I pulled into the alley behind the shop, turned off my ignition, and sat there for a moment watching the car windows fog and blur my surroundings. My heart ached, but I wasn’t sure why.
I’d never liked Craig. In fact, for much of my life, I’d hated him. But in that moment, I remembered him as I first saw him: the gangly new kid marched into the front of the class in elementary school. He had a homespun haircut with muddy brown locks sticking up here and there, and he wore a snagged, striped knit shirt that hung in places where the original owner had stretched it out. All that was rounded out with a freckled face complete with a chipped-toothed, crooked smile and a voice that was throaty and sometimes hard to understand.
One lone tear ran down my face, and I hesitated to brush it away. I still didn’t like the bully he had been or the man he became, but I was glad I had at least one honest tear to shed for him.
When I finally climbed out of my car, Dad was holding the rear door of the shop open. “I just heard,” he said. “You all right?”
Headlights lit up the back alley and swung wildly as a police cruiser pulled in next to me. Ken climbed out. “Does she know?”
“I just came from the hospital.” I shivered, not sure if it was from the cold or the memory, and my dad hustled us inside.
Up in the apartment, the coffeepot was gurgling its final refrain. Without bothering to remove my coat, I dragged myself into the living room and collapsed on my usual spot on the sofa.
Othello sat on his haunches in the middle of the coffee table, surrounded by VHS tapes. The cat looked up at me for a moment, blinked, then wove his way around the tapes, stopping to stretch before he hopped onto the couch and curled up in my lap.
Dad shoved coffee into my hand. “Drink,” he commanded, standing there until I did.
Ken threw his jacket over the arm of the chair facing me and sat down.
I looked up at him, hesitant to ask the question I needed to ask. “Murder, then?” I said quietly, reaching out my hand for Othello to sniff before running it along his head, then along his sleek black and white fur, all the way to tip of his tail. He immediately rewarded me with a purr.
Ken gave a hesitant nod, then locked his gaze with mine. “Still not sure. Going to treat it as such, though, until we know otherwise.”
Dad returned with two more cups and set them on the coffee table.
I pointed to the stack of VHS tapes balancing precariously on the glass. “Did you come over to watch?”
“Considering what happened, I thought I’d better.” Ken reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out papers held together by a rubber band. “By the way, there’s no record on Janet, our barista, except that she likes to drive a little fast. I’ve got a couple of guys tracking down the whereabouts of the other names on Hank’s list. So far, most of them are either still in jail or have moved out of the area.”
I looked up at my dad, whose face was grim. I wondered if he’d included Terry on that list. He’d have motive, I suppose. And the opportunity. Though if he had drugged the coffee—assuming the coffee had been drugged in the first place—his motive might have been less than murder. A practical joke, perhaps? Something that would maybe make Dad sick or loopy, perhaps embarrass him? All things that might have happened if the person who’d ingested this still hypothetical drug hadn’t donned a spandex suit and climbed a ladder.
“How do you do this?” I asked. “Manage all these what-ifs? It’s a tangled mess.”
Dad put a hand on my shoulder. “You follow every possible lead until they dead-end.”
“And on that note,” Ken continued, “I was able to get a few things on our mystery woman, the one who sold Craig the comic books. Including a picture.” He pulled that sheet out of the packet and handed it to Dad.
Dad reached for his reading glasses, offering me a glimpse of the picture as he did. Jenna Duncan was a hard woman to characterize. Brunette, yes. Pretty, yes. But that was the easy part. Classic and elegant would be her style. A little Jackie O, but with a lot more swagger. I suspected that if any of her features had dared stray outside of the limits of perfection, she’d’ve had them surgically altered years ago.
“Anything pop up when you ran her background?” Dad asked.
“No priors. She’s clean, but it’s who she’s married to that makes this all a little interesting. Y’ever hear of a lawyer by the name of Joshua Duncan?”
Dad sat up a little straighter. “This is Josh Duncan’s wife?”
Ken nodded.
“Who’s Josh Duncan?” I asked.
“Ah, he’s . . .” Dad let that word end in a hiss. “Uh, rather, he was a local lawyer. Still alive, but disbarred and kind of in prison.”
“Kind of in prison?” I repeated.
“He’s definitely in prison,” Ken said.
“I put him there,” Dad said, scratching his cheek. “At least, I started the investigation based on some initial complaints. I was out of my league so I handed it over to the FBI, who put their white-collar investigators and forensic accountants on it and found even more. Duncan claimed he just took on too many clients and got in over his head. But he’d falsified documents to make it look like he was doing a stellar job, even though his mistakes hurt his clients. One poor sap even found out his divorce was phony. His new wife was not happy to discover she’d married a bigamist, despite the reality TV potential.”
“How did I miss all this?” East Aurora always seemed like such a quiet hamlet when I was growing up. And it still looked the same. Maybe it was time to get those rose-colored glasses checked.
“It brewed over when you were living in Jersey,” Dad said. “When it came to trial, sentencing guidelines said he could’ve been given anything from a slap on the wrist to serious jail time. Only Duncan apparently had a habit of acting pretty cocky in court, so not only did the judge throw the book at him, but I think she adjourned before passing sentence so she could go home and search for a bigger book.”
“So while he’s locked up, his wife cleans out the attic and sells Craig her husband’s prized comic book collection,” I said. “And from what I gather, at a steep discount. And now she’s mad.”
“But who’s she mad at?” Ken said. “The comic book dealer who cheated her? Or the cop who sent her husband away?”
“Given all that activity around the comic booth, I’d lay serious money on the former, but that’s not the only question,” Dad said. “As I recall, Duncan also had a chunk of change to pay back in restitution. How is it that Jenna Duncan managed to stay in this house?”
“Maybe she has money of her own?” I asked.
“I guess I should check with the FBI to see if she’s on their radar,” Ken said.
“Talk to Mark Baker,” Dad suggested. “He’s the forensic accountant who worked the case. Tell him I sent you.”
“Thanks,” Ken said.
“Meanwhile, I’d like a replay of what happened at that comic booth.” Dad stood up and put a tape into the VCR. Soon a grainy picture popped up on the screen.
“So we’re looking for this Jenna woman?” I asked. “And Batman-man and Grandpa?”
“Edward Millroy,” Ken said. “And the other guy’s name is Don Eicher. We should also try to follow Craig’s movements.”
“He disappeared for a while this morning,” I said.
“We’ll want to watch everyone who approaches and see what they do.”
“Including Terry Wallace,” Ken said softly. He looked at me as if he wanted to say more.
“Terry had no reason to hurt Craig,” I said.
Ken tapped out an unrecognizable rhythm on his legs before answering. “With all the action taking place near that comic booth, it suggests that if anyone was drugged, Craig was probably the target. But I’m not ready to discount other possibilities.” He stared at my father. “And for your own safety, I don’t think you should write them off either. If we go with the working theory that someone tampered with the coffee cup, then we still have to allow that Craig might not have been the intended victim.”
Dad didn’t answer. He picked up the remote and pressed play.
# # #
When I woke up, I had a kink in my neck and a little string of drool connecting me to the throw pillow. I quickly wiped it away as I realized I wasn’t alone in the living room.
Dad was sound asleep in his favorite chair, while Ken smiled up at me from where he’d stretched out on the floor with his back against the sofa, the remote still in his hand. I picked up my phone and glanced at the time: 2 AM.
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep.”
“You probably needed it,” he whispered.
I sat up, squinted into my empty coffee cup, and set it down on the table amid the collection of cups, glasses, and the oversized popcorn bowl that now held just a few kernels. “Did you find anything?” The last tape I remembered had shown nothing suspicious, unless you counted Craig flapping his cape, swooping in on people, and annoying everyone in sight.
Ken pushed himself up off the floor and sat next to me on the sofa. “I’d like you to see this.” He rewound the tape and let it play.
This camera angle caught the comic book stand perfectly—and Maxine who was working behind the counter. To the left, Jack stood next to Terry who was paging through comic books from the five-dollar bin, and you could make out Maxine’s face turning in that direction, as if she was talking with them. I was so focused on them that I didn’t catch the movement to the right of the table until the person walked away, but then I realized it was Batman-man.
“Wait, replay that.”
Ken did, and this time I watched the right end of the table. When Maxine was talking with Terry, Batman-man approached the table. Even from a distance, something was odd in the picture, as if he was fumbling with something from the pocket of the coat that was slung over his arm.
“Back again?” I craned my neck forward to watch.
This time it was pretty clear that Millroy was doing something with his coat. Hiding something inside? Or pulling something out?
Ken rewound, and even while the tape was progressing backward, I looked for the coffee cups. There was one on a table in the back of their booth, but midway through the tape, Maxine took a sip from it.
“There. Could you freeze it?”
Ken froze the tape in the spot just before Millroy approached the booth.
I got up and walked to the television. “Right there.” I pointed to an object barely visible behind one of the comic bins to the right of the screen. “Is that a coffee cup?”
Ken came up behind me. Close enough behind me that I could feel his breath on my neck. “I think so.”
I took the remote from his hand and stepped the tape slowly through the whole sequence. Ken remained close, watching it with me. I could feel his warmth against my back and smell his musky scent. I resisted the urge to pull away to protect my personal space. After everything that happened today—or rather, yesterday—the human connection felt like a tonic. I breathed it in.
I paused during Millroy’s fumbling with his jacket. “Is he hiding something underneath it, like comic books? Or is he getting something out of it?” A few more frames after this, he’d hunched over the comic book bin. It would’ve been easy, if he had good aim, to drop something right into the cup behind it.
“Inconclusive,” Ken rumbled, very close to my ear. “Could be either. I don’t see Jack’s brother making any kind of moves like that, unless he’s deliberately distracting Maxine.”
“Why would he help those guys? He has no connections to the mob.”
“Unless he made some in prison. A lot of men who go in don’t come out for the better. Unless you count the new criminal skills they learn and contacts they’ve made.”
I nodded. So Terry still wasn’t completely in the clear.
Ken reached his arm around my waist. “I hope you’re not mad at me. About earlier.”
I hugged him tighter and let my head rest against his shoulder. “It’s just an ugly situation. I never liked Craig, so I can see why you had to rule me out, and I’m glad you did.”
“It was easy when I saw you never went anywhere near the coffee.”
I had closed my eyes, still relishing the closeness and safety. When his words sank in, my eyes popped open and I pushed him away to arm’s length. “But I did. I did have access to the coffee.”
“I don’t see you anywhere near it at the booth.”
I shook my head. “Not at the booth. Maxine was behind me in line. We both set all our cups down at a table. Jack and Terry were there. You. You were there.”
Ken’s face blanched, clearly visible even under a deep five-o’clock—or rather two-AM—shadow. “There was coffee on the table.”
“There were cameras,” I said.
Ken froze in place, and I fumbled through the stack of videotapes, holding the labels up to the light coming in from the streetlight outside. I ejected the paused one and put the concessions area tape in the player, then fast-forwarded it, keeping my eye on the time stamp. I pressed play, and the concession stand came into near focus. I stood in line with Jack and Terry with Maxine right behind. I watched as she got her coffees, I grabbed mine, and Jack and Terry got theirs, and we all set them on that wobbly round cocktail table. All the cups were clearly visible, no tampering possible, until Ken walked up. His position obscured the camera view, and shortly after that he accidentally jostled the table and we all made a grab for the cups.
Ken backed up the tape, played it again, then let out a chain of epithets that could raise the dead.
My father awoke with a snort. “What?”
Ken replayed it and Dad raised a fist to his mouth.
“What?” I said.
“I could have done it,” Ken said, shaking his head.
“But you didn’t,” I said, shifting my gaze between Ken and my father. They seemed to be in the middle of an intense telepathic communication.
“That’s not the point, sweetheart,” Dad said. He turned to Ken. “Who’s your best man? Howard Reynolds?”
Ken nodded. His lips were drawn so tight, I was worried someone would have to take a crowbar to pry them apart.
“It’ll be okay,” Dad said. “He’s a good cop.”
“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Apparently I don’t need to know what’s going on. Does this mean you have to excuse yourself from the investigation?”
“Recuse,” Dad said, “and there’s actually no rule that he has to. But should a case come to trial and some savvy defense lawyer picks up on any hint of impropriety or evidence tampering—”
“But he wouldn’t do that,” I said. “And they certainly couldn’t prove it. Besides, aren’t you like ninety-nine percent sure that Craig is at the center of all this?”
“I still think he is,” Dad said.
“Then what does it matter who drank out of whose cup?” I asked.
“Because just putting that idea out there,” Ken said, “can weaken a case in the eyes of a jury. All any savvy defense attorney needs is reasonable doubt. For instance, you didn’t like Craig.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t kill him!”
“And I wouldn’t tamper with evidence. Would a jury who doesn’t know either of us have the same confidence?”
Ken waited for a response, but I didn’t have one. “I’ll let Howard know this is his case in the morning—somebody might as well get some sleep.” He picked up his coat. “You both should too.”
While Dad walked him to the door, I gathered a few dirty glasses and the popcorn bowl and put them in the kitchen sink.
“Don’t look so worried, Lizzie,” he said when he returned.
“I don’t know Howard Reynolds. Any good?”
“Best as they come. Iraq War vet. Level-headed. Thorough. Doesn’t back down from a fight but doesn’t go looking for one, either.”
“I suppose that’ll make me a suspect, then.”
“He’ll want to talk to you. He’ll want to talk to me. Will he consider either of us as suspects? That’ll depend on how the evidence comes in.”
“I don’t like this one,” I said. “It’s coming too close. To all of us. I could be a suspect. You might have been targeted and could have been killed. Ken is off the case. Jack and Terry are under suspicion as well. What in the world is going on?”
Dad gave me a hug. “I don’t think we’re going to find any answers to that one tonight. Get some sleep, sunshine. Maybe in the morning something will dawn on you.”
I was halfway to my bedroom before I recognized the puns, but I was too tired to groan.