Chapter 1.8
It was nearly midnight before they’d finished talking to her. The woman, Detective Angela Reese, asked many of the same questions that the first officer had and saying in the middle of it: “sorry for your loss.” They’d told her she didn’t have to go to the station tomorrow after all. She’d given them enough.
She wouldn’t be going to Massawa for honey wine either.
Evelyn had gotten another look at the office—an unfortunate long look at the detective’s request. She spotted Val poking his head out of a filing cabinet. The office had only two filing cabinets … not enough casework to justify more. And thankfully those were against the wall near her desk, away from the blood.
She wanted to talk to the spirit, but knew that wouldn’t happen with the cops around. Val had been picked up a few times when he was breathing, spent more than a few nights in jail, and in death he had retained his passionate loathing for law enforcement.
“See anything missing, Ms. Love?” the detective had asked.
Thomas’s computer was there, but the back had been pried off it, the electronic guts ruined, his desk drawers gone through, an impressive-looking diving trophy he’d kept on a shelf broken. The lid of the office’s cashbox was under Thomas’s chair, the empty box a few feet away. And well beyond that dimes and nickels were scattered in the blood.
The detective saw her looking at the lid. “Do you know how much money was in the cash box? How much money Thomas Brock carried in his wallet? We didn’t find any money on the fey.”
Evelyn shook her head. “A couple hundred maybe in the box. No more than that.” A pause: “And Thomas never carried a lot on him. Not enough to be killed for.”
“Anything else missing? Obviously missing?”
So maybe they were thinking robbery as a motive.
“A glass snow globe that was—” No, it wasn’t missing, and it hadn’t been valuable. It was broken, the glitter at the edge of the blood, one of Thomas’s memories shattered. “That.” Evelyn pointed at the damaged computer, but that was evident. “Pieces of that are missing, the boards from inside it at least. And I don’t see his backup hard drive either, and that was always on his desk because it wouldn’t fit in the skinny desk drawers. For anything else, I’d have to go through stuff,” she’d told them. “Really look. The drawers, the papers, the file cabinets, and it’ll take time. Then I’ll know if something else is missing.” Her own desk appeared untouched; her chair had been returned behind it, seat still adjusted too high.
“Tomorrow,” the detective had said. “Around noon. I’ll come back and we’ll go through it together. Then when I clear it after that you can have a crew come in for cleaning. I can recommend—”
Evelyn had numbly nodded. “I know a cleaner. I’ll call them.” She’d tried to ask about the dark fey again, thinking the detective might give her something, but she got another “not at liberty to say.”
Damn, they really did recite that line.