“Good, Stella, let the event coordinator know we have a possible homicide. She needs to keep the readers in the lobby. The police are being summoned but I don’t know what their capacity is for handling this sort of thing. We don’t need to make it any harder by letting people mingle…”
“And just who put you in charge?” asked Stella, her bad attitude not having improved and drawing her officious self up to challenge Christie with her hands on her hips.
Christie lifted her hands, palms out toward the venue guards. “I’m retired Baltimore PD. Until the police get here, can you and I keep the stairs clear?” She pitched it as a request, not a command. The nearest guard swallowed and nodded, radio already in his hand.
“Twenty years with Baltimore PD—the last fifteen as a homicide detective. Got anyone else you think has better credentials? Or maybe you’d like to go down there and see if Sandy is dead?”
“Um no. I’ll go let Lizzie know what happened.”
“You do that,” Christie said as the little woman hurried off.
“I can do it,” offered the guard, who still looked a little green.
“If you want, you can, but I’ve done this way too many times to count, and it doesn’t bother me.”
“How come?”
“Because I focus on the body as evidence. Sandy’s dead. All I can do to help her or those she leaves behind is to find out if this was deliberate or an accident and who is responsible.”
He nodded. “That makes sense. I’m not even sure I’d know how to take her pulse.”
Christie smiled at him. “That’s okay, I do,” she said as she moved carefully down the stairs. One look at the way Sandy was lying confirmed Christie’s earlier assumption—Sandy’s neck was broken. Christie reached down to confirm the absence of a pulse and found none.
She made her way back up the stairs. “ETA on the cops?” she asked just before she could hear what sounded like no more than two cop cars with sirens approaching.
“Right about now,” the guard said with a grin.
“Is Sandy dead?” someone called.
“Someone said she was pushed,” called another.
“Folks,” Christie said in a reassuring voice that belayed the rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins, “we need to keep speculation at a minimum. The cops are here and will take charge. The best thing we can do for them and for Sandy is to have everyone go back to their tables and give them some time and space to start figuring this out.”
The guards started backing people up and dispersing the crowd. Christie glanced down at a discarded tote bag peeking out from one of the tables. Bending down, she could see Sandy’s name embroidered on it and a thumb drive peeking out of a side compartment. Knowing she should leave it to the locals, Christie offered up a little prayer for forgiveness as she reached for the thumb drive in the guise of kneeling down to tie her shoe.
Instinct told her to grab the thumb drive and make a copy of it before handing it over to the police. Instinct had saved her ass more than once on the job and she’d rather beg forgivenesslater than wait for permission. It wasn’t her case; she wasn’t on the job anymore, but she wanted to see what was on that thumb drive. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but she’d always been more of a dog person.
Shoving the drive in her pocket, Christie made her way back to her new friends. Something inside her told her these three women were ones she would make lifelong connections with.
“What happened?” asked Fiona, who was really a lovely person and hadn’t deserved that snarky bitch Stella’s disdain.
“Someone said someone shoved Sandy Parkinson down the stairs and killed her,” said Lori excitedly. Lori was the youngest of them and showed great promise as a writer.
“Let’s not start speculating. It’s the last thing the cops need.”
“Do you think we’ll be questioned?” asked Jessica, who was cool as a cucumber and most likely had little good to say about Sandy. God knows Sandy had never had anything good to say about Jessica, but then Sandy rarely had anything good to say about anybody.
“Probably. It shouldn’t take them long to narrow down the field of suspects, provided they have enough people. We can all alibi each other as we were all here at our tables talking, so we should be free to go.”
“What about the signing?” asked Lori.
Jessica patted her hand. “It’s most likely over, at least for the day. Christie’s right: the cops are going to want to talk to everybody, but we were all together and too far away to have been behind it.”
The cops made short work out of identifying those they could let leave the venue and those they wanted to talk to in more depth, although they did caution everyone not to leave the jurisdiction without checking in with them.
“Well, ladies, this wasn’t what I expected,” said Jessica calmly. “How about if I treat everyone to drinks and dinner atmy hotel? The food is excellent, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but after what happened to Sandy, I could use a little girl time to unwind and process it all.”
They all agreed, and Christie headed back to her own hotel. She wanted a chance to take a look at the thumb drive. Once she knew what was on it, she would know how she wanted to proceed.
