one, really. My mother was firmly anti–war toys, and I liked puzzles and crafts, and . . . I’m rambling. I’m nervous. I don’t like having a gun in my house.”
“We’ll take it with us.” Corbett pulled on protective gloves as Vinnie came in.
“Detective, there’s some unlocked windows. Abra told me she doesn’t always think to lock them. I’ve got some fibers stuck in one of the rear ones.”
“We’ll take a look at that. Who’s been in the house in the last couple weeks?”
“Oh, I have in-home yoga classes once a week in the evening, so my students. And my neighbors’ kids have been over. Oh my God, the kids. Is that loaded? Is that thing loaded?”
“Yeah, it’s loaded.”
“What if one of them had come in here and . . . I’m being irrational. They wouldn’t come in here and get that box off the top shelf of my closet. But if they had . . .” She closed her eyes.
“Any repairman in for any reason?” Corbett asked as he pulled an evidence bag from his pocket.
“No.”
“Landlord, cable company, anything like that?”
“No. My class, the kids.”
“Eli Landon?”
Her eyes flashed. Corbett simply studied her. “You told him you know he’s innocent.”
“I still have to ask the question.”
“He hasn’t been in the cottage in the last few weeks. He’s stuck close to Bluff House since the first break-in. I had to wheedle to get him to leave the house long enough to shop for his family’s visit this weekend.”
“Okay.”
He straightened. “Let’s take a look at the fibers.”
She waited while they studied them, murmured over them, tweezed them out and bagged them.
“Would you like some lemonade, Detective? I just made it.”
“That’d be nice. Then why don’t you sit down?”
Something about the way he said it made her palms clammy. She poured the drink, sat down at the table.
“Have you seen anyone hanging around?”
“No. And I haven’t seen the man from the bar again. At least I don’t think I have. I should recognize him, even though I haven’t been much help with the description. It’s why I went for the incense. I thought I’d light some, try more meditation. I’ve been edgy the last few days, and I thought I’d broken through.”
“Edgy?”
“With all that’s gone on, it’s understandable. And . . .” Hell with it. “Someone’s watching me.”
“You’ve seen someone?”
“No, but I feel it. It’s not my imagination, or I’m nearly positive it’s not. I know what it’s like to be watched now. You know what happened to me a few years ago.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And I feel it, and have for several days now.”
She glanced toward the window she’d left unlocked, toward her glass deck door and the pots of mixed flowers she’d set up in the sun.
“I’m out of the house a lot, and I’ve been spending most nights down with Eli. And since I was careless enough not to lock the windows, it would be pitifully easy to get in here, to leave that gun here. But why? I don’t understand why here? Why me? Or I do, but it’s convoluted. If someone wanted to discredit me, implicate me to cast doubt on Eli’s alibi, why not just plant the gun in Bluff House during the break-in?”
“We searched before he could plant it, or he didn’t plan on giving it up,” Vinnie said. “Sorry, Detective. Out of turn.”
“No, it’s fine. The last couple days, Wolfe’s pushed for a search warrant, for this cottage. His superiors aren’t backing him on it, and neither are mine. But he’s pushing. He claims he got an anonymous call telling him the caller saw a woman, a woman with long curly hair, walking away from the lighthouse on the night Duncan was murdered.”
“I see.” A canyon opened up in her belly. “You’d find the gun here. So either I killed Duncan or was an accomplice. Do I need a lawyer?”
“It couldn’t hurt, but right now this looks like what it is: a setup. That doesn’t mean we don’t go through the process.”
“All right.”
He sampled the lemonade. “Look, Ms. Walsh—Abra. I’m going to tell you how this reads, and how my boss is going to read it. If you had anything to do with Duncan, why the hell didn’t you throw that gun off the cliff, especially after we executed the search on Bluff House? Putting it in your bedroom closet with a bunch of incense? That makes you dumb as a bag of hair, and there’s nothing that indicates you’re dumb as a bag of hair.”