Booktown Mystery 15 - A Deadly Deletion

by Lorna Barrett

  Becca sighed. “Okay, so I’d visited Gene back then. He stood me up to go to your Christmas dinner.”

  Yeah, one of the few times he’d attended Tricia’s family affairs. “But he left that gathering early. It all makes sense now.”

  “It’s not like we were sneaking around or anything,” Becca said defensively.

  “Then what do you call it?”

  Again Becca sighed. “Okay, we were sneaking around.”

  “And what about Louise?”

  “What about her?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think she killed Gene.”

  “How about her husband?”

  “If I’d been married to the jerk, I might have killed him. But for some reason, as much as she might have had motive, I don’t think she did.”

  “Is that a decision made from proof or a gut feeling?”

  “The latter,” Tricia admitted.

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  “Speak to a former sheriff’s deputy.”

  “Former? And what can he do?”

  “Probably nothing, but it seems awfully convenient that Louise was arrested for both murders when the Sheriff’s Department seems to think Gene’s death was a murder for hire.”

  “I thought Baker was in charge of the investigation,” Becca said.

  “Not when the man they think did the killing was found dead in another jurisdiction.”

  “How interesting,” Becca said. “And you think one of Martin Bailey’s friends or employees hired him?”

  “I don’t think so. If it was you who drew one of Bailey’s associates to Gene, it most likely would have been the first time you spoke to him, let alone when you came to Stoneham last December.”

  “It was dangerous and stupid and I’m sorry I ever contacted him. Poor Gene might be alive today if I hadn’t.”

  “But you did it anyway,” Tricia said, and didn’t soften her tone. “And why were you in the area the day he died?”

  Becca sighed. “It was our wedding anniversary,” she said, her voice filled with sadness. “I was lonely. I was unhappy. It was damned selfish of me, but I also thought I should try to talk him out of asking you to marry him.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Because he didn’t love you.”

  The words should have hurt, but they no longer held that kind of power.

  “Were you hoping to get back together with him?” Tricia asked.

  Becca let out a long breath. “Yeah. It was a stupid idea, but with Marty gone, and since we’d seen each other several times since my accident, I thought—hoped—we could make it work.”

  “And why do you want to move here to Stoneham, or was that just a passing fancy?”

  “No, I’d kind of like to stay here. Not in that apartment on Main Street—it’s not at all my taste. The lease runs out in a few months. I might stay until it does and if I like the area, look for something more to my liking. I saw a real estate office farther down on Main Street. Can you recommend it?”

  “Yes. The woman in charge is Karen Johnson, but you could work with any of the agents. They’re all good.” Tricia still had more questions. “What about that storage unit? Have you had a chance to go through it?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve been avoiding it. I really should go through it so I won’t have to pay the rent on it for November. What gets me is that I never saw that key on the floor of Gene’s bedroom. I’d been walking through it for days. It didn’t just fall from the sky.”

  “Do you think it was planted?”

  “I don’t know. But there are an awful lot of fishy things going on, so why not? His keys were in law enforcement’s hands for a day or so after his death. Before they were given to me.”

  “But you had a key to his apartment, otherwise you wouldn’t have canceled your reservation at the Sheer Comfort Inn so quickly.”

  “Yeah, I had a key.”

  “Gene gave it to you?”

  “I . . . sort of copied it when I was here for Christmas last year.”

  So, she’d had her sights on a reconciliation even back then. And when Marshall had left Tricia’s holiday celebration, had he gone back to his apartment to bed Becca?

  Tricia didn’t want to know. She thought of what Becca had told her just moments before.

  “You can’t possibly think Deputy Kirby or Chief Baker planted those keys in Marshall’s apartment.”

  “Gene’s apartment,” Becca clarified. “Why not? Maybe one of them was hoping to pin it on me.”

  “But Kirby dropped out of the investigation pretty quickly.”

  “Then maybe it was your Chief Baker.”

  He wasn’t Tricia’s chief. Still, the suggestion made Tricia feel uncomfortable.

  There was no way Baker could have known Marshall intended to ask Tricia to marry him. It had been a shock to her. Becca and Ava knew his intentions, but Marshall wasn’t close to anyone else in the village. What if Baker had seen Marshall as an impediment to him getting back together with Tricia? Could he have decided to eliminate his rival?

  Tricia gave herself a shake. The whole idea was absurd. Except . . . Larry Harvick said everyone in the Sheriff’s Department knew Joshua Greenwell, which meant Baker did, too. Would he have known the brick-throwing motorcyclist, too?

  Greenwell’s body had been found in Rindge. Was Baker the person she knew who’d grown up there?

  “Hey, are you still there?” Becca asked.

  “Yeah. I was just thinking about—” But did she want to say the words aloud? Could Grant Baker have been responsible for Marshall’s death? And another four people’s as well?

  No, that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. Grant Baker was a good cop. Tricia had never seen him diverge from the straight and narrow. Not ever.

  “I . . . I’ll have to get back to you later,” Tricia told Becca.

  “You’ve just figured out who had Gene killed, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I have my suspicions. I . . . I need to do some research. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Tricia, wait!”

  But Tricia ended the call. Setting the phone aside, she tapped the computer’s keyboard to awaken it and brought up a new browser window. She Googled Baker’s name and came up with a number of entries. She scrolled through each one, skimming the text until she found what she wanted. Someone had scanned and uploaded a copy of the article Russ Smith had written when Baker had taken the job of Stoneham police chief. One sentence fragment immediately jumped out at her: Baker, originally from Rindge, Cheshire County . . .

  Tricia sat back in her chair, her stomach doing a somersault.

  Her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and saw it was Becca calling back. She ignored it and focused her attention on what she thought she knew.

  No. No. No! It just didn’t make sense. Why would a man who’d dedicated his life to the law have made such a dramatic and sinister change of heart?

  Because of you, Tricia’s inner voice taunted.

  That didn’t make sense. She’d made it clear to Baker—many, many times—that there was no future for them.

  But just weeks before, he’d jilted his fiancée and then abruptly asked Tricia to marry him.

  She sat back in her chair to ponder everything she knew about Marshall’s death.

  He’d been killed by a third party. That someone had apparently also targeted Tricia, but nothing had come of that. Still, her family had been attacked, too, in the form of arson, only for the alleged perpetrator to be found dead a few days later—and in an area of the state Grant Baker knew well.

  But as Tricia thought about it, she realized she’d been targeted again when the guy on the motorcycle tossed a brick through her shop window. She’d been able to give the first few letters of his license plate and the next thing you know he and his accomplice had ended up dead on the side of the highway. How convenient was that for whoever hired them?

  What didn’t make sense
was Mark Jameson’s death. Had he been killed as an excuse to frame Louise Jameson for Marshall’s death? Was the idea behind that crime that Jameson found out about Louise’s affair with Marshall, they argued, and she killed him either in a fit of rage or in self-defense?

  Becca had a key to Marshall’s apartment, and it was days later she’d been given Marshall’s personal effects—including his set of keys to his home and business. What if copies of them had been made? What if someone—oh, the heck with it, Tricia decided to just pin the crime on Baker—had gone back to the apartment to plant the key to the lock on Marshall’s storage unit to make sure Becca would find it? Her movements had been pretty easy to follow. She took most of her meals at the Bookshelf Diner. If Baker had staked her out, he could have easily followed her movements.

  It could have happened that way, Tricia told herself.

  And all because Baker wanted her?

  She kept rejecting him. Might that cause him to finally turn on her?

  A shiver ran through her. Uh-oh.

  Tricia’s phone pinged. Again, it was Becca. Tricia, don’t ignore me!

  She did.

  Tricia glanced at the time at the bottom-right of her computer screen. She still had an hour before all the shops on Main Street closed their doors for the day. She knew of only one person who might give credence to her theory, not that she was going to spill what she thought she knew. But this someone might have the key as to why Grant Baker would abandon his principles.

  That person was Larry Harvick.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Tricia didn’t even bother putting on her coat. She scooted past Pixie and Mr. Everett and practically ran down Main Street toward the Bee’s Knees. Luckily for her, the shop was empty and Eileen and her husband were busy restocking the shelves for the next day’s customers.

  “Hi, Tricia. What’s up?” Larry Harvick called, hefting a box filled with jars of honey.

  “I was wondering if you had a few minutes to speak to me.”

  “What about?”

  Tricia glanced at Eileen, who immediately got the hint.

  “Uh, I’ll go open those boxes of candles. Be back in a minute.” She left the shop, disappearing behind the door marked PRIVATE.

  Harvick set the box down and straightened. “So?”

  “The other day you made a comment that really stuck in my mind.”

  “What was that?”

  “About Grant Baker’s eyes. You called them ‘cold.’ ”

  Harvick nodded. “You mean you never noticed?”

  “No,” she answered honestly. “I got the feeling you didn’t really like him and I wondered why.”

  “Whether I like him or not is immaterial.”

  “I assume you were judging him personally and not his work ethic.”

  “Yeah. I never liked the guy. I thought he had a mean streak.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was always a little rough with the suspects when making arrests. He doesn’t do much of that himself these days, I guess, what with being the chief and all.”

  Tricia had never known Baker to be physically abusive. He hadn’t been a particularly generous lover, but they had enjoyed some pleasant intimate moments. When he wasn’t suspecting her of murder, they’d been cozy together plenty of times. Was that something he could turn on and off like a switch?

  “Did you think he was an honest cop?”

  “You mean did I think he’d take a bribe or something?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What is it you want me to say?” Harvick asked.

  Tricia chewed her lower lip and contemplated just blurting out her suspicions, but the truth was she had absolutely nothing in the way of proof to back up what she was thinking. A gut feeling wasn’t enough to slander someone who was respected in the community.

  “I understand you’ve undergone a recent loss,” Harvick said, changing the subject.

  Tricia nodded.

  “And that someone close to you lost her home to arson.”

  Again Tricia nodded. News sure got around.

  “And just the other day you had your shop window destroyed. I’d say you are either having a bad string of luck . . . or someone is out to get you.”

  Tricia stood rock still, her nails digging into the palms of both hands.

  “Do you think Baker is behind these acts of violence?” Harvick asked.

  “Personally?” she asked, her voice squeaking.

  Harvick nodded.

  Tricia found it hard to meet the former deputy’s gaze. “I know he didn’t throw that rock through my window. I caught a partial license plate number on the guy’s bike. They found the man and his accomplice dead in a gully off the highway. It looked like they’d been forced off the road.”

  “And the guy who allegedly killed your boyfriend was found shot in the woods near Rindge,” Harvick said, his voice neutral.

  “Yes,” Tricia whispered. “The chief grew up in that area. He knows it well. And Joshua Greenwell was shot with a Glock. Marshall, my”—she hesitated—“boyfriend, his Glock went missing.”

  Harvick let out a breath, crossed his arms over his chest, and gave her a long, hard look. “What do you intend to do about all this?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “If you want my advice, you should consult an attorney. And whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to be alone with a man you suspect of murder.”

  “I didn’t say I suspect Chief Baker of murder.”

  “No. You didn’t have to.”

  His words sent a chill through Tricia.

  Until then, she hadn’t felt afraid.

  * * *

  * * *

  The wind had picked up and it felt like Tricia had to slog up the street to get back to her store—or was it that she was so filled with dread that it just seemed that way?

  No customers had arrived during her short visit down the road. Pixie was behind the cash desk and Mr. Everett was tidying up the reader’s nook when she pushed through the door. The little bell over it rang cheerfully, but at that moment she found the sound resoundingly irritating.

  “Are you okay?” Pixie asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Tricia gave a shudder and waved her hand dismissively. “It was pretty cold out there. I should have worn a coat.”

  Mr. Everett came forward. “Would you like me to make you some cocoa? That would warm you up fast.”

  “No, thank you, but it’s kind of you to offer.”

  “Did your errand go well?” Pixie asked.

  “Fine,” Tricia answered succinctly.

  The three of them looked at one another for a long moment.

  “Um, I need to make a phone call. I’ll just head down to the office to make it and be right back.”

  “Sure,” Pixie said, giving Mr. Everett a curious look.

  Tricia gave them a smile—definitely forced—and hurried to her office. She’d never bothered to add her attorney’s number to the contacts list on her cell phone, so she had to look it up. But when she made her call, the phone rang and rang until voice mail kicked in. “You have reached the office of Roger Livingston. Our hours of operation are—”

  Tricia listened and then tapped the end call icon, frowning as she glanced at the clock. Sure enough, it was well after five o’clock. Why couldn’t lawyers keep the same hours as shopkeepers? But then, they arrived at work earlier. Luckily, Tricia was an early riser, and she would call the lawyer’s office first thing in the morning.

  But morning was a long, long way off.

  Tricia heaved a sigh, feeling overwhelmed. Somehow, she had to get through the next fourteen hours. To do that, she needed to isolate herself. To stay safe. And that meant she needed to lie low and protect Angelica, too.

  Tricia picked up the phone and called her sister.

  “Where are you?” Angelica asked.

  “Home.” She crossed her finge
rs as though to negate the lie she was about to tell. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be coming over this evening. My stomach is upset.” Well, that wasn’t far from the truth. Her stomach had been tied in knots ever since she’d spoken to Larry Harvick.

  “Would you like me to come over and sit with you?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t want you to climb stairs any more than you have to. By this time of the day, your foot is usually swollen.”

  “Yes, but I can put my feet up just as easily in your apartment as in mine.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m just going to curl up with a good book and maybe open a can of soup later—if I feel up to it,” she added for effect.

  “Well, if you say so,” Angelica said sadly. “I’ve already been alone two evenings in the last week. I don’t want it to become a habit.”

  “Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow and we can go back to our usual routine.”

  “Okay,” Angelica said reluctantly. “Feel better.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, call me in the morning to let me know how you are.”

  “I will. Bye now.”

  “Bye.”

  Tricia hung up the phone.

  The sky would soon be darkening. Her first concern was to secure her store and make sure her employees were safe. She decided to close the shop and send Pixie and Mr. Everett home. She’d decide how to proceed after speaking with her attorney in the morning.

  Tricia arrived back in the shop and, as hoped, found no customers. “Let’s call it a day,” she said, flashing a smile.

  “But we’ve still got another forty-five minutes to go,” Pixie protested.

  “It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any more customers—”

  But before she could finish the sentence, the door opened and a man and woman entered. “Oh, good, you’re still open,” the woman said.

  Pixie took care of them while Tricia stood behind the counter and fidgeted, her gaze glued to the clock.

  The couple stayed until the bitter end, pleasing Pixie with their more-than-a-hundred-dollar sale. Once they were on their way, Tricia pulled down the front display window’s blind. “That’s it for today.”

  Pixie gave Mr. Everett yet another curious look, but she went to the back of the shop, grabbed their coats, and the pair headed out the door.