I took the long route home and did some window-shopping along Main Street for something more colorful to wear tomorrow. Even if I had to wear one of my boring trial suits, I could perk it up with something brighter than my basic white blouses. Unfortunately, I reached Stefan's gallery at the end of the shopping district without seeing anything that appealed. My speech was just going to have to be extra colorful to make up for my boring wardrobe.
Stefan came out of the gallery, the hem of his pants catching on the uneven sidewalk, and called my name. "I just got a call from Gil at the museum. They're going forward with the acquisition, contingent on receiving your written appraisal and if we can agree on a price, which I think we will. We're pretty close already."
"I'm glad. You found the perfect quilt to kick off their acquisition program. They're lucky to have you nearby."
Stefan tugged on his bow tie self-consciously. "I'm just doing my job."
Tremain wouldn't have been that humble if he'd brokered this kind of deal for one of his quilts. That probably explained why Stefan's gallery was less successful than Monograms. Stefan had the better merchandise, but Tremain had the better sales pitch.
I wondered if any quilt collectors had bought from both dealers. Perhaps a disgruntled client of Tremain's had even transferred his allegiance to Stefan.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pulled up the list of Tremain's clients. "Would you mind taking a look at these names? Is there anyone there who might have had a grudge against Tremain?"
He scrolled through the list, pausing a few times. "Where'd you get this?"
I couldn't exactly tell him it was his competitor's confidential client list. "It's just something I got from the prosecutor's office. It includes some possible suspects in Tremain's murder."
"Mayor Kallakala is a suspect?"
"Think of it like a photo lineup, where they show a witness a bunch of pictures of random people known to be innocent, along with the one real suspect. The idea is to make it so you can't easily guess who might be the real suspect."
"What am I supposed to be looking for?" Stefan asked.
"From what I've heard, Tremain liked mingling with politicians, so maybe one of them had a reason to kill him."
Stefan started at the top of the list again and scrolled down slowly and methodically. "I don't know any of them personally or professionally. Just the politicians by reputation, and I never saw any of them with Tremain. Sorry."
He handed the phone back to me. I was disappointed but not too surprised. The politicians might well have expected Tremain to bring his merchandise to them, rather than visiting the shop personally. "Did any of the names on the list contact you about the lawsuit against Tremain and try to pressure you to drop it?"
"They didn't have to," Stefan said bitterly. "Tremain papered me to death, and I think he enjoyed it. Like he was just toying with me. He didn't take the case seriously enough to call in any favors."
So why was someone calling in favors now? Tremain was beyond caring about anything, but someone was worried.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more help," Stefan said. "I'm heartbroken over Emma's arrest. I can see why the police suspect her, even if they're wrong. There were only a few people in the shop anywhere near the time of the murder. Emma and Dee, you, Matt, and Alyse. That's it."
"And the landlord."
"I'd forgotten about him," Stefan said. "He was still inside when Matt left with Dee and Emma."
"You saw them leave?"
He nodded. "Business was slow, and I was curious about your meeting, so I was watching the shop. I thought I'd be able to catch you when it was over and find out if you'd accomplished anything."
"You can give them an alibi then."
"Not entirely," he said. "I saw them go on over to the bakery, and then I saw Matt heading over here, and I just didn't have the energy to deal with him again, so I put my lunch-break sign in the window and ducked into the back."
"Did you see where Matt went afterwards?"
"He went over to his truck and climbed inside to make some phone calls."
Matt's phone logs would give him an alibi, one that was more solid than anyone else's.
Stefan must have noticed the relief on my face, because he said, "You didn't really think Matt could have killed Tremain?"
"It's standard operating procedure for preparing a case," I said. "Consider all the possibilities so you can rule out every explanation except the one you want the jury to adopt."
"Why would Matt kill Tremain?"
"To prevent Tremain from suing him for libel. You know how expensive litigation can be."
Stefan laughed. "Matt would never worry about a libel suit."
"No one likes being sued."
"Matt's different. For one thing, he's independently wealthy. He could pay a dozen libel judgments, including the attorney's fees, and not even notice the cost any more than you or I would care about paying for a cup of coffee. If he was worried about his financial portfolio, he could earn another million bucks this year alone, just by making a few phone calls."
Matt? The guy who drove a beat-up truck and wore clothes that were several years old? He'd said he wasn't penniless, but I hadn't seen any indication he was anything other than simply a guy who kept his spending within his means. "I never thought reporting could be that lucrative."
"Not that work," Stefan said. "He's wasting his true talents."
Just then, the customer who'd inquired about walking sticks yesterday came through the door. "Mr. Anderson," he said. "Is my acquisition ready?"
"Excuse me," Stefan said to me before turning to his customer. "Of course. It's behind the counter, just waiting for you."
I grabbed one of Stefan's trailing shirt cuffs to stop him. "Just one more thing. Did you see anyone else go into the shop? Besides the landlord, me, Dee, Emma, and Matt?"
"Just the prosecutor," he said. "He was there for the meeting too, right?"
I shook my head. "He didn't know about the meeting. Wolfe came later, just before the police arrived."
Stefan frowned. "I know I saw him earlier than that. I recognized him from when I tried to get criminal charges filed against Tremain last year. He wouldn't listen, so I had to sue Tremain myself. Wolfe arrived maybe a second or two after Dee, Emma, and Matt came out of the shop to go to the bakery. If they'd turned around, they'd have seen him. I remember being irritated that it had taken so long for him to get interested in Tremain, but I figured it was better late than never. Then I saw him storm out of the shop just a few minutes later, and I was irritated all over again. He couldn't be bothered to show up on time, and then it looked like he'd gotten angry that you'd gone ahead without him. I thought you talked to him then."
"I didn't see him until after we found Tremain's body." I needed to have another talk with him.
Wolfe had made it clear he wasn't going to listen to anything else I said until I had the real killer's confession, but for once I wasn't going to do the talking; he was. He needed to explain just what he'd been doing at the shop before the body was found. There was probably a simple explanation, but one thing I'd learned about preparing a civil case was that it was impossible to tell what information might be important until I actually asked the question and got the answers.
The man at the counter was getting impatient. I released my grip on Stefan's shirt cuff. "I'll let you get back to work. Thanks for your help."
"Anything for Dee and Emma," Stefan said before scurrying over to his customer.
* * *
Wolfe dropped his phone into the receiver just as I was walking into his office. He was standing, and his briefcase was on top of his desk, as if he were about to leave. It was still early, just closing in on 3:30, but he probably wanted to get his beauty sleep before tomorrow morning's press conference.
"Don't tell me you got someone to confess," he said.
"Not yet." I remained standing to signal that this wasn't a social call. "I need to ask you something. What were you doing at Monograms at the time of the murder?"
"I told you. My boss wanted me to have a chat with Tremain. His friends at the state house had been calling our office, demanding that we declare him not to be a person of interest with respect to any crimes whatsoever. Like we'd ever do that. But I was supposed to go reassure Tremain that we weren't taking any of the little old ladies' nonsense seriously."
"You didn't tell me you'd gotten there before I saw you. Before the 9-1-1 call even."
"So what?"
"So you're as much a witness as I am. You were in the shop right around the time Tremain was killed. You need to recuse yourself from the case."
"Damn." Wolfe flopped back into his chair. "I just can't catch a break."
"What were you really doing there?"
"Just what I told you," Wolfe said irritably. "I was supposed to make nice with the good old boy. Except he didn't want to hear anything I said. He was ranting about providence and stupid old biddies interfering with his livelihood."
"You mean provenance?"
"Yeah, whatever," he said. "Tremain had a few choice words about you too."
"I bet he did."
"I'm not surprised he got himself killed," Wolfe said. "I was there on a peace mission, and he was so angry he couldn't see it. He thought I was part of your group, and he started threatening me with libel and slander charges. Wouldn't listen to anything I said."
I could picture it: neither of the two men was particularly skilled at listening, so it would have been like one brick wall shouting at another. "Did he get physical?"
"Tremain?" Wolfe looked skeptical. "Not his style. From what my boss told me, Tremain liked to twist people's words, but I never heard of him twisting any literal body parts."
"What about you?" I said. "You must have been tempted to flatten him."
"Back when I was a stupid kid in high school, I probably would have. But these days I've got a reputation to uphold. If I'd so much as tapped him with my pinkie, he would have brought assault charges against me, and that would have been the end of my political career. Tremain wasn't worth it. I just walked out on him. I could hear him stamping his feet the whole time until I shut the outer door behind me. Which I did very, very carefully. Didn't want to give him a reason to claim I'd vandalized his property."
"You came back a few minutes later, though."
"I cooled down and decided to try again to get him to see reason. My boss was really insistent that I needed to get Tremain to call off his buddies. Failing to soothe Tremain was going to be a huge black mark on my work record. By the time I got back there, you'd already found the body." He gave an ironic laugh. "And then my boss got even more phone calls from Tremain's friends. Probably blames me for that. I should have known that having dibs on this homicide case was too good to be true."
"So you'll withdraw from the case?"
He sighed. "Yeah. It won't help your friends, though. I can't have Emma released without some solid evidence against someone else. Can't risk her fleeing the jurisdiction. People will forget that I delayed recusing myself, but they won't forget if I got the right killer and then she escaped because of me."
I didn't have the kind of evidence it would take to change Wolfe's mind. At least not yet. Alyse and Stefan were both likelier suspects than Emma, but I needed to be sure before I implicated anyone. At the moment, I wasn't sure about anything except that I was running out of time. There just weren't enough hours left between now and lunch tomorrow to write my speech and finish the appraisal for Gil, let alone find the critical evidence that would get Emma out of jail.