Hoarded to Death (A Jamie Brodie Mystery) (21 page)

She looked at Pete, tears streaming down her face, then looked back at me and started with the hysterical crying again. "He didn't come!"

Pete, Jon, and I all looked at each other in puzzlement. I said, "Who didn't come?"

"K-K-Kevin! He didn't come to save me!" More sobbing.

Oh, for God's sake. I couldn't say anything for fear I might laugh, which would probably be incredibly inappropriate. Pete said, not very gently, "Jennifer. Wake up. Kevin's not going to come save you. You've been divorced longer than you were married. Kevin has someone new in his life, and there will be no reconciliation between him and you. Ever. It's time to let it go."

I said, "You've got a new boyfriend now, right? Call him."

She cried a little more, then started settling down. "I'm so stupid."

Pete sighed. "No, you're not stupid. Just naive. And in denial."

Jon said, "Jennifer. I need to know what you were doing here today."

Jennifer nodded and blew her nose. "The collection agencies have been hassling me nonstop, so I was trying to find out how much I was going to get from Trinity College for the manuscript page. I'd been looking online, doing some searches, and asking for information. I got a call from Mr. McEwen who said he could give me a quote, if I could come in and take a look at some similar items so he'd have a better idea what I had, so I got a substitute for today and came to see him. At first he was nice, but when I told him the page I had might be from the Book of Kells, that's when he pulled out the gun, and stuck it right in my face, and said, "Where is it?" And it was right then that the other customer opened the door and he shot at her, and she ran out. And Mr. McEwen came around the counter, and he was yelling at me, "Where is it?" But he scared me so bad I couldn't get out that I didn't have it, it was in Dublin already, and then we heard the sirens and he grabbed me. And he said he'd kill me if I didn't take him to it, and we were headed out the back door, but the cops were there already."

Jon had been taking notes. He said, "Did he show you anything that looked like the page you had?"

"Not exactly. He had a couple of pictures, but he didn't show me the other section of the page from my apartment."

Jon looked at me. "It'd be nice to recover that. Want to go look?"

"I can’t. The tear gas would set off my asthma."

"Okay. Be right back." Jon went to the shop, which had crime scene tape strung over the door already. He spoke to the cop in charge of the scene for a minute, and the cop let Jon in.

In just a minute, Jon came out with an evidence bag and came back to us. “I found it, right in plain sight in one of Kendall's desk drawers.” He showed it to me. "Think that's what we're looking for?"

"It sure looks like it to me."

"Me too. Let's go see if we can have a word with Kendall now."

At the other end of the block, the cops and paramedics had Kendall cuffed and strapped to a gurney, getting ready to transport him. His shoulder wound didn't appear to be life-threatening. He glared at me. I ignored him.

Jon showed Kendall the page he'd found. "You really should have put this someplace less accessible, Mr. McEwen. This is going to match the other section of the page we found in Mr. Wallace's hand, isn't it?"

Kendall glowered. "I'm not saying anything. I want a lawyer."

"All righty, then. Kendall McEwen, you're under arrest for the murders of Michael Lindsey, Howard Wallace, and Quentin Brashier, and the kidnapping of Jennifer Graham. You have the right to remain silent..."

Everything started to clear out pretty quickly after that. Kendall’s ambulance took him off to wherever they took injured arrestees. The paramedics with Jennifer’s ambulance made sure she was okay, then left. Jon and I walked back to where Pete and Jennifer were standing. Jennifer was still teary, but a good bit calmer. “Did he kill Wally?”

Jon nodded. “That’s what I just arrested him for.”

“Oh my God.” Jennifer’s lower lip trembled for a moment, then she pulled herself together a bit more. “Can I go home?”

“Yes, as soon as we get your formal statement. I’ll take you back to the station to do that, then I’ll take you home.”

“What about my car?”

Pete said, “After you get home, call your boyfriend. He can drive you out here and you can get the car.”

Jennifer sighed heavily. “Okay.” She looked at me. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in this.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay.” A lie, but I wasn’t going to get into it with her.

Jon said to me, “I’ll talk to you soon.” He led Jennifer off.

“Wow.” Pete looked at me. “Do you need to go back to work?”

“Yeah. I left my computer bag there.”

Pete drove me back to campus and waited while I picked up my belongings. Liz and Clinton were in her office, and I told them what had happened.

Clinton shook his head sadly. “Such violence because of such a precious object.”

Liz said, “Yeah. As the newly minted girlfriend of a cop, I’m finding that’s more the norm than I ever knew.”

It turned out that Kevin had been on the scene that day, on the other side of the police blockade. As soon as he saw Jennifer, he’d jumped in his car and gotten out of there. I didn’t blame him.

Kendall continued to refuse to talk, and his attorney entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. The judge denied bond, though, stating that Kendall was a flight risk since he wasn’t a U.S. citizen and that he was still a danger to Jennifer. So he was sitting in jail until trial.

Kevin and Jon believed they had enough evidence for an airtight case. An examination of Kendall’s financial records showed that he was indeed near bankruptcy, and his house was in foreclosure. They also found several checks written to Wally from Kendall’s business account. Stan the Junk Man was able to show from his records that each of those checks was written immediately after Wally had been on a hoard clean with Stan. So it looked like Wally had been taking valuable things from hoards and selling them to Kendall, who then re-sold at a profit. It had been going on for about a year. There wasn’t any way to tell how Kendall and Wally had come to know each other, since Wally was dead and Kendall wasn’t talking.

About a week after the showdown at Kendall’s shop, Jon showed up at the library. Liz wasn’t expecting him, and the way her face lit up when he approached the reference desk was wonderful to see. Jon winked at her and grinned at me. “Hey, Deputy Brodie. How’ve you been?”

I laughed. “Happily retired from police work, thank you. What brings you here? As if I didn’t know?”

“Just came to say hi to my best girl. And, to give you some good news.”

“Give
me
good news? What?”

Jon looked smug. “We’ve got our murder weapon.”

“Excellent! When did that happen?”

“Several days ago, some sanitation workers turned in a gun they found in a dumpster near Brashier’s shop. It was registered to Michael Lindsey, but it had Kendall’s prints all over it. We got the ballistics report this morning, and the gun matches the bullets from Lindsey, Wallace, and Brashier.”

“That’s
great
.”

“Yep. As it turns out, Kendall has an airtight alibi for Wallace’s murder. That’s the one thing he
has
told us. So we think now that maybe Kendall sent Lindsey with Wallace that morning to search, and Lindsey shot Wallace when they fought over the page. Then Kendall probably killed Lindsey because the page was torn, and he didn’t get the other fragment out of Wallace’s hand. He dumped Lindsey’s body on Brashier’s property to point a finger at Brashier because he didn’t like Brashier. Plus, according to some of the other book dealers, they’d accused each other of dirty dealings in the past. And, obviously, Kendall shot Brashier when they argued, and he dumped the gun shortly after he left Brashier’s shop.”

“So you have to drop the charges against Kendall for Wally’s murder.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. Between the evidence and Paulo’s testimony, we’ve got him at the very least for Brashier’s murder, and then of course there’s Jennifer’s kidnapping, which was witnessed by an entire SWAT team.” Jon stuck out his hand. I shook it, and he gave me another grin. “Case closed.” 

February

It was Valentine’s Day. I leaned my head against the cool window of the bus and watched Wilshire Blvd. crawl by. Traffic was heavier than usual – probably guys who’d forgotten the date and were out buying last-minute cards and flowers. I’d gotten Pete a card, and a nice gift – new hiking boots – both of which were hidden in the trunk of my VW at home. I’d considered sending him flowers at work, but then decided against it. Pete hadn’t said a word to indicate that he remembered what day it was, and he’d invited Kevin and Abby to dinner. They’d accepted, which wasn’t that strange – I knew from living with them that neither Kevin nor Abby were fans of Valentine’s Day and its crass commercialism. But the first time we dated, Pete had made a big deal of Valentine’s Day, even sending
me
flowers at work. So I had no idea what he was thinking this time.

Pete had gotten home later than usual yesterday and wouldn’t say where he’d been. Said it was a surprise. So maybe he did have something up his sleeve.

The bus finally made it to my stop, and I trudged home. The past three weeks had been tiring. We’d been swamped at the reference desk every day, and there was a new history professor who sent me daily requests for obscure articles and manuscripts. I’d been pulling favors left and right from friends in the libraries at Oxford to find some of them.

My therapy sessions with Dr. Bibbins were going well, but getting heavier. This week we’d started digging through my history with Pete, in particular our first attempt at a relationship. Dr. Bibbins felt that Pete and I were going to need couples therapy to really move forward, and I agreed. But getting Pete to that point was going to be problematic. He and I had talked a little bit about what we were both doing in therapy, but we were both so busy that it was hard to find time to have an in-depth conversation. On the weekends, we always seemed to be doing something with friends and didn’t have much alone time. And here it was, Valentine’s Day, and he’d invited people to dinner.

Sigh.

When I got home, Kevin and Abby were already there, hanging out on the deck with Pete while he grilled. I said hello, then went upstairs to change. I was pulling my shirt over my head when someone knocked on the door.

I disentangled my head from my shirt and saw that my visitor was Kevin. He handed me a bottle of beer. “You look like you could use this.”

“That bad, huh?” I took a drink, then started rooting through the dresser drawers for a clean t-shirt.

“Yeah, that bad. Long week?”

“Long
year
. Toss me the sweatpants on the back of the door, please?” I found a shirt and pulled it on, then took another drink and started getting out of my shoes.

“I hear that.” Kevin handed me the sweats. He had a funny look on his face.

I took off my khakis. “What?”

“I met Pete for lunch yesterday.”

“Yeah? He didn’t say anything about it.” I retrieved the beer and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I know.” Kevin stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaned back against the wall. “He told me what happened to him. About the abuse.”

I froze, one leg half into my sweatpants, stunned into silence. Kevin gave me a crooked smile. “I know he said to you that you couldn’t tell anyone, but he
decided to tell me himself.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “It’s his story. I’d never tell anyone. But I’m shocked that he decided to admit it to you.”

“He did it for you. Mostly, anyway.”

“
What?
”
“He said you needed someone else to talk to about it. That he knew you were afraid to say much to him because he hadn’t been handling the aftermath very well. It wasn’t just that; apparently he talked about it to his therapist, and she said it would be a good idea for him to tell me.”

“Because you’re his best friend.”

“Other than you, yeah. And other than Abby, he’s mine. So I’m glad he decided to tell. It explains a lot.”

I set my empty bottle on the nightstand and rubbed my face. “Yeah. It does.”

Kevin crossed the room and sat beside me, putting his arm around my shoulders. “I feel terrible for him.”

“Oh my God, yes. It’s a horrible thing.”

“He said you’d been great about it.”

“I’m trying. I don’t know how well I’m doing, though.”

Kevin squeezed my shoulders in a half-hug. “According to him, you’re doing just fine.” He stood up. “He said it wasn’t fair to you that you had to carry the burden by yourself. So he wanted to give you someone else to help you carry it.”

“And you don’t mind that.”

“Hell, no.” He reached out and ruffled my hair. “Anything for you, short stuff.”

I swatted at his arm and he laughed. “Plus, I know it’s easier for me, ‘cause I don’t have to live with him. Much less sleep with him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Believe me, you don’t want to know.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” He held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. “C’mon. Supper must be ready by now.”

The shrimp kabobs and roasted vegetables were delicious. Abby had brought homemade brownies with little hearts outlined in multicolored sprinkles on each one. After we finished eating, I got up to start clearing the table, but Pete put his hand on my arm to urge me back down. “I have a surprise for everyone. Be right back.” He trotted up the stairs. Kevin gave me a quizzical look. I shrugged.

Pete came back with an envelope. “Okay. As you all know, Trinity College authenticated the manuscript page last week.” True; Gillian Murray called me in breathless delight to tell me that the experts found the page to be consistent with the Book of Kells. It briefly made the news, and Jennifer had given a couple of local interviews. “What you don’t know is that Trinity paid She Who Shall Not Be Named…” He paused for effect and we all had a chuckle at that. “…$750,000 for the intact page.”

Abby gasped. Kevin looked pained. I said, “How did you find that out?”