Glenvar’s police station is in a long, low, nondescript, red brick building just behind the library. While we were waiting to speak with the detective, I read the notices on the bulletin board and contemplated signing up for the next session at the police academy since my job situation was still bleak, and it appeared that I was going to have to figure out a whole new career path for myself.
I had a pen in my hand, ready to add my name to the list, but then I reminded myself that I’d seen Tim’s pitiful paycheck and been around him and his cop friends enough to know how boring police work could be. There was also that pesky ‘possibility of getting shot and/or killed in the line of duty’ problem.
Given that I’m a big chicken (and probably couldn’t have passed the physical anyway) I decided that the Glenvar Police Department would just have to find a way to manage without me. I’m sure that if they’d known what they were losing out on, they would have been broken-hearted over the loss and begging me to change my mind.
I gave the pen back to the receptionist and settled into one of the gray molded plastic chairs in the tiny waiting area. Charli was across from me, making notes on a leather bound pad, and my new lawyer leaned against the wall, talking on a cell phone to his secretary. Dad thought that since Dicey was so intimately involved now that her boyfriend was a murder victim it would be best for another attorney to accompany Charli and me to the interview.
The lawyer he arranged for was an older man, maybe sixty, whose face must have been on the losing end of a collision with a cement block. The man actually resembled one of those little pug dogs, but he wasn’t nearly as cute. I suppose that he was okay at his job – according to Dad, he had a solid reputation for winning most of his cases - but he gave me the distinct impression that he thought I might just be guilty.
When my usual charm didn’t win him over I tried out some of Mom’s mannerisms, her drawl, the eye thing, the special smile, all in the hope of convincing him to at least like me. For some strange reason, all my primping and preening didn’t even faze him, except, perhaps, to make him hate me that much more. Charli, on the other hand, he was absolutely smitten with. He couldn’t do enough for her and once he actually giggled over something stupid she said. My ego deflated faster than a soufflé.
Detective Winger interviewed Charli first. She was in and out of his office in less than fifteen minutes.
“Well, Charli, it’s been a real pleasure to finally meet you,” the detective said as he walked her to the office door. “I’ve heard such wonderful things about you from my wife. She just thinks the world of Kevin and your family. Says she wishes all her students were as cooperative and all of the parents as involved as you and your husband are. You take care now, and don’t hesitate to call me if you think of anything else or have any questions. Thanks again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come down and meet with me.”
Hmm, maybe I’d been wrong about the guy. He sounded actually pretty nice. Normal, not the mean old ogre I’d built him up to be in my mind. Things were going to be okay. So what if Dicey wasn’t my attorney anymore and the new guy wasn’t as enthusiastic as I’d expected? The detective liked Charli, and, obviously believed her story. Since we were sisters, he’d like me. No sweat. Forget the lawyer’s opinion of me. He was probably just having a bad hair day or something. All I had to do was be my normal, sweet, adorable, charming self. If I acted nice, Detective Winger would probably even apologize for the other night and…
If I went into the meeting bubbling over with delusions, I left it feeling like Wile E. Coyote looked after one of his tricks backfired and he was on his way to the bottom of the cliff. I should have known when the detective, without even cracking a smile, first motioned for me to come into the office. Somehow, in my pitiful hope that finally, just this once, something was going to go my way, I didn’t catch on that the anvil was whistling hard and fast right toward the imaginary bull’s-eye painted smack dab on the top of my little punkin head.
The interview started out reasonably well. Detective Winger poured us all a Styrofoam cup full of coffee and chatted with my new lawyer for a few minutes before turning to me.
“Ms. Sheffield, please tell me how it was that you came to discover the body of Mr. Robert Pluck.” He stared at me intently.
I studied him and sipped the coffee. It tasted like burnt shoe leather mixed with cigarette ashes and the Styrofoam shocked my teeth. I sat the cup on the table and started my tale with going over to Charli’s house to use her computer. Although, I didn’t tell him what I was going to use it for.
“So, anyway,” I finished up my story, which took about four minutes to tell, “as soon as we realized that it was a real live human, oops, I mean real dead, oops, I mean, we thought he was dead, but we weren’t sure, you know, oh, but don’t worry, we didn’t touch him, er it, er, him, or anything like that, so anyway, like I was saying, as soon as we realized it was a person, we, well, Charli did it, not me, she had her phone, I didn’t, because I keep forgetting to charge mine, anyway, she called 911 and the cops, I mean, the police, they came and the ambulance and we went back to sit in the car and I guess that’s pretty much it. So, show me where you want me to sign the statement and I’ll just get on out of your way.”
The detective drew a bead on me then pulled out his notebook and a pen. He took his time leafing through the pages of the notebook and twisting the expensive silver ballpoint open.
“Now, Ms. Sheffield,” he said when he’d found the page he wanted, “I have a couple of questions for you regarding your whereabouts the day of the murder and about your relationship to the victim.”
I seriously doubted that he’d asked Charli to answer a bunch of questions. I shot a questioning look at my newly hired attorney. He shrugged, but something in his eyes told me it was going to be a long morning.
I took a deep breath and wiped my sweaty hands across my khaki skirt. “Certainly, Detective Winger. I’ll be glad to answer your questions.”
I could tell that the detective didn’t believe much of anything I said because he spent the whole rest of the interview asking me the same questions over and over again, each time phrased just a little differently like he was trying to trip me up.
“Ms. Sheffield, where were you at approximately five o’clock the evening of June twenty-first? Do you have any witnesses to your whereabouts? Were you on or near the Orange Ridge Branch Battlefield Trail at approximately five P.M. Monday? What was your connection with Mr. Robert Thomas Pluck? Did you ever have a relationship with Mr. Robert Thomas Pluck? What was the nature of your relationship with Mr. Robert Thomas Pluck?” And on and on and on.
My interview took two hours and forty-five minutes. When I came out Charli was leafing through a hunting magazine she’d borrowed from one of the patrol officers and munching on a bag of pretzels. “Geez,” she whispered when we were out of earshot, “what took so long?”
I told her about all of the questions that Detective Winger had asked me. “I don’t think he believes me either. He kept trying to trick me. I think maybe he was trying to sweat a confession out of me, you know, like they do in the movies.”
We were almost out the door when my new lawyer caught up to us. “Ms. Sheffield, I’d like for you to come by my office in about an hour to discuss your case with me. I have some questions for you and the answers aren’t contained in the files Ms. Ward’s office messengered over.”
“Sure, I’ll grab a bite to eat and be right over,” I told him.
Over lunch at the too-quaint-and-cute-for-words Fort Lewis Mountain Coffee Shop, which is just across Main Street from the library courtyard, I whined and complained and whined some more about how unfair it was that Detective Winger was picking on me while I chowed down on a turkey club and a bowl of French onion soup.
After I finished the soup and sandwich, I ate three giant chocolate chip cookies to calm my nerves. Since Giselle and Kyle Yagle were tucked away at a table in the rear cubby of the coffee shop, their heads practically touching they were so close together, I probably should have made it four.
I was glad that they were so intent on their conversation because they didn’t see me when I went past them to use the ladies’ room. As I came out of the bathroom, I heard their voices coming from next to the back entrance, which is just to the left of the ladies’ room. I pulled the restroom door closed so that it was cracked just wide enough for me to eavesdrop. I had a brief qualm of guilt as I wondered why lately I seemed to always be standing in bathrooms listening in on other people’s conversations. But I wasn’t bothered enough to keep from doing it.
“Super,” Kyle said, “you can start next week part-time and then go to full-time at the end of the month. I’m really thrilled that you signed on, Giselle. I think this is going to be great for all of us.”
Giselle, working for the CIA? No way. Or, to use Herb’s favorite expression, ‘no effing way’!
“It’s fabulous, Kyle, I’m just so delighted that you made the offer. It’s like a dream come true for me. These last few days have been sheer torture. Thank you so much for coming to my rescue,” she said.
Well, poop. He’d obviously hired her to work for him. I couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with me? Why wasn’t he offering me a job? I’d been out of work way longer than Giselle, I actually had some marketable skills, well, semi-marketable anyway, and I was much, much nicer than she was. Life, no matter what Mom says, is not fair.
I heard the rear entrance door open and squeak shut so I assumed they’d left. I waited a bit just to be sure, then swung through the door and went back to my table.
Charli stood next to the front entrance. When she saw me she checked her watch and pointed me out the door. “We better run. You don’t want to be late for your meeting.”
For the next hour and ten minutes I slouched in an uncomfortable wooden chair in a dimly lit conference room going over all the territory that I’d already been over with Dicey. I tried desperately to get the new lawyer, Mr. Dickerson, to like me, or at the very least, to make him believe in my innocence.
“Ms. Sheffield,” he said, his voice deep and resonant, sounding just like a lawyer should sound, “I don’t need to believe in your innocence. The person we have to convince is Detective Winger. He’s in charge of the investigation. And if we can’t convince him, then we’ll have to target the prosecutor. If that doesn’t work, well, we’ll be attempting to convince a jury of your peers of your innocence. Right now, I suggest you don’t worry your pretty little head about any of this. You just go on home and let me do my job. I’ll be in touch.”
Ticked me off. No way was I going to put up with an arrogant, patronizing jerk that didn’t give a fig about my guilt or innocence. Plus, let’s just say that I was less than confident in his ability to save that particular bit of my skin that’s never, ever been exposed to sunlight. I grumbled and groused about it all the way home.
“Geez, Charli,” I said. “He talked down to me even more than that woman at the unemployment office did.”
“Well, maybe you should consider getting someone else,” she said.
“You’re absolutely right. The thing is, I hate to keep changing attorneys. I mean, Dad did go to a lot of trouble to find this guy and he is supposed to be good. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I want it to all be over with. I want my life back. I want to have Delbert well, I want to do my weekend shift down at the station, I want to hang out with Tim down at Pilazzo’s and, most of all, I want to not be suspected of murder by everybody in town.”
“Not everyone suspects you, Marty. Only a couple of people. The people who love you and know you are on your side.”
“Yeah, but the people who love me and know me aren’t the ones that can keep me from going to prison. I don’t want to be in jail, Charli. Believe it or not, I’m a wimp. I like my comfy bed and my ratty sofa. I don’t want to live on bread and water and gruel. I’d just die without potato soup and chili and hamburgers and pizza and ice cream and chocolate. Especially chocolate.”
Charli patted my leg and gave me a sympathetic look, one I recognized because I’d seen Mom do it a zillion times. Great, just what I needed. Another mom-bot. But then, Charli has always basically been a mini Mom. I knew what she was going to spout at me before she did.
I mouthed the words along with her. “Don’t worry sweetie,” she said, “everything is going to work out for the best.”