twenty-three

Not much later Francine received a call from Charlotte. “Jud’s here,” she said. “He’d like you to come over too.”

That was fast. Jonathan isn’t even back from seeing Larry’s lawyer. “Is he mad at us?”

“What do you think?”

“I’ll be right there.”

If Jud had been angry when he arrived at Charlotte’s, he’d mellowed by the time Francine got there. Charlotte had made a pot of tea, and the two of them were enjoying a cup in the dining room. Jud was dressed more like a beat cop, in uniform with his gun obvious. A manila pocket folder sat next to him on the round table. It was stuffed with papers.

Jud stood when she entered. He smiled and gave her a hug, just like he had when he’d hung out with her sons. Although she was fond of Jud, the change in attitude made her suspicious.

“Sit,” Charlotte said, half invitation and half order. “Can I get you some tea? It’s English Breakfast.” Tea was always a safe alternative at Charlotte’s house. She might drink rotgut brandy, but she stocked a good selection of loose teas ordered from a specialty house in Boston. Without waiting for her to answer, Charlotte poured it into a fancy china cup and saucer, china that was used only when she wanted to impress.

“Jud and I have been discussing strategy for solving this crime,” she said. “I think we’ve come to an agreement of sorts.”

Jud nodded. “I can’t seem to keep you ladies away from this, so what I want to do is keep you safe.”

“Safe is good,” said Francine. “What did you have in mind?”

“First and foremost, we have to share information.” He paused to take a sip of his tea. “Isn’t that right, Charlotte?”

Charlotte smiled.

Francine briefly considered that she had crossed into the Twilight Zone. “Meaning …?”

“Meaning he’s not very happy with us searching Friederich’s house without his permission,” Charlotte said.

“I admit it wasn’t the brightest move, especially in retrospect, with the press showing up.” She briefly considered throwing Charlotte under the bus by saying it was all her idea, but she figured Jud had already guessed that. She took a softer tack. “You’d already searched the house, hadn’t you? We didn’t find anything.”

“Ah, but you did find something. You took a few magazines out of the house. Channel 59 put the report on their website. Charlotte held them up to hide her face.”

“As a part of our agreement, I returned them to Jud,” Charlotte said.

He tapped the manila folder to indicate he had them.

Francine was quite certain now she’d entered the Twilight Zone. This was a Charlotte from an alternate universe. Unless … Jud didn’t know about the iPod, and she was hiding it from him.

“Was there anything significant in the magazines?”

“No smoking guns, if that’s what you mean. We’d already glanced through them, especially the one at the top of the closet, but Charlotte and I have talked about the ones in the bathroom with the turned-down pages. Her reasoning is making us take a second look.”

“I think the marked pages may reveal some clues to why Friederich had the other one at the top of the closet,” Charlotte said. “It may relate to the crime.”

“Is Emily Barringer going to get in trouble?”

Jud put down his teacup. “Technically, she didn’t do anything wrong. The house is listed for sale, and it wasn’t a crime scene. We would have preferred it not be shown for a while, but there’s nothing we could charge her with.”

“I’d feel really bad if I’d gotten her in trouble,” Charlotte told Francine.

Jud looked at the two women with seriousness. “I’m more concerned about you than Emily. As I said, I need to keep you safe. The problem is, there’s been no threat against you, and I can’t justify the manpower to give you a police escort everywhere you go. So I want you to court the press.”

Francine winced. “Do we have to?”

Jud, who had taken another sip of his tea, almost snorted it out. “I thought you loved the publicity.”

“Certain members of the Bridge Club do.” Francine threw a glance at Charlotte. “I’m not one of them.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who’s been asked to be on The View.”

Francine’s eyes blazed. “I have no intention of doing that show.”

Jud put up a hand to stop the bickering. “I need for you to pretend you enjoy the press. Just until we have the killer in custody. After that, you can do as you like.”

Francine considered his request. She wanted to say yes, but if it went on for too long she might really end up on The View. “Are you close to an arrest? You sound like you might be.”

“We have a lot of circumstantial evidence at this point, but we think we’re close to having a case.”

Circumstantial evidence likely pointed to one person.

“You’re not close enough to having a case if you think it’s Larry Jeffords,” Charlotte said.

“Why are you so certain it’s not him? Francine isn’t.”

“I’m not?”

“You were at the County Government Center yesterday looking into his property.”

“How did you know that? And anyway, we’re out to prove Larry is being framed. I was trying to find out if anyone had accessed information about the building. He didn’t have that property listed, but someone who knows a lot about Larry worked his way around the security cameras and then placed the body in his shed.”

“We knew where you’d been because an anonymous source called it in, and I checked it out. Everyone knows who you are. You can’t skulk around doing detective work. Nor do we want you to.”

Jud was getting Francine’s dander up. “I’ve known Larry for a long time,” she said. “He’s not a killer.”

He rested his forearms on the table. “Really? Just how well do you think you know Larry?”

“Pretty darn well,” Charlotte said. “We’ve known him and Alice since they moved in thirty years ago.”

Jud looked at his watch. “If you have a half hour, I’ll show you that you don’t know him like you think you do.”

Francine checked her cell phone. Nothing from Jonathan, but she’d forgotten to leave a note, and now she was worried what he would think if he heard about their escapade from someone else. “Let me make a phone call to Jonathan so he knows where I am,” she said.

She made her way into the hall.

Jonathan turned out to be in the truck on the way home from the lawyer’s office. He hadn’t heard about the Channel 59 incident, which surprised her. “Don’t believe anything you might hear,” she told him. “I’ll fill you in when I get home. It’ll be a half hour or so. Jud’s taking us somewhere to prove we really don’t know Larry.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He sounded nervous. “Just remember, everything isn’t what it looks like.” He hung up.

Francine wondered if they both didn’t have a lot to talk about later.

Back in the dining area, she volunteered to drive and Charlotte accepted. After locking up the house, they walked out with Jud. He pointed to two new cars parked out front.

“There’s your paparazzi, ladies,” he said, beaming. “Wave to them and make nice. They are your friends right now.”

Francine grumbled but did as she was asked. Charlotte did, too, but with more enthusiasm.

They got into the Prius and Jud got in his police car, and the parade drove over to Friederich’s garage on Adams Street.

After they arrived, the press immediately set up and began taking pictures. Jud cautioned them to stay back. He gathered the women by the shop door, using them as a shield to block the reporters from being able to see what he was doing.

He unlocked the dead bolt on the door and then went to work on the numeric keypad. His fingers flew over the numbers with practiced certainty and there was a click. He opened the door. “Let’s go in,” he said, leaving the press outside.

The look of delight on Charlotte’s face reminded Francine that this was her first look at Friederich’s garage. She stepped off the tiles in the entryway and admired the shiny garage floor. “Look how clean it is!”

“If we have time, I’ll take you through the rest of the shop,” Jud said. “But not now. Now I want you to see this.”

He flipped a wall switch and the lights went on. Then, bending down to the first tile by the door, he removed it, flipped a lever, and a nine-tile section of the entryway slid back to reveal a staircase leading down.

The women drew in sharp breaths when the staircase appeared.

“Larry installed this?” Charlotte asked.

Jud started down the staircase. “Had it installed. Shortly after he bought the building, apparently. Larry was famous for the low-stakes poker tournaments he had here.”

He said the last line pointedly, making Francine realize where he was going. “So more than a few people knew about this.”

He nodded.

Perhaps that’s what Jonathan meant when he said not everything was what it looked like.

Jud arrived at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up. “Watch your head, Francine. Charlotte, you may not want to come down. There’s no handrail, and I don’t want you to fall.”

“Jud, if you told me I had to jump down there onto a trampoline, do a somersault, and land on a skateboard, I’d still do it. As it is, all I need is Francine’s hand. I’ll be careful!”

The two women took the staircase one step at a time. Francine breathed a sigh of relief when they stood at the bottom.

The first thing she noticed was a faint smell of cigar smoke and stale beer. Jud flipped a light switch and the remainder of the basement lit up. The room was not, in the current vernacular, a man-cave. It was more like an unfinished, bare-bones poker room, with a poker table in the center and a florescent light above it. Two couches in disrepair were in a corner of the room, a small table between them.

A man was lying on one of the couches, curled up, facing the back. The women gasped when they saw him. Jud drew his gun, which scared them even more. The man looked like he could be asleep, but Francine didn’t think so. With all the commotion they’d made, they would have awakened a hibernating bear.

Jud motioned them back. He cautiously approached the couch.

“How did he get here?” Charlotte whispered to Francine. “Haven’t they had this place closed up?”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Hey, buddy,” Jud said. No response.

“Buddy …”

He jostled the man’s shoulder. Still no response. He felt for a pulse at the man’s neck. Without a word to the women he reholstered his gun, pulled out a walkie-talkie, and called 911.