Friday evening, Eva left Marie to stay with Heather while she took off in search of Camilla’s spirit. Heather managed to get a decent night’s rest, knowing Marie looked over her. The next morning, instead of being served breakfast in her jail cell, Brian greeted Heather with the news she could go home.
“Why?” Heather asked.
“I suspect Mel got to the DA,” Brian suggested. “From what I understand, the DA didn’t feel there was enough evidence to take this to trial.”
Standing at the now open jail cell, Heather said, “One thing I thought was weird, I was never questioned. No one asked me where I was when Camilla was killed. No one asked me if I knew Camilla or what our relationship was. Nothing.”
“What about when you were in the interrogation room with Bowman?” Brian asked.
“He didn’t really ask me questions. I thought it was because Mel wasn’t there yet. He just kept trying to talk me into confessing, telling me how much better off I would be to save money on bail and legal fees.”
“How about after Mel arrived?” Brian asked.
Heather shook her head. “No. He didn’t ask me anything. Not really. As far as he knew, I might have an airtight alibi during the time of death. He didn’t know if I had a jogging partner who was with me that morning or if I was alone the entire time.”
“You had one. Me,” Marie chimed in.
Heather smiled at Marie. “True. And Marie, thanks again for staying with me last night. It really made it much easier.”
“I’ll walk you out before I go find Eva. I doubt she’s found Camilla, since she hasn’t been back, but perhaps she has a lead,” Marie said.
* * *
Thirty minutes earlier, across town in the Lyonses’ garage apartment, the Bowman twins sat on the unmade sofa bed in the living room, still wearing their pajamas while each ate a bowl of cereal and watched cartoons.
In the kitchen area, a colorful vinyl tablecloth covered the small table, where Clay sat drinking his coffee and staring at the cellphone in his hand.
“Do you want eggs or cereal?” Debbie asked her husband for the second time. When he still didn’t answer, she snapped, “Clay!”
Clay frowned up at his wife, who stood over him, her hands on her hips. “What?”
“I asked you, what do you want for breakfast?”
“I’ve got to go into the station.”
Debbie frowned. “But it’s Saturday. I thought we could do something together today, as a family.”
Clay picked up his mug, finished the last of his coffee, and stood up. “I need to go down there. That call I just got. I have to release our prisoner.”
“But she murdered someone. Right?”
“Apparently, her attorney convinced the DA that we don’t have enough to hold her on.”
“Can he do that? Just let a murderer go?”
* * *
When Clay pulled into the police department parking lot on Saturday morning, he saw they had already released Heather. She walked with Brian, heading towards his car. Bowman pulled up beside the couple, rolled down his window, and stopped his vehicle.
“What did I tell you, Henderson?” Bowman barked.
Placing his right hand protectively on the middle of Heather’s back, Brian turned to the police car. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re to stay away from Donovan. She is a suspect in the murder of your ex-wife, and if you’re trying to compromise our case, perhaps I need to charge you as an accomplice.”
“And I imagine they’ll drop those charges as fast as the ones against Heather,” Brian snapped back.
“I know she killed your ex-wife.” Clay turned his attention to Heather, who stood silently by Brian’s side. “You’re not to leave Frederickport, Miss Donovan. You’re still a prime suspect in this case, and trust me, I’ll be bringing you in again, this time with enough evidence to convince the DA to pursue this case.”
Heather glared at Clay. “If you have anything to say to me, you can talk to my attorney.”
Brian gave Heather’s back a gentle nudge, and the two continued to his car.
* * *
Marie resisted the temptation to give Clay Bowman a good kick in the backside. She had already gotten Heather into enough trouble by smacking Camilla at the funeral. Had she not done that, she doubted the story of the animosity between Heather and Camilla would have spread, thus saving Heather from being a suspect in Camilla’s murder.
She watched as Clay drove away after harassing Heather and Brian. He parked in Chief MacDonald’s space on the other side of the parking lot. Marie turned her attention back to Heather, who was now getting into Brian’s car.
“You go home, get a good rest,” Marie told Heather. “I’ll go find Eva. Hopefully, she has a lead on our newest spirit.”
Five minutes later, Marie stood in the parking lot and watched as Brian and Heather drove away. She looked back at the police station just as Bowman entered the building. Marie contemplated following Bowman instead of looking for Eva.
* * *
After Clay entered the building, he went straight to lockup, hoping no one had been arrested last night. He didn’t want an audience when retrieving the voice-activated cassette recorder he had hidden in the cell. Ten minutes later, Clay entered his office and locked the door behind him. He walked to the desk and sat down, placing the recorder before him. He wanted to see if Henderson had ignored his orders and visited Heather last night. If he had, Clay wanted to know what they had talked about.
He hit the rewind button and discovered the recorder had captured something last night. He wondered whose voices would be on the tape. After the recorder finished rewinding, he hit play and listened.
“I wish Marie were here with me now, like she was then. Eva? I was just wishing you were here! And Eva’s here too! I saw Camilla this morning. She was standing in front of my house. I spoke to her. Yep. I really need to figure out how to tell dead people from living people.” Laughter.
Clay stopped the tape, rewound it, and then listened to it again. Who is she talking to?
“Mel is terrific. She told me she’s doing this pro bono. I can’t believe how generous she is. What do you mean? Sort of like paying it forward. Do you know where Bella is?” Giggling. “There is just something funny about Chris Glandon cleaning my litter box.”
Once again, Clay stopped the tape. Did she say Chris Glandon was cleaning her litter box? Is she talking to herself? He hit play again.
“I’d like to talk to Camilla. Ask her who murdered her. Her ghost might be at the funeral home or her uncle’s house. Or maybe she’s hanging around Brian. It seems like she had some sort of obsession with him before someone murdered her.”
* * *
Marie had entered Bowman’s office not long after Clay pushed play on the recorder. It took Marie a minute to figure out what she was listening to. Bowman had obviously hidden a voice-activated recorder in Heather’s jail cell last night. Since it was a voice-activated recorder, it had only recorded when Heather spoke or made some noise, and it stopped when Eva or Marie spoke. Because of this, it sounded as if Heather had been rambling incoherently when alone in her cell last night.
Furious at the invasion of Heather’s privacy and rights, Marie focused her energy on the tape recorder. Just as the recording said, “It seems like she had some sort of obsession with him before someone murdered her…” the tape player’s speed increased at such a rate the voice coming out of the machine sounded like an angry chipmunk.
Frowning, Clay looked down at the recorder and pressed pause. The compartment holding the tape flew open, spitting the cassette from the machine and, in doing so, sent narrow tape unraveling outside of the cassette. The cassette landed on the desk, a pile of tape spilling from its core.
“What the hell?” Clay muttered as he picked up the cassette. Gingerly touching the loose magnetic tape with his fingertips, he looked as if he was contemplating how to roll the tape back onto the cassette. The next moment his hands moved of their own volition, and his eyes widened as he stared down at his fingers as they pulled the rest of the magnetic tape from the cassette and then tore the tape into little bits, putting an end to any notion he might have had of rewinding the tape and listening to it again.
After his hands finished decimating the cassette, they dropped the tape onto the desktop. Clay sat paralyzed, staring down at the broken cassette and pile of tangled and torn magnetic tape. He raised his hands to his face and stared at them as if looking at the appendages for the first time. He took a deep breath, lowered his hands to the desk, and closed his eyes.
“Serves you right,” Marie snapped at Clay. “You won’t be listening to that now.” Had a medium been in the room with Clay, they would have witnessed Marie vanish the next moment.
* * *
His heart raced; its wild beating filled his head. Clay told himself to calm down, and he took another deep breath. He remembered the coffee incident in Pier Café. The mug hadn’t simply slipped from his hand. He remembered the distinct sensation of pressure against his hand as if someone took hold of his wrist and twisted it, making the mug turn upside down.
He searched his brain for an answer and remembered a problem he’d experienced several years earlier with his legs, where they twitched uncontrollably. The doctor had said it was muscle spasms, and had explained dehydration, too much coffee, not getting enough sleep, stress, or anxiety could cause the spasms. Clay had to admit, he had been experiencing both stress and anxiety, and he didn’t get enough sleep, and he probably drank too much coffee.
After convincing himself he had diagnosed his problem—ignoring the fact spasms would not make his hands behave as they had—Clay picked up the ruined cassette, along with the recorder, and threw them all in the nearby trash can. He leaned back in the office chair, closed his eyes, and tried to recall what he had heard when playing the recording.
At first, it sounded as if Heather was talking to herself, a jumble of nonsense. He wished he could listen to the tape again. Was she simply crazy? Did she imagine someone was in the cell with her? Was that whom she was talking to, an imaginary friend? Then it came to him. She must have been talking on the phone. Perhaps her words weren’t an incoherent jumble. Perhaps he only heard her side of the conversation, not the other person’s. This meant someone at the police department had brought her a cellphone last night, against his orders.
It must have been a phone conversation; that would explain what he’d heard. The recorder only turned on when she spoke, and then turned off when she stopped talking and the person on the other end of the call spoke.
She mentioned someone named Eva. Was that whom she had talked to? Who is Eva?