Page 69

“You can talk in here,” Mrs. Dubonnet offered hopefully.

Ruthanne shook her head. “Step outside, please, Andy.”

Andy’s heart dropped, but he walked outside, and Ruthanne pulled the door shut behind them.

“We can talk in my cruiser.”

The little crowd parted for them as he followed Ruthanne to her cruiser in silence.

“Folks, please go home,” Ruthanne said without any real force—or hope.

She opened the back door, Andy climbed into the back seat, and waited, heart pounding, for Ruthanne to walk around and get behind the wheel. She half turned in her seat and slid open the window of the prisoner partition.

“I’ve called State to send a crime-scene team. We’re not equipped to handle something like this.”

“Okay.”

“You’d better tell me now. What happened last night?” Ruthanne’s cheeks were pink with the cold, and her eyes had a funny glitter.

“I told you. I wasn’t here. Quinn and I had dinner, and then we went back to his place. I spent the night there.”

“Where did you have dinner? What time?”

It felt like she was asking him to recall details from his distant youth. “The Doughty Duck. We met at five thirty.”

“You didn’t come back here at all after dinner?”

“Well, yes. Of course. I didn’t wear pajamas to the restaurant. We left the restaurant late, drove back to the store, grabbed some things, and headed over to Quinn’s.”

He was leaving a lot out because he couldn’t quite decide whether to confide in her.

That reticence was instinct, not reason. Ruthanne and Chief Millard were both stuck on this idea that juvenile delinquents had broken into Time in a Bottle and attacked Uncle C. They were going to have trouble believing that… Professional thieves? Smugglers? What? Andy wasn’t even sure. That someone else was behind the break-ins and had possibly killed Marcus for reasons unknown. Andy would need more proof than the return appearance of an odd guy in a fedora, the break-in at Marion Labelle’s, and a bunch of smashed snow globes.

But not just that. It had also belatedly occurred to him that if the break-ins at Time in a Bottle were somehow connected to diamond robberies and the death of this Whittaker woman in Bangor, there might—almost certainlywas—a local connection.

No way on God’s green earth was Uncle C. knowingly involved in anything nefarious, so that meant there had to be another player.

Another player who…what?

That was the problem. Andy didn’t know. He still wasn’t sure what they were dealing with. He only knew—suspected—that it was not random, not coincidence that Uncle C. and Time in a Bottle were somehow involved. Someone local had chosen Uncle C. and his dusty, disorganized little shop as the perfect place to commit a crime.

Lost in his own worrying reflections, Andy realized he’d missed whatever Ruthanne had been saying. She was gazing expectantly at him, waiting for his reply.

“What?”

“Andy, what’s the matter with you? What are you trying to pull? Bok was a stranger here. No one in Safehaven had any reason to want your ex out of the way butyou. You and, it turns out, maybe Quinn. Was this planned? Were you in it together? Tell me the truth, and maybe I can find a way to help you.”

“Helpme?” Andy repeated blankly.

Ruthanne said earnestly, “We all saw the bruises. Bok wasstillmaking drunken threats yesterday at the Jack Tar. You wouldn’t be the first victim of domestic violence desperate enough to take the law into their own hands. But you’ve got to come clean now. If that’s going to be your defense, you’ve got to say so now. You can’t wait and try to play that card later.”

Andy’s jaw dropped. “You thinkIkilled Marcus?”

Ruthanne was somber. “If it wasn’t you, it was Quinn.”

“Quinn?”

“Come on, Andy. Are you seriously expecting anyone to believe that the night your abusive ex gets knocked off just happens to be the same exact night you and Quinn hold your…your reunion?”