by Libby Kirsch
She stared at a tiny nick in the table, torn about what to do. Elizabeth had said that a cop was there the night of Ike’s murder, and that cop helped cover up the crime. Was Finch the helper that night, and Ike’s killer had decided to tie up loose ends? Or did Finch start asking too many questions and the killer got nervous? And if so, who was the killer? Another cop, or someone else?
“You can trust me, Janet.”
She almost opened up—almost told him everything she knew. But something stopped her. She couldn’t put her trust in the wrong person, and the only way to know for sure was to continue on with the plan she and Elizabeth had come up with—God, was it only a few hours ago?
She looked up from the table. “How much longer is this going to take?”
He broke the eye contact first and frowned. “Could be hours, could be all night, Janet. It’ll depend on those guys.” He gestured to the men—now numbered at four—who surrounded the Beerador.
“Go,” one yelled, and two men together pushed against the side of the heavy appliance, with the other two bracing it from the opposite side. They finally tipped it up enough so that one could slide the edge of a fortified, heavy-duty rolling hand cart under the bottom edge. With a crash they let go, and then with one dragging the cart and the other three surrounding the Beerador, supporting it with their arms, they pulled the refrigerator out from behind the bar.
A flurry of detectives and patrol officers flung tables and chairs out of the way, clearing a path to the door.
“Now what?” Janet asked, watching them drag her property off like a prize. With a pang, she realized she was going to miss that giant steel and aluminum bottle.
“Now they take it apart and see what evidence is hiding inside.” He leaned in, forcing Janet to turn and face him. “You can trust me, Janet. I’m here for you.”
His eyes were clear and convincing, but he seemed to be looking for something from her that she couldn’t give him. At least not yet.
“We’ll see, O’Dell.” She stood and headed for the door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Janet’s joy at finally being allowed to leave the Spot was quickly overshadowed by the wall of sound that hit her when she stepped foot in the parking lot. She looked over the crime scene tape that circled the lot in shock. A bevy of reporters, some standing next to the unblinking eye of news cameras, others holding out tape recorders, lined up and pressed in, yelling questions they couldn’t possibly have expected her to answer.
“What did you do?”
“Did you kill Detective Finch?”
“Who else is in there?”
“Are you guilty?”
“Are your customers all targets?”
Exasperated, she’d just opened her mouth to answer that last one when a nearby officer standing guard at the perimeter shook her head.
Janet realized with a start it was Officer Davis—the same cop who had been there when she’d found Ike’s body.
“Where are you headed?” the officer asked.
“Home, I guess. Looks like we won’t be able to open tonight.”
“No, I’d say not,” Davis agreed. “You be careful. Someone’s angry. Hard to guess who.”
Janet nodded slowly and climbed into her car without a word, chewing over the policewoman’s words. Someone’s angry. Until a couple of hours ago, she’d have said Finch was angry. Now he was dead.
But the list of angry people seemed long and noxious. Frank was angry about getting fired from his last two jobs. Abe’s wife, Vanessa, was angry, convinced her husband was cheating. Benji the lawyer was angry that Ike had gotten away with murder so many years ago. Ollie’s parents were angry that the police were complicit in protecting their son’s killer. Was Jason angry? She started up the engine, mulling that over. If she was being honest with herself, sure, Jason was angry with the cops for messing with his business. But she’d have guessed he was more angry at O’Dell for serving the subpoena than Finch.
Of course, she couldn’t know until she spoke to Jason. She picked up her phone and dialed his number using the keypad, instead of tapping his name, as if the process of pressing each number might make him more likely to answer. But once again, the call went straight to voicemail. She left Elizabeth a message, only advising her that the plan had changed, and that she should stay put at the church for now.
She stared out the windshield, barely noticing her route as she wondered why her boyfriend wasn’t answering his phone. What was he hiding?
Ten minutes later she pulled up to her house in time to see the SWAT team loading up their trucks, ready to depart.
“You Janet?” one asked, swaggering up to her car.
“Yes.”
“Here’s your key. It wasn’t as much fun as the battering ram, but I guess they can’t all be fun.”
“So no one was inside?”
“Nope.”
“Did you guys take anything?” Janet checked the trucks behind him, wondering if they were going to call her TV evidence and haul it away.
He pinched his lips together. “We’re not thieves, we’re law enforcement.”
She nodded. “Mm-hmm. Right. So, did you take anything?”
“No,” he said, before turning with a sneer.
The engines growled to life and all three SWAT trucks pulled away.
Janet stared uncomfortably at her house. It hardly seemed like home just then. Her boyfriend was gone and the police had been there more than she had in the last two days. Before she could shake the feeling of discomfort, Mel waved from the porch.
“Everyone okay?” Janet called, glad to have a reason not to go in her half of the duplex. “I hope they didn’t scare the baby!”
“Not as much as they would have if they’d rammed in your front door! What were they looking for?”
“Jason,” she answered, then said in a low voice, “Aren’t we all looking for Jason.”
She filled Mel in on the latest from the Spot, and the other woman whistled under her breath. “So . . . Now what?”
“Now we wait for the police to finish their investigation, I guess.” They stared at each other for a moment before Janet turned toward her half of the structure.
“You wanna stay here tonight?” Mel asked, and Janet felt a sudden urge to cry at the offer. But before she could even consider it, Hazel let out an almighty yell that shook the entire first floor. Mel chuckled. “I’m not saying you’ll get any rest, but you won’t be alone at least.”
“Thanks, Mel. I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t—” Mel cut herself off. After a moment she said, “Just be careful.” She shook her head as Janet turned to walk back to her car.
Maybe Mel knew that she wasn’t going to wait on the police. After all, they’d been wrong about just about everything so far. So she was going to get to work.
Finch’s murder felt personal, and Janet was determined to get to the bottom of things, even if that meant starting back at the beginning.
Margaret, Vanessa and Abe, and Benji—she wanted to talk to all of them again, but on her own this time, and she’d start, she decided on the fly, with the doctor and his wife.
Abe’s house looked much the same this time as the last, and Janet felt just as out of place as before.
Curtains fluttered at the house across the street and Janet knew she was on display as she walked up the path to the front door. She raised her finger to the buzzer, but before she pressed it, Vanessa flung the door open from within.
“What?” Gone was the matching athleisure wear from before. Instead, Vanessa wore designer jeans, a form-fitting sweater, and high-heeled booties.
“I’m sorry, are you headed out?” Janet asked, stepping aside to let her pass.
“No,” she snapped, her face twisted in dislike as she stared at Janet.
“Oh.” She’d never met anyone who dressed so meticulously to sit at home.
“What do you want?” Vanessa narrowed her eyes. “If you’re looking for Abe—and you should
n’t be, if anything you were a small, disposable distraction for him—but anyway, he’s not home.” She stepped back and made to move the door.
Janet stepped across the threshold, blocking the other woman. “I actually wanted to talk to you.”
Abe’s wife was so surprised, she stopped pushing against the door. “About what?”
“About the other night. In my bar.” Janet used her most superior tone, and it worked. The manners bred so strongly into Vanessa came out, and she looked abashed at the memory.
She leaned against the wooden door frame. “Oh, that. Abe insists I got everything wrong that night.”
“Not everything,” Janet said, hoping to shock Vanessa into letting her in. No one in this kind of neighborhood wanted an ugly scene outside. “Can I come in?”
Vanessa frowned but pulled the door all the way open.
Janet stepped into a massive entryway, about the size of her entire house. An actual crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, and a curved staircase wound its way up to the second floor. She followed Vanessa through to the kitchen, a room so immaculate she was convinced they did as much home cooking there as she and Jason did at their place.
“Wow,” Janet said when they were both sitting at a claw-foot, round cherry table surrounded by a wall of windows. “Great place.”
“Cut to the chase. Did you come here to tell me that you are, in fact, sleeping with my husband?”
“No! I’ve only met Abe twice. Once here, and again at my bar. He wasn’t there looking for me, though. He was looking for another woman.”
“Oh, well now I feel completely at ease,” Vanessa said with a scowl. “Thanks for coming.” She pushed up from her chair and made to move past Janet.
“Sit down, Vanessa. After I’ve had my say, then you can act shocked, or appalled, or whatever emotion comes to mind in your designer booties. Until then, shut up.”
Vanessa’s mouth opened and closed twice before she finally sank back into her seat. She had the impression Abe’s wife was grappling with how to deal with a rude person in her own house. Her every instinct must have been telling her to offer Janet a drink or hors d’oeuvres. She was trying hard to ignore those feelings and settled on looking over Janet’s head at the far wall of cabinetry.
Now that she had Vanessa’s attention, Janet took her time. “Did you know that Abe’s college roommate was hit and killed by a drunk driver?”
Vanessa didn’t answer, and Janet waited. Finally, she blew out a sigh and said, “Yes.”
“Did you also know that that man, Ike Freeman, was recently murdered behind my bar?”
A flicker of unease in Vanessa’s eyes put Janet on high alert.
“Yes, I—Abe did tell me that, yes.”
“What did he say?” Janet asked, curious as to what was making Vanessa so uncomfortable.
“He said that Ike Freeman was dead, that’s all.”
“Did you know that the murder happened the same night that Abe wasn’t here at home, and wasn’t at work like he’d told you?”
“No, I’m sure that’s not—”
“The very same night. You told him at the Spot yesterday that his administrative assistant didn’t know how to code the receipt from that twenty-four-hour diner. I did some digging, and it turns out there’s only one twenty-four-hour diner in town. It’s not by the hospital.” Vanessa fiddled with her hair, her eyes now magnetically attached to Janet. “Do you know where it is?”
She shook her head.
“It’s about two blocks away from the Spot.”
No response from Vanessa, save a line that formed between her drawn eyebrows.
“Why would Abe have been near the Spot the night that Ike Freeman was killed?”
“He . . . he took a shower right when he got home. That morning?” Vanessa stared over Janet’s head again. It was almost like she was talking to herself, except that her eyes occasionally flicked over to her guest. “And I found his clothes from that night in the outside trash can the next day. Not the kitchen trash can or the bathroom trash can. He’d taken them all the way outside. So I wouldn’t find them. I thought it was because—because he’d been with another woman.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes and Vanessa’s countenance seemed to improve with each passing second. She finally looked over at Janet with a victorious smile. “So, you’re telling me there’s not another woman?”
“Well, no—not another woman, but a murder, Vanessa—”
“But not another woman! All right. I can work with that.” Vanessa clapped her hands and stood up with markedly more spring in her step than when Janet had first arrived. “You’ve got to go. I’ve got things to do!”
“What things? You do realize that I’m telling you your husband may have been involved in another man’s—”
“Oh please. Even if that’s true, which I don’t think it is,” she added hastily as she steered Janet to the door, “I’m still not worried. All the lives Abe has saved in his career? And some old drunk who killed someone is dead now? My husband’s karma is just fine.”
Before Janet could think of a counterargument, she was alone on the front porch, her only company the echo of the front door slamming.
“Rich people are strange,” she said out loud as she headed to her car. She wasn’t ready to cross Abe off her list; in fact, he sounded more guilty than ever based on what his wife had said.
She circled his name on the list she’d made earlier and pointed her car across town. Time to check in with Ollie’s parents. It had occurred to her this morning that Detective O’Dell hadn’t asked them where they’d been the night Ike was killed. They had the strongest motive of anyone she’d met so far. Time to get some answers.
Chapter Thirty
Though Janet had been there only days ago, she was surprised to find the house looked the same. So much had happened over the last week, it felt like months, maybe even years, had passed. But the flowering shrub by the door had the same endless number of blooms, and she admired the plant as the door opened and Margaret walked out.
“Crepe myrtle. Dan loves them, he just planted two more out back. They never stop blooming.”
Janet reached out to touch the nearest flower. “The red is stunning.”
“Blood red.” Margaret walked down the steps to join Janet. “They’re hearty, and the blooms last. It’s a great combination. Janet, right?”
“Yes,” she said, startled that the other woman almost seemed to have been expecting her. “I wanted to ask you a few questions. Do you have a minute?”
“More than a minute. Why don’t you come in for some tea?” She turned and walked into the house without waiting for Janet to answer.
With only a cursory concern about walking into the house of a woman she hadn’t yet crossed off her suspect list in two murders, Janet followed her in.
The house was still and quiet. “Is Dan home?” she asked as they made their way into the kitchen.
Margaret put the kettle on the stove and went through the same methodical process of preparing the mugs. By the time the teakettle whistled, she still hadn’t answered Janet’s question.
“Dan always likes milk and sugar in his tea, but I think that masks the real flavor. You might as well just have chocolate milk at that point.” She looked up from the mugs. “How do you take it, Janet?”
“Plain,” she answered, the first prickle of unease touching her stomach. She took the steaming mug from Margaret and set it down on a coaster in front of her. It was just shy of one hundred degrees outside. She wanted a hot cup of tea like she wanted another dead body on her property.
Margaret blew on the surface of her tea and took a small sip before placing her cup on the table, too. “Perfect. What did you ask?”
“Ten minutes ago?” Janet stared at Ollie’s mother over the curls of steam between them. “I asked where your husband is.”
“Ah. Yes, Dan. Where is Dan. You’re not the only one asking that question.”
“
What do you mean?”
“Well, I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“What are you saying? He’s missing?”
“No, not missing. He left a note. Says exactly where he is going.”
“Which is where?” Janet asked, perplexed by Margaret’s demeanor. The woman was edgy and nervous, and kept looking out the window to the backyard.
“Well, it’s not that specific. He just says he needs a break and is taking some time for his health.” Margaret picked up her mug again and cradled it in both hands, like she was cold and needed the warmth. “It’s not the first time it’s happened. Dan doesn’t deal with things as well as he used to. This business about Ike Freeman, it just ate away at him after you and that handsome detective were here. He needed an escape, and I understand that, I really do!” She ended with such force that tea slopped over the side of her mug and she set it down without taking a sip. “This house has been an absolute hive of activity these last days. Reminded me for a moment of having a teenager at home.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just so many visitors. On Sunday it was Larsa.”
Janet leaned forward. Now she knew where Larsa had gone after she’d left the Spot. “What did she want?”
“What she did was make my poor husband upset. What she wanted? Who knows. She was a rambling, incoherent mess.”
“And it upset Dan?”
“Just all the talk, all the discussion about that day—the day Ollie died. You think you’ve forgiven everyone involved, and you spend a lot of time praying about the right thing to do, and you think you’re there! You think you’ve made it to this kind of holier-than-anyone-can-imagine space, where you still miss your son but you’ve done what you’re supposed to do. You’ve forgiven his killer. And then you realize, quite simply, Janet, that you haven’t. You haven’t forgiven the man who took your son, you haven’t forgiven the ones who helped him get away with it, and you’re in fact as angry as you were the day it happened.”
“So . . . Dan was upset?” Janet asked, taking stock of Margaret’s heavy breathing, red face, and glistening eyes.
