'Keys.' He held out his hand.
I swallowed a mouthful of dry nothing and dropped them into his upturned palm without a word.
'Why are you here?' It didn't sound like a question, but it must have been.
A gagging noise came out before any words. 'Nothing, no reason. Just, uh, looking for clues.'
He regarded me for a long moment from behind the dark glasses. I held my breath, waiting.
'There's nothing here,' he said.
'Oh.'
He stared at me. At least I think he was staring. He might have been napping for all I could tell. Only my own terrified reflection looked back at me from the shiny black lenses. Maybe I could leave.
'I think I'll go now.' I edged past him and almost made it. He turned his head toward me and took hold of my arm. The blood fled from my face.
'I'm watching you,' he said.
'Oh, uh, okay,' I said in a small voice.
He released my arm abruptly. I scurried to my car, my heart rate at near stroke level, somehow got the key in the ignition, and took off not daring to look back.
By the time I got home I'd marshaled my wits and gotten a grip on my initial desire to continue driving until I reached my parents' house in San Francisco. I hustled up the walk to the porch but stopped, house key in hand, when I saw a page from a newspaper taped to my front door. Odd. The page was from the
Then I saw the red circles. Someone had used red ink to mark individual words in different articles. Why? As I hung up my jacket, it hit me.
A message!
Duh.
I grabbed the paper and searched. Five words, or parts of words, were circled. I read, more or less left to right: 'stop,' 'ing', 'ions.' 'ask,' 'quest.'
'Stoping ions ask quest? Doesn't make any sense. And 'stoping' is spelled wrong.'
I looked again and this time I read from top to bottom. 'Stop asking questions.'
Molar-grinding aggravation outmaneuvered my initial spike of fear. Dammit, I'd been assaulted, yelled at, interrogated and insulted-and that was the short list. Now some jerk was leaving me a stupid note right out of a bad movie. I had freaking had enough.
I locked the front door behind me and strode to the kitchen. Yanking open the freezer door, I pulled out a half gallon of triple chocolate fudge ice cream and grabbed a soup spoon from the silverware drawer. Cup of Aunt Vi's tea, my ass. I dug in.
Chapter Fifteen
At three o'clock I sat in a cold, hard chair, in a cold, hard conference room at the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office. Detective Thurman was late. My attorney, Jacob Green, held the newspaper message I'd handed him by a corner and read it while tapping an index finger against his thin lips. He exhaled abruptly and waved the paper like a flag.
'You said this was on your front door?'
'Yes.'
'Any idea who left it?'
'No.'
'Any idea what, specifically, the message is referring to?'
'No.'
'Well, we'll let the good detective deal with it.' He slid it into his briefcase and resumed the pacing I interrupted when I arrived.
Jacob Green was not what I expected, not even close to the image I formed from our first phone conversation. Rail thin, tall, and middle-aged, the attorney pacing a new track in the worn linoleum was straight out of Central Casting's supply of used-car salesmen. Right down to the ancient, ill-fitting suit and the I'd-rather-die-than-lie-to- you brown eyes.
He stopped pacing all at once and hit me with a narrow-eyed stare.
'You left out some information when I talked to you yesterday.'
'I did?'
'I don't like hearing client information that my client should have told me from someone who is not my client.'
'What do you mean?'
'Frederick Parsons. Stopped by for a little chat with you on Monday.'
That startled me. 'Oh. I thought it was irrelevant.'
'It's not irrelevant unless I tell you it is. What did he say?'
'He called you?' Maybe I was naive, but it struck me as out of line for the father of a murder victim to call the attorney of a person of interest.
'Yes. What did he say?'
'How did he know you were my attorney? Didn't he tell you what he said to me?'
'I want to hear it from you.'
I related our conversation, verbatim, and mentioned the really big guy in the dark glasses – just in case he wasn't irrelevant. Mr. Green grimaced, shook his head, and muttered something about not realizing Joey was out of prison. Then he resumed pacing.
Great. I was being watched by a felon – or ex-felon. Maybe an escaped felon.
'I want to know how Frederick Parsons knew to call you,' I said. When Green didn't answer, I persisted. 'I didn't tell him the name of my attorney.'
'Someone told him. I expect someone who heard it from you.' Mr. Green's comment was off-hand, as if unimportant. 'Now,' he said, throwing on the brakes, 'what about the phone call I dodged today? What was Parsons going to tell me that you should have?'
'Oh, uh, well, I kinda ran into Joey today out at Valerie's.'
Mr. Green ran a hand across his comb-over and blew out a lungful of air.
'What were you doing out at Valerie Parsons's place?'
'Looking for clues.'
He tugged an earlobe. 'Did you find any?'
'Well, that's the funny thing. It's more what I didn't find. It looked like she wasn't expecting any horses at all at her place.' Mr. Green gave me a long, silent look, adjusted his shirt cuffs with a quick jerk and set his feet into motion again. True, I was new at this, but why was he acting like my observation was unimportant? 'Well, don't you think that's odd? I was thinking Valerie meant to have Nachtfeder picked up instead of Blackie – that Blackie's theft was a mistake made by someone she hired. But now I don't know what to think. And, by the way, Joey is spending a lot of time parked outside my house.'
'No. Is he really?'
I'm positive that was sarcastic.
The door swung open and Detective Thurman strode in, threw himself into the chair across from me, and slapped a file folder on the table. He pulled out a sheet of paper and slid it toward me. I reached for it, but Mr. Green snatched it up first. I scowled at him, but he didn't give any indication he noticed. He read it as he paced, then stopped abruptly to address Thurman.
'A word with my client, please.'
The detective heaved himself out of his chair. 'Two minutes,' he said and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Mr. Green handed me the paper. I opened it, read it twice, and fought the urge to throw up.
