Authors: Christine Husom
“I attended more social events during my years in Washington than I will ever remember.” I threw up my hands. “Hey, it’s not so bad. There is always someone at any given gathering who’s interesting to talk to.”
They both shook their heads.
Sandy Gibbons blew into the coffee shop like a whirlwind, reminding me I had not gotten around to calling her. “I’m sorry, Cami, but my editor is going crazy. I left a bunch of messages on your home phone, then one of my friends just told me you were at work. I usually try not to bug people when they’re working, but it’s almost six and you’re about to close up shop for the night anyway, right?” She spit out her whole monologue in about three seconds.
Sandy had been reporting for the
Brooks Landing
Weekly News
since I was a young girl. She was a short, pudgy ball of energy in her early sixties. I smiled at the enthusiastic, expectant expression on her face. She was flushed and her eyes were open as wide as could be.
Pinky and Erin moved in closer to me as if they felt they needed to, in case Sandy attacked or tried to kidnap me or whatever else they thought she might do.
I lifted my hands. “Sandy, I honestly meant to call you—”
“She honestly did and told me so this morning.” Pinky defended me unnecessarily.
Sandy flapped her hands then lowered the briefcase she had strapped over her shoulder onto a counter stool. It swiveled a bit so she steadied it as she reached in and pulled out a notebook. It had a pen clipped to the front of it, ready for action. “You’ll give me the story, won’t you? If I get my article in by ten o’clock tonight, it’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”
I was momentarily torn. Clinton Lonsbury hadn’t told me to keep my account under wraps, even from the media. Having the story in the local newspaper might somehow prompt the person who had committed the crime to slip up and say something incriminating. I’d heard those stories a number of times over the years. It had to do with bragging rights, which I didn’t understand, but then again I did my best to live inside the law, not outside of it. “Let’s have a seat and I’ll tell you what happened.”
We went to the same table Pinky, Erin, and I had sat at two days before when I’d relayed Friday night’s events out loud for the first time. It seemed like a week or two ago. Pinky and Erin sat down with us, not considering whether they were invited or not.
Sandy plopped down like she was carrying an extra one hundred pounds then blew out a loud breath of air that lifted the first few pages of her open notebook. “I can’t believe the biggest story to break in our town in a long time, and where was I? At my annual quilters’ retreat up north, where I had no cell phone reception. And neither my husband nor my editor thought to call the resort.”
The newspaper came out weekly, not daily, so even if news was breaking, it would not be reported in print until Tuesday afternoon. Why wreck a high-strung woman’s chance to relax by telling her news that would surely have her scrambling to get back home for every juicy detail?
“Okay, Cami, take me through that fateful night and then I’ll ask you any questions I still have.”
I told her as much as I could, leaving out details like finding the penny on the pathway and picking it up; grasping the knife in that unthinking moment; the snowing globe in my shop; and my fact-gathering trip to southern Minnesota with the infuriating Clinton Lonsbury.
When Sandy finished jotting notes of what I’d said, she looked up and shook her head. “Who are the police investigating?”
“You know I couldn’t answer that, even if I knew.”
“Off the record?”
“Sandy, it would be pretty obvious who you got the information from, and I am trying to avoid any further trouble with the Brooks Landing Police Department.”
“You said ‘further trouble.’ You don’t mean they think you had anything to do with Jerrell Powers’s murder, do you?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“Oh, my goodness, Cami!”
“That reminds me, I’m Camryn now. Just for the record.”
• • • • • • • • • • • •
I
lay in bed that night pondering what was really going on with my friends. I’d shredded the pages of the notebook where I had started listing possible suspects—in case it fell into the wrong hands. Without a doubt, Mark, Pinky, and Erin had some kind of secret information they were not telling me about. If they thought they were shielding me from something, they had another think coming. Unless they were somehow involved in Jerrell Powers’s death after all. I hadn’t wanted to consider such a thing the night it happened, and I didn’t want to now. And the possibility that all three of them had played any kind of part, no matter how small, was especially troubling.
Clinton Lonsbury’s prime suspect was Benjamin Arnold, which was understandable from a police perspective. It was easier for me to see where he was coming from, particularly after what we’d learned on our visit to Atwood and Hassock. Arnold had threatened Powers and that was witnessed by several semireliable sources. From what little I knew about Powers, he had likely pushed Arnold to the limits. Maybe what Arnold and Powers didn’t like about each other was that they had nearly identical personalities. At least according to one of the halfway house residents who’d spent time with both of them.
My mind drifted to Pamela Hemley. She was an enigma. Why was she so taken with Jerrell Powers anyway? I knew that bad boys were magnets for some women and maybe that was the case. Her sister had, in no uncertain terms, made it clear she had not wanted Pam to continue seeing Powers. And I had to agree with her. She had legitimate reasons. From all I’d heard, he was definitely a bad boy.
I heard a crashing sound outside my window and jumped out of bed. It was most likely a cat who was in pursuit of a mouse or other small creature and had knocked something over. But what? The backyard border was an alley that separated my house from the backyard of my neighbor’s. A detached single-car garage, accessed from the alley, was where I usually parked my car. I opened the bedroom blinds enough to sneak a peek. I didn’t see a cat, but I did see a man running away from my house, down the alley.
Goose bumps popped up all over my body. It was highly unlikely the guy was out for a jog at eleven p.m. on a chilly night. And it was a little early for trick or treat. I wondered if there was a peeping Tom lurking in the neighborhood. As much as I did not want to call the police, it was my civic duty to report unusual and suspicious activities, especially when they were happening right outside my house.
I picked up the phone from my bedside stand and punched in the critical three numbers.
“Buffalo County, nine-one-one. Is this an emergency?” As luck would have it, it was the same dispatcher who had answered my call a few short days before when it was a real and critical emergency.
“Um, no. But I just saw a man running from my backyard and I thought you should know in case he’s up to something.”
“Yes. Your name, ma’am?”
I gave her all the key information, including my address, so she wouldn’t have to ask me for it.
“Okay, I will send an officer over.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. If you could just have him drive around the area, maybe.”
“It’s standard procedure, Miss Brooks. It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
“All right, thank you.” I hung up wishing my friend Mark worked the night shift. He and Clint were the only two officers in town I really knew. It was a small department and Mark had made mention of the other five members who worked there, but I had never met any of them, officially or otherwise. I’d known Chief Hermann from when I was a teenager and he was a Brooks Landing police officer in a much smaller department.
I got out of bed, grabbed the blue flannel robe I had lying on top of the covers, pulled it around me, and cinched the sash around my waist. Then I stepped into the pink furry slippers Pinky had given me the previous Christmas. They were more her color and style than mine, but they were warm and she was my friend.
A police car pulled up to the curb and parked in front of my house right after I’d turned on the lamp in the living room. I glanced out the window and who got out but Clinton Lonsbury. I had almost made it one whole day without seeing him or hearing from him. Drat, drat, double drat. I immediately felt underdressed and wished I’d put on some clothes.
I opened the door to save him from knocking. “Good evening, Assistant Chief Lonsbury. You’re working late again.”
Clint’s eyes roved from my head to my toes in a split second. “One of the officers called in sick and there was no one else to cover. Rather than making one of the others work a double, I thought I’d be a nice guy for the second time in less than a week, and work the first half. Then Mark’s starting four hours earlier to cover the second half of the shift.”
I came close to liking Clint when he said that. I hadn’t thought about why he’d been on duty late the night Jerrell Powers had died.
He waved his hand at my robe. “You were getting ready for bed and you saw someone in your backyard?” His eyebrows came together and the tone of his voice sounded like he didn’t quite believe my report to the dispatcher.
He made it easy to go from almost liking him back to not wanting anything to do with him. “No, I was in bed when I heard a crashing sound out back by my garage. I thought it was a critter and got up to check. That’s when I saw a man running away.”
“Can you give me a description of him?”
“Not a good one. He had on dark pants and a dark jacket and a dark stocking cap. Maybe they were black, but he could have had on jeans. It happened so fast, he was gone before I knew it.”
The inside corners of Clint’s eyebrows touched. “You’re saying he ran fast?”
“Pretty fast, I guess.”
“Approximate height, weight?”
Oh, boy. “Well, he didn’t seem really tall—like, I doubt if he was much over six feet—but he wasn’t short, either.”
Clint cleared his throat. “How about his build? Can you give me an estimate of his weight?”
“I’d say average. So if he was six feet tall, he’d maybe weigh around one-seventy, one-eighty. But with a jacket on it was hard to tell because that adds bulk.”
“Did you happen to notice if he was carrying anything?”
“Like what?”
“Anything. I don’t want to put ideas in your head, but something that could be used as a burglary tool, maybe.”
“Oh.” I closed my eyes, hoping to squeeze whatever I could from a scene that had lasted just a few seconds. “He may have had a backpack, but I can’t swear to it.”
“Or to any of the rest of it, either, it sounds like.”
“I can swear that there was a person who I’m pretty sure was a man that took off and ran down the alley.”
“I drove around the area and didn’t see anyone on foot, but he could be a neighbor who is back at home by now.”
“Could be.” But the man in the alley had acted more like someone who was running away from something.
Clint pulled a magnum flashlight from his duty belt. “I’ll go take a look around out back, see if he left any evidence behind.” He started for the front door.
“Why don’t you go out the back door in the kitchen?” I headed in there and turned on the light. When I turned to see if Clint was following me we almost collided. “Sorry.”
He shook his head to brush it off. “I’ll come back in before I leave to tell you if I find anything.”
“I’ll grab a coat and go out with you.”
“You should stay inside.”
“I need to know if he broke into my garage. There was that crash.” I ran to the front closet and found a long wool coat. I put it on over my robe, but didn’t take the time to find a pair of shoes. Clint had already gone outside and I didn’t want to miss anything.
The air was nippy on the bare skin of my lower legs, hands, and face. Clint was flashing his light on the ground by the garage. The moon was behind some low-hanging clouds, but there was a streetlight about halfway down the block, so it wasn’t completely dark. I tagged along at a safe distance behind him as Clint followed the length of the garage to the alley where the garage’s overhead door was located. He directed the flashlight’s beam to a bicycle that was lying on the ground in front of it. “That your bike?”
I’d never seen it before. “No. And I know it wasn’t there when I got home from work because I drove my car into the garage.”
Clint shined his light on a plastic bag that was slung to hang from the handlebars. Then he turned around and studied the area to the north. “I think I know what caused the crash. He was riding and hit that wet clay, skidded, and wiped out.”
“Why didn’t he just get back on the bike again, instead of running away?”
Clint reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. He put them on before he slid the bag off the bike’s handlebars. He looked inside. “Aha. The bike crash might have stopped him before he committed a crime after all. He’s got a flashlight, bolt cutter, box cutter, picks. A nice assortment of tools for breaking into buildings, cars, storage units.”
“Have there been burglaries in town?” I hadn’t heard of any.
“Not a rash of them. But we get reports of one every so often.”
“I guess people should lock their doors at night.”
Clint shined his light on the garage. “I don’t see any damage to your garage. I’ll check out the rest of the houses around here and then get this stuff loaded up. Losing his tools will hopefully curtail that guy’s criminal activities for the night.”
“Besides crashing and losing his bike.”
“That, too. After I finish up here and get back on patrol, I’ll be on the lookout for a man on foot, dressed in dark clothes.”
“Thanks.”
I started to turn to go back to the house when Clint said, “You get those from Pinky?”
“Get what?”
“Those fuzzy things on your feet. They’re not quite your style, somehow.”
“I like pink bunnies, too.” There was no way I was going to tell Clint he was right. I liked the slippers just fine as long as I didn’t look at them. “Good night.”
“Lock your doors.”
I didn’t want to be caught gawking out the windows while Clint went about his police business, but watching him work was somewhat interesting. I went into the bathroom, left the lights off, and pulled the shade back a little—enough to see the beam of his flashlight moving around the alley. When he walked by the side of my house to cut through to the front where his car was parked, I let go of the blind and stepped back.