Murder in the Marigolds by Dale Mayer (best young adult book series .txt) 📕

You did find it, and you moved it on to us,” he said, “although maybe it required a little persuasion.”

“But the bottom line is, you do have it,” she said.

“What are the chances that somebody saw you with it?”

She looked at him. “Anything is possible. The restaurant may have even told Mathew that they gave it to me.”

“Quite right,” he said. “I think it’s safe to say he came here looking for that and maybe anything else he could find. Let’s go check upstairs.”

With that, they did a full search of the house.

“They obviously went through everything,” she said. “Closet doors are open that I wouldn’t have left open. Drawers are ajar that I wouldn’t have left that way, things like that,” she said. “But I honestly can’t tell if anything is missing.”

“And you didn’t have much in the way of valuables, right?”

She raced over to Nan’s bowl that she kept in one of the drawers. She pulled it out, shook her head, and said, “You know what? Really this is chump change for him.”

“Maybe, but it wasn’t him who did the searching, and it might not have been chump change to whoever that was.”

“True, but Mathew would not have been pleased if somebody accepted a little something for themselves.”

“Right. A bit of a stickler on things like that, is he?”

“In a big way.”

She stared down, her fingers automatically going through the bowl of coins and bills, including the new roll from Nan. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost this,” she muttered.

“You would have been fine.” He gently squeezed her good shoulder. “Now, let’s stay focused. Anything else to check?”

She looked at him, turned around to survey her bedroom, and said, “Well, the antiques are already out of here, and that’s what was really valuable. Even the rare books. But I guess to be thorough, we should check the basement.”

He led the way downstairs to the basement, and she searched the area and said, “I mean, nothing’s really down here anyway.”

“No, we did a good job emptying it,” he said, with a note of humor.

She smiled up at him. “We did, indeed.”

“And what about the garage?” he asked. We should check that as well.”

They went out through the double doors to the garage. As she turned in a slow circle in the middle of the garage and all the tools, she said, “I don’t think anything is missing in here either.”

“Well, that’s the good thing about not having much,” he said cheerfully. “Not much to steal.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “There is some truth to that. He has all kinds of security systems at his place.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Surveillance cameras all over the property, alarm systems, things like that,” she said, with a shrug. “I’m not even sure about all that he has.”

“You never had anything to do with it?”

“No, not at all,” she said, “just a matter of the need to always have them turned on. He was a stickler for that too,” she admitted. “But then we had people on the property all the time who were looking after it.”

“So would you say he was paranoid?”

“Absolutely. Of course, at the time, it just seemed normal. But, looking back, yeah, he was definitely paranoid. I don’t think he’s very comfortable in the world he’s created for himself,” she said.

“That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said, “but, as I look around, and as I realize just how much I was confined in a way, he was also confined.”

At that, Mack stopped, stared at her, and said, “That’s an interesting take.”

She shrugged. “Well, how else would you describe it?”

“I’m not sure, but he did have access to the security system, so he could turn it on and off at will, right?”

“Yes, but he didn’t. When we were in for the night, we stayed in for the night. I don’t know if he ever went out again.”

“And what about when he was meeting the lawyer?”

She winced at that. “I’m not even sure when and how all that happened,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “And I really don’t want to go in that direction.”

“Good,” he said cheerfully. “Glad to hear it.” And, this time, his voice was more relaxed.

“Now that we’ve checked,” she said, “I can calm down.”

“More or less, yes,” he said. “I guess I wanted to know for sure that he was actually gone.”

“And why didn’t you detain him?”

“I had no reason to,” he said. “But now? I want to speak to him. I didn’t really have a reason to before.”

“That’s not true,” she argued. “We definitely have a reason. When you think about it, he needed to be questioned in terms of the lawyer’s death. It’s way too much of a coincidence for both of them to be here in the same time frame.”

He just glared at her, and then his phone rang. He answered it. “Oh, good,” he said, grinning at the phone. “I’ll come down and have a talk with him myself.”

“I thought—” She stopped and froze. “You lied to me,” she cried out, when he got off the phone.

He glared at her.

“You were trying to throw me off the scent. You did pick him up, didn’t you?”

“For questioning, yes. And he came quite willingly, without any trouble.”

“Yeah, he is good at that,” she muttered.

“Good at what?”

“Throwing people off that way. He’s really good at deception.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. He does have a flight to catch later this evening,” he said. “And he has requested that he be released in time for that.”

“Of course,” she muttered.

“If we need to get him back, we can always get him back.”

“Says you. It would be much easier to keep him here. Then you can nail him to the wall.”

“Funny, you’re the one who was out walking with him today, without first telling me about his arrival,” Mack said, as he walked to the front door.

“Not fair,” she said. “I was still trying to figure out