Flipped Out (21 page)

Wayne nodded. “Last night.”

“And?”

“They said Tony’s car was here when they left around eleven thirty. And so was Melissa’s.”

“So that’s why you arrested her.” And why Derek’s story about their time spent together hadn’t made a difference. Melissa had been here earlier in the evening. Tony might already have been dead when she ran into Derek in his parking lot.

“I didn’t actually arrest her,” Wayne said. “Just brought her in for questioning. I can hold her for forty-eight hours without charging her, and that’s what I intend to do.”

“What did she say happened?”

“Nothing,” Wayne said. “He was alive and well when she left him.”

Just what I’d expect her to say. “Any news on the murder weapon? Or the rest of our tools?”

Wayne shook his head. “Whoever killed him probably dropped them in the ocean. Or tucked them away in his garage or something.”

“Melissa doesn’t have a garage.”

“I know that,” Wayne said. “I had Brandon go through her apartment, but there was nothing there. No tools, no murder weapon, no blood. Same thing with the car.”

I nodded. “Let’s go out in the backyard for a minute. I could use some air. Lots of paint fumes in here.” And I didn’t want to talk about the letter inside the house. There were too many people wandering around to make conversations convenient.

“Sure,” Wayne said and headed for the utility room door. I snagged the stack of mail from where I’d stashed it, out of sight of everyone who’d come through the kitchen, in the bottom of a bank of drawers next to the stove, and followed.

There was some shade in the backyard under a couple of big trees, and we stopped there.

“This came for Tony today.” I handed over the mail. The important stuff, anyway; I’d left the circulars inside. “I don’t know who else to give it to. Tony won’t be able to take care of it, and Derek and I don’t own the place. I guess the taxes will become part of the estate, a lien or something, but I’m not sure about the rest.”

“Tony had a lawyer,” Wayne said. “A guy in Portland. I’ll pass this on to him.”

“I don’t know if Kate’s mentioned it to you, but ever since she got here, Nina has been getting letters.”

Wayne looked nonplussed. “Lots of people get letters. Even when they’re on vacation. Or away from home.”

“Not like these. They’re small envelopes, sent from Missouri. One every day so far. Kate brought one over for her just this morning that she said arrived just as she was leaving the B and B.”

“So?” Wayne said.

“So if you look at what you have in your hand, you’ll see that Tony got a small envelope from Missouri today, too. Kate says it looks exactly like the ones Nina’s been getting.”

Wayne looked down. “This?”

I nodded. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

He cut his eyes to me. “It’s illegal to open someone else’s mail, Avery.”

“But you’re the police. And he’s been killed. Don’t you think it might be a clue?”

Wayne kept turning the envelope in his hands.

“I could have opened it myself, you know,” I said. “I didn’t have to give it to you.”

“You’d interfere with the mail?”

“It’s not like anyone would ever know. Tony won’t miss his letter. And if I’m right, it’s not like anyone’s expecting a response.”

Wayne gave me a long look.

“C’mon,” I pestered. “Open it. I want to see what it says.”

Wayne sighed, but he pulled a pocket knife off his belt and slit the envelope. I leaned forward and craned my neck as he pulled out a sheet of notepaper, the same thick ecru as the envelope, and unfolded it.

There was only one sentence marching across the page, typed in the same faded uneven font as the address.

 

I saw what you did.

 

So that was one question answered. Yes, it was a poison-pen letter, sort of. But now I had another question. “What does it mean?” I said.

Wayne glanced at me. “I would think that, at some point, Tony did something that someone else knows about, and that Tony probably would have wished they didn’t.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, Sherlock. Beside that?”

“I have no idea. There isn’t anything like that in Tony’s past. Not that I know about. No big secrets or anything. He’s lived around here practically his entire life. Waterfield and then Portland. Grew up right in this house, went to Waterfield Elementary and High School.”

“Did you know him growing up?”

Wayne shook his head. “He was younger than me by five or six years, so I wouldn’t say I knew him. Not well, anyway. I knew who he was, and after he went into broadcasting in Portland and I moved up in the Waterfield PD, we ran into one another from time to time. He’d call and ask me for information about cases once in a while, and I’d call him if I needed a description or a missing person’s report to get on the air.”

“You got along well?”

“As well as could be expected,” Wayne said. “He was a local boy, even if he liked to pretend he wasn’t. Got out of Dodge just as quickly as he could after high school. We all figured we’d seen the last of him and he’d make a career for himself someplace like New York or LA. He always was ambitious.”

“But he didn’t?”

Wayne shook his head. “He went to college for a few years and then started working at some small station in the Midwest. Stepping stone to bigger and better, I guess. His mother told everyone in town that he was on his way; it was just a matter of time before we’d see him on
20/20
or
Dateline
. First of the Micellis to ever get a college degree.”

“That’s nice that his mother was proud of him.”

“She was a bit of a stage mother,” Wayne said, “from what I understand. And very controlling. I remember old lady Micelli. But yeah, I guess it is nice. She was fit to be tied when he came back, anyway, after just a few months of working out there.”

“Any idea what happened?”

But Wayne didn’t. “I can’t imagine it matters,” he said, “since it’s so long ago.”

“That’s where he met Nina. They worked together for a few months on their first job.”

“She told me.”

“And Nina’s been getting these letters, too.”

Wayne hesitated, and I could almost hear the gears clicking in his head. After a minute, he turned his head to look at the house. “Is she around?”

“She was. She came with the others this morning, and she hasn’t told me she’s leaving, so I assume she’s still here.”

Wayne nodded. “Let’s take a walk out front.” He headed toward the house before I could say anything, and it was just as well, because he’d said “us,” and I wasn’t about to dissuade him from the idea that I should come along.

14

Inside the house, it was business as earlier. Josh had finished the two bedrooms and was busy rolling paint in the dining room. Beatrice was with him, cutting in. Cora had started the same job in the living room, carefully maneuvering her loaded brush around the stone of the fireplace. Derek was still working on the bathroom floor, but all the tile was laid now, and he was filling in with grout. Wilson was back to filming, with Adam standing by. He had taken to calling Derek Dirk. No one stopped him; I guess maybe because it was closer than anything else he’d come up with so far.

As Wayne and I came through to the outside, Fae was on the porch talking quietly on her cell. I caught just a few words. “. . . anymore. For now, anyway.” When she saw us, she turned away and lowered her voice even further.

Kate and Shannon were still on the lawn painting cabinet doors. Usually I prefer a more durable oil-based paint for the sheen and coverage, but since time was of the essence this week, we’d decided to go with quick-drying latex. It was warm in the sun, so the first doors they’d painted had already dried, and Shannon had turned them over and started painting the backs. At this rate, I thought we might almost be able to get everything done by Friday night after all, at least if we cut a few corners along the way. We could spruce up the front of the house, for instance, saving the back and sides until the crew had left and we weren’t in such a hurry anymore. That way they’d have a lovely front exterior to film on Friday night, and we could take our time finishing up the rest of the house next week.

Kate looked up when we walked past. She arched her brows at me, and I mouthed, “Nina.”

Kate nodded. And watched out of the corner of her eye as Wayne approached the director.

Nina was standing outside the picket fence, a lit cigarette in her hand and a strained look on her face. Wayne’s approach over the grass was almost noiseless, so when he greeted her, she jumped. “Miz Andrews.”

“Chief Rasmussen,” Nina managed. The hand holding the cigarette shook when she lifted it to her mouth. “And Avery.” She forced a smile in my direction.

“How are you holding up?” I smiled back. “You seem a little jumpy today.”

“It’s this situation with Tony,” Nina said, taking another drag on her cigarette, deep enough to make her cheeks hollow. “Seeing him again after twenty years and then—poof!—he’s gone. Brings back”—she hesitated—“memories.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Miz Andrews. You and Tony worked together once, you said?”

Nina nodded. “Our first job. It didn’t last long, though. Just six months or so.”

“I remember. He grew up here, you know. I remember his mother telling us about his job, and then just a few months later, he was back in town again. Something happen?”

“Nothing in particular,” Nina said, but she avoided looking at either of us.

I would probably have pushed—in fact, I intended to do a little online research tonight to see what I could dig up; both about Nina’s past and about Tony’s—but Wayne just nodded. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the letter. Tony’s letter. Unfolded it and handed it to her. “I need you to tell me about this.”

For a second, I was afraid that Nina was going to drop into a dead faint. What little color she’d had drained from her face and she wobbled. The cigarette in her hand shook hard enough to dislodge the inch-long piece of ash that had been hanging off the end.

When the ash fell and hit her toe in the open sandal, she seemed to come back to reality. She looked at the cigarette for a second, her expression disgusted, and then she dropped it on the pavement and stepped on it. Before squaring her shoulders and looking at Wayne. “Where did you get that?”

Nina obviously thought this was one of her letters. Wayne did nothing to dissuade her from that belief, either. “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind. My wife tells me you’ve been getting these for the past few days. Ever since you and your crew arrived here in my town.”

Nina nodded. No reason not to admit it when Kate had seen the letters. Or at least the envelopes.

“Did it start this week, or has it been going on longer?”

“It started a few weeks ago,” Nina said. She glanced around to make sure no one else was in hearing distance. Kate and Shannon were still on the grass, but Fae had disappeared off the porch. “At first it was just one. I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, these things happen, right? Prank calls and e-mails and letters once in a while is just part of the business.”

Maybe so,
I thought. Or maybe not. The talent, sure, they’re in the public eye, and it stands to reason they’d sometimes catch the attention of some wacko or other, but the director, someone who spent her time behind the scenes . . . ?

Wayne didn’t ask, though, just nodded for Nina to continue.

“Then another came. Exactly the same as the first. And a few days later, another. In the past week, they’ve been coming every day.”

“Any idea who’s sending them?” Wayne asked.

Nina shook her head. “If I did, don’t you think I would have put a stop to it?”

“I don’t know.” Wayne’s voice was bland. “You might not want to confront someone who claims to know something you did. Something the letter-writer seems to think you’d want kept quiet.”

Nina didn’t answer, but she flushed.

“Would you mind telling me what the unknown writer thinks you did?”

“I have no idea,” Nina said. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I can imagine quite a few of them might have upset someone. You flirt with someone’s husband, you inherit someone’s job, you take someone’s parking space. Things happen every day. Isn’t that the case for most of us?”

Wayne shrugged, but I had to agree. We all do things that affect other people all the time, and sometimes, if one of those people is more on edge than the rest, he or she might resort to poison-pen letters. Like Derek had said, it needn’t even be something that anyone else would consider a big deal.

“I was an investigative reporter for a while,” Nina continued, “and I discovered things about people. Little secrets, things people wouldn’t necessarily want the neighbors to know. Nothing stands out, though. I didn’t do criminal investigations, just public-interest things.”