by Paige Sleuth
She spotted a cluster of gym employees huddled in the parking lot. She recognized Fred, Brawn New You’s sixtyish owner, and Mikaela. She didn’t know the middle-aged man standing with them by name, but she often saw him working around the gym. He seemed to be in the middle of telling them something.
Kat scooted closer and cocked one ear in their direction.
“She was getting ready to do laps when I finished mopping, but she was very much alive and breathing,” the man said.
Mikaela caught sight of Kat and straightened. “Oh, hey, Kat. I didn’t know you were here.”
“Just waiting for Andrew.” Figuring Mikaela’s acknowledgment was as close to an invitation as she would get, Kat sidled closer. “I gather you all are talking about Ellie.”
“Not much else on the brain right now,” the middle-aged man said, smoothing back his short, salt-and-pepper hair.
Fred clapped the man on the shoulder. “Kat, have you met Harvey? He’s our equipment maintenance man, custodian, handyman, and go-to guy all rolled into one.”
“You take care of the pool as well?” Kat asked Harvey.
“I do. I finished my morning maintenance there about fifteen minutes before Ellie was found.” Harvey’s shoulders slumped. “She came in as I was leaving.”
“She had to have been killed,” Mikaela said. “Ellie was too good of a swimmer to have drowned accidentally.”
Fred eyed her down the bridge of his nose. “Now, you don’t know that.”
“Why else would the police be here?”
“That Andrew guy, he was working out when it happened,” Fred replied. “I’m sure he only took charge because he was already on site.”
Kat knew otherwise, but she wasn’t going to be the one to tell them about the blow to the back of Ellie’s head.
“Kat,” Mikaela said, “didn’t you find her?”
“Me and Diana, yes.” Kat turned to Harvey. “You said you saw Ellie entering the pool area. Was anyone else around at the time?”
Harvey shook his head. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but Fred interrupted before he could get a word out.
“What are you insinuating?” Fred asked, his eyes narrowing at Kat.
She spread her hands. “Nothing. Just that Harvey might have seen who did this.”
Fred pinned Mikaela with a look. “Why does everyone insist someone besides Ellie is responsible for what happened to her?”
“Why are you insisting someone isn’t?” Mikaela shot back.
“Because it makes us look liable.”
“Oh, Fred.” Mikaela’s face softened. “Nobody blames you.”
“Of course they do. It’s my gym.”
With beefy forearms and a rock-hard body, Kat couldn’t deny Fred was an intimidating figure. His build combined with the fact that he didn’t look happy made him almost frightening.
Mikaela rested her hand on Fred’s forearm. “I know you’re concerned about the gym’s reputation, but I don’t see how anybody can find you at fault. I mean, it’s not like you killed Ellie.”
Taking in Fred’s hard face, Kat wasn’t sure she shared Mikaela’s confidence. The gym owner certainly looked capable of murder at the moment.
For that matter, either Mikaela or Harvey could have done the deed. Both looked to be of above average strength, and Kat knew for a fact that Mikaela practically lived at the gym. She not only taught a couple fitness classes a day, but Kat frequently spotted her using the weight machines in her off time.
As for Harvey, maintaining a gym had to be physically demanding work. Kat often saw him mopping floors, oiling the machines, and even rearranging some of the equipment—back-breaking labor that was as good as, if not more, effective than targeted weight training.
How hard would it have been for either one of them to karate-chop Ellie in the head when she had her back turned?
Mikaela eyed her colleagues. “Did either of you speak to Ellie recently?”
Fred shook his head while Harvey said, “I nodded hello to her when I was leaving the pool area, but that’s it.”
Mikaela turned toward Kat, a questioning tilt to her head.
Kat shrugged. “She was fostering one of our 4F cats, but I haven’t talked to her in a week. Why?”
“Because I did talk to her, just yesterday, in fact,” Mikaela said. “And she was acting kind of funny.”
“Funny how?” Kat asked.
“Funny like uncomfortable, I guess. She kept looking around. You know like how people do when they’re hoping not to run into a certain somebody?”
Kat thought of how Diana had avoided the subject of Ellie earlier. Could Diana have been the person Ellie wanted to avoid?
“Ellie’s always been so friendly,” Mikaela said, “so seeing her like that struck me as kind of out of character.”
“You’re reading too much into things,” Fred said. “She probably had a squabble with somebody and merely didn’t want to get into it again.”
“I’m not imagining this. Ellie looked uneasy.”
Harvey squinted at her. “Any idea who she wanted to avoid?”
“No. But whoever it was, I guess they found her anyway.”
Mikaela’s statement hung in the air, casting a pall over their little group.
Andrew exited the building. Kat’s heart beat a little faster at the sight of him. She hoped he was coming to tell them they’d caught Ellie’s killer.
He stopped in front of Fred. “I’d like access to the lockers.”
He briefly met Kat’s eye over Fred’s shoulder. She gave him a slight nod, figuring he was following up on her report about how anxious Diana had been to gather up her things.
“The lockers?” A crease bisected Fred’s forehead. “What do you need to get in there for?”
“I have to consider the possibility that one of your clients killed Ellie,” Andrew replied. “Assuming he or she is still on the premises, perhaps I can uncover some evidence to advance our case inside one of the lockers.”
Fred pressed the tip of one finger into the cleft on his chin. “So you’re saying this was murder? You’re sure of it, Detective?”
“You can still call me Andrew,” Andrew told him.
Fred shook his head. “No can do. I can’t have people thinking I’m getting chummy with the lead investigator when my place of business is the scene of a crime. They might think you’re easing up on procedure because we’re pals.”
Kat suppressed a smile. Anyone who knew Andrew would never mistake him as a person willing to bend the rules, no matter the circumstances. In fact, she wouldn’t doubt she herself had made his list of suspects.
“Hey,” Fred said, slanting toward Andrew, “do you think you can keep what happened here under wraps?”
Andrew leaned back. “Excuse me?”
“If word of this gets out, it won’t be good for business. If you could just keep a lid on it, I’d really appreciate it.”
Andrew stared at Fred as if a third eye had sprouted in the middle of his forehead. “I can’t do that. This is a homicide investigation. My goal is to speak with as many people as possible. You never know who might have information crucial to our case.”
Fred pressed his lips together, appearing to consider that. After a few seconds, he snapped his fingers. “Hey, what about this. You talk to whoever you need to, but you leave out the fact that Ellie died in my pool. Think that’s possible?”
“No.”
Fred’s face fell.
Mikaela touched his elbow. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Fred. I’m sure everybody in town already knows every gory detail. That’s the way the grapevine works here.”
Kat didn’t think her comment would offer Fred any comfort, but he actually nodded.
“So,” Andrew said, hooking his thumbs through the belt loops of his slacks, “the lockers? I need somebody to open them up.”
Fred frowned. “That might be a problem.”
“How so?”
“They’ve each got
their own key. See, my patrons, they show up, they choose a locker, drop in a quarter, then take the key. When they’re finished, they return the key for the next person and get their quarter back.”
“I’m familiar with the system,” Andrew said. “But don’t you have a master key?”
“We did, once.”
“So, where is it?”
Kat could tell from Andrew’s increasingly curt tone that he was losing his patience.
“Gone.” Fred splayed his fingers as though to demonstrate he didn’t have the key hidden on his person. “One day it was in my office, and the next it was missing.”
“And you didn’t have a replacement made?”
“Nope. Truth be told, we’ve got enough lockers. I can’t recall a time when somebody said there wasn’t one free to store their stuff.” He shrugged. “Look, if we lose a key here or there, it’s no big deal. We just leave that locker out of commission.”
“Yeah,” Mikaela piped up. “There’s one in the women’s room that’s been locked for months.”
Fred shot her a glare, clearly not appreciating her contribution to the conversation. She held up her palms and scooted closer to Harvey.
“All right.” Andrew glanced at his car. “In that case, I’ll get my crowbar.”
“What?” Fred’s hands balled into fists. “You can’t do that!”
“I’ll only bust open the ones I can’t get into using other means. Lucky for you, most of the people present this morning chose to stick around until they could get their things.”
Fred’s jaw clenched. “You do any damage, your department’s paying for it.”
“Gladly.”
Fred’s nostrils flared as he spun around and stormed toward the building. Kat watched him retreat, pondering over whether his belligerence might be masking another emotion, one he didn’t dare let show.
After all, whoever had killed Ellie had to be worried the police were closing in on them.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Did you manage to get into Diana Feather’s locker?” Kat asked when she and Andrew were in his car on the way to Ellie’s house.
“I glanced through it, yes, with her permission.”
“Her permission?” Kat twisted sideways to face him better. “You mean she was there?”
Andrew kept his eyes trained out the windshield. “I asked if she would allow me to search her things, that I was going through all the lockers as standard procedure. She agreed.”
Kat couldn’t deny that Diana’s acquiescence surprised her. “Did you find anything?”
“Nothing to cause alarm, no.”
“I bet she accessed her locker before you could get to it and removed anything she didn’t want you to see,” Kat said, struggling to account for Diana’s change in attitude.
“It’s certainly possible. We told everybody to stay in the fitness room until I had a chance to question them, but, except for me, most of the crew on site had their hands full processing the area near the pool. We didn’t have any extra personnel left to monitor whether anybody ignored our instructions.”
Kat sagged against the passenger seat. If she had known that, she would have made it her own personal mission to track Diana’s movements while Andrew was conducting witness interviews. But she didn’t bother to mention that. He would probably just point out that in the police’s eyes, she was as much of a suspect as Diana.
Diana was forgotten entirely when Andrew turned down Ellie’s street. “That’s Thunder,” Kat said, lurching toward the windshield.
“Who?”
“Thunder, Ellie’s foster cat.” Kat’s eyes locked on to the big Maine Coon sitting in Ellie’s driveway. His brown-and-tan markings stood out in stark contrast to the white concrete. “The 4F foster cats aren’t supposed to be let outside.”
Andrew eased toward the curb. “Does Ellie have a roommate?”
“No.”
“Then maybe the cat snuck out.”
“Maybe.” But Kat doubted it.
She had a bad feeling about this. First, Ellie had turned up floating in the Brawn New You pool with a bump on the back of her head. Now, her foster cat was outside the house. Ellie had always struck Kat as a responsible foster parent. Even if she were going to fudge the rules and let Thunder out for a few minutes, she wouldn’t have left him unsupervised. So how had he ended up in the driveway?
Kat didn’t know, but this whole situation was making her stomach churn. It didn’t help that Thunder looked upset. His amber eyes were hooded, and his striped tail flicked back and forth on the pavement.
Andrew shut off the ignition, and they climbed out of the car. He set one palm on Kat’s forearm when they caught up on the driveway.
“Stay here until I verify the coast is clear,” he said, his voice low and his eyes on the house.
Kat bobbed her head in acknowledgment. Evidently she wasn’t the only one with a bad feeling.
Andrew headed toward Ellie’s front door, and Kat made her way over to Thunder. The cat pointed his tail vertically in the air as he ambled over to meet her halfway. He obviously remembered her from their previous encounters.
“Hey there, Thunder,” she murmured, crouching down to stroke the cat’s luxurious coat. “What are you doing out here?”
A purr rumbled deep in Thunder’s chest, and he pressed the black patch between his ears against her leg.
Several yards away, Andrew knocked loudly on Ellie’s front door. “CHPD,” he announced in a loud, clear voice. “Anybody home?”
A crash sounded from the back of the house. Kat shot to her feet, prompting Thunder to twist his body around and hiss.
Andrew jogged toward the side of the house, his right hand resting underneath his jacket where Kat knew he kept his gun holstered. “Get back in the car,” he yelled over his shoulder without breaking stride.
Kat bent down to pick up Thunder, but he jerked out of her reach. She tried again, with the same result. Her chest squeezed with the urgency of their situation. She couldn’t leave Thunder alone and in potential danger, but maintaining a hold on a spooked Maine Coon was nearly impossible. Thunder weighed close to twenty-five pounds, most of it muscle.
Movement out of the corner of her eye snapped her head sideways. She caught sight of someone’s backside as he dashed between two hedges a couple houses down. He had a loping gait, a byproduct of long legs, she surmised. She watched him cut through another yard before ducking behind a neighbor’s garage.
She stood there, paralyzed. Her heart was pounding as if she had been the one running. She waited for the man to reemerge, but Andrew ran into view first.
His gaze zigzagged from right to left. “You see where he went?” he shouted at her.
“That way,” she called back, pointing.
Andrew sprinted off, but Kat didn’t figure he had any hope of catching the man. He looked to be in good shape, a dedicated runner.
Kat glanced at Thunder. The cat had sat back down, but she could tell he was in no mood to give in to being manhandled. His head was pointed in the direction where the man had disappeared, and there was an intensity to his gaze that hadn’t been there earlier. Did he recognize the man? He had to be the reason Thunder wasn’t in the house.
Andrew returned five minutes later. Or maybe it was closer to one minute. Kat couldn’t tell. She had lost track of time.
“He’s gone,” he said, pushing the words out between breaths.
“Do you think he’s the guy who killed Ellie?”
Andrew shrugged.
“He looked fit,” Kat said. “He might know Ellie from Brawn New You. He could have seen her standing by the pool and hit her on the head when she had her back turned.”
Andrew’s eyebrows crept up his forehead. “How do you know she was hit on the head?”
“Uh.” Kat shifted her weight between her feet. “I might have overheard one of the crime scene techs say something.”
Andrew didn’t reply, but his silence seemed to be more the product of ca
tching his breath than annoyance at Kat for eavesdropping on his colleagues.
She glanced at the house. “I wonder what he was doing inside.”
Andrew strode up the driveway. “I’m going to take a look around back.”
Kat followed after him. When they reached the rear of the house, he blocked her progress by extending his arm in front of her. The reason for his reaction was obvious—the back door was wide open.
“Stay here until I give you the go-ahead,” he whispered into her ear.
She nodded, relieved he wasn’t insisting she get in the car. She didn’t know what she could do if Andrew ended up in danger, but she hated the thought of letting him out of her sight right now.
Andrew gripped the butt of his gun and crept toward the door. “Police! Anybody home?”
Kat held her breath as he disappeared inside. While she waited for him to come back out, she listened for any noises coming from the house. All she could hear was the chirping of birds.
She nearly wet herself when she became aware of a rustling sound directly to her right. But it was only Thunder, come to join the action.
“Stay,” she said, hoping she sounded as commanding as Andrew had.
Thunder’s whiskers twitched, but he didn’t make any other movement.
Andrew finally emerged from the house. “All clear,” he told Kat.
She exhaled. “Come on, Thunder.”
Thunder trotted after her.
“Don’t step on anything,” Andrew said when they reached the threshold.
Kat gave him a puzzled look, but his meaning became clear when she caught her first glimpse inside.
The house was trashed.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Is this how Ellie normally kept things?” Andrew asked, blowing his hair out of his eyes.
