by Dana Marton
“How does that feel?”
“Doesn’t hurt too bad.”
“That’s the spirit, honey. But just because you can walk, it doesn’t mean business as usual. Keep the weight off that ankle as much as you can.” She turned to Harper. “You can take this wheelchair to your car. But if you could return it to the lobby once you’re done, we’d appreciate it.”
“Will do.” Harper took charge of the conveyance with the same confidence he used to tackle all tasks. “Allie?”
She eased herself into the chair. By the time she thanked the nurse and tucked her feet onto the footrest, Harper was disengaging the brake.
“Ready? How do you feel?”
“Like a high school marching band is having band practice in my brain. Try to drive carefully.”
He did, but her brain rattled anyway. The best she could do was not moan out loud. She was still wearing Annie Oakley’s outfit and didn’t want to bring shame to the uniform. She bit her lip and toughed out the pain.
She felt a little better in the pickup—Harper had lifted her in—but by the time they reached Finnegan’s, her head was pounding again. It didn’t help matters that as Harper got out, his mother came running.
“You didn’t return my texts. Shannon had to call me to tell me what happened.”
“Allie has a concussion. I’ll be keeping an eye on her.” Harper opened the door on Allie’s side. Smiled at her. “Hold on for a sec.”
He walked to the door that Allie figured led to the staircase that would take them up to his apartment above the bar and unlocked it while Rose Finnegan watched Allie through narrowed eyes. Her lips moved but didn’t quite part, as if she was struggling to hold something back.
She failed.
She shook her head, and said in a low tone her son wouldn’t hear, “Three days back in town, and you’re moving in with him? I have to give it to you, you sure work fast, Allie Bianchi.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Dave Grambus is waiting for you. I put him in the interview room, like you said,” Robin told Harper as he walked into the station Friday morning after a sleepless night.
“Anything else that needs my attention right now? Hey, nice earrings.”
“Swarovski crystal.” She shook her head, and the twin angels took flight. “Easy day so far. Good news only. Jack Sullivan called this morning, just to check in. He and Ashley are having another baby. A boy.”
“Did they know that?”
“No,” Robin smiled, “but since I sensed it, I told him.”
“How many kids is that now?” Harper paused to think. “Four? Christ, someone needs to talk to that man about the birds and the bees.”
“You go ahead and do that.” Robin laughed. “They’re coming back this summer for a visit. Ashley is having a multi-city art show. New York, Philly, Baltimore, DC.”
“Yeah?” Harper was looking forward to seeing them. Jack was one of the good guys. He’d been a damn fine detective when he’d lived in Broslin. They missed him around the station.
“How long has Dave Grambus been in there?” He nodded toward the interview room.
“Ten minutes?” Robin handed him a voice recorder. “I was in the back to fill the stapler, so I grabbed one of these for you.”
“Thanks. Time to narrow the field.”
“I heard the Bianchi girl was in a hit-and-run last night after her show. I had a feeling about her when I heard the news.” Robin closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, then opened her eyes again. “A darkness is watching her. Is she all right?”
Harper had seen enough of Robin’s feelings come true that he never discounted her pronouncements out of hand. “I’m keeping an eye on her. For the moment, she’s fine,” he said as he marched off to crack Grambus. “Nothing major.”
He reached the door of the interview room just as his phone buzzed with a text message from Allie.
-Thanks for last night-
-Heading back to the B and B-
Harper sent a quick response.
-Do NOT go down those stairs-
-Wait until I get home-
A couple of seconds passed before she sent
-You’re not the boss of me-
To which he responded
-I locked you up before. I can lock you up again-
As Harper stepped into the interview room, Grambus shot him a hostile glare. This time, the baseball hat he wore to cover his baldness said TRUCKERS DRIVE IT STRAIGHT HOME.
“This ain’t right. Why am I here? Am I under arrest?”
“Would you like some coffee?” Harper offered. “Like I said over the phone, I just need to ask a few more questions.”
“I don’t need no damn coffee. Get yourself some. Your eyes look like two piss holes in a snowbank. And I know what you’re trying to do here. I have the right to have an attorney present.”
“Would you like to call one?”
Grambus huffed. “Then you’ll think I’m guilty. Hell, I have nothin’ to hide.” He shifted on his seat as if he couldn’t find a comfortable spot and rubbed his hands together. “Damn room’s colder than a well digger’s ass.”
He was rattled. Exactly what Harper wanted him to be.
He set the recorder in the middle of the table, then identified himself and Grambus. Next, he went through the same questions he’d asked at the man’s apartment, to see if the suspect’s answers would change. They didn’t. Grambus insisted that he was home alone on the night in question and hadn’t gone anywhere near the victim.
“Can you tell me a little more about the prepper club?” Harper asked next. “Did everybody contribute equally? Ever had arguments about money?”
“What are we, freaking kids? We put in the same. Everybody.”
“Did you pick Lamm’s house for your headquarters because he didn’t like to go out?”
“That too, I suppose. But mostly because he already had the place reinforced,” Grambus said, then added in a tone filled with aggravation. “It’s not something I can do at the apartment. They wouldn’t even let me have a steel security door installed.”
“So all the supplies were kept at Lamm’s?”
“The supplies we put together for the long haul. We each have our own kits at home. Enough for a couple of days.”
“Would that be food? Weapons? Money? Drugs?” The black gym bag in the back of Lamm’s Camry held plenty of the latter. Everyone’s leftover pain meds from every medical procedure they’d ever had. The men must have pooled their resources, keeping a veritable pharmacy in the safe in case of an emergency later.
“All of the above.”
“Gold bars?”
Grambus shook his head. “About five hundred dollars’ worth of silver coins each. But most of our silver was in Lamm’s safe.”
“So Lamm had all the gold and most of the silver?”
Grambus’s expression turned pinched. “The apartment building wouldn’t let me install a wall safe either. Shouldn’t have moved in, but there was an opening on the ground floor, thought it’d be good for later as I get older. You have a house, you have to deal with mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, fixin’ the roof, and whatnot. Who needs that shitshow?”
“And everybody in the club knew Lamm had all that precious metal?”
“We paid for it,” Grambus said in a don’t-be-stupid tone. “Of course, we knew about it.”
“Did you keep building the stash, or stop once you had a certain amount?”
“We have a year’s supply. We’re building up to two.”
“How do you keep track of progress?”
“Chuck gave us regular reports.”
“I’d like to see the last one.”
“No can do.”
“I can get a warrant.”
“You can’t see it because the report is a printout he used to give us in person at the monthly meetings. After we read it, we destroy it. Don’t want it to get into the wrong hands and have someone try to raid our supplies.” Grambus fell silent. Rubb
ed an arthritic hand over his face. “Which is exactly what happened.”
“Do you think someone got hold of one of these printouts?”
“How else would they know what we had?”
“They also knew where the safe was.”
“One of us?” Grambus shot him another don’t-be-stupid look. Then the look hardened into something else. “You think I did it?”
Harper leaned forward. Time to turn up the heat. “You knew about the safe and what was in there. You knew the victim. He fired you from the paper mill, so you have bad history. You wanted to replace him as the head of the group, so that’s current conflict. You’re part of the group, he would have let you in. Nobody can confirm your alibi…”
“Christ.” Grambus huffed. “I explained all that before. And it ain’t a crime to live alone. Couple of decades, and you could be right where I am.”
Since Harper couldn’t argue with that, he turned the questioning in another direction. “Can you tell me, for the record, what size are your feet?”
The bloody boot prints at the crime scene were crucial evidence.
“Size twelve.”
“Would you be willing to surrender your winter boots for a DNA test?”
“I don’t have winter boots.”
Grambus caught the skepticism on Harper’s face and stuck a foot out from under the table between them. He was wearing blue tartan house slippers, the same pair he’d worn when Harper had visited his apartment.
“You think you’re so damn smart, take a look at this.” The man slipped his bare foot free.
His toes were badly deformed, his big toe swollen to double the normal size.
“I can’t put on boots, not with my joints all twisted from inflammation. Hell, I can’t even wear socks. Got gout in my big toe that’s killin’ me. You don’t want to know what it feels like when somethin’s touchin’ the damn thing.”
Harper stared at the painful-looking, deformed foot. He nodded with sincere sympathy. “Would you sign a release for medical information so I can confirm all this with your doctor?”
“You got eyes, don’t you?” Grambus gave another one of his boy-you’re-a-dumbass looks. Then he waved Harper off. “Hand me the damn paperwork. And get on with finding my money!”
Within ten minutes, the papers were signed, Grambus gone, his name crossed off the suspect list. Harper was going to check with the man’s doctor, but it would be a formality so the piece of paper could be added to Grambus’s file before it was closed.
The victim’s Camry had run into the ditch a mile from Allie’s Chevy. The killer had walked that mile, stashed his gold in Allie’s trunk, then walked back to Broslin. It hadn’t been Grambus. Couldn’t have been, not on those feet.
Out of the four men, Frank Carmelo was in the best shape, the youngest of the suspects at eighty-two. He’d played on the senior baseball team at one point, hadn’t he?
Harper glanced at his schedule. Carmelo was the next interview on the books, right after lunch. The case could be solved before the day was out.
The thought put Harper in a good enough mood to tackle the paperwork piling up on his desk. He worked on that until he reached the point where he would just as soon set the remaining stack on fire than lift another sheet off the top.
As he headed out, Robin turned from her computer, her crystal angel earrings dancing at her ears. “How’s the case coming along?”
“Might be getting close. I don’t suppose you have any feelings about it?”
“Not about murder,” she said in all seriousness. “That’s all dark. The light doesn’t go that way.”
He nodded like he knew what she was talking about. “I’m taking an early lunch break.”
She was nobody’s fool. She smiled at him as she raised an eyebrow. “Time to check in on Allie?”
“I can’t deny or confirm.”
As he stepped through the door, she called after him, “Don’t forget that Mercury is in retrograde!”
He waved a thanks for the warning. Although as much as Harper understood about astrology, Mercury could have been in the third grade and he wouldn’t have known the difference.
Chapter Eighteen
Allie looked up from her revamped show schedule on her phone as a knock sounded on the door. She figured one of the Finnegans was coming to tell her to keep her hands off Harper. And since there was no escaping them, she called out, “Come in.”
“Are we bothering you? Hi. Just wanted to stop by to make sure you were okay. I’m Sophie Bing. The captain’s wife. He said you had an accident,” the shorter of the two women entering said, petite with red curly hair and dancing eyes. She looked like what Orphan Annie would look like if she’d grown up into a seriously hot chick.
The other one was more than a head taller, sleek and sophisticated, and would have been listed in her high school yearbook as most likely to appear on the cover of Vogue.
When she smiled, Allie felt the inexplicable urge to grab a camera.
“Hi,” she said, “I’m Wendy. Married to Joe Kessler. He remembers you, and sends wishes for your speedy recovery.”
Joe Kessler. High school football god. That he ended up marrying a model did not surprise Allie. But that he actually remembered Allie? She would have bet her spurs against that.
“Thank you,” she said with a degree of uncertainty, which didn’t stop the women from tumbling forward, depositing half a dozen gift bags on the table.
“Brought some chocolate. Bonbons and hot chocolate, both. Do you like it with marshmallows or without? Doesn’t matter,” Sophie swept her own question aside with her hand. “I grabbed both.”
“Bubble bath,” Wendy said, straightening up the largest bag. “I figured Harper would think himself too manly to keep any around. And I brought a fuzzy Donna Karan robe I got at a shoot yesterday.” She measured up Allie. “It might be a little too long on you, but that’s even better, right? More warmth. I also brought some fashion magazines in case you’re bored.”
“I brought romance novels.” Sophie grinned. “Very, very dirty. Don’t tell Bing.”
Allie blinked at them, more than a little dazed. But when she said, “Thank you,” this time, her voice rang sure. “What have I done to deserve this?”
Sophie laughed. “Harper brought you home! We were dying to meet you. You’re not mad at us for popping in, are you? We thought any woman living with Harper in his bachelor pad would need some feminine comforts.”
“I’m not exactly living with him.”
They exchanged a look. Right. Nobody was buying that.
“Thank you,” Allie said again. “Please, sit down. Anything to drink?” She cringed. “Sorry. Nothing in the fridge but milk and beer.”
“That’s all right. No time anyway. Just wanted to check on you. On our way to pick up the kids.” Sophie rolled her eyes. “Be warned. When you’re a mother, every time you’re having fun— No…just as you’re about to have fun, like before it even begins, a little voice in your head says time to pick up the kids. And then you’ll have to run off, no matter how much you want to pump someone for gossip.”
Allie laughed. She couldn’t help herself.
Wendy pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to her. “Our phone numbers. Please, call if we can help with anything. Or if you just need to have a girl talk.”
“We’re ready to hear all of Harper’s dirty secrets,” Sophie added in a tone brimming with hope. “Maybe we could go out for coffee next week?”
“Do you think you could be bribed to give another performance before you leave?” Wendy asked. “The first one was amazing. I checked your website. I’d love to see more. Sometimes, for a shoot, I have to get into character, but it’s nothing like what you do. I could have listened to you all night.”
“You were at the show?”
“Back row. Came in late. Sorry. Babysitter was running behind.”
The women stayed a few more minutes, asking Allie about reenacting, about her past
with Harper, about her intentions with Harper…
When they left, Allie felt as if she’d been twirled around by a whirlwind. And…welcomed. Like she’d felt at Shannon’s B and B. Like she’d felt when Harper had carried her into his apartment.
She was still thinking about that when Harper strode in a few minutes later with a tray of food. Seeing him with his badge clipped onto his belt still knocked her sideways every time. Detective Harper Finnegan.
He had brackets around his mouth that weren’t usually there. His blue eyes had a tired slant. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him do anything but work, from clearing roads with his own truck the night he’d run into her, to unending police business since.
His life probably wasn’t always like this—he was in the middle of a murder case—but right now, it had to be exhausting. He looked knackered.
She’d had a rough week, but so had he. And he still managed to take care of her. She wasn’t sure she was ready for how that made her feel, some gooey weirdness in the middle of her chest.
He glanced at the gift bags Allie had moved to an empty corner. “Who was here?”
“Mrs. and Mrs. Claus.”
“Santa is two-timing? Naughty. I always thought if anything could crack all that marital bliss on the North Pole, it’d be Mrs. Santa with those elves.”
Allie laughed. “Wendy and Sophie came by. They decided to replay Christmas and pretend they both drew my name from the Secret Santa hat.”
“They are good women. Frankly, they could have done better. Who would willingly marry a policeman?”
Allie gave a theatrical shudder while she said, “They gave me the impression they could handle whatever came their way.”
“You’d be right about that,” he told her, then added, “I brought lunch. Coffee too. Sorry, my coffeemaker is broken. I keep forgetting to replace it.”
“How are you still alive?”