by Jessica Beck
Bobby sneered a little before he spoke. “I’ll just bet I know who’s been talking about me. Surely you don’t believe Gabby Williams. That woman would lie when the truth would suit her better.”
I was glad that Jake didn’t confirm or deny our source. Gabby had done us a favor by telling us about what had happened in the grocery store, and I didn’t want to betray her confidence in return. “Son, there were quite a few people in that store. You shouldn’t spread wild allegations.”
Bobby shrugged. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t care who told you. Was I embarrassed by Teresa’s rejection? You bet I was. She’s been flirting with me ever since she got into town. How was I supposed to know that she didn’t mean one bit of it? Is that really why you’re here? Did she complain about me? That’s just perfect. First I ask her out, just like I thought she wanted. Then she treats me like an idiot, and if that’s not bad enough, the manager saw it all, and he fired me on the spot! Yesterday was a rotten day, and I hope I never see that attorney again as long as I live. You can tell her that for me the next time you see her.”
Was it possible that he hadn’t heard the news, or was he just acting as though he hadn’t? His tone seemed sincere enough to me, but then again, I’d been fooled before by killers, and I’m sorry to say on more than one occasion.
“I’m afraid she’s dead, Bobby,” Jake said in that solemn way that refuted any denials before they could be formed.
He looked shocked to hear the news. “What? How? What happened to her?”
“Someone hit her in the back of the head with a bookend,” I said.
“No. Seriously? That’s terrible. She can’t be dead. I mean, I just saw the woman yesterday.”
“So you said,” Jake replied calmly. If my husband was feeling any sympathy for the young man at all, he was a master of not showing it.
“Is that why you’re here? Do you think I killed her? You’re both insane. I didn’t do it!” His voice was nearly a squeal as he denied his involvement in the attorney’s death.
“Bobby, this is important. Did you happen to see her after your, ah, conversation at the grocery store?” I asked him.
“No, and that’s the truth. I went to the back to cool off a little, and then I got fired almost immediately after that. What else could I do? I came straight back here and played video games until I fell asleep. It had to be three or four in the morning, and you just woke me up.”
Jake turned and pointed toward the building I owned, which now happened to be a crime scene. I hadn’t realized we could see it from where we stood, but my husband had. “Her office isn’t that far away, is it? Teresa was working late last night; we know that much. What happened? Did you see the light on in her office and decide to go make her pay for humiliating you in public like that and getting you fired? It’s perfectly understandable. Nobody could blame you for wanting to show her that she couldn’t get away with treating you like that.”
Wow, the way Jake had just laid it out, the entire thing was completely plausible. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said that Jake had witnessed the murder himself, he was so convincing. No wonder so many guilty folks confessed their crimes after spending a little time with my husband.
“That’s not what happened at all!” Bobby protested, and I could swear that he was on the brink of tears.
“Talk to us, Bobby. We can’t help you if you don’t come clean with us.” Jake’s voice was eerily soothing as he spoke.
Was Bobby about to break down and tell us something that we didn’t already know? It turned out that we’d never find out, because the next thing I knew, Chief Grant was hitting his siren and pointing his squad car straight at us.
“Hi, Chief,” Jake said, doing his best not to look displeased by Chief Grant’s sudden arrival.
“What’s going on here?” the chief asked.
“We were just having a friendly little chat with Bobby here,” Jake said.
“Is that true?” the chief asked the teenager.
“I wouldn’t call it friendly. They both think I killed Teresa Logan. Does that sound friendly to you?” Bobby asked, his voice on the edge of hysteria. “I didn’t do it, and that’s the honest truth!”
“How did you even know we were here?” I asked the police chief.
He pointed toward Teresa Logan’s office, much as Jake had done earlier. “I was over there when I saw you two pull up. Is there a particular reason you’re speaking with young Mr. Wells, if it’s not to accuse him of murder?”
“He had a confrontation with Teresa Logan yesterday at the market,” I explained. “In fact, he got fired because of her.”
“What happened, Bobby?” the chief asked the young man.
“I asked her out, she turned me down, and my boss didn’t like me asking at the store, so he canned me on the spot. I didn’t kill her, though. I swear it!”
“Give me one second. Why don’t you go inside and wait in there for me,” Chief Grant said as he held up one finger, and then he turned to us. “May I have a word with the two of you?”
The chief had formed it as a question, but there was nothing optional about his request.
“What’s going on, Jake?” he asked softly after Bobby was safely back inside.
“We heard that Bobby and Teresa had an argument at the grocery store yesterday, so we wanted to check it out,” Jake admitted.
“I thought you were going to call me with any new information you got,” Chief Grant reminded him.
“We were going to, but we didn’t even know if there was any truth to the story or not. Naturally we wanted to confirm that it was worth your time to investigate before we called you,” Jake said.
“You almost make it sound believable when you say it that way.” The chief looked unhappy, and he waited three beats before he spoke again. “I was afraid this was going to happen. I’m almost used to getting it from Suzanne, but now you, too?”
“Hey, I resent that,” I said.
“That’s fine with me, but do you deny it?” the chief asked me.
I couldn’t, so I kept my mouth shut, which was a genuine change of pace for me.
Chief Grant went on. “That’s what I thought. Now I need to be able to trust the two of you, or this isn’t going to work.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I can see now that I was wrong. I’ll let you know everything we suspect from here on out.”
“You don’t have to go that far, but if you’re going to talk to a potential suspect, I’d appreciate a heads-up. Is that too much to ask?”
“No, sir, it’s not,” Jake said, doing everything but saluting the man.
“Okay. I’m glad we got that settled. Now I think I’ll have a go at him myself. I’ll see you two later.”
“That sounds good,” Jake said.
We watched as Chief Grant knocked on the door before climbing up into the camper and then closing it behind him.
“Did you really mean what you just said?” I asked Jake as we walked back to my Jeep.
“I did,” he said.
“You’re honestly going to tell him every time we go speak with someone? He’s never going to let us interview another witness. You know that, don’t you?”
“Suzanne, there are some things we can skirt, others we can’t. Don’t worry about it.”
“If you say so,” I answered, still puzzled by how quickly my husband had caved in. “What do we do now if we can’t speak with anyone without the chief’s permission?”
“I say we drive back to the cottage and compare the pictures we took with our phones at the crime scene. That was one of the reasons I agreed to keep him informed about who we’re going to speak with during our investigation. I was afraid he was going to confiscate our cell phones on the spot, and then where would we be?”
“That’s brilliant,” I said. “I didn’t e
ven consider that possibility. How did you come up with it?”
He grinned at me before he answered. “Maybe it’s because that’s exactly what I would have done. Now come on. Let’s go before he figures it out for himself.”
“Fine, but we probably shouldn’t go home. In case the chief thinks of it, we don’t want to be anywhere he can find us.”
“Where should we go, if we don’t go back to the cottage?” Jake asked.
“Let’s park in front of the donut shop, and then we’ll walk over to City Hall. He’ll never think to look for us there.”
“No, but I’m not sure there’s any place we can hide from him in the building that he can’t find us,” Jake said.
“That one’s easy. We use part of George’s office.”
“The mayor might not be willing to give us sanctuary, given the circumstances,” Jake said.
“Not if he were here, but I happen to know for a fact that he’s on his way to see an old friend. He stopped off at the donut shop this morning, and he told me he wouldn’t be back until tonight.”
“We can’t just break into his office, though.”
I couldn’t believe it. Now my husband was deciding to be a law-abiding citizen, after keeping information from his former protégé that might be valuable in solving the homicide? “No worries on that point. We don’t have to break in.”
“Even if you have a key, I don’t like using the mayor’s office without his permission,” Jake said.
“We’re not exactly using his office, at least not technically, so we don’t need his permission.”
“I’m confused,” Jake said.
I explained, “There’s a small vestibule near his office that’s tough to see from anywhere but sitting at the mayor’s desk. We can compare our photos there without much danger of being discovered.”
“Remind me never to play hide-and-seek with you,” he said with a grin as we parked my Jeep in front of Donut Hearts.
As we walked down the street to City Hall, I grinned at him. “If you and I were playing hide-and-seek, there would be one big difference.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I’d be sure to let you find me.”
Chapter 5
“How did I never notice this space before?” Jake asked me as I showed him the spot I’d chosen for us to work.
“It’s easy to miss if you aren’t standing in just the right spot,” I told him. There was no door for the entry to the side room, but the way the walls had been built, from every angle but one, it appeared that there was no opening there at all.
“How did you find it?”
“I came by to see George one day, and he showed it to me,” I said. There was just room enough for a pair of chairs and a small table. “I think he hides in here when he doesn’t want anyone to know where he is. It’s a lot easier to sneak over here when there’s no one at the desk out front.”
“Why doesn’t the mayor have his own secretary?” Jake asked.
“George has his own explanation for it, but I think it’s because he’s just too irresistible to the women he hires.”
“George? George Morris? Are you sure we’re talking about the same man?” Jake asked me incredulously.
“Don’t kid yourself. For women his age, he’s a real catch. He’s got an important job, he’s polite, and he actually listens to you when you talk. I know he may seem gruff on the outside, but when you dig deep enough, he’s a real sweetheart.”
“How deep do you have to dig to find that side of him?” Jake asked me with a grin.
“You aren’t a woman. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am about that fact.”
Once we were seated inside the room, Jake and I pulled out our phones and started studying the pictures we’d taken. Jake had one of his small notebooks with him, the type he’d always carried when he’d been a cop, and the moment he found something interesting, he started jotting down things in it.
“Hey, did you just find something?” I asked him. “You’re not a solo act anymore, mister. You need to share anything you come across with me.”
“Sorry. You’re right,” he said. “I just wanted to write down the names of Teresa’s two appointments last night. They both occurred after she and I had our little confrontation in front of the Boxcar Grill, so we know for a fact that she was alive up until then.”
“Who exactly did she have meetings with?” I asked him. I could have looked it up on my phone just as easily, but Jake seemed to enjoy telling me himself, and who was I to disagree?
“Joe Chastain was scheduled to come in at seven thirty, and Becky Rusch had an appointment for eight thirty. It’s kind of odd that Teresa conducted office hours that late in the day, isn’t it?”
“I would think so,” I said. “Then again, maybe it was the only time either one of them could meet with her. I know Becky, and Joe’s been in the donut shop a time or two. I must admit, I’m not all that surprised they both needed an attorney.”
“What makes you say that?” Jake asked me.
“According to local gossip, Joe is a mean drunk, and he likes to pick fights when he’s intoxicated, so that’s probably how he got into trouble. Becky’s got a bit of a temper as well, but she doesn’t have to be drunk to display it. I overheard a conversation a few months ago between two of my customers in the donut shop about her. Apparently, a man cut her off in traffic on the way to Union Square, and she got so mad that she chased him down and forced his car into a ditch. That’s got to be why she hired Teresa.”
“So, they both have anger issues, and the victim just happened to be killed with a bookend in what looks to be a crime of rage. Each one of their tempers makes sense, given what happened to Teresa,” Jake said. He tapped his notebook before he added, “We need to speak with Becky first.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If she admits to being there for her meeting, then chances are good that Joe is off the hook, since it would mean that Teresa had to have survived their appointment.”
“Unless he came back and killed her after Becky left,” I said.
“Maybe, but everything about this shouts that it was a spontaneous crime. As a general rule, you don’t have an argument, leave and stew about it until later, and then return to pick up a nearby object and bash someone over the head with it.”
I thought about that and then came up with an alternate solution. “That makes sense, but what if the killer just wanted us to think that it was spur of the moment instead of being a carefully planned execution?”
Jake laughed. “Suzanne, you’ve been reading too many mystery novels. You’re giving the killer too much credit. Nine cases out of ten, a crime scene is exactly what it looks like.”
“Maybe so, but didn’t you handle all of the cases that weren’t the norm when you were with the state police?”
“Mostly,” Jake admitted. “I suppose we’ll have to entertain the possibility that this was premeditated, but I’m not going to make it my main theory. I still think we need to talk to both of them, so we might as well start with Becky Rusch.”
“That’s fine with me, but let’s finish this up first,” I said. As I flipped through my shots, I noticed something odd in one of them.
Jake must have seen the puzzled expression on my face. “What is it, Suzanne? Did you find something?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Let me see,” he said as he scooted closer and tried his best to look over my shoulder.
I held the phone toward Jake and showed him the picture in question.
“It looks like some kind of packing label to me. What do you think?” I asked.
“Where exactly did you take this photo?” Jake asked as he kept studying the image.
“It was back behind the desk,” I answered. “See the chair leg at th
e edge of the shot? It’s the one closest to Teresa and away from the client chairs on the other side. I can tell because it’s the leg that’s been scratched up. I noticed it when we moved it in, because Teresa tried them all out and then claimed that it was more comfortable than the other chairs.” The office had been leased fully furnished, so Momma had graciously donated some office furniture she had in storage from other projects of hers. I’d taken it all gratefully, since I really couldn’t afford to outfit the place with new stuff before I even collected my first month’s rent.
“I agree; it’s some kind of label. My question is, what did it come from, and how did it end up in Teresa Logan’s office?” he asked me.
I enlarged the picture as much as my phone would allow, but all I could see was part of a bar code. “I have no idea.”
“Then we’ll just have to file it away and keep looking. No doubt the chief found it as well. He might even know where it came from,” Jake said.
“Only we don’t have any way of finding that out,” I answered.
“We just have to do the best we can with what we’ve got. Hey, here’s something interesting,” he added almost instantly.
I leaned over to see what he’d captured on his phone. It was nothing more than a smudge of something on the carpet, and I had a tough time seeing what it was. After a few moments, I had a guess, though. “Is that clay dust?” I asked him.
“That’s what it looked like to me when I took the picture,” Jake said as he frowned. “I could swear at the time that the imprint showed the back edge of a shoe or boot. I’d been hoping my phone would pick it up, but clearly it didn’t. All I can see here is a smudge of something that may or may not be red clay.”
“I’m sure the chief must have seen it, too,” I said. “They probably got a great picture of it.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t do us much good, does it?” It was clear my husband was getting frustrated with the limitations an investigation on the other side of the law imposed.
“What about that message on Teresa’s machine?” I asked as we finished going through our photos without finding anything else that looked significant to us. At least we’d gotten a few things out of them. After all, our images of the appointment book had given us two solid suspects that we wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t flipped that appointment book open.