Chapter Ten
Lizzie offered to spend the night at my place, but I told her I didn’t want to take her away from Hal and the kids.
“Why do you think I’m offering?” she said, annoyed that I didn’t understand her ploy.
“Oops.” I laughed. “Sorry.”
Jane jumped in. “It’s all right, Lizzie. I’ll be staying with Shannon for as long as necessary.”
“Thank you,” I said, having already planned for her to stay. Jane had become almost fanatical in her determination to keep me safe. I got the feeling that she was more worried about me than I was about myself, which was pretty darn worried.
“But I could stay, too,” Lizzie said. “We could have a slumber party.”
I gave her a big hug, but in the end she went home to her darling family, while Jane and I ordered Chinese food and watched one of Jane’s favorite old romantic comedies. We laughed, we cried, and if we’d only had more time, we would’ve painted our toenails and braided each other’s hair. It was girls’ night, for sure.
Thursday morning after breakfast, Jane still wasn’t keen on leaving me alone in the house. But since I knew she had an appointment with her landscaper, I insisted that she go home.
“I can cancel the appointment,” she said. “You and I can stay here and play cards or . . . something.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll be fine by myself. I’ve got a bunch of things to do today and besides, nothing’s going to happen to me in broad daylight.”
“But Eric said—”
“I know what he said and believe me, I appreciate his concern. I’ve already seen a cop car drive by a few times this morning, so I feel safe right now.”
She glanced out the window. “I’m uneasy about leaving you here alone.”
“I’m a little anxious myself, but I’ll be okay. When I asked you to spend a few nights here, I didn’t expect you to stay twenty-four hours a day.”
She fiddled with her purse strap, unsure of what to do next. “I feel guilty leaving you.”
“No guilt allowed,” I said, grabbing her for a quick hug before nudging her toward the door. “You have your own life, and you need to get that garden whipped into shape if it’s going to look good by the grand opening.”
“What will you do while I’m gone?”
I walked with her out to her car. “I’ll be sticking close to home today.”
“Can I give you a ride anywhere?”
“No, thanks,” I said easily. “I plan to clean up the garage. It’s got that black dust everywhere from the fingerprinting. And then I thought I’d better go through my tools. Make sure nothing else is missing.”
She grabbed my arm. “Oh, God, Shannon.”
“Yeah, I know.” If I found more tools missing, I was going to call the police right away.
With a heavy sigh, she climbed into her car. “Okay. I’ll be back sometime later this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Jane.” I watched her drive off, then went back inside the house. I called Penny at the bank to beg off meeting her at the gym.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Oh yeah. I’ve just got something I’ve got to take care of at home.” I didn’t feeling like sharing the details with everyone in town.
“That’s a drag,” she said. “Maybe we can make it sometime this weekend.”
“I’m determined to get there tomorrow. Do you think you’ll be there?”
“Tomorrow’s Friday,” she mused. “Yeah, I might be able to make it.”
“That would be great,” I said. “If it turns out you can’t, we’ll do it another time. Otherwise, I’ll see you there around five.”
After we hung up, I spent a full hour stretching out my muscles and limbering up. Ever since the bike accident I’d been feeling positively ancient with all my aches and pains. That had to stop.
I stuck with the warm-up stretches, but vowed that tomorrow afternoon at the gym I would start getting my legs and arms back into shape. I could always go for a walk later today, but I was a little wary of running into any of my neighbors. I knew they would try to bully me into spilling the details of Wendell Jarvick’s murder. I was fairly certain I’d be able to withstand their doggedness, but, really, who could blame them? Everyone loved gossip, especially in a small town. It was our lifeblood. That was doubly true when something gruesome happened on your own street. You owed it to the rest of the town to get the scoop and share it with others.
The garage cleanup took me almost two hours. That fine black fingerprint powder was more difficult to clean than I thought it would be. On the outside windowsill I started off with a soapy sponge and learned right away that any moisture added to the powder residue would turn it into something resembling India ink. I got it all wiped off eventually, though, thanks to the glossy white paint on the surface, which was so thick there were no crevices for the black powder to sink into.
My work bench inside the garage was different. The wood there was simply whitewashed, not glossy and thick, so the minuscule powdery flecks had burrowed into the porous surface. I finally resorted to using my industrial Shop-Vac with the HEPA filter that was so effective on sweeping up drywall dust. Except for a few tiny spots, it worked. I could live with the spots until it was time to paint the darn thing.
I put away all my cleaning stuff and turned to my tools. I’d amassed a pretty large collection over the years, but I had always been diligent about keeping them in order. I didn’t find anything missing from the large rolling tool cabinet—yes, it was pink—I always kept at home. Likewise, nothing was gone from the two smaller toolboxes I used on job sites. I organized everything, culling some of the items I rarely used and rearranging the drawers to be more accessible. Then I locked up the boxes and went out to my truck to get my third tool chest, the one I’d brought home from the Boyers’ place. The police had gone through the entire contents, and Eric had asked me to look through it, too, in case something else was missing. I had assured him that other than my pink wrench and the screwdriver used as murder weapons, nothing else was gone.
Before I locked it up, I decided to double-check that everything was where it should be. It looked to be in good order, until I shifted the big wooden claw hammer and realized that I had been storing three different hammers in this chest for the Boyers’ job. My claw hammer and my framing hammer with the lightweight titanium head were both in their proper places. But to my horror, my pink-handled ball-peen hammer wasn’t there. I went back through all of my tool chests to make sure I hadn’t overlooked it. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I had no choice but to call Eric and give him the bad news.