“So you’re saying you were with Tim from the time you got off work on Thursday to the time you went into work on Friday?”
“That’s right.”
Elise was writing down what she said, but her pen hesitated.
My next push would either crack Leslie’s story or she’d continue to try to hold to it and we’d prove that she and Tim hadn’t been together by checking with her boss. I could probably threaten and save us the trouble. Leslie likely wouldn’t want us chatting with her boss about the possibility of her taking off from work early.
I caught her gaze and held it. “Tim said you were together from around three on. So one or both of you are lying.”
Her eyelids drooped, and her lips turned down. I’d read about faces crumpling before, but I’d rarely seen it happen.
She dropped her gaze to her coffee cup. “What do you think Tim did?” she whispered.
The sadness in her voice hit me in the chest with that sensation like the middle had caved in. I’d been imitating the police’s methods and my parents’ methods. It wasn’t me.
Now that she wasn’t opposing us, I could go back to the way I preferred to deal with people—with compassion.
“We don’t know that he did anything,” I said as gently as I could, “but he might have killed one of his co-workers.”
She gave a slow I’m-thinking head nod.
I moved around the small kitchen island but kept a respectful distance. “Tim wasn’t with you, was he?”
She shook her head.
“Why did you lie?”
“I always say Tim was with me if I’m asked. We’ve been friends since we were kids, and I didn’t mind. He has some…situations in his life.” She took her time pouring the remainder of her coffee into the sink. She turned back around and leaned against the counter. “I don’t want to share all his private business, but it’s not to cover for anything illegal. I promise. Tim’s not like that.”
She had no idea how much I wished we could simply take people’s word on whether or not another person was capable of murder. It would make investigating crimes so much easier. As it was, there wasn’t anything else she could tell us. Now we had to find out why Tim lied.
Scherwin had a rumpled and sleepy-looking Tim in the interview room by the time Elise and I got back to the station. It looked like he’d hauled Tim out of bed and hadn’t given him a chance to even put on real clothes. Thankfully, it seemed he slept in sweats rather than in his boxers or in the nude.
Tim’s posture was hunched over, more so than I would have expected from fatigue alone, even though he had been working all night and couldn’t have been in bed more than an hour before Scherwin roused him.
“I should have told you the truth from the start,” Tim said before we’d even sat down. “It wasn’t right to expect Leslie to lie to the police. I panicked.”
Elise held up a hand. “Before you say anything else, have you been read your rights?”
Tim nodded. “I don’t need a lawyer. I wasn’t honest with you, but I didn’t kill Bruce, either.”
My dad had a name for people who tried to deal with the police by themselves at this stage, and it wasn’t a polite one. Since I was on the side of the police this time, though, I wasn’t about to encourage Tim to bring in a lawyer. One thing I was sure of—we’d get more information out of him without one. Hopefully information that would close this case.
“Then why did you lie?” I asked.
For a second he looked like he wanted to ask me why I was the one leading the interviews when I wasn’t a police officer, but instead stretched both hands out on top of the table.
“I wasn’t with Leslie, but I was with someone the whole time, just like I said.”
Elise gave him a patented Cavanaugh eyebrow quirk. “If that’s the case, why not tell us?”
Tim hung his head. The silence stretched, and Elise, to her credit, let it.
Finally, he looked up. Red rimmed his eyes. “The man that everyone thinks is my best friend is also my partner. I was with him.”
Normally, it wasn’t my place to comment on anyone’s decision to keep such a private and personal part of their life to themselves, but this was a murder investigation. Normal rules didn’t apply here. We needed to confirm that he was telling us the truth this time. “Why not say so?”
“Fair Haven is a small town. Lifestyles that are accepted in a city aren’t here.” He looked reproachfully at me like moving from a city to Fair Haven proved I’d hold the same attitudes and try to pin the murder on him because of it. “Landon works at the daycare. There are parents who would want him fired if they found out.”
That was a good enough reason to keep their relationship a secret. The question now was whether they were willing to kill over it. “Did you kill Bruce Vilsack together because he found out and threatened to expose you?”
“No!” Tim slammed his hands down on top of the desk. Then he must have realized how that outburst might make him seem, and he tugged his hands back close to his body. “No,” he said more calmly.
“Explain it to us,” Elise said. “If you went to so much trouble to hide your relationship for all these years, it sure looks like motive if Vilsack knew.”
“He knew, but he’s known for years. He caught us kissing one time after practice when we thought we were the only ones left in the locker room. But he didn’t care.”
Elise raised both her eyebrows this time.
Tim brought his hands up in an I swear it gesture, palms toward us. “He said he wasn’t going to judge. Besides, he knew if he said anything I could ruin him, too. He liked to try to sleep with any pretty guest who came in The Sunburnt Arms’ front door, and Mandy would have fired him for that.”
I knew he was telling the truth. Mandy prided herself on running a clean, homey, safe bed-and-breakfast. A lecherous front desk clerk preying on guests…she wouldn’t have even given him a warning or two weeks’ notice. And she’d have made sure the whole town knew why.
“Landon’s building has security cameras,” Tim said. “I don’t know how long they keep the recordings for, but if they still have them, you’ll be able to see me going in before Bruce even came in to work and not leaving until the next morning. The same for Landon. We didn’t do it.”
14
