Page 54 of Deathmarch
“How do you think the gold ended up in the trunk?”
“Can’t discuss that either.”
“I had a lot of time to ponder this lately,” she said after she swallowed a mouthful of potatoes. “I’ll tell you what I think, and then you can nod if you think the same.”
“Okay.”
“Between me leaving my car and you getting back to my car, the killer went by and stashed his stolen gold in my trunk.”
Harper nodded.
She speared a piece of ham with her fork. “I’ve been trying to figure out why. I mean, he killed Lamm and stole the gold. Why didn’t he take it home, to his own house?”
Harper waited for her to continue.
“Maybe he wanted to get it out of town,” she said. “He had some alibi set up. He could sneak out for an hour or so before he would have been missed. So the original plan was to drive the gold out of town and stash it somewhere. He could have had a storage unit rented.”
“In West Chester.”
Exactly.
“But then the storm turned bad, and he realized he wasn’t going to make it to storage and back in an hour. And if he was missing for more than an hour, it would have been noticed. He was halfway there, saw my car in the snowbank… And he figured I wouldn’t be back for it until daylight. He thought he could come back for the gold before that. He only needed an alibi for around the time of the murder. He could go missing for an hour later in the day. That wouldn’t matter. You wouldn’t be asking anybody about what they were doing three or four hours after the victim died.” She waved her fork, wishing she could articulate her convoluted thoughts more clearly. “Anyway, that’s my theory. Do you think it’s stupid?”
Harper watched her. And as he did, the distance that had been between them since she’d arrived back in town disappeared. He opened his mouth, as if he was about to tell her something, maybe something personal, because the look in his eyes was suddenly so Old Harper that Allie swallowed the wrong way.
The ensuing coughing fit broke the spell.
Harper handed her her glass of water. And, in the end, all he said was, “Your theory is pretty close to mine. Actually, I’m impressed.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I hear you were over at the B and B to see Miss Bianchi last night,” the captain said over the speakerphone in the conference room, calling first thing in the morning to check in before his training sessions began.
Can’t hide shit in a town the size of Broslin.“Yes, sir,” Harper said while Chase smirked. “She’s no longer a suspect. The killer was a head taller, according to the coroner, as calculated from the angle of the bullet. I’m working on the assumption that the victim knew the killer since he let the person in. I could find no link between any of the four men left on my suspect list and Miss Bianchi. Miss Bianchi allowed me to examine her phone. No calls to or from Broslin, except for Ginny Knapp, who booked her for a performance for the Historical Society.”
“She could have another phone.”
“A burner,” Chase said, oh, so helpfully.
“If she does, where is it?” Harper asked. “If she used a burner to keep in touch with her accomplice, the phone would have been with her. But it wasn’t on her when I arrested her. It wasn’t in her car or at the crime scene. She didn’t toss it at Finnegan’s. I asked the staff to go through the garbage. It wasn’t at the B and B either.”
“All right.” The captain didn’t sound convinced, but at least he didn’t hand the investigation to Chase.
In all fairness, nobody could blame the man for not being thrilled. Harper wasn’t exactly thrilled with himself.
Allie cleared; Harper moves on. That should have been the plan. Not,Allie cleared, let’s go to her room and have dinner with her.Yet, last night, Harper had done just that.
He felt guilty over the past. When Allie’s father had abandoned her, she’d needed Harper, and he hadn’t been there for her. He’d let her down, like everyone else had let her down. He should have done better by her. So now, if he could help her, he would.
He’d loved her back then, but that was ancient history. Sure, she was back, but she wasn’t the same sweet girl. She wasn’t the Allie he remembered. If she had stars in her eyes when she looked at him, they were those ninja throwing stars. Hell, the glass eyes in the jars at the B and B held more warmth for him than Allie’s gaze.
She was a woman, strong and full of fire. Christ, she’d threatened to stab him with a fork.If he had any brains, he would stayfaraway from her.
“Lamm had eleven other preppers in his club,” Harper told the captain, “or brotherhood or whatever you want to call it.” He stepped to the murder board, the oversized corkboard that held the crime scene photos, timeline, and names. “I couldn’t reach Poole, but I’ve done initial interviews with the rest of them. Seven have alibis.”
He reached up and unpinned those seven black-and-white photos, printed from the DMV database, then dropped them on the sprawling conference table behind him.
Chase lifted his cup of coffee to his mouth, paused. “What do you have on the narrowed list of suspects?”
