Deadly Production (Mapleton Mystery Book 4) (27 page)

Save it for when it becomes an issue. Hell, you haven’t even thought about a ring yet.

But the fact that he was thinking about
not
thinking about it meant he
was
thinking about it. He’d screwed up once with Cynthia, and didn’t want to screw up a second time. Solving a murder was much less complicated than dealing with a relationship.

He went to the war room and paced in front of the whiteboard. He wrote
hot chocolate
and contemplated connections as he resumed his pacing, tossing the marker from hand to hand.

Lily Beckett had confessed to taking hot chocolate packets. It was possible people knew she liked it, so could she have been the target? Marianna Spellman’s purse revealed candy bar wrappers. Her penchant for chocolate might have been known as well. And Gordon sure as hell didn’t want to have to start from scratch with Lily as a target, which meant finding people who would want her out of the way.

He remembered his words to Solomon.
Don’t make the facts fit the theory.

So, someone wants to drug Lily. Gordon couldn’t figure out a logical way to introduce crushed pills into a packet of hot chocolate mix. Surely anyone would notice it had been tampered with. No, someone had to have put the drug into the hot chocolate itself. Offered it to Marianna? Would she have accepted it? When he’d watched her eat at the diner that first morning, she’d avoided touching anything with sugar or fat in it. Was that her public persona? Did she binge in private? Maybe she’d already had a huge breakfast at the B and B. Or was she feeling “off” that day?

And what about Yolanda Orozco? The drug affected people differently, so it was possible she’d had a dose equivalent to the one Marianna had taken, but hadn’t collapsed. Maybe she’d had more food in her stomach, slowing down the absorption of the drug. Had she gone to the lounge, somehow ended up with the tainted cocoa?

He slammed the marker into the tray. Questions. Questions. More questions. An answer or two would be nice right about now. Starting with where the hell was Marianna’s damn computer? And who’d broken into her RV, and why? And had anyone discovered what was missing?

At least that last one he might be able to answer. They’d been pulled in six directions, and he’d forgotten about the full personnel file Ethan Lang had emailed him.

He went to his office and pulled up the files on his computer. He scrolled down the spreadsheet. Holy Crap. If this was a bare-bones production, he’d hate to think how many people worked on a high-budget film. There was no indication of which people were in Mapleton on location, and which weren’t. He pulled up the spreadsheet their civilian patrol volunteer had made using Dawson’s list of everyone on the Mapleton shoot. Then there was a third one, a listing of all the pages they’d found in Marianna Spellman’s RV.

If nothing else, all the work he’d put in doing budget spreadsheets had upped his skill level considerably. He started sorting and combining data. When he was finished, he’d found five names on the Mapleton production list that didn’t have matching paperwork in Marianna’s files. He wrote them down, and then let it roll through his mind. When he was working on budgets, he crunched numbers, but when he presented them to the Town Council, he went beyond the stark figures. It was as much
why
they needed something as it was how much it would cost. All he had here was the summarized information he’d asked for, because at the time, he needed names and phone numbers. But like you had to go to a crime scene to get the feel of a case, he wanted to see the original data. Was there more he wasn’t seeing on those sheets of paper beyond names, phone numbers, and emergency contact information?

Gordon found the computer images of all the paperwork Solomon had photographed before sending them to the county lab to be fingerprinted. Because he hated jumping from image to image on the screen, he sent the first half dozen to his printer so he could compare them side-by-side more easily.

Based on all the different handwriting, Gordon felt safe in assuming each person had filled out his or her own sheet. But on some of them, he noticed there were additional markings. There were large Xs in the top right corner of two. On two others, there were numbers and letters near the bottom of the page. They all seemed to be done by the same person. A code? A way Marianna categorized people? Curious, he printed out the rest of them. More with Xs, more with cryptic notations.

Now came the fun part. Seeing if there were any connections. He remembered playing a game with his grandmother when he was about four. She’d give him a box of assorted buttons from her sewing kit and he’d spend rainy afternoons grouping them by his own arbitrary classification systems. He’d line them up by size, then by color, by shape, or by the number of holes in the center.

Not much different from detective work, looking at all the pieces and seeing how you could relate them to each other. Often the relationships were far-fetched, but every now and again, you’d see a connection and everything fell into place.

He needed more room, so he took the papers to the war room and spread them out on the table. Where to start? First, he went through all the ones with Xs in the upper corner. Staring at them, he tried to find some commonality. Males and females. Some actors, some tech crew. Addresses were primarily California, emergency contacts all over the place.

Buttons were easier.

He’d spent about twenty minutes moving papers around when something else hit him. Solomon had photographed the fronts, because that’s where the names and phone numbers were. But what about the backs? He grabbed the papers and went to his office to call Xander.

When the tech answered, Gordon jumped in. “Before you say anything, no, I’m not bugging you about the lipstick matches. Can you do me a favor?”

“Depends.”

“I’ve got photographs of the personnel paperwork we took from Marianna Spellman’s RV.”

“A bit of a mess, as I recall,” Xander said. “They went to be fingerprinted, but it wasn’t high priority. They’re probably in the queue along with a bazillion other pieces of evidence.”

“That’s fine. I’m not interested in prints now. What I need to know is whether there was anything on the
back
of any of those sheets. Sooner rather than later.”

A brief pause, some clicks of a keyboard, and then Xander came back on the line. “I’ll have to go dig them out. Might take twenty, thirty minutes to locate them and go through channels. Everything’s its own department here. You want me to call you with what I find?”

“What I’d like is for you to fax me any of those sheets that have writing on the back.”

“Fax? Do people still do that? What if I scan them and email them?”

“As long as I get them. Of course, that’s assuming any
have
writing on the back.” Gordon thought for a moment. “You’ll have to send both sides, so I can match them with what I have here.”

“All right. I’ll tell the wife I’ve been saddled with more unexpected work.”

Gordon couldn’t tell if the man was glad to have an excuse to be away, or feeling guilty. “Make it up to her. Bring her some roses. Chocolate. Dinner. I’ll pick up the tab. For one, not all.”

“Well—”

“Within reason, Xander. Within reason. And for God’s sake, take over kid duty for the night.”

With Xander’s promise to dig out the paperwork, Gordon ended the call and opened a blank spreadsheet. He made a list of all the notations. Maybe seeing them all lined up would give his brain a jolt.

Alphabet soup was more like it. None looked like acronyms he was familiar with. He picked a coding and went to the pages themselves. M appeared most often, so he separated all the sheets with that code. Did the placement matter? Most of the Ms were in the right-hand margin, about a third of the way down the page. Nearest to the phone number field, if that made a difference. Hell, for all he knew, the M was her initial, and she was noting she’d read the page, or it was complete, or ready to be filed.

He set aside the ones with only M notations. Some also had 2s on them. He went through the stack again to see whether any other pages had that code. He found four.

The 2s were below the Ms on the pages with both, and in approximately the same place on the ones with only the numeral. So, placement must mean something. Easier to find, was his immediate thought.

Find. That triggered a thought. They’d found the paperwork scattered all over the floor, but hadn’t talked about where it had come from. Offices were full of paperwork. Had these papers been filed somewhere? They weren’t three-hole punched, so she wasn’t keeping them in binders.

Or were they stacked in a “To Be Filed” place? Had they piled up because she didn’t have time—or the desire—to file them? Gordon knew if he didn’t have Laurie, he’d have six months of paperwork waiting for the dreaded filing. But leaving them around didn’t go with what he’d seen of Marianna’s personality.

Or, had they been filed, and that’s where their yet-to-be-determined suspect had found them? Gordon couldn’t remember seeing file folders amidst the mess in Marianna’s RV. He searched his computer for the pictures Solomon had taken. As thorough as any official crime scene tech, he’d documented everything, including the drawers of Marianna’s desk. The bottom drawer served as a file cabinet, with hanging folders, most of them empty. A few held colored file folders, but they weren’t labeled. Gordon clicked through more of the images to see whether or not Solomon had zoomed in any closer, or taken pictures of the contents. Because he hadn’t, Gordon was inclined to think the folders were empty.

But assumptions were a surefire way to send you down the wrong track, so Gordon called his officer.

“Ed, sorry to bother you, but I’ve been looking at the pictures of all the paperwork we found in Marianna Spellman’s RV.” He explained about the notations and the file folders in the drawer. “Do you remember if there were papers in any of them?”

After a pause, Solomon said, “Not that I recall. I figured the ones on the floor had probably come out of the drawer, but at the time, I was busy getting pictures of all those sheets. Maybe Xander and company did.”

“I’ve got another puzzle,” Gordon said. He went through the markups on the paperwork. “I can’t figure out whether they’re pertinent to the case, or merely notes Marianna made for herself.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” Solomon said. “I’ve hit a wall with the Deadbeat Dad case. I can come in if you want.”

Gordon did some quick math, envisioned the mayor’s frown when he read the manpower reports. Tough. “I’ll deal with the overtime. I’m sure the mayor understands we can’t solve cases like this working forty-hour weeks.”

“I’m on my way. You want lunch? My wife made lasagna last night, and there’s tons left over.”

Gordon’s stomach urged him to say yes. “Sounds good.”

He pulled up his budget spreadsheets, began juggling numbers.

Solomon had just arrived when Xander called. “I’ve got that information you wanted.”

“Hang on,” Gordon said. “Ed Solomon’s here. I’m putting you on speaker.”

Xander spoke, louder, as if he felt the need to project his voice throughout an auditorium, not Gordon’s small office. “The lipstick on the cup from the lounge is a match for the one in Marianna Spellman’s purse. But wait. There’s more.”

“So, what do I get if I phone in right now?” Solomon called out.

Xander chuckled. “You get to find out what we discovered when we ran the prints on the cups.”

Gordon grabbed a legal tablet and a pen. Solomon extended his hand and waggled his fingers. Gordon ripped off a couple of sheets and slid them across the desk to Solomon, who reached into Gordon’s pen container and snatched one. “Let’s hear it,” Gordon said.

Xander’s voice took on that lecturing tone. Gordon accepted it to mean the tech was running through procedures, not doing the
in words of one syllable so even you small-town cops can understand it
routine. “We got partials on the cups. Nothing, unfortunately, that could be matched by AFIS, assuming these people would be in the database to begin with, but enough so we’re confident we’ve got one person’s prints on all three cups.”

“Three cups?” Solomon said. “Where from?”

“From the trailer designated lounge one,” Xander said.

“What we’ve been calling the VIP lounge,” Gordon said.

“But there was no actual rule banning anyone from either lounge, was there?” Solomon asked.

“No. Which, as has been happening all too often, means we haven’t narrowed our suspect list.” Gordon faced the phone. “Continue, please, Xander.”

“We found three cups with hot chocolate, and all contained traces of citalopram hydrobromide.”

“The same concentration in all of them?” Solomon asked, busily writing notes.

“Good question,” Xander said. “Yes. Not a massive dose, given nobody finished their cocoa, but there are lots of factors to take into account, like body weight, metabolic rate, sensitivity, interaction with other drugs.”

Gordon groaned inwardly. Could their killer have had a different—or another—target? “So someone in addition to Yolanda Orozco and Marianna Spellman was likely drugged as well?”

“That would be my take. Of course you can’t rule out that person number three didn’t drink his or her hot chocolate, which would mean he or she wasn’t drugged, although it doesn’t eliminate whoever that person was as a target,” Xander said, echoing Gordon’s thoughts.

“Or, person number three knew the chocolate was drugged and pretended to drink.”

“Recapping.” Solomon drew a grid on his paper. “You have three cups of tainted hot chocolate. Based on the lipstick, one is confirmed to have been Marianna Spellman’s.”

“Also based on her prints,” Xander said. “We have enough to feel reasonably confident they’re hers. Likewise, based on what we found in the wardrobe RV, we’re assuming the strong likelihood one of the other cups was handled by Yolanda Orozco. And, given she was admitted to the hospital showing symptoms commensurate with ingesting citalopram, I think it’s safe to assume she drank some of the cocoa.”

“How much was left in those cups?” Solomon asked.

“Another excellent question. We found two on the table, one in the trash. Enough hot chocolate in the trash to indicate at least that cup was tossed before the chocolate was finished. The two on the table were a little more than half empty, which is based on another assumption that the drinks came from a standard hot chocolate packet of the variety found in the trailer, and whoever mixed it up followed the package directions—”

“Wait a minute.” Gordon cut off Xander’s exposition. “Let’s not get too far into speculation land yet. Who knows whether the hot chocolate left in the cups represented the only ones each person drank? Maybe they were having seconds. Or thirds.”

“If that were the case, we’d have found the empty packets in the trash, wouldn’t we?” Solomon said. “How many were there?”

“And the hat trick of good questions goes to Officer Solomon.” Xander paused, perhaps for effect.