“I visited Rabble Point Road.” I leaned across the bar. “Wait ’til you see what I discovered this morning.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a diner waving frantically for his check. “I’m busy right now. Can you stick around until things quiet down?”
Binder dug into his soup. “We’re off duty. We’re in town tonight so we can get an early start tomorrow. Come by the station in the morning.”
Apparently even state cops understood the principle of not working eighteen hours a day during the off-season better than I did.
Chapter 20
We were so slammed, it was eleven at night when Chris and I headed upstairs to my apartment. Before we did, I watched as Chris slowly and carefully locked the kitchen door, listening for the click of the latch. I’d locked the street door an hour earlier when the last guest left. Chris had watched me do it.
“I didn’t even have a chance to show you what I found today,” I said. I could tell from his movements he was still keyed up from the success of the evening.
“Let me jump in the shower, then you show me.”
Half an hour later we were on my couch, both bundled in sweats against the cold air seeping in through the big front window. And it was only the first week of December. This was but a preview of what was to come.
Chris was still coming down off the evening’s success. “That was amazing. And on a Thursday. Do you think we can draw that kind of crowd every night? Maybe we should hire another server.”
“I’m still in wait-and-see mode. Binder thought the crowd was curious about the activity in the parking lot this afternoon. Flynn called them ghouls.”
“Really? Is that what you overheard as you were serving people?”
I considered. “No. I mean everyone was talking about the murder, and the body in the harbor, but I think that’s natural. It didn’t feel like we’d turned into a scene-of-the-crime museum or anything. Not like yesterday morning. Nobody asked to tour the walk-in, did they?”
“Nope.” He laughed. “So tell me about your day.”
Where to start? I told him about my conversation with Fee and Vee and how that led to the discovery of the photo.
“And they’re all in it? That’s incredible.”
“All of them. I’ll show you.” I fetched my tote bag off the top shelf in the closet alcove and pulled out the photocopy.
“Amazing,” Chris said as he studied it. “Have you noticed how Michael Smith looks familiar? Like we’ve seen him before all this?”
“Is that it? I knew there was something in this photo that was bugging me. Maybe it’s just that he looks the same today?”
Chris squinted at the photo. “No, that’s not it. I don’t know what it is. Just a feeling.”
“He complained to Binder that I talked to Sheila.”
“Just because you had a conversation with her?”
“Yup.” And Phil Bennett had warned me not to talk to Deborah. Lots of overprotective husbands in that group. “I’ll take the photocopy over to the police station first thing in the morning.” I returned the photo to the tote and left it front and center on the coffee table so I could grab it and go.
“Good plan.” Chris stretched. “I need to sleep.”
“Me too,” I said.
*
“It’s not here!” I turned the tote inside out and upside down and shook it. I felt a little sick. “How can it be gone?”
“What’s gone?” Though it was still dark out, Chris was fully dressed, ready for an early morning pickup with his cab.
“The copy of the yacht club photo! How can it be missing? I showed it to you last night.”
“Are you sure you put it back in the tote?” Chris riffled through the stuff on the coffee table, his voice rising with alarm. “Maybe we left it out.”
“I’m positive I put it back in this tote bag and left the tote on the coffee table. It’s gone. Someone has been coming into the apartment.”
He looked like he wasn’t buying it. I almost couldn’t blame him. “Who even knew you had the photo in that bag?”
“I showed it to Caroline Caswell, Deborah Bennett, Sheila Smith, and Fran Walker,” I answered. “And Fee and Vee. And my mother.”
“That’s it?”
“I suppose each of the women in the photo probably told their husbands. Sheila definitely told Michael, because he complained to the cops about me bothering her. Binder said Michael was lingering on the street outside the restaurant last night. Do you think he could have snuck up here and taken it?”
Chris shook his head. “You showed me the photograph after we locked the doors.” He paused. “Do you really think one of the people in the restaurant the night of the murder took the photo somehow? How would a person even get in here?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what I thought. “What I don’t get is why anyone would take it. It’s a copy. The original is still hanging in the yacht club. What does getting rid of one copy accomplish?”
“Did you hear anything in the night?” Chris asked.
“I went right to sleep.” I shivered, imagining someone creeping into the room where we slept.
Chris nodded. “We were so busy last night, I was exhausted. Once I closed my eyes, I was dead to the world.”