Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Ukiah, California
“I think you’re right, Ronan,” Howard said when Ronan and Gary had returned to the observation room. “I don’t think she did it.”
“She’s being set up,” Gary murmured with a nod toward Elle, still seated at the table with her attorney.
Ronan agreed with them both. “And not by Miller. He might have left that candy bag next to Garfield’s body, but he couldn’t have put those things in her room today. He wasn’t mobile.”
“The wife?” Howard asked.
“She would have had to break into Elle’s room before she went to the pharmacy,” Ronan said.
“Elle had her either within her physical sight or visible on her tracking software after she left the pharmacy. It’s possible, of course, but Wendy Miller doesn’t seem to be the type.
Unless she’s the mastermind behind all of this and is pretending to be young and foolish. ”
“She was smart enough to use a pharmacy far away from where she and Miller were hiding out,” Gary pointed out.
“Three times,” Ronan countered. “Using Miller’s credit card. That doesn’t scream ‘competent criminal’ to me. She led us right to her.”
“Yeah.” Gary shrugged. “Just playing devil’s advocate. If not Miller, then who?”
“Maybe whoever killed those growers,” Ronan said.
“That couldn’t have been Miller. They were alive to shoot him a week ago and he wasn’t physically capable afterward.
But Wendy’s still a possibility.” He frowned.
“Except for the woman in San Francisco. If this is connected to that murder, it started two years ago.”
They were all quiet for a long moment.
Howard broke the silence. “We’ll start with whoever broke into her room at the inn. Get the footage from Judith. Focus on the hours just before Wendy Miller appeared at the pharmacy.”
Gary checked his phone. “I asked Judith for the footage after I finished the search. She might have—” He made a satisfied sound. “She sent it. Let me download it.”
Ronan wanted to see Gary’s phone. He needed to know who’d entered Elle’s room and he needed to know now.
He was tempted to grab Gary’s phone and do it himself, but Gary was doing all the right things. It was unsettling, this impatience, this need for Giselle Randolph to be innocent.
But he couldn’t deny the feeling. She sat with her fingers wound together so tightly that her knuckles were white. She stared straight ahead, her gaze unseeing.
He wondered what she was thinking. She had to be scared. He was scared for her.
“Got it,” Gary announced. “I’m going to start at the eight-thirty mark. Judith said Sara Lambert left the inn this morning at that time and that Ms. Randolph left directly after.”
Gary watched his phone screen for several minutes while Ronan waited impatiently. “Well? What are you seeing on that recording, Gary?”
“Nothing and nobody. Not in the time frame Wendy could have planted the stuff.”
“What about after?” Ronan asked.
“I’m looking, I’m looking.” Gary fast-forwarded again and again. “Ah. Here’s something.”
Ronan leaned to look over Gary’s right shoulder.
Howard crowded Gary’s left. Gary held his phone out obligingly.
“Here. At two fifteen this person entered her room, pushing a housekeeping cart.” He glanced over his shoulder at Ronan.
“Significant because the two women had requested no housekeeping service. No one was supposed to have entered their room. They requested towels, et cetera, when they needed them.”
The person on Gary’s phone screen was slender, gender-neutral. They wore a medical mask, so their face was hidden. Their eyes were also hidden by the brim of a ball cap.
“It’s not going to be easy to get an ID on this character,” Ronan said, frustrated. “We can’t see their face.”
“Okay,” Howard said. “Cut Randolph loose for now. We don’t have enough to hold her even if I did believe she was guilty.” He paused, frowning at the one-way glass. “What’s she doing?”
Elle, who’d grown even paler than she’d been before, was writing furiously on a legal pad, which she showed to her attorney.
“Do they think we’re listening in?” Howard asked, clearly offended at the notion.
Elle’s attorney read whatever she’d written and went stock-still. She wrote something on the pad, then rose, heading for the door.
“I think we’re about to have a visitor,” Gary said, just as there was a knock on the observation room door.
Ronan opened it, gesturing for Alexis Hellier to enter. The attorney immediately pointed to Elle, who sat with her hands tightly clenched once more. “She thinks she’s been bugged.”
Howard frowned, clearly doubtful, but Ronan could see Elle’s reasoning.
“Kasey’s mention of the bodies in the well and Dianne’s brooch?” he asked.
Hellier nodded. “Yes and yes. And the candy, too.”
Several people knew that Elle loved the candy cap caramels, but no one else except Sara should have known about the bodies in the well and the brooch.
“Her phone?” Gary guessed.
Hellier shook her head. “Sara Lambert requires her hunters to run scans on their phones every day. Elle would have found a bug in her phone long before now. She thinks it’s her jacket.”
“Her lucky jacket,” Ronan murmured. “She said she was wearing it when she rescued that toddler from the fire. She didn’t die that day and…well, the jacket is a common thread. She said she wears it whenever she’s on a case.”
“In the summer, too?” Gary asked.
“We all live in San Francisco,” Hellier said.
“Most of Sara’s cases are in the area and it can get chilly there in the summer.
And Elle’s from Florida. I think she’s always cold.
That she wears that jacket whenever she’s working isn’t a stretch.
She wears it when we go out bar hopping, too.
More because it looks good on her, I think, than the superstition. ”
It did look good on her, Ronan had to admit.
“Let’s get someone up here from the lab,” Howard said. “They can check it out and then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
Gary held up his phone. “I’ll call.”
“Thank you,” Hellier said quietly. “You guys know she’s innocent.”
“We think she is,” Howard told her as Gary spoke to the lab. “Not the same as knowing. We’ll investigate this thoroughly, no matter what we think.”
The attorney nodded. “I’m glad. That way there will be no doubt of my client’s innocence. How long before the lab gets here with a scanner?”
Gary put his phone away. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“I’ll sit with Elle.” Hellier moved toward the door. “Did you find anyone entering her room at the inn?”
“Yes,” Ronan said before Howard could tell the attorney that she wasn’t entitled to that information. Because she wasn’t. But Elle had been through enough today. “We’ll be releasing Ms. Randolph as soon as we take her jacket into evidence.”
“Thank you. How do you want to play this? Do you want whoever planted a listening device to know that you’re aware it’s there?”
That was a good question. The three of them—Ronan, Howard, and Gary—looked at each other before Ronan said, “Considering we have someone else out there involved, we don’t want to show our hand.
Wendy didn’t plant the evidence in Ms. Randolph’s room, but she might have killed the growers.
She might still be involved, just not alone.
Let’s create a conversation to make whoever planted the bug think it’s still there.
” He thought a little more. “We’ll tell Ms. Randolph that we don’t have enough to hold her for now, that she’s free to go.
That we need to take her jacket into evidence to check for gunpowder residue since those growers were shot in the head.
I’ll make sure the lab tech knows to talk through what he’s doing as if he’s testing for GSR, in case someone is listening.
Then, when we put the jacket into evidence for real, we’ll store it in a way that renders the bug useless. ”
Hellier nodded approvingly. “I’ll let her know what’s going to happen. I’ll write it down so that whoever’s listening won’t know. I won’t allow her to be blindsided. She’s devastated enough by all this.”
The attorney left the room and a moment later returned to Elle’s side.
Elle still seemed dangerously pale, the freckles on her nose and cheeks standing out in stark relief, but underneath the outer fragility was a strength Ronan admired. Her jaw was set, her expression determined.
She was going to get through this. He’d make sure of it.
Ukiah, California
Monday, February 2, 7:25 p.m.
Elle felt numb. This was surreal. The detectives and Alexis were arguing about keeping her here, Alexis insisting they had to cut her loose or arrest her, Ronan and Simpson giving her all the reasons they thought she was guilty.
Except they didn’t think so.
Alexis had prepared her for this via notes she’d written on her legal pad, but it was still hard to hear.
Finally Ronan held out his hand. “We have to take your jacket into evidence, ma’am.
We’re going to check it for gunpowder residue since the growers were shot and we still don’t know how Kasey Arnold and Steve Garfield were killed.
If you fired a gun wearing that jacket, we will know.
” His expression was stony once again and, if she hadn’t been told this was all a farce, she would have believed he thought her guilty.
But if she had been bugged, there could be more than audio. Someone could have been watching her, too.
A shiver of revulsion ran down her spine. She’d changed her clothes in the same room with the jacket. Someone had been spying on her, catching her at her most vulnerable.
She was shaking as she removed her jacket, giving it to Ronan without saying a word. He took it, but she couldn’t look at his face. She didn’t think she could bear to see his look of disdain, even if it was fake. So she kept her gaze fixed on her feet. On her boots.
Oh. Oh no. Her boots. Think, Elle. Think fast.
She hoped there wasn’t video, too, because if there was, she was about to give up the game.