Motion for Malice (17 page)

The question flitted through my mind
what would a normal woman do?
A normal woman wouldn't be interrogating the grieving sister of a murder victim, or pressing her cheek to the door of an empty house, trying to will its occupant into being present. I wasn't sure what exactly a normal woman
would
be doing instead. Until I figured that out, I had to stop pining away on his doorstep. It was embarrassing and possibly illegal.

Clutching his mail, I slogged upstairs to my apartment. For practice, I slipped off my shoes so I could be lighter on my feet while I tiptoed around turning on lights. I put on the television to the local news, but kept the volume low. And I resisted the urge to shout profanities when I opened my electric bill.

Normal woman. Maybe after dinner I'd put on my apron and bake some chocolate chip cookies.

I settled in front of the television and looked down at my dinner with a sigh. Maizy had gotten to me. All her crazy talk about health and nutrition had guilted me into stopping at the supermarket salad bar to splurge on a salad for dinner. Just looking at all those carrot strips and cauliflower bits was enough to make me long for the sweet sugar rush of Butterscotch Krimpets. I'd picked only those veggies I actually liked, which meant I had a very small salad. Smothered in lots of unhealthy, creamy dressing. It was the only thing that kept me from dumping it all down the garbage disposal. Not that I had anything against a green salad. I just preferred mine paired with ravioli and meatballs.

I'd just picked up my fork when someone knocked on the door. I leaped up fast enough to make myself dizzy, hoping Curt had come home early to praise me for my dietary turnaround and celebrate its coming with a tasty pizza.

But it was Wally who came through the door. Only not Wally—a black-haired, doppelganger Wally. He'd taken Curt's advice, but he'd taken it too far. He was now the Vampire Lestat with a box of Just for Men but without the good looks. And he had a sparkly earring in his left earlobe. His puffy, red, swollen earlobe. It seemed that along with his pretty new bauble, Wally had himself a whopper of an ear infection.

I sucked in a breath, my eyes riveted to his head. I couldn't think of a thing to say. Except "Have you eaten? I've got salad."

He slid out of his coat, shaking his head. He was wearing the Wally version of casual—he'd loosened his tie. "Sorry to stop by unannounced again."

"It's fine," I told him. "Come on in. Let me get you a fork."

"No, thanks. I stopped at Sonic for a burger on the way over."

"So why are you here?" I asked with a touch of hostility, since he obviously wasn't going to take that salad off my hands.

"I made a little change," he said. "I wanted to see what you thought before I show your sister." He held out his arms in a
ta-da!
kind of gesture.

I stared at him.

"Better, right?" He nodded. "Your friend called it. I was never meant to be a blond."

He wasn't meant to have black hair, either. Or an earring. Especially a pink earring. "You got your ear pierced," I told him.

"You noticed."

I couldn't help but notice. His earlobe practically had its own heartbeat.

"I think it's a nice touch." Wally touched his ear and winced. "I'm just having a little trouble with it right now."

"Who did this to you?" I asked. It was like looking at a horrific car accident. I didn't want to see the gore, but I couldn't look away.

"Vegas Vince's Tattoo Parlor and Greeting Card Emporium." His eyes lit up. "I kind of backed out on the tattoo at the last minute, so he gave me a fifty-percent discount on the earring, and I bought a beautiful
Thinking of You
card to write my poem in. Vince said it's his bestseller. He's a pretty sensitive guy under all that leather and ink." He sucked in a breath. "But I'm thinking I should've gone with the tattoo. This thing really hurts."

"You'll want to put some alcohol on that," I told him. "Or hydrogen peroxide. Or better yet, just take it out. It doesn't go with your job."

"Are you kidding? I've been getting all kinds of looks down at the courthouse."

No wonder. "You mean people have seen this?" I asked. And by
people
I meant Howard. No way was Howard going to go for the bedazzled
Dark Shadows
thing Wally had going on.

He blinked at me. "Of course people have seen it. But I didn't do it for people. I did it for Sherri. She's going to love it, don't you think?"

"She might have loved a gold stud more," I said. "Or a diamond stud. Not…" I gestured toward his ear without actually looking at it again.

He frowned. "It's a pink sapphire. Girls like pink, right?"

In their own ears, maybe. "You know she prefers blonds," I said gently.

He crossed his arms over his little concave chest. "She also likes take-charge men. I took charge of my appearance. With your friend's help, of course," he added. His arms dropped. "I can't wait to show it to her. I'm going to go see her now, but I wanted to bring a little treat from Leonetti's with me. What's her favorite bakery item?"

Leonetti's was the best bakery in the county. My stomach growled. This was so unfair. Sherri only ate carbs under duress, and here I was stuck with weeds and rabbit food while jonesing for something loaded with sugar and preservatives.

I couldn't take it anymore. I wasn't ready to live a longer, healthier life. I wanted fat. I grabbed my coat. "Why don't I just show you, and then you can drop me off on your way to see Sherri."

"I don't know," he said doubtfully. "I can't really risk being seen with another woman."

"Wally." I stuck my hands on my hips. "Listen, and listen good. I am a desperate woman with an empty stomach. You are buying me three cupcakes and a giant chocolate chip cookie, or I'm going to file a substitution of counsel for every single case you've got and give them all to Howard. Do you understand me?"

"Fine." He tugged his coat back on. "You want to play hardball. That's fine by me. But before I take you anywhere, I need a good faith offering. Tell me one item she likes."

I picked up my house keys. "That's not the way it works."

"Fine." He buttoned his coat. "You don't want to negotiate. But I need to know I'm not being used just for my wallet here."

I rolled my eyes. "It's a
cupcake,
Wally." And a cookie. And maybe a large hot chocolate, if I played my cards right. That might put a dent in my budget, but it was chump change to Wally.

"Fine." He opened the door. "But don't look out the window, okay? In case we pass anyone who could rat me out to Sherri." And he walked out with black hair color staining the back of his neck.

*   *   *

Maizy called me back later that night, after I'd shoved the salad into the fridge and gorged myself on baked goods. By then I was sprawled on the sofa in sweatpants with the remote in my hand, sluggish after the sugar crash. I filled her in on the afternoon's developments, from my discovery of Dorcas's script to my visit with Deirdre Higby. "She said Dorcas didn't keep anything at the studio of any value," I said. "So what was Seaver doing there?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Maizy said. "He was tampering with evidence."

"I don't think so. The police had already processed the scene and released it."

"That doesn't mean they found everything there was to find," Maizy pointed out. "Those are some pretty awesome dollar amounts. She could have had a wall safe hidden behind a painting, or under a floorboard."

"There weren't any paintings," I said, "and she had carpet." A cheap, thin carpet that could have easily been pulled up to reveal a hiding place under a floorboard. I was pretty sure Dorcas hadn't had hardwood floors in her studio. Could you make a hiding place under vinyl tiles?

"Well, from what her sister said, Weaver drove the bus," Maizy said. "I bet he hid something there that maybe Dorcas didn't even know about. Rolls of cash, maybe."

I thought about the numbers I'd seen on Dorcas's papers. Rolls of cash weren't out of the question. Plenty of people who operated a cash business tucked some aside out of sight of the IRS. And plenty of them went to jail when they were discovered, but maybe Weaver didn't plan to stick around that long. Maybe he planned to hightail it to some Caribbean island. One with casinos.

"But why send Seaver to pick it up?" I asked. "Why not go himself?"

"Get real," Maizy said. "He's the grieving widower. It would be unseemly if he wasn't home to accept all the casseroles."

"But he wasn't home," I began, and stopped. "What casseroles?"

"Isn't that what you do when someone dies, make casseroles? When my Great-Aunt Ginger died, her son got like eighteen of them."

I heard the rustle of a bag and a crunching sound. "Are you eating potato chips?" I demanded.

The crunching stopped. "Of course not." I heard her swallow. "So you know what this means," she added.

I sure did. It meant Maizy was a food hypocrite. "We have to make another trip to the studio," I said glumly. "Even though Seaver probably emptied out the hiding spot already."

"If he found it," Maizy said.

"If it exists," I said.

"We'll go after food shopping tomorrow," she said. "Wear something that blends into the background so no one remembers you."

No problem there. I could walk around naked, and no one would remember me.

"Should I go see Honest Aaron again?" she asked. "I think we could get a pretty good discount on a Plymouth Valiant."

"I can't afford Honest Aaron," I said. "I have a turkey to buy."

"That's probably for the best," she said. "It doesn't have any windows anyway. See you after study hall."

The next morning, I stuffed my most unmemorable outfit of jeans, a brown sweatshirt, and beat up New Balances into a plastic bag, dressed for work in an equally unmemorable navy blue sweater, black slacks, and flat shoes, and headed for my car. It had flurried overnight, and a light glaze of snow coated everything. The sky was still battleship gray, which coincided nicely with my mood. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to return to Destinies with Dorcas. I didn't think it mattered much if she had had a hidey-hole built into her studio, especially if Seaver had emptied it out. I didn't know that it didn't matter, either. And since I seemed to be the one with the bull's-eye on my back, suspect-wise, I had no choice but to check it out.

Curt's morning paper was sitting on the sidewalk near my car. I scooped it up to toss it into my car, and that's when I saw the photo and the partial headline "Local Woman."

The photo was of me.

The plastic bag of clothes slipped from my nerveless fingers, landing on the snowy grass. I left it there while I tore the baggy off the newspaper and unfolded it. There I was, fully recognizable in glorious color, peeking out of the doorway of Destinies with Dorcas. I remembered that moment. Maizy had insulted the driver of the SUV down the street and I'd feared for the life of my car after we went inside.

Only Maizy wasn't visible in the picture. Just me and my worried (and maybe a little angry and suspicious) expression, in full fifteen-megapixel clarity.

I frowned at the picture. The light was wrong. There was too much of it. It had been dark when Maizy and I had gone for our readings, eight o'clock or later on a January night. Yet in this photo, the subdued browns and tans of downtown Oak Grove were visible in what seemed like waning afternoon light. The skeletal branches of leafless trees that had clawed upward into darkness were now bland silhouettes against the sky.

A surge of anger and panic tore through me. This picture had been Photoshopped, which pretty much took away any doubt that someone was trying to frame me for Dorcas's murder. Hard to believe Detective Bensinger wasn't knocking on my door already.

But even more than the picture, the headline shrieked at me. "Local Woman a Person of Interest in Psychic Slaying."

Oh no.

I picked up the bag of clothes, tucked the paper under my arm, and scurried back to my apartment, locking the door behind me. My heart pounding, I fell into a kitchen chair to assess the damage.

It was as bad as I'd feared. The reporter admitted that "details are unclear" but that an eyewitness had placed me at the scene of the murder at 5:30 in the afternoon, as evidenced by the photo submitted from an anonymous source. The article brushed over the crucial fact that I hadn't been arrested or charged with anything. Guess that was one of the unclear details.

Worse still, it announced that I was an "entry level employee" at the local personal injury law firm of Parker, Dennis, along with the obligatory sidebar about former partner Doug Heath's murder at that office, as if I'd been somehow involved in that as well.

The phone rang.

"Did you see it?" Maizy.

"I'm looking at it right now," I said. "What am I going to do, Maize? My
mother
is going to see this!"

"We have to find out who's behind this," she said. "Here's the plan. I'll call the paper, see who sent in that photo. Then I'm cutting school today. You're calling in sick."
"I can't call in sick," I protested. "I have to explain this mess to my boss."

"You can't explain this mess," Maizy said. "What're you going to say, yeah, that photo's me, but I wasn't there, and oh, by the way, I'm being framed even though I'm a nobody without a dime to my name?"

Well, that was kind of harsh.

"It's obvious that you're a convenient patsy," Maizy added. "I mean, your name was all over the papers early on for finding the body, remember? All it takes is a little Internet research to find out where you work and who you are."

"But the picture," I said. "Whoever it was had to be at the scene to take the picture."

"Yeah, all roads lead back to that SUV," Maizy agreed. "But that still doesn't make it personal. I mean, we could've been wrong place, wrong time showing up at the studio when we did. Like oh, look, here comes someone I can pin this on—let's take a picture in case I need it. Or let's take a picture in case I want to kill any eyewitnesses."
A shiver ran through me. "That's pretty cold."