I woke up with bleary eyes and a headache that throbbed right between my eyes. I’d tossed and turned all night, wondering what Javier and Dayna were digging up. Did they get a confession from Cynthia or Felyne? Were they going to follow up on my tip about Beatrice’s husband looking for a forensic accountant and a divorce? Even Stormy seemed on edge—she hissed and batted at Mr. Tuttles as we passed her on our way to the kitchen. Tuttles, always the gentleman, looked confused and gave two little wags with his tail to let her know that no offense was taken.
Harmony, already up and at the table with her laptop, gave me a wan smile. A piece of poppyseed bread sat next to her on the table, barely picked at. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m changing my flight to go home today.”
I totally understood. Harmony had only stayed behind to help take care of her mom’s house as soon as it was released to her, but now that it had burnt down, she had no reason to stay. She could handle all the legal matters from her own home. “Of course I don’t mind. I can drive you, if you’d like. And you know you’re welcome to visit any time.” It occurred to me that with Angie gone, Harmony wouldn’t have as much reason to come back out to California, and a pensive silence settled between us.
“The girls will be begging to come out for some beach time,” she said after a few moments.
“I’d love that!”
Stormy circled Harmony’s feet, rubbing her cheeks against her ankles, and Harmony snapped her fingers, inviting her up. I marveled once again at the effortless grace of the cat, who leaped into Harmony’s lap seemingly without moving a muscle.
“I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
“Your mother once told me that true love means never having to say thank you. It’s implicit in everything we do for each other.”
Harmony stroked Stormy’s fur as the cat purred in her lap. “She told me that, too, but it still feels rude to at least not say something.”
I agreed with Harmony. You should always tell a loved-one how you feel, whether it was grateful or sorry or even annoyed. Really, love meant being able to say anything or nothing at all. It also meant not showing disappointment when Harmony threw her nearly untouched slice of poppyseed bread in the trash. That was a sign of an even deeper kind of love.
I dropped Harmony at the airport with many hugs, a few tears, and a renewed promise to bring Angie’s killer to justice. We’d boxed up the few cherished belongings from her mom’s house that she’d been able to retrieve before the fire and sent them via UPS. Harmony suggested I should take Stormy, as she seemed to have settled in at my place and because Harmony already owned a cat. I had a suspicion it wasn’t so much that Harmony didn’t think the cats would get along, but more because she didn’t want to put up with Stormy’s pre-dawn rampages. I had grown used to Stormy’s early morning craziness, mostly sleeping through them now, and she and Mr. Tuttles were already the best of friends, so I was glad the little monster was staying with me.
With Harmony gone, I felt an emptiness deep inside. I hand’t realized how much her presence kept me grounded, constantly reassuring both her and myself that we would find her mother’s killer, and now I wondered if it would happen. With Cynthia and Felyne in jail when the fire had been set, they were out of the picture now. Maybe I’d been fooling myself that I might be able to solve this when the police seemed to be stuck on the wrong suspects. As Nick pointed out, the city of Palm Hills hadn’t seen a homicide in years.
I told my phone to call Dayna. Now was as good a time as any to find out.
“Good morning.” Dayna sounded tired, without the usual musical lilt to her voice. It must have been a long night.
“Sooo….”
“Kate, you really need to give us a little time to catch our breaths before calling for information.”
I glanced at my watch. It was already 11:00 am. How much more time did they need? “Sorry. What’s news?”
Dayna sighed. “No confessions from the ladies…yet. They lawyered up, so this could take a while. We had to let Cynthia go this morning. We just didn’t have enough to hold her, but we let her know not to leave town. Since we can tie the poison in the jelly to Felyne’s garden, we were able to keep her for a bit. She’ll be charged with attempted murder, and we’re working that angle with her and her lawyer to get accomplices and maybe a confession for the actual murder.”
“What about Beatrice? Did you follow up with the information about her husband needing a forensic accountant?”
“Babe, it’s been a minute! We’ve had a fire, we’ve had lawyers up in our grill, so, no, nobody has even given that a thought.”
“But if Cynthia and Felyne were in jail at the time of the fire last night, then they couldn’t have set the fire, so they probably didn’t kill Angie.”
“You are getting way over your skis there. First, we have no proof the killer set the fire. As a matter of fact, the Fire Chief said that the fire started naturally. He said it looked like a small rodent chewed through the power cord of the refrigerator and sparked it.”
“But there’s, like, protections in place for that stuff! Things don’t just spark anymore!”
“Angie’s kitchen was remodeled about five years ago. The Fire Chief pulled the permits, and the company who did the remodel was known to cut corners. And he said there was no accelerant, which means nobody was going around throwing gasoline all over her kitchen. I know it seems improbable, but it really does look like that was an accident.”
I couldn’t believe it. No way did a fire start in Angie’s home only a few days after she was killed. Of course the two events were related. They had to be! I made a lane change, just glancing over my shoulder, and realized I almost cut somebody off. I really needed to stop driving and talking on the phone; I was becoming a menace. I reached up and massaged my jaw, trying to rub the tension away. This case was going to be the death of me.
I arrived home tired, looking forward to a light lunch, a glass of iced tea, and a little relaxation before I decided on my next steps. Coming in through the garage door, I dropped my keys on the kitchen island and headed for the bathroom, because, of course, first things first. I stopped at the family room, gaping. Somebody had TP’d my room. Toilet paper was everywhere, snaking around the floor, draped over the back of the couch, and criss crossed across the room. The end of it was still attached to the roll in the adjacent bathroom.
“What in the world happened here?” I demanded.
Stormy and Mr. Tuttles looked up sleepily from their circle of cuddles and blinked at me, faces full of innocence.
“Okay, you two. Who did this?”
Silence. Stormy gave Mr. Tuttles’ head a lick or two and then settled back down, closing her eyes. Mr. Tuttles’ tail thumped twice.
I shook my head as I gathered up the errant toilet paper. “I’m basically a detective now, you know. Deductive reasoning would say that this never happened before one of you came to live here. I think we all know who that is, don’t we?”
Mr. Tuttles extracted himself from the cat’s embrace, stretched, and trotted over to me, sitting expectantly, waiting for pats and ear scratches. I sighed and rubbed his head. “You two are not making my headache any better.”
Food. A little lunch would make me feel better. I popped a frozen burrito into the microwave and poured myself a glass of wine. Apparently day drinking was now a thing I did.
I placed my head against the cool refrigerator door while the microwave hummed away, the timer counting down. It seemed oddly prescient, like an analogy for my life, slowly counting down, to what? The microwave was counting down to a precise ending, a burrito, maybe not the most delicious lunch, but nourishing. My life, though, seemed to be counting down to a state of being obsolete, instead of managing a company, I was managing two naughty pets, and I wasn’t even doing that well. I picked up a few strands of toilet paper off my floor, frustrated that I was unable to act while a murderer continued to stalk his prey on his hunting grounds.
Except his hunting grounds was my neighborhood.
Cynthia, Felyne, Beatrice, Bug Guy, Pool Guy….
I was still missing something, I was sure of it.
Think, Kate. Think!
My wandering mind went to Peter Barlow.
Shit! I owe that man an apology. Actually, I owed him one this morning, and I’m already late.
“What do you think, Big T? How bad is it to go on a date with a nice guy and then run out of there like a manic berserker with barely a goodbye?”
Mr. Tuttles’ eyes followed my every word, and I knew it was because he was listening intently and not that he was hoping for a few bites of the burrito.
The microwave dinged, and I pulled the burrito out, filling the kitchen with its cheesy chorizo scent that even brought Stormy’s big eyes and flicking tail to the table.
“Sorry, little buddies. I’m stress eating right now, and stress eating means no extra bites for the circus animals.” I took a bite of the burrito, standing at the counter. Calories consumed while standing don’t count, which was good because lately I’d been enjoying the poppyseed bread a little too much. “I do need your advice, though. What should I do about Peter Barlow? Text an apology or give him a call? What say you two?”
Mr. Tuttles woofed once. Complete confirmation that he agreed with me. Which choice he agreed with was still a bit of a mystery. Stormy rubbed her body in a figure eight around my ankles, clearly trying for a bite of chorizo.
I gulped my wine. I knew I should call him, but texting seemed like a much better way to test the waters—see if he was mad. When did I become such a coward? Normally, I’m the one to take the bull by the horn, bend it to my will. But I knew I’d screwed up, and I’d really enjoyed my date with the handsome Mr. Barlow. I picked up the phone. Maybe he’d be with a client, and I could just leave a message.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three. Good, I’ll just leave a—
“Hello?”
“Peter, uh, hi.” Silence. “I just, uh, well, shoot, Peter, I’m so, so sorry for running out on you last night. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been a bit discombobulated over Angie’s murder, and I hardly even recognize myself anymore. I never do these things, I promise. And, I mean, I had a really good time with you last night….”
Oh, my God, Kate, you’re talking to much. Let him get a word in.
“Kate, I—”
“I’d really like to go on another date with you,” I blurted out. Then, in a smaller voice, “If you’d like to, of course.”
Peter’s deep chuckle relaxed me. “Kate, I will admit to being worried. I thought I’d overstepped asking about your relationship status. But I did hope you were just excited about the case. Looks like I was right. As usual.”
“Ha! Okay, Mr. Forensics, I’ll give that one to you.” The tension in my jaw eased, and I took another sip of wine, hoping he wouldn’t be able to hear me drinking wine in the middle of the day.
“How about if we try this again? Next Friday? There’s a new French restaurant that just opened up in Palm Hills that a client of mine said I had to try. Perhaps we could see if it’s as good as he says together?”
“That sounds amazing. I’m in.”
“And nothing personal, but this time I’d like to pick you up. I feel like you’re less likely to run away from me at the end of dinner if you need me to drive you home.”
“You never know. I could always call an Uber.” I had a huge grin on my face, and I could tell my voice was lighter, too.
“Let’s hope you don’t feel a need to.”
“I swear, I will be fully present for the entire dinner. And dessert, too.”
We said goodbye and hung up, and it was like a million tons of weight had been lifted from my chest. I felt so good I decided to celebrate by cutting a slice of a new loaf of poppyseed bread, the one I’d planned to freeze for a later date. As long as I ate it standing up, I didn’t have to worry about the calories.
I plopped into my office desk chair and leaned back, looking for answers on the blank walls. There’s what’s possible and then there’s what’s probable. It was possible that a faulty wire just happened to catch fire only a few days after Angie was murdered in her home, but, to me at least, that wasn’t particularly probable. Because both of their suspects were locked up at the time, Javier and the rest of the PHPD wanted to believe it was just a faulty wire. Looking at this analytically, though, the most probable solution to this was that the fire and Angie’s murder were related, which meant neither Felyne nor Cynthia were the murderer.
My hands moved to my jaw, rubbing the two sides in small circles to relieve the pressure there. How long ago had I taken ibuprofen? I glanced at my phone. Not long enough ago. I shrugged and pulled two pills out of my desk, swallowing them with the diet soda I’d switched to after the glass of wine.
DNA results from the candle holder would be weeks away, and I had a feeling they wouldn’t be useful. This was somebody who didn’t leave fingerprints or DNA. Nick’s idea to swab the island in Angie’s kitchen had been a good one, but that wasn’t feasible anymore.
Something set the murderer off to make them set that fire. Did they remember something they’d left there, something the police had overlooked? Javi’s team had bagged up all of the evidence from the kitchen; they’d all been checked for fingerprints, but I’d check tomorrow to see if they were having any of the other items analyzed for DNA.
Then there were the fibers found in Angie’s hand. Black cotton, Dayna had said. None of her visitors that day were wearing a dark fabric, but I guess if you’re going to go back to her house with ill intent, you’d probably change into something dark so that nobody can see you going through the open gate and into the back yard.
Whoever had set that fire had to have known enough to not only spark the wires, but also to make it look as though it was an accident. That took knowledge and cunning. I closed my eyes, rolling through all the conversations I’d had with people over the last week. I imagined Angie in those last moments. Who was there?
The video footage! If only I could get Dayna to give it to me!
I didn’t dare call or text Dayna again, and of course Javier wouldn’t help me. I thought I remembered something in one of the photos, though.
I pulled my computer towards me and opened it, pulling up the photo I’d taken of Dayna’s desk. When I was in Dayna’s office the day I brought the donuts in, I’d snapped a quick pic of her desk so that I could study the photos, but I’d been so quick about it, I’d gotten the entire desk. At the time, I hadn’t realized what else I’d gotten. All the way in the corner, in a tiny yellow sticky, was what I thought was Dayna’s password. It was a combination of letters, symbols and numbers. What else could it be? I panned over and zoomed in. “DA&D%970.”
Government official logins are typically straightforward. With the work I’d done in Palm Hills, I’d had to email the city a time or two, and I knew their emails were first name dot last name at PalmHillsCA dot gov. I assumed their usernames for their city-owned police accounts would be the same.
Some quick searching got me to the city personnel login, and I entered the username and password.
Nope.
Damn! I thought I had it.
I rubbed my temples, trying to ward off the headache that was coming on. My IT people at work had emphasized a 10-character password. I counted Dayna’s. 8 characters. Dayna was anything but stupid; she’d never leave her password just laying around on her desk. She’d clearly left something out, something only she would remember to enter. I doubted she had a dynamically changing password, like Angie did; she’d been impressed when I told her about it so the police could check Angie’s accounts.
DA started the password. Was it possible she was using her own name? I tried variations of Dayna Afaoma for the beginning of the password, but no luck.
I glanced at the clock. The day was getting away from me. Maybe this was useless.
DA&D? Ages ago, Dayna had shared with me that it was just her and Del; her parents passed away when they were in their early 20’s, and now he was the only family they had. Could the extra D mean Del? I tried variations on DA&DA, DA&DEL, and finally hit on DA&Del with the rest of the password.
I was in! I looked around, proud of myself for figuring this out and wanting to share, but apparently Stormy and Mr. Tuttles had decided to retreat to the spare room for their morning naps.
I navigated through the system and found all of the photos from the crime scene and the video from Angie’s ring cam.
I pored over them, inspecting every single item in the photos, and then I turned on the video and watched every single second of it. Maybe there was a clue in there somewhere. The police had probably only looked at the times where there were people approaching the front door, but I had noticed that the camera also gave a view, although quite narrow, of the yard. If somebody was coming from the east side of the road, they would have to cross in front of the camera at the sidewalk in order to make their way to the side yard gate.
It was quite a job. While I knew what I was looking for was more likely to be at night, I started from the beginning of the day and watched everybody walking by. Even though I could barely see the people, as they were extremely grainy so far away from the door, I could get an idea of what they were doing. Did they look at the house? Were they with other people?
I knew there were a lot of people that walked the neighborhood during the day, but, wow! I wrote down everybody I saw and took a blurry, grainy screenshot of them, identifying anybody I was sure I knew.
Once the sun went down, the images became more defined by light and dark, ghostly images with no faces, no detail, just globs of light against the gray background of the darkness of night. I could no longer identify anybody at all, but I could still tell when a person passed by, defined by their heat signature on the camera’s high-powered infrared illumination.
Felyne had left around 8:30 pm, just after it had turned dark. When I looked hard at the video, I could swear I saw a shape just off to the side. It was really just a dot of light. With everything being dark, it was hard to tell where it was exactly, but I guessed that the dot was just across the street. I watched Felyne’s form exit the house, walk down the driveway, and disappear to the east, which would be in the direction of her home.
The dot didn’t move, and I started to think I was completely mistaken about what it even was. And then, I saw it. Almost exactly two minutes after Felyne left, the dot turned into a shape that moved from east to west across the line of sight of the driveway, becoming larger. It was just a flash, a ghost image that one could easily miss, but it was definitely there.
If I was right and this was our killer, he or she waited until Felyne had left, and then hurried across the street to the side gate.
And it hit me: if this was the killer, then the one person that was completely excluded was Felyne!