Lois’s eyes were red. Her dandelion froth of white hair was tangled and uncombed. Tears ran down her cheeks.
Brent stood back and let her in.
She curled her hands into fists as if she were about to pummel him, but she rolled her fists into the lapels of her purple hand-knit cardigan, instead. “Why?” she demanded, looking straight at Brent and not bothering to wipe her eyes. “Why?”
I took her elbow and guided her to the wing chair. She was almost lost in it. Dep jumped into her lap. Lois wormed her fingers into Dep’s fur, but her eyes were still on Brent. “Why?” she asked again, more hesitantly.
Still wearing his jacket, he eased into the couch opposite Lois and leaned forward, his forearms on his knees and his hands clasped together. “I believed him and didn’t think we should arrest him, but the evidence piled up. First of all, during your interview with Detective Passenmath and me, you admitted that you had once given Georgia Treetor a doll dress like the one that Randy showed you last night.”
Lois’s hands stilled on Dep’s back. “I made lots of those dresses.”
“How many were mostly pink with black trimming like that one?” he asked.
She slumped back. “I told that surly female detective that I don’t remember, and I don’t. I made doll gowns to cover toilet paper rolls for years, and I must have had other friends whose bathrooms were similar. Besides, I sold those dressed dolls at my church’s bazaars, year in and year out. That color scheme was popular for bathrooms when I was a girl, and Fallingbrook has many houses from that era.”
I again pointed out that if Randy had taken that gown off the doll and stuffed the doll into Georgia’s mouth, he wouldn’t have allowed two detectives to see it.
Brent lowered his head for a second, and then looked up at me. “Passenmath decided he did that to deflect suspicion from himself.”
I plunked myself down on the opposite end of the couch from Brent. “That’s too weird.”
He explained, “It was clear that when Randy came in, he didn’t expect to see any detectives in Lois’s living room, let alone two. And he didn’t know who Passenmath was until she introduced herself. She figures that he knew the bag was translucent enough that she might have seen the dress and guessed what it was, so he quickly made up a story about finding it in his car.”
I brushed a small drift of flour off one knee of my black jeans. “That doesn’t explain why, if he’d murdered Georgia, he brought that dress to Lois.”
“Passenmath thinks that’s just one more sign that Randy is unhinged.” Brent’s jaw tensed up.
Lois made a despairing noise in the back of her throat. “He’s not.”
“I agree,” I said. “Lois, does Randy shop at Taste of Fallingbrook?”
“I doubt it.”
“Do you?” Brent asked her.
“Not since Matthias’s death. Anyway, Matthias used paper bags. He said they were better for the environment. Randy didn’t get that plastic bag from me.”
I had another idea. “Brent, if Randy parked somewhere with his car window open, could Fred Aggleton have thrown that dress into the car?”
Brent stretched his legs, barely missing kicking the coffee table. “Randy told us the dress was in the bag, and shoved deep underneath the front passenger seat. Someone would have had to open the door.”
I burst out, “Passenmath obviously believed that, but not that Randy wasn’t the one who put the dress into his car. She’s cherry-picking which of his statements to believe.”
Brent’s only response was a quick and unreadable glance at me. He focused on Lois again. “Lois, is Randy one of those people who leaves his car unlocked?”
“Probably. He’s fairly easygoing about possessions.”
“Aha,” I said.
Brent leaned back and folded his arms. “Unfortunately, there are more clues pointing to Randy. When we fingerprinted your house the day after you were attacked, Lois, the prints we found were yours, the previous owners’, a couple of Emily’s, some of mine, and lots of Randy’s.”
Lois nearly exploded. “Randy helped me move in! Of course his fingerprints were there.”
Brent stayed calm. “We all accepted that, at first.”
I asked Brent if Randy’s fingerprints were found in Georgia’s house.
“No, but her killer wore gloves.”
Lois sagged back into the wing chair. “Emily touched things there, like that doll’s legs and feet.”
Brent nodded. “You and five other women testified that you saw her touch them after you discovered Georgia, who appeared to be deceased.”
“I could have gone to her house early Monday morning, before work.” My statement came out more sarcastically than I meant it to.
Brent flicked a steely glance at me.
“Emily’s not a killer,” Lois asserted. “But it just goes to show you that fingerprints can be somewhere quite innocently.”
Brent conceded, “Randy’s fingerprints in your house, Lois, would not have been enough for a homicide charge.”
Lois turned Dep over on her back and cuddled her in her arms like a baby. “It was those photos, wasn’t it? The car that looked like his, coming out of the valley, and the one Passenmath made me tell her about last night, the one of him in front of the car that I had to admit was his. I never should have shown you the first one.” Dep flipped herself upright and scrambled off Lois’s lap.
“Or deleted the second one from your flash drive.” Brent managed to sound supportive.
Lois brushed a tear from her cheek. “I know that now. But it’s all circumstantial. Even if Randy was driving his car out of the Fallingbrook River valley the night that Matthias went missing, it doesn’t mean that Randy had anything to do with Matthias’s death. It couldn’t have been Randy driving, anyway. As I told you before, Randy would have stopped to say hello.”
“He waved at you,” Brent said.
“What?” Lois ran both hands through her hair, which only made it stick up more. “I didn’t see him wave.”
“You said you weren’t looking at the car,” Brent reminded her.
“I wasn’t. But if it was Randy, why didn’t he stop?”
Brent thinned his lips and stared at her, daring her to draw her own conclusion, I guessed, like the one I’d thought of before. A fleeing murderer would not stop to chat.
Lois answered her own question. “Maybe he was late for a date or appointment. What makes you think he waved?”
“The forensics guys enhanced and enlarged the photo. Let’s go up to your computer, Em. Now that I know what to look for, I can show you two what the forensics team found.”
As usual, Dep beat us to the top of the stairs. I sat in the desk chair, turned on the computer, and loaded the photo.
Behind my right shoulder, Brent tapped near the driver’s side of the windshield. “Enlarge that portion, Em, please.”
I did.
He pointed above where the top of the steering wheel would be. “Center it on this spot and try enlarging it more.”
The picture blurred. It was beginning to look like an abstract painting. “There,” Brent said. “See? His left hand isn’t on the steering wheel. He raised his arm.”
“Maybe to pull down the visor,” Lois suggested in an unusually aggressive tone, “not to wave.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Brent said. “Look at his wrist. See those dark marks?”
Lois was behind my left shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”
I could barely make out the dark marks. I turned around in my seat and looked up at Brent. “Want me to play with the brightness and contrast to bring them out more?”
“There’s no harm in trying. The forensics guys thought they saw a tattoo. Letters or a word.”
Lois didn’t utter a sound.
Brent and I tried different ways of temporarily editing the photo until the dark marks were clearer. I rummaged in my desk and found a magnifying glass, only slightly scratched. I held it up to the screen. “I se
e where someone might have thought they were seeing a tattoo.”
I stood and gestured for Lois to sit in the desk chair. She sat and peered through the magnifying glass. “You’d have to have a wild imagination and want to believe you’re seeing Randy’s tattoo so you can close your case and go back to Milwaukee or wherever you—I mean she—came from.”
Brent said mildly, “The forensics guys got a clearer picture, and it did look a lot like Randy’s tattoo. Can we go downstairs again, Em? Your donuts are calling to me.”
Lois followed me downstairs.
In the living room, she again sat in the wing chair. I went to the kitchen and poured three glasses of milk. I managed to fit the glasses, three dessert plates, and a stack of pretty cloth napkins on a tray. I set the tray on the coffee table and then returned to the kitchen for the platter of donuts. Lois chose an unraised orange donut with orange icing.
Brent came downstairs with Dep draped around his neck. He stared at me for a few seconds, and then sat on the couch. As if she’d planned a ride down a playground slide, Dep slithered off Brent’s shoulders and landed on his lap. He leaned forward and helped himself to a raised donut with bits of candied ginger sprinkled on dark chocolate icing. I gave Lois and Brent each a plate and a glass of milk, and put the napkins on the coffee table next to the platter of donuts.
“This is delicious, Emily,” Lois said. “Thank you.” Then she confronted Brent again. “So, you’re telling me that Randy was arrested for killing two of his favorite people because someone enlarged a bunch of pixels until they were completely fuzzy, and then made up something that might implicate him? It won’t hold up in court, and meanwhile, the actual murderer is free to kill again.”
“There’s that dress you crocheted,” he reminded her. “There’s blood on it, O positive, Georgia’s blood type.”
Lois waved her hand in dismissal. “That’s the most common type.”
Brent agreed with her. “We’ve sent it for DNA analysis, but that could take a while. Clues added up, and the first thing this morning, a judge approved Detective Passenmath’s application for a warrant to search Randy’s car. Investigators found several objects in it linked to Georgia’s murder and the attack on you. That was enough for Detective Passenmath, for any of us, to arrest him. I’m sorry, Lois, but the evidence is fairly conclusive.”
Lois looked about to chomp on the insides of her cheeks. “What objects did they find in his car?”
“A chisel,” Brent answered, “with a blade that matches the size of the gouges near the locks on your front door and Ms. Treetor’s back door.”
Lois frowned, obviously unconvinced. “So? It’s probably not an unusual size.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But no chisel blade will be exactly like another, and they’ll be able to tell for certain if it was the chisel the killer used. Also, there were other things in the bag with the chisel. There was a rock with a protrusion that matched the dent in Georgia’s head. It has O positive blood on it, and also AB positive, which I’m guessing is your blood type, Lois.”
Lois started to shake her head, then got up, turned her back on us, and blew her nose. “That’s my blood type, but it’s impossible. My boy is not a killer.”
Brent continued to sound soothing. “Again, we’ll compare the DNA.”
She folded her arms. “I don’t have to give you a DNA sample.”
His answer was mild. “You’re correct. We might not need it to convict Randy, anyway.”
She turned pale. “Why not?”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as if he didn’t want to tell her. Finally, he opened his eyes and said with obvious reluctance, “The pictures that were missing from your photo album were in that bag. I’ve obtained a warrant for your album so we can determine if the vestiges of paper and glue in the book match the ones missing from the pictures, but based on the photos I took of your album, I’m almost certain they do.”
“Noooo,” Lois moaned, almost as if she were beginning to accept the horrible truth. She sat up straighter. “May I see the warrant, Brent?”
He handed it to her. She studied it. “Mind if Emily takes a look?”
“Of course not,” Brent said.
I didn’t take long to assure Lois, “It looks legit to me, for all I know. You can trust Brent, Lois.”
She bowed her head and sniffled. “I’ll give you the album, Brent.” I could barely hear her.
I asked Brent, “What kind of bag were the things in?”
He gave me another penetrating stare. “A white plastic grocery bag from Taste of Fallingbrook.”
“Frederick Aggleton’s store.” I couldn’t help showing my dislike of Frederick Aggleton.
Lois sat in the wing chair again. “That man! He always wanted to buy the store when Matthias owned it, but he never offered what it was worth. Then he beat Georgia down in price until she sold it to him, and have you been in there, Brent? It’s nothing like it used to be. He’s run it down and made customers feel unwelcome, and now it’s bringing in hardly anything. Right, Emily?”
“Yes. He complained to me that he might have to go bankrupt. He also showed Misty and me a couple of collages that are supposed to prove he’s innocent.”
“Supposed to?” Brent repeated.
“You don’t have to stay in a hotel to have receipts saying you paid for three nights there. It’s all a little too convenient, as if he planned his so-called alibis before killing Matthias and Georgia. Aggleton could have put that bag of evidence in Randy’s car.”
Brent picked up a pineapple fritter. “Why would a store owner murder someone and put the evidence in a bag from his own store?”
I had what I thought was a convincing answer. “Because no one in his right mind would do that, and besides, he was going to shove them into the first unlocked car he saw, so it didn’t matter what bag they were in.”
Brent bit into the fritter.
I held up an index finger. “I just thought of something else. Randy wears a strong cologne. If Randy attacked you, Lois, wouldn’t you have recognized his fragrance?”
Suddenly Lois looked happier than she had since she’d arrived at my place that evening. “Emily’s right. Randy always has on the same aftershave or whatever, but when I was attacked, I didn’t notice any fragrance.”
I added, “Aggleton wasn’t wearing cologne when I talked to him.”
Brent pointed out the obvious. “Cologne can be washed off.”
Looking defeated again, Lois said she should go.
Brent offered, “I’ll walk you home.”
“Why?” she demanded. “My dangerous great-nephew is locked away.”
“I can get that photo album from you.” He followed her outside and patted his jacket pockets. “Em, I think I left something near your computer. I’ll come back for it in a few minutes.”
He was between Lois and me, so he didn’t see her give me a watery smile. Her great-nephew had been charged with murder, and the man staring into my eyes might have been instrumental in that arrest, and I was sure that Lois liked me, yet she was still hoping to pair me off with Brent.
I had a feeling that his coming back later had nothing to do with any sort of romantic interest. I suspected he wanted to tell me something that might sadden Lois even more. We said our good-byes, and I locked the door.
I almost tidied the living room instead of going upstairs to my computer, but Brent had spent extra minutes upstairs alone with Dep after Lois and I came down. I asked Dep, “Is there something upstairs that he wants me to see?”
“Mmp.” She raced me up the stairs. As usual, she won.
An unfamiliar thumb drive was plugged into my computer. The screen was blank. I moved the mouse. A grainy black and white picture appeared on the screen. I could see several cars, including the passenger side of a small gray or silver sedan, in a parking lot at night. The sedan looked a lot like Georgia’s—and Randy’s. The only illumination came from above, as if a surveillance camera shared a
pole with a light fixture.
A largish right-pointing arrow was in the middle of the picture.
Brent had loaded a video on my computer.
Chapter 30
A good citizen would not view the surveillance video that a detective had, inadvertently or not, left on her computer. I told myself that it wasn’t like I was tampering with evidence. Besides, it was my computer.
I clicked on the arrow.
At first, nothing moved except seconds ticking away on the time stamp at the screen’s lower right corner. If the camera’s clock was right, this video began last Monday, the day that the police believed that Georgia was murdered, at eighteen minutes after five in the morning.
A man came into the upper right corner of the picture and walked toward the camera. He wore jeans, a light-colored long-sleeved shirt, and a white ball cap pulled low in front. The insignia on the cap was the Green Bay Packers’ G.
It had to be Randy, with his bowlegged gait, a sort of swagger from side to side that I attributed to horseback riding. Randy tugged his left sleeve down as if to hide that tattoo, got into the small grayish sedan that I’d already guessed was his, backed out of the parking space, and headed away from the camera. The picture was too grainy for me to read the license plate. A number was painted on the pavement where the car had been. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought it said 406.
The video stopped and restarted, same camera on a pole in a parking lot, at six forty that same morning. The sky was light. Several cars had left the parking lot. Headlights came toward the camera. Because it was mounted high, showing a wide view, I couldn’t see the driver as he swung the small gray car into the space it had left more than an hour before.
The driver got out and locked the car. Even from the back, I could tell it was Randy by the way he walked. His right sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, but it was his left sleeve that he pulled down past his wrist. He disappeared near the top right of the picture.
The video, again from that same camera and showing the small silver or gray car, restarted at seven Monday evening. The sun was still up. Wearing his jeans, white shirt, and Packers cap, Randy came from the middle of the right side of the picture, got into his car, and drove away.
Survival of the Fritters Page 22
