by Sara Rosett
The rush was over and the rest of my shift passed quietly and quickly. I buttoned up my coat and signed out. As I reached the door, it opened a crack, then an arm reached through the small opening, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me outside.
Once I realized it was Gabrielle behind the most ridiculously huge sunglasses I’d ever seen, I let go of my death grip on the door frame. “Ellie,” she said, “good you’re leaving. Just the person I was looking for. Don’t you answer your phone?”
I patted my pocket and checked my purse. “I must have left it in the van,” I said. “How did you find me?”
There was a second of hesitation, then she said, “I came to drop off a donation and saw your van.”
“Do you need help carrying it inside?” I asked.
“No. I’ll do it later.” She gripped my arm again and pulled me down the stairs. “Come on. I’ve got something to show you.”
“What?” I asked as I followed her across the gravel lot. Her car was parked beside my minivan.
She already had the car door open. “Just hop in. I’ll explain on the way,” she said.
“I can’t. I have to pick up the kids in a few minutes.” That wasn’t exactly true. I had some time before I had to be at the school, but there was no way I was jumping in the car with her, especially when she was acting kind of weird.
“Ellie,” she said with an eye roll that I could see through the sunglasses, “it’s only a few minutes away. You’ll be back in plenty of time.” When I didn’t budge, she said. “Fine. Okay. I don’t have time to stand here arguing with you. I thought you wanted in on this, but that’s okay. I’ll call you. Maybe.” She climbed into her car and slammed the door.
I checked my watch. I did want to know what Gabrielle had found. I knocked on her window and shouted. “I’ll follow you.”
She mouthed whatever and put the car in gear.
I hopped into the minivan.
Tips for a Sane and Happy Holiday Season
Holiday Shopping
The best time to do your holiday shopping is during the after-Christmas sales. This strategy requires some planning and storage space, but if you hit the sales, you can pick up fantastic bargains. If you have quite a few people you shop for, put a sticky note on each item with the name of the recipient, then store for next year. Store all your gifts in the same area to make it easy to find them months later. If you’re not a plan-ahead shopper, you can still pick up a surefire gift at the last minute: a gift card. If you’re not sure which store or restaurant the person likes, get them a generic gift card like a Visa or an American Express gift card, or—simplest of all—give cash.
Chapter Twelve
Gabrielle drove fast and took the turns quickly. In less than two minutes we were turning into Simon’s neighborhood. I realized she was taking me to his house. She parked in the driveway and I rolled to a stop at the curb where I quickly checked my phone. Three missed calls, all from her.
I climbed the steep driveway. Gabrielle had already punched in the code on the remote garage door opener keypad and gone inside. I paused in the gloomy garage. I couldn’t help but glance over to the last bay, where I’d found Jean. A burst of light flashed in the shadows. I heard the distinctive click of a camera shutter. “Gabrielle, is that you?”
“Over here,” she called as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. There were more rapid flashes and clicks of a shutter.
“What are you doing?”
“Photographs,” she said shortly as she moved to the opposite side of the garage and took a wide shot. Then she rotated the lens and moved to Jean’s work area. She began clicking away, photographing close-ups of the work table and the floor. “I thought it would be best to do our investigation exactly like the cops. Photograph everything, record everything.”
“They’ve already done that.”
“I know,” she said impatiently. “But it doesn’t seem like they’re using them. And we don’t have those photographs to look at. We need our own photographic record.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, thinking that she was going a little overboard on the crime scene investigation. “What did you want to show me?”
“In a minute.” She’d worked her way around to the other side of Jean’s work area and was snapping pictures of Jean’s shelves of inventory. “I don’t know how long Simon is going to leave this stuff here. He’s being funny right now, not touching any of her stuff, but he’s acting so strange that he might throw it all out tomorrow. I wanted to get it photographed.”
“I saw Simon today at the food bank. He seemed . . . okay.” Not the best term to describe someone whose wife had been murdered, but he had been functioning and even interested in helping other people—that had to count for something.
“Yeah, well, maybe he’s different when he’s there, but here at home, he’s definitely erratic—weeping one minute, furious at the world the next.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “Hey, is that the box you saw with the white elephant gifts?” she asked, pointing to an open cardboard box on the floor.
“Yes, it is.” The picture frame, the bat box, and the sewing machine were all in it. I used a knuckle to push the frame aside and look into the box. “Everything else is in here, I think. Would she sort everything on the floor?”
“No.” Gabrielle switched the camera off. “She usually put what she was working on over there by the shelves. I’ve never seen her work with items on the floor.” There was a gap under the table about the size of the box.
“I bet she had it stored under the table,” I said, pointing to the faint trail of dust.
Gabrielle whipped out her camera and photographed the floor. “I don’t think Jean was working with these things. I bet someone pulled the box out, found the paperweight, and wiped it clean before . . .”
I touched the edge of the box, where there were black smears. “I think this is fingerprint dust.”
Gabrielle shrugged. “But if the person wore gloves . . .” She cleared her throat. “Come on,” she said, and charged over to the door to the house. She was inside before I could say anything.
Reluctantly, I trailed along behind her. This didn’t feel right, but I’d never been good at tamping down my curiosity. The doorway from the garage opened into the kitchen, a large room with dark wood cabinets and a huge Formica-topped island with bar stools ranged along one side. There was a box of cereal on the island along with a menu for Chinese take-out and a few crumpled napkins.
Gabrielle picked up the menu and said, “He’s ordering take-out when he’s got all that food in the refrigerator?” She slapped the menu back on the counter and opened the refrigerator. “He threw it out? All of it?” She yanked the freezer door open, then shoved them both closed rather hard. “I can’t believe he’d toss all that perfectly good food.” She seemed to remember I was with her and ran her hands down the lapels of her coat. “I can’t stand waste,” she said.
She certainly was passionate about it, I thought, as I nodded agreement. I hated it when the kids didn’t eat all their food, but did I act like that? I wondered. She moved to another part of the kitchen and I scanned the rest of the room.
An oak dining table separated the kitchen from a family room with worn couches and a rather tired-looking recliner. A woman’s black cardigan was draped over the back of one of the dining-room chairs and I wondered if it was Jean’s. Surely not. It would be kind of weird to leave it out, almost as if she could walk in at any moment and put it on.
Three Christmas stockings dangled from the fireplace mantel and an artificial tree stretched to the ceiling, its branches crammed with all sorts of ornaments. Fragile glass globes nestled next to ornaments made of Popsicle sticks and glitter, obviously made by her son when he was younger.
I looked away from the tree—the whole situation was so sad. I focused on Gabrielle, who was bent over a small built-in desk in the corner of the kitchen. While I’d been looking around, she�
�d been at work with her camera again, but had put it away. “Gabrielle, does Simon know we’re here?” I asked again.
She didn’t look up. She closed one drawer and opened the one below it. “He doesn’t mind. I had to drop off those sympathy cards,” she said with a wave of her hand at the dining-room table where a few pastel sympathy cards were stacked. “We’re just taking a quick look around.”
“So he doesn’t know we’re here,” I said.
“I’m in and out of here all the time,” she said. “Not a big deal.”
“But you said Simon has been acting strange. You don’t think poking around his house while he’s gone might upset him?”
She shoved the last drawer closed and stepped back, hands on hips. “I don’t know. He’s . . . skittish. Better that we do this and get it over with. No need to upset him unless we find something. After all, he wants Jean’s killer found, too.” She’d repositioned the sunglasses that she had pushed up on her head and was looking around as she talked, clearly more interested in whatever she was looking for than in talking to me.
She strode across the family room and opened a door to a hall closet near the front door. She checked the floor, then parted the coats and peered into the back of the closet.
“You said there was something you wanted to show me,” I said.
“I was so sure it would be in her desk,” Gabrielle said in an undertone. “I thought maybe it fell on the floor when she was putting her coat away, but there’s nothing there.” Gabrielle moved away from the closet, her forehead wrinkled in a frown.
I crossed the room to the closet. It didn’t look as if anything was out of place. A mix of men’s and women’s coats hung on the rod and a row of matching gray luggage lined the back wall from a large oversize suitcase to a small overnight bag. There was a gap where a small rolling suitcase would have fit. “What are you looking for? The small suitcase?”
“No, Kurt probably took it to school. Her calendar. She had a date book with a nice leather cover. That’s what I wanted to show you.”
“Maybe the police took it?”
“No, I saw the inventory of the things they put into evidence and it wasn’t on it.”
“Maybe her bedroom?” I suggested.
“No, I looked there yesterday. Simon blew up.” She raised her eyebrows and gave a little shake to her head as she said, “He wasn’t upset that I was in her room. He was upset that I was cleaning things out. But, he can’t leave all her things as they are forever. He’s going to have to get in there and clear them out. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
“Maybe it’s too soon.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “Maybe. I guess it’s the organizer in me. I can’t stand the thought of her things—her clothes, her books, her knitting, even her makeup—sitting around getting dusty like they’re some sort of museum display. That’s pitiful and not a good way for Simon to live.”
“You might give him a week or two,” I suggested.
She made a noncommittal noise. “Where else would she put her date book?” Gabrielle asked, returning to her main concern. “The more I think about it, the more important I think that date book is. Jean was very old-school. Her cell phone was positively ancient and she hardly ever used it. She didn’t like to be on the computer and only used it for her business. I don’t think she ever sent me an e-mail—said it was better to just talk to people, that all that new technology only got in the way of communication and became a time waster.”
“She might be on to something there.” I tilted my head, thinking about where Jean would go during her day. “Could it be in her car?”
She snapped her fingers and said, “Good idea.”
She nearly knocked me over as she rushed back to the garage. I pulled the door to the kitchen shut, then walked across the garage to the black crossover SUV that was so similar to Gabrielle’s.
“Found it!” she said, backing out of the car. “It was stuck under the passenger seat.” She put the brown leather date book on the hood of the car and opened it to December, then went still. “Nothing? The day she died is blank?”
“Only a note about lunch with Diane.”
“Maybe there’s something else—a notes section?”
Gabrielle’s hands were shaking as she viciously flipped pages. She slapped it closed and shoved it at me. “Nothing. There’s nothing.”
I turned the pages, seeing normal entries: book club, spouse club, dentist, lunch with “G,” which I assumed meant Gabrielle.
“Look at these,” I said, pulling out a few folded pieces of paper from the back. There were a couple of glossy brochures for apartments and a flyer with a border of holly promoting a move-in special.
Gabrielle yanked them from my hand and quickly flicked through the pages. “These are left over from when she helped me look for an apartment,” Gabrielle said, and shoved the pages into a trash can, then stalked out of the garage. I stood there, contemplating going after her, but decided to give her a few minutes.
I skimmed through the rest of the sections—phone numbers and a section of notes that were nothing more interesting than grocery lists and reminders to return books to the library. There was one page of numbers that made me pause.
I walked slowly outside. Gabrielle was leaning against her SUV, arms crossed. The sunglasses were back over her eyes, but it looked as if she was staring at the thin scalloped layer of clouds in the distance. As I walked up, she said, “I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. I just want to know what happened. And for there to be nothing . . .”
“Well, I don’t know if this is something or nothing, but it’s . . . different from everything else in here,” I said as I held out the date book and pointed to a page with two columns of numbers. They ranged from three-digit numbers all the way up to seven-digit numbers.
“What could they be? They’re not long enough to be phone numbers.”
“I don’t know. I’d think they were lists of dollar amounts, but there’s no dollar signs or periods or commas.”
“If they’re about money, then these are huge amounts. That one would be a million dollars,” she said, her voice incredulous. “It can’t be money. Simon and Jean were fine financially, but they didn’t have that kind of money. It’s got to be something else.”
“Lock combinations?” I said, half joking, but Gabrielle missed my lighter tone.
“No. I don’t think lock combinations have three-digit codes.” She put the date book on the hood of her SUV and photographed the page, then flipped back and got shots of all the calendar pages. “I’ll send you all these photos once I get them downloaded.” She looked considerably more upbeat than she had a few minutes ago.
Later that evening, I was pushing a grocery cart through the grocery store. Livvy and Nathan were gripping the sides of the cart, their feet braced on the bottom rack. The classroom Christmas parties were scheduled for later in the week and I was on the list to bring cupcakes for both classes, but I had no cake mix, no frosting, and—ultimate horror—no sprinkles.
Since it was a quick run to the store, I’d gone to the local grocery store instead of the commissary on base. I spotted a familiar figure moving slowly along the last aisle ahead of me. “Cecilia,” I called. She twisted around and waved. She wore running shoes, black yoga pants, and a pale yellow workout top. In the formfitting clothes, I could just make out the hint of a pregnant belly. While she waited for me to catch up with her, she took a box of ice cream sandwiches off the shelf and put them in her basket.
“Caught red-handed with the ice cream,” she said as I came even with her. She greeted Livvy and Nathan, then said, “I know I should feel guilty about the calories and the sugar, but I want one so bad.”
“You’ve got some fruit in there, too, so I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it. Besides,” I said as she fell into step beside me, “I bet you worked out today.”
“As you can tell,” she said, gesturing to her makeup-free face and her pale yellow hair, which was held bac
k with a thin headband, then gathered into a ponytail. “Stroller brigade. We’ve missed you.”
“I know, but the holidays are so busy. I’ll get back soon.”
“Hey, thanks for covering for me at the food bank. Sorry if it put you behind,” she said, crinkling her beaky nose up in an apologetic expression that made her small, circular glasses rise slightly.
“It was no problem. It was the least I could do after you rescued me from Wisk,” I said, leaning into the basket, pushing harder to keep up with Cecilia’s fast pace as we hurried down the aisle to the checkout lines.
“Oh, that wasn’t hard. Gavin takes care of our cats, now that I’m pregnant.” She saw me glance again at her basket, which was loaded with multiple boxes of macaroni and cheese along with about twenty cans of soup. “Don’t worry, that’s not all for me. Food bank donation. Did you get the e-mail?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve been so busy I haven’t even checked it today.”
“Food donations are down this year and they’re running low. I figured the least I could do was to pick this up for them, since I missed my slot today.”
We separated to go through different lines, then met back up again at the exit to the parking lot. Cecilia pulled her keys out of her tiny shoulder bag. “I’m over this way.”
“Me, too,” I said, taking long strides and pressing hard against the cart’s handle to keep up with her. We were power-walking again.
“Whee!” Nathan called as we bumped along at our fast pace.
Cecilia said, “I still can’t believe what happened to Jean. Have you heard how the family is doing?”
“I saw Simon at the food bank and he seemed all right. Not good, but coping.”
“Such a shame about her and Gabrielle. I really hope they were able to patch things up before Jean died.”
“Wait—there was a disagreement?”