A Penny for Your Thoughts (20 page)

I glanced back at Sollie, who finally allowed himself a small smile.

“Just so long as
her
job doesn’t interfere with
my
job,” he said.

I met his gaze for a long moment.

“I’m very good at what I do,” I told him earnestly. “I’ll make it a point not to interfere with your job.”

Twenty

I walked back to the car, deep in thought. I was glad for the police list of alibis; it saved me a lot of time and trouble. Though I would verify each of the alibis myself, at least this list provided a good starting point.

I passed several department stores as I walked, the windows decorated colorfully for autumn, most of the clothes the colors of the changing leaves. I thought about the small stack of clothes back at the house—the things Judith had loaned me as well as the few things I had picked up for myself—and I wondered if there was anything suitable for a funeral in any of that. Passing a lovely dark gray suit in a store window, I hesitated, wondering how much it cost and if they would have it in my size. I turned back to take a better look.

From the corner of my eye, I could see that someone else also stopped about 30 feet behind me and was looking into a window there. My heart skipped a beat. Was someone following me?

Heart pounding, I started walking again, then stopped abruptly at the next window. I glanced back to see the person behind me also stop. A man—I couldn’t discern more than that without being conspicuous.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

If the person meant me harm, then I needed to lose him. But if this was just someone keeping tabs on me, then I would do better to let him trail along for now and only lose him when I got to something important. Either way, I needed to get a good look at him to figure out who I was dealing with.

I headed off again, this time at a more leisurely pace. At the next corner, I saw my opportunity: I turned right, then quickly darted into the first door on my right. It opened into a long, narrow, musty-smelling jewelry store with faded velvet material draped in the window displays.

Fortunately, the only salesperson in attendance was with a customer at the far end of the counter. I stayed near the door, facing a glass case filled with wristwatches, watching the window.

Sure enough, after a moment, my pursuer rounded the corner and then stopped. He was in his mid-20s with an angry face and
short brown hair. He had a slight widow’s peak at the top of his forehead, and his inch-long bangs stuck straight up from there like a little flag. He was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and jeans, his physique showing the bulging arms and shoulders of a serious weight lifter. He certainly looked threatening. He stood there in front of the window for nearly a full minute, hands on his hips, scanning the street in front of him. When I saw that he was about to look inside the store, I crouched down beneath the glass case and counted to 20 before peeking to see that he was gone.

“May I help you?” I heard from the salesman behind me, and I jumped, startled at his close proximity.

“No, thank you,” I mumbled, and then I walked out of the door and trotted across the street to peek around the far corner.

There he was. I could see him standing a few yards away, talking into a cell phone. I couldn’t hear everything he said, but I did catch bits of “lost her” and “nothing I could do.” For a moment, I toyed with the idea of confronting him once he got off the phone. Surely, out in the open like this, he couldn’t harm me. In the end, however, I thought it might be wiser to turn the tables and follow him to see where he might go.

It didn’t take long to find out. His destination was the parking garage of the Smythe building. I watched from a safe distance as he took the stairs down to the first lower level. He headed straight for a red pickup truck, let himself in, and then just sat there.

He was waiting for me, I felt sure. My car was parked in view of his, across the row and down a ways. Though I had no intention of getting caught alone in here with him, I inched my way along the back wall toward his truck until I could just make out his license plate number. I memorized it, returning to the front of the parking garage.

I didn’t have time for this. There was still much to do today in a short amount of time. The last thing I needed was to try to wait this guy out. For all I knew, he was settled in for the night, complete with a Thermos full of coffee and Port-A-Potty jar.

Suddenly, the elevator dinged, echoing sharply in the cement garage, and the doors opened to let out a small group of businessmen. Seizing the opportunity, I crossed over and fell into step with them, walking safely to my car without incident. After I got inside, I cracked the window, then started it up, listening for the sound that was sure to follow. Within an instant, I could hear the truck start up as well.
Here we go,
I thought as I pulled out and headed for the exit. Just what I needed. A tail.

Reaching the exit of the garage, we headed out into the five o’clock gridlock of downtown Philadelphia. After a few blocks, I pulled out my cellular phone and dialed Harriet. I got her machine, so I left a message describing the car that was following me, complete with license plate number. I felt sure she would have no trouble taking it from there. And if something unfortunate should happen to me, at least they would know where to start looking.

After going six slow blocks with the truck two cars behind me, I felt just antsy enough to try to lose him. We were in a long line of traffic trying to funnel onto a bridge over the Schuylkill River in an area I was familiar with from my summer at the law firm there. I waited until I was even with an empty one-way street, then suddenly turned right and zipped down it the wrong way, to the sound of several different honking horns. I turned right again once I reached the next intersection.

I went about a block, then turned right again, essentially doubling back behind the truck that had been following me. There were other routes out of the city, and I considered my options as I checked my rearview mirror for signs that the guy had succeeded in following me. With no glimpse of him, I crossed over the road I had started on, then continued in a perpendicular direction for a few miles before finding another bridge over the river and out of town.

I had lost him; I was sure of it. Letting out a long, slow breath, I settled into my seat and tried to put the entire thing out of my
mind. Someone was keeping tabs on me, and I wondered who it could be. Perhaps once Harriet ran the plate, I’d have a better idea.

Traffic grew heavy again once I was on the Schuylkill Expressway, and I glanced at my watch, knowing that the wake for Wendell Smythe was in two hours. It would be my first good chance to be alone in the Smythe’s home, and I planned to work my way through the bedrooms I hadn’t yet seen. I knew I would have to move quickly; I couldn’t be too late for the wake.

As I sat in stop-and-go traffic, I got out my notes from the meeting with the police and went back over the alibis of all of my suspects.

According to their notes, Derek and Judith had both been at work at the time of their father’s murder, supposedly at their desks, though no one had yet confirmed that they actually were where they said they were.

Gwen was also at work, using the phone. Though phone records did show a number of outgoing calls during the time that Wendell was killed, I didn’t think this was much of an alibi. With private access to Wendell’s office, she could’ve easily put someone on hold, gone into Wendell’s office and given him the lethal injection, and then come back out again. Of course, there was still the fact that Gwen wasn’t the person I chased down the stairwell. If she was the killer, she certainly wasn’t acting alone.

Ditto for Alan Bennet, who was “running errands” at the exact time of death. I remembered how impatient and out of breath he had been when he first came into his office and found me sitting there. I wondered if somehow he and Judith had been working together to murder her father, if it was Judith I had chased down the stairs.

The maid, Angelina, had been at the grocery store; apparently, the checker remembered seeing her. Her brother, Nick, had been busy in the city, helping Marion Smythe with her shopping.

I supposed with Nick and Marion out shopping, that gave either one of them opportunity, of sorts. One or the other of them could’ve slipped away at some point, dashed over to the Smythe building, and done Wendell in. I decided to reserve judgment on
Nick and perhaps look more closely at him for some sort of motive. As for Marion, my gut told me that her grief was too genuine, her sorrow too real, for hers to have been the hand that killed her husband.

That left Sidra. Supposedly, she had been attending a Bible study at the time of Wendell’s death, though that was thus far unconfirmed because the pastor wasn’t available.

I looked up the address of St. James Church, seeing on the map that it was near the Smythes’ home. Depending on how long it would take to get through all of this traffic, I decided to stop there on the way to the house, knowing that if I skipped dinner with the Smythes I would just have time to squeeze it in.

Twenty-One

The front doors of the church were locked, so I walked around the building and tried each one. The place was modest in size, though very lovely, and I wondered if there was a parsonage nearby. I was just about to walk away when I heard someone calling from the window of a building across from the church.

“May I help you with somethin’?” the man’s voice called. I crossed the quiet street and walked closer to the window.

“I’m looking for Pastor Quinn,” I said. “Does he live here?”

“He lives here, yes.”

“Is he here now?”

“Right now? Well, yes. Right now he’s lookin’ out the window at you.”

It took me a moment, and then I laughed.

“Come on in,” he said, pointing toward the door. “I’ll meet you in the dining room.”

I walked to the door and turned the knob, stepping into a warm, roomy kitchen. It had an industrial dishwasher and double ovens, and through a large doorway I stepped into a room with seating for about 20.

“This is nice,” I said when he came in. “I bet you can feed a lot of people in here.”

“Even more than you’d think, lass,” he answered. “Have a seat. How can I help you?”

I pulled up a chair at the corner table and sat.

“My name is Callie Webber,” I replied. “I’m here on an investigation.”

“An investigation?” he asked. “A policewoman, are you?”

I shook my head.

“It’s a private investigation,” I said. “But if you’re Pastor Quinn, you can really help me out.”

“I’m Ian Quinn. You got somethin’ to ask me, child?”

“Sidra Smythe,” I said. “Do you know her?”

“Do I know her?” he cried. “She’s one of the Lord’s angels, she is. Comes to church almost every day, helps out in the church office, even cooks with the soup kitchen in here on the weekends.”

“My.”

“A lovely girl. So what is the problem?”

“I need to know if she was at Bible study here on Monday morning. Around 10:30 or 10:45.”

He sat back and squinted intelligent blue eyes at me.

“Same time of day that her father-in-law was murdered, is that what you’re asking?”

I hesitated for a moment, startled by his bluntness.

“She’s not necessarily a suspect,” I finally replied. “Right now, it’s still sort of a process of elimination.”

He leaned forward and rested both elbows on the table, looking at me earnestly. He seemed to be in his late 60s or early 70s, robust and healthy, with a tinge of a suntan on his face and the wiry body of a runner.

“Well, about fifteen other parishioners and I can tell you that Sidra Smythe was here for ten o’clock Bible study on Monday morning. She led the prayer. Got here well before ten.”

“What time did she leave?”

“Around noon—not until after she had helped straighten up after the service and helped us set up the tables for our Wednesday night prayer meeting.”

“Good.”

I could tell he was feeling defensive, and I felt bad that I’d had to challenge the integrity of one of his beloved parishioners. I was quiet for a moment, wondering how I could keep him talking, maybe get him to shed a light or two on Sidra’s relationship with Derek. I wondered if he knew about the “incidents” at the house. Finally, I made a big show of pulling my notebook from my purse, flipping to the list of suspects, and scratching off Sidra’s name.