Ill-Gotten Panes (A Stained-Glass Mystery) (19 page)

“Suit yourself. But once Chip and his guys get here, you’re staying in the car. You can’t tag along on police business.”

I said nothing, allowing her to decide for herself what she thought my silence meant. Of course, I had no intention of staying in the car.

“What do you think?” she asked. “You think Bill Harper is inside the store?”

As if I could see through walls, I turned to face the back of Village Grocery. Lights remained on inside, though the store had been closed for going on an hour. No shadows passed within to give a clue to the building’s occupancy.

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “But I know someone who might.”

I grabbed my phone from its temporary storage space in the center console of the car and punched in Carrie’s number.

“Who are you calling?” Diana asked. “You’re not going to say anything about what we’re doing, are you?”

I shook my head as Carrie picked up the call. “Hey, it’s Georgia. Quick question for you. Does Bill Harper work late on Fridays?”

“I’m not sure. Probably,” Carrie responded. “Why?”

“No reason. Thanks.” I ended the call and passed on the information to Diana.

“Maybe we should send a car to his house,” Diana said, her tone more thinking out loud than inviting input.

“What are we waiting for anyway?” I asked.

She leaned forward, peering around me to the back of the store. “Chip has to get a warrant. That means tracking down a judge. At home. On a Friday night.” She shook her head and leaned back. “Better him than me.”

“A judge,” I repeated. Something was tugging at my memory. Something I’d seen.

Then it hit me. “The courtroom,” I said. If I closed my eyes, I could see in my memory with absolute clarity the patchwork below the window of Town Hall. Brand-new Wenwood bricks used to patch the building where Wenwood held court, where Wenwood’s judges worked. “The judge . . . I don’t think he’ll sign the warrant.”

“What are you talking about? Of course he will. Mind you, he’ll probably make Chip sweat for a while.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. The judge won’t sign it because Bill Harper has his fingers in . . .” In what? What did a few bricks prove? But the police station was crumbling, while Town Hall stood as pristine as ever. Those bricks could only have come from one place: the last man in town with a stash of Wenwood bricks.

What sort of deal had Harper made with the town elders? With the politicians and the judges—the elected officials—and the rest of the Town Council? If he provided those bricks, what kind of favors was he owed in return?

In half sentences and incomplete thoughts, I explained my concern to Diana. “What if the judge won’t sign the warrant? What if he insists on, I dunno, more information or some kind of sworn statement from Scott Corrigan?” I asked when I’d finished. “Then Grandy will spend even more time in prison and . . . And what if the judge calls Bill Harper and warns him the police are closing in?” I was nearly shrieking by the time I accused the unknown judge of being a little bit crooked.

Diana laid a hand on my arm. “Hey, relax. Take a breath, okay?”

“Easy for you to say. Your grandfather is—” I cut myself off. In fact, I had no real way of knowing if her grandfather was or wasn’t incarcerated, or was or wasn’t alive even, and I didn’t want to risk accidentally offending her again. “What if the only thing that will get Grandy out of jail is in that store and Bill Harper gets rid of it before Detective Nolan can secure a warrant?”

She took her hand back, sat still in her seat while chewing on the inside of her lip.

I gripped the steering wheel hard enough I was surprised it didn’t crack. Minutes ticked away on the dashboard clock. A breeze ruffled the tree above, and a single green leaf fluttered down onto the windshield. At last I couldn’t take it anymore. “Well?” I demanded.

Pursing her lips, Diana nodded once, firmly. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s check it out.”

Before the import of her statement registered, she was out of the Jeep.

I scrambled to follow, cursing the tangle my seat belt caught me in when I tried to exit the vehicle without first unlatching.

She circled around to my side of the Jeep, tipped her head in the direction of the shop. “We’re just going to go see if there’s anyone in there, okay? If no one’s in there, there’s no worry of anyone moving or removing anything without us seeing them arrive. Right?”

I nodded. “Right. Wait.” I looked her over head to foot. “Where is your gun anyway?”

Cutting me a hard glance, she said, “Aggression issues.” She rolled a shoulder. “I’m required to leave my weapon in the station house when I’m not on duty. It’s temporary.”

“Oh. Okay. Night stick?”

“Same.”

“Oh. Okay.” So basically we were headed for a building in which a killer may be lurking and all we had to defend ourselves was our charm. And frankly, I feared Diana didn’t have a whole lot of that.

There had to be something we could use as a substitute. I glanced back at the Jeep, considered its contents: jumper cables, ice scraper, windshield wiper fluid. Would it be possible to use jumper cables as bolas?

“What’s the holdup?” Diana asked.

“Trying to think of something . . .” And then I saw the bigger picture. The walnut tree.

I retreated to the Jeep, pulled open the door, and grabbed one of my reusable shopping bags—the small one, the one suited for fresh produce or cosmetics. With silent apologies to Grandy, I climbed up onto the hood of the Jeep, draped the tote bag from its handles along my forearm. Reaching carefully, I tugged a branch low. It took more force than it would have later in the season when the fruit was ready to drop on its own, but I ripped several clusters of walnut fruit from the branch and dropped them into the tote. At the center of each piece of fruit resided the walnut that made for tasty salads and healthy snacks. Its outermost shell, though, the protective outer fruit, was hard as a baseball. As weapons went, walnut fruit was on the puny side. Still, I wouldn’t want to be hit by one.

“What do you plan on doing with those?” Diana asked as I rejoined her.

I pulled a fruit from its cluster and handed it over. “Aim for the head.”

“
Niiice,
” she said.

Once again we headed for the market. I kept my attention on the back door, where the lights inside continued to illuminate the back end of the produce aisle, the very spot where I had encountered Bill Harper just two weeks earlier and had forgotten his name. I knew without a doubt I would never forget it again.

“You stay here,” Diana said, indicating the back with the slightest gesture. “I’m going around the front.”

“Why? Why do you get to go around the front?” The front offered the potential of other people passing by, the potential of witnesses, the potential of help coming quickly should it become necessary to start pitching walnuts.

“Just wait here. If you see him, shout.”

She hurried up the narrow access driveway and disappeared around the front of the store.

Left on my own, I turned a small circle, taking in my surroundings. The Jeep we’d arrived in was one of only two vehicles present in the lot behind the market. The other was a smallish sedan the make and model of which I was unfamiliar with. There was no other sign of life. Friday night in a small town; everyone had gone home.

In a matter of seconds, the restlessness took me. Diana meant for me to stay put and give a holler if Bill Harper appeared. Standing still didn’t suit me.

I approached the door, intending to peer through the window. But the motion sensor remained engaged. The door swung open.

Surprised, I hurried backward and watched as the door closed. Door opening and car in lot proved to me someone was in the store.

Giving wide berth to the door’s sensors, I headed into the access driveway, doing my best to shout in a whisper for Diana. For several moments I stood at the mouth of the access driveway, rocking back and forth from foot to foot, struggling to decide whether to go to the front and retrieve Diana or stay where I was, where I could see if anyone left the store.

Once more I called her name, letting my voice come slightly above that whisper. She poked her head around the corner and I waved her close. “The back door is open,” I whispered.

“So someone’s in there.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to keep a sarcastic tone from my voice.

“I’ll call Chip and see where he is with the warrant.”

“He’s nowhere with the warrant. I’m telling you, the judge is never going to sign it. Or sign it in time at any rate. Let’s just sneak in there, check out the . . . I don’t know, the locker room or the storage room or whatever kind of place a supermarket has where people would keep a change of clothes.”

“We can’t go in there,” Diana said. “Any evidence recovered without a warrant is inadmissible.”

Who knew that being embroiled in a scandal at Washington Heritage Financial would provide useful?

I smiled at Diana. “Any evidence
you
recover is inadmissible. You’re a police officer. I’m a civilian. I can poke around public spaces all I want. I’m going in.”

She grabbed my arm and spun me toward her. “You are not going in there alone.”

“
Ow.
” I pried myself out of her grip, certain I would find bruises on my bicep come morning. “I’m going. You call for backup or whatever it is you have to do. I have to get my grandfather out of jail.”

“Georgia,” she snarled.

I ducked away before she could grab me again. I didn’t want to test the boundaries of her aggression issues.

She called my name again, her voice making me consider the possibility that I was far safer inside the market than outside with Diana.

The door opened at my hurried approach and I ducked inside, shifting immediately to my left, using an endcap to keep me out of sight—I hoped—of the manager’s office at the front of the store. Edging sideways, I peered up and around the display of crackers on the endcap. The forward corner of the store appeared dark, with only the overhead light illuminating the area.

I recalled, then, talking to Bill Harper in his office, the stack of papers held down by a bright, new Wenwood brick. The walls behind him had been hung with clipboards and notices and what was no doubt the weekly staff schedule. If that was the case, and the office no doubt a high-traffic area, I suspected it would not be the ideal place to stash evidence from a crime scene.

Where in a market would be a good place? The brick allegedly used to kill Andy Edgers was in the evidence locker at the Pace County PD. But it had to have been hidden somewhere, tucked away out of sight in the days between Andy’s death and the recovery of the brick behind the dine-in.

From somewhere in the building, a
thunk
reached my ears. I froze, holding even my breath still. The
thunk
came again, as though someone were dropping large cartons to the ground. Its muffled sound coupled with the lack of vibration beneath my feet made me suspect there was some activity taking place in basement storage . . . meaning somewhere in the store was basement access.

For the number of times I’d been in the store, I had failed to notice any doorways not leading to the outside. But they had to be there. If there were doors somewhere in the middle of an aisle, certainly that I would have noticed. Therefore, logic dictated the doors were somewhere on the perimeter.

I resettled the tote on my arm then belatedly withdrew a walnut fruit. Keeping it at the ready in my hand, I crept slowly away from my place of concealment.

I moved along the back of the store, where shelves of cookies, breads, and muffins ran the length of the wall. At the very end, bins for fresh-baked breads nestled into the corner, guiding shoppers into the turn for the far wall.

There had been only one more
thunk
as I crept along. Just as well. The proper sound effect for the view after the turn would have needed to be tense violins.

“Damn,” I said on a breath. There before me were the meat cases. Plastic-wrapped packages of steaks, chops, thighs, breasts, filets. Roughly twenty feet down, the cases were interrupted by a pair of swinging doors of dull aluminum. The cases on the opposite side of the doors, I knew, contained milk and cheese and other dairy products that were of no concern. It was the space behind the meat cases that held the answers. Because behind those fresh cuts of raw meat stretched an open window onto the butcher’s workspace. Visible in the half-light spilling in from the store, a steel table gleamed at the center of the butcher’s area. And on its opposite side, another windowed door provided a view to the next room. There, hung from a series of pegs set into the wall, were coats and trousers stained with blood.

Continuing on in stealth mode, I crept to the double doors and carefully pushed one open. Laws of evidence aside, I really had no intention of removing anything from the store. But if I found among the clothing in that back room trousers resembling those Bill Harper had been wearing on Monday, well I might have to make an exception.

Once through the doors, I paused. I’d gone from illuminated sales floor to darkened butcher’s shop. Not only did I need time for my eyes to adjust, but the awareness of where I was struck me as just plain creepy. Worse, I knew somewhere in that space lurked an impressive array of knives. I had no wish to stumble into the wrong end of any of them.

Though I waited for my eyes to sufficiently dilate, still I could not make out much more than shadows.

Skimming the wall beside the door, I found a switch and flipped it to the on position. An overhead fluorescent light hummed and flickered and I dropped the walnut I held back into my tote. Straight ahead the meat prep area. To my right, the other door. I dashed through the door, arms outstretched, reaching for the coat pegs while holding open the door with one foot.

My fingers touched twill as the light behind me warmed to full brightness and spilled into the smaller area. Three white coats with varying intensity of faded yet visible stains hung atop trousers—two pairs white, one pair khaki. Carefully I lifted the lower hem of the coat covering the khakis and peered beneath. Pale spots speckled the legs of the trousers. Was I looking at residue from someone’s weekend barbecue order? Or residue from a murder?