The Double Wedding Ring (12 page)

“He added a codicil. He set up a trust for Allie.”

My throat tightened. It might have been a simple, kind gesture from a man who knew his time was running out, but whatever his motive, Roger had involved Allie in something that might have gotten him killed. “Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“How much is the trust?”

“I'm afraid I don't know that either. Roger wanted me to know about it, but then he got very secretive.”

“What about you? He must have left you money.”

“Roger had a life insurance policy, and I'm the beneficiary. It's enough to pay off the mortgage but not a lot else. Does that make me a suspect? Angry ex-wife?” she asked. “I guess it does. There was no other money as far as I know. Civil servants don't cash big paychecks. Even the ones who risk their lives. He used to talk about how he had a second insurance policy, but then he'd laugh. He said the only way it paid off was if he didn't die.” She rubbed her eyes and stared at me again. She didn't look like she'd had any more sleep the night before than I did.

“Maybe you should get some rest,” I suggested.

“I'm fine. If you want to ask me anything else . . .”

I did, though I felt bad asking it. “What did you mean, he wasn't the idealized version Jesse thinks he was?”

“He was a man. Just an ordinary, fallible man. He did his best, and sometimes that was pretty good, but sometimes he went too far.” She squinted, thought for a moment, then started again. “I loved Roger. He annoyed me, drove me crazy actually, but in my own way I loved him. I just didn't want to be with him anymore, and he couldn't understand that.”

“I know Jesse doesn't consider you a suspect . . .”

She laughed a little. “I spent fifteen years listening to Roger talk about catching bad guys. Even if I wanted to kill him, which I didn't, I know that killers get caught. And I also know that the spouse is the very first person the police look at. I'm not stupid. And I guess, unlike what you were saying about yourself, I do plan. Spending my life in prison is not in my plan.”

I heard the door to the shop open. Eleanor was back with the sandwiches. “I should get going.” Anna moved quickly into the main part of the store, introduced herself to Eleanor, and then headed back out into the snow.

“She seems nice,” Eleanor said, looking back at me. “But you don't like her.”

“She is nice,” I admitted. “And no, I don't.”

I was glad Eleanor didn't question me further. I had no idea what it was about Anna that bothered me. But something did.

T
he afternoon dragged. My eyes were tired, my mind was restless, and my stitches were huge. I left my project on the worktable in the classroom and wandered into the main part of the shop. We'd been open six hours and so far there had been only two customers. Now the shop was empty. The snow had stopped, but the roads were barely passable. The county had the job of clearing the streets, and they were busy on the highways. Archers Rest was low on its list of priorities. I stared out the window at what should have been a pretty scene, the blank white covering on the streets and trees, giving the town a wintery glow.

But my eyes wandered from the street up to the rooftop across the street where just the day before a sniper had probably stood. If I'd been standing in the same spot yesterday I would have seen who it was. Or been shot.

Some of the murders I'd maneuvered my way into investigating had too little information. This one had too much. Roger came to town, was murdered. There was a shooting, no one got hurt. Different weapons, different targets, but I knew they were connected. And they were planned. Someone had seen Dru's car parked in that spot and saw a chance to use it as cover. That meant there wasn't one killer, there were two. Anna and Bob Marshall—who else could it be? They were the only ones who knew Roger. And if Jesse was right that the murder had nothing to do with his days as a New York City cop, then it might have something to do with Roger's personal life—an affair between Anna and Bob? I was stepping out of theory into fiction, but it was better than standing in the shop feeling lost in a sea of confusion.

“Grandma, I'm heading across for coffee,” I shouted. I grabbed my coat and went to the door before she had a chance to answer, but I heard a muffled “okay” as the door closed behind me.

I walked across the street to the coffee shop, but instead of going up to the counter for my usual order I walked straight through, leaving through the alley door.

Carrie called out, “Nell, don't you want . . .”

“No, thanks.”

“But we have to talk.”

She seemed insistent, but it could wait. Something was pulling me up to the roof.

There were fire escapes bolted to the back walls of each of the stores. I jumped up to the ladder of the one leading to the roof of the old Clark's Dry Cleaners. The old iron slid down with a grunt. I climbed slowly. There was ice on the rungs, making each step slow and scary. My foot slipped as I tried to move higher, my bare hands gripped the frozen metal, which tore at my skin as I tried to let go. By the time I made it to the top I was out of breath and regretting the attempt. In my hurry to get moving, I'd left my boots, gloves, scarf—basically all of the sensible attire for a cold winter's day—back at the shop. All I had to keep the chill out was my coat and my stubbornness.

I moved to the center of the roof gingerly, half afraid the thing would collapse under the weight of the piles of snow that had fallen. I edged closer to the front of the building and could see the street below. I was only one floor up, but I suddenly felt dizzy. The wind was picking up. I pulled my coat tighter. I had an irrational fear that I would be swept off the roof by a strong breeze, but I stayed where I was, hoped for the best, and tried to imagine what the shooter had been looking for.

From my position on the roof, I could see the end of the street where Dru's car had been parked. Someone with a reflective object signaling from behind her car would most certainly be seen from up here.

But why did he do it? If the shooting was a message, as it seemed to be, what was the message? If the killer had followed Roger, or taken him to Jesse's house, then surely he knew that Roger hadn't spoken to Jesse yet. Whatever it was he was going to say, or do, Roger had been killed before he'd had his chance. Trying to threaten Jesse seemed likely to cause more trouble, not less. Besides, why not just leave town? He'd gotten away with murder, all he had to do was slip back onto the highway and head south to New York. But the killer had stayed at least long enough to climb up to this roof.

I stood there a long while, watching people walking down below, unaware that I was up here. Any one of them could have been hurt, or worse, if the shooter had aimed his gun just a little lower.

Today the street was back to its normal level of small-town busy. People were going in and out of stores, and I could hear greetings and complaints about the weather as voices wafted up toward me. The broken bulbs on the streetlights had been replaced, and I knew that there was a new windshield on Jesse's squad car. The only evidence of anything out of the ordinary was the bullet hole in the
S
of “Someday Quilts.” Other than that, it was like the shooting had never happened.

I saw my parents' car drive down Main and park in front of the shop. My mom got out and went inside. Through the window of Someday I could see her looking around, but then she disappeared farther into the store.

I watched as Greg walked from the park, cigarette in hand. He crossed the street toward Jitters and briefly looked up at the roof. Instinctively I pulled back. He didn't see me, at least he didn't seem to, but he looked nervous. I heard the bell announcing that the door to the coffee shop had opened. Greg went inside.

There was no point in hunting for clues. Assuming the shooter left anything behind, the state police would have found it or the snow would have covered it up. And yet I was pinned to this spot. There was something here, something that might lead to an answer. I just didn't know what it was.

I tried to put myself in the mind of the shooter, the person who also very likely killed Roger Leighton. If I was sending a message, where would I aim? The Someday sign was across the street, the two streetlamps with broken bulbs were in the direct path of a shooter on either side of the shop, and the squad car with the shattered windshield had been parked just below.

It gave me the shivers. The night Roger was killed, he had sat in the coffee shop watching Someday Quilts. When Carrie told him that Jesse's girlfriend worked there, Roger had muttered something about hoping “she liked heartbreak.” If it was meant for me, as Natalie suggested, it seemed odd that the shooting happened while I was still inside Jitters. Why not wait until I crossed the street? Maybe the message was to Jesse, and it wasn't that he was in danger, but that unless he did what the killer wanted, I would be hurt. Maybe that's why he wanted me to stay off the case.

My hands were frozen and my feet, clad only in loafers, were wet in the two feet of snow that packed down on the roof. I turned to head back, and as I did I had a decent view of River Street, which intersected Main. City Hall was the most prominent building on the street, with the police station right next to it. I caught a glimpse of bright blue, Anna's coat. She was walking down the steps of the police station toward a silver car. A man I could see only from the back was waiting for her. They hugged. It was hard from this distance to tell if the hug was friendly, comforting, or something more intimate. But it lasted. I couldn't see the man very well, but he wasn't Jesse, and he wasn't Bob Marshall.

He turned toward his car, and I caught a brief glimpse of him. He was elegantly dressed in a suit and camel hair coat. He had a briefcase. Lawyer, probably. I'd been hoping for another suspect, but he was probably just some old friend of Anna and Roger's making sure papers were in order to take the body home. It was nothing, I decided.

Then he looked up and saw me. Maybe it was the light, or the distance, but as our eyes met, it looked like he smiled.

“A
re you nuts? It's freezing out there.” Carrie didn't even ask if I needed anything, she just handed me a cup of hot chocolate and wrapped a blanket over me the minute I stepped back into Jitters. “What were you doing in the alley?”

“On the roof,” I corrected her. I was shivering, and not all of it was from the cold. The idea that the killer might be after me was sinking in. “I just wanted to see where the shooter had been.”

“And?”

“And nothing. He . . .”

“Or she . . .”

I nodded. I almost told her my theory, but I couldn't. I might be wrong, and, either way, it would only worry Carrie and maybe put her in danger, too. “Right,” I said. “He or she had a very good view of the center of town. I could see people down below, but if I stayed away from the edge, I don't think anyone would have seen me. With Clark's empty, it's not like there was anyone down below who would have heard footsteps on the roof.”

“And his escape?”

“Once the shooting started we all stayed inside, so he could have climbed down the fire escape and been in a waiting car in less than a minute. Or he could have dumped the gun somewhere and just walked toward the library. With all the panic, would anyone have noticed?”

“For all we know, he could have stashed the gun on the roof earlier, and been in here drinking coffee, and just slipped out the back.”

“Do you remember who was here?”

Carrie shook her head. “Before the shooting? It was busy and I was focused on Eleanor's quilt and Roger's murder. I didn't pay attention.”

Neither had I. It was frustrating. “It's just such a public threat,” I said. “If he really wanted to scare Jesse, there are simpler ways to do it. None of this makes sense.”

“It never does until it does. We'll figure this out.”

I admired Carrie's optimism even though I wasn't sure if I shared it. It did snap me out of my own obsession about the shooter, though. “Before I went out back you said you wanted to tell me something.”

She pulled me toward the back of the coffee shop, looked around to make sure no one was within earshot, then whispered, “I don't know if you want to hear this.”

I braced myself. “Hear what?”

“I contacted my friends in the banking world. One of them works for the company where Roger and Anna have their accounts. He owed me a favor and now I definitely owe him one,” she said. “He wouldn't give me a lot of information. He likes me but not enough to spend time in federal custody. He said Roger and Anna had a joint account, but he didn't tell me the balance.”

“You weren't thinking he would?”

“Of course not, but when I told him everything about the case, about Roger and Jesse and everything, he got interested. He told me Roger had an account, in his name only. He said it had more than fourteen thousand dollars in it.”

“Okay. That's a healthy account, but nothing out of the ordinary. What am I missing?”

“Roger's account is a money market that's been open for just over three years. And in that time there have been about forty deposits for various amounts. My friend said they were small, nothing over five hundred dollars. Roger has never taken any of the money out. It just sits there.”

“I'm not getting this, Carrie. You just said it's a savings account. He deposited money and left it there, which is kind of the definition of saving. It's probably from his paycheck. So what is it you're not telling me?”

She took a deep breath. Whatever it was, she wasn't happy about having to tell me. “All the deposits have been from one source. A direct deposit from the account of Jesse Dewalt.”

I replayed the last sentence in my head. “Jesse's been sending Roger money for three years?”

She nodded. “Do you have any idea why?”

“He told me they hadn't spoken since Lizzie's funeral.”

“Maybe it was a loan of some kind,” she said.

“It must have been,” I agreed. “But why open a separate account? Why not pay into the Leightons' joint account?”

“I don't know. Maybe he didn't want his wife to know about it.”

I finished my hot chocolate. “Over fourteen thousand dollars?”

“That's what he said.”

“That's a lot of money for a police officer to loan a friend,” I said. “Where would he have gotten it?”

Carrie didn't have an answer. All she had was another question. “What if it wasn't a loan? What if Jesse was paying Roger for some reason?”

“What, like blackmail?” I meant it as a joke, but Carrie didn't laugh. My stomach tightened at all the possibilities: blackmail, bribery, money laundering. None of it seemed remotely possible, not for the man I loved. “Whatever the reason,” I said, “we keep this within the group. Jesse didn't do anything wrong and there's no point in hurting his reputation.”

“Don't you think the state police are going to look into Roger's finances and come across all of this?” she asked.

I shook my head. “They're not on the investigation. Jesse is running it. It's his town. The state police were here because of the shooting, and only as support for the Archers Rest PD. Jesse has been absolutely insistent on doing this his way.”

Almost as if he had something to hide. The thought crept into my mind and I pushed it out again.

“It's got to be a loan,” Carrie said. Sometimes, if you don't know the answer, picking a theory and sounding very sure about it feels like almost the same thing. “When we know the truth we'll both feel silly that we worried for even a second. Jesse's a good man and he loves you.”

Which were the exact words he'd said to me not even twenty-four hours before.