Staying Home Is A Killer. Sara Rosett
A rush of emotions coursed though me. “But I would never—that’s absurd!” I couldn’t put a coherent sentence together as rage, anger, and disbelief converged.
Thistlewait pulled back and headed to the door. “All I’m saying is I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you better stay out of trouble. Try to be that average citizen who never notices anything and doesn’t get involved.”
An Everything In Its Place Tip for Organized Closets
Don’t plan to organize every closet in your home in one day—an overwhelming thought. So overwhelming, in fact, that it may stop you even before you get started! Instead break your organizing task into several smaller tasks to achieve your overall goal. For instance, start with one closet, even one area of your closet, and use the “Keep, Throw Away, Give Away/Donate” model to get started. Then tackle changing the shelving or storage containers in your next organizing session.
Chapter Eight
“Mitch, I’m a suspect. Whether or not they read me my rights, I’m at the top of their list. I could see it. I could feel Thistlewait’s attitude shift as soon as I said I took the bag from Penny and brought it to the Scheduling Office. I can’t leave my future in the hands of some investigators. What if they get it wrong? What if they go with the easiest answer? That’s me. Like Thistlewait said, I’m connected to both Penny and Georgia. I got the feeling Thistlewait was cutting me a little slack, but what if someone wants a quick solution to this thing? I’m it.”
Mitch leaned against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and his legs splayed out at an angle, propping him up. He looked like a mule with his tight, set jaw. He didn’t want to budge. “Thousands, no, millions of people, do just that. They trust the police to get it right. They go on with their lives and don’t think about getting involved.”
“But millions of people only have brushes with the police, a speeding ticket or something minor. Most people are not murder suspects.”
Mitch growled and marched over to the refrigerator. He jerked open the door, which set off a clatter of clinks and thuds. My shoulders tensed as I waited for Livvy to cry. We’d just put her in bed, and any little sound could wake her up. He pulled out a Dr Pepper, shoved the door closed, and guzzled half of it. Livvy must be catching up on her sleep, because the house stayed quiet. Mitch strode to the other side of the kitchen.
I took a sip out of my water bottle and doodled circles in the margin of my notepad. I had two headings across the top, Penny on the left and Georgia on the right. Under Georgia I wrote Accidental. I said to Mitch, “If those espresso beans were poisoned, they were intended for Penny. The fact that Georgia ate them is purely coincidental. There was no way Penny knew what I’d do with them once she gave them to me. They had to be for Penny.”
“Where did they come from?”
I shrugged. “You know Thistlewait is following that trail.” I didn’t mention Rachel, my friend who just happened to be the spouse of an OSI special agent. I made a mental note to call her later. Right now, I wanted to focus on my conversation with Penny. I’d talked to her shortly before she died. I wanted to get down on paper what I remembered. I couldn’t imagine anyone being angry enough with Penny to want to kill her, but someone had murdered her and there might be a clue in our conversation or in what Penny had done during the last few days before she died. I’d start with my conversation and then try to fill in the rest of her morning.
She’d looked so happy and I’d commented on it. I wrote Happy/News.
Then she’d given me the espresso beans. I wrote Beans. Under that word I wrote Problem/Needed Help. I’d forgotten about that until now. I drew some more circles. No matter what Mitch thought, I couldn’t let this go now. Penny had asked for my help before she died. She’d even mentioned the murder last year. She must have realized she was in danger and wanted my help. If only we’d talked right then. That dark feeling descended again. I wished we could go back and live that day over again, but this time I’d insist Penny tell me what bothered her.
Mitch tossed his empty can in the recycling bin and sighed deeply. He pulled out a chair at the table. “Okay, what have you got?”
“You’ll help?” I asked guardedly, unsure if he really wanted to help or if he wanted to see my notes.
“Ellie, you are the hardest-headed person I know. I’m not about to let you get into this without knowing what you’re thinking. I’ll help, if I can.”
“Well, you were looking pretty mulish yourself over there just a minute ago.”
“Yes, but I can be flexible. I can give in. Unlike some people.” He leveled a look at me and pulled the notepad toward him.
“I’m not going to give in until I know the police don’t suspect me and aren’t going to arrest me. I have no alibi for Penny’s death. I was driving home from lunch with you.”
Mitch ignored me; well, technically he acknowledged my statement with a grunt as he read over the list, which I took to mean he gave me a little on the alibi point, but he didn’t want to concede that in words. “This is what you and Penny talked about?”
I explained my notes. Then I said, “She was about to tell me something, but then the door opened and a flight crew came in and she looked…funny.” I paused, trying to remember her exact expression. “She was afraid, but there was something else there, too. Defiance?”
I wrote, Flight crew and listed the names as I spoke. “Zeke Peters was there. Pilot?” Mitch nodded. The squadron didn’t have hard crews, so once copilots upgraded to pilot and flew in the left seat the Air Force kept them dual qualified, so they could fly as either a copilot or a pilot, depending on what the needs of the moment were. I remember Zeke’s towering figure dwarfed the others as they labored up the ramp.
“Then Aaron, our new neighbor. He didn’t say anything. Do you know his last name?”
“Reed. He’s our newest co.” Mitch meant copilot. Aaron and Bree had moved into the property left vacant when our neighbor requested a transfer after his wife died last year. A management company now rented the bungalow, and the Reeds were the first to live in it. I’d met the couple one day when I was planting ground cover in a flower bed. They seemed polar opposites; Bree had spiky tomato-red hair and was an artist, a painter. She’d chattered nonstop about the local art scene while Aaron stood mute in the background. “Is he as quiet at work as he was that day I met them?”
“Quieter. We call him ‘the Stealth Co.’”
“Oh. I almost forgot. Rory was there.” Barrel-chested and with a thatch of blond hair over his owlish round glasses, he’d powered up the ramp.
“Rory Tyler? Yeah, he was on it and someone else hopped on that flight.” Mitch left the kitchen and then returned with a small packet of paper, the week’s flying schedule. Now that everything’s computerized, the hard copy should have faded away, but the wing commander liked to see it on paper, so a hard copy went out every Friday for the next week.
Mitch scanned the blocks filled with data. “No one else is on here, but I remember someone came in that morning, wanting to fly.”
I wrote a question mark as Mitch said, “Willy. It was Willy. But it wasn’t this flight. The same crew flew the week before, Friday, I think. He hopped on the Friday flight with Zeke, Rory, and Aaron the week before.”
“Will Follette? Wasn’t he just back from the deployment? Penny said something about being glad he’d be home for a few days.”
Was it only last week? Things had changed so quickly. Will had been gone on the first rotation to the “sandbox,” or “SWA,” pronounced “sa-wah,” an abbreviation for Southwest Asia. Mitch was scheduled to leave in three weeks for his turn. Usually, you had some time off when you returned from a deployment. Sometimes it took a while to get readjusted to the time zone after being halfway around the world for months.
“What