Stuck on Murder (21 page)

Brenna suspected that was his way of being sure that she didn’t steal anything. She was just tickled that he had handed her the golden ticket, an unsupervised visit to Ed’s office.

She dug into the papers, looking for the one she needed. He was gone a mere two minutes when she found the article. She left the freezing room behind and headed down the hallway.

The copier in front of Ed’s office was off. She switched it on and then hurried back down the hall to look over the newsroom. John’s office was located on the other side, past the sea of cubicles. There was no way he could see her from here and no one else appeared to be in the building.

She hurried back to the copier. She lifted the lid, but it was still warming up. She leaned her back against Ed’s office door and turned the knob with her hand. It opened with a muffled click.

Brenna pushed the door slowly backward, hoping its hinges weren’t squeaky. The door slid silently across the blue industrial carpet, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She turned and slowly closed the door behind her.

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and called Tenley, who picked up on the first ring.

“What’s your twenty?” she asked. Obviously, she’d been watching too many cop shows.

“I’m in,” Brenna said.

“Roger that,” Tenley said, and then she giggled. Brenna rolled her eyes, although there was no one there to see her, and hung up.

They had worked it out that if Tenley saw anyone enter the building, she would call Brenna’s cell phone, which was set to vibrate, to warn her. If Ed entered the building, she would call her once, hang up, and call her again to let her know he was on his way.

Brenna kept the office light off and worked by the glow of Ed’s screen saver, which was the header of the
Morse Point Courier
being typed across the screen in a continuous loop.

A cursory glance was all she needed to see that Ed was a pig. A blackened banana and empty carryout containers littered the top of his desk, which was piled eye high with reams of paper, folders, and Post-it notes. Good grief, how was she supposed to find anything in here if she didn’t even know what she was looking for?

She glanced out the window of the office. There was no movement. She felt jittery and jumpy, expecting to be caught at any moment. The harder she tried to figure out where to start, the more paralyzed she felt.

“Knock it off, Brenna,” she whispered to herself. “Come on, focus.”

She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Feeling a smidge calmer, she figured the best starting place was his desk. She began to flip through the stacks, being careful not to move anything in case Ed was one of those people who knew exactly where everything in his personal mess was.

She tried to read his notes but his handwriting looked more like hieroglyphics than anything else. She shuffled through several piles of minutes from the latest town council meetings, the schedule for the peewee football league, and the take-out menus from eight nearby restaurants.

She glanced back through the window again—still no sign of anyone. She shifted to the left side of his desk and began to riffle through those papers, while holding a congealed cup of coffee from Stan’s Diner in her left hand to keep from spilling it. Ew.

Still, there was nothing. She tapped the space bar on his keyboard to see if she could access the files Marybeth had mentioned. She scanned the icons, but saw nothing that looked like what she wanted. She double-clicked an e-mail icon. His e-mail log-in window filled the screen.

His first initial and last name were already in the log-in space, but the password line was empty. She tried the obvious and put in his first initial and last name in the password line. She was rejected. Then she tried the name of the paper. Nothing.

What would Ed use as a password? She glanced at his desk. There were no photos of people or pets. On the wall were framed photos of him at several area press club banquets, but there were no awards on the shelf.

The one thing Ed craved more than anything was recognition. It was a long shot, but she tried it anyway. In the password line she typed “Pulitzer,” and Ed’s e-mail opened up like an oyster spitting out a pearl.

Brenna resisted the urge to pump her fist, barely. She scanned through his in-box. There were lots of local messages about events happening in Morse Point; several more were from New York and had Nate Williams as the subject line. It killed her to skip these, but she knew they were just gossip. She thought about deleting them, but knew that would be crossing an ethical line she was not yet ready to jump over.

She worked from older to newer, starting with the day Ripley was murdered. There had to be something in here that would give a clue as to who Ed thought was the murderer or even if it was Ed himself. She still hadn’t given up the idea that he might have had something to do with the mayor’s demise. Ed did not strike her as the sharpest pencil in the box—he had to have left some clue, made some misstep, something.

Toward the top of his in-box, she saw a message with no subject line. She opened it.

It read:
I know who murdered Mayor Ripley. Meet me at the Willow House at 9:00 pm. Come alone.

It was dated today.

Just then, her phone vibrated in her pocket and she jumped. She knocked the congealed coffee cup with her hand and sludge oozed out across the desk.

“Damn it,” she hissed. Her phone stopped vibrating. She had to get out of there.

She hit print and bounced on her feet as the printer slowly ground out the message. She exited out of Ed’s e-mail, snatched the page from the printer, and hurried out to the copier. It was ready now. She ran a quick copy of the article she needed. As the copier hummed and its green glow lit up the hallway, she felt her phone vibrate again.

Oh no, that was two calls. That meant Ed was on his way.

She grabbed her copy and the original and dashed down the hall to the archive room. She stuffed the newspaper in the box and hurried back through the newsroom toward John Sheady’s office. She found him sipping a steaming cup of coffee.

“Thanks so much, John,” she said. She forced a smile even though she felt as if her heart was going to pound right through her rib cage.

“Sure,” he said. “Did it copy all right?”

She glanced at the copy in her hand without really seeing it. The phone in her pocket was still vibrating. She was out of time!

“Yeah, it looks great,” she said, backing toward the door. “Thanks and, uh, bye.”

She turned and broke into a run.

Chapter 19

Brenna broke through the main doors to find Tenley in her Honda Pilot with the engine running. Brenna hopped into the passenger’s seat and Tenley sped from the curb.

“I’m sorry,” Tenley said.

“For what?”

“It was a false alarm,” Tenley said. “I saw Ed walking down the street towards the building, so I called twice but he didn’t go in. He climbed into his car and took off.”

“That’s okay,” Brenna said. “Because we’re going to follow him.”

“What? How? I didn’t see where he went,” Tenley said.

“What and where is the Willow House?” Brenna asked, while she fumbled with her seatbelt.

“It’s a student hangout on the edge of town, near the university,” Tenley said. “Why?”

Brenna glanced at her watch. It was eight thirty. They only had thirty minutes.

“How fast can you get us there?”

“If I hit the lights right, twenty-five minutes,” she said. She stomped on the accelerator and Brenna reflexively grabbed her armrest.

Tenley glanced at her. “What’s going on?”

“I found this in Ed’s office,” she said and read her the e-mail.

“Should we call Chief Barker?” Tenley asked.

There was a beat of silence.

“I am going to hope that Ed had the good sense to do just that,” Brenna said. A thought struck her. “Unless Ed is the guilty party.”

“You think someone is calling Ed out?”

“Maybe,” Brenna said. “We need to see who is meeting Ed then we’ll call Chief Barker.”

They hit three lights, which set them back a few minutes. After twice circling the 1920s residential house that had been converted into a coffee shop, it became apparent there was no parking. Tenley pulled over to let Brenna out.

The coffeehouse was full to bursting with students, and it was standing room only as a live band was performing outside on the terrace. The bass beat of the drum was so loud that it made glasses skitter across table tops. The lead singer was a shrieker, performing what they called screamo. It certainly made Brenna want to scream with frustration. How were they supposed to track Ed Johnson in this crush of people?

She jostled her way through the crowd, getting bumped as she made her way toward the door. If Ed was meeting someone to talk, he’d want to do it where it was quieter.

A tie-dyed T-shirt flitted by her and she glanced up to see an older man with a long, gray ponytail dancing by. His arms were raised, his butt was pushed out, and he alternated stomping his feet in time with the beat. He was the worst dancer she’d ever seen. Just then, he glanced up and she recognized Bart Thompson. He gave her a big smile and a wave and danced over to her side.

“Inhale-Exhale-Repeat! Aren’t they great?” he yelled in her ear as he pointed a thumb at the band. Brenna nodded.

He bounced at her side, seemingly off in his own world. She supposed it was a long shot, but she asked anyway, “Bart, have you seen Ed Johnson?”

Bart tilted his head to the side and looked puzzled. “I don’t really think this is his scene,” he said. Then his face lit up. “Hey, do you think he’d take my picture for the paper?”

Just then Twyla appeared out of the crush. She was dressed in a vibrant shade of purple and draped in crystals. Her lined face split into a grin when she saw Brenna, and she wrapped her into a crusher hug.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Twyla said. “We could have driven together.”

Bart was dancing on his own just a few feet away from them.

Curiosity overwhelmed her and Brenna asked, “Are you two dating?”

Twyla’s eyes twinkled and she said, “Sometimes.”

Brenna wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. They were a perfect pair.

“Do you want to dance with us, dear?” Twyla asked.

“Thanks, but I’m meeting someone,” Brenna lied. Twyla nodded in understanding and gave her a wink. She wrapped her hand around Bart’s arm and they gave Brenna a wave as they were absorbed into the crush.

Brenna scanned the area for familiar faces, but saw no one other than Bart and Twyla. She pushed her way through the crowd and up the stairs. Once inside, the crowd lessened somewhat, and she hurried into the main room. Every table was full, but there was still no sign of Ed.

She searched three more rooms, until she reached the back door. Outside, she noticed the back patio of the house was full of tables as well. She scanned the tables, but there was still no sign of him.

A block wall encircled the small grassy yard. A cobbled walkway led through the grass to a short wrought-iron gate at the back of the yard. The gate hung open as if someone had just walked through it. Maybe the noise had driven Ed and his contact to a quieter spot beyond the grounds. She jogged across the lawn and through the gate.

She pushed it open and carefully stepped through. It led to an alley, which was too dark to cast shadows and pungent with the acrid smell of rotten milk.

It was quieter out here, the band muffled by the block wall behind her. She glanced in both directions, but without a street light, it was impossible to see farther than an arm’s length away.

She heard a noise to her right, and she started. It sounded like a hiss, and she thought it was probably a tom cat. Still, the hair on the back of her neck stood up in alarm.

She took a breath and walked toward the sound. Her foot connected with something solid and yet soft. She jumped back with a yelp. Her breath was coming short and fast, but she forced herself to kneel and reach out with her hand. If it was an injured animal, she knew she’d get clawed. But if it was something else . . . she refused to think about it.

She patted the jagged pavement, her fingers trembling, when she touched fabric. She wanted to pull her hand back, but she didn’t. Instead she stretched out her fingers. There was no mistaking the feel of a human leg beneath her hand. Brenna knew she had found Ed Johnson.

She scrambled up toward his head. She could hear herself breathing loudly through her nose as she tried to keep herself upright with bracing gusts of oxygen.

She ran her hands over his face. There was a warm sticky liquid on his temple that she suspected was blood, and she felt faint breaths being emitted from between his lips. He was breathing. She put her hand on his chest and measured the rise and fall. It was faint but steady.