Flipped Out (24 page)

“You’ve also got my ex-wife locked up in your dungeon. I’d like to see her.”

Connor glanced at me. “Both of you?”

“Melissa and I are old . . .” I hesitated for a second, looking for the right word. When none was immediately apparent, I settled for the old standby, “friends.”

Connor shrugged. “Visiting hours ended long ago, but I don’t think anyone would mind. C’mon. I’ll take you back.”

He moved out from behind the counter, and that was when I realized he was sitting in a wheelchair. It was a surprise, not at all what I’d expected from such a young, healthy-looking man, and I guess I must have shown it, because he glanced up at me in passing. “Traffic accident.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” He shrugged. “It’s down here.”

He wheeled and we walked into the bowels of the building, past the offices—including Wayne’s, where I’d been this spring; it was dark and quiet now—and down a set of stairs to the lower level. The stairs were equipped with a lift, which took Connor and the wheelchair down while Derek and I walked.

Yes, the “dungeon,” as Derek had called it, was in the basement. But it didn’t look anything like a dungeon. And Connor Estrada was certainly no old-fashioned jailer. He knocked politely on the door before he inserted the key card in the lock and hit the button for the intercom. “Miss James? You decent?”

“Yes, Connor,” Melissa’s voice floated back. “You got something for me?”

“Visitors. They’re coming in.” He removed the key card—it was the kind of lock you find on hotel room doors, with a light that flashes green, along with a no doubt supersecret code he had to enter on a keypad—and pushed the door open.

I looked in, into a small room, only about eight by eight feet, with a bed—bolted to the wall—a desk or table—ditto—and a chair. It had carpet on the floor and the walls were painted an inoffensive off-white, something like the grayish yellow ecru of Nina’s poison-pen letters. The bathroom wasn’t in the cell itself, the way you see on TV; it was in a separate room off to the side. There was no door between them, but it wasn’t like this little space would be shared by more than one person at a time, anyway. It didn’t look like somewhere I’d want to spend more than a few hours, but it didn’t look too uncomfortable, either.

Melissa was sitting on the bed, legs tucked sideways, flipping through a home-and-garden magazine. And for being in jail, she still managed to look pretty damn good. Her hair was brushed and gleaming in the fluorescent ceiling light. Her makeup was perfect, and she made jeans and a cotton top look like the height of fashion. There were even diamonds sparkling in her ears, as well as on her finger. When she saw Derek, she jumped up. “Thank God! Have you come to get me out?”

Derek shook his head. “Afraid not. Wayne isn’t ready to release you yet.”

Melissa pouted, and the pout got even more pronounced when she saw me coming through the door after him. “Oh. Hi, Avery.”

“Melissa.” I managed not to smile too broadly, but I must admit that seeing Melissa in jail—even a fairly comfortable jail—had gone a long way toward making my day. Even if she managed to look stunning through it all, and even though I—after a long, hard day of manual labor and my crawl through the garbage—surely looked (and smelled) anything but.

And all right, yes, there was the chance that she’d actually killed Tony. Derek seemed to think she hadn’t, and I found it hard to reconcile it in my own mind, as well, but with what we knew right now, it seemed awfully possible. Which went some way to mitigating any glee I felt. Along with the fact that, if she hadn’t killed him, she’d just lost her fiancé.

So I focused hard and managed to sound sympathetic when I added, “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Get me out of here?” Melissa suggested and threw herself petulantly back down on the bed. Derek offered me the room’s only chair, but I declined. He sat, and that left me the choice of sitting on his lap, sitting next to Melissa, or standing. I chose to stand.

“I can’t stay away from the desk too long,” Connor said, heading back to the lift. He added over his shoulder, “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. That enough time for you?”

“Plenty,” Derek said.

Melissa must have noticed that he was pretty brusque, because she refrained from any comment about his not wanting to spend time with her. Instead, she just smoothed her hair behind one ear with a talon-tipped finger. The diamond sparkled. “What are you doing here, if you’re not coming to get me out?”

“You lied to me,” Derek said. “I want to know why.”

Melissa huffed. “I didn’t lie.”

“You didn’t tell me you’d been at the house on Cabot Street the night Tony was killed.”

“You didn’t ask,” Melissa said.

“Oh, I was supposed to ask? Excuse me for not realizing that!”

They stared at each other.

“What were you doing there?” I cut in, trying to become the voice of reason.

Both of them looked at me, as if for a moment they’d both forgotten I was in the room. I arched a brow at Derek, who made a face, before we both turned to Melissa. She rolled her eyes.

“He asked me to meet him.”

“When?”

“He sent me a text.”

“Why didn’t he just stop by your place?” I asked.

Melissa shrugged. “No idea. I didn’t talk to him.”

“Didn’t you think to ask?”

She huffed. “Have you ever texted anyone, Avery? It’s not really suited for long conversations, OK? He said he was back, he wanted to talk, could I meet him?”

“And you . . . ?”

She tossed her head. “I said yes. And drove over there.”

“To the house on Cabot?”

She nodded. “It was about eleven thirty. I didn’t want to rush, because I wanted him to know that I wasn’t happy about him going out with Nina, even if he told me they were just old friends and it was her idea. And besides, I thought maybe he was going to tell me that he wanted to break off the engagement, and I wasn’t in any hurry to hear that.”

Couldn’t blame her there.

“What happened when you got there?” I wanted to know.

“We talked for a few minutes. Then I went home.”

“Try again,” Derek said. “We just found the screwdriver. In a bag in the Dumpster behind my loft. I always thought it was strange that you were there that night. If you’d been in your apartment, you would have been able to look across the street and see that my lights were off.”

Melissa had turned pale under the perfect makeup. “You found the screwdriver?”

“Did you think we wouldn’t? It was pretty obvious when you think about it.”

“So what really happened?” I asked. “That night? Tony texted you, and what?”

All the bravado had gone out of her, and her voice was low, so I had to step closer to hear. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I knocked on the door. He didn’t answer, but I knew he was there, because his car was parked at the curb. So I tried the door, and it was open. I walked in, and then . . .” She swallowed noisily. “I saw him lying there.”

“Dead?”

“Of course dead! You think I would have left him if he wasn’t? I was married to a doctor for five years, Avery, I know how to tell when someone’s dead!”

“Sorry,” I said.

She deflated. “It’s OK. I checked. He was dead. Stabbed with that stupid screwdriver that I stupidly touched. I just wasn’t thinking, you know? It was sticking out of his chest, and I pulled it out. I was just trying to help!”

Derek muttered something, probably to the effect that if she’d been married to a doctor for five years, she should have known that it would have been better to leave the screwdriver where it was. Melissa didn’t seem to hear.

“Why didn’t you call nine-one-one?” I wanted to know.

She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe I had to ask. “I thought they’d say I’d killed him. That he’d told me he wanted to end the engagement and I’d been so upset that I’d grabbed the screwdriver and stabbed him.”

“So you took the murder weapon and ran?” Derek said. “Christ, Melly . . . !”

Melissa sniffed and tossed her head.

“What did you do then?” I wanted to know, and she turned her attention to me.

“I drove back home. With the screwdriver on the seat next to me. Inside the bakery bag. I’d picked up a coffee and a muffin in the morning. But when I parked, I realized I couldn’t take it upstairs. It had Tony’s blood on it, and Derek’s initials, and what if the police came and searched my place? So I decided to put it in Derek’s truck, after I wiped it clean.”

Derek sputtered. “
My
truck? What the hell . . . ! What were you trying to do, make it look like
I’d
killed him?”

“Of course not,” Melissa said. “It’s just . . . you have so many tools, I thought you wouldn’t notice that this was the same as the one from the house. All tools look alike, right?”

Derek look of disgust eloquently expressed his opinion of that question, and of Melissa’s intelligence.

“Not exactly,” I answered. To a carpenter or a handyman, someone who works with his tools every day, each screwdriver is distinctive and different. If this screwdriver had shown up in Derek’s truck, he would have known right away that it was the screwdriver from the house on Cabot Street. Even if all of Tony’s blood had been wiped away.

Melissa shrugged. “Well, the truck wasn’t there anyway. So I started to go home again. But then Derek drove up, and I had to say something to explain why I was there. So I tossed the bag with the screwdriver into the Dumpster behind the hardware store. When he asked me what was going on, I told him I was upset about Tony going out with Nina and asked him if he could come upstairs with me for a while.”

Derek snorted. He was obviously rather outdone with his ex-wife at this point. “Christ, Melissa, you should have just called the police when you found him. It would have been better than running away and taking the murder weapon with you.”

“Wayne doesn’t like me,” Melissa said. “You don’t, either.”

Her eyes were filling up with tears, and as she turned to me, they spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “You have to help me, Avery. I know you’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. You have to figure out a way to prove to Wayne that I didn’t do it. Please!”

16

Had the circumstances been different, I might have felt rather gratified at that point. Melissa, perfect, fabulous, do-no-wrong Melissa, was in way over her head and begging for my help. My help in keeping her out of the slammer, which made it all the sweeter.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to enjoy the situation as much as I might, however. Partly because she seemed very sincerely distraught, and partly because I really couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that she might have killed Tony. Much as I disliked her—and yes, I did, especially after hearing her say that she’d been trying to foist the murder weapon off on my boyfriend!—I couldn’t see her as a murderess. Stupid enough to run away with the murder weapon, sure. Manipulative enough to try to rope Derek into providing an alibi for her. But not crazy enough to stab Tony to death with a screwdriver. At least not over something idiotic like a dinner date with Nina.

We walked out of police headquarters shortly after I promised her I’d do my best to exonerate her. Connor came back to ask if we were ready to go, and escorted us upstairs and to the front door. “Everything go OK?” he asked, his face worried.

“Everything went fine,” I said. Derek’s silence was eloquent.

I had thought he’d be happy about me saying I’d help Melissa, since he’d been trying to convince me all along that she didn’t do it. He didn’t turn out to be. Happy, I mean. When we were in the truck on our way toward the Waymouth Tavern later, I asked why.

“You have to ask?” He gave me a look that was somewhere between incredulous and angry.

“I thought you wanted Melissa out of jail.”

“I don’t care if she spends the rest of her life in jail,” Derek said in a modified bellow, “especially after she tried to frame me!”

After a moment, he added, in a calmer voice, “Although I’d feel better if she was actually guilty. And I don’t think she is.”

“So why aren’t you happy that I’m helping her?”

He shot me another boy-you’re-stupid look. “There’s a murderer running loose. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothing’s happened to me before.” Any of the other times I’d gotten involved in Wayne’s murder cases.

“Lots of stuff’s happened to you before!”

Point taken. “But I always came through it OK. I never even got hurt!”

“Then,” Derek said. “This time you might.”

“I won’t. I promise. I’ve got you and Mischa to protect me. What could go wrong?”

“A whole lot,” Derek said.

“Well, I don’t have a choice. I promised her I’d try.”

He shook his head, exasperated. “Only you, Avery. You don’t even like her! Why would you go to all this risk and trouble for Melissa?”