I collected my tote from the chair and headed back to Drew, this time to gain admission to my nephew’s office. I hoped all would go well there. I already had enough people whom I’d offended today.
“Nothing new,” Skip said. “But you know that, if you saw Rosie downstairs on her way out.” Skip’s short-sleeved peach-colored shirt blended in with one of the faded partition walls, both clashing with his red hair. June must not have seen him leave this morning.
“Rosie didn’t have much to say. She was anxious to get home.” I took a seat on a formerly peach-colored chair, now an undefined hue. “I wish you hadn’t picked her up before the service. When I told you-”
“I know you feel guilty about alerting us to where she’d be, but believe me, we would have found out anyway. And wasn’t that better than interrupting the service?”
“Not to Rosie.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Aunt Gerry, I feel in my gut that she didn’t do it. She’s just the closest thing we have now for a suspect. The reunion classmates all checked out.”
“Even Cheryl Mellace?”
“Her husband says she was with him in their hotel room from midnight on.”
“So they’re each other’s alibi. Is that legal?”
Skip laughed. “Of course. Maybe not convincing, but legal, definitely.”
“They could have been together all night, technically, but wasn’t David killed early in the morning?”
“The ME is putting the time of death from about four in the morning to when the kids found him around seven thirty.” Not what I hoped-the fact that I could vouch for Rosie’s whereabouts at around seven was virtually meaningless.
“And Ben Dobson?” I rubbed my arm where Ben had touched it, leaning on my driver-side window.
“A couple of people at the party corroborate your story-”
“Excuse me?” I folded my arms in mock offense.
“Just an expression. The point is that, yes, it seems they did fight, but we talked to all the maintenance staff, too, and no one was particularly surprised, but neither could anyone think of a motive for murder. Dobson was at the highest level he could go and he got a decent salary.”
“What about Barry Cannon?”
“Class president, CPA, works as CFO for Mellace Construction.”
“I know all that. What’s his alibi?”
“The same as most people’s from four to seven in the morning. He was asleep in his hotel room.”
What would Skip say if he knew Barry had been sending Rosie presents, in all probability setting her up to be humiliated at the hands of David? I needed one more shot at Barry before I brought this up to Skip. Barry’s reaction when I asked him about the presents told me he was indeed guilty-of present buying. Hardly a crime unless I could make a connection to David’s murder.
That concluded my list of suspects, but I had one or two more loose ends. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Skip, how did you manage to get hold of the locker room scene that Rosie… altered?”
“We got an anonymous call that we’d find it in the woods, near the crime scene.”
“But it wasn’t at the crime scene when you found David’s body?”
“No, the call came afterward, later in the morning.”
“So isn’t it likely that someone planted it there?”
“Not necessarily. Much as we’d like to think we’re perfect, the people at the scene don’t always pick up everything. The little room was off a ways and in some bushes.”
“And the anonymous caller knew exactly where you could find it?”
“Right.”
“How would the person know you hadn’t already found it unless he or she put it there after you left?”
Impeccable reasoning. But that’s not what it was all about.
“This happens a lot, Aunt Gerry. Someone calls in a tip and the timing doesn’t always make sense-maybe the person just wanted to make sure we found it-and we just have to go with it. And the locker does exist, and it was Rosie Norman who wrote hate mail on it, that’s what’s important here.”
I wished I could argue with him. Instead, all I could do was toss other suspects his way. “What about David’s son, Kevin Malden? Have you checked out where he was over the weekend?”
Skip scratched his head. “I’m not even surprised that you know his new name. But, yeah, he checks out. He was showing some of his stuff to a few dozen other artists at some kind of fair. And his mother, Bridges’s ex, was in Europe. Bridges’s family is a dead end.”
Police work was frustrating. I might have to think about retiring.
Was this the time when I should tell Skip about Ben Dobson’s trek down the path to the crime scene in Joshua Speed Woods? And show him the bank record, which might have been left by Ben?
The bank record was the only lead I had left, if it could even be called that, and Skip needed to see it. “I have something to show you,” I said. I reached back into my shoulder tote and found the folder by feel, my normal way of digging things out of the long-handled, oversize bag. I opened the folder and found… nothing. No sheet of paper with possibly incriminating bank records, just the blank neutral folder stock.
I removed the bag from my shoulder and sorted through its contents, looking for the sheet, thinking it slipped out of its folder. I fingered a thick wad of scrap fabric, meant to be left at the Mary Todd for my crafts students; a new pair of scissors, still in its shrink-wrap package; and a paperback copy of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, for discussion at a book club I’d joined recently. I also saw my wallet, brush, and general purse items. No eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper of any color.
“Are you looking for cookies or something to do with the case?” Skip asked.
“I had a piece of paper in this folder. I know I had it in the building because I showed it to Larry Esterman downstairs.”
Skip picked up his cubicle phone and punched a button. “Hey, Drew, did my aunt Gerry leave a piece of paper or something down there?” Skip held the receiver to his chest. “He’s going to look.”
I motioned to take the phone from Skip and waited until Drew came on the line again. I had another idea about the record.
“Nothing here, Skip,” Drew said.
“It’s Mrs. Porter, Drew. Did you by any chance see the folder I was showing to Mr. Esterman?”
“Yeah, I saw you guys looking at it. You know, I think I saw him put something in his pocket, something white, like a sheet of paper. I figured you gave it to him. Shall I put out an APB?” Drew laughed, but I didn’t think it was such a bad idea.
“Thanks, anyway,” I said.
Larry Esterman didn’t have a briefcase or any other kind of container with him, nothing into which a sheet of paper could have fallen accidentally. There was no way he mistakenly walked off with it.
Larry Esterman rushed his daughter out of the building for a reason-he’d confiscated my record. Easy come, easy go, I thought, remembering how the record had fallen into my lap, or one seat over.
A sneaky move on the part of Rosie’s father.
Larry Esterman was a man after my own heart.
With nothing much to talk about and no desire to explain my day to Skip, I left the police station and headed for Rosie’s house. On the way I called Maddie, who’d been at Linda’s for the better part of an hour.
“I just wanted you to know I’ll be there soon, sweetheart.”
“Okay, Grandma. Don’t worry about me. Mrs. Reed let me help her make some leaves and now I’m doing my programming homework for tomorrow.”
Huh? No nagging or whining about being left out of my errands?
Not one to question my good fortune, I clicked off and pulled into Rosie’s driveway. I was reminded how close her home was to the Joshua Speed Woods. I felt a shiver through my body. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Ben Dobson strolling down the quiet street, but it was merely a gardener wearing the same color jumpsuit I’d first seen Ben wearing.