And I still hadn’t heard from Kyle. I’d called him on my way to the police station as well. My call had gone straight to voicemail.
“What about phone calls?” I asked. Norton hesitated, and a chill worked its way down my spine. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Ryan’s going to be under a microscope. Samantha can call him if she wants, but he’s in trouble, and he knows it. He might not be in the best frame of mind to talk to his daughter.”
“I thought you said he’s not a suspect.”
“I said he wasn’t an ‘official’ suspect, but he’s the primary person of interest. Circumstantial evidence points to him, and I know how the cops will view it.”
“What circumstantial evidence?” I asked.
Norton didn’t respond.
“You know I’m going to find out,” I said. “You might as well tell me now and save us both the aggravation.”
“All right. Ryan admitted to getting into an argument with Melody at his office. He met with her behind closed doors, but they got loud, staff in his office heard, and Melody stormed out. That part’s in the official statement he gave the police.”
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
“I imagine there is, and I imagine Ryan’s told Pat, but I’m not privileged to that information and neither are you. Abby, I looked at the report you prepared for Ryan as well as the photographs. You admit that you were following Melody the entire day at his request, and that you had a confrontation with her a short time before she died. I’m not sure you understand what a truly precarious situation you’re in. If the police can make a case against Ryan, you could be charged as an accessory.”
“What?” If I’d thought I’d been in shock last night, it was nothing compared to this. “How could they possibly...”
Of course, they could. The case would be purely circumstantial, but a good prosecutor could make me look like Lizzie Borden without the axe.
“Do you understand now?” Norton said. “Why you and Ryan can’t be seen together, talking about anything together, without it looking to the police like you’re covering for each other?”
“God, Norton.” My hand was trembling holding the cell phone. “She had a damn stalker. She might have had two of them. Stalkers are seriously whacked out people. You know that. I know that. Why aren’t the cops focusing on them?”
“They will. That’s why I’ve got Ryan’s permission to show them the report, and I’d like yours regarding the rest of the information you didn’t put in the report, including all the other photographs you sent me.”
I’d interrupted the writer the night before when I’d stopped at my office to email Norton a copy of everything I had regarding my surveillance of Melody Hartwell. The writer had been too surprised at my sudden appearance to gripe at me for ruining the flow of her work or lob anything in my direction. Not that she’d been typing when I unlocked the office door. I didn’t understand writers, but then again, I’m not sure she understood my work either.
“They’d be able to get all that with a warrant, right?” I asked.
“They can certainly make an argument for probable cause, so yes, I believe they’d get everything connected with your investigation one way or the other.”
I sighed. I didn’t like the idea of the cops digging through my files, but if it kept them from tearing apart my office and my house, I could live with it.
“Go ahead,” I said. “You’ve got my permission to release all of it.”
“Good,” Norton said.
He hung up after telling me to take care of myself and that if he saw me at his office today attempting any other work, he’d fire me.
I sat in my bed, my arms wrapped around my knees, and stared at the thumb drive I’d left on my nightstand. I’d made it the night before at my office after I’d emailed copies of everything I had on Melody’s case to Norton. It held a duplicate of everything on my office computer about Melody’s stalkers.
As soon as I got myself together, I intended to go through everything on that thumb drive with a fine-tooth comb. The police would be going over all my files, but they’d be looking at the pictures and notes for evidence they could use against Ryan. I had a different purpose in mind. I intended to use my files as a starting point to prove Ryan was innocent.
CHAPTER 15
SAMANTHA WAS STILL ASLEEP when I plugged the thumb drive into my laptop.
I’d brought the laptop out to my dining room table so I wouldn’t disturb her. She usually slept with her door only partly closed in case the cat wanted to curl up on her bed. This morning the cat was grooming on the living room couch, stretched out in a pool of sunlight streaming in through the front window.
The day had all the promise of being a scorcher. I didn’t know why a cat, who came equipped with a permanent fur coat, would seek out a sunny spot on a hot day, but this wasn’t the first time I’d seen her do it.
Since I wasn’t going to Norton’s office and had no plans to go to my own, I’d slipped on a light cotton blouse and a pair of shorts. Instead of coffee, I was already drinking iced tea. The cat could keep the nice sunny spot all to herself. The dining room was still nice and cool.
My laptop was a few years out of date, and it didn’t have the biggest screen. I planned to replace it someday, although as long as it kept working, someday kept being pushed further and further into the future. Right now it was good enough for what I needed.
Except for the rather terse written report I’d created in a hurry for Ryan, most of the digital files I had regarding my surveillance of Melody were the pictures I’d taken on my camera. I had a digital voice recorder that I used as well, but the only things I’d recorded were the addresses of the places Melody had gone and the times she arrived and departed so I could be precise in my written report.
The digital recorder was still in my purse, and I hadn’t downloaded the recordings to my computer. I’d have to remember to ask Norton if he wanted copies of my voice files to give to the cops along with the rest of it.
When I’d looked at all my files last night, I’d been surprised to discover that I’d taken over a hundred pictures. The vast majority were of the two guys I’d spotted outside the cafe. Or more precisely, of Justin Sewell and the white SUV Lewis Richards owned.
As I scrolled through the photographs, one shot made me catch my breath. I’d been focused on Justin Sewell, trying to get a good picture of him to show to Ryan, but I’d caught Melody in the photo as well. She’d been walking to her car. What I hadn’t seen when I was actually at the cafe taking the shot came through clear in the picture: Melody had turned around to glance at Justin, and she was smiling.
It didn’t look like a simple smile, either.
I zoomed in until her face filled the frame. Unlike all those TV shows where the computer automatically filled in a blurry shot, the more I zoomed in on Melody’s face, the fuzzier the picture got. So I pushed the computer toward the other side of the table and scooted back in my chair until I had enough distance that the picture looked more like a photograph again instead of a random collection of colorful pixels.
The photograph had caught Melody doing something she probably hadn’t wanted anyone to see, especially not anyone connected with Ryan. She’d been flirting with Justin Sewell. She might not have given him a little finger wave or a raised eyebrow, come hither look, but there was more to her smile than what a woman would give a strange man on the street who couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Yesterday when I’d watched her leave the cafe by herself, I’d wondered who she’d had lunch with. Sure, it was possible she’d spent forty-five minutes inside having lunch by herself. I ate lunch alone all the time, but it was usually at my desk while I was working or fast food in the car while I was on the way from one job to the next. Melody never struck me as the kind of woman who’d do that. She had a lot of girlfriends according to Samantha, and she was always going somewhere to meet them for a drink or a movie or a party or even to work out together. That’s why I’d thought she’d met some of her girlfriends at the cafe.
But if she’d met friends, wouldn’t they have left together? Women tended to do things in groups. They went to the restroom together, gathered together at parties while the husbands and boyfriends they’d come with were off in another room talking business or watching the game on TV. Even as anti-social as I could be at times, when I’d been married to Ryan, I did the same thing.
No, if Melody had met with a group of girlfriends for lunch, they would have left the cafe together, or at least within a short span of time after Melody. That hadn’t happened. The only person who came out of the cafe immediately after her had been Justin Sewell.
Had he been the person she’d met for lunch?
I zoomed out on the picture and studied it again, trying to figure out if I was reading more into her smile than was really there.
Melody had never struck me as a stupid woman. She was engaged to a well-known local attorney. The cafe on California Avenue was only a few blocks away from the courthouse. All the cafes and restaurants in the area catered to the attorneys whose offices were clustered around the courthouse. Hell, Ryan’s office was less than a quarter mile away. If Melody was going to have an affair with someone, even flirt with someone over lunch, she couldn’t have chosen a worse place if she wanted to keep the whole thing a secret from Ryan.
But what if she hadn’t cared? I couldn’t tell from the picture whether she had her engagement ring on. In the shot, her left hand had been hidden from view when she turned to look at Justin.
I scrolled through a few more pictures in the sequence, trying to see if she had her engagement ring on, but none of the shots showed her clearly enough for me to tell.
I sat back in my chair, staring at my laptop but not really seeing it. What had she been up to? Had she been cheating on Ryan, or was it just an innocent lunch with her banker? Justin’s business card did say that he was a
personal
banker. But why would Melody need to have lunch with a banker? As far as I knew, she had no plans to start a business of her own. Then again, I’d probably be the last person to hear if she did.
My cell phone vibrated. I’d put it on the table next to my laptop and turned the sound off so that if anyone called, the ringtone wouldn’t wake Samantha. The house was still quiet, with only the sounds of the neighborhood filtering in. The occasional car passing on the street in front of the house, birds chattering in the trees, a neighbor mowing the lawn before the midday heat set in, someone else using a leaf blower to clean their yard by blowing the trash into someone else’s.
In my neighborhood, life went on as usual. Melody’s hadn’t, but the neighborhood didn’t care. There was probably a deep philosophical lesson in there somewhere, but I was too tired and too focused to worry about the big picture.
I glanced at my phone. I’d received a text from Kyle.
You awake? I’m out front. Didn’t want to knock if you’re still sleeping.
Instead of replying to the text, I padded over to my front door on bare feet. I unlocked the deadbolt and the security screen door and went out onto the front stoop.
Kyle had parked his unmarked police car in front of Freddie March’s house. He must have seen me come out the door, because the next thing I knew he’d trotted across my front lawn and enveloped me in a hug.
“I was on a stake out last night. I didn’t hear about what happened until I got back to the station this morning and got your message,” he said. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head. “Not even close.”
He felt warm and solid in my arms. He smelled like coffee and cigarettes. Kyle didn’t smoke, but he wasn’t always alone on stakeouts. His normally clean-shaven cheeks were scratchy with stubble. I tilted my head back and saw the dark circles beneath his eyes.
“Catch your guy?” I asked.
“Made some progress.”
He couldn’t talk about specifics, and I knew better than to ask. When we did talk about his work, it was always in generalities.
“Are you sure you should be seen with me?” I said. “I’m a ‘person of interest’ in a homicide. Might not be good for your career.”
The words came out sounding more bitter than I’d intended.
He snorted. “They’re fishing, and they know it.”
Kyle kissed me lightly on the lips, a gesture meant more to reassure than anything else, but I took it. After all of Norton’s warnings about how serious my situation was, it was nice to get that reassurance even though I could tell by Kyle’s expression that he was worried about me.
“Let’s go inside,” he said. “We’ve got some stuff to talk about.”
I heard the sound of the shower when we went back inside. Samantha apparently couldn’t sleep well, either.
During the entire summer, I’d rarely seen her up before ten-thirty in the morning, which meant that most days I was out of the house while she was still in bed. She was old enough that I trusted her to stay home alone, and not invite Maddie over if I said not to. I’d only taken her to the Marches’ last night because the last thing I’d wanted was for my daughter to be alone after hearing that the woman who was about to become her step-mother had been murdered.
I poured Kyle a glass of iced tea and we sat at my dining room table. A picture I’d taken of Justin Sewell was still on my laptop screen.
“One of the guys I thought might be stalking Melody,” I said, gesturing at the screen. “Now I’m not so sure.”
While Kyle sipped his tea, I scrolled back through the pictures to the one of Melody looking back at the cafe, smiling at Sewell.
“She knows him,” Kyle said. “Did she have lunch with him?”
“I’m starting to think that.” I gave him a brief rundown on how I’d tracked Sewell back to the bank and got his name. “He’s a personal banker. He didn’t take my twenty bucks, so I’d thought he was an honest guy. Now I’m beginning to wonder.”
“He could still be an honest guy, just an honest guy interested in a woman who isn’t.”
I didn’t say anything about Kyle’s present-tense reference to Melody. He’d only met her once. A few months after we’d started dating, we had a Friday night dinner date which we were late for because Ryan had been late picking up Samantha for the weekend. I never made Samantha wait at home by herself for her father, so the three of us had been watching a movie when Ryan eventually arrived with Melody, who’d either been drunk or high. She’d apologized for making Ryan late, and generally been much more charming than her usual sober self. She’d even flirted a bit with Kyle, which I’d figured was just because she hadn’t been herself.