with a deadbolt, which meant no entry. No easy entry anyway.
I walked around the house to the back door. Also locked. But this time with a spring bolt. I reached inside my pocket and pulled out a few credit cards, riffling through them until I found my driver’s license—my preferred method of breaking and entering since laminated cards were bendier. I wedged the card between the door and the frame, pushed the card in, and slid the latch back.
Voila.
I was in.
The living room was neatly presented. With the exception of the large pool of dried blood staining the pink, plush carpeting, it didn’t look like anyone had died here. Aside from a sofa and two armchairs, there was a glass coffee table with magazines spread across the top and an entertainment center against the wall, flanked with shelves on both sides. The shelves contained books on the left and music CDs on the right. The CD collection included oldies like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. A few opera CDs and Broadway hits were thrown into the mix, as well as a deluxe edition of Bon Jovi’s greatest hits, which would have seemed like it didn’t belong if it wasn’t for the CDs being lined up in alphabetical order.
I flicked the first of two switches on the living room wall. The light came on. I flicked the second switch, expecting the fan to come on. It didn’t. I walked over to the ceiling fan, tugged on the chain. Nothing. No fan. It didn’t make sense. Wren said there had been a breeze blowing on her from the fan, but now it appeared to be broken.
I took my phone out of my pocket, dialed Will’s number. When he answered, I said, “I’m at your mother’s house.”
“You are?” he replied. “How did you get in?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I would have taken you over there myself. All you had to do was ask.”
“I didn’t know if you were up for it. I didn’t want to push you.”
I also did better when I poked around on my own. Less distractions.
“Did you know your mother’s ceiling fan was broken?” I asked.
“Yeah, that just happened.”
“How long ago?”
“A week, maybe. She asked me to come take a look at it, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”
“Wren said the fan was going when she was here.”
“It couldn’t have been.”
“Then why did she say it was?”
“She probably assumed it was the fan because my mother always had it running, day or night, even in winter. After dinner we usually gathered in the family room, talked about what we had going that week. This last Sunday was different though. After my mother dropped the dual boyfriend and moving bombshell, we all left early.”
Where had the breeze come from then? I surveyed the room, spotting only one other possible source. There were two windows in the living room. Perhaps June had left one or both of them open before going to bed. Perhaps it was how the killer got in.
“I need to check a few things out,” I said. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
I slid the phone back into my pocket and crouched down, looking at the panes of glass, the wall, the floor, the entire area surrounding the window. If the killer gained entry this way, I couldn’t tell now. It had been scrubbed clean by forensics.
I crossed in front of the bookcase again, this time noticing something I hadn’t before. One of the books was out of place. While aligned with the others, the order was wrong. Bryon, Christie, King, Keats. Keats came before King, not the other way around. From one OCD woman to another, assuming she was as persnickety as her house suggested, there was no way June would have botched the order.
I slid the infraction off the shelf. There was a small tear on the front cover of the book jacket, and it looked dented, almost like it had been warped from being left in the rain. Given the other books were in pristine condition, this seemed off. And there was something else, a dark patch about the size of a quarter in the center of the book. It looked like dried nail polish.
Or dried blood.
“Hello?” came a sound from the hallway.
The rugged male voice was a familiar one. Too familiar. I froze.
The scene had already been processed. What was he doing here again? I slid the book inside my messenger bag.
“Don’t bother actin’ like you’re not here,” he continued. “I saw your car parked in front of the neighbor’s place, and she told me you left her house twenty minutes ago.”
He poked his head around the corner, looked at me.
“Hey,” I said.
Cade’s finger was in the air, wagging like a disciplinary stick. “Are you kiddin’ me right now?”
I smiled. “Nope, not kidding.”
My weak attempt at humor fell flat.
“What if I wasn’t alone?” he scolded. “What if Shorty was with me?”
“A couple years ago, we broke into a house together. Two houses, actually. Or have you forgotten you used to bend the rules now that you’re an esteemed member of the community?”
“Things were different then. The situation was different. It wasn’t like this.”
He was right. Being here put him in a bad situation. He’d been working hard to gain the trust of his fellow officers since taking the chief’s job, and here I was threatening it. I didn’t mean to, of course. I was just doing my job, same as he was.
He tipped his head toward my messenger bag. “What’s in the bag?”
“Nothing important.”
“Why are you lyin’ to me? You know you can’t remove things from a crime scene.”
“Why not? You’re finished processing this place, aren’t you?”
“Don’t matter.”
He held out his hand. Maybe it shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did.
“Are you expecting me to hand it over to you?” I asked.
“I’d like you to.”
I pressed a hand against the bag. “No.”
“No?”
“You don’t even know what it is or why I took it.”
“Don’t ma
tter what it is. If you took it, there’s a good reason.”
“There is, and when I’m finished, I’ll put it back.”
He stood inside the doorway, blocking me from passing.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Give me the bag and I’ll let you pass.”
He’d let me pass?
Is this what life was going to be like now?
Cade’s obstinate attitude signaled the inception of what had the potential to evolve into a great divide between us. I flashed forward to a year from now, saw myself sitting in a stuffy office, taking only the safe cases, like cheating spouses and premarital background checks. Sure, I took jobs like that on occasion, when I had nothing better to do. But the gritty, tough-to-solve cases, made me tick, gave me purpose, filled my lungs with fresh air.
Without them, I’d suffocate.
I yanked the strap off my shoulder, clutched the bag with both hands, and drove it into his chest. “Here. Take it.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.
His lips curved into the kind of smile that on almost every other occasion made me weak in the knees.
Not today.
“Oh, come on, Sloane. Don’t be pissed.”
“You said you’d let me pass.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Talk to me, or lecture me? I’m your girlfriend, not your child.”
“I don’t want you to be angry.”
“Too late.”
He turned to the side. I walked past. He reached out, cupping a hand around my wrist. “Let’s talk this out.”
“Let go of me, Cade.”
“Dammit, woman. Why can’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to do here?”
“Let. Go.”
He released the hold he had on me, and I bolted, hearing the sound of his fist slam against the living room wall as I sprinted out the back door.
CHAPTER 9
Recently I’d started seeing a shrink. Not often, just enough to keep the panic part out of the attack. Having my life dissected was on the top of my list of things I swore I’d never do, but as it turned out, Elodie was no average therapist. She was considerate and unassuming. Two words I never thought about when the word “therapist” came to mind.
Dead of Night (Sloane Monroe) Page 3