*
ON THE WAY to my office, I stepped into the break room, picked up Eliot, and took him with me. After throwing my shoulder bag in the bottom desk drawer and flipping on my computer, I set him on the floor. Then I went back to the break room and retrieved his water and food bowls. “You can just hang out with me for a while, buddy,” I said, placing them on the floor by my desk. In response, he rubbed against my legs and let out a purr that sounded like a motorboat starting up. I think he liked the idea of hanging with me.
Just as I settled behind my desk, my phone rang. It was Sean.
“Hey, there,” he said. “Glad I caught you in your office.”
“Yeah. Good timing. I was about to give you a call. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Bet there is. Just got in. Saw that someone broke into Makayla’s shop this morning. There wasn’t anything in the report about injuries or anything. Is Makayla doing okay?”
“She’s fine. Shook up a little, but you know Makayla . . . She’s already back up and running. Didn’t really miss a beat.”
“The report said nothing was stolen.”
“She hasn’t noticed anything missing yet. They might have been after cash, but she’d taken in a deposit the night before, so there wasn’t much there. Just enough to open with this morning.” Eliot jumped up on my desk and started rubbing his cheeks against my computer screen.
“And it wasn’t touched?” he asked.
“No, guess not.” That was strange. Someone breaking in for money would have stolen whatever cash was at hand. In fact, I’d think they would have taken it even if they’d broken in just to cause havoc. “I had something else I wanted to tell you about, though. It has to do with the case.”
“I’m listening.” His voice suddenly seemed tight, but he listened patiently while I relayed what I’d learned at the pet shop. “Seeing Matt with the nail gun made me think of something important, Sean. I know you don’t believe me, but what if I’m right and someone is really framing Jodi. I mean, at first I thought Lynn was the one being framed, but after the nails being discovered in Jodi’s room, I’m thinking the killer set out to frame her all along.”
“Or she’s guilty. Not all killers are smart about it. It could be she just thought she could get by with it, that no one would suspect her enough to search her room.”
“But there’s no real connection between her and Chuck. Is there?” I ran my fingertips along Eliot’s ginger-colored fur, tracing the line of his spine until his tail rose and bushed out like a feather duster. Glancing at my frost-covered window, I couldn’t help but think there was something comforting about a warm cat on a cold day. Even when discussing something as gruesome as murder.
After a few beats, Sean still hadn’t replied, so I jumped back in with, “It’s just that the method of murder was so unique. Either someone read about it in Jodi’s book and copied it, or they purposefully set out to frame her. No matter what you think, I know Jodi’s too smart to kill someone the same way she killed off one of her characters. And the nails cinched it for me. It just seems too convenient that they were found in her room. And were her fingerprints on the nails?”
“No. No prints at all.”
More proof that they were probably planted, I thought.
Sean continued, “And I’ve considered the same things you’re telling me, Lila. And I agree. But there’s also a lot of evidence stacked against Jodi. At this point, it’s up to the court to sort it all out.”
He was right, but I still persisted. “True. But if you’re considering the possibility of a frame job, then you’d have to ask yourself how the killer knew Chuck would be alone in the kitchen, with a nail gun, at just the right moment.”
He paused a few beats before replying. “That just proves my point. It wasn’t a frame job.”
Boy, he sure was stuck on that point. “It’s the nail gun that’s bothering me, Sean. The day I met Chuck, he was doing some work over at the Magnolia Bed and Breakfast. Putting up shelves, I think. Anyway, he was using a hammer and nails. I remember because the hammering was driving everyone crazy. Then at the pet shop this morning, Matt showed me some work Chuck had done on the subfloor. He’d missed nailing down a bunch of boards, but the ones he did nail down looked like they were done with a hammer. I could tell because there were little dig marks in the wood where he’d missed the nail head in spots. Anyway, the point is, if he had a nail gun, why wasn’t he using it for those jobs? Or, what I find even weirder, why did he take one into the Arts Center when he was going to be working on a refrigerator? Does that seem likely to you?”