by Leslie Caine
“Rebecca Berringer? We’ll see if they both have alibis for tonight’s shooting.”
Audrey beamed at her. “That’s an excellent idea. One that might actually get us somewhere.”
Linda left, and I sighed. “It’s been a long night,” I told Audrey. “I’m going to go clean up the broken glass and then—”
“Erin, we need to talk.”
“What about?” But I knew what she was going to say. My heart sank.
“We need to figure out what it is about you that makes you keep bashing heads with killers. If you don’t put a stop to all this amateur sleuthing of yours immediately, I’m going to host an intervention.”
Desperate for a diversion, I took a sharp right and wandered toward the den. “So—an oxygen bar, you were saying?”
The phone rang in our office on Monday morning. Michael’s voice was so strained with emotion that I scarcely recognized it. Sullivan had scooted his chair close to mine as we went over some plans for a living room makeover. He immediately asked me, “Michael?” and I nodded. He surprised me by giving my arm a reassuring squeeze before returning to his own desk. Even more surprising was the electric feeling that surged through me when he touched me.
I murmured a few cajoling words here and there as Michael rattled on and on, repeatedly asking who could possibly have done such a thing and why, vowing to avenge his wife’s death, wallowing in his guilt about his affair, and explaining that, sure, he and Shannon had had serious problems, but that “this was the last thing I wanted….” All the while, I was struggling to gauge his credibility. He sounded like a truly shocked, heartbroken man who’d lost his wife. “Every couple of hours, I forget that she’s gone. I’ll start to ask her about something, and then I remember. It’s like I have to keep reliving the shock of her death, several times a day,” he told me.
“I can’t begin to imagine how painful that is….”
“You can more than most, though. You just lost your brother.”
I gave no response, still too uncertain of his innocence to want to consider him as a comrade in grief, far too unsure of his guilt to want to treat him like a murder suspect.
“But I’ve been bending your ear too long,” Michael went on. “I called to tell you that the insurance company called me an hour ago. The roof and attic passed inspection. I can move back home.” He made a harsh noise in the back of his throat. “Ironic, isn’t it? Not to mention cruel. No way would Shannon have forgiven me this fast. I’d still be at the hotel.”
“It’ll be good to get out of the hotel, I’m sure.”
“I suppose,” he agreed with a sigh.
Sullivan was listening in. “Ask if we should come over,” he said quietly.
“Maybe we should drop by,” I told Michael. “Sullivan and I could give you a hand getting resettled…and discuss how you want us to proceed with the new design.”
“Terrific idea, Erin. I want to sell. I can’t live there again. Not knowing it’s where my—” He broke off. In a choked voice he said, hastily, “Sorry. I gotta go,” and hung up.
The morning flew by. Sullivan and I had a packed schedule, thanks to all of the appointments we’d been forced to postpone. When we arrived at Michael’s house at noon, his car was parked in the open garage.
“Bet he’s going to sell every last one of Shannon’s pieces at scalper prices, then buy himself a ritzy condo downtown,” Sullivan remarked quietly.
“He’d said he wanted to open a new restaurant,” I remarked as we made our way to the door. As I rang the bell, I had to battle flashback images of finding my brother’s and Shannon’s bodies just on the other side of this door. I certainly couldn’t blame Michael one iota for wanting to sell the place.
When Michael appeared, his skin was so pale and his eyes had such dark circles under them that he looked like a ghost. “Come on in,” he murmured. “Grab seats…someplace. I don’t know. I can’t even think of where to sit. Every room reminds me that she was—”
“Let’s just go sit at your kitchen table,” I suggested. As a chef, he would undoubtedly be the most comfortable in his kitchen. “Can I make you some tea, maybe?”
“No, no. I’m fine.” He ran his palm over his bald pate. “I can’t stay here. You have to help me get the house into marketable condition. As fast as possible. I just can’t bear it….”
“No problem,” Sullivan assured him, though his shoulders tightened visibly. “At the very least, we’ll need to get your front room completed. And the porch.”
A workman, with the visor of his Rockies baseball cap hiding his features, stepped through the back door into the kitchen, then froze. He pivoted as though he’d forgotten something. My warning flags were instantly flying, but the men had seen the guy, too, and yet they prattled on without concern. I was either being more alert than they were, or more paranoid. Probably both. I relaxed enough to add my two cents to our list of must-do items for Michael’s goal of getting this property ready to list.
In the corner of my vision, I spotted the skulking workman wearing the baseball cap. He’d now entered through the front.
Michael grumbled, “I just wish we hadn’t poured the cement for the courtyard. That was all Ang Chung’s nonsense—squaring off the house. Adding the gazebo.” His expression hardened. “I fired his ass. I don’t have any proof, but I think he’s the one who killed my wife. Maybe she finally caught on to how he was scamming her. But even if he’s innocent of murder, we’ve got to undo his lamebrain projects now.”
“Let’s take a look out back and see what we can do.” Sullivan and Michael promptly headed outside. Suspecting that the furtive carpenter was listening, I joined them, but then excused myself and doubled back.
I tiptoed down the hallway. The door to Shannon’s studio was closed. Carefully and silently, I turned the knob and peeked inside.
The carpenter in the cap was rifling through Shannon’s file cabinet. I recognized him at once. “Ang!”
He jumped back in surprise, then stared several inches above my head. “Your astral projections are seriously out of alignment once again, Miss Gilbert.”
“What are you doing?”
He donned an expression of innocence incarnate. “I’m simply following the dragon.”
“And you think that energy lines are in Shannon’s files?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. I was looking for the old geomantric charts that I’d given her.”
“Yeah, right,” I said through clenched teeth. “While you’re dressed like a workman and avoiding everyone.”
“You needn’t be so suspicious of my every little movement, Miss Gilbert. Shannon has been a huge advocate of mine. I’m the last person who would benefit from her death.” Ang gave me a wry smile. “Whereas, the word is that you have quite a track record for getting involved in homicides in this town. I hope you’re not abusing your relationship with the police department in order to escape detection yourself.”
“You’re accusing me?”
“Shannon Dupree did not kill your brother, you know.”
“I’ve never suspected her for a moment. She was speaking at a luncheon when he died.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And it never occurred to you that the hotel was only a couple of miles away? So she could have easily slipped away for fifteen or twenty minutes…long enough for her to return home, unmissed?” He let that nasty suspicion sink in for a moment, then asked, “Aren’t you afraid that the killer is gunning for you next, Miss Gilbert?”
“Are you afraid the killer’s gunning for you?” I shot back.
“I can take care of myself.”
“What are you really looking for in Shannon’s file cabinet?” I demanded.
“Something that could be embarrassing for me if the police were to discover it. But not so much that I’d take another person’s life,” he added solemnly.
Michael appeared at the doorway. His jaw dropped. “What the hell are you doing in my house!” he snarled at Ang.
�
�I’m looking for something that belongs to me.”
“Nothing in my house belongs to you! Get out! I’m reporting this to the police!”
“If you’ll excuse me.” After giving me a sneer, Ang brushed past Michael and strode out the door with his head held high.
At the end of my long day, my neck and shoulder muscles were aching as I made my way home. I needed to draw myself a nice hot bath and forget about everything for a while. I looked up at my bedroom window. Audrey had already had the damaged pane replaced. My spirits sagged. Two people had been killed. Why? To know which window was mine, the killer must have followed me to my house at some point. Was I the next target?
I unlocked the front door and stepped into the foyer, shutting the door behind me. I heard a slight noise. “Audrey?”
No answer. No doubt it was Hildi. Oddly, the French doors to the parlor were open. We almost always kept them closed.
I opened the closet, but hesitated before shedding my coat. Something didn’t feel quite right. I tiptoed over to the French doors. “Hildi? Come here, kitty.”
Hildi peered at me from around the corner. She trotted toward me, then she stopped. She let out a loud meow.
Before I could move, a hideous pain resounded in the back of my head. Instinctively, I put my hands out. The floor seemed to be rising to meet my face.
chapter 20
The pain in my head was horrid. Hildi sat two inches from my nose. Maybe I was hallucinating…. Then I remembered where I was and what had happened: I’d been knocked unconscious.
My vision swam as I struggled to my feet, ignoring Hildi. The door was open behind me. The intruder had to have run out that way. I could only have been unconscious for a couple of seconds; the air wasn’t even cold from the open door. I kicked it shut and staggered over to the sidelight. Through the beveled glass, I couldn’t see anyone running or starting up their car. My purse was on the floor. I sat down beside it, retrieved my cell phone, and dialed 911.
Linda Delgardio and her partner arrived in less than ten minutes.
“You told the dispatcher not to send an ambulance?” Linda asked.
“I’m fine. I already called Audrey; she’ll be home any second. She can drive me to the hospital if necessary.”
“Did you get knocked out?”
“No,” I lied. I didn’t intend to sit in the emergency room for half of the night. “At least, I don’t think so. I got knocked to the floor, and I shut my eyes for a moment. But I heard the storm door slam behind whoever did this.”
I’d gotten a bag of frozen green beans out of the refrigerator. It was now icing the lump on my head.
“Is there any chance you’re wrong about that?” Linda persisted. “About the intruder leaving through the front door, I mean?”
“No, I’m positive that I heard…” I paused and reconsidered. “I guess there’s always the chance that I dreamed that part. When I first started to get up, I had a moment of confusion, where I thought I’d gotten up and run to the door to try to catch whoever conked me, then that I lay down on the exact spot where I’d fallen, and opened my eyes. That had to have been a dream.”
“Yeah. Which you experienced when you were knocked out,” Linda said with a scowl. “Be sure you have Audrey take you to the hospital. Head injuries aren’t anything to dismiss.”
Or I could have Audrey watch me for signs of a concussion, or worse, tonight. I knew that Linda knew I wasn’t going to the hospital if I had anything to say about the matter.
Mansfield strode toward the French doors. “I’m going to check the house for signs of the intruder.”
“Okay, take me through what happened again,” Linda demanded of me in her investigator’s voice. “You unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Did you look around at all?”
“No, I entered and shut the door behind me.”
“So someone could have been standing behind the coatrack, and you might not have seen him or her?”
I glanced at the offending coatrack. It was a monstrous item that Audrey had purchased at a garage sale. Maybe I should pounce on this opportunity and suggest to Linda that they take it with them as evidence. “It’s possible, yes. That’s the direction I think the intruder rushed at me from.”
“Here’s how he got in,” Mansfield called. “The back door’s been jimmied.”
“Call for CSI to come out,” Linda called back. “Maybe we’ll get lucky for once and be able to lift some fingerprints.”
I was reconsidering my statement about the coatrack. “On second thought, Linda, all I really know is I didn’t hear anybody come through the door. So whoever did it was hiding in the foyer.”
“The intruder could have been hiding in the closet, then.” She glanced at my clothing. “And you still haven’t taken off your coat?”
“No. I’m cold.” Not wanting to get carted off to the hospital, I added hastily, “But not because I’m hurt, only because I’ve been holding frozen vegetables against the lump on my head.”
“Was the closet door open when you came home?”
“No, I started to take my coat off, but changed my mind. Then I thought I heard a noise—a small thump, which could have just been the cat.” I paused as a Gilbert and Sullivan lyric—“Silent be, it was the cat”—raced un-bidden through my addled brain. “At that point, I went over to the doors and called for Audrey, then Hildi.”
“Could the noise have come from behind you?”
“It felt like it came from over there somewhere.” I waved in the general direction of the den. “But maybe the intruder banged against the back of the closet. And I merely assumed the sound came from the other room.”
Linda pursed her lips. She put on plastic gloves and began examining the double-wide closet. She seemed reluctant to change the spacing on any of the coats and held them in place as she ran the beam from her flashlight over each one. She focused her attention on my London Fog raincoat. “Is this yours?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s been too cold to wear it the last few days.”
She patted down my coat, then reached into the pocket. “Is this yours?”
Dumbfounded, I stared at Linda’s discovery. “Oh, my God! How did a gun get into my raincoat pocket?”
Her partner rushed into the foyer and gaped at the gun in Linda’s hand. She frowned at him. He said, “I searched the main level and basement. No signs of the prowler.”
She nodded and gave a slight glance at the staircase.
“I’ll go check the upstairs,” he said.
Linda returned her attention to me. “I’ll bet someone was framing you and broke in strictly in order to put this firearm in your coat.”
“But…framing me for what? Taylor was killed with a nail gun. And Shannon was stabbed with her sword.”
She hesitated. “Friday night when your window was shot out? There’d been a related burglary in town, earlier. A forty-four Magnum was stolen.”
I watched as Linda slipped the weapon into an evidence bag, which she labeled. “And that’s a forty-four Magnum?”
She didn’t answer.
“Whose house was it stolen from?”
Mansfield returned. He must have “searched” the upstairs at a dead run. Linda told me, “I’m not at liberty to say. Sorry.” She gave me a sad smile. “I’ll take this into ballistics for testing. I have a feeling it’s going to match the slug and casing for the bullet that was fired through your window.”
“So somebody broke into a house and stole a handgun? Then shot a bullet through my window Friday and broke into my house tonight, just to hide the gun in my pocket? That makes no sense.”
Audrey had made a noisy entrance through the back door, and now she swept toward us. Her camel wool coat was unbuttoned and her face was flushed. Mansfield straightened his shoulders. “Evening, ma’am.”
She focused her laser glare on him. “This is unacceptable! If not downright appalling! I told you to keep a keen eye on my house, and this happens, three nights later!”
She curled her lip at him, then turned her attention to me. “Why would someone do this to you? Did you interrupt a burglary?”
“I don’t think so. The person who hit me stuck a handgun in my raincoat pocket. Apparently it’s the same type of gun that fired the bullet Friday night. Linda thinks someone’s trying to frame me.”
“For shooting out your own window? That’d be idiotic.”
“It’s possible whoever did this is trying to make it look as if Erin was trying to shift suspicion away from herself,” Linda explained. “If Erin hadn’t come home right when she did, the original plan probably would have been to plant the weapon and then place an anonymous call to us, reporting a prowler in your house.”
Audrey let Linda’s words sink in, then looked at me. “You have no idea who attacked you?”
I started to shake my head, which was a mistake. It hurt. “No, it was dark. And he or she was behind me the whole time. I think I might have been clocked with a flashlight, though. So if we see someone using a dented flashlight, we can arrest him on the spot.”
Audrey put her hands on her hips. “I don’t see how you can be so cavalier about all of this, Erin. You could have been killed. Or I could have been, if I’d been the one to walk through that door.”
“No chance of that. You always use the back door.” My knees were wobbly. I needed to lie down.
She gave me a withering look, and I held up a hand in apology. “Point taken,” I muttered hastily. I started to edge my way through the French doors, craving the chance to sprawl on the beloved sage sofa and restore my strength. “I was lucky…in that I wasn’t hurt any worse.”
Audrey shed her coat and started to reach for a hanger. “Stop,” Linda said. “A pair of crime scene investigators will be here shortly to test for fingerprints.”
“Oh. Of course.” Audrey folded the coat over her arm.
