by Mary Maxwell
“Where’d they go?” Julia said.
“Pinyon Flats,” Kenzie replied with a roll of her eyes. “They’re gluttons for punishment.”
“My brother used to go there with his friends,” I said. “He still raves about that place even though he’s now roughing it on the beach in San Diego.”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” Kenzie said. “I just hate getting sand in my eyes and hair and mouth and—”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Harper said as she walked into the kitchen. “Can you take a call, Katie? It’s Maureen Vinton. She sounds a little worked up.”
Julia scoffed. “How can you tell? That woman’s always hot and bothered.”
“No doubt,” Harper said. “But she also said please and thank you, so you know something’s really got her upset.”
CHAPTER 4
Maureen Vinton was wheezing loudly when I picked up the phone in the office a moment later.
“What the heck took so long?” asked one of the grouchiest curmudgeons in town. “I told Harper it was urgent!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was with a customer.”
“It’s Kenzie Harwood, isn’t it?” she asked. “What’s that wench hiring you for this time?”
“As a matter of fact, it is Kenzie,” I said, feeling a sense of déjà vu. “Was that a lucky guess or are you—”
“I’m out front,” Maureen said abruptly. “I recognized Kenzie’s car in the lot. Since she and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment, I figured it would be best not to come inside.”
Maureen did something similar a few weeks earlier when she saw another woman’s SUV in the lot. She had a reputation for being contentious, demanding and opinionated. I’d never found myself on her bad side, but I’d certainly seen her temper in action on more than one occasion.
“Do you want me to come out there?” I asked.
Her wheeze coiled into a soggy sigh. “Would you do that for me?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Let me grab a jacket. I’ll be right out.”
Five minutes later, when I slid into the passenger seat of her sedan, my nose was assaulted by the unmistakable odor of canned tuna.
“Sorry about the stink,” Maureen said. “I couldn’t leave Pinky home alone. She’s been a little under the weather lately. I didn’t want to take a chance that she’d upchuck all over my new carpeting.”
I looked over my shoulder. A large orange tabby was lounging on the back seat with a Tupperware container of canned fish and dry kibbles.
“Hey, Pink.” I waved at Maureen’s pampered pet. “Sorry you’re not feeling very good.”
The cat glowered at me before casually licking one paw.
“She’s normally more animated than this,” Maureen said. “I think she might be dealing with depression.”
I turned my gaze back to Pinky’s concerned owner.
“So what are we here to talk about,” I said, “besides your cat’s health challenges?”
“It really is urgent, Katie,” Maureen said. “And I apologize for being a bit brisk. But I found a few things this morning when I was going through an old briefcase that I bought at Tobias Armantrout’s thrift shop. They gave me the chills, so I thought you might be able to tell me if they’re real or not.”
“I’ll help if I can,” I said. “What did you fine?”
“I didn’t look at everything once I saw the picture,” she said. “But there’s a ransom note and murder confession along with a map to where the body is buried, a roll of duct tape, a couple of pictures, a turquoise ring and an old newspaper.”
If I’d been skeptical at the start of her reply, the disbelief was gone by the time she finished. In addition to a quivering voice and trembling hands, Maureen’s breathing was now a series of intermittent puffs and rasps.
“Keep going,” I said.
Maureen reached into the backseat. When she brought her arm forward, I saw a battered leather briefcase the color of melted caramel.
“It was locked when I bought it,” she said, pointing at the unsecured front flap. “I found it in the backroom of the thrift shop during his annual sale. It was tucked underneath a bunch of old overcoats. Tobias was asking ten bucks, but I got him down to four on account of he’s trying to clear out things that have been there too long without selling.”
“How does he know if something’s been there that long?”
Maureen pointed at the small green tag tied to the satchel’s handle with a piece of twine.
“The code is on the back,” she explained. “It tells when Tobias bought something, how much he paid and the initials of the seller.” She studied the tag for a moment. “So this old bag’s been in the store since November 2009.”
“Nearly ten years,” I said, taking a quick photograph of the tag with my phone.
“That’s right. I guess Tobias figured it was worth accepting less for it since the dang thing’s been gathering dust for so long.”
“Okay, so you took it home and cut off the lock,” I said. “What happened next?”
Maureen thought for a moment. “Well, if you’re looking for what literally happened next, I got a phone call from Stephanie Roland accusing me of spreading vicious lies about her liposuction. But I didn’t stay on the phone very long, because—”
“My apology for interrupting,” I said delicately. “But I meant what happened after you opened the bag.”
She smiled. “Okay, that’s fine. I didn’t know. I’m a little on edge after what I found.” She patted the side of the old leather briefcase. “But I don’t think you’ll blame me once I show you.”
I nodded. “Please,” I said. “Let’s take a look at what’s inside.”
“Well, for starters, there’s an old book.” She reached in and came out with a package wrapped in a white plastic shopping bag. “I know this is…well, it’s pretty darn unusual. And I appreciate you taking a moment out of your day. But I didn’t want to go right down to the police until I had a second opinion.”
“What do you mean?”
She put the package on the seat between us. It was the shape of a hardback book, but the shopping bag obscured the cover. Twine was looped around the middle a few times and tied into a bow.
“It could be a prank or something like that,” she said, putting one hand on the bundle. “You know, kids maybe thinking it was funny to make up a story and draw a fake map.”
“Can you describe what you saw?” I asked.
She blinked. “Do you mean the confession or the map?”
“How about both?”
She removed the hand and brushed some dust from the dashboard. Then she pulled in a deep breath.
“It’s pieces of notebook paper like students use in school,” she began. “With the little holes on one edge where they were ripped from the metal spiral thingy.”
“What did the note say?”
She swallowed hard. “I didn’t think I’d still be this nervous,” Maureen said. “When I opened it at home earlier and realized what I was looking at, I started to tremble like after a big fright. Know what I mean? Chattering teeth and chills down my back. I called my sister, thinking I could get her to tell me if she thought it was real or not, but she didn’t answer the phone. That’s when I decided to come over here, Katie. I remembered that you were a cop in Chicago, and that you do some consulting work for the Crescent Creek Police.”
“I wasn’t actually with the Chicago PD,” I said. “My job was—”
“Like that matters,” she said. “You’ve got the background is what I’m saying. And I didn’t want to go straight down to police headquarters until I got someone else to take a look.”
“Okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“Will you take it inside and see if you think it’s real?” she asked.
“Don’t you want to do that right now?”
Maureen shook her head. “I’m too nervous. I’m sorry that it’s got me so riled up, but I don’t think I want to see those things again.�
��
“The note and the map?” I said.
She gulped in a breath. “And the one picture,” she said. “It’s a Polaroid of a woman with a towel over her face and a knife coming out of her chest.”
CHAPTER 5
Dina Kincaid stared at the old leather briefcase after I put it on the table in the Crescent Creek County Crime Lab later that day. As soon as I’d assured Maureen Vinton that I would deliver the bag and its disturbing contents to the Crescent Creek Police, she drove away looking like someone who’d just won the lottery. “Thank you for taking this weight off my shoulders,” she’d gushed. “I’d probably go up in a ball of flames if I had to take it to the police myself.”
I was thinking about the relief on Maureen’s face when Dina asked the question I was expecting.
“Did you look inside the bag?” she said, arranging a large sheet of clear plastic beneath the briefcase.
I shook my head. “I didn’t have to. Maureen took pictures of everything before she came to see me. She watches a lot of British detective shows. She didn’t want to risk contaminating the evidence.”
“Nicely done,” Dina replied with a mischievous smile. “I love that you can pull off personal restraint and professional consideration when the curiosity was probably driving you nuts.”
“Half nuts,” I said. “I can be a very patient woman when I need to be. Besides, she and I went through the pictures on her phone before I emailed them to you.”
“That’s true.” She slipped into a pair of blue disposable gloves. “I don’t know if I could’ve been so controlled myself.”
“Yes, you would’ve,” I told her. “You’re cool and calm in any situation.”
She smiled. “I wasn’t last night when they brought the dessert tray around at Café Fleur. I ordered three different things. Then I ate every bite except the one that Deputy Chief Walsh snagged with his spoon while I wasn’t looking.”
“Fancy place for dinner with you and Trent,” I teased. “Are you two thinking about giving marriage another try?”
Dina scowled. “Not another word,” she said. “It was dinner with Mayor Washington to discuss a confidential situation.”
“Are you and Trent in some kind of trouble?” I asked.
She made a face. “Not in the least,” she said, opening the briefcase. “But I’ll fill you in on that later. Right now, I want to see what’s inside the briefcase.”
For the next few minutes, Dina carefully removed and inventoried the contents from the leather satchel. When she finished, there were several mismatched items arranged neatly on the plastic sheet: a roll of gray duct tape, a copy of The Crescent Creek Gazette from July 23, 2009, a badly creased Polaroid of a woman who had been stabbed in the chest and a bleach-stained Van Halen tour T-shirt that was wrapped around a turquoise ring and stainless steel hunting knife.
“It’s like items from a scavenger hunt,” I said.
Dina looked up from the items. “Or a felony,” she said, reaching into the briefcase again. “And we’re not quite done.”
The last things in the valise were two sheets of pale green stationery: The first was an unsigned murder confession:
To Whom It May Concern:
We are sorry about Caroline. We never intended for her to die. But accidents happen.
The second sheet of paper contained a ransom note addressed to a wealthy businessman from Crescent Creek:
Pay attention, Sean Hale!
This is your first and only warning. We have your daughter. If you want to see her alive again, you will go to bank, withdraw $200,000 in unmarked bills and take it to the address on this note at midnight tomorrow. Come alone. Do not call police. If you ignore these instructions, your daughter Evie dies.
After we read both notes, Dina and I stared at the two pieces of paper. There was a dreamlike quality to the briefcase and its contents; like we’d unintentionally stumbled upon a time capsule from the past that would finally answer countless questions that had been lying dormant until this moment.
“Are you kidding me?” Dina said, breaking the spell. “Evie Hale and Caroline Whitman! Don’t you remember the summer they went missing? Evie was ransomed a day or two after she was kidnapped. Her father paid a quarter of a million dollars for her release.”
“When was this?” I asked.
Dina thought for a moment. “Nine or ten years ago,” she said. “I’d been with the CCPD for at least two or three years by then. Evie and Caroline were both high school seniors.”
“So I was in Chicago,” I said.
Dina nodded. “Yep. Didn’t your mother or sister tell you about the kidnappings?”
“I vaguely remember hearing about them,” I said. “What happened to Caroline? Was there a ransom?”
“Her parents received a note,” Dina said, “and they met the ransom demand. But Caroline was never seen again. The police worked the case for years, but every lead ended with a dead end.”
I stared blankly. “Who handled the case?”
“Detective McBride was here back then,” she said. “He’s retired now.”
“Lucky guy,” I said. “What happened with Evie Hale back then?”
Dina shrugged. “I’ll have to dig into the files,” she said, “as well as find out who handled the so-called kidnapping case.”
“Why the doubt?”
“I need to read the case history,” she said, “but I definitely remember tons of gossip that summer and into the next year about Evie. She’d supposedly been dating an older guy, but I never heard who it was.”
“Maybe he went away to college,” I suggested.
“Possibly,” she replied, staring at the collection of evidence on the table. “The techs at the lab are going to love me. They’ve got a backlog of evidence to process from the arson last week on Red Cloud Circle. And now I’m going to ask them to put a rush on all of these things, too.”
“You didn’t exactly plan on this dropping into your lap,” I said.
She looked up and smiled. “True. But you know how it goes. When they hear that it might possibly be connected to a cold case, they’ll argue that the arson should take priority.”
“And they’d have a point,” I said. “Do you want to wait on this until they get out from under that case?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “We arrested a suspect in the fire, so that seems to be in good shape. I don’t see how focusing on these things for a couple of days will make a huge difference.”
“Maybe you can compromise,” I suggested.
She considered the idea. Then she walked around the table and gave me a big hug.
“You’re a genius, Katie!”
“I am?”
“Definitely!” Dina replied. “I’ll ask the Crime Lab to focus on the knife. If it was used in a violent crime, there’s a high probability that they’ll find trace DNA for the victim and possibly the perp. If not, then I’ll ask them to process the other things one at a time. That way, they’ll be able to keep going on the evidence from the fire and move these things through the lab as well.”
“Sounds like a good middle ground,” I said. “How can I help?” I asked.
Dina hummed for a moment; the familiar hushed melody that always accompanied her moments of appraisal and deliberation.
“Here are a couple of ideas,” Dina said. “While I locate the old case files and make a few calls, would you take the pictures of the ring to Eleanor Rivera? She’s an expert on Navajo art and culture. Maybe she’ll recognize the piece or tell us where that type of jewelry is sold in the area.”
“I can do that,” I said, reaching for the copies of the ring photographs. “What else?”
“Evie Hale,” she said. “I’ll talk to her later today, but you and she are pretty friendly, right?”
“I know her from different charities and volunteer projects around town,” I said.
“Well, she might be more relaxed chatting with you about what happened ten years ago.”
“I’
d be happy to talk to Evie,” I said, “as well as anything else that I can do to help.”
CHAPTER 6
“Evie Hale is a very bad liar,” Dina told me when she called later that day. “Detective Armstrong and I went to see her, but it was a waste of time. She denied things that she told the police ten years ago as fact. Even when I showed her copies of the interview transcripts, she claimed it was somehow falsified or someone misinterpreted her responses to very simple questions.”
“I know how know much you hate that,” I said. “It’s beyond frustrating.”
She heaved a sigh. “Luckily, Tyler is a more patient person than me. When I realized that she wasn’t going to cooperate, I stepped outside to see if she’d be more forthcoming talking to a guy.”
“And?”
“No change,” Dina said. “She kept insisting that she was so badly traumatized by her abduction that even hearing our questions was giving her flashbacks. According to what she told Tyler, Evie has been seeing Alan Thorpe for the past decade to try and resolve her PTSD.”
“Who’s Alan Thorpe?” I asked.
“He’s a therapist,” Dina said. “His office is upstairs from Pirate’s Boneyard.”
“What’s Pirate’s Boneyard?”
She laughed. “You need to get out more, Katie. Pirate’s Boneyard is the new vegan café owned by Iris and Jake Hutchinson.” She paused. “And before you ask, they moved to town about six months ago from Harrisburg.”
“Pennsylvania?”
“It’s a miracle!” she said. “Something you know.”
“Hey, that’s not nice,” I replied. “The fact that I haven’t heard of a therapist or vegan restaurant doesn’t make me deserving of abuse.”
“It wasn’t abuse,” she said. “I was teasing you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Since when are you so sensitive?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I was teasing you! I’ve been to Iris and Jake’s place a couple of times. The activated charcoal waffle with peaches is amazing!”
