One Hot Murder (17 page)

She opened the door a crack and again peeked into the vendors’ lounge, but there was no sign of the intruder. Feeling like a sneak, she tiptoed into the lounge, unlocked the back door, and scooted out into the parking lot, then ran as fast as she could around the side of the building.

It was far too soon to expect the sheriff’s deputy, but as she looked around the lot, she recognized Detective Davenport’s car parked in front of Wood U. She made a run for it. By the time she got there, she was breathless and had a stitch in her side.

Davenport was snooping around the side of the dark
building. “Detective,” she called, panting. “Someone’s in the Alley. Someone’s sneaking around inside the Alley and it’s supposed to be empty at this time of night.”

“Do you always jog with a hammer?” Davenport asked with a frown.

“Only when I feel my life might be threatened.”

“What did this person do that was threatening?”

Katie bit her lip. “He—he peed in the Alley’s downstairs restroom.”

Davenport’s eyes widened and then he burst into laughter. “You were threatened by a peeing man?”

“Detective, will you please be serious? Someone either broke into the Alley or hid inside after closing.”

“Did you call nine-one-one?”

“Yes, there’s a sheriff’s deputy on the way—but who knows how long it’ll be before he gets here? And—”

Davenport grabbed her by the arm, his fingers moist from the humidity. “Come on.” He dragged her over to his car and they got in, neither bothering with their seat belts for the short drive across the parking lot.

“I left the back door open,” Katie said, and Davenport steered for the back parking lot. He pulled up to the back door with the screech of brakes, nearly tossing Katie through the windshield.

About the same time, the sound of a siren could be heard.

Davenport jumped from the car with more speed than Katie thought him capable of. She followed suit. “Flag down the deputy. I’m going in,” he said.

Katie nodded and made a run for the side of the building once more, jumping up and down, waving her arms and shouting. The deputy got the message and pulled his car up to meet her.

“What’s going on?” Deputy Schuler demanded, eyeing the hammer still clutched in her hand.

“Someone is trespassing in Artisans Alley. Detective Davenport has gone in to investigate.”

“He should have waited for backup,” Schuler said and scowled.

“Tell
him
that,” Katie said as the deputy slipped out of his car, grabbing his billy club in the process.

“You stay here,” he ordered, and ran for the back stairs.

Katie felt foolish standing there with her hammer, especially when she noticed Andy running along the tarmac and heading for her.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“There’s someone in the Alley.”

“At this time of night?”

“Exactly. I heard footsteps up on the second floor and called nine-one-one,” she briefly explained.

“Good girl,” Andy said, making Katie wince at his word choice. He craned his neck to see around her. “Is that Davenport’s crate?”

She nodded. “I saw him poking around over at Wood U and we jumped in his car and drove right over. Then the deputy showed up.” She gave the back door a worried look. “I wish they’d hurry up and find that creep.” She shivered, even though the temperature had to still be in the high eighties. “The thought of somebody being there when I was all alone…” Again she shivered.

Andy rested a floury arm around her shoulder. “You could’ve called me.”

She smiled at him and kissed his cheek. “My hero.”

The back door opened and a sweaty-faced Davenport exited the building. “He must’ve heard the siren. I heard running footfalls on the second floor, and tore up the stairs,” he said, still panting. That wasn’t a good idea for a man his age and especially in this heat. “Looks like he got away through an emergency exit at the back of the loft. Your alarm’s blaring—you’d better call your security company.”

“I’ll do that right now,” Katie said, and went back inside the building, while Davenport opened his car door and switched on his radio transmitter to talk to dispatch.

The heat inside the building was at least ten degrees higher than outside, and practically slammed Katie in the face. Back in her airless office, she looked up the number for the security company in her old and worn Rolodex, called them, and explained the situation, telling them that sheriff’s deputies were already on the scene.

As she hung up the phone, she noticed a key she kept on a hook next to her bulletin board was missing. That explained a lot.

Katie left her office and headed out the back door once again, looking for Detective Davenport, who was conversing with Deputy Schuler. They stopped talking as she approached.

“I just noticed the key to Chad’s Pad is missing,” she told Davenport.

“Chad…your husband? Hasn’t he been dead for over a year?”

She nodded. “We were living apart at the time of his death,” she reminded him. “He was staying here in the Alley.”

“Illegally,” Davenport put in.

Katie nodded. “I didn’t like the idea either, but…that’s beside the point right now. I keep the key to the door of the room he stayed in on a hook in my office—it’s missing. But I checked the door to that room earlier today and it was definitely locked.”

“Let’s go have a look at
Chad’s Pad
,” Davenport said.

“Now that I know you’re okay and that the detective is here, I’d better get back to work,” Andy said. “Stop over before you go upstairs tonight,” he told Katie, who nodded.

Katie led Davenport through the Alley and up the stairs to the stifling hot loft. Tucked in the far corner was the
room that Chad had occupied. The door was closed, but when Katie reached for the handle, it turned.

“Damn,” Davenport muttered, “I shouldn’t have let you do that. You’ve just ruined any fingerprints that might’ve been on there.”

“If someone’s been living inside, there’ll be plenty more—and in the bathroom downstairs,” Katie said and swung the door wide. The room was dark, and she used her elbow to flip the switch. Sudden light blazed in the sixty-watt bulb that hung from the ceiling. The room stank of stale sweat and Katie forced herself to breathe shallowly. Davenport pushed past her to enter the tiny room.

The covers on the bed were a jumbled mess. The remnants of past meals—lunches and other food swiped from the vendors’ lounge’s refrigerator—filled the overflowing wastebasket. Gwen’s missing pop cans and Vance’s Tupperware bowl were tossed in a pile as well. A heap of dirty clothes filled one corner of the tiny room. Davenport pulled out a pen and poked at them. “Do you recognize any of these shirts?”

Katie bit her lip. “I think so. That striped one. I think Dennis Wheeler has one like it.”

The detective looked up sharply. “Do you think he’s the one who’s been hiding here in your loft?”

“I don’t know. All I know is he has a shirt like that. I don’t know if it’s actually
his
shirt.”

Davenport straightened and frowned. How could he stand to be in that close, hot space and not keel over? “Would
you
have told him about this hiding place?”

“Of course not. But it was no secret that Chad stayed here for two months when we were apart. He went to a couple of the Merchants Association meetings. He might have told Dennis about it then. I don’t know—I wasn’t part of the group then. But Gilda Ringwald-Stratton would know. She’s a walking encyclopedia when it comes to the Victoria Square Merchants Association.”

“I’ll have a talk with her, and then I’ll speak to Mrs. Wheeler again,” Davenport said, scowling.

She made a mental note to call the woman herself the next morning. If Abby was going to be grilled by Detective Davenport, she might feel the need for a little moral support.

Davenport glanced at his watch. “I hope you weren’t planning on doing anything important tonight, Mrs. Bonner, because I want to get the crime team out here to fingerprint this place. I know you won’t want the area around this storage space to be cut off from your customers in the morning.”

“You’ve got that right,” Katie said. She’d found sleep hard to come by in her sweltering apartment, and she had plenty of work to keep her occupied while the crime team did their thing up here. And she blinked in astonishment. Detective Davenport had actually shown sympathy for complications that could arise for her business.

He must be feeling really ill
, she decided. Or had his pending retirement finally made him see that even after a violent death, the living needed to make money to
keep
on living?

She moved aside as Davenport exited Chad’s Pad and pulled out his cell phone, punching in a number.

“I’ll wait for you downstairs,” she said.

He nodded, turned his back to her, and began speaking into his phone.

Katie had no desire to eavesdrop and headed for the back stairs and her office. She had a feeling it was going to be a very long night.

It was well past twelve when the lab team finished their work in Chad’s Pad and started on the washroom behind Katie’s office. An hour later, she inspected the space and shook her head. She was far too tired to deal with the mess they’d made. She locked up Artisans Alley and walked across the darkened parking lot toward home.

The lights were still on at Angelo’s Pizzeria, but there was no one out front. Andy was probably in the back preparing the dough for the next day’s batch of cinnamon buns. Katie withdrew her cell phone from her pocket and punched in Andy’s cell number. Instead of answering, his head popped around the corner of the door. He saw her and hurried toward the front of the shop. She pocketed her phone as he unlocked the door.

“Hey, you were supposed to call me
before
you left the Alley,” he chided her.

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“Don’t do that again,” he admonished. “I worry about you.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

“That took a long time,” he said, and gave her a quick kiss.

“It sure did.”

“Come on inside, you’re letting the mosquitoes and moths in,” he said. Once inside, he locked the door and gestured for her to follow him to the back room. Sure enough, he was working on a new batch of dough. “I might have to hire a backup backup,” he said as he washed his hands at the slop sink. “I’d forgotten how much work it was to run the shop
and
keep the cinnamon buns going.”

“You got spoiled fast.”

“Thank God Danny will be back on Monday.”

“Then you’ll be able to make the potluck?” Katie asked, sudden hope coursing her through.

“Wouldn’t miss it. I’m bringing my world-famous pepperoni pasta salad.”

“It’s supposed to be a Christmas party,” Katie reminded him.

“I celebrate Christmas in December. You and your vendors can celebrate it whenever you want.”

“Party pooper.”

She watched him work. He looked tired. He always looked tired. He worked too hard, for too long, and this whole situation with Blake was also wearing on him.

“That was a great dinner tonight,” Andy said. “Thanks for going to so much trouble.”

“I’m glad you liked it. Only now it seems like it must have happened three or four weeks ago,” she said and eased herself into the room’s only chair. It was a duplicate of the plastic lawn chairs Andy had out front for customers.

“So what did Davenport have to say about your intruder?” Andy asked as he went back to work.

“Not much. But there was something on his mind. He was…different. His attitude. Of course, he’s been acting weird—nice—since Sunday. Tonight was just another facet of his weirdness.”

“Cut the guy some slack. He’s retiring in a couple of days. It’ll be a big change.”

“It’s not just that. The other deputies were very standoffish. Like he had cooties or something. They didn’t seem to want to talk to him.”

Andy added another hunk of dough to one of the rising trays. “That’s odd.”

“I kind of felt sorry for him,” she added. “And you’re right. Leaving the Sheriff’s Office has got to be a big change for him. And worse, he lost his wife last fall. I’m sure they must’ve made plans for when he retired. And he’s still got kids in school. Why retire now with all that expense hanging over him?”

“You ever heard of student loans?”

“How do you think I went to college? But most parents want to help their kids through school. I get the feeling he would, too.”

“Maybe he got forced out,” Andy suggested, and pulled out another empty rack, filling it, too, with dough to rise.

“I suppose that could have happened. He does have a rather brusque personality,” she said and yawned.

“You need to hit the sack.”

“Hey, you’ve been up as long as I have, if not longer. I don’t know how you manage.”

Andy smiled. “I love to work. At least for myself. I never would have worked this hard at the accounting firm. But I get a lot of satisfaction being here. I have this old building, I’m happy with the kids that work for me—for the most part—and I even love that you’ve living here now. When I leave at night, I know that you’re here and you’re safe and that I’ll see you every day, no matter what.”