Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) (30 page)

TWENTY-NINE

Pete placed a call to Baronick and arranged to meet him at the Monongahela County Police Headquarters. The detective was already waiting when Pete led Logan into the building.

“Didn’t waste any time getting here, did you, Wayne?” Pete said.

“Hey, you tell me you’re bringing in a fugitive, and I drop everything to accommodate you.” Baronick flashed a smile that made Pete wonder how much he’d spent on those veneers.

Beside him, Logan cringed.

“I need to talk to you a minute,” Pete told the detective.

“Sure.” Baronick waved over two uniformed officers. “Place this young man under arrest, gentlemen. Put him in the interrogation room, and I’ll be along shortly.”

Logan gave Pete a frightened, helpless look over his shoulder as the two officers ushered him away.

“Okay, Pete. What is it?”

He hadn’t told Baronick about Logan’s “confession.” The kid was underage and hadn’t had legal representation. The entire story would be thrown out of court in a heartbeat. “Tread lightly on this one. He’s a kid. A good kid. And he’s been through hell this week.”

“I hear you. But if he killed a man, I can’t look the other way.”

“I’m not suggesting you do.” A headache began to creep up the back of Pete’s skull. “Just don’t steamroll him. Now, what’s going on at Doaks’ place?”

“No sign of him yet. My men are still at his house. The eyeglass lens they found might be a match to the one missing from Ted Bassi’s frames or it may not. Even if it is, it may not be enough to get a search warrant. I need that hard drive from your girlfriend’s computer.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” If Pete could share Logan’s story, they’d have no problem obtaining a warrant. McBirney had been killed in that house. Besides, Pete wanted to see Zoe’s computer, too. He’d tried to call her from the HQ parking lot, but got no answer on her cell phone. 

“That’s not what I’ve heard.” Baronick chuckled. “Anyway, I haven’t been able to reach her. I need the photos you told me about to get a warrant for Doaks’ house.”

Where are you, Zoe? “Wasn’t she at Doaks’ place when your men got there?”

The toothy grin faded. “Yeah. Those idiots sent her home. But they figured we’d be able to contact her if we needed something.”

“Keep trying.” Pete didn’t add that he would, too. “I have a stop to make first, and if you haven’t reached her by then, I’ll swing by her place on my way home.” 

The glass double doors behind them whooshed open, letting in a blast of icy air and an even icier Sylvia Bassi, dragging a beefy, gray-haired man in a suit behind her.

“Where’s my grandson?” Sylvia demanded.

“He’s waiting in interrogation, Mrs. Bassi,” Baronick said. He nodded to the man beside her. “Mr. Imperatore.”

“I see you know my attorney.” Sylvia clutched her purse against her chest. Pete hoped she didn’t decide to use it as a weapon again. “He’s also my grandson’s attorney.”

“I assumed as much,” the detective said.

“And I would very much like to speak with my client, Detective Baronick.” The attorney gave one of his sleeves a tug.

“Give me a second, and I’ll take you back.” Baronick drew Pete aside. “I suppose I have you to thank for leaking the kid’s arrest to the grandmother,” he whispered.

Pete smiled. “I told you not to steamroll him. Sylvia will make sure that you don’t.”

Baronick squinted at him. “Just let me know if you hear from Zoe Chambers.”

“Will do.” Pete turned to leave, touching the brim of his ball cap and nodding at Sylvia.

She nodded back.

God help Wayne Baronick.

The half-hour drive to Vance Township from Brunswick offered Pete time to ponder recent events. Logan’s confession wasn’t the end of it. Pete thought of the old saying about the tip of the iceberg. There was a helluva lot of crap still hiding under the surface.

Starting with Ted Bassi’s killer.

Pete wasn’t willing to believe he had two totally separate homicides on his hands. If he bought into Logan’s story that he and Allison had been responsible for McBirney’s death—and the more Pete thought about it, the bigger that
if
became—did he still have a killer running loose? Pete could understand Logan attempting to protect his sister. But no way did that boy have a hand in killing his father.

Allison, however…

Pete shifted in the driver’s seat. He hated the idea, but something about it rang true. Allison Bassi had been acting more bizarre than usual since Ted’s death. They’d all written it off to grief. Was it something more? There was that blue fiber in McBirney’s garage that matched her school jacket. The one with the hole in it.

And, of course, there was Matt Doaks. He’d never liked the guy, but always chalked most of that up to Zoe’s past with the bastard.

Jealousy. First he’d suspected McBirney of Bassi’s murder, largely because of Marcy. Now, he was doing the same thing with Doaks because of Zoe. Baronick may have been right to take him off this case. Not that he wasn’t up to his neck in it anyway.

Where to go first? Pete wanted to talk to both Marcy and Zoe. He dug his cell phone from his coat pocket and tried Zoe’s home number only to be greeted with a busy signal. Her cell went directly to voicemail. Damn it, Zoe. Get off the phone. Well, at least she was at home.

He slowed and made a sweeping left turn off Route 15 onto Mays Road. Treacherous glossy black patches dotted the road that was more gravel than blacktop. The afternoon’s thaw made the back roads passable, if not entirely safe. At the top of the hill, he swung right onto Cowden Road and followed the ridge all the way to McBirney’s farm.

Pete had expected the long winding farm lane to be a mess without McBirney and his tractor around to plow it. Instead, the lane was clear—almost in better shape than the township road he’d driven in on.

Lights brightened the farmhouse’s kitchen windows. Pete parked next to the back stoop and cut the ignition. He contemplated his next action, reminding himself that he was under suspension. Picking up his cell phone he punched in Nate Williamson’s number.

“Chief?” Williamson said when he answered.

“What’s your twenty?” Pete said.

“I’m still hanging out at Matt Doaks’ house.”

“Anything new there?”

“No, sir. The county crime scene unit has processed outside. Now we’re waiting around for Doaks to come home. Maybe he’ll let us in without a warrant.” From the tone of Williamson’s voice, he wasn’t optimistic of that happening in this lifetime.

“Are you available, or do the county guys want you to stay put?”

“Uh, no. I’m just hanging out. What do you need, Chief?”

Pete smiled. He knew what Williamson was doing. Hoping to be present for some excitement on a long boring night. Arresting a widow probably wasn’t in the same category as waiting for a sexual perv to put in an appearance. “Head over to Jerry McBirney’s farm. I may have some work for you to do.”

“Copy, Chief. On my way.”

Pete tucked the phone back into his pocket and stepped out of his car. The porch light flipped on. Good thing he hadn’t been counting on the element of surprise. Marcy opened the door as he raised his fist to knock.

“Pete,” she said. “I wondered who was pulling in so late. I’m a little jumpy now that I’m out here all by myself.”

“You should get a dog.” Or maybe not. If she was in jail, her protection would be handled by the state.

Marcy escorted him into the kitchen. “Coffee? Or do I need to ask?” She smiled.

“Do you have any made?”

“There’s a cup or two left in the pot. It’s cold, but I can nuke it.”

“Thanks.”

While she bustled around the kitchen, pulling a mug from the cabinet, filling it from a large pot, and placing it in the microwave, Pete took a seat at the table.

“What brings you out here tonight?” Marcy asked. “If you’re here to ask me about Jerry’s death, I’m afraid you’ll need to contact my attorney.”

“No. I need to ask you some questions, but not about your husband’s murder.”

The microwave beeped, and Marcy removed the steaming mug, placing it in front of Pete. Then she settled into the chair across from him and folded her hands on the table. He studied her face. The swelling had shifted downward, making her jaw line puffy, and the bruising had turned more yellowish green than black and blue.

“Your face looks better.”

Her good eye twitched, but she said nothing.

He sipped his coffee. “At what point in our marriage did you start sleeping with McBirney?”

She blanched. “What?”

It was Pete’s turn to say nothing. Instead, he watched her expressions run the gamut.

“Why would you want to know that?” she said.

He shrugged, wanting to appear nonchalant. Don’t accuse her too early. Make this seem like a normal conversation. “Curious. With everything that’s happened in the last week, lots of old memories have surfaced. I quit my job with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police to move here because you wanted a quieter life.” He managed a short laugh.

Marcy leaned back in her chair, resting her hands in her lap. “You think we’d have ended up differently if we’d stayed in the city?”

It was a question Pete had considered innumerable times over the years. “Maybe. What do
you
think?”

She pressed her lips together and stared over his shoulder a moment before letting her gaze come back to his. “I never liked the city. You knew that. I wanted space and fresh air to raise kids—” Her voice broke.

He resisted the urge to reach across the table to her. Their shared memory of two miscarriages wasn’t the direction he’d intended this discussion to take. Get back on track. “So you weren’t happy in Pittsburgh. You obviously weren’t happy here either. Not with me.”

Marcy squirmed in the chair. “Why are we talking about this now?”

“Because we were never able to talk about it before.”

She took a noticeably deep breath and exhaled. “Okay. I don’t think it was so much that I was unhappy with you. After we lost the two babies, I wasn’t happy with myself. When we didn’t get pregnant again, I thought getting that horse would fill a void. I’d always wanted a horse. Ever since I was a little girl. It was just happenstance that I stumbled across Jerry’s ad for stall space in the paper. It wasn’t like I planned to find a kindred spirit when I decided to board Comanche here.”

Pete clenched his fists. “Kindred spirit? At least you aren’t calling McBirney your soul mate.”

“I thought he was. At first. Jerry and I both loved long rides in the woods. You were too busy with work to spend time at the barn. Or with me anywhere for that matter.”

“So that’s when you started sleeping with him?”

Marcy stood and crossed to the sink, where she grabbed a towel and began drying the few dishes parked in the drainer. “Not right away. But, yeah, over time.”

“Were you sleeping with him when he went through his financial problems?”

A glass clattered into the sink and shattered. She gripped the edge of the counter until her knuckles turned white.

Pete stood and moved next to her, where he could see her face and the tortured series of expressions that danced across it. “Or did the affair start after he managed to bail himself out?”

She stiffened, her jaw set. “If you’re insinuating that I only agreed to sleep with Jerry after he came into some cash—”

Her feigned indignity disrupted his attempt at indifference. “No, not at all. I’m just wondering whether you started fucking Jerry McBirney before or after you stole the township’s receipts to fund his bad financial choices.”

Marcy spun to face him. Even her bad eye had widened, showing white all around. “How did you—”

Pete’s cell phone rang. Hoping this was finally Zoe returning his calls, he dug the phone from his pocket. The number on the screen wasn’t Zoe’s, though.

“It may be nothing, but I thought you’d like to know,” said the gravelly voiced lab tech, when he answered.

“What’ve you got, Grace?”

“It’s still too soon to have DNA on the hairs recovered in the vehicles, but I’ve looked at them under the microscope.”

“And?”

“There were several long dark hairs found in Ted Bassi’s pickup that were dyed.”

Goth girl Allison. No big surprise there. “That’s it?”

“Would I be calling you if that were all?” Grace gave a snort over the phone. “There were also long dark hairs found in the Buick. The ones from the passenger side headrest were from a natural brunette.”

That would be Marcy.

“But,” Grace continued, “there were also long, dark hairs found in the trunk. Dyed ones. They match the ones in the pickup.”

“Thanks, Grace.” Pete snapped the phone. What the hell were Allison’s hairs doing in Jerry McBirney’s trunk? Before he had a chance to make sense of it, his phone rang again. “Yeah, Nate?” he answered.

“I’m at the end of McBirney’s lane. What do you want me to do?”

Pete eyed his ex-wife, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, pressing a dish towel to her face. He realized this was the first time in all the years he’d known Marcy that her tears hadn’t cut into his heart. Instead, his gut told him trouble lurked elsewhere. “Have you had any word from county about Doaks or Zoe?”

“Nothing on either of them. You think something’s happened to Zoe?”

“I hope not. Come on down to the house. I need you to take Mrs. McBirney in for questioning.”

Marcy staggered to a chair and dropped into it, weeping into the towel she held to her mouth.

Pete snapped the phone closed.

“How did you find out after all these years?” Marcy whispered.

“That computer that your husband made such a fuss over. Your e-mail exchanges are still on it.”

She swore and put her head down on the table.

Pete crossed to the door and watched the headlights from the township’s second cruiser sweep down the lane toward the house.

“What’s going on with Matt and Zoe?” Marcy said.

He turned to find her sitting up, wringing the towel in her hands, a look of total defeat on her battered face. “Huh?”

“I heard you on the phone asking about them. Has something happened?”

“I don’t know. The county police have some questions to ask Matt.”

“What kind of questions?”

What the hell difference did it make to Marcy? “I think you have enough problems of your own to deal with right now. You don’t need to worry about Matt Doaks.”

“I know.” Her voice sounded like a child’s. “It’s just that Matt and Jerry are—were good friends. He had dinner here quite a bit.”

Something whispered in the back of Pete’s brain. The jumble of puzzle pieces struggled to click into place.

Keys.

Doaks knew where Zoe hid her house key.

Hidden keys.

One of the things that never made sense to Pete was the lack of a car key in the Buick. He’d assumed McBirney had driven the car out into the game lands that night and left it and Ted’s body, but brought the car keys home with him. It had never felt right.

A knock at the door indicated Williamson had arrived.

“You say Matt and Jerry were good friends,” Pete said.

“Yes,” Marcy said.

“Did Jerry ever loan the Buick to Matt?”

“Yeah. Matt’s old car kept breaking down last summer. Jerry let him use the Buick whenever he wanted.”

Williamson knocked again. Pete parted the curtain and held up a finger. In the porch light, he made out the officer’s nod.

“Marcy, did Matt know about Jerry’s spare key?”

“Spare key?”

“The one he kept on a nail in the garage. He showed it to me that morning I came here to question him about Ted’s death. Jerry couldn’t locate it at first.”

“Oh. Yes. Jerry showed it to him so he didn’t have to bother one of us every time he needed to borrow the car.”

Damn it.

Pete yanked the door open so fast that Williamson flinched. “Chief?”

“Take Mrs. McBirney into custody. Charge her with theft of township property.”

“Like Sylvia Bassi?”

Not quite. “Just do it.” Pete broke into a sprint toward his car.

“What’s up?” Williamson called after him. “What’s wrong?”

Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. “I’ll call if I need you.” Pete pressed Zoe’s cell number into his phone as he leapt behind the wheel of his vehicle.

“Come on, Zoe. Pick up.”

He turned the key and the engine roared to life.

Zoe’s voicemail greeting played in his ear. Pete snapped the phone shut and rammed it in his pocket. Shifting into gear, he jammed his foot down on the accelerator.

Damn it. The phone lines were still down to Zoe’s house. That’s why he’d been getting a busy signal there. He should have gone to her place first. If anything happened to her…