“Hope went by herself to the storage facility?” Dez couldn’t disguise the disbelief in her voice.
“If she did, she didn’t go with Tyra’s cellphone,” Sarah said.
“How long did she spend at Cahill Warehouse Storage?” Fenway asked.
“According to the records, forty-three minutes.”
“That’s enough time to argue with Seth Cahill, hit him over the head with a hammer, find the rug in his office, wrap his body, and move it into an empty unit.” Fenway lifted her wet feet, one by one, putting them back down into the growing puddle on the porch. “Does Hope’s time at the storage facility match the time of the murder?”
“Yes,” Sarah said.
“I knew Miranda didn’t do it,” Fenway muttered.
“We need to contact ADA Pondicherry,” Dez said. “Miranda shouldn’t spend one more minute in jail.”
“You’re right,” Sarah said. “The ADA is my next call. But look—that’s not all.”
“The Corvette.”
“Right.” Tapping keyboard sounds on Sarah’s side. “At 10:57 Monday night, Hope Dunkelman’s phone leaves the storage facility and goes to—”
“Miranda Duchy’s cabin,” Fenway finished.
“Right. Less than five minutes there. Then the phone pings off towers along the Cactus Lake cutoff road, then along the back roads until it gets back to the storage facility.”
“Where Hope got back in her car.” Dez folded her arms. “And Tyra was her alibi.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Sarah said. “You’ve got a copy of the phone records in your email. Anything else?”
“The cabin was a bust.” Fenway looked out toward the Impala; the rain was getting heavier, the wind blew harder. “And this weather is no fun.”
“HR asked us to leave,” Sarah said. “Essential personnel only.”
“Go,” Fenway said. “Get home before the roads get too bad.”
“And before the power goes out at work,” Dez added.
“Right after I call to get Ms. Duchy released,” Sarah said. “You two drive safe. I’ll see you tomorrow—if we’re not underwater.”
Fenway ended the call. “We need to get into this cabin. I’d bet twenty bucks the latest shipment of morpheranyl is somewhere in that house. We can go back to evidence, try to get the actual key, then come back—”
“We’re not coming back here in this weather,” Dez said. “Besides, I assume Deputy Huke went home with the rest of the non-essential personnel. We couldn’t get the key from the evidence room, anyway.” Dez frowned at the rain, coming down in sheets again. “Let’s not stand here—”
“Right.”
They both ran to the Impala, trying to get soaked as little as possible. They got in and slammed the doors shut.
Dez gripped the steering wheel, not starting the car. “If Hope drove the Corvette to Miranda’s cabin, how did she get back to the storage facility? Did Tyra drive her?”
Fenway paused. “I have another theory.”
“Whatever it is,” said Dez, “It’s gotta match the location information from the phones. Hope went straight to the storage facility. But Tyra’s phone didn’t leave her house until 11:18 p.m.”
“My theory explains that,” Fenway said, her phone dinging. It was the location info from Sarah. Fenway tapped the file to open it.
Dez was silent.
“You still don’t believe it was Hope,” Fenway said.
“The evidence is staring me right in the face,” Dez said. “I can’t argue with it.”
“But your gut’s telling you something’s not right,” Fenway said.
“I don’t really believe in that. But—uh, yeah.”
“So here’s my theory.” Fenway looked at Dez. “The scooters.”
Dez cocked her head. “What?”
“You’ve seen those Tailwhip electric scooters that are all over Estancia?”
Dez nodded. “Yeah. Gotta admit, they’re kinda fun.”
Fenway blinked. “I guess.”
“What?” Dez said. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of those pearl-clutchers who think those cute little scooters are ruining the city.”
Fenway screwed up her mouth. Not worth explaining the injuries she’d seen in the clinic back in Seattle. “Three scooters on the sidewalk in front of Cahill Warehouse Storage when Seth Cahill turned off the cameras. When the cameras were turned back on? Only two.”
“The cameras were off all night, right? Someone else could have taken a scooter.”
Fenway tapped her phone screen. “That’s why I asked Tailwhip for their usage information for that area.”
“You lowered your standards enough to talk to them?” The corners of Dez’s mouth curled into a smile.
“Hilarious.” Fenway scoffed. “I got their response last night before I went to bed. You know what they made me do?”
“I have no idea. Sing a song about how awesome Tailwhip is?”
“They said if I wanted it within a few hours, they could send it via the app. So I had to download Tailwhip to my phone. And I had to enter my credit card information before I could receive data from the company. They’re diabolical.”
“Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you to lighten up.”
“Not likely.” Fenway tapped the Tailwhip app. “Oh—there it is. Came in while we were driving here.”
Dez started the engine and turned the defroster on. The rain strengthened, the sound of the drops hammering against the car almost as loud as their conversation. “Did they ask for a subpoena?”
“Nope. Sent the usage information for Monday night.” Fenway tapped the screen. “The file’s loading. Hang on a second.”
“I’m heading back to the office. I don’t want to get caught in the hills in this storm.”
“Sure.”
Dez backed out of the driveway. The file loaded, then finally appeared as the Impala got onto the Cactus Lake cutoff road.
Fenway tapped with two fingers, pulling them apart to enlarge the image. Five rows of information, each with a first column labeled Vehicle No. It was weird to think of an electric scooter as a vehicle, but Fenway turned her attention to the rest of the spreadsheet.
Three of the rows had no information. One of them had location information about three blocks away from Cahill Warehouse Storage and had been ridden to the bus station. But line 4…
“Vehicle 03046,” Fenway read. “Went into standby mode at the corner of St. Ignatius and Thirty-Fifth.”
“That’s Cahill Warehouse Storage.” Dez’s eyes showed strain with the difficult driving. The car was staying on the road, no hydroplaning yet, but Dez had a tight grip on the wheel.
“The scooter’s GPS shows that it was removed from its location two minutes before Hope’s cellphone pings away from the storage facility,” Fenway said.
“And it didn’t sound some sort of alarm?”
Fenway shrugged. “Maybe Tailwhip doesn’t do that. The scooter was activated about twenty minutes later—at the Hutash Bridge. Got the last four digits of a credit card number.”
“Name?”
Fenway frowned. “Not on this spreadsheet. Maybe Sarah can find out.”
“She went home, remember?”
“Maybe we can catch her.”
“HR sent everyone home. Don’t be that manager, Fenway.”
“No, no, of course not.” Fenway startled—she still hadn’t resolved the hiring issue. As much as Fenway hated to say it, the hiring process would have to wait. Probably until after the storm passed. “The scooter was dropped off about a block away from the storage facility—maybe right where Hope left her car.”
Dez nodded. “So Hope didn’t get a ride home. She took the scooter.”
“Down these mountain roads, too. I wouldn’t have pegged her as that type of risk-taker.”
“She’d just killed her best friend’s ex-husband with a hammer. Adrenaline can do a lot.”
Fenway braced herself as Dez turned onto the freeway on-ramp. “Yeah, I suppose.”
The Impala went through a puddle, spraying water up and around, and the vehicle floated for a moment. Fenway held her breath, but then the familiar feeling of the tires on the road came back.
“Why?” Fenway asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did Hope do it?”
“Not sure we need to figure that out before we arrest her.” Dez looked over her shoulder as she merged onto the freeway.
“Watch out—the shoulder’s full of water.”
“Got it.” Dez changed into the middle lane. “The sooner we can be out of this storm, the better.”
“Maybe the two of them were having an affair and he threatened to tell Tyra?”
“Hope and Seth Cahill? We haven’t seen any evidence of that.”
Fenway shook her head. “There’s gotta be something else.” Then her eyes widened. “Scott Behrens.”
“What about him?”
“That’s the motive. We thought Tyra’s motive might be revenge for Scott’s death. Maybe that’s Hope’s motive, too.”
“You mean,” Dez said carefully, slowing down to forty miles an hour as the rain continued to batter the windshield, “We thought Tyra might have killed Seth because she held him responsible for Scott’s overdose. Now you’re saying Hope killed him—for the same reason? Does that make sense?”
“It’s possible,” Fenway said. “Hope and Tyra were best friends. The two of them were ostracized in high school after Tyra got pregnant and Hope stood by her. Maybe Tyra fell apart when she learned Scott had died, and Hope got overprotective.”
“As a motive for murder?” Dez frowned. “That’s a stretch.”
Fenway jumped in her seat.
“What?”
“I thought of something.”
“Thank God. I thought you saw something in the road.”
“Sorry,” Fenway mumbled, pulling out her phone. She opened the file on the cellphone location. She scrolled back a few weeks.
“This is interesting,” Fenway muttered.
“What?”
“Hope visited Cahill Warehouse Storage a few times a week.”
“Not surprising, if she and Tyra were such good friends.”
“But here—” Fenway tapped the screen. “For the last six weeks. Every Thursday at eight thirty in the morning.”
“Maybe she and Tyra went to breakfast.”
“Tyra doesn’t work on Thursdays. So even if they did go to breakfast together, Hope wouldn’t have gone to the storage facility.”
Dez raised her eyebrows. “So maybe it was an affair with Seth.”
Fenway knotted her eyebrows. “I suppose that’s a possibility. But maybe…” Ugh. The cacophony of rain on the Impala was almost deafening—it was hard to concentrate. She tapped the phone screen again and went back to her email. She scrolled—there it was. Seth Cahill’s bank records. She tapped the email and opened the file.
“Yeah,” she murmured.
“Did you find something?”
“You heard Cahill’s cash deposits were about five thousand more than what was listed in the ledger?”
Dez nodded. “Yeah, I was there when Sarah told you.”
“Right. I think I found the discrepancy.”
“Yeah?”
“Every Thursday for six weeks, Hope goes to Cahill Warehouse Storage at eight thirty. On Thursday afternoon—for the last six weeks—Seth Cahill makes a cash deposit of a thousand dollars at the ATM on St. Bonaventure. Well, a couple of times it was nine hundred. Once it was four hundred.” Fenway looked up. “That’s the missing five thousand dollars.”
“Blackmail,” Dez said.
“It’s not evidence, but blackmail is one reason Hope might have given five grand to Seth.”
“And that’s motive.” Dez exited the freeway, the wind pushing the Impala nearly out of the lane. “Do you want to wait for Sarah to get the name of the person who rented the scooter?”
“I’m impatient,” Fenway said. “But yes, we should wait.”
A flash in the sky illuminated the world so brightly that Fenway blinked. Almost immediately, a boom shook the car.
“The storm is almost on top of us,” Dez said.
“Craig says the storm isn’t as bad as it could be.”
“It’s not a hurricane, but it’s pretty bad.”
Dez navigated around a scooter left in the middle of the street and turned into the office parking garage. Immediately the raindrops slamming against the car ceased. “I don’t think Hope realizes she’s a suspect.”
Fenway swallowed and her ears popped—she could hear herself think again. “She will as soon as Miranda gets released.”
Dez was silent.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Miranda will get released, and Hope will realize we’re onto her.”
“She might not find out for a while.”
“No,” Fenway said, “she might not. But if she does, the storm will provide good cover for her to get away. She could be in Mexico by the time Tropical Storm Alonso lets up.”
Dez grunted.
“Sorry. Our safety is more important.”
“Two conditions,” Dez said. “We’re heading to the office and you’re checking the credit card info. If it matches Hope Dunkelman, then onto condition number two.”
“Which is?”
“Check the weather.” Dez pulled into a parking space. “If the experts have downgraded it to a tropical depression, we’ll go visit Hope Dunkelman. But if it’s still a tropical storm, we’re going home.”
Fenway tapped her weather app, then clicked on the Severe Weather Alert.
Severe Weather Alert for ESTANCIA, CA THU 18 JUNE 05:07 PM
Tropical Storm Alonso Advisory Number 12
Sustained winds at 45 MPH, with higher gusts
Landfall 5 mi NW of Estancia
“Not downgraded yet, but close,” Fenway said, turning the phone so Dez could see. “It was fifty miles per hour when we were at Miranda Duchy’s cabin.”
Dez turned off the engine. “Fine. Let’s go in.”
The wind whipped through the parking garage, stinging Fenway’s eyes. They walked down the ramp, the rain blowing sideways into the covered areas. Fenway and Dez looked at each other at the bottom of the ramp, and Fenway gritted her teeth, then ran through the plaza between the parking garage and the office building. Fenway pulled the door open and the wind nearly tore it out of her hand. Dez grabbed the edge of the door, and they struggled to pull it shut. Finally, they got the door closed, and as it clicked shut, the pressure popped Fenway’s ears again.
“We’re crazy,” Fenway said. She should be in her apartment, cuddled up with McVie. Maybe with the storm, he could postpone leaving for a day or two. She blinked. She needed to catch a killer first.
Dez nodded. “I’m amazed the power is still on.”
Fenway nodded and squished her way down the hallway toward the coroner’s suite. “Let’s hope I can still get that credit card info.”
“I’ll get paper towels from the restroom,” Dez volunteered.
A few moments later, Fenway woke up the laptop in her office. Sarah had sent the notification that ADA Pondicherry had submitted the paperwork to release Miranda Duchy. Given the order of non-essential personnel going home, it wasn’t clear if Duchy’s paperwork would get expedited, or if they’d wait until the storm passed and everyone was called back.
Fenway closed the email, then opened her web browser and clicked the financial app on the county intranet. She opened the spreadsheet she’d gotten from Tailwhip earlier. She copied the credit card number, then went to her financial app and pasted it, then clicked Search.
Mid-Coast Bank
Cards issued: 2
Account owner
Hope Jessica Dunkelman
Fenway looked up as Dez walked in, still dripping, with a large stack of paper towels. “These are terrible, but they’re better than nothing.”
“Got a hit on the card used for the Tailwhip scooter,” Fenway said. “Account owner: Hope Dunkelman.”
“So now we wait for the storm to be downgraded.” Dez sighed. “I could really go for Java Jim’s.”
“The coffee machine didn’t close for the storm.” Fenway grinned. “It even has decaf, so you can keep your wife happy.”
Dez mimed a retch.
Fenway’s phone dinged; it was a weather alert.
Severe Weather Alert for ESTANCIA, CA THU 18 JUNE 05:16 PM
Tropical Storm Alonso advisory number 13
Sustained winds at 37 MPH
Alonso has been downgraded to tropical depression
The deepest water will occur along the immediate coast in areas of onshore winds
Surge-related flooding depends on the relative timing of the surge and the tidal cycle and can vary greatly over short distances
“There’s your second condition met,” Fenway said to Dez. “So if we want to catch Hope Dunkelman—”
“Yeah.” Dez mopped the back of her neck with a paper towel; half of it stuck to her skin. “Maybe we can get something better over at the sheriff’s office.”
Fenway blinked. “The sheriff’s office? Shouldn’t we take—"
“We’re checking out a cruiser,” Dez interrupted. “Ain’t no way I’m getting a soggy murderer into the back seat of my Impala.”