“Have you asked her where she got them yet?”
“I’m going in right now. Watch her as I talk to her. Maybe something about her mannerisms will seem familiar.” He picked up a folder and two plastic bags from a nearby table and headed toward the door into the interrogation room.
Rory watched the screen as Detective Green entered the room. He pulled up a chair so he was facing the girl, placed the folder on top of the plastic bags on the table and leaned back as if getting ready for a chat with an old friend.
Before he could say a word, the girl stopped twirling her hair, jutted her chin out defiantly and said, “You’re in big trouble. My dad knows people. Important people. He’ll have your job for this.”
“We’re just having a conversation,” he said in his most soothing tone. “Tell me about your family, Emily. I can call you Emily, can’t I?”
The girl looked taken aback, as if she hadn’t expected the policeman to be so friendly. “Sure,” she said a bit uncertainly.
“Your family?” the detective gently prompted.
“My dad’s a manager for Vista Beach Bank, the branch on Main. My mom’s a doctor, dermatologist. Are they here? Can I talk to them?” She looked toward the door as if expecting her parents to walk in at any moment.
“Brothers, sisters?” he continued.
Emily returned her attention to him and shook her head.
“Only child.” He nodded, as if her answer had confirmed his assessment of her. “I know how that goes. I was one myself. Busy parents, time-consuming jobs. No time for you, I bet.” He nodded his head sympathetically, the last sentence coming out more as a statement than a question. “Makes you independent, strong.”
Her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled for the first time. “Exactly.”
“Now, Emily.” He moved his chair closer, leaned his elbows on his knees and looked up into her eyes. “There’s something I don’t understand, something I’m hoping you can help me with. Maybe you can explain it to me. You’ve never been in trouble with the police. You come from a good family. How does an upstanding citizen like yourself end up with stolen goods?” He unearthed the plastic bags from under the folder and pushed them toward her.
When she saw the ring and watch inside the bags, her eyes lit up in recognition. “Where did you get those? They’re mine. I didn’t steal them.”
He shook his head in disbelief and a sad expression came over his face. “Then why do they match the description of jewelry taken from a homicide victim?”
Emily stared at him in horror. “You mean, like, murder?”
The detective opened up the folder and showed her a photograph. Rory couldn’t tell what it was of, but from the appalled look on the girl’s face, she suspected it showed Willow’s body.
Emily shoved the picture across the table and averted her gaze, looking like she was about to throw up. “Take that away. I don’t know anything about that. The jewelry’s mine. I didn’t steal it.”
He put the photo back in the folder and closed it. “Your parents have money. They must give you whatever you want. Why sell it?”
She snorted. “My allowance barely covers a movie once a week. My parents want me to earn money. They’re even threatening to charge me rent. They think because I’m eighteen now and out of high school I should be more responsible.” She air quoted the last word. “That’s what I’m doing, being responsible.”
“How does selling your jewelry do that, exactly?”
“Me and my friend, we find stuff in dumpsters people have thrown away, clean it up and sell everything at swap meets or online. It’s completely legal. Anything anyone throws away is fair game.”
“Is that where you found these?” He tapped his finger on the plastic bags. “In a dumpster?”
She nodded. “You should see all the stuff we find. You wouldn’t believe what people throw away. Perfectly good clothes, DVDs, furniture. There’s even a market for VHS tapes if you look hard enough. We found a stash of records once. You know, those vinyl discs people used to listen to all the time.” She leaned forward. “That one was funny. Some guy came looking for them. His girlfriend got mad at him and threw all his stuff out. He didn’t care about most of it, but those LPs he wanted real bad. We got to them first. Made him pay top dollar to get them back.” She raised her head in pride.
“Where did you find the jewelry?”
She screwed up her face in concentration. “On Seashell Lane. A few blocks from that church. Don’t remember the name. Good something or other. You know the one.”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd such expensive-looking jewelry was in the dumpster?”
“People throw away good stuff all the time. Saturday evening. That’s when we found them. Tim and I go dumpster diving every Friday and Saturday after dark. We used to do it during the day, but some people don’t like us rooting around in their trash. They call us names. Someone even chased us away with a broom once. Ask Tim, he’ll tell you we found the watch and ring there.”
“What about Friday evening?”
“Like I said, we were looking through dumpsters then too. Ask Tim.”
Detective Green wrote down her friend’s contact information on a notepad, picked up the evidence bags and stood up. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”
His image disappeared from the screen. Rory looked across the room to see him close the interrogation room door behind him.
He walked over to her. “Anything?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think she’s one of the teens who broke in.”
He nodded and went over to a phone. He glanced at his notes and dialed. Rory strained to hear what he was saying, but couldn’t make out any of the words. After a short conversation, he returned to the interview room. “Tim confirms your statement, Emily. He told me how you found the jewelry on Saturday and that you two were also together Friday evening.”
A look of relief came over the young girl’s face. “I can go now? That’s all you wanted to know?”
“For now. We may need to talk to you again.”
She stood up and held out her hand. “Jewelry please.”
“It stays here.”
“Why? The watch and ring are mine.”
“They’re stolen property and evidence in a murder investigation.”
Detective Green escorted the girl out the door. After handing her over to a uniformed officer, he walked over to Rory.
“She and her friend could be in it together,” she said to him. “They could have robbed Willow on Friday.”
“There’s no evidence she’s involved in any of the other burglaries. I think she’s telling the truth.”
Rory looked curiously at him. “Were you telling the truth in there? Are you an only child?”
“You get them to talk any way you can,” was all he said.
“There’s still the charm bracelet. They might not have noticed it in the dumpster. It could still be there.”
“I’ll send someone to check it out, but chances are the dumpster’s already been emptied.”
“We may never find it then,” Rory said softly. She pictured the bracelet disappearing into a landfill, never to be seen again.
The inviting smell of freshly baked cookies greeted Rory as she opened the back door to her house. When she stepped inside the kitchen, she found Liz sitting at the table with an almost-empty plate of chocolate chip cookies in front of her and Teresa standing in front of the open oven door.
Liz reached for a cookie, withdrawing her hand as soon as she saw her friend. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t eat all of them. I saved a couple for you.”
“Don’t worry, there’s more.” Teresa picked up the plate and added the batch she’d taken out of the oven moments before to it.
Rory sat down at the table and picked up a cookie. “I thought you weren’t eating dessert t
hese days.”
Liz munched on another cookie. All Rory heard was a muffled wa-wa-wa-wa similar to the way adults spoke in the Peanuts cartoons. She swallowed. “Sorry. I said, ‘These are too good to pass up.’”
“They are good. You didn’t have to do this, Teresa.”
The woman blushed at the praise. “Consider it a thank you for letting me stay here.” She placed an envelope and a newspaper on the table in front of Rory. “These came for you while you were out.”
Rory put the half-eaten cookie down on a napkin and picked up the envelope. Her name and address were written on the front in block lettering. No return address, no stamp, no indication it had ever been sent through the mail. She opened the unsealed envelope and drew out a piece of plain white paper. Written on it in the same block lettering was “Stop it or else.” She turned the paper over, but nothing was written on the back. Rory stared at the note in disbelief. “Where did you get this?”
“It was in the mailbox when I got back from the grocery store.”
“Did you see anyone on the street?”
“A few of your neighbors. At least I assume that’s who they were. No one was acting suspiciously, if that’s what you mean. Why? What does it say?”
Rory placed the note down on the table so the other two could read it.
“What are you supposed to stop doing?” Teresa asked.
“Beats me.”
Liz put her hand over her mouth as if stifling a yawn.
“Not a very effective threat. Hashtag boring. What is this, the third anonymous note you’ve gotten since you started solving crimes?”
“Something like that.” Rory examined the envelope. Nothing on it gave her any indication who could have sent it.
“It’s handwritten,” Liz said. “Very old-fashioned. Odd since everyone has computers these days.”
“Do you think they’re talking about you investigating Willow’s murder?” Teresa asked.
“Could be, but like Liz said, it’s not very effective. Tell me about the people you saw on the street when you got home.”
Teresa puckered her face in concentration. “I didn’t really notice much. Let’s see. There was a man across the street looking in his mailbox. That’s why I checked yours. I figured the mail had come, but all I found was the note. There was a woman walking a dog and another jogging. Oh, and a couple cars were driving down the street.”
Rory put the note back in its envelope and put it on the table.
“You’re ignoring it, then?” Teresa said. “Shouldn’t you call the police?”
Rory wondered for a split second if her guest was the person who had written the note, though she didn’t know what it would gain her.
“I don’t think I’ll bother. Seems pretty lame to me.”
She picked up the copy of the Vista Beach View and studied the front page. Beneath a photo of Willow and Dr. Wagner at the grand opening of Beach Healing and Acupuncture taken six months before was an article on the herbal healer’s untimely death. A bare-bones description of the crime, it included the usual quotes from the police about how they were doing everything possible to identify and apprehend the culprit and that they were pursuing some promising leads.
Below the fold was an update on the rash of burglaries plaguing neighboring cities with a grainy photo of the two suspects taken from a home security camera. Rory peered closely at the photo. Neither of them looked anything like the two people she saw at Willow’s the previous day or the girl selling the jewelry.
Teresa was reading the article when a cell phone lying on the table rang. She glanced down at its display and pressed a button to silence it.
“Don’t worry about us. You can answer it if you want to,” Rory said.
“It’s just Trent. I told him where I’m staying. If he wants to talk with me he can come here in person.”
“What if it’s about your kids?” Liz asked.
“I checked in on them a little while ago. My mother took them to the zoo. Last big outing before they go back to school. She’ll call me if there’s anything I need to know.” Teresa filled the tea kettle with water and put it on the stove. “I’m making tea. Do either of you want some?”
Rory and Liz shook their heads. Teresa pulled up a chair and sat down at the table while she waited for the water to boil.
Sekhmet wandered into the kitchen from the front of the house, sat down on the floor and yawned. Teresa looked down at the Abyssinian and smiled. “Sleepyhead’s up, I see. You hungry?”
The cat meowed as if she understood every word. Rory started to get up to feed her, but Liz placed a restraining hand on her friend’s arm. She leaned over and said in a whisper, “Let her. She needs someone to mother right now.”
Rory nodded and sat back in her seat while Teresa opened a packet of cat food into a bowl and set it on the floor. The cat delicately picked up each morsel, munching contentedly on the food.
“She seems to have adjusted to her new surroundings,” Liz said.
“I wonder if she realizes Willow is gone for good,” Rory said. “Speaking of Willow, Teresa, you spent a lot of time with her. What do you know about Lance?”
Teresa prepared her tea and sat down again. “They met when he came into her store looking for some help with migraines he was having and they hit it off. He’s a real fitness freak. Have you seen his body? It’s pretty amazing. She liked tight bodies. Plus Willow preferred younger men.”
“Any recent problems between the two of them?”
“He has a fitness product he’s been trying to get funding for, a new kind of portable gym. He asked her to help, but she wouldn’t give him any money.”
“She had money?”
Teresa bobbed her tea bag up and down in the cup. “Lots of it, from what she told me.”
“Any idea who it goes to?”
“She never mentioned anything to me. As far as I know she doesn’t have any relatives. Maybe the acupuncturist she owns the store with, Dr. Wagner, gets it.”
“I heard he gets the building—maybe he gets everything. Lance seems to think she was having an affair with someone. Do you know anything about that?” Rory said.
“Willow? An affair?” Teresa snorted into her cup. “Wouldn’t that just be peachy? Her having an affair after talking to me about how important it was to be honest in a relationship.”
“You don’t think she was then?”
The woman put her cup on the table. “Not that I saw. She seemed pretty devoted to her project, as she liked to call Lance.”
“Project?”
“The way he eats is pretty healthy, but he still likes his meat. She was trying to get him to become a vegan like she was, only it was slow going.”
“Why would she refer to him as her project? I thought she loved him,” Liz said.
Teresa took a sip of tea. “He certainly loved her. Maybe too much, if you know what I mean. Very protective of her. Didn’t like any man talking to her. Not even the chief of police. I heard what Lance said at the press conference. He was her landlord. Of course the chief’s going to talk to her now and then.”
Rory and Liz looked at each other. “So they weren’t having a fling?”
“Willow and the chief?” Teresa shook her head. “Not likely. He’s still hung up on that wife of his who died in that fire years ago.”
Rory looked down at the cookie in her hand, uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken.
Liz cleared her throat and said a little too brightly, “Did you get the email from Dawn about Sunday’s class? She gave us our first assignment.”
“Haven’t seen it yet. What does she want us to do?” Teresa said.
“We’re supposed to go to the chalk festival on Saturday and check out all of the entries. Apparently a lot of them will be examples of trompe l’oeil.”
As part of t
he annual end of summer festival, the last big event before kids went back to school, the city of Vista Beach was staging its first chalk art festival, where artists would create temporary works of art on the pavement.
“I heard Dawn’s participating,” Teresa said. “I’m not sure what she’s going to be drawing, but she hopes it will bring in interest for her classes.”
As the two women continued to talk about the class and the upcoming festival, Rory wondered how much money Willow had and who would inherit it now that she was gone.
Chapter 17
Friday morning, an ocean breeze blew over Vista Beach for the start of the three-day end-of-summer festival, kicking off with the city’s annual sidewalk sale. Most businesses downtown participated, displaying their wares on tables and racks in front of their stores. By ten a.m. the sidewalk was crowded with customers enjoying the cooler weather and looking for bargains.
Rory stared down at the display of painting and scrapbooking supplies on the table in front of the entrance to Arika’s Scrap ’n Paint and went over her checklist in her mind. Two-ounce bottles of acrylic paint in a rainbow of colors, check. An assortment of brushes, check. Stamps and stickers, check. She got to the end of her list and frowned. Something was missing, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
A bell tinkled and Arika stuck her head around the front door of the store. “How’s it going?”
“I think I’m missing something, but I’m not sure what.”
Arika stepped outside and studied the display. “Gel pens. You’re missing the gel pens.”
“Of course.” Rory followed her mother into the store and returned moments later with boxes of pens in various colors.
A teenage girl in a black hoodie with sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing a long scar on her right arm, stood by the table. Almost against her will, Rory’s gaze zeroed in on the scar. It seemed oddly familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she’d seen it before.
A Palette for Murder Page 14
