Fenway parked her Accord next to the curb under a streetlight, its bright glow casting harsh shadows on the quiet residential street. She looked across the road to the large house, its tall arches framing the well-lit doorway. To the left and slightly behind the front of the main house, a four-car garage—with similar arches and other architectural details—stood behind a row of tall Italian cypresses.
A police cruiser pulled up behind Fenway and turned its engine and lights off. Fenway got out of the Honda to greet Deputy Celeste Salvador as she emerged from her vehicle.
Deputy Salvador was a few inches shorter than Fenway, in her early thirties. Her shoulder-length dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked at Fenway with wary dark brown eyes. “Do we think the suspect is here?”
“Redmond Northwall. I don’t know—I’m applying for a warrant for obstruction at the very least.”
“Think it’ll come through?”
“Sarah’s pulled off miracles before.” Fenway shuffled her feet on the asphalt. “If he’s the killer, I’m sure he would know that we’d look for him here. So my money is that he’s back at the temple or in the wind. If he’s here, either he’s supremely confident in his ability to trick us, or he’s innocent.”
“This guy is the CEO of a software company, right? A successful one?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you read that study that said CEOs are ten times more likely to be sociopaths than the overall population?”
“I did.”
“No offense to your dad.”
Fenway chuckled. “None taken.”
Celeste motioned toward the house. “Did you put out an APB on his car?”
“Not yet. I want to see if he’s here.”
Celeste motioned to the house with her chin. “It’s well lit. Looks like someone’s home, anyway.”
Fenway took a deep breath. “You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
They crossed the road and walked up the stone footpath to the front door, a reddish-tinged mahogany with ornate glass windows. Fenway reached out and touched the bell; Westminster chimes rang from inside.
A moment later, a woman opened the door. Trim and athletic, she wore a black business suit with a brooch in the shape of a dolphin on the lapel. Her red hair cascaded down past her shoulders, and she had freckles across the pale skin of her cheeks and nose. She was likely in her early forties, without the treatments and plastic surgeries that Fenway halfway expected from a famous CEO’s wife. She smiled easily. “Yes?”
“County Coroner Fenway Stevenson.” Fenway held her identification out.
The woman peered at it, her smile faltering.
“This is my colleague, Deputy Celeste Salvador. Is this the residence of Redmond Northwall?”
“Yes.” The woman stepped out onto the front step, closing the door behind her and crossing her arms. “What can I help you with?”
“Do you live here as well?”
“Yes. I’m Emma Northwall, Red’s wife. What’s this about?”
“We need to speak with your husband. Is he home?”
“No. I believe he had a business dinner.” She paused. “Speaking of which, I’ve got a dinner to get to myself.”
“This will only take a moment, Mrs. Northwall. When was the last time you saw him?”
“About twenty minutes ago.”
“Twenty minutes ago?”
“Yes.” Emma pointed back at the house. “He came home from work, ran in the house, said hi to me, then said he had to go out again, and went to the garage.”
“The garage?”
“Of course. He drove his car home and took it back out.”
“He parked it in the garage, then drove it back out?”
“That’s what I just said.” Emma crinkled her nose.
“What kind of car?”
“A Tesla Model S—what did you say this was about?”
“He’s the leader of the local chapter of the Monument Brotherhood, is he not?”
“Uh—that’s correct. I’m pretty sure that’s a matter of public record.”
“How long did he spend in the garage?”
“Only about fifteen—” Emma paused, then looked from Fenway’s face to Celeste’s and back again. “California has a policy of spousal privilege,” she said carefully.
Fenway was silent. This wasn’t good.
“You can’t compel me to give information against my husband,” Emma continued.
“Testimony,” Celeste said.
“What?” Emma asked.
Fenway winced, then glanced at Celeste. “Testimony, not information. But we’re not accusing your husband of anything.”
Emma folded her arms. “What is this information regarding?”
“There was an incident at the temple this evening and we wanted to ask him if he could give us any details.”
“An incident?”
“That’s right,” Fenway said. When she started as coroner last year, she might have spilled the beans about the murder, but that would definitely shut Emma down. It might not make much difference in this case—Emma looked like she didn’t trust Fenway anyway. “I wonder,” she said as calmly as she could, “if he left the information we need in the garage. If we could just—”
“I think it’s time for you two to leave,” Emma Northwall said. “I’ll fully cooperate with warrants and subpoenas, but I have nothing else to say at this time, and I decline to allow you to search anything on my property.”
“Fair enough,” Fenway said. “Have a good night.”
Fenway turned and walked back down the stone pathway to the street, Celeste on her heels.
“Sorry,” Celeste mumbled.
“For what?”
“I said one word, and it’s the word that shut her down.”
Fenway shrugged. “She was getting suspicious of us anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to search the garage no matter what you’d said.”
They walked across the street to their cars.
“Not what I expected,” Fenway said.
“What?”
“Emma Northwall. She’s not that much younger than Redmond. I was expecting a trophy wife with plastic surgery.”
Celeste glanced back at the house. “The Courier did a piece on her charity a few weeks ago. Some save-the-ocean thing. She’s got a degree in marine biology—she’s no one’s trophy.” She frowned as she approached the police cruiser. “But I got the feeling she’s hiding something. She knows—or at least strongly suspects—what her husband might have hidden in the garage.”
“I agree,” Fenway said. “I’ve already got Sarah filling out a warrant application for this house.”
“Does that include the garage?”
“Sarah’s done this before,” Fenway said, evading the question, but made a mental note to check with her. “And Dez is signing the warrants. So I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
“And you caught what she said, right?” Celeste asked. “He was in the garage for ‘fifteen’—something. Probably minutes.”
Fenway nodded. “And he pulled all the way into the garage. If you know you’re just running in the house to get something, you don’t drive into the garage. You park in the driveway. In a neighborhood like this, you probably don’t even lock your car.”
“Unless you need to hide a murder weapon.” Celeste unlocked the cruiser. “You would pull in the garage all the way. You don’t want your neighbors seeing your bloody baseball bat.”
“Bloodstone scepter.”
“Bloodstone scepter,” Celeste muttered. “Seriously?”
“It’s cosplay for white men,” Fenway said.
“Yeah.” Celeste opened the door of the cruiser. “It’s all fun and games until one of them gets their brains bashed in.”
“And then it’s just fun.”
Celeste didn’t even chuckle, her brow creased in thought.
“You ever think about taking the detective exam?”
Celeste looked up. “Scheduled for April.”
As Celeste drove away in the cruiser, Fenway got back into her Accord. She pulled out her phone and sent a message to Sarah to include the garage in the warrant, then remembered that she hadn’t gotten a call back from McVie. Especially with Redmond Northwell going in and out of his garage—and with his scepter as a possible murder weapon—she needed someone who could get through to the Monument Brotherhood. She turned the engine on, waiting for the phone to connect to Bluetooth, and tapped the screen.
Two rings. “McVie Investigations,” a high-pitched woman’s voice said.
“Has Craig got you working late again, Piper?”
“Hello to you too.” Piper chuckled. “Don’t worry about me. I’m taking comp time—a long weekend with Migs since he passed the bar. Can you believe he’s never been to the Grand Canyon?”
“Yeah, well, I’ve never been either.”
Piper gasped. “Never?”
“Not all of us—” Fenway paused. Maybe she had gone to the Grand Canyon, back when her parents were still together, and she just didn’t remember. “Never mind. Can you put him on?”
“Sure.”
A moment later: “Hey, Fenway. I might have some client work tonight—I’m not sure when I can get away.”
“Oh, right.” Vaguely, Fenway remembered they’d made dinner plans—or plans to make plans, anyway. “I’m caught up in a case myself. And I thought you could help me.”
“Help you?”
“I heard that when you were sheriff, you used to run into the Monument Brotherhood.”
Silence on the other end.
“Craig?”
“I’m here. I—” McVie drew in his breath sharply. “They don’t have the power they used to, but they still have control of a lot of stuff in Estancia.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe control is the wrong word. Let’s try influence. Like the hiring practices at a lot of local places—the ones your dad didn’t own, anyway. A couple of the county agencies, too. They finally got voted out of the school board about a decade ago—anyway, that’s in the past. Do you need me to connect you with one of the members?”
“I need to figure out how to get our CSI team into the temple.”
McVie hesitated. “That’s a tall order. You better have an unimpeachable reason for wanting—”
“A dead body on the floor of their ballroom.”
Silence.
“You there, Craig?”
“This is tough. There are a few judges in the county who are still members of the Brotherhood. Benson, Haggarty, Pressway.”
“Then they should recuse themselves.”
“But you know they won’t.”
“I’m having Judge Harada sign the search warrant, but I hope it won’t come to that.”
“Are you asking me to contact them and—do what, exactly?”
“Sweet-talk them? Pal around with them, tell them we’re not so bad?”
“I don’t think I hold the sway over them you think I do.”
“Not me—Dez thought you’d be the right person to talk with them.”
“Oh. Well, I’m glad I made such a good impression on her, but I can’t…” His voice trailed off.
“What is it?”
“I, uh, I’ve swept some things under the rug for them. It’s not something I’m proud of.”
Fenway blinked. “Why—why would you do that?”
“Because they run a lot of this town. Like a restaurant suddenly gets its liquor license pulled because the owner fired the son of one of the Brotherhood members. Stuff like that.” He stumbled over his words. “So, so, uh—I pulled some strings, and they pulled some strings.”
“Ah.”
“I’ll call my contacts if you want, but now that I’m not sheriff, I can’t convince them to do much of anything.”
“I see.”
“I’ve—uh, I’ve also got a client who is involved with the Monument Brotherhood. It’s an ethical conflict of interest. Maybe. Was the dead person involved with the brotherhood?”
Fenway hesitated for a moment—it wasn’t public knowledge, but McVie was trustworthy. “Frank Mortimer.”
McVie sighed heavily. “You think it was foul play?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, that’s not good. It’s not good at all. You better come down here. I’ve got a ton of information that’ll be pertinent to your investigation.”
Fenway’s stomach growled. She looked at the clock: it was past six-thirty. She put the Accord into Drive, turned the car around, and drove toward downtown.