Sketch a Falling Star (10 page)

S
he found Zeke perched on the arm of the couch waiting for her. “What was that all about?” she asked, not bothering to sit.

“Some good old-fashioned eavesdroppin’,” he said, sounding quite pleased with himself. “It would be a lot simpler if I could just hear things firsthand, at the same time you do.”

Rory was about to object, but she stopped herself. What was she doing? Either he was her partner or he wasn’t. She couldn’t have it both ways. She’d grown so accustomed to arguing with the marshal that it had become a reflex. Surely he’d earned the right to have his thoughts given consideration and not rejected out of hand. “And the flickering lights?” she asked.

“It seemed only right that I should let you know I was around,” he said, “although I can see as how we need a different signal when I’m plannin’ to stay out of sight.”

“Thank you. It might keep me from acting like a complete idiot again.”

Zeke grinned, eyes twinkling with mischief. “Well now, that’s a pretty tall order, and there’s only so much I can do.”

Rory shook her head and laughed. Maybe a little more patience and restraint on her part would actually work. Hey, it was worth a shot.

“There you go,” Zeke said, “you didn’t leave your sense of humor out west after all.”

“Shouldn’t we be having this conversation in the house?” she asked, since he seemed to expend far too much energy even commuting the short distance to the office. From what she could tell, there was little if any correlation between measurements of time and distance in her world and the dimension he inhabited.

“Thoughtfulness
and
a sense of humor. Are you tryin’ to stun me into submission?”

“If only.”

O
nce they were seated at the kitchen table, Rory summarized her conversation with her aunt, since Zeke had only heard the tail end of it. He was right. It definitely made more sense for him to hear and see things firsthand, complete with facial expressions and body language. As long as he didn’t take the inch she was offering and stretch it into a mile. She shook off the little voice in her head that was second-guessing her decision. If she wasn’t willing to trust him, their relationship was never going to work in the long run.

“We’re sure as hell not lackin’ for motives,” Zeke said, already wading knee-deep in the possibilities of the case.

“Assuming it was murder,” she reminded him.

“I’ll bet there are other motives in the troupe Helene’s not even aware of,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’re goin’ to have to interview everyone who was in the canyon. And bein’ actors, they’re likely to be real talented at hidin’ the truth.”

Rory got up for a glass of water. When the marshal was fired up, it was just easier to let him run out of steam than to try to stop him.

“I’ll tag along as often as I can, energywise. It’ll be like havin’ an extra pair of eyes and ears with you.”

As long as that wasn’t in the literal sense. Rory had a brief but horrible vision of Zeke’s eyes and ears blossoming out of thin air while she was interviewing someone. She told herself that would never happen, that he only appeared by choice. At least he’d always made it seem that way. Who was she kidding? She had to know for sure.

“You can’t materialize by accident, right?” she asked.

“I don’t believe so.”

She suppressed a groan. Why couldn’t he have simply said “‘right’”—a firm, unequivocal “‘right.’” “What if you were so focused on listening to a conversation that you let down your guard a bit—could it happen then?”

“I imagine almost anythin’ can happen given the proper circumstances, darlin’, but the odds are you’ve got nothin’ to worry about.”

And right then and there she started worrying.

Chapter 10

W
hen Rory started calling the members of the troupe to set up interviews, the number one name on her list was Adam Caspian. According to the offhand comment his daughter had made, he was glad Brian was dead. That sounded like a man with a motive to Rory’s way of thinking. Now, if she could just tease a confession out of him, she wouldn’t have to bother interviewing anyone else; the case would be closed in record time. But when she reached Adam by phone, her hopes were quickly dashed.

“I heard Clarissa hired you,” he said after Rory identified herself. “She really believes her son was murdered, huh?” Apparently the troupe’s grapevine was as efficient as a posting on Facebook.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Then I have some good news for you,” he said cheerfully.

“What’s that?” If it was a confession, Rory swore she’d go back to believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

“You can cross Sophia and me off your list of possible suspects.”

So much for childhood fantasies. “Why would you assume you were on such a list?” she asked, thinking she might reap some useful information by playing dumb.

Adam chuckled as if he’d just heard a good joke. “Come on, Rory. How naïve do you think I am? Clarissa hires you to catch a killer, and out of the blue you call me. We’ve never said more than a few words to one another. Am I wrong? Did you call to ask me out to dinner or a movie?” The chuckle was still there behind his words.

“Okay,” she said, “so why is it I can cross you off this supposed list of mine?”

“You know what they say—location, location, location.” Adam was positively jolly. “And throw in an eyewitness for good measure.”

“You’ve definitely got my attention,” she said, wishing they were having this discussion in person so that she could read his face as well as his voice.

“Sophia and I were the last ones into the canyon,” he said, sobering quickly as he began to recount the details of that day. “And we were the first ones out when the flood hit.”

“Just a happy coincidence?”

“Not entirely. We’d been chatting with Jerry, our guide, on the walk to the canyon entrance. Sophia had asked him about the history of the area, and Jerry was obliging but a bit long-winded. Anyway, he was still answering her question as the rest of the group started filing inside, so we wound up being the last ones.” Adam paused, either for effect or because the horror of the day had seized him again. “We couldn’t have been there for more than a few minutes when the flood swept in. I credit Jerry with saving our lives. And now it seems we also have him to thank for providing us with an alibi.”

“You were lucky on several counts that day,” Rory said, thinking it all sounded too pat. “Would you mind if I called and spoke to this Jerry? You know, due diligence and all for my investigation.”

“No problem.” Adam’s buoyant tone was back as if he’d shaken off the memory the way Hobo shook the rain from his coat. “I actually took down his number in case something like this came up.” Talk about being prepared. Adam must have made a fine Boy Scout.

“S
o you’re just crossin’ the Caspians off the list?” Zeke asked incredulously after Rory told him about her conversation with Adam.

“Not ‘just,’ ” Rory came back. “I called the guide and had a long talk with him. He verified everything Adam told me and then some. If ever a job suited a person, his does. That man sure loves talking. I was even treated to a lesson about how the slot canyons were discovered before I was able to get off the phone.”

“Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but did it occur to you that maybe Adam paid him for his cooperation? I doubt tour guides up there on Indian land earn a heap of a lot. A chance to make some extra cash could be awfully tempting.”

“Of course I thought of that,” she said, annoyed by the defensiveness that immediately infiltrated her tone. “Jerry sounded very relaxed, not at all nervous or rehearsed.”

“Money can have that kind of calmin’ effect.”

“Short of kidnapping and torturing the man, how would you like me to make sure he was telling the truth?”

“By keeping Adam and his daughter on that list for now.”

Rory had to admit that what the marshal was suggesting made a certain amount of sense. But putting them back on the list made her feel like the investigation was moving in reverse, which it pretty much was.

A
fter the Caspians, Rory had no particular order in which she wanted to conduct the rest of the interviews. As a result, the first actual interview was with Richard Ames, MD, simply because he was the first one to answer the phone when she called. She’d tried four of the other actors before him but wound up leaving four voice-mail messages. Either they were a busy bunch, or some of them were screening their calls. Technology wasn’t always the boon it was cracked up to be.

Although Richard wasn’t on her aunt’s list of those with known grudges against Brian, Rory couldn’t afford to ignore any Player who’d been in the canyon that day. She still didn’t believe Brian had been murdered, but Clarissa did, and she was the one paying the bills.

She arranged to meet Richard at his home in Lido Beach at seven o’clock that evening. He’d sounded surprised to hear from her and more surprised to learn that she’d been hired to investigate Brian’s death. It appeared the grapevine hadn’t reached him yet. Rory told him she just wanted to get his insights into Brian and his relationships with the other members of the troupe. She’d decided to use the same excuse with all the Players she interviewed. People opened up more easily when they weren’t on the defensive.

As soon as she hung up, she did a Google search on him. Apparently Richard Ames was a popular name on planet Earth. It was a good thing he was also a doctor. That narrowed the parameters substantially, leading her to Richard Ames, pathologist and member of the Way Off Broadway Players. From what she could see, there were no red flags. Nothing specific to jot down and inquire about when she talked to him.

Zeke had been keeping a low profile since she’d agreed to let him be her invisible fly on the wall, with “invisible” being the operative word. She still had some trepidation about opening that door to him, but in the interest of harmony she’d adopted a wait-and-see attitude. For his part, Zeke had been conserving energy in order to be at maximum readiness to play his new role. He’d worked out a signal to let Rory know when he was in the room—a gentle tap on the shoulder. They’d tested and refined it a dozen times, since tapping by remote-control energy was hardly an exact science. By the time Rory was satisfied that the pressure was enough to catch her attention without startling her, Zeke was grumbling under his breath about a princess and a pea. She let his words hang in the air without rebuke, proud of her self-restraint.

She arrived at the Ames’ home with a few minutes to spare, the trip south to Lido Beach having taken more than an hour in the last of the evening rush. The houses on the block were large and clearly expensive but built so closely together that it was hard to discern any beauty in the jumble of different architectural styles. Since land there was a commodity in short supply, if you wanted to be on the water you had to make sacrifices.

Richard’s two-story contemporary overlooked the calm waters of Reynold’s Channel, while a quarter-mile directly south of it, the waves of the Atlantic Ocean pounded the shore. Since it was only late April, the summer crowds were still months away, which meant parking was not a problem. When Rory emerged from her car, it was fully dark, even though they were already on daylight saving time. A sharp wind was whipping off the ocean, heavy with salt and the pungent smell of low tide. She tugged the sides of her leather jacket together. She’d forgotten how much cooler the temperature on the south shore could be, a benefit only in the heat of summer. She climbed the bullnose-marble steps to the Ames’ front door and rang the bell.

To her relief, Richard answered the door in a matter of seconds. “Come in, come in,” he said. “I have hot water up for tea. It’s that sort of night, isn’t it?” He chattered on about the weather as he led her past a formal living room and dining room and down a wide center hallway to a gourmet kitchen that flowed into a spacious family room. Rory couldn’t help thinking that it was a lot of house for a widower whose only daughter was away at college—information Helene had eagerly imparted when Rory called her on the way to the interview.

“You have a beautiful home,” she said, accepting a seat in an armchair that faced a broad bank of windows. She was sure the view in front of her had to be spectacular during the day, but at night, with only a few, dull lights in the distance, it was like having a ringside seat at the edge of the abyss. When Zeke gently tapped her on the shoulder a moment later, she literally jumped several inches off her seat. For once, she couldn’t put the blame on him.

Luckily, Richard was in the kitchen with his back to her, busy making their tea and providing a lively little tutorial about the proper preparation of tea and the great American sin of using bags rather than leaves.

“Milk or lemon?” he inquired, turning to her.

“Just sugar, thank you.” She was surprised her voice wasn’t quivering like her insides.

Richard placed a cup on the table beside her. With his own cup in hand, he sat on the couch, with his back to the daunting view. Rory thought about asking if they could switch seats, but she didn’t know if he would be offended. In all likelihood he’d offered her what he considered the best seat in the house. So she picked up her cup instead and dutifully sipped the tea, proclaiming it superior to any she’d tasted before, although in reality she couldn’t detect much of a difference.