by Sharon Pape
“Did you ever hear Sierra express anger toward the deceased? Or frustration over their business competition?” There was little deviation in Brock’s tone. In fact, Jaye thought he sounded bored, like he might close his eyes and take a catnap while he waited for her response. She warned herself that he could be trying to lull her into thinking she had nothing to worry about, that he was just doing his job by rote and wishing he were home watching TV and drinking a cold one.
“No,” she said. “Never.”
“Did Sierra seem at all preoccupied lately, as if there was something weighing on her mind?”
“No.” After what seemed like dozens of such questions, Brock asked her to account for her whereabouts over the past twenty-four hours. Jaye felt as if she’d just completed the short answer part of an exam and was now up to the essay portion. Answer, don’t elaborate, she reminded herself.
“Sleeping took up about six hours,” she said, realizing too late that her words might have sounded flippant. A frown pinched Brock’s eyebrows together as if he were actively considering that very possibility, but Jaye sensed that trying to explain herself would only make things worse. Better to let it go and be more careful in the future about what she said and how she said it.
“Did you spend those six hours alone?”
Was that a bit of sarcasm she heard in his tone? “Yes, I was alone. My alarm woke me at seven this morning, and I was at work in my shop from eight until six this evening.”
“Did anyone see you there?”
“Forty or fifty people.” It wouldn’t be much of a business if she didn’t have any customers. Maybe he was baiting her to see if she’d try to make a joke of this too.
“Anyone you can name or reach by phone?”
“The best I can do for you are credit card receipts. My shop attracts mostly tourists.”
Brock ignored the offer. “What happened between the time you closed up and when you found Peggy’s body?”
“Sierra and I had dinner at Finnegan’s; then I followed her home to try out her new recipe for Linzer tortes. On the way here we stopped so she could pick up Frosty at day care.”
“And how did you come upon the body?”
Jaye dutifully answered the question he’d prevented her from answering five minutes earlier. He asked how she’d characterize Sierra’s reaction when she saw the body.
“Stunned, horrified . . .” Jaye debated piling on other adjectives. Would that make it more convincing or suspiciously melodramatic?
Brock didn’t give her a chance to decide. “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.” He flipped his notepad closed and, in one deft move, stowed it and the pen back in his jacket as he whipped out a business card—his own little desk in a pocket. Jaye wondered what else he had stowed in there.
“You’re free to go now, but give me a call if you remember anything relevant,” he said, handing her the card. “Oh, one more thing,” he added as if it were an afterthought, “you need to stick around town until we get this thing sorted out.” He waited until Jaye left the patrol car before getting out himself and returning to the crime scene. Jaye remained rooted to the driveway, her thoughts jumping around like the numbered balls in a lottery spinner. The same thought kept popping to the top: she and Sierra were officially suspects—or in the more politically correct jargon of the day, “persons of interest.”
After five minutes her curiosity finally demanded attention. Using the gate on the far side of the house, she wandered around to the patio to see if Anastos was finished interviewing Sierra yet. She found them sitting a few feet apart in the two webbed folding chairs that made up the sum total of Sierra’s outdoor furniture. Frosty was lying with his head tucked under Sierra’s chair as if he believed he was completely hidden from all the strangers and tumult around him. It appeared he’d finally met his match.
Anastos was sure taking a lot longer with Sierra than Brock had taken with her. Although it could have been simply a matter of the detectives having different styles, it was far more likely a result of the stormy history between Sierra and the deceased. It was no secret around town that Peggy had been carrying a chip on her shoulder large enough to transform even the Jolly Green Giant into Quasimodo.
Jaye gave the patio a wide berth and continued on to take a peek at the crime scene, where things were moving along more quickly. The sheriff and his two-man crime scene unit had arrived while she and Brock were talking in the car, and they’d set up floodlights that carved an oasis of day out of the darkness.
Peggy’s remains had been placed in a black body bag and transferred to a gurney that was being wheeled out through the gate under the direction of a man Jaye assumed was the coroner. The crime scene investigators, along with Brock and the sheriff, were slowly crossing the side yard, their shoulders touching, their heads down and their eyes focused so intently on the ground that none of them seemed to notice she was there. It didn’t take much crime savvy to figure out they were scouring the area for clues—a speck of blood, a shred of cloth, anything that might help them piece together what had happened there.
“Crap.” Brock stopped in his tracks, causing his colleagues to stop as well.
“What’s wrong?” the sheriff asked. “What is it?”
“Dog crap,” Brock grumbled, dragging his left foot along the ground.
Jaye choked back the laughter that was bubbling up her throat, the tension of the night making the moment more comical than it otherwise would have been. In spite of her best efforts, a small hiccup of a laugh got away from her, instantly drawing all their eyes in her direction. Judging by their faces, no one else saw any cause for amusement.
“This area is off-limits, Miss,” the sheriff said, his expression as steely as his tone.
“Don’t go into the house either,” Brock added, hopping to keep his balance on one foot while he checked to see if his shoe required further attention. “It still has to be processed.”
Murmuring an apology, Jaye wandered back toward the patio, feeling like a weary seabird with no place to land. She might be free to leave, but she had no intention of going anywhere until she’d had a chance to speak to Sierra.
She was relieved to see that Anastos was finally on his feet. From a few of his words that carried to her, he seemed to be delivering his version of the “don’t leave town” advice she’d received. He nodded at Jaye as he strode past her.
“You okay?” Jaye asked, settling into the chair he’d vacated. In the amber glow of the patio light, Sierra looked dazed.
“I could never kill anyone,” she said so softly that she might have been talking to herself. Then her eyes focused on Jaye. “Cal suggested that maybe Peggy attacked me, and I was just trying to defend myself when . . .,” her voice trailed off. “I guess it makes sense from his point of view.”
“Sierra, you cannot allow people to put words in your mouth,” Jaye told her sternly, “especially not the police.” She’d learned from personal experience that sometimes you had to be firm with people in distress. Being too coddling or sympathetic often fed into their emotions, causing them to fall apart faster. And Sierra needed to pull herself together now.
Chapter 3
Jaye heaved a sigh of relief after hearing Sierra’s recap of her interview. Their statements had been consistent with each other in all respects. Not surprising, given that they were based on the same set of facts. Yet it would hardly have been the first time jittery nerves scuttled the truth. The crime scene investigators had finished going through the house, and the detectives had cleared Sierra to stay there, with one caveat—Frosty wasn’t allowed in the yard where he could muck up clues that might have been overlooked.
It was after one o’clock when Jaye finally returned home. She’d tried unsuccessfully to talk Sierra into coming with her instead of spending the night alone. Although there was only one bed in her apartment, Jaye sw
ore she didn’t mind camping on the floor. But Sierra had insisted she’d be fine at home with her pal Frosty to keep her company. Besides, she’d added practically, if she took refuge with Jaye tonight, she’d just find it harder to stay at home the next night. Jaye couldn’t argue with her reasoning, which was impressive since Sierra hardly ever dipped her toes in the cool, clear waters of logic.
Three o’clock came and went, and Jaye was still staring at the ceiling, the night’s events replaying in a continuous loop in her mind. Her subconscious seemed determined to find some scrap of information that had eluded her earlier and would now miraculously help her make sense of Peggy’s sudden death. Or murder. Based on the facts as she knew them, Peggy died after suffering an injury to her head that caused major blood loss. Jaye had watched enough shows like CSI to know that once the heart stopped beating, most of the bleeding stopped too. So based on the copious amounts of blood found around Peggy’s head, the odds were against her having been killed in another location and then dumped in Sierra’s yard. Peggy’s life had most likely ended where they’d found her.
Jaye hoped she was wrong. She’d never been a suspect in a murder case, and she had no desire to add that experience to the already troubled résumé of her life. On the plus side, it would come in handy should she ever decide to write her autobiography. It was no secret that murder sold. Unfortunately, being a suspect came with a lot of worrisome baggage like arrest, trial, conviction, incarceration and maybe even hanging. It occurred to Jaye that she didn’t know if Arizona had a death penalty or what form that penalty might take. It wasn’t the first thing she’d thought to check out when deciding to move there, but maybe it should have been.
And what about Sierra? If anyone had a legitimate cause for concern, she did. Not only had she been locked in an adversarial relationship with the deceased, but the deceased was found, well, deceased on her property. It didn’t matter that Sierra had tried multiple times to extend the hand of friendship to Peggy only to have a few fingers bitten off. At this point, the principal fact the police had to go on was that Peggy was dead and Sierra wasn’t. Jaye’s last cogent thought before sleep finally nabbed her and pulled her under was that Sierra was her only family and that she wasn’t going to let anyone take her family away from her again.
***
The alarm didn’t stop ringing when Jaye hit the snooze button. As she surfaced from the depths of sleep she understood why—the alarm clock wasn’t the culprit. In all the confusion of the previous night, she’d forgotten to set it. The persistent ringing was from the doorbell outside her shop, and the person leaning on it clearly had no intentions of giving up and going away.
Sierra! Before the thought was fully formed, Jaye jumped out of bed and immediately tumbled onto the thin, worn carpeting, her legs as tangled in the sheets as if she’d been practicing a gymnastics routine in her sleep. She kicked off the linens, grabbed her bathrobe out of the closet and ran down the stairs into her shop, pulling on the robe as she went and hoping no early-morning walkers happened to be passing by. When the owner of the old house had it transformed into a commercial property, he’d installed extra-large windows in the front, great for attracting business, not so great for thwarting gossipers.
She scooted behind the register counter, where the pad for the security alarm was located, and tapped in the code to deactivate it. She was sprinting for the front door when her left foot flew out from under her and sent her sprawling again, this time on the less forgiving hardwood floor. She looked around, trying to figure out what had tripped her, and was surprised to see a small wallet lying nearby. She didn’t own one like it, and she hadn’t seen it when she’d come home last night. For that matter it hadn’t been there when she’d left the shop yesterday to meet Sierra for dinner.
Her visitor had given up on the bell and was now pounding on the door. Jaye pushed herself to her feet, plucking up the wallet as she crossed the last few yards to the door. She disengaged the deadbolt and was turning the knob when it dawned on her that she didn’t actually know who was on the other side of the door. Peering out the windows wouldn’t have helped. The door was slightly recessed, making the view from the windows too oblique to see someone standing there. But at six fifteen in the morning who else could it be? The police? a little voice in her head piped up. A journalist from the local paper hoping to scoop an interview? Flowers from a secret admirer?
“Who’s there?” she called out, clamping down on her imagination.
“Seriously?”
There was no mistaking that voice. Jaye pulled the door open, and Sierra flew in, glancing over her shoulder as if worried about being tailed.
“Please tell me you’re not on the lam,” Jaye said, trying to inject a bit of levity into her tone, “because I don’t think I’d be any good as Clyde.” She closed and locked the door behind her friend.
“You have nothing to worry about unless I change my name to Bonnie.” Sierra sounded almost like her normal upbeat self. “What’s with the wallet?” she asked, “did you think I was a girl scout selling cookies?”
“If only—I tripped over this thing on my way to the door.”
Sierra shrugged. “One of your customers must have dropped it yesterday.
“Then why didn’t I see it before this morning? I came through here twice last night, and it was lying directly in my path between the alarm pad and the door.”
“You probably just stepped over it. You were certainly preoccupied enough when you got home last night.”
Sierra was no doubt right, since the only other explanation was that the owner of the wallet had broken into the shop, turned off the alarm, dropped the wallet on the floor, reset the alarm and somehow relocked the door after leaving and taking nothing of value.
Jaye frowned. “But if you lost your wallet, wouldn’t you try to get in touch with every shop you’d been in?”
“I’m sure whoever lost it will notice it’s gone soon enough,” Sierra said, clearly ready to table the subject. “Shouldn’t you be asking me why I’m here at dawn?”
“Okay, why are you here at dawn?” Jaye inquired, although there was only one reason for her friend to have deviated from her normal work schedule.
“I’ve decided to be proactive about this whole dead Peggy business. I’m not going to sit around and wait for the police to arrest me because they can’t come up with a more likely suspect. Do you want in as my sidekick?”
“Too late—I’m already on the case.”
“Great, then we need to sit down and figure out where to begin. How about a cup of Earl Grey?”
“You don’t have time for that,” Jaye said firmly. She took her friend by the shoulders and turned her around so she was facing the door. “The best thing you can do is continue on with your life as if Peggy’s death has no real impact on you. Get over to your bakery and start pumping out the goodies.”
“Won’t that make me seem callous?”
“It’s going to make you seem like anyone else who hears some disturbing news but still has to make a living. A big show of grief would send out the wrong signals, especially since everyone knows how Peggy despised you. If you want to cut back on the smiling for a few days, that would be fine.”
“But—”
“No buts. Go fill those detectives up with fat and carbs. I’ll start investigating during my lunch hour. I swear I’ll call you if I need help.”
After she’d sent Sierra on her way, Jaye turned her attention to the wallet in her hand. It was barely three by four with a little plastic window on the front of it through which she could see a driver’s license. She slid the license out of its pocket and stared at the photo of a young woman. Jaye couldn’t recall having seen her in the shop the day before, but she’d been so busy at the register that she probably wouldn’t have recognized most of the people who’d come in, especially if they hadn’t bought anything. Foc
using on an individual while ringing up their purchases usually helped etch them into her memory.
According to the license, the wallet’s owner was Stacey Winston, twenty-three, who hailed from Provo, Utah. Further inspection of the wallet yielded a small deck of credit cards and forty dollars in cash. Not much to go on. Jaye figured she could check a Utah directory, but even if Stacey had a listed landline the odds were she was still away on vacation.
Before putting everything back in the wallet, Jaye shuffled through the credit cards to see if she’d missed anything and realized that one of the plastic cards was actually a hotel key card. Okay. All she had to do was call the Coronado Motor Lodge and ask to be connected to Stacey’s room.
Stacey picked up on the second ring. Once Jaye introduced herself and explained that she’d found the wallet, Stacey couldn’t thank her enough. “I’ve been going crazy looking for it,” she said, her voice animated with relief. “Where did you say you found it?”
“On the floor in Crystal Clear—my crystal and gem shop,” Jaye replied.
There was a long pause. “But I didn’t go into any crystal stores yesterday,” Stacey said finally. “In fact I didn’t go into any stores at all. My boyfriend and I spent the day hiking.”
“Maybe someone stole it and tossed it away in my shop,” Jaye suggested, since there was no point in arguing with the girl’s memory. “How much cash did you have in it?”
“Not much—forty dollars I think. Are all my credit cards there?”
“Well, the cash is still in it, but you’ll have to check for yourself to see if any of your cards are missing.”
“Of course, how would you know?” Stacey said with a small, self-conscious laugh. “I’m not thinking clearly. When can I come for the wallet?”
Jaye told her to come any time after nine and gave her directions. Then she ran back upstairs, glad to have brightened someone’s day. And although solving the little mystery of the wallet could probably have been accomplished by a five-year-old, she thought it augured well for her success in the vastly more important investigation ahead.