A Plus One for Murder, page 9
“They were all there that night,” Emma said. “In the audience.”
Stephanie grabbed hold of the emergency-stop cord and pulled, bringing the treadmill to an immediate stop. “Whoa.”
“Um, we’re still working out here,” Emma said.
“Um, no, we’re not. Do you know what I watch on TV every weekend when the rest of the world is going to barbecues, or hiking, or hanging out with friends, or playing with babies, or whatever else it is normal people do?”
Emma pulled a face. “You’re normal, Stephanie, you just—”
“I watch crime shows.”
“O-kay, so . . .”
“That means I sit on the couch and, between potato chips, I play armchair detective. And you know what? I’m pretty darn good at it.” Stephanie paused, her brow furrowed. “I figure out the bad guy at least fifty percent of the time.”
“Which means what?”
“Let’s do it. You and me. Let’s figure out who killed your date.”
“Once again, he wasn’t my date. He was my client.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Semantics.”
“No. Not semantics. Facts.”
“Then you have an even bigger vested interest in his murder being solved.”
Emma pulled her own emergency-stop cord, the sudden cessation of movement necessitating a quick grab for the treadmill’s handrails. “How do you figure that?”
“Hello? Your client died on your watch?” Stephanie leaned against her own handrail. “I can’t imagine that would be good for business.”
She opened her mouth to protest, only to close it as the validity of Stephanie’s words took root. “It’s not like anyone in the room that night knew why I was there with him.”
“It’ll come out. Everything comes out in an investigation—trust me.” Tapping her chin, Stephanie lifted her gaze back to the ceiling in thought. “Soon, the cops will want to know about your history with the victim. Then, some”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“anonymous source on the inside of the sheriff’s department will leak some information and, bam! Your Friend for Hire business is the talk of the town.”
Stephanie pinned Emma with a warning look. “Oh, and FYI? You can’t give me up as a client, okay? It’s bad enough you know how pathetic my life is. I don’t need all of Sweet Falls—or, at least, the part my mother doesn’t play bridge with—to know it, too.”
“I wish I could.”
“Wish you could what?” Stephanie echoed.
“Not give you up as a client.”
“Meaning?”
Emma sat down on the edge of her treadmill, her head beginning to pound. “I had to tell the sheriff’s department. Or, at least, one of the deputies, anyway.”
Stephanie pulled a face. “Excuse me?”
“He was here on Friday. On the treadmill next to yours, in fact. He heard me say I’d been with Brian at Deeter’s on Wednesday night. And that’s why he was waiting for me when I came out of the locker room after my shower.”
“Oh, man.” Stephanie’s moan was long and drawn out. “Why, oh why did I leave when I did?”
“You said—”
“Rhetorical question,” Stephanie said, stopping Emma with a raised hand. “So you told this deputy that Brian hired you to be there with him?”
“I did.”
“And the paper Brian gave you with the suspects on it? What did he say about—”
Emma held up her own hand. “We don’t know they’re suspects, Stephanie. They’re just faces of people Brian copy and pasted onto a piece of paper.”
“People he said wanted to kill him,” Stephanie countered. “People who were all there when—guess what?—he was murdered. That makes them suspects in my book.”
It was Emma’s turn to moan, and moan she did.
“Did you at least take a picture of it before you gave it to the cop so we can work it?” Stephanie asked.
Emma glanced up. “Work it?”
“Investigate it. Ourselves.”
“You do realize Brian Hill was a conspiracy theorist, right? Meaning he always thought someone was up to something . . .”
“I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t qualify as a conspiracy theory, seeing as how, A, he said all four”—she slanted a glance Emma’s way—“it was four, right?”
At Emma’s nod, Stephanie kept going. “All four wanted him dead. B, all four were there the night he—C—did, in fact, die.”
It wasn’t anything she hadn’t thought about. In fact, everything coming out of Stephanie’s mouth was the same stuff that had made sleeping difficult, if not downright impossible, since Brian’s death had been ruled a homicide. Still, hearing the thoughts she’d done her best to ignore coming out of another person’s mouth was disquieting, to say the least.
She moaned again.
“So?” Stephanie prodded, sitting down across from Emma. “I ask again; did you snap a picture of the paper before you gave it to the cop?”
Emma squeezed her eyes closed. “I took a picture of it, yes.”
“Okay, good. Smart.”
“You might want to hold up on that word,” Emma murmured.
“Which one? Good, or smart?”
“Maybe both.” Slowly, Emma parted her lashes to find Stephanie staring at her, waiting. “I still have the actual paper, too.”
“Come again?”
“I didn’t give it to him or anyone else.”
“What? Are you serious?” Glancing over her shoulder at the heads turning in their direction from every corner of the gym, Stephanie lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “Why?”
Emma swallowed again. “I don’t know. At—at first, I think, I managed to convince myself, in the immediate aftermath of it all, that Brian had some sort of health issue that killed him and that the paper he gave me was just par for his conspiracy theorist lifestyle. Same old, same old, you know?”
“No, but go on,” Stephanie said.
“Then, when it became official, it dawned on me that I’d taken evidence from the scene of a crime and I guess I sort of shut down, or freaked out, or a whole lot of both. And then yesterday, when the deputy started grilling me at the park, I—”
Stephanie leaned so far forward, she had to grab the edges of the treadmill to keep from falling into Emma’s lap. “You saw the same cop the very next day?”
“Yes.”
“At the park?”
“Yes.”
“So he’s following you now?”
Emma swallowed. “I’m not sure. Maybe?”
“They probably see you as a suspect.” Pushing off the treadmill, Stephanie stood. “Which isn’t a bad thing.”
She stared up at the woman. “It’s not a bad thing I might be a suspect in a murder?” Emma echoed. “How on earth do you figure that?”
“You didn’t do it, right?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Then they’ll be distracted enough by you that they won’t be looking in the same places that we’ll be looking.” Stephanie traveled the distance of three treadmills before turning and making her way back to Emma, her face unable to contain her excitement. “Which means we can really do this.”
“Do what?”
“Investigate a real, live murder.” Stephanie took another lap. “Though that might be a bit of an oxymoron, come to think of it . . . But, either way, it’ll give me something to do after work that doesn’t include listening to my mother bemoan the grandchildren I’ve yet to give her.”
Emma looked down at the ground. Swallowed. “I couldn’t give it to him.”
“What, the paper? To the cop? Why not?”
“Because then he’d have to show it to others in his department.” When it became clear Stephanie was waiting for more, Emma drew her knees up to her chin and covered her head with her hands. “Which could be an issue—a big one. At least insofar as one of the four is concerned.”
“What are you saying?” Stephanie asked as she returned to her treadmill. “Is someone on the paper connected with the sheriff’s department?”
This time, when she nodded, she did it while looking straight at Stephanie. “Tell me I’m being paranoid. Tell me I should just give him the paper instead of nudging him toward Sheriff Borlin.”
“Sheriff Borlin?” Stephanie echoed, her voice shrill.
Emma looked over Stephanie’s head at the faces turning in their direction once again. “Shhhh . . .” she hissed back. “Keep your voice down!”
“Sheriff Borlin was on that paper?” Stephanie repeated more quietly. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Wow.” Stephanie ran her fingers through her hair, dislodging her ponytail in the process. “So what do we do with that?”
“We?”
“Yes, we. I’m paying you to be my buddy, remember?”
“Your gym buddy, yes.” Powered by the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, Emma stood. Half a second later, Stephanie did, as well. “But this is different.”
“I’ll double your pay!”
“Double my pay?” Emma echoed.
“Yes!”
“Are you nuts?”
Stephanie shrugged. “Maybe. But c’mon, this’ll be a blast! And it’ll make my mother happy because I’ll be participating in life instead of just watching everyone else live theirs.”
A steady ringing in her ears was making her head ache. Or maybe it was just the conversation—one she had better control over when it was happening solely in her brain. At least then she could chalk it up to sleep deprivation.
“Someone killed him, Emma,” Stephanie insisted. “That’s not okay.”
“I realize that.”
“More than that, he clearly felt someone was out to get him, and he clearly wanted you to know who and why.”
“He didn’t tell me any whys.”
“That’s okay,” Stephanie said, shrugging. “That’s what an investigation is for: to find out that kind of stuff. Once we do, we can see who the most likely suspect is.”
“Maybe I should just turn it over to Jack.”
“Is Jack the cop?”
“Deputy, yes.”
“His boss is on that sheet, Emma.”
She sighed. “I know.”
“Which means there’s no way he’ll do anything with it.”
She thought back to the park, to Jack’s face as he revisited whatever conflict Brian had had with the sheriff. The worry she’d seen there had been real. “I don’t believe that,” she said.
“Seems to me you’re putting a lot of faith in a guy you just met three days ago.”
“Maybe.”
Stephanie watched her for a long moment—waiting, Emma imagined, for any sign of internal second-guessing. Emma gave her nothing.
“Okay. Fine. We’ll give him a little time. In the meantime, we can focus on the other three for now.”
More than anything, she wanted to point Stephanie back onto the treadmill so they could finish their walk and get on with their respective days. But she couldn’t. Brian Hill was dead—murdered. And as much as she hated to admit it, Stephanie was right. He’d been murdered on Emma’s watch. In fact, she’d watched him take his last breath while her elbow had been resting atop a folder containing four suspects—suspects he himself had named.
She didn’t want to be involved, she really didn’t. But Brian had made it so she didn’t have any real choice in the matter.
“Okay,” she finally murmured. “We’ll investigate. A little.”
Chapter Ten
At precisely three o’clock, Emma held the Limoges teapot above Dottie’s cup and tried her best to keep the fatigue she felt clear down to her toes from manifesting itself in her voice. “Your tea, Dottie.”
At the single nod she earned in return, she filled the matching cup atop the matching saucer to within exactly a quarter inch of its gold-trimmed lip and followed it up with a single splash of cream and two pinches of sugar.
She waited the standard three beats for the Lovely, dear that always followed, but it never came. Instead, Dottie peered up at her from behind stylish bifocals, tsking not so softly beneath her breath. “You look awful, dear. Truly awful.”
At a loss for a response to the unexpected script change, Emma made her way around the linen-topped table to her own seat and her own cup as she had every Tuesday for the past eighteen months. “Biscuit?”
“No.”
She paused, her hand atop the basket, and stared at the octogenarian. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”
“Then let me rephrase,” Dottie said in what could only be described as a bored drawl. “Why, yes, Emma, I think I will not.”
“Will not what?”
“Have a biscuit.”
“But you have to. It’s what you do.” She held the basket still closer to Dottie. “I ask you if you want a biscuit . . . You answer with, Why yes, I will . . . Then I hold it out for you like I am right now and you hem and haw to my silent count of three Mississippis before you actually take one . . . And, finally, I hold it a little tighter while you reach back in for the I really shouldn’t second biscuit.”
Dottie’s eyes widened on Emma. “You make it sound as if you’ve been following a script.”
“Not in the written sense of the word, no, but we certainly have a routine.” Retrieving her napkin from the table, Emma unfolded it across her lap and tried her best to hold back a sigh. “It’s what I promised Alfred I would do, what he told me you wanted.”
“The time—yes. The tea—yes. The china—yes. But now that we’ve shared our mutual dislike for those dreaded biscuits, I think we can dispense with them, don’t you?”
Hit by a loss of words, Emma merely nodded.
“I almost said something to you when you put them on the table, but it’s more fun watching your expression as it is at this moment.” Disengaging her wheel brake, Dottie rolled her chair back a foot to afford a view of their silent companion positioned beneath the table. “What do you say, Scout? Would you like a biscuit?”
At the lack of anything resembling an answering thump, Emma laughed. “I’m afraid he knows that word as well as we do.”
Dottie’s eyebrows dipped below the top edge of her bifocals, only to return to normal as the meaning behind Emma’s words grew clear. “They really are dreadful, aren’t they . . .”
As it was a statement, rather than a question, Emma remained silent as Dottie’s attention returned to their tea-party stowaway. “Would you like a cookie?”
Lurching forward, Emma held fast to both of their teacups, the liquid inside them sloshing with each answering wag of Scout’s tail. “Whoa . . . Whoa . . .”
“I take it that was a yes?” Dottie asked, momentarily abandoning her view of Scout.
“That was a yes.” When the threat of a veritable tea-sunami was over, Emma stood, grabbed the basket of uneaten biscuits, and ventured her way back around the table to the hallway beyond. “I’ll get the—” She stopped, glanced back at the table and its unprotected teacups, and pointed a warning at the golden retriever parked beneath it all, his eyes sparkling, his tail poised in anticipation of her next word. “Oh no . . . don’t even think about it, mister.”
Less than three minutes later, she was back in her chair, the biscuits replaced by a half dozen (minus one eaten en route back to the living room) shortbread cookies. Hovering the basket above the table, she hurried to get their weekly ritual back on track. “Dottie? A you-know-what?”
“Why, yes, I think I will.”
Grinning, Emma held the basket firm as Dottie helped herself to a cookie, hemmed and hawed for the right amount of time, and then reached inside for the I really shouldn’t second helping.
“Thank you, Emma.”
“Thank you, Dottie. For reminding me that things can be tweaked without changing everything.” Retrieving her napkin from the table once again, Emma unfolded it across her lap, set two cookies on her own plate, and then held the last one below the edge of the tablecloth. “This is one treat your housekeeper won’t be finding in the corner of Alfred’s study, that’s for sure.”
Dottie’s laugh segued into a comfortable silence as they sipped their tea as per the Tuesday tradition. Halfway through her second cookie, though, Dottie veered off script again by leaning back in her wheelchair and lifting a knowing brow at Emma. “I’m waiting.”
Emma glanced across her own cookie to the empty basket. “You want more cookies?”
The second the words were out, she realized her mistake as cups rattled atop their saucers. “Sorry . . . his tail gets a little boisterous at times.”
“I see that.” Dottie wiped her lips with her cloth napkin and then lowered it back to her lap. “And no, I don’t want more.”
Emma leaned forward far enough to see the sip or two of tea that still remained in Dottie’s teacup. “What am I missing?”
Dottie crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You tell me.”
“I would if I could.”
“Then perhaps I should help you.”
“Perhaps you should.”
Clearing her throat, Dottie returned her hands to the armrests of her wheelchair and sat up tall. “Why, Dottie, you were right after all. Thank you—thank you so much.”
“Right about what?” Emma prodded as her eyes returned to the empty basket.
“My idea. For your livelihood.”
“Your idea for my—” She stopped. Pushed back her chair. Stood. “You want to talk about your idea? Fine. We’ll talk about it. In terms of the two people you sent my way, yes, I got two jobs out of those calls—a one-off to accompany someone to a dance at the senior center, and—”
“Big Max.”
Emma retrieved the serving tray from the buffet table under the front window and placed the empty basket and their dirty plates in the center. “Sidebar: he’s completely adorable.”
