Vicki DeVine raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
“A tie clip wasn’t bagged with the rest of Detective Baker’s personal effects, which means it fell off when the body was collected.” Grimshaw pointed to the area where Baker’s body had been twisted. “Right around there.” He focused on the two females. “It’s possible that someone picked it up, thinking it wasn’t significant—a pretty bauble that no one would miss. But it is an important piece of evidence, and we really need it returned.”
Grimshaw took the charm bracelet out of his pocket and held it up, spreading it open over his fingers so they could see the charms.
“Oh!” Her dark eyes bright with excitement, Aggie released Vicki’s hand and reached for the bracelet.
Grimshaw pulled his hand back just enough so that she couldn’t grab the bracelet and run away.
Aggie gave him a look that held a touch of menace. She might be young, and she wasn’t one of the forms of terra indigene that would be lethal as individuals—not like a Panther or Bear or Wolf—but he didn’t think calling a gathering of crows a murder was a designation someone made up just for the fun of it. And a gathering of the Crowgard certainly could be a danger to a single human.
“I’m willing to trade this bracelet, which a young woman could wear as well as admire, for the tie clip Detective Baker was wearing when he came to The Jumble the other day.”
“A lot of people could bring you tie clips in order to get the shiny,” Aggie said, her eyes still focused on the charm bracelet. “How would you know which one belonged to that man?”
“I’m a cop. I’ll know.”
Aggie looked at Vicki in mute appeal.
“An experienced police officer would know, just like the investigator in the story we watched the other night,” Vicki said.
Aggie sighed. Then she pulled the beach cover-up over her head, giving Grimshaw a look at physical quirks that he didn’t want, or need, to know about. Moments later, she shifted into her Crow form and flew away.
“You think Aggie took the tie clip,” Vicki said.
“Someone here pulled the tie out from under the body and took the clip,” Grimshaw replied. “If it wasn’t Aggie, then I’d bet a month’s wages that it was one of her kin.”
“You really need it for the investigation? Why?”
“Because Detective Swinn was very upset about its disappearance, and I want to know what’s so special about that particular tie clip.”
They fell into an awkward silence. She seemed reluctant to be around him, and not because he was a cop. She was acting like someone had painted an insulting remark about her on a public wall, making her the focus of unhappy attention—and he was one of the people who had read it.
Before he could decide if he should say anything about the fireplug remark Swinn had made, Aggie returned. She landed on the wide arm of the chair near the front door and dropped the tie clip she carried in her beak. She nudged it this way and that until the tie clip was resting on the front edge of the arm, right in a narrow beam of sunlight that showed the clip to best advantage.
Grimshaw set the charm bracelet on the arm and scooped up the tie clip. Aggie grabbed the bracelet and flew off. Bargain set and sealed.
He looked at the tie clip and frowned, unable to see why Swinn had gone into conniptions about its loss. Okay, everything from a crime scene should be bagged, but he didn’t think that was the reason Swinn had reacted the way he did.
Then he caught the look on Vicki DeVine’s face. “What is it?”
“Yorick has a tie clip like that.”
He held it up to give her a better look. “Your ex-husband has a tie clip like this or just similar to this?”
She looked at him, her eyes full of confusion. “Exactly like that.”
CHAPTER 22
Vicki
Thaisday, Juin 15
Sitting in The Jumble’s library with Ilya Sanguinati and Officer Grimshaw, I looked at the books I had shelved yesterday and had an epiphany. While I enjoyed reading thrillers, I didn’t want to be the girl tangled in the plot of one because I would have been the heroine’s best friend or the girl who had fallen for the hero—the girl he felt some affection for because she gave him sex while he was getting over the loss of his one true love. Those were the girls who ended up getting tossed in the wood chipper or left at the bottom of a deep, dry well full of spiders and millipedes—said well suddenly refilling, quite inconveniently, so that the girl would be found but not in time, especially if she was the passing love interest of the hero of the story. Those were also the girls who would be tied up in a cave and left to become the frame for a bat guano sculpture.
But even the epiphany didn’t stop me from snorting out a laugh when Officer Grimshaw floated his theory about the tie clips.
“You think Yorick belongs to a secret society? An organization with secret handshakes and code words? A society that, wanting to remain secret, identifies its members by a tie clip? Are you serious?”
Apparently he was. I looked at Ilya Sanguinati to see what he thought about Grimshaw’s theory. I don’t know if it was because he was a vampire or an attorney, but he had mastered the poker face.
“You think it’s possible,” I said to Ilya.
“It should be considered,” he replied. “It indicates a connection between Detective Swinn and your ex-husband.”
Grimshaw leaned toward me, his forearms resting on his thighs, his face full of concerned sincerity. “Think about it. You were married to the man for how many years? Did he belong to any clubs, go out to monthly meetings that were members only?” He picked up an evidence bag containing the tie clip and held it up. “Your ex-husband and at least one of the detectives in a CIU team had this exact tie clip. A Bristol CIU team should have taken the assignment when I reported the suspicious death of Franklin Cartwright on your property. But a team from Putney, led by Marmaduke Swinn, showed up instead.”
“The police in Putney have not concerned themselves with the citizens of Sproing until now,” Ilya Sanguinati said.