I nodded. “I’m so sorry. She . . . didn’t fall off that embankment by accident.”
His mouth twisted to one side. “I probably shouldn’t ask you how you know that.”
“It would be better if you didn’t,” I said.
“What happened?”
I told him what Hope had shared with me. He had to know that she was the source of the information, but neither one of us said her name.
“She didn’t text me, Kathleen,” he said. “I gave her my number and I told her she could call me, but she didn’t.”
“That’s good,” I said. “You can show them your phone.”
He shook his head. “Even though I don’t text I still get some spam. I clear it out once a week.”
My heart sank.
Marcus was meticulous and organized and I knew he would have a system in place to deal with those unwanted texts, just the way he did with so many other things.
“You deleted them all,” I said. Inside I groaned.
He gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Last Friday.”
Anyone who knew Marcus would know it was completely in character for him to do something like that.
“If this were my case I’d think it was suspicious,” he said. “But I give you my word that Dani didn’t send me any texts the day she died. She didn’t ask me to meet her.”
The only thing I could think of was that someone else must have answered that text, and then, realizing it was Marcus’s phone, deleted the original message and the reply out of embarrassment. Maybe it had been someone at the station who had mistaken his phone for their own. It seemed far-fetched but what other explanation was there? I knew Marcus generally kept his cell in his pocket but it was possible he’d set it on his desk for a moment and gotten distracted.
“I don’t need your word,” I said. “I know you. And everyone else who knows you knows that you had nothing to do with Dani’s death.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” he said, “but you know that police investigation is based on following the evidence, and from what you’ve just told me that evidence leads to me.”
“You told me once that an investigation is a little like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. First you have to make sure you have all the pieces. Then you have to start putting them together to form a picture and sometimes you can’t be sure how one piece fits until you get some of the others in place.”
He laughed, which was the last thing I was expecting.
“What?” I said.
“Kathleen, when I said that to you I was trying to impress you. I was trying to make what I do sound more like an art than just the facts, ma’am.” He got to his feet, touching my shoulder as he moved behind me.
“Yes, police work is a process, but it’s also an art,” I pointed out. “It’s as much instinct and feeling as it is observation and fact-finding.”
“I think instinct and feelings are how you figure things out,” he said as he poured a cup of coffee for each of us, “not me.”
He was right. The conflict between feelings and facts had been the major source of turmoil between the two of us. It had taken a case that was very personal to Marcus for us to start to see things from the other’s perspective.
He came back to the table with our coffee. He waited until I had taken a sip, then he spoke. “What else do they have? There has to be more than just those texts. You wouldn’t have come out here this early just for that.”
“Marcus, where are your extra keys?” I asked.
“In the bedroom on my dresser.”
I got up and went down the hall to the bedroom. The keys were in a pottery bowl that he’d told me his sister, Hannah, had made when they were kids. I snagged the keys with one finger. The round metal fob from the drive-in wasn’t attached. Somehow I’d known it wouldn’t be.
I went back to the kitchen.
“What is it?” Marcus asked, turning in his seat to look at me.
I dropped the keys on the table in front of him. He got it immediately. He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Where was it?”
“Under her body,” I said softly.
His face twitched. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t—”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my cheek against his hair. It smelled like baby shampoo. “I know,” I said.
“It must have gotten lost when Thorsten had my keys.”
“That’s possible.”
“And someone picked it up.”
I didn’t say anything.
Marcus eyed me slowly, shaking his head. “You don’t think John or Travis . . . ?”
“No,” I said. My stomach did a queasy flip. “They have theirs.”
His forehead creased. “You think it’s a setup?”
It was the conclusion Hope and I had come to. Someone—the real killer—wanted to make it look as though Marcus had murdered Dani. “Nothing else makes sense,” I said. “We just have to figure out who’s behind it.”
He twisted around to look at me. “No. I don’t want you involved in this in any way.”
I took a step backward and folded my arms over my midsection. “I’m already involved. I’m not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs or making stinky crackers for the boys while someone sets you up for murder, so if we’re going to argue about this let’s hear all your arguments now because I have things to do.” I made a beckoning gesture with one hand and waited for him to tell me this was a police matter and I had no business getting involved.
Instead, he stood up, pulled me against him and gave me a kiss that made me forget—for a moment at least—what we’d been talking about. “I love you,” he said.
I laid my head against his shoulder. “I love you, too,” I said. I tipped my head back to look up at him. “If this is our new way of fighting about things, I like it.”
He smiled and kissed me again, on the forehead this time, so I didn’t temporarily lose all my senses. “Somebody is trying to make it look like I killed Dani, Kathleen. This is dangerous.”
I was starting to see the kisses were more about distracting me than anything else. I broke out of the embrace and took a couple of steps backward so the counter was at my back and there was some air space between me and his broad, muscled shoulders.
“It was dangerous when Ruby was a suspect in Agatha Shepherd’s murder,” I said. “Remember what happened when Owen and I got locked in the basement of that old cabin?” I felt a fleeting rush of panic as an image of that small dark cellar flashed into my mind.
“I remember exactly what happened,” Marcus said. He narrowed his blue eyes. “You could have been killed in that basement or you could have died from hypothermia. It was dangerous.” He enunciated each of the three words, biting them off as though they left a sour taste in his mouth.
“I know that,” I said, struggling not to raise my voice. “I went out there for Ruby, and for Harrison because the papers about Elizabeth’s adoption were out there. I went because I care about both of them.”
I could see from the stubborn set of his jaw that he wasn’t going to be easily dissuaded. “Ruby is my friend and Harrison is like family. I went out there because I cared . . . care about them.” I was having a hard time keeping the emotion out of my voice. “But what’s between you and I”—I gestured from me to him—“is a lot . . . stronger. I was willing to take a risk so Ruby wouldn’t go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit and so Harrison could meet his daughter. You can’t ask me to do any less for you.” I felt the prickle of tears and I blinked several times so they wouldn’t fall.
“That’s when I knew,” he said, his eyes locked on my face.
“Knew what?” I said.
“That I was crazy about you.”
“Way back then? You knew then?”
He nodded. “Uh-huh. I was afraid you were . . .” He cleared his throat. “I was making all sorts of ridiculous bargains with God and when I saw you and Owen through the trees, wading through the snow almost up to your waist, I wanted to dance. I wanted to jump up and down like a kid and high-five everyone in sight.”