“THIS LOOKS LIKE a fairy-tale cottage, one you’d see painted on the cover of a kids’ book.” Abby Hart turned toward Robert “Woody” Woods as they reached their destination. “Trouble is, in those books something bad often lives in the cottage.”
Her partner laughed. “Think an ogre lives here?” he asked as they stepped out of the car.
“If this were fairy-tale Grimm, you can bet that’s what we’d find.”
She stood by the car door for a minute and took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air. It had rained yesterday, but today was gorgeous —seventy-five degrees, puffy white clouds dotting a brilliant-blue sky with a gentle breeze rustling leaves on the trees. She turned as the patter of paws caught her attention. A medium-size shepherd trotted up to her, wagging his tail. Abby missed her own little dog, Bandit, and bent to scratch the shepherd’s head.
“Hey, cutie, you live here?”
Woody joined her, and for a moment they showered the dog with praise.
“Nice dog. Collar, no tag. Wonder where he belongs.”
“He’s a little on the thin side. . . . I wonder.” She looked toward the house. “We can ask, but first let’s find out about the odd guy that used to work here.”
They left the dog and walked toward the house. Around them birds chirped, and she noticed a hummingbird feeder hanging from a branch on one of the oak trees.
Abby knocked on the door and stepped off the porch to wait, noting that the dog had followed and was watching her, tail wagging. She’d try to remember to ask who owned the dog —if they came up empty on their search, that was. They were asking about a cold case, and you never knew if you were going to touch a nerve, unearth a buried clue, or receive blank, empty stares.
She took a police tactic out of habit, moving to one side of the door as Woody stood on the other. She had been part of the West Coast’s federal cold case squad since November and was now working with Woody and PI Luke Murphy. But she’d known and worked with Woody for years before that. He’d been her first training officer in uniform and a good, solid friend for the fifteen years since. Though he’d retired from the PD, Woody eagerly jumped aboard the cold case squad and Abby was happy to be teamed up with him.
She was about to knock again when the door opened. From the corner of her eye, she caught a blur of fur and realized that the dog had fled, tail between his legs. Frowning, she turned to the tall, dark-haired and bearded man who had stepped partially into the doorway but stayed in the shadows.
“Sergio?” Abby asked.
“Sí. El jefe, he send you?” Through his thick accent, his tone was guarded, suspicious, and it set Abby on edge. But there could be a lot of reasons he was nervous.
“Yes, I’m Detective Hart, and this is Investigator Woods. The owner told you we’d be coming by to ask you some questions?”
“About Chester?”
“Yeah, what kind of problems did he cause?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know where he is.”
“What can you tell us about the man?”
He shook his head, looking for all the world like he didn’t understand the question. Abby squinted, trying to read his face in the shadows.
“We’re not from immigration,” she said, hoping he’d stop being obtuse. “We’re looking for a witness to a crime that occurred near here a few years ago. Maybe it was this Chester.”
She glanced at her watch. They were scheduled to meet Agent Orson for an early lunch after this contact, and at this rate they would be late.
“Your boss told us you fired him. Do you remember anything about him?” Woody asked, trying a different tack.
“Sí, I fire him, but I don’t know where he go.”
He looked bewildered again, and Abby got impatient with the shtick. And with the sun hitting her in the face, this was a position of disadvantage. She was ready to move on but wanted to be 100 percent certain.
“Maybe you have employment paperwork we could look at. Would you mind if we came inside to talk for a few minutes?” she asked, praying the man wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know what that meant. His employer had told them that most employee records were kept with Sergio. She hoped he’d have something that would provide a more detailed work history about Chester than they had so far.
Thankfully, Sergio nodded and stepped aside, motioning for Abby to enter his home. Abby stepped up onto the porch and into the house, Woody behind her.
Sergio let them enter and closed the door. Abby turned to look at him just as he brought his elbow up and struck Woody full force in the back of his head. Woody went down hard.
Shock gripped Abby by the throat, and she dropped her notebook to reach for her gun.
Too slow.
Sergio knelt on Woody’s back, flipped open a switchblade, and held it to the fallen man’s neck, just below the ear.
“Don’t move or I will kill him,” he ordered, voice calm, with no trace of an accent. Keeping the knife pressed to Woody’s neck with his left hand, he held out his right hand. “Hand me your gun by the grip.”
Abby hesitated as Sergio pressed with the knife and a drop of blood pinched out.
Face flushed, she tried to think, tried to see a way out of surrendering her weapon.
“Now. The gun. Hurry.”
Knowing Woody would bleed out in bare minutes if Sergio pressed any harder, Abby carefully drew her weapon and handed it to Sergio. He took it and thankfully removed the knife from Woody’s neck and stood upright, pointing her .45 at her. As he backed up, Abby knelt to check on Woody, who started to get up. He put a hand to his neck where Sergio had drawn blood and rose to his knees. To Abby he seemed okay, if a little shaky from the blow to his head.
“Kudos to you two for finding me after all this time. I’ve stayed well hidden but never lost my paranoia. Does Victoria know?”
Neither Abby nor Woody answered.
“Does she know?” he demanded.
“She will, when we take your butt in,” Woody said, the timbre in his voice telling Abby he was more than a little shaken up.
“You don’t get it. You think I’m the monster. You’re wrong. She’s the killer, and if she finds me, she’ll finish the job. I can’t let that happen. I can’t let you tell her that you found me.” He extended the gun their direction.
All Abby could think was Welcome to fairy-tale Grimm.