Sketcher in the Rye:

by Sharon Pape

  Arlene pulled a small photo album off the shelf where she’d tucked it after bringing it down from the attic. “I don’t know if you remember your grandmother Betty,” she said, sitting beside her daughter. “You were barely five years old when she died.”

  “A short, chubby woman with white hair and powdered cheeks who smelled like a flower garden?” Rory hadn’t thought about her grandmother in years, but the memory had popped up readily at the mention of her name.

  “That was definitely my mom,” Arlene said, clearly pleased that Rory remembered her. “Anyway, after she died, Helene and I had to dismantle her house. It was a huge job. Every closet and drawer was stuffed with papers she’d apparently been afraid to throw out. She must have kept fifty years of tax returns alone. There were also more than ten years’ worth of TV Guide magazines. We could never figure out why she’d held on to those. Of course if September third, 1982, ever came around again, she would have been one up on the rest of us,” she added with a laugh. “By the time we’d finished going through all the papers, Helene and I had had enough. We just boxed all the other stuff like photos and mementos and put them up in our attic to go over at our leisure. Then we promptly forgot about them. I found them when I started throwing out stuff for our move. I’m determined not to leave you the same kind of mess to deal with when we shuffle off.”

  “So this album was Grandma Betty’s?” Rory asked, to derail any further discussion of the “shuffling off.” It was too hard, too weird to imagine a world in which her parents no longer existed. “It sure looks a whole lot older than that.” Threads dangled from the spine, where the binding was coming apart, and the burgundy material on the cover was faded and worn.

  “I’m sure it is,” Arlene agreed. “Once we’re settled in the new place, I’ll have time to do some research on it, maybe even use one of those genealogy programs. You’ll see by the clothing that some of the photographs must go all the way back to the nineteenth century. Unfortunately a number of them have faded to near oblivion, because they weren’t properly preserved. I wonder if my mother knew the album was stored away in her attic.”

  “But she must have brought it there with her when she moved in,” Rory pointed out.

  “That’s just it.” Arlene opened the album and set it gingerly on her daughter’s lap. “The house originally belonged to my great-grandmother. Mom and her parents wound up living there with her. Eventually the house was passed down to her parents and then to her. So my mother spent her entire life there. There’s a real possibility she never saw the album or even knew it existed.”

  Rory took her time poring over the sepia images as if she could will them back to clarity, but a number were difficult to make out, some downright impossible. In the best of them, the people were formally dressed, rigidly posed and unsmiling.

  “Don’t they look terribly somber?” Arlene said. “I guess back then having your picture taken was an important event, and no one wanted to appear frivolous.”

  “Or maybe no one back then had thought of asking them to say ‘cheese,’” Rory said, with a grin.

  Arlene burst into laughter. “You and my sister—the same wacky sense of humor.”

  As Rory made her way through the album, she could see how the quality of the pictures had improved as the science of photography advanced. It appeared that the family only had one or two pictures taken a year. Her family, she had to keep reminding herself. And there were some years with no pictures at all to mark their passage. What had happened during those times? War, financial problems, illness? “You know,” she said, closing the album and handing it to her mother, “they have amazing techniques for restoring photos today. I bet a lot of these could be enhanced. Even the worst ones might be salvageable.”

  “I thought about that too,” Arlene said, putting the album back on the bookshelf, “but it’ll have to wait until we’re moved in and unpacked.”

  Rory would have volunteered to tackle the job herself if there was some way to squeeze a few extra hours out of a day. Until someone came up with an app for that, she needed to devote her time to her livelihood. The odds were against Matthew’s killer or the saboteur showing up at police headquarters with a bad conscience and a confession on his or her lips.

  ***

  Rory had just walked in the front door when her phone started ringing. She turned off the alarm, threw her purse on the bench beside the stairs and grabbed the handset in the kitchen just before the call went to voice mail. She could really use an extension on her new table in the entry too.

  “You sound out of breath,” BB said instead of hello. “Did I catch you after a marathon?”

  “No, I just got home from lunch with my folks, but a marathon sounds like a much more interesting story.”

  “You’re quite interesting enough for me,” he assured her. “Speaking of which, Reggie stopped by my office a few minutes ago.”

  “And?”

  “Well, sorry to say the only prints on the note were yours.”

  “I was afraid of that,” she said, feeling a bit disheartened about it anyway.

  “However,” BB went on, “he did find a tiny hair lodged in the crease of the note.”

  “Let me guess—it was red like mine.”

  “As a matter of fact it was blonde,” he said, taking his time and obviously enjoying the drama of his revelation.

  “Blonde?” she repeated.

  “Yes, but dyed blonde. Do you think that might help at all?”

  “It may,” she murmured, trying to absorb this unexpected but welcome news. As Zeke often said, “You never knew which tiny bit of information would break a case wide open.” Unfortunately every member of the Harper family was one shade of blonde or another. And given that most adults have lost the glowing blonde of their youth, there was a good chance the Harpers, like so many others, had turned to science to restore it. She’d have to check the photos in the info sheets from Gil, but to the best of her recollection, none of Harper Farms’ managers were blonde.

  “Do you think Reggie could match the DNA in the hair to samples I collect?”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” BB said. “He told me the DNA was compromised and he didn’t hold out much hope that it could be used as evidence.”

  Rory felt like she was on a roller coaster—soaring one minute and diving the next. It was a ride she’d never enjoyed. “I understand,” she said, trying not to sound too deflated. Little as it was, it was more information than she’d expected. “Last question,” she said. “From what you just told me, it’s not hard to determine if hair is dyed, right?”

  “Correct,” BB replied, already a step ahead of her. “Drop off whatever samples you obtain and Reggie will test them for you.”

  “Please thank Reggie for me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate his help as well as yours.”

  “De nada, Rory girl, pas de quoi. You are most welcome.”

  ***

  “What brought about this sudden wave of domesticity?” Rory asked. She was sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar in Leah’s kitchen watching her friend mix the ingredients for pumpkin pie.

  “It’s Gary’s favorite; he’s always talking about the one his mother used to make for Thanksgiving.”

  “In other words, he guilted you into it,” Rory said, stirring more sweetener into her coffee. Leah’s coffee was always too weak or too strong. She seemed incapable of making it “just right.”

  “He’s racked up a lot of brownie points lately, so good wife that I am, I called my mom-in-law for her recipe. She swears it’s foolproof, but with my dismal record in the preparation of food, I figured I’d better make a trial attempt before the big day.” She started laughing. “Do you remember the brownies I made for the Christmas party your first year at headquarters?”

  “I broke a tooth on one of those bricks,” Rory said, dissolving into laughter at the memory.

/>   “Well, no one told me they’re supposed to come out of the oven when they’re still soft in the center,” she said indignantly.

  “If you’d bothered to read the directions on the back of the box, you would have known.”

  “Picky, picky,” Leah giggled, pouring the contents of the mixing bowl into the frozen pie crust.

  “I’m surprised your mother-in-law uses a premade crust.”

  “Shhh,” she said, even though they were alone in the house. “She doesn’t. But then I’ll bet she’s not as good with a gun as I am.”

  “Say no more.”

  Leah popped the pie into the oven and joined Rory at the breakfast bar with her own mug of coffee. “This is awful,” she said, grimacing after the first sip. “Why are you drinking it?”

  “Because you’re my best friend, and you already feel like you’re missing the cooking gene.”

  Leah snatched the mug away from her and poured all the coffee down the drain. “How about tea?” she asked. “I don’t think there’s any way I can ruin that.”

  “Tea would be lovely.”

  Leah set the kettle on the stove and dropped tea bags into two clean cups. “Now then, what have you come to confess?” she asked as casually as if she’d said, “Do you take milk or lemon?”

  “What makes you think I have something to confess?” Rory said indignantly, although she knew it was pointless to evade the question. Her friend could sniff out ulterior motives better than a hound dog could sniff out foxes and moonshine.

  “Just trolling. You do have an uncanny knack for getting into predicaments.”

  Rory had been trying to decide how much to tell Leah about the note and the man following her. Withholding information from the police was a punishable offense, but she did have the right to pursue her own investigations as long as she didn’t get in their way. It sounded simple enough, but there were a lot of gray areas, and lately she’d been finding every one of them. In the end, Rory opted not to tell her how close she’d come to being attacked. There was no new information she could pass along as a result of the incident, no license plate to run and no description of the would-be assailant, since she couldn’t be sure it was the same man she’d seen in the mall. There was nothing Leah could do about it now but worry. The note was a different matter. It might have been written by the killer, so she didn’t feel right about keeping it from her friend. As much as Rory enjoyed solving a case and racking up the free publicity it garnered her, she wished it didn’t have to come at Leah’s expense. “There is something I wanted to mention while I’m here,” she admitted finally. “I don’t think it counts as a predicament, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I received an anonymous note.”

  “Of course you did,” Leah said, shaking her head. “I’ve been a cop for eight years, and I’ve never received a single anonymous note in all that time. And you’ve already gotten . . . ,” she paused as if she was trying to do a quick tally, “. . . how many? I should probably be insulted.”

  “I had the note checked out,” Rory went on, choosing to cut to the chase, “but there were no usable prints. There was a tiny piece of dyed blonde hair on it though.”

  “DNA?” Leah asked hopefully

  Rory shook her head. “Damaged.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “That I should leave police work to the police.”

  “Sounds like it came from a weary guardian angel,” Leah said with a wry laugh.

  “Or someone who knows my record for solving murder cases and figures they stand a better chance if I’m not on their trail.”

  “Which also implies that the police are less of a threat to the killer—now I am insulted.”

  “Hey, we both know I’ve just had a run of beginner’s luck.”

  The kettle had started whistling, so Leah took a moment to fill the mugs and carry them back to the breakfast bar. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a little help on the side. Other than BB and Reggie,” she added archly.

  Rory set her tea down so hard it sloshed over the sides of the mug. She was mortified, not only for keeping their little arrangement a secret from her best friend but also for putting BB and Reggie at risk of losing their jobs. Of course she didn’t believe Leah would report them, but failure to report the unsanctioned use of government property made her friend an accomplice to their sub rosa activities. A fine mess she’d created. “How did you find out?”

  Leah emptied a packet of sweetener into her tea. “Give me some credit. I’m a detective after all. And you can wipe that worry off your face; the secret is safe with me. What I meant by someone coaching you was someone like Mac if he were still alive. He had a pretty impressive track record himself.”

  Rory sipped her tea and shrugged. “I guess I inherited the ability.” Which was true to a degree. She had inherited the marshal from her uncle. Sooner or later though, she was going to have to tell Leah about her not-so-silent partner. But for the moment, “later” still seemed like the better option.

  Chapter 14

  “I’ve got an easy solution for you,” Zeke said, sitting across the kitchen table from Rory while she drank her morning coffee. He was wearing his marshal duds and looking as if he hadn’t put a comb to his hair since their interview with Lacey. It was only a small detail of his manifestation, an oversight likely caused by a low energy level, but that morning it irked her.

  “Let’s hear it,” she said, yanking her focus away from his appearance.

  “If you need hair samples from every member of the Harper family, I can get them for you.” His face split with a self-satisfied grin. “I should be doin’ more to pull my weight around here anyhow.”

  Rory opened her mouth to list every reason his plan wouldn’t work, but she couldn’t come up with a single one. She’d considered asking Helene to help her as she had in the dognapping case, but then she’d only needed one suspect’s hair. This time she needed five samples, including Gil’s. According to the marshal, even the person reporting the crime could turn out to be the culprit. She would have had to drag her aunt along to each of their homes to distract them while she made a beeline for their bathrooms to steal hair from their brushes. Using the same scenario over and over again, something was bound to go wrong. If she were still with the police, she’d have the clout to demand they each snip off a strand of hair right in front of her. But these days, she was only a private investigator, and she couldn’t trust the suspects to supply her with a sample at their leisure. It would be too easy to substitute someone else’s hair for their own. Zeke’s idea was definitely the best one, because he had the gift of invisibility. Unfortunately he also had other “gifts,” like miscalculating the energy needed for a given task and taking liberties with the scope of his assignment, to mention just a couple.

  “So what do you say, darlin’?” he prodded. “You won’t be gettin’ a better offer anywhere else.”

  “It sounds like it might work,” she murmured, trying to put the lid on a roiling pot of reservations. As good as the plan seemed to be, anything that involved the marshal had the potential to blow up in their faces.

  “That doesn’t sound like a ringin’ endorsement.”

  Rory did her best to produce a confident smile and immediately laid out the ground rules. He was to slip through the walls of each house, find the master bathroom and take a few strands of blonde hair from a brush or comb. If there was more than one occupant of the house, as in the case of the elder Harpers and James’s young family, Zeke was to find hair from each of their brushes, except, of course, the small children, and keep the samples separate from one another until he handed them over to her. Having him put the samples into individual, plastic evidence bags required fine muscle control, which was difficult for him and would waste too much time. Once he had the samples, he was to promptly leave t
he premises. She would be waiting in her car with prelabeled evidence bags at the ready. Remembering the broken figurine in James’s house, she made it clear to the marshal that he was not to touch anything else in the house or linger for any reason. It shouldn’t take him more than two minutes tops at each address. If Zeke was thinking of arguing with the strict parameters, one look at her steely expression changed his mind.

  In fine-tuning the plan, Rory realized she’d have to park as close to each house as possible in order to give Zeke a long enough tether to conduct his search. To avoid the possibility that someone from the Harper family might recognize her car, she borrowed her mother’s Chevy, which had the benefit of tinted windows.

  Their first stop was Lacey’s house. Rory figured it would be best to put the captivating Ms. Harper at the top of the list. If the marshal was going to try freelancing, it was more likely to happen near the end of the job when boredom might set in. She added one other safeguard for the first mission. She made sure it was a day that Lacey worked at Harper Farms, where she ostensibly earned her keep. The marshal didn’t need any visual distractions.

  Zeke returned to the car in under a minute with several hairs from Lacey’s brush dancing the twist in the energy field above his palm. Rory placed them in the evidence bag with Lacey’s name, and they were off to James’s house. A silver Lexus was in his driveway and it was possible there were other vehicles in the two-car garage. It was a fair guess that at least one member of the household was inside.

  “It shouldn’t make any difference as long as you’re careful not to bump into anyone or anything,” she told him.

  “I heard you the first time we went over this,” he said, “as well as the second and third times. I may be dead, but I’m not deaf or forgetful.” Rory apologized, thinking that had to qualify as one of the strangest statements she’d ever heard, and thanks to the marshal, she’d heard quite a few.