“They came in a black Jeep, didn’t they?” she said.
“Well, it was black; that’s pretty much all I can tell you about it. But how did you know that?”
“It’s not important. What I want to know is whether the alarm went off.”
“I didn’t hear it, but I figured with all the dandy tools folks have these days, breakin’ and enterin’, even with alarm systems, has gotta be downright easy.”
Rory had too many questions jockeying for position in her head, to waste time explaining that it wasn’t quite that simple.
“Do you know what they were looking for?” she asked instead. From what she could see, the living room and dining room were exactly as she’d left them, which didn’t surprise her. She already had a pretty good idea of what they’d been after.
“They weren’t after cash or jewelry or the usual things. I found them in the study, goin’ through the filin’ cabinets and the papers on the desk. When I popped up, I scared the bejesus out of them and they ran out empty-handed.” Zeke seemed to puff up with pride over his triumph.
Rory had finally reached the limits of her ability to remain passive and calm. “Did they get into my computer files?” she asked as she ran up the stairs.
Zeke was already on the upper landing, waiting for her. “I don’t think so. But there’s somethin’ more you need to know.”
She stopped short, two risers below him.
“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it. They were the same two fellas who murdered Mac.”
Rory crumpled onto the step as if all of her muscles and bones had suddenly dissolved into gelatin. After having heard all of the marshal’s theories, she thought she’d accepted the possibility that Mac’s death might be linked to Gail’s. Obviously she’d been guilty of what Mac liked to call “the ostrich policy.” She’d buried her head deep in the sand, leaving her tail feathers to weather the storm. A ridiculous sketch of herself in that position popped into her head as she sat there, trying to absorb this stunning bit of news.
Zeke sat down on the top step. “They were lookin’ for the file on Gail, weren’t they?”
Rory nodded, not ready to trust her voice. In some ways nothing had really changed, and yet everything had changed. She was still tracking the same killer, but now her investigation might lead to the identification and arrest of the person or persons responsible for Mac’s death as well. Until this moment she’d pretty much relegated that bit of closure to the realm of lost causes.
“Whoever’s behind this wants to find out what you know,” Zeke murmured, as much to himself as to her.
“Then we’ll just have to keep them guessing,” Rory said, more determined than ever to see the case through to its resolution. She stood up, feeling a whole lot stronger than she had any right to expect after her little meltdown.
She looked Zeke in the eye. “Are you in or out?”
“If I can’t talk you out of this, than count me in,” he said, moving out of her way as she marched up the last steps. “Somebody’s gotta try to keep you in line.” The study looked like a mini version of the office after
it
had been ransacked. Rory stepped over the fountain of papers and folders that had cascaded out of the filing cabinet and onto the floor, and went straight to the bookshelf. Based on nothing more than instinct, she’d been keeping the hard copy of Gail’s file behind a world atlas and several other oversized books since the day she’d brought it home. Thanks to Zeke, it appeared undisturbed. The intruders had left before they’d had a chance to look for it there.
She brushed a few papers off the desk chair and sat down in front of the computer. When she touched the mouse, the screen came up on the home page of her filing system, the cursor blinking on the window that asked for her password. With more time and the right skills the intruders might have gained access. For a moment she felt as if she’d won a bout in a boxing match, but in reality what had she won? In spite of their impromptu encounter with Zeke, these were not the type of men who were likely to give up as long as they were being well paid for their time and trouble. But at some point, whoever was footing the bill was going to decide that it was more cost-effective to get rid of her than to keep tabs on her.
Zeke was leaning against the doorjamb, thumbs hooked into his gun belt. “Anythin’ gone missin’?”
“No,” Rory said, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. “But just thinking about those creeps going through my stuff makes me want to scream. And knowing that they’re the ones who killed Mac . . . it’s, it’s just unbearable.”
“I know. Best thing to do is stop thinkin’ and get busy. You have those pictures you took at the open house?”
Rory sat up straight. “Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.” She opened the lower drawer of the desk where she kept the camera and took out the memory card. Either cameras weren’t on their shopping list, or the thieves had left before they’d had a chance to search the desk, once again thanks to Zeke. Had the marshal been more than smoke and mirrors, she would have jumped up and given him a great big hug.
She slipped the card into a port on her computer and set it for “slide show.” She waved Zeke over to the desk as the first photo came up on the screen. Together they watched the parade of photos without comment. After the last one, Rory turned to him.
“You can see, aside from a little missing wallpaper, there’s nothing that even comes close to being unusual, let alone suspicious.”
Zeke nodded. “It couldn’t hurt to talk to the fella who put the paper up, find out who actually opened the package when it arrived from the manufacturer.”
“That’s already on my ‘to do’ list,” Rory said. “But it sure feels like we’re heading down the wrong road here.”
“It’s not the wrong road if it’s the only road around.”
Rory suppressed a little groan. She hoped Zeke wasn’t spending too much of his free time trying to come up with other pithy words of wisdom.
“Can you leave it so I can look at those pictures again some time?” he asked.
“Sure,” Rory said, trying to figure out the best way to broach a potentially delicate question. In the end she decided to just ask what needed asking and hope that Zeke was in an understanding frame of mind.
“The thing is, if I’m not here, how will you manage to work the mouse, you know, to start the program, pause it, or maybe enlarge a photo if you want to?”
To her relief, Zeke was more pragmatic than emotional about the limits of his current condition.
“I can use energy to move things,” he said. “Of course, there’s the matter of whittlin’ the power down to the right amount for the right job. Too little and it won’t work. Too much and . . . well, don’t you worry, darlin’. I’ll be mighty careful about fine tunin’ it.”
Rory had an awful image of the computer flying across the room and into the wall at the speed of light. She realized too late that her reaction was probably written all over her face. To redeem herself, and in spite of her better judgment, she showed Zeke what he would need to do with the mouse and keys.
He was eager to start practicing right away, but she quickly put that notion to rest. “There’s something more important we have to do first. You saw the men while it was still light out. I need your help to adjust the sketches of them.”
“Sure enough.”
Rory went downstairs to retrieve her sketch pad from the kitchen counter where she’d left it. Zeke was sitting at the table as if he’d been waiting there for hours. The transporter on
Star Trek
had nothing on him.
She sat down next to him, flipped to the page with the first sketches of the men and showed it to him. “First, tell me what needs changing.”
Zeke studied the drawings. “Okay, the tall guy is younger than I thought. Maybe still in his twenties. And he wasn’t really bald; it was like he shaved his head on purpose, ’cause I could see the outline of where his hair would be if he let it grow. And his nose was flattened lookin’ in the middle like maybe someone broke it for him.”
Rory made the corrections.
“Now the shorter guy, I pegged his age right the first time. He had kind of a pudgy face with mean, little eyes. He was the one givin’ orders. And he had a tattoo on his arm that looked like a big old snarlin’ bulldog.”
Rory showed Zeke the reworked sketches, and he suggested a couple of other changes. They were both so engrossed in what they were doing that they were startled when the kitchen phone rang.
“Thanks, that’s a great help,” Rory said as she reached for the phone.
Zeke gave her a nod and a quick salute of good-bye and disappeared to do whatever ghosts did when they weren’t hobnobbing with mortals.
Rory was pleasantly surprised to find Leah on the other end of the line. They hadn’t seen much of each other at work, since Leah had been helping out in a narcotics investigation.
“Do you think maybe we could meet for breakfast tomorrow?” Leah asked. “It feels like forever since we’ve gotten together outside of work.”
Rory agreed. She’d been so caught up in settling Mac’s affairs, moving into his house, taking on Jeremy’s case, not to mention learning to live with a ghost, that she’d left her friendship with Leah on a back burner. But there was something in her friend’s voice that didn’t quite match the lighthearted tenor of her words.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You don’t sound right.”
Leah didn’t try to make excuses. “Well, I do need to talk to you about something, but I’d rather wait until I see you tomorrow.”
“Oh, come on now. Are you really going to make me wait?” Rory complained with a laugh.
Leah wouldn’t be swayed, and she wasn’t laughing. “It’ll keep till then.”
“Yes, but will I?”
“I guess we’re going to find out.”
Chapter 21
T
he diner was noisy, crowded with Saturday morning families of squirming children and work-weary parents. Leah was ensconced in a booth, drinking coffee when Rory arrived. Although Rory was hungrier for information than she was for food, she managed to wait until they’d given the waitress their order before she until they’d given the waitress their order before she demanded satisfaction.
“Okay, what’s so important that you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”
Leah took another sip of her coffee before setting the cup down. “I got an interesting call right before I left work yesterday.”
“And?”
“You tell me. What kind of mischief have you been up to, my friend?”
“Do I get to know who’s accusing me of mischief?” Rory forced a laugh even as her pulse shifted into overdrive. It was a good bet that her little foray into private investigation was no longer as private as she’d hoped to keep it. Her goose might be well and truly cooked.
“The caller was a woman, or a man with a convincing falsetto, but she wasn’t willing to identify herself. I was hoping you could tell me.”
A woman—Rory ran through possible candidates in her mind. “Maybe if you told me what she said it would help narrow down the field a little.”
“Well, she said she thought it was against our policy for cops to moonlight.”
Rory made sure she didn’t look away under Leah’s scrutiny. “That was it?”
“No, she told me you were working as a private investigator. And that you were harassing people. She wasn’t at all happy about it. In fact, she said that her next phone call would be to the captain. Ring any bells yet?”
There were enough bells peeling to make Rory’s head feel like a virtual belfry. The leading contenders were Casey Landis and Elaine Stein, but there was always the possibility that some lesser player was the snitch. The more immediate question, though, was whether she was going to tell Leah the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or something that would temporarily blind her radar.
The waitress arrived with their breakfast. She set the plates in front of them and refilled their coffee cups. While Leah dug right into her egg white omelet, Rory made a production of pouring just the right amount of maple syrup onto her waffle and adding more sweetener and cream to her coffee. When she couldn’t reasonably delay any longer, she put down her spoon and looked her friend in the eye.
“I’m not moonlighting,” she said. “I’ve just been checking into things for someone, as a favor. No money has exchanged hands and none will. I’m not in anyone’s employ.”
Leah listened and nodded. “Okay, it sounds as if you’ve covered your ass with regard to the exact letter of your contract, if not the spirit of it. But the problem is that you’ve apparently been stepping on toes.” Leah leaned across the table so that she could emphasize her point without shouting over the general hubbub. “If you’re so sure that what you’re doing is not out-of-bounds, why haven’t you ever mentioned it to me?”
Rory suppressed the urge to squirm in her seat. “Because I didn’t want to stick you with the moral dilemma of trying to protect a friend but feeling that you were being disloyal to the job. And I didn’t want you to have to answer to the captain for any perceived lapses in my judgment.”
Leah drew back and forked another wedge of omelet into her mouth. She chewed it as she thought about Rory’s words. “Do any of the parties with injured toes have a legitimate reason to accuse you of harassment?”
“I’ve made every effort to be courteous and considerate,” Rory said, feeling a twinge of guilt. Well she had, at least most of the time.
“Can you put it to rest before you dig yourself into some real deep trouble?”
Rory almost said “yes,” purely as a reflex. There was no point in lying outright to Leah, and there was no way she was going to quit now that she knew that Mac had been murdered. But how could she bring her suspicions to her superiors at headquarters when she didn’t have enough evidence, any evidence for that matter, other than a ghost’s eyewitness account?
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, and I’m sure that when I tell you everything, you’ll understand why and you’ll agree with my decision. For now I need you to trust me. I need you to give me some space and the time to run down some leads. Then I promise you, I swear to you, Leah, I will bring the whole case in and lay it out for you and the captain.”