by Dana Marton
“Actually, the food and the clothes aren’t the only reasons I’ve stopped by.”
Her stomach hardened. “You’re taking me back to jail. Firing squad at dawn. This is my last meal.”
“Anybody ever told you, you tend to be a little dramatic?” Harper’s blue eyes twinkled.
“I’m an actress.”
“Okay. Fine. You got me. Firing squad.”
She tilted her head. “How much do you think it would add to my sentence if I stabbed you with a fork?”
Before she could decide whether the hassle would be worth it, he said, “I wanted to let you know that you’ve been cleared of all charges.”
She laid down her silverware. “Are you serious? If you’re just playing with me, Harper Finnegan, you sadist, I swear to God…”
“Your lawyer should be calling you in a minute.”
Intense relief and gratitude filled her. Maybe her guardian angel was awake. “How did this happen?”
“I have a pool of other suspects. I’ve gone through them. None of them has any connection to you. No trace of you was found at the scene. All evidence against you is purely circumstantial.”
“So, you no longer think I’m an accessory to murder?”
“No. I was just doing my job, and you got caught up in… Look, I’m really sorry about that.” He had the good sense to look apologetic.
“Sorry about that?!” She looked at the food before looking back up at him again. “Harper Finnegan, if I weren’t so hungry, I’d throw this plate. I—”
His stomach growled.
The sound, and the thought that he might have missed lunch too, possibly to clear her name, stole the wind out of Allie’s sail. She’d just been cleared of murder. She absolutely could not kill Harper right now. She probably shouldn’t yell at him either.
“I can’t eat all this,” she told him. “Would you like to join me?”
He dropped into the chair without hesitation, as if he’d been waiting for the invitation. “Sure.”
He pulled a second set of silverware from his back pocket, wrapped in a napkin, then grinned at the incredulous look she shot him.
She picked up her fork. Maybe she could stab him. Just a little. Under the table. Just one knee.
Instead, she said, “I hate smug men.”
“Noted.” He grabbed his fork and pulled a piece of ham to his side of the platter. “So what have you done today?” he asked conversationally, like they were an old married couple.
The sheer nerve of the guy.
“Rearranged my schedule.” She flashed him a fake sweet smile. “Then I cursed you for a while. Then I cursed myself for ever coming back.” She managed exactly two seconds of restraint before asking, “Who are the suspects?”
“I can’t discuss that.”
Bummer. “If the charges against me are dropped, does that mean you’ll be giving me my car back?”
“Not yet. The car is still part of the investigation.”
“How do you think the gold ended up in the trunk?”
“Can’t discuss that either.”
“I had a lot of time to ponder this lately,” she said after she swallowed a mouthful of potatoes. “I’ll tell you what I think, and then you can nod if you think the same.”
“Okay.”
“Between me leaving my car and you getting back to my car, the killer went by and stashed his stolen gold in my trunk.”
Harper nodded.
She speared a piece of ham with her fork. “I’ve been trying to figure out why. I mean, he killed Lamm and stole the gold. Why didn’t he take it home, to his own house?”
Harper waited for her to continue.
“Maybe he wanted to get it out of town,” she said. “He had some alibi set up. He could sneak out for an hour or so before he would have been missed. So the original plan was to drive the gold out of town and stash it somewhere. He could have had a storage unit rented.”
“In West Chester.”
Exactly.
“But then the storm turned bad, and he realized he wasn’t going to make it to storage and back in an hour. And if he was missing for more than an hour, it would have been noticed. He was halfway there, saw my car in the snowbank… And he figured I wouldn’t be back for it until daylight. He thought he could come back for the gold before that. He only needed an alibi for around the time of the murder. He could go missing for an hour later in the day. That wouldn’t matter. You wouldn’t be asking anybody about what they were doing three or four hours after the victim died.” She waved her fork, wishing she could articulate her convoluted thoughts more clearly. “Anyway, that’s my theory. Do you think it’s stupid?”
Harper watched her. And as he did, the distance that had been between them since she’d arrived back in town disappeared. He opened his mouth, as if he was about to tell her something, maybe something personal, because the look in his eyes was suddenly so Old Harper that Allie swallowed the wrong way.
The ensuing coughing fit broke the spell.
Harper handed her her glass of water. And, in the end, all he said was, “Your theory is pretty close to mine. Actually, I’m impressed.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I hear you were over at the B and B to see Miss Bianchi last night,” the captain said over the speakerphone in the conference room, calling first thing in the morning to check in before his training sessions began.
Can’t hide shit in a town the size of Broslin. “Yes, sir,” Harper said while Chase smirked. “She’s no longer a suspect. The killer was a head taller, according to the coroner, as calculated from the angle of the bullet. I’m working on the assumption that the victim knew the killer since he let the person in. I could find no link between any of the four men left on my suspect list and Miss Bianchi. Miss Bianchi allowed me to examine her phone. No calls to or from Broslin, except for Ginny Knapp, who booked her for a performance for the Historical Society.”
“She could have another phone.”
“A burner,” Chase said, oh, so helpfully.
“If she does, where is it?” Harper asked. “If she used a burner to keep in touch with her accomplice, the phone would have been with her. But it wasn’t on her when I arrested her. It wasn’t in her car or at the crime scene. She didn’t toss it at Finnegan’s. I asked the staff to go through the garbage. It wasn’t at the B and B either.”
“All right.” The captain didn’t sound convinced, but at least he didn’t hand the investigation to Chase.
In all fairness, nobody could blame the man for not being thrilled. Harper wasn’t exactly thrilled with himself.
Allie cleared; Harper moves on. That should have been the plan. Not, Allie cleared, let’s go to her room and have dinner with her. Yet, last night, Harper had done just that.
He felt guilty over the past. When Allie’s father had abandoned her, she’d needed Harper, and he hadn’t been there for her. He’d let her down, like everyone else had let her down. He should have done better by her. So now, if he could help her, he would.
He’d loved her back then, but that was ancient history. Sure, she was back, but she wasn’t the same sweet girl. She wasn’t the Allie he remembered. If she had stars in her eyes when she looked at him, they were those ninja throwing stars. Hell, the glass eyes in the jars at the B and B held more warmth for him than Allie’s gaze.
She was a woman, strong and full of fire. Christ, she’d threatened to stab him with a fork. If he had any brains, he would stay far away from her.
“Lamm had eleven other preppers in his club,” Harper told the captain, “or brotherhood or whatever you want to call it.” He stepped to the murder board, the oversized corkboard that held the crime scene photos, timeline, and names. “I couldn’t reach Poole, but I’ve done initial interviews with the rest of them. Seven have alibis.”
He reached up and unpinned those seven black-and-white photos, printed from the DMV database, then dropped them on the sprawling conference table behind him.
C
hase lifted his cup of coffee to his mouth, paused. “What do you have on the narrowed list of suspects?”
“Basic biographical information and claimed whereabouts, but no alibies on the night in question for Frank Carmelo, Brody Cash, Dave Grambus.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the index cards he’d written up earlier, then tacked one under each man. “Not much on Dicky Poole. I haven’t been able to talk to him yet. He went to Florida on a three-day fishing trip the morning after the murder. Due back today.”
Chase scanned the men’s photos. “Anyone who sticks out in your mind?”
“They all know how to use a gun, either because they served or used to hunt or both. All have multiple registered firearms. They all live alone, except for Carmelo, who lives with his granddaughter and her kids, but they were at a sleepover on the night of the murder.”
“Four is a reasonable number,” the captain said over speakerphone. “You should be able to narrow it down to the perpetrator pretty fast. Sooner the better. I don’t like unsolved cases. Who’s your best guess?”
“Dave Grambus,” Harper told him. “Used to be a trucker. Long-distance hauler. Most people wouldn’t go out in a storm like we had Monday night. Someone who used to be a professional driver, on the other hand…”
“What do you need from me?”
“A warrant for any weapons he owns. Want to have them tested for ballistics.”
“Judge isn’t going to sign a warrant on a vague suspicion, not when there are three other suspects as well. He’ll say it’s a fishing expedition. You need to whittle down the list. Then I’ll talk to the judge for you. He’s not unreasonable.”
“Yeah.” Pretty much what Harper had expected, but he had to try. “I’m bringing them in one by one for their second round of questioning. I want them in the interview room, apply a little more pressure. Grambus is first, tomorrow morning.”
Chase gulped some coffee, then said, “Weather’s warming up today. Last of that snow’s finally melting. New evidence might be uncovered.”
“I sent Mike out.” Harper spoke toward the phone so the captain could hear him. “He’s checking Lamm’s driveway and the route between Lamm’s rancher and where I found the gold. He’ll take a second look at the spot where Allie’s car went into the ditch. We know the killer was there at one point that night. He might have dropped something when he was stashing his loot in the trunk.”
“Sounds like you have everything under control,” the captain said. “You let me know if you need help from my end.”
After he hung up and Chase walked out, Harper called Allie.
“Just checking in. Everything okay?”
“Any developments in the— Never mind. You can’t say.”
He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “Sorry about that.”
“About what?” she asked in a tart tone that Sweet Allie hadn’t had.
“Too many things to list over the phone.”
She was silent for a moment before she demanded, “Are you confusing me on purpose? Are you just pretending that you don’t suspect me and we’re all friends again so I’ll confess to you?”
“No. I am sincerely sorry. I swear.”
A second of silence stretched between them, then two, before she said, “Dinner last night threw me for a loop, and I don’t like it. It was an unexpected kindness.” She paused another beat. “Except I can’t really say it was out of character because you used to be kind. I remember.” She made an undecipherable noise in the back of her throat. “Other than that last phone call on my eighteenth birthday.”
“Number one on my list of things I’m sorry for, I promise.”
“You arrested me for murder. That should be number one.”
“There, I was doing my job. I’m a police detective, Allie. The victim’s gold and blood were found in your car.”
A long, long stretch of silence followed that.
Then Allie finally said, “Fine. You did work to clear my name. I’ll give you a pass on the arrest.”
“Thanks.” He felt his mouth curve, the weight on his shoulders lifting. Might as well go for broke. “How do you feel about dinner again? I could bring food over, same as last night. Or we could go to Finnegan’s.” He rethought that last bit. “Or not Finnegan’s.”
“Or not Finnegan’s would be good,” she said after some hesitation. “But it’d have to be tomorrow. I called the Historical Society earlier, and we rescheduled my show for tonight from six to eight. It’s the only gig I can do right now, since I can’t leave town until I get my car back.”
“Meeting at the library as usual?”
“At the high school auditorium. More seating, and it’s nice to have an actual stage. Better visibility from the back.”
“I’ll come. I want to see what you do.”
“Thanks?”
Her dubious tone and clear lack of enthusiasm made him smile. “No need to break out in song from excitement.”
“I don’t usually have people I personally know in the audience. I don’t know how that will make me feel. Maybe I’ll be self-conscious.”
“I doubt it. You were always a natural on stage. And I’ve watched you before in plenty of high school plays.”
“Also…I don’t know if I trust you yet. What if you’re coming to laugh at me? If you heckle me, Harper Finnegan, so help me God… I won’t be wearing Calamity Jane’s cowboy boots, but Annie Oakley’s high-tops can still kick plenty of ass.”
Harper was swallowing a laugh as another call pinged on his phone. He missed old Allie, but he liked this new Allie with her sharp tongue just as much. He glanced at the screen. Mike.
“I have to go. Police business,” he told Allie. “See you tonight. What do you consider heckling, exactly?”
“Harper!”
As she hung up on him, he switched to the other call. “What is it?”
“Found the victim’s car,” Mike said, his tone brimming with as much self-satisfaction as if he’d invented a beer that tasted better than Guinness.
“Where?”
“About a mile past where Allie Bianchi’s Chevy spun out. Looks like Lamm’s Toyota did the same. It’s overturned in the ditch. Snow covered it right up.”
“No passersby called it in all this time?”
“Was mostly buried in snow until today, I guess. Didn’t help that it’s white.”
Harper shrugged into his coat. “On my way.”
The car would hold DNA evidence from the killer. If the guy shed as much as a strand of hair, the lab would find it. They had him.
The temperature had inched up to the midforties outside, downright balmy compared to the first half of the week. Not roll-your-window-down kind of weather, but it did hold a promise that spring might sashay forth at one point, dressed in her gown of green. In the meanwhile, the melting snow turned the pretty little town of Broslin into a mud pit.
Everybody was out on the road, running whatever chores they’d postponed due to bad weather the past few days. Plus, Harper’s cruiser always slowed traffic right down. Fact of life: people saw a police car, they stepped on the brake, whether they’d been speeding or not.
Harper passed the town limit, then the telephone pole he’d tied police tape to, to mark where Allie had slid into that snowbank. Another mile down the road, there was Mike’s cruiser, and as Harper pulled over behind it, he saw Mike too, standing next to the overturned Camry.
Mike lowered the department’s crime scene camera. “Took pictures of the outside. Wanted to wait for you to open her up.”
“Thanks.” Harper straddled the worst of the mud on the bottom of the ditch.
“Hey, listen to this. A horse falls into a hole in the ground.” Mike said. “His chicken friend runs off, grabs the farmer’s fancy new Silverado, and tows him out.” He grinned. “Next day, they’re walking again, and wouldn’t you know it, this time it’s the chicken that falls in. The horse just straddles the hole, hangs his dick in there, and pulls her out, easy.” He
grinned wider. “You know what the moral of the story is?”
“Do I want to?”
“When you have a big dick, you don’t need a fancy truck to impress chicks.” Mike laughed so hard, he snorted.
“Damn, Officer McMorris, that’s almost funny.” Harper jumped into the ditch. There was no help for it. He was going to get muddy. “Where do you get all this stuff?”
“Jokes stick to me. I hear one, I remember it.”
Harper shook his head. “Tow truck?”
“Billy said he’d be here in about twenty minutes.” Mike turned back to the Toyota. “What do you think happened?”
Harper thought it over. He’d liked Allie’s theory the night before, but this new development changed things.
“I think the killer drove to Lamm’s place, maybe parked his vehicle a street or two over. By the time he was done emptying the safe, his car was snowed in, stuck. It’s an uphill neighborhood. Some of the streets are pretty steep, difficult to navigate in bad weather. Lamm’s Camry is four-wheel drive. The killer filled it with his loot and drove off. He got this far, was probably nervous, blood pressure up. He’s eighty-something, maybe he can’t see well at night, especially with all the blowing snow. Reflexes slower than they used to be. He lost control of the vehicle.”
“Lucky he could climb out.”
Harper ran through the theory in his mind as if he was playing a movie reel. “Gets out, drags out his loot. The bag had to be next to him, or on the back seat. Couldn’t have pried it from the trunk with the car turned like that.”
“Then he walks back to town?”
“Except the weather is worse than expected, the loot too damn heavy. He drags his freezing ass a mile and realizes he can’t go any farther like that. He needs to lighten the load. He sees Allie’s car in the snowbank. He splits the loot, stashing the gold in the trunk and taking the silver with him. He’s going to walk to town, dig out his own car, then return. He figures nobody would be back for the Chevy before morning.”
“But you drove by with the plow and found Allie, and then her car.”
Harper nodded.
“You didn’t see anyone walking?”