Daphne stood there, appraising him. He looked like he’d slept outdoors last night, and his overalls seemed puffy across his chest.
Since I’d left my bag in Candace’s car, all I had was the crumpled ten-dollar bill in my jeans pocket. I hoped it was enough as I held it out to Ed. “I can give you more later,” I said.
He dropped the bags on the doorstep and took the money. “This is plenty.” Then he reached inside his overalls and pulled out a roll of bubble wrap. “Thought this might be helpful, too.”
Daphne accepted it before I could move. “Thank you. It was . . . really nice of you to come out here and bring this.”
“No problem.” Ed was looking past Daphne, trying to see inside the house. “You got anything you don’t know what to do with, give me a call. Miss Jillian here has my number and knows where my store is.”
Daphne looked out toward the driveway. “I see you have a truck. You’ll need it. After I meet with the estate agent, I’ll give you a call.” She held up the bubble wrap. “Thanks.”
Ed started to turn away but stopped when I said, “I saw computer monitors and towers in your shop. You find anything lately?”
He tilted his head. “I did, as a matter of fact. Found a tower that looked like it’d been attacked with a sledgehammer. “Don’t know if I can salvage anything except the electrical cord, but you never know.”
“When did you find it?” I asked, my heart speeding up.
“Yesterday. At the dump. I know it’s broken, but heck, you can always save something.”
Daphne and I looked at each other, and I said, “Would you recognize your father’s computer?”
“I doubt it,” she said.
But that wasn’t about to stop me. “Ed,” I said, “you save that computer for me, okay? I might want to purchase it.”
“I’ll tell you right now, it ain’t worth much all broke like that. You’ll get a fair price.” He smiled.
And I was smiling, too. But not because I’d get a fair price. If that computer belonged to Flake Wilkerson, even if it was “all broke,” secrets might be resurrected from the rubble—certainly not by me, but Candace would know someone skilled enough to find out what was on it and why it had disappeared from a murdered man’s house.
Twenty
After Candace finished her errands and returned to the Pink House, the three of us made good progress organizing the contents of the house for the estate sale. Daphne was happy to let me have all the old newspapers, as well as the bags of shredded pictures or documents or whatever they were. When I told her about my cat quilts, she said she’d seen them upstairs and I could have them back.
Candace looked at me like I had two heads when we left the house with me carrying the garbage bags and the old newspapers along with the quilts. She said, “Your quilts I understand, but what’s with this other stuff?”
Once we were on the road and I explained, she understood and said, “The day of the murder, I told Lydia about the shredded paper in the cat room. She said the most recent stuff from the wastebasket was enough, said we didn’t have the resources to mess with every tiny scrap of paper.”
“There’s something else,” I said. I told her about the smashed computer. Her mood went from interested to wary in a nanosecond. I could almost reach out and touch the tension between us.
“You can’t buy that computer,” she said.
“Why not? Ed found it at the dump and it could be—”
“Oh, I know what it could be. Hard evidence. The key to everything,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “And that’s why—”
“That’s why I go to Ed’s Swap Shop, secure it and call Baca.”
“Did you think I planned to take it home?” I said with a laugh. “If I bought it, I thought I could hand it over to Chief Baca, no warrant attached.”
“Oh. Sorry I misunderstood,” she said. “But you don’t have to buy the thing. Ed knows all about stolen goods. I’m surprised they haven’t checked with him about the computer already. Maybe they have by now.”
“And you guys will have people who could make sense of damaged computer guts? Because Ed said it wasn’t in good shape.”
“The county has forensic computer experts. No one in Mercy PD could begin to tackle that job,” she said.
Even though it was after six and I’d had nothing to eat all day, Candace insisted we head straight for Ed’s store. In what seemed like only seconds, we pulled into the tiny parking area, courtesy of Candace trying to set a world record for getting from the Pink House to the other side of town. She told me to stay in the car and she’d deal with Ed. I didn’t mind. Thanks to her driving, my personal fear factor was about a ten on a scale of one to five, and I needed time to calm down.
