Joe began to ask questions again. “Did Dinah tell you anything about her plans?”
“Yes, she wanted to keep going north. She had vacation time, and she intended to use it.” He looked up then. “We went into a couple of haunted houses that afternoon. It wasn’t Halloween yet, but they get all excited up there for the whole month of October. I met her in that area where no cars can go—”
“The pedestrian mall?” Joe suggested.
“Yeah, yeah. At a joke shop. That’s when I met Dinah. She was looking at the books.”
“So you just started talking?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Figured out we were both from Boston. Both up to see the leaves. So we decided to go for coffee. I thought she was cute, and she said she thought I was rugged. And cool,” he reflected mournfully.
Jeremy thought it was the appropriate time to bring out Mary Johnstone’s picture. He watched Richardson’s face as he thrust the photo in front of him.
If anything, the man looked perplexed. He frowned, looking up at the two of them. “That isn’t her,” he said. If he’d recognized Mary in any way, he hadn’t betrayed it with so much as a blink.
“No, that’s the woman we’re looking for right now,” Joe said.
“I’ve never seen her ’cept on the news,” Richardson claimed vehemently.
“She disappeared on Halloween,” Jeremy said.
Richardson groaned. “I was with a hooker on Halloween.”
“And her name was?”
Richardson stared at them, shaking his head.
“Sugar,” he said at last.
“Did Sugar have a last name?” Joe asked him.
Richardson groaned again. “Plum.”
“Being a smart-ass isn’t going to help you,” Joe informed him.
Richardson laughed dryly. “I’m not being a smart-ass. That’s the name she gave me when she got in the car. Sugar Plum. She even asked me to go in and buy her a bottle of plum brandy. While we were waiting for the guy to run my card, she said she was just like the sugarplum fairy, she’d be in my dreams forever.”
“Any reason you picked up a working girl on Halloween?” Joe asked.
“Yeah. I was horny,” Richardson said.
The man was wearing down, Jeremy thought. He’d been through all this with the Boston police. It was amazing he hadn’t demanded a lawyer yet.
“Wait a minute,” Jeremy said. “Did you just say you used your credit card in a liquor store?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you tell anyone this before?” Jeremy asked.
“No.”
“Why not?” Joe demanded.
“Because I just remembered it now,” Richardson said irritably.
How dumb was this guy? Jeremy wondered. He didn’t seem to realize he’d finally given himself an alibi that would hold water.
Joe rose and banged on the door for the guard. “I’ll get them right on it,” he said.
The cell door closed in Joe’s wake. Richardson looked at Joe. “Good cop, bad cop?” he asked.
“I’m not a cop at all. I’m just a private investigator trying to help my friend. He’s married to the woman in the picture. I would really appreciate any help you can give me.”
Richardson sat there, chewing his lip. “I wish I could give you something. Believe me—I wish I could get myself out of this place. I never met your friend’s wife. I did meet Dinah. We went to some haunted houses, a couple of shops, and we stopped by a museum, but we left when she saw I was bored with all that history stuff. Then we had dinner at the bar. Did I think I was going to get laid? Yes. Did I kill her when it didn’t work out? Hell no. That’s why they make working girls, you know?”
“What happened when you left?” Jeremy asked him.
“After dinner, she said she wanted to talk to someone she’d met during the day. I said I could wait and walk her to her car. She said not to bother, that it was just over by the cemetery, a couple of blocks away, and she could get there by herself.”
The cemetery, Jeremy thought. Everything kept going back to the cemetery.
He needed to get a list of everyone who had been in that bar the night Dinah Green had last been seen. He was certain now that someone in that room—maybe the person she had spoken to, maybe someone else—had followed as she walked to her car.
And then…
Jeremy handed him his business card. “If you think of anything else, anything at all, call me.”
“Sure. If they let me,” Richardson said.
Jeremy glanced around…just in case. “Ask for an attorney,” he said.
Richardson frowned. “They said I could have one. But I’m not guilty.”
“Innocent men need attorneys, too,” Jeremy assured him.
Just then Joe returned to the cell. Jeremy looked at him. “Your Halloween story checks out.” Joe turned to Jeremy. “The guy at the liquor store actually remembers little miss Sugar Plum. Imagine that.”
Jeremy shrugged. He extended a hand to Richardson, who stared at it for a few seconds, then accepted it. “If I could help you, I would. You know that, right?”
“You never know what might come to mind,” Jeremy said.