The Christie Curse (13 page)

I knew he was right, but I hated letting go and hated waiting while they worked on
her. The paramedics radioed the hospital, assessing Karen’s condition.

“Lost a lot of blood.”

“Checking vitals.”

“Let’s get that bleeding stemmed.”

They seemed to work as a hive mind, completing each other’s tasks and sentences, buzzing
over Karen as they prepped her to go to hospital. I knew they would do everything
possible to save her.

By the time she was loaded on the gurney and being wheeled toward the door, I found
that I was shaking. Officer Smiley’s arm was still around me. He led me to the foyer
where there was a comfortable sofa and a table. “You’d better sit down,” he said.

I sat, stared at my knees and shuddered.

Officer Smiley waited for me to gather myself a bit. I was even beginning to feel
a bit grateful for his presence. “What happened?” he said in a low voice.

I turned to stare at him. “I don’t know.”

He nodded sympathetically. “But you were here.”

“What? No, I wasn’t here.”

He patted my hand. “Jordan, you might be in shock. We’ll get you seen to before they
take your statement.” That took care of any misplaced warm fuzzies I was feeling.

“Take my statement? Why?”

“Because a woman has been seriously injured and you were here.”

“I told you. I wasn’t here.”

He nodded sadly. “We’ll get you seen to.”

“Karen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her name is Karen. She’s not just ‘a woman.’ She’s Karen Smith. She runs the Cozy
Corpse. I told you that. She was really nice to me. I like her.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t intend to diminish her. My point was that you were
here with Karen when she was critically injured, so we will need to know what happened.”

He made it sound so reasonable. It was really hard to be mad at him and his cute little
chipped incisor, but really, I could not give a statement. No way. I was pretty sure
every
cop in upstate New York had a file on my felonious family members. For all I knew
they had one on me too. Maybe this smiling policeman was familiar with it. That would
explain why he was always showing up. But why would they have a file on me? I hadn’t
done anything. I was the law-abiding one. I’d gone to college. I had paying jobs.
I filed my taxes.

Oh right. I had just taken over the job of a man who’d died mysteriously. And now,
I’d stumbled over a woman who looked to be critically injured. But I had no idea what
had happened. Making that point wouldn’t do me much good. It was the Kelly family
curse: even when we are doing the right thing, we exude guilt. I could see how it
looked. I was in an empty hall after nine o’clock on a Sunday night for no reason
that made much sense, and I’d been found holding Karen’s hand with both of us covered
in blood. I glanced at his innocent pink-cheeked face. I decided I was better talking
to him than some stranger who might have a history with my family.

He said, “Look, I know you’re upset. But let’s get you some medical care and—

“I’m all right. No need for medical care. I’ll tell you what happened.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. You’re with the Harrison Falls Police and I—”

“Yes.” He nodded at me and waited.

I said, “Does the jurisdiction of Harrison Falls Police Force extend to Grandville?”

“Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure I’ll get my butt seriously kicked for being here
in uniform.”

“Well, um, why are you here in uniform?”

“I got a call.”

“A call about?”

“That someone, who didn’t identify himself, wanted to meet me to give me information
about a series of crimes in Harrison Falls.”

“And he wanted you to meet in Grandville?”

“Yes.”

“At Saint Sebastian’s?”

“Exactly.”

“And that seemed like a good idea to you?”

“At the time.”

“Huh.”

His flush got deeper. “When you think of it, it turned out to be a good idea. I was
here to help you.”

I bristled. “I had already called 911 by the time you got here.”

How deep could a flush get? He didn’t say anything.

I said, “I’m sorry. I’m being a jerk. I am really glad you showed up. You calmed me
down.”

Damn good thing my uncles weren’t around to hear that little speech. I’d be cut off
Kraft Dinner for years. To my own surprise, I’d meant it.

“So what happened before I got here?” he said. I guessed he didn’t hold a grudge,
not like my family. His flush was subsiding, and he seemed to have forgotten my outburst.

I’m sure police officers have people blowing up at them all the time, and probably
far worse than myself. All this caught me off guard, though, and I found I was willing
and able to spill every detail, especially as I had a choice. “If I tell you what
happened, then may I check up on Karen and go home after?”

“Right. Of course.” If he’d nodded any faster, his smiling blond bobble-head might
have fallen off. “So do you mind filling me in?”

Why not? I really didn’t have anything to hide. “I got a call from Karen to meet her
here.”

“What time was that?”

“During dinner. We dine at eight.” I was surprised at how naturally that very Vera
Van Alst phrase slipped out of my mouth.

“Oh, we do, do we?” Was he smirking now?

“We can check my phone for the time.” My hand was now rifling through my satchel where
I’d dropped the phone.

“Did she, Karen, say why?”

“Just that she had interesting information.”

“What kind of information?”

“She didn’t give any details, but I assumed it had to do with a collectible that I
might buy.”

“You didn’t ask her?”

“I didn’t take the call. I was at dinner and my employer refuses to have any modern
electronic devices in the dining room. I checked the message just before nine and
drove over.”

He blinked. Perhaps it was because of the “dining with my employer” thing.

“She asked you to meet her at that time?”

I stopped to think about what exactly she
had
said. “She said she’d be here packing until around nine thirty. I’d left her a reply
saying I was on my way.”

“Were you worried?”

“What? No. I was excited. I was really hoping to find out what she’d learned. And
it’s a beautiful Sunday night. This is the fun part of my job.” I shivered. “I can’t
believe I said that.”

“You didn’t mean it that way.”

“No, I meant finding leads and tracking down books is the fun part of my job. I had
no idea that I’d find…” I trailed off, picturing poor Karen barely alive.

“What did you find, Miss Bingham?”

I thought back. “The parking lot had only the Cozy Corpse van. I didn’t see any other
cars anywhere around the building. So whoever it was must have attacked Karen and
then driven off quickly, or if they were on foot, disappeared into the neighborhood
as quickly as possible.

He blinked again. What was he thinking? I wanted him to nod in agreement or say yes
or something else reassuring. I reminded myself that the police are—if not the enemy—at
the very least, a force to be wary of. “We need to consider both possibilities,” I
added. “There’s no way to know for sure.”

He blinked again. I decided that he blinked whenever he was keeping something from
me. Good to know. I said, “Is there any way to find out? Surveillance cameras? Witnesses?”

“No working cameras here, believe it or not. And
we
shouldn’t be considering anything. You leave me to worry about that.”

Like I wasn’t going to worry. Normally it would be all I could do not to laugh at
that comment. Just like a cop to pretend it’s run-of-the-mill to stumble upon a victim
of a violent attack. As if. But I didn’t laugh, because there was nothing funny about
tonight.

“I think I will worry, if you don’t mind.”

He said, “The police will look into all this.” Before I could protest, he said, “Weren’t
you nervous meeting her here? Alone?”

“Nervous? Why would I have been nervous? It’s a bright night. You could still see
well enough. It was a church hall in a lovely residential area. I was meeting a friend
after a book fair. This is Grandville, for Pete’s sake. It’s hardly the mean streets.”

“People have been killed.”

“Killed? What people?”

“Well, Alex Fine. You were going to see his fiancée earlier.”

“That’s one person. And he was killed by falling in front of a subway train in New
York City. Why would that make me nervous here?” I realized that my voice was pretty
high-pitched for someone who wasn’t nervous. “Anyway, I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t nervous.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I should be. I went in and—”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No. Just the—

He said, “How did you get in?”

“Didn’t I say that? The door was open. It had been propped open by a box of books.
I assumed she’d done that because she was loading the van. I just went in. I didn’t
want her to come out and get me. I saw”—I closed my eyes to recall the scene exactly—“the
room was empty except for her table and some boxes of books, stacked.”

“And you saw her, um, Karen Smith?”

“No. I thought she’d left the room to go to the ladies’ room or something. The cash
box was also on the table. And stacks of credit card slips.”

“Was there cash in the box?”

“I don’t know. It was closed. I imagine she would have had a float at least. The box
got knocked over when I tripped. That’s when I found her.”

“You tripped?”

“I fell over that overturned chair and I went flying.” I stood up to demonstrate,
showing him where the table had been in relation to the chair. “And I crashed into
the back table. As I was getting up, I saw Karen’s leg sticking out from under.”

“What did you think?”

That was just annoying. “I didn’t know what to think. Have you ever had anything like
that happen to you? It was bizarre and frightening. Then I saw the blood from her
head wound and started to make sense of it. Not that it makes sense. I got down to
check if she was…all right. I called 911. The rest you know. Oh, wait a minute. When
did you get the call?”

“It didn’t take me long to get here. I was at the edge of town, so maybe ten minutes.
I must have taken the call ten minutes before I arrived.”

My eyes widened. “But I would have already been here.”

“Yes.”

“So someone called you over in Harrison Falls to come here and find me kneeling in
Karen’s blood. Does that not strike you as strange?”

It struck him as something. I could tell by the look on his cute pink face.

I saw his eyes flick behind me to a man looming in the doorway. This guy could only
be a detective. There was a granite edge to his features, and my guess was that would
be reflected in a hard, edgy personality. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach
was because I knew I’d be giving him my statement next. Even from a distance, I could
tell he lacked Officer Smiley’s apparently sincere and pleasant nature.

One thing I was glad of, I could give the Van Alst mansion as my address, rather than
the digs I recently shared with my uncles, who would be, as they say, known to the
police. It would be a good time to be a Bingham rather than a Kelly.

I
F YOU FIND yourself in an interrogation room, you will probably do better if you have
not spent a bit of time kneeling on a blood-soaked carpet. And it would be especially
good if you didn’t have any of that blood smeared on your clothing and your hands.
I’m just saying. A word to the wise.

Detective Fenton Zinger had brought me a bottle of water. This seemed like an act
of kindness, but I knew better. I’d been coached by my uncles, that should I ever
find myself being interrogated, I should not accept an offer of water, as the police
were just trying to get my prints and DNA. They advised if I was too thirsty to refuse,
to make sure I took the bottle or paper cup with me. Leaving it behind made it fair
game for the fuzz—Uncle Mick’s words, not mine.

I felt my insistence that I’d had nothing to do with Karen Smith’s attack, or maybe
that would be her murder by this point, was not having the right impact on Detective
Fenton Zinger.

“Tell me again,” he said. “Start from the beginning. You got the call…”

“Yes. I got the call.”

“You didn’t know what it was about.”

“I
did
know what it was about. She had found something she thought I would be interested
in. I just didn’t know what that item was.”

“Maybe it was her cash box?”

“What?”

“The thing she keeps her money in?”

As Uncle Mick likes to say, everyone’s a comedian. I said, “I know what a cash box
is. I’m pretty sure the call wasn’t about that.”

“But she had one.”

“Yes. I saw it on the table when I came in.”

“Any idea where her cash went?”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Wasn’t it there?”

He couldn’t hold back that sneer.