Being the diplomat she was, Odelia decided to change the subject.“So have you visited Wolf in prison?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll say to him when I do. He’s just…” He raked his fingers through his shaggy mane. “He’s one of my oldest friends. I just can’t believe he’d do a thing like that.”
“I know,” she said. “He never struck me as the murderous type. Then again, you just never know, do you?”
“No, I guess you don’t. Is it true that you’re the one who caught him?”
She nodded.“Me and Chase—that’s my boyfriend. He’s a local detective.”
“Oh, I’ve seen him. Talked to him, even.”
“That’s right. Chase interviewed everyone.”
“He was very thorough.” Conway frowned. “Just tell me one thing. Simply to satisfy my personal curiosity. The papers never mention stuff like that. How did you know it was him?”
“A witness came forward. She said the killer was wearing a yellow jacket—a yellow parka, as a matter of fact. And then we found a yellow parka hanging in Wolf’s closet. It still had Dany’s blood on it.”
“Terrible,” said Conway, shaking his head. “That’s just terrible.”
“Also, another witness said the killer had an owl-shaped mole on the back of his right hand, and Wolf has just such a mole.”
“A witness said that?” Conway seemed surprised by this.
Odelia nodded.“She saw the killer and even though she didn’t get a good look at his face, she did see his hand.”
“So this second witness is a she, huh? And will she testify in court?”
Odelia cast a quick glance in my direction, and I shook my head. No, Rita would definitely not testify in court, that much was obvious, and neither would Ringo.
“You’ll have to ask my uncle,” she said, still the diplomat. “He’s the chief of police.”
“Right.” He flashed her a quick smile. “You’re something of a sleuthhound, aren’t you, Odelia?”
“Reporter, sleuth—this girl wears many hats, Con.”
“She does. And now she’s going to be a star on the stage, too.”
His phone jangled in his pocket and he took it out. And as he answered it, I saw Odelia stare at the man, her eyes suddenly wide, and her face almost as white as the sheets she was lying under.
But then Conway excused himself, got up and walked out just when Tex and Marge walked in.
Odelia stared at me, then said slowly,“The owl-shaped mole.”
“What about it?” I said.
“Conway has one. On his right hand.”
Chapter 39
Odelia had called an emergency meeting, and it was being held in her hospital room. Not the best place in the world to hold a meeting, but she had no other choice. The doctor advised against her discharging herself from the hospital, and so did her dad. And she wasn’t going to put herself in danger by going against their wishes.
Around her sat her mom and dad, her uncle Alec, and Chase, of course. They’d tried to locate Gran but hadn’t succeeded. She was off somewhere on a quest to locate the Yellow Parka MacGyver Gang and wasn’t answering her phone.
“So what’s so important?” asked Uncle Alec.
“It’s about your head, isn’t it?” said Marge. “The doctor has found a tumor!”
“No, nothing like that,” Odelia was quick to put her mother’s mind at ease. “This isn’t about me. It’s about Dany Cooper.”
“Dany? You’ve uncovered some more information?” asked Chase.
“I have. You locked up the wrong man. Wolf Langdon didn’t kill Dany.”
There were gasps of shock around her hospital bed. In a corner of the room, four cats also stirred. The nurses, understanding Odelia wasn’t going to part with her cats, even though they didn’t agree, had brought in blankets, bowls of food and water, and even a litter box. It was an unusual arrangement, but Tex had talked to the head nurse, and had convinced her it would help Odelia enormously in her recovery, and she’d grudgingly agreed.
“How do you know?” asked Chase, reluctant to let go of his main suspect.
“Remember how I mentioned Ringo?”
“The mysterious witness,” said Chase, shuffling uncomfortably in his chair.
“Ringo said he saw the murder, and led me to a second witness. Her name is Rita. And she said the thing that made the killer stand out was an owl-shaped mole on the back of his hand. I checked pictures of Wolf’s right hand. He has a mole, but it’s not owl-shaped.”
She held up her phone, and showed a close-up of Wolf’s mole to the others.
“It’s more, like, pear-shaped,” Marge said.
“Pear-shaped, owl-shaped. Who cares?” said Chase. “The guy did it. He had the parka still hanging in his closet. You saw it yourself!”
“That’s what I thought, until a man came to visit me earlier, and he does have an owl-shaped mole on his hand. Conway Kemp.”
“Wolf’s business partner? Why would he kill Dany?”
“I’ve talked to several crew members this afternoon—I have nothing better to do while I’m laid up here anyway.”
“Honey, you’re supposed to rest, not conduct a murder investigation over the phone,” said her dad.
“I know, but an innocent man is in jail, and the real killer is walking around a free man. What do you expect me to do? Besides, I feel fine,” she added waving away her dad’s tut-tutting. “The thing is, Conway was madly in love with Dany.”
“How do you know?” asked Chase, who was proving hardest to convince.
“Several people said he’d been making advances towards her ever since production started. He’s the one who discovered her, not Wolf. And apparently Con had this crazy idea of taking her to the top as her husband-manager. She fell for Wolf, though, and wasn’t interested in Con. He kept showering her with gifts, though, and asking her out, and she kept turning him down. I think he must have lost it yesterday, after she turned him down yet again. He stabbed her in a fit of rage and left the yellow parka in Wolf’s closet to frame him.”
“But we found that parka by accident. Nobody told us where to find it,” said Chase.
“I’m pretty sure Con would have put in an anonymous call to put us onto the parka. Only we beat him to it, which made things work out even better than he’d expected.”
“This is all conjecture,” Chase pointed out. “For one thing, who are these witnesses? This Ringo and this Rita? Are you going to produce them so they can testify in court?”
“We need to extract a confession from Conway Kemp,” said Uncle Alec.
“We’d have to arrest him first. And on what grounds? The word of two witnesses who won’t come forward? A mole on his hand?” Chase shook his head. “This is ridiculous. Odelia, honey, I’ve gone along with this as far as I can, but you’re just grasping at straws.”
“I’m not crazy, Chase. Conway killed Dany. I just know he did,” she said.
Chase was looking at her as if this bump on her head had messed with her sanity, and she hated it.
“I’m not going to arrest a man based on some flimsy ‘evidence,’” said Chase. “We have a solid case against Langdon and I’m sure the judge will agree with me on that. How about you, Chief?”
Uncle Alec was in a tough spot. Either he sided with his niece, on the basis of evidence he would never be able to bring into court, or he sided with his lead detective, knowing he was dead wrong. Either way, he would be criticized.
“I think—” he began.
But he was interrupted by some type of loud commotion outside.
He got up, and so did the others, and moved over to the window.
Underneath Odelia’s window, on the hospital parking lot, Gran was holding up a sign that read, ‘Justice for the Pooles. Arrest the Yellow Parka Gang Now!’
“End police incompetence!” she yelled when she caught sight of her son. “Put our tax dollars to work now!”
Chapter 40
Conway Kemp was in a lousy mood. He’d offered the part of Mary Poppins to that Odelia Poole and she still hadn’t gotten back to him. He didn’t get it. Any other actor would have jumped at the chance to accept a plum part like that, potentially launching her career, and this woman preferred to stay buried in this small town andwork as a stupid reporter?