CHAPTER TWELVE

C HAPTER T WELVE

Chloe had to act fast. “Do you want me to take the kids upstairs? I can watch them while you guys talk.” She shot Ethan a big smile. “We can play with your toys!”

Becky and Holly both waved their hands. “No,” Holly said. “Go on with your walk.”

“We don’t want to keep you,” Becky agreed.

Chloe wagged her finger. “My walk can wait.” She wasn’t kidding. No way was she leaving now, right when things had a decent chance of getting interesting.

“If you’re sure,” Becky said.

Ethan jumped up. Excited. “I just got the Ultimate Protectors Pack ! You can be Hulk.”

“Wonderful.” Chloe took Charley’s hand and they followed Ethan up the stairs, one step at a time.

“Have fun, you guys!” Becky said in an overly cheerful, high-pitched voice.

Chloe glanced back at her, right as Detective Seicinski stuck her head through the door. For a flash of a second, she and Chloe locked eyes before she continued upstairs. The detective knew who she was because after Chloe saw Shannon leave Rosella’s house yesterday, she’d gone back over there, to Officer Frank’s dismay, and introduced herself, even gave the detective her cell number in case she had questions. Wesley had been furious when she’d told him that part. But she didn’t care. What was the big deal? She didn’t kill Rosella, but she sure as heck wanted to know who did.

At the top of the stairs was the loft with a couple of toys scattered about. That is, if a couple meant a hundred. Judging by the mats and dumbbells in the corner, the space had been a workout room at one time. Now it was filled with toys, including a miniature ice cream stand and a metric ton of colorful plastic blocks. Chloe smiled as she ordered a strawberry ice cream from Charley. She was promptly given a tiny spoon. Downstairs she heard them talking and strained to make out every word of the conversation.

Detective Seicinski said, “Your name is Holly Bateman?”

“Correct.”

“You’re married?”

“Yes. Becky and I married last year.”

“You’re an ICU nurse at Sutter Hospital?”

“Yes. For nine years now.”

“Did you know Rosella Marlow?”

Holly nodded. “We were acquaintances, certainly not friends.”

“Why ‘certainly not’ friends?”

Holly’s tone was callous. “Because the woman was never nice to me.”

“How so?”

“Oh gosh. The woman never smiled. Her expression was like your partner’s—gruff and unwelcoming.” Chloe heard nothing, which must have meant things were getting uncomfortable.

Holly finally said, “Rosella made it clear she didn’t like children, backing away if they crossed her path. She was critical of the fundraisers we held here at the house. I can’t remember a time when she had anything even semipleasant to say to me or Becky.”

“And yet you invited her to your house, and she supported your charity work with her checkbook.”

“True. Yes. She could be generous at times.”

Chloe was impressed by how much these detectives already knew.

“But you didn’t like her,” Detective Toye interjected.

She paused. “No. I didn’t like her.”

Detective Seicinski spoke next. “Can you tell us where you were between Monday evening and eight a.m. on Tuesday?”

Becky said, “Weren’t you at—”

Detective Seicinski cut her off. “If you don’t mind, I’d like Holly to answer.”

“Yes, um, of course,” Holly said, stumbling. “I woke up around five and made coffee. The kids were awake by six thirty, maybe earlier. Becky had been out late, so she was still asleep. I made the kids breakfast, and I got dressed for work.”

“What are you doing?” Charley asked, holding a stuffed pony. Chloe’s ear was flat against the floor.

Ethan had handed Chloe the Hulk figure, and he kept bashing her figurine with the Black Panther in one hand and Captain America in the other. “Shouldn’t they be fighting the bad guys instead of each other?” Chloe asked.

“If you want to see those police people,” Ethan told her matter-of-factly, “you can look down the hole.”

“What hole?”

Ethan ran to his room.

“Grab some toys and let’s go,” Chloe told Charley.

The little girl actually did as she asked. She dropped her ice cream cone, swept up an armful of Barbies, and excitedly followed Chloe to Ethan’s room. The kid had already laid out the protectors in a perfect line and now dug through a bin filled with plastic toys.

“What time did you start work?” asked Detective Seicinski.

“On Tuesdays I don’t have to be to the hospital until eight thirty.”

Chloe’s eyes widened. The voices were clear as day. She followed the sound to the floor vent, took a seat on the ground, and got comfortable.

“You were ready for work early that day?”

Holly stuttered before saying, “Yes.”

“And you went straight there ... to work?”

“Well, um ... yes. I went early.”

“I want to show you something we found inside Rosella’s house,” Detective Seicinski said.

“Okay.”

This was too good! Chloe lay flat on her stomach and peeked through the decorative iron vent cover. Ethan was a genius. She could literally see Detective Seicinski retrieve a plastic evidence bag from her carrying case and place it in front of Holly, who gasped. “That’s frightening. Why are you showing me this?”

“Because it seems to me whoever left this for Rosella obviously didn’t like her.”

Holly said nothing.

Chloe squinted. Oh my God. The detective wasn’t kidding—Seicinski had placed some sort of weird-looking stick figure in front of Holly. A nail dripping with a gooey bloody substance protruded from the head. Didn’t like Rosella? Understatement of the year! Chloe puffed her cheeks and blew out air. Whoever had left that thing for Rosella despised her.

“And as you can see,” the detective continued, “it appears to have been made from the branches of a weeping willow.”

Chloe couldn’t see Holly’s face, but she might as well have been sitting at the table with all of them, because she could feel the tension in the air. Holly was probably even more nervous because she had two weeping willows in her backyard. She had planted the trees herself because they reminded her of her childhood. Unfortunately for Holly, there were no other weeping willows on the block.

Detective Seicinski picked up the bag, let it dangle in front of Holly’s face. “Have you seen this before?”

“No. It’s disgusting.”

She’s right, Chloe thought. The doll was disgusting, but there was something familiar about it, and that worried her. Was she experiencing déjà vu? Whatever she was feeling, she didn’t like it. It was confusing. She pushed all those weird feelings aside when she saw Holly’s hands shaking. Panic was setting in. The poor girl.

“Were you at Rosella Marlow’s house Tuesday morning?”

Holly didn’t hesitate. “No.”

Well, that was a lie. Charley picked that moment to sit on Chloe’s back, her little legs straddling Chloe’s waist while she played with her Barbies. She tried to hand Chloe a headless doll, but Chloe had her standards and quietly asked Charley to find her one with a full head of hair and a cute outfit. It worked, too. Charley ran off.

Through the vent she saw another evidence bag placed in front of Holly. Inside the bag was a mask. Through the entire Covid fiasco, no one ever saw Holly without a mask. She still wore them to the grocery store.

“Is this your mask?” Detective Toye asked.

Holly’s voice sounded strained. “No. Uh, I don’t think so.”

He pointed at the mask. “That’s a Sutter Hospital logo, isn’t it?”

“A few of us living on the block work at Sutter,” Holly told him. “It could be anyone’s.”

“Anyone’s?” He flipped the bag over and jabbed his finger at something. “Looks like your name was stamped right here in black ink.”

Everyone knew Holly stamped everything: books, notepads, shoes, even the brown paper lunch bags she took to work. Chloe knew because she found a baseball hat once and thought it belonged to her youngest child, Rowan, until he showed her the H OLLY B ATEMAN stamp.

“Any idea what your mask might have been doing in the hedge plant outside Rosella Marlow’s house?” Detective Toye asked next.

“I have no idea,” Holly said. “I often have a mask hanging from my wrist. Maybe I lost it in my driveway and it ended up wherever you found it.”

Charley was back. She plopped down on Chloe’s back again, pushing the breath right out of her, and shoved another Barbie in her face, covering her view of what was going on downstairs. But she had to admit, cute little Charley had done a good job of picking out the right Barbie doll. Sequined dress, diamond earrings, matching heels. “Nice job,” she whispered.

“Does she need to get a lawyer?”

That was Becky’s voice. Chloe couldn’t see her, but she imagined her standing there, arms folded and her face as forbidding as Detective Toye’s.

“No,” Holly said. “I don’t need a lawyer. I did nothing wrong.”

“We’ll need you to come to the station today to be fingerprinted.”

“Why?”

“Anyone who’s been to Rosella’s house will need to be fingerprinted.”

“But I wasn’t there,” Holly said.

“There were fingerprints on the murder weapon,” Detective Seicinski said. “Fingerprints we already know do not belong to the house cleaner or Rosella Marlow.”

“Okay,” Holly said.

Her voice sounded shaky and small. Chloe’s heart raced. She felt sick for her friend. She had a strong desire to take action and support Holly in some way, but she was powerless, and it was not a good feeling.

“Okay, what?” Detective Toye asked.

“Becky’s right. I want to get a lawyer.”

Shit! This was not good. Holly had done nothing wrong. Why would she need a lawyer? Chloe refused to doubt Holly’s innocence, and yet she knew her conviction went beyond logic or evidence. The loyalty she felt toward Holly was rooted in their history together, experiences shared, and the trust they had built over time.

Charley climbed off her, praise the Lord, prompting Chloe to push herself to her feet, which wasn’t easy. Every joint creaked. She needed to get back to the gym. Right when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, she saw a Channel 10 News van pull up in front of Shannon’s house. “I think the visitors are leaving,” Chloe told Ethan.

He frowned. “We didn’t even beat the bad guys yet.”

She heard the door downstairs open and close. Holding Barbie with her beautiful sequin dress in the air, Chloe used her ventriloquist voice to say, “I’ll be back. I promise. And me and my friends are going to take you out!” She used Barbie’s head to bop one of his figurines in the head.

Charley giggled, but Ethan crossed his arms and stared her down.

“Come on, kids. Let’s go.”