by Mike Omer
“Mrs. Thompson, whose idea was it to use your mother’s name?” he asked.
“W—what? It was mine.”
Bernard pursed his lips. “Was it? You created the profile two years ago. I assume you were married then?”
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
“Did you talk to your husband about it?”
“I guess I did. We talk about everything.”
“Could it have been your husband’s idea?”
“What? No. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Whose idea was it to open your own online shop?”
She was silent for a moment. “My husband’s,” she finally said.
“In this shop, do you sell the same ointments and oils that your mother did?”
“Basically, yes. We branded them a bit differently.”
“Did your mother know about the shop?”
“No… not yet.”
“Would she have been angry if she had known?”
“No, I don’t think so—she’d have been happy for me.”
“Then why didn’t you tell her about it?” Bernard asked.
“I… I don’t know. I was going to…”
“In a few months?” Hannah interjected, her voice steely.
Sophia said nothing.
“Did your husband know that your mother was planning on including Val as a partner in her shop?” Bernard asked.
“I… yes, of course, I told him.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When did you tell him?”
“A week ago, I guess. We were talking about Val’s wedding, and I told him about it.”
“What happens to your mother’s shop now?” Bernard asked.
“I… I haven’t thought about it yet.”
She was lying; it was plain on her face. The shop, with all of its clients, would go to her. A perfect stream of income for a family struggling to keep their home. And no new partner. But Bernard doubted that she had it in her to kill her mother.
“Thank you, Mrs. Thompson.”
“Can I go?”
“Yes, you can wait outside. We need to ask your husband a few questions.”
Jack Thompson was a broad-shouldered man, his head completely bald, a constant frown on his face. The frown was even more pronounced as he sat down in front of the detectives.
“Haven’t you hassled us enough?” he said, his voice rough and heavy. “My wife is very upset. She needs to mourn her mother. Do your damn job and leave us alone.”
“We just have a few questions, Mr. Thompson,” Hannah said calmly. Bernard sat back, doing his silent and deadly routine, gearing up for an eruption of fake rage.
“Sure, what is it?”
“Where were you yesterday morning?”
“What? Now I’m a suspect? Why would I kill my wife’s mother? Are you insane?”
“Where were you yesterday morning, sir?”
“I was at work,” Jack spat angrily, his fists clenching.
“Where do you work?”
“I work in construction.”
“Did anyone see you there?”
“Sure. You can call Curt—he was with me the entire time.”
“Curt works with you?”
“Yeah. We’re on the same construction team.”
“Can you give us his phone number?”
Jack pulled a phone out and fiddled with it. He then dictated the number, and Bernard wrote it down.
“What time did you get to work?”
“About eight in the morning.”
“And when did you leave?”
“When my wife called me to tell me that her mother was dead.”
“Mr. Thompson, I understand that you’re having some money difficulties.”
“We’re doing fine.”
“Your wife said that you told her to keep reading online using her mother’s name.”
“Yeah, sure. If she stopped doing that, we’d be in deep shit.”
“And will you also be in deep shit when Valerie becomes a partner in the online shop?”
Jack looked at them, and Bernard could almost see the gears spinning in the man’s head. “She’s supposed to become a partner only after her wedding,” he finally said. “That’s three months from now.”
“And will things be better three months from now?”
“Maybe.”
“Because of the income from the new shop that Sophia opened?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“She said that you were the one who suggested she open it.”
“Yeah, it’s good money. Those people pay a lot of cash for some crushed herbs and berries.”
“‘Those people?’ You mean your wife’s clients?”
“Yeah.”
Bernard got up and left the room. He walked over to the squad room and picked up his phone, dialing the number that Jack had given them.
“Hello?” The voice was loud, gritty, reminding Bernard of his grandfather. He heard the engine of some heavy machinery in the background.
“Hi, is this Curt?”
“Yeah?”
“Curt, my name is Detective Bernard Gladwin. I’m calling about Jack Thompson.”
“Okay.”
“When was the last time you saw Jack?”
There was a moment’s pause. “He came to work yesterday morning,” Curt finally said.
“Do you know when he got to work?”
“Sure, we usually go to work together. We got there at about seven-thirty. I can check the time card, if you want.”
“That would be great,” Bernard said. “I’ll wait.”
“One sec…” There was a moment of silence. “Seven twenty-eight,” Curt finally said.
“And what time did he leave?”
Another moment of hesitation. “I don’t remember.”
“Doesn’t it say on the time card?”
“Uh, no. I think he forgot to sign out. He was distraught. He had a death in the family.”
“And you were with him the entire time?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“He didn’t take a long bathroom break, or anything like that?”
“No, man. Our supervisor is a son of a bitch. He would have noticed something like that.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Bernard hung up. As alibis went, this one was murky at best. He returned to the interrogation room. Jack Thompson was speaking, his voice tense.
“…don’t know what will happen to her mother’s clients. We’re still quite busy, trying to process it all.”
Bernard sat down and stared at Jack, his eyes narrowing. “When did you find out that Valerie was about to become a partner in the shop?”
“I don’t know. About a week ago.”
“Did you talk to Jacqueline about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Sophia and Jacqueline talked about it, and I wasn’t part of the discussion.”
Bernard decided that simply intimidating the man loudly wouldn’t work. Instead he said in a steely voice, “But maybe you decided to talk to her after all.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“In fact, maybe you tried to make her change her mind. And worried as you were about losing your house, maybe you got a bit angry.”
Jack Thompson folded his arms and looked at Bernard. His face was tense, but reserved. He said nothing.
“That’s why she bought that gun—she felt she had to protect herself from you,” Bernard said, but as he spoke, he was already kicking himself. The timeline didn’t fit. Jacqueline Mune had bought the gun two weeks ago, a week before Jack had found out about Valerie’s part in the partnership.
“That’s bullshit.”
“What happened yesterday morning, Mr. Thompson?” Bernard asked, raising his voice. “Did she tell you to stop pushing her about this partnership? Did she threaten to tell Sophia how you were intimidat
ing her? Or maybe you just figured that your life would be a lot easier with her dead, and her client list in your wife’s hands?”
Jack shook his head and began to stand.
“Sit down, Mr. Thompson!” Bernard roared, fake rage in full swing. “We’re not done! We have fingerprints and DNA. You think you were so careful? Do you think you wiped everything in that room? You missed a spot, Mr. Thompson! Do you really want us to hit you with everything we’ve got?”
Jack Thompson stood straight and looked deadpan at Bernard. “I think I want to talk to a lawyer,” he said.
Chapter Seven
Hannah went over to the murder board as soon as they finished the interrogation. She looked at it for a moment, thinking, then added a new suspect, writing the name Jack Thompson in a blue marker. She added Alibi: Curt (coworker) and left some room for an image she’d print later from a frame of the interrogation footage. Jack and Sophia had gone home. The detectives didn’t have anything solid to arrest either of them on, and as soon as Jack had asked for a lawyer, the interrogation had effectively been over. She chewed her lip, thinking. She could hear Bernard typing behind her, doing the paperwork on the interviews. He did most of the paperwork when they worked, despite his seniority. He seemed to like the routine of the reports. Hannah definitely didn’t complain. Like most cops, paperwork was one of the things she detested most about the job.
“Would she buy a gun to protect herself from her son-in-law?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Bernard said, turning toward her. “If he scared her badly enough.”
“But wouldn’t she have talked with her sister about it? With her daughter?”
“Well,” Bernard said, “maybe we just didn’t ask the right questions. We can drop by the sister’s house again. See what she thinks of her niece’s husband.”
“Yeah,” Hannah said doubtfully.
“He had a very good motive, Hannah.”
“The timeline for buying the gun doesn’t fit. And you also said he has an alibi.”
“Yeah, but it was his friend. The guy sounded hesitant. Like he had to think about his answers. Jack could have falsified his alibi.”
“He didn’t have any opportunity to contact his friend after giving us his number.”
“Maybe he was concerned in advance that we would suspect him, so he told his friend to lie for him,” Bernard said doubtfully.
Hannah shook her head, dissatisfied.
“It could also be Sophia, the daughter,” Bernard said. “After all, it’s her shop, and it’s her that gets all of her mother’s contacts. Probably inherits the house as well.”
“I doubt it,” Hannah said. “Whoever killed Jacqueline Mune was pretty cool about it. He cleaned all the fingerprints after the murder. Sophia doesn’t strike me like a person who could kill her own mother, and then just start wiping the fingerprints off the handbag.”
“I doubt it too, but her alibi is a lot flimsier.”
“That’s true,” Hannah said. She gave it some thought. Would Sophia have been able to chat with a customer immediately before or after killing her mother? She imagined Sophia coming to her mother’s house, talking to her, while simultaneously chatting on her phone with a client, establishing an alibi. Then, her mother went to the storage room to get something. Maybe the squaw vine. While she was in the storage room, her daughter rummaged in her handbag, pulling out the gun. Her mother came out of the room, Sophia shot her, cleaned up after herself while still occasionally chatting with her client, then walked out, alibi intact.
It would have been cold, calculated, and pretty improbable. But possible. Unless it was a video chat.
Hannah sat down in front of her computer. “How do I find the site where Sophia chats to her customers?” she asked Bernard.
“I don’t know if it’s just one site, but I’ll send you the link I found last night,” Bernard said. “Hang on.”
She waited for Bernard’s email, then clicked on the link he sent her. The browser opened, Jacqueline Mune’s photo above her profile. Hannah looked at the options. There was a video chat option and a standard chat option as well, both disabled since Jacqueline Mune was offline. Hannah wondered if Sophia would keep using her mother’s name now that she was dead. Probably not. With the clients from Jacqueline’s shop, they might even decide to focus solely on the online shop and stop the tarot reading altogether.
She read the profile descriptions, then scrolled down to the reviews. The majority were five stars. People gushing about the accurate reading they received, about how precise she was, how helpful.
There were thirty-two negative reviews. Hannah clicked the tab and began to read them, one after the other.
Four were from the same client, NilsD.
The first one was Didn’t answer specific questions, gave only general advice. Was very negative.
Hannah read it twice, then looked at the second review. I was left with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. This was not helpful.
The third took an aggressive turn. Why the HELL would she say those things? I DIDN’T ask her how to stay ALONE!!!
The fourth simply read, Never again. She’ll regret this.
“Hey, Bernard,” Hannah said. “I think I know why Jacqueline wanted that gun.”
Nils Denver’s address was in a residential building in Boston. On one hand, since Boston was definitely close enough, this made him into a much more likely suspect. On the other hand, it meant they had to go to Boston, which displeased Bernard and irritated his wife even more. She said there was a parent-teacher conference at Tom’s school, as he surely remembered (he didn’t), and that he was supposed to look after the kids while she went to the conference. He suggested that she call her mother to see if she could maybe look after the kids. Carmen muttered something and hung up.
The drive to Boston was slow, and they reached Nils’s building early afternoon. He lived in apartment 806. They went up the slow, cumbersome elevator, getting off on the eighth floor, and Bernard knocked on the door, hoping the man was home.
“Yeah?” someone said behind the door.
“Police,” Bernard said, flipping the badge in front of the peephole.
After a few seconds, the door opened. A gaunt pale man stood in the doorway, wearing a faded green shirt and baggy black pants. “Yes?” he said.
“Nils Denver?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Detective Bernard Gladwin from the Glenmore Park PD, and this is my associate, Detective Hannah Shor. Can we come in?”
“The police again? What’s this about?” The man had a whiny, annoying inflection to his voice.
“It’s about letting us in. Or we can take you to the police station for interrogation, whichever you prefer.”
Nils’s eyes widened and he stepped aside, motioning them into his apartment.
It was a small, cramped space. The entire apartment seemed to consist of two rooms and a small kitchen. There was a lingering unpleasant smell, as if Nils regularly cooked his unwashed socks for dinner. Nils himself had a case of bad breath, Bernard noticed as he passed by him into the living room. They sat down. Nils didn’t offer them anything to drink, and Bernard wouldn’t have accepted anything from the man in any case. He radiated uncleanliness. His hair was oily, his clothes were stained, his teeth were yellow and brown. They sat down on a sticky sofa, and Bernard tried to minimize the contact of the upholstery with his pants.
“So…” Nils said, his manner anxious. “What’s this about?”
“Mr. Denver, do you know a woman by the name of Jacqueline Mune?” Bernard asked.
Nils hesitated, looking confused. “Well, sorta, I guess,” he finally said.
“You guess?” Bernard asked. “And what do you guess your relationship with Jacqueline Mune is?”
“She did a tarot reading for me several times.”
“And were you happy with her reading?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Really?” Bernard took out a folded piece
of paper from his pocket and read from it. “‘I was left with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. This was not helpful.’ Didn’t you write this review, Mr. Denver?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You did,” Bernard said. “And three other reviews.”
“Listen,” Nils suddenly said, his face flushing, “how did you connect my username to me? Because if you got it from those bastards who run the psychic chat website, it’s illegal. I want you to leave.”
Bernard spoke, taking care not to breathe through his nose. “Online anonymity isn’t a law, Mr. Denver, nor is it a constitutional right. It’s a privilege, which you seem to have abused. We did get your details from the manager of the psychic chat website. They gave it to us, because we had a warrant. And you know why we had a warrant? Because a judge thought that the reviews you left on her profile mandated it.”
“My reviews? People write way worse things online.”
“I’m not sure at all, Mr. Denver. Would you mind telling me what made you so angry about Mrs. Mune’s reading?”
“Of course I mind. It’s private!”
“Were you angry enough to hurt her?”
“Hurt her? What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about going over to her home and hurting her.”
Nils stared at him, his mouth open in dismay, the smell of unbrushed teeth and rotting food slowly escaping into the closed space. Bernard felt the need to stop breathing altogether.
“Go to her home?” Nils squawked. “I’d never do that!”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Of course not!”
“Then you wouldn’t mind discussing some details,” Bernard said. “Just to eliminate you from the suspect list.”
“Like what?”
“Why were you so mad about Jacqueline Mune’s reading?”
“Because… I contacted her because I wanted her to tell me how to make this girl love me.”
“What girl?”
“A woman I met online. Paula.”
“And what did Mune tell you?”
“She said that she could see in the cards that I would be happier if I moved on. I told her I didn’t want to move on, I was in love with Paula. But she kept telling me that the cards were telling her that this wasn’t meant to be.”
