When Cait returned to the house, the landline was ringing and Marcus wasn’t in his office to answer it. She left a note on his desk to order water and coffee for the Blackfriars theater as the answering machine picked up the call. If someone wanted tickets for the plays, Marcus would know more about that than she would.
A gruff voice said, “I know where you are.”
Cait froze. “What the—”
Then someone knocked on the back door and startled her. She peeked around the corner and was relieved to see June through the door window. When she opened it, June rushed in carrying a covered plate and set it on the counter. “I made enough lasagna for an army—too much for Jim and me.” She removed the foil from around the plate and sat down. “You have all these fancy stainless steel appliances but never use them.”
The aroma of tomato, cheese, and sausage curled up Cait’s nose, sending her stomach into spasms. She opened a drawer, took out a fork, and sat next to June. “It’s not that I can’t cook. Sometimes I get busy and forget to eat.”
The phone rang.
“The answering machine will get it. I had crank calls earlier.” She told her about the hang-ups on her cell and the landline. “The last was threatening. In case anything comes of these calls, there’s something you should know.” She told June why the initials on the knife concerned her.
“Good lord, I hope you told Detective Rook.”
She nodded. “I stopped by the station to tell him. When Shep Church, my friend at the Columbus PD, checked their property room, the knife wasn’t there.” The more she thought about the calls and the knife, the angrier she became and the tighter the knot in her stomach. “Detective Rook wants you and Jim to watch for anyone acting suspicious this weekend . . . someone wandering away from the crowd. There will be about four hundred here for the plays, but Rook’s promised extra security.”
“I’ll tell Jim to keep his gun with him.”
Cait didn’t know Jim had a gun. “I’m sorry. The last thing you and Jim expected were cops and robbers when you came here, and it never crossed my mind I would become a target for something that happened two years ago on the job.”
“Fiddlesticks. Excitement keeps us on our toes.”
“Hank Dillon’s younger brother Wally would be twenty-two now. Maybe he made the calls and tried to break into the house.”
“How could he get the knife? He couldn’t just waltz into the police station and ask for it, could he?”
“No, but he could request it and fill out a form.”
“Oh, that easy?”
“Depending, after a period of time and if it hadn’t been involved in a homicide.” She cut into the lasagna. “Another possibility is Calder Manning.”
“Who?”
“Manning’s family adopted Hank Dillon, a black kid, who’d been in and out of trouble with the law. Calder Manning, their son, is a war correspondent.”
“That would keep him out of the country a lot, so he couldn’t be a suspect. ‘The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.’ ” June grinned. “Sorry. Sometimes I can’t help myself. You can take the actor out of the theater, but you can’t take Shakespeare out of the actor, or something like that. That was taken out of context from Hamlet. Jim and I didn’t come here to drink wine and bask in the sun. We need to be useful. Tell us what we can do to help you.”
The landline rang again.
They exchanged glances and waited to hear a message, but one wasn’t left.
Then it rang again.
Cait jumped up and grabbed the receiver. “Who is this?” When the line went dead, she punched *69, but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t see a number. “Every criminal’s favorite toy. Disposable phones.”
June slid off her stool. “I’m going to tell Jim what you’ve told me. Don’t answer the next time it rings.”
After June left, Cait finished eating, turned off the lights, and went upstairs.
Cait logged onto her laptop and searched Calder Manning’s name. What she read surprised her. Not his undergrad degree from Ohio Wesleyan or his grad degree from Northwestern University, but the in-depth articles he’d written from war zones and his narrow escapes from certain death. Covering stories in the midst of a war zone took guts, she thought as she read more of his articles. One in particular, in which he wrote about unnecessary deaths, the aftermath of car bombings, and the misery and futility of the war, touched her. Cait didn’t think he sounded like someone with time to waste tracking down a police officer, even one who killed his adopted brother during a bank robbery.
For the first time, she wondered if her inheritance had something to do with the attempted break-in, someone coming out of the woodwork demanding his or her share. She shook her head. But that wouldn’t explain the knife and the initials.
Cait leaned back in her seat. She seldom experienced loneliness, not even after she left her husband. She savored privacy, yet her life was fulfilled with work and friends. But everyone she loved and trusted was either dead or in Ohio. Her thoughts turned to Royal Tanner, the Navy SEAL she’d met when she’d first arrived in Livermore. His work took him around the world, but after a shaky start, they’d parted as friends. When he left a month ago, she opened an account on Skype to stay in touch with her best friends, Samantha and Shep, but secretly hoped RT would look her up on it. So far she hadn’t heard from him.
She refocused her attention on the screen, and after much searching she found the picture Shep had mentioned of Manning wearing a helmet and a flak vest strapped over his clothing. Even without a weapon, she thought he looked intimidating. She decided this illusion must be caused by the fatigues and the soldiers surrounding him with their massive weaponry. She wondered if journalists who had been drawn to the hot zones of the globe were driven by a notion that they have a role to play in an historical period. As much as she admired Manning’s bravery, she wondered if his real mission was to draw the attention of the world to the evil committed by malicious forces against helpless victims—like a global crusader.
She reviewed military weapons and found the knife the police discovered on Dillon after he was shot, which was identical to the one found outside her house. The one distinguishing feature she’d missed when she’d described the knife to Detective Rook was the double bevel that ran down the center of the blade. It was listed as an Applegate Combat Folder, which was considered to be best-of-class among tactical knives.
Cait relaxed, satisfied with her finding. The screen began to blur before her eyes. She closed the document and pushed away from the desk when an electronic chirping stopped her. She clicked the mouse and saw Shep on Skype.
She smiled, her own image displayed in a tiny window in the upper left corner. “Hey you.”
“You must have been at your computer,” Shep said.
“Yes, and I found that photo of Manning you mentioned and I also identified the knife.”
“Cait. I have something to tell you.”
“Okay.” This can’t be good.
“I talked with Commander York about the knife. After Dillon’s funeral, someone came to the station and asked about the officer who shot Dillon. The guy refused to give his name but did say he was a journalist.”
The skin on the back of her neck tingled. “Calder Manning.”
“Maybe. When the officer he talked to wouldn’t give him your name, he left. Protocol has to be followed in the case of any officer shooting. Your name was kept out of the papers until after the full investigation had been conducted. The officer Manning talked to reported the incident to his sergeant.”
“I should have been told,” she said.
“You’re right. Remember Chuck Levy? He retired a couple of years ago.”
“Sure.”
“He kept meticulous notes in his infamous black journal. Stuff like conversations nobody else thought important, details like why the hall lightbulb at a murder scene had been removed. When he retired, he turned the journal over to his commander and then told him about an incident that happened days before he retired.”
She fidgeted in her seat. “What incident?”
“Levy was having what he called a celebratory Johnnie Walker after work at that place around the corner from the station.”
“Ah.” She had fond memories of the old police hangout. Her department had given her a party there to celebrate her promotion to crime analyst and again when she got her inheritance.
“Well, what Levy thought was an accidental bumping of elbows at the bar at the time, turned into an interrogation. This other guy drank along with Levy, got him talking about his retirement. Levy later noted in his journal he made a mistake by saying he wished he’d inherited a vineyard in California like one of the officers in his department and letting your name slip.”
Cait stared at the screen and the grim look on Shep’s face, but couldn’t find the words to console him for being the bearer of bad news. “Something else I wasn’t told. But lots of people hang out at that bar, Shep, and cops know they must be tight-lipped when they’re in there.”
“Yep, they sure do, but you know alcohol loosens the tongue.”
“I don’t suppose Levy gave a description of the guy in the bar.”
“No, but at least he reported it when he realized his mistake.”
“I’ll let Detective Rook know what you’ve told me.”
“I already talked to him, since this involves both of our departments. Cait, I’m thinking about coming out there.”
She hesitated, not wanting to hurt him. “Please wait to see if anything comes from this. You’re my only contact there. Rook will have cops here during the festival. My concern is Actors’ Equity coming down on me again. Last time there was trouble, they threatened to remove their actors from what they considered a dangerous environment for them to work in.”
His face serious, Shep touched his finger to the screen. “Okay, but leave this thing on so we can stay in touch. I’ll catch a flight if you need me. Be safe.”
The window faded, as did her hopes of a festival without danger.