Sleight Of Paw Part 34

The third time around, I pulled into the lot, into Ruby's empty parking spot, and got out to look around on foot. There were no cameras. I smacked the side of the truck with my hand and said some very unlibrarianlike words.

The truck was hard and cold and my hand hurt. I stood there rubbing it and looking around in frustration, when I realized I could see part of Everett's office building. If I could see the office, then the office could see the lot.

I got back in the truck, turned around successfully in the small lot, and drove up to Henderson Holdings' offices.

Lita was at her desk. She smiled when she saw me. "Hi, Kathleen. You're about five hours early for the meeting."

I smiled back. "Hi, Lita," I said. "This is going to sound a little strange, but do you have security cameras on the building?"

She nodded. "Yes, we do."

How was I going to explain that I wanted to look at the footage to see if Justin had taken Ruby's truck?

"You want to see the footage from last Wednesday night," she said.

"The police were already here, weren't they?" I dropped onto the chair in front of her desk.

"The cameras don't show the old school at all. I'm sorry. There was nothing recorded that could help Ruby."

I rubbed the s.p.a.ce between my eyes. Nothing was working. I couldn't exactly go to Marcus and explain that I knew Justin killed Agatha because he had elastics on his arm and smelled like hair gel.

I stood up. "Thanks, Lita," I said. "I'll see you this afternoon."

There was a plaque by the door and I would have missed it if I hadn't dropped my gloves and bent to pick them up. I had the same simple plaque in the library. The school gave one to every business that partic.i.p.ated in the student work-experience program.

I stood there with one hand on the door, my thoughts falling over themselves. Kate, my co-op student, had been working on a mixed-media art project with a couple of her friends. The kids had mounted webcams on a rotating base at various spots around town and were editing the footage to create a dizzying 360-degree look at Mayville Heights.

That's why there had been a camera in the second-floor storage room for the past ten days. They kept having trouble with the signal and feed. They hadn't been able to get all the cameras working at the same time.

"Kathleen, are you all right?" Lita asked.

I turned around and walked back to her desk. "I'm fine," I said. "Lita, do you have a co-op student?"

"Yes. Brandon."

I let out the breath I'd been holding. The universe was back on my side. Brandon was one of Kate's friends.

"Did he ask you about setting up a webcam for a school project?"

She laughed. "That child is persistent."

"And did you say yes?"

"I did," she said. "He was extremely persistent, Kathleen."

"Where's the camera?"

Lita pointed up over our heads. "Up in a little closet we use to store office supplies." Her expression changed then. "Do you think that camera might have recorded the parking lot down at the studio?"

I held out both hands. "I don't know."

Lita stood up. "Let's find out. I'll get Brandon."

Waiting for her, I thought about calling Marcus. What would I tell him? I didn't know if the webcam had recorded anything useful at all.

Lita came back with Brandon, whom I remembered from the setup in the library.

"h.e.l.lo, Ms. Paulson," he said. "Mrs. Gray said you want to look at what we've been recording."

"Please, Brandon. I do."

He shrugged and set his laptop on Lita's desk. "Sure thing." He hit some keys and muttered to himself, then tilted the screen back a bit more, s.h.i.+fted sideways and said, "There you go."

Lita and I both leaned in. The live image feed was clear and mostly showed an area of the downtown and the water.

"There," Lita said, pointing to the bottom right corner of the screen.

I could see a slice of the studio parking lot. "That's it," I said. I touched the corner of the screen. "That's part of the back wall of the building."

She nodded. "There is the edge of the door. Those are the first three parking spots." She turned to me. "Which one is Ruby's?"

"Two," I said. I turned to Brandon, who seemed to be trying not to look bored. "Brandon, were you recording last Wednesday night?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Is there any way to look at what you recorded?"

He gave me that pitying look that computer-savvy kids give to adults like me. "Sure. What time?"

Agatha had died sometime between two and three a.m. Eric had met Justin about ten.

"Try nine thirty," I said. Brandon started hitting keys again.

Lita gave me a smile and held up two crossed fingers.

"Okay, here is Wednesday night at nine thirty."

Lita and I exchanged glances and I looked at the screen. There it was. Ruby's truck, or at least the back end, in the bottom corner of the image.

"Can you fast forward that?" I asked.

"You mean advance the time?" Brandon said.

I nodded.

"Where to?"

"Fifteen minutes ahead."

"Sure," he said, but I caught the eye roll as he ducked his head over the keyboard.

Ruby's truck was still there at the forty-five-minute mark. I felt a flicker of excitement. "Show me ten thirty, please," I said.

The quality of the image from ten thirty wasn't as clear, and it cut out for a minute.

"We've been having problems with the Wi-Fi signal," Brandon explained.

"How about two a.m.?"

The truck was still in the spot.

"Two thirty, please," I said. I could feel my heartbeat thumping in the hollow at the base of my throat.

Brandon looked up at me. "Sorry, no two thirty. The signal cut out."

"What about three?"

He turned back to the keyboard. If he was curious about what we were looking at in his footage, he wasn't asking. At three o'clock the truck was still in that spot. I stepped away from the computer, trying to sort things out in my head.

Lita stood silently, hands clasped in front of her. Ruby's truck hadn't moved. There were gaps in the footage, but it sure looked to me like reasonable doubt. I turned to leave. "Lita, could you do something for me?"

"Of course," she said.

"Call Ruby's lawyer and Detective Gordon. Please tell them what we found."

Brandon's head snapped up. " 'Detective,' as in 'police'?" he asked.

"Yes," Lita said.

His eyes darted from Lita to me. Then he shrugged. "Cool." He turned back to the computer.

I headed for the door. "You're not staying?" Lita asked.

"There's something I have to do," I said. "I'll see you this afternoon or I'll call you, or something."

I hurried out to the truck. My mind was jumping from thought to thought faster than I could sort them into anything that made sense. But overriding everything was the thought that Ruby's truck hadn't moved. It hadn't moved. Which meant there was another truck.

All I had to do was find it.

28.

Hercules was sitting on the bench in the porch, almost as though waiting for me. Which he probably was.

"There's another truck," I said kicking off my boots and unlocking the kitchen door at the same time. I dropped my bag and jacket on a chair and raced into the living room. Hercules followed. "What did I do with the brochure Justin gave me about the camp?" I asked the cat.

It wasn't on the table next to the phone. I took the stairs two at a time and burst into the bedroom, almost giving Owen, who was stretched out on the chair by the window, a kitty coronary.

He jumped down and hung his head. "I don't have time to yell at you," I said. "So we'll all just pretend I didn't see you."

I went through the papers next to my computer. Nothing. The brochure wasn't in the drawer, either.

"There's another truck," I said to Owen. "I don't care what Roma found out. Justin didn't drive Ruby's truck. So there has to be another truck. And he has it." I sat on the edge of the armchair. "Harry said that Sam's old truck was junk. But what if it wasn't? Or what if somehow Justin ended up with it?"

Owen seemed to be thinking about what I was saying.

I stood up and walked around the bed. "If Justin had or has the missing truck, it's not in town. Maybe it's out at the campsite. That would be the perfect place to hide an old truck. I just need to find that brochure so I can figure out where the camp is."

I turned to pace back around the bed, and Hercules was standing in the doorway with a piece of paper in his mouth.

"You found it?" I said.

He walked over and dropped the folded paper at my feet. I bent down, cupped his black-and-white face in my hands and kissed the top of his furry head. "You're a genius. Thank you." He stretched forward and licked my chin.

The paper smelled of garlic and tomato. Clearly I'd stuck it in the recycling bin.

I scanned the brochure for the camp's location. It was there in the last paragraph of the last page, "several acres on Hardwood Ridge."

Where the heck was Hardwood Ridge?

I had a map of the area in the drawer. I pulled it out and spread it on top of my laptop. There was no Hardwood Ridge on the map.

I smacked the top of my head with my open hand in frustration.

This was one of the idiosyncrasies of Mayville Heights. Like having two different Main Streets. It seemed charming until you were trying to get directions to somewhere. Just because the place was called Hardwood Ridge didn't mean it was going to show up on the map under that name.

"I'm going to have to call Maggie," I said. Owen immediately looked at the phone. I wasn't sure if she was home, at the studio or at tai chi. So I called her cell.

"h.e.l.lo," she said, sounding out of breath.

"Hi," I said. "Did I take you away from something important?"

"Just burpees. What's up?"

"Do you know where Hardwood Ridge is?"

"Yes." She still sounded a bit breathless. She was probably working out and talking to me at the same time. "Remember there was a road just this side of the Drink? Well, you just-" She suddenly stopped. "Why do you want to know? Does this have anything to do with you wanting to know about security lights on the studio?"

"I was looking at the proposal Justin gave me and I wondered where the camp was going to be."

"No, you didn't," she said. "You figured something out. You should call Marcus."