Chapter 14 #2
“Two minutes before I texted you. The paint was still wet. Edwina was inside, going crazy, so it couldn’t have happened too long before we got here.”
“And you were with Greg Newsome all evening?”
“From six o’clock on. We had dinner at Fidelio’s, ran into Kenny and Jacquie there, and then he drove me home. But Greg wouldn’t have had anything to do with this.”
“I didn’t think he would,” Mendoza said dryly. “So Kenny was at the restaurant when you arrived. When did they leave? Would he have had time to drop his date off before coming here?”
“He must have,” I said, “don’t you think?”
He tilted his head. “You can’t think of any reason your client would be party to this?”
Could I?
“She’s my husband’s ex,” I said. “I won’t claim that we’ve always gotten on well.
But she did hire me to follow Nick. Although I suppose she could have had ulterior motives for that.
Maybe she planned to kill him, and she hired me so I’d be part of her defense.
If I proved—as much as anyone could—that Nick wasn’t cheating, she could claim not to have any reason to kill him. ”
Mendoza nodded. “Possible. Kenny alone, or Kenny and Jacquie, then. Anyone else?”
I thought about it. “Daniel, I suppose. I assume he knows that I’ve tried to warn Rachel away from him. He knows where I live. And he wasn’t at Fidelio’s.”
“He might have been with Rachel, though.” Mendoza made another note. “Beyond family?”
“Like I said, I thought of the mob. This has a certain horse-head in the bed look to it, don’t you think?”
Mendoza’s lips twitched. “It does. Although like I said, I think the mob would have used real blood.”
I nodded. Creepy as that was to contemplate, I tended to agree.
“And I also don’t know why they’d want to scare you,” he added.
“You’re not involved in this. All you did was follow Gio Abruzzi from the Body Shop to Sambuca one day last week, and then draw Izzy Spataro’s attention by wandering into the back of the restaurant looking for the ladies’ room.
That doesn’t seem like enough reason for them to try to scare you off. ”
“I appreciate that,” I said sincerely. “Megan is one of yours, I assume?”
His face turned blank, in a rather disconcerting way. “One of… who, exactly?”
“Undercover cop,” I said. “Your counterpart at the Body Shop.”
“Oh.” His face cleared. I wondered what he’d thought I’d meant. “Yeah. Megan Slater. Detective in Vice.”
“So even if she noticed me tailing her home the other day—or to your place, rather—she wouldn’t have any reason to object.”
He shook his head, and this time he looked amused. “Not with red paint, for sure.”
“I don’t think Sal has noticed me, and the only other person I’ve been in touch with lately has been Mrs. Miller, in the other side of the duplex from Nick. But I don’t see her doing this, and besides, why would she? I didn’t kill him. I just found the body.”
“She would have smelled him herself soon enough,” Mendoza said cynically, “if you hadn’t found him. There could be something else going on—”
“There could always be something else going on.”
He nodded, “—but barring that, I agree. This doesn’t seem like something she’d do.”
“My money’s on Kenny,” I said. “It’s exactly something he’d do. Although if I confront him about it, it’ll probably just make things worse.”
Mendoza turned back to the door. “It’s a shame you don’t have a proper security system. Then we might have been able to see who it was.”
“I have an alarm system,” I protested, as I followed him inside. “David put it in when we bought the place. Top-notch everything, including cost.”
“That’s a long time ago,” Mendoza said, which was a reminder I didn’t need, frankly. “Besides, I meant cameras. Motion-activated, cloud storage, the works. Feeding directly to your phone. You could have watched whoever did this walk right up to your door.”
I made a face. “Lovely.”
“It would have helped.” He shut and locked the front door and headed back down the hall toward the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s eat breakfast before it gets cold. There’s a cinnamon roll, too. We can share it.”
“You’re trying to bribe me with carbs,” I said, even as my heart did a little flutter at the idea of sharing. Ridiculous.
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Is it working?”
I made a face. “Absolutely.” Forty minutes on the elliptical. It’d be worth it.
By the time Mendoza left—after extracting a promise that I’d think about upgrading the security system—it was nearly nine o’clock. I gathered up Edwina, locked the house, and drove to the office.
Rachel was already there, and so was Zachary. They both looked up when I walked in, and I could see the concern on their faces. Rachel must have let Zachary know that something had happened, and he’d been sitting here worrying ever since.
“Let’s get this over with,” I told them both, and set Edwina down. She trotted over to Zachary, who scooped her up and clutched her to his stomach.
Then I told them everything. About finding Nick’s body, about the conversation with Mendoza and the visit to Jacquie’s apartment, about the mob connection and the undercover operation.
At this point, I couldn’t remember who I’d told what, so I just let it all out.
I ended with Kenny and Jacquie together at Fidelio’s, and about the paint on my door.
Zachary looked stricken. “I should have stayed. I should have—I don’t know, gone inside with him or something.”
“It wasn’t your job to go inside with him. We weren’t hired to be security. All we were supposed to do was determine whether he was cheating on Jacquie.”
“Did you notice anything?” Rachel asked. “When you left? Any cars lurking, anyone suspicious?”
Zachary shook his head miserably. “Nothing. Just a quiet street. The neighbor’s TV was on—I could see the flicker through her front window—but that’s it.
Most of the houses were dark. No cars outside the duplex except Nick’s truck and the neighbor’s Pontiac.
There were a lot of cars in a lot of driveways, but I wouldn’t have noticed if someone was sitting in one of them. ”
No, of course not.
“At least Mrs. Miller was telling the truth about watching the Late Show when she heard him come home,” I said. “Whoever killed him must have come later, after she’d gone to bed.”
“Or she was waiting for him to come home,” Zachary said, “so she could go next door and kill him. Eleven-thirty’s a bit late for an old lady to be up, isn’t it?”
Maybe it was. I wasn’t old enough yet to know, although I tend to be in bed before that myself. I was glad to see that Zachary hadn’t lost his ability to think critically, anyway.
“Jacquie drives a dark blue Beetle,” I told him. “I don’t suppose you saw one of those? Or a white Bronco? New and shiny?”
Zachary opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Rachel frowned. “You don’t really think Kenny might have something to do with this, do you?”
“It isn’t impossible. He was certainly quite cozy with Jacquie last night.”
“That doesn’t mean he killed anyone. Kenny’s a lot of things, but I don’t think he’s a murderer.”
I didn’t necessarily think he was a murderer either, but— “You’re defending him?”
“I’m saying he’s less immature than he used to be. He’s been working on the bar with Daniel, and he’s been showing up on time, putting in real effort. Daniel says he’s impressed.”
I snorted. “Daniel’s impressed by anyone who shows up more than once.”
“That’s not fair,” Rachel protested, but there wasn’t much heat in it.
“No,” Zachary said into the silence. “No bright and shiny, new, white Bronco. And I don’t think there was a Beetle, but I can’t swear to it. Not in the dark.”
“What about the paint?” I asked Rachel. “You don’t think Kenny would do that, either?”
Rachel hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it seems petty, even for him.”
“Petty is Kenny’s specialty.”
Rachel opened her mouth to respond—I was bracing myself—but before she could let rip, the front door opened and Jacquie walked in.