The door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it open.
'Tom? Are you here?'
She froze at the scene in front of her. Papers covered every surface. The file cabinet drawers had all been pulled open, and as a result it had tipped forward. The table was on its side. Books had been pulled from the shelves and lay face-down open on the floor. Paper clips and rubber bands were strewn among the papers, and the wastebasket that had held the shredding had been dumped and the contents spread across the carpet.
'Geez Louise,” Harriet whispered, but whatever else she might have said was cut off by a strong arm wrapping around her neck from behind.
Pulled backward into someone larger and stronger, she kicked backward hard, connecting with a shin. When the arm loosened slightly, she dropped to the floor and rolled forward, coming to back to her feet in one motion to find herself face-to-face with Tom Bainbridge. At least they would have been face-to-face except that he was hunched over rubbing his shin.
'I think you broke my leg,” he gasped.
'Why did you grab me?” she demanded, and stepped forward, righting a chair for him to sit on.
'Stay back,” he ordered, and pulled the chair toward him. He sat down and pulled his cell phone from his pocket and started to dial.
'Who are you calling?'
'The police-who do you think?'
'Wait. You don't think I did this, do you?” Her face was hot.
'I've been patient with your snooping. I really have. But this is too much. I don't know who you think you are or what you think you're doing, but you've crossed the line here.'
Harriet grabbed for the phone, but he stretched his arm out, holding it as far behind him as he could.
'Look,” she said, and pulled the pink note from her pocket. “You asked me to meet you here.” Anger blazed in her eyes. “I came because you asked me to. The door was open, so I came in and this is what I found.” She gestured to indicate the chaos.
'I didn't ask you to meet me here. I got a text message that you had information about my mother and to meet you here.'
'Let me see the message.'
He pulled back his arm and pressed keys to bring up the message screen.
'That's not my phone number,” she said. She pulled her own phone out of her pocket and quickly pushed the buttons to display her number. “Look.” She held it out. “I've never seen that number.'
'Okay, now I really am calling the police.” He dialed nine-one-one and quickly described the situation. “They'll be right here.'
'Sorry about your shin,” she said with a small smile.
He rubbed it. “You have a heck of a kick. Where did you learn that?'
'I used to live in Oakland. With the crime rate there it seemed prudent to take a women's self-defense course.'
'You must have been their top student.'
Harriet shrugged and smiled again.
'Miss Truman,” Detective Ruiz said from the doorway a few minutes later. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Two uniformed officers stepped past him and into the room.
'I don't know,” she said. “Why is a detective responding to a simple break-in?'
'Angel Harbor is a small place,” he countered. “We don't have a lot of crime. And when we have an open homicide investigation, well, we tend to take notice of a lot of things. We also tend to notice when an ordinary citizen keeps inserting herself into our investigation. Ordinary citizens don't do that, so that makes us wonder why this one does.'
Harriet sighed and looked at the ceiling, silently counting to ten. She handed Detective Ruiz the pink note. “Nancy in the office gave me this note. I thought it was legitimate so I came here. The door was open, and the room looked like this.'
'And I got a text message to meet Harriet here,” Tom said. “It turns out it wasn't really from her.'
'So, what's going on here?” Detective Ruiz asked, looking at Tom and then Harriet.
'I wish I knew,” she said.
'I don't understand why anyone would do this to my office,” Tom said. “There's nothing of any value here. I mainly have the correspondence between us and our affiliated schools, and the shipping records of materials we send back and forth. The school's tax records and business incorporation papers and that kind of thing are at my home office. And all the financial transactions take place in the school's main office. It doesn't make any sense.'
'Someone wanted you two here together,” Detective Ruiz speculated. “Perhaps they even timed it so you would think Miss Truman did it.'
Tom gave Harriet a guilty glance.
'Maybe it's a smoke screen,” Harriet offered.
'Yes,” Ruiz concurred. “Your friend Miss Sawyer might be foolish enough to think this would distract us from looking for her.'
Harriet raised her eyebrows, her eyes wide. Would Lauren do this?
'You haven't seen your friend, have you?” the detective asked.
'She was in my room this morning when I came back from my shower,” Harriet said. Her shoulders sagged. She didn't like giving up a friend, even Lauren, but lying to the police wasn't going to help anyone.
'And you didn't think to let us know?'
'It was six o'clock in the morning, and I was meeting someone for coffee. I didn't really think about it. She told me not to bother trying to find her, and frankly, I put it out of my mind.'
'You're so anxious to help us solve this crime. Can't you see that the best way you can help is to tell us everything you know, and when I ask you to let me know if you see someone, call me? Don't go snooping around, don't question people, don't search rooms-just call. Is that clear?'
'Okay,” Harriet said, and a very small part of her meant it.
Detective Ruiz looked around the office. “At least your coffee-shop story provides an alibi of sorts.” He looked back at Harriet. “If it checks out.” He waved his hand to encompass the room. “This took some time.'
'When can I start cleaning it up?” Tom asked.
'Not yet,” Ruiz replied. “We probably aren't going to get anything, but we need to process the scene just in case our perp got careless.” He looked at his watch. “Give us a couple of hours.'
Chapter Twenty-five
Tom walked her back to the Tree House. “I'm going to the business office and call my attorney,” he said. “I'm thinking I need to do something about security here. I don't know what my liability is, but for my own peace of mind I feel like I need to do something. I don't even know where you look for reputable security people-certainly, not anywhere in Angel Harbor.'
'Good luck with that. I'm going to go to the lectures today and try to pretend I'm a regular fiber art student.” She went up the steps onto the porch.
Mavis pulled the door open. She shivered and pulled the two sides of her plaid wool shirt closed, wrapping her arms across her chest.
'Where have you been, young lady?” she demanded. “You weren't here when we got up, and no one knew where you'd gone.'
'I'm sorry. I went to coffee early with Aiden, and when I came back, I got a message to meet Tom at his office. Things went sideways from there.” She described the tossing of Tom's office and the false message that led
