Authors: Carlene Thompson
“I agree. But it was good of Jeremy to stay for so long. I’m sure he’d rather be with you.” Winter ambled around the big carpeted space, then did a double take when he saw the quilted silver mesh satin bedspread, the huge model of the starship
Enterprise
beside the bed, and a framed poster of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock looming over the double bed. “Wow,” he said simply.
“Jeremy is a die-hard Trekkie,” Christine explained.
“I guessed. Where in the world did you find that bedspread?”
“Wilma Archer made it for him. She ordered the material from some place she found on the Internet. Or rather, her son found it.”
“Streak Archer?”
“Yes.”
“The computer genius.”
Christine stiffened. She knew Winter thought Streak might be the Brain to whom Dara referred in her diary. “Streak has always been very kind and patient with
Jeremy. He even lets Jeremy come over and mess with his computers. He’s a good man.”
“He must relate to Jeremy on some level.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean that people see them both as being
different
, and not different in a good way.”
“You’ve heard bad things about my brother?”
“The usual,” he said vaguely, clearly wanting to change the subject.
“And you’ve heard bad things about Streak,” Christine pursued.
Winter looked at her with a somber but kind expression. “Miss Ireland, Streak Archer is a recluse who gets hysterical in public places. What do you think a lot of people say about him?”
“Terrible things, especially because he was perfectly
normal
, as they would say, before he went off to serve his country.”
“Fighting an unpopular war. I didn’t mean to insult you or him. I’m just telling you what I’m sure you already know. People think he’s strange.”
And he
was
strange, Christine admitted silently. She didn’t really know Streak. She had no reason to be so protective. Besides, her defensiveness was probably doing him more harm than good.
“Well, I sure do like that bedspread,” Winter said, as if wanting to regain their earlier light tone but not quite knowing how.
“Maybe I can find out where Wilma got the fabric. You might have to quilt it yourself, though.”
“Fine. Quilting was on my list of things to learn this summer. That and learning to make my own lye soap.”
Winter smiled at her and she relaxed. “I guess this concludes our tour of the house,” Christine said.
“And we found no broken or unlocked windows.”
“I’ve only been back a couple of hours. I haven’t opened any windows and then relocked them. And the locks on the sliding glass doors are intact. All the other doors were locked when I got home,” Christine said as they went upstairs to the kitchen. “I assume whoever put the rat in the refrigerator did so at night. Otherwise Mrs. Flint would have noticed someone strange hanging around the house.”
“How do you know she didn’t?”
“Did the police get a report of any prowlers around my house?”
“No.”
“Then she didn’t see anyone. It’s Mrs. Flint’s dream to be on one of those shows like
Unsolved Mysteries
. She would have been on the horn to police headquarters if she’d noticed anything the least bit peculiar or suspicious.”
Winter grinned. “Sometimes that type can be very helpful. Other times they can be a pain. Mostly the problem is that they lose credibility by crying wolf. If she’s a habitual caller to headquarters, they might not have taken a report she made too seriously. I’ll have to talk to her. Right now, though, I’m going to take a look outside. You don’t need to go with me. It’s starting to drizzle.”
“Fabulous. I’d rather have a regular old steady rain than drizzle. If you come upon any stunning clues, though, will you call me out to see?”
“Certainly,” Winter said firmly. “But unlike in books, criminals rarely leave a convenient footprint or matchbook or, best of all, a photo of themselves. They’re downright impolite in real life. Never give us cops a chance to show off.”
“Let’s hope this was an amateur who touched every surface with bare fingers and maybe even dropped his business card.”
“That
would
be a blessing. I’ll be ready for some of that coffee when I get back.”
“I’ll have it ready.”
While he was outside checking for any sign of the intruder’s entrance, Michael thought about his earlier conversation with Christine. Most of it had been serious, but there had been some joking, too. He almost never made jokes on the job, particularly with young, attractive women. Sometimes they took things wrong, thought you were flirting, reported you for sexual harassment. This had never happened to him, though it had happened to some of his friends in LA. But somehow he wasn’t worried about Christine Ireland. She didn’t seem like the type of person who exaggerated, made something out of nothing, put significant or even malicious spins on casual or innocent statements.
And what makes you think you know her so well? he asked himself as he parted box hedges, looking for depressions in the damp mulch. You’ve barely met her. And you’re acting entirely too lighthearted about all of this. She’s scared silly and with good reason, and here you are making jokes about rats and quilting and—
Michael saw a piece of shiny metal lodged in the mulch. He pulled on a latex glove and carefully lifted it, blowing off the dirt to reveal a circular piece of silver with engraving. Jackpot! he thought. Then he read:
Rhiannon
442 Cardinal Way
Winston, WV
304-555-5095
“Oh, hell,” he muttered. Miraculous find! The cat’s lost tag.
He went back to searching and thinking about Christine.
Yes, he was being too casual with her. She probably thought he wasn’t taking her case seriously. Besides, he thought with a stab of guilt, he hadn’t acted this way around a woman since the death of his daughter and his divorce from Lisa less than a year later. Stacy was dead, his wife still a painful memory. He had no right to feel any happiness, especially with a woman who was going through what Christine Ireland was going through right now. What was wrong with him? Was he going crazy? He was thinking more about making Christine feel calmer than working the case. Well, maybe not more, but too much.
He’d pull himself together, he decided sternly. He would be solemn. He would be earnest. No joking. He’d barely crack a smile until he left.
When he went back inside, Christine looked at him expectantly. “Just as I thought,” he said. “No footprints, no signs of anyone having pried at windows with a penknife, not a scratch on a door lock.”
“Then obviously it was a ghost,” she returned grimly.
He looked at her. She returned his gaze with complete sincerity. Then her aqua eyes seemed to dance and a smile tugged at the right corner of her mouth. He couldn’t help himself. Grinning, he said, “You had me worried there for a minute.”
“Your face looked like it had turned to granite. You didn’t find
anything
?”
He held out Rhiannon’s tag. “Just this.”
“She lost it about a month ago. I’ve already had a new one made.” She smiled. “Mrs. Flint was watching you the whole time you were in the front yard. I thought she was going to crash through her picture window when you picked up something. She must have thought it was something devastatingly important. How disappointed she’d be to know it was Rhi’s tag. Unless she saw for herself.”
“How could she have seen something that small?”
“Opera glasses.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m not. I swear as a former Girl Scout.”
Winter laughed. “Then I definitely need to ask her a few questions about what she saw going on around here yesterday. She seems fairly observant.”
“That’s putting it mildly. Ready for some coffee now that the dirty work is done?”
Winter followed Christine into the kitchen, where she set out coffee mugs. She poured cream into a creamer she never bothered with for herself and searched until she found the dainty sugar holder before she remembered that Deputy Winter took his coffee black, just as she did. She left the cream and sugar on the counter and placed doughnuts on a china plate.
“I didn’t expect breakfast,” he said.
“You don’t have to eat. I just thought you might be hungry.”
“I am.” Winter went to the sink and lathered his hands with antibacterial soap. “And what kind of cop would I be if I turned down doughnuts?”
“Actually, I’m a doughnut junkie. My friend Bethany bought some for me at the bakery this morning. She was here waiting when I got home from the hospital.”
Winter looked at her. “Here? In the house?”
“No. She hadn’t come in yet, but she does have a key.”
“Anyone else have a key?”
“My friend Tess. You met her at the hospital yesterday.”
“You mentioned then that she had a key. She’s married to that guy who works for you,” he said, drying his hands on a paper towel.
“Reynaldo Cimino. He’s a jewelry designer. I met Tess the first week I moved to Winston when I went into her bookstore, Calliope.”
“I suppose Ames Prince has a key.”
“Well, no,” Christine said reluctantly as they sat down at the table. “If he had a key, that would give his wife access to the house, and I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of Patricia nosing around in here under some imaginary pretext.”
“You think she’d do that?”
“I don’t really know what she’d do. In spite of our having lived in the same house for years, I don’t feel I know her very well.”
“But you know her well enough to distrust her.”
“To be fair, I’m not sure that distrust is warranted. Patricia and I just never hit it off. I could be suspecting her of doing things she’d never do. I trust Beth and Tess completely, though.”
Winter nodded. “I think you should have your locks changed. Just to be safe.”
“But I told you I trust the only two people who have keys.”
“Did you have the locks changed when you moved in here?”
“No.”
“You don’t know who the former owners gave keys to. You don’t even know how many keys might be floating around out there.”
“Oh. I should have thought of that when I bought the house. It never occurred to me.”
“It doesn’t to a lot of people. But now seems like a good time to correct the oversight.”
“A
very
good time. I don’t care to have any more wildlife deposited in my refrigerator.” She picked up the coffeepot. “You take it black, don’t you?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m psychic. I also served you coffee in the store day before yesterday.”
He closed his eyes. “God, I was so tired that day I forgot all about the coffee, although it sure hit the spot at the time.” He watched as she poured, then said, “Back to the people who have keys to this house. How about your brother?”
“No. Unfortunately, Jeremy has a penchant for losing keys. He tries to hang on to them, but unless you put one on a chain around his neck, which makes him feel dumb . . .” She trailed off, feeling disloyal to say she couldn’t even trust her brother with a house key.
Winter smiled. “I understand.”
“Most people don’t. They think he
is
dumb. And his IQ is a bit low. Around seventy. But he’s sweet and so talented in other areas. Jewelry design, for instance—”
“Miss Ireland, you don’t have to explain,” Winter said gently. “I have a cousin just like Jeremy. We’re exactly the same age and were best friends growing up.”
“A cousin like Jeremy? Your best friend?” He nodded and she felt surprisingly relieved. Rarely since she’d moved to Winston had she met anyone who really understood Jeremy—his strengths as well as his weaknesses. Many people either avoided him or patronized him. “Are you still close to your cousin?”
“As close as we can be with him in Los Angeles and me in West Virginia. He got married last year.”
“Married?”
“Yes. A sweet girl he met in a special school. They both work in a nursery. They love flowers, shrubs, all that stuff that dies if I just look at it, while they make it flourish. They live next door to his parents, who help them out some, but they’re really fairly self-sufficient.”
“For some reason I’m stunned.”
“I can tell. You look like you could use a doughnut to steady your nerves.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t even offer you one.”
They both reached for the chocolate-covered. “You take it,” he said. “Chocolate makes me hyper.”
Christine bit into the doughnut, which was light and sweet and tasted as close to heavenly as food came. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. “I guess I just never thought of Jeremy marrying,” she said. “Not that he doesn’t pay attention to girls. Well, not obsessively, just naturally, like any young man would do. There’s nothing abnormal about his interest in women—”
“Miss Ireland, you’re doing it again. Making excuses for him. I’ve told you already I understand.”
“And I’m doing him a real disservice by all this overexplaining.” She smiled. “And after all we’ve been through—the rat and all—I think you should call me Christine.”
“In honor of the rat, I will call you Christine. Except around other people. Then you’ll be Miss Ireland or we’ll set the whole town talking. And I’m Michael.”
“When we’re in private.” Which sounded like she planned to spend a lot of private time with Michael Winter. In embarrassment she took another gigantic bite of doughnut and felt chocolate smear across her lips. Honestly, she was acting like a thirteen-year-old, she thought.
“About this key situation,” Michael went on smoothly as if he didn’t notice her hastily wiping away chocolate, “you say both Tess Cimino and this friend Bethany have keys.”
“Yes. Bethany Burke. Her husband, Travis, is a biology professor at the university.”
“So that gave four people access to your house while you were in the hospital.”
“Four? You mean Rey and Travis? Why on earth would they come here? Tess came very early to get clothes for me to wear home from the hospital. And I suppose if we hadn’t arrived when we did, Bethany would have come in to leave the groceries she’d brought. But
neither of them would have put a rat in my refrigerator. The idea is absurd. I thought Bethany was going to have a stroke. You should have heard her screaming.”