She pulled the notebook back out. “When you see this you’ll understand how on top of things I am. I couldn’t get any crime-scene photos of the body so I had to improvise.” She turned to a page I hadn’t seen and showed how she’d drawn Kelly’s workroom with a stick figure sprawled face up with a large red mark in the middle of her chest in front of the sliding glass door. She had used red curlicues going from the stick figure to areas all around it to show the blood spatter. “Eric told me where the body was.”
“I’ve seen a real murder book,” I said to Adele. “Just the other night, Barry showed me the one from a case he’s working on.” I was going to tell Adele more about it, but she cut me off.
“Mine is almost as good as the real thing,” she said, holding the picture page open.
“I drew it all based on what Eric told me, like they could tell that Kelly was shot at close range and was facing her assailant.”
“So then this is accurate? She was on her back?” I asked, and Adele nodded. “It means she was facing her killer.”
Adele snapped the book shut. “All of it points toward the culprit being Dan Donahue. Except they haven’t found the murder weapon and they don’t have any other hard evidence that he did it. At least, not yet,” Adele said, giving us a knowing look.
* * *
Although Mason and I had been having dinner together most nights, that night we didn’t. He called to tell me they were having some kind of family powwow about the wedding situation. I realized I had no place in it, but I still felt left out.
I was surprised to come home to an empty house. For so long Barry had been there every night, mostly Jeffrey, too. But now that Barry was back on his feet, literally, it made sense they wouldn’t just be staying put. I could tell by the trash, they’d had dinner before they went wherever. The takeout food containers gave it away. And the number of dishes in the dishwasher.
I laughed at myself. I was becoming quite the detective. Figuring out Samuel was out was easy. The light was off in his room and the door was shut. I had the house all to myself, finally. It was still balmy outside due to the fact it had been over one hundred degrees during the day. It seemed like a perfect night for an ice cream dinner. The only problem was no ice cream.
I brought the dogs inside and grabbed my purse. Gelson’s and Whole Foods were closing for the night, so I headed toward Ralph’s. The hot weather seemed to have made lots of people put off their grocery shopping because even though it was almost ten, the parking lot was crowded.
Once I got inside the store, I remembered other things I needed and, before I realized it, had a cart full of things like paper towels and cat food. I was ready to pick up the ice cream and check out, when I almost crashed carts with Dan Donahue. I had assumed by what I’d seen at their house that Dan brought everything they needed from his store, but apparently I was wrong. His cart had a whole selection of merchandise.
When he looked up to apologize for the cart crash, I said “Hello.”
“Molly Pink, the bookstore lady, right?” he said. I nodded and he started to back his cart away. I wasn’t about to let go of the opportunity to ask him a few questions, so I grabbed the side of it and stopped his escape.
I wished Dinah was there. We could do a good cop, bad cop thing and get information out of him without him even realizing he was giving it. But with no Dinah, my options were limited. You couldn’t do just bad cop.
“I’m surprised to see you shopping here,” I said. I studied his face. He looked tired and his smile seemed a little wan.
He glanced at his cart with a sheepish expression. “Bang for a Buck doesn’t carry everything. I’m going to have the reception for Kelly’s funeral at the house and I needed some things.” He paused with a long sigh. “I wanted to have what she particularly liked.”
“How are you holding up?” I said. This was the hard part. How to figure out if Detective Heather and Stone, along with everybody else, were right