“So he picked the yellow car for a reason,” I said. “Curious why he’d pick something so visible.”
“And then we have to wonder if that was the plan all along or if he was improvising because of the weather. Cromwell is definitely the road less traveled. And it’s probably a fifteen-minute drive from the theater. Risky considering how fast we got the APB issued.”
“He knows the area,” I said. “Knew how to navigate where he was going in the dark and in the rain. Had a getaway vehicle waiting and ditched the yellow car, and then drove home. Cromwell is right on the line between Nottingham and Newcastle. Or maybe he had an accomplice who picked him up.”
“We’re impounding the vehicle and we’ll see if we can pull any prints or find anything that might point us in the right direction. We’re running a DMV search right now to see who it’s registered to.”
“I talked to Rick Early a few minutes ago,” I said. “A guy by the name of Bruno Corelli was Juliet’s lover before Peter Trest.”
“Bruno Corelli?” Jack asked. “Seriously?”
“Rick said it’s his middle name.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Jack said. “I’m waiting for warrants, and we’re neck deep in 911 calls because everyone listens so well. Let me know when you’re finished with the autopsies and we’ll go pay a visit to Bruno.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I checked the time and knew I had at least four to five hours of autopsy work in front of me, so there was no point in delaying the inevitable. I turned on Nat King Cole and got to work.
I rolled Tatiana Russo back into the cooler, feeling mildly disappointed. Autopsies made sense to me. They were a piece to an always bigger puzzle. The body often gave witness testimony as well as any living person—sometimes even better.
But Tatiana and Mark had died senselessly. There had been no revelation. No hidden clues. Each had suffered a single gunshot for no rhyme or reason. Jack would look into the friends and families, see if they had any gang or drug associations. But there’d been no drugs in their system. No markings or tattoos on their bodies to say they belonged to any organization. They’d just been teenagers, getting a handle on life. Maybe a little bit in love. I didn’t have anything to give to Jack that would help him with this case.
I cleaned up and shut everything down, anxious to get out of the basement and get some fresh air. I knew Emmy Lu had control of the funeral home, though I did wonder why we hadn’t received Louise Chalmers yet. I’d fully expected for Sheldon to come down to start the embalming process while I’d been working.
There was no one in the kitchen, and I checked my office, but Lily wasn’t there. I had a text from Jack letting me know he was free whenever I was ready. The rain was still coming down, but it was lighter than it had been. I switched out my boots and put on my coat, hat, and scarf, and then locked the side door behind me.
I breathed in the frigid air, letting it expand in my lungs. It felt good. I dug in my pocket and pulled out my gloves, and then made my way down the ramp to the Suburban. I wished I had one of those cars that started and heated up by remote, but it seemed frivolous to get rid of a perfectly good transport vehicle just for the luxury of heating up my seats from inside the house.
Catherine of Aragon was higher in the middle of the road so drainage ran off to both sides, but as I backed out of the driveway I realized the water couldn’t drain if there was no place else for it to go.
So I drove in the middle of the road toward the Town Square. I was glad to see there weren’t as many people on the roads, and several of the businesses I passed were closed down, but whatever hissy fit Mother Nature was having was wreaking havoc on the county. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had flooding like this. Maybe not ever.
The sheriff’s office had recently taken over the entire municipal building once the new fire station was built, and renovations had been slow going through the holiday season and the rain. They were redoing the exterior and the front parking places were blocking off because of the scaffolding. I pulled in the first available spot and debated on whether it was worth it to get my umbrella out.
I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and pulled up the hood of my jacket, fastening it tight under my chin, and made a run for it. There was no sidewalk traffic, and I skirted around the edge of the scaffolding managing to get water on the inside of my rain boots, and then I ran up the front steps and opened the door.
The familiar smell of burned coffee and strong disinfectant assaulted my nose, and I wiped my feet on the mat. Sergeant Hill manned the front reception area, and he was the first line of protection between the outside world and the cops that sat in the bullpen behind him.
I was just about to sign in when Jack stuck his head through the employee entrance and said, “Come on back.”
Something was up. I waved at Sergeant Hill and then followed Jack through the door, where it locked automatically behind us. He walked back toward his office and I saw Betsy Clement standing by her desk. Betsy wasn’t the kind of woman who showed a lot of emotion, but I could’ve sworn I saw relief on her face.
Betsy hadn’t changed in my lifetime, and I had no idea how old she was. Her steel-gray curls were rolled like sausages across the top of her head. She wore a floral-print dress and a soft blue sweater, and her glasses hung from a chain around her neck.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking back and forth between Jack and Betsy. “You look worried.”
“I called the funeral home and Emmy Lu said you were gone,” he said. “She said she was busy with a client but she saw when you left on the cameras. Then I tried your cell and it kept going straight to voice mail. That was almost a half hour ago.”
I reached in my bag for my cell phone. “Service must be down,” I said. “I don’t show any missed calls. And it took me a while to get here. I had to go all the way around to the other side of the square to get in. Are you going to tell me what this is about?”
“Betsy got a phone call a while ago from a man who told her to take a message for the sheriff.”
“What was the message?” I asked.
Jack handed me a piece of paper, and I saw Betsy’s neat handwriting and a word-for-word dictation of the caller.
“The sheriff is messing things up,” I read aloud. “Why wouldn’t he check his mail? Why would he just leave it on the table? Juliet was the first for you to find. Timing is everything, and now I’ve had to make adjustments. But it’s okay. I can fix it. Just tell him to check his mail.”
I trailed off as I finished the last sentence, understanding dawning. “You put the mail on the table when you came home last night. You didn’t look at it.”
“I know,” Jack said.
“Which means someone was watching us,” I said, the familiar feeling of panic taking hold. “I felt someone watching. That’s why I grabbed the gun. But none of the alarms were triggered.”
“You don’t have to be on the property to see into the house if you have the right equipment. It would be a long shot, especially with the rain. But not impossible.”