Chapter Nineteen. That’s the Trouble with Murder
CHAPTER NINETEEN
That’s the Trouble with Murder
WE made it back to the townhome without spotting the woman again, and yet I could not shake the sensation that it was not the last time we would see her.
Ruan pulled the sack of sweets from his pocket and placed them gently on the table next to some cut hellebore that Mrs. Penrose must have picked up on her own at the market today.
Untucking my blouse, I withdrew the stolen file from my waistband and laid it on the tabletop.
“You will be the death of me, Ruby Vaughn. I swear it.” His nimble fingers began unfastening the cuffs of his shirt and he rolled his sleeves up before washing his hands in the sink. He turned back to me, gesturing for me to sit.
Puzzled, I sank down onto the kitchen chair. “What are you…”
He took my chin in his fingers and tilted my head into the light, examining my wound. “Turn your head to the left.”
I did. “Ruan, I don’t understand—”
“Now right.”
I sighed and complied.
“And up?”
I let out a pained groan. “Please stop coddling me.”
Ruan placed his hands on his hips and raised his brows. “The blow to your head certainly isn’t affecting your stubbornness.”
“I’m not stubborn…” I grumbled. “I am fine as I told you. Besides, I don’t have time to not be fine. Mr. Mueller is dead, and we are still no closer to finding out who the killer is. That’s two bodies now instead of one.”
He ran his thumb tenderly along my cheekbone, before turning away to fill a kettle and set it on to heat. Either he agreed with my assessment that I was perfectly well, or he had simply grown tired of arguing the point.
“How did you know I was at the police station? Was it your—” I gestured at the center of his chest, still having trouble voicing the peculiar connection between us.
“No … oddly enough it wasn’t.” A pained expression crossed his face. “But there is something I need to tell you about this morning.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
Ruan folded his arms, drumming his fingers on his forearms. “I went back to Harker’s museum after I left Laurent’s house. I started home, but could not recall if we’d locked the door to the museum when we left. I dropped by to make certain. It was probably four or five o’clock in the morning.”
I furrowed my brow. “The door was open though…”
He nodded grimly. “I know. It was when I arrived as well. Someone had pried it open. The wood was damaged. I decided to go inside and see if anything was taken.”
“Ruan, that was incredibly—”
“Reckless?” He cocked an eyebrow. “I recognize that. Especially in light of…” He gestured at my brow.
The kettle began to whistle, and Ruan took it from the range.
“Was anything taken?”
He poured the water into the nearby teapot. “All of the jars. Plus several crates near where we were standing. They also took the tongue.”
“It had been lying on the floor—why cut someone’s tongue out to begin with? I suppose if the jars were stolen, then this gives credence to Leona’s theory of cocaine.”
Ruan’s brows raised as I explained what Leona had shared this morning.
How Julius Harker had thoughts of intercepting a shipment of drugs from some mysterious figure and my suspicion that he was disguising it amongst a supply of natron.
The alternative would be too grim to countenance—if he were planning on lacing the cocaine with natron, he would likely be signing many a death warrant.
I shivered at the thought. Suddenly something else struck me.
“Ruan … how did you know where to find me?”
He hesitated, taking a step back. “After I left the museum, I came here to tell you what I discovered. When I arrived, Owen told me you’d already left for the Artemis Club.
” He closed his eyes with a sigh. “When I got there, they said that you’d headed home over an hour before.
As I’d already come straight from there, I returned to the museum, thinking you’d likely had the same notion as I had.
It was about nine o’clock or so when I arrived, and a local shopkeeper told me a woman had been recently attacked and her body taken to the police station.
She thought you were dead, Ruby…” He raked his hand through his hair.
“I thought you were dead. I did not hear you and yet a part of me … a part of me knew you could not be.”
“Well, you were right. I’m very alive. Sore. But here.”
Something flickered in his expression. He meant to say something more, but instead checked his watch with a frown. “I don’t want to leave you like this.” He gestured at my head. “But I promised Laurent I’d join him for lunch in an hour. I could send word to him—”
“It’s fine, Ruan.” I held up my palm in pantomime of an oath. “I promise I will not risk my neck again today so you can eat at least one meal in peace. Besides, I have a stack of papers to go through, and I don’t need you hovering.”
He smiled at that, his green eyes softening. He lifted his palm to touch my cheek, but then closed his hand tight. “If you’re certain…”
“Very. Just look at all this!” I spread the police file out across the rough wooden work surface, annoyed at having lost my notes along with Mrs. Penrose’s careful accounting from Harker’s museum transactions.
It would take hours to replicate what was lost. Hours we did not have.
And worse yet, it was very likely that the killer had it in his possession at this very moment.
All my wonderings, thoughts, every name and scrap of information I’d collected like a crime-solving magpie were now in the hands of the very person I was after.
“Oh God … what have I done? Why did I even take it with me to meet Leona?”
Ruan sat the teapot on the table between us, a soft herbal scent drifting from the spout and filling the kitchen. “Do you think your friend is in danger because of your notebook?”
“I don’t know. She has her secrets—I grant you that—but she was afraid this morning.
She is the one who told me of the cocaine, I hadn’t brought up anything we’d found at the museum—only relayed what poor dead Mr. Mueller had told me.
She assured me that her mysterious visitor was unconnected to Harker’s death, but I don’t know what to believe.
There was a man with her, I heard voices. Why would she hide that from me?”
“Do you think it was the man she works for, that Reaver fellow?”
I bit my lower lip, shaking my head. “It didn’t sound like him. I don’t know who it could be. And maybe it’s nothing? Perhaps she simply has a … friend.”
Ruan leaned back against the sink, drumming his fingers on his forearms. “That’s the trouble with murder. Nothing is ever simple. It’s never nothing. There’s always something more hiding beneath the surface.”
“Ruan Kivell, you’re starting to sound like me … and I cannot decide how to feel about this.” My expression fell at once. “How did Mueller die exactly? Before you arrived, Jack said that one of the rioters broke loose.”
“Jack?”
I leaned back in my chair, waving my hand airily. “The young constable who took you to the cells—he’s a very sweet boy.”
Ruan took a sip of the herbal tea. “As far as I can tell it was strangulation. There was bruising on his neck, and signs of a struggle. Scratches. Cuts along his hands. He’d likely been trying to fight off his attacker.”
How horrible. “Do you think it was as the police said? An altercation with one of the rioters?”
“How would another prisoner get access to his cell? Besides, the rioters are more interested in fair pay and feeding their families than they are murdering a middle-aged bookkeeper.”
“Do you think whoever attacked me is the same person who killed him?”
“Perhaps, though from what I can tell Mueller had been dead for hours. I don’t know why the constable even bothered calling for a physician at all, unless it was to have a witness verify that Mueller was in fact dead.”
Fiachna trotted into the kitchen from the sitting room and padded over to my leg, rubbing himself on it before hopping up onto the tabletop to press his feline head against my cheek with a loud purr.
“And they didn’t notice? I realize that I can be overly critical of the police at times but this …
this is suspicious. Arresting Mr. Mueller without cause, then to let him die in his cell and leave his body for hours.
” My pulse throbbed in my wounded temple and I squeezed my eyes shut to blot out the sensation.
“The constable behaved … strangely when discussing the inspector.”
Ruan made a low sound in his chest. “The inspector was none too pleased to see me either. I have to say, I don’t like any of this.”
Nor do I.
I picked up the wax-paper bag of penny candy and took a ginger sweet, plopping it in my mouth. It clacked in my teeth. “You should go…”
Ruan cast a long glance to the papers spread out before me. “Are you certain you don’t want my help? Professor Laurent is perfectly able to survive a meal without me.”
I did want his help. But I also saw the pain in his eyes every time he spoke of Ernst. Spending more time with his friend’s father would ease that ache a little. If I cared for him—and I did—I could give him that much.