fifteen

The office tilted, and my brain scrambled to compensate. The blood, the body—it looked too much like Christy’s murder. I shook myself, trying to order my thoughts. Basic first aid: assess the situation, ensure your own safety, call 911. What came after those three steps, I’d long forgotten.

Dropping to my knees in the thick green carpet, I felt for a pulse in Michael’s neck. There was none. An egg-shaped glass paperweight lay on the floor by his head.

“Call the—” I started to say “police,” but when I looked over my shoulder, Harper was dialing, her lips pinched together, grim.

“Is he …?”

“I think he’s dead.” I pressed my fingers deeper into the side of his still-warm neck, praying I was wrong, knowing I wasn’t.

She nodded and stepped into the hall, as if to give us privacy.

I reached for the paperweight. Fingertips inches from what was no doubt the murder weapon, I mentally slapped myself. The glass egg was mesmerizing, with red and blue spirals floating inside it like smoke … and no blood, no hair. Had the killer cleaned it off? Assuming this was Michael’s paperweight, the crime must have been spontaneous. I couldn’t imagine someone bringing a heavy glass egg along as a weapon. The urge to pick it up was nearly overwhelming. I resisted and stood, jamming my hands in my pockets.

I glanced at the closed closet door to the left of Michael’s desk, looked over my shoulder at the open door behind me, and licked my lips. The closed door seemed threatening. Outside, Harper’s voice was a soft murmur. I didn’t want to stay in that room alone, but it felt wrong to leave Michael.

Harper stuck her head inside, her face pale. “The police said not to touch anything, and to wait in the lobby.”

I nodded and followed her into the waiting room. She gripped her phone in both hands, sitting with her feet firmly planted, legs apart, ready to launch.

I edged into the chair beside her. “When I called Michael, he was with someone. He didn’t say if it was a man or woman.”

“At least Adele’s off the hook for this one.”

“Yeah.”

“But this is the second body you’ve found in a week,” she said. “The police will have to wonder.”

“Yeah.” My lunch was doing unpleasant things in my stomach. I scrubbed a hand over my face. Was Harper wondering about me as well? And why shouldn’t she? We’d been friends for years, yes, but we hadn’t seen each other much in the last five. She’d changed. So had I. Bile rose in my throat. “At least we’ve been together since the time I spoke with him.”

Her jaw set. “Unless you were pretending to talk to him.”

I stared. She couldn’t really think I was a killer?

She shook her head. “Sorry. Of course you didn’t.”

I swallowed. “No. It’s logical. But there will be phone records, won’t there? Of me calling and someone on this end picking up? The police will check, I’m sure.”

But was I so sure? They’d arrested Adele, and my faith in law enforcement was eroding. They seemed to stop at the most obvious answer, looking no further for suspects. Someone had picked up on Michael’s end, but not necessarily Michael. I could have called an accomplice who’d killed Michael earlier and then waited for a phone call, fudging the time of death. Would the police see it the same way?

“He told you he was meeting with a client?” Harper asked.

“No, he just said he was meeting with ‘someone.’ It might not have been a client.”

“But you told me it was a client.”

“My imagination was embroidering. He didn’t specify.”

Harper crossed her legs, bouncing one over her knee, lips pursed. “So we were wrong. Michael didn’t kill Christy.”

So who had? Michael had been an ideal suspect, particularly since he was so dislikable. He never denied having the key. In fact, he’d left me with the distinct impression that he’d had it at one point.

Footsteps pounded up the concrete stairs and the door flew open. Cops poured into the cramped waiting room—Detective Slate with a couple uniforms. Laurel Hammer followed, crisp in a white blouse and khakis, her expression tight.

Slate pointed at me. “Stay.” He strode past us and down the hallway, the coattails of his black suit jacket flapping.

Laurel glanced at the uniformed cops and nodded to the front door. One positioned himself beside it, a sentry preventing our
escape. Lip curling, I looked away. If we’d wanted to escape, we’d already have fled.

Paramedics jogged into the office. At a word from the cop by the door, they disappeared into the hallway. Five minutes later they returned to the waiting room. They leaned against a wall, speaking quietly.

So Michael didn’t need medical help. I’d known this, but my throat tightened. I’d never been a Michael fan, but this … this would kill Adele.

The detectives emerged. Laurel crooked her finger at me.

I rose, feeling three hundred pounds heavier. She led me into the stairwell, her expression grim. Through the glass door, I saw Slate speaking with Harper, their voices muted.

“What happened?” Laurel rolled up a sleeve of her blouse, as if preparing to beat out a confession.

“Adele asked me to collect the keys to the museum that were floating around. I thought Michael might have one, so Harper and I came to collect it. When we got here, we found the door unlocked and Michael dead.”

She rolled up her other sleeve, exposing a dark sliver of tattoo. “Why did you think Michael had a key?”

I glanced down the concrete stairwell. It strobed blue with reflected light from the emergency vehicles outside. “The building was a wedding present. I figured both Michael and Adele might have keys. When I called him around lunchtime, he didn’t deny it. He said he was with someone and hung up on me. I was having lunch with Harper at the time, at the Plot 42 winery. Mr. Nakamoto saw us.” The blue strobes were making me dizzy.

Laurel smiled, her gaze predatory. “So he didn’t tell you he had a key. What time—exactly—did you call him?”

I pulled my cell phone from my jacket pocket. “Twelve forty-seven. The call lasted less than a minute or two.”

“Did he say who he was meeting with?”

I shook my head. “But at least it’s obvious Adele couldn’t have done it, or killed Christy either.”

She canted her head. “Obvious?”

“She’s in jail. And the two killings must be connected. Michael and Christy were lovers, and now they’ve both been murdered with the same MO within days of each other. It must be the same killer.”

“MO?” Laurel smirked. “You’ve been reading too many mystery novels. And right now the only common denominator between the killings is you.”

“Me?” My voice went up an octave. I cleared my throat.

“You were on the scene when both bodies were found.”

“But I was with Harper when I talked to Michael on the phone. We were together the whole time after that. Mr. Nakamoto saw us!”

“So you say.”

“Check my phone!” I waved it at her.

She grabbed my wrist. In a flash I was on the ground, arm wrenched upward, face mashed into the cold cement, something hard—Laurel’s knee?—wedged between my shoulder blades. Heat flushed through my body as memories of Laurel the high school bully flashed through my head. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself not to struggle, not to give her an excuse to snap my wrist. The pressure on it was unbearable.

“Now you’re just overreacting,” I gasped. I knew it would madden her, but I’d reverted to high school. Thoughtless.

She twisted. Pain sparked from my wrist to my shoulder. The phone clattered from my hand.

A pair of polished men’s shoes came to stand before me. “What’s going on?” Slate asked.

“She made an aggressive move toward me,” Laurel said.

“I was showing you my—” Her knee pressed downward, flattening my lungs.

Slate picked up the phone I’d dropped. “Your phone? Why?”

“She claims she called the victim while she was with Ms. Caldarelli.”

“That’s what Ms. Caldarelli says as well. If you’ve finished the interview, I think you can let her up,” he said mildly.

The pressure released.

I stumbled to my feet, brushing the dirt from my cheek.

“May I?” he asked, holding up my phone.

I nodded, rubbing my wrist.

He thumbed through my phone log. “I see a call from twelve forty seven to this number. It looks like it lasted less than a minute. Make a note of that, Detective.”

Harper barreled into the stairwell, her chin high, her breath noisy. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Laurel muttered.

“Don’t leave town, Miss Kosloski, Miss Caldarelli,” Slate said. “We may have more questions for you.”

Taking my arm, Harper steered me down the stairs. “Well, you know where to find us,” she tossed over her shoulder. When we were back in the parking lot, she said, “What happened? One minute you were talking to Laurel, and the next she was on top of you. What’s with her?”

Muscles quivering, I rolled my shoulder and shook out my damaged wrist. “Laurel Hammer was responsible for the single most humiliating moment of my life,” I said. “Ever. If anything, I should be the one who doesn’t like her. And for the record, I don’t.”

“What made her snap today?”

“I was showing her my phone. She interpreted it as a threatening gesture.”

Harper snorted. “If she finds you threatening, then she’s not much of a cop.”

That was what worried me.