Thirteen

You promise this is off the record? I won’t see anything in the paper about our conversation?”

“I can say ‘anonymous sources’ or ‘sources close to Ms. Russo’ if you like,” Jonathan Crier said.

“What I’d like is for you to—never mind.” I took a breath. “I don’t have anything to tell you except that I had nothing to do with any of this. The reason I called is to find out who you’ve talked to and what they told you.”

“I can’t tell you that, Ms. Russo.”

While I considered my next question, I heard the juniper bushes under my kitchen window scrape against the wall again. Peter O’Drool must have cornered another rabbit. I refocused on the phone call. Peter could wait.

“What if I asked you about certain people and you just say yes or no. Or if you can’t even do that, maybe you cough once for yes, and twice for no. Like Queue Quaid. Did you talk to Q? Cough once for no, and twice for yes. Or was it the other way around?”

He laughed in a good-natured way that immediately made me suspicious. “There’s no need to go all Deep-Throat-in-a-parking-garage, Ms. Russo. Yes, of course I spoke with Ms. Quaid. She was Ms. Walter’s assistant.”

“And what did she say?”

“Now that’s a secret. But let me ask you a couple of questions. What’s all this about embezzlement?”

“What the hell? Embezzlement?”

“My investigation has revealed that you’ve publicly accused Ms. Walter of stealing—or at least hiding—royalties owed you by your publisher. How much money are we talking about?”

“None! Melinda wasn’t stealing from me!” Have I used language like that in public? I drew a blank. “Who told you that?”

“Can’t tell you. But it’s not that hard for me to find income statements. Public records are a wonderful invention.”

“Who told you I said Melinda was stealing from me?”

“Ms. Russo, I’m very good at my job. Suffice it to say, I’ve spoken with everyone you know and everyone who knew Ms. Walter. Now, was the amount of these royalties large enough to warrant murdering your agent?”

I felt all the blood rush to my head. My mild hand tremor turned into a full-body vibration, like I was sitting on, holding, and brushing my teeth with industrial jackhammers. Lance was right. Reporters were tricky. Why in the world had I called him? If I said, “No, the amount wasn’t large,” he’d write that I’d murdered her for not much of a reason. And if I said yes ...

“I didn’t kill Melinda.” I pulled the phone from my ear, then brought it back. “And that’s ON the record.” This was one of the few times I longed for a sturdy landline I could slam down. Hanging up with attitude was simply not satisfactory on cellphones.

I put my head between my knees and tried not to barf. The whooshing in my brain slowed enough that I didn’t think I’d faint in the next few minutes. I raised my head and slumped in my chair. I still vibrated, but it seemed with less horsepower.

Staring at my phone, I wondered who to call. Who could help me? Who would tell me what they told the reporter? And whether they told the police the same thing? But if the police suspected me, they’d have been here by now, wouldn’t they? That’s what happened on TV, anyway. Every murder was solved in an hour, less twenty-two minutes for commercials.

Life wasn’t like TV, though, was it? Bad guys didn’t always go to jail. People rarely broke out into song or tap dance numbers. Conversations weren’t perfectly witty and accompanied by a laugh track. If Elmer Fudd wasn’t a cartoon character, surely he’d have blown the stuffing out of that wascally wabbit by now.

Rabbit. I glanced toward the kitchen window, wondering if Peter was still outside. I stuffed my feet in my boots and pulled on a coat.

I kept to the sidewalk again, calling as I walked. “Peter … you out here?” I thought I heard rustling and stopped to listen, trying to determine its location. I walked a few more steps and saw footprints in the snow leading from the dry sidewalk over the decorative fence. Guilt flooded me as I pictured Barb or Don struggling over the fence to get Peter. I cleared the corner of the building and saw the juniper bush straight ahead. But I only saw tiny pawprints there.

I scanned the snow around the bushes. Just some straight pawprint paths, like doggy arrows shot into the junipers. No human footprints going toward the bush. My eyes studied the snowy expanse from the juniper bushes to where I stood on the sidewalk.

The footprints in the snow near the sidewalk didn’t go toward the bushes. They stopped at my patio. A chill that had nothing to do with the weather raced down my spine. My feet were rooted to the sidewalk, my eyes following the tracks. Someone had tromped to my patio and stepped over the wrought-iron fence that surrounded it. It was one thing to step over the decorative fencing that ran along the sidewalk, but this was a much higher fence, almost a wall. With a start I realized they had peeked in the sliding door—maybe even tried to open it. Then I noticed more prints leading away from the edge of the patio, hugging the wall all the way to my kitchen window.

As I stared, trying to wrap my brain around someone peering in the corners of both my patio door and my kitchen window, a car alarm shrieked. I performed a clunky pirouette in mid-air and raced toward the apartment stairs. Chest heaving, I banged on Don and Barb’s door.

When Barb opened it, I asked, “Did either of you come down to get Peter out of the bushes today?”

Barb frowned and shook her head. “I don’t think so, dear.” Turning into the apartment, she called, “Don? Did you go down for Peter today?”

I heard him say he hadn’t.

“I don’t think Peter’s been out since you brought him back earlier. Which reminds me, he might want to go out now.” Again, Barb faced the interior of the apartment. “Peter, do you need to go out?”

I stepped forward in time to see Peter in his sheepskin bed answer her by curling his nose tighter into his tail.

“Thanks for checking on us, dear.” Barb began to close the door. “Now get back inside or you’ll catch your death.”

That’s exactly what I was afraid of, too.

I raced down the steps, pausing near Suzanne’s apartment. I raised my hand to knock but pulled it away at the last second, instead stepping into my apartment. I hurried back out carrying the banana bread still wrapped in plastic.

When Suzanne answered my knock, I held out the loaf. “Hey, Barb made this but I can’t have walnuts. Do you want it?”

“You bet.” She snatched it away. “Thanks.”

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Were you on my patio today? I saw some footprints … ”

“Yesterday, when I was trying to get your attention so I could give you those books.”

My breath released in a whoosh. Of course. “And you walked along the wall to my kitchen window?”

Suzanne shook her head vigorously. “Nope. Not me.”

My heartbeat jumped to double-time and I took a step backward from her. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” She squinted. “Why?”

“No reason. Just wondered.” I tried to control the squeak in my voice, but wasn’t sure I succeeded.

“You have a Peeping Tom?”

I gave her a tight smile. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but keep an eye out, okay?”

She agreed and called out a thanks for the banana bread, but I had shut and locked my door by the time it reached me.

I dialed Lance and told him I thought someone had been peeping in my windows.

“It’s your imagination. Right there in front? I doubt it. Now, at those buildings in back, where Ozzi’s is, absolutely. Nobody goes back there. But you’re right on the sidewalk, near the parking lot with all those lights.”

“There are footprints in the snow right along the building from my patio to my kitchen window.”

“You saw them go right up to your window, but not past it?”

“No. I didn’t look that close. I stayed on the sidewalk.” I began to feel foolish. Now I couldn’t even say for sure the footprints weren’t there earlier when I’d collected Peter O’Drool. Or even last week.

“Maybe maintenance came by to check something. You need to take a breath and chill, Space Case.”

Hearing his childhood nickname for me was oddly comforting. I took a breath but was not anywhere near chill. He talked a bit more, being logical, trying to calm me down, but I quit listening to his words. Instead I let the sound and cadence of his voice wash over me.

Finally I interrupted whatever he was saying. “Will you come over?”

“Can’t. Got a shift in twenty minutes. Go … eat some soup or something.”

“I don’t have any soup.”

“Eat cereal. Watch TV. Have you been sleeping?”

“Not really.”

“Well, that’s it then. You’re going bonkers from lack of soup and sleep. Just like you’d get during finals.”

“Murderers and stalkers are hardly the same as college exams.”

“True. But when you’re tired, you tend to freak out over little stuff. Have Ozzi cook you a nice dinner tonight and drink that wine you’ve been saving. Call maintenance. Things will be better tomorrow after you’re thinking straight.”

Maybe. “Are you sure you can’t come over?”

“I told you, I—”

“Fine.”

“Call me if you need me.” He quickly added, “But you won’t.”

He was probably right. It was my imagination. I thought about those footprints leading from the sidewalk to my patio. Yes, most likely made by Suzanne. She either forgot or just didn’t want to say that she’d peeked in the kitchen.

Or it was a maintenance guy. Lance was probably right.

I sighed, wondering if he was right about Ozzi, too. I reached for my phone to call him but drew my hand back. I wanted to kiss Ozzi and have him wrap me in a hug, but it still hurt, remembering how he made me feel. Was I just being stubborn? Were we mismatched? This was our only big crisis so far and we weren’t handling it very well. Besides, was it fair to drag him into my drama? He didn’t sign up for that.

I couldn’t afford to use any brain cells to figure out how to save my love life. I needed them to save my real life.

I wanted to talk to my mom. An adult. An adultier adult. I covered my face with my palms and remembered Jonathan Crier’s words. He said he’d spoken with everyone I knew. My mom, too? Tears sprang to my eyes. The last I’d heard from her was that text message she’d left me on Monday before I heard about Melinda. She didn’t know anything about any of this. Or at least I hoped she didn’t.

I picked up my phone with shaky hands and dialed her number. Her message came on. She’d changed it since the last time I’d called.

“If this is some reporter, hang up now. I’m not talking. And if it’s you, Bug, you be careful.”

I clicked off. “I will, Mom. But I don’t know what to be careful of.”