By this point, the only people who actually wanted to be in that room were the reporters, who seemed to be basking in the glow of their own verbosity. But when they turned their attention to the chief of police, he quickly cut them short.
He answered three questions that had already been asked a dozen times then stood abruptly. “No further questions. There will be another press conference if and when more information comes to light.” He turned and marched out the side door.
My hero.
Who started a stampede. Suddenly everyone seemed desperate for fresh air, including the reporters.
As though it was the baton in a relay race, I extended an arm and stretched to slip a tidy sheet of prioritized talking points to Lila as she and Frank squeezed through the crush blocking the rear doorway. She flapped the paper in thanks and mouthed, “Talk later.”
I decided to hang around for a few minutes just in case. Lila had looked a little peaked, and she was tiny. She was Frank’s handler, for lack of a better term, so she didn’t need me lurking at the edge of the camera-shot framing for his television interviews. She’d be taking care of that herself—functioning as a blend of bodyguard, human teleprompter, and moral supporter. But I wanted to make sure she was up to the task, physically, and be ready to step in for her if needed.
I palmed my phone so I was prepared for an emergency call from Lila, but turned the other way, deeper along the deserted halls of the police station. It was like the quiet after a storm. I could hear the central heating system whooshing and clicking, trying to recover from the mass of warm bodies that had suddenly exited.
It seems that I am very good at bumping into people in doorways. This time, though, it wasn’t a broad belly but rather a tall and firm torso in brown herringbone accompanied by a steadying grip around my elbow.
“Eva. So you made it.” If it was even possible, Vaughn smelled better than he had the previous night.
“Highlight of my day,” I grumbled.
“Maybe I can change that. How about lunch?”
I scowled up at him. “Already? It’s not even ten o’clock in the morning.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t get a lot to eat yesterday. Gotta make up for it somehow.”
I had my mouth open for a smart reply about his eating me out of house and home when I saw that he was laughing at me. Quietly. In fact, just with his eyes. But before I could readjust to an escalated level of indignant sarcasm, he tugged on my hand. “Come meet the chief.”
People have so many layers. For most, I have no desire to learn what’s beneath the surface. But with the rare few, it’s an indescribable pleasure, an experience to be treasured, when they let you see who they really are. Lonnie Monk, chief of the Fidelity Police Department, was just such a person. I instantly knew why Vaughn hadn’t been worried about offending his chief’s ethical sensibilities.
There was an easy camaraderie between the two men. Not the hearty, back-slapping type of kinship, but more of a personal courtesy and respect, a quiet confidence and familiarity with one another. It was the only time in my life that I’d sensed such a strong absence of tension between two people. Oh—except with Sloane and me. We had it too, but I’d never witnessed it between other people before.
The chief was old enough to be Vaughn’s father—mid-sixties or thereabouts. And maybe their relationship held an element of the father-son bond; or mentor-mentee; or perhaps a type of apprenticeship where the pupil now matches his tutor for knowledge and experience, with the assurance of knowing the transfer has been completed satisfactorily and beneficially. I would have to noodle away at what I was observing for a while before I’d be able to categorize it.
“Your first body?” Chief Monk asked while he shook my hand. It seemed to be a popular question in law enforcement circles.
“Of the dead sort, yes,” I answered.
“Not the first at Marten’s Marina, though. The way the currents in the river work, that’s where floaters often end up. Roxy and I have held vigil several times there over the years, waiting for the ME’s technicians to arrive. How’s Roxy doing, by the way?” Chief Monk crossed his arms over his middle and rocked back at the hips into the classic cop stance.
Considering I’d only known Roxy for a few days, I settled on, “Persevering.”
Chief Monk chuckled. “Yep. She’s been doing that for years too. Give her my best. You two better get out of here while you can. Who knows what kind of scrum that media-fest in the parking lot is going to turn into.” He gave me a curt nod and exited through a heavy metal door that banged behind him, but not before I’d caught a glimpse of a police cruiser with its hood up, undergoing an oil change.
“The garage,” Vaughn muttered. “It’s his second office.”
I arched my brows in a silent question.
Vaughn broke into a full grin. “Where he goes when he doesn’t want to answer the phone. One of the perks of being chief—the mechanic can’t kick him out.”
We rode in Vaughn’s pickup. There was still a cluster of reporters and camera operators around the media vans in one corner of the parking lot, but I didn’t spot Lila’s small blonde head or Frank’s sandy-brown one among the crowd. The crews appeared to be packing up.
Vaughn eased his truck out onto the street and drove down Fidelity’s short retail corridor and then into one of the ramshackle residential areas. The front yards we passed were characterized by plastic children’s toys scattered behind chain-link fences and the occasional barking dog of desultory lineage. Beyond the dilapidated neighborhood, he pulled up in front of a derelict commercial building that housed a pawnshop, a beauty salon, and—in a tiny space at the end—a taquería.
That segment of the building was stuccoed and painted adobe-red for ambiance, with twenty empty picnic tables lined up in the weedy lot next door. Strings of faded Corona and Nigra Modelo beer pennants were looped on tall poles and crisscrossed over the tables as though the place doubled as a finish line for a marathon. All that was missing was a bunch of gasping, sweaty people in spandex. It did not look promising.
But I kept my mouth shut. Maybe Vaughn really liked my company. Or maybe he didn’t want to eat alone and would tolerate just about any type of fraternization to ameliorate his digestive process. If this hole-in-the-wall eatery was my competition in the culinary arts category, then Vaughn was far less discriminating than I had expected.
He pointed at a table and pushed through the door into the restaurant. I brushed off the designated bench with my hand and then cleansed both of my hands with a sanitary wipe from my purse. I settled my already numb bottom on the hard wooden bench and sighed deeply.
Vaughn emerged with two plastic baskets lined with parchment paper. Nestled inside the paper were the biggest soft tacos I had ever seen. Neat bundles of flour tortilla wafting delicate tendrils of steam.
And I learned that I couldn’t have been more wrong about Vaughn’s palate.
“Good?” he asked when I came up for air and licked my fingers.
I could only groan with pleasure.
We were alone out in the sunshine because most people don’t eat massive, debilitatingly delicious tacos in the middle of a weekday morning. However, I had no doubt the crowds would be arriving soon. I wished my stomach was bigger.
The timing wasn’t fantastic, but I figured I might not get another shot at Vaughn’s undivided attention—or nearly undivided since I was sharing it with only a magnificent taco. “So, not suicide?” I asked.
Vaughn quit chewing. “No,” he said warily.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“State secret. Unless you’re the murderer. In which case, you tell me.”
“I’m not the murderer.”
“I know.”
“But my client might be? Is that what you’re saying?”
Vaughn frowned and wadded up his greasy napkin. “I already told you he has an alibi for most of that very large time window.”
“Most,” I muttered. I collected loose strands of shredded beef that had escaped from my taco and popped them into my mouth. “Not an accident either?”
Vaughn answered by flattening his brows into two straight lines. I took that as a no.
“What about the women?”
Vaughn has very acrobatic brows. Now they were perfect arches over his faintly amused brown eyes. “What do you know about them?”
I shrugged. “Not much. Just that there were a lot of them.”
“Tell me about it.” Vaughn sighed.
“So that’s what you’ve been doing.” I chuckled. “Interviewing a bunch of emotionally distraught and bereaved women. No wonder you needed sustenance.”
“Not all of them are grieving Ian’s passing,” Vaughn admitted. “He tended to create a lot of animosity just before breaking up with them. Seemed to be a pattern.” He collected my basket and stacked it with his own. “Caveat emptor.”
I knew all about that.
CHAPTER 10
Vaughn dropped me off next to my ancient Volvo which was still complacently rusting away in the police department parking lot. Somebody could do me a great favor by stealing it, but I’d probably have to park it elsewhere to improve the odds of filing an insurance claim in the near future.
After a quick phone call to my sister, I set off on another round of errands, my trusty map once again gracing my lap. I’m old-school that way, the sole reason being that I am intimately familiar, due to my last job, with the nefarious purposes for which GPS can be used. There is no way I would willingly plug one of those devices into my car. Or use that feature on my phone, for that matter. I wouldn’t mind if we all reverted to using the Pony Express, but I don’t expect my views to be popular or practicable either.
Home improvement store, rental equipment place where I exchanged the pressure washer for a paint sprayer machine and the same clerk gave me the same degree of sparse instructions, and a little neighborhood grocery that specialized in fresh pasta. Since I owed Cal a lasagna soon, I had to outsource that particular aspect of the process to someone else.
I chose the full porcini sheets so I—or rather, Willow—would be able to cut them to fit my pan, which absolutely delighted the proprietor. He wasn’t sparse with his comments, and we ended up gabbing for close to half an hour in a very Italian way with lots of hand gesturing and free samples of his other products. It was all I could do to get out of the store without spending a hundred dollars, but it was also an inspiring experience.
How many navy-blue, beat-up Honda Accords were there in Portland? Probably a lot. The Accord is a popular car. In fact, I remembered seeing it on a list of the most frequently stolen vehicles in the United States. Alas, my Volvo had not been on the list.
But how many of the navy-blue Accords in Portland had a dent in the left front bumper and were burning enough oil to make visible chugs of smoke come out the exhaust pipe? And how many of them needed to go to the exact same places I was going and at the exact same times and in the exact same sequence as I was? It was a little disconcerting.
I kept peeking into the rearview mirror, but I couldn’t see the driver clearly. He or she hadn’t gotten out of the car or followed me around inside the stores. The car just seemed to always be there. Not tailgating, but following nonetheless. Patiently, too. The long-winded discourse on sauces and cured meats and cheeses at the grocery had proved that. Definitely creepy, but not threatening—yet.
I decided to hold my phone on my lap. Just in case a 911 call was in order.
I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. And I’d made arrangements to meet Sloane at the marina so we could get a jump on house painting while it was still sunny. So I headed for home, getting a crick in my neck while watching the movements of the car behind me.
When I slowed to pull into the marina’s parking lot, the Accord sped up and zipped around me, too fast for me to handle the turn and imprint the driver’s face on my memory at the same time. Gone—in a blur.
What silliness. I was being paranoid. But my chagrin didn’t stop me from levitating off the seat when the phone in my lap rang.
“Eva?” Lila sounded breathless. “Do you have a few minutes?”
Sloane’s minivan wasn’t in the parking lot yet, so I said, “Sure. What’s up?”
“Frank was just fabulous this morning,” she gushed. “I wanted to let you know to watch the news tonight—all four of the network stations will be airing at least a portion of his interview. Good stuff.” Lila sounded like a kid who’d just received a long-desired birthday gift. Performance is the currency of public relations, so I could understand her enthusiasm.
“Your talking points were perfect. Frank especially loved the trust fund idea. He’s getting one of his friends to set up a trust for Ian’s son. He can’t have the Cox and Associates name associated with it, of course—you know how it is—but he’ll see to it that it’s accomplished.” Lila carried on, providing a play-by-play recounting of the morning’s media hour.
I scrunched the phone between my ear and shoulder and popped the trunk. I could haul and listen, probably. Maybe a headset would be a good investment, considering my new living situation.
Lila chattered ebulliently while I shuttled supplies to my house and trudged back for the next load. And the next. And the next. The girl was either ecstatic or in a nervous tizzy, and I didn’t think Frank Cox’s problems justified either emotional extreme.
“Whoa,” I puffed as I leaned against the open door to the backseat of my car. I told myself I was just taking a breather before the final load. I interrupted her mid-sentence. “How long have you worked with Frank?”
“What?” Lila squeaked. “Oh, about two months.”
“Is that all?” I was being sarcastic—public relations is a notoriously transient business.
But Lila answered with timid somberness. “Of course. But we haven’t, you know—the other has been just recently. You won’t tell, will you? I mean, I know it’s not professional behavior to also have a romantic relationship with a client, but we’re keeping it strictly separate.”
How did I get into these things? Ugh. How, how, how???
For once, Lila was silent as though she expected feedback. Or perhaps exoneration.
“Let me guess,” I muttered. “His alibi?”
“Me,” Lila whimpered. “The detective asked, specifically, so I had to tell him, you know? But he promised to be discreet, no need for anyone to know except him—and well, now you.”
Terrific. I must have the word confidante stamped on my forehead.
Gravel crunched as Sloane pulled her minivan in beside my Volvo. She flashed me a broad smile and a thumbs-up through the window. Which gave me a marvelous excuse to extricate myself from the call and shoot house painting to the top of my priority list.
While I made good-bye and good-luck noises—which took some time considering Lila’s distraught condition—Sloane hopped out of her vehicle and pulled open the Volvo’s other rear door. She scooped the remaining items off the backseat and helped me carry them down to the house.
“Client?” she asked once we’d dumped the last load and I’d clicked off the phone and set it on the kitchen counter with a scowl.
“Yep.” I debated turning off the ringer, but figured I wouldn’t be able to hear it anyway with the racket we’d soon be making. “What’s that?” I pointed to a tattered manila folder she’d also placed on the counter.
“It was on the backseat of your car. Did you not want it brought down?”
“I don’t know what it is.” I flipped open the folder and was confronted with a sheaf of charts, graphs, and tiny font. Inside the front cover, someone had hastily scrawled a note—so hastily that I couldn’t read the handwriting, even with considerable squinting.
“Time’s a wastin’,” Sloane warned cheerfully.
“Right.” I tapped the folder and its contents into order and stacked it on my laptop, then I followed her out to the deck where the spraye
r and gallons of Grizzly—a sort of brownish-gray, or was it grayish-brown?—paint awaited us. I should get that job, the naming of paint colors. Probably where the big bucks were. To my discriminating eye, the paint was the color of weathered cedar shake, which I considered quintessentially appropriate, if boring, for a floating house tethered at a marina. And certainly better than the current rusting aesthetic of the cargo containers.
Sloane has a knack for mechanical things, so she tackled setting up the paint sprayer while I slapped plastic sheets and tape all over the windows and doors and draped cloths over the deck. Then it was just a matter of gophering after her as she quickly and precisely swathed the sides of my house with paint. I made sure the line stayed unkinked and the tank was refilled immediately.
Communicating through the noise and activity was difficult, but we managed to catch up with each other in short spurts. The kids were having grandma time—with Riley’s mother—so we could talk about grown-up stuff like jobs and shoes and tacos and the impropriety and inconvenience of other people’s romantic flings.
“I don’t get it.” I finally voiced the bothersome idea that had been nagging at me since Lila’s call. “What’s the point? If Frank is covered and not a suspect in Ian’s murder, and Lila knows this since she’s his alibi, then why are they both so anxious about their—or really, his—reputation? Wouldn’t it just be better for him to stay quiet, lie low for a while? They don’t need me.”
Sloane laughed and flicked the sprayer vertically along a narrow strip of metal at the corner of the house. “Sounds like you have yourself a sinecure.”
“Sounds like you’ve been sneaking a peek at Roxy’s word-a-day calendar.” I snorted, but Sloane’s observation was accurate. I had an easy, almost fluffy, job for which I had negotiated a hefty hourly fee. Show up a few times, make a few notes, listen to Lila’s woes. From all appearances, that was the extent of what would be required of me.
Mercury Rising (Tin Can Mysteries Book 1) Page 10
