Luckily, I didn’t have to. Quigley said, “Nothing is ever resolved to the satisfaction of everyone. Your ex believes you knocked off your formal personal assistant and buried him in your backyard. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it’s obvious that’s what he thinks.”
So much for the easy questions. I gaped at them. “Why would he? Why would I?”
Dean said, “Deflection—answering a question with another question—is a common tactic.”
This was not like any police interview I’d ever experienced. But then I’d never been interviewed as a serious suspect before. Or even as a flippant suspect.
I said, “A common tactic for whom? I realize your attitude is jaundiced by your line of work, but most people don’t kill their cheating spouses or romantic rivals. Most people just divvy up the CDs and change the locks, which is what I did. And why the hell would I kill Dicky of all people? Wouldn’t it be more likely I’d kill David?”
Dean said, “Maybe you hoped with your romantic rival out of the way, David would return to you.”
I spluttered, “I wouldn’t have had David back on a silver serving platter with an apple stuffed in his maw—or elsewhere.” I could see by their expressions that was perhaps more frank than wise, but there’s something really insulting about being suspected of murder. Okay, no. Not being suspected of murder. Being suspected of being so insecure, you’d commit murder in hopes of winning back the lame-ass boyfriend who dumped you. That’s insulting.
I added more reasonably, “Anyway, even if I were nuts enough to commit murder, I’d have to be an idiot to bury someone in my own backyard.”
From the kitchen I could hear the homey sounds of J.X. and Gage still busy with their breakfast preparations. The scent of coffee and sausages and buttermilk pancakes spreading across a hot griddle drifted into the living room. Quigley’s stomach growled. He shrugged at Dean’s look. My own stomach was in knots.
Dean said, “According to your ex, you write mysteries for a living. In the mysteries I’ve read, murderers always do completely illogical and idiotic things in an effort to throw law enforcement off the track. Perhaps you believed you were being clever in doing something completely reckless.”
Great. An embittered mystery reader. Like I hadn’t had enough of those in my life.
Quigley said, “It wouldn’t be something you necessarily planned, but let’s say an argument broke out, you wacked your former employee with something like, oh, maybe a bookend, and then you noticed the nice, deep hole in your backyard where the new pergola was being built.”
I didn’t think he’d accidentally lit on the idea of using a bookend as a weapon, and my unease—and hostility—grew.
“I don’t know for a fact construction on the pergola had started yet.”
“How convenient.”
I spluttered and then said coldly, “Do you actually do this for a living?”
Coldly works better when you don’t begin by spluttering.
“Do you own a firearm, Mr. Holmes?” Dean inquired right back at me.
“No. I don’t.” That was interesting news. I studied them. “So the victim was shot?”
“We’ll know more once we have the ME’s report.”
Uh…sure. But, thanks to sixteen years of writing Miss Butterwith and Mr. Pinkerton’s adventures, even I knew enough to recognize a bullet hole when I saw one. Don’t tell me these two didn’t know for sure.
I’m sure my skepticism showed because Dean changed the subject. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Dickison?”
Or maybe that was still the same subject. In either case, I was ready. I slid the copy of Dicky’s final check—front and back—across the coffee table. I’d printed it out that morning in preparation for their visit.
Detective Dean picked the paper up and examined it. She handed it without comment to Quigley.
I said, “Dicky showed up the Monday after David moved out. He asked for his final paycheck, and I gave it to him. You can see that he cashed it the same day.”
“You never saw him again?” Quigley squinted at the printout.
“I never saw him again. For the record, I don’t believe that body belongs to Dicky.”
Dean looked interested. “Who do you think was buried in your backyard?”
“I have no idea.”
“If Dickison is not buried in your backyard, what’s your theory as to what happened to him?”
“Again, no idea. Maybe he got cold feet. Maybe he got a better offer. As I recall, he had an active social life.” I added, “Maybe David killed him.”
I didn’t really think David had killed Dicky; that was simply payback for accusing me. Old habits die hard.
Dean and Quigley exchanged looks again. Quigley said, “What’s his motive?”
I shrugged. “David wasn’t used to rejection.”
Dean jumped on this angle. “Was your ex violent? Did he ever assault you? Did he ever threaten you?”
“He was loud. We both were. As I’m sure the neighbors can testify.” I sighed. “I don’t really think David killed Dicky. Like I said, I don’t believe that body belongs to Dicky. It could have been there for years. Originally there was a gardening shed in that part of the yard. So…”
“You were the legal homeowner for fourteen years, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So that would be going back quite a way.”
“Yes. It would.”
“Meanwhile, no one has heard from Mr. Dickison for nearly a year.”
“Well, I haven’t heard from him. David apparently hasn’t heard from him. That doesn’t mean no one has. Hasn’t.”
“Do you have contact information for Mr. Dickison?”
“I used to. If I do, it’s lost in a box somewhere. It sounds like it would be out-of-date anyway.”
“We would appreciate it if you could make an effort to locate that information.”
“I can try.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Within the next day or so.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t think they were out of questions, but they chose to end the interview there. They thanked me for my cooperation and departed with a promise to be in touch.
As I bolted the front door behind them, J.X. appeared in the hallway. There was a smudge of flour on his cheekbone. On him it was almost dashing.
He asked quietly, “You okay?”
“Splendid.”
He grimaced at my tone and nodded toward the kitchen, where Gage and the Black Keys continued to dominate the airwaves. “I couldn’t hear much. It couldn’t have been too bad. You’re still a free man.”
“Ha. Funny. There wasn’t much to hear. This was a fact-finding mission. They weren’t sharing information, that’s for sure.”
“They probably don’t have a lot of information to share.”
“Yeah, well. Whoever the victim was, he seems to have been shot. I’m not sure if they deliberately let that slip or not.”
“Good,” J.X. said with bloodthirsty cheer. “That means they’re going to have trouble connecting the murder weapon to you, assuming they continue to regard you as a suspect.”
“I don’t think they missed the significance of the fact that Dicky lived to cash his final paycheck, but they also didn’t seem to regard it as a Get Out of Jail Free card.”
“It’s way too early to rule anybody out.” I think he intended it to be comforting, but I’d have preferred to be automatically ruled out by virtue of obviously being innocent.
J.X. studied me for a moment. “This is routine procedure, Kit. You know that.”
“I know.”
“Don’t let it rattle you.”
“Do I look rattled?”
He bit his lip, clearly torn between diplomacy and his natural—distressing—inclination to always tell the truth. “Just don’t let it spoil our day, okay?”
“No, no,” I assured him. “I believe the Halloween Hootenanny will accomplish that.”
The hootenanny is going to be more fun than you imagine. Now there was a phrase I never expected to hear in connection with myself.
I sighed. “Well, it could hardly be less.” I kissed him back.
* * * * *
Sponsored by the Haight Ashbury Street Fair, the 13th Annual Halloween Hootenanny was held at the skate park in the Stanyan and Waller Street cul-de-sac. By eleven in the morning, the event was already packed. By eleven-thirty, I was ready to leave.
Needless to say, I was outvoted, and we continued to mill around with the throngs of costumed kids and parents—some of the grown-ups also in costume (although this was San Francisco, so who could say for sure)—wandering from booth to booth to enjoy the games and contests and performers.
This year’s theme was Clowns and Carnivals, and there were a disconcerting number of pint-sized Pennywises as well as the occasional benign Bozo.
Ten minutes in, Gage, dressed like a miniature Zorro, had his face painted in the Day of the Dead style, which was probably culturally inappropriate, but what do I know? My family background is Swiss and English. Anyway, the kid looked very cute in a gruesome-child-corpse kind of way—which, IMHO, would be his fate if he continued to eat everything in our path. On top of the pancakes he’d had for breakfast not more than an hour earlier, Gage consumed popcorn, peanuts, cotton candy, and a premonition-green slushie before his uncle finally called a halt.
“We’re going for pizza later, remember?”
Gage did remember but clearly still felt thwarted, which he vented by jabbing me a couple of times with his rubber sword.
“Ow,” I said, parrying his jabs with my hand.
“Hey. Not cool,” J.X. intervened. He frowned. As looks of displeasure went, that was a formidable one. “Not okay.”
The ghastly stitched outline of Gage’s mouth turned downward in embarrassed hurt at being scolded in public, and I felt an unfamiliar affinity—as well as the equally unfamiliar desire to earn uncle points by saying nah, never mind, no problem. I recognized in time that undercutting J.X.’s authority was not okay, and equally not okay was becoming Gage’s favorite outlet for frustration, and instead settled for looking grave while glancing around uncomfortably for some useful distraction.
My gaze happened to light on a group of clowns standing near the photo booth. Two of them were, of course, variations on Pennywise—complete with Queen Elizabeth I hair and pointy fangs—a third one was an impressively vintage Pipo de Clown, and the others had no identifying marks or characteristics other than being…clowns. With them was a man not in costume. He was attractive enough: average height, slender, curly brown hair. Something about his smiling profile caught my attention. My heart skipped a beat. I looked more closely.
Was that—? He looked an awful lot like…
It couldn’t be.
No. It was impossible. He was in jail, awaiting trial.
As though feeling my gaze, the curly haired man turned his head and stared directly at me.
The sounds and sights of the street fair seemed to fade away into a stark, echoing silence. There was no one on the street—in the world—but me and the guy across the way.
He did not smile. Did not look away. Did not so much as blink.
It was him. There was no mistake. It was Jerry Knight.
My biggest fan in the world.
The man who had tried to kill me.
Chapter Four
Granted, I had tried to kill Jerry back.
Had he seen me? Was this a coincidence, or was he following us? What the hell was he doing out of prison?
“You feel okay?” J.X. asked behind me, and I jumped.
I threw him a quick, harassed look. “What?”
His smile faded, his eyes narrowed in warm concern. “You look sick, Kit. What’s wrong?”
I stared at him, but it wasn’t J.X. I was seeing. “I-I think I just spotted Jerry Knight.”
“What?”
“Jerry Knight. He’s here.”
“That’s not possible. It must be someone who looks like him.”
“I know, but I think it was him.”
J.X.’s face took on a hard, tight look as he scanned the crowd around us. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. He was over there. Wait. Don’t be obvious.” I stole a peek at the group near the photo booth, but now there was no sign of Jerry. “He was standing there with those clowns.”
J.X. glanced automatically at a group of teenaged boys jostling each other near a hot-dog stand, and I said, “Not those clowns. The other clowns. The real clowns.”
“The real clowns,” J.X. repeated in a funny voice.
I jerked my head in the direction of the clowns. “I don’t see him now, but I’m positive…” I glanced at J.X. and then did a double take. “He’s not out, right? He couldn’t afford bail.”
“Right,” J.X. said. He definitely looked strange.
“But?”
“Nothing. Kit, Izzie would make sure we got a heads-up if Knight was out on bail.”
Izzie was J.X.’s former partner at SFPD, and they were still good friends. Izzie would certainly give us a heads-up if he learned Jerry had been bailed out—but what if he didn’t know?
“In theory, yes. But I’ve been watching Obsession on Investigation Discovery, and you would be horrified to learn how many times the system fails to protect victims of stalkers.” I surveyed the crowd, trying to spot Jerry. Where had he gone? I had only looked away for a second.
“Kit—”
“I’ve seen at least three episodes in the first season alone.”
“You’ve got to stop watching that stuff. Anyway, Knight is more than a stalker. He’s being held on Homicide and Attempted Homicide charges.”
I nodded, only half listening. Jerry had completely disappeared, seemingly having melted into the milling crowd. That was the advantage of looking so abnormally…normal.
“I think we should talk to those clowns,” I said.
“Why?”
I threw J.X. a look of surprise. “Because it seemed like he knew them.”
“You don’t think maybe they were just being friendly? As part of their job?”
“No. Well, I don’t know, but it didn’t look like that to me. They greeted him like they knew him.”
J.X. said nothing. I couldn’t quite read his expression.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing!” J.X. sucked in a sharp breath. “All right. I’ll do it,” he said. “You keep an eye on Gage.”
I kept half an eye on Gage, who was taking his frustrations out on some kind of knock-the-hell-out-of-the-Jack-o’-lanterns game, but most of my attention was on J.X. Even at a distance I could see he wasn’t getting anywhere. There was a lot of shoulder shrugging and shaking of red, blue, and green heads going on.
“Look, Uncle Christopher!” shrieked Gage as several orange-painted rolls of toilet paper went sailing. “Look!”
“Great,” I said.
J.X. strode back to where I waited. He shook his head. “Dead end. Three of them denied talking to anyone. The fourth one claimed someone came up and asked for directions to the restrooms, but he didn’t know the guy and didn’t keep track of where he went.”
“A likely story.”
J.X. said patiently, “It is a likely story.”
“Take my picture!” cried Gage. “Uncle Julie, take my picture!”
“He can’t remember someone he spoke to four minutes ago?” I protested.
J.X. pulled out his phone and snapped a string of photos of Gage beaming among the scattered square heads. “Kit…”
“The thin polka-dot line,” I said.
“Honey—”
“Don’t use that diplomatic tone. I know what I saw. Who I saw.” Honesty compelled me to add, “I think.”
“Knight’s a common physical type. Average height, average build, brown hair. Isn’t it possible you maybe mistook someone who looks like him for him?”
“No.”
But yes, of course I thought it was possible. And with each minute that passed without catching sight of my number-one fan and former stalker, I thought it was even likely. Except I couldn’t quite discount that moment of instinctive, horrified recognition. It was pure Animal Kingdom. Intraspecies recognition.
J.X. glanced back at the remaining trio of clowns, who were staring our way. He shuddered.
I studied him more closely. “You okay? You seem…”
Shaken, frankly.
He said tersely, “I don’t like clowns.”
“Does anyone really like clowns? I wonder.”
“No, I mean…it’s…” He cleared his throat.
“It’s what?”
“It’s kind of a thing with me.” He met my eyes, looked away. His expression was almost…stricken.
Enlightenment dawned. See? I knew he couldn’t be perfect. It was actually a relief to hear this.
“You mean like a-a phobia?”
He nodded glumly. “It is a phobia. It’s called coulrophobia.”
Whoa. J.X. had actually gone to the trouble of researching his bête noire. Or in his case, his Beppi noire.
I tried to be comforting. “If it’s got its own phobia name, it means a lot of people have the same reaction.”
J.X. winced. “Please. I know how ridiculous this is. I know it’s a cliché, but…”
“Cliché or not, fear is fear.” Yeesh, I sounded like the flip side of one of those schmaltzy love is love memes. Only instead of a rainbow, my meme would have lightning bolts and a graphic indicating fried wires.
J.X. said irritably, “And there isn’t any reason for it. It’s not like I had a bad childhood experience at the circus or an evil clown showed up at my birthday party. I’ve just always found clowns…disturbing.”
“You don’t have to explain. A lot of people don’t find clowns funny. Me included.”
In Other Words...Murder Page 3
