“You mean you just filled them back up with air and they were fine?”
“Yep. Craziest thing I ever saw. It’s like somebody was playing a practical joke on her. Everything was temporary. No permanent damage.”
“Except that I don’t know a lot of practical jokers who would write the word Murderer on her car hours after a dead body was found.”
“True, that.”
“Is there anything else that you noticed?” I asked. “Anything at all?”
“There’s one more thing, but this is between you and me.”
“What?”
“I found an envelope of money under the seat. A lot of money. Hundreds in an envelope. When I asked Ebony if she knew anything about it, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. But then she took it and said she’d been looking for it. She took the bills out of the envelope and tossed the envelope in the trash.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He reached under the counter and pulled out a cream-colored envelope with the letters BM embossed on it. “This is the envelope and those are Blitz Manners’s initials.”
I relaxed. “Blitz hired her to coordinate his birthday party,” I said. “That was probably how he paid her.”
Dig turned the envelope over and showed me a smear of something red on the back. “So then you want to tell me why it has somebody’s blood on it?”
Chapter 23
THE SMEAR ACROSS the back of the envelope could have been a lot of things: ketchup, barbecue sauce, hair dye, or, yes, blood. And considering where it was found and who it had come from, the obvious answer wasn’t that Blitz had been eating a plate of ribs without a napkin before he’d been killed.
“Dig, did you tell anybody about this?”
“No, and you can’t either.”
“It’s not that simple. This is evidence,” I said.
He snatched it back from me. “No it’s not. It wasn’t found in the fire hall, it was found in Ebony’s car. Nobody searched her car. It wasn’t part of the crime scene.”
“Because I drove it away,” I said. “Maybe they would have searched it. We don’t know.”
“It’s too late for that now. I detailed the thing after I finished cleaning up the exterior.”
“Did she ask you to do that?”
“Nope. It was on the house.”
Depending on how thorough Dig had been—and I was guessing he’d been very thorough, considering how he felt about Ebony—he’d negated the principle that forensic science was based on: every contact leaves a trace. Because if there was trace evidence in her car, it had been vacuumed up and dusted off with a coating of Armor All.
“This means she’s in trouble, doesn’t it?” he asked, waving the envelope back and forth like a fan.
“Not necessarily.” I checked the time on my phone. I’d planned to go to Ebony’s house before opening the store. I needed to catch the next Zip-Two or I wouldn’t have enough time to make it back to Disguise DeLimit by ten.
“Remember—not a word about this,” he said. He tucked the envelope into his back pocket and I looked away.
The Zip-Two was filled with people on their way to work. All of the seats were taken. I stood by the doors about a third of the way back and kept myself balanced by holding on to a silver pole that protruded from the floor while I thought about this new information. According to Amy, Blitz and Gina had occupied the backseat of Ebony’s car at the party. So it wasn’t a stretch to think that Blitz could have had the envelope of money in his costume and that the envelope had fallen out. And continuing that train of thought, he could have gone inside and been confronted by someone—maybe someone who expected that very envelope of money—who killed Blitz for it.
But who at that party would have expected Blitz to hand over twenty grand?
There was Amy, who was noticeably angry at Blitz for cheating on her after a two-year relationship. A woman scorned was not to be taken lightly, and if she was angry enough, she could have snapped. But what did that have to do with the money?
Then there was Octavius Roman, who had been burned by Blitz’s last-minute cancellation. There was no easy explanation for why he’d been at the party in the first place, and $20,000 would have been a significant amount to him to absorb for the loss of business, even if his insurance covered the broken pipe. Had he snuck into the party and confronted Blitz in the kitchen over the money? It’s doubtful someone would have questioned him. Just like Black Jack had said, anybody could have gotten into the party if they were dressed in the right costume. Who would have known if there’d been a stranger among us?