Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

20.

“She didn’t do it.” Leda told Grady excitedly on the way back to the car.

“Why do you think she’s innocent? And what was with your little moment back there, with the questions about those other companies? Did you flash on something?”

Leda grinned widely and leaned back to steady herself against the incline, as they staggered together down the hill. “Not a flash exactly—more like a hunch. But now we know what the connection is between Tod’s murder and the Gilman murders!”

“Wait, we do?”

Smugly, she declared, “Probable Outcomes.”

He snapped his fingers. “Yes! That’s why the company name sounded familiar. You had it somewhere on your murder board.” He was getting excited now, too. “I feel stupid for forgetting it.”

“It’s okay! It’s a crowded murder board, and there’s no way you could remember everything on there. And I know that Kim Cowen didn’t do it because she was head-over-heels in love with Kevin Gilman. Did you see the look in her eyes every time she said his name?”

“I did notice that, yes. But true love isn’t much cover for a murder motive. Claiming to have been in love with a victim is kind of a classic excuse.”

“Is it?” Leda asked.

“Yes.” He stopped to wait for a light to let him cross. Leda stopped beside him. “Just because she had the hots for one of the victims, that doesn’t mean she didn’t kill them. If we’re operating from the theory that Kevin was merely caught up in the violence, then it could’ve been anyone—even someone who was not-so-quietly in love with him. She could’ve killed Christopher and then panicked when Kevin caught her in the act.”

The crosswalk light gave the all clear. Leda stepped onto the street first, letting Grady trail along behind her for once. “That’s true, but that’s not what happened. My psychic senses are tingling.” She glanced back at him, making sure he was keeping up.

“Are they tingling about somebody named Scott? And if not, what was that about?”

“Yes. There’s definitely a Scott involved.”

When they got to the car, Grady unlocked it from the driver’s side and Leda let herself into the passenger seat. “You think Scott’s our killer?” he asked.

“No clue. Or rather, it’s not a very good clue, but it’s the one I’ve got. Now what happens next? Who do we talk to now? Did any random Scotts turn up in your investigation?”

He was quiet until they’d pulled into traffic. They’d almost made it to the interstate on-ramp when he said, “None spring readily to mind. I can get into the corporate records in storage at the precinct; some of that stuff was seized as evidence at the time, and our mystery Scott might turn up there.”

“What about the IRS?”

“That was just a guess. The IRS won’t give us the paperwork without a lot of hoop-jumping. No, Janette is more likely to have that stuff… and she probably doesn’t. The odds are better than zero that it’s all been shredded except for the tax-related financials and whatever we have downtown, and I don’t know if that’ll be enough to tell us anything. We’ve already gone over all of it with a fine-tooth comb—and at one point we used a real forensic accountant,” he added. “We already knew about the accounts in the Cayman Islands, and we already knew that someone was helping themselves to the corporate coffers. It might be new information to you, but we knew most of this already. I mean, we-the-police. Not we-you-and-me. I hate to say it, but this was not the world’s most productive interview.”

“Except for Scott,” Leda persisted.

“If you say so. It’s a common male name, both first and last. But it hasn’t appeared anywhere that I can think of, anywhere connected to this case—or to the case of your late fiancé,” he added before she could chime in. “If it was, you would’ve said so by now.”

Leda folded her arms and sulked.

Exasperated, he added, “I’m not saying it’s nothing. I’m just saying that I don’t know what to do with it. What if I found you some more stuff to touch? Do you think that would help?”

Leda was in a full-on funk when she said, “No.”

Grady’s phone rang. He glanced down and said, “Oh shit. Hey, do me a favor, would you? Pretend you’re not here.”

“Why? Who is it?”

He pointed to the dashboard, where she saw the words SPD DISPATCH scrolling along the radio display. “It’s work. This is Bluetooth. Please don’t make a sound, because I don’t want to make any explanations right now. I’m asking you as a friend and colleague and a person who doesn’t want to lose his job because he has a kid and a dog to feed. Okay?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll zip it.”

He pressed a button on the steering wheel. “Detective Merritt speaking.”

A woman’s voice came through his car’s speakers. “Grady, I know you’re not on duty right now, but your presence has been requested at a crime scene.”

“I’m sorry, come again?” he asked.

The dispatcher cleared her throat. “There’s been a break-in at the Beckmeyer residence, and Richard has asked for you, specifically. That’s all I know. Do you need the address?”

“Holy shit. No, I’ve got it,” he said, jerking his car toward the nearest exit. “Tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Is everyone all right?”

“His wife took a knock on the head, and it sounds like maybe there was a fire—but I don’t think there are any serious injuries.”

“Thanks, Lucy,” he said to her. “I appreciate you.”

“Even when no one else does, Merritt. Go save the day.”

He pressed another button, and the radio came back on. “Richard’s house is on the way back to your part of town. Can you behave yourself at a fresh crime scene, where crime is still being actively investigated?”

If anything, the idea perked Leda right back up again. “I’m looking forward to doing so, yes. Do you think it’s related to our case?” she asked, eagerly clutching her purse. She dived down into it, in search of her cell phone. When she found it, she whipped it out.

“I don’t know yet, but maybe Richard does. I can’t imagine why else he’d ask for me.” He glanced over at Leda, who had unlocked her phone and started texting. “What… what are you doing? Are you texting Niki?”

“No. Yes. Okay, of course I am. But she texted me, first.”

“Do not summon her to this crime scene,” Grady commanded.

“I wasn’t going to. I forget the address anyway. I’m just keeping her in the loop.”

“Why does she need to be in the loop. Why.” He did not so much ask as complain.

Leda kept on typing and didn’t look up. “She’s my best friend, and I tell her everything. Don’t you have a best friend?”

“Not exactly.”

“But you’ve had one in the past, yes? And you understand the impulse to share absolutely everything, absolutely all the time?”

Grady shook his head slowly, then stopped to read some road signs and adjust his course. He turned a hard left that took him over the interstate and into the edges of fancy-pants suburbia. “Guy best friends and girl best friends must be different. Or maybe you two are just…” He zipped through a yellow light. “Creepily codependent.”

“We are comfortable in our codependency, if that’s what it is.” Leda texted another line or two and waited while a bubble with ellipses appeared to show that Niki was responding.

“Whatever makes you happy.”

“Now you’re talking.” The bubble made a zoosh noise as it filled with text in Leda’s phone. “Ooh, she’s at the aquarium with Matt.”

“In a plastic boot?” he asked.

“He was threatening to get her one of those scooter things. Maybe he did, I don’t know. I just hope the silver fox is all right.”

Grady pulled out into an intersection and waited to make a left. “It sounds like he’s fine. We’ll be there in a minute, and you can ask him yourself. Wait.” He stopped himself almost immediately. “Don’t do that. Don’t ask him anything. Actually, don’t talk at all, unless someone talks to you first. If that happens, say as little as possible.”

“I’m not a child, you know.”

“This will be different.” He squeezed the steering wheel. “This is an active crime scene. If I even think you’re about to get underfoot, you will be banished to the car.”

“I get it, I get it. I’ll stay quiet.”

He muttered, “I don’t believe you, and I know I’m going to regret this.”

Ten minutes later, they pulled up to the tasteful, posh craftsman home—which was now crawling with uniformed police officers. The cops were joined by a fire truck, which took up most of the parking area, so Grady parked his car on the street almost two blocks away. It was the best he could do.

“All right, come on,” he said, leaving the car and slamming its door.

“Right behind you.” Leda hustled to catch up. The detective’s legs were longer than hers, and he was striding with a purpose.

Quietly, and over his shoulder, he told her, “Stay close to me.”

Up the sidewalk they went, past uniformed cops and a firefighter or two. They were rolling their hoses and milling around the truck, talking into radios and generally packing up. Whatever fire emergency had occurred was under control now.

The cop at the front door gave Grady a head nod and Leda a perplexed look.

She stood up straight and followed behind him like she belonged there and wasn’t merely along for the ride. The cop didn’t stop her. Neither did the other two who lingered in the parlor, or the one in the living room—where Richard Beckmeyer and his wife sat side by side on the couch. Richard rose to his feet when he saw Grady.

“Detective! Thank you so much for coming, and hello again, Ms. Foley.” He shook their hands warmly and gestured down at his wife. “This is my wife, Sheila. She was home when the break-in occurred, and as you can see, the maniac tried to kill her!”

“He didn’t try to kill me,” she protested. Sheila was seated on the couch, her head and forearm bandaged, and a bruise on the side of her face—near her left eye. “Or I don’t know, maybe he did. I wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when he tried to set fire to the office. I suppose the house could’ve burned down around me.”

Grady said, “Manslaughter, not murder. The results would be the same for you, though. I’m glad you’re all right, ma’am.”

“Thank you dear, I’ll survive just fine. I think I’ll have a black eye tomorrow…” She patted at the bruise. “But all in all, it could’ve been much worse.” She was a pretty woman, well into her sixties, with a silver bob that had taken a beating from the afternoon’s invasion. Even so, she sat with poise and spoke calmly, like someone accustomed to being listened to.

Leda sat down beside her in a show of solidarity, and Grady took the chair opposite them. Richard sat down, too, and Grady pulled out his ever-present notebook.

“Mrs. Beckmeyer, I’m sure you’ve already given a statement—maybe several times over—but can you tell me what happened? There was a break-in, I understand.”

She nodded firmly, then clutched the side of her head as if she wished she hadn’t. “Richard was at the grocery store, and I was home alone. Out back, in the yard,” she specified. “It’s a nice enough day—and dry enough, too—so I was tidying the garden, getting ready to close it all down for the season. There’s not much to pick, not anymore. Mostly just the squash.”

Richard nodded, a tired look in his eyes. “There’s been a lot of squash.”

“I’ll plant less next year. This year, I was trying something new,” Sheila said—mostly to Leda, since Leda was sitting so close and listening so quietly. “But I was out back, tending the garden, and I heard the sound of glass breaking. It was somewhere in the house. At first I thought it might be the neighbor’s cat again.”

Her husband said, “Princess Pookie?”

“Well, why not? He’s gotten inside our house three times in the last month. He likes your office, that’s what it is. He likes to sleep on your chair.”

Leda asked, “Princess Pookie is a boy?”

Sheila grinned. “As we all learned, when he knocked up Mr. Wiggles last year. Now they’re both fixed, but our neighbor lets dear Pookie come and go… so he comes. And he goes. Anyway, he’s never broken anything before—he just sneaks in through the nearest open window and makes himself at home. I don’t mean to complain. I’ve become quite fond of him, honestly.”

Grady waved his pen in a little motion that said he’d like to get back on track. “So you thought it was a cat, and it wasn’t a cat.”

“Correct,” Sheila said confidently. “I knew Richard wasn’t home, and I didn’t expect him back. You have no idea how long he can dicker around in a Whole Foods, and he’d only just left the house. So my first thought was the cat. I didn’t want him to cut his little feet or anything, so I put down my gardening and headed inside.”

“With the spade. You forgot to put down your spade,” Richard reminded her.

“That’s right,” she added. “I was holding my spade. I came in through the back door, over there.” She gestured. “And I saw a person dart across the hallway, toward my office.”

Grady got ready to write. “A person. Can you be more specific?”

“I only saw them for an instant, and from the back. I think it was a white person, wearing dark clothes. Either a hat, or dark hair. But I wouldn’t even swear that it was a man, or a woman. It was someone a little bigger than me, I think? Let’s say it was a young man, for the sake of argument.”

“And right-handed,” Leda guessed.

Sheila said, “I’m sorry, come again?”

“The bruising… it’s all on the left side of your face and head. Isn’t it?”

“Oh, I see why you’d think that, yes.”

Grady noted, “Unless they hit her from behind.”

“He came at me from the side,” she clarified. “He was hiding around the door when I poked my head in. All I saw was a flash of something dark—his arm, I think? I don’t know—and then I saw stars.” Her voice went thoughtful as she reached for any lingering extra detail that she’d missed so far. “I swung at him, out of pure reflex, just before I fell. I hit him with the spade, on the shoulder or neck. I don’t know if I hurt him or not. I didn’t see any blood.”

Grady was looking down the hall. He could see it over his shoulder. “Your office, that’s the second door on the left, correct?”

“Yes, and Richard’s is the one across the hall, on the other side.”

Grady’s head bobbed as he scrawled in his book. “Then what?”

“Then I was on the floor for a few seconds, maybe? The person stepped over me at some point. I was dazed, but not entirely out of it—and I was afraid to move or open my eyes. I just heard shoes very close to my head. I don’t know how much time passed exactly, but after a bit, I smelled smoke. I stayed there for a few seconds, wondering if I was right—wondering if I was having a stroke. You’re supposed to smell burnt toast, isn’t that right?”

The detective shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“After I smelled smoke, I heard fire. That faint crackling noise, very nearby. That got me up and moving, I tell you what. I got to my feet, and I started walking.”

Leda craned her neck. Down the corridor’s walls, she saw dirt-smeared handprints. Sheila had struggled to hold herself upright. A flash threatened to ping in Leda’s head, but it was too distant, too faint. It wouldn’t tell her anything.

“The fire was in Richard’s office, and the fire extinguisher was in the kitchen—so I closed the office door thinking… thinking that would contain it? I’m not sure. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I went to the kitchen, got the extinguisher, and opened the door again. The flames were all over his desk, his filing cabinets. I think someone threw lighter fluid all over them, that’s what it seemed like.”

A passing uniformed officer paused on her way through the living room and said, “You can still smell it in there. The intruder definitely used an accelerant. They just didn’t do a very good job of it.” Then she walked away.

Grady pointed his pen at her. “Good to know. I’ll follow up, once the report is finished. Please, continue, Mrs. Beckmeyer.”

“Well, I emptied the fire extinguisher, and it helped—but didn’t finish the fire off. Finally, I came to my senses and grabbed my phone to call nine-one-one. I was still on the phone with the dispatcher when the fire truck appeared. Apparently a neighbor saw the smoke and called before I did. I’m very grateful. They were so prompt. They absolutely saved the house.”

And maybe her, too, Leda thought. The sirens chased him off before he could do her any further harm. That’s what the flash was saying. A fire burning in the office. A woman lying on the floor, half in the hallway. Mostly unconscious but moaning softly. A figure ransacking the rest of the house, hunting for something. Abruptly, Leda asked, “Do you think the burglar stuck around, or did he take off right away?”

“I honestly couldn’t say. I opened the door for the firefighters, so they didn’t have to smash their way inside. I staggered out onto the porch and… you know what? Now that I think about it,” Sheila said, squeezing Leda’s hand. “I was sitting on the porch swing, stunned and trying to stay out of the way—and I heard something moving through the shrubbery over there.” She pointed past the front door and off to the right. “At the time I thought it sounded too big to be the cat. I think it was the intruder, sneaking away from the scene. You should tell somebody,” she said to Grady. “I didn’t think of it until just now—when she said something. Yes, there was still someone outside, right up until the truck came…” Her voice trailed away, and she gazed toward the porch and past it.

Leda worked to keep herself from looking too smug.

Grady jotted more notes. “I’ll grab the crime scene folks when they’re finished with the office. We can look for footprints, take fingerprints, and see if the creep got careless and left anything behind. Thank you, Ms. Foley,” he said, with a note that told her he hoped he’d heard the last from her until they could debrief later, in the car.

She gave him a look back, and she hoped that it adequately conveyed her commitment to doing what she was told, at least for the next few minutes.

But then Richard said something that gave her pause.

“I’m just glad the damage wasn’t any worse. There’s nothing too precious in my office—just old files. If the intruder took anything, I couldn’t tell you what it is. We’ve already checked the jewelry, the safe, and… and what else is there that’s worth any money in the house?” He looked to his wife. “Maybe the baby grand piano? But it seems to be unscathed. We got off easy. Of course, the burglar might do the same, and get off scot-free himself. I realize that these crimes aren’t always solved quickly, or at all.”

Leda jumped like she’d been shocked. “I’m sorry, a piano?” Then she mumbled, “Scot-free.”

Grady froze. This wasn’t the way it usually went, and he was clearly concerned—for the case, for the victims, and maybe even for Leda. “Ms. Foley, are you all right?”

“Scot-free,” she said again. “And the piano.”

“Those are… two different sets of words, Ms. Foley,” he said carefully. “Do they have something in common?”

“I’m sorry, excuse me.” She left the couch and went outside to the porch. She sat down in the swing and wished for a paper bag to breathe into—but lacking one, she timed each breath slowly, to the push of her foot and to the sway of the swing, until she could get her head right again.

Grady emerged a few minutes later. He sat beside her and asked quietly, “Are you okay? Seriously.”

“Seriously, yes. There’s something, though. A connection I’m not seeing. My…” She stopped herself from saying “psychic powers” just in time to keep a couple of firefighters from hearing. “My Spider-Sense is tingling like a mofo. It feels like I’m forgetting something, but that’s not what it is. I’m missing something.”

“I believe you. And I trust you, mostly. But let’s get out from underfoot here. I’ve talked to the crime scene lead, and she’s going to check the side of the house for prints.”

“He was wearing gloves,” she told him.

“He? Definitely a he?”

She hesitated. “No, not definitely a he. But my gut says it’s a he. I’m going to keep calling him a he,” she said with finality. “He’s the killer, Grady. I’ve never been so sure of anything else, not in my whole life. He came here to… to… destroy evidence.”

“Of what?” Grady asked.

She saw columns of numbers, tables of information, manila folders being opened and discarded. “Businessy stuff. I don’t know for sure, but he was going through the filing cabinets, drawers, everything, looking for anything that would point back to him.” Another flash, weaker this time. “He wasn’t even sure he would find anything. Something happened recently, something that made him worry that there might be something left, something to point a finger at him… for… for murdering everybody.”

“Everybody?”

“The Gilmans,” she said. “Christopher the dick, and Kevin the beloved. And Amanda Crombie. And…” She took a deep breath. “Tod.”