McGuire nodded his approval.
We continued to role-play until it was time to leave for the meeting. McGuire seemed satisfied with Dolores’s performance. I could have told him she was always a fast learner.
“I’ll be waiting for you by the front door of the Sheriff’s Department.” He snapped up the check for our coffees and his tea and stuck a few bills under his saucer for the server. “Take your time. By the look of things, it will be a long session.”
A few minutes later Elton pulled the Escalade in front of the Sheriff’s Department, and, true to his word, the lawyer was waiting on the other side of the glass front door.
Dolores grabbed my hand. “Oh, Jess, now I am getting nervous.”
“No need. You’ll have Mr. McGuire guiding you the whole way. You’ll be fine. Come. I’ll walk in with you.”
“Do you ladies want me to wait right here?” Elton asked.
“No,” I said. “I have a feeling this is going to be a much longer wait than the last time you and I were here. You’d best park in the visitors’ lot, and if you need me, I will be in the lobby.”
Deputy Remington gave me a friendly wave, then changed over to fully professional as soon as I introduced Dolores and her attorney.
The deputy tapped a few keys on her computer, nodded to herself, and said, “Lieutenant Hall from the Investigative Division will be with you in a few moments. Please have a seat.”
Dolores clung to my arm and I could feel tension rising within her, so I whispered, “I have been thinking about root beer floats.”
“Carmody’s Ice Cream Parlor on the last day of finals,” Dolores said. “Do me a favor and call the house. Ask Lucinda to make sure we have plenty of root beer and plenty of ice cream. If not, tell her we will pick it up on the way home.”
A middle-aged man wearing navy blue slacks and a tweed jacket stopped at Deputy Remington’s station. She pointed to us.
As he walked our way I said, “You’ll be fine, Dolores.”
Francis McGuire stood and offered his hand. “Lieutenant Hall, may I present Mrs. Nickens and her friend Mrs. Fletcher, who’ll be waiting for us?”
“Just routine. Shouldn’t take long.” The lieutenant smiled at me as if to say, Don’t worry about your friend—I left my rubber hose at home.
I sat for a while, thumbing through an ancient issue of Newsweek. Every time I glanced at my watch it was barely five minutes later than the last time I’d looked. And then I thought of something useful I could do.
I approached Deputy Remington, who was busy studying a chart on her computer. When she looked up, I said, “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
She gave me a friendly smile. “Of course. The restrooms are right off that alcove in the back of the lobby sitting room.”
“Thank you, but that wasn’t what I had in mind.” I tried to sound apologetic.
She dropped her smile. “Well, if it’s about the, er, death, you know I can’t . . .”
“Actually, it’s about the fish.”
That caught her short. “Fish?”
“Yes. I understand that the Department of Natural Resources took . . . I guess you would call it custody of the koi that populated the pond where Willis died. I am sure it would cheer Dolores—Mrs. Nickens, that is—to have the fish back. Is there any way you could find out when that might happen?”
The deputy looked at me long and hard, and then came to the conclusion that what I was asking was harmless enough. “Just give me a minute, Mrs. Fletcher.” She tapped away at the keyboard and scrolled through a couple of pages.
“Found ’em.” She enlarged a document and ran her finger across the screen. “No sickness, no internal objects on the X-rays, no poison. Looks like you’re in luck, ma’am. Those fish are clean, healthy, and scheduled to be returned to Mrs. Nickens’s home sometime tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Deputy. Dolores could use some good news, and you have provided it.”
Back in my seat I realized that, more important than telling Dolores that the colorful fish would soon be on their way home, I’d better remember to tell her about Available Options and Randall Carbonetti. She needed to be up to speed when we got to Marcus Holmes’s office, where, hopefully, she would begin learning about Willis’s business activities. If we were lucky, Mr. Holmes would be a shortcut so we wouldn’t have to read every single paper in the storage locker. I did want to get back to Cabot Cove again sometime before next winter’s first snow.
Chapter Twenty-five
I glanced at the cover of a copy of Time magazine sitting on the end table, only to see it was even older than the Newsweek I’d flipped through earlier. Someone had left a newspaper on a chair, and I tried that. The banner said it was today’s edition of the State. The paper was filled with world and local news, homegrown gossip, and plenty of advertisements. One full page from the governor’s office explained the dos and don’ts of hurricane preparation. Although hurricane season in South Carolina doesn’t start until June first, according to the governor, it is never too early to begin preparation. I scanned every page, and there was nothing about Willis Nickens’s death, and more important, not a word about his wife’s being a person of interest.
I became increasingly restless so I stood for a while, and then began pacing back and forth. Everyone who had been waiting in the lobby when I arrived was long gone, and a small number of new people had come in for either aid or information. I had reached the tapping-my-toe state of impatience when Elton came in and handed me a paper bag.
“Water, ma’am. Thought you might be feeling parched. Any word on Miss Dolores?”
I shook my head. “She and Francis McGuire were called inside immediately
