Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned (19 page)

Nineteen

Farabee grew still. His face might as well have turned to concrete for all the better Pete could read it. He kept his gaze on Farabee and closed the distance between them until they were nose-to-nose. “Thanks for your help,” Pete told the troopers. “I’ve got it from here.”

They nodded and left Pete, Holt, and Zoe alone on the porch.

“Zoe,” Pete said, “you can go, too.”

“Not on your life.”

He figured as much. Without acknowledging her smartass retort, he honed in on Farabee, close enough to feel the man’s breath. Close enough to smell his nervous sweat. “You and I are going down to the station to have a little talk. You have the right to remain silent—”

The door at the far end of the porch crashed open, interrupting the Miranda warning. Wayne Baronick, a brown evidence bag in his gloved hand charged toward them. “Good. You’re still here. You’re gonna want to see this.”

Pete took a step back from his murder suspect. “What have you got?”

Baronick opened the bag. “The boys found something besides a dead body in the potato bin.” He reached into the bag and removed a black ball cap.

A black ball cap with a blue UK stitched on it. Just like the one Farabee’s daughter had been wearing on Saturday.

Pete closed in on Farabee, whose stone-faced façade had started to crack. “Do you recognize that hat?”

Farabee’s eyes had widened, locked on the hat. Pete could almost hear the whir of the man’s mind processing his predicament. Farabee opened his mouth.

From behind him, Zoe cleared her throat. “You were about to Mirandize him, weren’t you?”

Damn.

She continued where Pete had left off. “Anything you say can and will be used against you.”

“Zoe,” Pete warned.

“So shut up.”

Farabee gave a barely discernible nod. “I think I will.”

Pete resisted the urge to snarl at Zoe.
Stop helping
. Instead he shrugged. “Fine.” There would be plenty of time to get the truth. Baronick dropped the cap back into the evidence bag while Pete unclipped a pair of handcuffs from his duty belt. “Holt Farabee, you’re under arrest for the murder of Stephen Tierney.”

Farabee made no effort to resist, but as Pete closed the cuffs on the man’s wrists, he turned his head toward Zoe. “Maddie.”

“Mrs. Kroll and I’ll take care of her. I’ll call Mr. Imperatore, too.”

“Not Mrs. Kroll. You. I need
you
to protect her. Don’t let her out of your sight.” Farabee’s voice sounded strangled. “Promise me. Don’t let anything happen to my little girl.”

Zoe watched Pete and Holt from the bank of windows on the back porch. Pete put Holt in the Explorer’s backseat, climbed behind the wheel, and drove away. Downstairs, Franklin Marshall and the Monongahela County Crime Scene Unit along with Wayne and his county detectives processed her basement. Unless they’d removed Stephen Tierney’s body through the outside doors, he was still down there, too. The assorted police jurisdictions remained on the premises, some talking among themselves outside, some moving in and out of her side of the house. Yet the commotion all around seemed muffled by the noise inside her mind.

Protect Maddie.

Holt didn’t say watch. Or keep an eye on her. He said
protect
.

Why did that word stick inside Zoe’s head like a burr to her jeans after a ride through the brush?

Then there was the ball cap. She’d seen him wear it a number of times since he’d moved in. But when was the last time? When he’d argued with Tierney on Friday. After that she had no way of knowing. She’d been on duty. What on earth had happened here while she’d been out trying to save lives?

She turned away from the window to fix her gaze on the closed door to Mrs. Kroll’s kitchen. Behind it waited the landlady and Nate. And Maddie. What was she supposed to say to Maddie?
Your dad’s been arrested for murder. But everything will be okay because he didn’t do it
.

Or had he?

Had Zoe invited a killer into her home? Hers and the Krolls’. Had she not only put herself in danger, but that sweet old woman as well? Had Zoe been blinded by her need to shelter Maddie? Had she refused to consider Holt’s guilt because he happened to be good-looking?

Handsome men had blinded her to their fatal flaws in the past, too. It was a weakness. One Pete had pointed out. Zoe pressed her hands to her face, massaging her forehead and covering her eyes as if that would block out the images of all her mistakes. Right now she had to check on Maddie and call the attorney for Holt.

Protect Maddie.

From what?

“You can’t be serious.” Anthony Imperatore thumped his briefcase down on Pete’s desk after the attorney’s meeting with Farabee.

Pete leaned back in his chair. “Can’t I? Your client’s personal belongings keep popping up at crime scenes. Did he give you a viable explanation?”

Imperatore gave him a tight smile. “You know any discussion I have with Mr. Farabee is subject to attorney/client privilege. Besides, he doesn’t have to. The burden’s on you and the DA to prove guilt. And if all you have is a Kentucky Wildcats ball cap and a promotional lighter, your case is a tad malnourished.”

Imperatore was right, unfortunately. For now. “I have a few questions for him, which might help me fatten it up a bit.”

The attorney sniffed. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I’ve told Mr. Farabee he shouldn’t speak to you at all, but he says he wants to clear his name.” Imperatore jerked his head toward the door.

Pete pushed up from his seat and led the way down the hall to the interrogation room.

Farabee sat motionless, his hands folded on the table. Imperatore took the empty chair next to his client. Pete lowered into the one across from them. For a long moment, he studied Farabee, his clenched jaw, his eyes glazed.

Pete had sat across this table or others just like it more times than he could count. He’d seen cocky criminals convinced they were too smart to get tripped up by a stupid cop. He’d seen suspects who were clearly innocent and those who clearly were not, but tried to act that way. He’d even encountered a few with unreadable faces, stoic as statues.

Farabee didn’t fit any of those categories. He seemed to be shooting for impassive, but there was a hurricane of activity below the surface of his eyes. If Pete had to make a guess, he’d say the man was scared out of his wits.

Pete turned on the recorder between them and made his routine statement of who was in the room and confirming Farabee had been read his rights.

With the preliminaries out of the way, Pete sat back. “How long have you known Stephen Tierney?”

It was a simple question, but long seconds ticked off before Farabee answered. “Four, maybe five years.”

“He was your neighbor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know him before you moved to Scenic Hilltop Estates?”

“No.”

“Did your wife know him before you moved to Scenic Hilltop Estates?”

“No,” Farabee said tersely, his eyes darkening.

Farabee’s reaction confirmed Pete’s suspicion. The topic of Stephen Tierney and Lillian Farabee was clearly a trigger. “Would you say you were friends with him?”

“Friends?” Farabee’s voice deepened. “No.”

“How would you classify your relationship with him?”

Farabee fixed Pete with an unwavering glare. “Neighbors.”

“How did your wife get along with Mr. Tierney?”

Farabee’s folded hands tightened, his knuckles turning a mottled crimson and white.

“Don’t answer that,” Imperatore said.

The hands relaxed.

“All right.” Pete turned a page in his notebook. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Tierney?”

One of Farabee’s fingers started tapping the opposite knuckle. “I’m not sure of the exact date. Before the fire.”

“Had you talked to him since you moved back in?”

“Talked to him? No. I saw him coming and going is all.”

Interesting. Pete wished like hell he could have asked Tierney a few questions before someone shut him up permanently. “Can you explain how your ball cap ended up with Mr. Tierney’s dead body?”

Farabee’s hands remained relaxed, and he opened his mouth to reply, but Imperatore touched his arm. “Now, Chief. We don’t even know for certain the hat belonged to my client.”

Pete eyed Farabee.

All three men knew the hat belonged to him. But Imperatore had been right earlier. It wasn’t enough.

A knock at the interrogation room door distracted Pete from contemplating his next question. He pocketed his notebook and clicked off the recorder. “Excuse me for a moment.”

He opened the door to Baronick, who motioned him into the hall.

“What?” Pete snapped.

“Thought you’d like an update. The coroner is transporting the body to Brunswick and will do the autopsy either tonight or tomorrow, depending on when he can get Doc Abercrombie to come in.”

“That’s it?”

“Not entirely. I pressed him for a guess about how long Tierney’s been dead. Marshall says since the decomp is so far along, he’d clearly been dead several days to a week. Maybe even a little longer.”

Typical Franklin Marshall. Never one to give clear cut information prematurely. “Anything else?”

“The Crime Scene Unit and my detectives are still there picking through the basement. I asked Zoe if we could search the house.”

Pete battled a grin. “I have a pretty good idea of her reply.”

Baronick huffed.

“Actually it was pretty tame. The little girl was in the room. So unless we come up with probable cause for a search warrant, we aren’t getting access beyond the basement.”

“I doubt we’d find anything anyway.”

Baronick tipped his head toward the interrogation room. “You getting anything useful?”

“Not with his attorney sitting next to him.”

“At least we have his ball cap.”

“Imperatore has pointed out we don’t know for certain it belongs to Farabee.”

Baronick snorted. “Who else around here went to the University of Kentucky? We can test it for DNA if need be.”

Pete breathed a soft growl. “Yeah.” If need be.

The detective narrowed his eyes. “I know that look. What’s wrong? You know we’ve got our man.”

Did they?

Pete wasn’t so sure anymore.

The coroner’s van had pulled out, signaling to Zoe that Stephen Tierney’s body no longer occupied the potato bin. Nate Williamson and most of the police and news media vehicles had also vacated the premises. However, the crime scene truck and a pair of unmarked sedans belonging to the county detectives remained parked behind the house. Footsteps and sounds of scuffling still floated up from the basement.

Zoe found Maddie curled up with a book on the couch in the parlor. “How are you doing?”

The girl looked up, her eyes red and weepy. “When’s my dad coming back?”

Zoe wished she knew. She searched for words that wouldn’t offer false hope, but wouldn’t scare the child either.

Before Zoe could come up with a suitable answer, Maddie must have seen it in her eyes. “I don’t want to sleep in our room all by myself. Can I stay with you?”

Holt’s words echoed in Zoe’s head.
You. I need
you
to protect her. Don’t let her out of your sight.

“Absolutely. If your dad isn’t home before bedtime, we’ll just move your bed across the hall into my room.”

Maddie seemed appeased. She lowered her eyes to her book.

But Zoe suspected the girl didn’t comprehend a word of it. “Hey, why don’t we go out to the barn? We can saddle up George and Windstar and go for a little ride.”

Maddie drew her puckered mouth to one side of her face, contemplating. “No, thanks. I don’t feel like it.”

In Zoe’s experience, it was never good when a girl turned down a chance to go riding. If equine therapy wasn’t going to work, maybe feline therapy would. “Then can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Merlin and Jade are locked in my office because of all the hubbub. I want to move them upstairs and put them in the bathroom instead. You know. In case one of those guys opens the office door.”

“You don’t want your cats getting out. They might run away.”

“Exactly.”

Maddie placed her bookmark and closed the book. “Okay.”

Zoe dug her key from her pocket and motioned for Maddie to follow.

They crossed the wide center hallway, Zoe unlocked the door at the base of the front staircase, and they stepped into her office. Jade stood there as if she’d been waiting for them, her tail twitching. Merlin gazed at them from the sunny windowsill next to the fireplace.

Zoe scooped up Jade and deposited her into Maddie’s eager arms. Then Zoe squeezed around her recliner to retrieve Merlin from his sunspot. Cats in hand, they returned to the hall and climbed the main staircase, slipping into Zoe’s bedroom at the top.

With the felines contained securely in the bathroom, Maddie hopped onto Zoe’s bed. “I like your room.”

“Thanks.” She took a seat next to the girl. “Everything’s going to be all right, you know. Mr. Imperatore will bring your dad back as soon as Pete’s done talking to him. They might even be on their way now. Or it may take until tomorrow morning.”

Maddie scowled at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. “I don’t know.” She looked up at Zoe. “The police think my dad killed Mr. Tierney, don’t they?”

A knot formed in Zoe’s throat. “They’re just trying to find the truth. It might take a little while to sort it out, but they’ll figure out who really did it.”

A troubled line creased Maddie’s smooth forehead. “That’s what I’m afraid of. What if my dad
did
do it?”