Pumpkin Roll (23 page)

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Pete asked, his eyebrows pulled together with concern.

“I have nothing to hide, and I know how to handle myself,” she assured him, which reminded her that he
did
have something to hide: Michaels.

Pete nodded. “I’m so sorry, Sadie,” he whispered, lifting a hand and running the backs of his fingers down her cheek.

Sadie’s entire body reacted to his touch, warming up instantly. She reached up and took his hand in her own. “Sorry for what? This isn’t your fault.” But had he made it worse by not calling the police sooner? Was she jumping to conclusions? She wished they could talk about it right now. With the police around, though, that wasn’t going to happen.

“This isn’t how I wanted this trip to go,” Pete said.

Sadie smiled reassuringly. “I know that,” she said, taking a step closer so that their foggy breath blended together. “And I’ll be fine, okay?”

Pete nodded. “If you start feeling like they’re painting you into a corner, stop answering their questions.”

Sadie raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“They need to find someone to blame this on—nothing’s as unsettling to a cop as a crime without a perpetrator—and you’re the most logical assumption. Until or unless they find someone else who makes a better suspect than you do, you’re in the hot seat.”

“Well,” Sadie said, trying to sound strong as she attempted to lighten the heaviness that had quickly descended. Her smile, however, was shaky at best. “My feet are numb, and I can’t feel my nose, so maybe a hot seat wouldn’t be too bad right about now.”

Chapter 20

They did, indeed, take pictures of Sadie at the police station. Pictures of her hands, feet, hair, and clothing. After they’d had her stand and turn and pose two dozen different ways, they handed her some gray hospital scrubs and asked her to change. Sadie suspected this was standard dress code for the inmates they booked into jail and didn’t like the idea of looking like one of them.

“What will happen to my clothes?” Sadie asked the female officer, Officer Gall, who had accompanied her through the police station.

“You really think that paint’s gonna come out?” the woman asked her, lifting her thinly penciled eyebrows, which were stark against her fresh-looking face. Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun, but the woman couldn’t be older than twenty-five. “They’ll be filed with the other evidence.”

“Evidence,” Sadie repeated, pausing at the doorway of the little room where she’d been told she could change her clothes. She’d really liked those jeans; they didn’t make her hips look nearly as wide as most styles did. The idea of her clothes being evidence—tagged and indexed in some computer somewhere—was kind of creepy. Would that show up on her police record?

The room was solid concrete, with no windows or mirrors, and Sadie was glad they didn’t make her undress in front of someone else. That would be terribly embarrassing. The paint had dried against her skin, and she had to peel off the clothes in places. Patches of paint were left behind all over her left side. Hopefully it was a basic latex paint that would come off with a little soap. The scrubs fit like a cloth garbage sack, and she was glad there was no mirror for her to see how they looked. She folded her paint-covered clothes as best she could—the paint had dried quite stiff, making it tricky to get it right—and let herself out of the room where Officer Gall was waiting for her.

“Gray’s never really been my color,” Sadie said, trying to smile as she handed over the clothes. “So I guess it’s good you took my picture already.” Her fingers still had several spots of paint on them that she hadn’t been able to wash off after the pictures.

Officer Gall smiled politely and took the clothes.

“This way, Mrs. Hoffmiller,” another female officer said. Wait, no, this was a female
detective.
Sadie didn’t have much experience with female detectives, but she followed her obediently until they came to the door of what Sadie knew to be an interrogation room. She stopped and looked up at the woman holding open the door. She was Latino or Greek or something, with her hair pulled back in a bun just like Officer Gall’s and the same no-nonsense expression Sadie had seen on Pete’s face when he was working a case.

“They said I was just coming here for some photos,” Sadie said, tugging at the hem of her top.

The woman nodded and then smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “And since you’re here, we thought we’d ask a few questions—it’s all about efficiency.” Efficiency Sadie could understand, but she doubted that was the only motivation for this interrogation. She decided to play it out a little longer and entered the room, sitting down on one of the hard metal chairs as casually and comfortably as she could.

The detective—she hadn’t given her name yet—took the opposite chair, holding Sadie’s gaze for a few seconds. Sadie didn’t let herself get stared down, but when the detective finally looked away, she wondered if maybe she should have allowed the other woman to win.

The detective put a file down on the table between them and pulled open the cover, scanning the page before looking up again. “I must say this is one of the most interesting records I’ve ever read,” she began, watching Sadie carefully. “Not even a speeding ticket up until a year ago, then . . .” She let out a breath, closing the folder and leaning back in her chair. “Maybe you can summarize it for me,” she said, smiling in a way that was not at all comforting. “Paint me a picture, so to speak.”

Sadie hesitated for a minute but remembered she’d told Pete she had nothing to hide. Why should she play games? Not giving her own explanation wouldn’t help anything, so she might as well keep her power and show them that she was on the same side of this as they were.

“Well,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “It all started when my neighbor was murdered last year. She’d been baking, or at least that’s what it seemed like when . . .”

Sadie had just gotten to her adventure in Florida when there was a knock at the door. She stopped talking and blinked a couple of times to reorient herself to the right time and place. It was easy to become lost in her past adventures, especially when she had such an interested audience.

Detective Lucille—that was her last name, not her first name—was still leaning back in her chair, but her posture had become looser as Sadie had unloaded her recent history. Without a word, Detective Lucille rose, opened the door six inches, and whispered something that Sadie couldn’t hear. After about thirty seconds, she shut the door and turned back to Sadie.

“That’s rather fascinating,” the detective said, sitting down and looking at her watch. Sadie could only guess that she was commenting on Sadie’s recent history and not on the secret conversation she’d just had through the door. “So, what brought you to Boston?”

“Babysitting,” Sadie said, wishing she could continue the story she’d been telling. She didn’t like fast-forwarding through Florida, especially the end.

“And how did you meet Delores Wapple?”

Sadie didn’t feel any hesitation in sharing exactly how she knew Delores Wapple. She didn’t leave out anything.

“You believe in ghosts, then, Mrs. Hoffmiller?” Detective Lucille asked after Sadie explained about the voice she’d heard the night before and the lights that came on once the power returned.

“Not really,” Sadie said, then frowned. She didn’t believe in ghosts—never had. So why hadn’t she just said no?

“But you said yourself that there was no explanation.”

“I don’t think ghosts are an explanation,” Sadie said quickly. “Someone must be wanting it to seem supernatural, that’s all.”

“And who would do that?” the detective asked. There was a new undercurrent in her voice. Sadie suspected that talking about these inexplicable things was making her sound crazy, but how could she leave things out if she was determined to be completely honest with the police?

“I—I don’t know,” Sadie said with a surrendering shrug. “I’ve been assuming it was Mrs. Wapple.” She paused, leaning forward slightly. “And, as horrible as this sounds, do you think she could have hurt herself on purpose?”

“Why would she do that?”

“Well, a vendetta of some kind.”

“A vendetta against you?”

Sadie nodded. “I mean, look at all the weird things happening: her hat in our house, and then her calling me to come over only to find her suddenly unconscious. Maybe she wasn’t really unconscious, but just pretending so that I’d get in trouble. After all, I was covered in paint, making it impossible for me to pretend I wasn’t there, right?”

“She’d have to really hate you to go through all that trouble, don’t you think?”

The idea of anyone hating her was hard to take, but she was the one who’d thrown out the hypothesis. “I guess,” Sadie said, slumping in her chair. “All I did was take her some cookies.”

That reminded her of Gabrielle. Should Sadie mention her? Was it important? She was hesitant to get into that part of the story because she wasn’t sure what the police would make of her going to the banquet last night.

“Ri-ight,” the detective said, leaning forward and putting her elbows on the table. She looked at Sadie hard, as though she could read her thoughts, and her intensity rendered Sadie absolutely silent. She wished the other woman
could
read minds, then she’d know Sadie was telling the truth.

Detective Lucille looked at Sadie in silence for nearly ten full seconds; Sadie waited her out, not sure what other option she had.

When Detective Lucille spoke, her voice sounded loud in the small room. “I’m going to check out a few of these details. I’ll probably need you to come back tomorrow so we can finish up—is that a problem?”

“I’m happy to help,” Sadie said, glad to hear they were done for the day. She was relieved no one had read a Miranda warning to her and that she hadn’t said anything that would make them hold her at the police station. That meant she’d done a good job, right?

“We appreciate your cooperation,” the detective said, standing up and taking a moment to straighten her slacks. They had bunched up at the top of her thigh, leaving unsightly wrinkles behind. No doubt the bunched-up fabric had been cutting into the detective’s legs as well, making them as uncomfortable to sit in as they looked.

“You ought to look into wide-leg slacks,” Sadie said helpfully as she stood. But her smile fell when she met Detective Lucille’s eyes. “You’ve got wide hips like I do,” Sadie said quickly, wanting to soften the other woman’s expression by explaining why she’d brought up the subject and pointing out their similarities. “I find that a wider leg gives me the best compliment, evening out my curves and drawing attention away from my problem areas. Plus the fabric isn’t so tight on my thighs that it climbs, ya know?”

The detective continued to stare at her for a moment, and Sadie swallowed as the scrutiny seemed to press upon her. Surely Detective Lucille could appreciate the tip, right? Sadie had been grateful for it when Joann Proctor from the Senior Center had passed on the advice to her a few years back.

“Did you just tell me I have big hips?” Detective Lucille finally said.

“Oh, well, I didn’t mean to imply that was a bad thing, just that . . .” Sadie began. Detective Lucille stared at her with a flat expression. “Um, I just meant to point out that certain styles were more, uh, flattering than others when . . .” She looked at the ground and kicked at a crack in the concrete floor with the toe of her clog as her face and neck began to burn. “Never mind.”

“Uh-huh,” the woman said, turning toward the door. Sadie made a mental note not to comment on the body shape or size of any law enforcement officers in the future—well, maybe anyone who wasn’t a really good friend would be insulted. It wasn’t worth the risk. She followed the detective, her cheeks flaming at having made the unintended insult. They walked through a series of hallways toward the front of the police station.

“Your daughter’s been waiting for half an hour,” Detective Lucille said. “She said she’d take you home.”

“My daughter?” Sadie took a few quick steps in an attempt to catch up with the other woman. Not only did Detective Lucille have wide hips, but she had long legs as well. Sadie must have misunderstood her comment that Breanna, Sadie’s daughter, was here to give her a ride home. Breanna was in England eating crumpets and shepherd’s pie in between cleaning out monkey cages.