“I don’t suppose you can tell me who he’s suspecting now?” she asked as she gathered the remaining supplies into one place, for easier loading once she brought her car back. Derek shook his head reproachfully.
“Of course not. I’ve talked too much already. But I can do one better.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a familiar set of keys. “That lawyer of yours has been bugging the chief, and now that you’re off the top of the suspect list, he was okay with letting you back into the marketplace.”
“No kidding?” Claudia stared at the keys dangling from his hand like she couldn’t believe they were real.
“No kidding at all. We were done with the crime scene a long time ago, unofficially, of course. I think it’s starting to occur to the chief that he might be setting himself up for some trouble down the line, and he’s hoping you’ll let bygones be bygones.”
“I’m not making any promises,” Claudia said cautiously, still eyeing the precious keys hungrily. “But a person is a lot less likely to complain about a problem they don’t have, you know?”
As assurances went, she thought that was pretty vague, but apparently it was enough for Derek, who handed over the keys and removed the crime scene tape from the door with a theatrical flourish.
“Your palace, madam.”
Claudia was so happy and relieved she almost giggled.
Entering the darkened marketplace, the first thing that struck her was the smell. Despite the mostly cool weather, five days turned out to be beyond the coping limit of even the most farm-fresh cabbage. The second thing, as soon as she turned on the lights, were the memories of the last time she had been in here. She had spent a lot of time in the last few days thinking about what had led to Lori’s murder, and it occurred to her at that moment that one of the reasons might have been to avoid having to think about finding the corpse, and the terrible violence of her death.
Desperate to distract herself, and hoping for a little more information, she turned the conversation back to what Derek had mentioned about Chief Lennox’s ideas about the killer.
“So, this new theory of your boss’s must be pretty good if he’s letting you do all this for me. Is it something you guys learned about Neil Hahn while he was here?”
Fortunately, Derek chose to be more amused than annoyed by her transparent bid for information.
“Nice try, but no. We didn’t even know who he was until he turned up dead. Had to get his name from his driver’s license, and it was your friends at the ranch who told us how he was related to Ms. Roth.”
They were standing near Lori’s booth, which Claudia hadn’t really seen since the night she had told Lori she needed to close it. Looking at it now, it seemed painfully obvious that the bags and napkins and fabric-covered journals weren’t handmade, with their vivid colors and curiously uniform designs. But she had fallen for it, never even asked a question. That was the problem, Claudia thought. She had to learn to be less trusting.
The goods were in minor disarray, like someone had looked through them, but hadn’t made much of a job of it. She wondered if the police had even paid that much attention to the boxes from Lori’s storage. Her hope, in not sharing what she had learned about the list Lori was keeping, was that they would have found it themselves and come to the same conclusions, but now she wasn’t so sure. It would be just like Lennox to miss everything important. She was happy to not be his top suspect anymore, but that just meant that someone else was, and there was a chance that person was just as innocent.
“About those boxes of Lori’s, and Neil. I think he might have been looking for the list.”
“What list?”
Claudia cringed at the sudden sound of accusation in his voice. Things had been going so well. But she had come this far, and there was no turning back now.
“I guess I have a confession to make,” she said. “Those boxes that Lori had stored with me, that I turned over to you? I kind of had a look through them first. I didn’t take anything, but I did see some stuff she was keeping, a list of names and a picture. I think it had to do with a friend of hers who committed suicide. I figured you had found them too?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Derek said, reproachfully. “The chief took all that stuff away and locked it up in the evidence room. If he found anything in it, he didn’t tell me. You really should have said something about this sooner.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” Claudia didn’t think this was the moment to explain that, at the time, she had not seen the police as particularly sympathetic. But since she was being helpful now, she tried to think of something she could do to make it up to him.
She cast her eyes around the marketplace, trying and failing to avoid the spot where Lori’s body had been. Aside from the chairs having been pushed out of the way, the corner by the cheese shop looked exactly the way it always did, from the dark wood walls down to the wainscoting along the floor. That reminded her of something, and it took a moment for Claudia’s brain to retrieve what it was.
“The fitness tracker,” she said. Derek looked surprised, and she remembered that she had never confirmed to the police that it was hers. But it was too late now, so she pressed on. “It was under the body, right? So maybe it moved when Lori was killed.”
“Could be,” Derek said, still confused. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Because the whole point of it is it records movement. And that information gets uploaded to the computer.” Claudia was already crossing the marketplace in quick strides, heading to her office in the corner. “The software wasn’t compatible with my laptop, so I had to set it up in here. I can look at it and see the last time it moved before you found it, and that might help to narrow down exactly when Lori was killed. That would be a useful thing to know, right?”
“You can do that?”
“Sure. The whole reason I bought that brand was because they open-sourced a lot of their software. I thought I might be able to use it for something, but I never got around to it.”
Her office was a cramped room tucked into a corner of the marketplace, between the storage closet and the bathroom. There was barely enough space for the desk that held the computer she had cobbled together from salvaged parts when they had cleaned out the offices at her old job. It didn’t look like much, but it worked in exactly the way she liked, and she had long ago declared that she would do anything, up to and including black magic, to keep it running.
The comfort she felt just logging in was enough to relax her, and she clicked through to the application that controlled the fitness tracker practically on muscle memory. She was so sure of the outlines of what she was about to see, she barely paid attention to the details, until they were clear on the screen in front of her.
“That’s weird.” The words were out of Claudia’s mouth before her brain finished processing the implications.
“What’s weird?” Derek asked. The office was so small that he was left standing in the doorway, from where the screen wasn’t visible.
“Um, the syncs stopped over two months ago. The battery must have died.”
Claudia was lying. The battery was fine, and the syncs hadn’t stopped. They had been happening at regular intervals, whenever the device was in range of her phone or the computer. Which made it pretty clear the tracker had been in her house since she stopped wearing it, talking to the phone when she was home. And it had still been working, and nowhere near the marketplace, on the night of Lori’s death, when it was supposed to have been under the body. It had last connected from Claudia’s house at three the following afternoon, right around the time Derek and Lennox had been there, telling her she was a suspect in the murder.
This was a problem.
There were exactly two people who could have taken the tracker then and later claimed it was found under the body, and one of them was there in the room with her.
“Sorry,” Claudia said, just a shade too brightly. “I guess that was a dead end. Worth a try, right? Anyway, than
ks for getting me my keys back. I should probably get to work, though, I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.”
“I think that’s going to have to wait.” Derek was standing across the doorway, his broad shoulders blocking the exit, with his gun pointed at her chest. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Time stopped, at least metaphorically. Claudia didn’t know how long she sat staring at him, trying to process what was happening, but it was long enough that he narrowed those lovely blue eyes and waved the gun again.
“Come on, you don’t have all day.”
Frantically, Claudia tried to think of something she could do, some signal she could send with one or two taps she might get away with on the computer, but nothing was occurring to her. So, slowly and reluctantly, she willed herself out of her chair, toward the weapon that was pointed at her chest.
She kept her eyes focused on Derek’s face, hoping he would give something away, but his expression was impassive and he said nothing, just stepped aside so she could pass and indicated that she should walk in front of him. Claudia knew that obeying wasn’t in her best interests, that whatever he wanted for her was definitely not going to be what she wanted for herself, but her head was full of wool, and if there was a brilliant plan in there she couldn’t get at it. So she went, and hoped she would think of something soon.
Derek walked her to the exit and had her turn off the lights and lock the door behind them. The fog was coming in, and the parking lot was cold and misty. Claudia tried to suppress her shivering and hoped it wouldn’t be interpreted as a sudden movement.
The cold air had the additional effect of clearing her head, and after her initial freeze-up, her brain was working double-time now, making connections and spitting out theories faster than she could process them. Of course it was Derek—an attractive young man, newly arrived in town, who had every opportunity to frame her and suppress evidence. He was the person Lori was after, the subject of the list that Claudia had just so helpfully told him she had found.
And he was the angle that Neil had identified, either trying to avenge Lori or gain something from it himself, only he didn’t get the chance. And Claudia, poor, dim, susceptible Claudia, hadn’t given the possibility even a moment’s thought.
She was all set for a good round of self-reproach, but this wasn’t the time. Taking a hard look at her personal judgement was something she could do after she got herself out of this alive.
“The chief didn’t tell you to give me back the keys, did he?” she said as Derek guided her out into the darkness. She was still thinking that in the long term it wasn’t going to be a good idea to obey his orders, but for now she needed to keep the situation as calm as possible until she figured out what he was planning, and try to get as much information as she could in the meantime.
But Derek wasn’t playing along.
“Don’t worry about him, he doesn’t know anything,” he said. “Just keep walking.”
“To where?”
“Your house. Now let’s go.”
It was the best news Claudia had gotten since she didn’t think she was going to get good news again. If he had been taking her to his car, her only option would have been to bolt when they got to the road and hope Derek wasn’t good at hitting a moving target. But the route back to her house gave her an idea, and that idea turned into a plan.
It wasn’t a good plan, but it was a plan.
The fog rolled over them like sets of great waves on the rising wind. In the distance, Claudia could see the headlights of cars passing on the highway, too far for any hope that someone might hear her if she called out, even if for some reason they were driving with the windows down in fifty-degree weather. She was walking as slowly as she thought she could get away with, hoping against hope that someone would have misread the times for the outdoor market and a busload of badly-scheduled day-trippers was about to pull up to deliver her.
That didn’t happen. Derek directed her across the parking lot, his gun held low enough not to be obvious from a distance, and Claudia tried to think of a suitable topic of conversation. But it was her captor who spoke first.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he said, sounding like a man making an unconvincing apology that he nonetheless expects to be accepted.
“You can quit any time you want,” Claudia replied. “I’m not stopping you.”
“It’s not that simple.” He was whining now, and Claudia wondered how she could have ever found this man remotely appealing. “You shouldn’t have looked at that stuff, and now I don’t have a choice.”
“You shouldn’t limit yourself like that,” Claudia said encouragingly. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
She even managed a smile, but whatever sense of humor Derek had pretended to have wasn’t in evidence now. In retrospect, trying to jolly a two-time murderer out of killing her probably wasn’t going to work anyway, so she changed her approach.
“I’ve talked to Kara,” she said. “She knows about the list. Are you going to fly across the country and shoot her too? I wouldn’t say we were best friends, but if she hears about something happening to me, she might get in touch with someone, tell them her story about Steve Mann. In fact, I’ve already given a reporter her information, and asked him to send her pictures of people from local events. I know you’re pretty careful about staying out of photos, but are you sure? If there’s one picture with you in it, she’ll spot you no problem. How do you think that’s going to work out for you?”
That, at least, was something he wasn’t expecting. Derek paused in marching Claudia across the parking lot and flared his nostrils in her general direction.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, though from the unsteadiness in his voice it seemed like he might not be taking his own advice. “I can take care of myself.”
“I can see that. But for how long? That reporter knows about Dana too. Whatever you do, this isn’t going to end with me.”
Claudia had hoped that might be enough to shake him, but no such luck. Derek just narrowed his eyes and pointed the gun at her a little more directly.
“That’s not your problem, is it? Just keep walking.”
They headed across the hillside toward her house, and if Derek noticed that Claudia was straying from the path, he didn’t mention it. The fog was still swirling around them, making it hard to see more than a few feet ahead, and they both had to focus on not missing their footing on the uneven ground. Claudia was starting to worry she had misjudged her route, but they passed the rock that looked a little bit like a frog, and she knew they were still on track. Just a little farther, so she might as well start talking now.
“What do you think you’re gaining by doing this?” she said. “If you leave right now, it’s going to be hours before I can get anyone to listen to me, let alone go looking for you. Do you know how insane I’m going to sound, trying to convince Lennox that you killed both Lori and Neil, with absolutely no evidence? By the time I even got him to take my call, you could be halfway to Mexico. But if I’m dead, you’re down one suspect, and you’ve got another body to explain.”
“Not if you killed yourself because you were so worried about being caught. That should tie things up nicely.” Derek sounded smug, like this terrible idea was something her silly little mind could never have thought of.
“How am I supposed to kill myself by being shot in a field? With your gun?” Claudia said.
“I’m not going to shoot you here.” He explained it slowly, like he was talking to a small child. Clearly, he still hadn’t seen the flaw in his plan, so Claudia helpfully illustrated it for him.
She stopped walking, at a spot just downhill from her goal, and turned to face her captor. It was now or never.
“Well, maybe you’re going to have to. This is as far as I go. Shoot or get off the pot.” She took a step backward, drawing Derek in that much closer and trying to keep in on a diagonal pa
th. He was only about ten feet away now. She just hoped they were awake.
“Cute. But no, keep moving.”
“Make me.”
Derek stared at her, blank with confusion. It was clear that he believed that being person with the gun should earn him absolute obedience, and the failure of this basic principal had thrown him wildly off-balance. Claudia didn’t expect that to last for long; she just hoped it would be long enough.
“Look,” she tried reasoning. “If you pull that trigger you’re going to be making a world of new problems for yourself. You know it and I know it, and I know you know it, and that’s why there’s no point waving that thing at me like you’re going to get me to do anything. And you were going to have to leave anyway, right? Even if you succeed with me, it’s only a matter of time until someone else makes the connections.”
In the distance, she could hear the phone ringing in her house. It was probably just Betty, ready to say that she didn’t care what Claudia thought, it wasn’t safe for her to stay by herself, and expecting an argument. But Claudia decided to take a more optimistic approach.
“That’s probably the reporter now, calling to tell me that Kara looked at the pictures and saw you. If he can’t reach me, he’s bound to have his next call be to the police station, to find out where you are. Or maybe he’ll go straight to the county sheriff’s office, hard to say. Either way, that’s really going to cut into the time you have to make your getaway. Why not make it easier for yourself and go now?”
For half a moment she almost thought he was considering her proposal. But maybe that was just the time it took for him to work through her tortured syntax, because his only response was to point the gun at her more menacingly, if that was possible.
“You had better move or I am going to make you,” he said. “Believe me, there’s nothing I can do to you that I can’t get Lennox to believe was your own fault.”
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