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“What is it?” Foster asked, her voice calm, patient. “You were following her, isn’t that right? Was it the entire day? It would almost have to be. You’d have had to be at the march, to be tracking her, or how else would you know she walked into Teddy’s?”
Rimmer scooted his chair back and made like he was about to stand. Both Lonergan and Foster braced themselves. Li lifted off the wall. Rimmer froze, then eased back down.
“Whoa. Okay. Everybody calm the hell down,” he said. “Look, I don’t know what you think I did here, but I didn’t kill her. I broke up with her, that’s all.”
Foster shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”
“She dumped you,” Lonergan said. “She’s in college. You’re a do-nothin’ who thinks he’s gonna be the next Elvis. She had no use for ya.”
Foster slid Lonergan a quizzical look. Elvis? But she saw what Lonergan was doing. He was testing Rimmer, wanting to see how long or short a fuse he had. She sat and watched him work.
Lonergan pushed the photo closer to Rimmer. “Start talking.”
After a glance, Rimmer pushed it back. “So I was there. Big deal. But you see I have an alibi.” He stabbed the image of the available blonde. “Right there. You can see her as clearly as you obviously see me, right? I left with her, and when I did, Peg was still there.” Neither Lonergan nor Foster said anything. “You can see that. You’ve got eyes.”
“The blonde have a name?” Foster asked.
“Didn’t get it, or if I did, I can’t remember it now.” He uttered the words as though that were all the explanation they needed.
“What’d you think followin’ Peggy was gonna do for you?” Lonergan asked.
“I went to the march. Okay? That’s my constitutional right. I never saw Peggy there.” He lowered his chin to his chest, lowering his voice too. “I caught sight of her after it was breaking up and everybody was heading in a million directions. I wanted to see where she went, so I followed her.” His head popped up. “But that’s all I did. You got the tape. Run it. You know already she was alive when I left.”
“You coulda dumped the blonde and waited for her outside,” Lonergan said.
“Well, I didn’t. I was with what’s-her-face.”
“All night?” Foster asked.
“Absolutely. Look, can I go now?”
“Not even close,” Lonergan said. “We’re going to toss you into a holding cell and rummage through your life until we find something we can ding you for. That means tracking down your weed-selling buddies and their buddies and their buddies . . . I don’t think that’s going to make you too popular.”
“Your lying to us puts you in a different category now, Mr. Rimmer,” Foster said. “We’ll need to take a closer look.”
“All right. All right.” Rimmer held his head in his hands, ruffling his hair in desperation. “I followed . . . all day. I knew she’d probably be there. She was into the whole activist thing. I thought if I could just talk to her, you know? In a neutral spot, away from her friends, we could, you know, smooth things out. A rock star’s got to have a lady, and we looked hot together. I figured if I just . . . but I never got the chance. She was in the middle of shit all day. Then when she headed to the bar, I just . . . that blonde was a revenge hookup. That’s all I did. I swear.”
Rimmer flipped the photo over so he wouldn’t have to see it. “I never got an opening. And yeah, it steamed me. There she was living it up. It was like she wasn’t bothered at all about us not being together or about missing out on being with somebody who was about to be famous.”
Lonergan laughed. “What?”
Foster pushed on. “The woman you left with?”
“I told you . . . no idea. Maybe Casey or Cassidy or . . . it was something with a C, I’m pretty sure. But I was with her, not Peg. She’s my witness, so I couldn’t have killed anybody, even if I’d wanted to.” He suddenly realized what he’d said. “Um, not that I did. Want to. I didn’t. Besides, you see what the cameras did. I left first and didn’t double back.” He jabbed the photo with an angry finger. His face registered a spark of remembrance. “And the woman. She told me Teddy’s was her place, so me not remembering her name’s no big deal. You want her, ask around there. Somebody’s bound to know who the hell she is. I’m telling you the God’s honest truth here.” He fixed pleading eyes on all three cops. “Ask her; she’ll tell you I was with her. Ask her.”
At her desk, Foster called downstairs to the desk sergeant. No sign of Ashley Tighe, Stella Dean’s study partner. Foster had obviously been stood up. When she hung up, she pulled up Tighe’s driver’s license and ran her address and number.
“What’re you doin’?” Lonergan was watching her from his chair, his fingers laced across his belly.
“Stella Dean’s whereabouts are still unconfirmed. Ashley Tighe was the name she gave us. Her study partner? While you were out, I called her. She agreed to come in and talk.” She looked over at him. “She didn’t show.”
“Dean? You really think she could stab somebody over twenty times?”
Foster stood. “Anybody could, if properly motivated. You coming?”
“Where to?”
“To Teddy’s for the blonde, then Tighe’s for Dean.”
Lonergan sneered at her. “What? You’re not bringing Li along?”
Foster was already halfway to the door. “Grow up.”
CHAPTER 23
Amelia had a sense that the other side of her bed was occupied but hadn’t for the life of her any idea who was doing the occupying. She rolled over, saw the naked man there. Black. Lean. He took up most of the length of the queen-size platform bed. Amelia rose up on one elbow and just stared at him, enjoying the view, despite the pounding headache, which was courtesy of a fading high. She had a faint recollection of a night of cosmos or Thunderbird or something that would need to come back to her gradually after time, along with the naked man’s name. Something with a T. Tony? Tommy? She gave up. It wasn’t that important anyway, was it? This was a one-off. She’d never see him again.
She shook him, then took a lascivious peek under the rumpled top sheet. It all came back to her then—the night, the guy. A pickup in a bar at almost closing. She peered at the clock on the bedside table, almost twelve hours ago now. She shook Mr. Handsome again, harder this time—fun time was over. Half the day was gone already, and she had things to do. Preparations.
“Hey, good looking. Rise and shine. Time to go.”
He groaned awake, turned groggily, blinked bleary eyed a few times, trying to focus. It didn’t appear that he recalled the night any better than she did. It was definitely Thunderbird, now that she thought about it. She had the faint taste of it, akin to cheap gasoline, coating her tongue.
She rolled out of bed and found a pair of sweats and a T-shirt slung over a chair and put them on. “Gotta go, lover boy.”
He sat up on the side of the bed and searched the floor for his pants. “Some night, huh?”
Amelia flicked on the television to the midday news while she watched Mr. T dress and hunt for his shoes. She spotted them kicked under a chair and pointed the remote to guide him to them. “There.”
She turned back to the TV, hoping there was something new on the body they’d found on the Riverwalk. Nothing on that so far, but plenty on the overnight body count. Fourteen shot around the city, three fatally. What a violent town. Who knew how many bodies lay scattered around unclaimed, tossed away like trash, moldering in abandoned buildings or buried in a forest preserve? The possibilities were too dark to even imagine.
“I’m out,” her date announced on his way to the door.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s your name again?”
“What’s it matter?”
He had a point. “You’re right.”
“It’s been real,” he said as he walked out the door.
She locked the door behind him. “I might agree if I could remember it.” She stretched, then padded back to the news. Seriously, she thought, what a violent town.
CHAPTER 24
They were back at Teddy’s with Giles Valentine before noon, looking for information on the blonde. A lunch crowd was beginning to form, mostly tourists who’d wandered off the Riverwalk looking for a place to sit and eat before hitting the Mag Mile to get their pockets picked, legally, at the high-end stores there.
Lonergan held up the photo from the security footage and pointed to the blonde. “Who’s this, and before you get cute and start dancin’ around playin’ with us, this shows you straight up talkin’ to her when you shoulda been workin’. And on top of that, we’ve got a dead girl across the river, so this isn’t some game.”
Foster cleared her throat to let what Lonergan had said die down a bit. “We’re hoping she’s in here often enough that you may know who she is?”
“Since you never forget a face and talk up all the ladies who come in here.” Lonergan sat the photo on the bar, tapped it with a finger. “We need a name and where we can find her. Now.”
Valentine reached up and adjusted his tie. “What’d she do?”
Lonergan shook his head. “That’s a question. Want to try again?”
Valentine’s face colored. He really didn’t like Lonergan. “Or?”
Lonergan stepped forward, glancing up at Valentine’s hat and then down at the bow tie. He didn’t answer the question, but the look he gave the man had him backing away from the bar.
“I hate cops,” Valentine mumbled.
“Neither here nor there, pal,” Lonergan groused.
For a moment Valentine said nothing; then he turned his attention from Lonergan to Foster. “Her name’s Kate. She’s a bit of a regular. She lives in the area. We’ve been out a couple times.”
“That’s all you know about her?” Foster asked.
Valentine’s brows lifted. “How much do I need to know?”
Lonergan grimaced. “She have a last name, Casanova?”
Valentine wouldn’t even look at him. He addressed Foster instead. “I got better than a name, but only for you, because a woman’s dead, and I want him out of here.”
The man pulled out his wallet and slid out a business card, handing it to her. Foster eyed the card. There was a name on it and a telephone number. She flipped it over, but there was nothing on the back. Foster read aloud. “Katherine Samuels-Key. She’s married?”
Valentine’s face lit up, his tongue wetting his lips proudly. “I didn’t ask. She didn’t tell.” He slid a contemptuous look at Lonergan, who was staring daggers back at him. “That’s how it’s done this century, Pops.”
Lonergan took a step forward to apparently show Valentine just how much of an old man he was, but Foster broke in with another question. “So she works the bar, goes with anyone here. You watch as she picks up whoever; still you keep her card in your wallet?”
He stared at her, confused, like he didn’t get why she found that strange. “We’re not dating or anything.”
Lonergan leaned forward, his jaw straining. “Dumbass, is she or is she not a pro?”
Valentine backed up to the shelves, the contact rattling the bottles on the ledge behind him. He couldn’t put any more distance between himself and Lonergan, but it sure looked like he wanted to. Valentine was all mouth. Lonergan knew it. Foster knew it too. She suspected that even Pike, his boss, knew it, but if Pike found out he’d been letting professionals work the bar on an odd night, Foster was sure his days were numbered here at Teddy’s. That might have accounted for the sweat on his forehead and the attention to his tie.
“I don’t know, okay? Her business is her business,” Valentine said.
Foster suspected that the name on the card was as bogus as a three-dollar bill, but the number was good, otherwise Valentine wouldn’t be carrying it around in his wallet. She waited to see if Lonergan had anything more to ask, but it looked like he was going to let the conversation die there, which, for him, was probably for the best. They had a number and an unreliable name. It was something.
“Anything else?” Foster asked Valentine.
He picked up his bar rag, wound it around his hands. “What more do you need?”
Outside the bar, Foster slid her notebook back into her bag and looked up at Lonergan next to her. “Why do you terrorize people like that?”
Lonergan sniggered. “I was right takin’ you for a bleedin’ heart. Look, you want to make an omelet, you got to break some eggs. A little in-their-face cuts the bullshit by half.”
She glanced out over the river at the pedestrians strolling along the path on the other side. The flags along the bridge waved in the breeze. The water was calm. And standing next to her was a lummox of a partner working her last nerve.
“The problem I have is that I don’t trust you.” Her eyes met his.
“Your problem, not mine,” he said.
She exhaled. “Like I said.”
They met Ashley Tighe outside her residence hall sitting cross-legged on a bench, a philosophy textbook in her lap. She seemed nervous and sneaked furtive glances at the doors when anyone went in or out. Tighe, petite and barely five feet tall, with blinky black eyes and a mess of brunette curls, didn’t look like she ate enough to keep a bird alive. Foster wondered if it was Stella she was worried about.
“I expected you to come in, like you agreed,” Foster said.
There was another glance toward the door, a shift of body weight. “I changed my mind. I really don’t want to get in the middle of anything. I don’t know anything about what happened to Peggy.”
“It’s Stella Dean I want to ask you about,” Foster said. “She says she was studying with you Sunday. Is that true?”
Lonergan stood by. He hadn’t said much since the bar. Foster was fine with that. Tighe checked the doors again. Students passed, paying them little attention, too focused on their own thing, lugging heavy backpacks or riding bikes or talking on their phones.
“Yeah, we studied Sunday.”
“Studied what?” Lonergan asked, his voice a little softer than Foster was used to hearing it.
“Econ. I get As. Stella’s lucky if she pulls a D.” She looked up at Foster. “Stella’s why I didn’t come. She’s been burning up my phone. She wants me to say she was with me all day, but she wasn’t. We met up at noon, and I was back in my room a little after two. It wasn’t my idea to study with her, but Stella . . . she insinuated herself. She makes it almost impossible to say no to her about anything.”
“Some friend,” Lonergan said.
“Stella doesn’t have friends,” Tighe said. “She has . . . hostages. I thought I’d left mean-girl cliques behind in high school, but they’re here, too, and Stella’s their supreme leader, at least here in Barnwell.”
“So you can only vouch for her between noon and two,” Foster said. “You have any idea what she was doing before or after that?”
Tighe shook her head. “I try not to think too much about Stella.” She clasped her hands in her lap, squeezing them tightly, then checked the door again. “She’s probably watching us right now.”
“Did she threaten you?” Lonergan’s jaw clenched, and it looked like his eyes had shrunk down to two steely blue marbles.
“Stella never comes right out and says stuff, but she made it real clear she wanted me to lie and say we were studying longer than we were. What happens when she finds out I didn’t? You don’t know how she can get.”
Foster could feel her entire body coil at the thought of Tighe, Stroman, and others tiptoeing around campus trying to stay out of Stella Dean’s orbit. Had Peggy Birch done the same? Had she gotten on Dean’s bad side somehow? Had Stella done something about that, and things had gone wrong?
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Foster said. She hated bullies. Always had. She had a little something for Stella Dean. Foster scribbled her number in her notepad, then tore the page off and handed it to Tighe. “If you can think of anything else we should know, call me, please?”
Tighe took the number and stood. One last look at the door. No Stella. Tighe rushed off.
“Well, Dean’s a liar,” Lonergan said.
“Twelve to two,” Foster said. “And then in bed by nine, so she said.”
Lonergan slid his sunglasses on. “First part’s a lie, the second part’s gonna be a lie too. That leaves a lot of holes in her day.”
“So let’s plug some of them up,” Foster said.
CHAPTER 25
Stella Dean wasn’t so tough, Foster thought, as she stared at her across the table in the interview room. Detective Li sat beside her, her dark eyes holding Stella’s without expression. Foster knew they made a formidable-looking pair, and from the guarded look on Stella’s face, she could tell the intimidating effect was working.
The team was outside in the office making calls, checking Dean’s background, diving deep looking for arrests, reports of disturbances . . . anything related to Peggy Birch that might indicate she had a motive for killing her.
Right now, though, Foster wanted Stella here at the table with the silence. She placed her notebook in front of her, then folded her hands on top of it and waited for the girl to get uncomfortable. There’d been no pizza from Zippy’s Sunday night; that had been easy to check. The place had no receipt, no video, no employee with any recollection of Stella walking into the place that day. It was a campus spot. Faces were remembered easily, and no one had seen Stella’s on Sunday. There’d also been no deliveries made to her dorm that night, so pizza from Zippy’s and then an early turn-in had been a lie. So now Stella was here, and Foster and Li sat waiting, watching to find out what else she’d lied about.
“Look, I told you, I wasn’t with Peggy Sunday. I never saw her. I don’t know what happened.” Stella glanced around the smelly, tight, depressing room. “God, this room is fucking awful.”
