by Nina Post
"Oh, I didn't kill him," Shawn threw in.
"It's mostly about the victim before he was killed," Sarah explained. "He was a well-known songwriter."
"That should prove a nice challenge for your relationship," Trainor said, slightly muffled, in what Shawn thought of as Trainor's microscope voice. "Like traveling together to a different country, a crucible for any relationship. Before Krista and I were married, we had the horribly idealistic notion of taking the train across Russia -- exactly the thing you should never do unless you're single and in your early twenties, or too ensconced in marriage to care. We were neither. It went much better than it had any right to."
Trainor continued as he adjusted the slide. "I was relieved to note her grace under fire through Kafka-esque procedures, rules and customs checks, and an interminable train ride." He pulled back slightly to turn to look at them. "Not to mention the bureaucratic brick walls, archaic plumbing, and the food." Trainor returned to the microscope. "It was a miracle, really. We should have despised each other halfway through, but we didn't. So. This first sample is a synthetic material called Tapeta Footings."
"Tapeta Footings?"
Trainor nodded. "It's a mixture of sand, rubber, and fiber, with a wax coating. And there's only one place to find it, as far as I know."
"Where's that?"
"Presque Isle Downs and Casino, just south of here. The Downs are paved with it."
"Indicating the suspect or the victim was there recently," Shawn said. "Unless it was indirect transfer." It didn't seem like Jasper would've frequented a horse track and casino, but he didn't know Jasper, not really. He didn't even know Jasper had written hit songs, made truckloads of money, or returned to Erie. But Brower…Shawn wouldn't be surprised if he went to the Downs on a daily basis.
"The other one will take me a little more time to figure out," Trainor continued. "Can you leave it a little longer?"
"Sure. Let me know if you find something," Shawn said.
Back in the car, he inserted the key in the ignition and froze in thought.
"I hope you weren't electrocuted just now," Sarah said.
"Just thinking."
"Don't pull anything. Where to now, Presque Isle Downs?" Sarah rested her elbow on her knee and pointed the camera at Shawn.
After a moment, he checked the side and rearview mirrors. "Later, though I do want to take a look around there. First, I need to look for Darcy and Paul."
"Who are Darcy and Paul?"
"We used to be friends. Darcy Fallon -- now Kehoe, Paul Harmon, Jasper, me, and John Brower."
"Really? You had friends?"
"Good one. Though yeah, it's been a while."
"When was this alleged friend period?"
"We were ten or eleven. A gentleman never reveals his age."
She laughed. "Too late for that."
"To reveal my age or be a gentleman?"
"Yes. What are they up to now?"
"I have no idea."
"You don't know what your old friends are doing?"
He gave her a baffled look. "No. Why would I?"
"You don't stay in touch?"
Shawn chafed. He wanted to be at that point where you were so familiar with the other person that they just knew these things about you, but he realized he was also reacting to the frustration of being in a new department and working with new people. He hoped it wouldn't affect his work. He hoped Sarah's involvement wouldn't affect his investigation -- or their relationship. He knew it was risky.
"No, we didn't stay in touch. No need. Don't know much about them."
"What's that look?" Sarah asked, starting a smile. He looked back to the road. "Something about the case?" She put up a hand. "No, I know. I know what it is. It's working with new people. Am I right?"
He reached over and put his hand on the back of her neck, ran his thumb into her hair, then put it back on the wheel (9 and 3 guy, all the way). He shouldn't have worried. "You're right."
Sarah glanced at her phone. "What's with the new phone?" Shawn asked.
"Bonus from Dad after helping him with a DUI case. We got a great price on the phones with a business calling plan. Nice, huh? Oh, by the way, Darcy Kehoe probably won't be home."
"It's Sunday. And how would you know?"
"She owns several Flagship Creamery locations in the city, and she's a city councilwoman. The schools and non-profits and police adore her. She's always doing fundraising, and donates up to half the proceeds. My point is, she keeps busy, and does a lot of that stuff on the weekends."
Shawn shook his head. "I'll admit, it's not what I expected."
***
Darcy's house was a long way from the one she had grown up in as Darcy Fallon.
That house was always on the verge of total collapse and radiated an off-putting vibe, like something horrible was immured there. This house was brand new, a ranch-style home unlike the boxy two-story houses of northwestern Pennsylvania.
The man who opened the door was distracted, like they were interrupting him. His size and presence and salt-and-pepper mustache were all imposing. "Good morning," Shawn said. "Lieutenant Shawn Danger with the Erie Police Department. Are you Julian Kehoe?"
"Yes, that's me," he said. The man's voice came from deep in his chest like a sonic wave.
"I have a few questions for Darcy Kehoe, but I can't reach her."
"Oh, she's probably at one of her shops. She likes to touch base at all of them."
"I just want to speak with her about her possible connection to an investigation."
"She ought to be at the State Street Flagship Creamery today, at least for a little while," Julian said in a flat northwest Pennsylvania accent. "The one near the police department?"
Maybe other people in the department frequented the location, but he liked to bring his own meals and rarely got ice cream. Odd, that Darcy was so close by without him knowing. That both she and Jasper were living here. He never expected to see any of them again, and certainly not in Erie.
"Am I on one of those reality TV shows?" Julian Kehoe asked of Sarah.
She lowered her camera. "Sarah Baio, Mr. Kehoe. I'm making a documentary."
"Like Internal Affairs? Some kind of checks and balances thing?"
Sarah shook her head. "No, just a documentary. I'm not with the police department, and I would need you to sign a form before I used any of this footage."
Shawn fixed his gaze back on the man. "When did you last speak to your wife?"
Julian's light blue eyes widened. "Has something happened?"
"No, nothing's happened." I hope.
"When did I -- ah, this morning. She left the house at seven. Oh, hey, when you talk to her, could you ask her to bring home a butterscotch dip, if you think of it? I'll be tied up with some work." He angled his body toward his desk as though anxious to get back to it.
"What is it you do, if you don't mind me asking," Shawn said.
"I'm an auctioneer. Kehoe Auctions and Real Estate."
Well, that explained his stentorian voice, Shawn thought.
"I specialize in antiques and collectables from Pennsylvania," Julian said. "Quilts, blanket chests, jelly cupboards, redware pottery, that kind of thing. Darcy has a few collections herself I keep trying to talk her into auctioning." He chuckled. Shawn suspected that Darcy's husband could talk nearly anyone else into what he wanted.
"And where were you on Sunday morning from three to eight a.m.?"
Julian frowned. "Do you know something I don't, Mr. Danger?"
"Lieutenant," he corrected mildly. And of course he did. If he showed up at someone's door, that virtually guaranteed he knew something the resident didn't know yet. Shawn waited for Julian Kehoe to answer his question.
"Well…" Kehoe exhaled. "I was in Memphis from Thursday night to Saturday evening. I've only been home an hour and have a ton of work. I do more than a hundred fund-raising auctions around the country every year, and quite a few of those are out of state. I can show you my flight stu
bs."
"That'd be great. Does your wife usually leave the house at seven on a Sunday?"
"Yeah, yeah. She's always up before I am, at four-something, and she's usually out of the house by seven-thirty, eight, weekend mornings -- after about three hours of work and three miles on the treadmill. A real dynamo. Has a list of goals yay long." He swept a hand down the length of his arms and laughed softly.
Darcy was afraid to slow down, Shawn thought. If she wasn't working, wasn't busy, the bad stuff would catch up to her. But if she kept moving and focusing on work, she could fend it off.
"Did you see her Saturday night?"
"Yeah, she was home."
"Did you notice anything unusual?"
"Unusual?" Julian frowned. "No, why?"
"And did you see her this morning?"
"Not so much, but she gets up so early."
"Did you notice her leave at a particular time?" Shawn asked.
He shook his head. "I'm a hard sleeper."
"Would you mind if I took a quick look around the house, Mr. Kehoe?" Shawn asked. Darcy's husband didn't seem too concerned, but only he had the context. Julian glanced back to his office and tapped his finger against his leg. "Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Just let me know if you need anything. But no recording the house."
"I assure you, we won't be," Shawn said. "And if you could find me those ticket stubs, I'd appreciate it."
"Copies okay?"
"Sure."
Shawn stepped inside and closed the door behind him and Sarah as Julian hurried off. The first thing he did was look for the master bedroom, and eventually found it at the end of a hall. The king-sized bed was neatly made, and the furniture was oversize. He glanced over the top of the wide mahogany dresser, another reminder of the Sylvain case, and noted perfume bottles, a round black hairbrush, a few glass display boxes with jewelry inside, a silver pin with a flower design, a vase half-filled with polished river rocks, and a bronze figurine of a rhino. On the wall next to the dresser was a gilt-framed copy -- he presumed -- of what looked like a Dutch painting.
"Do you know what that is?" he asked Sarah.
"It's a Vermeer," she said, getting closer to it. "I think it's called The Art of Painting." She stared at it for another minute. "I vaguely recall something about Vermeer using a camera obscura to create this. You know, a box with a hole in it where the image is turned upside-down? It's like an aperture in a camera." She held up her camera. "The smaller the opening, the sharper the image -- "
He got a flash of "Big Bottom" lyrics from This Is Spinal Tap.
" -- but the projected image gets dimmer, and if the hole is too small, diffraction makes the sharpness much worse."
He kissed her, one quick kiss.
"What was that for?"
"Knowing about art. I'm going to take a quick look in the closet." He stepped into the walk-in closet, thinking of the Haviland Sylvain murder investigation, and sniffed. Smoke? He brought his nose closer to the clothes on the upper rack -- the blouses and shirts. One or more of Darcy's tops smelled like smoke. It was hard to get that out.
"I'm looking for a sound guy, by the way."
"A sound guy?" Shawn said. "Like Michael Winslow from the old Police Academy movies?"
"I wish! No, someone to do the sound for the movie. Someone with their own equipment."
They left the bedroom and he took a quick look around before getting back to the front door.
"All right, Mr. Kehoe," Shawn called out. "Thank you."
Julian got out of his desk chair and met them at the door with copies of his ticket stubs. "Did you see anything that could help you?"
"Nothing stands out," Shawn said. He wanted to tell him not to worry, but there was good reason to. John Brower had a kill list, and Darcy was on it.
"You know what? I'm going to call the State Street location. She didn't answer my email or text." Julian speed-dialed the number and pressed the phone to his cheek, a concerned expression on his face. Shawn imagined someone showing up at his house and asking him when he had last seen Sarah, but it only lasted a second because the notion was too horrifying.
After a brief conversation with someone there, Julian set the phone on a table, his skin colorless. He chewed on his lip for a moment, then picked up the phone again and called the other two locations. Same deal. Shawn waited.
Julian set the phone down again. "She's not there. And now I'm officially worried."
***
The atmosphere at the Flagship Creamery location was tense as they approached the counter.
"Maybe this is just one of those tense Flagship Creameries," Sarah said in a low voice.
"Yeah, some of them are just high-strung," Shawn murmured back as they approached the counter. "Too much sugar."
Sarah shot him a sidelong glance. "I kinda want to warm my palms on my six-shooters, but I don't have any."
"Well, your birthday is coming up."
One of the employees, a pudgy, saucer-eyed girl with a pink streak in her blonde hair, gave them a tentative look and a barely passable tone. "Welcome to Flagship Creamery, may I take your order?"
"I need to speak with Darcy Kehoe." Shawn showed his gold badge.
"Darcy -- " she turned and looked over her shoulder. Another employee, a nervous high school kid with a smattering of acne, came up to the counter. They both stared up at Shawn. "Ms. Kehoe isn't here," the boy said.
"Was she supposed to be?" Shawn asked.
"Yep."
"Did she call?"
"No."
"Is this behavior like her?"
"No. Sir."
"Have you tried calling her?"
"We called -- " he glanced at the girl, "a bunch of times."
"What time was she supposed to be here?" Shawn asked.
"She always stops in on Sundays. She'd mentioned she'd come by around nine."
"That's early for an ice cream shop, isn't it?"
"Oh, we've branched out into breakfast sandwiches 'n' stuff," the girl said.
"Hey, uh, is she with you?" The boy gestured to Sarah.
"Hey," Sarah said, and kept filming.
"Yeah, she's with me. Have you seen Ms. Kehoe" -- he used Ms. Like the boy did -- "talk with anyone you didn't recognize, or anything like that?"
The two employees exchanged a glance.
"Anything at all," Shawn said.
"Well…" the girl started. "She's talked to someone who was driving a van."
"We saw it a couple of times lately," the boy said.
"What kind of van? What color?"
"One of those old ones, you know, with the sliding door?" the boy said. "I'm pretty sure it was white. Wasn't it white?" he said to the girl.
"I guess, yeah," she said. "And Ms. Kehoe was really tense during the rest of my shifts on those days. She yelled at us for little stuff like not filling the napkin dispensers all the way."
Shawn nodded. "Okay. Thanks. Listen, if you hear anything from her, give me a call. It's important." Shawn gave the boy a look that backed up his statement, then handed him his card. Where are you, Darcy?
Chapter 6
Shawn and Sarah were having a rare, camera-less conversation in the car outside the Flagship Creamery.
"If I couldn't find you, I would freak out," Sarah said.
Shawn smiled a little. "Really?"
"Wouldn't you?"
"I can't even think about it." He shook his head. "But yeah, I'd go into a full-blown panic mode if someone like me showed up at my house. I'd cover my fear with a rugged, masculine intensity, then open my secret room lined with elaborate firearms and choose just the right one. Then a few more."
"Alfred Hitchcock suffered from anxiety attacks," Sarah told him, "and he said that the sources behind them were, in order, small children, policemen, high places, and that his next movie wouldn't be as good as the last one."
"Small children can be terrifying. What are you worried about?"
"Nothing."
"I don't think it's nothing
."
Her head fell back against the seat and she let out a breath. "I'm worried about my documentary. It's terrible that Jasper's dead, but I'm worried I won't be able to do a good job and do him credit. I'm worried it's going to cost too much money and won't be worth it. I'm worried I won't be able to do this as a career, and that no one will like what I do. I'm worried about my dad because he's getting older. Also, bioterrorism, death, et cetera. The usual."
"Is that all?"
"Actually, no." She flashed a smile. "But I'll just pick up more work with my dad."
"Let me know if you want me to take Comet on the road. He can jump straight up in the air if I ask nicely and he's in the mood. Or I can just put an empty cardboard box on stage, flick around the laser pen and let him at it. Throw in a small container he can try to squeeze himself into and we can get five bucks a head, easy."
"I'll let you know if it comes to that," she said. "Can he also give psychic readings?"
"Sure, why not?"
Shawn checked his phone. How many times would he have to tell them…ah, it didn't matter. But it was the detective who did the background check on Brower. He raised a finger to Sarah indicating he'd be a minute.
"John Brower joined the Army right out of high school," the detective told him, "and got an honorable discharge four years back, but his trail stops cold after that."
"Okay. Thanks. You can put it on my desk."
He expected all of them to be on his desk when he got back, and still had to find Michelson to ask about the canvass.
"One more quick call," he told Sarah, and called the lab. Nothing yet.
He disconnected, then looked at Sarah. "Nothing on Brower for the last four years. And Jasper's scene was cleaner than Martha Stewart's guest bathroom." He thought about it. "Okay. Darcy didn't show up where she was expected today, and this is a woman with a lot of responsibilities."
"It wouldn't be like her to just flake out," Sarah said. "Not to mention her husband can't reach her."
Shawn would have to push this through and convince the captain it was a priority, before they had more homicides to handle.
***