Stockton finds body of murdered woman.
He said hoarsely, “Turn it up.”
When the bartender didn’t react quickly enough he half lifted himself from the stool and shouted, “I said turn it up, asshole!”
The bartender took his time pointing the remote control at the television and raising the volume. All he caught was the last part of the segment.
“Thank you, Miss Stockton,” the serious-faced reporter said as she turned to the camera. “Once again, police are still investigating this bizarre assault and murder of a hotel guest outside the Pembroke Host Inn here in Pembroke. The identity of the victim is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. We’ll keep you updated as the story develops. This is Carolina Mays, WCGA News.”
Somebody said, “Thank you, Carolina,” as Raine Stockton and her yellow dog moved out of the shot.
Jeremiah Allen Berman stared at the television screen in slack-jawed disbelief for a minute, then became aware of the sharp gaze of the bartender and dropped his eyes to his phone. She was still there, in the baseball cap and the dog shirt. Brown ponytail, slim figure. But there was something different. How could she be different? She’d come out with her black and white dog ten minutes after he’d called her room, hadn’t she? How could she be different?
He took a long slug of his beer, and his face hardened as he swallowed. Brown ponytail, dog shirt, baseball cap. And behind her, the entrance sign to a fairgrounds. Google maps found it in .03 seconds.
Jeremiah Allen Berman was nobody’s fool. Nobody’s. And now he was pissed.
* * *
Detective Laraposa seemed less than excited to learn why I was calling. “You do realize we’re investigating a murder here, Ms. Stockton,” he said. “So unless you have some new information that pertains to the case…”
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know how this is connected to Marcie’s killer, but you need to have your men search the field behind the hotel for a lead pipe. My dog Cisco found it this morning and he was showing an usual amount of interest in it.”
“Ms. Stockton—”
“The kind of interest he usually shows when an article has recent human scent on it, or strong scent, like blood.”
“The medical examiner didn’t find any sign that the victim was struck with any sort of weapon.”
“But her boyfriend was. Neil Kellog.”
Now he was interested. “What do you know about that?”
“I just left him. He’s co-owner of the dogs and—well, that doesn’t matter. The thing is, the way he described the man who attacked him sounded a lot like the man I saw with Marcie yesterday afternoon at the hotel. But what I forgot to tell you was that he was carrying a bag with him when the two of them went to walk the dogs. What if the lead pipe that he used to attack Neil with was in the bag? And what if the reason he took the bag with him when they walked the dogs was to get rid of the weapon in the field, where no one would associate it with the attack on Neil?”
The detective was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Thank you, Miss Stockton. We’ll look into it. We have your contact information if we need anything else.”
All in all, that was a very unsatisfactory conversation.
I made a wry face as I tucked the phone back into my pocket. “They’ll look into it.”
Miles’s expression was mostly sympathetic. “Not like working with the hometown cops, huh?”
“I can’t believe she sat down at the table with us last night as calm as you please, knowing Neil was passed out on the floor with pain.” I gave a dismayed shake of my head. “I thought I was a better judge of character than that.”
“Maybe she didn’t know,” Miles suggested. “Her boyfriend—or whoever it was who was with her—might not have told her. People who take care of problems like that don’t usually give the details.”
I said, “I’m starting to see where Melanie gets her really, really bad television viewing habits.”
He didn’t acknowledge that, frowning thoughtfully. “I still don’t see how any of it relates to the murder, though.”
The waitress brought the take-out boxes and our check. Miles reached for it automatically, checked himself, and passed it to me with a smile. I turned down the corners of my mouth and dug some cash out of my back pocket.
“Where are we going from here?” he asked, making a visible effort to appear cooperative.
“To feed the dogs,” I replied. I