Ghost Wanted (27 page)

Cobb flicked a glance at Weitz.

The detective cleared her throat, held up the flash drive between two gloved fingers. She turned to face Detective Smith and the video camera. “Officer Weitz, taking into custody a flash drive found in a brown manila envelope in the desk of Eleanor Sheridan, dean of students at—”

A sudden timid knock sounded on a panel of the open door. The student in the pink blouse and red tights stepped inside. “Excuse me. Please. I want to help. I didn't know I could help, but I got this phone call from this guy at the
Bugle
and he said”—she looked toward Sam Cobb—“that I needed to tell the police chief what I knew.”

Detective Smith turned the video camera toward the doorway.

The girl stopped, a pulse fluttering in her throat. She barely managed the words. “Are you Chief Cobb?”

Sam didn't frown at the interruption. His brown eyes saw the uncertainty and shyness in the little figure who faced him with fingers laced tightly together. “Right. Can I help you?”

“I'm Daisy Butler. I'm a work-study student.” She looked across the room at Eleanor Sheridan, her gaze timid but eager. “I'm glad to help out, Dean Sheridan. I was here that day, September seventeenth. I was working on name tags for the tea for the student activities fair and I was down on the floor behind the counter. Most everybody had already gone out of the office for lunch. People like to go at eleven thirty but they come back at twelve thirty so it isn't like they take more time than they should. Anyway, I was down on the floor sitting cross-legged. I learned it in my yoga class. I don't think anybody knew I was here, but I heard the door open and real fast footsteps. I popped up, thinking I could be, like, the receptionist, but I saw the lady and she looked scary. I mean she was actually a nice-looking older woman, her hair was brown with some silver streaks, and she had blue eyes and the kind of face like my aunt Margaret, sort of round, but I could tell she was really upset. I thought maybe somebody was in big trouble and she'd come to see about it. She came in from the hall, and she didn't even look toward the counter. She knew right where she was going. I mean, she came right to this door”—Daisy gestured—“and she didn't knock. She turned the knob and went right in, and before she slammed the door she said, ‘I'm Susannah Fairlee. I told you—' Then the door closed. The
Bugle
guy said somebody was saying that this woman—Susannah Fairlee; he sent me a picture on my cell and I knew it was her—wasn't here that day, but I can swear she was.” She stopped and looked pleased.

Eleanor sat immobile. Her right hand gripped the silver bracelets on the opposite wrist.

I could imagine the questions pummeling her mind.
Why does the
Bugle
editor think it matters that Susannah Fairlee came to my office that day? No one else knows what happened to Susannah. Her death was officially deemed accidental. Why did that idiot girl come in and talk about Susannah? Do they know? How could they know?
Eleanor took a quick breath, said coolly, “Thank you, Daisy. That will be all for now.”

Daisy blinked, aware that her willingness to help was somehow unwelcome. She looked deflated. She shot a questioning glance at Eleanor then at Chief Cobb.

“Close the door behind you, Daisy.” Eleanor's tone was sharp.

Daisy shrank a little, hunched her thin shoulders. She nodded and stumbled a little as she turned.

Eleanor again seemed to draw on an inner reservoir of command.

I wondered how much effort it took as she managed to look exasperated. “I'm sorry for the interruption. I hope this exercise is soon coming to an end.”

When the door clicked shut, Chief Cobb said brusquely, “We'll take her statement.”

Eleanor's expression was one of puzzlement. “That is your prerogative. But I can't imagine why. As for that day, people come here all the time. I don't remember that particular incident. I can look at my daybook.” Her lips curved in a mocking half smile.

“Perhaps that will refresh my memory.”

Cobb spoke heavily, coldly. “The investigation into Susannah Fairlee's death has been reopened and she is now considered to be the victim of a homicide.”

Eleanor's features hardened. She looked predatory and dangerous and very, very wary.

The chief jerked a thumb at Weitz. “Resume your search.” He glanced at Smith.

The video camera followed Weitz to the windows. She pulled a wine-colored plush red velvet drape forward, checked behind it, carefully scanned the lining. She stepped to the next drape.

A short beep. Sam unsheathed his cell phone, held it up, listened. His face tightened. “Taken into custody?”

I tensed, moved near enough to hear an excited voice. “. . . found her by the fountain in front of the building. Listen, Chief, this big guy's raising hell, saying she's innocent, insisting we don't take her in, that he'll get a lawyer and—”

“Ask Ms. Hoyt and her friend to remain where they are. Tell them I will soon have information for them.” The chief's deep voice carried well.

I was watching Eleanor. Her patrician features exhibited boredom in addition to long-suffering forbearance with idiotic officialdom. I had no doubt she'd heard and knew Michelle Hoyt was in custody, even if not under formal arrest.

Behind that facade pulsed a quick brain. She would bend her intelligence to discovering who and what lay behind the arrival of the police, but for the moment she was triumphant. No matter what was found, no matter if Susannah Fairlee was seen entering her office, she would insist the materials had been placed in her office by someone else and that she simply didn't recall Fairlee's visit, had no reason to recall it. Even if a search of her house yielded the clothes she'd worn the night she shot Ben Douglas, she wasn't in a corner. If the forensic team found a thread from her sweater on the fringe of the box containing diaries belonging to Susannah Fairlee, Eleanor could blandly shrug, insist she had no possible idea how that could have happened. But, of course, the box had been in the room for some time, hadn't it? And there was no way of knowing when a thread might have caught there, and perhaps she'd visited the library and inexplicably somehow a thread was snagged from her sweater. Certainly that was no proof she'd been in room 211 the night Ben Douglas was shot. She would be horrified at the suggestion. All the while a smug, catlike smile would mock her questioners.

Trials often were decided on circumstantial evidence, but a defendant had to be definitively linked to a crime by a witness, physical evidence, or a weapon.

That was my ace in the hole: The revolver that killed Ben Douglas would soon be found.

Cobb's craggy features furrowed in a deepening frown. He knew full well what she was thinking and knew further that so long as she maintained her bland dismissive attitude, they could not prove anything against her.

Detective Weitz completed her search of the last drapery, turned toward the bookcases.

On the second shelf, behind the fourth book—
Adobe Angels: The Ghosts of Santa Fe and Taos—
she would find a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver with six chambers, two of them empty. When test-fired, the cartridges would match the bullets that resulted in Ben Douglas's death.

My feeling of satisfied expectation abruptly evaporated.

Eleanor's fingerprints were not on the gun. Eleanor knew her fingerprints were not on the gun. She would have made certain the gun was shining clean before she placed it in the trunk of Michelle's car. I had no doubt she would recognize the gun when Weitz found it. I could predict Eleanor's response: shock, astonishment, anger that someone had placed a weapon in her office.

Weitz lifted books out, scanned the empty area, returned the titles.

Eleanor placed her fingers over her lips to smother a small yawn. She was a vision of boredom.

Weitz neared the end of the top shelf.

I slipped past the searching detective, careful not to brush against her. At the end of the bookcase, I looked up at the second shelf to the book about long-ago ghosts. I'd been pleased with myself when I'd tucked the gun there, enjoying the title, thinking—all right, pride goes before a smashing fall—how clever I was.

Weitz lifted out the last three books. In an instant, she would re-shelve them and move in her deliberate fashion, face expressionless, to the place where I now stood.

Eleanor smoothed back a strand of golden hair. She glanced at her wristwatch. Ah, yes, she had an important appointment in another ten minutes and likely would suggest that the search was a matter that the police would surely soon conclude, perhaps even rise and stroll toward the door, murmuring she had an appointment and she knew they didn't need for her to be present any longer.

Chief Cobb's stolid look didn't quite hide his uneasiness. What was he going to do about Michelle, now in police custody? If he found nothing here to justify arresting Eleanor Sheridan, if he couldn't pull together evidence to entrap the dean, Michelle would be placed in a cell and murder charges would be filed, his job would be in jeopardy, and a killer would be safe.

My eyes dropped to the third shelf, with its collection of expensive and beautiful millefiori paperweights. I remembered with a sharp stab of anger JoLee Jamison's single varicolored marble, so tiny in comparison, not of value to anyone but her. The dean's collection of heavy glass paperweights in contrast likely cost thousands of dollars, a luxury made possible by blackmail. No doubt the dean had held each one, turned them in bright light to enjoy the almost iridescent flashes of color, cupping each paperweight in long slender fingers.

My eyes lifted to the second shelf and the book about New Mexico ghosts. I had an empty feeling deep inside. Detective Weitz would find the gun where I'd so carefully placed it and the discovery would do no good. There were no fingerprints—

If Eleanor's fingerprints were on the gun, she would never be able to explain away that fact. I looked again at the shelf with its gorgeous paperweights.

Weitz raised her hand to the first books on the second shelf. Her back was to me.

Eleanor once again used the index finger of one hand to flick, flick, flick a silver bracelet. She gazed at the shining circle of silver.

Sam Cobb folded his arms, watched Weitz intently.

Detective Smith aimed the video camera at the bookshelves. He was leaning back against the wall, likely thinking this was boring and would Weitz get a move on, he wanted some coffee.

The leather couch and Eleanor were not in range of his lens.

Careful again not to touch Weitz, I slipped past her, reached down to the lower shelf. My fingers closed around a gorgeous paperweight, with blue, green, pink, yellow, and white ribbons of glass curled in the ball to a millefiori design at the top. The paperweight was designed in the shape of a ball that tapered to a small two-inch base. I eased the paperweight over the edge of the shelf, moving down, down, down.

Weitz continued to pull out books, return them.

Keeping my hand below the top of the desk to hide the paperweight, I once again passed Weitz. I bent down and with a sidearm angle a couple of inches above the floor threw the crystal ball as hard as I could. The paperweight crashed with a resounding whack on the opposite wall.

Weitz whirled, hand on her holster. Her brown eyes scanned the far side of the room.

Detective Smith straightened up from the wall, the video camera loose in his hand. He stared at the paperweight as it wobbled to a stop near his feet.

Cobb turned toward the sound in a flash, gun in hand, a quick move for a big man.

Eleanor's head jerked around and she stared at the floor.

I reached up, pulled out the book, grabbed the gun, and tossed it directly into her lap.

Caught by surprise, Eleanor gave a sharp cry. Her hands flailed, grappling with the gun. As her hands closed around it, she looked down. Her face changed. She recognized the gun, the weapon she had so carefully cleaned and placed to entrap Michelle and which she now held in her hands, and her fingerprints were all over the cold steel barrel and grip.

“Someone threw this at me.” Her voice rose in a shout. She gripped the stock in one hand, came to her feet. She looked from Smith to Weitz to Cobb.

Face cool and determined, Weitz held her service revolver with both hands, feet planted, aim steady. “Drop the weapon. Drop the weapon now.”

Cobb was moving. The video camera crashed to the floor as Smith yanked his gun free.

Eleanor's face convulsed in rage.

Weitz was across the intervening space and her hand closed on Eleanor's wrist. “Drop it.”

The gun clattered to the floor.

Eleanor had maintained her insouciant attitude each time the unexpected occurred: The recovery of the flash drive from her desk in an envelope she knew she had discarded. The work-study student's artless revelation about Susannah, which was utterly shocking because Eleanor had no inkling anyone knew of a link between her and Susannah. After each blow, she must have struggled with flickers of panic. Who put the envelope and flash drive in her office desk? Who alerted the Adelaide police? And now the gun that killed Ben Douglas, lying on the floor with her fingerprints.

Eleanor Sheridan no longer looked confident. “The gun—” But she knew what the gun would reveal. She stared at Cobb with an expression of horror. Red stained both cheeks. Her mouth twisted.

“Eleanor Sheridan, we are also serving on you a search warrant for your home—”

She drew in a deep ragged breath.

I saw terror in her eyes, terror and a sickened realization of doom. I was puzzled for an instant and then I knew. The police would find more than the clothes she'd worn to kill. The police would find Susannah Fairlee's diary. I felt certain of that discovery, read that knowledge in her desperate gaze. Why had she kept the diary? A trophy? Defiance? A macabre toast to her own cleverness?