Motion for Malice (25 page)

"See him where?"

"In—" I hesitated.
No, no, no.
"He said he'd hate to see something happen to us and that killers often return to the scene of the crime." I rubbed my arms to ward off a sudden chill. Even thinking about Seaver Beeber was a little scary. "Don't you get it?
He
was returning to the scene of the crime!"

Uh-oh. Talk about spilled beans.

Bensinger glanced at me without lifting his head, sort of a peeking through the eyelashes thing. It would have been an endearing boyish gesture if it wasn't coming from a homicide detective with my backside in his sights. So to speak. "So you encountered Mr. Beeber at Destinies with Dorcas?"

"Not inside," I said immediately. "Out, on the street. And not for very long, because it was a dark and stormy night." I felt a giggle welling up and ate another cookie to stifle it.

"I'm terrified he's going to break into my apartment in the middle of the night," I added, trying not to spit cookie crumbs on him.

"Why's that?" Bensinger asked mildly. I wished he'd stop asking
why's that
. It was getting irritating. One minute this guy was all ears, and the next he was out to lunch.

"Didn't you hear what I just said?" I snapped. "He threatened us!" I saw his eyebrows rise. "You had to be there," I said.

He did a slight headshake. "If it helps you sleep better, Mr. Beeber informed us his brother has driven back to New York."

That was interesting. Seaver had claimed he'd be sticking around for his brother, presumably until the money got passed out. It didn't ring true that he'd go home so soon, unless they'd had some sort of argument. Weaver seemed too broken to fight about anything, but money did things to people. I'd heard.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I mean, did you talk to Seaver or anything?"

Bensinger sighed. "I called. He hadn't arrived home yet."

Ah-ha!
What if Seaver had never intended to go home, but had checked into some local fleabag motel to plan a murderous intervention with the only person who wasn't buying his grieving brother act. Okay, the police might not be buying it either. I wasn't sure, but either way I was an easier target, because I lived alone, weighed ninety pounds, and my backup didn't even have a driver's license.

Detective Bensinger took the box of Thin Mints, sealed it, and put it on the seat beside him. "I think we're done here, Miss Winters. I'm sure you're perfectly safe in your apartment. Thanks for your time."

As if I'd had a choice. I eyed the phony letter in its plastic sleeve, wishing I could tear it up or burn it. Instead, I opened the door and got out of the car and went home.

Curt intercepted me before I reached the stairs, stepping out his back door. His expression was grim. "Got a minute?"

I nodded. "Just let me run these bags upstairs."

"Why don't you come inside first?" he said.

That didn't sound good. I followed him into his kitchen. He had two mugs waiting on the table: coffee for him, hot chocolate for me. With whipped cream. And an unopened box of Butterscotch Krimpets. I slid into a chair with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Hot chocolate with whipped cream and Krimpets were comfort food. Comfort food meant I was going to need comforting. I didn't think I could take much more bad news. I could take a little more whipped cream, though.

Curt sat down and pushed a single paper across the table toward me. "Anything you want to tell me about?"

Frowning, I took a look. It was a search warrant, for my apartment. A flash of anger surged through me directed straight at Detective Fur. He had to know that while I'd been snarfing Thin Mints in the parking lot, his buddies had been going through my private space, including my underwear drawer, even though there was nothing there to excite anyone except a cotton farmer. In search of what? Did they honestly expect to find something incriminating up there? If they were looking for dust bunnies and stale bread, they were in the right place. Beyond that, nothing.

Unless something had been planted.

I sat up straighter, squeezing my mug in both hands to stop the sudden shaking. The only plantable thing was the crystal ball, and that was in the possession of the police. Nothing else could incriminate me.

Right?

"I'm waiting," Curt told me. He stirred cream into his coffee with angry slashes.

I swallowed. "It's nothing, really. Someone's been trying to frame me for Dorcas's murder, but they've been really clumsy about it. Stupid phony letters and Photoshopped pictures." To go along with a full set of my fingerprints. Phony letters were only stupid when there was nothing to back them up. "The police took my laptop, didn't they?" I said faintly.

Curt nodded. "And that hunk of junk printer."

Well, the joke was on them. That printer had been broken for months. It didn't even have an ink cartridge. But I knew what they were doing. They were hoping to find the original draft of the Dorcas death threat letter on my computer. I wasn't worried about that, because I knew I hadn't written the letter. But I did have to start working on a resume, and now I had no way to do that.

Curt put down the spoon, very deliberately. His eyes had gone near black. His eyebrows had drawn together. His color had risen. He looked magnificent. "Someone's going to a lot of trouble here, Jamie. Who would do that?"

I took a breath. "We have it narrowed down to Seaver Beeber, Artemis Angle, Tippi McWirth, or Roger Marrin." I told him about Dorcas's financial misdeeds, and Tippi's anger management problems, and Roger Marrin's bitter resentment, and Artemis Angle's broken love connection and parched revenue stream following Dorcas's departure.

"I've got to hand it to you," Curt said when I was done. "You've managed to get down in the muck with some real quality people this time."

This
time? Hilary Heath hadn't been in the running for any humanitarian awards when she'd practically enslaved me to track down her husband's killer.

Curt drank some of his coffee and put down the cup a little too hard. "Why didn't you tell me about any of this until now?"

My anger intensified. "Because you were running around in the woods with your brother, without cell phone or Internet service, while I was trying my best to stay out of jail." I pushed the mug aside and dropped my head into my hands. "I got fired," I said, horrified that my voice was shaky when I wasn't even on the verge of tears. No way was I going to cry. I was too mad to cry. This whole thing had gotten away from me somehow. I'd been kidding myself thinking I could find out who'd murdered Dorcas. The whole time I'd been bumbling around accomplishing nothing, the killer had been spreading innuendo and phony photos and letters to the police and the media. Now I didn't even have the pseudo comfort of a trio of lawyers just a floor away. I didn't have a job. All I had was a cat, and I'd stolen her.

Ashley! She must have been scared out of her wits when the police had been ransacking my apartment. "I have to go check on Ashley," I said, leaping up so abruptly that I banged my thighs into the table, sending a slurry of whipped cream and hot chocolate sliding over the rim of my mug.

"Wait a minute," Curt said. He left the room for a few minutes, and, when he came back, he had Ashley curled against his chest, her tail hanging over his forearm, waving languidly back and forth. Her eyes were half shut in bliss. I could hear her purring from across the room. I knew how she felt. I'd purr too if Curt was holding me like that. "I brought her down here when the police came," he said, almost apologetically. He handed her over to me. Her eyes opened in alarm at the transition, but she settled into my arms right away and continued purring. "She's a good cat," he added, running his fingers across the top of her head.

This time my eyes did fill, with tears of relief. I nuzzled Ashley with my nose. "She is, isn't she? Thanks for letting her stay."

He nodded. His voice was quiet when he asked, "Is Maizy helping you?"

I nodded. I didn't trust myself to speak.

"I want to help you, too," he said.

I stared at him. "But I'm not
normal."

He blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"I thought you wanted a nice normal woman who didn't fall over bodies." I heard the accusation in my voice, but I didn't care. That word had been needling me the entire time he'd been gone.

"You don't fall over bodies," he said. "They kind of fall over you."

I glared. He gave me a tentative grin, enhanced by his dimple and five o'clock shadow. I wasn't falling for it. Good looks weren't going to make me forget about his comments at the diner. That grudge was the only thing I still had a firm grip on. I kept glaring. It wasn't easy. His looks might not make me forget, but they'd definitely make me forgive, if I wasn't careful. I buried my nose in Ashley's ear, refusing to succumb to a stupid dimple. Which would have been a lot easier if that was all he had to offer.

"Where's this coming from, anyway?" he asked.

Was he kidding? "You," I practically yelled. "You said I wasn't 'normal'!"

"I did?" He seemed honestly baffled. "When'd I do that?"

I shook my head, reminding myself he'd rescued Ashley.

"Are you telling me you spent the whole week ticked off at me?" he asked. I narrowed my eyes at him. He didn't seem to be kidding. "I had no idea."

That, I believed.

"So are you mad because I said you weren't 'normal'—which, by the way, isn't necessarily a bad thing—or because I didn't spend the week stewing over it like you obviously did?"

"This," I warned him, "is so not helping."

"Is stewing a bad word?" he asked innocently. "How's sweating? Mulling? Hold on, I'm pretty sure I've got a thesaurus in the house somewhere."

"I get it," I told him. "You can stop now."

"I will if you will." He pushed the box of Krimpets closer to me. "Why don't you have one and tell me everything. I'll help you work through it."

The moment of truth. Ordinarily I'd tear that box open like a wolverine. I forced my gaze away from it. "I can't. I'm kind of trying to eat healthy."

His mouth fell open.

"It's not that incredible." I hugged Ashley closer. "Maizy convinced me it was for my own good. She was right."

"What was she eating when she convinced you?" Curt asked.

"Doesn't matter. She's seventeen. She can eat anything. I'm a mature woman."

"Who weighs less than the average overpacked suitcase."

"Nevertheless," I snapped.

He shook his head, "Let me give you some advice, Jamie. Don't change for anyone."

My eyes widened. He was giving me my own advice.

He gave the box a tap. "Eat a Krimpet."

I shook my head. "Don't want one."

He crossed his arms and sat back. "What'd you have for breakfast today?"

"Styrofoam and whole grain toast," I shot back.

He showed me both dimples this time, and some teeth too. It was breathtaking. "How about after you tossed that down the disposal?"

I grinned. "Cap'n Crunch."

"That's my girl." He stood and held out his hand. "Come on, let's go upstairs and check out the aftermath. You can tell me all about what you and Crazy Maizy have been up to in the past week."

I nudged Maizy. "It's twenty after two. Where is he?"

"He'll be here." She looked up from her cell phone to squint out the front window at the street. "He's here every afternoon."

We were at Starbucks in Center City, Philly, waiting for Harvey McWirth to show up for his daily iced cinnamon dolce latte. Outside, the day was overcast and chilly, with snow flurries in the forecast. Inside, we were finishing up a slow second round of coffee cake muffins in an effort to hold onto our table.

"What went on with you and Uncle Curt last night, anyway?" Maizy asked. "It took my dad like a half hour to calm him down."

I broke off a small piece of muffin. "He called Cam?" I wondered when he'd found the time. We'd been up until past midnight talking and straightening up my apartment after the police search. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared, since, thankfully, it seemed they'd left my underwear untouched. It had all gone in the hamper anyway, just in case. And I had to say, the whole going commando thing was a lot better in theory than in practice. That's why I was currently wearing a pair of Curt's Jockeys, those cute, form-fitting ones that looked like bike shorts, in electric blue. Curt really had it going on, underwear-wise.

"Oh, yeah, he called all right," she said. "I could hear him yelling for ten minutes straight."

I liked the sound of that. "The police executed a search warrant on my apartment," I told her. "He was a little upset by everything that's been going on."

"I should hope so," Maizy said. "How come you didn't tell me this before? Did they take anything?"

"My laptop," I said. "And it needed taking. You can help me buy a new one. When I get another job, that is." Curiously, I'd woken up feeling a lot calmer about the search warrant, if not about the whole I'm-a-murder-suspect thing.

"Cool. I can do that." Maizy glanced at the clock on her phone. "Huh. You know, he might not show up today."

We both turned to look out the window, as if we expected to see Harvey McWirth stroll past. He didn't.

Maizy tapped impatiently on the table. All her nails were burgundy colored except for her middle fingers, which were painted black with a single cubic zirconia glued to each. "So are you making dinner for Uncle Curt or what?"

I nodded. "Tonight. I hope I can pull this off. Remember, you promised to help."

"Tonight!" She stared at me. "Is the turkey defrosted?"

I stared back at her. "What are you talking about? How long does it take to defrost a turkey?"

"Wow." She shook her head as if to clear it. "You really aren't the domestic type, are you?"

I rolled my eyes. "Pity me later," I said. "Help me now. Do I have a problem?"

Maizy slumped into her oversized puffy coat, burying her face in her ginormous scarf, which I was happy to note was footprint-free. She may or may not have been giggling. "No. No problem at all." She tapped away at her cell phone.