Person of Interest (A Celeste Eagan Mystery) (18 page)

“Shh,” he whispered against my ear. “I don’t think the storm knocked out the electricity.”

“Why?” I whispered back. “It’s been raining like crazy all day.”

“The neighbor’s isn’t out.”

I looked through the window over the sink and he was right. The Pospieches’ house was lit up like Christmas Eve.

“What do we do?”

“Is your pantry a walk-in?” I shook my head—then said no when I realized he couldn’t see me. Muldoon directed me over to the kitchen table, bumping into a chair as we rounded the end to the side. “Get down under the table and stay there. Got it?”

Chapter Sixteen

Every creak and groan echoed through the kitchen. I couldn’t tell what was actual ambient noise and what was Muldoon—or anyone else—moving through the house. I’d like to think I’d just blown a fuse. The house being less than ten years old, however—and the fact that my father had checked out everything from the water to the electricity last time he was here—I couldn’t ignore the coincidence of everything.

There was a loud thump followed by a crash. I covered my head with my hands and just prayed no one started shooting again. I stayed hunched over and wasn’t sure how much time passed, but the hum of the electricity kicked on a second before the lights all came back on. When I finally opened my eyes, all I could do was stare down at the floor, a little surprised to see dirt in the linoleum crevices. My mopping skills were clearly lacking. I shifted and leaned my head against the padded seat in front of me. I was cowering under a table from some unknown assailant and my love/hate relationship with Mr. Clean should not be called to my attention.

Muldoon’s boots appeared at the edge of the table a moment before he called my name. “Celeste.” A chair moved and his large hand snaked under the table. “You can come out now.”

I ignored the little tinge that zipped through me when I let him guide me out. “What happened? Did you find anyone?”

“Did you leave your garage door open?”

I frowned. “No. I haven’t opened it in days. Levi’s Hummer won’t exactly fit inside. Besides, my controller bit it with the car.”

“Come here.” The flirty, easygoing guy was replaced with super cop.

He set his hand at the small of my back and guided me into the garage. Boxes with all sorts of decorations and Paige’s too-small clothes lined the slot where Colin used to park. My spot was barren with my car not yet replaced with a human-size vehicle.

“The garage door was open.” He pointed at the closed bay door. “Someone came in and flipped the main breaker on the fuse box. A wet trail from outside led straight to the box. The door into the house was unlocked.” He tapped the deadbolt with his index finger.

“I always leave it unlocked. You can’t get in without the remote.”

His lips disappeared with the disappointed purse of his mouth. “Someone did.”

I closed my eyes and ran my hands down my face. Yet again, I’d screwed up. How many times had my dad told me to keep that interior door locked? I’d always felt safe, though, because the big garage door was locked up tight and now without a remote... “How could someone get the garage door open?”

Muldoon shook his head and looked down. “You gather up a couple and try different frequencies and wham, there ya go. Thieves will troll alleys or streets pushing buttons until they get a hit. It’s an easy score, especially if the interior door is easily accessed to them.”

“Did someone get in the house?” I pointed to the last remnants of the wet trail.

“Not far. They’d just opened the interior door when I heard them. I almost had my hands on them but I tripped over some little table. They took off and I couldn’t see where they went.”

I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets. “That was awful brazen of someone to do this when a cop was in my house.”

“They may not have known I was here.” He guided me back into the house and into the living room. “There was a good-size puddle in front of your house so I parked a house over. But whoever it was may not have cared either. I’m going to put a guard back on you.” He was reaching for his phone.

“I don’t want that.” I sank onto the sofa. I didn’t want to be watched all the time again. We—well
I
, who knows what Muldoon uncovered from the leads I gave him—had no idea who to be wary of. “Please, no cops watching me.”

“Celeste...” He sighed and sat across from me.

“I don’t get it. I just don’t.” I kicked my heels up on the coffee table. “Chad and Kelsey are murdered. I didn’t do it. I don’t know who did it. So why are they coming after me? Do they think I know something? ’Cause I swear to you, I don’t.”

“There must be something. Anything.”

I hadn’t told him about my appointment with Beau Henderson. But if he was the bad guy and I was coming
to him
, why would he continue to come after me?

“Let’s start at the beginning and go over this again.”

“Fine.” I ran through everything I knew up to that point. All the leads I’d followed and everything I’d printed. Well, all except the info on Mr. Henderson. Other than Levi, no one knew we had that info. Okay, Kellen knew we knew
something
. But I never elaborated or told him details. Honestly, I was afraid he’d try to get an interview and anything candid the man might say would be tainted. So other than Levi... I trusted Levi with my life. He was not involved. No one would be the wiser about my appointment, so it couldn’t be a threat. And that’s assuming it was even relevant. I didn’t have proof it had anything to do with anything. I was going to see him to tell him what
I
knew.

“You never spoke to the gardener after you got picked up by the Fort Worth Police?”

“Danny?” I shook my head. “Nope. Not since the night I ran into him getting my grade book. Why?”

Muldoon leaned his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. “The night the office was broken into.” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes tight. “He got your sweater all greasy.”

“Yes. My pink cardigan.” I was getting beyond fidgety. I thrummed my fingers on my thighs and bounced my knees. “When you examined Chad’s office after the break-in, did you find grease on anything?”

He straightened his head and looked at me. But didn’t speak.

“Aw, come on, Muldoon. I get that whole confidentiality part. I really do. But at this point what difference does it make if you give me an itty bitty detail here and there.” He still didn’t speak. “Unless you really think I’m in on it.”

“I don’t.” He sighed. “Fine. Yes, we did find a couple of spots with grease. But only on a light switch and one spot on the corner of the desk. No viable prints.”

“See. There ya go.”

“The place was trashed. If he had enough grease on him to ruin your sweater you’d think we’d have found more. Yes, I think he was definitely there, but maybe he was just curious and went to see what was up.”

“Maybe? You say it like you’re not sure. Didn’t you question him?”

“At the time of the school break-in, yes. In regards to you. He didn’t admit to being there.”

“But I told you...”

“Yes, you did. We’ve had a little trouble tracking him back down. He hasn’t been questioned again.” He sat up straight. “And there was nothing to tie him to the office.”

“The grease.”

“Which you had on you, too. As well as the fact that you were the only person to log in that night. When we tracked down Kelsey to speak to her again...”

I shivered. “That’s when your guys found her body?”

Muldoon nodded.

“And you found the DVDs.”

“Yes. She also had a small handheld DVD recorder. We think it came from Jones’s office. After watching a couple of the DVDs, we knew the entrapments were mostly filmed there.”

“You confiscated his computer, didn’t you? And your techie guys found videos uploaded on it too?”

“Yes.” He had that wary, “uh-oh why’s she asking” look.

“His ex-wife said something to me at the funeral, couldn’t believe I’d had the nerve to show up. At the time I thought she considered me a potential killer, but later when we spoke on the phone...” His dark eyebrow shot up—damn, those things moved around a lot, it was sexy as hell. I gave myself a mental smack to the back of the head.
Mind off the sexy detective and focus
. “I called her to find out what that whole cold shoulder was about. She told me about the videos and about being able to divorce him because of it. Said she should have thanked me and the others. How many others?” I waved away the question. “Even if you could tell me, I don’t think that I want to know.”

“’Kay.”

“Was his office the only place he, um, shot footage?”

“No. There was a hotel room. We checked it out. He rented it as needed so there was nothing he kept there.”

I tugged on the end of my sleeve, pulled at a piece of lint. “Was his house scavenged like someone was looking for the DVDs too?”

Muldoon shifted in his seat. “Why do you ask?”

“If I, whoever the ‘bad guy’—” I did air quotes with my fingers “—might be, were to look for something, I’d check any place Chad could potentially leave it. If I was going to go to all the trouble to kill the man and make it look like suicide, I’d want to find it. I wouldn’t want to take chances that it was found by the police.”

“No, his house wasn’t trashed.”

Really? That was strange. “Why would mine and Kelsey’s be trashed but not Chad’s? Did they find what they were looking for at Kelsey’s?”

Muldoon shrugged. If he had a theory, he wasn’t sharing.

“Do you think it was a former victim?” I couldn’t wrap my head around any of the women who left the school killing him. Once they were gone, what was the point?

“It would be hard for a woman to do it by herself. But it’s not unheard of. And if she had help...”

“Do
you
think it’s a woman?”

“I have a few ideas.”

And with that, the open-answer portion of the night closed down again. “Which you won’t share with me.” It was a statement. Muldoon’d started to put the wall back up.

“You ask pretty good questions,” he said by way of redirecting the conversation.

“
Veronica Mars
.”

“What?”

“I’ve watched every episode of
Veronica Mars.
The TV show—well, and movie. Teenage super sleuth. Never mind. What made you become a cop?” Not the best segue, but I was curious.

“My dad was a cop.”

“Was?” I gulped. I didn’t want to open a whole can of “remember when” for Muldoon and his dad. As much as my mother annoys me, I’d never wish her gone—gone over state lines, yes, but not gone, gone.

“He retired about ten years ago.”

“Oh good. I mean not good that’s he retired good that he’s not dead, which was my first thought when you said
was
. I’m sorry. I get diarrhea of the mouth from time to time.”

“I’ve noticed that.” He chuckled. “I don’t mind. It’s kind of cute.”

“Cute. Gaw.” I leaned my head back on the sofa cushion. “That’s like being friends. No girl wants to be cute. Especially someone sneaking up on forty.”

“I happen to like cute.”

I lifted my head slowly. This game between us was a little too much for my brain to process along with everything else. “We should focus on our case.”

He cleared his throat. It almost sounded like he was trying to smother a laugh. “
Our
case?”

I shrugged with one shoulder. “Chad used the DVDs as blackmail of sorts. Kelsey was the current victim?”

“She was the only recent one as far as we could tell.”

“Do you think she killed him?” I was holding my breath a little, wondering if he’d actually answer the question.

He took a long breath himself, then said, “She had a pretty good alibi for the night Jones died.”

“Did you talk to her boyfriend?”

“Yeah, but he was alibied even tighter for that night. He was in jail on a DUI stop. And when she was killed, he was at a court-mandated AA meeting.”

“That quickly?”

“From a previous DUI stop.”

I tapped my lips. More people were ruled out than in. “So it could have been a previous mark.”

“Mark?”

“His victims.”

“I know what a mark is. But coming from you...” He shook his head. “You’re a teacher. You shouldn’t be worrying about marks or victims.”

“I’m a
theater
teacher. Former teacher.” The words caught in my throat. It was going to be hard to get used to that. “Drama is right up my alley.”

“Pretend drama, not car explosions, shootings and dead bodies.”

“Tomayto, tomahto. I’m in it now, so the best thing is to get to the bottom of it to get out from under it. Don’t you think?”

“Where you’re concerned I don’t know what I think.” He slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. “There weren’t any recent
marks
as far as we could find.”

I stood as well to keep from having to crane my neck at an alarmingly uncomfortable angle. “So why go to the trouble to kill him now if he’d moved on.”

“Exactly.”

“I still think the scandal with the professor when he was in college has to be the key.” I reached out and set my hand on his arm. “It can’t be a coincidence that he just so happens to be videoing people and dies eerily similar to the way she did.”

He didn’t move or shy away from my touch. “I agree. That was an excellent find.” He patted my hand, let his fingers linger a moment before he dropped his hand to his side. “And we’re talking to the police involved back then. Going over old case files. But it’s been over twenty years. Some of the key witnesses have moved on. Sources have forgotten the details.”

“What about the professor’s son?” I stepped back and let my own hand fall away. “Do you think he knows anything?”

“He was a kid at the time. I doubt she’d conduct any of her affairs in front of the boy. But no, we haven’t gotten a hold of him. He was a minor and was put into foster care after his mother’s death. There’s a couple of decades of paperwork to wade through for his info.”

“That poor little boy. Can you imagine? Losing your mom and then having to be sent to live with people you didn’t know.” My mind flashed to Paige. No matter what happened to Colin or me, Paige had enough family that she would never have to worry.

Muldoon started to comment when the doorbell rang. He immediately stiffened. His hand crept to his side and he lifted his sweater to reveal a gun handle.

I was halfway to the door when the bell rang again followed by a key in the lock. “Sweets, you home?” Levi called when he got it open.

“It’s my friend.” I patted Muldoon’s arm. “You can re-cover your cannon.”

He snorted and adjusted his sweater back over the weapon.

“Do you always pack heat?” I arched an eyebrow over my shoulder at him as I went to greet Levi.