Idyll Threats (14 page)

“Why'd he come here then? No way some big-city detective packs it in for this place unless he's dirty.”

Finnegan said, “My money's on drugs.”

More murmuring, but I couldn't pick apart the sentences. Yankowitz approached. His eyes widened when he saw me, but he held his ground. “Afternoon, Chief,” he said. “Need help?”

I lurked near a file cabinet. “No, thanks.” Luckily, the cabinet had a calendar featuring half-naked women. “Wrong month,” I said. I flipped the pages over from May to August.

“Oh,” he said. “We know. But we like Miss May best.”

“I see.” I let the pages fall back to Miss May, who was washing a sports car with more enthusiasm than accuracy. The suds were all over her red bikini, not the car.

Yankowitz moved on, and I took half a step closer.

“He think he's going to get some sort of medal for solving this case?” Wright asked.

Finnegan said, “Dunno. Hasn't solved it so far.”

And then they started to rip into city cops. How we thought we were tougher, smarter, and better than everyone else. I pushed away from the cabinet, ready to go.

Wright said, “How many drug tests does a cop have to fail to be sent here?” Like he was setting up a joke.

Finnegan said, “How many?”

“All of them.”

They laughed until Finnegan went into tubercular-attack mode. I made a beeline for the exit.

“Chief, you got a call from DPW,” the desk sergeant said. “Someone's been messing with their trucks.”

“I'll get back to them.” I didn't break stride. I walked out the door and headed for my car, away from whispers and speculation. I'd run before, from New York to here. Tired of the guesses about what had happened that awful day between Apollo and Rick and me. Of regretting what Rick and I had talked about the prior week. My request for a transfer, away from the station and his habit.

“I heard you requested a transfer.” Rick laced his shoes and double-knotted them. Just as he did each night before we left the station. He claimed his father told him a story of a cop who tripped over his laces and discharged his weapon into a Sunday church crowd. So he always double-knotted his laces. Superstitious to the last.

“Closer to home,” I said. I zipped the lower half of my jacket, checked that my gun wasn't bulging. It's harder to dress a gun than it looks.

He said nothing. Just put on his sunglasses and said, “So it's the location?”

“Yup.”

“Not the company?” His voice peaked. I couldn't see his eyes behind his mirrored shades. Only saw myself keeping to myself.

“Company?” I said, as if the thought had just occurred. “Of course not, Leprechaun. Don't be crazy.”

He adjusted his loose belt. “Right,” he said. He scratched his nose and clapped his hands, fast and hard. The noise made me jump, but I covered it by slamming my locker closed.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Always.”

When we got outside, I realized why his gesture had bothered me. Rick scratched his nose when suspects told him lies. “I'll drive,” he said. And he drove us to talk to Vince Reginald, the man who would lead us to Apollo St. James.

Cecilia North's sister, Renee, didn't want to meet at the police station. I let her propose a spot. She picked Dunkin' Donuts. When I pulled into the lot, she was in her car, staring through the windshield at nothing. She didn't see me, so I knocked on the driver's window. She jumped. Then she opened the door. “Sorry. I must have zoned out.”

We walked inside. Two customers stood in line. A couple in the corner bickered about rent payment, and the mother of two small kids wiped their faces free of sugar with thin napkins.

“What'll you have?” the young girl with the Dunkin' cap asked me.

“Coffee, black, small.” I turned to Renee. “Large hazelnut iced coffee,” she said. “And a plain bagel, toasted with butter.” She told me, “I forgot to eat this morning.”

We took our drinks and her bagel to the corner table farthest from the fighting couple. We sat facing each other. Renee's eyes darted on and around me. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. A gold hoop hung from it.

“You had more questions?” she asked. Finnegan had interviewed her, weeks ago. I hoped to get more from her. She sipped her drink. Renee looked more like Cecilia's cousin, her family resemblance diluted. Renee was taller, blonder, and had more oomph—as the boys liked to say. Rick used to say that when we were out, driving. “Would you look at that? That girl got some oomph!”

“It seems that your sister planned to meet someone the night she
died.” I kept my voice low. I didn't need the town gossip wagon hitching a ride. “Did she mention anything to you?”

“No. I didn't talk to her that day. I saw her the weekend before.” She took another sip of her drink, set it down, and said, “Who was she meeting?”

“I don't know. I was hoping you might have an idea.”

“Her friends would have mentioned it if they'd met her that night.” She gripped her drink. “You don't think—” Her face gave it away. She thought I might consider one of Cecilia's friends to be the killer.

“No. I don't.”

“Then who?”

“We're looking into it. If Cecilia had been going to meet someone and she wanted to keep the meeting private, where would she go?”

Renee broke off pieces of bagel, but she didn't eat them. “Depends. If it was a guy, maybe the woods, or Sutter's cabin. She used to meet her boyfriend, Rob, there when she was a sophomore in high school. I told her about it. It's pretty private.” She bit her lip. “Rob was a good guy. I wouldn't have let her go out with someone…”

“It's okay. The cabin. That's a good idea.” Finally, someone had mentioned the cabin in connection with Cecilia. Now I could share it with the men as a tip from the deceased's sister. We didn't have any news about the soda cans I'd submitted from there to the techs. The men still regarded the cabin as low on the list of places she might have gone before she was killed.

“Do you know if she was seeing someone?”

She assessed me. “She'd broken up with her boyfriend.”

“But?” I said.

She leaned in. “I thought in July that maybe she had started seeing someone.”

“Why's that?”

“She kept singing. She couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle, but she loved to sing. And she always got more singy when she was interested in a guy.”

“And she was like that in July?”

“Yes, but when I asked her about it, she laughed and told me I was reading too much into it. Said she was just in a good mood. And she stopped doing it so much after that. So I thought maybe I'd guessed wrong. She never mentioned any guys.” Her eyes darted toward my hand. Checking for a ring. I suspected I was getting more information not because I was a better interviewer than Finnegan but because I was better looking.

“I see. What did she sing?”

She put her hand to her forehead. “Oh, God. Songs from musicals and pop ballads. She really did have the worst voice.” She squished her bagel bits into one messy ball. Butter leaked out. She wiped her hands on her jeans.

“Is it possible she was seeing a co-worker?”

Renee shook her cup. The ice rattled. “Maybe.”

“Would your sister have dated someone who was married?”

Her laughter wasn't the happy sort. “Yes, sad to say. Cecilia was very trusting, and she had terrible taste in people. Really. She always assumed people were telling her the truth.” She tapped her fingers. “I can see her falling for a guy with an ‘unhappy marriage' no problem.”

Gary Clark. Had he fed her a line about his troubled marriage? Sure, he had an alibi, but he'd also spent a lot of time in her office. Too much time.

She set her hands on her thighs. “Cecilia was sweet. But not super bright. God, that sounds bitchy. Sorry. But—” She shrugged. “We all knew it, Cecilia most of all. Poor thing. When she got to school, all her teachers were like, ‘You're Renee's sister' and then, because I'd done so well, they expected the same of her. Wasn't fair, really. And my parents, they sometimes expected more of her too. They kept talking about her job like it was a stepping-stone, but I'm not sure it was. Cecilia didn't have any job passions, expect maybe for animals.”

I felt a kinship to my murder victim. Her childhood sounded a bit like my own, only in reverse. John's teachers were surprised and delighted to discover that Thomas Lynch's brother did his homework without complaint and never got into fistfights.

“But she'd never have become a vet,” Renee said. She rolled her straw wrapper into a tight sphere. “Veterinary school's tougher to get into than med school, and she didn't have the grades.”

“Right.” I was done hearing about Cecilia's academic failures. “About her job. Any trouble there?”

“Not much. I think it was kind of boring. And her boss seemed like a bitch.”

“One last thing. Do you remember if Cecilia was sick this summer?”

“Sick? I doubt it. Cecilia never got sick. I'm the one who catches every cold.”

“She called in sick to her job on July thirty-first.”

Renee finished her iced coffee with a loud slurp. “You could ask my parents. I wasn't home all summer, just weekends mostly. I should go back to my apartment soon, but…I feel like as soon as I go, that will be it. It will mean she's really gone. Which is stupid, I know. She
is
really gone. But as soon as I leave, the next time I come back…” She lifted her head and stared at me. Her eyes were damp. She forced a smile. “I'll have to go back soon. Or the food will start leaving the apartment,” she paused, “on its own feet.”

“Thanks for your help,” I said.

“Do you think you'll catch whoever killed her?” she asked. “I mean, do you? You don't have to say you will because I'm her sister or anything.”

“Yes. I'll catch the killer.”

“Good.”

“Do me a favor?” I sweetened my words with a smile. “Please don't mention what we talked about to anyone, not even your parents.”

“Sure. If they get too pushy, I'll lie. I'm pretty good at it, if I have time to prepare.” She thought for a moment. “Cecilia was the same way.”

I walked her to the parking lot, where she waved me off. Then she got in her car and sat, staring at nothing again.

When I shared my new intel, the reaction was underwhelming.

“Why'd you talk to the sister?” Finnegan asked. He tugged his tie. Annoyed.

“I wanted to see if she recalled Cecilia being sick this summer. Also, see if Cecilia told Renee about any summertime romance, if she'd had one.”

“I asked her that,” he said. He kicked the bottom of his desk. It had a dent from years of such abuse.

“I know. But not about her being sick. And we didn't know much about Gary Clark then.”

“His alibi's still waterproof.” He pointed at the board.

“Yeah,” Wright said. “Anyone else you interviewing?”

“Why?”

Revere, silent until now, chimed in. “It helps to know whom you're planning to interview as part of the ongoing investigation, sir.”

They all stared at me.

“It's kind of hard, not knowing what you're up to,” Finnegan said. “One day you're at the autopsy—”

“I didn't see any other volunteers,” I said. These fuckers. Piling on me for doing my job.

“And the next you and Billy are out bagging evidence. No word to any of us,” Finnegan said. “It feels like we're competing, not cooperating.”

He had a good point.

“Plus you dismiss any theories other than your own,” Wright said.

“Like your harebrained scheme about Anthony Fergus?” I said.

Revere formed a “t” with his hands. Time out. “Chief, maybe if you just kept us abreast of your inquiries…” He let it hang there.

“Sure,” I said. “I'll stop by and inform you of my movements every morning.”

They weren't sure how to take this. Wright made the mistake of accepting it at face value. “Great.”

“When hell freezes over,” I said. “If we're going to complain, how about starting with the fact that my detectives disappear for hours
and can't be raised, when major tips come to light? Wright you didn't answer when called about Mrs. Ashworth. That's why I ended up taking her statement. And Revere, while you're grabbing info from your statie pals, Billy's left to try to match gun-theft reports on his own. Something you were supposed to supervise.”

“Hold on,” Revere said.

“No. You hold on. You're a guest at this station. I didn't request your assistance. Now if you'd like to second-guess my work, go ahead. But do it silently.”

Wright said, “My kid broke his ankle. I had to take him to the ER that day.”

“You should've called in,” I said. I took a few steps. Paused. Turned. “And he sprained his ankle. He didn't break it. Don't lie to me, again.”

I left them to curse me. Lord knows I'd done it to my supers over the years. But I'd trusted and respected them. I had no such illusions that these men felt that way about me. They thought I was dirty. My mind walked through the woods to the Sutter cabin. The place I'd pretended never to have visited. Where I'd never seen Cecilia North the night she died. They were right. I was dirty.