Page 9 of Little Dark Deeds (Georgiana Germaine #12)

T he first thing I noticed upon entering Tiffany’s house was her luggage leaning against the wall next to the door, purse sitting on top, as if she was still there, ready to jet off to my wedding.

Beside those items was a wrapped gift. The paper was different than the one I’d seen in my dream, a pastel pink with white stripes, but the shape of the gift was the same.

When he failed to see me, I leaned forward, tapping him on the shoulder. The gesture caught him off guard, and he leapt back.

“Whoa, Gigi,” he said. “How long you been standing there?”

“Not long. I just got here.”

He removed the earbuds and shoved them into one of the pockets of his black shorts. “What a difference a day makes, eh? Yesterday I was officiating your wedding, and today ...” He paused, then added, “I’m sorry. That was insensitive, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have said what I just—”

I swished a hand through the air. “It’s fine. I appreciate it, but you’re right. It’s hard to believe all that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours. My main focus is to find who did this to her. How’s everything going on your end?”

“Slow, but that’s on me. Knowing what she meant to you, I’m taking my time. I don’t want to miss anything. I’m sure I’m being a bit too meticulous, but hey, if it helps us catch this dude, it will all be worth it. I could use a break, though. You wanna sit for a minute and talk?”

“Sure.”

We took a seat on the sofa, the same sofa I’d helped Tiffany pick out when she’d bought and renovated the home several years earlier. We’d been goofing off in the furniture store that day, bouncing up and down as we went from sofa to sofa, looking for one that was firm, but not too firm.

That same day, she met Furniture Salesman Chad, who, after selling her the sofa set, asked if he could give her a call sometime.

They dated for about nine months, and when they broke up, via text message no less, she didn’t give me a lot of details about what happened.

All she said was they had an argument—one they couldn’t seem to recover from.

Thinking back on it now, it was becoming clear that Tiffany had kept me out of the loop a lot more than I’d realized.

At times, she was an open book. Other times, she was elusive, and when it came to friends, I didn’t like to pry.

The way I saw it, if someone I cared about wanted to share information about their life with me, I gave them the time and space to do it.

When I was conducting an investigation, on the other hand, I relished the art of prying—poking and prodding a person until all the juicy details came spilling out. I saw it as a gift—an art form if you will—and I was dang good at it when it suited me.

“Hey, if you don’t feel up to talking, I don’t mind just sitting here with you,” Silas said.

“Oh, no. We can talk ... sorry.”

“Where’d you go just now?”

“I was thinking about this sofa. I was with her the day she bought it.” Glancing around the room, I added, “We were together when she picked out everything in this room. Except for the wall art. The cat dressed in a ballerina costume over there was not my idea.”

He turned toward the framed print and fisted a hand over his mouth, laughing. “I think the cat art is the most dope thing in this place.”

I wasn’t surprised.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Four or five hours. I would have liked to have been here before Tiffany’s body was removed, but Kiera did a great job of photographing the scene and gathering the initial evidence in my absence.”

With his workload picking up in recent years, Silas had been given permission to hire an assistant. And that was Kiera, a charismatic, energetic young woman in her late twenties.

“So, you’ve seen Kiera’s photos?” I asked.

“Yep. She forwarded them to me right before I boarded the flight.”

“What are your initial thoughts and takeaways?”

He crossed one leg over the other, giving the question some thought. “Here’s what I know so far. Tiffany was stabbed several times, and the wounds she sustained weren’t isolated to one area.”

“Meaning?”

“They were haphazard, like wherever the arm flailed and landed was it. Some stabbings are a lot more methodical, like a slit throat or a knife through the heart. One and done. Not this one.”

“Sounds like it was more sporadic. There may be something there. A crime of passion, perhaps?”

“Or a novice who didn’t know what they were doing and was taking swings and trying to land them before Tiffany had a chance to fight back.”

“ Did she fight back?”

“I’m not sure yet. From what I’ve seen so far, I’d say no. We took some fingernail scrapings. Once we’ve had the chance to run some tests, I’ll have a more definitive answer for you.”

“What can you tell me about the time of death?”

“Based on Kiera’s review of the scene, the murder took place not long before Tiffany’s father arrived to take her to the airport.

He called 911, and when the paramedics got here, they reported her skin was pale, in a state of pallor mortis.

Given her body temperature was close to normal at that time, she hadn’t entered algor mortis yet.

Bottom line, she hadn’t been dead long.”

The way she’d been murdered seemed rushed—not well thought out, at least.

Had it been a random act of violence?

A crime of passion?

Something else?

“It seems risky to me, murdering her right before she was planning on heading to the airport,” I said.

“Even if the killer had no knowledge of her trip, they would have noticed the luggage at the door ... if they came in that way. Given her bedroom window was open, it could have been an easier way to get inside the house. Were there any signs of forced entry?”

“The lock on the front door looks like it’s had some damage to it. A bit of paint is chipped off around the knob, and I noticed some scratch and dent marks too.”

“Her door was always like that,” I said. “I kept bugging her to fix it.”

In that moment, I realized something—something important.

“I bought Tiffany a doorbell security camera for her for Christmas last year,” I said. “If the killer entered through the front, there should be footage. Have you taken a look at it?”

“It was the first thing Foley did when he arrived.”

“And?”

“Turns out, it wasn’t on during the time of the murder, and for who knows how long before that. The battery was dead.”

I huffed out a disappointed sigh.

I’d purchased and installed the camera myself, and when I’d given it to her, I made sure to tell her how important it was for her to use it. She’d waved it off, laughing as she reminded me how little crime there was in our quaint little town.

Little crime didn’t mean no crime.

But when it came to convincing others of that fact, it wasn’t easy.

What was easy was for people to assume crimes of this nature were things that happened to other people, and not to them.

“Even though we have no footage, the fact she had a camera would have been obvious to anyone who approached her front door,” I said.

“I would think it would give a person pause, maybe think about another entry point so they wouldn’t be seen.

If it turns out the killer came through the front door, I’d assume they knew Tiffany.

Maybe they even knew the camera wasn’t on. ”

“The murderer may have also worn a mask or a disguise of some kind.”

Silas was right.

I was trying to put the clues together too fast, jumping to conclusions without thinking them through first. In most of my homicide investigations, my mind was a lot clearer, but given the murder was so personal to me, I knew I wasn’t thinking straight, not as much as I should be.

If I was going to figure out what happened to Tiffany and why, I needed to focus, to treat her murder like I would any other.

It was a reasonable thought.

I just wasn’t sure it was possible.

“Have you had the chance to look Tiffany over yet?” I asked.

“For a short time.”

“Did anything other than the stab wounds suggest a motive for her murder?”

From the look on his face, he knew what I was getting at.

I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.

Silas cleared his throat. “I’ll be doing a forensic exam to see if she ... uhh, you know, was ...”

“Raped before or after she was murdered.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, which wasn’t something that happened between us all that often, and I sensed his concern for what I was going through. I imagined others would behave the same way, whether I wanted them to or not.

I was trying to be tough, to act like I could handle this investigation in the same way I’d handled all the others. But if I was being honest with myself, part of me wanted to melt to the ground, ranting and wailing until all my pent-up frustration was spent.

Tiffany had been taken from me, and it wasn’t okay.

It wouldn’t ever be okay.

But right now, I had a job to do.

And I needed to find a way to do it.

“Can you describe the crime scene to me?” I asked.

“Anything in particular?”

“Was she dressed, or was she naked? And if she was dressed, what was she wearing?”

“She had on a robe. Most of the robe came off during the murder, but it was still over one of her arms when she died. When Tiffany’s father found her, her breasts and genitals were exposed. He admitted to covering her with a towel.”

“Do you believe Tiffany was stabbed with a knife, or is it possible a different object was used?” I asked.

“A knife was found about a foot away from her body.”

How odd.

“Why leave it?” I asked. “You would think the killer would conceal it somehow, taking it with them when they left.”

Silas shrugged. “Why, indeed. There was a fair amount of blood on the knife’s handle and on the blade.”

“Any prints?”

“We didn’t find any.”

To me, that indicated the killer had worn gloves, suggesting premeditation.

I was about to ask a follow-up question, when I heard sniffling, and I looked up, my eyes coming to rest on the one man I wasn’t prepared to face yet.