Shots in the Dark (27 page)

As I watched, we heard a commotion from the bottom of the stairs, and a moment later a breathless Cora arrived, with Mal on her heels. Though I could tell Cora was practically bursting with curiosity, when she saw what Duncan was doing, she set her laptop on the table and watched him without saying a word.

Once the surface of the key was covered with the powder, Duncan picked the key up, tapped it a few times, and then carefully brushed over the surface. Then he eyed the end result.

“That looks like a pound sign,” he said, pointing to a tiny figure on the left. “And this on the right . . .” He tilted the key in the light, studying the revealed figure. “It looks like the number one.” He handed the key off to me, and I saw what he saw: a pound sign followed by the numeral one. I handed the key to Mal, who examined it, with Cora peering over his shoulder.

“What does it mean?” I asked. “Number one?”

“It could be a hashtag,” Cora said. “People use it online, on Twitter,” she explained.

Mal handed the key back to Duncan, who took out his phone and snapped several pictures of it, playing with different lays of the overhead light to see which angle showed it best.

Cora went on with her explanation. “Folks who use Twitter use the hashtags to highlight keywords or trending topics. It makes it easier for other people to find all the tweets on any given topic.”

“Twitter and tweets?” I said, shaking my head. “What is the world coming to?”

“It's the wave of the future,” Cora said.

“So do we have to go on Twitter and search for this hashtag with a one after it?” I asked.

Cora frowned. “I don't know. It seems a bit too generic, too vague, though I suppose it can't hurt to try.”

“Okay. Then how do we do it?” Mal asked.

“It just so happens, I have a Twitter account,” Cora said.

“Of course you do,” I said with a smile.

Cora took a seat, opened her laptop, and started tapping away at the keys. “By the way,” she said as she typed, “I ordered a bottle of Opium through my Amazon Prime account. It should be here tomorrow.”

“And that leads right into the main reason we called you up here,” I said. We then filled Cora in on the Opium connection to Suzanne Collier, Tad's comments, and what we wanted her to do. She became so enthralled by our story that she momentarily forgot what she was doing on the computer.

“I can tell you of one connection I know about without doing any searching,” she said when we were done. She looked excited. “The Collier family is a huge sponsor of Boerner Botanical Gardens. I know because it's a spot I visit often whenever I need to escape somewhere and meditate. It came up in a discussion once, and Tad mentioned that Suzanne is very involved with the place. I imagine it would be easy for her to get her hands on an aster or a willow leaf given that.”

We all exchanged looks, but no one said anything. I thought we were all letting the idea of Suzanne being the letter writer ferment in our minds. And that got me to wondering about Tad. Was he involved somehow, too? Or was he an innocent bystander in it all?

I didn't know about the others, but I was starting to feel like I couldn't trust anyone anymore.

“Okay,” Cora said, returning to tapping her keys. “I'll do some more digging as soon as we get done investigating this hashtag thing.”

Mal was already standing over Cora's shoulder, staring down at her screen. Duncan and I moved around the table to do the same.

“I don't know,” Cora said after a moment, looking grimly at her screen. “A hashtag with just the number one after it is going to bring up all kinds of crap. It's too simple, too common. And Twitter doesn't like searches for hashtags that have only numbers in them.” She pointed at her screen. “This is exactly what I feared,” she said. “There are thousands of things that come up when you search for a hashtag and the number one. It could take days to wade through all of this.”

“What about if you type out the number one as a word instead of using the numeral?” Mal asked.

Cora did so, but the results were equally voluminous and, to my eye, confusing.

“Is there a way you can look for things having to do with keys or with beer?” I asked. “Maybe that will help narrow it down.”

“Beer?” Cora asked, sounding confused.

I explained to her that the paper that was inside the small envelope with the key had been treated with beer.

“I can try,” Cora said with a sideways grudging nod. “But don't get your hopes up. I think I'm going to need something a little more unique and specific to narrow down the search.”

“Do what you can,” Duncan said.

Cora didn't look hopeful.

Duncan went into my kitchen, grabbed some Baggies, and packaged up the evidence. As I watched him drop the key in a Baggie, I bit my lip.

“Are you sure you should take that?” I asked. “What if I have some kind of brainstorm and need that key to try to open something?”

“Like what? A key this small can't be for a lock on anything much bigger than a diary or a box like the one you found at the cemetery. If you find something like that, you should be able to break it open in an emergency. And if need be, I can get the key back to you at any time.”

I caved, but I wasn't happy about it. My gut was telling me to hang on to that key.

“I have to go,” Duncan said, “but I'll call you later to let you know what time I'll be back.”

“Don't forget to call the new phone.”

“New phone?” Cora asked.

“Yeah. Mine got wet,” I told her.

“Put it in rice,” she said.

“Already did.”

“Give it twenty-four hours, and if that doesn't fix it, let my guys take a run at it. And give me the number of your temporary phone in the meantime.”

I gave Cora the new number, and she entered it into her phone. Then I asked her to give me Melanie Smithson's number again. A few key taps later, she had it, and I entered it into the burner cell. I dialed the number right away, but my hopes sagged when I got a message informing me the number was no longer in service.

“It looks like she ditched the phone,” I told the others when I was done.

“You'll just have to wait and see if she calls back on your landline,” Mal said.

Cora said, “I'll see if I can find another transaction for a new phone for her, but it might take a day or two for the charge to show up on her card, assuming she uses it again. In the meantime, I'll play with this stuff on Twitter for a while and see if anything comes up that looks like it might pertain. But don't hold your breath.”

We all pulled off our gloves and Mal collected them, tossing them into the kitchen trash. Duncan put his coat and hat back on, pulling the hat down low over his forehead. Then he wrapped the scarf around his lower face. The sight of him, with just his eyes and nose showing, reminded me of the drawing Carter had done based on Harrington's description. Something niggled at the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was.

Mal, Cora, and I followed him downstairs, and once we determined the coast was clear, he exited out the alley door. Cora headed upstairs to the Capone Club room, where she would likely be bent over that laptop for the rest of the day. Mal and I went into my office, where I turned the alarm back on.

“What's next on your agenda?” he asked.

I looked at the stack of drawings on my desk with all the lower faces that Carter had drawn the night before. “I want to run these by Teddy to see if he recognizes anyone.” I shuffled through the sheets of paper until I got to the original drawing Carter had done. I stared at it, and that same niggling sensation came back to me, but then a knock came on my office door, and whatever thought had been trying to surface went back into hiding.

Mal opened the door to Debra. “Sorry to bother you, Mack,” she said, stepping over the threshold. “But Pete is sick. He just ran into the bathroom and upchucked. He needs to go home. Plus, that new waitress, Linda, just called in to say she can't work today, because her mother is in the hospital. And we're slammed out here.”

“I'll be right out.”

With that, Debra returned to the bar.

I looked at Mal and shrugged. “I guess my agenda for today has changed.”

“I'd help out if I could,” he said, “but I don't know anything about bartending or waiting tables.”

“Thanks. We'll manage. Why don't you take some time for yourself?”

“I think I will,” he said. “I've got some shopping I need to do. I'll check back in with you later.”

We left the office, and I went behind the bar, where a pale, shaky-looking Pete was struggling to mix some drinks. “I got this,” I said to him, taking the glass he had in his hand. “You go home.”

“Thanks, Mack. Sorry.”

I waved away his apology. “Not a problem. Go home and get better.”

Mal waved good-bye and headed out. Pete followed closely on his heels. Teddy was helping Debra wait on tables, and when he came up to the bar, I told him to keep at it. I could manage behind the bar fine on my own, even with my crutches.

For the next several hours, we stayed crazy busy. Billy came in at five and joined me to help. I was woefully inadequate when it came to carrying a drink tray with my crutches, so I kept making drinks and had Teddy continue to wait on tables. Duncan called around five thirty to say he was going to be held up at work, thanks to a gang shooting, and he didn't know when, or even if, he'd be able to come by. Normally, I would have been disappointed, but given that I was also being held up at work, I told him it was fine. He said he would call later if he could come by at all, but that it would likely be very late if he did.

The dinner service was equally busy, and the evening hours flew by. Somewhere around ten o'clock we finally got a break and things slowed down. My leg was aching, my arms were throbbing, and my head was pounding from working on my feet—or rather foot—for so many hours. I told Billy I was going to take a short break and went into my office, where I downed a handful of ibuprofen. I sat down at my desk after dragging the spare chair around so I could prop my casted foot on it. And then I just sat for a while, letting my mind wander.

I nearly fell asleep, but a knock on the office door a short time later brought me back to attention. I got up and maneuvered my way to the door, where I found Clay Sanders.

“I hope it's okay that I knocked,” he said. “Your staff said you were in here.”

“Of course. Come on in.”

I headed back to my seat, and Clay stood across the desk from me. “You look beat,” he said.

“I am. It was a busy day. And getting around with these things”—I pointed to the crutches, which were propped off to one side—“makes it doubly hard. What's up?”

“I was wondering if you'd had any luck with Melanie Smithson.”

“I don't know,” I told him. Then I replayed the essence of my initial conversation with Melanie to him. “You're right. She sounds like she's afraid of something. And to make matters worse, my cell phone is dead.” I told him what had happened and that someone had called me just as I dropped the phone into the toilet. “Maybe it was her,” I said. “If it was, I may never know. Even if I could figure out who called by looking at my bill, she apparently deactivated the number we have. I tried to call it again a little while ago and got a message saying it was no longer in service.”

“Bummer,” Clay said. He was looking down at my desk, at the stack of drawings. “What are these?”

I explained to him how the group had spent last evening playing around with the faces in the drawings to see if any of the results looked familiar.

Clay started shuffling the papers around. At the fourth or fifth one, he stopped, cocked his head to the side, and took a step back.

“What is it?” I said.

He picked up the drawing and turned it so that I could see it right side up. “Does this look like anybody you know?” he asked me.

I stared at the picture, and that niggling thought that had been hiding out at the back of my mind leaped to the forefront. The lower face featured a narrow, weak chin and thin, pale lips. The face was instantly familiar. “It looks like Rory Gallagher!”

Clay nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. “Yes, it does.” He set the papers down and walked over to the couch. He sat, placed his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, and stared at the floor, saying nothing. He looked troubled.

“It could be a coincidence,” I said. “We have no way of knowing what the man Harrington met with looked like underneath that scarf.”

Clay shook his head and gave me a grim smile. “Maybe, but it makes a weird kind of sense. Rory has always been a strange, moody kind of fellow, and as far as I know, he's never dated anyone for very long. And there's the incident of the family dog that was so dedicated to Tiffany and bit Rory.” Clay looked at me briefly, then tore his gaze away. I could see his thoughts were churning.

“Where are you going with this, Clay?” I had an idea, but it was so disturbing, I didn't want to voice it.

He made a face like he felt ill. “Ben told us that Tiffany seemed upset, that she got into one of her moods after they attended a family gathering, remember? And Rory might have known where Ben and Tiffany were staying when they went to Door County.” His expression made it obvious that whatever he was thinking, he found it distasteful, and I felt certain he'd made the same leap I had.

I had a mental image of puzzle pieces floating around me. Slowly, they started coming together, fitting snug and tight. The idea that Rory was behind it all did answer some questions and fill several holes. It could explain why Tiffany suddenly grew so sullen and withdrawn in her teenage years. It could explain why she started cutting herself, and why she wouldn't reveal who the father was when she got pregnant during her senior year in high school. The puzzle pieces fell into place one by one, until only a couple remained floating. But the ones that had fit together provided enough. The picture they formed was of Rory Gallagher's face.

I thought I knew how to make those last pieces drop into place. I recalled my promise to Kelly Gallagher. At the time I'd had every intention of keeping it, and I'd already broken that promise by telling Mal. But this . . . this changed things, didn't it?

Except what if we were wrong? What if I told Clay what I knew and none of what we were surmising proved to be true? Would he leak it somehow, print a scandalous story about it? Could I trust him? I didn't know if I could, but maybe if I made him promise he wouldn't take it any further, I'd be able to tell if he meant it by listening to his voice and looking for changes. Except here I was reneging on a promise that would have rung truthful when I first made it to Kelly Gallagher. Clay might make promises to me that he intended to keep, but there were no guarantees he wouldn't change his mind down the road for some reason, the same way I had.

The puzzle pieces flapped and fluttered as they floated, insistent, demanding. It felt like the right move was to say something, and I prayed that I wouldn't live to regret what I was about to do.

“Clay, Kelly Gallagher confided something to me when we were looking at Tiffany's paintings, something I think might be relevant to our discussion. But I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone.”

Clay looked at me with angst-filled eyes. “Was it about Tiffany getting pregnant during her senior year?” My stunned expression gave him his answer. “I already know about it,” he said. “Aidan spilled the beans one night when we were at a party. He was very drunk. He made me promise not to tell anyone.”

“And did you keep that promise?” I asked, wondering about the rumors that had circulated about Tiffany's absence that year.

“Until now I did,” he said, and based on the taste of his voice, he was telling the truth. “Colin Gallagher's preference of Aidan over Rory is painfully obvious, even during the few times I've seen the family together. What if it's because he knows Rory is twisted? What if he knew about him and Tiffany all along and tried to cover it up? He couldn't let a scandal like that get out.”

The idea that Tiffany might have had an incestuous relationship with her brother was bad enough. The thought that her father had known and done nothing about it was even worse. My heart ached more than ever for that poor girl. Had Kelly known? I didn't think so. But I thought she might have suspected.

“What about the semen they found in Tiffany?” I asked him. “There was no sperm.”

“Maybe Colin forced Rory to have a vasectomy, knowing that his proclivities might get him into trouble again down the road.”

“How can we find that out?”

Clay's forehead wrinkled with thought, and he ran a hand over his head. “I don't know. Getting medical information these days is like trying to push a wall. It was easier before all the facilities went to these electronic medical records. Back in the day I could get someone to sneak a peek into a medical file for me anytime. But now if they do that, it can be tracked. No one is willing anymore. They're afraid they'll get fired or, worse, prosecuted.”