Page 11 of The Dead Come to Stay
“Gimme a minute. Getting Uniform over to his apartment,” she said. MacAdams waited until she closed the call, though not very patiently.
“Okay, so, Foley’s flat. Turns out to be an extended-stay place. The kind that comes already furnished.”
“How long was he there?” MacAdams asked.
“Last six months. Sold a flat in Whickham, apparently. Struthers isn’t finished with his analysis on the duffel yet, by the way.”
“Well, we have the death window, regardless. Jo saw him close his door at eleven.”
“And Roberta found him at eight thirty.” Green nodded. “What about the cottage?”
“They’re looking at his clothes right now. Trousers were muddy, suggests a walk.” MacAdams looked to the whiteboard.
Someone had written “Hammersmith” in bright blue, and both “Ronan Foley” and the “CEO” were stuck by magnet underneath.
“Where is this place?” he asked.
“Gallowgate in Newcastle,” Green explained. “A Knight Frank kind of setup for commercial real estate, but smaller scale.”
“And his executive, Stanley Burnhope?” MacAdams asked, tapping the photo of a dark-haired, smiling city boy type.
“We tried his office,” Gridley said, emerging from her ramen and egg. “Closed on weekends, and I figured you might want to make a house call anyway. Opens Monday at 9:00 a.m.”
MacAdams tapped rhythmically on the back of a plastic chair. It meant they would lose all Sunday for that angle; weekend murders were very inconvenient.
“On the bright side, we got cleared for the work email. It matches the one on the booking form you forwarded,” Andrews said, handing him a printout. “It’s basic—rfoley@hammersmith. No personal stuff, apparently. Must have another email for that.”
The subject headings mostly concerned a series of overseas properties—and an unfinished job in York. MacAdams made a mental note.
“Look at this latest one, though,” Andrews said. “It’s from Foley to Burnhope; it says ‘partner meeting.’ Except the website doesn’t list Foley as a partner. And check this out—the email header says, ‘Meet Friday at 4:00 p.m. to discuss business.’”
MacAdams wrote a timeline on the board.
“Meeting at four, he reserves the cottage by five accordingto the registration, arrived at ten—dies after eleven, found by eight thirty Saturday morning.”
“Right. But he reallyshouldn’thave been,” Green said. She’d returned to her desk with a pile of curried chips in Styrofoam. In fact, everyone had managed to get lunch except MacAdams, despite his proximity to sausage rolls. “The murderer picked a damn good spot. That access road isn’t traveled all that much.”
“Hard to get to as well,” Gridley added. “I mean, what with the rain.”
“Hard to get to,” MacAdams repeated. “Like the cottage itself. Did he walk up there? If he drove, in what? Where is the car now? And why are the towels missing?”
“The towels?” Green asked.
MacAdams filled them in on the missing items, which included the coat, as well.
Gridley cracked her knuckles. “A thought. It was storming, right? Maybe he started to drive to the cottage, got stuck and walked the rest of the way.”
MacAdams rubbed his chin and paced under the fluorescents. Surely he’d have mentioned it to Jo when he arrived to the cottage?
“Keep going with the theory. His car is stuck and...?” he encouraged.
“Hang on, I’m getting a map.” There was a nearby stack of brochures for the garden’s opening that had the town map printed in friendly cartoon colors on the back. She grabbed one and used it as a guide to draw a rudimentary copy in dry erase marker.
“Okay, here’s the road and here’s the lane. I’ve been up there walking, and it’s steep. Gravel gets waterlogged and muddy, let’s say his car gets halfway. Maybe he even tried to push the car out.”
“It would explain the spattered pants,” MacAdams agreed.
“Right. So, then the rain stops and he thinks about going back for it.”
