Death Swipes Right, page 14
Abbie glanced at him with a frown. “Could she have gone over to Talin’s flat to borrow his hammer?”
“If the killer used the hammer Mrs. Fisher carried,” Robert said, “her death was one of impulse and opportunity.”
“We still need a motive,” Abbie said. “Did you spot a tablet or desktop computer?”
“There’s a large electronic contraption in her study.” He led the way and Abbie followed, carrying the frame. She suspected Talin might want this photo.
The last time she visited his flat, it had no personal photographs anywhere, and the walls were bare. It had made her wonder if Talin didn’t know what he wanted from life.
Abbie’s home was full of her kids, parents, brothers, their families, and her friends’ photos. No one who visited St. Michael’s cottage would be in any doubt that Abbie adored the people in her life.
Talin stored all his photos on his tablet.
Niara’s study had dying exotic house plants, as well as knick-knacks and art pieces from Trinidad. Every wall also had pictures of people in colorful costumes celebrating various events against a tropical background. She had been a woman who loved her homeland.
Had she missed Trinidad as much as Mama D’leau did?
Yet, Niara had voluntarily stayed in this foreign land to care for Talin, while Mama D’leau had no way of returning home.
Abbie’s chest squeezed tight, and she doubled over.
“Are you alright?” Robert asked, hurrying to her side.
She nodded, breathing deeply to ease her through the sharp shooting chest pains.
Straightening, she waved off his concern.
Niara’s computer was at least a decade old. Sheaves of paper lay scattered over the tabletop beside it.
Abbie turned on the table lamp to study the sheets. “These are eOrbit dating profiles.”
Sitting to look through the pages, she sank into her work. From what she could discern, the pages outlined a history of the aggressive or cruel behavior of some men toward their past partners. Several had a big red X across them.
Her mobile pinged. Judith. Abbie handed the phone to Robert.
He took it into the next room. When he returned, he said, “Miss Chan dropped by Mr. Kanaan’s flat on her way home to see what he’d learned from Radford. She inquired if we needed help. I informed her I can stand idle without assistance, so she is on her way home.”
“Sorry,” Abbie said, sitting back and stretching her sore back. Her muscles were stiff from being hunched over for hours. “I’m done.”
She’d sorted the pages into three piles. She tapped the first one, which was the highest. “None of these fit the profile of the murdered men Callum identified.”
She tapped the next highest pile. “These are Caribbean men, but none have a record of committing heinous crimes against women. They merely show a tendency to be arrogant.”
“And this pile?” Robert asked, which held a few sheets.
“All dead. Each sheet has handwritten details about how and when they vanished. Eight in all.”
“A larger number than Radford’s listing,” Robert said. “He’d only found records of six dead Trinidadian fellows.”
Abbie showed him the two sheets that mentioned names missing from Callum’s list.
“I believe the murderer also killed these two,” Abbie said.
While Robert perused those sheets, Abbie texted Judith the information she’d uncovered to pass on to Callum about the two additional men. As Robert read her handwritten notes, Abbie typed, These were brothers who betrayed the same woman, Shamiah Palmer.
Likely the same Shamiah Palmer she’d met outside Niara’s door. Abbie’s suspicions were now rife about Ms. Palmer’s connection to Niara Fisher.
She added that she’d met the lady here tonight before putting away her mobile.
“I have one more dot to add to the ones you are lining up,” Robert said. “Constable Chan said that according to Mr. Kanaan, the CEO of eOrbit is Radford’s prime suspect. Can you deduce her identity?”
Her fatigue forgotten, Abbie straightened. The keen look in Robert’s gaze said there could be but one answer to his question. “Shamiah Palmer?”
“On the mark,” he said, giving her an approving nod. “She joined the company two years ago when the killings began.”
Abbie acutely regretted not sending Robert to track Palmer earlier. “I might have met our killer, after all.” She tapped rapidly on her mobile, asking Judith to send her an address for Shamiah Palmer. “What we need now is proof she killed Niara.”
Abbie stood, tucking the ten sheets with the dead men’s names into her back pocket. “We’re done here for tonight. Let’s return home and regroup.”
Putting her mask back on, Abbie headed out, tossing the keyring up and catching it. “One more stop to return these and to hear a story before we leave.”
Mrs. Williams had charmed Abbie with a promise of a tale about a girl who wanted to be queen. What Grimm could resist that lure?
Robert shadowed her with an indulgent smile.
Once downstairs, she knocked on the lady’s door.
Receiving no response, Abbie nodded to Robert to go inside and take a clandestine look around. If Mrs. Williams had fallen asleep, she could slip the keys under her door and return tomorrow for their storytelling chat.
Robert went inside and within a few moments rushed back out, looking quite ashen for a ghost. “She’s been bludgeoned.”
Abbie had dialed 999 before Robert finished speaking. “Should I check on her, in case she’s still alive?”
“No chance of that,” Robert said in a grave voice.
She gave the operator the bare facts and hung up, her heart wrenched with sorrow. “I should still check on her.”
Abbie pulled out her tools. Her brothers had taught her how to work a lock, and this one appeared easy to pick.
Robert grabbed her forearm in a firm grip. “You cannot help Mrs. Williams. Her head is as thoroughly and viciously damaged as was done with Mrs. Fisher. This time, the killer used a black bust of a man with his arms raised and broken chains falling from his wrists as the murder weapon.”
Horrified by the picture he painted, Abbie still resisted.
He added, “You must not leave evidence of your presence here, Miss Grimshaw. DI Turner would use it against you.” Robert pointed to where blood seeped out the door.
Abbie backed up before that flood of scarlet reached her trainers. They hurriedly returned to her car. Her heart ached at the loss of that sweet woman. No one would hear her delightful chuckles, be entranced by her smiles, or listen to her stories.
Once inside Rosie, they sat awaiting the police.
Abbie recognized this heavy, trauma-ridden feeling. She’d felt exactly like this the night she’d stumbled across a murdered mother at St. Michael’s. Back then, two orphan kids had kept her company, strapped into Rosie’s back seat, with a Siamese cat impatiently tapping his tail on the bonnet.
“Why didn’t I allow you to follow her?” Abbie asked, heartsore, a chasm expanding in her gut at that fatal miscalculation. Her Grimm instincts should have warned her what was afoot. Why hadn’t they? Or had she ignored them?
“What-ifs are a waste of energy,” Robert said. “You are not responsible for another person’s action or inaction, Palmer’s or mine. If she is not our killer, it would have made not a jot of difference, other than leaving you alone. What if the killer had come after you next?”
She glanced at him in surprise. “Who else was here? She’s our only viable suspect.”
“My point, Miss Grimshaw, is that self-recrimination is a self-defeating exercise.”
“You’re right.” Though her mind agreed, she carried on mourning for a woman whose vibrant energy had been so carelessly extinguished tonight. Abbie recalled inhaling Mrs. Williams’ exotic perfume when the landlady leaned in to whisper about prying eyes.
“She must have been aware of something incriminating about the killer,” Abbie mused. “As Niara had been before someone silenced her.”
“Agreed.” Robert glanced at her with grave concern. “If I leave you for a moment, will you be all right?”
Abbie frowned at him. “My shield is still up, I have the cord ready to attack, and the police are on their way. Why? Where are you off to?”
Even as he vanished, his words slid into her mind. “Not far. I wish to see if there is any evidence in her flat that might be of use. Before the police arrive.”
Abbie breathed a sigh of relief at that pre-emptive move. She mustn’t enter the victim’s home, but Robert faced no such restriction.
While she waited, she resisted the temptation to use her cord to contact her friends and family to inform them about what had happened. She felt too numb to talk. Instead, she simply sat, allowing her thoughts to still, but it was hard not to picture Mrs. Williams’ cheerful visage before she had been so violently ripped from this world.
All too soon, in the distance, a two-tone signal proclaimed that help was on its way.
Before the flashing lights reached her, an unmarked vehicle pulled up ahead of Rosie with an angry screech of tires. The ambulance arrived next, parking behind Abbie, effectively blocking her in. Even Bran wouldn’t be able to slither out of this wedged-in position. Not that she planned to leave yet.
Turner exited the vehicle up front and the DI’s vindictive look chilled Abbie’s already cool body. Abbie lowered her window, and DI Turner leaned her hand on the ledge of Abbie’s car window as she bent to speak. “When I said call me, I didn’t mean like this, Miss Grimshaw.”
Several more police units swerved around Rosie. The ambulance crew unpacked their gurney and rolled it down the pavement toward the building’s front doors.
Abbie waved to an EMT she recognized.
The fellow avoided eye contact, afraid to acknowledge her. She sighed at that slight. Rumors and suspicions flew like wildfire in small towns.
She gave Turner the key chain Mrs. Williams had loaned her. “You’ll need the silver one to enter the front door.”
A light of satisfaction flashed in Turner’s eyes. She put on latex gloves before taking the keys. She called over a constable to stand guard over Abbie until she returned.
“Am I under arrest?” Abbie asked.
“You are a Person of Interest again.” Turner walked away.
At least she hadn’t cast a spell on Abbie’s feet the way Judith had when she arrived at St. Michael’s church after her 999 call back then. That reminded Abbie that Turner was a norm. A non-magical, ordinary human. Abbie’s Grimm calling was to protect such people.
She sat back and released the tension in her stiff shoulders. She still didn’t know who had killed Talin’s auntie or, now, Mrs. Williams. Shamiah Palmer was their only lead.
Robert appeared beside her, glancing at the vehicles surrounding Rosie and the uniformed guard by her door with concern. “What has happened here?”
“Turner wants me to stay until she’s checked out what’s inside the building,” Abbie said, pinching the bridge of her nose as a migraine hit. “Did you find anything useful?”
“Mrs. Williams kept a diary,” he said, his concerned gaze settling on her. “It was beside her. The last few pages were torn out. There were ashes nearby.”
Abbie’s sigh was heavy. Another lead lost.
Robert held out his hand, fist clenched. When he opened his fingers, there was a lighter lying on his palm. He held it up to show her the lettering on the side. eOrbit. Time to find your ideal partner. “It was by the back door.”
“Better put it back,” Abbie said. “Might have prints that Turner could use to identify the killer.”
He disappeared and then returned empty-handed.
“Robert, would you tell the kids that I’m fine?”
“You could do that yourself, using your cord,” he replied.
“No. If I spoke to them, they’d know I’m not okay.”
“What is wrong?” he asked with alarm.
Abbie shrugged. “I don’t know. Lately, I feel down all the time. I overreacted when they arrested Talin. This latest murder has left me shaken far beyond normal.” She met his frowning gaze. “I haven’t felt this low since my friends in London died. I only met Mrs. Williams tonight. Why would her death leave me this devastated?”
“It has been stressful of late.” Robert took her hand, his touch cold but comforting.
Abbie treasured the physical contact. Since COVID hit, she’d missed these small human touches. “Robert, I haven’t been alright for a while now.”
“Do you recall exactly when you began to feel this discomfort?” he asked. “Did it come on gradually or abruptly?”
Abbie sat quietly, cherishing his cool hold, and thought back to when this constant sense of depression had settled over her. She’d been shocked when she and Talin stumbled across his Auntie Niara’s body and she’d felt his sorrow sweep over her. Since she hadn’t ever met Niara Fisher, she assumed she had simply been empathizing with Talin.
This current darkness rolling over her hadn’t been there then. Not even when Turner interrogated her. She remembered making lighthearted gestures with her tongue behind her mask. Or at St. Michael’s when she spoke to Callum. She’d enjoyed being with him. She missed his company.
It dawned then what might have brought on this sense of abyss and her startled gaze swung up to meet Robert’s.
“It began after Mama D’leau hugged me in the woods.”
Robert nodded. “She might have inadvertently, or intentionally, gifted her pain to you. If so, you must return this emotional baggage to her.”
Was it even possible to transfer one’s hurt to another?
He squeezed her hand. “My wife taught me that, to heal, we must work through our pain, not suppress it or wallow in it. Certainly not gift it away for another to bear.”
Abbie sent him a glance filled with curiosity. This was the first time he had mentioned his wife, Pauline.
“She sounds like a wise woman,” Abbie murmured. “I think I would have liked her. And I understand what she means. If pain lingers too long, because we’re unwilling to release it, it can fester and become poisonous.”
As she spoke, she realized her words applied to herself as much as to Robert and Mama D’leau.
Chapter Thirteen
“If this darkness is from Mama D’leau,” Abbie said, “I doubt she would take it back.” Who would? “I am determined to get her home to Trinidad, though, and that might ease both of us. We need to speak to her because she could tell us for certain if Palmer is the killer we seek. But there’s a safer way to contact her this time. Shahay could get a message to Mama D’leau.”
Robert nodded. “A much better plan.”
Turner exited the building then, looking fierce.
“I’ll see you soon,” Abbie said in mind-speak. “Say goodnight to the kids for me.”
Turner took Abbie into the Chipstead nick this time for questioning. A session that lasted all night.
Early the next morning, Callum walked Talin and Abbie out of there. Since uncle and nephew were part of the same support bubble, Abbie left the two men to chat upfront. She sat in his jeep’s backseat, masked and with the window rolled down. She pensively gazed at the passing scenery as Callum drove them to Judith’s home.
“Thank you,” she said after a short while. “For taking the time to come get us. It can’t have been easy to convince Turner to set us both free.”
“It wasn’t,” he replied, catching her gaze and sharing an amiable smile. It was a refreshing sight after enduring Turner’s confrontation all night. “But it isn’t me you have to thank. Someone higher up threatened to reassign Turner if she wasn’t willing to be reasonable. It helped that she didn’t have a solid case against either of you.”
“Kiros must have intervened,” Talin said, sending Abbie a backward smirk.
“Who is he?” Callum asked.
“A friend,” Talin said, just as Abbie said, “An enemy.”
They looked at each other, assessing their opposing take on the same person.
“Which is it?” Callum finally asked into the silence.
“Yet to be determined, I suppose,” Talin admitted.
“How did you meet this man?” Callum asked.
“Kiros came to visit us yesterday,” Abbie said. Had it only been a day ago?
“A stranger visiting during COVID restrictions?” he asked in a disapproving tone.
“They kept on their masks on and social distanced,” Abbie said.
“They?” Callum asked. “You only mentioned Kiros.”
“James was Kiros Hillier’s henchman,” Talin elaborated.
“And a great tea maker,” Abbie added from the back.
That silenced Callum for a full minute before he asked, “What did they want?”
“A favor,” his talkative nephew said.
Abbie’s shoulders tightened. She didn’t know how to stop him.
“From you two?” Callum asked, “or all seven of you?”
How could he know there were seven of them? She frowned at the back of his handsome head. How much had Callum deduced about their SB Group? She recalled a conversation when he said he knew that she, Judith, Talin, and Yousef were in a group. Including her two children, added to six. He couldn’t possibly know about Robert. Could he?
Then she recalled Jimi had told Callum there was a ghost with them while they were at the kids’ uncle’s flat. Jimi also mentioned Robert last spring when Callum called her. Had Callum put those two pieces of information together and come up with seven?
If so, she had better watch out, or he would uncover all of their secrets before she confessed to any of them. Grass did not grow under this DCI’s feet.
“You ask one of us, you ask us all,” Talin replied cryptically.
“What’s this man’s interest in you lot?” Callum probed.
“He wants us to be his friends,” Talin said.
“Why?” Callum asked.
“Because he fears us,” his nephew said.
