Trudy, Madly, Deeply (Working Stiffs Mystery Series) (25 page)

I dropped my fork, my appetite gone.

Duke scowled at us. “How many lunch breaks are we taking today?”

Rolling her eyes, Lucille leaned closer. “I’ll be dipped if I’m going to let anyone get to Peggy tonight.”

I pushed away my bowl. “If you take the first shift, I’ll take the second. Try to keep a low profile, though. And no weapons.”

“Damn,” Lucille grumbled.

“It won’t help Peggy if someone calls security about a crazy woman waving a gun around and you’re escorted out of the hospital.”

Lucille shrugged. “Whatever.”

“No one will try anything in front of a witness. All we have to do is stay awake.” I yawned. I’d have a much better chance of staying awake if I could squeeze in a two-hour power nap after dinner.

Lucille nodded. “Sounds like a plan. I can’t stay awake much past ten, though.” She sucked down the dregs of her coffee. “Even on this swill.”

It sounded like a plan to me, too. Not much of one, but if Peggy were still alive in the morning, it was good enough.

Chapter Twenty-One

After I climbed the courthouse steps to the third floor, I saw Jake Divine sitting alone on a yellow chair in the hall across from the County Prosecutor’s office door.

Tendrils of his hair looked slightly damp like he’d showered before he’d changed into a pair of black jeans and a white oxford shirt.

His eyes widened in recognition. “You were the one.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, my heart thudding as if I’d just finished running up the stairs.

“My mother called me. You talked to her yesterday.”

Guilty as charged.

I met the gaze of the Sheriff’s Deputy staring at us from twenty feet away. He seemed even less impressed with me than usual, but I took some comfort in the knowledge that backup was seconds away if I needed it.

“Who the hell are you?” There was no trace of the charmer left in Jake’s voice. Instead, he sounded like a recalcitrant adolescent. “And where do you get off asking my mother a bunch of questions about me?”

“I was simply doing a background check,” I said, trying to maintain what little composure I still possessed. “It’s part of my job here.” Sort of.

Jake leaned toward me, tension coiled in him like a cobra, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. “If you want to know anything, you ask me and leave my family out of it.”

Since he was sitting in the hallway like the two witnesses I had interviewed with Lisa Arbuckle earlier this morning, I had a feeling I’d be doing exactly that and a lot sooner than he thought.

Lisa stepped to the office doorway. “Mr. Divine, sorry to keep you waiting.”

Jake stood, towering over the petite Deputy Prosecutor as she introduced herself.

Lisa turned to me. “Do you have time to sit in on this?”

I wouldn’t have missed it. “All the time you need.”

I followed Lisa and Jake to the conference room opposite Ben’s office and took a seat next to Lisa.

Much the same as all the other witness interviews she’d conducted in the last few days, Lisa poured Jake a glass of water from a plastic carafe at the center of the table and tried to make him comfortable with some preliminary chitchat.

He folded his arms over his chest and sat sullenly, making it abundantly clear she was wasting her time.

“Mr. Divine,” Lisa said. “I’ve read the statement you gave to the police and have a few more questions for you.”

He slanted an angry glare my way. “Does she have to be here?”

Lisa and I exchanged glances.

“Do you know one another?” she asked me.

“A little,” I said. “I’ve taken a couple of his classes at the senior center.” I left out the part about visiting his mother to dig up some dirt on him and hoped that Jake would do the same.

Lisa smiled politely across the table at Jake. “I can’t see how that should present much of a problem, can you, Mr. Divine?”

Jake shrugged a shoulder. “Can we just get on with it?”

“Fine.” Lisa opened the manila file folder on the table in front of her and flipped to a page of handwritten notes. “Now, let’s go over the early morning events of May 19th. You’d said that you went to the club with a few of your friends. Is that correct?”

“Not exactly,” Jake said. “I worked that night, had dinner with a girl I know, then I met up with some of my friends there.”

A girl—did he mean Suzy? It seemed strange that someone his age would refer to her as a girl. Then again, from where I sat there wasn’t much about Jake Divine that seemed all that typical.

“It says here that you’re a personal trainer in addition to being the Assistant Activity Director at the senior center,” Lisa said.

Jake sat up a little straighter. “That’s right.”

“Who were you working with that night?” I asked.

He jutted his chin at me. “A client.”

That narrowed it down. “Someone you know from your job at the senior center?”

“Yeah.”

“Your client’s name, please?”

Lisa’s eyebrows arched—a little warning sign that I was taking us down a road she hadn’t planned to travel. But this could be an avenue to the truth about what was going on at the senior center, so she might as well come along for the ride.

Jake blew out a breath. “Peggy Como.”

Peggy.
Where Jake went, trouble seemed to follow.

“And where do you work with your clients for these one-on-one sessions?” I asked.

“Usually, their home. If they have a gym membership, we go there.”

Peggy didn’t look like someone who had ever seen the inside of an athletic club. “Where did you work with Peggy Como?”

“Her home.”

“What time were you there?”

“We started around seven and I left a few minutes after eight.”

“Was her husband there?” I asked, nodding as I got the wrap it up signal from Lisa.

Jake frowned. “I think he was bowling.”

How convenient. “What is the nature of your relationship with Peggy Como?”

“My relationship? I’m her trainer.”

“Is that the full extent of your relationship?” I tried to keep the innuendo out of my voice.

“She’s old enough to be my grandmother! What the hell kind of question is that?”

It was the kind of question to get an emotional read on him, and I’d just hit pay dirt.

I smiled politely. “Would you please answer the question?”

He sucked in a deep breath. “I have a working relationship with Peggy Como. She’s a nice lady who wanted to lose a few pounds, and she hired me to help her.”

True.

I had a sinking feeling that his
special
services might not be as special as I’d been led to believe.

“And what about your relationship with Virginia Straitham?” I sensed anger, tension at the mention of her name. “How would you characterize that?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” he demanded, raising his voice.

Lisa shifted her gaze to me like I’d better come up with a good answer and fast.

“It’s just that you seem to be a jack-of-all-trades at the senior center, and since Mrs. Straitham recommended you for that job, I was wondering if she ever asks you to do the occasional odd job for her?”

His eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Like what?”

“Like a job within a few blocks of the club,” I said to Jake. “Around two a.m. on the 19th.”

“A job?” he repeated, a sneer of contempt tugging at his lips. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did she give you an errand or ask you to do anything after you left the club?”

“No. Why the hell would she?”

Ever since Norm had told me that Virginia Straitham had been a nurse, I’d been asking the same question. Why would she need Jake? He’d be a loose end—a liability she couldn’t afford in the dangerous game she was playing.

Jake raked his fingers through his hair. “After Gabe and that crazy chick got into it in front of the club, I didn’t want to stick around, so I headed home.”

I believed him. The services Jake offered might be a little questionable, but he was no killer for hire.

Lisa clicked her pen, signaling that my time at the wheel had just run out. “Mr. Divine, let’s talk about what you saw at the club that night, shall we?”

Jake spent the next few minutes giving her a blow-by-blow account that generally supported Shea’s story.

After a couple of follow up questions, Lisa turned to me. “Anything else?”

Since Jake might have witnessed more than just a knife fight that night, “Actually, yes.” But what I wanted to know concerned my case, not hers. “If you have some place you need to be, you probably don’t need to stay for this.”

The tight quirk at a corner of the Deputy Prosecutor’s mouth told me I’d taken a flying leap beyond my role as an assistant.

Lisa stood and slipped the folder under her arm. “Thank you, Mr. Divine.” She turned and pointed her jaw at me. “See me when you’re done here.”

Swell
. I already knew that I’d ticked her off. With any luck, not enough for her to complain to Frankie about me.

After Lisa shut the conference room door behind her, I smiled across the table at Jake. “I have a couple of things I’d like to go over with you.”

Jake slumped in his seat. “What else can I tell you? I’ve already gone over everything.”

“I know, but something else happened that night, so I’m hoping you can help us connect a few dots.”

Jake stared longingly at the door like a child given a timeout.

“So, after you went out to dinner with your girlfriend …” I waited for him to give me a name.

“Kim.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Kim from the cafe?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you still going out with her?” And if Suzy knew, why was she telling
me
to stay away from her man?

“Are you trying to tell me that you care?” Jake asked smugly, his mouth curling into a tight smirk.

“How about if you just answer the question.”

“We’re not exactly going steady if that’s what you’re trying to find out.”

Jerk. If I hadn’t seen him on the dance floor with Suzy, I would never have believed there was anything between them.

“So, you and Kim were on a date, then you took her home and went on to the club around midnight.”

“Right.”

“Did you see anybody in the area who didn’t look like they belonged there? Anything unusual?”

“Besides a knife fight?”

I forced a smile. “Besides the knife fight.”

He shook his head. “When I was heading home, I thought I saw Mrs. Straitham’s car go by, but other than that, the streets were pretty dead.”

“When was that?”

“Around twelve forty-five.” Jake rubbed his forehead, and frowned at me like I was giving him a headache. “You know, I already told the detective all this shit. Aren’t you guys all on the same side?”

Apparently not.

After showing Jake the door, I made a quick side trip to Lisa’s office to do some damage control. Since she looked like she’d been sucking on a lemon for the last ten minutes, I knew that hijacking her interview with Jake Divine hadn’t helped my chances of seeing day thirty of my thirty-day trial.

“Would you care to explain what happened in there?” she asked.

To avoid yet another reminder that Trudy’s case wasn’t official, I tiptoed around the truth. “I needed to gather some information for an unrelated coroner case.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask which one. “Sorry if I … overstepped.”

“See that it doesn’t happen again,” Lisa said, sounding as frosty as my ex-mother-in-law. “And shut the door on your way out.”

Okay, I had a wedge of condescension pie coming. But a little dressing down was a price I’d willingly pay for a witness who might have seen Virginia Straitham’s car in the vicinity of the hospital on the night Howard Jeppeson died.

I skulked back to my desk and called Steve’s cell phone.

“I’m a little busy here,” he said. “Let me call you back.”

“Well, I’m busy, too, and you could have saved me a lot of time if you had told me that Jake wasn’t a suspect.”

“It’s not my job to keep you informed, Chow Mein.”

“Obviously. Just remember, pal, that can work both ways.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I don’t have to share what I find out with you.”

“Char, considering what you’ve found out so far, that wouldn’t be a great loss.”

“Thanks a lot!” I disconnected and slumped back in my desk chair.

Irritating man. Heather deserved him. They could irritate the hell out of one another for eternity for all I cared.

So, I was wrong about Jake and Dr. Straitham. Like the hotshot detective had never arrested the wrong suspect before.

Couldn’t he just take Virginia Straitham in for questioning? If Jake was right and he had seen Virginia’s car that night ….

“Shit.” I redialed Steve’s number.

“You know how I told you I was busy,” he said after one ring.

“Yeah?”

“I’m still busy.”

“This will only take a minute.”

He blew out a breath. “Then start talking.”

“I’m concerned that Virginia Straitham might make a move on Peggy tonight—”

“I don’t think that’s something you need to worry about.”

“But—”

“It’s not going to happen.”

I lowered my voice. “Nothing will happen to Peggy or it’s not Virginia Straitham?”

“I have to go.”

“Steve.” Silence. “Steve … ?” More silence.

I stared down at my cell phone.
Call ended.
“Shit!”

* * *

After three hours of dreamless sleep in my grandmother’s bed, I put on an old sweatshirt over my tank and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. Faint smears of black mascara accentuated the circles under my eyes, making me look like a pudgy extra from
Night of the Living Dead
. I swiped them away and added a swish of my mother’s bronzer. Slightly ghoulish with sun-kissed cheeks—not the look I’d ordinarily go for, but good enough for guard dog duty.

By the time I’d wolfed down the roast chicken and gravy dinner Gram had kept warm in the oven for me and drunk half a pot of coffee, I felt locked and loaded for the night ahead.

All I had to do was sit outside Peggy’s hospital room and stay awake. I might not have the world’s greatest detecting skills, but I’d worked the graveyard shift as a pastry chef plenty of times and had years of experience with staying awake while the rest of the world slept.