Logan opened his door and waved both of us in without a word. His place was dark for the daytime, all the curtains presumably pulled shut for privacy.
"You've met my father, Finnegan Day. He's working with me on the case," I said. "He's retired now, but as you know, he's worked in law enforcement since before I was born. Definitely an asset to the team."
My father shook Logan's hand. "Sorry to be seeing you again under these circumstances."
Logan nodded. "It's always darkest before the dawn."
"Don't I know it."
A woman sniffed.
We all turned toward the woman sitting on Logan's sofa with a box of tissues next to her. Dharma Lake appeared small and frail, a shadow of the energetic woman I'd seen at the Fox and Hound. The auburn dye in her hair didn't suit her at all, and made her look even more haggard.
"Thank you for saving John's life," she said. "He called from the hospital as soon as he got there."
My father and I exchanged a look. Her husband knew where she was, and he was still in a sorry state.
We joined her in Logan's living room, which was arranged in the mirror image of mine. The familiarity only added to the strangeness of the situation.
Logan dragged over a chair from his kitchen table so he could sit across from me and Dharma.
"Your husband knows you're here?" I asked Dharma.
"He's known for a few days. I've been using the special phone your boyfriend got for me. He's such a clever—"
"Logan's not my boyfriend," I said quickly.
She looked even more lost, like she was about to slip into a catatonic state.
I reached out and placed my hand on hers. "Sorry, please keep going. I hope your husband's feeling better now. He seems like a very nice man."
She forced a smile. "You've got passion, dear. You give me hope for the future."
Logan interrupted to ask me, "What were you two doing at the Lakes' residence, anyway?"
I scratched the top of my head and gave Logan a look that said we probably shouldn't say everything in front of his client.
Dharma picked up on my body language and excused herself to use the washroom.
With her out of the room, my father and I explained the events of our day, from asking Marcy to trace the domain name, our brief visit to Kettner Insurance, then the search of Voula's house and subsequent discovery of the hidden space as well as the button, the research into the custom shirts, and finally, the call we paid to the Lake residence.
"That's very thorough," Logan said. "I wish all your hard work wasn't wasted."
"We've got more leads," I said.
"But I called you here to tell you it's over."
"Over?"
Dharma returned to the room, taking small steps. "It's all over," she said. "I'm sorry I've put everyone through all this fuss for nothing."
"Not for nothing," I said. "Just give us a few more days. We're looking into this ghost of a movie producer, and we have other leads."
Dharma shook her head. Her voice weak and trembling, like her spirit had been broken, she said, "There's no need for anyone to waste their time or money. I'm turning myself in."
She sat next to me, then squeezed my hand, like I was the one who needed comfort. "Everything will work out," she said.
My father said, "We'll have you out on bail in no time, I'm sure."
She withdrew her hand from mine and looked down at the floor, avoiding my eyes.
"No bail," she said.
"I'm sure your uncle would help," I said.
"There's no need," she replied, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "I need to pay for what I did."
My mouth went dry, and my words came out hoarse. "What did you do?"
She flicked her gaze up to mine. "Isn't it obvious? I shot her. I shot her to death."
Chapter 32
Logan drove Dharma to the police station to turn herself in, while my father and I drove back to his house. We were both in shock, and possibly denial.
"But she didn't do it," he said, yet again.
"She says she did."
"I've seen people confess to crimes they didn't commit. The public wants to believe every confession must be true, but it isn't. Being accused is such a nightmare for the suspect, a nightmare they desperately want to wake up from. Some of them see confessing as the only exit from the nightmare."
"Would they convict her based on her confession? She'll come to her senses before the trial, won't she?"
"I don't know. Did you see how weak she was? She might not make it to trial."
"Don't say that."
He reached over and fiddled with the volume for the radio. The DJ was talking about donuts, and even though I didn't usually have any feelings about that particular radio announcer, his voice was suddenly the most irritating thing on the planet and I wanted to punch him in the mouth.
We drove in silence while I tried to settle my anger.
Before turning herself in, Dharma had told us everything she could remember.
She remembered driving her van to Voula's house that morning, and how they'd had tea, then her memory got fuzzy. She did remember the feeling of the kick of the pistol in her hands, and how the shots were louder than she'd expected, even with thick earplugs in her ears. Then she was staring at Voula's body on the floor, blood pooled around her. She picked up the little doll from the floor, and then… nothing else. Her memory was a blank until after the vehicle accident, when she had some flashes of memory with an older female police officer draping a blanket over her shoulders.
I slammed on the brakes, checked over my shoulder, and made a U-turn.
"Dad, Dharma said shots. She said the shots hurt her ears, but Voula was only shot once."
"You're right. Just one wound, and the shooter didn't miss. There were no other bullet holes found in the room, but then again, the crack CSI team didn't locate the hidden room, so we can't say they're infallible."
"Dharma probably did fire the pistol, which was how the gunshot residue got onto her steering wheel, but what if it was at something else?"
"Or someone else. She grabbed the gun from the killer and ran him off!"
"The killer would have left on foot, because I only saw the van on the road. And the only other person I saw was a girl walking her dog. Does that seem suspicious to you? There's not another house around for miles."
"Lots of folks walk their dogs through there." He pointed through the windshield, at the hill the house sat atop. "There's a trail from town that leads right through there. It cuts across the property, which actually extends down the back of the hill in a wide swath, well into part of the forest. The kids ride their dirt bikes around there in the summer, and I remember we had a problem a few years back when the rental company put up fences and the kids kept taking them down."
He filled me in on the property and surrounding area, and we went over our game plan to search the house for other bullet holes to support our new theory. He explained how the holes were smaller than a layperson would expect, easily hidden in a ceiling of rough plaster if you didn't look inch by inch.
We pulled onto the road leading to the scary-faced house for the second time that day. The drive along the access road took us three minutes at moderate speed. I'd gotten run off the road at the midpoint, which meant… I got to use the algebra formula for two trains leaving two cities at different speeds, racing toward each other. Somewhere, a math teacher was smiling. We concluded that our mystery person could have gotten away in a vehicle unseen by me, if they'd had a one-and-a-half-minute lead on Dharma.
We parked in front of the house, got out, and paused to look down at the town again. Dusk had descended already, well before suppertime, as it does in a mountain valley in winter. Street lamps blinked on and shone like pearl garlands decorating the town.
My father said, "Before the sun goes down completely, we should check around the exterior. Who knows, we might get lucky and find a body under the snow."
"You call
that lucky? I don't consider finding a body under the snow to be all that fortunate."
His jaw moved, but Finnegan Day was actually at a loss for words. I'd gotten him with that one.
We trekked around the house, to the back area, which wasn't so much a yard, but a giant snowy field that sloped down toward the forest edge.
"They planned to subdivide this land," my father explained. "They cleared the trees, but then the developer built that house in the prime location and decided he didn't want any neighbors after all. The land's changed hands a few times over the years, but I'm guessing we won't have houses back here for a while. Nobody wants to look out of their windows at a murder house. Kinda ruins your appetite."
"Is that how you feel about the house next door to yours?"
He didn't answer, so I let the topic drop.
We kept walking. I scanned the snowy field for human-sized lumps, but found none. I did, however, see something interesting at the edge of the forest—the horizontal line of a fallen tree, with a red Coca-Cola can resting on the sideways trunk.
"Dad!" I ran toward the can and leaned down to inspect it. "Bullet hole! Right through the letter O."
He was slower than me, using his cane to keep himself steady, and huffing from the exercise. By the time he reached the area, I'd used my boots and bare hands to clear away the snow underneath the horizontal log. I'd found a dozen soda cans, all empty, but only three with bullet holes.
"We found our second victim," he said as he stuck his pinkie finger into an indentation in the nearest standing tree.
"Arboricide," I said with a chuckle. "Get it? We're looking for an arborist with lousy aim."
He struggled to not roll his eyes at my pun.
"These cans haven't been outside for long," he said. "Careful not to touch that one on the log. They might be able to pull some prints. Maybe."
He looked over his shoulder at the house, which seemed to be watching us, even though the eye-shaped windows were on the other side.
"Really? You think we'll get fingerprints?"
"The little button was too small to pull prints, but this is different. We're going to have to call it in."
"Sounds like a plan. You can make the call." I used my phone to take photos of the can and the target practice area, using the flash.
We started the walk back up the slope, slower than the speed we'd come down.
"I should send the photos of the cans to Logan," I said. "He can show his client and hopefully give her an alternate explanation for her memory of shooting the gun."
In a harsh tone, he said, "Don't get your hopes up."
I stopped walking and waited for him to catch up. Even in the dark, I could see the look on his face was pure misery.
"Are you feeling okay? How's the hip?"
He scowled. "I don't want to talk about it."
"You're doing great, though. Your walking is much better."
"How would you know?" he snapped. "You're always three paces ahead of me, dragging me all over hell's half-acre, without so much as a glance over your shoulder."
I bit my tongue, waited for him to catch up with me, and then walked beside him, consciously slowing my pace.
"Tell me to slow down if I'm walking too fast," I said gently. "I'm not a mind reader. You haven't taught me that yet, remember?"
"I could fill Gene's junkyard with all the things I haven't taught you."
I mouthed the word okay, but didn't say it. Everyone has their limits, and it had been a long day for both of us. The sun had slipped behind the mountains, and the sky was dark and cold.
I pulled out my phone again. The light from the screen obliterated my night vision, but I used it anyway, relying on my father to keep us heading in the right direction.
I'd finished exchanging a few messages with Logan by the time we got back to the house.
"Logan's still at the police station with Dharma, where she's giving her statement," I reported.
"You sent the photos?"
"Yes, and he told them all about the cans with the bullet holes. He said it was an anonymous tip, so they won't know it was us." The sound of a vehicle somewhere in the distance gave me a jolt of adrenaline. "Unless they come here right now and find us on the scene. I guess we'd better skedaddle."
"To the Batmobile," he said with a gritty forced cheerfulness.
We got into the car, and I started driving right away without letting it warm up.
In the dark, I could feel the bad mood radiating from him. I knew I should just let him be with his thoughts, but I couldn't help myself.
"Hey, how did lunch with Tony go?" I asked casually. "Did you two talk about the case?"
"I wish."
"Yeah?"
"Diaper stories," he said.
"Tony was telling you diaper stories? I really missed out."
"You haven't missed out on anything. Don't compare yourself to some impossible standard. Not everyone's cut out for marriage and raising kids."
I stared straight ahead. I'd meant that I'd missed out on the lunch conversation with Tony, not that I'd missed my chance at starting a family.
Had he given up? I hadn't felt hopeless until now, hearing my own father imply it wasn't going to happen for me. Instead of saying I wasn't at all worried about the bleakness of being single and thirty-three and one cat closer to spinsterhood, I busied myself with the car's many heater settings.
On the main road, we passed what I thought was the crime scene investigation van, but it was unmarked, so there was no way to know for sure.
My father warmed up along with the car interior, and started explaining what he knew about fingerprints. If the aluminum can had been outside since New Year's Day, it had been exposed to the sun and other elements for about four days. For fingerprinting, this meant finding the clear ridge detail necessary for a positive identification was unlikely, but not impossible.
It would be simple enough to match the bullet lodged in the tree to the one that had ended Voula Varga's life, though, so that was something.
I told him I was crossing my fingers they'd find Dharma's fingerprints on the cola can, or maybe even fingerprints from another party.
For the second time that evening, my father told me not to get my hopes up.
I attributed his bad mood to pain from his hip, because it wasn't like him to be so negative. He sounded resigned to the idea of Dharma going off to jail, even though it probably meant a death sentence for her husband.
That wasn't acceptable to me, though.
My father didn't raise me or my sister to be quitters.
I would hold on to my optimism, because I remembered what he'd said so many times, whenever I'd been down.
Never lose hope in your quest for the truth, because even a little hope can light the way.
Chapter 33
At the end of a very long day, I dropped my father off at his house and picked up Jeffrey in exchange.
In the car ride back to my place, Jeffrey sang me the songs of his people. I asked him if he took requests, and if he knew "Free Bird."
He did not.
All was forgiven when we got home and Jeffrey got his favorite dinner.
I kept the curtains open a crack and watched the window for Logan returning from the police station, but he still wasn't back by the time I went to bed.
January 6th
In the morning, I called my father three times before he finally picked up.
"You could have left a voicemail," he grumbled.
"Sorry. Were you in the shower?"
"No."
"Well, I don't know about you, but my back is killing me." I rubbed my sore hip while I slowly stretched from side to side. "I fell on my butt and got a bruise, but you had major surgery. I feel like I'm broken, Dad, so I can't imagine how rough your pain must be."
"It's a little better today," he said, his tone softer.
"Do you feel up to some investigating? We can look over the customer names from Sew It Goes. I have a new idea.
We can cross-reference customers with photos from the Polar Bear Dip that day. It was on the opposite side of town, so whoever was at the dip would have a good alibi."
"Don't bother. I talked to Tony last night and told him everything. He'll get the other customers from Denise, if they decide to pursue the button thing."
"You called Tony?" I took a deep breath and resisted the urge to yell at him. "Dad, you shouldn't have done that. We took the job working for Logan, which means we're working for Dharma Lake, not the people who locked her up."
"They wouldn't have even been looking for her if you hadn't identified the van, though."
"Thanks for pointing that out," I said flatly. "Because I haven't been torturing the hell out of myself over that little fact, nonstop."
"Listen, I understand you're frustrated, but Tony called me, and he was just confirming everything Logan had told them. Your friend didn't name us, but Tony's the kind of guy who can put two and two together. He's a good cop, and he's handling the investigation."
"So, this is it? We're done?"
There was a long pause, and then he said, "I'm going to make some calls to some old investigator friends and see if I can find you someone else to apprentice with."
"You're firing me?"
"Stormy, calm down."
The irritation in his voice, combined with those three irritating words—Stormy, calm down—set me off. What happened next wasn't pretty, it involved some swearing, and it ended with me saying something to the effect of, "You can't fire me as your partner, because I quit!"
January 8th
Doing a full inventory at my gift store took three days, which was two days longer than I'd promised myself it would take.
The previous owner's system for assigning codes to items that didn't have barcodes was slightly worse than no system at all. By the end of the third and final day, I was throwing non-coded mystery objects into cardboard boxes that were heading to my house, or the garbage dump, or back to the circle of hell from which they'd come.
My employee, Brianna, knew exactly what I was up to.
"Boss, you don't really need that many heart-shaped candles at your house, do you?"
Death of a Crafty Knitter Page 23
