Frowning, Detective Lippert returned to my table.
“What were you talking about?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”
Lippert sat down across from me again.
“Calm down,” he said tersely.
“What do you mean, calm down?” I said loudly. “What do you intend to do?”
“With you? Nothing,” Lippert replied. “You’re being released, Ms. Cosi. We’re not charging you for illegal entry or trespassing, though we can. Nor are we charging you as an accessory to murder.”
“But what about my daughter?”
Joy’s shrill cry interrupted us. “No! Are you people crazy? Don’t—”
Two uniformed officers gripped Joy by the arm. Then Detective Tatum began handcuffing my daughter’s hands behind her back.
“No, please,” Joy’s voice was desperate, terrified. “Listen to me. Why won’t you listen? I didn’t do anything. Please! You’ve got it all wrong!”
I moved to go to her. The uniformed officer standing behind me grabbed my arm. “Let me go,” I warned him. “Let me go to my daughter.” But the policeman held on. With a curse, I elbowed the officer, right in the gut. I heard him grunt, felt his grip relax. I broke free, ran across the dining room.
“Joy!” I was less than two feet from my daughter when a new pair of officers grabbed me, restrained me. “Let my girl go. Please! She didn’t do anything!”
But Detective Tatum wasn’t listening. With a neutral face, he loudly intoned the words that froze my blood:
“Ms. Joy Allegro, you are under arrest for the murder of Tommy Keitel.”
“No!” Joy cried. “I didn’t do it!”
As the uniformed officers began dragging her to the police car outside, she turned her head, and her eyes met mine. “Dad’s right, Mom,” she said. “We can’t trust the police!”
I struggled against the officers holding me, but they were stronger and slightly crueler in their determination to keep me restrained, having seen what I’d just done to their buddy in blue.
Detective Lippert stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Joy. His warm, friendly demeanor had gone dead cold. He glanced at the two uniformed men restraining me then met my eyes.
“If you assault another officer, we’ll arrest you, too.”
“Why are you doing this?!” I demanded, wincing at the forceful grip the men were applying.
Lippert pointed to the pages of his notebook. “Ms. Allegro herself supplied all the evidence we needed to make the arrest. She gave Sergeant Tatum one of the strongest motives I’ve ever heard. Tommy Keitel was her lover. The man jilted her today and also fired her, humiliating her in the process. Ms. Allegro confirmed that the murder weapon belonged to her, which you did, as well, Ms. Cosi. And you also confirmed that when you arrived, your daughter was already here and the victim already stabbed, which meant Ms. Allegro had the time and opportunity to commit this act.”
Detective Lippert closed his notebook. “I don’t think I have to look any further for a prime suspect. Do you, Ms. Cosi?”
Sixteen
I returned to my closed, dark coffeehouse and dragged myself up the back stairs to the duplex. My body was exhausted and bruised from the manhandling by Detective Lippert’s men. The door to the master bedroom was wide open, the room empty. It was after three in the morning. Matteo was still out clubbing with the Waipunas.
I tried Matt’s cell and was sent immediately to voice mail. That’s when I remembered how he’d warned me to stop calling earlier because his cell battery was about to die.
So what else is new? I thought. For far too many years, Matt was unavailable to me when I’d wanted him. Why should tonight be any different?
Then it occurred to me that I really didn’t want Matt at all. I wanted to inform him what had happened to our daughter, sure. Given Breanne’s connections, he would know what high-powered lawyer to call, so I’d leave that to him.
The man I actually wanted and needed was Mike Quinn. A little desperate to hear his voice, even if it was only on a digital recording, I picked up the phone and dialed his apartment’s number.
I knew he was still on duty, so I wasn’t surprised when I got his answering machine. I left a long, rambling, semicoherent message with every detail I could think of about Joy’s arrest, ending with “Please, please, Mike, call me back.”
Then I stretched out on the narrow couch. I tried to sleep, but visions of what my daughter was probably experiencing played through my imagination like a waking nightmare. I recalled my grim trip to Riker’s Island when Tucker had been falsely charged of a crime and arrested. I wondered if they’d put Joy on a bus to that terrible place, shackled beside some crack dealer or small-time felon.
The phone rang beside my ear, and I bolted upright. Daylight streamed through the living room’s French doors, and I realized I’d nodded off. I glanced at my watch: 8:15.
The phone rang again. I snatched the receiver off the hook.
“Yes?”
“Clare? It’s Mike.”
“Thank you. Thank you for calling. I’m sorry I phoned you so late, but I didn’t know who else to turn to—”
“Sweetheart, it’s okay. You did the right thing.” His voice was tender and reassuring, a splash of light in my darkest hour.
“So you got my message?”
“As soon as I heard it, I started making phone calls. All I got were voice mails, so I caught a few hours’ sleep. Ray Tatum at the Nineteenth just returned my call.”
“Yes, I remember Detective Tatum,” I said. “He’s the one I wanted to throttle when he handcuffed my daughter. What did he say?”
There was a long pause. “It’s not good, Clare, but it’s not the end of the world, either.”
I took a breath. “Tell me.”
“The medical examiner on the scene estimated that Tommy Keitel was murdered within an hour of the time his body was discovered. No one really knows when Joy arrived, because the burglar alarm hadn’t been set, and the door wasn’t locked.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Mike sighed. “It’s not great. If the alarm had been set, the time of entry and exit could’ve been determined by checking in with the security monitoring company. As it is, we only have Joy’s word to go on, and frankly, Tatum and Lippert don’t believe her.”
“Lippert,” I bit out unhappily. “I tried to tell that man what I’d discovered. I outlined the other leads they could have investigated for Keitel’s killer, but Lippert was obviously humoring me, buying time so I wouldn’t disturb Tatum’s interrogation of Joy.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Clare. You’ve got a natural talent for investigative work, but you’re not a trained interrogator. I know Ray Tatum well, and I know he’s one of the best in the department. I don’t doubt he sweet-talked Joy into crying on his shoulder, telling him everything.”
“Incriminating herself, you mean?”
Heavy silence followed. Even across the phone line I could sense something bad was coming.
I cleared my throat. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Mike said. “There’s more, Clare.”
His voice was quiet and steady, as if he was about to tell me that someone had just died. “The handle of the murder weapon was wiped, but there were two fingerprints lifted off the base of the blade itself. They were Joy’s thumbprints. The match is perfect.”
“Mike, listen to me. My daughter did not kill Tommy Keitel.”
“Clare…” There was an exhale and I could just picture the man running his hand through his sandy hair. “She had a motive. She had an opportunity. It could have been a crime of passion—”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this! You’ve met Joy. Does she look capable of stabbing a person to death? I know my daughter, Mike. I saw her right there in the kitchen moments after she discovered the body. She didn’t do it!”