“But why not? If he’s that scared, we have to do what we can to save him.”
“I’m sure that the officers Chase will pick will be more than equal to the task of keeping Mr. Wissinski safe,” I said. I didn’t think giving potential victims room and board was the way to go. It might set a dangerous precedent. Soon we’d be running a safe house.
At that moment, Chase had had enough of standing around, and we all repaired downstairs. I think it had finally come home to him that we needed to end this case, unless more victims would follow. And so soon we were off in his squad car. I recognized the route he was taking. He was taking us straight to the house where the Careens lived.
Chapter 29
We arrived just in time to catch the three Careens at home. Dominic and Rick were already standing next to their jeep when we got there, ready to take off. When they saw us driving up, blocking the driveway, father and son exchanged a look of annoyance.
“What is it now?” asked Dominic as he threw his backpack through the open window into his jeep.
“Haven’t you heard?” said Chase, slamming the door of the squad car shut. “Sergio Sorbet is dead. He was killed last night.”
“If you expect me to burst into tears you came to the wrong place,” the bearded forester grumbled. “Good riddance is what I say.”
“Is that what you told Sergio when you killed him last night?” Chase demanded.
“Here we go again,” Dominic said, rolling his eyes. “How many times!”
“Where were you last night, Dominic? And you, Rick?”
“We were right here at home. Where else do you think we’d be?”
“I don’t know. Out and about, maybe?”
“Did you see the weather we had last night? Being out and about was not a good idea.”
“Didn’t you have to be in the woods? Making sure nobody ventured out there?”
“That’s not our job, detective. We make sure those woods are well kept, but it’s not up to us to make sure the public stays out of them when there’s a storm like the one we had.”
“What about you, Rick?” asked Chase, addressing the young man. “What’s your story?”
“I was here,” said Rick. “We nailed some planks of wood to a window at the back, since it’s a little rickety and might not have survived, and made sure not to venture out again.”
“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, are you?”
“It’s not a story, detective. It’s what happened.”
Chase sighed.“So you won’t mind if I ask your neighbors, will you?”
“Be my guest,” said Rick.
But when I glanced over to Dominic, I saw he suddenly got a little twitchy.
Talking to the neighbors just might be a very good idea indeed.
Chase called in the assistance of some of his colleagues, and while two of his officers made sure Dominic and Rick stayed put, the others spread out and did a house-to-house to get the neighborhood’s observations about the Careens’ whereabouts last night.
Suddenly Chase came barging up.“Bingo,” he told Odelia, who’d covered the other side of the street and now joined us in front of the house.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Turns out that Dominic did leave the house last night. Just before midnight, in fact.” He strode into the house, and we all followed the long-legged detective, who now resembled a dog with a bone. Or even a man with a bone to pick—or both. “You did leave the house last night, Careen,” hesaid loudly, as he pricked a finger in the forester’s chest.
The man was pushed back and dropped down on the couch next to his wife.
Kristina looked scared, and quietly said,“Better tell him the truth, honey.”
“Look, I did nothing wrong, all right?” said Dominic. “And I didn’t go anywhere near Sorbet.”
“So where were you?” Chase demanded.
“I went to the woods. I thought I left the door to the cabin unlocked, and wanted to make sure everything was closed up and nailed shut. We keep equipment in that cabin that’s easily worth thousands of dollars, and I didn’t want anything to happen to it.”
“So why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Because I can see which way the wind is blowing, can’t I? You come barging in here, accusing us of all kinds of stuff, and I didn’t want to give you any more ammunition!”
Chase stared at the man for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind.“Dominic Careen,” he said, taking a pair of handcuffs from his belt, “I’m arresting you for the murder of Sergio Sorbet.”
“No!” his wife cried, holding up her arms in a protective gesture.
“You can’t do this,” said Dominic.
“Watch me,” Chase growled.
“Dad?” said Rick.
“It’s all right, son,” said Dominic. “We didn’t do anything.”
Chase read the forester his rights, and then slapped the cuffs on his wrists, escorting him out of the house, watched on by his distressed-looking wife and angry son.
“I think it’s the Jonagolds that did it, Max,” Dooley commented. “A man who gets upset over missing Jonagolds is a man who’s capable of anything—even murder.”
“I’m not so sure, Dooley,” I said. “The Jonagold incident revealed a side of Dominic that we hadn’t seen yet, but that doesn’t make him a murderer. Just a man who’s under a lot of stress, and can be triggered by the slightest incident.”
“So? The death of his daughter and his wife’s illness are bigger triggers than a missing Jonagold.”
“Yeah, but these murders have shown us a killer who’s meticulous in both planning and execution. And that doesn’t jibe with a guy who flies off the handle just because his wife’s favorite apple happens to be missing from the store.”
“So you don’t think Dominic Careen is our killer?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, as we watched Chase put Dominic into a car and officers drive off to get him booked and locked up by the strong arm of the law for safekeeping.
Chapter 30
While Dominic was gently stewing in the lockup—apparently a standard practice to make people more susceptible to interrogation—we decided to drop by Vince Gusta to find out more about the little black book that had found its way into Kristina Careen’s possession in such a thoroughly mysterious way.
Jefferson Gusta, the original author of the notebook, may have passed away last month, but we were hoping his son might enlighten us about his father’s handiwork.
The Gusta Garage was still a thriving business, or at least it looked that way when we arrived there and saw that the place was a beehive of activity. Several mechanics were hard at work trying to give broken-down cars a new lease on life, and when we entered the small office adjacent to the garage, it was Vince himself who did the honors of greeting us.
“What can I do for you?” he said, then glanced through the window to Chase’s car and frowned. “Looks fine from what I can tell. Though I don’t like the sound of your engine. I heard a persistent ticking noise when you drove up just now. Don’t know if you noticed?”
“We’re not actually here about the car,” Chase said.
Vince, who was a man in his fifties with greasy coveralls, a greasy red ball cap and smudges of grease all over his face, leaned back.“Oh? Then what are you here for?”
“This,” said Chase, and produced his phone, on which pictures of the black notebook were in evidence. “And this,” he added, then scrolled to the page in question.
Vince took Chase’s phone and stared at the evidence. “That looks like my dad’s handwriting,” he said as he handed the phone back. “Where did you get this?”
“It was hand-delivered to Kristina Careen two days ago,” said Chase.
“Someone put it through her mail slot,” Odelia clarified.
“I’m sorry, but that wasn’t me,” said Vince.
Chase, who’d produced his badge and now held it out to the garage owner, said, “Right now I’m not really interested in how the notebook came into Kristina Careen’s possession. Were you aware that your father worked on a Mustang on October 14th thirteen years ago? He even wrote down the license plate,plus a list of the work he did on that car.”