Chapter Nineteen

Deputy Spencer stopped in at Phillip’s store shortly after noon on Friday, hat in hand and an eager expression on his freckled face.

“We have information on your vandal,” he said to Phillip, who turned to Kate.

“Let’s go to my office,” Phillip suggested, worry etched into the lines of his forehead.

The deputy nodded, and Phillip motioned to Ellie to keep an eye on the store, then led the way to the back room. Phillip took the chair behind the desk and picked up a pencil that he fidgeted with nervously while Kate and Skip sat across from him.

The red-haired officer reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the silver-plated lighter encased in a plastic baggie. “Do you remember this, Kate?” Despite the young deputy’s obvious desire to seem professional, Kate noticed the earnest glint in his eyes.

“Of course,” she said. “I found it after the first attempted break-in here.”

He tucked the lighter back into his pocket. “Well, it’s our link to unlocking this thing,” he said in his deep voice. “It has the same fingerprints as those we took off of your slashed furniture and the front doorknob,” the deputy said. “And the prints were found at Eli’s, too, on the day of the theft there.”

“Whose prints are they?” Phillip asked.

Skip scratched his head. “Well, it looks like whoever it is hasn’t been arrested before ’cause his prints aren’t on file. But we do know they’re the same prints. It’s just a matter of finding the guy.”

“So,” Kate said, her mind gathering the information together, “this means that whoever stole the mannequin was the same person who broke in here. Eli and Phillip are both cleared.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Skip said.

Kate let out a breath of relief, then just as quickly, her mind flew to the man who had tried to break in the back door. “W.M.,” she began. “Any leads on who that could be?”

“We’ve been asking around town but no one has seen the man fitting the description you gave us. At least not yet, though combined with this it does narrow things down for us.”

AFTER KATE HAD FINISHED UP helping out for the day at the store, she headed home to start supper.

Her mind drifted to her investigation into the mannequin’s roots. She traced the clues, from Horace Hanlon’s journal to Lucas Wilcox’s assertion that Jack Leonetti knew the author of his biography before the bank robbery to the initials on the lighter she’d found on the sidewalk.

W.M. If only she’d seen the thief’s car the day he’d broken the window at the store, something that would help her figure out who he was.

She called Livvy and asked if the second book penned by Simmonds had arrived yet. Livvy said the book was still checked out and could be another two or more weeks before arriving.

Kate turned her car onto Smoky Mountain Road and wended her way past the towering trees. The shade was a relief from the heat of the day. She decided she could use a glass of iced tea when she got home. She thought of the tea she’d had when she visited Lucas Wilcox. What a wonderful, kind man he was, though she’d seen the loneliness that he lived with too. She reminded herself that she’d wanted to sign him up for the Faith Freezer Program. But something pulled her up short, something Lucas said that day that she hadn’t fully picked up on at the time.

The day she’d gone to see him, he’d mentioned having two visitors that week. Yet he’d said that was rare, that the other visitor, a stranger from the sound of it, was looking for a woman. Was it possible the man with the limp had been his visitor? It was a long shot, but Kate decided to give the elderly man a call.

Lucas’ warbly voice answered on the eighth ring, and Kate introduced herself.

“I remember who you are,” he said.

“I’m wondering if you remember something else,” Kate began. “The day I came to visit, you mentioned someone else coming by that week, looking for a woman. Do you remember that?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “I had no idea who the guy was. Wanted to know if some woman had come snooping around asking questions. ’Course I told him no.”

Kate’s pulse quickened, and she tightened the grip on her cell phone. The man had been asking about her! Had he seen her at the historical society researching the case? How else would he have known to talk to Lucas?

“He didn’t tell you his name? Where he was from?”

“No, ma’am. He was only here for a few minutes.”

“What did he look like?”

“Oh,” Lucas paused, “let’s see. He was a shorter fellow. Balding. Probably in his early fifties, maybe older...”

“Did he have a limp?”

“Why, yes...how did you know that?”