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COLE SHOVED HIS CRUMBLED muffin aside. He eyed Detweiler’s recorder. The scorched coffee aroma permeated the room. His stomach felt like he’d swallowed a super-sized portion of broken glass. Sweat filmed his body. Buzzing in his ears sounded like high-voltage electric wires. He eyed the door to the restroom.
Visions of Jazz, of Morgan, of Austin lying bleeding refused to leave. Of his first reaction when he saw the man with the knife poised above the clown. That he was torturing him, serial killer style.
Nobody died. Nobody got hurt.
Cole swallowed. He was not going to puke. Not now.
Yes he was. He bolted for the restroom, emptied the meager contents of his stomach. Heaved until there was nothing left, then heaved some more.
He rose to his feet on unsteady legs, staggered to the sink, and clutched the edge of the basin. He grabbed a handful of paper towels, soaked them in cold water, and wiped his face, his neck. Leaned over the stream of water, filling his mouth, rinsing, spitting, until he felt semi-human.
Studying his pathetic reflection in the mirror, he waited until he looked semi-human before making his way to the table. A bottle of water sat in front of his chair. Brody—all traces of humor gone—was reporting his part in the arrest.
Cole slid into his seat, unscrewed the water bottle, but didn’t trust his stomach enough to drink.
“You want to wait until tomorrow?” Detweiler asked.
Cole twirled the bottle in his hands. “Nah. Let’s get it over with.” He related everything that had happened. “The grandmother and the kid. He pitched a fit about using the bathroom. Whether they know it or not, they’re the real heroes. Rabbit lost his focus, which gave me the chance to act. Any way to get their names? Did they give statements?”
“We have statements from everyone who didn’t hightail it to safer positions once they left the restaurant,” Brody said. “The woman was in the restroom with her grandson, so she didn’t see how you subdued the suspect, but we have her name and address.”
“Would it be all right if I stopped by tomorrow, told her how she and her grandson helped? Give the boy one of the police badge stickers we give to schoolkids?”
“Don’t see it as a problem,” Detweiler said. “We’re always looking for ways to show people—kids especially—that cops are the good guys.”
Cole had a fleeting vision of his discussion with Austin. Cops as good guys was a rare opinion these days.
Those thoughts triggered more visions of Jazz and Morgan. He picked up his water bottle with both hands to hide his shaking, and braved a sip. Stayed down. Good.
“Too bad Burger Hut doesn’t have cameras in the dining room,” Brody said. “I wish I’d seen Big Toby Vandenburg sitting on the rabbit. I expect him to visit the mayor tomorrow and ask for a medal.”
“Far as I’m concerned, they can all have medals,” Cole said. “Keeping quiet so I had the element of surprise in the kitchen was a gift from whoever’s up there looking after cops in trouble.”
“You were quick,” Detweiler said. “They were still in shock. The delay before they could react was all you needed.”
Cole accepted the reality, but he still held out that once in a while, whoever watched over cops was in the right place at the right time.
Kovak sauntered into the room, sniffed at the coffee pot, grimaced, and snagged a muffin. After a bite, he said, “This morning’s or a week ago last Tuesday’s? They’re definitely not from Ashley’s bakery.”
Kovak took a seat, and Cole wondered how the man acted as though everything was a normal day at the office.
Then again, Cole was the only one who’d been there for the incident. Arriving after the fact had to be easier.
“Our suspect’s being transported to the county jail. As interrogations went—” Kovak held his hand out, palm down, and wiggled it back and forth. “He insisted he was acting under orders. He confessed to the robbery at the lounge in Salem, to driving the van—which did contain a duffel stuffed with cash, by the way—and to agreeing to hold people in the dining room while his partner had his wound treated. He’s using the but I didn’t hurt anybody defense. We’ll see how far that gets him.”
He set his muffin aside and trapped Cole with his gaze. “Good job, quick thinking. How are you holding up? I’m surprised the big guy hasn’t sent you home already. Or at least invited you into his office for a sip of his secret stash.” The two detectives exchanged a knowing look.
“I’d rather get my report written and filed before going home,” Cole said. “While it’s fresh in my mind.”
Detweiler tapped the recorder. “We have people who can transcribe this for your signature tomorrow,” he said. “If you’d like to drink a toast to an officer defusing an incident without a shot being fired, I’m fine with that.”
“Don’t forget apprehending two bad guys,” Brody added.
Cole didn’t want to go home where nightmares about Jazz’s shooting and what might have happened tonight would be playing in 3-D on a big screen.
He took several long pulls on his water bottle, then stood, testing his knees. No more shaking. “Thank you, Sir. A short drink would be nice.”
“Make sure it’s the good stuff, and it’ll be better than nice,” Kovak said, a hint of a grin in Detweiler’s direction. “I need to get home.”
Kovak reached into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone and handed it to Cole. “Here. We had eight unclaimed phones. Yours was among them. Forgot I had it while I was interviewing Rabbit.”
Tapping his pocket to confirm his was missing, Cole said, “Thanks. Forgot all about it, too.”
To Cole’s surprise, Brody declined Detweiler’s offer of a drink. That, combined with the look the two detectives had exchanged, made Cole wonder if after the group commendation, he might be in for a private reprimand for acting on his own.
~~~
MORGAN HURRIED TO DRESS the next morning, not wanting to greet Tom and his crew in her robe. The fact that Cole might be included had nothing to do with it, she told herself as she tamed her hair and applied makeup. Not a lot. Eyeliner, a hint of shadow, mascara, and lip gloss. A squirt of perfume. She snorted. Definitely not doing this for Cole. He’d seen her naked.
Didn’t mean she shouldn’t look presentable.
She found Austin in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal. “Sleep okay?”
He nodded, put his spoon down, and hummed a tune. “Which one is this? I know it’s Mozart, but can’t remember the name. Turk something?”
Morgan poured a cup of leftover coffee and put it in the microwave. “Right. That’s Sonata Number Eleven in A major. ‘Alla Turca’.”
“Thanks.” He dashed upstairs.
“Where’s Bailey?” she called after him.
“Backyard.”
Best that the dog stay outside while the crew was working, so she filled his water dish and set it beside the steps. He scampered over and dropped a ball at her feet. Rumbling and clunking sounds came from the front of the house. Too loud to be Tom’s van. She picked up the ball, threw it across the yard, and went out front to investigate. Tom and his partner were unloading a Bobcat from a trailer.
She hadn’t given the front porch more than a cursory glance when she’d driven in last night. Tom was supposed to have repaired it. Why was so much of the entranceway dug up, and why the scattered holes? The porch landing looked new, but the steps were makeshift. She met Tom and one of his crew as they climbed out of the van.
“What happened?” She pointed toward the porch.
“Slight delay while they dug up the bones,” Tom said. “It’s first on our list today.”
Morgan’s jaw dropped. “Wait. Bones? What bones?”
“Thought you knew. Your dog found a bone under the porch, and they had to call the county to dig them up. They’re done now, so we can get going again.”
“What kind of bones?” Her mind shot to the graffiti with its Now You’re Dead message.
Tom hiked a shoulder. “Human, or the cops wouldn’t have been all over the place. That’s all I know.”
“Did they get them all?” Visions of skeletons beneath her house, like the catacombs in Rome, swam before her eyes.
“They said so.” Tom and his partner worked a table saw from the back of the van. “Gave us the green light.”
Cole hadn’t thought to mention this? No, he’d probably thought about it, then decided not to tell her, keep her from freaking while she was away.
It was her house. She had a right to know what was going on. Was he coming to work today? Or had something happened after everyone left the restaurant last night?
He’d have let her know. Or it would have been on social media.
“Just the two of you working today?” she asked Tom.
“Nope. Forsythe should be here any minute.”
The two men set up the saw and a pair of sawhorses, then went to the side of the house, returning with several long planks of lumber. Tom pulled a notebook from a pocket of his jeans and read off measurements to his partner, who laid boards across the sawhorses, measured and marked them. Their third worker, Layton Forsythe, Trisha’s husband, appeared from the side yard and moved toward the Bobcat.
Tom hadn’t mentioned Cole, and she wasn’t going to ask. She went inside, saw her coffee still sitting in the microwave. She dumped it and set a fresh pot to brew. A full one, enough for the crew.
She checked her phone. No messages from Cole.
Screw that. Screw him.
She brought her laptop to the kitchen. Her email program showed a message from a sender she didn’t recognize. The subject line said it was about her uncle and Portland Financial. She opened the message, trusting her anti-virus software to do its thing.
Morgan read the message. A woman introduced herself as her uncle’s administrative assistant with Portland when he worked there, and offered her condolences.
Mr. Tate insisted on maintaining his own records. Based on what Mr. Gehman forwarded, this appears to be the kind of ledger Portland Financial advisors kept during its earlier years, and the writing looks like Mr. Tate’s. The left hand column would be dates, then the investment name, then anything bought or sold. The last column would be gains or losses.
It fit with what she and Cole had hypothesized, and matched what Mr. Gehman said. She kept reading.
I didn’t follow Mr. Tate when the companies merged, so I can’t speak to how Metropolitan handled these records. My supposition is the data were computerized at Metropolitan, and for whatever reason, Mr. Tate kept the originals. I hope this answers your questions. Feel free to contact me if you have others.
With the whine of the power saw and the pounding of nails in the background, Morgan reread the message. Nothing new, just confirmed what Mr. Gehman said. But, if the ledgers were how records were kept at Portland, what about the spiral notebooks? The sheet in Uncle Bob’s pocket? Were those drafts that he’d copied into the ledgers? Or copied from them?
Where had she put them? In her bedroom closet.
Morgan collected the ledgers, then moved boxes from the kitchen table to the counter to make room to work. She opened a ledger, checking the columns against what Uncle Bob’s admin had told her.
Austin joined her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not sure. Trying to see if these pages of numbers in these ledgers are the same or different from the ones in this notebook.”
“Can I help?”
Four eyes were better than two. “Sure.”
She tore the sheets out of the spiral notebook and handed Austin half, plus one of the ledgers. “See if you can find any pages in the ledger with the same numbers at the top for starters.”
Austin, tongue peeking from between his lips, took a notebook sheet, studied it, then turned pages of the ledger. Seemed like a workable system, so she took another sheet and did the same with her ledger.
“I found one,” he said a couple minutes later.
Morgan scooted over to look.
Sure enough, what she’d been told were client code numbers at the top matched. She ran her finger down the columns on the ledger sheet, comparing them to the ones on the notebook page.
According to what Uncle Bob’s admin said, the first column was dates, the second the investment. The ledger and the notebook matched there, but the other columns were different.
Morgan grabbed her phone, took pictures of both pages, and sent them to the woman for an explanation.
The back door opened, and Bailey scooted in, followed by Cole, dark circles under his eyes, a thick shadow of stubble at his jaw.
Hangover? She didn’t know whether to be relieved he was all right or angry because he hadn’t let her know.