Crime Seen (27 page)

Candice thanked Dillon and we left. When we got into the Hummer, she turned to me and asked, ‘‘So what was it that the old radar was hitting on?’’

‘‘It was that obvious, huh?’’ I said.

‘‘Only to someone who knows you well,’’ she reassured me. ‘‘You did pretty good with the poker face until you said that bit about it being ironic.’’

I sighed. ‘‘Couldn’t help it. I don’t like Dillon. His energy sucks. And he’s a liar.’’

‘‘Which part was he lying about?’’ she asked curiously as we got back on the road.

‘‘A lot of it. For starters, I think he’s hiding something about Lutz. Or the truth about Lutz. When he said that the police had all the evidence against Bruce, my lie detector went haywire.’’

‘‘What could he know that the police don’t?’’ Candice wondered.

‘‘I’m not sure,’’ I said. ‘‘And I don’t even know where to begin to find out.’’

‘‘What we need is more information,’’ said Candice, looking pointedly at me. ‘‘And you, my friend, are the key to that.’’

I was about to reassure her that I was doing my best at the mortgage company; then I thought about Bree, and the danger she might be in now that I knew who’d really killed her mom. ‘‘I think I have an idea,’’ I said as we turned back onto Woodward Avenue.

‘‘I’m all ears,’’ she said.

An hour later, we were parked in front of a well-tended little bungalow in the heart of Berkley, a neighboring town to Royal Oak. ‘‘This is cute,’’ Candice said as she parked in front of the house.

‘‘Yeah,’’ I said. I got out on my side and headed up the walk. Candice fell into step behind me and I said quietly to her, ‘‘This time, let me do all the talking, okay?’’

She nodded and I pressed the doorbell, taking a quick glance at the driveway, where two cars were parked. There was some noise that sounded like a television from inside and a woman’s voice called out, ‘‘Coming!’’ A moment later the door opened and Bree gave me a look of surprise, then said, ‘‘Hey, Abby! What are you doing here?’’

‘‘Hi, Bree, sorry to intrude on a Sunday, but can I talk to you for a quick minute?’’

Bree gave me a quizzical look as a male voice from behind her asked, ‘‘Who is it?’’

Bree turned her head to say, ‘‘It’s a friend of mine from work. I’ll be right back.’’ She stepped out onto the porch with us, closing the door behind her. ‘‘Let’s go across the street to the park,’’ she said, motioning to a nice-sized playground and a group of picnic tables.

We all crossed the street and made our way over to the tables. As we sat, I could see that Bree was looking intently at me, probably thinking I had some message from her mother. I did indeed, but it wasn’t one that she would probably welcome. ‘‘Thanks for talking with us,’’ I began.

‘‘No problem. How’d you find out where I lived, anyway?’’ she asked. ‘‘Our number and our address are unlisted.’’

Candice hid a grin and I was quick to say, ‘‘I’ll tell you about it someday. What I’m here for is to pass on some information, and collect something from you.’’

‘‘Okay,’’ said Bree, swiveling her head over to Candice, probably wondering who she was.

‘‘By the way, this is my friend Candice. She’s also a psychic and she’s been working with Theresa and me on your mom’s murder.’’

Candice smiled confidently and extended a hand. ‘‘Nice to meet you,’’ she said to Bree. ‘‘And may I just say that you have a fabulous aura!’’ She waved her hand around Bree’s head and Bree blushed slightly.

‘‘Wow, you sure know a lot of psychics, Abby,’’ Bree said.

I laughed. ‘‘Yeah, well, birds of a feather. So as I was saying, the message I have to pass on is that I’ve given the police a physical description of who killed your mother.’’

Bree looked at me grimly. ‘‘She showed you what happened, didn’t she?’’ she said simply.

‘‘Yes,’’ I said, meeting her gaze. ‘‘It wasn’t more than a few seconds, but it was enough to have a sketch artist draw a portrait.’’

‘‘Can I see it?’’ Bree wanted to know.

I felt my left side grow thick and heavy. ‘‘I’m sorry, Bree, but your mother feels that would put you in danger. And that’s the main reason I wanted to come by today. I want you to be on alert that if your mom’s case opens back up, her killer may believe the source of the information was you.’’

‘‘No one would believe a psychic could hit the mark, huh?’’ she said bluntly.

‘‘That’s right. The good news is that the law enforcement officer I spoke with seemed to think that the sketch was good enough to narrow the list of suspects. He has to go slowly and gather his evidence carefully, and while he’s doing that, you need to be wary of strangers at your door, or of being followed and being alone in unfamiliar places.’’

Bree glanced nervously at her house. ‘‘Do you think my family’s in danger?’’

My left side again felt thick and heavy. ‘‘No, my radar says they’re going to be okay. It’s you who could be at risk, though, so it’s important that you take precautions. Okay?’’

Bree wrung her hands. ‘‘How long do you think it will be before they catch the guy who killed her?’’ she asked.

I shrugged. ‘‘I’m not sure. But as I get updated, I’ll pass that along to you.’’

‘‘Good. Thanks again, Abby, for all of this. I mean, I’ll definitely keep my eyes open and be careful, but I’m really grateful to you for connecting me to my mom again, and for shining some light on her murderer.’’

I grimaced, because the next thing that I had to ask played right into her sense of gratitude. ‘‘You’re welcome,’’ I said and paused as I thought how to broach the subject. ‘‘Now I need a favor from you.’’

‘‘Sure,’’ she said enthusiastically. ‘‘You name it.’’

‘‘It’s big.’’

‘‘I figured it might be,’’ she said with a laugh.

‘‘I need your log-in and password at Universal.’’

Bree tilted her head curiously at me. ‘‘Why?’’

I looked her dead in the eye. ‘‘I can’t tell you, but it’s important.’’

‘‘Is it illegal?’’ she asked.

I smiled. ‘‘No. I need it to look up something. The information will not be used illegally, I swear.’’ For emphasis I held up my hand, scout’s honor style.

Bree hesitated. ‘‘They guard those passwords pretty closely, you know,’’ she said to me. ‘‘I mean, they’ve fired processors before for giving out their passwords to loan officers.’’

Crap. I was putting her in a really sticky position. ‘‘Bree, I swear, I need to look up this information one time, and then I will never use that password again. In fact, how about if I tell you that I only need it tomorrow morning, say, before eight a.m. Then you can go to the IT department and tell them that you’ve forgotten it and need it reset. Okay?’’

The look of worry on Bree’s face brightened at the suggestion. ‘‘That’s cool,’’ she said. ‘‘I can live with that.’’

‘‘Great,’’ I said, pulling out a piece of paper and a pen from my purse. ‘‘Write it down on this, and after I’m done in the morning I’ll flush it down the toilet.’’

Bree actually laughed as she took the paper and pen. ‘‘It’s not like it’s the code to Fort Knox or anything.’’

While Bree was writing down her log-in and password, my eye caught a silver sedan making its way slowly down the street. It paused ever so slightly in front of Bree’s house, then continued to the end of the block and turned the corner. ‘‘Here,’’ she said, pushing the paper in front of me.

I took the paper and folded it several times as the three of us stood up. Thinking about the suspicious behavior of the car I’d just seen, I said, ‘‘Remember, if there’s a stranger at the door, don’t answer and stick close to your husband for a while, okay?’’

‘‘You really think I’m in danger, don’t you?’’ she asked earnestly.

‘‘I think that you can go a long way toward making sure you keep safe. I’ll talk to that law enforcement officer again, and hopefully he can have someone keep you under surveillance or something.’’

We headed back across the street and waved good-bye to her as we got into the Hummer. ‘‘Want to fill me in on the mother-murder thing?’’ Candice asked while she buckled her seat belt.

‘‘Can’t,’’ I said flatly. ‘‘It’s official FBI business and Dutch would kill me if I said anything,’’ I added, feeling a bit guilty about keeping something from her.

‘‘Okay,’’ she said, holding up a hand in surrender. ‘‘Don’t want to know too much and make myself all vulnerable.’’

‘‘I know what you mean,’’ I said moodily.

We drove in silence back to the office and parked in the garage. ‘‘What now?’’ I asked her, noting that it was still fairly early in the afternoon.

‘‘Now I do some digging,’’ said Candice. ‘‘I want to check out Dillon’s story and find out what he’s lying about.’’

‘‘Good idea,’’ I said. ‘‘While you’re doing that I can get back to my mailing list.’’

We headed up to our suite and as we came down the hallway we saw a tall figure pacing in front of the door. ‘‘Uh-oh,’’ I whispered as we approached.

‘‘I’ll let you do the talking,’’ Candice whispered back, then said, ‘‘Good afternoon, Detective Johnson.’’

‘‘Candice,’’ Milo said evenly. ‘‘Abby,’’ he said without a hint of warmth in my direction.

‘‘Hey there, Milo,’’ I said with a brilliant smile. ‘‘What’re you doing here on a Sunday?’’ I asked as I opened the door to the suite.

Milo followed us in and said, ‘‘The question is, what are you doing talking to Dillon McDaniel about his dad’s murder?’’

Crap.
‘‘He called you, huh?’’ I asked, as my mind worked feverishly to come up with a plausible story that didn’t involve telling Milo I thought Lutz was innocent.

‘‘Yes, he called me. He wanted me to find out who’d hired you and Candice to dig up dirt on Lutz. Trouble is, you two never asked him a question about Lutz. Instead you drilled him on his personal business. He seems to think you might be trying to cast some doubt on the case, and he’s worried that Lutz is the one who hired you.’’

Milo was giving me the hard stare. Typically, he played good cop to Dutch’s bad. But when he was alone, like now, he could really do the bad cop thing well. ‘‘Lutz did not hire us,’’ I said, hoping I could leave it at that.

Milo gave me a look of contempt—he wasn’t buying it. He turned his attention to Candice. ‘‘What do you have to say about this?’’

‘‘I have to say that in the brief time we’ve been looking into the murder of your former partner, the evidence is really beginning to turn us in a new direction,’’ was all she said, but it was enough to incense Milo.

He started breathing hard through his nose, and his jaw clenched and unclenched a few times before he said, ‘‘This isn’t a case you want to continue to work on, Candice. You’re new in town, and at some point you’ll need the full cooperation of the police on some other investigation you’re working. I’d hate for you to get stonewalled because you’ve got a reputation for being friendly toward cop killers. And I’d also hate it if, say, a complaint ended up at the private investigators’ licensing bureau. You know how they hate to renew licenses to PIs who rack up a lot of complaints.’’

My mouth fell open and I inhaled sharply. Milo was playing
really
dirty pool here. He was such a straight shooter—this just wasn’t like him. ‘‘Hold on a second,’’ I said.

‘‘I’m sorry, detective, I must have misunderstood you, because I thought I just heard you threaten to hamper any future investigation I might conduct,’’ said Candice evenly. Her eyes were narrowed and she was standing ramrod straight. I got the feeling she didn’t cotton to being pushed around.

‘‘Oh, I didn’t threaten so much as promise you that if you proceed to try and muddy the waters at Lutz’s parole hearing by introducing some bullshit about a hero’s family and his financial affairs, I will make sure you go broke in this town.’’

‘‘That’s enough!’’ I yelled and stuck my face right into Milo’s. He was still glaring at Candice, who was glaring right back. I took him by the shoulders and said, ‘‘
Listen
to me!’’

Milo blinked and his eyes looked straight into mine. I’d never gotten up in his face like I was doing right now. ‘‘Let go of me, Abby,’’ he said quietly, but I could tell he was one breath away from twisting me around and slapping handcuffs on me.

I let go of his shoulders and held up my hands, but I wouldn’t back away from him. ‘‘Lutz didn’t hire Candice,’’ I said. ‘‘
I
hired her.’’

Again Milo blinked several times in rapid succession. ‘‘You?’’ he asked. ‘‘Why would you hire her?’’

I sighed, trying to figure out where to begin. I decided I might as well start from the beginning. ‘‘Remember that night you came over with Lutz’s file, and Dutch told you he’d asked me to look at those three cases of his?’’

‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘Well, when he left the next morning I went to his study to work on them, but the case I ended up getting the most info on was Walter’s. His file got mixed in with the others and my radar wouldn’t let it go.’’

Milo’s expression softened. Unlike my boyfriend, Milo had always believed in my intuitive abilities one hundred percent. ‘‘And?’’ he asked after a short silence.

I continued. ‘‘The very first impression I had was that Lutz didn’t do it.’’

Milo rolled his eyes. ‘‘Abby, he confessed to it. He had details only the killer would know.’’

‘‘He had details
fed
to him by the killer, Milo!’’ I insisted. ‘‘I swear to you, Lutz did not kill Walter!’’

Milo folded his arms. ‘‘Then who did?’’

‘‘Wolfe was there,’’ I said, trying to remember the images that had flashed into my mind. ‘‘And someone else. But I’m not sure who actually pulled the trigger.’’

‘‘Wolfe has an alibi,’’ Milo said with a sigh. ‘‘He was playing poker at a friend’s house. Five separate witnesses have all given sworn testimony that he was there all night.’’

It was my turn to roll my eyes. ‘‘And I bet all five of those witnesses work for Wolfe,’’ I said.

Milo looked a little uncomfortable and I knew I’d hit the nail right on the head. ‘‘Whatever,’’ he said with a wave of his hand. ‘‘We have a guy in jail who has
confessed
to the crime. We have another guy who has five witnesses who place him well away from the scene and no other evidence against him. Someone’s going to pay for Walter’s death, Abby, and if it’s the guy who confessed, then that’s okay with me.’’