Let's Fake a Deal

by Sherry Harris

  Bristow rubbed a hand over his face. “It seems awfully convenient.”

  “It was just a win-win for Ashley. Two birds, one stone.” I drank some more water. “After they put Blade in Michelle’s SUV, they broke into Michelle’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “To make it more convincing. Ashley dressed in Michelle’s running clothes and ran off base to the car and back to Michelle’s house. Then she left the dirty shoes at the top of Michelle’s steps. Maybe hoping she’d take a tumble. That would have been the perfect ending for Ashley. Blade dead. Michelle dead. And me in jail for her other crime of selling stolen goods.”

  “What shoes?” Bristow asked.

  “The ones Michelle threw in a dumpster over by the TLF. With any luck it hasn’t been emptied. If they are still there, maybe there will be some evidence on them that will seal the deal for Ashley.” Even if there wasn’t, I hoped there was enough other evidence to convict her. Knowing who killed Blade would mean it would be easier to process any trace evidence in Michelle’s SUV.

  Bristow stood up. “Excuse me for a minute.”

  I stood and stretched while I waited. Michelle was going to be in trouble for not saying anything about the shoes, but it sure beat being tried and imprisoned for murder.

  Bristow returned a half hour later and we both sat back down. “I made some calls. It hasn’t been dumped yet. I have someone going to the dumpster. But you have to realize it doesn’t look good for Michelle.”

  Bristow took his water glass and swirled the water around. “I’ll check to see when and where Blade’s and Ashley’s professional lives crossed paths.” He pushed the water glass away. “But why did they argue now?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe he decided he was far enough along in his career and had enough support that a long-ago affair as a young officer would no longer hurt him. He’d proved himself to be a good officer.” For the most part. “Or maybe he was tired of being involved with their burglary schemes.” Unless Ashley suddenly confessed to everything we might never know. Somehow, after the scene at the hospital I didn’t think she’d do that. Or if she did she’d blame Jeb and Blade. Dead men really don’t tell any tales.

  “It seems very risky for her to have been in the bar the night you were there. You could have recognized her.”

  “I wasn’t looking for her. Besides as the Greens they were friendly hipsters. As the Evanses, Ashley had short hair and wore a ton of makeup. No glasses.”

  Bristow looked thoughtful. “If Blade knew about Jeb and Ashley’s extracurricular activities, he’d always be a threat to them.”

  “Exactly. It’s the why of all of this. When Ashley saw Blade undermining Michelle and filing the IG complaint, she knew he couldn’t be trusted.” My phone rang. Mike. “I’ve got to take this. Will you excuse me for a minute?”

  Bristow looked incredulous but motioned for me to go ahead.

  I slipped out into the hallway. “What’s up? I’m kind of busy here trying to convince Special Agent Bristow that Michelle didn’t kill Major Blade.”

  “Then I’m going to make you very happy,” Mike said.

  “Did you enhance the security camera footage I sent you?” I asked. I could hardly breathe.

  “No. It was worthless.”

  I was so disappointed. “Oh.”

  “I’m going to send you some dashcam video from a car that was traveling down the road the night Major Blade was murdered. It shows a clear picture of the face of your runner. And it isn’t your friend Michelle.”

  “What?” This was amazing news. “And it’s not doctored?” Okay, so I didn’t quite trust Mike.

  He didn’t respond.

  “I’m sorry. It just almost seems too good to be true.” I remembered when I’d first watched the video at Patty Sanchez’s apartment. A couple of cars had gone by. “How did you get it?” I hoped it didn’t involve broken knees or any other body part.

  “I twisted a few limbs,” Mike said.

  “Mike—” I felt dizzy.

  “Not literally.”

  “Oh. Whew. But how?”

  “Let’s just say people are creatures of habit and leave it at that.”

  “And if Special Agent Bristow wants to talk to the person who owns the car and dashcam?”

  “He can. There’s no connection to me. It will look like it came through Vincenzo’s investigator.”

  Good enough. “Thank you.” Another check mark in the “I owe you” column for me. Sometimes I pictured Mike as Scrooge hunched over a desk with a big book. It only had two columns. One for “I owe you” and one for “you owe me.” The “you owe me” column was full of check marks and the other practically empty. Someday I was going to balance that ledger in my favor. Somehow.

  As soon as we hung up my phone bing ed, and there was the video with the name of the driver and his contact information. I watched the video because I wanted to make sure it was authentic before I showed it to Bristow. The dashcam showed a dark two-lane road. The car turned, and as the headlights swept around the corner it caught the face of the runner before they ducked their head. The video even had a date and time stamp.

  “Ashley. Ashley is the runner,” I said when I burst back into the interrogation room. I handed my phone to Bristow and sat back down in the chair across from him. He watched the video without comment and then watched it again.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Vincenzo’s investigator.” I didn’t like to lie to Bristow. He watched me with his cop eyes. I didn’t have a good poker face, but I did my best to not look away.

  “Okay, then.”

  Whew. If he didn’t believe me, he wasn’t going to call me out right now. I stood up. “That’s all I have. It’s in your hands.” I thought about Michelle who must be sitting in a room down the hall. How scared she must be. I hoped with all of this information that she’d be home soon. I needed to call Luke when I left here and tell him all that had happened. He’d be relieved, too.

  Bristow stood, too. “You’re good at this you know. Investigating. Making connections.”

  I shrugged. This was the second time he’d said this to me. The first being the day we’d found Major Blade’s body. I couldn’t decide if he was serious or not.

  “Why not make it official? It might keep you out of trouble.”

  Wow. Maybe I should be flattered. Or maybe Bristow was telling me to do it officially or not at all. “It’s not for me. I can’t picture me running around with a gun and a badge.”

  “You could be an analyst,” Bristow said.

  “No thanks. I’ll stick to garage sales.”

  “Will you?”

  “Of course,” I said. It did boost the old ego when someone of Bristow’s caliber thought so well of me. “Thanks for listening to me.”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Bristow said as I left.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Becky called me as I drove over to Kitty’s house at seven on Saturday morning.

  “I talked to Erin yesterday,” she said.

  “How did it go?” I pulled over to the curb because I didn’t like driving and talking even though Great Road was fairly empty right now. Ellington was just waking up. Although the Dunkin’s had been crowded when I picked up a couple of boxes of coffee and donut holes to give out at the sale. Kitty’s sale didn’t start until nine, so a few minutes of talking to Becky wouldn’t make me late.

  Becky sniffed. Once, twice, three times.

  Oh dear. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “She wasn’t interested in my apology or trying to forgive me. She said that everyone on base knew what kind of person I was and that I should just get over myself.”

  Inside I sighed. “At least you tried.” I thought about sharing some platitude about you can only control what you do, not what others do. “That’s all you can do.”

  “I guess it is. But you don’t agree with Erin, do you?”

  I wasn’t sure what I thought, and what did it matter
anyway? I saw the good and bad in Becky and Erin. None of us are perfect. And I didn’t have to deal with Becky in my daily life or worry about her husband hurting the career of anyone I cared for. “Sometimes it’s very hard to be a military spouse.”

  “You’re right.” Becky sniffed again. “I’ll just do my best. And try to ignore people like Erin.”

  “There you go,” I said. I wondered if she noticed I hadn’t answered her question.

  We said our good-byes and I headed to Kitty’s house, thinking about how I couldn’t control how the Greens set me up to sell their stolen goods. And Major Blade hadn’t been able to control them, either.

  * * *

  By eleven the Cat-tastic Garage Sale was in full swing. People milled about buying, buying, buying. Who knew people loved cat items so very much? I guess Kitty did. I looked across the driveway at her. Kitty wore tights with a cat head just below each knee. A sweater with dancing cats on it and her fifties “cat” skirt. She flounced from person to person in shoes covered in cat heads that matched her tights, asking them what cat things they loved and leading them to it. This was one sale that had something for every cat lover. The advertising I’d done with the cat groups was certainly paying off. If this kept up, it would be one of the most successful sales I’d ever run.

  Michelle was home. Not out of trouble yet, but at least not in jail. It looked good that the IG complaint would be dropped because Major Blade was the one who filed it. It looked like he was doing it with extreme prejudice. Once that was taken care of her promotion would go through, which meant sometime in the next year she’d be moving. I wondered how Luke and Michelle felt about that.

  My phone bing ed. Bristow sent a text saying they couldn’t question Ashley until she was off the painkillers.

  Painkillers? She wasn’t on them yesterday.

  She’s had a relapse.

  Relapse, my rear end. She’s faking it.

  Ashley must be faking injuries to keep from being moved to jail and questioned. But that wasn’t my problem. Bristow replied.

  I agree.

  But until the doctor does there’s nothing to do but wait.

  I put my phone away. This was so frustrating. She’d said all of those things she’d told Officer Jones and me when she thought she was on painkillers.

  The day was overcast, and fall was definitely in the air. Clouds hurried across the sky. We had ten tables filled with cat items. And two baskets full of free cat figurines to go to good homes. I stayed over by the more expensive items because Kitty wasn’t as comfortable with negotiating as I was. I still worried about what her neighbors were going to think when they found out she wanted her house to look like a cat. But it was her property to do with what she wanted.

  There was a card table full of cat jewelry, some of it vintage, some of it new. None of it was that valuable. I’d taken flat, shallow box lids and lined them with terry-cloth towels. Then I’d put the jewelry in. It kept it all from rolling around. Kitty had hundreds of pieces of jewelry. It was a sight to behold. A woman in a Garfield T-shirt came up and started combing through the jewelry. She set the pieces she was interested in to one side.

  Two other women came up and tried to crowd her out. One of the women started picking up the pieces the first woman had laid aside.

  “Those are mine,” the first woman said. She looked at me for help.

  “Would you like a bag for those?” I asked. I’d brought some quart-size plastic bags to use for this kind of thing or for the miniature cat collection on another table.

  “Yes, please. That would be great,” she said.

  I grabbed a bag and we put the jewelry in it. I offered the other two women bags, too. Then I set the box of bags at the edge of the table in case anyone else wanted to use them. All three of them crowded the table, hands bumping each other and glares getting fiercer. The first woman finally stepped away. She had one full bag of jewelry.

  “Would you set this someplace while I continue to shop?” she asked. “I want to look through the records.”

  “Sure,” I said. I set the bag next to the porch where I kept my water bottle, extra plastic bags, and a few other things that were sold but people were coming back for when they finished looking around.

  “Excuse me,” a man said. He wore corduroy pants, a cream-colored knit fisherman’s sweater, and expensive shoes. “I saw in your advertisement that you had a set of opium weights. Have they sold?”

  “No. They are over here, and the price is firm,” I said.

  He made a face. People didn’t like not being able to negotiate at a garage sale. We walked to a set of white wooden shelves that had carved cats across the top.

  “Here they are,” I said. “And they are authentic, not reproductions.” I had checked with a friend of mine who had an antiques business in Acton. “Also it’s a complete set. All nine of them are here. Complete sets are hard to find, especially in as great condition as these.” I picked the smallest one up. It was my favorite. Its expression reminded me just a bit of Toulouse, who I’d become very fond of.

  He took out a pair of glasses and looked them over carefully. “I agree they are original.” Then he offered me half of the price I’d put on them.

  I shook my head. “I can sell them online for more than that.”

  He offered twenty-five percent more.

  Apparently, this man didn’t understand what the word firm meant. “No.”

  “You aren’t going to counteroffer?” he asked. His face turned a little red.

  Right now I was rethinking that whole having a badge thing. It would be lovely to whip it out and tell him to get lost. “No. I explained that the price was firm. It’s a fair price. Cheaper than you could buy them anywhere else. So would you like them or not?”

  “I drove all the way from Boston. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “No.” I set the smallest weight back on the shelf. I refrained from telling him I couldn’t care less even if he’d flown over from London, England.

  “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “So I’ve been told.” I did have a modicum of empathy for the man. I knew what it was like to be shut down when you were trying to negotiate. Truth be told, it happened way more than I’d like it to when I was out shopping.

  He took out his wallet and carefully counted the cash. He handed me the money and I recounted it.

  “You’re short twenty dollars,” I said, fairly certain that was deliberate.

  “And you aren’t going to cut me any slack?”

  “Again. No. See the woman over there? The one decked out in cat clothes? She has a dream, and she’s selling things she loves to fulfill that dream. I’m going to make sure every dime, or in this case every twenty, counts.”

  “Oh, all right.” He took his wallet out and got out another twenty. “If I ever have a garage sale, I’m going to hire you.” He gave me a slight smile.

  I tucked the money in the multi-pocketed carpenter’s belt I wore around my waist. For a brief minute I thought about the last time I’d worn it—when I’d been arrested. “And I’ll be just as tough for you as I am for my client today.” I wrapped the opium weights individually in tissue paper with cats on it and put them in a bag. “Here you go.”

  The two women who’d been so aggressive at the jewelry table came over to me with their arms loaded with things, including several bags of jewelry.

  “We are ready to pay you,” one of the women said. “I assume you will do some negotiating since we’re buying so much.”

  “Sure,” I said. I took the first bag of jewelry, studied the front and then the back. I gave her a price. She asked for ten percent less and I said yes. The second bag was even more stuffed. I turned it over and over. This jewelry looked familiar. I glanced over to where I had set aside the first woman’s jewelry while she looked at the records.

  “Where did you get this bag?” I asked.

  The woman frowned and then sighed. “From over there.”

  She p
ointed to where I’d set the bag for safekeeping. I gave her a steely gaze and took the bag back. After that she and her friend didn’t argue over the prices I gave them and left quickly. Sometimes I just didn’t get people.

  I drifted back over to where a man was looking at the jewelry. He had a jeweler’s loupe with him and studied several pieces. He held up a necklace with an unassuming chain and enameled back.

  “This is a Victorian mourning necklace,” he said. “There’s no price on it.”

  I took it from him and turned it over. The other side had an intricately woven hair preserved behind a piece of glass. How had I missed this?

  “How much do you want for it?” he asked.

  “I will have to check with the owner. Excuse me,” I said. I took out my phone and did a quick search online. They were selling from fifty dollars all the way up to six hundred, depending on the condition and the hair. Some held just a snippet of hair, but the more expensive ones were more like the one I held.

  “Kitty, a man found this Victorian mourning necklace in with the jewelry. I think it could be valuable.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s a piece of jewelry with hair in it that during Victorian times people kept as a remembrance of their loved one who died. I’m so sorry I overlooked it earlier.” I was kicking myself for missing it. It would have been terrible if I hadn’t been there when the man had said that or if I hadn’t taken a better look when he asked for the price. One of my biggest fears was selling something valuable for next to nothing for a client and then seeing it on an episode of Antiques Roadshow.

  “It’s beautiful and creepy at the same time,” Kitty said.

  I nodded. “Do you want to sell it? It could be a family heirloom.”

  Kitty frowned. “I should take it to my mom and see if she knows where it came from.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. If you don’t want to keep it after you talk to her, I can sell it for you online.” That at least would ease my conscience a little.