A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (11 page)

We all turned. The back windows of the Inn were clearly visible through a break in the trees.

“I bet that guy sat here last night enjoying a beer until he thought you’d gone to bed,” she said. “Remember, we were out late last night for the trash run, so depending on what time he got here, he might have had to wait a while.”

“Good job, Sherlock,” Blair said with a smile. “Pretty soon, you’ll be working for CSI.”

“Goldie said she saw him light up a couple of cigarettes, so let’s check around and see if we can find any cigarette butts,” I said.

“I’m not picking those up,” Blair said distastefully.

Doe and I wandered away from the path a few feet, searching through the grass and plants.

“Hoo-ha!” Blair suddenly whooped.

We all turned and rushed over to where she was standing on the other side of the path. She was pointing a long red fingernail into a bush, to where a cigarette butt had caught on a branch.

Rudy grabbed another baggie and stepped in front of her. “Here, Princess, let me get that for you.” She flipped the butt into the bag, taking a whiff before closing it up. “It’s hard to tell if it’s fresh,” she said. “It’s pretty damp around here. C’mon, let’s keep going. There might be more.”

We finished our trek through the trees, but found nothing else until we neared the Singleton’s home. Everyone referred to Goldie’s place as the “Gnome Home” because she had an affinity for the little pointy-hatted creatures. She had over a hundred of them scattered throughout her outdoor gardens. Some were hiding behind bushes, while she’d arranged others in little vignettes on stumps. The large, two-story home had at least that many or more inside, tucked into every nook and cranny.

The gnomes started showing up along the path within a hundred feet of the Singleton property. Their little red hats rose above leaves, and their wrinkled faces poked out from behind bushes. Some were sitting on top of rocks or inside hollowed out logs. If you let your imagination run wild, it was a little creepy.

When we finally came out onto the beach in front of Goldie’s, a voice hailed us from their back porch.

“What are you girls doing?” Goldie called out.

Goldie and Ben had built their home back in the Seventies, so the wood was dark and weathered, and the gardens were all mature and/or overgrown. A large deck stretched across the entire upper floor, facing the lake, shading a set of sliding glass doors on the ground floor that led into their recreation room.

Goldie was standing at the railing on their second floor deck. We could barely see her gray head above the top railing. I crossed the lawn and walked up toward the building so that I didn’t have to yell.

“We’re looking for evidence from that guy who attacked me last night,” I said, gazing up at her.

She was looking at me through the space between the railings, and her gray eyes suddenly lit up. “Stay there! I’ll be right down.”

She disappeared into the house, causing Doe to say, “Oh, dear Lord, we’ll be here all day.”

Ben appeared on the deck holding a big mug of coffee. “Morning, Julia,” he said.

I looked up at him. “Morning, Ben.”

Ben was as big as Goldie was small. He had high cheek bones and a rim of white hair around the lower half of his head. He and Goldie had been married since they were eighteen, something not so normal since they were a mixed couple. They were mixed not only in ethnicity – Goldie was white, Ben was black – but in religion. Goldie was Jewish and Ben was Catholic.

They were known in the neighborhood as a happy and friendly couple, if not slightly offbeat. Goldie dressed like she was still living in the hippie days, and Ben liked to walk the neighborhood streets with a gold-topped walking stick and pipe that made him look like he was straight out of Wallingford, England. As an ex-military man, he held himself erect and would often gesture to things with the walking stick, as if he were giving a college lecture. On the other hand, Goldie liked her firearms and had discharged that old shotgun more than once, eliciting complaints from some of the neighbors. Her affinity for gnomes was seen as just another eccentricity.

“Goldie told me what happened last night. You okay?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. I just miss Ahab.”

He nodded. “I expect I’ll be getting my shot gun back soon,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. Goldie emerged through the sliding glass doors at the ground floor patio. She hurried out, dressed in the same faded hoodie she’d worn the night before.

“Did you find anything in the trees?” she asked excitedly, bustling up to us. “Cuz you know, I saw him stop for a light. He could’ve dropped his cigarette butt.” She saw me glance up to the deck and followed my gaze. “I’m going to help the girls,” she said to her husband. “Go back inside.” She waved her hand dismissively at him, and Ben turned and disappeared through the bedroom door.

Goldie had thick, gray hair worn just below her ears in a pageboy style.  And although she’d had two knee replacements, she moved with the frenetic energy of a four-year old.

“We found a beer bottle and a cigarette butt,” I told her, moving away from the building. “Do you mind if we keep looking.”

“No. I’ll help,” she said enthusiastically. Her gray eyes twinkled. “Ben didn’t believe me when I first told him about everything that happened. He doesn’t hear too good anymore, you know, so he didn’t hear me leave last night. But I said the police had come out and everything.”

“And took your gun,” I said.

“Yes,” she quickly replied. “He wasn’t happy about that. You know how he is with the Second Amendment and all. They better return it soon, or he’ll probably get some of his old military buddies to march on the police station. By the way, how are the dogs?”

“They’re fine.”

“Oh, they’re good dogs, you know. Dachshunds. Had two of them when I was growing up. They love to bark though. I sure wish they’d caught that son-of-a gun. Our Dachshunds caught a kid trying to steal my bicycle once and nearly ripped his ankles up.”

I knew all about her Dachshunds growing up. It was a story she told often, so I cut her off. “Yes, but sometimes I wish I had a German shepherd.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Goldie carried an extra twenty pounds in her hips. It made her look as if she’d strapped on a pair of saddle bags. Every time she shifted her weight, she raised a saddle bag an inch or two.

“Hey wait a second,” she said. “Let me get my gloves.”

She disappeared into the house again as we spread out along the route where the path cut across her beach. She re-emerged a moment later with a muffler and heavy gloves.

“You know, Julia,” she said, bustling up to me as I searched along the water’s edge. “I went to bed late last night because I like to read. I’m reading a really good mystery about a guy who murders old men because they remind him of his abusive father,” she said.

I heard Doe sigh loudly behind me.

“Anyway, you know Ben goes right to sleep. It’s so irritating. Sometimes, he’ll fall asleep right in the middle of a sentence…not his, mine,” she chortled.

She got to laughing, and I found myself sighing deeply myself.

“Anyway, I just had to finish that book, so I stayed up late. I was just getting ready for bed when I saw the light bobbing around outside.”

“You saw a light, like a flashlight?” I asked her.

“Yeah. I think that’s what it was. It bounced around like someone was moving from the parking lot to the trees,” she said, using her fingers to pick up a piece of plastic left along the beach.

“What time did you see the bobbing light?” Blair asked her.

The two were standing close to each other. Goldie had to lift her gaze to answer Blair, who was 5’ 8” – taller in her heeled boots.

“Oh, let me think. It was late. Maybe 1:30 or quarter to two,” she said, putting a gloved finger to her chin.

Blair looked at me. “What time did we get…did we finish our…trip last night?” she asked.

I thought a moment. “I think it was around 12:45.”

“So he wasn’t here when we came home,” Blair said.

“Do you remember what time you went to bed?” Doe asked me.

“I turned off lights and went right to my apartment,” I replied. “But I took a shower.” I stopped, remembering the two phone calls. “I didn’t get to sleep until close to 2:00 though. Goldie, where did you see the light?” I asked.

“Over there,” she said, pointing to the right. “And then it moved that way into the trees.”

She had pointed towards a small parking lot that sat on a knoll in between Goldie’s property and the Bartlett’s on the far side. The parking lot was blocked from view, but the path picked up again on the other side of Goldie’s lawn, weaving between some trees and up a slope.

“So you think whoever you saw was coming from the parking lot?” Rudy asked her.

“Yes. We get kids who do that all the time. There’s no beach over there. The parking lot drops right off into the lake. So, they’ll park there and come looking in this direction for a beach,” Goldie said. “I have to chase them off. But I thought it could have been that guy who’s been breaking into people’s homes. I chased
him
off a couple of weeks ago, you know.”

“Had he come from that direction, too,” Rudy asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I shot at him, but he got away.”

“You’re not thinking it could be the same person, are you?” I asked Rudy.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Who knows? It seems coincidental, but let’s go take a look,” she said, moving off in that direction.

“I’m coming, too,” Goldie announced.

And we were off again.

The five of us hurried across the back of Goldie’s property and hit the small path that led to the parking lot. We climbed the slope and emerged into the tree shrouded lot.

There was only room for two cars, but the lot was empty. People could access it by a short, one-lane paved road that came in from E. Shoreline Drive. A wooden railing across the end of the lot prevented cars from rolling right into the water.

We spread out once again, searching the pavement and the area around the perimeter of the asphalt.

“Here,” Doe called out a few minutes later.

We converged on the spot. “Another bottle,” she announced.

And sure enough, there was another empty Smithwick’s bottle lying in the grass on the far side of the lot.

“Bag it,” Rudy said.

Blair produced a bag and we rolled the bottle into it with a stick.

“Do you think that means something?” Goldie asked, as she poked her head around Doe.

“It’s the same kind of beer bottle we found earlier. I think it means this guy was prepared for a long wait,” Rudy said.

Blair was looking back and forth from where we’d picked up the bottle to the spot where a car would have been parked, facing the lake. “But, if he parked here,” she said, “don’t you think that bottle would have come from the passenger side window?”

Everyone stood and stared at the empty parking space for a moment.

“Meaning there were two people in the car?” Doe asked her.

“That’s a good one, Blair,” Goldie said, shifting her weight from foot to foot again.

“But wait,” Rudy interjected, studying the area. “He could have backed the car in.”

She was standing right where a car would have parked, but she was facing the street. Doe followed her gaze. While the lot could hold two, maybe three cars, it was a narrow, single lane road that led into it. And each side of the road dropped off into small but deep gullies.

“It would make sense,” Doe said. “Especially if he wanted to get away quickly. If he’d pulled straight in, he would have had to turn around to leave. Backing out of here, especially in the dark, would have been tricky.”

“So now what?” Blair said, pulling her coat around her. “It’s cold out here.”

Rudy turned to me. “I say we call Julia’s new boyfriend.”

At the mention of David, Goldie eyed me.

“Ask him about my shotgun,” she said. “You miss your Ahab, but I miss my Betsy.”

I wasn’t surprised that Goldie had given her shotgun a name. I’d known many people who named favorite inanimate objects – and some
not
so inanimate. Although Blair’s last name was Wentworth, as long as she’d been married to her current husband she’d referred to him as Mr. Billings. It was only recently that she’d admitted to me that the name referred to his private parts, based on a long weekend of lovemaking in Billings, Montana. Unfortunately, now I couldn’t look at him without thinking about that.

We were able to extricate ourselves from Goldie and said goodbye to her back door and tramped through the trees again with what we thought might be two good pieces of evidence: the cigarette butt and the beer bottles. Although I agreed that we should probably call David, I wasn’t feeling very confident about it. Somehow, having him come all the way out to the Inn while he was in the middle of a murder investigation just to pick up what we
thought
might be evidence in a parrot theft, created a nervous sensation in the middle of my stomach.

Good thing calling David wasn’t necessary. He and Detective Abrams were waiting for us at the Inn when we returned.

We met them in the breakfast room. David looked handsome in a blue shirt and tie, and I felt my heart speed up.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, attempting to keep my voice neutral.

“We heard about last night,” he said in a scolding voice.

“I was going to call you about it,” I said apologetically. “In fact, that’s just what we were coming in to do.” I tried to sound convincing, but it sounded like a lie even to me. I whipped out my baggie holding the first beer bottle.

David just stared at it. “What’s that?”

The tone of his voice made me pause. “It’s uh…evidence.” I looked around at the girls for confirmation.

“Evidence of what?” he asked.

Crystal appeared behind him. “Julia,” she said. “The man is here to fix the alarm.”

“That’s right,” David said, turning to look at Crystal and then back to me. “How did your intruder get past your alarm system last night?”

“We had some problems with it over the weekend, so they came out on Sunday to fix it, but had to wait for a new keypad.”

“So it wasn’t even on?” David asked with his brows furrowed.

I gave him a haunted look. “No. What are the odds?”

“Too great,” he said. “By the way, how do guests get in late at night when it
is
working?”

“We have an intercom at the front door that’s hooked up to my apartment. I’m on call at night, and so I let them in. But if I know someone will be coming in late, I sometimes give them the code.”

“So who knew your security system would be off last night?” Detective Abrams asked.

“I’ve thought that through. And there’s a whole bunch of people, including some guests. But Peter Romero was the one who was working on it. The company is owned by his father. Anyway, I’ll write down all the names for you.”

Detective Abrams nodded. “Okay, and then we’re going to need to talk to Peter Romero.”

I turned to Crystal. “Who’s here to fix the alarm?”

“It’s
Mr.
Romero,” Crystal said. “He’s in the utility room.”

“Can you get him for us?” I asked her.

She turned and disappeared down the hallway. A moment later, she returned with a tall, gangly man with angular features and thinning light brown hair.

“Roger,” I said.

“Julia,” he replied, his eyes filled with pain. “Again, I’m so sorry. I have the keypad and should have the system up and running in about thirty minutes.” He stepped forward and put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said, looking at him. “I’m just sick about Ahab, though.”

“Of course,” he said, his voice tempered with empathy.

“Roger, this is Detective Abrams and Detective Franks,” I said, gesturing to the two men on either side of me. “They wanted a chance to speak with you and maybe Peter.”

He straightened up and extended a hand to Detective Abrams. “Happy to meet you,” he said, shaking hands with Detective Abrams. “Well, not happy…I mean, under the circumstances, well, never mind.”

“It’s okay,” Detective Abrams said. “We were just wondering why the alarm system was down last night.”

“We had to pick up a new keypad. Peter was here working on the system until late on Sunday and the place that stocks them was closed by the time he finished. We had to wait to order a new one. It just came in this morning. I never thought…I mean, boy…” he ran his long fingers through the thinning strands of his hair.

“Mr. Romero,” David said. “Did you or your son tell anyone that the system was off?”

His eyes grew wide. “No. Of course not. We would never do that. Peter had another job this morning, so I offered to come over and get it installed immediately.”

“How did you find out about the break-in?” Detective Abrams asked suspiciously.

Roger paused and then glanced at me. “A police officer stopped by earlier this morning to talk to me. And then Julia called.”

“We need to talk with your son,” Detective Abrams said.

Roger nodded. “Um, okay,” he said. “Sure. He’s over at the Cranberrys’ house, by Island Crest Park. Do you want me to call him?”

He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Detective Abrams put up his hand to stop him.

“No. That’s okay. We’ll drive over. You finish here and get Ms. Applegate’s system up and running.”

“Of course,” he said. “Yes, I’ll do that.”

He glanced at me, glanced at Detective Abrams and then turned awkwardly to return down the hallway.

“Why don’t we go into the dining room?” I said, spying the Brewsters hovering in the background. I led the men into the dining room.

“So what’s going on, Julia?” David asked.

“Why don’t we all sit down,” I offered.

I sat at the head of the long dining room table, and David sat to my left.

“We think that Ahab might have been stolen by whoever killed Trudy,” I said.

The men exchanged curious glances.

“What makes you think that?” Detective Abrams asked with his sharp blue eyes narrowed with skepticism.

“I don’t know if you remember, but at the Christmas Eve party, he squawked, ‘
I want to kill Dana Finkle
.’ Dana accused me of teaching that to him, but I didn’t. Not that I’d never thought of locking her in a tower with a big red hourglass, just like Dorothy,” I said.

“Julia!” Rudy said.

“Sorry,” I said, snapping out of my
Wizard of Oz
reverie.

“So you think Ahab overheard someone say that they wanted to kill Mrs. Finkle?” Detective Abrams said, hiding a smile.

He sat back, his broad shoulders stretching the confines of his shirt. I snuck a glance at Blair, who was openly staring.

“You’ve said often enough that you don’t believe in coincidences,” Rudy said.

“True,” he agreed.

“I mean, c’mon,” Doe began. “Otherwise, why would someone break into the Inn just to steal a bird?”

“We wondered the same thing,” David said. He turned to me. “So what about the beer bottle?”

“I saw a light outside last night…out there,” I said, pointing out the window toward the trees. “And Goldie – she’s the one who had the shotgun – she says she saw someone light up a cigarette while waiting in the trees. Anyway, we went out to see if we could find anything he might have left behind.”

“And look what we found!” Blair exclaimed, producing the baggie with the cigarette butt.

Detective Abrams reached out and took it from Blair. The two men shared a knowing look.

“What?” I said.

“You realize we couldn’t use this in a court of law,” David said.

“Why not?”

“Because there was no chain of custody established,” Detective Abrams said. “There’s no way to guarantee where this came from or that you didn’t somehow compromise the evidence.”

“Or plant it,” Rudy said with a disappointed sigh.

Detective Abrams shrugged. “Right. But it still might be helpful. Where did you find these?”

“There’s a flat rock out in those trees,” I said. “Maybe halfway through.”

“A place that’s hidden from view, but that just happens to have a perfect view of the Inn,” Rudy added.

“We think whoever it was sat there and waited until most of the lights went out in the Inn,” I said.

“We also found this in a small parking lot on the other side of Goldie’s home,” Rudy said, producing the second bottle. “The path from the parking lot leads directly to the beach in front of her home and then picks up again, running through the grove of trees to the Inn. We think he parked there.”

She placed the bag on the table and slid it across to Detective Abrams. He picked it up and just stared at it, before sneaking a second glance at David.

“What?” I said again. “C’mon, you guys know something you’re not saying.”

Finally Detective Abrams sighed. “We found a bottle just like this hidden behind a bush at the library yesterday morning. We really had no way of knowing who left it there. But it’s the same brand.”

“Wow,” Blair whispered. “We really
did
find evidence.”

“But that also means that Ahab really
was
stolen because of Trudy’s murder,” Doe said.

“That’s why I said what you found might still be helpful,” Detective Abrams said. “This is a very rare beer. In fact, there’s only a couple of places in Seattle that sell it. You didn’t happen to get a look at the guy who attacked you last night, did you?”

“No,” I said with a sigh. It was too dark, and he was behind me most of the time. I got a whiff of his cologne though. And Minnie bit him in the face.”

“That could be good,” David said. “Do you know what the cologne was?” David asked.

“No, but a kid that just checked out today was wearing it.”

I told them about Mr. Dalton. David took notes, but they weren’t encouraging that Mr. Dalton was our suspect. After all, his face was unblemished. In other words, no bite marks from an angry Dachshund.

“So the odds are high that the same person left the bottles behind, don’t you think?” Rudy surmised. Detective Abrams nodded. “We didn’t touch the bottles,” she said. “You might still be able to get fingerprints off them. We picked them up with the baggies. But they’re fresh.”

David nodded. “We think the one we found at the library was too. But that one was pretty badly compromised because of the storm that night. These,” he said, nodding toward the two on the table, “might give us more information.”

Blair grinned. “So, we did good?”

A brief smiled flashed across Detective Abram’s handsome face. “Yeah, you did good.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “We also found a note caught in the bushes up at the library. We can’t be sure it has anything to do with Ms. Bascom’s murder, though.”

“What did it say?” I asked him.

He paused before saying, “Ain’t karma a bitch?”

“That’s weird,” Blair said.

“That doesn’t ring a bell to any of you?” he asked.

We all shook our heads.

“Well, now we need to figure out who might have made that comment about Mrs. Finkle in front of Ahab. Think back,” he said to me. “Who was at the Inn that night that might actually want to kill her?”

I shook my head. “I’ve already done that.”

“Besides,
everyone
at that party probably wanted to kill her,” Blair said.

He sighed and leaned back again. “It’s true. She isn’t well-liked. We’ve been researching her background on the island, and she’s sued half the people who live here.”

“Including me,” I said with a smirk.

“But has she actually hurt anyone?” Rudy asked. “I mean to the point that someone would want that kind of revenge?”

David shook his head. “No, not that we can find. Most of her lawsuits are pretty frivolous. She’s been successful in extracting some money from a few people, but more often than not, the suits are dropped. But we’re still interviewing people. And we’re looking into her background.”

At the mention of her background, I flinched. I snuck a glance at Rudy, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. We weren’t going to admit to the trash run.

“She’s actually more irritating and exasperating than anything,” Doe said. “Not worth going to prison over.”

Detective Abrams pushed his chair back and stood up. “We’ll see what the bottles show us,” he said. “Meanwhile, keep thinking about who might have made that comment in front of Ahab.”

They both stopped at the door to the hallway.

“And next time something happens, call us,” David said firmly. “The patrol guys don’t know the difference between a routine break-in and what might be connected to a murder case.”