Left to Murder (Adele Sharp #5) - Blake Pierce Page 0,39

sedan.

“I was told she left a pile of supplies nearby,” John said.

Agent Carter replied, “Already back at the lab. It was wine-making stuff—a glass carboy, and double-level corker. They’re tagging and bagging, but they don’t think the killer touched it. It looked like she bought it from the store, then dropped it. Clerk confirms the purchase.”

John nodded once, and Agent Carter looked like he’d been awarded a medal. He began beaming again, and John’s mood seemed to darken a little more. Adele rolled her eyes and began circling the car, her eyes flitting. Nothing of note. Just an old vehicle. The plates had already been run. Everything was legal. Not even a traffic ticket outstanding.

She looked back toward the store, her gaze darting to the camera again.

She stood for a moment, beneath the gray clouds still pulling across the sky. She breathed softly and closed her eyes. The woman had been taken here. Killed somewhere else, then dumped on a road two miles away. The person had done so quickly. They must have known the area and planned it out. Were they a local? They’d killed in Germany, then France, and now in California. How familiar were they with these places?

Adele shivered a bit and rubbed at her sleeves. She was in a new suit, thankfully, no longer boasting wrinkles from sleeping overnight in a motel room.

She glanced at John. “See anything in the car?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Didn’t think so. I’m going to talk to the clerk. You guys can keep flirting out here, or follow me.” She glanced back up at the security camera for a moment, certain she glimpsed a small red light.

Maybe the eye in the sky had spotted something they’d missed.

She moved toward the wine-making shop and approached the sliding glass doors, onto a pink brick walkway. A couple of other stores flanked the wine shop on either side, and Adele took note before passing through the sliding doors into an air-conditioned room, in desperate hope the security camera had spotted anything.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Artisan’s Supplies was in a much better state than the facade of the building. The sign had shown peeling letters, and the pink bricks looked like they’d been red once upon a time. Inside, though, whoever owned the store kept the place immaculate.

Adele spotted various accoutrements lining the wall. Large, wooden barrels neatly arranged against the back wall, with small hooks attached to bungee cords holding the containers in place in such a way that would allow one to remove the lower containers in the stack without toppling the entire display.

Adele even detected a faint hint of pumpkin spice on the air, and she glanced toward the counter, listening to the quiet whistle of woodwick candles placed in an arrangement around a cash register half-hidden behind a row of pamphlets and magazines boasting subjects one might expect to find in such a store.

“Can I help you?” the clerk behind the counter asked.

The clerk had a thin torso, but large, round cheeks. She was smiling genially, but her eyes kept glancing between Adele, Agent Carter, and Agent Renee with flicking motions that almost seemed to match the soft sputter of the candles.

“I hope so,” Adele said, displaying her credentials and then reaching the front of the counter. She absentmindedly poked at a dangling car-scent ornament—a foam tracing of red triangles in a plastic wrapper which boasted the ability to fill one’s car with the scent of strawberry wine.

The clerk winced, scanning Adele and flicking her eyes over her rosy cheeks toward the two other agents. “Is this about the girl again?”

Adele nodded once. “What can you tell us?”

The clerk simply shook her head. “As I told the officers who came in a few hours ago—I remember her purchasing some supplies, saw her move out into the parking lot, but that’s about it.”

Adele stared at the clerk for a second. The woman was glancing off to the side every couple of words, though she seemed to be trying to fix her gaze on Adele. A nervous tic? A dishonest one?

“Is that all you saw?” Adele asked.

The clerk shrugged, muttered to herself, then sighed and crossed her arms over her crisp white uniform in a defensive posture. Her silver earrings caught the light cast by the candles, and she cleared her throat and said, “Look—I’m not one to pry. I did notice she dropped one of the items she’d purchased. A glass decanter by the looks of things. But I had other customers to attend to.”

“She