by Mary Kruger
“No,” Ari said. “It’s hard to tell from the picture. But I’d know it if I saw it in person.”
Josh nodded. This picture had galvanized all of them, enough so that they’d called Nancy in again to ask her about her pictures. There was now a patrolman en route to her home to get her camera.
“What do you think?” Josh asked Charlie.
“I don’t know.” Charlie glanced at Briggs. “Is it enough for a warrant?”
Briggs shrugged. “I’d think so. At least now we have an idea of who to search.”
Josh nodded. Search warrants could be tricky to write. Last night, without a sure suspect, they’d been unable to get one. Today looked better. “It’ll have to be comprehensive,” he said. “We’ll need to look at all her belongings.”
“Plus we want to get a cast of her tires,” Charlie said. “Need to have the mud on them analyzed, too. There should be grass and such mixed up in it.” He looked up at Ari. “Thanks, Ari. This was good work.”
“I hope so,” she said, smiling a little.
“It’s a start. You can go back to the other room,” Briggs said.
“Okay,” Ari said, disappointed to be dismissed. She turned at the door to see Josh watching her. To her surprise, he indicated the chairs at the back of the room with a jerk of his head. She nodded and went to sit down.
Josh turned back to the others. “When did our suspect get back to the hotel?”
“Let’s see.” Briggs, reading glasses perched at the end of his nose, pulled a piece of paper toward him. On it were listed the people who had stayed at the motel last night and the time they had checked in. “She registered last.”
“Of course, that doesn’t mean anything if she came in with the others,” Charlie said.
“There weren’t any stragglers,” Josh said. “Still…”
“Let’s try for that warrant again,” Briggs said. “We’ve got enough evidence this time.”
“I’ll call Bouchard to get the application together.” Charlie pulled out his cell phone and made the call. He had just disconnected when, after a brief knock, the door opened, letting in a Freeport patrolman.
“The camera, sir,” he said, handing it to Charlie. “Also the papers you asked for.”
“Thanks, Mike.” Charlie dismissed him with a nod. “Let’s see what’s on this baby.”
Josh watched as the chief turned the camera on and flicked a switch to display its pictures on a small screen on its back. “We’ll be able to prove where the pictures came from,” he said, looking over Charlie’s shoulder.
“Yeah, and that they haven’t been doctored.”
“Let’s tag it, then,” Briggs said, taking the camera from Charlie. He put a manila tag on it, thus making it official evidence.
“It’s not proof,” Charlie said.
“Everything helps.”
Charlie nodded and reached for some large envelopes lying on the table and pulled out some papers. “Nancy Moniz’s birth certificate,” he said, carefully separating one paper from the pack with the tip of his finger. “There are her parents’ names on it, Michael and Sandra Erickson. So that rules her out.”
“Birth certificates are amended when someone’s adopted,” Josh said, making the others look at him. Last night before going to bed, he had done some quick research and had learned some things about the legalities of adoption. “At least they are in Massachusetts.”
“Hell, Josh, I know her father,” Charlie said. “Anyway, you know we had to rule her out.”
“Rosalia wasn’t adopted, either,” Briggs said. The birth certificate Briggs was studying was written in a foreign language. “According to this, she was born in Portugal.”
“Then we’re back to these.” Charlie looked at the photographs. “With no proof that she’s Felicia’s daughter.”
“And no way to find out without a court order,” Josh said gloomily. A call had come in from the Simsbury police a little earlier. Without more evidence, no judge in Hartford County was going to issue a court order to unseal Felicia’s records. They might have their suspicions, but they had no way of proving them. At least not yet. Careful not to let the others see, Josh turned and looked at Ari for a long moment.
Ari returned Josh’s look and nodded slightly. From the beginning of this case—was it only yesterday?—he had given her subtle hints that he wanted her help. This was more than subtle, though. She shouldn’t be here, not with two other investigators in the room. Josh was likely to land himself in serious trouble for letting her stay.
Charlie’s cell phone rang. “Charlie Mason,” he said, and listened. “What the hell—why?”
“What?” Briggs said, and Charlie motioned him to silence.
“Not enough? What the hell more does he want? Oh. She? So what does she want? Never mind. Call the DA’s office and see if they can do anything. Damn it,” he said as he flipped the phone closed.
“The warrant?” Briggs asked.
“Yeah. We didn’t get it. Insufficient grounds, still.”
“We’ve got a picture of the weapon. What more does the judge want?”
Charlie gave him a look. “Judge Fitzpatrick.”
“Oh Christ. She practically likes us to catch the perp in the act.”
“Is she the one who’s soft on crime?”
“Yeah. We’ll have to find better evidence.”
The men sat in silence. Ari leaned forward, frowning. If they’d exhausted all the investigative tools at their command, at least for the moment, then they were stuck. Certainly they could hold everyone from the festival for several more hours, but eventually they’d have to release them. She didn’t need to be a cop to know what that meant.
Briggs turned, hooking his arm over the back of the seat. “What do you think?”
Ari, startled, looked around, but there was no one else in the room. “Me?”
“Yes.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Ari.” Charlie turned as well. “What the hell are you doing here? No, don’t answer.” The look he gave Josh told her there’d be hell to pay for this. But Briggs had somehow known she was here, and hadn’t said a word.
“I might be able to help,” she said.
“How?” Briggs asked, and this time Charlie looked at him in disbelief. Briggs seemed very much a bythe-book man, and yet he was breaking every rule to include her.
“You don’t have any solid evidence,” Ari said, stating the obvious. “You have physical evidence you can’t link to anyone yet. What make was the car?”
“The one that made the prints? Probably a Jeep. An SUV, anyway.”
“Ari, are you sure about that yarn?” Charlie asked.
“No, not without seeing it. Not about the needles, either. All I can tell is that they’re aluminum, and old. I’m not even sure about the color.”
“So what do you think?” Josh asked.
“I think the only way we’re going to catch the killer is to get a confession out of her.”
Briggs raised an eyebrow at her. “How do you propose to do that?”
“By presenting the evidence to her and making it sound like we have more than we do.”
Briggs looked at the other men, and for the first time this morning, exasperation showed on his face. “Is this how she did things last time?”
“Ari, you can’t play Nancy Drew again.” Charlie’s face was both stern and drawn.
“No, not Nancy Drew. I was thinking more along the lines of Nero Wolfe. You know, gather everyone together and lay out the case. It’s too bad we don’t have the leather chairs, or someone to serve drinks.”
Charlie glared at her. “Ari,” he growled.
“I don’t intend to get myself into any danger,” she assured him. “I’m not going to do anything without any of you there.”
“And where are you planning this confrontation?” Briggs asked. “In the main conference room?”
“Oh gosh, no. At the fairgrounds, of course.”
The day
might have been sunny, but the mud at the fairgrounds had yet to dry completely. Barn A, so warm and inviting yesterday, was chilly today. It looked tawdry in the bright sunlight. The chairs from the snack bar were old and uncomfortable, with cracked red vinyl seats and uneven chrome legs.
As if she were still part of the Suspects Club, Ari sat with the others in a semicircle, noticing their postures and wondering if she could spot guilt. What she saw was mostly annoyance and anger.
“Why’d they drag us back to this godforsaken place?” complained Beth, the first to speak. “Why don’t they just let us go?”
“They can’t,” Ari said. Today she had no knitting to keep her busy, but that was by design. After much discussion, the police had reluctantly agreed to let Ari conduct this meeting, while they stayed out of sight and listened. “They can keep us longer because of Rosalia’s murder last night.”
“This is your cop’s doing, isn’t it?” Beth accused.
“I don’t know. All I can guess is that this is convenient.”
“It’s uncomfortable,” Annie said, her soft voice taking most of them by surprise. Since yesterday Annie had said very little.
“Why are we here?” Diane whispered to Ari.
“Because it is uncomfortable and two murders happened here,” Ari whispered back. “If anyone’s going to confess, it’ll be here.”
“Ha. There are some tough cookies in this bunch.”
“My lawyer’s advised me not to say anything to anyone,” Beth said, proving Diane’s point.
“Ari?” Nancy leaned over. “When will the police come in? Why can’t they get this over with already?”
“Why are you asking me?” Ari said.
“Because of your cop.”
“He’s not my cop,” Ari protested, but without much conviction. After last night, that was no longer true.
“Oh, c’mon, Ari.” Diane lounged in her chair. “You’ve got to know more than we all do.”
“I don’t. If you think about it, you all know the same things I do.”
“I don’t know anything,” Lauren said. “Nancy’s right. Why don’t they just get this over with?”
“We all know that yesterday someone stabbed Felicia Barr in the back with a knitting needle,” Ari said. “She stumbled into me, said a few words, and died.”
“She said something?” Debbie said sharply. “What?”
“None of us here can prove where we were when Felicia died,” Ari continued, ignoring Debbie, “or we had had some association with her. Beth Marley had a fight with her—”
“I knew you’d try to hang this on me,” Beth said.
“You did fight with her, in full view of everyone,” Ari pointed out. “And you left the fairgrounds, too, so you can’t account for your time.”
“I rode by your yarn shop. It’s quaint,” Beth said, sneering.
“And you’ve got a motive,” Ari went on, ignoring her. “Felicia fired you, and you hated her for that, didn’t you? Never mind that you’d been embezzling from Knit It Up! by accepting extra money from advertisers and promising better reviews and articles.”
“This is slander!”
“It’s fact, and you know it,” Debbie shot back. “You’re really lucky Felicia decided not to prosecute.”
“I’ve never been part of something so stupid in my life. You’re trying to get me to confess, aren’t you? Well, it’s not going to happen.”
“Actually I don’t think you did it, Beth,” Ari said.
“What?”
“Why would you? There might have been bad blood between you two, but you stood to lose more by killing Felicia, didn’t you? If you did, the news about what you did at the magazine would come out.”
“How did you know about that?” Debbie asked.
Ari ignored her. If they guessed how much the police had told her, no one would say a word. “Of course, it’s not your fault that it has come out.”
“So that’s how Felicia got that reputation of favoring advertisers,” Lauren said. “Beth, that was really rotten.”
“What did Felicia say to you, Ari?” Debbie asked.
“She said something about mud. ‘I tried to get the mud.’ ”
Debbie frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, at the time it didn’t. But that’s because no one knew where she was killed. It was raining hard when I left here with coffee and I had my head down, but I think I would have seen someone stab Felicia if it had happened right in front of me.” Ari leaned forward. Unconsciously the others did, too. “That means she was killed someplace else. She didn’t have her coat on.”
For a moment there was silence. “She left it somewhere,” Debbie said, figuring it out first. “Was she trying to get mud off it?”
“Yes. I think she was trying to tell me who killed her.”
“What!” Debbie’s exclamation was followed by others. “Who?”
“I don’t know. No, I really don’t,” Ari said, raising her hands as if to ward off an attack.
“Where was she killed?” Lauren asked.
Ari leaned forward again. “The police found her coat in Barn C.”
“But that was empty,” Nancy said.
“Where’s Barn C?” Annie asked. She, too, was staring at Ari.
“Between Barn B and Barn D. Nancy’s right. It wasn’t being used, so it was perfect for the killer’s purpose.”
“Why would Felicia have gone in there to get the mud off her coat?” Debbie asked, frowning. “I know she hated the weather here yesterday because of her clothes, but that doesn’t make sense.”
“Then she shouldn’t have tried to flaunt them,” Beth said.
“Actually I think she would have gone into Barn B, but someone stopped her. Someone wanted to talk to Felicia about something important.”
“What?” Debbie demanded.
“Maybe about an article in the magazine. Maybe about something she made. Or, maybe, because she was Felicia’s daughter.”
That announcement caused another uproar. Ari had expected it, but she hadn’t thought it would mask the reaction she’d been hoping to see. Everyone looked surprised, not just one person. “Are you saying her daughter was here?” Debbie asked.
“Yes. Debbie, you told us that you and Felicia came here to do a story on the festival.”
“Yes, that’s what she said.”
“That sounded like a pretty thin story to me. I mean, why would Felicia come here for such a small festival? There are others closer to New York. But then I found out about her daughter.”
“From your cop,” Beth said derisively. “Does he know you’re here spilling all this?”
Ari bent her head to hide her expression. If anyone guessed the truth, her plan would fail. “Anyway, I began to wonder if she came here to see her daughter.”
“But the daughter got in touch with her in New York,” Debbie said. “Why would she need to come here?”
“Because of something that happened lately that changed things for her. Felicia was diagnosed with cancer.”
“My God. Really?” Beth asked.
“Yes.”
“My God. Poor Felicia. Well, I didn’t like her,” she said, at the scornful looks the others gave her, “but I wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone.”
“Commendable,” Debbie said dryly.
“Why would Felicia having cancer make a difference?” Annie asked.
“Maybe she wanted to see her daughter one last time.”
“If she had a daughter and gave her up for adoption, why would she bother?” Annie replied.
“Ari, are you saying the daughter killed her?” Nancy asked.
“It’s possible. As I said, Beth, you were a strong suspect. So were you, Debbie.”
“Me?” Debbie looked up. “Why?”
“You get the magazine, don’t you? Also, you’d be the most logical person to go into the barn with Felicia, since you were with her all morning.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know. You were aware she was dying. Even if she wasn’t, you could have killed her at any time back in New York. However, if she did come here to see her daughter and you knew it, then you had a reason.”
“No I didn’t.”
“What if she told you she was considering changing her will? She was, you know. You might not have gotten the magazine.”
“She wouldn’t have cut me out,” Debbie said, but she sounded uncertain. “She was like a mother to me.”
“Until her own child came along,” Ari said.
“That’s not fair!”
“Of course it isn’t. You must have been hurt, at the least. We all heard how much you loved Felicia.”
“I just wanted her to be happy.”
“But it hurt.”
“All right, so it hurt! I’ve been hurt by plenty of things, but I’ve never killed anyone because of them. Why would I start now? And don’t tell me it was because I’d lose the magazine.”
“No,” Ari said softly. “You were afraid you’d lose Felicia’s love.”
“Oh, damn you.”
“So you had motive, and you had opportunity. What you didn’t have was means. That’s a problem. How did you get a knitting needle? I know, there were plenty being sold, but this was an old needle. That makes me think someone was using it, and not just carrying it around. No one saw you with a project yesterday. Besides, if you did want to kill Felicia, it was a pretty chancy way. But a lot of people here had needles.”
“Like you,” Beth said.
“No.” Ari shook her head. “Not the right size, and the needles I was using are newer ones, with the plastic buttons. This needle had a steel button. Beth, you probably have a project with you, don’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“So you could possibly have had the needle with you yesterday. But I don’t think you did it.”
“Then who did?” Nancy said. “Everyone had needles with them.”
“I didn’t,” Diane said. “I was just spinning, not knitting.”
“So Diane’s out of the running, and so am I,” Ari said. “But, Nancy, you were knitting, and you were using old needles.”
“Yes, so? I had no reason to kill Felicia.”
“But you’re the right age.”
