Page 48 of Lucifer's Revenge
“I’ll tell her. I only have one more question, then I’ll get out of your hair and let you do your job.”
“What’s that?”
“Until we can repaint, can we hang a tarp over the garage door?”
“Absolutely. You’re not disturbing the scene, you’re basically preserving it for us. We’re not big enough to have a crime unit on the force, we’ll have to call into the city for theirs to come out.” Bandit rubbed the back of his head. “Between you and me, do you think it’s just Sally? Or possibly Brenda Smith?”
“I would bet it was both of them together. I’m not telling you how to do your job, but I’d put a BOLO out on them now for the airports, bus stations, or whatever if they were behind this and are trying to flee.”
“Yeah,” Bandit pulled out his phone and dialed.
Luc went back outside, talked to the guys, and for some reason, someone already had a tarp in one of their saddle bags. It wasn’t a large one, but it did the trick of covering the words from the neighbors. When they finished, they stood there, and a man came running up to them, but was stopped by the club members.
“Wait,” Lilith said. “That’s Richard.”
“The retired private dick?”
“Yes.”
Lucius allowed him to be let through, then the three of them went back inside. “Bandit,” Lucius called out, and it turned out that Richard and Bandit knew one another from when Richard was an active working investigator.
“Richard, what can we do for you?”
“Do you know that Ms. Richards hired me?”
“Yes, I’ve seen the photos you took. What about it?”
“Well, for some reason, my gut was screaming in the middle of the night. I don’t sleep well anyway, but something made me get up out of bed, and come over to Ms. Richard’s house lastnight. It was at two forty-seven that I left my home. I arrived here at three twenty-three.”
“Thanks for the time line,” Bandit began writing. “What did you see?”
“People leaving Ms. Richard’s home.” He had a professional looking camera and the four of them scrunched around to see the six inch square window. They all saw, plain as day, Sally, Brenda, and the man from the photos earlier, leaving Lilith’s home with gigantic grins on their faces. There were several frames of them high fiving each other. The last three frames showed them entering a vehicle parked before the house, and a clear picture perfect image of the license plate. The man got behind the wheel, Sally climbed into the front seat, and Brenda into the back.
“I’m going to want copies of those.”
“I figured as much. I wanted you to see these before I went into my dark room. I can have them to you in a couple of hours.”
“Thank you,” Bandit said, and Richard left. He turned to Lilith.
“Has Sally ever been in your house?”
“Yes, roughly a week before I met Lucius. She came over and we had pizza and wine, we were best friends, and she brought the wine. I’ve since done some deep cleaning.” She scrubbed her forehead, and sighed heavily. “See, when I get upset, or it’s the change of seasons, I deep clean my house. I mean I wash the walls in the entire house, after my weekly vacuuming, and cleaning, once I do a deep clean, I hire professionals to come in and steam clean the entire house.” She shrugged at their look. “I had a cousin that was severely allergic to almost everything. Her mother had professionals come in and steam clean her entire house. I know my cousin comes twice a year, so I have it done within days of her visiting.”
“Do you know when the last time it was done?”
“Sally was in my home five months ago, Renee, my cousin, was here five weeks ago, so I’d say it was cleaned six weeks ago.”
“Good, then if Sally’s prints show up, then they should be from this incident, and not months ago.”
“Correct.”
“Okay, now for the bad news. I told Luc that we’ll have to call into the city to get a crime unit out to dust for prints. You’re going to have to come down to the station to get yours taken for elimination purposes. Unfortunately, it’s going to be forty-eight hours or more before you can get back in here to clean. If you could leave me your keys, I’ll make sure it’s locked.”
“Can we put plywood over the broken windows?” Luc asked.
“Unfortunately, not. We don’t want to mess up any prints that might be there. I can tell the crime unit to dust the outside first, then you can come in and put it up.”
“Let me know,” he said as he wrapped his arm around Lilith. He turned her and took her chin in his fingers. “You’ll come back to my place.”
