“Right,” I said, pretending I knew what she was talking about. “And what do you think happened?”
She glanced around, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, looking as though she wanted to say something but needed more prodding to overstep her boundaries as an orthopedic nurse. What did she know? My father hadn’t mentioned a fall, let alone being pushed. My head got fuzzy as the edges of the room darkened.
“Was it his neighbor?” I asked. “A man named Murray? Is that who pushed him?”
“Who?” Dora didn’t show any recognition of the name Murray.
“Dora, if you know something, please tell me.”
She appeared to struggle with a desire to flee the room but finally said, “I don’t think she meant to push him down the stairs.” She waved one hand dismissively. “He was probably saying something sassy, like he always does, and she gave him a shove, and down the steps he went.”
“Are you saying Pam pushed my father down the stairs? Do you mean the ones inside his house?”
She took two steps backward, toward the hallway, shaking her corkscrew curls. “I’m not saying anything, dear.” She forced her mouth into a disconcerting smile. “But you might want to ask him about his fall.”
“Dad,” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Stop pretending to be asleep.” His nostrils flared, and the rhythm of his breathing broke, but he didn’t wake up. I shook his shoulder again.
“He won’t be out much longer,” Dora said, talking quickly and edging toward the door. “Would you like to borrow a book from the floor’s library? I could get you a real coffee from the staff lounge. Don’t use the vending machine in the hall if you know what’s good for you.”
I looked once more at my father, who was smiling, enjoying whatever dream he was in.
“What do you say to that coffee?” Dora asked. She stood in the doorway with her palms pressed together in a prayer-like gesture. She wore three rings on her fingers, but her wedding ring finger was bare. She was a single mother with a full-grown son, and I knew she was just my father’s type because his type was any female who found him charming.
“Thanks for the kind offer,” I said. “I’ve got an errand here in the city. If he wakes up, tell him I need to speak with him, and he’d better not go anywhere.”
“Don’t you worry,” Dora said. “I won’t let him get away.”
Chapter 27
No matter how dark things get, life has a way of getting better when you do a good deed for someone else.
Though I was worried about my father’s hip, his situation with Pam, the prospect of my new tenant being wanted for questioning, plus a killer on the loose back in Misty Falls, I could do some good during my visit to Portland. I got into my car and punched the address for R&F Brokers into the navigation system. If Mr. Jenkins had broken in looking for stolen cufflinks, they likely had some sentimental value, and it would be a good deed for me to retrieve them. I had to assume Tony had checked his alibi for the time during which Mr. Michaels had disappeared and that the man was innocent. The good deed would also assuage some of my guilt for continuing to call him Creepy Jeepers in my head.
R&F Brokers was, as I suspected, a pawn shop. An assortment of tough-looking guys were leaving when I arrived. Despite the chilly winter weather, the men wore no jackets, all the better to show off their arm tattoos and thick gold chains.
They gave me an appreciative look when I stepped out of my car. I was wearing my new lace-up boots, wool jacket, brown cords, and emerald green blouse. One of the bigger guys gave me a chin-lift gesture as he walked by, letting me know he liked what he saw. I smiled to myself, happy my new clothes had been a good investment.
I walked into the pawn shop and immediately started sneezing from the dust. A young woman of about twenty, with a shaved head and multiple piercings, sat behind the main counter on a stool, oblivious to me as she thumbed her phone screen. I sneezed again, and she didn’t even glance my way, let alone greet me.
I told her, “Your customers wouldn’t sneeze so much if someone ran a damp cloth over these display cases.”
She looked up at me as though I was a fussy older person who stuck her nose in everyone’s business. I realized, with horror, that I wasn’t so different from Pam, who’d said the same thing to my employee three days earlier.
The girl with the buzz cut gave me a dull stare. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll get right on that. Anything else?”
“I’m looking for some cufflinks. They’re possibly vintage.”
“What are cufflinks?” She stared at me steadily, her expression unchanging.
Instead of explaining, I reached into my purse and pulled out the yellow envelopes. “These checks are from here, right?”
She shrugged. “Looks like it. What’s wrong, lady? Did your kid pawn your stuff for drug money?”
“My kid?” She’d basically handed me a premise far better than the one I’d had in mind. I stood on the precipice for several seconds before taking the plunge, casting my eyes down so she wouldn’t see my discomfort over lying. “He used to be such a good boy,” I said.
“Sorry about that,” she said, hints of genuine sympathy in her tone. “That’s a real bummer when they steal from you, but I can’t cash those checks, and if the goods are sold, they’re long gone.”
The dust was making my eyes water. I sniffed and rubbed my eye. “I’ll never be able to replace those cufflinks.”
“Don’t cry,” she said. “I can look up the lot number from one of those checks and cross-reference it to see if anything’s still here, if you want.”
I sniffed convincingly. “Thank you so much.”
“I’ll have to look it up on the computer, but yeah, whatever.” She took one of the checks and started tapping away at a computer terminal that looked older than she was. Her movements stirred up more dust, making me sneeze. With each sneeze, she gave me a suspicious look, as though I was doing it on purpose to make her feel bad about not dusting. I busied myself by looking around at some of the musical instruments on display. An accordion caught my eye, and I wondered what stories the old squeezebox had to tell.
The employee called out to let me know she’d found something. I met her at the counter, where she showed me a tray with four small items. There was a pair of cufflinks, a jeweled money clip, a man’s gold wedding band, and a panther brooch.
“You’re amazing,” I told her. “I really appreciate your help. I only need the cufflinks. How much?”
She pointed to the check on the counter between us. “I might be able to do a straight exchange for the check since it’s been less than four weeks.”
I guiltily took back the check. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll pay for the cufflinks with my credit card. I need these checks for evidence.”
“Evidence, huh?” She whistled. “Your kid is in some serious, deep trouble.” A phone rang loudly, and she excused herself to answer the call.
While she had her back turned, I used my phone to snap pictures of the other three items. According to the dollar amount of the check, none of these objects seemed valuable enough to murder someone over, but I would pass the information along to Tony, or, better yet, Officer Wiggles, who’d probably be more appreciative of my help. The panther resembled the charm I’d seen Ruby wearing.
While I was paying for the cufflinks, another customer came in, the door movement setting off a trio of bells and alarms. The employee finished her phone call, shot me an apologetic look, and went to greet the other customer. It was a female who asked if the shop’s owner was in that day.
“Never this early,” the girl answered. “He’s more of a night owl.”
“Can I leave a note?”
The employee sighed but fetched a pad of paper and pen over to the other customer. I was busy trying to take some decent photos, which was difficult given the low light, and only paying attention to the other interaction peripherally. As the customer was saying goodbye, I glanced over.
I was surprised
to see a familiar face. The other customer was Harper, the blonde who worked with Jessica.
“Harper,” I said in a friendly tone.
She didn’t look over, even though I was only a dozen feet away. Had she not heard me over the ’80s-era rock ballad playing on the shop’s dusty speakers?
I tried again. “Hi there, Harper.”
She handed the paper to the employee, turned, and walked out of the shop without acknowledging me.
The employee rubbed her shaved head and gave me a sheepish look as she came over to finish ringing up the cufflinks. “I guess your friend didn’t want to talk to you,” she said.
“We’ve only met once,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t who I thought it was.” I looked at the folded sheet of paper in the employee’s hand. “What name did she give you?”
The girl looked even more uncomfortable. “Ma’am, this is a pawn shop. It’s not the public library.”
“I understand. Could you maybe blink once if she left her name as Harper?”
The girl stared at me. She had beautiful eyes, one green and one blue. Neither one blinked.
After a moment, she clicked some keys, an old printer spat out a receipt, and she handed it over with a plain paper bag containing the cufflinks.
I thanked her and hurried out of the store, scanning the parking lot for the girl. People were coming and going, visiting other shops in the strip mall, but none of them looked like the blonde I could have sworn was Harper.
Then I spotted a flash of golden hair as a girl stepped into the driver’s side of an older-model green Ford Torino. I whipped out my phone and took a photo of the license plate as she drove away.
Chapter 28
Traffic was bad, and the trip back to the hospital took twice as long as the reverse direction. I got stuck behind a truck advertising soy sauce, the bottle photographed next to delicious Chinese food. By the time I got to the hospital, I was hungry enough to eat a whole order of the Golden Wok’s sweet and sour chicken balls.
I took the elevator up to my father’s floor and walked down to his room. He was awake, but he wasn’t alone.
Sitting next to the bed was Officer Tony Milano, who looked as thrilled to see me now as he had been several hours earlier, outside the police station.
I asked, “What’s going on?”
My father was sitting up in bed, awake and alert. He almost looked like his usual self, except for the hospital gown and a scruffy jawline in need of a shave.
“Business as usual,” my father said calmly. “The Misty Falls police department is trying to pin a case on me.”
“Not again,” I said.
He shrugged. “It’s been a few years. I suppose this is their way of letting me know that just because I’ve been put out to pasture, I haven’t been forgotten.”
I walked around the bed, to the opposite side of where Tony sat. The other bed was still empty, so it was only the three of us in the room. The sun had pierced the Portland Mist and was brightening the pale lavender wall across from the beds.
I glared at Tony. “You’re not actually going after my father for this one, are you? Don’t you have more important things to do?”
“More important than catching a murderer?” Tony’s dark eyebrows raised. “I’m doing my job.”
“It’s okay,” my father said to me. “In a small town, you can’t skip investigating the people you know, or you’ll have to skip everyone. I’d come after me too, if I were him. After all, I’m the dummy who uttered death threats, on multiple occasions.”
I crossed my arms. “No, you didn’t.”
“Old Murray knew I was joking,” he said. “Everyone did. But threats are threats. He was a notorious kleptomaniac, did you know that?”
I glanced over at Tony, who nodded. “We’re getting a clearer picture of the situation every day.”
“He took an extension cord,” my father said. “It was brand new, perfect condition. I told him I’d be happy to loan him anything he wanted, and he didn’t have to take things and lie about it. He swore he hadn’t seen my extension cord, so I told him if I found it inside his house, I was going to wrap it around his neck.” He shifted to arrange the pillow behind his back. “In hindsight, that wasn’t a very gentlemanly way to deal with a situation, but the pain made me cranky some days.”
“Did he return the cord?” Tony asked.
“It appeared one day on my porch, as if by magic.”
“Good,” Tony said. “That’s good to hear.”
While Tony jotted notes on his notepad, I asked, “Dad, did things ever get physical? Did Murray ever push you?”
His gray-flecked eyebrows raised. “What have you heard?”
“Your orthopedic nurse told me you hurt your hip because of a tumble. Why didn’t you tell me you fell?”
He dismissed the notion with a wave of one hand. “This hip’s been bothering me for years. I did give it a bump recently, when I slipped on the wet floor, but it was nothing.”
Watching him very closely, I said, “I heard you slipped in the tub. Now you’re saying it was the floor. Which one is it?”
“Same thing,” he said. “One foot on each.” He turned to Tony. “Murray was nowhere near the bathroom.”
Tony said, “I believe you.”
“What about Pam?” I asked. “Was she there when you fell?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, young lady, but no,” he said vehemently. His Irish accent became more pronounced, as it always did when he was either being charming or getting agitated. “Pam was not there when I stepped out of the tub and slipped on some water and fell.”
Tony said, “At your age, you need to be careful. I can get you some stick-ons to put inside the tub. We have them for the kids. Little yellow ducks.”
My father sat up straighter in the bed and told Tony what he could do with his little yellow ducks.
Tony patiently flipped through the pages of his small notepad. Once my father’s rant was over, he said, “You were heard promising to ‘choke some sense’ into Mr. Michaels. Was that in reference to the electrical cord incident?”
“Could have been anything. The man was in need of some sense.”
I patted my father’s hand. “Dad, you don’t have to answer these questions now. We can talk to a lawyer.”
Consulting his notepad, Tony asked, “How long ago did your relationship become contentious?”
My father scratched the gray scruff on his chin. “We started off on the wrong foot, right from the beginning, when he moved in over twenty years ago. He kept asking me what the girls’ real names were.”
I interrupted, “Did he really?”
He chuckled. “He thought I called you two Sunny and Stormy just to irritate him.”
“I never knew about that.”
“He suggested the whole family see a psychiatrist.”
I smirked. “Now that’s funny.”
My father grinned. “It was right after the Halloween that your imaginary friend, Johnny Green, or whatever his name was, egged Murray’s house. In hindsight, I probably should have taken you somewhere to get your brain fixed.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, Dad. I couldn’t have actually believed in imaginary friends.”
Tony cleared his throat. “As much fun as this is, catching up on old times, can Finn and I have a few minutes of privacy?”
I patted my father’s arm. “I’ll wait outside of the room. I still need to talk to Tony about something.”
Tony said, “Don’t lurk around the hallway. I’ll meet you down in the cafeteria when I’m done here. I’ll even buy you lunch.”
“I’m not hungry,” I lied.
“Yes, you are,” my father said. “I can hear your stomach rumbling. I’ve already had my lunch. You go have yours, and we’ll talk after.”
I hesitated by his side. “Dad, just give Tony straight yes and no answers. Your pupils look awfully dilated right now. If you feel confused at all, it’s probably because of the pain meds. Pro
mise you’ll call for me if you need me.”
He pointed to the door and gave me his I’m-Your-Father look, which hadn’t lost any of its power.
Chapter 29
The hospital cafeteria had closed the hot lunch buffet and didn’t have dinner ready yet, so I chose a sandwich from the cooler, paired with a bowl of vegetable soup. I ate quickly, pausing only to set the four yellow envelopes on the table and write down the blonde’s license plate number on the back of my receipt. Minimizing my time with Tony would save us both aggravation.
He arrived in the cafeteria as I was finishing. When he spotted me, he gave me an unexpectedly warm smile that was the exact opposite of the expression he’d given me twice that day. I actually glanced over my shoulder to see if someone better was sitting behind me.
He got his lunch and joined me without saying a word. He used a cafeteria butter knife to methodically cut his ham and cheese sandwich into quarters and then eighths.
“That’s cute,” I commented.
He frowned at his sandwich as though confounded. “Did I just cut this sandwich into quarters?”
“Technically, those are eighths.”
He sighed and rubbed his temples. “Tony Junior will only eat sandwiches cut like this. I must have been on autopilot. This is what kids and lack of sleep will do to you.” He gestured to my empty dishes. “Good job cleaning your plate. I’ll buy you dessert. They just put out a fresh tray of Jell-O.” He handed me a twenty. “Get me one, too.”
I left him to his sandwich and returned with two bowls of colorful gelatin cubes.
Between mouthfuls, I said, “I haven’t had Jell-O in years.”
“If you don’t like the red cubes, I’ll eat them for you.”
I curled my arm around my bowl protectively. “Nice try. Those are the best ones.”
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, I asked, “Do you guys still have the quote board?”
He looked surprised and then amused. The board was a running gag at the police station. They’d use it to whenever, during the course of their work, one officer said something that would get a person fired from a corporate job. Taken out of context, the quotes were even more shocking and thus funny. They didn’t keep the board to disrespect their work or the victims of crime but to break the darkest moments with a laugh, to keep their sanity.
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