“You?”
“Look at me.”
“What do you mean? You’ve got good skin, nice hair, weight in proportion to height. . .”
She tilted her head as if considering. “Maybe.”
“All you need is self-confidence and an interest in making it with a married man.”
She smiled. “I guess I’ll never know.”
“Do you know a woman named Peyton Shilling?”
“That would be the current favorite.”
“They say,” I said.
“They say. Again, it’s just gossip.”
“So she’s not a friend of yours?”
She shook her head. “She’s older than most of us, twenty-six or seven, I think. Maybe even older.”
Wow, I thought. Even older than that.
“The word is Mr. Woodruff even moved in with her for a while, but things got messy, and he moved out again. I think she got possessive on him.”
“I saw some stuff on Instagram,” I said.
The girl smiled. “Me, too. A lot of us, actually. It wasn’t like she was discreet or anything. I heard she called his home even when she knew he wasn’t there, just to stick it to the wife.”
Gossip sure made the rounds. “You make Peyton sound like she’s not a very nice person,” I said.
“Oh, she’s not nice. Drop dead gorgeous, but not nice.” She glanced at her phone and stood. “Time’s up. I’ve got to get to class.”
The café had cleared out without my noticing.
“I’m Robin Starling, if you ever have anything more you want to tell me. Two bird names, easy to remember.”
“I don’t think I’m going to tell you my name. Really, I’ve just been repeating gossip. I wouldn’t want to testify or anything.”
“They wouldn’t let you, if all you know is gossip.”
“Good to know.”
I got up and walked with her to the door. “Of course, I like gossip,” I said. “And I’m always ready to hear more.”
She nodded, but turned away from me as we went through the door. I watched her walk to the next building. She was wearing jeans and a pullover, carrying a backpack on one shoulder. Nothing wrong with her looks, but she was pretty ordinary somehow, despite what I had told her. Probably too serious-looking to appeal to the Chris Woodruffs of the world.
I left off speculating and headed for my car. I had a dog waiting for me and maybe time for a run before Paul showed up.
Chapter 5
Or maybe not. When I turned onto my street, Paul's car was parked on the curb in front of my house. I turned onto the side street and into my alley and from there into the garage, and I entered the house through the kitchen. Paul was in my living room watching a rerun of The Big Bang Theory.
He pressed mute on the remote. “How was it?”
“Don’t you ever work?”
“I was out of town first part of the week. They cut us some slack.”
“You were at a two-day conference in D.C. being wined and dined like one of the lords of heaven.”
“You want to keep your government officials happy, don’t you?”
“Not that happy.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t like us when we’re not happy.”
I let it go. “You didn’t get Deeks,” I said. “Deacon.”
“You know why. If I get Deacon, he won’t let me in the house. I know he’s still a puppy, but he’s up to sixty or seventy pounds. He can be a scary guy.”
It was true. Deacon loved Paul, but he had taken it into his head that Paul wasn’t supposed to be in the house when I was away. I’d tried explaining the situation, but you know how dogs are.
“He’s happy over at Dr. McDermott’s. They both enjoy the companionship,” Paul said.
“Fair enough.”
We were crossing the street to Dr. McDermott’s when my cell phone rang. It was Carly. I swept my thumb across the screen.
“Hey, Carly.”
“The police are here.” Her voice was soft, pitched lower than usual.
“What do they want?”
“They’re searching your office.”
“What? You mean they’re presenting you with a search warrant, or they’re actually in my office?”
“They’re already in your office.”
“Who’s there specifically? McClane?”
“Is he the fireplug with the flat-top?”
“Yeah, that would be him.” Carly, while not as tall as I was, was every bit as tall as McClane, who had the shoulders and barrel-shaped torso of a much taller man. “Can you. . .never mind. I’ll try him on his phone.”
I punched off. “Trouble,” I said to Paul. We were on the front stoop of Dr. McDermott’s house when I found McClane’s number in my Contacts list. I punched it just as the door opened and Deacon surged out to jam his nose between my knees. For some reason I wasn’t ready for it, and I staggered back a step, Deacon following me, his tail a blur. I scratched his head with my free hand.
“McClane.”
“The police are searching her office,” Paul said quietly to Dr. McDermott.
Dr. McDermott stepped back, and Paul and Deacon followed him inside.
“What the hell are you doing in my office?” I said to McClane. I had planned to stay out on the porch, but the breeze was turning colder, and I hadn’t put back on my jacket for the walk across the street. When I went inside, though, I turned toward the kitchen instead of following the others to the living room.
“Well, good to talk to you, too,” McClane said.
“You can’t search my office. I’ve got attorney work-product in there. Searching my office is a violation of attorney-client privilege; it’s a violation of my client’s Sixth Amendment right to effectiveness of counsel; it’s—”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. We’re not opening any file folders, and your laptop’s not even here. We just want the pistol, which you yourself have admitted you have.”
“Had. Past tense. And a subpoena’s the appropriate way to handle this, not a search warrant.”
“We tried a subpoena, remember? And it got us squat. If you’ve got a problem with the new tactic, take it up with Aubrey Biggs, not me.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Not long.”
“It shouldn’t take you more than fifteen minutes to satisfy yourselves there’s not a gun in my office.” I hoped there wasn’t a gun in my office.
“We want to be thorough, be sure we’ve considered every possible hiding place.”
I took a few deep breaths.
“If that’s everything,” McClane said in preparation to punching off.
“Do you have the D.A.’s number on your phone?” I said. “I don’t think I’ve got it.”
“I think I can do that much for you. After all, we’re such good friends.” There may have been a touch of sarcasm there. Once upon a time, he had bought me coffee, and his wife had showed up in my office, and. . .well, suffice it to say, we weren’t especially good friends.
Dr. McDermott, who had come into the kitchen without my noticing, laid a phone book on the table by my elbow. I nodded my thanks.
“Here it is,” McClane said. He read it out to me. I didn’t have a pen handy, so I closed my eyes and made an effort to remember it, then punched off without saying goodbye and dialed.
Aubrey Biggs, at least according to his secretary, was on another call.
I punched off violently. Deacon was there nuzzling my leg. I put down my phone to rub his ears, but he yelped and pulled away.
“You’re expression’s as dark as a thundercloud,” Dr. McDermott said.
“Sorry. Sorry, Deeks.” He was back with his tail wagging, my apology accepted before it was made, and I rubbed the top of his head more gently. “The police are searching my office.”
“That’s what Paul said. Can they do that?”
“Evidently. I don’t have to like it.”
“May I offer you a hot beverage?”
/> My eyes went to Paul, who had gotten Dr. McDermott started on The Big Bang Theory a couple of months ago. The offer got a smile out of me, but I shook my head.
“Something stronger, perhaps? I’ve got Scotch, or we could open a bottle of cabernet.”
I stood, and my gaze was caught by the cars in front of my house, one of them a police car. My front door was standing open. “Holy cow!” I brushed past Paul, headed for the front door and moving fast—though not as fast as Deacon, who stayed right with me, even anticipating me so that I had to dance around his wriggling body to keep from tripping over him or stepping on his paws. It allowed Paul to catch up to me, and his hand closed over mine as mine closed on the doorknob.
“You can’t take Deacon.”
He was right. There was no telling how Deacon would react to unaccompanied strangers inside his house. It could get chaotic, and Deacon might get hurt. “Hold him,” I said.
Paul didn’t trust to the collar, which Deacon had slipped out of before when highly motivated. Paul knelt and hugged him, one arm around his chest behind his front legs and the other around his chest in front of them. I opened the door and went through it, conscious of Deacon’s toenails scrabbling against the tiled floor of Dr. McDermott’s foyer. The door closed behind me, and I ran down the sidewalk to the street.
Matt Tarrant met me in the doorway of my house.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I said, and he handed me a sheaf of papers. It was another search warrant. They were looking for the M&P Bodyguard or any other handgun that might have been used in the murder of Christopher Woodruff.
“You tell your boss I won’t forget this,” I said. “I’m going to be out for blood.”
“If you mean the chief, he doesn’t have anything to do with this. It’s all Aubrey, all the time. Besides, if we find what we’re looking for, your ass is going to be in jail.” He looked at me over the rims of his glasses with his pale, watery eyes.
I started past him into the house, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“I’d like for you to stay out here with me,” he said. “Better not to get in the way.
I held up the papers he’d given me. “What we’d like and what we get are often two different things.”
“Robin. Don’t start something here. There’s nothing in it for you.”
“If your men are going to trash my house, I’m going to watch them do it.”
And I did. There were four uniformed men in the house, and I watched them take out my dishes and glasses from the kitchen cabinets and set them on the counter, go through the stuff in my freezer, poke metal rods down into my canisters of flour and sugar and coffee. In my bedroom, they emptied my drawers and got up on a step-stool to shine a flashlight into the corners of my closet shelf. They took the lids off my toilet tanks. They looked under beds and under sofa cushions, and they lifted out my TV to see if anything was behind it or taped to the back.
Actually, the four of them were spread out through the house, working independently, and I don’t know what all they did, but they seemed to make a thorough job of it, checking out not just the house proper, but the front porch, the back patio, the garage, and of course my car. About forty-five minutes into it, Paul showed up, without Deacon, and he found me in the laundry room that separated the kitchen from the garage. I met his gaze and grimaced, and he gestured with his head back in the direction he had come.
I followed him. Matt Tarrant was in the living room, standing with his hips propped against the back of my sofa. He turned his head as we came in.
“If you find anything, it will be because somebody planted it,” Paul said. “You can see what they did to the French door.” I hadn’t yet replaced the broken pane, though I had cleaned up the glass so Deacon wouldn’t cut himself and cut a rectangle of cardboard out of a box to tape over the opening.
“You didn’t report a break-in,” Tarrant said.
“I don’t think that’s how they got in,” I said. “The window was broken from the inside.”
“Interesting.”
“It would be nice if someone other than me thought so.”
“I don’t disbelieve you.”
“But you don’t believe me either.”
“I’m suspending judgment.”
“Great. See how far that gets you.”
Paul was standing with his leg against the end table, his body hunched slightly so that his fingertips touched the surface. I looked at him quizzically, but he didn’t meet my gaze. My eyes moved down his arm to the end table where a cell phone leaned against the base of the lamp.
My mouth went dry. It was a cell phone, but not an iPhone. Not mine. And not one I’d ever seen before.
Fortunately, “cell phone” wasn’t on the search warrant. Two hours or so of searching failed to turn up a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard or any sort of firearm. The uniforms left, but Matt Tarrant hung back to say, “I think we’ve misjudged you.”
“Well, thank you, but it’s a little late for that. I’ve got this mess to clean up.”
“You’re even more devious than everybody says you are.”
“Maybe I’m just innocent. Has anyone considered that?”
He gave me a weak smile. “Time will tell,” he said.
I closed the door behind him, and Paul and I went back to stand over the phone.
“Should we touch it?” he said.
“I think I’d like Rodney to dust it for prints. Not that there are likely to be any.”
“Doesn’t it make you nervous that someone keeps walking in and out of your house like he owns the place?”
A shiver started between my shoulder blades and worked its way outward. It evidently showed.
“I’ll take that for a yes,” Paul said.
“You know, I misplaced my keys for a while early in the week. Tuesday. Had to borrow Brooke’s car that afternoon and everything.”
“Where did you lose them?”
“Carly ran across them in the kitchen later that afternoon. They were on the counter next to the coffee maker.”
“Do you remember taking your keys into the kitchen?”
“No. I’m not saying I didn’t, but I can’t imagine why I’d have been carrying them around. I missed them when I got back from lunch, and Carly had to let me in my office.”
“You need to have all your locks rekeyed.”
I glanced at the time on my DVR. “It’s too late to do it today,” I said.
“You know that means I’m staying here again tonight.” He held up his hands. “And don’t worry about hygiene. I went by my apartment before I came out here, and I’ve got enough clean underwear to last me a week.”
The next day was Friday, and I have to say, I was ready for the week to be over. I gave the cell phone we’d found to Rodney Burns and asked him to check for fingerprints. When he brought it into my office about thirty minutes later, he was carrying it with latex gloves.
I looked up into his face. “Anything?”
He shook his head solemnly. “Nothing, not even smudges.”
“Do you think someone wiped it clean?”
“That would be my guess.” He placed the phone on the desk and turned it to face me.
“Do you know whose it is?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I didn’t even try to turn it on.”
“Let’s see.” I put a thumb on the screen to hold the phone in place and pressed the button on the top edge.
“You do realize your prints are on the phone now,” Rodney said as the Samsung logo winked on.
“But now I’ll feel no compunctions about wiping them off.”
The wallpaper that replaced the Samsung logo was a picture of a very young child who I thought might be Caden Woodruff. I swiped the screen and was invited to enter the passcode.
“Do you recognize the baby?” Rodney asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I wondered what Caden’s birthday was. The easy way to find out—the cheap way, at least—was to call Wi
llow and ask her.
“I think it’s Caden Woodruff,” I said. “Son of the murdered Christopher. I don’t guess you could get me his date of birth, could you?” The screen went dark.
“Probably. You think that’s the passcode?”
“Maybe. Could be Willow’s birthday or Chris’s, or their anniversary—or anything else for that matter. Let’s try the boy’s birthday first. If that doesn’t work, I’ll call Willow and ask her if she knows the passcode for her husband’s cell.”
Rodney nodded gravely, and he left my office. I moved the phone to the edge of my desk, noted my purse on the floor beside me—in my rush to get the phone to Rodney, I’d just slung it against the right pedestal of the desk—and opened the drawer to put it away.
A black semiautomatic stared up at me. I shut the drawer and sat back. A poltergeist was playing games with me. I opened the drawer again, almost expecting to find the drawer empty this time, but the pistol was still there. I leaned over it, staring. It was a Smith & Wesson M & P Bodyguard.
“Robin?”
My insides lurched as I sat bolt upright, slapping the drawer shut. It was Brooke Marshall.
I exhaled tentatively.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Funny you should say that.”
She came in and sat down, but I was trying to think and found it difficult to meet her gaze.
“What’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”
“I need a man,” I said.
“What? That’s sudden. Shall I ask Rodney if he has a few minutes, or can you wait for Paul to get over here?”
“A man’s voice,” I said. “I need a man to make an anonymous call from the food court out at Regency Square Mall.”
“What is it?”
I shook my head. “It’s better if you don’t know, if nobody does.”
“How about the man you need,” she said slowly. “Can he know?”
I grabbed my purse by the strap as I stood up. “I’m going to the mall.”
Brooke stood, too. “Okay. I’m going with you.”
“You’ve got work.”
“As it happens, no appointments all morning.”
I focused on her. “Good. You can drive. I’ll call Paul on the way, maybe he can meet us.” I hesitated a moment, then unzipped my purse, took a pencil off the desk, and bent over the side drawer. Slipping the pencil into the barrel of the gun, I lifted it out of the drawer and into my purse. I zipped the purse shut.
Gone Ballistic (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Page 8
