by Blake Pierce
“No, not at all.” Flynn smiled, trying to put her at ease. “You’re right that it’s regarding the death of his employer, Frank Richards. I just need to talk to William about a few things that might help us with our investigation. I’m afraid time is of the essence.”
Mrs. Pertree paled and nodded, then left the door to swing open for him as she retreated and called out for Billy in a hushed voice. Flynn came inside, shutting the door behind him, still ruminating on Agent Zoe Prime. Maybe there was something he could do to get her to open up. Give a little to get a little. It wasn’t surprising that she didn’t trust him yet—given that they didn’t know each other very well. But if he opened up to her, maybe she would be able to do the same. Not only would it ease their working relationship, but it might sharpen her up—help her to clear her mind so they could tackle this case more head-on.
It took a long moment before a young man, probably in the last of his teenage years, stumbled out of the hall and into the living room where Flynn had found his steps automatically taking him.
“What’s going on?” he asked, squinting and rubbing a sleeve across his eyes. His pajamas had a spaceship print on them. He was clearly exactly on the brink between childhood and manhood—still living in his childhood bedroom even though he’d left school and begun to work.
Flynn introduced himself a second time, then gestured to the sofa. “I apologize for the late hour, but we’re really up against the clock here. We want to try to prevent any more loss of life, if we can.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, dropping down onto the seat and seeming to gain a little more alertness. “Yeah, whatever you need.”
“The first thing is, I’d like to know if you remember anything unusual in the weeks leading up to yesterday,” Flynn said. “I’m sure you’ve spoken to the local police already, but if you wouldn’t mind going over it for me again. Anything you remember will help.”
Billy sniffed, wiped his sleeve roughly over his eyes again. “You mean, more unusual than my boss being found dead?” he asked. “He was a good man, Mr. Richards. He really was.”
Billy’s mother rested a calming hand on the back of his head. “Billy’s been really torn up about it, haven’t you, Bill?” she said. “It’s a terrible shame.”
“Mrs. Pertree,” Flynn said, trying to keep his smile as pleasant as possible. “Do you think it might be possible for Billy and I to have this little chat on our own? We just need to get the facts down as quickly as possible, you see.”
Mrs. Pertree looked put out, but she didn’t argue. She simply nodded, squeezed her son’s shoulder, and moved away. Flynn had no doubt that she would be out in the corridor listening in, but so long as she didn’t interrupt, that was fine.
“Can you tell me about yesterday—your last day at work with Mr. Richards?” Flynn asked, trying a different tack.
Billy sniffed again. “It was just like normal,” he said. “Really, really normal. A few customers came in, paid for their orders, there weren’t any problems. Mr. Richards told me some tips for Mom’s tomato plants, how she could get them to produce more fruit. He told me she could have some plant food if she wanted it.”
Flynn nodded. This detail was useless, but it was important to make Billy feel forthcoming. If Flynn shot down anything he said, Billy would be more likely to clam up, to not mention things that seemed unimportant. And the things that seemed unimportant in a case like this could very well be the opposite. “Did he seem fine when you left?”
“Yeah, he was just closing up,” Billy said. He shrugged his shoulders up and down. “I was messing around with the greeting cards, pretending I was doing work. He always pretended he believed me. I can’t believe that was the last time…” He broke off, rubbing furiously at his face.
Flynn had to give him a moment of sympathy, but there wasn’t time for more than that. Even if the boy had been the last one to see Frank Richards alive, he clearly had nothing to do with it. He was a wreck now. Both of the victims had been popular with their employees, with customers, with locals. But somewhere along the line, there was someone who didn’t like them. Enough, in fact, to take their lives.
“Can you think of anyone who caused any trouble recently?” Flynn asked. “Someone who had a reason to dislike Mr. Richards?”
Billy shook his head miserably. “Why would anyone want to do something like this?” he asked. “It’s stupid. He was always nice to me. He had a family. I don’t get it.”
“Forget about that, Billy,” Flynn said, trying to temper his patience. “That’s why I’m here—working out things like that. Just think back. Was there any kind of interaction with a customer, maybe? Someone who might have held a grudge about the way they were treated?”
He didn’t want to put the words in Billy’s mouth, but he wanted the connection. Needed it to be there. Not out of some misplaced macho need to see himself prove Zoe wrong, but because they needed something—anything—to crack this case wide open. They needed to make the killings stop. No one deserved to feel like Billy did, like Frank’s wife and daughter did. If Flynn could save them from that pain, it was his duty to do so.
“Um, there was this one guy,” Billy said hesitantly. “No, I’m sure he wouldn’t be angry enough to…”
“Don’t second-guess yourself,” Flynn urged him. “Tell me. I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. It’s better that we investigate someone and they turn out to be innocent, than we miss the killer. Do you understand?”
Billy nodded slowly. “It’s just… now that you mention that. About how they were treated. It did ring a bell. There was a guy who accused Mr. Richards of cheating him out of some money.”
Flynn leaned forward in his chair. “Tell me all about this customer,” he said eagerly, ready to see the case solved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zoe parked the car outside the precinct, keeping the motor running while she waited. She rubbed her eyes, letting them close for just a second and then forcing them open. She did it again—her eyes feeling heavier each time. But she didn’t have time to rest properly; it was only a few moments before the long-legged figure of Agent Flynn emerged from the shadows by the building’s entrance, unfolding himself from the wall and straightening the front of his suit jacket before he swung himself into the passenger seat.
“Anything?” Zoe asked. “You said something about a customer on the phone?”
“Even more of something, now,” Flynn said excitedly. “I got the list through from Patience Richards while I was on the way back over here. I talked to Billy, and he picked out this one guy who was in the store a few weeks back. Maybe a month or a little longer ago, he says.”
“A customer with a grudge?” Zoe asked, raising an eyebrow. She was fairly certain she had a strong lead, but Flynn seemed to have something as well. If she wasn’t exactly surprised, she was certainly impressed. It wasn’t unusual for the more complex murder cases to have plenty of avenues worth exploring. It was less often that all of them paid off.
“Yeah. So, this guy, he comes into the store and puts down a whole bunch of Christmas ornaments on the counter, all of them in packaging marked up with West Street Goods pricing labels. The packaging has clearly been opened, everything looks used—some of the smaller baubles have actually been broken. But he says he bought them from this store and demands a refund because they’re smashed.”
“This was about a month ago?” Zoe asked, thinking. “That was right after Christmas.”
“Exactly,” Flynn said. “So, Richards isn’t having any of it. He tells this guy that anything purchased before Christmas is now outside of the twenty-eight-day return period, and that he also can’t accept returns on goods that have been opened and used.”
“So far, so expected,” Zoe said, shrugging. It sounded like standard retail policy to her.
“Yes. But then they got into a bit of an argument about it. The customer was insisting that he should be refunded for the dodgy goods, got into a bit of a shouting match with Richard
s. Richards looked a bit closer and realized the ornaments weren’t even something he’d sold—just cheap substitutes in the same boxes. It was some kind of scam he was trying to pull. And they weren’t cheap, either—big gift sets with the works included. It would have cost Richards a lot, and this guy would have had his money back while keeping the real items.”
“Richards could not have been happy with that,” Zoe said. “Did he ban the customer?”
“Banned him and reported him to the Chamber of Commerce. They would all have known about this guy—he would have been restricted from doing anything, let alone pulling off scams. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t able to walk into a single store in Salem without being chased out.”
“You said there was more?” Zoe asked. “Patience’s list?”
“That’s right,” Flynn said excitedly. He scrolled to an image on his phone and dug the list that Joe had given them out of his pocket. “Recognize anyone?”
Zoe looked between the two lists, comparing them. There was a man who matched up on both, that much was clear: his name was listed as Gerry Dean, and in both photographs he stood out easily. He was bald, in his mid-forties, short and stocky. In fact, now that Zoe looked again, he was on Harry Stout’s list twice—the second time, wearing a very obvious hairpiece that would have fooled no one.
“He was caught by both of them,” Zoe said. “That would have been… what? Humiliating?”
If Flynn noticed her lapse in pretending to understand normal human motivations, he ignored it. “I would say so,” he replied. “That’s enough of a reason to want revenge. With Stout and Richards being so influential in the Chamber of Commerce, the two of them pairing up to spread the word about his bad behavior would have a huge impact.”
Zoe chewed her lower lip for a moment, thinking. Calculations, percentages, and probabilities flashed through her mind. “We should go after the bookstore first,” she said. “My contact at the Chamber of Commerce mentioned that this store was refused entry to the Chamber, with the campaign against her led by Richards and Stout. I asked Morrison to get me the details of the owner. He says she will meet us at the store itself.”
“You don’t think we should pursue the customer?” Flynn frowned.
Zoe put the car into motion, tapping on the GPS to get the route guidance started as she pulled out. “You can call Morrison on the way,” she said. “Get the guy’s address. If the bookstore does not work out, that makes him more likely to be our suspect. We will head there afterwards if we need to.”
“I really think it’s a better lead,” Flynn said, his tone getting harder, his voice louder.
“I am already driving,” Zoe pointed out. “Call Morrison.”
Flynn was stiff and sharp in his movements as he went into action, making the call as Zoe drove the dark streets. She didn’t care if he was annoyed, not when there were lives at stake. It was three in the morning, everywhere quiet and closed except for their borrowed car zooming through the neighborhoods. They passed the witch memorial, where a single tree stretched out skeletal branches to the sky, fenced in and surrounded by the low stone wall of the structure. A sentinel over the memory of the women who were hanged for their supposed supernatural abilities. There was something eerie about it: Salem deserted and asleep. Or there would be, if Zoe had any kind of belief at all in the existence of witches.
But she knew the truth of those old tales. There were no witches. There were only women who dared to be just a tiny bit different from the norm, and they were persecuted for it.
Zoe knew a thing or two about that. She could empathize. But she wasn’t afraid of long-dead legends.
She rushed through the streets with perhaps not quite as much speed as Flynn would have managed, but the gain in speed seemed not worth the time it would take for them to switch seats; Zoe had run those calculations in her head the moment they knew where they were going. She pulled up outside a bookstore after only five minutes, conspicuous as the only building on the street with the lights turned on.
“This is it,” Zoe said, making Flynn look up from his phone, where he was still studying the images of the banned customers from Richards’s list.
“It doesn’t look…” Flynn paused, obviously searching for the right words. “Well, it looks quite normal.”
“Hmm.” Zoe gave the store’s exterior another once-over. The dimensions revealed nothing special; from the outside, it was only a bookstore. The one window bore shelves draped with pink satin, and on them were novels with vague titles like The Heiress’ Fiancé or Sweet Dreams of a Fearless Governess. The covers, too, were innocuous enough. When there were models pictured on them, they were fully clothed. “Only one way to find out what they were all so shocked by, I suppose.”
Flynn nodded his agreement, and they got out of the car, heading for the doors. Before they had even knocked, the door swung open; the proprietor must have been watching them from a window somewhere.
“Hello, hello,” she said, making Zoe stop in surprise. “I’m Elizabeth, the owner. Do come in. It’s awfully cold out there.”
The woman who was beckoning them inside was around sixty-five years old, white-haired and dressed in a modest floral dress that reached her feet. Zoe couldn’t quite tell whether it was a nightgown or whether the woman had found the time to dress before meeting them. She had a kindly face, and as soon as Flynn and Zoe were both inside, she bustled about shutting the door and offering them hot drinks and seats. Zoe couldn’t find a moment to complain. The woman looked healthy enough, but she was still too old. There was no way she could consider her as a suspect, not the second she had the chance to look at her. But then again, there was always the possibility of a protective child or employee, so Zoe bit her tongue for the moment.
“Ma’am,” Flynn said, looking around with a mystified expression. “Is this… the whole store?”
Elizabeth caught his tone and smiled, catching Zoe by surprise again. What on earth was going on here? “Do you mean, where is the back room with all the filthy sex books I can’t put on display?” she asked.
Flynn had flushed pink in his cheeks. “Well, yes.”
Elizabeth laughed, though it was a weary sound. “I’m sure this isn’t what you expected,” she said, gesturing around the well-lit space that was filled with Harlequin romances and benign classics. “The Chamber of Commerce really did a number on my reputation, I’m afraid.”
“I can see that,” Flynn said He lifted a book entitled A Daring Captain for Her Loyal Heart and then swiftly put it down, as though his fingers had been burned. “It’s mostly just… sort of, bodice rippers, is it?”
“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth said, leaning back against the counter. “I suppose my sister made it sound a lot worse than it really is, didn’t she? I’m sure she told you it was all pornography.”
“Your sister,” Zoe said. It wasn’t a question. She could see it now: the way the dimensions of their eyes, mouths, jaws, noses were the same. The age, even the height and weight, made it obvious now.
“Yes, Margaret,” Elizabeth sighed. “I do love her, but she’s very prissy about all of this sort of thing. You’d think she managed to have her children by magic, the way she’s so closed off about sex.”
Flynn was an even deeper shade of pink now, and Zoe chose to ignore him, taking the lead easily. “So, I think it might be fair to assume that you are not too upset by the Chamber of Commerce’s decision not to include you, given the family link.”
“Oh, gosh, no.” Elizabeth sighed and shrugged. “It was a little disappointing, especially given that they didn’t take the time to really understand what I’m doing here. Those men all seem to think I’m running some kind of smut haven—but it’s their wives coming in week after week. They must not be getting the romance at home, is all I can say. It’s a shame, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’m banned from running a business at all just because I’m not in the Chamber of Commerce.”
“Just to be sure,” Zoe said, ev
en though she was confident already they were not talking to their killer. Her strength alone, which was much below the average level assumed for the perpetrator, ruled her out. “Where were you last night? Around six in the evening?”
“Well, I was here,” Elizabeth said, spreading her hands expansively to indicate the space to either side of herself. “Accepting a new delivery of the latest releases.”
“Can anyone confirm that?” Flynn asked. He seemed to have recovered sufficiently to keep his composure.
“Well, yes, I’m sure the delivery driver will remember,” Elizabeth said. “I have a part-timer who works here, and she was there to help out, too.”
“That will be enough.” Zoe nodded, handing her a blank page from her own notebook. “If you could just note down any contact details you have for them, in case we need to check with them later. Your part-timer—was she annoyed by your exclusion from the Chamber?”
“Not at all,” Elizabeth chuckled. “I don’t think anyone on my side of things is. We’ve taken it in stride. Who cares? We don’t need to be in that group of snotty elites.”
There wasn’t time now to go calling around and looking for witnesses, not with it being the middle of the night and the killer still out there. She made a mental note to hand them to Morrison. If they had their killer by the morning, it wouldn’t matter either way. If they didn’t, at least he could follow it up on their behalf.
“Is that everything?” Elizabeth asked, handing the paper back. “Can I interest you in a book for the road? I’m sure you agents have to travel a lot.”
“Thank you, but I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Flynn said hastily. “Oh, I’ve just got a message from Detective Morrison. Agent Prime, we should be getting on.”
“Right,” Zoe said. It was amusing to watch him struggle, his usually suave demeanor hanging in shreds. But not so amusing that she would put the case in jeopardy. “Thank you for all the help.” Since he was still flustered, somehow Zoe managed to remember that one of them ought to offer pleasantries.