Jean asked, “Detec, er, Steph, have you had any rest at all since Friday afternoon?”
“Rest? What makes you think I’ve had any rest?” There was humor in her voice, but of the bleakest sort.
“I’ve been involved in investigating murder cases before,” Jean said.
Stephanie looked from Alasdair to Jean and back again. “You mean you two are a team? I’d never have guessed.”
Compressing her lips, Jean hid her expression by digging through her bag again. She hadn’t meant anything by that. Neither had Stephanie.
From the corner of her eye Jean saw Alasdair gazing up at Dunmore’s portrait, utterly expressionless.
“Solving Sharon’s murder,” Stephanie said quietly, not speaking to anyone in particular. “We’ve gone through the messages on both Sharon’s and Jessica’s phones, and yes, Jessica did leave a message asking Sharon to meet her at the Lodge instead of behind the Courthouse.”
“That’s by way of being meaningless,” Alasdair told Dunmore’s portrait. “Unless Jessica was lying when she said she didn’t know she’d be needing an alibi.”
Jean opened her mouth, closed it, went ahead and spoke. “If she’d known, if she’d killed Sharon, wouldn’t she have set one up?”
“We’re testing the hair caught in Sharon’s cell phone,” Stephanie went on, without either reprimanding or encouraging Jean’s comment, “It’s the same color as Jessica’s hair. We’re testing the traces of skin caught beneath Sharon’s fingernails, where she scratched her assailant, to see if they’re Jessica’s. Plus there was a thread caught in Sharon’s broken nail. If we don’t get a match with something, though, we’re up the creek without a paddle.”
DNA testing taking a long time, Jean replied silently, and the results only being helpful if you have something to compare them to, and you can’t hold Jessica much longer without charging her.
Stephanie massaged her eyebrows. “As for solving Wesley Hagedorn’s murder, I think we have, yes. Preliminary tests match Sharon’s feet and shoes to the prints by the pond, and there’s a small wood shaving in the stitching of one shoe. Her socks and her other clothes have been washed, but maybe not well enough. We’ll see what forensics can do to find mud and blood stains. And we’ll test Wesley’s clothing as well, there’s a good chance Sharon shed a thread or a hair onto his back while she was kneeling on him.”
“But you cannot charge a dead person,” said Alasdair.
“Tell me about it,” Stephanie said, and, at the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside and a hand on the door knob, stood up.
Olson threw the door open and leaped back against the jamb. Tim Dingwall barged past him and into the room, head down, jowls quivering, face a mottled crimson. “What do you have against my family? First I have to get my sister and Quentin out of your clutches and now you’re harassing Dylan!”
Olson shut the door and leaned against the wall, notebook unholstered, pen cocked.
Stephanie’s black eyes darted a quick message to him, to Alasdair, and back to Jean. Don’t mention Wesley’s murder, not now, not yet. To Tim she said, “Sit down please, Mr. Dingwall.”
“Not this time. I know your ploy, I sit down, you stand up, endeavoring to display dominance.”
“Whatever.” Crossing her arms again, Stephanie faced Tim squarely and said, “Mr. Cameron here has a case against both Kelly and Quentin for stealing the replica Witch Box. If you can tell us where it is, he might—that’s might—try for mitigating circumstances.”
“How can I tell you where it is when I’ve had nothing to do with it?” Tim obviously meant his glare at Alasdair to be a look that killed, but Alasdair deflected it with a quick tilt of his chin.
“Have it your way,” Stephanie said. “I’ll be charging Dylan with removing evidence, the tote bag, from the scene of a crime.”
“She was his mother! Have you no compassion for a motherless child?”
“Since he’s told us where he hid the bag, we’ll try for mitigation. Still, he helped Sharon burgle Wesley Hagedorn’s apartment.”
“Lies. Harassment,” Tim gobbled. He tried to loom, but only succeeded in puffing himself up like a blowfish. “Miss Detective, I demand . . .”
The door flew open and crashed back against the wall, missing Olson by an inch. He flinched to the side and collided with Alasdair.
Kelly Dingwall stood in the opening, her expression almost identical to Tim’s. A uniformed officer danced from side-to-side behind the fur-trimmed collar of her coat. “Ma’am, you can’t—”
“Don’t you lay a finger on me,” Kelly said to him. And to Stephanie, “You’re picking on Dylan this time, I see. And Tim again. Fine, our lawyer’s on retainer for the entire family.”
“Then he or she,” Stephanie enunciated, “will be earning his or her money.”
Oblivious to Stephanie’s sarcasm, Kelly shut the door in the officer’s face and plumped down in a chair. “Go on. I’m listening. And I hope Orson here is taking notes.”
Olson exchanged an exasperated look with Alasdair that, Jean thought, Kelly deserved.
“Tell me this, Ms. Dingwall,” demanded Stephanie. “Why didn’t you just go ahead and use Lady Dunmore’s note and drawing as publicity for the movie? Why get into the tug-of-war with Jessica?”
“Jessica Evesdottir,” Kelly huffed, “used Tim and Sharon’s research for her own purposes and plagiarized them to boot. Stop persecuting us and start prosecuting her.”
Nice play on words, Jean thought in spite of herself.
“You, both of you, lose the attitude.” Stephanie’s voice sharpened rather than rose. “You and your family are in deep shit here, you got that? Your whole conspiracy shtick, the catfight with Jessica over some damned piece of paper and that Box in the Museum and a rock, already, it’s caused crimes up to and including murder. Two murders that you’ve had good motive to commit.”
Tim looked aghast. “You don’t mean to imply--my own wife . . .”
“The sooner you start to cooperate, the better.”
“I am cooperating.” Tim’s lower lip protruded
“Like hell you are. Answer the question.”
“And while you’re about it,” Alasdair put in, “Miss Dingwall, Mrs. Polito, can be telling us where she’s sent the replica Witch Box.”
“You’re still trying to pin that on me?” asked Kelly. “What a waste of police resources.”
Stephanie’s glare ricocheted from Tim and Kelly to Alasdair and back. “Answer the . . . “
“Sharon,” Kelly explained with exaggerated patience, and amended, “we were waiting for the note to be authenticated and the movie to be ready for its premiere. We can’t have our publicity campaign peak too soon. But the movie’s running behind.”
Authentication never stopped you before, Jean thought to the back of Kelly’s dead-animal-adorned collar. And then she thought, Whoa. Stephanie didn’t know the full story of the Charlotte document. Did Tim? Did Kelly? Jean was beginning to suspect that Jessica was right—Sharon was the brains of the Dingwall operation. And Barbara had said that Tim wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
Proving Barbara’s point, Tim blurted, “We’re moving as fast as we can on the movie, I told you that, it’s just that we haven’t found, I mean, we need . . .” He looked around at all the ears twitching toward him and gulped down the rest of his sentence.
But Jean finished for him. “The keystone, the capstone, the cornerstone. The charm stone.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Stephanie glanced around, serving notice she was not amused. A suspicious ripple of Alasdair’s lips signaled a suppressed smile. Olson stared blankly over the rim of his notebook. Tim looked at Kelly, waiting for a cue, perhaps, and Kelly shot a haughty glance back at Jean.
Jean shrugged at them all. It’s not just what I do, it’s who I am.
The door opened again, and the officer almost bowed in deference as Barbara Finch swept past him and into the room. Gown, gloves, wig—she
looked for all the spirit world like the ghost of Charlotte Murray in later life. They knew how to dress to impress in Charlotte’s day. How to signal social status. No one who had to do any actual work would be dressed so impractically.
“Mrs. Finch,” said Olson, “if you’ll wait in the other room . . .”
“I’ve come for my granddaughter.” Barbara’s shoulders were straight, her head up, and her face blazed brighter than one of the candles in the ballroom. She brushed not only Olson and Alasdair but also Tim aside, turned her back on Kelly, and confronted Stephanie from her inch or so of superior height. “Where is she?”
“Across the hall,” said Stephanie. “We need to talk to her.”
Tim thrust himself forward, into Barbara’s face. “It’s all your fault, you and Jessica promised to help Sharon develop her theories about the charm stone and the Witch Box and then you stabbed her in the back.”
“I believe she was hanged,” Barbara told him. And back to Stephanie, “My son’s here, too, isn’t he?”
“Yes, and we need to question him as well.”
“All right then. I’ll sit down here.” With a swish and swirl of silk, Barbara sat down beneath the portrait of Lord Dunmore. Alasdair’s gaze met Jean’s over the older lady’s head. She didn’t know what he was thinking, but she was thinking of the Monty Python episode about Hell’s Grannies.
What Kelly thought was obvious. Her lip curled with contempt and she stood up, flicking the hem of her coat away from Barbara’s proximity.
Stephanie glared at Barbara. Barbara looked straight ahead. Tim sidled toward the door, moving surprisingly quietly for a man of his bulk. Kelly strode, each stacked heel thumping the floor.
With the tightest of shrugs, Stephanie gestured at Olson—Tim, Kelly, Dylan, hotel. Custody. Rachel.
Olson made it through the door and into the hall without being trampled by Tim and Kelly. His voice rose and fell in concert with another. A second door opened. One set of footsteps shuffled, another tapped lightly. More voices, the slam of a third door, and a mighty sniff receded into the night. Olson returned with Rachel in tow.
“Can’t I go with Dylan?” she asked Stephanie. “He needs me.”
“You’ve done enough for him.”
“But I’ve already talked to you,” the girl pouted, less than effectively with her pale lips.
“Miss Finch, I can either charge you with aiding and abetting a fugitive or you can sit down.”
Rachel tried a flounce, but even with her long skirts it came out more of a flop. She sat down next to her grandmother and Barbara took her hand. “That’s the apron you wore for the play last night. It’s the wrong time period for Dunmore’s Palace, dear.”
“It’s the one I grabbed,” Rachel said. “Most of these people won’t know the difference.”
“We have to be true to ourselves.”
Well, yes, Jean thought, and stifled yet another acidic garlicky burp. More cocoa. That’s what she needed.
Judging by Alasdair’s drawn features, what he needed was a wee dram.
Stephanie stepped forward to stand over grandmother and granddaughter together. “To recap, Rachel. Last night you and your mother got dressed for the play in the back room of the Courthouse.”
“I was there as well,” said Barbara.
“Your mother left the Courthouse after she played her part. You were in the play to the end. You heard the commotion surrounding the discovery of Mrs. Dingwall’s body and joined Quentin by the tree.”
“Yes,” said Rachel, eyes downcast not demurely but truculently.
“A friend, another actor in the play, took you to your car and you drove to your father’s house, even though you live with your mother.”
Barbara patted Rachel’s hand. “Her father’s more traditionally maternal than her mother is, in some ways. Perhaps more than I am. I had to be both mother and father when Matt was a boy, though Matthew senior was never far from me.”
Jean caught Alasdair’s silent and less than charitable remark, even though it wasn’t directed at her. Fine, she transmitted back at him. Be that way. But he didn’t notice.
“Let Rachel answer for herself.” Stephanie’s voice sharpened even further—like a samurai blade, it could cut a man—or a woman—in half.
“Yes, I went to my dad’s house. I called my mom and she said she’d probably end up at the police station—and she did, too. Gran was at the church, so I couldn’t go to her.”
“I’m so sorry.” Barbara kept patting, her white glove only a bit brighter than Rachel’s hands coiled in her apron.
“Dad wasn’t there. He came in later, wet from the rain, said he’d been walking around thinking about Mom and Wesley—she thought she was being discreet, yeah, right—I think he was following Mom around, you know? He knew all about Mrs. Dingwall being murdered and everything, he was there in the crowd.”
This time Alasdair’s crimped mouth and cocked eyebrow were directed at Jean. Yes, I know, she returned.
Stephanie pressed on. “When did Dylan get in touch with you?”
“He texted me about ten-thirty, said he was in the Palace garden. So I told Dad I was going home, and I did, but I stopped on the way and got some food and I took a couple of blankets and gave them to Dylan, too. I said I’d stay with him, but he’s . . .” Rachel turned to Barbara. “He’s a totally nice guy. I don’t care who his family is. He’s okay. He was all, take care of yourself.”
Barbara stopped patting and nodded indulgently, although her indulgence had a brittle edge—let’s humor the poor little thing.
“I kept checking on him the next day, today, he said he’d found a window unlocked in the kitchen and taken some cookies, and he kept walking around pretending to be a visitor, going the other way every time he spotted security. He’s like exhausted.” She looked up at Stephanie, re-arranging her expression from truculent Xena to pleading Bambi.
Unimpressed, Stephanie asked, “How much did you know about the Dingwalls’ movie? About the plans and photos stolen from Wesley Hagedorn’s apartment?”
“He told me about the movie, and the charm stone opening up the grave, and, I mean, it’s all just fantasy, you know? Like a video game. It doesn’t hurt anything.”
Jean couldn’t tell who scoffed more loudly, Stephanie, Barbara, or Alasdair. Even Olson shook his head, before asking, “Do you know about the burglary at Wesley Hagedorn’s apartment? Do you know why Dylan was hiding his mother’s tote bag?”
Rachel made an impatient gesticulation. “Yeah, yeah, he told me all about it. You’re overreacting, all of you.”
“I don’t . . .” Stephanie bit off her sentence.
Before the detective could come around on another strafing run, Jean braced herself on the back of the chair in front of her and asked, “And what do either of you know about the Charlotte document? The note and the drawing of the Witch Box that Jessica brought back from the U.K.?”
“Just the sort of thing my mom would go to the mat for,” Rachel answered. “But it was Dylan’s mom who got her onto it to begin with. Mom said she’d give Sharon a credit in her book but Sharon said no way, the note was hers.”
Barbara said, “It’s an interesting document, but hardly worth the fuss the Dingwalls were making over it.”
“Have you seen the original?” Jean asked, trying not to lead her witnesses.
“I glanced at it,” said Rachel. “The bit about the charm stone is cool. Wes was going to duplicate it, you know, but, well, everything fell apart.”
“Jessica made me a copy,” Barbara said, “thinking it might assist me in my studies.”
“And were you assisting Sharon Dingwall with her research,” Jean asked, “like Jessica was? Robert Mason, the charm stone, Francis Bacon, all that?”
“The Dingwalls’ studies were not entirely without merit, not that I would go so far as to say where there’s smoke there’s fire. However, their scholarship was sloppy in the extreme. I did what I could to dissuade Jessica from getti
ng involved with Sharon, but she insisted on going ahead. Now she realizes that her association with the Dingwalls could damage her academic reputation.” Barbara smoothed her skirts with her free hand as though cleaning that hand of responsibility. I told her so.
Jean felt the pressure of Stephanie’s gaze and desisted, but she didn’t lean back. So had neither Barbara nor Rachel seen the other side of the document? Had Rachel seen it but not its significance? Were they lying to protect Jessica? Or, in Barbara’s case, was she lying to protect Rachel through Jessica?
“Go home, Rachel,” Stephanie said. “Stay there. I’ll see you at the station tomorrow morning. And Mrs. Finch, she can come alone.”
“What about my son?” Barbara asked.
“We can question him without your help, too.”
“As you wish,” said Barbara, her coolth rivaling Alasdair’s. Together she and Rachel got first to their feet, then to the door, which Olson opened for them.
Stephanie walked across the room, parted the blinds, peered out into the night as though considering how to make her own getaway.
Instead of matching her gaze with Alasdair’s yet again, Jean laid her forehead on her arms, still braced on the chair in front. It wasn’t that her mental bell choir was clamoring. It was that it had fallen silent, with nary a dong from the biggest bell or a tinkle from the smallest. And yet she knew there was a melody lurking in the still, silent clappers, if only she could start them ringing again.
“Are you all right, lass?” asked Alasdair’s voice in her ear.
She raised her head. “I’m no more tired than anyone else. And probably less than Stephanie and Olson—what is his first name, anyway?”
“Danny. Danny Olson.” Alasdair sat down beside her.
“Not Jimmy, the cub reporter in Superman?”
Charm Stone Page 30
