Hostile Witness (Sanctuary, Inc. #1)

Chapter 17

17

T ia had been so tempted in between bites of noodles to reminisce about the bonfire with Ethan. He’d been her first real kiss and a doozy at that. He’d wrapped the blanket around them both, and they’d kissed and talked for hours. She’d always regretted bolting when the cops had shown up, because she hadn’t gotten his number or even his last name. All summer while working at the ice-cream place on the boardwalk, she’d hoped to look up and see him standing in line. But it had never happened.

Tia whistled for Flynn and headed for the stairs. Time to show him his new digs and the second plush bed she’d bought for him up in her room. He lifted his sleepy head and lumbered toward her, gingerly picking his way up the steps. Poor guy. He had to be sore from the surgeries and trauma he’d endured. Later on, she’d give him one of the pain relievers Casey had included in his take-home bag.

She opened the bedroom doors, the linen closet, and the bathroom door. Might as well let the dog sniff and discover the sights and scents of his new home. Thank goodness she hadn’t brought Ethan up here to see this dog bed. Her room was a disaster. She flung open the closet door and tossed dirty towels and clothes down the enormous laundry chute in the floor of her closet. While not pretty, it sure was functional. After stripping the bed, Tia lobbed the sheets and blanket together. The weather had warmed enough for her to bring out the summer bedspread, so next went the down comforter. It disappeared from view, sliding all the way to a drop about three feet above her clothes washer, and landed with a little thud. The chute was one of her favorite features of the house.

Flynn growled as she pitched more dirty clothes over his head and down the cavernous slide.

Tia stopped.

The dog got down on all fours and combat crawled to the big hole, growling all the way. He even went so far as to let his front paws hang over the edge while he investigated. Whining, he shimmied backward.

Whoa. Her new housemate didn’t like dark holes?

Tia walked around the bed, throwing dirty pillowcases down the opening as he paced and barked. When she hung a jacket in the closet, the dog lunged in front of her to keep her away from the hole.

Oh, she’d have to work with Flynn on this because those closet doors were open more often than not. She couldn’t have him freaking out every time she needed clothes or dropped some laundry.

After grabbing a chewy treat from the new jar on her nightstand, Tia shut the closet doors and got down on one knee in front of Flynn. “Here, boy, you’re a good dog.” Ruffling his fur, she stroked the concern from his furrowed brow. “We’ll have to compromise on the laundry chute, my friend, because I really like it.”

She’d ask Mike and Casey if they had notes on his background. Maybe there was a simple explanation for his behavior.

Ethan strode through the precinct doors and headed for Conference Room 3. As he’d suspected, Earl had already parked himself at the massive conference table. A long whiteboard hung behind him. The sticky notes covering the board gave it a rainbowlike appearance. It’d be a great day if Earl’s notes yielded a suspect by day’s end.

“Morning, Earl.”

“If you say so, Son.”

“Does Tina still have you eating egg whites and sprouts?”

“Shut the eff up.”

Ethan pulled two huge bagel sandwiches from his bag and slid one the length of the table with the precision of a bartender delivering a whiskey neat. It landed three inches from Earl’s scribbling hand.

The older man’s face broke into a grin as he lifted the wrapper. “ Now it’s a good morning. And to answer your question, Tina made an egg-white, kale, and blueberry shake for breakfast. I poured it down the garbage disposal the minute she left for work. She’s determined to treat my slightly elevated cholesterol with a clean diet.”

“That’s what you get for marrying a woman some twenty years younger than you, boss.”

“Stuff it, kid.” Earl held the breakfast sandwich to his nose and inhaled. “Sausage, egg, and cheese. This is what breakfast should smell like.” He took a bite and closed his eyes. “Thanks. I’ve been up since four thirty and running on coffee.”

“Turkey sausage, and no problem. By the way, I saw the ride along late yesterday, and she mentioned kicking an object when she entered Margie’s kitchen, but the evidence files make no mention of it.”

Earl took another bite of sandwich. “Did you check the inventory log?”

Ethan nodded. “Yeah, of course. I stayed up late last night looking through all the files. There’s no info about it. Tia said she’d told whoever interviewed her at the hospital about kicking something across the room.”

Earl took a swig of his coffee. “First I’ve heard of it. Who turned in the report?”

“Carmichael, and he’s a thorough investigator.”

“Maybe the ride along thought she told the interviewer. She was treated for shock.”

“Possibly, but she was quite certain that it came up during the conversation. And considering her relationship to the chief, she’d understand that details like that are important, shock or not.”

“True. But we haven’t found anything unusual inside the crime-scene perimeter. The struggle took place in the great room. That’s thirty feet away.” Earl tapped his pen on the table and ruminated while he finished his sandwich. “Wanna take a ride to Glen Cove Road and look around?” He crumpled the wrapper into a ball and tossed it at Ethan.

Ethan lobbed their garbage into the can. “I was hoping you’d say that. You want to go now?”

Earl patted his middle section. “Yup. I’m all fueled up. Go sign out a vehicle.”

“Let’s take my truck. It’s ready to go.”

“Make sure you bring camera equipment.”

“Got it.”

“And leather gloves in case we need to move heavy shit.”

“Got that, too.”

Earl rose and slipped into his winter jacket. “You think you’d bring me another one of those sandwiches tomorrow? I’ll buy.”

Ethan held the door open. “Sure. Why don’t you just take the cholesterol med the doctor gave you and forget about it?”

“Bug off, Son. Getting older ain’t for pussies. It seems like every time I go to the doctor, I walk out with some new medication. It’s out of hand. I eat decent, work out, got a good body-fat ratio, but my cholesterol continues to rise.”

“I think they call it heredity, Earl.”

“Well, screw that.” He stormed out the front doors of the precinct. “They say too much medicine can affect how the equipment works.”

Ethan barked a laugh. “That’s what you get for marrying a woman only a few years older than me. She’s a lot to keep up with, I’m sure.”

Earl slid into the passenger side of the truck and shut his door. “Just for that, I’m gonna make your life miserable at the next hell workout. You wait, Son.”

“You’ve always exceeded my expectations, sir. I’ll look forward to it.”

Earl ran a hand across his head as they pulled out of the lot. “I need a haircut.”

Ethan glanced over. “It’s a half inch long, sir.”

“Like I said—I need a haircut.”

They pulled the crime-scene tape off the front door, slid into their paper booties, and stepped into Plante’s home. The chill in the air hung like a warning. Something sinister had happened in those rooms.

“You got any idea when Mrs. Stoddard is listing the house? Because there’s no way anyone’s going to buy it looking like this.” Earl frowned and shook his head. “You know, I can handle any crime scene no matter how horrific, but once I’ve done my job, I hate going back to the place. It’s always been that way for me. It’s hard for me to take once the crisis is over.”

Ethan studied the framed pictures on a mahogany bookshelf, snapped a few pictures, and put his phone away. “I believe Mrs. Stoddard has turned the details of the sale, including the cleanup, over to her lawyer. They haven’t started yet because forensics hasn’t signed off on the property. You know how they like to wait as long as possible just in case they need another run-through.”

Earl heaved a breath, flicked on the overheads, and fired up his flashlight. He scanned the entire kitchen floor. “I don’t see a damn thing down there. Did Tia mention if the object she kicked was heavy or lightweight?”

“No, she simply remembers kicking something right after entering this kitchen. She said the sound stopped abruptly, so it couldn’t have gone far.” Ethan got down on all fours and prowled the gleaming wood floor one sector at a time.

Earl followed suit. “ Hell, I didn’t bring my kneepads. There are four floor vents. Let’s check them.”

They crawled for several minutes in an eerie quiet.

Ethan broke the intense silence. “There’s nothing here. You find anything?”

Earl cackled. “I’m cashing in over this way. The vents produced three toothpicks, a penny, and a couple of dust bunnies. This is the cleanest kitchen floor I’ve ever seen.” He rose up on his knees. “You brought the leather work gloves, right?”

Ethan pulled a pair out of each pocket. “Here you go. What are we moving?”

“The refrigerator, Son. Tia’s a smart woman. I’ve known her her whole life. If she says she kicked something, then I believe her.” He stood up. “Try to shimmy that fridge out from the front.”

Ethan gave the refrigerator doors a pull, and the huge unit slid several inches before it stubbornly stopped. He hugged it from the front, and through the process of drag and tug, he got it out except for the last few inches. Earl joined in, and together they got the unit completely out.

Their flashlights illuminated the floor behind the fridge. “There we go, a plastic spatula. Let’s bag it just in case, but that utensil probably dropped off the counter when Margie was cooking.” Earl snapped a photo of the spatula and placed it in a thick tamperproof bag.

Ethan grabbed one side of the fridge. “Help me slide this behemoth back in place.” With a few grunts, the unit begrudgingly slid back.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ethan asked.

“Yup. We gotta pull the range out, too. It’s a Chambers gas stove from the previous century and is sure to weigh a ton. Look at that—it’s even got a thermowell with a pot for cooking corn or crabs. You ready?”

Ethan stretched for a few seconds. “As I’ll ever be. Let’s go.” It took them five minutes, a few cuss words, and a good sweat, but the aging gray combination stove and oven rested in the middle of the kitchen floor. Ethan aimed his light toward the cavernous space behind it. “There’s nothing back there.”

Earl got down on all fours and cast his light under the stove. “There’s something caught on the slide mechanism, probably why it was a bear to pull out. I mean, aside from the fact that it’s the weight of a heifer.” He wiped his brow with a sleeve. “We gotta tip it back a couple of inches so I can get at it.”

Ethan shook his head. “Are you trying to kill me? This cast-iron mother must weigh three hundred pounds.”

“I know. That’s why I make our crew participate in hell workouts. We gotta do the hard stuff or go home. Let’s slide it back a foot so that when we tip it it’ll rest against the counter.”

Ethan inhaled quickly through his teeth while Earl let out a string of coaxing curses until the stove rested at a slight angle against the countertop.

Earl slid a few cookbooks under the unit in case it rocked. He traded his leather gloves for a fresh pair of latex gloves and illuminated the underside. Stretching his arm, he captured a compact shiny metal device about four inches long between two fingers. “I found something. Looks like a penknife.” He dropped it into the evidence bag Ethan was holding.

Ethan held it up to the light. “That’s not a penknife. It’s a miniature lock pick set and probably the item Tia kicked across the floor, judging by how it was jammed in there. We’ll let forensics check it out. I’ll bet you a beer after our next workout that Margie Plante’s fingerprints are nowhere to be found on this thing.”

“Don’t count your chickens,” Earl chirped.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Let’s get this stove back in place. I’ve been meaning to ask: When’s the last time you checked on Harlan Brinker?”

Ethan grunted as he shoved the oven backward. “I saw him a few days ago, after I went to see the Hawkins couple. Mabel inquired about Harlan because she knows him from church. Then she asked if I’d deliver a frozen lasagna she’d made for him. He seemed pretty good. There was food in the fridge and a forty-pound bag of dog food in the pantry, even a bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter. I was a little late meeting Tia at the vet to pick up Flynn because I’d stopped to see Harlan, and you know Harlan. He can talk your ear off.”

Earl nodded. “Thanks for checking on him. I’ll go next week and take a pie from the farmer’s market that just reopened in the Pines. He’s had a rough year since losing his wife, and not having any family nearby to look after him makes it that much harder. I had to show him how to use the washing machine and dryer a while back.” Earl took off his gloves. “Helluva thing Mrs. Stoddard did, making you co-owner of that dog. Talk about getting blindsided. I guess you’re spending some time over at Tia’s, huh?”

Ethan shifted on his feet. “A little bit, but I’ve adopted your attitude about her.”

Earl glanced over as he removed his paper booties. “Yeah, what’s that?”

Ethan chuckled. “It’s not my story, Son.”

Earl laughed. “There you go. The best way to get through this life unscathed is to face forward and keep your nose out of other people’s business. It isn’t always the easiest thing to do though, Detective.”