“You were Ray Bolchoy’s partner,” she said, accepting his handshake. “September Rafferty.”
“Look, I’m about to get out of here,” Thompkins said, throwing himself into a desk chair that shrieked under his weight. He motioned Luke to a chair at the end of his desk. “You wanna talk to me, now’s the time.”
September asked, “Is this about a case?”
Thompkins frowned at her. “What’re you doing here?”
“Don’t worry. I’m on my own time.” She returned her attention to Luke, who decided to lay his cards on the table.
“You got a minute or two?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m on my way to an interview.”
“What interview?” Thompkins asked.
“Winslow Sheriff’s Department asked for our help on one of their cases. Wes can’t be here and I already was. What were you on?”
“Five minutes,” Luke cut in before he could answer. “Let me tell you why I’m here.” Both Thompkins and Rafferty looked about to protest, but Luke launched into the story of his working relationship with Andi, her friendship with Trinidad Finch, and, most importantly, that she was Jarrett Sellers’s sister. “I want to know more about the cricket flour,” he finished.
“So do I,” September said regretfully, “but I’m already late. I’ll check in with you later,” she said to Thompkins.
“You want this case?” he said, halfway belligerent. “It’s yours. They’re going to fire me anyway.”
“We’re all in the same boat,” she muttered as she headed for the door.
“What have you got on the victim?” Luke asked Thompkins when they were alone.
He regarded Luke speculatively for a while, checked the time, then seemed to shrug mentally. “Coulda been a mistake. She ate the bar and didn’t look at the label ’til it was too late.”
“What about Jarrett Sellers?”
“Well, if it’s a homicide, he’d be our number one suspect.”
“When are you going to know if it’s a homicide?”
“When we know.” He pressed his lips together, then exhaled heavily. “I have a call in to Sellers that he hasn’t returned. If I thought it was urgent, I’d be chasing him down.”
“Have you checked her cell phone?”
“Haven’t found it yet,” he admitted, and then went a step farther, saying, “and the wallet was clear of fingerprints.”
“No fingerprints? Sellers’s prints would be on it.”
“Yep.”
Luke thought about it. “Maybe someone touched it who didn’t want their fingerprints found at the scene, like the foil.”
“And then left it there for us to find, just in case we decide it’s a homicide?” Thompkins finished the thought.
“Something like that. The piece of foil wrapper left by her hand seemed staged to me. If she ate the bar and left part of the wrapper, where’s the rest of it?”
“Not in the trash,” Thompkins admitted.
“There are just too many little details that don’t quite fit with an accident.”
“If it’s a homicide—and I’m not saying it is—the doer should have taken the whole wrapper and not touched the wallet.”
Luke said slowly, “He wants us to know. Not completely, but sort of. He’s crowing about what he did.”
Thompkins snorted. “So he’s a psycho?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What’s his motive? And where does Sellers fit in?”
Luke shook his head. They were both good questions, but he wasn’t any closer to an answer than he had been earlier. “Sellers might just have been opportunity,” Luke suggested.
It’s too bad when little birds have to die.
He considered mentioning the threat to the detective but decided to wait. Luke wasn’t sure which way Thompkins was going to jump on this, and he had some ideas of his own. “She had a boyfriend other than Sellers,” Luke told him. “I asked Andi about him, but she’s never met him.”
“That’s Andrea Wren, the friend of the victim and sister of Sellers?”
“Yes.”
Thompkins shrugged. “I gotta wrap this up for tonight, Detective.”
Luke felt a certain nostalgia upon hearing Thompkins mistakenly call him detective. He took his cue to leave and headed outside, driving back to his office with thoughts circling his brain.
Instead of pulling into the back lot he drove toward the front of the building and, as he turned the corner, felt a cold jolt of alarm upon seeing a dark-haired man standing outside his office door, rapping sharply on the panels.
Chapter Twenty
Luke whipped into a parking spot and was out of the car in three seconds flat. “What do you want?” he demanded as he stalked toward the door. He got his second jolt when he realized it was Carlos Garcia, Helena’s husband.
“Carlos.”
“You have my wife in there?” Carlos asked flatly. He looked calm, but for the first time Luke saw the cold implacability that Helena had alluded to.
“Hell no. I haven’t seen Helena since I’ve seen you,” Luke said.
“You lying to me?”
“Carlos.” Luke stared at him.
“Who’s in there?” he asked suspiciously.
“A friend.”