He gave a deep sigh. “Ms. Roberts, you are a pain in my backside. I’ll see you at the hospital.”
“YOU’RE LUCKY ROGER Collins has decided not to press charges for breaking and entering,” Detective Battersea said sternly as he perched on the chair next to my hospital bed.
“I didn’t break,” I said stubbornly. He gave me a look. “Okay, I did break, but it was necessary.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course it was.”
I’d spent the last couple of hours being poked, prodded, and scanned half to death. The doctor determined that I had a concussion and would be fine, but he wanted me in the hospital overnight “for observation.” Which was annoying. The hospital bed was ridiculously uncomfortable, and nurses arrived every five minutes to take my blood pressure and assure themselves I wasn’t dead. How anyone could get any rest was beyond me.
“Have you found the notebook?” I asked, ignoring the detective’s snarky attitude. Not that I blamed him. Much. What I’d done was sort of illegal, and I really could be a pain in the backside. Ask my mother. I’d been annoying her for more than forty years.
“Not a trace of it.”
“That means the person who hit me over the head and took it must be the killer.”
He pressed his fore and middle fingers of each hand to his temples as if his head ached. “That is speculation, Viola. It could have been anyone who took it.”
“But why would ‘anyone’ take the notebook unless it implicated them?”
“A lot of reasons,” he said with exasperation.
“But after the threat...” I bit my tongue.
One eyebrow went up. “What threat?” he bit out.
“Um, well, the other day I was at Roger Collins’s house. I wanted to ask him some questions.” Bat rolled his eyes, and I ignored him. “He wasn’t home, but when I got back to the car, there was a note on it.”
“I don’t suppose you still have the note.” His tone was dry.
“Of course I do. I’m not an idiot. Hand me my purse, will you?” He did, and I dug around in my wallet until I found the note. I handed it to him with an air of triumph.
Bat looked over the note and gave an exasperated sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? This is serious.”
“I realize that. I’m telling you now.”
He tucked the note inside an evidence bag. “I’ll have to turn this in. We’ll do what we can to find out who wrote it, but it’s unlikely we’ll find anything.”
“Fine. Whatever. What do you want to bet the person who put that note on my car is the same person who hit me on the head and stole the journal?”
“It’s impossible to say,” he said. “Do you recall anything that was in the journal?”
I dredged up a memory of the few pages I’d seen. “He kept detailed records from what I could tell. Names and descriptions of the artifacts along with their value, who he’d sold them to, and for how much. That sort of thing. Also how he’d covered up the theft. Faked paperwork mostly, from what I could tell.”
“You remember any of the items or names?”
I rubbed the side of my nose, trying to remember details that were more than a little fuzzy. “I remember that one of the items was a statuette. It had some kind of number alongside the description. Like a serial number or something. He sold it for two hundred fifty dollars, I think.”
Bat leaned back and crossed his ankles. “Any idea who the buyer was?”
I shook my head and winced as pain knifed through my skull. “Ouch. Um, no. Those were in some kind of code, from what it looked like. I’m guessing there was a key somewhere, but if there was, I didn’t see it.”
“Or it was in Nixon’s head.”
“Or that,” I agreed, pulling the blanket up a little higher. I felt vaguely uncomfortable lying around in skimpy hospital garb in front of Bat, despite the fact he didn’t seem to notice.
“You remember the code?”
I scrunched up my forehead, trying to remember the string of letters and numbers. “I don’t remember the entire code, but the first three letters were WTF.”
He gave me a look. “You’re kidding.”
“I am not,” I assured him. “It’s why I can remember.”
“Any idea who that is?”
“None at all. You could ask Roger Collins.”
He nodded and scribbled in his notebook.
“Or Annabelle.”
He glanced up. “The girl in the gift shop?”
“Yep. She also gives tours of the museum. She seems to know a lot more than anyone gives her credit for.” I didn’t bring up my previous conversation with her. I figured he didn’t need to know. “It was the killer, wasn’t it?” I asked, changing the subject. “That was who bashed me over the head.”
He sighed. “I doubt that. Portia is locked up.”
“Portia is not the killer,” I snapped, barely refraining from adding “idiot” to the end of that sentence. Why he insisted on blaming her was beyond me. Okay, so there was the matter of the fingerprints, but still—that could totally be explained by any decent lawyer.
“I’m afraid all the evidence we have points to her. I know she’s your friend, but I have to deal with facts here.” He stood up, as if to leave, when his phone rang. “Battersea. Uh huh. Where? When? Be there in ten.” He shoved his phone back into the holster on his belt. “I have to go. Something’s...come up.”
“Who’s dead?” I asked.
“I never said anyone was dead.”
“You’re the lead detective in a homicide. It stands to reason.”
He gave me a long look. I couldn’t read his expression. He’d have made a great poker player. “A body was discovered down by the marina. Killed sometime last night.”
“Who?”
“Annabelle Smead.”
Chapter 17Sea Lions Don’t Eat People
THERE WAS NO WAY I was lying around the hospital while there was a mystery to solve. The minute Battersea was gone, I managed to hoist myself out of the bed, find my clothes, and get dressed.
