I recalled seeing it. When I’d stopped by, I’d paused for a moment to say hello to Kenna. I’d noticed that there was a safe in back of her, and that it was big and solid-looking. “Can you check and see if the buttons are there?”
“Now?”
“Would you mind?” I asked.
“No problem. Hold on.”
I listened to the Blue Dolphin’s on-hold message describing the week’s specials—baked stuffed lobster and buckets of littlenecks, the first of the season. I started salivating.
“The jewelry box is there,” Bobby said. “Right where it should be.”
“And the buttons?”
“Right—they’re there, too.”
“How many of them?”
“Two.”
One on the McCardell coat. Two in Riley’s jewelry box. Where was the fourth button?
“So one is missing—and you don’t know where it is?”
He paused again, maybe thinking it through, like me, and wondering if any of the suspects besides him had a connection to the sorority.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe Riley gave it to someone.”
I couldn’t imagine Riley, known for valuing tradition and heritage, giving away one of Babs Miller’s buttons. The bottom line was that either Bobby didn’t know where the missing button was, or he wasn’t telling. Either way, I had no leverage to make him come clean, and I couldn’t see how I could get any.
Kenna’s eliminated as a suspect, though, I thought. With the safe located behind her desk, if she’d needed to replace a button, all she would have had to do was take it. Or not. If it were me, I’d be too scared. As far as I knew, she and Bobby were the only people who had unfettered access to the safe. Talk about raising a red flag. If anyone came looking for Babs Miller’s buttons—like me—Kenna would have turned a spotlight on herself. I shook my head. No way was Kenna involved.
Tracking the button had been a good idea, but from what I could tell, it was just another dead end.
* * *
Cara buzzed up to tell me that Wes was on line two. I thanked her and punched the blinking button.
“Nancy Patterson just called Blackmore’s to see if the button is ready,” Wes said. “He told her to come in at noon tomorrow.”
I heard myself inhale sharply and felt my pulse spike. “Did anyone recognize her voice?” I asked, knowing the police were listening in.
“No.” He lowered his voice. “The police are already at the shop, setting up their cameras and planning their on-site surveillance.” Before I could comment, he added, “There’s more. Go to our Web site. We just uploaded an interview.”
I brought up the Seacoast Star’s Web site and saw a frozen image of Wes standing in front of a blue backdrop featuring his newspaper’s logo. My cursor hovered over the triangular PLAY button.
“Is your paper moving into TV?”
“Nah. We’re just adding a little multimedia content to the Web site, you know? Go ahead, play it.”
I clicked the PLAY button.
“Nancy Patterson,” Wes said into an unseen camera. “A common name. A name that has come up in connection with the Riley Jordan murder investigation, possibly as a made-up identity. According to the police, a woman named Nancy Patterson bought a gun on Thursday from a Maine dealer—the day before Gretchen Brock was shot and two days after Riley Jordan’s murder. Here’s what Roland LeBlanc told me just hours ago.”
The video went black, then came up showing a parking lot and part of a log building.
“What did you see?” Wes asked a man standing next to him.
“I didn’t wait on her myself,” Roland said with the laconic delivery and downeast twang of a native Mainer. “My boss did.”
“Did you see her?”
“Ayup.”
“What did she look like?”
“Don’t know. She wore a big straw hat and sunglasses. Couldn’t see her face.”
“What did she buy?”
“Don’t rightly know,” Roland said. “The police took the receipts.”
“Where is your boss now?”
“Fishing. He took his boat out for a couple of days.”
“According to official reports,” Wes said into the camera, “the Coast Guard is searching likely coves along the Maine coast for an eighteen-foot boat named Gone Fishing. If you spot it, you’re asked to call them immediately.”
Wes’s image faded away and was replaced by an 800 number running along the bottom like a banner.
“A woman bought a gun on Thursday?” I said into the phone.
“Amazing, huh? She bought it around 7:00 P.M. The store stays open until eight on Thursdays. No security cameras, can you believe that? At a gun shop? My sources tell me she bought a rifle, but I don’t know which model yet.”
“It’s so frightening, Wes,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed sounding not the least bit scared. “Catch ya later.”
* * *
I could tell from Wes’s high-energy sign-off that he felt exhilarated, not upset at all. I, on the other had, felt seriously shaken. I tried to imagine how the woman calling herself Nancy Patterson was feeling. Was she calm and controlled, planning the alibi she’d use to cover her trip to Blackmore’s the next day? Was she sitting with Bobby, coldly calculating their next moves? I considered the timeline.
For whatever reason, Riley got suspicious that the rumors about Bobby’s infidelity were true.
She asked Max for help.
Max hired Gus.
Gus took compromising photos and e-mailed them to Max.
Max called Riley, probably on Monday, the day she called his office wanting an immediate appointment.
As soon as Max told her he had news, she would have asked him to forward the photos to her so she could look at them right away, and privately. She saw them, freaked out, and picked up the phone to schedule an appointment. She must have been heartsick, beside herself, and ready to act.
When she saw Max on Tuesday, he would have handed her printouts of the photos. Sickened by them, she probably tore them to bits, and one tiny piece accidentally fluttered into her tote bag.
I shook my head. It couldn’t have happened that way. If it had, the police, having commandeered Riley’s computer, would have found the photos. I considered alternatives until a possible explanation came to me.
At Prescott’s, we deal in huge graphic files all the time. Sometimes it’s a hassle since many e-mail systems don’t allow large files to be sent or delivered. Our solution is to create private pages on our Web site where we post the images. By uploading photographs to a Web site, and giving its unique URL only to the people we want to be able to access it, we make it easy for clients with limited e-mail capacity to see the images. If they can access a Web site, they can view the photos.
I wondered if Gus had done something similar. In addition to hidden pages on a Web site, he could use an online photo scrapbook or an FTP site. Whichever option he chose, I bet he did what we do: e-mailed the instructions; otherwise customers have no way of finding the location or knowing the password.
I called Ellis and got him at his desk at the police station.
“I know you’re going to tell me it’s none of my business, but I had an idea I wanted to pass on. Am I correct that you didn’t find any photographs in Riley’s possession, ones she might have looked at just before she died? Like in the glove compartment of her car?”
“What are you asking, Josie?”
I bit my lip. There was no way around it. I had to reveal what I’d seen. “While I was waiting for you to come and pick up Riley’s tote bag, I peeked inside. The side ties weren’t pulled tight, so I could see in without touching anything. I noticed a bit of ragged emulsion, and it got me thinking about photos and why she might have ripped them up.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“If Max showed her photos of Bobby and another woman, for example, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn she’d destroyed them. I fig
ure that a little piece fell into her bag and she didn’t even notice it.”
“And if she had?”
“After the initial shock wore off, I bet she wanted to see the photos again. That would be my reaction. It’s like poking your tongue at a tooth that’s aching. It hurts and you don’t want to do it, but you can’t resist. The point is that almost all photography nowadays is digital, and some of the files are too big for some personal e-mail systems and most smart phones. Assuming I’m right, if whoever Riley hired to take them uploaded them to a Web site for convenient viewing, they probably e-mailed instructions on how to access the site. If the e-mail simply said to go to this Web site, whoever you have reviewing Riley’s e-mails might not have realized its significance.”
“This is good thinking, Josie. Thanks. I’ll follow up right away.”
As soon as he found the photos, he’d know the killer’s identity. Now was the time to call in a favor. I needed Wes’s police source to tell him who it was immediately. I called him, and his phone went directly to voice mail.
“Call me, Wes,” I said. “It’s urgent. I have news.”
* * *
I couldn’t concentrate.
I had the itchy sense that something significant was happening or that it was about to happen. Things were closing in. Something was going to break long before noon tomorrow.
Becka.
It has to be her, I thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
After staring at the phone for fifteen minutes waiting for Wes to call me back, I got up and paced, walking from my desk to the cabinet containing my rooster collection and back. Back and forth. Back and forth, over and over again.
I wanted to be there when the killer realized the jig was up.
I stood near one of the guest chairs and dialed Becka’s number at Hitchens University. Her direct line went to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. I called the English Department, and the secretary told me Becka had called in sick. I tried her home number and got her answering machine. Her cell phone went to voice mail.
I pushed the button for a new dial tone and called Wes again.
“I was just about to call you,” he said. “I was in an interview before, so my phone was off. What’s up?”
“Where’s Becka? Do you know?”
“She’s not at work?”
“No. They said she’s out sick, but she doesn’t answer at home or on her cell.”
“Maybe she’s sleeping,” he said, not understanding my urgency. “Why do you want her?”
I repeated the idea I’d passed on to Ellis, then added, “It’s got to be Becka, and I want to be there when she’s brought in for questioning. How can we learn where she is?”
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “I’ll call you right back.”
I continued to pace, thinking. It all came back to the button. A pearl rosette button Hank found. Finding its history had been easy. Margo was helpful. The sorority’s Web site was impressive.
“Oh, wow,” I said aloud.
I stood in the middle of the carpet. Implications ricocheted in my brain, boom, boom, boom. Riley’s Burberry trench coat had been buttoned to the neck. Riley decided to give Bobby a second chance. The fax Dr. Walker sent had been altered. Hitchens’s vacations aligned with Bobby’s trips to Honduras.
How could I not have known? I asked myself. I didn’t want to know, I answered. That explains why the police haven’t been able to find the phone Bobby used to break up with his mistress. He told her in person. I sank onto the love seat, my mouth open, my heart racing. Or he hadn’t told her at all. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t stand it. I felt sick.
I knew who’d killed Riley—and I knew why.
* * *
Seconds later, I gave myself a mental shake, grabbed my tote bag, and ran for the stairs.
As I dashed by Cara, I called, “I’ll be back.”
I dialed Wes as soon as I was on the road.
“Meet me at the Blue Dolphin,” I said. “Bring a camera. Stay out of sight.”
* * *
I parked in the city lot on Market Street and jogged across the street, entering the alley that ran behind the Blue Dolphin on the far end. As I rounded the corner, a man wheeling a dolly came into sight. I slowed my pace to give him time to reach the street. As soon as he’d turned onto Bow Street, I scooted up the alley and stepped behind a copper tub filled with pansies and tall grasses at the Ceres Street end. By leaning to the right I had an unobstructed view of the front door. I watched Ellis drive up in his SUV and park at the curb. A Portsmouth patrol car rolled to a stop just behind him. Two men, one in uniform, one in plainclothes, stepped out of the Portsmouth police vehicle. Ellis and Detective Brownley joined them on the sidewalk. Ellis said something, and the man in the suit nodded, then the four of them strode inside.
Within minutes, I heard a rustling in the tub to my left and turned, expecting to see a squirrel or a bird. It was Wes.
“You picked a good spot,” Wes said, “assuming what we’re supposed to see happens out front.”
“It will.”
“What do you know?”
“I figured out who they’re after. Given the timing, I’m certain the arrest will occur here.”
“You know who it is?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
A toddler ambled past the alley opening, catching my attention. A young woman wearing a lightweight red anorak, his mother, I assumed, followed close behind. From her doting smile and the way she matched his unhurried pace, I could tell she wasn’t the least bit bored or impatient. The little boy was talking to himself, or maybe to an imaginary friend. Cars passed, a Mini, then a Camry. A Mercedes pulled into a parking place near the Bow Street Emporium. An older woman with silvery gray hair got out, dropped a quarter in the meter, and ran into Hot Buns, a new bakery known for its rich desserts.
“Who is it, Josie?” Wes asked again.
I shook my head. He’d learn soon enough.
He didn’t push. We stood and watched and waited. The screams, when they began about ten minutes later, were shrill and sustained, reaching a crescendo just as the Blue Dolphin’s door flew open and Ellis appeared. I glanced at Wes. He held a palm-sized video camera aimed at the front door.
“Resisting won’t do any good,” Ellis said, his voice calm.
Detective Brownley appeared on Ellis’s right, followed by the uniformed Portsmouth police officer. “Come on, ma’am,” she said to someone inside.
In tandem, they took a step onto the sidewalk, then another, and just like that, they eased their prisoner onto the street.
Ava.
She tugged and yanked and kicked, her thick-soled white waitress shoes nearly connecting with Detective Brownley’s shin. Ava looked so young.
“Stop it!” she screeched. “You don’t understand! It was a mistake! Stop it!”
I stepped out from behind the pot, and as soon as she saw me, she stopped flailing.
“Josie,” she shouted. “Help!”
“Ava,” I said.
“It was an accident.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“It was an accident,” she repeated, seeming to gather strength as she spoke. “It was all a mistake.”
A slight scuffing sound alerted me that Wes, still hidden behind the copper tub, had shifted position.
Ellis caught Detective Brownley’s eye and patted the air, signaling that they should hold steady. Detective Brownley nodded, indicating that she got the message. The Portsmouth detective stepped outside, saw what was happening, and paused under the shell-shaped overhang. Ellis looked at me and lowered and raised his chin one time, a mini-nod. I got the message, too. If I could keep Ava talking, he wanted me to do so.
“What was a mistake?” I asked her.
“Really, Josie,” she said, her chest heaving, “it wasn’t my fault.”
I nodded. “Tell me what happened.”
; “Riley was upset about me and Bobby,” she said, sounding ingenuous, as if Riley’s reaction was irrational or had caught her unawares.
“Really?” I asked.
She paused, and her expression changed. There was none of the ingenue in her now; she was all viper. She raised her chin. “So she said. I think it was all pride and insecurity, myself. I told her the truth—the only reason Bobby stayed with her was for her money. She didn’t want to hear it, but it was true.”
I could tell that she was sincere, and that made it even worse.
“Bobby loved me,” she said, “but he needed Riley’s money.”
“You don’t care about money, do you?” I said.
“Not a bit. All I care about is Bobby.”
“Is that what you told Riley in the parking lot?” I asked, aware that to a stranger listening in, it would sound as if we were having a normal conversation.
“Yes, exactly. Riley had learned about Bobby and me from her lawyer. To tell you the truth, I was glad it was out in the open. I was tired of living a lie. I knew Bobby would be upset, though. We talked about his leaving Riley all the time, for months. He told me not to be shortsighted, that a little patience now would pay off later, big-time.” She snorted, an ugly, derisive sound. “Riley told me to leave him alone. As if. She was delusional, that’s all, just delusional, and I told her so. Riley said that Bobby had promised to break up with me, that he was taking her to Crenshaw’s that very weekend. I told her Bobby was playing her, that he would do and say whatever was necessary to keep her money. I showed her my button. I told her Bobby gave it to me because he loved me, but she still didn’t believe me.”
“Did you tell Bobby that you’d had the run-in with her?”
She nodded. “Yes. Right away. I went straight to the Blue Dolphin.” She smiled, remembering. “Bobby told me not to worry about anything, that he’d smooth it out with her, no problem.”
The snake, I thought. How could he? I glanced at Ellis, and he nodded.
“When did you get the button, anyway?” I asked, trying for a neutral tone, hoping Ava would mistake my horror and dismay for empathy.
“Christmas Eve. When Bobby gave it to me, he said it was a token of his love.”
Deadly Threads Page 24
