Tree of Life and Death (20 page)

Faria offered his opinion. "You've got to watch out for little old ladies when they get together. They can be vicious."

"I wouldn't be so quick to narrow down the possibilities." I thought Ohlsen was right, but it was never good to rush to a conclusion, and I really didn't want him to be focusing exclusively on Sunny. "From what I've heard, the victim had a history of shoplifting, and he was in the boardroom for at least an hour. He could have picked up a pair of the scissors, and I doubt anyone would have noticed one was missing, since there were so many of them. Then, if he got into an argument with the killer, he could have brandished the scissors, and the other person managed to get control of them."

Ohlsen considered it and then said, "Stranger-crime is less common than most people believe it is."

"It wouldn't have to be a stranger," I said. "Alan told me he needed to call someone to give him a ride home, and he had to go outside to make the call since there's no service in the boardroom. He came back inside for a while and then left again. The person giving him a ride could have killed him and then peeled on out of here before Sunny returned from her supply run."

"That's one theory," Ohlsen said, and his tone was too even to indicate whether he found it credible or not. "We've got the victim's phone, but it's password protected, so it'll take time to check his phone records."

"I think you're wasting time looking for another person," Faria said. "It's got to be one of the ladies in the museum. I'm telling you, I've seen how crazy they can be when it comes to their little hobby. Maybe one of them caught the guy stealing her scissors and decided to teach him a lesson."

Detective Ohlsen ignored the rookie's speculation and gestured for one of the forensic techs to get some gear and join us at the door to the museum. "We're going to have to take everyone's prints before anyone can leave. Just in case."

Much as I hated to believe that one of the quilting volunteers was responsible for taking a young man's life, I was becoming more and more convinced that it was true. There just wasn't any evidence to know for certain. The police needed something more than mere speculation.

There was the leather thimble, of course, but it probably wasn't even relevant. The forensics team had spread out across the entire parking lot, so for all I knew, they'd found it quite some distance from the body. But if it had been found close to his body…

"Before you start with the prints, could you tell me something?" I asked.

Ohlsen did his standard staring into space routine for a solid sixty seconds while he considered my question. "What do you want to know?"

"It's about the leather thimble," I said. "Maybe if I knew where it was found, I could find the owner more easily."

"I'm afraid it's going to be a while before you can return it to the owner." He looked disappointed by my question. Maybe he'd actually reconsidered the possibility that the thimble was related to the murder. "Your alibi checks out, so it can't hurt to tell you where it was, as long as you promise not to mention it to anyone else."

"I can keep a secret." It was a necessary prerequisite to practicing law, after all, and quilt owners seemed to expect the same level of confidentiality. I'd been amazed at all the personal information people volunteered during their appraisals.

"It was under the victim's leg. We found it when the body was taken away."

Given the isolated location of the crime scene, it seemed unlikely that any of the quilters would have had a reason to drop it there unless it had happened during a confrontation with Alan. Only the two or three people who'd parked at the far end of the lot—like Sunny—would have had any reason to be anywhere near the crime scene. That might be good news for Sunny. As far as I knew, she didn't actually sew, so she wouldn't own a thimble of any sort, let alone one as well used as the one being held as evidence. Her role in the quilting community was like mine, more of an interested observer and enabler than a practitioner.

"As long as you're going to take everyone's prints, there's something else you could check," I said. "Do you still have the leather thimble, or have you sent it back to the lab for processing?"

"It's still here, but we've got more important things to do than empty out the lost-and-found bin."

"What if the owner of the thimble was the killer?" I said, and quickly explained my theory about how isolated the crime scene was and how few people might have been near there for legitimate reasons.

Ohlsen considered it for longer than he'd considered whether to tell me where the thimble had been found. I waited as patiently as I could until he suddenly turned and called for a tech to go get the thimble from the forensic team's van.

He turned back to me. "You think I should have everyone try it on, I suppose. That sort of thing didn't work so well during the Trial of the Twentieth Century."

"They did it wrong," I said. "They should have known ahead of time whether the gloves fit. That's what pretrial discovery is for. Or the initial police investigation."

"I don't get it," Faria said, unable to contain his desire to be involved. "You think someone got killed over a stupid thimble?"

"It's just an idea," I said. "Not so much as a motive, but just another piece of forensic evidence, like a fingerprint. Something the killer happened to leave behind while committing the murder. I know that matching the thimble to the owner won't prove that its owner killed Alan, but if there's other evidence linking her to the victim, it might add up to enough for a conviction."

"You willing to prove your theory?" Detective Ohlsen said. "Be the first to try on the thimble?"

A regular thimble would fit a large number of people, but a custom one as well used as this one was had more in common with a DNA paternity test, where the odds of a match to anyone but a blood relative were infinitesimally small. There was virtually no chance the thimble would fit me, especially since I was taller and probably had larger hands than most of the quilters in the guild. It was bound to be too small for me, enough so that even a layperson would be able to tell. "Sure."

At a nod from Ohlsen, the returning tech gave me a pair of latex gloves that matched her own, and then she carefully removed the thimble from the evidence bag. Once I was properly gloved, the tech handed me the thimble. I slid it on the tip of the index finger of my left hand. To my surprise, given my relatively large skeleton, it dangled loosely. Whoever had owned it originally had an even larger hand, and it had fit the owner snugly, judging from the various irregularities in the leather where it had stretched to accommodate the raised finger pad and the hills and valleys between the base of the nail and the first joint of the finger.

"This is where most quilters wear a leather thimble while quilting. It protects the bottom hand from needle pricks." I slid it off the index finger and tried it on the middle finger of the same hand before demonstrating with the same two fingers of my right hand. "Sometimes they'll wear it on the middle finger, and if they're left handed, it would go on those fingers, but on other hand."

Ohlsen peered at my hand. "I'm guessing it shouldn't be that loose."

"No. It should be a snug fit. A little leeway is useful, to allow for the finger to swell in hot weather, so you should be able to turn the thimble like a person might do while fidgeting with a wedding ring." I spun the thimble on my finger. "It definitely shouldn't wobble like this. That would make it too difficult to keep it in place. It would be slipping off all the time."

Faria looked over my shoulder. "Whoever used that thimble is a man."

"Not necessarily. Anyone who works with her hands on a regular basis can develop strong fingers and calluses that would add to their overall size. Some of the older quilters probably have arthritis and would need a larger thimble to accommodate their swollen joints."

Still, Faria had a point. It made sense to start the testing with the males in the room. Carl was a large man, so he was a likely enough candidate, although he'd claimed that he didn't use a thimble. The only other men in the boardroom were Matt and Stefan. Even if I didn't know Matt had an alibi, I would discount him as a suspect. He had long, slender hands, not much wider than mine. I tried to remember what Stefan's hands looked like, but they were usually covered with his overly long sleeves. Most likely, they were as small and thin as his overall body structure. Sunny's hands, strong from her physical therapy work, were probably larger than Stefan's.

Gil was taller and therefore likely larger handed than I was, so the thimble might come close to fitting her, although she should have video evidence of her whereabouts at the time of the murder to establish an alibi.

The tech reclaimed the thimble from me and tucked it safely back in the evidence bag. Ohlsen pondered his options again, staring at the museum's brick back wall without seeing it.

"This is stupid," Faria said. "We should be doing real police work, not playing with a sewing kit."

That seemed to help make up Ohlsen's mind. He pulled out his cell phone. "We're going to need more techs if we have to test the thimble on everyone and still clear the scene before dark."

*   *   *

Detective Ohlsen got Faria out from underfoot by sending him around to the front of the building so the officer who'd been turning back visitors and rubberneckers could take a break. Ohlsen had me wait while he collected three techs—two to take fingerprints and one to oversee the thimble testing. The plan was to move everyone out of the boardroom and into the hall and let the techs set up their equipment without alerting the witnesses to the thimble test until the last minute.

Once we returned to the boardroom, I noticed Carl was still working at one of the sewing machines in the front row. Since his size made him the most likely person to fit the large thimble, I said to Ohlsen, "Perhaps test Carl first?"

For once, Ohlsen didn't have to think about it. "Would you let him know we'd like him to stay behind while Officer Fields moves everyone else out into the hallway?"

I went over to the first sewing machine table. "They're planning to take everyone's prints, starting with you, if you don't mind. They'll probably let you leave after that if you want."

"I'm not an invalid," Carl said irritably. "I need to take it easy after the incident earlier, but that just means no physical exertion. Might as well stay here and get some work done while I'm stuck in a chair."

"How are you going to get home?" I'd given up my driver's license voluntarily because of the risk that I might pass out at the wheel. Carl probably shouldn't drive today either.

"I've got a ride." He nodded at a woman whose name I didn't know. "And Trudy offered to drive my car home for me. She's the only one here who knows how to drive a stick shift. I warned her she'd have to walk past the crime scene, since I'm parked practically in the far corner of the lot, but she said she'd manage. That young woman is a lot tougher than I gave her credit for."

The boardroom's double doors had just closed behind the last quilter when Fred poked his head back through them. "Keely, could you join us out here, please?"

I left Carl and headed out to the hall, where Ohlsen was explaining that the techs were preparing to take everyone's fingerprints. "It's completely voluntary at this point, but we'd appreciate everyone's cooperation. If anyone has any reservations at any point in the procedure, I'd be glad to talk with you privately." He looked down the line, making eye contact with each person, giving her or him the opportunity to speak up. A few looked away, but no one demanded either a private conversation or a lawyer.

"Very well," he said, opening the door behind him. "I'll go see if the equipment is set up."

As soon as he was out of sight, Stefan scurried over to me. "Can he do this?"

"You have the right to refuse," I said. "If you're worried about it, you can tell the detective that you want to talk to your lawyer first. On the other hand, doing that might make them take a closer look at you."

"Are you going to do it?"

I shrugged. "No reason for me to refuse. They've already got my prints in a database somewhere, from when I took the bar exam."

"I need to think about this," Stefan said. "If it was just me involved, I'd do it, but maybe Sunny should wait and talk to a lawyer, since they're probably already looking at her as the prime suspect. If she's going to refuse, then I will too."

"You could always go to the end of the line while you think about it," I said. "I don't mind going first, and maybe they'll find something useful before they get to you, and they won't need your prints."

"I'll go second," Gil said. "Under any other circumstances I'd probably refuse, just on principle, but I can't do that here and now. I need to show everyone—not just the police—that I've got nothing to hide. It's going to be hard enough explaining a murder on our property to the museum's board of directors and all our donors. The only way it could be worse is if anyone thought I might have had something to do with it."

"No one who knows you would ever believe you were a killer," I said. "Just don't start singing
'Mack the Knife'
around Ohlsen. He doesn't have much of a sense of humor, and I have no idea what his musical tastes are."

Gil groaned. "Now I've got that song running around in my head. I'm blaming you if I get distracted and start singing it."

"Everyone always blames the lawyer," I said.

From somewhere in the middle of the crowd, Trudy pushed her way over to where Fred Fields stood blocking the doors. She drew herself up to her full height, which was somewhat above Fred's, and announced, "It's not right, fingerprinting innocent people, making us feel like criminals. I'm not going to do it. I'll get a lawyer if I have to."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, miss," Fred said. "Just wait in the back of the line for now, and if you change your mind in the meantime, that's fine. If not, I'll let the detective know that you've decided not to help us find the person who killed that poor young man."