Chapter 11 #2
There was no reason to think anyone but Nick had been in the truck, after all. He had driven it home himself last night, tailed by Zachary, and had left it in the driveway before going inside. No one else had been with him then.
“Unless Mendoza was right,” I added, “and Nick kept a gun in his glovebox. If someone reached in last night and took it, that could explain it.”
The other techs must be inside the duplex, because I couldn’t see anyone else. What I could see was Patches the tortoiseshell, sitting on Mrs. Miller’s front stoop like a furry little sentinel. When Edwina spotted her, she let out a sharp bark that made me wince.
“Shh. We’re trying not to draw attention, remember?”
Edwina barked again, and I saw movement behind Mrs. Miller’s curtains. Great. Now the neighbor was watching me watch the murder scene. I probably looked like some kind of ghoul, coming back to gawk at the scene of the crime.
Which, to be fair, I was. I just didn’t want anyone else to realize it. It wasn’t a great look for a forty-year-old woman.
Then again, she was lurking behind her own curtains, wasn’t she? Maybe she didn’t have a whole lot of room to talk, after all.
Edwina settled back down on the passenger seat, curling into a compact ball.
“Not that I’m surprised,” I told Edwina.
“It’s understandable that she’d be interested in what’s going on next door.
Nick was her neighbor for five years, she said.
And not just that, but she owns the duplex.
I wonder how hard it’s going to be for her to rent out that other half after someone’s been shot in it? ”
Zachary was, as far as I knew, still crashing with friends after his falling out with his mother.
It might be something for him. I didn’t know his feelings about cats—especially so many of them—but he did seem to enjoy Edwina, so maybe he wouldn’t mind Patches and her friends occasionally stopping by, either.
And I could probably rely on him to help Mrs. Miller with her groceries, the way Nick had done.
“I’ll have to keep it in mind for him,” I said. “After we see how the investigation goes. Wouldn’t want him to accidentally rent from a murderer, after all.”
Edwina didn’t answer, but she heaved a little sigh.
“Yes, I’m aware that there’s no reason to think she’s guilty. But most people are killed by someone they know, and she was right next door. It should at least be considered.”
And Mendoza—or Lieutenant Sam Copeland—was undoubtedly considering it.
I squeezed my eyes shut as mortification hit again, and then opened them so I could see where I was going. “I can’t believe he caught me sitting in front of his house like some kind of stalker. That’s even worse than Mrs. Miller catching me driving past the crime scene.”
Especially when I knew that this was the very reason I had kept myself from looking up his address in the first place.
I didn’t want to find myself in the position of being caught behaving like an enamored teen.
Women probably threw themselves at him all the time.
Looking the way he did, it was inevitable.
And I was damned if I was going to be one of them.
“In my defense,” I added, because I felt defensive, “I didn’t know it was his house. I thought it was Megan’s. Although that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing to get caught.”
Edwina yawned.
“You’re a big help,” I told her bitterly. “I’m over here having a crisis, and you’re taking a nap.”
Although running my thoughts past the dog did help. There was something about hearing them out loud that let me process what I’d learned, but without the pressure of another person judging my conclusions. Edwina was many things, but she wasn’t judgmental.
“He said he’d tell me how he knows Megan,” I continued, “but that I have enough information to figure it out on my own. So let’s see if we can’t.”
Edwina shifted slightly, getting more comfortable.
“She’s his babysitter,” I said, “obviously. And it wasn’t just a one-time thing. She and the kid have spent enough time together to get comfortable. So she’s someone Mendoza trusts.”
He wouldn’t leave his son with someone he didn’t. That, at least, I was sure of. Being a cop, he was probably extra careful about anyone he brought around his kid.
“But she’s also the bookkeeper—or receptionist or secretary—at the Body Shop. So does he take his car there, and that’s how they met?”
I thought about it for a second. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he does, actually. It’s near his house, and all I’ve ever seen him drive, are American-made cars.”
So that would explain how he’d met Megan, but it didn’t explain why he trusted her, especially if she’d only worked there a month or so, the way Jacquie had said.
“Maybe she was the one who turned him onto the money laundering,” I speculated. “Someone got the police involved, and it might have been her. That would build some extra trust more quickly, I assume.”
Whether it was enough to overcome Mendoza’s protectiveness of his child was another story. And besides—
I shook my head. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. A month wouldn’t be enough time for Mendoza to trust her with Elias, and it also wouldn’t be enough time for Megan to figure out the whole mob connection and get the police involved. Besides, how long has Mendoza been working at Sambuca, anyway?”
It was more than three weeks since I had heard from him, so if it had been that entire time, that coincided pretty accurately with the time Megan had worked at the Body Shop.
The answer, when it came to me, was so obvious I almost laughed.
“She’s a cop,” I said aloud. “She has to be. Mendoza’s undercover at Sambuca, and Megan’s undercover at the Body Shop. They’re partners.”
It all fit. The way Nick and Sal had been nervous around her. The way she’d touched Nick’s arm that first day, like she was trying to calm him down. She probably thought he was going to blow her cover.
The way she’d gone with Sal to the bank, as if to protect him—or the money. No wonder he trusted her above his many burly mechanics.
And if she was Mendoza’s partner on the case, then of course she’d know Elias. Of course she’d babysit for him. She was covering Mendoza’s undercover shift and keeping his ex-wife off his back, allowing him to have the morning with his son.
“God,” I said, “I’m stupid.”
Edwina made a sound that might have been agreement or might have been the beginning of a snore.
I nodded. “Yes, you’re right. At least I figured it out, even if it took longer than it should have.
Let’s just focus on the case. So Megan and Mendoza are both undercover.
The little boy—Elias—is Mendoza’s son. Not Nick’s, and definitely not Sal’s or Gio Abruzzi’s.
Nick and Megan were not involved, now or in the past. I can forget about all those crazy theories I had. Back to basics.”
To Nick.
Who was dead. Shot in head sometime between eleven-thirty last night and this morning. Mrs. Miller had either slept through the shot, or was lying about it.
There was no reason why she’d lie, although I also couldn’t prove that she wasn’t.
She might have heard the shot and now she was feeling bad that Nick was dead, so she was telling everyone that she hadn’t heard it just so no one would blame her for not going to his rescue.
It probably wouldn’t have made any difference anyway—bullets to the brain tend to be immediately fatal—although if she had looked outside, she might have seen the killer. Or at least the car he drove.
On the other hand, the killer might have seen Mrs. Miller too, and then she might be dead, as well.
Or—less likely, but possible—she was lying because she had shot him herself.
She was the landlady, so she probably had a key to Nick’s place.
Whoever shot him had made it inside somehow, and it wasn’t likely that he had left the kitchen door open.
A key would have helped, although it probably wasn’t necessary.
The locks hadn’t appeared particularly sophisticated.
I don’t know if I’d have been able to pick my way in, but someone with a bit more experience surely could have.
“Mental note,” I said, “learn how to pick locks.”
Edwina snorted in her sleep. I tried not to take it as an indictment of my (severely lacking) abilities as a PI.
So that was the case for—or against—Mrs. Miller.
Opportunity, but no motive, not unless she’d been lying about what a nice boy Nick was.
He might have been playing his music too loud and been three months behind on his rent, although if that was the case, it would have been easier to call the sheriff’s office to have him evicted than to shoot him dead, I assumed.
Jacquie, then.
The significant other is always a suspect, and she had believed that he was cheating. Believed it enough that she had paid fifteen hundred dollars to a private investigator to prove it. That seemed to indicate that the belief was sincere. It was too much money to waste otherwise.
Unless it wasn’t a waste but a calculated effort to throw off suspicion. I hadn’t seen any signs of an affair. If the police tried to arrest her, she could tell them, in all sincerity, “I paid a PI, and the PI said he wasn’t cheating. It wasn’t me. No motive.”
I thought about Jacquie’s tears, the way her face had crumpled when Mendoza told her Nick was dead. It had seemed real, but she had proved at David’s funeral that she was a good actress.
I hadn’t been able to muster up any tears when he’d told me that David was dead, and that was after eighteen years of marriage. Then again, I didn’t have fond feelings for David at that point. If Jacquie had hated Nick enough to shoot him, would she have been able to appear as broken up as she had?