“And better coffee. Really, James, that stuff is horrific.”
“But it packs a punch.”
“We had a bit of a downpour a minute ago.”
“I see.” Setting his mug on his desk, he strode to the door, shut it, and pulled me into his arms. “I’ll consider new coffee and a new coffeemaker.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Treat your officers well.”
“I always do.” He brushed his lips against my cheek, and we kissed.
I could have stood there, holding him, for an hour at least, but there was the pressing matter of a killer on the loose. “Did you hear what I said about Lauren?” I said, dropping my arms. Back to business.
“Was she listening in on conversations with Pastor Ackley? I was wondering how she was blackmailing people. I thought she might be scouring the church files or Ackley’s computer.”
My jaw dropped. “You knew?”
“She worked at the church and she was the kind of woman who stuck her nose in other people’s business.” He shrugged. “Still, it was only a hypothesis until we got her bank records an hour ago.”
“You’re brilliant.”
“You’re not so bad yourself. But I still need to confirm the hypothesis. Though Miss Hughes made several large and unexplained cash deposits starting in early March.”
I sat on the edge of his desk. With Gilroy, nothing was confirmed until hard evidence was uncovered or the guilty party confessed. “What about Ackley’s phone? I know the text messages from Sunday were wiped out. Did the tech expert recover them?”
“He just started work on it, and I don’t know if he can do anything. We’ve contacted the service provider, but I’m not sure we’re going to get anywhere with them either. We found messages from Saturday, but there was nothing useful in them, and none of them were from the women at the cottage.”
“Did any of them contain links?”
Gilroy shook his head. “The first thing he did was look for links or anything that could hijack his phone or seize control of his bell-ringing system.” He walked around his desk and sank into his chair, and I switched seats, taking the chair on the other side of his desk. “What he did find is remote-access software on his office desktop computer.”
“I knew it! One of those women—”
“Accessed the pastor’s computer from their laptops, phones, or desktops. Yup.”
“The tech guy’s been filling you in on how it works.”
He grinned broadly. “He’s giving me an education.”
“Underhill says you’re leaving in a few minutes. Where are you off to?”
“To collect computers and phones. We had a look yesterday and didn’t find suspicious software. Nothing obvious. Now we need a thorough scrub. Even deleted, the software would leave a trace on the hard drive.” Gilroy rose, extended his arms, and bent backward, stretching the muscles in his back. My guess was he’d been up much of the night, sitting at his kitchen table and working on the case.
“You still need a motive for murder,” I said. “We know the bells and Lauren’s death are connected, but how do you prove it? And you know the blackmailer, but who was she blackmailing—and why? It must be something devastating.”
“I’m afraid our tech guy can’t help with that.”
“Beth Lightfoot thinks either Tyra or Alison hated the pastor and the church, because the bells weren’t necessary for the murder.”
“Just those two? What about Mrs. Shipley?”
“The drunken woman who tripped over the pastor and did not cleverly remove her shoe so the scene would look more realistic?”
“So you agree?” He grabbed his coffee mug and upended it, drinking what was left—no doubt dark and nasty dregs.
“The more I think about it, yeah. She didn’t do it.”
“Mrs. Crawford isn’t a suspect either,” Gilroy said flatly.
I was somewhat surprised by his confidence in her innocence, but since I agreed with him, I let it slide and pushed to my feet. “I know where to find a motive. Why didn’t I think of it? There’s once place in town where gossipers gather, and one person hears it all. Holly.”
“Does she? I didn’t know.”
“You don’t know she does because she doesn’t believe most of the gossip she hears and she never spreads it.” I waved my hand in a shoo-fly gesture. “Except when it has to do with a case, of course. Anyway, it must be the sugar high or the atmosphere, because people say things in that bakery they don’t say anywhere else. I bet she’s heard something that even Sophie hasn’t heard.”
“That could point us to a motive.”
“I’ll talk to her and text you. Did the medical examiner’s report come back?”
“It was just as the coroner thought. Ackley bled out from a stab wound. Quickly. I think he confronted the woman who killed Lauren, but for some reason, he was taken by surprise.”
“She hid the knife in the book, maybe offering him the book, and he wanted to believe she’d turn herself in. She’s probably a very good actress. Sociopaths usually are.”
“The ME thinks she stood inches from him, face to face. Ackley had no idea what was about to happen. The blood on his hands weren’t from any defensive wounds.” Gilroy raised his hands to his stomach. “He was holding the abdominal wound, trying to stop the bleeding.” He leaned in and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “This woman needs to be locked up.”
He started for the door, but I called him back. “James? Why would the killer take Ackley’s phone, throw it into the woods, and then come back for it later? I can understand taking it, possibly to search it out of curiosity. And I understand throwing it away, but why return to look for it?”
“That’s been bothering me too.”
“She erased Sunday’s texts, right?”
Gilroy folded his arms across this chest. “We think so.”
“She killed Ackley, took his phone, and got into her car. Then she erased the texts and removed the SIM card before throwing the phone into the woods. She knew she had to go back to the cottage, so she couldn’t hide the phone there or in her car. She had to get rid of it. She threw the SIM card someplace else—in a trash bin in town or in another field. SIM cards are so small, no one will ever find it.”
“So why did she come back for the phone?”
“Maybe she thought the deleted texts might be recoverable. She had to hide the phone somewhere it would never be found—or totally destroy it. I think Ackley knew or suspected who the killer was, and on Sunday he texted one of the women about his suspicions.”
“Why would he do that? He knew to call the station if he discovered anything.”
“He was a pastor, James. His first instinct was to protect the innocent, and he felt he had to act quickly. He knew all the women were still at the cottage, and he may have thought the killer would strike again. He wanted to warn . . .” I paused. The pieces were falling into place. Ackley had discovered who hacked his system, and knowing that, he believed he also knew who had killed Lauren. So he texted his suspicions to one of the four women. The one he knew best. “Sophie. He wanted to warn Sophie. He didn’t phone the cottage because he didn’t know who would answer or overhear his call, and when Sophie didn’t text back, he walked to the back door, maybe hoping to catch Sophie alone in the kitchen. James, she told me someone moved her phone while she was napping.”
“You’re thinking one of her friends checked her messages?”
“Yes! When she’s at home, she keeps her phone on her kitchen table. After she woke from her nap yesterday, she realized someone had moved her phone.”
“While checking and then erasing Sunday’s texts.”
“I think it’s a safe bet that’s what happened. The killer couldn’t take the phone without alerting everyone, but it didn’t matter—”
“Because we’ve been focused on Ackley’s phone. No one has thought to examine Sophie’s.”
“You might be able to tap a button or two on Sophie’s phone to re
cover the information. Or maybe download the SIM card? Something like that.”
Gilroy took my face in his hands and kissed me. “Have I told you you’re brilliant?”
“More than once.”
“It bears repeating.”
He exited his office, told Underhill he was off to the cottage, and strode for the front door. “Call Mrs. Crawford right now—land line and cell phone. Tell her to bring her cell and charger to the station immediately. Make sure she doesn’t talk to anyone else at the cottage, and don’t leave a message for her.”
“But you’re heading there now,” Underhill said, flashing him a bewildered look.
“In case you can’t get hold of her,” Gilroy shouted as he pushed open the door.
Underhill raised a finger as I walked by, asking me to wait, so I hung around by the front desk as he made his call to the cottage. When no one answered after what must have been at least ten rings, he hung up.
“What’s happening?” he asked. “Is Sophie in danger?”
“She might be—”
“And I’m stuck here!” Underhill pounded his fist on the desk.
“Gilroy will be there in one minute. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t usually smack the desk.”
“I’m worried, okay?”
“You and Natalie aren’t together anymore?”
He did a double-take, staring at me as if I were speaking an incomprehensible foreign language. “Of course we are. What are you talking about?”
“You and Sophie.”
“What about me and Sophie?”
“Oh, come on, Underhill. She’s drop-dead gorgeous and you know it. You were drooling over her.”
His eyes became slits. “She’s married, Rachel.”
“But you—”
“And she’s my sister-in-law. Maybe not technically, but as good as.”
He could have knocked me over with a feather. After I recovered my powers of speech, I said, quite brilliantly, “Since when?”
“Since thirteen months ago.”
“But she’s a Crawford, not an Underhill.”
“Her husband is my stepbrother. I wanted to keep my dad’s last name.”
“I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t. You don’t know anything about me.” He grumpily latched on to his coffee mug and headed for what was left of the dark black coffee in the station’s coffee machine.
“How would I know?” I asked.
He spun back on me. “You wouldn’t. That’s just the point. Gilroy knows. He knows who my stepbrother is and who Sophie is.”
“But he calls her Mrs. Crawford, not Sophie.”
“You know how he is. He always does that.”
“Sophie never said anything to me.”
“You only met her a few times at the library. Why would she tell you we’re related? Anyway, she probably thought you knew by now.”
I spread my hands. “You never said anything.”
“You never asked. You preferred to assume things about me instead of just asking. Is this why Julia was asking me weird questions and staring at me like I’d killed her cat?”
“She doesn’t have a cat.”
He glared at me, poured his coffee—it smelled like tar—and returned to his spot behind the desk.
“Underhill . . .”
“It’s funny, Rachel. I know all about you, but you know next to nothing about me. Why is that?”
“You never talk about yourself.”
“You never ask. You ask about cases all the time, but you’ve never once asked about my life.”
“That’s not true. I asked about Natalie once, and you bit my head off.”
“One person, Rachel. One person I asked you not to talk about three months ago because I didn’t know if she wanted to keep seeing me, and if she didn’t, I didn’t want anyone to know that.”
He was right. I’d known him for months, and we’d been through some hair-raising times together, Gilroy’s near-death at the hands of crazed driver last December being one of them. But that had been about Gilroy. And after Gilroy, me. And Underhill had stood by us both.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I really am sorry.” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat, trying to get a grip on my emotions.
“Well don’t cry about it. Women.” He smiled. “You bring me a lot of donuts, Rachel. That’s pretty cool. And you’re working on getting us a new coffee machine.” He glanced down at his mug. “Which by the way, we need real bad. This tastes like gasoline.”
“I am sorry. I want you to know I think of you as a good friend, even if I don’t act that way sometimes. I can be so blind.”
Underhill was still smiling. “Is this a Massachusetts thing? Do they get all soppy like this in Boston?”
I smiled back. “They most assuredly do not. Pity.”
Hearing the front door open, I turned to see Gilroy holding the door for Sophie. And she had her cell phone in her hand.
CHAPTER 18
“I thought I didn’t get any messages on Sunday,” Sophie said. “If you don’t see texts messages, you don’t leap to the conclusion that someone took your phone and deleted them. But how do we get them back?”
She had laid her phone on the front desk, and the four of us were staring down at it as if it were a patient to be prepped for surgery.
“Do you know what to do, Rachel?” Gilroy asked.
Now that I was looking at the actual phone, no, I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to endanger the recovery by taking guesses and poking around.
Underhill jumped in. “I was researching that this morning, trying to figure a way around the service provider giving us Ackley’s deleted messages—if they even have them. There’s free recovery software for that on the web. Do you have the USB, Sophie?”
She dug into her purse and pulled out the phone’s USB cord while Underhill turned to his desk computer and downloaded a small app.
“Have you used your phone since Sunday?” he asked Sophie. “Texts, emails, downloading?”
“No, nothing.”
“Good. Then if you do have texts from Sunday, they probably haven’t been overwritten.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Gilroy asked.
“No, I’m not, Chief, but we don’t have much of a choice. There.” He angled the computer our way. “TextDoctor recovery software.”
“I never would have guessed,” Gilroy said, obviously pleased with his first officer.
“Until this morning, neither would I,” Underhill said.
Underhill set to work on Sophie’s phone, and a mere three minutes later, he had recovered two text messages to Sophie, both of them sent on Sunday afternoon by Pastor Ackley.
“‘Found out about bells,’” Underhill read out loud. “‘I suspected for a while. Friends still with you?’ That’s the first message.”
“When was it sent?” Gilroy asked.
“Just before two o’clock in the afternoon,” Underhill replied. “The second message was sent six minutes later. It reads, ‘It’s not safe. Meet me in back of cottage.’ That must have been when he decided to walk through the cemetery.”
“The quick way,” Sophie said.
“He wanted to get you out of the cottage,” I said. “So he wasn’t trying to get the killer to give herself up.”
Sophie groaned in frustration. “But who killed him?”
“Sorry I’m late, Underhill.”
At the sound of Officer Turner’s voice, we turned to the door.
“I’m staying, Turner,” Underhill said. “We’re in the groove. We found Ackley’s text messages.”
Turner made a beeline for the desk. “They cracked his phone?”
“No, that’s Sophie’s phone. We found out Ackley sent the messages to her. He tried to warn her.”
“Good man,” Turner said. “So who deleted the texts?”
“We think either Alison or Tyra,” Gilroy
said.
“Which one of them knew about the bell system enough to hack it?” I asked, glancing about the lobby. “And which one of them hated Pastor Ackley?”
“Neither one of them likes the church very much,” Sophie said.
“But Alison goes to St. John’s,” Underhill said.
“It’s habit with her,” Sophie said. “She doesn’t like the services, the music, or most of the people who go there. She’s attended for years, but she moans about it at all of our monthly meetings.”
“Tyra West doesn’t like St. John’s either,” Turner said. “When I drove her home Sunday night, I said it was a nice-looking church. I’d just searched it and was looking for something to talk about. She was like a mummy in the back seat. So I said I liked the pastor’s office chair with the brown leather and thick lumbar support. It’s exactly what I’m looking for at home.”
“You what?” Underhill said, a look of amused disbelief on his face.
“She didn’t know what I was talking about,” Turner continued. “She said she’d only been in the bell tower and would never set foot in the rest of the church. Pretty antagonistic, if you ask me.”
Underhill unhooked Sophie’s phone and handed it and the USB to her. “Sophie, between those two, who do you think killed Lauren and the pastor?” he asked.
“I’m at a complete loss,” she said. “I’ve thought and thought about it, and I can’t imagine either of them being so brutal. Stabbing someone is so cruel. They can both be mean, but verbally, not physically.”
I told them I’d be back in a minute and left the station. On the sidewalk, I slipped my phone from my jeans pocket and dialed Holly’s Sweets. When Peter answered, I told him where I was and asked him to give Holly a message. I needed to know if she’d heard gossip about Alison, Tyra, or anyone close to them. It was probably vicious gossip, I warned him. The sort Holly was loath to repeat. But this was important.
“Both Tyra and Alison knew about the bell system,” I said as I walked back inside. “They both talked about it the morning Holly and I drove to the cottage.”
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