Chapter 11
“Stephania, don’t do something emotionally driven,” Win reminded in my ear.
But here’s the thing. Sure, Coop might survive jail, because it’s evident she could fight her way out of a cage match without so much as a broken fingernail.
But would she survive emotionally? Trixie navigated more than most of her social interactions. I couldn’t imagine her in jail—even for a night—picking her way through the network of scum who end up there. She was too honest, too vulnerable in her effort not to lie and be a good person, and I suspected it was all due to her time in Hell. Likely, she’d done bad things to survive because hello, Hell.
I couldn’t bear the idea she’d be taken advantage of, or tricked into doing something she would end up finding out was the wrong thing to do, and it would be to her detriment. I wouldn’t allow that.
So I had two choices. Give her up, or keep right on lying to protect her from a far worse fate. If Dana took her in and she said one wrong thing without Luis with her, she wouldn’t be just a “person of interest” for long. I knew he knew I was messing with him, but I didn’t care.
Now, my eyes narrowed, but I kept my cool. “Are you here to arrest her?”
“I’m here to bring her in because I’m the only one the precinct could spare with the weather the way it is. But I suspect they’ll likely charge her with Hank’s murder.”
Then this conversation was over.
I lifted my chin and pushed the tail of the scarf still around my head over my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter what you’re here to do. I told you, Officer Nelson, they’re not here.” There. Decision made and out in the universe. I couldn’t take it back now.
“And I think you’re lying, Miss Cartwright,” he insisted, his mouth a thin line of anger.
Believe me when I say, we’ve been at odds like this before, except this time, the stakes were much bigger. This was a childlike woman’s life on the line.
I shot him my haughty, one-eyebrow-raised glare. “I don’t care what you think. Now, unless you have a search warrant to tear my place up again while you look for them—which I’m guessing you don’t because what judge in Eb Falls is awake past nine o’ clock?—I’ll simply thank you to be on your way until you can show me something official,” I said from stiff lips. We weren’t playing a fun game I could talk my way out of anymore. Now I was playing for keeps.
“You’re harboring a suspect in a murder investigation, Miss Cartwright. I don’t always like my job, but it’s my job, and I have no intention of losing it—not even for you.”
I wandered my way to the front door, ignoring his words as I did. I pulled it open, grabbing Whiskey’s collar to keep him from jettisoning out to play in the snow, which continued to pile up.
“You have no proof I’m harboring even so much as a grudge. It’s time you left, Officer Nelson. Good night.”
Dana’s nostrils flared at my words but he tipped his head and was gone, down the snowy steps, leaving only his footprints in his wake.
Letting out a breath of air, I fought the sting of tears. Dana was my friend, but I knew I was right about not giving up Coop. Knew it in my bones.
“Dove?” Win whispered in my ear. “How fare thee?”
Sniffing, I shrugged. “Thee fares rather poorly, thank you. I just couldn’t let him take Coop, Win. And it’s not the violence I worry she’d face in jail that made me lie.”
“It’s her determination to be, as she calls it, ‘a good person’. She’s tough as nails, but she’s also quite vulnerable. I understand and support your choice, Stevie.”
“Me, too, malutka. This Coop is violent, but not without cause and not without provocation.”
“So you guys aren’t mad?” I asked in disbelief. “I thought surely when you told me not to use my emotions, you meant I should give her up, Win.”
“Why would I be angry, Dove? You’re protecting someone who needs protecting in a way that has nothing to do with strength. What I meant was to simply think about your emotions—meaning, when fear is heightened, we sometimes do things we regret. I didn’t want you to give in to the fear Officer Nelson would arrest you.”
I grinned up at the ceiling. “Wow, you’ve come a long way, haven’t you? You used to be Mr. By The Book, Spy Guy.”
“And I still am for the most part. But I also know Officer Nelson, and if he didn’t come with a search warrant, he doesn’t really believe Coop’s guilty. He just wasn’t motivated enough, or he’d have suggested getting one before he ever drove out here. I’m sure he knew you’d ask for one. Subconsciously, he believes in Coop’s innocence, leading me to believe they don’t really have anything on her. I pray that means they didn’t find some sort of toxin in the tattoo gun’s ink. He’s simply following orders. Now he can go back and tell his superiors she’s not here. Mission accomplished.”
Well, that was one way to look at it. I’d like to believe Dana was being fair, but Dana was Dana. He played by the rules with no regrets.
“So don’t be angry with him, Stephania, eh?” Win prompted.
I flapped a hand at the ceiling and made a face. “I’m a little angry with him, but not enough to sever all ties. I’ll get over it. For now, we have bigger fish to fry. We have zero time to find Hank Morrison’s killer before they hunt Coop down, Win, and hardly anything to go on. If Starsky can pin it on her, he will. Without a last name and any kind of history, she looks like a vagabond. And it won’t be long before they drag Trixie in there, too.”
Just then, I remembered Coop and Trixie were still in the basement and rushed to let them know the coast was clear. Coop met me at the top of the basement stairs.
She poked her gorgeous head out of the door. “Is the policeman gone?”
I nodded confirmation with a sympathetic smile. “He is, and we have work to do. So grab your beverage of choice, put on something comfortable, and let’s get crackin’, girls.”
But Coop hesitated, driving her hands into the pockets of her leather pants as she stepped back into the kitchen, her expression now shy and maybe even a little fearful. “Maybe I should go to the policeman’s station and turn myself in. That’s what it’s called, right, Stevie Cart…um, Stevie?”
Trixie was directly behind her with Livingston on her shoulder, her eyes wide and glassy from lack of sleep. “We heard everything he said, Stevie. We’re giving you nothing but grief. I don’t want you to lie for us. It’s the last thing we want you to do. I think we should just get in the car and leave.”
“But it’s freezin’ out there, lass!” Livingston protested, the feathers on his back ruffling.
Coop put two fingers over the owl’s beak and frowned. “Hush, Livingston. It’s not nice to be ungrateful and complain when someone has been kind to you. We’re treating Stevie poorly by staying here in her house and putting her at risk. She told lies to keep us safe, and I know Trixie said sometimes you have to tell white lies, but Stevie could still get into trouble for harboring a…a bad person.”
Without thinking, I threw my arms around Coop’s neck and hugged her hard while her arms hung awkwardly at her sides and her entire perfect body went stiff. “You’re doing no such thing, Coop. Knock it off with that kind of talk. You’re here and you’re staying here until we figure this out or I find you a better hiding place. You’re not leaving this house unless you’re free and clear. No outlaws allowed.” Drawing back, I patted her cheek before turning toward the kitchen table. “Now, we have work to do. Let’s do that, shall we?”
Trixie let out a shaky breath and cracked her knuckles with a smile. “Tell me what you want me to do, and I’m all in.”
* * * *
Four hours later, at nearly three-thirty in the wee hours of the morning, I flopped down on the table, head in my arms, and groaned. “What, what, whaaat am I missing?” I cried.
Trixie rubbed the heels of her hands to her eyes, now red and glassy. “There’s nothing in these pictures, Stevie. I’m telling you, you’re not missing anything.”
We’d blown up and printed out all the pictures I’d taken of the crime scene, every last one, and spread them all over the kitchen table, but they gave us absolutely nothing to go on. Nothing.
“I don’t get it. Nothing about the way Hank landed on the floor or the position of his body gives us any hint as to what happened to him. We only have the assumption he was killed with the tattoo gun, but no solid proof as of yet. But there was none or very little, if any, blood on the floor under him. He looks like he just crumpled. Which could mean it was sudden. The only other explanation is poison in the gun. That would explain how everything around him is still mostly in order. For sure it doesn’t look like he tussled with anyone. Argh!” I fisted my hands and shook them at the ceiling.
Trixie peered at the picture of Hank’s body, squinting her eyes, then shook her head. “It does look just like he fell down. What I’d like to know is how long he was there. We left the store last night for about an hour to grab some dinner at the diner before the roads got too bad. We were only gone an hour and a half or so.”
“Did you go into the storage room when you came back?” I asked.
“Nope,” Trixie confirmed. “We watched a little Netflix and then we went to bed. It was pretty late by the time we got back in, and of course, if it happened while we were gone, Livingston wouldn’t know because he sleeps the sleep of the dead.”
The owl’s head swiveled in Trixie’s direction, his wide eyes droopy. “I heard nothin’, lass. Not a peep.”
I groaned again and wrapped my arms around my stomach. “Did you go anywhere in the morning?”
“Just to the coffee store,” Coop said, trailing her finger over one of the pictures. “But we weren’t gone very long.”
“Well, it doesn’t take long to murder someone, Coop,” I reminded her.
“Yes. I know that.”
Her concise words chilled me. I didn’t want to know how she knew. “Okay, so until we have an approximate time of death, we have even less than I thought, but it had to have happened either when you were out for dinner or when you went for coffee. The locks on that back exit aren’t exactly meant to keep much out, so the killer probably just popped it open without much fuss.”
“Once this is all over, I’m going to make it a point to put bolts on the door,” Trixie assured.
“Do you know if anyone had keys to the store other than Hank?”
Trixie pinched the bridge of her nose. “As far as I know, he was the only one other than us.”
I rubbed a hand over my grainy eyes. “Can you guys think of anything—anyone—who might want to hurt Hank? Did you hear anything from other Eb Fallers about him?”
“You’ve been over that with them already. I think it’s time to call it a night, Stephania. Surely some sleep will refresh all of you,” Win suggested with a gentle tone.
Yet, I shook my head with vehemence. “But we have no time, Win. They’re going to arrest Coop because that’s her tattoo gun with her fingerprints on it, and whatever’s in that gun probably killed Hank. I know you don’t think that’s what it is, but it’s always the obvious, isn’t it? It’s the first thing the police considered.”
But Coop actually looked offended. “I would never put poison in the ink, Stevie Cartwright! That’s wrong and bad.”
I clenched my eyes shut and rubbed them, smearing what was left of my mascara on my fingertips. “I know you wouldn’t, Coop. But someone else might, and unfortunately, that will make it look like you did it. Which suggests premeditation, by any definition, but who would want to murder Hank and frame Coop?”
“He was a bad man. I bet a lot of people wanted him dead,” Coop said in her deadpan way.
The question of premeditation led me to something else. “When was the last time you used the tattoo gun, Coop?”
“I haven’t used it yet. I only took it out of the box and looked at it. We don’t have any clients to use it on.”
“Could someone have gotten their hands on it and put something in the ink?”
Trixie’s eyes went wide as she twisted her hands together, her knuckles white. “I suppose anything’s possible, but it would be pretty tough to get into the store without one of us seeing something.”
“I hate to point out the obvious, but someone was murdered—possibly while you were in the store,” I commented, feeling positively awful.
Trixie rapped the table with a knuckle. “Touché.”
“Okay, then I need you two to write me up a timeline of your comings and goings since you had that tattoo gun delivered. Think back on everything you’ve done, when you’ve left the store together, apart, whatever, since the gun arrived,” I stressed. “We need answers, and we need them now before they get search warrants, and I know darn well Dana will be back here first thing in the morning with a search warrant.”
“While that’s likely true, Dove, you’ll do yourself no favors without sleep. You do know how cranky you become when you don’t get your eight. Dare I say, irrational and overly emotional.”
Tears of frustration sprang to my eyes because Win’s words were true. As much as I hated to admit it, I’m a schlump without the proper amount of shuteye.
Coop, who looked like she’d just left a photo shoot for Vogue, and not in the least tired, pointed to the ceiling. “I think the man up there is right. You’d better sleep, Stevie. I don’t like when Trixie is cranky. She gets weepy. I don’t think I’ll like you that way either.”
I shot her a look of sympathy. “But aren’t you tired, too, Coop? All that worry with your neck on the line has to be exhausting.”
Coop gave me an odd look. “I don’t need much sleep and my neck is right here, Stevie. Not on a line.” She pointed to her swan-like neck.
Trixie burst out in laughter, jarring Livingston, who’d fallen sound asleep on the back of the kitchen chair, contrary to their claim he was nocturnal. “Stevie means we’re in a precarious situation, Coop. It’s one of those expressions.”
Coop sighed, leaning forward and cupping her chin to look at me thoughtfully. “I don’t understand human expressions. Why don’t humans just say what they mean?”
Why didn’t they indeed? “Because we’re all too afraid to say what we mean. So we hide behind innuendo and mixed metaphors. That’s why. But I’m not afraid to say we’re stewed if we don’t find something soon. Trixie, what did you find online about Hank?”
I’d tasked her with looking up and bookmarking every piece of information she could find on Hank. Where he was born, where he went to school, if he had siblings.
“Well, as you know, Abe was his stepfather. His biological father died at the age of sixty-two back in 2004 of pancreatic cancer. His name was John Morrison. And you mentioned you’d met Hank’s mother, Francie Morrison Levigne, once or twice, right?”
A picture of Francie Levigne flashed through my mind. A sturdy woman with thick arms and legs and hair dyed so black, it almost looked blue in the sunlight.
I tapped the table with my finger. “Yep. Met her at bingo not long before Abe passed. Very pleasant, if not super chatty. Not nearly as scary as her imposing image would make her seem. But I’ve only seen her once or twice since then.”
Trixie pointed to the screen and cocked her head. “As sort of an aside, this article from 1987 says in her heyday, Francie was an ax-throwing champion. How unusual.”
“Very unusual. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I bet Hank thought twice about cutting up with a mother who had those kinds of skills, huh?” I said with a giggle I couldn’t help.
“And then there’s Hank,” Trixie continued, her index finger skirting the screen of my laptop to keep her place. “He never married and has no children that anyone is aware of. All that’s left is Hank’s sister, Pricilla. She’s his older sister by three years, at forty-six. She lives here in Eb Falls with her husband and her two teenage girls. She works at the high school in the cafeteria. Hardly looks murderous.” She swung the laptop toward me so I could see her picture.
Pricilla looked nothing like Hank. She was a tall, fair-skinned blonde with a wide smile and overly made-up eyes.
“I didn’t even know Hank had a sister…” I said, surprised by that revelation. “But then, I didn’t really mingle much with him. Did he have any hobbies or tickets or anything that might lead us to a suspect? Any suspect at all?”
“He liked to golf,” Trixie responded, showing me an article from the Eb Falls newspaper. “He’s in this picture here—right there in the crowd. But mostly he liked to buy and sell real estate.”
I squeezed my temples and watched the snow continue to fall over the Sound. At this rate, I think we could classify this snow as a potential blizzard. My hope was, the terrible weather would continue long enough to keep the police at bay. Eb Falls wasn’t equipped for snow like this. We didn’t have a large number of plows the way the northern states do. If the roads stayed messy enough, we might catch a break. At least for a little while. I could always find somewhere for Coop and Trixie to go to keep them from the police, but it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t find something—some kind of evidence that proved Coop wasn’t a killer.
Pinching my temples, I asked, “What about a Facebook page? Did he have one? Twitter, maybe?”
“That was my next search.” Trixie’s fingers clacked on the keyboard while I pondered Hank.
He’d certainly inherited a lot of real estate after Abe passed, and he wasn’t exactly making friends if he was raising rents left and right. We needed to look into whether he’d pulled the same fast one on someone else the way he had Trixie and Coop.
“Jackpot!” Trixie yelped, rising to sit up straight in the chair and reposition herself. “Hank didn’t just own our building. He owned the yoga studio, the flower shop, and the beauty salon among several other buildings—and some of those renters were very angry with Hank for raising their rent, too. Look at some of these posts on his business page on Facebook!”
She swung the laptop in my direction once more and pointed to a post about how he’d just acquired another property, and saying he’d post more once the deal was sealed.
As I read the comments, several in particular caught my eye, but one by Burt Freely made me sit up and pay attention, and it had nothing to do with the poor grammar.
Your a cheap no good SOB Hank Morrison. Abe is rolled around in his grave for the way your treating us! You better watch your back!
I clicked on Burt’s profile to find he was part owner of the men’s barbershop on Main. Hank owned that building too, according to Google. As I perused his page, I noted Burt didn’t look anything like a killer. He was more teddy bear than cold-blooded murderer, but he sure was big enough to have been the person who knocked me down last night.
I bookmarked Burt’s page as a person of interest to question then read more comments.
One from Enid Gunkle in response to Hank’s new property read, And the rich get richer while the rest of us slugs live paycheck to paycheck! Hell awaits your arrival!
Now we might be getting somewhere. “Hank had a lot of people angry with him, didn’t he?” I mused. “He must have pulled the same fast one on all these people that he pulled on you two.”
“Hank Morrison was a bad man. He told lies,” Coop said, her jaw clenched.
I pushed away from the table and stretched my arms again while rolling my head from side to side. “Yes. He sure wasn’t a nice one, Coop. But please don’t let anyone hear you say that. It only strengthens the case against you.”
“Okay, that’s enough, Stevie. It’s off to bed with you,” Trixie insisted. “You’ve sacrificed your sleep and your time. You need rest. We’ll clean up. Just tell us where we’re sleeping and we’ll take care of the rest.”
Normally, I’m not so easily put off, and I know I’ve been missing a good mystery to pass the time. But this one had, in the mere hours since it had cropped up, become very important to me. Sure, it’s always important to me to bring justice to the dead, but I’d become emotionally involved with these women now, and it was crucial I had my head about me when I sought out some of these potential suspects.
So I gave in. Unwrapping the scarf from my head, I gave both women a hug. “I just need a couple of hours of sleep and I’ll be good to go. Your bedrooms are up the stairs and to the right. There are fresh towels and soaps and all sorts of toiletries on each of your beds. If you need anything at all, just holler. Please don’t hesitate. And Coop? Tomorrow we go over your new identity. Win says his friend’s created a really solid background for you, but you’ll need to memorize it, okay?”
“I’ll do as you say,” she assured, moving to clean the table free of the pictures we’d spread out.
“Stevie? We can’t thank you enough,” Trixie added as I meandered toward the stairs with Strike trailing at my feet and Whiskey leading the way.
“Not necessary,” I called back with a wide yawn as I made my way to my bedroom, never more grateful in my life than I was today to see my warm, comfortable bed.
I crawled into it, not even bothering to change into my pajamas. “I’m beat, Spy Guy.”
“Then rest well, Mini-Spy,” Win crooned. “Tomorrow’s a new day, Dove. We shall persevere!”
“Sleep tight, malutka. Do not let the bugs bite,” Arkady whispered.
Whiskey hopped up and pressed his big body against my back, burrowing his nose in the comforter. And as I closed my heavy eyelids, I said a small prayer that we’d find who killed Hank so I didn’t have to drive Trixie and Coop to the border.
* * * *
“Stevie…” someone whispered.
I was dreaming, I suppose. I had to be dreaming because I didn’t recognize the gravelly voice at all.
But then the voice called me again—a deep, menacing voice. “Stevie… Wake up. I want to play with you. We can’t play if you’re asleep…” the voice singsonged, going from menacing to teasing and light.
My brow furrowed as I tried to open my eyes. Using my thumb, I wiped a bit of drool from the corner of my mouth. I always drool when I’m overtired and sleep heavily. Which is what I was doing, thank you very much, and this voice was no longer letting me.
“Steeevie,” the voice whispered. “Wake up, Stevie.”
“Go away,” I muttered, wrapping an arm around Whiskey and tucking back under my comforter. “I just need a couple more minutes.”
“Stevie!” the voice hissed in my ear, so close the sound echoed. “Wake up!”
Suddenly, the bed shifted violently with the weight of something—or someone—and before I knew it, I was forcibly rolled on my back with a hand to my throat, and found I was staring up at…
No. No frackin’ way.
As my eyes adjusted and focused on the image on top of me, they widened because indeed, yes. Yes frackin’ way.
I was staring up at a wild, red-eyed version of Trixie.