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Sunday, September 19
Despite having to work on a Sunday at the police station, it was just another day, another donut. Adam scowled at the box of pastries in the break room, or what remained of them since it was near noon. He hated the things and came close to chucking the entire box into the trash.
Adam bumped into Jinks as she headed into the room to grab a couple of raspberry-stuffed Danishes. “If my doctor asks, I had something from the grain group, the fruit group . . .” She poured some milk into her travel coffee mug. “And some dairy and protein. Coffee has antioxidants, too, right?”
Adam motioned to the mug. “Going somewhere?”
“Nashua. A possible break in my case. I hope it’s worth driving ninety minutes each way.”
“That’s great, Jinks.” His kudos sounded flat, but he hoped Jinks wouldn’t notice.
She looked more closely at him. “Dark circles. Either it’s ragweed pollen, or you pulled an all-nighter.”
“Couldn’t sleep. I should take some melatonin.”
“Cognac works better. Get you a one-ounce snifter.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He ran a hand through his hair but dropped his hand to his side when the chief’s assistant, Cherry, came in. Her words weren’t helping his growing headache. “Mayor Lehmann is in the chief’s office. They want you. Now.”
Jinks shot him a sympathetic look and said, “On second thought, driving to Nashua will be fun. Driving anywhere would be fun. As long as it’s away from here.”
The tension in Chief Quinn’s office wasn’t just thick enough to cut with a knife; it was like walking into a room with bricks for air. And it wasn’t because the chief also had to work on a Sunday—though one of the reasons the chief was pulling a weekend shift stood as close to him as a sleazy shadow. Lehmann. A man who never grasped the idea of “personal space.”
The mayor started off right away, “I just got off the phone with Reggie Forsythe. He spent an hour being harassed by the media camped outside his house. As he was escaping their clutches for a meeting with the Hartford PD, one of the TV crew shouted a question regarding whether there were any suspects.”
“What did he say?” Adam beat the chief to the question.
“What could he say? The same old story about some mystery woman who broke past his security and managed to conk his father on the head. But he embellishes it more with each telling. I want to know where you stand on your investigation into the con woman who stole Forsythe’s bowl. It must be the same person.”
The chief looked at Adam, who sat up straight in his chair. “I haven’t seen the photos from the security cameras yet.”
Chief Quinn opened a folder and passed some papers over to him. “Those were faxed from the Hartford PD this morning.”
Adam studied them. Brown curly hair, bulky coat, and the face was odd, misshapen like she’d fractured her jaw. It was hard to see the color of her eyes, but if this were a disguise, then she was likely wearing contacts. There was something familiar about that woman. He was reminded of the same feeling he’d had at the NAL meeting.
Adam handed the photos back. “Doesn’t fit the description Forsythe gave of the con woman.”
Lehmann growled. “Someone who is that devious could resort to disguises. Forsythe thinks so.”
Chief Quinn asked Adam, “And that Laborde woman? Does she have an alibi for the murder?”
“She says she was out sightseeing the whole day.”
“Alone?”
Adam nodded.
Quinn said, “No solid alibi. Then she could have murdered Forsythe’s father.”
Adam chose his words carefully. “I don’t have any hard evidence that she did. Or that she stole Reggie Forsythe’s property.”
Adam met the chief’s direct gaze with one of his own. He didn’t like hedging the truth, but neither did he like the way the chief appeared to be cozying up to the mayor. The same mayor was in a political bed with Forsythe. How far down did that Forsythe clout reach? Could Adam trust his boss to stay objective? He didn’t want to throw Beverly onto some altar as a sacrificial lamb to save Forsythe’s worthless hide. Or Lehmann’s.
The mayor sneered at Adam. “Forsythe told me you paid a visit to see him yesterday. Not too long after the murder. He hinted that you were disrespectful. And that he felt you were hiding information from him.”
The chief clenched his jaw. “You didn’t mention you’d talked to Reggie Forsythe.”
Adam cleared his throat. “I must have misfiled that report. I realized it this morning and was going to hand it to you, but I stopped for coffee first. And I assure you I was not disrespectful.” Okay, so he hadn’t misfiled the report. And he’d done more than stop for coffee. But he certainly hadn’t been disrespectful. Cheeky, maybe.
Lehmann huffed, but the chief waved his hand toward the door. “I appreciate you coming by, Titus. But if we want to help catch the person who killed Forsythe’s father, as well as this female thief, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We need to get right on it.”
Adam was surprised when the mayor accepted Quinn’s implied dismissal, turning on his heel and marching out of the office. Adam waited until the man was out of earshot. “If you want my honest impression, Chief, whatever that woman was doing at Forsythe’s house, it wasn’t to murder his father.”
“Really? How do you see that?”
“I talked to the CSIs at the crime scene. The murder weapon was too heavy to hoist easily by a petite woman like in that photo. Plus, it doesn’t make any sense she would go to all that trouble to do it when his son might be there. There are far easier ways to kill the man when he’s out in public.”
“People do strange things in the heat of anger.”
“Like Reggie Forsythe, you mean?”
Quinn sat down in his chair and leaned his arms on the desk. “Are you suggesting patricide, Dutton?”
“And if I were?”
Quinn placed his hands on his desk and spread his fingers wide. “The thought occurred to me. Probably my counterpart at the Hartford department, too. But even if—and I stress the word if—that is the case, we have to tread lightly. Forsythe is too well connected.”
“With too many high-priced attorneys.”
The chief grimaced. “I don’t care about my future as much. I could retire now and have enough of a pension for my wife and me to live on. But as long as Lehmann is the mayor, and he and Forsythe have us in their sights, it’ll be hard for you to advance. Ever considered moving? You know I’d be good for a reference. Not that I’m trying to get rid of you. You’re a damned good cop. You don’t second guess yourself even if I don’t agree with you.”
Adam’s stomach stopped doing flip-flops, and he nodded his thanks. For a moment, he was sure Quinn was ready to give him a pink slip. Adam said, “Off the record, say I ran across someone who said they might have evidence linking Forsythe to influence-peddling in the state legislature.”
Quinn jumped in, “Who is this source?”
“A confidential informant. If it turns out to be nothing, I prefer not to cause any additional waves, considering you’re already in the middle of a tsunami.”
“Who or what did he allegedly try to buy off?”
“A state rep, but I don’t want to mention names yet. As you say, these are all well-connected people. But if I find that evidence has legs, you’ll be the first to know.”
Quinn frowned. “Lehmann and Forsythe, the terror twins, are bad on their own, but now I’ve got jurisdictional headaches popping up. You should have asked me before you went to see Forsythe.”
“I was in the area doing some research on Laborde as you asked. Felt it might be good to see Forsythe in his personal lair.”
Quinn’s lips twitched. “Lair, huh?”
“I’m starting to get the impression lair might not be the right term. Try snake pit.”
“Let’s hope we don’t end up snake bit before this is all over with.”
Adam couldn’t agree more. He headed back to his office but had too much nervous energy to sit at a desk. He hadn’t paid his favorite newspaper reporter, Sam Cowie of the Herald-Post, a visit in a while. Perhaps Sam would have some gossip about the Forsythes. And hopefully, Sam liked stale donuts.
Before he left, he glanced at the paper coffee cup sitting on his desk with a lipstick stain. Beverly had left it behind in his car after their meeting in the parking lot of the resort. Maybe he wasn’t playing by the book by withholding some of the details about Beverly in his reports. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t follow proper procedure in other ways.
On his way out the door, he dropped the cup off in the lab, asking his favorite lab tech, Joe Brimm, “You think you can get the prints and DNA off this and run it through the databases for me?”
Joe looked at the cup as Adam placed it on the table. “Sure. When do you want it?”
“Yesterday, Joe.”
“Tell me something new, Adam.” Joe grinned at him. “You go play cops-and-robbers with your shiny police toys while I toil away in my dungeon of science.”
“You do that. And I’ll bring you back a Crackerjack prize for your trouble.”
“Just make sure it’s a good one. I always wanted one of those decoder rings, but all I got ever got was those little plastic monkeys.”
Adam didn’t have the heart to tell him they didn’t even include prizes inside anymore. It was all digital now. Not that he was dissing digital. Those digital databases often save the day. But so far, they hadn’t included any data on Beverly Laborde or whatever name she might have been using in her past.
The DNA bit was standard police procedure, and he wasn’t sorry for doing it. Then why did it make him feel like such a traitor? Shaking his head, he strolled to the break room to grab some of those stale donuts for Sam and headed out to play a little cops-and-robbers.
