“That file you showed me at your apartment,” I called out to him.
“What file?” he reminded me.
“The one I never saw and doesn’t exist,” I called back. “Did it say why Owen Haggerty was ruled out as a suspect?”
“Age and poor health. He would have been almost eighty when Dupree was murdered. The notes said Owen was being treated for hypertension and chronic back problems. Guess Tran figured it was unlikely that Owen could lift two hundred pounds of deadweight and dig a hole big enough to bury a man.”
“What do you think?”
Nick grunted as if he was lifting something heavy. “I think desperate people who want something badly enough are capable of all sorts of things. Why?” he asked, dusting off his hands as he emerged from the closet.
“What do you make of this?” I showed him the letter.
He wiped sweat from his brow and frowned as he read it. “I don’t know. It may be nothing, but I’ll run a background check on Owen and see what I can find.” He took a photo of it with his phone, folded the letter, and handed it back to me. I tucked it inside the cover of one of the books. Between Penny’s anonymous tip, Brendan’s suspiciously timed trip to Florida, Steven’s bizarre mulch deliveries, and this strange letter from Owen, I wasn’t sure what to make of any of this. There were too many clues, and none of them seemed connected.
“Hey,” Nick said behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders. “You okay? You’ve been a little quiet since you found those journals downstairs.”
“I’m fine.”
He turned me to face him. “We don’t have to do this. Steven’s lied to you so many times, Finn. No one would blame you for doubting him.”
“He didn’t sleep with Penny,” I said sharply. “And he didn’t murder Gilford Dupree. You don’t have to believe me.” After all the liesI’dtold over the last five months, I wouldn’t blame Nick if he second-guessed me either. But I was right about this.
I stepped out of his arms and dropped down on my knees beside the bed, ducking to look beneath it.
Nick knelt behind me. “I do believe you,” he said close to my ear. “If your gut says he didn’t do it, we’ll keep looking.” He reached around me to grab the mattress. The muscles in his arms strained as he lifted it so I could slide an arm underneath.
“Anything?” he asked.
“There’s nothing here.”
He let the mattress fall, but his arms stayed around me. He waswarm and solid, his body heat chasing away the chill in the room. “This is almost as much fun as that night we went looking for evidence in the dumpster behind Feliks’s restaurant,” he murmured into my hair. “Only you smell better.” He nipped my earlobe when I laughed. “You know, we don’t have to go back to your place just yet.”
“I’m not getting naked with you in Mrs. Haggerty’s bed.”
He nuzzled my neck as he unzipped my coat. “How about on the floor?”
“It’s freezing in here.”
“I can fix that, too.” He turned my face to his and kissed me. And in that moment, I was pretty sure he could fix anything. He pulled me against his chest and my knees turned to Jell-O.
Why not?I told myself. Mrs. Haggerty had been doing god knows what in my bedroom for the last four days. If I wanted to feel guilty for something, I had plenty of other sins to choose from.
Nick laid me back on the carpet, his hands finding me under all my layers. I turned my head as he moved down my body, kissing a trail down my neck. One of Mrs. Haggerty’s dog-eared paperbacks lay on the floor beside me, the peeling spine label caught in the beam of Nick’s flashlight. The title of the book pinged something in my brain.
Goose bumps rippled over my body as I recognized the collection of Miss Marple stories.
It was the same book I’d seen in Penny Dupree’s closet.
Detective Tran was right. You could tell a lot about a person by their taste in books.
I just hadn’t paid enough attention to Penny Dupree’s.
CHAPTER 16
“Tell me you’re not serious.” Vero looked like she might be sick in the back of my minivan the next morning. It was the only place I could think of where we could talk privately. As soon as Vero had come down to the kitchen searching for coffee, I had shoved her arms in her coat and a travel thermos in her hands and hauled her out to the garage with me. Then I’d stuffed us both inside the back of my minivan, locking us in where no one could hear us.
“I am telling you, I saw the exact same book in Penny Dupree’s house.”
