Michelle drove up then, turning in the Camerons’ driveway and parking in front of the house.
I got out of the SUV and walked over to her. “Thank you for doing this,” I said.
She smiled. “I don’t mind. I like Rose.” She must have seen the surprise I was feeling on my face. “Really, I do,” she said, locking the car and tucking the keys in the pocket of her gray skirt. Everything looked good on her. Michelle was tall and slim, with red hair and green eyes and the kind of quiet confidence that to me went along with being a police officer. “Okay, I’m not crazy about her detective work, but I kind of admire her persistence—and if you tell Rose I said that I’m going to deny it.”
When their friend Maddie Hamilton had been arrested for the murder of the man she’d been seeing, Rose, Liz, Charlotte and Mr. P. had “investigated” and dragged me into their sleuthing. After they’d “solved” the crime, they had decided to open their own detective agency, Charlotte’s Angels, Discreet Investigations, the Angels for short. Mr. P. had completed all the requirements the state had in place to become a licensed investigator. Now Rose was apprenticing with him. They’d set up their office in the sunporch at the store, which pretty much guaranteed that I’d get pulled into their cases.
I squeezed my thumb and index finger together and slid them across my lips like I was closing a zipper. Then I made a motion as though I was locking a tiny lock with an equally tiny key. I finished by pantomiming dropping the key into my bra. It was the same elaborate secret-keeping ritual we’d used when we were teenagers. Now that Michelle was back in my life, I realized how much I’d missed her.
She grinned at me now. “Let’s go,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the Cameron house.
“How are you going to do this?” I asked as we started up the driveway. We couldn’t exactly knock on the door and if Leesa Cameron answered ask her if she’d killed her husband earlier this evening.
“I thought we’d do good cop, bad cop,” Michelle said. “I’ll be good; you’ll be bad.”
“I don’t know how to be the bad cop,” I blurted. I looked at Michelle. She was laughing.
“I’m kidding, Sarah,” she said. “We’re following up on what happened earlier this evening. That’s all.”
“What if Jeff Cameron isn’t here?” I asked, smoothing a wrinkle out of the front of my blue-and-white-striped T-shirt.
“Then we’ll find out where he is.” Michelle stopped in the middle of the driveway. “I’m sure there’s some logical explanation for what Rose saw,” she said. “I talked to the officer who responded to the nine-one-one call. He confirmed that no one was home here.”
“How?”
“There were no cars here in the driveway or parked nearby on the street. He knocked on both the front and the side doors and got no response at either one, and”—she put extra emphasis on the word—“and, yes, he took a look through a couple of windows and checked the backyard. He didn’t see anyone or anything.”
I opened my mouth to point out that just because no one answered the door or was visible through the windows, that didn’t actually mean no one was home. Then I closed it again. I had no business telling Michelle how to do her job. She was a good police officer. But I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d just killed my husband, I was pretty sure I’d stay out of sight when the police knocked at my door.
Michelle bypassed the front entrance, continuing up the driveway to the side door. As we passed the sleek silver Audi that was parked there, I rested my hand on the hood for a moment. It was still warm. Whoever had been driving the car hadn’t been at the house very long. I crossed my fingers that it was Jeff Cameron.
Michelle gestured in the direction of the porch and spoke over her shoulder. “Officer Theriault did find a couple of sailboat fenders by the side steps. It’s possible Rose tripped on those stairs, fell and hit her head on one of them. If she was dazed, she could have wandered up the road to where she was found.”
She didn’t believe Rose’s story about being hit over the head from behind, I realized. She’d come out of friendship for me—and I was grateful for that—but Michelle didn’t think Rose had seen Jeff Cameron’s dead body or been attacked by someone.
I felt a surge of protectiveness. Rose wasn’t the feeble old woman some people seemed to think she was. She’d saved my life the previous winter and barely broken a sweat. She hadn’t tripped on the steps and hit her head. Maybe she hadn’t seen Jeff Cameron’s dead body being dragged across his kitchen floor, but she’d seen something.
Four steps led up to a small landing by the side door. Rose was right. It was possible to see through the porch windows—which didn’t have any curtains or blinds that I could see—into part of the kitchen. I could see a section of floor and part of a doorway into some other area of the house. Because I have several inches on Rose, I could also see through the porch to the backyard.
Michelle knocked and I realized I was holding my breath, hoping that it would be Jeff Cameron who came to the door. But it wasn’t. It was a woman. She was tall, with blond hair in a gamin pixie cut and blue eyes behind dark-framed hipster glasses. Michelle pulled out her badge and identified herself. “Are you Leesa Cameron?” she asked.
The woman nodded. “I am. Is something wrong?”
Michelle held up her ID. “I’m Detective Andrews. She gestured down the street. “There was an incident earlier this evening. A woman may have been hit over the head with a boat fender like that.” She pointed at the white plastic bumpers sitting in a galvanized bucket beside the porch steps.
Leesa Cameron shrugged. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’ve only been home for about fifteen minutes. I can’t help you.”
I didn’t want her to close the door. I put a hand on the painted wood. “Mrs. Cameron,” I said. “My name is Sarah Grayson. I own Second Chance, which is a repurpose shop here in town.” I glanced at Michelle and saw nothing in her expression that told me I should stop talking. “The woman who was attacked, Rose Jackson, works for me. She was dropping off a gift that your husband bought for you. I’m sorry, but it’s possible your husband was hurt as well.”
Leesa Cameron’s expression changed from polite inquiry to something darker. Her blue eyes narrowed and her mouth pulled into a tight, thin line. It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. She sighed. “You better come in,” she said.
We followed her through the small porch into the kitchen. It was very clean. The walls were white. So were the cupboards. The floors were pale white oak. There were no signs of a struggle, no blood anywhere.
An old farm table had been repurposed as an island in the middle of the room, and there was a retro aquamarine chrome table-and-chair set against the end wall—the only spot of color in the space. There were several cardboard boxes piled on the speckled Formica top of the table. A gray overnight bag was sitting on one of the matching aqua-colored chairs. We’d had a similar set in the shop a couple of months previously. The vintage table and chairs were in excellent shape and, like the whitewashed, solid-wood cupboards and granite countertops, suggested the cottage was high-end and likely came with a high-end rent.
“You’re going somewhere?” Michelle asked.
Leesa Cameron nodded. “I’m going back to Boston.” She cleared her throat and looked from Michelle to me. “I appreciate your concern about Jeff, but he’s fine. He’s a scumbag, but no one has hit him over the head with a boat fender, although it sounds like a good idea to me.”
Michelle frowned. “Excuse me?”
Leesa twisted the diamond-studded wedding band she was wearing around her ring finger. She was maybe a couple of inches taller than me although we looked the same height since I was wearing wedge-heeled sandals and she was in flip-flops.