Antiques dealerMike Kaminski
Low. No clear motive. Fraud? Interacted with Alan on day of death.
Get number from Alice, call to confirm alibi.Probably cleared. Offered evidence was in city. Check back if other leads fall through.
She looked over her chart for a moment, feeling a bit tired and overwhelmed. There still wasn’t very much to go on.Whatwasthere, unfortunately, seemed to be pointing her toward a drive to Schenectady followed by several hours in a basement somewhere digging through newspaper archives. She sighed. Then she closed her notebook and marched off to find Janine.
Sherry knew Janine’s schedule well enough to know that she would be home when she dropped by. It only occurred to her after she knocked that Janine might not appreciate Sherry suddenly appearing on her front porch without any forewarning. She wasn’t sure where her mind was at the moment. It was as if she was doing things without planning on it, the way Charlotte had described finding herself suddenly at the library without remembering having decided to go there. The skin on the back of her neck felt frostbitten despite her thick woolly scarf. Maybe she was just distracted and overwhelmed. Maybe she was beingpuppeteered.
The door opened, and Janine’s expression indicated very clearly that Sherry’s presence was a less than completely welcome surprise. “Sherry? Is something wrong? I was just getting some paperwork done.” She ushered Sherry inside, anyway, and closed the door behind her to keep the cold wind out.
“Sorry,” Sherry said quickly. “I know I should have called. I don’t know what I was thinking. But something’s come up, and I was wondering if I could borrow your car for a few hours.”
Janine crinkled her nose at her, then quickly uncrinkled it. Nose crinkling probably wasn’t the sort of neutral-but-supportive expression that Janine was supposed to make in her professional life, but people could be forgiven for slips made while off duty. Sherry was frequently guilty, in her personal life, of dog-earing paperbacks. “It’s pretty last-minute,Sherry,” she said finally. “I was hoping to run some errands this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry,” Sherry said. “It’s just that I think I might finally have a lead in the case.” This was a gamble: Janine had been fairly negative in their meeting the other day, but historically she’d found it difficult to resist discussing Sherry’s cases when the opportunity came up.
“Oh?” Janine said, her eyes lighting up very slightly. Then she went pinched again. “Do you need to drive to meet a warlock?”
“No,” Sherry said. “I need to drive to Schenectady.”
Janine raised her eyebrows. “Schenectady? Why?”
Sherry explained. Janine, finally, looked interested. “Thatdoessound like it would make sense,” she said. “Psychologically, I mean. Not that thereisa former client out for revenge. But if therewasone…”
“It would fit,” Sherry said. “I agree. Alan letting him in and everything.”
Janine hesitated. “Do you think you could have the car back by five?”
“Definitely,” Sherry said immediately. “Can I pick anything up for you on the way back? You said you had errands to run.”
“Could you?” Janine asked. She looked relieved now. “That would be great, if you could. Just my groceries. The list is on the fridge, I’ll just—” She darted off. Sherry waited patiently. Janine was the sort of person who liked you to take your shoes off before you ventured farther into her house than the foyer, and at the moment Sherry didn’t feel like bothering with that. Janine was back quickly enough, anyway, with the car keys and a neatly written shopping list in hand. “Thanks, Sherry,”she said, having apparently forgotten that it was Sherry who’d shown up on her doorstep to ask for a favor in the first place. “I’m really swamped; I wasdreadinghaving to go to the store.”
“Thankyou,” Sherry said, feeling much more magnanimous than she deserved to be. “I’ll fill up the tank before I bring the car back.” Then she hurried off before Janine had a chance to change her mind.
She took a moment to sit in the car before she started to drive. This happened every time now: the wave of anxiety, her heart beating faster. She took a deep breath and flicked on the radio. Janine had it tuned to NPR. Sherry let the droning voices wash over her without paying attention to the words. Then she started the car and very slowly and carefully backed out of Janine’s driveway. She tried to ignore the quiet chattering voice in her head reminding her of the last time she’d gone on a long drive, the rain beating against her windshield and the sudden jolt of impact. She’d been cocky and sure of herself back then, but it had been easy to feel that way around Caroline. The woman had always known how to spin up a kind of gleaming magic around herself, and Sherry was exactly the sort of very small, dull, ordinary person who headed right for that gleam like a moth slamming into a screen door.
