A Flicker of Doubt - Tim Myers [13]
He shrugged. “That’s easy enough to say, but a lot harder to live by. So how did she keep track of her life?”
I scratched my nose, then said, “She had a personal organizer in her purse. Did you see that, by the way?”
“It hasn’t been anywhere I’ve looked so far. Maybe it was near the point where she went into the water.”
I shuddered at the thought. “The sheriff thinks she went in near the overlook. I guess we could look around there.”
Markum put a hand on my shoulder. “That I won’t put you through, my friend. After we leave here, I’ll - drop you off at the candleshop and I’ll go look myself”
I didn’t put up much of a fight, mainly because I couldn’t stand the thought of going to the place where Becka had spent the last seconds of her life. I said, “I just remembered something. Becka kept her bills in one of those accordion files. It should be around here somewhere. There’s surely no reason she would have taken that with her.” We both finished searching the living room and found the folder together. It was pushed into ‘ the corner of the room under a chair, almost as if she’d been working on her accounts the night before and hadn’t returned it to its proper place.
Markum picked the file up and said, ‘There’s too much here to go through right now. I guess we’ll have to take this with us, too. Let’s get going. We’ve got a lot more ground to cover before we can go.”
I was about to reply when I saw Becka’s front door handle start to turn.
Chapter 4
What should we do?” I whispered fiercely to H Markum.
“You locked the door behind us, didn’t you?”
I thought back to the moment after I closed the door. “Yes, I’m positive.”
“Then we’re all right”
“Unless they have a key,” I whispered, but at that moment I realized they would have already been inside if they’d had one. .
I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when I heard a stranger’s voice outside the door say, “I knew it was too easy. We should have paid off the super for the key first, just like I said.”
More words were spoken that I couldn’t make out, then the nearer voice said, “Give him a hundred, he won’t argue. If he does, just take it from him.” A pause, then he replied, “Because somebody’s got to stay here and watch the door.”
Markum grabbed my arm, held a finger to his lips, then he whispered, “We go out the back way.”
He unlocked the sliding patio door and I followed him outside. At least we’d be out of the line of sight of whoever was trying to get in. I started around the side of the apartment away from Becka’s door when Markum said, “Those aren’t cops. I want to get a look at who’s trying to get in.”
I nodded reluctantly and followed him around the building the other way. A man in a nice suit was coming out of one of the apartments, and I wondered if it was our guy. After a minute, Markum followed him, with me close on his heels.
We were almost to the door when there was a police siren in the distance, coming closer by the second. I didn’t know what to do, but Markum didn’t hesitate. He raced for my truck, and I was half a step behind. I had the key in the ignition and was ready to start it when he said, “Don’t”
“Are you crazy? They’ll catch us.”
“We want them to. You might want to take off your gloves before they get here, though.”
I hadn’t realized I was still wearing them. “Sorry,” I said as I shoved them under the truck seat as he stashed the accordion folder under his.
“Markum, why are we hanging around here?”
“Our story is that we just got here ourselves,” he explained. “Let those guys come up with a reason why they’re inside. If Morton sees your track flying out of this apartment complex, he’s going to know what we’ve been up to.”
“So tell me, what are we going to tell him when he asks why we’re here?” I asked as the sheriff’s car raced up.
“It’s simple. We came to find the super to tell him about Becka so we could get the phone number for her next of kin, but the door to her apartment was already open when we got here.”
I couldn’t believe his audacity. “And you think there’s a chance he’ll actually buy that?”
Markum grinned.