I tapped the edge of the screen.
Elise swiveled it back to face her. “So unless she accidentally attacked Vilsack because he surprised her, the odds of her being behind his murder are pretty slim.”
Very slim, especially since people didn’t carry around a baseball bat for the heck of it. At least, no one I knew did.
Something about the time of death bothered me as well. I checked the date again. Assuming Becky went to the support group meeting last week—and that’d be easy enough to check—she would have been there at the time he died.
I closed the file and gave it back to Elise. “It seems like the support group connection is a dead end.”
My phone dinged with a text message. TOD based on his broken watch. Assuming it broke in the fight/fall.
That meant his time of death could be off, but since we didn’t have a reason to suspect Becky of killing him anymore, our effort was probably better spent looking for someone else who might have had a reason to hurt him.
The person who owned the bat seemed like the best place to start. “Did we ever find out if Bruce Vilsack knew anyone with a baseball connection?”
The bat might have been purchased at any sporting goods store by someone with no connection to a team, but it seemed like a strange and messy weapon to choose if it wasn’t something the person already owned for another reason. It carried too big a risk that the first swing wouldn’t knock the victim unconscious.
Elise shifted a stack of papers closer to her. “Quincey planned to run that down right after we got confirmation that the bat was the murder weapon, but with the way things have been, I’m not sure he got it done.”
She sifted through and pulled out a sheet with a yellow sticky note pasted onto it. The names were difficult to read upside down, but it was a long list—around twenty-five people.
I pressed a hand to my forehead. “How is it possible he knows that many people with a baseball connection?”
Elise squinted at the sticky note. “It looks like Quincey wrote he was a mother of a hateful cream, but I have to assume he meant member of a baseball team.”
The mere idea of interviewing an entire baseball team made me exhausted. I leaned forward and read the names upside down. A few of them were familiar because I’d met them around town. One was even a Sugarwood employee.
One was also an employee at The Sunburnt Arms. I pressed a finger beside it. “Tim O’Brien.”
Given the long-time connections among Fair Haven residents, being on the same baseball team didn’t guarantee guilt any more than the PTSD group connection had proved the two murders were connected. But it was a fresh start.
Elise called The Sunburnt Arms and confirmed that Tim was working the night shift.
She placed the phone handset back in the cradle, leaned back, and ran both her hands over her hair at the same time. “It’s late, but I think we should talk to him tonight.”
Knowing my mom, she’d be so engrossed in her research that she wouldn’t want to leave the station yet anyway. When it came to working a case, my parents had the energy of a three-year-old on a sugar high.
Now that I was seeing my mom out of her element, I couldn’t help but wonder if she also crashed as hard. My parents, apparently, had been quite good at hiding things from me growing up.
Besides, if we got this done tonight, Elise might actually get to see her kids tomorrow.
“Let’s go.”
The Sunburnt Arms parking lot was less full than I expected when we pulled in. Mandy had said she had a full house booked.
Mandy herself stood on the covered porch, blocking the door, her arms crossed. Tim must have asked her to come watch the front desk because he needed to talk to the police.
She started shaking her head before we were halfway up the steps. “You can’t be here again. You already did your search.”
It was a good thing Chief McTavish was out sick. With this kind of greeting, he’d have been sure to think Mandy was hiding something. Forget Chief McTavish, my mother would have said she was hiding something.
Elise’s mouth hung open a fraction. She clearly hadn’t been expecting a hostile reception. “We’re just here to talk to Tim.”
Mandy swiveled her body to face me, but continued blocking the doorway. “Do I have to let her in? By law.”
If Mandy kept this up, even I might start to suspect her of being involved, though deep down I knew she never would have killed one of her employees. “Not technically. Not without a warrant. But we really are here just to ask Tim a couple of questions.”
“One of my guests could come down for something and see you.” She widened her stance. “I lost two bookings for tonight already because they heard about the murder. This is going to destroy my business if anyone else sees police hanging around again.”
So she wasn’t trying to protect Tim or hide anything, she simply didn’t want more guests feeling unsafe and spreading the word about her bed-and-breakfast. “What if we talked to him outside? Would that be okay?”
Mandy’s arms lowered to her sides a fraction of an inch at a time, and she stepped clear of the doorway. I motioned for Elise to wait, and I went inside to bring Tim out. Even if a guest saw me, I looked like anyone else. Elise’s uniform gave her away immediately.
Tim followed me without argument.
The problem with being outside to talk to him, though, was that I couldn’t see his face or his posture well enough to read it. “Let’s sit in the car.”
I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. Three people couldn’t comfortably sit in the police cruiser’s front seat. That left the back seat. The back seat where people were placed while covered in all sorts of bodily fluids. My skin crawled like I was covered in fleas.
Technically, I could have sat in the front while Elise sat in the back, but then I wouldn’t have had as good a view of Tim and his reactions. We couldn’t afford to miss something. The solution to this case was already slippery enough.
The memory of my mom on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor at The Sunburnt Arms, flashed across my mind. If she could survive that, I could survive this.
I climbed in one side, and Tim slid in the other. I’d have to take a bath in disinfecting wipes and wash my clothes three times after this was over.
He didn’t demand to know what was going on. In fact, he didn’t ask anything at all. He must have already realized there was only one reason we’d want to speak to him this late at night.
He kept as much distance between us as possible as Elise recited the Miranda warning.
