Bombshell

"Yes, it was a dead man. I lost it and screamed my head off. Then something hard hit my head."

"Did you see who hit you?"

"No, I don"t think so. I mean, I don"t remember. Sorry."

"Are you quite sure the man in the bathtub was dead?"

Delsey shuddered. "Oh, yes, his eyes were staring straight up, and there was blood all over his chest."

"Had you ever seen him before?"

"Yes, but I don"t know who he was. I saw him around town during the past week or so. Once on the Stanislaus campus, maybe three or four more times here in Maestro."

"Where?"

"On the sidewalk once near the Holcombe Bank, and a couple of times at Maurie"s Diner, sitting in the back, where you"d walk past him to get to the restrooms. He always smiled at me and nodded; once he even asked me how I was doing and we chatted for a few minutes. He seemed like a nice man. No, he never came on to me, nothing like that, and we never really visited, if you know what I mean."

Griffin asked, "Did you see him speaking to anyone in particular?"

"No, not really. He seemed quiet, like he was marking time, maybe waiting for someone, but he was always alone. He spoke to Anna, of course, since she was his waitress. I heard her laugh once, I guess at something he said to her."

Dix said, "Did you ever think he was "off" somehow? Maybe paying too much attention to you, watching you?"

Delsey shook her head. "I didn"t get any vibe like that. He never told me what his name was or why he was here, but I did wonder what he was doing on campus that time I saw him going into the administration building."

"We don"t have a police artist on staff," Dix said, "but we do have Miss Mavis. She"ll do a sketch with you, and then we can show his photo around town, find out where he was staying, who he was and what he was doing here. It"s only logical, Ms. Freestone, that he has to be somehow connected to you, or else why would his body have been in your bathtub?"

Delsey shook her head. "I"m sorry, Sheriff, I can"t think of any connection between us other than those few times I saw him. Maybe if you can tell me who he was I can make some sense of it." Her breathing hitched. She again felt the punch of shock at seeing him lying there when she"d whipped back the shower curtain, and the terror that had screams ripping out of her throat. Griffin took her hand. "It"s okay, Delsey, now it"s okay."

"Why would he have broken into my apartment? Who would have killed him?"

Dix wondered for a moment how he would have reacted had he been in her shoes.

Delsey got herself together. "Like I told you, Anna had waited on him several times at Maurie"s Diner. Maybe she knows his name. She"s really friendly to everyone, plus she"s way more visual than I am, too. She"s done some drawing herself. She should be the one you do the sketch with."

Dix nodded and turned away to call his wife.

After he slipped his cell back into his shirt, Dix looked from Agent Griffin Hammersmith to his sister. "You two really do look a lot alike, almost like twins."

"Nah," Delsey said. "Griffin"s better-looking."

Griffin said, "Even if you"re right, it"s only because you"re still in your twenties. I"m hoping you"ll improve once you hit thirty."

Dix smiled, brought it back. "Does anyone else know you"ve remembered the dead man, Ms. Freestone?"

"Dr. Hayman left before I remembered anything."

Griffin saw the shock and fear still mirrored in her eyes. He took her hand again. "Why don"t you tell the sheriff why you"re Freestone and not Hammersmith?"

Dix said, "Yeah, I was wondering that."

Hadn"t she already told someone about why she had a different last name? She couldn"t remember. Freestone-Delsey had all sorts of memories of that wild time, but now they didn"t even p.i.s.s her off, particularly. "I was married to a creep for longer than I should have been after I graduated from UCLA. He"d just gotten a master"s degree in civil engineering. He was smart and awesomely ripped, and I fell hard for him. I really liked his cool name-Alexander Freestone. Sorry, Griffin, but I was tired of being saddled with Hammersmith."

Dix said, "Seems to me Freestone is just as much of a mouthful as Hammersmith."

"Freestone"s more a musician"s name, at least it is to me," Delsey said, then laughed at herself. "So I kept it, no matter that Alex turned out to be something I didn"t see coming at all."

"What, did the fool cheat on you?"

"No, not that. He wasn"t a horn dog. He was a jewel thief. Two different women called me out of the blue after the wedding to tell me they"d had jewelry go missing after he"d broken up with them. I told both of them he hadn"t broken up with me, he"d married me, and besides, the only good jewelry I had was the wedding ring he gave me." A laugh spurted out. "I"d forgotten about Grandmother Aladonna"s jewelry, all very expensive, all very beautiful. Since I hadn"t let him move in with me, he had to marry me if he wanted to explore Grandmother"s jewelry box. Yeah, yeah, I guess I told him about the pieces and it was enough to make him see himself drinking rum c.o.c.ktails on a beach somewhere. I reported him when I discovered my grandmother"s diamond brooch gone, the same day I filed for divorce. I think he served maybe eighteen months."

"Did you get your grandmother"s diamond brooch back?"

"The cops tracked it down and the p.a.w.nbroker had to cough it up. It"s once again snug in my jewelry box. I"m sure Alex returned to his light-fingered ways after he got out of prison, only in a different city or state. Poor women." She laughed. "The wedding ring he gave me belonged to one of the women who"d called me. I gladly returned it to her."

"I don"t think I"d want to keep the jerk"s name," Dix said, "not after all that."

"I did go back and forth for a while," Delsey said, "but then I decided to think of Freestone as his parents" name, with Alex an unfortunate offshoot, and they were nice people."

Dix shook his head at her. "Do you have her jewelry box in your apartment?"

She nodded. "Oh, no. What if that was their target?"

"Let me check that out right now." Dix turned to call one of his deputies. "We"ll know in a few minutes. I wish we had more to go on, Ms. Freestone. If the jewelry box is missing, that would mean the break-in was a burglary and one of the thieves came to a very bad end right there. I think I"ll also see if Mr. Freestone is still in prison. Who knows?"

"Nah, even though Alex was ripped and looked all sorts of heroic, he was a wuss. He"d take on any jewelry box, but not a person who could hurt him." She sighed. "Freestone-such a lovely name."

Dix said, "I"ll send Miss Mavis to see Anna, but I"d like to hear how you describe the dead man first."

"He was older than you, Sheriff n.o.ble, somewhere in his early forties. He was stocky, dark and swarthy, I remember. It was such a shock to see him there, and I was screaming-I can"t seem to focus on his features. It was horrible. Why ever would someone put him in my bathtub?"

Griffin said, "If the jewelry box is missing, then the thieves could have been in Maestro this past week looking for targets for break-ins. This party at Dr. Salazar"s would have presented the ideal opportunity. On the other hand, why pick a graduate student"s place rather than a well-to-do faculty member"s? And why didn"t they trash your place?"

Delsey said, "I haven"t advertised my grandmother"s jewelry, not after Alex. Anna and I are the only ones here who even know about it, as far as I know."

Dix"s cell phone buzzed. When he punched off a moment later, he said, "Grandma"s jewelry box was sitting on top of your dresser, still locked, didn"t look to have been touched."

"That"s a relief." Delsey squeezed her eyes shut. "But if not robbery, then why was the dead man there? I wish I could think of another reason why someone would do this. Do you know, it"s dumb, but it"s even worse to think the man might have been killed in my bathtub."

The amount of blood, Dix thought, he very likely was killed right there. He said, "Did you plan on getting home about one o"clock, Ms. Freestone?"

"I would have been a lot later if I hadn"t gotten sick."

"Which means you surprised them," Griffin said. "Whoever was there probably wanted to be long gone by the time you got home."

Delsey said, "Goodness, I write music, sing, and play the piano and guitar and not much else. I"m boring and predictable, everyone knows that."

Dix pulled out a notebook from his jacket pocket. "Tell me about this party you went to last night. They had to find out from someone that you weren"t home."