“When Celine went missing, the police bungled the case and they’re not going to do any better now.” Michael’s expression was tight.
Vicky shook her head. “You can’t say the police bungled the case back then. They just didn’t have any conclusive evidence. That was not their fault.”
“No?” Michael’s eyes flashed. “People said Perkins knew something and covered it up. He was only busy accusing me.”
“I can understand you’re angry about that, but try to see this with an objective mind. ‘People said’—yes, that’s what it was. Just talk. Rumors. You can’t act on those. You can’t break the law because of an idea!”
She saw in his expression that her words barely reached him and tried a different tack. “Besides, just take a look at this place. There’s junk everywhere. It’s a nightmare to search. Where can you even start looking?”
“Mortimer’s desk of course.”
“Even if he had some kind of paperwork, he need not have kept it in his desk. He could have taped it under his nightstand, or any other unlikely place. There could be an attic, a basement. If he wanted to ensure the safety of whatever he held…”
Vicky clenched her hands. “If you disturb things, anything, you could be committing a crime. They can arrest you for that. I can’t let you do it.”
Michael was pale and agitated. “Perkins failed back then, and maybe Cash knows about it. Maybe he is covering for the old man. He also lied about his whereabouts at the time of the fire, so he could be involved much deeper than we even suspect now.”
Vicky wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Half of her denied it was even possible; the other half was not so sure. She had not seen Cash in many years and maybe he had changed. Still he was the law around here and they had no choice but to work with him.
Vicky’s voice was hoarse. “Yesterday a barn burned down, now a man is dead. It has to stop here. This is police business. Just leave it alone. Please.”
Michael held her gaze. His eyes flickered with empathy, but still he straightened up as if he had taken a final decision. “Vicky, I left this place in bits and pieces. I traveled the world for stories, yes, but also to stay one step ahead of the hurting. Now I’m back here and I have to face it. I can’t keep on running. There has got to be something that can prove who took Celine back then. Mortimer was onto it and that’s why he was killed.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“No. But if there is only a one-percent chance it was so, I have to look into it. I need the truth now. I can’t let it elude me again. You don’t have to be a part of this. Just pretend you didn’t see me searching.”
Vicky scoffed. “How?”
Michael dived back into the living room, apparently intending to search until the police showed up.
“Mortimer can’t tell me anymore,” he called back to her. “If I want to find anything, I have to find it myself.”
As Vicky nervously listened for sirens in the distance, she glanced over Mortimer’s toolbox and saw a note sticking out of it. It was the sketch of her fireplace Mortimer had been using that day, a drawing with some measurements and a calculation beside it in black ink. It was rather morbid to realize he had held it in his hands hours before when he had still been very much alive, while he was now dead. Murdered.
Under the left hand side of the fireplace picture there were a separate 5 and 3, written in blue.
Like an afterthought.
“I got something,” Michael called out to her.
“What?” Vicky walked into the den, avoiding a look at the dead body. “Please don’t take it.”
“I’m not taking anything. It’s just a list with three phone numbers.” Michael looked at her, eyes wide. “The third of them is mine.”
Vicky frowned. “Yours? Why would Mortimer want to call you?”
“Good question. Especially as the second number on the list is familiar to me too.” Michael held her gaze. “It’s Diane’s number. I mean, it’s the number of the cottage of old Captain Black where Diane is now staying. I know it, because I looked it up myself the other day to call her about the anonymous threat I had received.”
Vicky’s mind raced. Mortimer Gill had intended to call both Diane and Michael about something. That made it more likely he had known something about Celine’s disappearance.
“And something else that’s significant,” Michael continued. “Mortimer’s cell phone is nowhere in sight. I wanted to see if he had actually used it to call either of these numbers before he died, but it’s not on him or near him. Maybe the killer took it, because the number in the outgoing calls list could incriminate him? He must have missed this note on the desk.”
He perked up. There were sirens in the distance. “Quickly.” He gestured at her. “Have you got a pen and a scrap of paper in your purse? Write down these numbers for me, will you? I would like to check later on the first one. I don’t know it and I’m really curious to whom that belongs.”
She obeyed, copying off all three numbers and slipping the sheet into her purse. Michael was still pulling open drawers and even crawling under the desk to see if anything was taped underneath it.
The sirens burst into the yard, and Michael popped up quickly, stripped off the gloves and put them back beside the toolbox. “Not a thing related to Celine’s disappearance. Just those phone numbers, and I’m not sure what they mean.”
Vicky bit her lip knowing how painful this was for Michael. At the same time she was glad he hadn’t found anything and put it in his pocket. If he took something away from a crime scene, it could have gotten tricky.
Still as she heard car doors slam, her mouth was dry and her knees jittery. She was sure Cash would read a guilty expression on her face and zero in on it at once.
The cowbell on the screen door jangled, and Cash barged in, his hat in his hand. Looking from Vicky to Michael, he said, “So what are you doing here?”
“We came to see Mortimer,” Michael answered calmly. “We expected he’d be having dinner or washing up, so we came in through the back door. I noticed a strong scent, as if something was burning, and took that frying pan off the stove and put it in the sink.”
He pointed at it where it still lay dripping water. “I was under the impression Mortimer had just forgotten about his dinner. Maybe he had gone out back to feed the birds? But then I went into the living room and found him lying face down on the floor. I checked whether he was dead, then Vicky called the police at once. If I had known that he was dead when we came in, I would not have bothered with the pan.”
Vicky noticed that Michael didn’t say he hadn’t touched anything else in the house. She hoped Cash would take it for granted that as good law-abiding citizens they had not.
Cash grunted. “And why did you want to see Mortimer in the first place? You don’t know him socially, do you?”
Vicky cleared her throat. She tried to sound normal and innocent. “He is working on a fireplace in my store. The one that Gwenda had bricked up? He started this morning and was making great progress. Everything seemed fine until he left to buy something at the hardware store and never came back. I wanted to ask him why. He knows I’m on a tight schedule to finish renovations as soon as possible, so his disappearance made no sense at all.”
“And you just took Michael for company.” Cash hitched a brow. “A simple phone call would have sufficed, to set a new date for finishing the work.”
Vicky felt her cheeks grow hot. “Mortimer was not answering his cell phone. Mr. Jones told me he had no regular connection as he had failed to pay his bills. I needed to convince him to come back tomorrow,