Alex began to say something, but I stopped him. “Men are definitely not very good with emotions, are they? If there was anything to show us he couldn’t have done it, that’s all we’d need. We don’t want to investigate someone who is simply missing someone.”
She grimaced and raised her eyes toward the porch roof for a moment, and then she held up her hands and excitedly said, “I called him on the home phone that night! He was here alone and he answered my call here. You can get the phone company to give you records or something, can’t you? I called the house here before ten.”
Alex wrote down in his notes and looked up as she continued to speak.
“I was worried that he hadn’t fed my cat and wanted to make sure he did. Please, check the records and you’ll see.”
“Can you tell us the exact time you made the call and how long you spoke to him?” I asked, sympathizing with her.
“It was quarter to ten and we spoke for at least two minutes. Please check the records. If you need me to sign a waiver or anything, I will. Just give it to me and give me a pen.”
“We’ll check into that, ma’am,” Alex said in his best polite voice. “Thank you for your help.”
After swearing that her son could never do a horrible thing like murder, Mrs. Martin left us standing on her porch and wondering who the real Kellen was. Could the person we’d met really be just a front for the person his mother believed him to be?
As we walked back to the car, I asked Alex, “Do you really think Kellen was here all night?”
He laughed at the disappointment in my voice. “It’s possible that awful guy isn’t our murderer, Poppy. We’ll have to see once we get the phone records.”
I stopped at the end of the sidewalk and sighed. “I’m not buying that this guy is truly heartbroken. I think what we saw there is a mother who has no idea what her son is really like.”
“What is that you said before? You can’t plant peas and get corn? Maybe Mrs. Martin wishes the corn that grew was really peas like her,” he said with a smile.
“I don’t know. What I do know is that I like her more than her son.”
Alex nodded and opened my car door. “On that, I agree one hundred percent.”
Chapter Nineteen
Craig sat behind what used to be Stephen’s desk tapping a stack of papers on the top and grinning like the cat who just swallowed the canary. I liked seeing him happy, and while I couldn’t admit it out loud right there as I stood in the big office where everyone but Derek and Alex had their desks, seeing him in that chair instead of Stephen because of his promotion thrilled me as much as it did Craig.
Maybe even more since Stephen had been a thorn in my side for months.
“How’s it going?” I asked him as he began to straighten out the stapler, tape dispenser, and pencil cup in front of him.
“Good! I’m ready to go as soon as you two are.” Craig stopped fidgeting with his office supplies and leaned over his desk toward me. Looking up with his big blue eyes wide, he said, “I want you to know that I’m happy you’re still going to be around and that Alex is staying on. It wouldn’t be the same here without you guys.”
“Thanks,” I said as a smile spread across my face. “I’m happy to be staying too, and I know Alex loves being a cop.”
“Yeah, but he could be a cop anywhere. I’m happy he decided to stay in Sunset Ridge.”
I patted him on the shoulder for that compliment. “Thanks, Craig. I’m sure Alex would appreciate that.”
“How long before we get our day rolling?”
Looking down the room toward Derek’s office, I wondered the same thing. Alex had gone in to speak to the chief as soon as we arrived this morning, and for the past forty minutes or so, they’d been in the office with the door closed. Even I had no idea what they were discussing, so like everyone else, I was in the dark about what would happen next.
“I’m not sure. Whatever they’re talking about, it seems pretty important. Maybe I’ll make a coffee run while we’re waiting. Want one?”
Craig’s expression morphed onto a look of disgust and horror that said the last thing in the world he wanted was a coffee. I may not have understood his dislike of the best drink in the world, but I understood that face he made.
I laughed at his reaction to my simple question. “Got it. Can I get you anything else? Tea? Soda maybe?”
The muscles in his face relaxed, and he shook his head. “No, I’m good.”
“I sometimes get Alex a danish. Would you like one too?” I asked as I turned to leave.
“No, but thank you so much for offering. I appreciate that, Poppy.”
Looking back, I saw a huge smile lighting up Craig’s face. Happy that I had put that there, I said what I knew would make him see that he was a welcome addition to our partnership. “You’re with real partners now, Craig. The danish and coffee are just perks that come with it.”
I didn’t think it possible, but his smile actually grew bigger until it was nearly an ear to ear grin. “Thanks, Poppy. That means a lot to me.”
With that bit of workplace kindness accomplished, I walked toward the exit and saw Alex coming out of Derek’s office just as I passed by. A quick study of his face and body language told me whatever they’d been talking about for all that time hadn’t been anything negative. While he wasn’t grinning like Craig, he did look generally pleased with whatever the meeting had been about.
“I was just about to go for a coffee and danish run. Are we heading out now?”
Alex nodded and waved for Craig to join us. “Yeah. I want us to all go over every single clue we have so far and every suspect we can either count in or eliminate from our investigation. It’s time to get back to work.”
Okay, so maybe his conversation with Derek wasn’t that wonderful. I heard frustration in Alex’s voice and wondered if the whole Stephen issue had made this case more difficult on him than others. Just another reason to dislike him.
“Everything okay? You seem a little stressed,” I said quietly so no one else could hear.
“No, I’m fine. Yesterday put me a little off my game, so I want to get back to working on this case and get it solved. Amy’s father called Derek last night because someone told him the case was in disarray after Stephen left, so there’s a little more pressure now. We’ll get it solved, though. I told Derek that.”
Jumping to Alex’s defense, I said, “In disarray after Stephen left? It wouldn’t have been in disarray, which it isn’t, by the way, in the first place if he hadn’t lied about knowing the victim. That really frosts my cookies, you know that? Nothing’s in disarray. I don’t even like that word now.”
“Frosts my cookies?” he repeated, taking the least important part of my diatribe and focusing on it.
“Sorry. I’m hungry. My mind is on food at the moment.”
Craig joined us just as I finished apologizing, and whatever Alex had been feeling faded away as a smile brightened his expression. “No time for food now. We need to go over everything Stephen did, including searching Amy’s apartment for clues, and then talk to Tamara Ridgeway again and get some answers on how much a woman scorned she really was.”
Turning toward Craig, Alex said, “You’ve taken a look at Stephen’s notes about his interview with Amy’s father. What do you think?”
Put on the spot, Craig looked frightened for a moment but then calmly said, “I don’t think he had anything to do with his daughter’s murder, but it might be good for one of us to speak to him again, just in case.”
“I agree. That’ll be our first stop, and then we’ll head over to Amy’s apartment to check there for any clues as to who would want her dead. If we’re lucky, our killer sent her some threatening note or something,” Alex said with a smile.
“Feeling particularly hopeful this morning?” I teased, knowing how unlikely it would be for us to find that kind of huge clue.
“I am. Let’s get going so we can solve this case before the mayor and the council come d
own with a full case of witchcraft hysteria and send our chief around the bend.”
The interview with Mr. Perkins gave us nothing more than what Stephen had reported in his notes from his talk with him, but it did provide Craig with the opportunity to see how a great cop did that part of the job. As we drove away from the Perkins house, I looked over at Alex with pride at how wonderful a mentor he was being to Craig.
“That was better than I imagined it would be, but I bet it’s just that you make it look easy,” Craig said from the backseat.
Looking up at the rearview mirror, Alex gave him a slight smile. “Just remember one thing and you’ll always do fine with those kinds of interviews. Whether the person is a suspect or not, they’re mourning the loss of someone they loved. Never forget that part of it.”
I knew Alex spoke from experience not only as a police officer but as someone who had to endure losing his wife and being a suspect in her murder. Although he rarely talked about it, he’d told me a few times that he’d never forget how it felt to be grieving her death and have everyone suspicious of his every move.
“It doesn’t take anything away from your performance on a case to act with some sympathy for what people are going through,” he said as he pulled up in front of Amy Perkins’ apartment and parked the police cruiser.
Looking back at Craig, I saw him nod in agreement. “Thanks, Alex. I won’t forget that.”
The three of us walked up to apartment 4B at 530 Sanderson Street to see a planter outside the door with bunny figurines just like at Kellen Martin’s house welcoming us to her home. Pointing at it, I said, “Those look familiar?”
Alex and Craig both turned their attention to the friendly-looking rabbits holding the Welcome sign, and Alex nodded. Craig’s expression said he was confused, but he didn’t ask why I’d pointed them out.
Taking a sheet of paper out, he read off it. “It says that her landlord lives in apartment 1A. Want me to get the key off her?”
“Sounds good. Poppy and I will hang out here with the woodland creatures,” Alex said with a chuckle.
Craig trotted off to speak to Amy’s landlord, and I pushed on Alex’s shoulder for that remark about the bunnies. “I like this kind of stuff. I think I’m going to get a planter for my front porch and put some welcoming woodland creatures in it, as you call them.”
He looked down at the rabbits and then back at me. “It’s not really my style, but it is your house.”
Just the way he said that made me want to say, “It’s basically an our house thing since you’re always there.” But I didn’t. That was a conversation for another time.
Craig reappeared holding the key in front of him like some kind of treasure he’d found and opened the door for us. We walked into Amy’s apartment and saw a neat and tidy home. Like her friend Crystal, she too liked nature, although her preference for it seemed limited to some plants on her kitchen counter and a few knockoff watercolor paintings hanging on the living room walls.
“Our victim sure did keep her house clean,” Craig said under his breath as we all slid on plastic gloves to begin searching for anything that might help us understand who would want her dead.
“That makes it easier,” Alex said with a smile, showing his pleasure at not having to sift through piles of junk like we’d had to in a number of cases. “Nothing like wading waist-deep through someone’s life. That makes it ten times harder to find anything.”
“So what are we looking for?” Craig asked as we began to look through the front room of the apartment.
“Anything that could tell us why someone would murder her,” Alex said flatly, not helping Craig in the least.
As he stuck his hand in between the cushions on the couch, I opened the single drawer in her coffee table and began looking through the notes and papers Amy had hidden away in it. “Basically, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. While we look in here, you could check the kitchen.”
Happy to have something to do, he headed into the room next to the one we were checking. Alex finished his inspection of the couch and shook his head, and it dawned on me that I wasn’t exactly the person who should be giving Craig directions on what to do.
“Sorry about that. I just thought it would be good for him to do this too.”
“It’s okay, Poppy. I was lost in thought there for a minute or I would have told him to check that room too. You did nothing wrong. Find anything in that drawer?”
I thumbed through an old magazine and shook my head. “No. She wasn’t exactly hiding stuff in here. I think she just liked the top of the coffee table to be clean, so she stuffed the magazines and things that other people would keep on top of it in the drawer.”
He looked around the very tidy room and sighed. “I’m beginning to wonder if this murder was because of her being a Druid. This woman seems to have very few people who disliked her, and other than having bad taste in the people she dated, she’s a model citizen who went to work every day, did her job, and kept her house neat as a pin. Who kills someone like that?”
Closing the drawer, I looked into the kitchen to see Craig running his hand along the back of the counter and finding nothing in there either. “I don’t know. We’re still stuck with just two suspects—Kellen and Tamara.”
Alex nodded. “And if those phone records show what his mother said was true, that leaves Tamara. I think it’s time we drive out to the Third Eye Center and talk to her again. I want to know more details about her alibi for the night of the murder. We’ll go right after we check Amy’s bedroom.”
We walked into the final room of Amy’s three-room apartment to find it as spotless as the other two. The bed with its teal and purple sheets and comforter had been made, and every item on her dresser, from her makeup to the three perfume bottles lined up by size from smallest to largest, looked perfectly placed by someone who prized neatness and order.
Alex and I stood in the middle of the room shaking our heads after looking in her nightstand and finding nothing but a book on meditation and in her closet and finding every piece of clothing hung up perfectly and four pairs of shoes lined up on the floor. “Nothing. Looking at this place would lead anyone to think she was the straightest arrow out there,” I said.
“And yet, she practiced a pagan religion and dated both men and women. That’s not exactly a straight arrow in most people’s books,” he said as he took another look around the room.
“Neither of those things are exactly wild and crazy these days, Alex. It is the twenty-first century, you know,” I said with a chuckle, having a little fun tweaking the proper side of his personality.
Shrugging, he turned to head back out into the kitchen. “To each his own, I guess.”
I followed him out to join Craig, who stood at the end of the Formica counter next to Amy’s refrigerator. In his hand, he held something round and green. “This looks just like the green rock we found near the body at the scene. Malachite?”
Taking a plastic baggie out of his pocket, Alex held it open and Craig dropped the stone into it. “Maybe the gods are looking down on us and there’s a fingerprint on it other than the victim’s,” Alex said, flashing me a smile.
“The gods?” I asked as he announced it was time to move on to the Third Eye Mind and Body Center. “Why, Officer Montero, how open-minded of you.”
He rolled his eyes while I walked past him out into the heat of the day.
We dropped Craig off at the station with the malachite so he could get it to the lab to hopefully find a fingerprint that would help us while we drove out to speak to Tamara Ridgeway again at the Third Eye Center. I wanted to do nothing less in the whole world than speak to her again, but since she’d continued to be one of our strongest suspects in the case, it was time to ask her a few more questions.
Alex parked the car in the empty parking lot in front of the building and joined me to walk into the center. “How does this place stay in business? It’s the middle of the day and there’s not a car in the lot,” he
asked.
“Maybe all the customers are the eco-friendly type who take the shoe leather express,” I joked. “Seriously, though, other than The Grounds, what store in town does much business on any day? Somehow they all stay open.”
As he opened the door, he muttered, “Another mystery of the small town.”
Tamara Ridgeway stood behind the counter in all her glory sorting through receipts as we walked in. The heady scent of patchouli hit me like a baseball bat to the head two steps into the building, and I waved my hand in front of me to dispel the odor.
“Again? Should I call a lawyer?” Tamara asked in all her rudeness.
“Miss Ridgeway, we’re here to ask you about your relationship with Amy Perkins. When I asked you last time we spoke, you said you didn’t have a relationship with her, but we’ve since learned that you indeed did have more than just a passing knowledge of each other. Why didn’t you tell us you were dating her at one time?”
“Who said that? Tell me who said that. It’s a lie!” she shrieked.
Before the interview went completely off the rails, I jumped in and said, “Miss Ridgeway, we’re not here to judge you. Love is love. We don’t have any issue with you and Amy dating, but you did lie. We just want to know why.”
Tamara stood there staring at us and saying nothing for a long moment. Alex gave me a tiny smile to let me know he appreciated my diffusing the situation, but I hoped I’d done more than that. I wanted her to give us the truth about her relationship with Amy so we could make some headway on this case.
She finally spoke, and I was struck by how uncharacteristically gentle her voice sounded. Knitting her brows, she said quietly, “Because I didn’t want to be judged yet again for loving her.”
Before our eyes, Tamara Ridgeway morphed into a softer version of herself. Gone was the harshness in her expression, and her tone became far less shrill. “I didn’t kill Amy. I would never hurt her.”
Alex took out his pen and notebook and asked, “Why did the two of you break up?”
The Witching Hour Page 20