I closed the wide-slatted wooden venetian blinds and turned on lamps at both ends of the two-seater couch. Under the circumstances, I tried not to think of it as a love seat. We sat facing the rear windows, but angled toward each other. I tucked a foot underneath my other leg and waited.
Brent paged through his notebook. “You told Misty that the woman said something. Do you remember what that was?”
“I couldn’t make sense of it, and I’m sure I didn’t catch everything she said, but it sounded like ‘a die a seized her.’ ”
“ ‘A seized her?’ ” he repeated, “not ‘I seized her’?”
“It could have been ‘I.’ She wasn’t speaking clearly.” I tried I’s instead of a’s. “ ‘I die. I seized her.’ Maybe she was trying to say, ‘I’m dying. I seized her.’ ” The thought that she knew she was dying was so sad that I stopped talking. I heard water running upstairs and Dep thumping down the uncarpeted stairs from the second floor. I spoke quietly. “Maybe the mime’s attacker was a she, not a he. I’ve been picturing the magician.”
“Why?”
Dep jumped onto my leg. I inched my fingers into her silky fur. “The mime failed to distract us enough to prevent Nina from noticing he was robbing us. I’m guessing he had to leave the carnival right afterward for fear of being caught. That could mean his day’s work didn’t bring in as much as he’d hoped, and he could have blamed the mime. Also, except for his white shirt and bow tie, he was wearing black, and if his shoes had been any color besides black, we probably would have noticed. If his shoes were black and his soles were, too, they could have made the mark I showed you on the ladder.” Brent wrote in his notebook and then looked up at me, and I added more theories. “The magician wasn’t the only one wearing black shoes that might also have had black soles. Marsha Fitchelder’s sandals were black, and she quarrelled with the mime. Marsha looks muscular, besides, so she might have been able to restrain the mime and hold her down.”
“Marsha Fitchelder also quarreled with you and Nina, didn’t she?”
I couldn’t help making a face like I’d bitten into an onion. “It was more of a discussion. She told us we couldn’t drive to our tent to unload the donut car. We asked to unload close to the entry gates. She said we could, but we’d have to move our car later.”
“Who moved the car?”
“Nina.”
“Did she have any arguments with anyone while she was doing that?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did you see or hear of Nina arguing with anyone else during the carnival?”
“She didn’t argue with anyone, including the magician and the mime, but they did make her angry. She was embarrassed about yelling at the mime.” Gazing back into Brent’s unwavering stare, I stopped petting Dep. “You can’t suspect Nina of attacking the mime. She would never hurt anyone. Besides, she was wearing turquoise shoes with white soles all day, and she still had them on when she returned to her apartment. She wasn’t the one who kicked the ladder out from underneath the mime.”
Brent only looked at me without saying anything.
I admitted, “Okay, we’re not sure anyone did kick that ladder.”
“It’s a good guess, but it’s only a guess.”
“True. Anyone could have caused that ladder to fall.”
“Including the person near the top of it. The ladder will be dusted for fingerprints, and the scuff mark will be analyzed. Do you have any idea why the mime went into Nina’s apartment without Nina?”
“No, and I’m sure that Nina doesn’t either. And I’m also sure she didn’t let them in. The latch plates of her street door and her apartment door were damaged as if someone had pried at the locks using the screwdriver you asked her about.”
“We’ll check the latches and that screwdriver, too, for fingerprints.” He reminded me, “Nina didn’t have her key. Maybe she broke into her own apartment.”
“That doesn’t make sense. She knew she’d left her purse in the donut car, so she set out to find me, and then she got the message saying I was bringing it to her. Besides, she looked really shocked when she came home and saw me trying to rescue the mime.”
Dep stretched, leaving her back feet on my leg and placing her front paws on Brent’s. The rest of her body followed. She curled up on Brent’s lap.
I put both of my bare feet on the love seat and hugged my knees. “Also, someone stole that locket from Nina’s jewelry box. If the mime took it, she did it before she fell and broke her wrists and ankle.”
Brent didn’t blink. “Tell me about the locket.”
The house’s old pipes clunked. Dep seemed to recognize that as a sign that Nina had turned off the shower. She jumped off Brent and bounded away. I wasn’t sure if Brent had known about the locket before I mentioned it, but I described what I remembered. “It was on the floor near the fallen ladder. It’s gold, probably an antique, and ornate. I didn’t notice a chain. Was the chain in the mime’s pocket?”
“I don’t know those details yet. Did you open the locket?”
I gave him a sheepish smile. “You know me too well.”
His lips twitched, but he didn’t quite grin. He merely waited, so of course I went on. “I didn’t know yet that it was Nina’s locket. I thought it might have been the mime’s, and I wanted to know if it held the mime’s identity or any medical information that could help the EMTs. They were on their way, and I didn’t want to lose a second in case there was crucial information in the locket that could save the mime, so I opened it.”
“That’s understandable, considering that your biggest concern was the mime. Did you find identifying or medical information?”
“No. In one side, there was an old photo of an eighteen-nineties gentleman, but in the other compartment, there was only a scrap of paper with something printed in pencil. The printing was teensy. Nina said that the gentleman was one of her ancestors but she didn’t understand what was on the paper.”
“What was it?”
I tried to picture the tiny pencil marks. “There was a number, nine hundred something, I think, and a word, all in capital letters, like ‘wrist,’ but I don’t think that was it. Both of the mime’s wrists seemed to be broken, so ‘wrist’ would probably have stuck in my memory. After the wrist-like word, there was an upward-pointing arrow.” I couldn’t control a shudder. “What if the word was ‘wrist,’ and it was a warning? Could someone be going around breaking over nine hundred wrists?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Where are the locket and the photo and the piece of paper now?”
“Last I knew, Nina had them. She said the locket was hers and the mime had taken it from her jewelry box. Didn’t she tell you about it?”
Brent didn’t answer.
I easily found an excuse for Nina. “She was distracted. And she must not have thought the locket had anything to do with the attack on the mime.”
He tilted his head slightly in apparent acknowledgment.
I again spoke to fill the silence. “Would you like me to go ask if you can see them?”
He removed a paper evidence envelope from his pocket. “Yes, if you can. Do you know why Nina seems to believe that the mime stole that locket? Her attacker could have been the one who took it.”
“If the attacker had wanted the locket, he probably would have taken it with him.”
“From what you told me, he or she left in a hurry.”
“True.” I took the envelope and stood up. “I’ll try not to handle the locket and the piece of paper much, but I suspect that Nina and I replaced any fingerprints on that locket with our own.”
Upstairs, Nina’s door was ajar, and her room was dark. She must have heard me, though.
She stage-whispered, “I’m not asleep.”
I put my face near the crack in the door. “Brent would like that locket and the piece of paper from it.”
I heard springs creak, and then the bedside lamp went on. “Just a second. I have the locket, but the paper didn’t belong
in it, so without thinking, I tossed it.” After a few seconds of rustling, she handed them both to me.
I thanked her, slipped them into the envelope, took the envelope downstairs, and handed it to Brent. “It’s not exactly an unbroken chain of custody, especially considering that I didn’t find a chain.” I knew the joke was lame.
He got it, anyway, and smiled. “At this point, I want to consider everything.”
I apologized again for removing the locket and its contents from what I’d already suspected was a crime scene. “I don’t know what else the mime or her attacker might have stolen from Nina’s apartment. Maybe the mime vandalized the painting in anger because the only valuable thing she found was the locket. But that doesn’t explain why the mime, or whoever, stole our bucket of confectioners’ sugar early this morning, ripped most of the label off it, scrawled the word ‘paint’ on the bucket, and took it to Nina’s apartment.”
“Since we can’t ask the mime, I don’t know if we’ll ever find an explanation.”
“I hope you do.”
He tossed me a half grin. “Good. You understand that we’re doing the investigating, not you.”
“I never interfere.”
“Not on purpose, exactly.” His smile warmed. “I should go.” He closed his notebook and stood up.
At the front door, he told me, “As for all serious crimes, an agent from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation will manage the case, and I’ll report to him or her.”
Him, I hoped. I’d met two female DCI agents. One had been incompetent, and the other had been competent but too interested in Brent, I thought, to focus on her investigation. I would be happy if Brent found someone to love for the rest of his life, but Detective Kimberly Gartborg seemed too cold and hard for him. The male DCI detective I’d met was quick and intelligent and didn’t worry me on Brent’s behalf. And I was fairly sure that the male DCI agent now understood that I was not a murderer.
Telling me to give Dep a hug, Brent wrapped an arm around my shoulders for a second and then let himself out. I closed the dead bolt. He trotted down the porch steps.
Earlier, when I’d held his hand and we’d toured the carnival like two people on a date, seemed like a long time ago. My face heated. I murmured, “Pretending wasn’t hard.” It wasn’t the first time we’d held hands. We sometimes grasped each other’s hands to keep our kayaks from drifting apart on calm lakes so we could stay together without paddling and without colliding with each other. I didn’t consider those incidents as romantic, and I doubted that he did.
I made certain that my doors and windows were locked, and then I turned out the lights and went upstairs.
This time, Nina didn’t call out to me. Figuring she might be sleeping or almost sleeping, I tried to be quiet while showering and padding back down the hall to my own room. I climbed into bed. Dep pushed my unlatched door open, jumped onto the bed, landed behind my knees, and purred.
It was late. I had to get up early, but I couldn’t sleep.
Maybe Nina was tossing and turning, also. Dep left my bed several times and returned a few minutes later, landing more heavily on me each time as if she could press me into a deep sleep.
I kept seeing that mime, first alive at the carnival, and then barely alive in Nina’s apartment.
I die. I seized her.
What had the mime been trying to say? What else did she say that I hadn’t caught? Nina had said that the cryptic note didn’t belong in the locket. Had the mime put it there? Or had her attacker? Maybe the note held a clue about who had killed the mime and why.
I turned over and wrestled with my pillow. I hadn’t reread that scrap of paper before I put it into Brent’s evidence envelope. What had been written on it? A number, nine hundred something, and a word like “wrist” or the card game whist, but I didn’t think it was either of those. W I S T? Had there been an s at the end? W I S T S? And after that meaningless word, there had been an upward-pointing arrow. Except for the arrow, the numbers and letters could have been copied from a license plate.
I had almost drifted off when a possible meaning came to me and I sat up, wide awake. Muttering, Dep jumped off the bed. WI was the abbreviation for Wisconsin. ST was an abbreviation for street. S was an abbreviation for south. An upward arrow could mean upstairs.
Had someone written a shortened form of Nina’s address on that slip of paper? I’d picked her up and dropped her off many times without paying attention to the number near that oversized door. I didn’t remember her address from our records at Deputy Donut, and I seldom programmed addresses into my phone, but I was sure that her apartment was in or near the nine hundred block of Wisconsin Street South. I wanted to wake her up, ask what her exact address was, and find out if she agreed with my deciphering of the code, but that was silly. In a few hours, we both had to go to work.
I flopped down but fretted about who had printed that coded address. I knew what Nina’s printing looked like from shopping lists she’d made at Deputy Donut. The printing in the locket hadn’t resembled Nina’s. Had someone been carrying Nina’s address around?
It could have been the mime or the magician or maybe Marsha Fitchelder. Any one of them could have targeted Nina’s apartment and folded the coded address into the locket after pilfering the locket from Nina’s jewelry box.
Any one of them could have targeted Nina.
The mime was about Nina’s height and weight, and they both had prominent cheekbones and short brown hair. The mime had covered her red-and-white-striped shirt and her chartreuse suspenders with a plain white shirt like the ones we wore at Deputy Donut. When she’d been in Nina’s apartment, she’d been wearing the black shorts she’d had on earlier in the day. Although baggier, those shorts were similar to the ones that Nina and I—and Jocelyn, too—had worn at the carnival. Someone, probably the mime, had torn most of the label off the bucket of sugar and scrawled the word PAINT across it.
The mime could have disguised herself as Nina carrying a pail of paint so that no one would think anything was wrong if they saw her going into Nina’s apartment.
And then, someone who was looking for Nina could have mistaken the mime for Nina.
The murderer could have believed he was attacking Nina, not the mime.
Chapter 9
Unable to lie still, I sat up again. If the attacker had been trying to kill Nina, she would be in danger the moment the attacker discovered she was alive, which could be as soon as the actual victim’s name was released.
I grabbed my pillow and hugged it on my lap. I had told Brent I wouldn’t interfere in the investigation, and I wouldn’t, unless I thought I could learn something that would put a killer behind bars before he could attack Nina. Or anyone else.
I would keep my eyes out for that magician, and for Marsha Fitchelder, and I would . . . I wasn’t sure what. I threw the pillow back where it belonged, plunked my head down, and turned onto my side.
Ideas, each more bizarre than the previous one, floated in front of my eyes, and the next thing I knew, my alarm was going off and Dep was leaping off my bed.
I went down to the kitchen, fed Dep, and started Wisconsin aged cheddar and spinach omelettes. Dep nibbled at her kibble.
Her makeup failing to conceal the dark shadows around her eyes, Nina joined us. Gold glinted at her throat underneath the collar of her Deputy Donut shirt.
Folding her omelette, I asked, “Is that the chain for your locket?”
“Yeah. It was in my jewelry box. She didn’t steal other pieces of jewelry, as far as I could tell. I hope I get my locket back soon.”
Hiding my doubt about how quickly belongings might be returned after a serious crime, I put her omelette onto a plate and set it on the granite counter. “Have a seat.” I poured us each a glass of cranberry juice. “I’m sorry, but you know I had to tell Brent about the locket and the coded message inside it.”
“I’d have told him if I’d thought about it, but with everything going on, I just wasn’t th
inking. And even if I had thought about it at the time, I don’t see how her stealing my locket can possibly tell anyone anything about who attacked her. I was just glad to get my locket back, for all the good that did. I hope Brent decides my locket has nothing to do with the murder and gives it back to me soon.” She perched on a stool. “Thank you again for letting me stay here. You’re a real lifesaver.”
I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
We ate breakfast, and I made a marinade with rice vinegar, maple syrup, and grated fresh ginger. I put a pork tenderloin into the marinade and refrigerated it.
Despite Dep’s high-volume protests, Nina and I eased her into her soft-sided carrier. Dep was even less happy about being put into the donut car. I couldn’t blame her. She’d gone to all the trouble to learn to walk in a harness with a leash attached to it. She knew she shouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of riding in a carrier in a car, even a charming antique car with a large plastic donut lying on top.
Pulling out of the driveway, I pitched my voice above Dep’s complaints. “Nina, it occurred to me that the mime’s murderer could have been after you.”
“How could that be?”
I pointed out that the mime had dressed like her, had probably carried a bucket labeled PAINT, which was something that Nina might do, and was in Nina’s apartment. “Someone could have mistaken her for you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Can you think of anyone who might see you as an enemy?” While Nina had been working at Deputy Donut, she’d never come near making enemies.
“No.” She drew the word out.
I teased, “Did you have to think about it that long?”
“Going back to when I was three takes a while.” Her sense of humor was returning.
“What’s your address on Wisconsin Street?”
“Nine seventy-one.”
“Wasn’t that what was on the slip of paper in the locket? Nine seventy-one W-I-S- T-S, which could stand for Wisconsin Street South, and there was an arrow pointing up, like for the upper floor of a building.”
Beyond a Reasonable Donut Page 7
