Franklin looked very handsome in his new collar. We let him run around the yard while we packed up a few items. All was quiet, but we planned to head back to Iz’s for at least a few more nights. I locked my gun in my glove box, making sure to do it when Chava wasn’t looking; otherwise she’d ask for an extra key.
I had just loaded Franklin back into the car when Chance and Kate drove up. I wouldn’t say their unmarked car exactly blocked the driveway, but it was clear I wouldn’t be making a fast getaway.
I found it disconcerting.
“What’s up?” I asked as they got out. In a lighter moment I might have teased Chance about the fact Kate was driving but something in their faces kept me quiet.
“We’d like you to come down to the station with us and answer a few questions,” Kate said.
“That sounds a little ominous,” I said, looking at Chance to try to get a read on the situation.
“It won’t take long,” Chance said, his expression no help at all.
“What’s this about?” I asked, directing my question to Kate this time. Maybe she’d be more forthcoming.
“We’ll explain it all down at our place,” she said, as unhelpful as Chance.
I paused. I did not like the way this was going.
“Have you learned something?” Chava asked.
Chance looked at Chava and his face softened. My mother had that effect on people.
“You can follow in Eddie’s car and meet her when she’s done,” he said.
“Wait. I’m going with you? In your car? Like a criminal?”
I definitely didn’t like this.
“Don’t think of it that way,” Chance said. “It’s just for the sake of expediency.”
Should I argue? Was I under arrest?
It wasn’t like I had a lot of choice here. I could get snotty and demand a lawyer, but I hadn’t even gotten a whiff of what this was about, so maybe I’d just play that card later if things got ugly.
“It’s okay, Chava. I’ll go with them, and you can follow in my car.”
Chava looked like she was about to argue.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said.
I wasn’t sure of that at all, of course, but diffusing the situation seemed like the best thing to do.
The drive downtown was quiet. It was clear Chance and Kate weren’t going to answer any questions and I wasn’t one to chat about the weather. We arrived at the station, and while they didn’t exactly hustle me into the interrogation room, it was clear they had an agenda and I was the item on top.
The room was small and slightly cold. The lighting was fluorescent, which always made me twitchy. I tried to gauge Chance’s mood, but he remained inscrutable.
“So let’s talk about what brings us down here,” Kate said as we settled in around the table.
They looked at me as if I might already know what that was.
“Did you figure out more about George Doe?” I asked, thinking this had to be connected to the murder. Nothing else would be important enough to come collect me.
“We actually didn’t bring you down to talk about him,” Chance said. “We’re wondering if you recognize this woman.”
Chance set a photo down between us. It showed a young woman lying on a metal table at the morgue.
“Is this who died in the back room?” I asked. It had to be, right? How many dead people could have shown up in Bellingham in the last couple of days? “Where did you find her?”
“Does she look familiar?” Kate asked.
I examined the photo, taking into account I was seeing a corpse. Death changed a person’s appearance.
She did look familiar.
A knot formed in my stomach. I took my cellphone out of my pocket and scrolled through my pictures, landing on the one sent me by Rhonda King. I set my phone down next to the photo.
“Lily Patterson,” I said.
“Friend of yours?” Chance asked.
“I never met her. She worked across the hall.”
Though I was guessing the police already knew that.
“How is it you have her photo on your phone?” Kate asked.
I walked them through my conversation with Rhonda.
“Has she been informed?” I asked, thinking about how awful it was going to be for her to learn about her niece’s death.
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Chance said. “How sure are you that the Kia you saw in your lot on Tuesday was the one owned by Anthony Glenn?”
The stolen car? We were back to that?
“Pretty sure. It looked like the car, and the bumper sticker was the same.”
“And you’d never seen that car before?” Kate asked.
“Not that I can recall.”
Why was I starting to sweat?
“And you just happened to recognize it from a used car ad?” Chance asked.
“Well, not exactly.”
The two watched me, pencils poised over notepads, expectant looks on their faces.
“It looked a little familiar in the ad, but I didn’t think anything of it. It’s a pretty generic car. Then, when the woman called Chava to tell her it had been stolen, I remembered why it looked familiar. It looked like the car I’d seen parked out back.”
“And then?” Chance prompted me.
“And then, the bumper sticker I’d tried to remember popped into my mind,” I said to Kate, reminding her I’d brought it up in our original interview.
“The Mud Gutter Trio,” Chance said.
“The Mud Gutter Trio. Turned out that was the owner’s band. I mean, how many cars could be driving around Bellingham with that sticker on it?”
“At least three,” Kate said under her breath, which made me laugh.
“I said the same thing to Chava,” I said, to explain my inappropriate response.
“And so you went over to interview the grandmother, Antonia—”
“She goes by Toni,” I corrected, instantly regretting it.
“Toni,” Chance said, staring at me a beat too long.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“So you went over to interview the grandmother, Toni, because you thought …” he let the sentence trail off to see how I’d finish it.
“To see if it really was the car I’d seen Tuesday morning.”
“Why not call us?” Kate asked. “Why go talk to her on your own?”
“It seemed like too much of a crazy coincidence,” I said.
Neither one of them argued with that.
“Then what happened?” Chance asked.
I walked them through my visit with Toni, gathering the photo and the VIN, then reminded them I’d immediately passed the information on to them.
“And you’ve never seen the car again?” Chance asked.
“No. Never. Did you find it?”
“We did,” Kate said, “with this young woman in the trunk.”
So she was dead and left in the car I’d seen outside our building. It made sense, then, that she died in our building. That would explain the blood in the back room. Then my mind went to Rhonda King and the sad truth that her niece was never coming home.
“What does this have to do with me?” I asked.
Though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.