Pushed to the Limit (an Emma Cassidy Mystery Book 2) (19 page)

“I found Tom’s body a couple of hours ago,”
Emma said.

“Oh, you poor thing! That must’ve been
terrifying.” Stacey grabbed Emma’s hands and squeezed them tightly. “No wonder
you look so pale. I’ll make you some hot chocolate.” Releasing Emma’s hands,
she bustled into her kitchen and began pulling out milk, saucepan, and cocoa.

Emma looked on. “You don’t have to go to so
much bother.”

“It’s no bother at all. It won’t take
long.” As Stacey poured milk into a saucepan, Emma couldn’t help noticing her
friend’s hands were shaking.

Emma gripped the edge of the breakfast bar.
“Stacey, I have to tell you something.”

The seriousness in her voice got through to
Stacey. She set down the saucepan on the lit stove. “Yes?”

Was it her imagination, or was Stacey
bracing herself for bad news?

“The thing is, the knife that—that was used
to kill Tom. It belonged to my parents, but it was sold at the yard sale.” Emma
paused for breath. “I think you bought it.”

Stacey sucked in an audible breath. “Me?
You think I…”

They stared at each other across the
breakfast bar. The silence stretched to breaking point, and then Jackie
sauntered into the kitchen. She stopped short. “What’s going on?”

“A man was stabbed to death this afternoon,”
Emma said.

Jackie gasped and turned a ghostly white,
while Stacey growled and rushed to the stricken woman’s side.

“You didn’t have to break the news like
that,” Stacey scolded Emma. “After what she’s been through, you could’ve been a
little more sensitive.” She turned her attention to Jackie. “Breathe, honey.
Remember to breathe. This is nothing to do with you.” She rubbed Jackie’s hands
between hers.

“Sorry,” Emma muttered, mortified by Stacey’s
criticism. She hadn’t been thinking. The events of the day had crowded everything
out, and she’d forgotten about the violence that Jackie had suffered.

Steadying herself against a kitchen
counter, Jackie glanced between the two women. “But why were you two arguing
when I came in?”

“We weren’t arguing,” Stacey said swiftly.
“We were just…just trying to figure out something.”

“About what?”

“About—about—” Stacey sighed and shook her
head, apparently coming to the conclusion that it was no use trying to pretend.
“Emma believes that the murder weapon belongs to me!” She threw up her hands in
despair.

“What?” Jackie turned her brown eyes on
Emma. “How can you think that?” The shock was receding from her face, replaced
by indignation.

“The knife that was used on Tom once belonged
to my parents, but it was sold during the yard sale. According to my receipts, Stacey
bought a ‘kitchen knife.’” Emma switched her attention to Stacey. “Listen, I’m
not accusing you of anything. I’m just worried that Chief Putnam might drag—”

“The police know about the knife?” Jackie
broke in, her voice squeaky and breathless. “Oh, my God!”

A flush heightened Stacey’s color. “All
this fuss over a kitchen knife! I hardly remember what it looks like anyway.”

“It had a heavy handle carved out of bone,”
Emma said.

Stacey frowned. “Really? I thought the one
I bought had a wooden handle.” Turning to the drawers, she started to comb
through the contents. “Now where did I put that thing?” she muttered to
herself. “Oh, this is it, isn’t it?” She pulled out a chef’s knife with a
smooth wooden handle.

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I guess it is,
if you say so.”

Stacey nodded. “That’s the knife I bought.
I got it while you were on your break.” But she wouldn’t meet Emma’s eyes, and
she pushed the knife back into the drawer as if she wanted to hide it.

A queasy sensation started to well up in
Emma’s insides. Stacey was acting strangely. Why was she being so evasive? But
Emma didn’t have the heart to push the matter further. Not right now. She might
suspect that Stacey was lying about the knife, but she didn’t have any proof.
And besides, she should let the police conduct the murder investigation.
Only…she hated the thought of Chief Putnam arriving here in that officious,
jack-booted way of his and bullying Stacey, maybe even dragging her off to the
police station.

“Stacey,” she said tentatively, taking a
few steps toward her. “If you know anything about the murder, you will tell me,
won’t you? I mean, I want to support you in whatever way I can.”

Stacey’s lips quivered, and her eyes began
to brim with tears. But Jackie stepped between them and linked her arm with Stacey’s.
She gave Emma a challenging stare that almost amounted to a glare.

“Stacey had nothing to do with the murder,”
Jackie stated firmly, daring Emma to contradict her. “She was with me all
afternoon. She couldn’t possibly have killed anyone.”

Stacey gave a faint gasp. “Jackie!” she
admonished, but the other woman didn’t back down.

“Your receipt doesn’t mean anything,” Jackie
added, a hint of scorn hardening her usually meek voice. “If all it says is
‘kitchen knife’, then that’s no proof at all. You should have kept better
records, then you’d know for sure who bought your murder weapon. Until then,
maybe you should stop bullying Stacey and go home.”

Through Emma’s frustration and anger and
shame came the memory of Tom’s dog as he lay mournfully next to his dead master.

“Well, I’m sorry for upsetting you, but a
man was killed today. And maybe he was a bit strange and people avoided him,
but he didn’t deserve to have a blade plunged into his back.” Emma stalked out
of the house, quivering from head to toe and wondering where that outburst had
come from.

As she reached her car, someone touched her
on the arm. She stopped to find Stacey beside her.

“Don’t mind Jackie too much.” Stacey’s mild
eyes were squinched up with concern. “She’s wound up. She didn’t mean what she
said.”

Shame washed over Emma. Even though she’d half
accused Stacey of being involved in Tom’s murder, Stacey didn’t hold that
against her, and was even trying to patch things up between her and Jackie.

“No, she was right to pull me up.” Emma let
out a sigh. “I rushed over here without thinking things through.” As she gazed
at Stacey’s anxious face, she wondered how she could have imagined this generous-hearted
woman could be capable of killing a man. “Anyone could’ve bought that knife at
the yard sale. It’s my fault for not keeping better records.”

Stacey squeezed her arm. “No, it’s not your
fault. I mean, who even gives out receipts at a yard sale?” She glanced over
her shoulder at her house. “I’m just sorry that all this had to happen while Jackie
is here. She’s so sensitive to any hint of violence. That’s why she blanched
when you talked about Tom.”

“I understand.” Emma nodded. “I won’t
mention it again.”

Stacey patted her arm and peered more
closely at her. “But what about you? You must have got a horrible fright when
you found the poor man. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Stacey’s sympathy brought a sudden wobble
to Emma’s lower lip. The adrenaline that had fueled her since she’d stumbled
over Tom’s dead body was slowly ebbing away, and she realized she was feeling
rather shaky.

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “I’ll go home
and take a nap.” She paused as a thought hit her. “Unless the police want to
question me again.” She looked closely at Stacey. “They might want to talk to
you, too, you know. Just to clear up this knife business.”

A wary look came over Stacey. “Do they know
where the knife came from?”

“Not at the moment, but I have to tell
them. I’ll have to show them my receipt book as well.”

Stacey pressed her lips together and
straightened her spine. “Well, if they come, I’ll show them the knife I bought,
and that will be that.” Despite her fighting words, she still looked anxious.

Emma understood why Stacey wasn’t looking
forward to the police knocking on her door. She couldn’t risk having her real
identity revealed, and every contact with the law heightened the chance of some
nosey officer digging deeper into her background. Plus, a visit by the police
would no doubt throw Jackie into a spin, too.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Emma said, eager
to reassure not just Stacey but herself as well.

She turned to go. As she climbed into her
car, she glanced once more at the house. From the living room window, Jackie
frowned at her, her long brown hair framing a white face pinched with worry.
Why was she so agitated? Emma wondered as she drove off. Was it because Emma
had falsely accused Stacey and that had raised Jackie’s hackles? Or did the
secretive woman know something more? Something Stacey wasn’t telling Emma?

In the end, the
quiet nap at home that Emma had envisaged didn’t eventuate. Before she reached
home, she received a phone call from Chief Putnam asking her to go to the
police station immediately. There, he and another policeman, Officer Martinez, quizzed
her in more detail about her discovery of Tom’s body. It seemed like a routine
interview, until she reluctantly told them about the knife and how she
recognized it.

Chief Putnam instantly glowered at her.
“Did you touch the body or the knife?” he barked. “You do know it’s an offence
to interfere with a criminal investigation.”

She hurried to assure them that she hadn’t
contaminated the crime scene. As if she’d been in any mood to examine the dead
body closer. She told them the knife had once belonged to her parents,
explained about the community yard sale last Saturday, and pulled out her
receipt book.

“It’s incomplete. Not everyone wanted a
receipt, and it was very busy at times. I didn’t really get a chance to keep
track of everything.”

The censorious expression on the chief’s
face made her feel like a bumbling idiot who had no right running a yard sale
stall, let alone an event planning business. Officer Martinez, who had been
largely occupied writing in his note book, threw her a sympathetic look. His round
face and laid-back manner were disarming, but Chief Putnam was in charge of the
investigation, and he’d never had a high opinion of Emma.

The chief flicked through the receipt book
and, as she predicted, paused when he came to the one made out to Stacey.
Sticking a finger on the page to mark his spot, he went through the remainder
of the book, but she knew that was the only receipt for a knife. With his bushy
eyebrows slanting downward, he showed the receipt to Officer Martinez.

“She bought a different kitchen knife, not
the one my parents owned. Hers had a wooden handle, not carved bone,” Emma
said, conscious that she was babbling slightly.

“You remember that?”

She hesitated. “No, but that’s what she
told me…”

Chief Putnam rested his meaty paw on the
receipt book. “We’ll need to keep this as evidence. Officer Martinez will type
up your witness statement. Come by tomorrow morning to read it over and sign
it.” He heaved to his feet. “Thanks for coming in, Ms. Cassidy.”

“Stacey doesn’t know anything about the
knife, you know,” Emma said as she got to her feet, a sinking feeling inside
her.

“We’ll be the judge of that. And by the
way, don’t leave town in the next couple of days without telling us.”

Emma gaped at the chief. “Wh-what? You
don’t think I had anything to do...that’s ridiculous.”

Unmoved, the chief folded his arms, his bulk
stretching his starched blue shirt. “You were there when Faye Seymour took a
tumble down her stairs, and then a week later you happen to stumble across the
dead body of her next door neighbor. I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t
consider that an unusual coincidence.”

“But—but—” Emma spluttered.

The chief waved a hand, dismissing her.
“Martinez, can you escort Ms. Cassidy out of the station, please?”

Limp with dread, Emma allowed the officer
to walk her out of the chief’s office, but when they were in the foyer of the
police station, she halted and turned to him.

“Does the chief seriously think I’m a
suspect?” she asked, her voice squeaking on the last word.

“It’s still early in the investigation. We
have to keep an open mind,” Officer Martinez said with a sympathetic lift of
his lips.

“But I was with Faye almost the entire
day,” Emma protested. “I drove her home from the hospital, did some chores
around the house for her, took her to the vet and the grocery store. When would
I have had a chance to run next door and stab poor Tom?” The police officer
didn’t say anything, but his facial expression gave him away. “Oh, did Tom die
earlier in the day? Maybe this morning or the night before, even?”

Officer Martinez shifted on his feet. “I
can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with you.”

So that’s why the chief had wanted to know
her movements for the entire day. Tom must have been killed before she had
arrived at the hospital at noon. Before that, between seven and ten, she’d been
at the park checking on the clean up. Any of the crew could verify that, if
asked. But after that she’d returned to Faye’s house, packed up her belongings,
and driven to her father’s house, and no one had seen her during that time,
which meant she had no solid alibi. The police would surmise that she could
have grabbed her parents’ old kitchen knife, popped over to Faye’s house, gone
next door, and killed Tom Kovacs. It wouldn’t have taken any time at all.

Nausea swirled in her, and she thought she
was going to be sick.

“Easy, there.” Officer Martinez helped her
to a bench in the foyer. “Put your head between your knees and breathe slowly.”

She did as he instructed, and gradually the
panic subsided. She forced herself to sit up. “But why would I want to hurt
poor Tom Kovacs? I barely knew him.”

“You were in and out of Faye Seymour’s
house all week. Plus, you stayed over a couple of nights. You might have run
into him. Or he might have seen you do something, something you might not want
other people to know about.”

So they were back to Faye. Deep down, as
soon as she’d discovered Tom’s body, she’d sensed that his murder was tied to
Faye.

“While you were at Faye’s did you ever talk
to Tom?” Officer Martinez asked.

Emma shook her head. “I tried to, but he
ran away.”

“When was this?”

“I caught him staring through the window
earlier in the week; it must’ve been Wednesday. According to Faye, he did that
sometimes when he came over to steal her peaches. I called out to him, but he
disappeared. I went outside to see if I could catch him, but he’d already
vanished next door.”

Officer Martinez regarded her steadily. His
eyes were no longer friendly but shrewd. “What did you want to talk to him
about?”

“I—I don’t know. I suppose I felt a bit
sorry for him, and I thought it would be neighborly.”

“Tom Kovacs was an antisocial hermit who
lived in a hovel. Do you usually go out of your way to be ‘neighborly’ to men
like him?”

Emma couldn’t help flushing. “You make it
sound so suspicious.”

“One of my colleagues talked to Tom Kovacs
the other day. I read her report. Seems Tom saw someone running away the day
Faye took a tumble.”

Perspiration broke out on the back of
Emma’s neck. Why had she thought Officer Martinez was nice and friendly? She’d
been fooled; he was just as dogged and mistrusting as Chief Putnam.

“And you think I match the description Tom
gave to Sherilee,” she said, resisting the temptation to wipe the back of her
damp neck. She couldn’t afford to give Officer Martinez any further signs of
guilt. “But it was a very vague description. It could fit half the female
population in Greenville.”

Officer Martinez didn’t respond, and she
knew she was right. He looked her over, and gradually the suspicious cop
attitude faded as he scratched his temple and gave her a nod. “I’ll call you
tomorrow to come in and sign your statement,” he said by way of dismissal, and
with another nod he turned on his heel and walked away.

Emma remained on the bench for a few more
moments while she tried to re-focus her chaotic thoughts. The foyer hummed with
activity as officers and civilians bustled in and out, carrying an air of
urgency with them. She supposed all the activity was due to Tom’s murder. She
thought about the police officers and crime scene technicians swarming over
Tom’s lonely house and wondered what the recluse would’ve made of it, his
private domain which he’d guarded so fiercely now invaded by strangers who poked
through his possessions, revealing the solitary life he’d led. He would hate
it, she thought. He didn’t deserve to die like that, terrified, in agony. As
the awfulness threatened to overwhelm her, she took a deep breath and forced
herself to stand up.

“Hey, Emma.” Sherilee raised her eyebrows
at Emma as they crossed paths outside the station.

Emma was in no mood for Sherilee. Not
today. “Hey,” she muttered, hunching her shoulders and walking past.

But Sherilee turned and kept pace with her.
“I’ve just come from Tom Kovacs’s place. I’m sorry you had to find his body.”

The sympathy in Sherilee’s voice was so
unexpected that Emma stopped. “I’m sorry for him.” She paused as a thought hit
her. “Do you know what’s happening with his dog? It was really upset.”

“Yeah, poor mutt. He didn’t look in great
condition, so I took him to the vet, and he agreed to keep him overnight.”

Nick Stavros had done that? “That’s very
decent of him,” Emma said. “What about Faye? Does she need someone to stay with
her?” She hoped and prayed Sherilee wouldn’t suggest she go over there. It
might be selfish, but she really didn’t want to return to Faye’s.

“She seems to be holding up okay,” Sherilee
replied. “Helen Wylie is over there. She’ll probably spend the night with her.
And we’ll have extra patrols in the neighborhood until we catch the killer.”

Emma nodded.

“By the way,” Sherilee continued. “I’ve
been trying to get hold of Lorraine Atkins, but she’s not answering her phone,
and her neighbor seems to think she went away for the weekend rather suddenly
this afternoon. Do you know anything about that?”

Emma tiredly rubbed her forehead. “Yeah,
she told me she was going away to spend time with her ex-husband. I bumped into
her at the store, and…” The image of Lorraine’s shopping cart came to mind, and
all Emma could think of was that sharp kitchen knife sitting incongruously
between the champagne and the strawberries. Why had Lorraine needed that knife?
Had she purchased it intending to use it on Tom but changed her mind when Emma
caught her in the grocery store, and decided on a different knife? A
bone-handled knife she’d bought at the yard sale, for instance?

“You were saying?” Sherilee prompted her.

“Um, that’s it. She—she left to see Taylor,
her ex-husband.” The man Lorraine still loved. Had she finally decided to take
revenge on Faye for destroying her marriage? Lorraine might have shoved Faye
down the stairs, and then been forced to kill Tom to stop him from identifying
her.

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll try calling her again.”
Sherilee walked away.

Emma drove home, plagued by doubts about
Lorraine. She couldn’t imagine the placid artist stabbing an innocent man in
the back, but Lorraine had seemed quite agitated at the grocery store. It
could’ve been merely the anticipation of seeing her ex-husband again, or it
could’ve been something more sinister. Who knew what Lorraine had suffered over
the years?

When Emma arrived home, she found her dad
and Janet Ramos anxiously waiting for her, having already heard the news
through the local grapevine, so she sat down and prepared herself to telling
her story all over again, though this time her audience was far more
sympathetic.

***

Emma started awake
at the sound of her cell phone chiming from somewhere in her room. Rubbing the
sleep from her eyes, she blearily hauled her tote bag onto her bed and rummaged
through it. In the end, she had to empty half its contents before the phone,
still singing out, tumbled out.

“M’ello?” she answered, barely suppressing
a yawn.

“I thought you might still be asleep.”
Faye’s tart voice pinged in Emma’s ear. “Good thing I called to wake you up.”

“Faye?” Pushing herself upright, Emma
checked the time on her phone. Ten past eight. On a Sunday morning. Oh, for the
love of—

“Pick me up in twenty minutes,” Faye said
in a tone that brooked no argument. “That should give you plenty of time to
wake up.”

Emma ran her fingers through her mussed up
hair. “And why am I picking you up?”

“So we can go to Marietta.” A huff of
exasperation came from the other end of the call. “The pancake parlor. Carmel,
Kenneth Bischoff’s mistress. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” It was all coming back to Emma,
the conversation she’d had with Faye about Bischoff forcing his way into her
house and demanding the evidence of his affair be destroyed. Faye wanted to
visit Carmel at her place of work and ask if she knew where Bischoff had been
last Saturday afternoon. Everything that had happened before Emma had
discovered Tom’s body seemed a long time ago. “But do you still want to do
that? Shouldn’t we leave it to the police?”

“The police?” Faye snorted. “I’m sure Chief
Putnam is a good man, but he’s not exactly nimble in his thinking, and now he’s
got Tom’s murder occupying him, he’s hardly going to pay any attention to who
might have pushed me down the stairs.”

“But don’t you see that the two crimes
might very well be connected?” Emma said. “Whoever caused your fall could be
the same person who killed Tom because of what he saw.”

“If that’s the case then it’s all the more
reason to visit Carmel and question her.” Faye sounded more determined than
ever. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to get here.” She ended the call before Emma
could say another word.