Little Shop of Homicide (29 page)

I
had already rung the bell three times when Noah jerked the front door open. His usually perfectly styled hair fell across his forehead and into his eyes. He needed a trim—and possibly a shower. I wrinkled my nose. A stale odor that reminded me of an old gym locker wafted from him.

Adding to my sense of unease was his attire. The Noah I had known in high school, and observed from a distance for the past thirteen years, was always immaculately dressed. Tonight he wore navy sweatpants with bleach spots down one leg and a T-shirt that might have been red at one point, but was now a washed-out pink.

The most worrisome part of Noah’s appearance was the confused expression in his eyes. He almost looked drugged.

Scrubbing his face with his fists, he asked, “Dev, what are you doing here?”

“Uh.” Noah didn’t seem happy to see me, and for a split second, I wondered if maybe I
should
have waited to talk to him until Jake returned.

“Dev?” Noah’s voice had warmed up, and now it held a hint of concern. “Are you okay?”

“Sorry. I’m fine.” Mentally, I gave myself a good shake. This was Noah. He was not on drugs. And he
wasn’t any threat to me. I’d probably just woken him up. “But I do have a couple more questions for you. Can I come inside?”

“Sure.” Noah tried to hide his confusion. “Come on in.” He moved out of the doorway so I could enter. “Let’s sit in the den.”

This was the first time I’d been in Noah’s home, and as I followed him a few feet down the hall, I wondered what the rest of the place was like. The little I could see was beautifully decorated, but appeared cold and uninviting. Was Noah as lonely as his house implied?

Noah interrupted my thoughts. “Would you like something to drink?”

I declined his offer of refreshment and settled on one of the leather club chairs facing the sofa. A tan Chihuahua stared at me from his place on the matching chair.

Noah must have noted my interest because he explained, “Lucky was Joelle’s. She named me his guardian in her will.”

Although I already knew that, I pretended not to, and said, “He seems like a nice little dog.”

“Yeah.” Noah plopped down on the couch. “It’s been tough on him. Chihuahuas are one-person animals, so he’s still adjusting to me.”

“Poor thing.” I noticed the remains of a frozen dinner on the coffee table. The food was barely touched, but the beer bottle next to the white plastic tray was empty. “Well, anyway, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because an issue has come to light since Jake and I spoke to you about Joelle’s murder, and I wanted to hear your side of it.”

“Sure.” Noah reached for the remote and turned off the TV set, which had been playing a
National Geographic
special on the wildebeests of the Serengeti. “What’s up?”

Noah still seemed foggy, and judging from the pillow and afghan lying at one end of the couch, I was betting he’d been awakened from a deep sleep. It finally dawned
on me that it had been only ten days since Joelle’s murder, and because her body hadn’t been released yet, there hadn’t been a funeral. To Noah, it probably felt as if she’d died just yesterday.

A part of me sympathized, but the other part, the one Woods was trying to convict of murder, said good. It’s easier to get the truth from someone who’s vulnerable. And although I didn’t think Noah was guilty, he might have information about the person who was.

“Actually there are two things.” I forced myself to relax against the back of my chair.

“Yes?” Noah’s pearl gray eyes met mine, and a sliver of our old chemistry feathered up my spine. “What do you want to know?”

I hoped none of that attraction showed in my expression as I gazed steadily back at him. “Your nurse told Jake that you let your entire staff leave last Saturday while you were waiting for your emergency patient to show up. That seems odd to me.” I tilted my head. “Why would you do that? Weren’t you afraid you’d need assistance?”

“A little.” Noah twitched his shoulders. “But by the time I let Eunice go, it had been over a half hour since the call. I think I already suspected the patient would be a no-show.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I hated to keep her from her holiday plans for a false alarm.”

“Really?” I deliberately injected a modicum of skepticism into my tone.

“Really.” Noah tapped his fingers on the arm of the sofa. “You said you had two questions?”

“I did.” My voice sharpened. “The other matter is a bit harder to explain away.”

“Yes?”

I sat forward. “How come you told us that you didn’t arrive at the Parkside until seven thirty last Saturday night, but hotel records show you parked in the garage well before six?”

I watched carefully for Noah’s reaction. He had never
been a very good actor. In high school, drama was about the only class in which he didn’t excel. I was sure I could tell if he was lying.

“I have no idea.” He frowned. “I hadn’t even left Shadow Bend by six, so there’s no way it could have been me. Maybe the Parkside had a computer glitch.”

“There’s no evidence of that.” I willed him to come up with the same explanation I had.

“There must be some mistake.” Noah wrinkled his forehead, thinking hard. “I just don’t know.”

I waited, hoping my guess was right, but reluctant to put words into his mouth.

Abruptly he smacked his forehead with his palm. “In fact, I never parked in the garage at all. The police had the whole area cordoned off when I arrived. I had to park on a side street and walk to the hotel.”

Yes!
If he was telling the truth about his arrival time, that was exactly what I figured must have happened. “Do you have any proof of that?” I asked, knowing Noah’s word alone wouldn’t convince Jake. “Did you see anyone before leaving Shadow Bend?”

“No. The area around the clinic was deserted.” Noah slumped. Then a moment later he jumped to his feet, walked to the desk, and handed me several yellow slips of paper. “I got three parking tickets. I didn’t have any change and planned to go back and feed the meter once I got some. But—” He stuttered to a stop and swallowed hard.

“That’s interesting.” I glanced at the tickets and saw the seven forty-five time stamped on the first, eight forty-five on the second, and nine forty-five on the third. “Though it doesn’t explain why the records show you parking in the garage from five forty-five until eleven the next day.” This was the part I hadn’t been able to figure out before, but now an idea popped into my head. “Is it possible someone switched key cards with you?”

“I suppose.” Noah’s eyes lit up with a hint of hope. “Joelle left the key card for me at the clinic’s appointment
desk. My receptionist, Madison, called me on the intercom and told me the key was there. I told her to leave it on the counter and I’d get it when I had a chance.”

“So”—I beamed at him approvingly—“it sat on the counter, in plain sight, for several hours?”

“I suppose so… until I walked out the door.” Noah’s smile matched mine. “In fact, I almost forgot it. You could confirm it with Madison.”

“You don’t still have the key card, do you?” I asked, thinking the police had probably taken it or Noah had turned it over to the hotel when he left.

“I might. I just might.” Noah nodded slowly. “I put it in my jacket pocket that night, and I don’t remember ever taking it out.”

“You’ve had it in your pocket all this time and never noticed it?” I asked.

“I wore my leather jacket last Saturday, and I’ve been wearing my wool coat since then,” he explained. “Let me check.”

He disappeared down the hall, with me trailing him. It took only a few seconds for him to find his coat in the foyer closet, and when he faced me, he was triumphantly waving a white plastic rectangle.

Why was my life always full of more speed bumps than a church parking lot? Although I was pleased to have proven Noah’s innocence—at least it would be proven as soon as the KC police confirmed his story with Madison and the key card in his possession was shown not to open the door to the suite the night Joelle was killed—I was no closer to removing myself from Woods’s Most Wanted list. I needed to find him a viable suspect soon, or I would end up in jail becoming acquainted with a woman named Bad Betty in an up-close-and-personal way.

When I arrived home, a note on the kitchen table weighted down by a cupcake-shaped saltshaker didn’t
improve my mood. Gran had gone to bed with one of her sick headaches, but she wanted to remind me that I had promised to take her to see my father Sunday afternoon.

I never went into the prison to visit him myself, but I always drove Gran back and forth. In view of my current precarious position with the law, I really didn’t want to be anywhere near a penitentiary, but a promise was a promise, and I certainly couldn’t let her go alone.

After a quick bite to eat, I plopped down on the couch and spread my notes on the case all around me. There had to be something I was missing. I had been at it for about an hour, and was going over the hotel’s garage parking data again, when I finally spotted it.

According to that list, early on the evening Joelle was murdered, at five forty-five p.m.—the same time Noah supposedly arrived— someone named Etienne Aponte had parked in the hotel’s garage. The e-mail that Irene had seen on Joelle’s computer had been from an Etienne.

Considering that Etienne was an extremely unusual name, at least in the Midwest, it was unlikely that an Etienne who was unrelated to the case chose that day to stay at the Parkside Hotel. This Etienne had to have had something to do with Joelle’s death.

My first inclination was to call Jake, but after some thought I decided to e-mail him with my discovery instead. I wanted to include all the information I had gleaned from my visit with Noah, and I knew Jake would be unhappy to learn I had talked to my ex-boyfriend alone. My hope was that he would have cooled off before we spoke on the phone.

My cell rang the next morning at seven. Thankfully, I was in my car driving to the store early in order to work on several basket orders, because I didn’t want Gran overhearing what Jake had to say. Especially since the first few minutes of the conversation were an unpleasant replay of yesterday’s call.

“What part of ‘
Do not
talk to Underwood without me’ did you not understand?” Jake’s fury throbbed through the little phone’s speaker.

“I understood your order; I just chose not to follow it.” I barely stopped myself from saying
because you’re not the boss of me
. “Nobody likes to be told what to do, least of all me.”

Jake grunted, or maybe growled. I know I heard teeth grinding.

Finally I said, “As you must know, since you obviously saw my e-mail, I was sure Noah was innocent and now I have proof.”

“The only reason you were convinced he was innocent is because you wanted him to be.” Jake’s words seethed with exasperation. “Just admit you’re still in love with him.”

My annoyance matched his, but I ignored his taunt, held on to my patience, and asked in as civil a tone as I could muster, “What about Etienne Aponte? Were you able to find out anything about him?”

Jake was silent for a couple of seconds, then grudgingly said, “He’s Joelle’s husband.”

“What!” I shrieked before I could stop myself. “But she was going to marry Noah.”

“Not legally.” Jake’s voice held a hint of satisfaction. “Your precious doctor was about to enter into a bigamous union.”

Instead of responding to Jake’s crack about Noah, I demanded, “Tell me everything.”

“Joelle Ayers is really Jolene Aponte. About a year and a half ago she won half a million in the Louisiana lottery and disappeared.”

“Wow.”

“Yep,” Jake agreed. “She spent the next nine months or so transforming herself. She bought colored contact lenses, dyed her hair, had plastic surgery to enlarge her breasts and remove her wrinkles, and took speech lessons to improve the way she talked. Once she was transformed,
she assumed an identity that was ten years younger than her real age.”

“How did you find all this out so fast?” I had sent him the info only eleven hours ago.

“Etienne Aponte filed a missing persons report when his wife vanished,” Jake explained. “Once we found that, the rest unraveled quickly.”

“What rest?”

“It turns out Etienne’s fingerprints are in the system because he applied for a job as a bank security guard.” Jake paused, then delivered the coup de grâce. “And they matched the print found on the champagne bottle stuffed in Joelle’s mouth.”

“Oh, my God!” Now I remembered that Woods had never answered my question about whether there were other prints besides mine on the murder weapons. “Why didn’t they run those prints right after the murder?”

“They did, but Aponte’s prints are what they call ‘civil fingerprints,’ so they’re not in the criminal databank.”

“Oh.” After thinking about it for a minute, I asked, “So how did they find them now?”

“The FBI doesn’t advertise this, but they’ve started to retain the fingerprints of employer-conducted criminal background checks.” Jake lowered his voice. “So, when I heard that Aponte was a security guard, I called in a favor and asked a friend at the bureau to run the print on the bottle through those records.”

“And it was a match.” I blew out a long breath of relief. “Which means Aponte is the killer, right?”

“That’s the way the KC cops are figuring it. Joelle ran away rather than divorcing Aponte so she wouldn’t have to give him half the money from her lottery win. According to her friends in Louisiana, she always dreamed of living a different life, of being a country club lady with designer clothes and fancy cars.” Jake took a breath. “And since Joelle’s will is not in her real name, and she’s still married to Aponte, he’s her legal heir. The
theory is that he tracked her down and killed her for the money.”

“Wow!”

Jake added casually, “I made sure the info went to Woods’s chief of detectives so he couldn’t bury that evidence.”

“Thank you.” Those two simple words didn’t seem sufficient, but they would have to do until I saw Jake in person. “So, I’m no longer a suspect?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Were there any prints on the shoe?” I knew mine hadn’t been on the stiletto because it wasn’t part of the basket’s contents.