Chapter 17
There wasn’t much in the box. A few things. Papers that had faded with time. Miranda always got a bit freaked out when this kind of thing happened. The victims were who stayed with her the most. She always saw the faces of the ones she loved in the faces of those who were…lost.
She’d never forget how it had felt to watch her mother die over a period of weeks.
Only to lose her aunt a short time later, wasting away from almost the same diagnosis.
She always hurt for the loved ones left behind.
When she stopped feeling that pain in this job—it was time to hang it up and do something else.
“You have gloves nearby?” she asked the gorgeous man hovering at her left.
He was another who was probably too emotionally sensitive for the law enforcement world.
She’d long suspected that about this man.
Pierce felt people’s pain so deeply. She hoped he always would.
Because that was one thing that made him the phenomenal man that he was.
This was a man with heart.
Pierce crossed to a cabinet near the door and came back with a box of nitrile gloves. They each grabbed a pair.
Miranda snapped hers on and lifted Derek Gibson’s coat out. Men's extra-large, Carhart brand. That mustard brown that was so popular back then.
She went through the pockets. Left front was empty.
Right front had a folded piece of paper.
She pulled it out, and opened it carefully.
She resisted the urge to flinch; it was a child’s drawing on what looked to be the back of an envelope.
A robot, it looked like, with "Best Dad Ever!
!" written across the bottom in blue marker.
She had dozens of those types of drawings now, all stored in a drawer in her home office.
His ‘special things’ spot. She always dated them.
And when he’d had his last birthday, she’d put them in a scrapbook to keep forever.
The drawer kept filling up. Miranda would keep them all. He was her little boy, after all.
"Cruz," Pierce said. “Kid was pretty good. Kai’s struggling a bit to hold a crayon right now.”
She had met his child before, when Kai had been visiting Payton for a few days.
Kai was a beautiful, black-haired version of his father.
He had a few delays due to some trauma related to his mother’s death, Payton had told her in confidence.
But Pierce was helping him through those struggles.
And Pierce Asher was one hell of a beautiful father.
Damn it. Too bad he wasn’t the man for her. But some woman somewhere was going to be a really lucky woman someday. That woman just had to catch Pierce first.
Miranda could send him Charlotte’s way…
Miranda turned the paper over. Nothing on the back. She set the drawing on the table. That drawing…it hurt. No denying that. There was a receipt in the top pocket—dated a few days before the murder. She sat it aside—she’d have it processed, and have Dani add it to the timeline.
The Gibsons had come across this guy somewhere. It could have been a gas station—people tended to frequent their favorite establishments, close to home. She did that herself.
"Just a coat," Knight said. “Unless DNA points anywhere.”
Miranda reached back into the box, there were various items in it that would be found in a car like a tire gauge, ice scraper, old style phone charger, sunglasses.
Just…a man’s things. Underneath that, a stack of receipts held together with a rubber band.
She pulled them out and slipped the rubber band off, after Pierce had photographed and documented everything.
They all knew how this was played. Investigations were incredibly time-consuming events.
"I'll get these to Dani. Have her compare them to the timeline we have for Aimee in the weeks before.
And check his bank account." She set the stack on the table.
"Derek's movements have always been harder to pin down. Aimee was the one who kept every detail. It looks like Derek was the exact opposite—and I bet he carried cash most places.”
She looked at another man she knew well—Knight always had a roll of one hundreds in his wallet. She’d seen them before.
They’d had trouble creating a full timeline for Derek, but Dani was still working on it.
That woman was tireless at times. Knight grabbed the next stack of papers from the box—the man had a bit of an impatience problem, no denying that.
It would probably get him in trouble one day.
Miranda would probably have to rescue him or something.
"Anything?" Miranda asked.
"Nothing yet." He set them on the table.
Miranda pulled out a pen from a bank and an old, faded menu. “Bo-Mac’s? What is a Bo-Mac’s?”
"That's a drive-in over in Shoals. Been there decades. Seasonal, only, though. Menu is probably just one he had lying around. They wouldn’t have been open at the time of the murder,” Pierce said. “Great onion rings, and Kai loves the ice cream, of course.”
“I will have to check it out if I am ever through here during operating season again.” She set the menu aside.
There was a notebook there, the small pocket-sized kind.
The kind Dr. Allen Knight used all the time.
She flipped through it quickly. There was a phone number, no name, note, or date on the last used page.
"Dani might be able to do something with the phone number," Knight said. He took a photo of it quickly.
"Maybe." She set the notebook aside. Her next find was a soft lunch bag. There were familiar cartoon characters on the front. "This still has crumbs in it. Eww. Hate it when that happens. And this thing is really well insulated. Surprised garage mousies haven’t gotten to it."
"Derek was using a kids' lunch bag?" Knight asked.
"Probably borrowed it from Cruz." She looked at the Hot Wheels racing across the front.
"I get it. I've used a Prince Rufus and Princess Rikkie one this month.
Bentley didn't mind too much. He now informs me that he has to put it on the shelf and save it so it will be worth lots of money someday. Since…his cousin Dusty is related to Princess Rikkie now and everything.”
"Scraggle Popps. My boy is obsessed with Jilly Silly.” Pierce sent her a look that said the man totally understood. “For some strange reason.”
"Surprise, surprise." Of course it wasn’t—Payton was the sister-in-law of the woman who had played Jilly Silly on the Scraggle Popps, after all. "Has he ever met the real Jilly Silly?"
"Once. At Payton's. He was too shy to talk to her. He just hid behind my leg the whole time, then talked about her non-stop on the way home. He says he’s going to marry her someday. I didn’t have the heart to explain she’s already married to Uncle Luc’s brother."
"That's so adorable."
"He eventually warmed up enough to wave at her. The idea that Aunt Payton is related to Jilly Silly just thrills him."
"I bet. Jillian is awesome. She video-chatted with Bentley once when she learned he was a fan.
Has Kai seen the latest movie yet?" The man who owned the rights to Scraggle Popps now was a friend of her cousin Charlotte’s.
They were animating Scraggle Popps digitally—Jillian was doing some voice work for him, as was Charlotte. They were on the second movie now.
"Not yet. I did see the movie Gretta, though. There was this very beautiful redheaded elf warrior princess that stood out to me."
Miranda looked at Knight. He was just sitting there, that stony look on his face that said he was finished with the chitchat and they should get back to it now. "You know I am a movie star, right, my dear handsome Knight? Jac was in it, too."
"One Rowland Bowels movie doesn't make you a star.”
"Bowles, not Bowels. Aren't you so clever.” Rowland Bowles was a movie director Miranda had met multiple times. He was a good friend of Charlotte’s.
It was how Miranda and her sisters and cousins had ended up in his movie.
And Jac—Jac had been there with her. It had been a fun experience Miranda would probably never repeat.
It was now one of Masterson’s claims to fame.
"The lunch bag," Knight said. "Stay on task."
"You're no fun at all." Miranda looked at Pierce, and smirked. "He's no fun at all. My costume was seriously badass.”
“No kidding. I greatly enjoyed it.”
“What was there of it,” Knight added.
Well, that was a personal comment. Surprise, surprise. Miranda was in shock. Still, they had a real purpose here. And it wasn’t to needle Knight. “Thought you didn’t see it.”
“I’ve seen photos.”
Oh, interesting. Something she would delve into later. Cyber-stalking her, perhaps?
"Anything in there besides crumbs?" Pierce asked. She pulled in a deep breath before looking. That drawing was bothering her more than she was going to tell her two boy buddies now.
Miranda held it open wider, looked again. There was something in the bottom crumpled up.
A wad of paper, balled up tight. She tilted it toward Pierce, who snapped a photo. Miranda pulled it free.
She set the lunch bag aside and started to smooth the paper flat on the table. Gently. She’d learned long ago how not to screw with evidence. The forensics people got really, really angry when that happened.
She looked down at the letter.
U diserve to fucking die. In bright red marker.
"Well, this is rather succinct," Miranda said.
There was a sticky note on the bottom, with blue ink, and in a more flowing hand.
Derek, I think Pete might be a little angry about last week!
"Wonder who Pete is," Miranda said. “Or…was.”
"I'll check the witness list," Pierce said. "See if there's a Pete anywhere in the files."
"And the sticky writer. That's someone who saw this threat and thought it was funny." It told her the writer was familiar with Derek enough to joke with him about something that had happened. Probably at work. “It’s sounds so casual to me. Like the person really knew Derek well enough to know how he’d react to this.”
"It could be a coworker," Pierce said. "Or family."
"The wording doesn't sound like family," Miranda said, thinking about it. They didn’t have a lot to go on, but this was his lunch bag. For work. "'I think Pete might be a little angry about last week.' That sounds like someone who was in the day-to-day. Someone who knew what happened last week."
"Someone at the factory," Knight said. “It makes the most sense.”
"If Pete worked there too, someone might remember him," Pierce said. "Especially if he had a reputation."
"Fingerprints first. Then Questionable Documents for the handwriting." Miranda picked up the evidence bag. She looked at Pierce. "Wonder if we have any super genius baby sisters in that department who can help us out?"
Now they had an actual lead to go on. It was a place to start.