Jada did as he asked, slowly sipping her drink. “None of my neighbors were outside. Not that I noticed, anyway. I remember a car driving by, though. Normally, I wouldn’t have paid any attention. Even though it’s a pretty quiet neighborhood, we do get some traffic when people miss their turn on the main road and use our loop to turn around. I only noticed this time because the car was moving slowly, like the driver was looking for an address, but then it suddenly picked up speed and took off. I never got a look at the driver.”
“Can you give me any kind of description of the vehicle itself?”
“It was a dark color. Black . . . no, it was blue. One of the smaller style SUVs. No idea what make, though.”
“Not a problem. Is there anything else you can think of about that day?”
When she shook her head, Gage quietly set his pen back down. He looked relaxed, but the methodical way he moved made Abby suspect his calm demeanor only went skin deep. Fear for what was going to come next ratcheted up her own tension. It was unclear if her mother had picked up on the dark undercurrents, but Jada looked as if she was about to bolt for the closest exit.
Gage finally leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at Jada with that hard-eyed cop gaze that had no doubt broken many a desperate criminal. Abby hated seeing him use it on Jada, but surely he wouldn’t go all tough cop on the girl unless it was warranted.
“That takes care of last night, Ms. Davidson.” But before anyone could relax, he added, “But I still have questions about what happened at the park the other night.”
Abby’s mother rushed to intercede before Jada could respond. “Don’t you think she’s been through enough for now, Chief Logan?”
Interfering with Gage’s investigation was never a good idea. Abby tried to head her off at the pass by stepping toward the table. “Mom, don’t—”
Gage waved her back. “Mrs. McCree, it’s fine if you want to sit with Jada. And if I have any questions you can answer, I’ll aim them at you directly. Otherwise, remain quiet. If that’s not possible, leave.”
Her mother’s eyes briefly widened in shock before narrowing in pure anger. “Excuse me, but this is my daughter’s house, not your police station. If anyone needs to go, it’s you.”
Abby slammed her coffee cup down on the counter. This time she wouldn’t be deterred by either her idiot of a parent or the angry cop in the room. “Mom, that’s enough. You’re way out of line here.”
The woman didn’t back down, not an inch. “No, I’m not.”
“You’re right about this being my house. I decide what goes on here, and I’m telling you to apologize to Gage and then leave the room. He’s conducting the interview with Jada here because he thinks it would be less upsetting for her than meeting with him at the police station.”
Jada shifted her gaze back and forth between Abby and her mother, her mouth hanging open in shock. Abby didn’t check to see how Gage was reacting to yet another McCree family squabble. “Well?”
Hands on her hips, her mother snapped, “I can’t believe you’re still siding with him against your own mother.”
Oh, brother! Seriously, when had the woman become such a drama queen? “Mom, playing the guilt card quit working when I was sixteen. This isn’t a case of us versus him. It’s a case of right and wrong—or have you forgotten this is a murder investigation?”
Her mother flinched as if Abby’s words had delivered a physical blow. She deliberately turned away from both Abby and Gage to focus on Jada. “If you are uncomfortable with anything that man asks you, you are within your rights to ask that an attorney be present to protect your best interests.”
Then she stalked out of the room and then up the stairs to the third floor. Even Gage winced when the sound of the bedroom door slamming echoed down the steps. It was tempting to go after her, but Abby stood her ground. She wasn’t wrong. Gage had every right to interview Jada.
It was his job, for Pete’s sake.
The flurry of powerful emotions left her badly shaken. It was time to sit down and try to restore some sense of calm in her mind. The best way would be to put as much distance between herself and everyone else as she could. But as bad as her mother’s behavior had been, she’d been right about not leaving Jada to face Gage alone. She took a seat at the table, careful to make sure her chair was no closer to Jada’s than it was to Gage’s. “If it’s okay, I’m going to stay. Jada, do you want another glass of water before Gage gets started again?”
“No, I’m fine.”
The words were spoken without hesitation, even though it was clearly not true. Rather than argue, Abby settled back in her chair, hoping if she faked being calm that it would help keep the tension in the room to a manageable level. For his part, Gage cleared his throat. “Abby, I’m sorry to cause problems between you and your mother.”
She waved him off. “It’s not your fault. We’ll work things out.”
Eventually. Maybe, anyway. For now, she would really like to get this interview over with so she could move on to other things. Maybe it was time to break out some food, her patented cure-all for stressful situations. “Zeke needs to go out for a minute. Meanwhile, I’ll fix us some snacks.”
If Jada thought that was weird, she didn’t say anything. At least Gage looked marginally more relaxed, no doubt recognizing her need to play hostess even if this wasn’t exactly a social situation. She left the back door open after Zeke charged outside. While she waited for him to return, she made quick work of plating up some cheese and crackers. By the time she had everything ready, the dog was back in position next to Jada.
The small respite seemed to have helped all three of them get back on track. Jada put a few crackers and slices of cheese on her plate. Unsurprisingly, she left the food untouched as she asked, “I’m sorry, Chief Logan, but could you repeat that last question?”
“I need you to go through what happened the night of the murder. Start with leaving your house and go right up until you returned home.”
It took a couple of deep breaths before Jada could get going with her narrative. “I met Mr. Quinn at the restaurant, so the two of us could set up the food truck together. I’ve only worked for him a short time, so I’m still learning the job.”
Gage looked up from his notes. “I understand before that you worked for your father.”
“That’s right. I officially started helping out my dad in his office when I was just sixteen—answering phones, doing the filing, stuff like that. Even before that, I did similar clerical stuff for him in his home office. Our plan was for me to finish my business degree and then come work with him as a junior partner. Basically, I was learning the business from the ground up.”
“Did you quit because someone else took over the office?”
“No, that wasn’t my intention at all. I just planned to take a few days to get everything settled after Dad’s death. I’ve only got what’s left of this summer quarter, and then two more, before I graduate. But when I stopped by the office to see if Mr. Anders had any questions about where things were, he informed me that I didn’t have a job.”
Abby interjected herself into the conversation. “Why not? You’d think he’d appreciate having someone who already knew the business and the people here in town.”
Jada’s eyes looked shiny as if she were fighting the urge to cry. “That man actually said I never worked for the company in the first place. At least there was no record of me ever having been hired by the home office. All I can figure was that Dad was paying me himself somehow.”
She briefly lapsed into silence as she nibbled on a cracker. Gage seemed willing to give her a little extra time to gather her thoughts. “What happened after that?”
“I went home. I was still too messed up from Dad’s death to argue with him. I returned a few days later and told him I’d come to get our things . . . mostly Dad’s stuff, actually. All I wanted were the personal items, nothing that belonged to the company. Mr. Anders refused to let me ta
ke anything and ordered me to leave. His excuse was that he hadn’t had time to finish inventorying the place yet. He said it would take a few days, and then he’d call me to come pick up everything. He never did, though, and wouldn’t return my calls. Meanwhile, I started looking for a job.”
Gage prompted her to continue when she seemed to get lost in thought. “So that’s when you went to work for Quinn.”
Jada nodded. “Yeah, I really needed to find another job right away, and he had a spot open. My tuition will be coming due soon, and I’m still trying to figure out where I am financially. I’ll probably need to hire someone to help me wade through all the legal mumbo jumbo.”
Gage moved on. “So the two of you loaded up the food truck. Was everything in place? Did you notice anything missing?”
“No, I didn’t, but I’m pretty new to the business. I’m still learning how it all works. If Mr. Quinn noticed anything weird, he didn’t say so.”
“Okay, go on from there.”
The rest of Jada’s narrative was pretty much on track with what she’d told Abby and her mother when they’d asked her the same kinds of questions. It was hard to figure out what Gage was thinking, but there was still something off about the sequence of events as she was laying them out.
Jada had been looking directly at Gage right up until when he pressed her on how long Owen stayed with her when he supposedly checked on her during the movie. At that point, she stared down at Zeke as if he were the most riveting sight on earth. For an experienced cop like Gage, it was like a shark scenting blood in the water, because he immediately leaned in over the table as if trying to get right up in the girl’s face.
“What did the two of you talk about while he was there?”
“He, uh, wanted to know how many customers we’d had since he’d left me alone and if I thought we were running short of anything. You know, that kind of stuff.”
Gage made a couple of notes and then flipped back through the pages in the notebook before launching another salvo. “Well, here’s the thing. We’ve talked to a lot of people who were at the movie or just walking the trails at the park that night. Seems several of them claim to have seen you heading out of the park toward Main Street at just about the same time you and Owen claim to have been together.”
He tapped his pen on his notes and then pointed at whatever was written there. “So here’s my problem, Miss Davidson. Either all of these fine citizens of Snowberry Creek conspired to mislead me for no good reason, or else you and Owen lied to cover for each other. I regret to say I’m inclined to go with that latter option.”
Jada sat in frozen silence with her eyes filled with pure panic and breathing as if she’d been running long and hard.
Gage wasn’t done yet. “I have a murder to solve and a burglary that may or may not be connected to it. I swore an oath to protect the people of Snowberry Creek, and I can’t do that if people are blocking me at every turn. I’m going to give you one more chance to tell me what really happened at the park, because I can’t help but wonder what the two of you were up to that night that makes it necessary for you both to lie to me.”
Jada’s lack of response only made her appear guiltier by the moment.
“Let me make this perfectly clear, Miss Davidson.” By this point, his voice was a low growl. “This is your last chance to convince me I shouldn’t take you down to police headquarters and put you in the cell next to Owen’s after you call an attorney.”
For the first time, Abby understood how silence could be deafening.
CHAPTER 17
The clock on the wall counted off the seconds. Normally, Abby didn’t notice the sound, but right now the ticking rattled around the silent room, stretching her nerves to the breaking point. If it bothered her so much, how much worse was it for Jada, the one actually in Gage’s crosshairs?
Finally, the girl whispered, “I didn’t kill Mitch Anders. I saw him, though, when he entered the park from one of the trails from the forest. He was carrying a lawn chair and a twelve-pack of some kind. As soon as I recognized him, I ducked down to make sure he wouldn’t see me.”
Her expression was bleak when she looked first at Abby and then at Gage. “You have no reason to believe me, but all of that’s true. I never went near the man, and I have no idea where he sat to watch the movie. I never went further into the park than the parking lot where we’d set up the food truck.”
She was speaking at a more normal volume now, maybe thanks in part to Gage giving her an encouraging nod. “Once the movie started, I didn’t have any customers. It occurred to me that I might be able to retrieve Dad’s stuff from the office. It was just some pictures and a few plaques for awards Dad had earned over the years. I mean, why wouldn’t Mr. Anders just let me get my things and be done with it?”
Her question must have been hypothetical because she didn’t pause long enough for either Gage or Abby to respond. “He’d already insisted that I turn in my set of office keys as well as Dad’s, but he didn’t know that we also kept a spare set at the house. I’d been carrying them with me in case I ever had a chance to sneak in when he wasn’t around. I couldn’t risk going during the day or when I didn’t know where he was. But when he showed up at the movie, I thought it might be my only chance. I slipped away from the food truck and took a roundabout way to the back entrance of the office. I was inside no more than about ten minutes. He’d dumped most everything in a box in the supply closet.”
Had the girl even considered what the repercussions would be if Mitch Anders had ever discovered the items were gone? If Jada was telling the truth, and the only things she’d taken had belonged to her and her father, she might as well have painted a target on her back. One call to the police, and it could’ve had a catastrophic effect on the girl’s future.
It still might, especially if Gage decided to play hardball.
Suddenly curious, Abby asked, “Was one of the items was a large picture of some kind that used to hang in that blank spot on the wall behind your father’s desk?”
Whoops, that instantly drew Gage’s attention in her direction. At least he looked more puzzled than angry. “And how would you know about a blank spot on the wall?”
She gave Jada an apologetic look. “My current insurance agent is a longtime family friend, so I never had a reason to go into your dad’s office. I happened to walk past it the other day. Curiosity got the best of me, so I stopped to look through the front window. The only odd thing I noticed was a big rectangle on the wall where the paint was several shades brighter than the area around it. I figured a large picture of some kind had been removed.”
Jada nodded, looking as if that picture was one of the more important items she’d recovered. “My father was proud of the time he spent in the military. It was a photo of him with his unit.”
Gage held up his hand before Jada could continue. “For now, let’s just say you decided to pay an unscheduled visit to your father’s office. Pick up the story from where you went from there.”
After giving Gage a puzzled look, Jada did as he asked. “I, um, made a quick trip to my car, which was parked down the street at Mr. Quinn’s restaurant. From there, it was a short jog back to the food truck. I stayed there until the movie ended. The only time I saw Mr. Quinn was when he stopped by in case I needed help to finish closing up, but I was already pretty much done. After that, I drove the truck back to the restaurant and unloaded everything that needed to go back inside.”
Her forehead wrinkled as if something bothered her about that. Gage noticed it, too. “Something you want to tell me?”
Jada bit her lower lip and winced before answering. “I was surprised he didn’t follow me back to the restaurant in case I needed help resetting the alarm. I guess he must have stayed with Mrs. McCree or something.”
Abby could fill in that blank for her. “Tripp asked him for his help in packing up the tables we’d set up for vendors. That’s where they were when my mother and I found the . . . well, you know. After th
at, we were all busy giving Gage our preliminary statements.”
She didn’t know if Jada knew Owen was the only one of them Gage had taken back to headquarters that night, and didn’t see the need to bring that up now. While Abby might be getting used to the idea of her mother’s relationship with the man, she hated that they still didn’t know the depth of Owen Quinn’s involvement with Mitch Anders. She still suspected the two men had known each other before Snowberry Creek. She didn’t have any hard facts to back that up, but she’d learned to trust her gut feeling in these matters. Whether that relationship was innocent or not had yet to be determined. Either way, that was Gage’s problem to deal with.
Right now she was more concerned about the break-in at Jada’s house. Until they knew if it was a random event or connected to the murder, she wouldn’t feel right letting her go back home, especially alone.
Gage closed his notebook. That left both Jada and Abby staring at him as they waited to see what came next. Finally, he pushed his chair back from the table as if preparing to leave, even though he made no move to do so. He studied Jada for several more seconds and then nodded, maybe to indicate that he’d made up his mind about something.
“For the moment, Jada, I’m not going to do anything about the fact you entered Mitch Anders’s office without permission. Assuming you told me the truth about what you took and why, it’s pretty much no harm, no foul. He’s not around to sign a complaint, and I doubt the home office will care about your father’s personal belongings.”
For the first time all day, Jada had more color in her face, and her eyes look less haunted. Maybe confession really was good for the soul. It also meant that Gage and, by extension, Abby had a few more facts to piece together. If they accepted that Jada had finally given them the truth about her actions, it cleared her of any involvement in the murder.
That was the upside. The downside was that it left Owen Quinn without an alibi for the time he’d claimed to be checking on Jada. Abby really didn’t want to be the one to tell her mother that interesting tidbit. The woman was already skating on the nearside of crazy, and this might just send her tumbling over the edge.
Death by Intermission Page 15
