“You’re lucky he didn’t recognize you as a cop. It’s a good thing you had your sunglasses on.”
He leaned in and adjusted the air conditioning controls. “Don’t be so sure he didn’t know who I was. Maybe not consciously, but he did leap right into talking about the police at the first opportunity.”
“Almost like someone with a guilty conscience?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Then again, maybe he had the local police on his zapped-out brain because they questioned him yesterday.”
I glanced over, eyebrows raised. “His zapped-out brain? What are you saying?”
“Timothy Barber has had ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, a few times, but not the newer, gentler kind. I’m afraid ol’ Tim Barber rode the full-power Lightning Express back in the old days. He’s doing well these days, considering.”
“Barber,” I said. “That name sounds familiar.”
“He’s the nephew of Ray Barber, from the Credit Union.”
“That explains it,” I said. I’d been just a kid when the bank was robbed in a bizarre case that grabbed national headlines. The names of those involved had continued to reverberate for years.
We drove for a while before I asked, “Do you think Tim could have hurt Dieter Koenig? Erica kept saying how sweet he is, but I know a short fuse when I see one.”
“You would,” he said. “And even the sweetest person can commit unspeakable acts when cornered or frightened.”
“Or maybe he loosened something on the diving board and caused the accident. Like some bolts, maybe. Then he fixed it before Erica discovered the body. That might have been why he was hiding in those bushes.”
“Possibly,” he said. “However, that shows a level of planning and forethought I’m not sure the man’s capable of.” He adjusted the air conditioning again before adding, “Not to mention there’s a real lack of motive. Why would Tim kill his employer?”
I scoffed. “I’m thinking someone paid him off. Specifically, two someones. There are thirty million reasons the man’s heirs might pay someone to do their dirty work.”
He made a thoughtful noise and stared out of the window for a minute before saying, “That would be awfully foolish of Tim Barber to get involved with those two. He’d be outmatched in every way.”
“Plus you know what they say about secrets,” I said. “The only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. And with two Koenig sons plus Tim, that makes three people in on the secret, which is a real crowd.”
“You’re assuming both brothers were in on it,” he said. “If you were planning to pull off a big crime, such as the heist of the century, would you tell your sister, Sunny?”
I laughed. “Only if I wanted to give her future blackmail material.”
He chuckled in agreement.
After a few minutes, he said, “Is it possible you’re fixating on the handyman for personal reasons?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met the man before today.”
He took off his sunglasses and shot me a look. “I meant, might you be fixating on him because you don’t want to deal with a certain person? A certain young woman by the name of Della?”
I groaned. He was right.
“She’s evil, Dad.”
“Worse than a garden gnome?”
“Way worse, because she doesn’t even know she’s evil. She’s the type of person who acts like she’s the victim in everything, even when she lies and hides things to get what she wants. The type who thinks anything she does is justified because it’s for the greater good—the greater good being her getting whatever she wants.”
“I thought you didn’t know her that well?”
The car was hot. I rolled down my window.
“I know her type,” I said. “I’m not saying everyone who craves the spotlight is the same way. Some entertainers are really nice people. But narcissism infects a person’s soul. I’ve felt the darkness myself, when people are talking about me around town but they’re not saying the things I want them to say. I feel this urge to control the narrative, you know?”
“I do know,” he said. “Why do you think police wear uniforms? It’s not just so the public can identify us. It’s also to remind us that the job is not about us. We’re part of something bigger than ourselves. When you’re secure in that, you can let go of the idea of your image and just do the work.”
I focused on driving for a few minutes, thinking over what he’d said.
“Dad, you’re kinda deep and philosophical sometimes.”
“Better to be deep than wide,” he said.
I laughed, even though I didn’t quite get it.
After a moment, he said, “Are you going to look into Della as a suspect?”
“Only if Logan asks me to, but so far she doesn’t have much motivation. Unless he recently changed his will to provide for a woman he’d barely started dating, I can’t see why she’d benefit from him being dead.”
“There are other motivations besides money,” he said. “Revenge, anger, jealousy, self-protection, and so forth.”
“You think the old man was going to break up with her and she was angry about it?”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
“Well, nobody likes being scorned.”
“Try to have an open mind,” he said. “Let your personal experience inform you without prejudicing you.”
“That sounds hard.”
“If it were easy, we’d live in a perfect world.”
“Good point,” I said, and I tried to think about Della without imagining her falling into canyons or being eaten by a pack of wolves.
He wanted me to have an open mind, but how could I? The woman had nearly shot off one of my most favorite body parts—my head.
Chapter 10
"Logan, Dad and I met with Erica Garcia this morning, and guess what? We have our Running Man. His name is Tim Barber, and he’s the handyman. He wasn’t on the schedule Sunday morning, but seeing is believing. I’ll tell you when I see you, which will be in ten minutes.”
I pressed the button to confirm my voicemail, ended the call, and steered the car back onto the road.
“Turn left up here,” my father said.
“I’m not taking you home?”
“Not unless someone put in a wood-burning bagel oven while we were out. I’m meeting some friends at the bagel place. Drop me off there, and I’ll find my way home.”
“How’s your hip for driving these days? You don’t seem to use your car much.”
“That car’s boring,” he said. “It’s an old-man car.”
“No comment,” I said. He’d thought the car was the bee’s knees a year ago when he bought it, but he wasn’t wrong about it being boring. If he dropped by the seniors’ center to play cards, it took two or three tries to figure out which car in the parking lot was his.
I went into the bagel place with him and ordered some lunch to go. Logan might be disappointed I hadn’t cracked the case entirely yet, but he’d be happy to get a ham-and-cheese bagel with three kinds of spicy mustard.
With my bag of warm takeout food, I drove toward Logan’s office.
If you’re ever visiting the Pacific Northwest in search of the tallest public viewing area west of the Mississippi, set your sights on the Sky View Observatory in downtown Seattle, Washington, in the Columbia Center. Constructed in 1985 with many technical innovations, including viscoelastic dampers, the tall building is one of the strongest and safest in the region. At seventy-six stories, the Observatory offers panoramic views of the city, Elliot Bay, and the Cascade and Olympic Mountains.
In Misty Falls, our tallest building was also built in 1985. It’s called the Mesa Office Tower, though it hardly qualifies as a tower at a mere five stories. The building was originally named the Mesa Office Block, but people thought Block sounded too institutional, and businesses were reluctant to move in, so it was changed to Tower.
I turned into Mesa’s parking entrance and spiral
ed down toward the visitor spots.
The building had one of the few underground parking lots in town, extending down into the earth at least six stories. The Tower was like a sturdy weed with more roots than leaves.
I parked and took the elevator up to the fifth floor, the offices of Tyger & Behr.
Logan had been with the law firm since his arrival in Misty Falls nine months earlier, and plans were underway for him to become a named partner. As I pulled open the door, I imagined the etched title on the brass plate being changed to Tyger, Behr & Sanderson. The change would probably happen sooner than later, given the fact Logan had brought in Dieter Koenig’s business.
The receptionist, Corine, greeted me warmly. She eyed the brown paper bag in my hand.
“Delicious carbohydrates,” she moaned. “Those bagels smell like my downfall.”
“They’re fresh from the wood-burning oven,” I said. “So doughy and soft, you can eat them plain, like donuts.”
Corine crossed her arms and whimpered dramatically. She looked radiant in her tropical-print dress. Corine was trying to lose a few pounds before she met her internet boyfriend in real life.
I pulled out the mini-bagel I’d gotten for her and handed it over. Her new diet didn’t allow full-size bagels, but she could indulge in a miniature version, which had the same number of carbohydrates as the pita bread she usually had for lunch.
She opened the paper wrapper and inhaled deeply. “Stormy, you’re such a darling.” She folded the wrapper shut and set the mini-bagel aside. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you back to see Logan. He’s in a private meeting with a client.”
“Can you let him know I’m here?”
Corine shook her head. “He’s got his phone turned off. It’s a really important meeting, and he didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Is it something to do with the Koenig Estate?”
“Nope.” She glanced around furtively. We were the only two people in the reception area. She leaned forward and whispered, “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but he’s meeting with that singer girl. Della.”
I nodded as the information sunk in. Corine didn’t know of Della’s connection to the Koenig Estate. How on earth was that even possible? And how had I not heard of it before Logan told me? Della wasn’t the discreet type. The only explanation was that the idea of the dramatic karaoke singer being involved with the wealthy millionaire was so preposterous, nobody believed it even when the story did leak out.
“Then I’ll wait around,” I said, sitting on a visitor’s chair. “You don’t mind if I hang out here at reception and eat my lunch, do you?”
Corine made a strangled noise and disappeared behind the reception desk with a thud.
“I’m okay,” she said, jumping up. “It’s this crazy ball of mine. Sometimes I forget I’m not sitting on a chair.” To illustrate, she held up the inflatable ball that served as her chair. About half of the people at the law firm had taken to sitting on exercise balls or converting their desks to standing desks, ever since an ergonomic expert gave everyone a demonstration earlier in the summer. Logan hadn’t gotten rid of his comfortable leather executive chair, because he already spent a good portion of his day pacing around his office, dictating into a recorder.
Corine came around the reception desk and motioned for me to follow her. “You’re welcome to wait for Logan to be done with his top-secret meeting. Let’s get you set up in the staff break room. This way.”
“The staff break room,” I commented with reverence. “I feel like I’m being promoted.”
Corine laughed. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
She showed me into a room I’d never seen before. My hopes were neither exceeded nor dashed. The staff break room at Tyger & Behr was a typical staff lunchroom, except for the five-foot-wide corkboard displaying photos of dogs, cats, weddings, and children of various sizes. Above the corkboard was a banner reading OUR LOVED ONES.
I nearly choked when I saw a large photo of myself and my Russian blue cat, Jeffrey. As if there were any doubt in my mind the picture was me, it was labeled Stormy and Jeffrey, loved ones of Logan Sanderson.
Corine looked at the photo over my shoulder. “He talks about you two all the time.”
“And here we are.” I stepped back to admire the whole board. “Corine, which ones are yours?”
She pointed out some of her nieces and nephews, I offered the usual compliments about their cuteness, and then she excused herself to answer the phone.
I made myself comfortable in the small kitchen, preparing a fresh pot of coffee and sitting at the sleek glass table to eat my bagel sandwich.
Over the next hour, staff members came in and out, grabbing food from the refrigerator, using the microwave, refilling their coffee mugs, and then returning to their desks to eat at their computers while they worked.
The few people who noticed me sitting there offered a polite hello and good-bye as they went about their business.
Two women came in together and exchanged gossip while they waited for their diet entrées to finish being microwaved.
The curly-haired woman said to her friend, “I hear Della might be getting her own reality TV show. I guess she would sing or something. I can’t imagine what the show would be about, but I’m not ashamed to admit I would totally watch it.”
Her short-haired girlfriend replied, “Don’t you dare"—she paused dramatically—"watch that show without me!”
“What if we got to be in the show somehow? There could be an episode where we have to meet with her to get some important legal paperwork signed.”
The women both laughed, and the short-haired one said, “I know you’re joking, but Della really could make anything interesting. She’s got that star quality.” She gasped excitedly and jumped up and down. “I could say something mean about her short skirt, and she could slap me or throw a drink in my face.”
The other one joked, “I’m so glad we went to law school, so we could get these amazing career opportunities.”
Giggling hysterically, the two women left the kitchen with their Parmesan-scented entrées.
By then, I’d had enough of waiting around for Logan. I cleaned up my dishes, put Logan’s sandwich in the fridge with a note on it, and left the staff break room. The ladies’ washroom was directly across the hall, so I freshened up before my drive home.
As I was washing my hands, the door opened, and in walked trouble.
“Della,” I said, pretending to be surprised to see her.
“Hello, Stormy,” she breathed dramatically.
Logan’s coworkers were right about Della’s star quality. For a moment, I suffered Della-proximity amnesia and couldn’t figure out how to use the fancy hand dryer. I tapped the silver thing that seemed to be a button and waved my hands frantically. When the blower finally came on, my hands were already dry from my flailing.
“You look well,” I said.
Her dark-brown eyes flashed with apparent delight. “Thank you,” she cooed. “That means so much coming from you. I think you and Logie are becoming my favorite people.”
I tipped my head to the side. “Logie?”
She turned to the mirror and squared herself with her reflection. With laser focus, she smoothed her glossy black waves with one hand, adjusted the loftiness of her bosom, and scratched a speck of lipstick off her tooth with one thick-lacquered fingernail.
Without taking her eyes off herself, she said, “You don’t have to pretend you don’t know.”
“That you were dating Dieter Koenig?” I asked. “I heard about it, but not through Mr. Sanderson.”
“Yeah, right.” She reapplied more lipstick and blew herself a kiss. “I’m sure Logie already told you everything.”
“He didn’t tell me his nickname was Logie.”
Della shot me a self-satisfied look. “I just came up with that today. You can use it. You have my permission.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Did your meeting with Logie go well today?” It was h
ard for me to keep a straight face calling my respectable lawyer boyfriend a nickname that sounded like something a baby would say... or spit up.
Della shook her shining mane of hair and sighed, still facing her reflection. “Whatever happens, I’m just so happy you’re going to be on my side.”
“On your side? Me? Or are you talking to your reflection?”
Ignoring my question, she said, “It’s going to be a battle. An actual war. Literally! On a battlefield.”
I smiled broadly. “I don’t know if I’m battle-ready, but I have been jogging regularly.”
She turned to give me a pitying look, her cute nose wrinkled. “Stormy Day, you are so weird.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Without warning, Della threw her arms in the air and launched herself at me. I became the recipient of an enthusiastic, very chesty hug. When she pulled away I checked my shoulder blades for knives. With no signs of any sharp objects lodged in my back, I had to assume the unthinkable.
Della thought we were friends.
She adjusted her cleavage again. “I’m so glad I got to see you today,” she said.
“Me, too,” I lied.
Her expression grew serious. “Now go,” she commanded, pointing one long fingernail at the door. “I can’t go you-know-what if anyone else is in the bathroom.”
“Fair enough. I was just leaving.”
“See you around. Give Logie a kiss for me!”
I left Della to her privacy in the washroom and stood in the hallway for a minute.
The only thing more unsettling than having Della as an enemy was having her as a friend.
But my father had urged me to have an open mind. Was she really so bad?
We’d met under stressful circumstances, and she’d suffered huge losses within the last six months. I could give her a second chance, setting aside the whole mud-wrestling incident and everything else that happened at the Flying Squirrel Lodge in February. I might forgive and pretend to forget, the way Officer Kyle Dempsey had declined to report the exact manner in which Della had taken possession of his firearm.
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