I waited and watched the world go by. I saw a couple walk by arm in arm, shoulders touching, laughing. Two women stopped for a moment, deep in conversation, then continued down the street. A man walking a boxer struggled to control the dog’s impatience to run ahead. An old woman with a limp made slow progress along Ceres Street. The phone rang.
“It’s me, Josie,” Max said. “First, don’t call Alverez. Call me. Agreed?”
“Okay,” I said, feeling like a fool.
“Second, Alverez was very professional. He refused to call you a suspect, which is good news, but in reality, it doesn’t much matter because even if you’re not a suspect per se, you’re certainly a person of interest. I made an appointment for us to meet with him at noon tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at your office at eleven-thirty and we can talk en route.”
I agreed to the plan, went home, got the Bombay Sapphire out of the freezer, and made myself another martini.
Cathy looked up when we entered promptly at noon the next day, but didn’t speak. Chief Alverez was standing at a file cabinet near the back, and when he saw us, he closed the drawer.
“How you doing?” he asked me, after greeting Max.
He led us into the same room we’d been in yesterday, and I selected the same chair.
Alverez turned to Max, and said, “We have some new information.”
“What’s that?” Max asked.
“Fingerprints.”
Max and I waited for Alverez to explain. Still speaking to Max, he added, “As we expected, Josie’s fingerprints were everywhere. We learned she’s pretty darn thorough. We found her prints under furniture, on the back of picture frames, and inside drawers.”
“Makes sense,” Max commented. “She’s a professional appraiser.”
“Yeah,” Alverez agreed. “But we also found her prints someplace they shouldn’t be.”
“Oh, yeah?” Max asked. “Where’s that?”
“On the knife that was used to kill Nathaniel Grant.”
CHAPTER THREE
Max gripped my shoulder. “Josie,” he said, keeping his eyes on Alverez, “don’t say a word.”
“But I can explain,” I protested.
“Say nothing.”
He looked determined and grim, and I shivered. I nodded slightly, signaling that I’d do as he asked.
Max squeezed my shoulder again. I couldn’t tell whether he was offering support or thanking me for doing as he instructed. He turned back toward Alverez, picked up his pen, and queried, “Fingerprints on the knife?” His voice was calm, his tone pleasant.
I kept my eyes lowered and sat, silent and still.
“Yeah,” Alverez said, nodding. “That’s right.”
“Where?”
“On the handle.”
“Distinct? Complete?”
Alverez glanced at his notes. “According to the tech guys, there wasn’t enough ridge detail for an ID from most of the prints. But there was one clear index print from Josie’s right hand. A sixteen-point match.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means your print is on the knife. For sure.”
Max patted my arm to calm me. “It sounds as if the knife had been wiped, but not thoroughly.”
“Apparently,” Alverez agreed.
“Okay, then. Would you excuse us for a minute? I want to talk to my client privately.”
“Sure,” Alverez said. His chair made a loud scraping noise as he pushed back. The door closed behind him with the same disconcerting click I’d heard yesterday. Max cleared his throat and flipped to a fresh page on his yellow-lined pad.
“Okay, Josie,” Max said, his pen at the ready. “Explain why your fingerprints are on the knife.”
I looked down at my lap, unable to think in sentences. Now that I had permission to speak, all that came to mind were words of outraged protest. I wanted to shout and rail and pound the table.
“Now, Josie. We don’t have a lot of time.”
His admonition helped me focus. “Do I need to whisper?” I asked, remembering Max’s instruction that I was to whisper when I wanted to talk to him privately.
“No,” he said. “When we’re alone like this, you’re free to talk naturally.”
“Okay.” I paused to think. “It was Thursday of last week,” I said, “the second time I was there. We’d settled on our next appointment and I was saying good-bye when Mr. Grant asked me to have some tea.” I shrugged and flipped a hand. “So I did. We went into the kitchen. I thought it was very sweet of him. I cut the cake.” I shuddered. “That must have been the knife that was used to… that must have been the knife.”
“How was it that you cut the cake?” Max asked, keeping me focused.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Max asked, tapping his pen on the pad, “did you take the knife from him? Did he hand it to you?”
“I took it from the knife block on the counter.”
“Why would you do that? I mean, you don’t just walk into someone’s kitchen and grab a knife.”
“No, no,” I exclaimed. “It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t grab the knife. When we got to the kitchen, Mr. Grant had everything ready.”
“In what way?” Max asked.
“Well, he’d set out cups and saucers, teaspoons, some little plates, and a Bundt cake. He’d brewed real tea and the pot was sitting on the table along with a sugar bowl.”
“Okay. Then what happened?”
“He started opening drawers and pawing around, looking, he said, for the cake knife. Finally, he said he couldn’t find it. He wasn’t upset or anything. I remember we spoke about how odd it is that things disappear on their own. I told him about my father. How when I was growing up and something was misplaced-you know what I mean-when the can opener that lived in the top drawer was found, after an exhaustive search, in the bottom drawer, well, my father used to blame it on Oscar, the poltergeist. Mr. Grant laughed and said that made perfect sense and explained a lot of things.”
Max nodded. “Then what?”
“Then I said it didn’t matter that he couldn’t find the cake knife, that any knife would do. But he wanted to use the right knife. He said his wife was a stickler about things like that, using the right fork for the pickles and the right spoon for the jelly. But finally he gave up. He asked me to take a knife from the block on the counter. I took one randomly. We laughed about it because the knife I selected was huge! It had, I don’t know, maybe an eight-inch blade.” I looked away for a moment, remembering Mr. Grant’s jolly laugh.
“Mr. Grant made a joke,” I said softly, “saying that he’d paid full price for the Bundt cake, so it had better not be stale and need a knife that big to cut it.”
Max shook his head sympathetically. “And after you had tea?”
“After we were done,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I helped him put the dishes in the dishwasher and I took a sponge and wiped down the table. Then I washed the knife by hand.” I thought back, remembering standing at the oversized sink and enjoying the ocean view. “I watched the waves awhile as I dried the knife, not well, apparently, and put it back in the slot in the block.”
I began to tear up again. Using my middle fingers, I pushed the skin under my eyes until the tears stopped. I sniffed and wiped them away with the backs of my wrists. Max patted my shoulder while he made some notes.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t want to mislead you, Josie. Chief Alverez obviously considers you a viable suspect.”
“But, I swear-”
Max raised a hand to stop me. “Look at it from his point of view. You were there. The knife was there. And your fingerprints are on it. As near as I can tell, his focus now will be to figure out a motive. He’s wondering why you might have killed Mr. Grant. You know, how it might benefit you to have him dead. Until he can answer that question, probably he won’t charge you with murder.”
I felt light-headed. Sitting in a police station listening to a matter-of-fact description of my vulnerability felt surrealistic. Someone was thinking of charging me with murder. I shook my head in disbelief.