“Yes, except I checked his vacuum cleaner. And his hand vac. New bags.”
“So what he did, the minute we left, he vacuumed.” She thought of something. “Why’d he leave the screenplay in the crisper?”
“He didn’t think we’d look there.”
“If it was me, I’d get rid of any evidence of it. He’d have to know we’d look in the refrigerator. He’d have to know we’d be thorough this time around.”
“How else do you explain it, then?”
“I don’t know. Did you find any floppy disks?”
“I found a box of them. Didn’t look at them, though. Some of these guys have a program where they can destroy everything on the hard disk if someone unauthorized logs on. No way I’d turn that puppy on.”
Laura concealed her disappointment. “He could hide e-mails on those disks, right?”
“Oh, sure he could.” He straightened up and she heard his knees crack.
Forensics on a computer would take weeks, sometimes months, depending how careful he was in getting rid of any incriminating evidence. Just deleting files wouldn’t protect him for very long. Most of what was on his hard drive would be retrievable through various means, but it would take a long time.
She wondered if they’d finally find CRZYGRL12.
Ted Olsen stroked the beard lying on his chest as if it were a pet ferret. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “The mustache made a big difference.”
The owner of Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Show and Emporium squinted again at the row of six photographs on the table in the conference room at the Bisbee Police Department. He wore a polyester short- sleeved shirt, so thin Laura could see the individual hairs on his back. She noticed his odor, a peculiar combination of chicken soup and pencil shavings.
Buddy Holland alternated between leaning over him and pacing the small cubicle. “You sure?” he asked now. “Do you know any of these men?”
“That’s Chuck Lehman.”
“Think about what he’d look like if he had a mustache.”
Trying to influence the witness.
But Ted Olsen wouldn’t be influenced. His shifted onto one buttock and removed a snot-caked handkerchief from his back pocket, blew his nose. Leaned back and looked. Leaned forward so his eye was close to the photo. Leaned back again and scratched an armpit.
Milking it for all it was worth.
Finally he shook his head. “It could be Chuck. But I can’t tell without the mustache. He has blue eyes,” he added helpfully.
“What about his voice. Did his voice sound like Chuck’s?” Buddy asked.
Laura shot him a warning look, but he ignored her.
Olsen considered this, but finally shook his head. “I’m not sure, and I can’t put a man in jeopardy if I’m not sure.”
“I think we’re done here,” Laura said wearily.
She was surprised at the virulence in the gaze Buddy shot her. He reached down and swept up the photos.
“Thank you for your help, sir,” Laura said.
He looked up at her. “Sorry I couldn’t help.”
“You did the right thing. If you could give me your opinion on these.” She showed him photographs of the dress Jessica Parris had worn in death. “What about this dress? Do you recognize the pattern?”
He stroked his beard, then clasped his hands over his stomach. “Looks familiar … I never made that one.”
“Why not?” asked Buddy.
“Because I don’t like the sleeves. Too puffy.”
“But you’ve seen something like this before?”
“It could be in the catalog. Online.”
“And that would be?”
He marked them off on his fingers. “Inspirational Woman, Satin and Lace, Lynette’s Originals, Darcy’s Dress Shoppe …”
Laura wrote them down. “Must be a popular style.”
“It’s kind of alternative clothing, you know? The stuff girls wear today—kids in thongs, those midriff blouses.”
“You don’t like that kind of thing?” asked Laura.
“Nope. I should have been born in a different era. When women didn’t show everything they had.”
As Laura headed back to Tucson later in the day, she replayed her interview with Ted Olsen. After agreeing with him on the sad state of teenagers today and their lack of modesty, she’d eased into specific questions about his actions on the evening Jessica Parris disappeared. If he recognized that the thrust of the interview had changed, Laura didn’t see any evidence of it. He answered her questions innocently and with painstaking thoroughness, supplying the name of at least one person, a local woman, who had been to his shop that
