Fool Me Once

He looked left. He looked right. “Are you sure?”

“Go.”

She moved to the other shed, snipped the lock, looked inside.

Also empty.

When she glanced behind her, Corey was in the distance, staggering past the car parts toward the exit. She waited until he was out of sight. Maya checked her watch. She wiped her prints off the chain cutters and hid them inside the Oldsmobile. Even if found, they’d prove nothing. She waited another twenty minutes to be on the safe side.

Then she called 9-1-1.

Chapter 27

Maya had a story and she stuck to it:

“I got a tip to come here. When I arrived, the lock was broken. An arm was sticking out. So I opened the door some more. And that’s when I called nine-one-one.”

The police asked what kind of “tip.” She said it was anonymous. They asked what her interest was in this. She went for the truth here because they would learn it from Tom Douglass’s widow anyway: Her sister, Claire, who had been murdered, had conversed with Tom Douglass not long before her death, and Maya wanted to know why.

The questions kept coming in various forms. She said that she needed to arrange pickup for her daughter at day care. The cops let her do so. She called Eddie and quickly explained the situation.

“You okay?” Eddie asked.

“Fine.”

“This has to be connected to Claire’s murder, right?”

“No doubt.”

“I’ll get Lily now.”

Maya reached the Growin’ Up Day Care via Skype and, surrounded by police presence, explained that Lily’s uncle Eddie would be picking her up today. Miss Kitty did not readily accept that. She made Maya jump through all the hoops and then insisted on phone-call backups to make sure it was all on the up-and-up. Maya welcomed the security overkill.

Hours later, Maya finally had had enough. “Are you arresting me?”

The lead cop, an Essex County detective with the most glorious helmet of curly hair and bold eyelashes, hemmed and hawed. “We can arrest you for trespassing.”

“Then do that,” she said, putting her hands out, wrists together. “I really need to go home to my daughter.”

“You are a suspect here.”

“For what exactly?”

“What do you think? Murder.”

“Based on?”

“How did you end up here tonight?”

“I told you already.”

“You’d learned that the victim was missing from his wife, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Then you got a tip from a mystery source to check this storage shed.”

“Right.”

“Who was the mystery source?”

“It was anonymous.”

“By phone?” Curly asked.

“Yes.”

“Home phone or mobile?”

“Home.”

“We’re going to check your call records.”

“You do that. But for now, it’s late.” She started to stand. “So if that’s all for tonight-”

“Hold up.”

Maya recognized the voice and cursed under her breath.

NYPD detective Roger Kierce walked toward them with his caveman swagger, his arms jutting out from his squat body.

“Who are you?” Curly asked.

Kierce flashed his badge and gave his name. “I’m investigating the shooting death of Joe Burkett, Ms. Stern’s husband. Do you guys have a cause of death here?”

Curly looked warily at Maya for a moment. “Maybe we should talk alone?”

“Looked like a slit throat,” Maya said. They both looked at her. “Hey, I really have to go. I’m trying to save us all time.”

Kierce made a face and looked back toward Curly.

“There is what appears to be a knife wound at the throat,” Curly said, “but we don’t know more than that yet. The county medical examiner will give us her findings in the morning.”

Kierce pulled up the chair next to Maya, twirled it so the back was in the front, and then made a big production of sitting/straddling it. Maya watched him, wondering about what Caroline had said about Kierce taking payoffs from the Burketts. Was it true? She doubted it, but true or false, raising it at this juncture seemed an unwise move.

“I could call my attorney right now,” Maya said. “We both know you guys don’t have enough to hold me.”

“We appreciate your cooperation in this matter,” Kierce said without an iota of sincerity, “but before you go… Well, I think we’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

He was waiting for her to bite.

“What have we”-she emphasized the word-“been looking at wrong, Detective?”

Kierce put his hands on the top of the chair back. “You keep stumbling over dead bodies, don’t you?”

Eddie’s words: “Death follows you, Maya…”

“First your husband. Now this private investigator.”

He gave her a smile.

“Are you trying to make a point, Detective Kierce?”

“I’m just saying. First, you’re with your husband in the park. He ends up dead. Then you come searching for God knows what. Tom Douglass ends up dead. What’s the common denominator in all this?”

“Let me guess,” Maya said. “Me?”

Kierce shrugged. “You can’t help but notice that.”

“No, you can’t. So what’s your theory, Detective? Did I kill them both?”

Kierce shrugged again. “You tell me.”