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The Last Safe Place
iPhone in the slot on her SoundDock speaker deck, touched the playback icon and made her escape.
But she did tell them in detail what Yesheb had done to her and described the bloody knife he’d shown her. At that point, Rude Cop spoke into the microphone attached to a clip on his shoulder and before long five more officers appeared, conferred with the first two and then left. She had just completed her account of trying to run Yesheb down with her car when one of them came back into the room and spoke into Fat Cop’s ear.
Fat Cop nodded, then gestured toward Gabriella. The other officer gawked at her—he’d figured out she was the famous novelist Rebecca Nightshade—and didn’t pick up that he was supposed to tell her what he’d found out until Fat Cop elbowed him in the side.
“Ma am, we looked and there wasn’t … I mean, we couldn’t find the guard, Ridley, any trace of him,” Bumbling Cop said. “Searched all around the buildings and the grounds and didn’t find a thing out of the ordinary. No blood, no signs of a struggle. And no vehicle. Did he drive to work?”
“You think a rent-a-cop and an attack dog took a cab?”
Bumbling Cop actually considered the question for a moment before he realized it was sarcasm. “There’s no blood in the house, either, Ma’am. None on the sheets—”
“Then Yesheb changed the sheets!”
“Why would he do a thing like that?” Rude Cop asked.
To make it look like I’m the one who’s crazy.
But she said nothing because she could already see where this was going. The same way all the other complaints had gone.
“In fact, all the beds in the upstairs bedrooms were made, no evidence anybody’d slept in them,” Bumbling Cop continued. “And the windows were closed, too. No blood in the hallway where he … where you say he …”
“Bit off my earlobe? What—you don’t believe me? Look at this!” Gabriella turned her head and thrust her bloody ear toward them. “You think I was attacked by killer pinking shears?”
“No, no, I didn’t mean that, ma’am … Ms. Nightshade. I’m just saying the house was locked up tight.” He held up the car keys she’d left in the ignition of the Town Car parked out front. “Had to use the door key on this ring to get in.” He placed the keys on the coffee table. “And the alarm went off as soon as we opened the door. Liked to never got that thing shut down. The phone line worked fine, too.”
About half an hour after that, another officer came in and had another whispered conversation with Fat Cop.
The round-faced policeman looked sheepish when he spoke to her, like he was embarrassed for her that she’d been caught in such an obvious fabrication. He’d recognized her by now, too. And had likely been told she was nuttier than a jar of Planters, filed complaints about being watched and followed all the time.
“Ms. Nightshade, we found Officer Ridley’s car at his house in his driveway—no dog, though. He lives alone and he wasn’t there, but a neighbor said he sometimes goes off, stays gone for days.” The officer lowered his voice. “Said he had a drinking problem.”
Gabriella just looked at him.
A security guard walks off the job in the middle of the night to go have a beer with his pit bull—that seem reasonable to you?
“And we checked on this Al Tobbanoft guy, the one you have a restraining order against. His butler said he’s in the hospital with a broken foot—”
“ That’s what I ran over—his foot!”
“He broke it three days ago, Ma’am. That’s what the doctor …”
“What hospital?”
“Stonybrook, a private hospital.”
“Do you know who owns it?” she asked, then answered her own question. “I’d say the safe money’s on the Al Tobbanoft family. But you might have to trace back through half a dozen corporations … which you can’t, and I’m sure you wouldn’t even if you could.” She let out a long sigh. “Forget it. Just forget it.”
The officer