I need to talk to Mrs. McConnell again.”
Joella let him in, but she watched him with wary vigilance.
I started to swing my legs from the sofa to the floor, but he said, “No, that’s okay. Don’t get up. How’s the head?”
“Feeling better. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name earlier?”
I figured I needed to start thinking of him in terms more dignified than simply Short Officer. He had a stocky build, ruddy face, wedding ring, and hands that looked as if he’d done hard physical labor at some time.
“Deputy Cardoff. The medical examiner is removing the body now. If you’re up to it, we’d like you to come in to the sta-tion this afternoon. We need further information.”
“But I’ve already told you all I know.”
“We’d like to have you talk to one of the detectives on the force, Detective Sergeant Molino. He’ll be heading up the investigation. He’s out there now.”
They still weren’t confirming that Jerry’s death was murder, but having a detective “heading up the investigation” gave a strong clue to their thinking.
“Okay, I can do that.” I found myself nervously twisting a thread on the blanket. “Do I need a lawyer?”
“At this time we’re simply interviewing everyone who may have knowledge or information about the case. You can have a lawyer present if you like, but it isn’t necessary. We’ll also be talking to Mr. Norton’s coworkers and people here in the neighborhood.”
“I was here all night. I didn’t hear or see anything,” Joella volunteered.
“Someone will interview you later. And there’ll be a tow truck here shortly to pick up the limousine.”
“You’re taking my limousine?” I asked, dismayed.
“You’ll get it back when the lab is finished with it. I’d guess ten days to two weeks. Unless it turns out we need to hold it as evidence for a trial. In that case the time could be considerably longer.”
I tried not to think about whose trial. “Okay. Thank you.”
“We need to move the Corolla so the tow truck can have access to the limousine,” he added.
I started to struggle to my feet, but Joella put a protective hand on my shoulder. “I’ll do it.”
“We’ll move it ourselves.” His authoritative tone suggested they didn’t want either of us meddling around in the crime-scene area. “We just need keys.”
The officer went back outside. Joella cut through our joined garage space to get my car keys. Looking out the window, I saw her hand them to an officer. She came back inside, and together we watched him move the Corolla over onto the grass, out of the way.
Within a few minutes only the original patrol car and the crime-scene van remained. An hour or so later a tow truck showed up, and away went my limousine. Even strung up like a junkyard reject, it still looked sleek and elegant, an aristocrat even in shabby circumstances.
“I guess we won’t be going to the park to make limo-dogs for your birthday after all,” Joella said glumly as we watched it go.
My birthday. Yes, that’s what today was. I hadn’t even thought about it. A birthday seemed trivial and irrelevant now. So I was sixty. Big deal. Jerry was dead.
I was unexpectedly overcome with memory of all his good points and why I’d been so close to falling in love with him. The fun we had sailing together. The way he told slyly impu-dent knock-knock and lightbulb jokes. The way he made me feel young and lighthearted. His eagerness to try anything new—restaurants, food, movies. His deep, contagious laugh.
I swallowed. “I don’t feel much like celebrating anyway.”
“Me neither.”
“We’ll do it some other time,” I promised.
“Is what happened going to make the limo feel forever . . .” Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t think of the right word.
“Tainted?” I suggested.
She nodded. “Tainted.”
“I’m not sure.” Would I ever be able to look at it without also seeing Jerry’s body in the trunk? Did I really want it back? “We’ll see.”
“Do you have any idea who could have killed him?” Joella asked. “Did he ever mention enemies?”
“I think most people at F&N liked him.”
It was true. Jerry was great at hitting it off with almost any-one. When the company had foreign visitors, he was usually chosen to shepherd them around because he was so good at making people feel comfortable and welcome. But I knew he could also be impatient and abrasive.
“He had a run-in not long ago with one of the other condo owners, something about their cat digging in the flowerpots on his balcony. They had to get rid of the cat. And over in Olympia he got some waiter who spilled coffee on him fired.”
I’d felt he’d overreacted in both instances. And there was also the unpleasant scene he’d made at a car wash when an attendant stumbled and accidentally put a minuscule scratch on the Trans Am. But surely none of those incidents would have driven someone to murder. He could be good-hearted too. I once watched him spend a half hour helping a little boy lost in the Wal-Mart parking lot find his folks’ car.
“Didn’t he have some business outside F&N?”
“His Web site–design business. Some of his clients were a little strange. One woman was indignant about what she said was an unfair prejudice against vampires, and she wanted a Web site to correct that. Jerry told her that image upgrading for vampires wasn’t in his line of work, and she’d have to get someone else.”
“Good for him.”
“He did set up a Web site for some rabid group that sold all kinds of anti-everything literature over the Internet. He called them ‘weekend commandos’ who were into paintball wars and looking for conspiracies or cover-ups in everything from Barbie dolls to movie-theater popcorn.”
“Nuts can be nutty, but they can be dangerous too.”
“He shut off their Web site when they didn’t pay their bill.”
But the uneasy thought occurred to me that even though Jerry had laughed at the group, he’d said there were a couple of guys in it he thought could actually be dangerous. Then a totally unrelated thought jumped into my head.
“Fitz!”
“Fitz killed Jerry?” Joella sounded both startled and bewildered.
“No. I just remembered, I have to get hold of him and tell him I can’t pick up their guests at Sea-Tac. Do you have his cell phone number?”
She didn’t. We found a listing for MATT’S SAILBOAT CHARTERS in the phone book, but it was an office that handled information and reservations for several local businesses. The woman couldn’t or wouldn’t give me Fitz’s private cell phone number, but she could give Matt a message. I asked her to have him call me.
An irrelevant thought struck me. “Jo, has Fitz ever asked you about your pregnancy?”
She shook her head and smiled. “Fitz is incorrigibly nosy . . . ‘interested,’ as he puts it . . . but he’s never ungentlemanly.”
“How come you don’t have him going to your church?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Same as you work on me?” I teased lightly.
“I try to open the door, but you have to step through your-self. Though God may give you a good shove, like He did me.”
A shove from God. I wondered what that would feel like. Would I know it if I had one, or would I just ignore it?
I went back to my side of the duplex for a shower. I felt dirty from toes to head wound, although it wasn’t just a physical feel-ing, and water didn’t eradicate it. Murder left an invisible scum of its own.
Joella offered to drive me to the sheriff’s station, and I took her up on it. My headache was down to a dull throb, but I felt too jittery for safe driving.
A few neighbors were still watching the activities in my yard as we drove out. Tom, wearing his usual plaid pants and with binoculars glued to his eyes, was gazing from his deck. I sometimes wondered where he got his strange wardrobe. Was there some Plaids-R-Us store I didn’t know about?
Joella turned the corner, but about a quarter mile down the road, in an area where there were no houses, she suddenly braked. “Look!”
“Where? What?” My mind was fixed on the coming inter-view. Being singled out to appear at the station, when neighbors would be interviewed in their own homes, felt ominous.
“There. In the parking lot.” She pulled over to the edge of the lot.
It wasn’t really a parking lot, just a vacant lot where local carpoolers sometimes left their vehicles. On this Saturday, only a half dozen cars were lined up in the lot.
One of them was Jerry’s Trans Am.
“Why would he park way out here if he was coming to your house?”
“I have no idea.”
The thought hit me again that what I knew about Jerry was like the blurb on the back cover of a book: enough to intrigue, not enough to give away the whole story.