Dee Henderson - The Witness

“He’s networked.”

“Like very few others are in this town. I think he takes it personally, the well-being of those who live in his jurisdiction, even the upper crust who tend to end up in trouble by their own choices or lack of attention to their surroundings.”

It gave her a picture of the police chief, and Marie thought she would find it interesting to meet him. Connor admired him: it was there in the tone of his voice. Marie studied the bottom of her coffee mug and wondered how much she could get away with prying. “Are you close to Marsh?”

“We’re not brothers, but there are days we might as well be.” He smiled. “What do you need to know, Marie?”

She looked up at him briefly and smiled. “Is Marsh serious about Tracey? Is he the type to want to settle down? So many things that would have played out on their own course are going to get badly disrupted right now.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about Marsh; he’s a selective kind of guy. Your sister chose him, rather than the other way around, and that kind of smoothed the age difference between them. Not that Marsh ever tried to put on the brakes to the relationship. From all I’ve seen they are a very good match together. The money isn’t going to change his opinion about your sister, and I don’t think it changes your sister all that much either-I expect she’ll still finish that degree and then rejoin a medical practice here in town. But this will likely slow down any plans the two of them have been talking about until this situation sorts itself out more, rather than speed up those plans.”

“Yes, I think you’re right about that.” Marie sighed. “I worry about her, being married to a cop one day. He’s a good cop, and oddly that makes it harder than if he wasn’t so committed to the job.”

“I know.”

“You’re not going to tell me not to worry?”

“Marsh and I carry guns; they don’t give them to us because it’s a desk job.”

“I like you.”

He laughed. “Because I’m honest?”

“Because you’re sitting there drinking my coffee and answering my questions and being pretty patient with getting handed this task as a favor for a friend.”

“Daniel’s an old friend-that does make a difference.” He got to his feet. “But it’s probably best we get on with the task before you need to get changed to go meet Granger. I like my boss, but I do try my best not to keep him waiting.”

She got to her feet too.

“Without wanting to invade your privacy, let me glance in bedrooms and the bath, get a count of windows; then I need to see storage rooms and access to the roof, any other ways on and off this floor. Securing the gallery floor will be the easier task.”

She nodded. “This way.” She wished she remembered how she’d left her bed that morning, how many clothes were still tossed around, if her makeup still sprawled across the bathroom counter. She’d been in a hurry to open the gallery and make the meeting with Daniel, not thinking there would be anyone up here today. Her Saturday had been planned to be her cleanup day.

Connor glanced around her bedroom, smiled at the mannequin she used to keep her coat and hat and longer scarves, and counted windows. He glanced into the second bedroom. “Does Tracey stay here often?”

“She rooms on campus when classes are in session. She’ll be here for another ten days or so, and then she planned to head back.”

“I’ll make sure someone stops by her place on campus next week and gets its security tightened up.”

“The third bedroom I use as a studio of sorts.”

The room had the best lighting of all the bedrooms for it faced north and had three full windows. The room was pretty bare. She’d spent the night before setting out new canvases to work on, and her sketch board had been cleared. She’d left the furnishings as a simple arrangement of chairs and open display case for her paint supplies.

“You spend a lot of time here.”

“More and more as the years pass.”

“I like it. Someday I can say I knew you when.”

She laughed. “I doubt my paintings will ever become collectible works.”

“You never know.” He added more notes to his pad.

Connor rewalked the living-room area, and she saw him studying where the heating and cooling came in, counting windows, and checking what doors inside had locks. “Are you particularly attached to any of this woodwork? It really would be good to have better frames on the windows and solid doors put in for the bedroom wing. Someone gets inside or someone’s just hassling you, you’ve still got layers of protection and locks you can throw.”

“I’m not going to quibble if you think it needs to be done. Daniel gave me a pretty good reality check even before you rattled off that list of risks.”

He looked over, and she understood the gaze even if she didn’t want to understand it. “Rattling you is okay, Marie-scaring you is not. Sorry about that.” He counted doors. “The more stuff done now tends to mean less trouble later, and the carpenters can do it all as one rush job.”

He jotted notes. “I’ve got what I need in here. Show me the storage rooms and utilities.”

She picked up her key ring and led the way.

“You’ve got valuables stored up here?”

“I built a room downstairs to be secure storage for the paintings; up here is extra framing and packing materials, Christmas decorations, replacement panels to use when we have a showing, that kind of thing.”

He walked past the storage shelves to the windows and tried turning the locks. “You open the windows during the summer?”

“Yes. I don’t think any of the windows will still be painted shut, but a few are tighter than others.”

He looked at the fire alarm. “Cover your ears.” He reached up and hit the self-test button. “You’ve changed the batteries recently.”

“First of every month. Fire is the one thing I’m kind of paranoid about.”

“That’s not such a bad thing to be. Where’s the electrical box for the building?”

“There are two-one for this floor, one for the gallery.” She opened the utilities room and clicked on the light, then nodded toward the electrical box on the back wall.

Connor checked it. “Good, there’s room. New lighting for the hall can include emergency floodlights as well as just better fixtures and higher watt bulbs. Someone cuts your electricity, the emergency lights will automatically come on in the halls. Amazing how many times that’s enough to stop trouble in its tracks. And it saves you a lot of time if there is a fire or other reason to be leaving quickly.”

“You’re not doing a very good job cheering me up here.”

He smiled. “Daniel gets the bills; just remember that. I’ll have the carpenters replace that stairway handrail for you too; I noticed it was a bit shaky. You’ve got another staircase down to the gallery level, or do you always go out to the street and then back inside?”

“There’s another stairwell at the other end of the hall. We use it just enough to keep the cobwebs down.”

She led the way to show him.

“Nice.” The stair treads were steep and narrow and disappeared with a sharp turn.

“The building was divided in half until about thirty years ago. This used to be the other entrance, but they bricked the former doorway and turned the direction of the final few stairs when they combined the building.” Accustomed to the narrower treads she walked down first with her hands braced against each wall and turned the corner, stepping into the open storage room at the back of the gallery.

Connor joined her. “Doors at the top and the bottom and brick on either side of you-it has potential.” He checked the lock. “If you had a fire, Marie, I’d use these stairs rather than try for the main stairway. There are no cooling or heat ducts to carry smoke in. I’ll have them put in a steel-core door at the top-that will give you better security and a final bit of fire protection and emergency lighting.” He jotted down a final note and then looked around where they stood. “Okay, what’s down here?”