Pumpkins are Murder Page 11

“I don’t see why he couldn’t just tell you that at the beginning.”

  The chief shook his head. “You meet all kinds of people in this line of work. He’s by far one of the oddest that I’ve encountered.”

  “What was he up to?” She thought of something and froze. “Do you think he’s stalling for time while somebody destroys evidence for him?”

  “I don’t know,” Chief Daly said sounding unconcerned by the prospect. “He very well may be. But that’s a risk with all cases, and if there’s a record online then it’s going to be traceable by our experts whether it was deleted or not.”

  “What about his property? I mean, his sister could have gone there and gotten rid of anything incriminating.”

  The chief smiled. “I’ve already thought of that. That’s why Officer Stanley has been trailing her ever since she left the station.”

  Jessie held her breath. The chief had been interviewing Amy Jordan for twenty minutes now. She was a shy young woman who was obviously frightened. It took a while for her to open up—like Cassie, she seemed embarrassed by her out-of-character behavior.

  Once she started talking, though, her version of events puzzled Jessie. She claimed to have spent the whole afternoon and evening with the man. Chief Daly pressed her in as delicate a way as he could, but she was adamant. They had had a lovely time and had not left each other’s company all afternoon.

  Chief Daly came into the observation room a few minutes later. It was clear from the look on his face that he regretted investigating Jessie’s new theory.

  “That’s it?” she protested. “You’re going to let him go?”

  “I don’t see what we can do. He’s got an alibi for the time of the murder.”

  “But… but… what about his sister? She was lingering outside here earlier. Isn’t that suspicious?”

  “Wouldn’t you do the same if it was your brother?”

  “I guess. I don’t know. I… Wait, Chief. We’ve been focusing on the day of the murder. What we don’t know is when she first made contact with the man on Tinder. That might help explain what happened with Cassie.”

  “That’s irrelevant. I’m not investigating why he didn’t show up to meet Cassie. This woman says she spent all afternoon with Bobby. She’s willing to testify to that, she says.”

  “But Chief. There’s definitely something shady about this guy. I wasn’t sure at first, but having seen the way he acted in his interview… isn’t there anything more we can do?”

  Chief Daly sighed. “I already have more than enough paperwork to do for this case. But I tell you what. I’ll give you ten minutes with her. You can ask her anything you want. And then we call an end to this—deal?”

  “Deal.” She was out the door before she finished speaking.

  Jessie introduced herself, going to great lengths to make it clear that she wasn’t a cop. The chief had coached her to do so just in case it ever became an issue in court. She only ever conducted interviews when they reached a point in a case where they seemed stuck. In this case, this was her last chance before Chief Daly sent Bobby home and prosecuted Tony.

  Thankfully, Amy had no objection to answering a few questions.

  “Did you meet on Tinder?”

  The young woman flushed. “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Um, last week.”

  “Can you tell me when? What day, specifically.”

  Amy looked away. “Friday.”

  “Friday. As in the day before the parade?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, still not looking into Jessie’s eyes. “I know it looks bad, but he was so charming and he was moving here to start a new life. He’s from Colorado, just like me. I—”

  “Please,” Jessie said as gently as she could. “You don’t have to make excuses. I’m not judging you. He certainly seems like a charming guy.”

  A delightful smile crept onto the young woman’s face. “Yes, he is.”

  “So you’ve been in contact since then?” Jessie tried to sound excited for the young woman sitting across from her and not betray her disgust at his manipulating ways. It was difficult.

  “Yes.” She blushed even harder. “You know, I really questioned what I was doing when I agreed to meet him. Every instinct told me I shouldn’t go meet a man alone in an apartment, but… I don’t know. I’ve been single for so long that I thought maybe it was time to do something out of my comfort zone.

  “And do you know what? He was the perfect gentleman. We spent a lovely afternoon playing board games and chatting about our favorite movies and music. We’re going to meet again this weekend. We just enjoyed spending time together.”

  “Spending time,” Jessie repeated, wondering what other lies he had told Amy to charm her. “So this was your first meeting? Had you ever seen him on Tinder before?”

  “No. My goodness, I don’t think I would have agreed to meet any of the other men I’ve met on there. I only joined it because there are such limited options for meeting new people in Springdale. And I was ready to delete my profile. You wouldn’t believe the sort of horrible things men say on there. But Alex.” Her eyes took on a dreamy quality. “Alex is such a gentleman.”

  Alex, she thought, wondering if the man was even capable of telling the truth.

  “What made you sign up to Tinder? I don’t mean that in an insulting way, but you seem like somebody who wouldn’t like putting up with crude messages from strange men.”

  Amy laughed. There was a sadness in her eyes that was impossible to miss. “Maybe I do. Yes, it took quite a lot to make myself join. But I’m not getting any younger and I’m not meeting men in the more traditional ways, so…”

  “You thought you’d give it a shot. My cousin is the same.” That reminded Jessie that she hadn’t asked Mel if she had come across this guy. Something told her that she hadn’t; that Bobby/Shawn/Alex had chosen these women based on some perceived vulnerability he had detected in their profiles. “Could I see your profile? If you don’t mind?”

  Amy shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I’ve deleted it, you see. I know it’s a little sudden, but what with meeting Alex…” She smiled again.

  There was something strikingly similar between Amy and Cassie that Jessie couldn’t put her finger on for a while. After all, Amy was sweet and open where Cassie was cagy. She finally landed on it: they were both very unhappily single.

  She sighed. That didn’t make her next question any easier to ask but she was running out of time and she needed to know.

  “Look, Amy. I hate to say this, but an innocent man’s liberty might be at stake here.”

  Amy’s eyes widened. “I’d hate to think that but I don’t see what that’s got to do with me?”

  “It has everything to do with you,” Jessie said, looking her levelly in the eye. “Was there any point in the afternoon where…um…Alex left you? Even for a few moments?”

  “Well, he did go to the bathroom, but then so did I. Neither of us was gone for more than a minute or two.”

  Jessie shook her head. The apartment building was close to the parade route but not that close. “No, I mean did he leave the apartment for long enough to have gone to Groom Street?”

  Amy gasped. “You think he did it! You think he murdered that man!”

  “Maybe,” Jessie said gently. “How well do you know him? Can you say for sure that he didn’t do it?”

  “But he was a perfect gentleman. Is a perfect gentleman. I can’t imagine…”

  Jessie closed her eyes. The next thing she had to say was going to hurt Amy but it needed to be said.

  “Do you know he had planned to meet with another woman that day? She told him on Friday she’d be a little late but he agreed that was okay. She knew him as Shawn. He never showed.”

  Amy faltered. “I didn’t know that. He seems like a great guy, but that’s worrying.”

  “I think he canceled because he needed the alibi. The other woman had to push their meeting forward. She would have only made it to the apart
ment she booked at one forty-five. Why do you think that wasn’t suitable?”

  Amy shook her head. Her breath came out in ragged gasps, and there was no mistaking her distress now.

  For Jessie’s part, she hated every moment of this, but she knew it was the only thing she could do. She kept on, talking in a monotone so as not to betray her own dismay.

  “Isn’t it better to be single than to date a murderer? A manipulative murderer at that. How long do you think he’s going to keep you around after the weekend? As soon as somebody else is charged with the murder, he’ll have no use for you anymore.”

  “How do you know this?” Amy cried. “What makes you think he murdered that man?”

  “Jessie!” Chief Daly shouted as he burst into the room. “That’s enough! I told you I could ask some questions. I didn't say you could harass this poor woman. What were you thinking?”

  Jessie shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just thought—”

  “It’s clear to me that you didn’t think. You can’t speak to people like that.”

  “An innocent man could go to jail. I’m trying to prevent that.”

  “We need to follow due process! We can’t just go off—”

  “Wait,” the young woman said, looking from Jessie to the chief. “Wait.”

  “What is it?” Jessie whispered.

  “Do you really think he did this?”

  Chief Daly shook his head. “We don’t know. It’s my job to look at the evidence. That’s the only thing that makes up my mind.”

  Amy sighed. “It might be nothing,” she said, looking from Jessie to the chief again before bowing her head. “Oh, I promised him I’d tell people we were together all day if anyone asked!”

  Jessie snapped her head around to look at the chief. She didn’t dare say anything; not after his earlier reaction.

  “He asked you to say that? Why would he ask you a thing like that?” The chief’s voice was calm but Jessie could hear the urgency in it.

  “He was worried his ex-wife might find out he was dating. Their divorce isn’t finalized yet and he was worried that she’d be able to get their prenup voided if she caught him with another woman. That was the whole reason why we had to meet in the apartment.” She bowed her head. “Please. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You’ve done the right thing,” Chief Daly said. “How long was he gone for?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ms. Jordan. You’ve got to tell me. Did he leave the apartment? How long was he gone?”

  She looked up and her eyes were red-rimmed. She didn’t say anything at first but then she turned to look at Jessie. “You’re right,” she sniffed. “I would rather be single than chase after a murderer. But what if you’re wrong? What if he really was just protecting himself from his ex-wife?”

  Jessie shook her head. “He’s never been married.”

  “What?” Amy paled. “You mean he lied about that?”

  Chief Daly looked sharply at Jessie but didn’t say anything. “Can you tell me the truth about that afternoon? It’s very important.”

  She sighed. “Fine. Okay. Yes, we were together most of the afternoon, but he did pop out for a while. He said he had to go down to the parking garage and get the flowers he’d brought for me.”

  “How long was he gone?”

  “Fifteen minutes? Maybe a little more. He came back with flowers though. I had no reason to believe he wasn’t telling the truth about his ex-wife, I swear.”

  27

  “That was just about enough time,” Jessie said solemnly when they were back in the chief’s office.

  “I don’t know. It’s a risky business. He was reliant on Parker being on time and nobody else disturbing them on Groom Street.”

  “Or,” Jessie said. “He was prepared to do it in the ice-cream store. Remember? Tony said his cameras have been off-line since last week. I bet Bobby had something to do with it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And we don’t know. If Bobby came back with flowers twenty minutes later or a half hour later, he might have fed Amy some story about finding a flat tire or any number of other excuses.”

  “It might be true. What I don’t understand is her willingness to lie for him.”

  “She’s not the only one. Cassie said he was charming. My guess is he’s capable of being highly charming when he wants to be, and he selected these women knowing how much they’d been disappointed in the past; how much they wanted to meet somebody and settle down. So we’ve got him now. Right? You’ve got to charge him.”

  She didn’t like the look on the chief’s face.

  “No. It’s not that simple, Jessie.”

  “Why not? He’s got no alibi for the time of the murder.”

  “A lot of people don’t. He’s also got no connection to Albie Parker.”

  “But he manipulated Tony. And Cassie.”

  “That’s true,” the chief said with a sigh. “But I don’t know if that alone is enough for us to get a warrant to search his home and to get his phone records.”

  “But Chief! What about everything you said about Judge Carter?”

  “Jessie,” he said with a sad smile. “You must have known I was just saying that to try and make Bobby talk. The reality is this is going to be a hard sell.”

  “But we’re almost sure we know what happened! He persuaded Tony to invite Albie Parker to his store. He met with Amy so he’d have an alibi for the time of the murder and we know he convinced her to lie about his absence. We think he was the mystery client who asked Jeff to go to that abandoned house, so he could try and pin the murder on him. It was probably Bobby who harvested that pumpkin to use as the murder weapon and he somehow acquired Jeff’s business card to plant on the body.”

  “Yes, that’s a good summary, Jessie, but there’s still no proof there. There’s no motive. We can’t prosecute him with what we’ve got—any half-decent defense attorney would have him free in hours.”

  She shook her head. A moment ago it had all seemed so conclusive. “So what do we do?”

  The chief held his hands up. “There’s not a lot we can do right now. I’ll get the guys on the job of tracing that anonymous message to Jeff.”

  “I have another idea,” Jessie said. “But I’m not sure you’re going to approve of it.”

  The chief didn’t approve, as it happened, but he was even less inclined to allow a murderer to go free so he gave the plan his blessing.

  It was risky—Jessie had known that all along.

  They weren’t even sure it would work. After all, they had no way of knowing who else might have been working with Bobby. Nobody had any clue who the man in black was.

  But they were out of other options.

  So here they all were, clustered in Amy Jordan’s kitchen. The front door of her small home led directly onto the living room, off which sat the kitchen.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?”

  Amy nodded and pressed send on the message they had spent almost an hour preparing. “Sure. I’m the only chance you’ve got. How could I say no to that?”

  He smiled. “Thanks. You don’t know how brave you are.”

  “Brave?” She shook her head and laughed as if it was the most outlandish thing she had ever heard. “I’m not brave. If anything I’m the opposite. You said that’s why he targeted me, right?”

  “Not at all! He targeted you because you really wanted to meet somebody. That’s not a crime.”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “Tell that to my couple friends. I never get invited to dinner parties anymore in case I mess up their numbers. It’s crazy—why don’t they just outlaw the number one and be done with it?”

  Jessie laughed. Amy had seemed quiet at first, but underneath her shy exterior was an absurd sense of humor. It seemed likely that Bobby had stereotyped and misjudged her. Jessie hoped that his mistake would prove to be the thing that sent him to jail.

  “I’ve just got a message from him!”

  They pee
red at the phone as Amy opened the message.

  What do you mean? We need to talk about this!

  “Good,” Chief Daly said. “It looks like he’s taken the bait like we hoped he would. Let’s go with the next message. Amp it up this time. Tell him you feel strange about lying. What if his ex-wife comes to you and asks the truth. We’ll play along with the story he told you for now and hope it doesn’t raise his suspicions.”

  Amy nodded. “You don’t think this will make him disappear into the woodwork forever?”

  “I don’t. No offense, but I’m of the opinion that he judged you and decided you were so desperate for love that you’d comply with his wishes. He was obviously wrong about that, but he doesn’t know it. That gives us some flexibility to push him.”

  They settled down and Amy responded to Bobby Holmes’s increasingly irate messages with the replies they had agreed on. So far, they’d been able to stick loosely to the script, but they were aware that he could do something irrational at any moment.

  And then it happened. The next message arrived and it wasn’t what they’d hoped for.

  Come to my house. 54 Broad Street. We need to talk about this. You have no idea what this could mean for my life.

  Amy shook her head. “I thought you said he’d want to come here.”

  “I thought he would. Maybe he sensed something was wrong.”

  “How? We came here in Amy’s car. He doesn’t even know where she lives. That we know of.”

  Amy shivered. “What should I say? I need to reply or he’ll get suspicious.”

  “Be cold,” Jessie said nervously. “Just say you’re busy and you can’t make it. Hint that you’re home but don’t tell him outright.”

  They debated back and forth for a couple minutes and she sent her reply.

  He responded in less than a minute.

  I’m coming over.

  Amy gasped. “How can he come here? I never told him where I lived!”

  Jessie looked at the chief. “We didn’t plan for this. We thought she’d have to tell him the address. What do we do?”

  “I know,” Amy said. “I should give him my address right now. Then he’s got no reason to get suspicious when I don’t question how he knows the address.”