A Flicker of Doubt - Tim Myers [43]
“I’m not sure,” I said, “But I think it had something to do with the way her boss was trying to manipulate me.
There’s got to be more to it than that What else have you been up to?”
“I got Cyrus’s sister to agree to come back to Micah’s Ridge. He has two guards patrolling his grounds now. It’s the only way I could think to get past tan.”
“My, you’ve been busy, haven’t you? Anything else I should know about?”
“No, that’s about it Wait a second, there is one more flung.” I pulled the excised newspaper clipping out of my wallet and handed it to him. ‘This is the article Becka cut out of her newspaper.”
He studied it a moment, then said, “I wonder why she cut out this article about Hank Klein’s donation to the Firefighter’s League.” I took the clipping back from him and was surprised to see Klein’s name mentioned in his own newspaper. I flipped it over and gave it back to him. “I didn’t even notice that. How about this woman’s body found in Larkspur Lake?”
“We should ask Morton about it”
“I already did,” I admitted reluctantly.
“So what did he say?”
“He told me the coroner ruled it an accident, but that’s no proof. He thinks Becka killed herself, too, and we know that’s not true.”
He studied the article a few moments. “Harrison, the circumstances are too different, even though both women died around water. What else do you have?”
I pointed to the snippet about illegal dumping. “I’m willing to admit it could be about this. Don’t you think it’s too big a coincidence, given the fact that we found an envelope from Washington in her purse and a photo of a barrel in her room?”
“It’s a possibility, but coincidences happen in life. “What do we really have?”
Suddenly I felt like the dumping was where we should focus and not on the drowning. The article and the envelope have to be tied together. That picture edge we pulled from her dresser mirror is another piece of it, too.”
“Do you think Becka stumbled across something she shouldn’t have?”
I nodded. “It’s another possibility we have to consider.”
“I don’t know,” Markum said. “For all we know, that letter was something entirely unrelated, and the photograph might have been of her ex-boyfriend, the one she wanted to get rid of.”
“So why was the tear left behind?”
“Maybe she got so mad she tore it off the mirror and left that corner by accident. We don’t even know it’s a barrel; it could be some kind of outdoor chair for all we can tell.”
“My gut is telling me we’ve already got the answer, if we could just find the right way to look at it,” I said.
A customer came in and said, “Excuse me, I’m looking for a present for my mother. She’s in her early seventies and she’s looking for a new hobby.”
“You’ve come to the right place,” I told him, then looked at Markum and added, “If you’ll hang around a minute, we can talk more about this.”
He glanced at his watch, then said, “I need to make some phone calls. We’ll discuss it later.”
After Markum was gone, I asked the customer what kinds of things his mother liked. “She’s a fabulous baker, but she’s looking for something else to do with her time.” He patted his stomach and said, “If I don’t find something else for her to do, she’s going to kill me with cookies.”
“Does that mean she has a lot of cookie cutters?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t believe her collection,” he said. “She can’t stop buying them. Mother claims the shapes are what she loves.”
“Then I’ve got just the thing for her.” I walked over to the aisle with tinted sheet-wax kits and grabbed a few colors. “You should have her try these. She can use her cookie cutters to cut out shapes in the wax. Hang on a second.” I’d been experimenting with one-page pamphlets for the store to try to generate some extra business. I grabbed the one I’d written about making specialty candles with cookie cutters and handed him one.
He looked at the brochure, then asked, “What do they look like, though?”
“Let’s see what I’ve got in my classroom.” We walked to the back of the store, and after a few minutes of searching