Anything else for the good of the order? I picked up my coffee cup. It was empty, darn it, so I got up to get more. I’d tossed and turned most of the night as my brain tried to make sense of the bits and pieces of information I’d gathered from the investigation. A woefully small number of bits and pieces.
Since my alarm had gone off, I’d been downing cup after cup of java. The caffeine was keeping me going, but it wouldn’t last. With my Friday morning meeting with Calypso coming to an end, it was time for yet another refill.
“Yeah, you can fill me up, too.” She handed her forty-four-ounce mega-mug to me.
I rolled my eyes. “Since you’re the associate agent and I’m the fully fledged one, and owner of the agency, shouldn’t you be getting the coffee?”
“Nice try.” She leaned back in her chair and propped her feet on an arm of my office love seat. “I got the last round. While you get the joe, I’ll make a final check of the royalty statements. Now, shoo. And don’t you roll your eyes at me. I’ll tell on you.”
“Yeah, right. Who are you gonna tell, my fiancé or, better yet, my mom?” I strutted out of the room, brimming with confidence that I had her.
“No. Your BFF,” Calypso hollered. “Sloane told me if you start being a jerk boss, she’ll hire me.”
“She wouldn’t dare.” My raised voice got Ursi’s attention. She raised her head from her food bowl with her ears pinned back in annoyance.
A moment later, the clomp, clomp of Calypso’s Doc Martens sent the hair on the back of my neck on end.
“Here.” She handed her phone to me. It was queued up to play a video. “Hit Play.”
I pressed a tiny triangle at the bottom of the screen and Sloane’s image came up. She was looking at a piece of paper. Then she began to speak.
I, Sloane Winchester, do hereby solemnly swear that I will hire Calypso Bosley on the spot to be my personal assistant if she ever tells me she wants to quit working for the Cobb Literary Agency because Allie was mean to her. You’ve been warned, Allie. Thank you.
The screen went black. Slack-jawed, I returned the phone to Calypso.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
Calypso cracked a smile. She refilled her mug, then mine. “It’s a little bit of a joke. Sloane was at the Pub having lunch and we got to talking. She asked if I liked it here in Rushing Creek. I told her I did, but that my big worry was what I’d do if something awful happened to you. She told me that she’d give me a job. That I was an important part of the community.”
A lump formed in my throat. That was my Sloanie. To borrow a line from Jazon Mraz, she was always looking for the good. While I didn’t like to think about such dire consequences, my death or incapacity were hardly the same thing as being mean to Calypso.
“So, how did you two get from that conversation to the video on your phone. They’re hardly covering the same territory.”
“As we talked, one thing led to another, and we agreed that while we want you to live forever, that doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to turn into a mean old lady.”
“But I’m not. Am I?”
This time, Calypso laughed. “Of course not. You’re an amazing boss and a pretty decent human being. I love working with you. But the video is my ace in the hole if I ever need it. So, be nice. Especially with everything you’ve got going on right now. It’s enough to make anyone grumpy.”
“Holy cats.” I shook my head and laughed. “You and Sloane conspiring against me. What has the world come to?”
“We prefer the phrase aligning mutual interests.” She took a seat on my couch. “And to help you not be grumpy, is there anything I can do to help with the investigation?”
I explained my conundrum with Jack. “I know I should be able to clear things up with him with a quick chat. I’m kind of scared to approach him right now, though. I mean, what if he really is the killer and I swing by his place? You might need to talk to Sloane about a job a lot sooner than either of us want.”
“Have the police talked to him?”
“Don’t know. And to be honest, I don’t know if it matters if they have.” I let out a sigh. “If he’s the murderer, he could lie to them. Wouldn’t be the first time a suspect lied to our beloved Rushing Creek PD.”
“But you don’t think he’d lie to you?” Calypso frowned.
“Not if I approach it the right way. I think he trusts me. And I’m pretty sure he knows I have a bit of a crush on him.”
My cheeks got hot at the admission. What the heck, it was the truth. Just because he was easy on the eyes didn’t mean I’d actually do anything inappropriate. I loved and wanted to spend my life with Brent.
End of story.
“Seems to me you need to stop beating around the bush and actually talk to him. If he is the guy, the longer you wait, the more time he has to make up a good story.”
“You’re right.” I pulled up his number in my phone. “I’ll text him to see if he wants to set a time after the honeymoon to talk about the committee’s plans for this year. Sounds plausible, right?”
“Whatever it takes, Fearless Leader.” Calypso’s phone beeped. “That’s Aunt Renee. She wants to talk about hiring me to boost the bookstore’s online presence.”
“Nice.” I lifted my mug to her. “Would this have anything to do with the freelance work you’ve been doing for your authors?”
Calypso had recently started working as a personal assistant for one of the agency’s authors. Her focus was on overseeing the author’s social media presence and outreach with organizations like book clubs, writing groups, and libraries. In a matter of weeks, her client list had grown from one to three writers.
“It does. If things keep going like this, I’ll be able to cut down on my shifts at the Pub.”
“Holy cats, that’s fabulous.” I couldn’t be happier for her. “Go. Don’t forget to double-check the royalty statements so payments go out on time.” I still had a business to run, after all.
“No problem. Later, Boss.” She opened the door. “Oh, hey, Gabe. What is up?”
“Heading to work,” he said, then popped his head through the doorway opening. “Morning, Allie.”
“Officer Sandoval keeping the streets of Rushing Creek safe.” I waved to him. “Hey, got a second?”
He exchanged goodbyes with Calypso then closed the door behind him. The man cut an impressive figure in his dark blue police uniform. His baseball cap lessened the authority figure vibe but made him more approachable. The ensemble suited him.
Not that he had any problem maintaining authority. He had a stare that was known to make drunken tourists quake in their shoes. Whether that was true or another Maybelle tall tale didn’t matter to me. He was a solid guy.
And had information I needed.
“How’s the investigation going?” I gestured for him to take a seat.
“Slow.” He picked at a dust mote on his sleeve as he let out a weary sigh. With a closer look at him, the dark circles under his eyes were easy to see. “There’s so much video evidence to go through. Every time we think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, we get another new batch.”
“Find anything helpful yet?”
“We’ve ID’d a number of individuals who were seen carrying long guns at one time or another during the day. The chief’s been interviewing them.”
“Do any of them own a rifle that would use the kind of bullet recovered from the Memory Tree?”
“Some do, but the firearms they were seen carrying that day don’t match the one the shooter used. The bullet came from a .308 cartridge. It’s used with your run-of-the-mill hunting rifle.”
I flipped my notebook to an open page and began writing. Finally, some progress on the gun end.
“So, if they used a hunting rifle, they could have taken the shot from far away, right?” I smiled as a lesson from the gun safety class of my youth returned to be of service.
“Yeah, a hundred yards or more. The chief thinks it was taken from closer in, though. Because of all the people in the park at the time.”
A burst of insight flared to life in my head. “So, that’s why you all were so deliberate combing through the park grounds.”
“Exactly. It’s a pain in the backside, but we’re being thorough. Given where Ollie was and where the bullet lodged in the tree, we have an idea of where the shot came from, so we’re concentrating our search in that part of the park.”
“What about outside the park’s boundaries? I mean, leave no stone unturned, right?”
“We’ve done a cursory walkthrough of each of the properties that we believe could be relevant. Nothing turned up and we haven’t been authorized to do any kind of search that would need a warrant. The powers that be don’t want to do that right now. There are a lot of influential people who live in those houses.”
“I hope you’re not missing out on anything taking that approach.”
“Same here. The thing is, the chief thinks odds are really low that the shot was taken from outside the park. Between the distance and the crowd, only a sharpshooter could pull that off.”
“A sharpshooter.” And who were sharpshooters? Many military veterans were. That forced the issue about Jack.
Gabe frowned when I mentioned his name. “We haven’t been able to reach him. The last anyone can confirm seeing him was Saturday morning when he was headed out of town. We checked with his family. Nobody seems to know where he is.”
Okay, that was weird. People in the twenty-first century didn’t simply disappear into thin air. Unless they wanted to go into hiding.
“What about his cell phone? Can you try to locate him that way?”
He shook his head. “Not without a warrant. At this point, we have no reason to believe he may be the shooter. Until he shows up, or we find evidence linking him to the crime, we’re focusing our energies on other avenues of investigation.”
Hmm. I tapped my pen on the page. Maybe this was one of those occasions where I could use those unorthodox investigation techniques Matt had mentioned. I’d have to give it some more thought.
For a second, I considered bringing up the issue of Ollie’s little protection racket but decided against it. I didn’t want to besmirch a dead man’s reputation. At least not until I discussed the matter with Matt.
Behind closed doors.
That issue was a grenade. And one I would have to handle with care, and then some.
“Just one more question. What about Zoe Watson? Anybody taking a look at her?”
“Ollie’s wife?” Gabe’s eyes went wide, the deep brown of his pupils ringed with white. “Has the secretly vengeful widow scenario ever actually worked out? In any place besides in one of your books?”
Ouch, that hurt. I bit back a snippy response. The man was right. Only a few months ago, I had been convinced a murder victim’s wife had been involved. That assumption had come back to bite me. Almost fatally.
I wouldn’t let that kind of thinking happen again.
“Fair point, Gabe. Hear me out, though. People I’ve talked to said Zoe and Willie Hammond have had a long-term affair going on and that she and Ollie weren’t exactly happy together. What if the thought of living with him in his retirement was too much and she shot him or arranged to have someone else do the deed? She’d get his possessions, including his pension, and be free to do as she pleases. With whomever she pleases.”
He was silent for a moment, rubbing his hands together as he considered my words. After a while, he stood.
“It’s plausible. The thing is, we talked to her right after the shooting. She says she wasn’t at the park that night. She was at her office, working on a brief for a trial she has coming up. She met us at the hospital.”
“Have you been able to verify that?”
“No.”
Of course not. That would make life too easy.
“Let me guess. The office where she works doesn’t have any electronic security.”
Gabe took his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. “We haven’t checked. At this point, we have no reason to consider her a suspect. Look, Allie, I know you’re good at finding conspiracies everyone else misses, but unless you’ve got something tangible we can work with, I need to get going.”
I let the conspiracy theory dig slide off me like water off a duck’s back. Gabe wasn’t wrong. I considered my active imagination an asset. Sure, I’d been wrong about things in the past, but in the end, that knack for creative thinking had always worked in my favor.
But, as Matt had told me one time, the police didn’t work in theories. They worked in evidence and facts. Until I had some of those, I needed to stay out of their way and let them do their jobs.
“You’re right. I appreciate your time and candor. If I can be of assistance in any way, you know where to find me.”
“That I do.” He smiled. It was a wide one that showed off a perfect set of gleaming white teeth. One of his canines was crooked, though. Apparently, the guy had amazing teeth without the horror of braces. Good for him. I wasn’t jealous.
I shivered as I pushed memories of my thirty months in braces into a corner.
After he made his exit, I returned to my case notebook. I was already caught up on work email. That being the one positive outcome from a restless night. While I updated my notes, a thought came to me.
There was something I could do. Something the police couldn’t. It might get me in hot water, but it wasn’t dangerous.
Probably.
The low level of danger is what got me moving. I gave Ursi a small handful of kitty treats and scratched her between the shoulder blades. It was one of her favorite spots.
“I’m off in search of a needle in a haystack, girl. Wish me luck.”
The cat gave me a quick glance, then attacked her snack. For a moment, I wanted to trade places with her. She wasn’t putting herself in harm’s way or in a position to be arrested.
Sometimes, though, a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do. Like look for evidence in places where the authorities weren’t allowed.