Sheila’s frown got deeper. “Don’t worry, Trixie doesn’t bite.”
“I wasn’t worried about the biting so much.”
Sheila nodded and gave the leash a little tug. Trixie backed up and lay down. “I didn’t really have much to say. I was at my folks’ house the night of the… the night they died.”
“Did you know Chloe or Paige?” I was waiting for her to invite us in where we could sit down and talk in private, but she didn’t seem inclined.
“Just to say ‘Hi’ to. But you might want to talk to C.J. I think he went out with Chloe.”
“C.J.’s your next-door neighbor?” Sheila looked over my shoulder at his door and nodded. The way her eyes lingered, I got the feeling she looked at his door a lot. “What did you tell the police?”
“Just that I’d met Dale Pearson a couple of months ago. My car got a flat up in the canyon, and I was waiting for Triple A to come. I had Trixie and Dixie with me. That was before Dixie passed. We were on our way home after a hike in Runyon Canyon, and they were really thirsty. They’re fifteen years old, so I was getting worried. Dale was the only one who stopped to see if he could help.”
Finally some good news. “And did he? Help, I mean.”
“Yes. He was super nice. Changed the tire, gave the girls some water-they loved him, and they don’t usually like men all that much. When I told him where I lived-”
“He asked where you lived?”
“I volunteered.” I guess my expression said more than I wanted it to because she nodded. “I know, dumb move. But he seemed so… safe. Anyway, I said I couldn’t believe I got a flat less than a mile from home, and he asked me if I lived near Chloe’s building. When I told him I lived next door, he asked whether I’d ever been burglarized or if I’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around the night of Chloe’s burglary.”
I liked what I was hearing more and more. And the fact that Sheila’s statement hadn’t shown up in any of the reports less and less. “What’d you tell him?”
Sheila smiled a little. “That the most suspicious people I’ve seen in this neighborhood are the ones who live here.” Her eyes drifted back to C.J.’s apartment. “I’ve never been burglarized, but I have this little motion detector.” Sheila looked down fondly at her motion detector, who seemed to have fallen asleep on Sheila’s foot. “And back then I had her sister, Dixie, too. But I really don’t see much. I work at the library all day, and when I come home, I shut the world out.”
“So you don’t know any of your other neighbors? Other than Nikki and C.J.?”
Sheila shook her head. “Really just C.J. I met Nikki only because I was coming home with Trixie when that police officer was leaving her place. She pointed me out to him.”
“Did you ever see Dale after that day?”
“A couple of times, as he was coming or going. We just waved and said hi.”
“Then you never saw him driving up and down the street at night, looking around?”
Sheila frowned. “No. Never. But like I said, I don’t see much of anything at night. I come home, have dinner, go to bed.”
“Did you tell the police officer that you’d met Dale?”
“Oh yeah. I did. But he didn’t seem all that impressed. He seemed kind of impatient, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ You know?”
I sure did. And pretty soon, thanks to fifty-some-odd news channels, so would everyone else.
EIGHTEEN
We headed to Chloe’s building, which was next door to Sheila’s. I didn’t need to know Chloe’s address to figure out it was where she’d lived. The entire sidewalk and grass median in front of the building was filled with flowers, teddy bears, candles, and hand-painted signs that wept with love for Chloe, and anguish at having lost her. When we managed to weave our way through it all, I saw that the building was a little more worn than Sheila’s, dingy white with peeling green trim, and it was positioned so that the side faced the street and the back faced the canyon.
I wanted to get an idea of the layout, so we walked down the open corridor that led past the first-floor apartments. There were six units on the first floor and six on the second floor. Chloe and Paige lived on the second floor in apartment 208.
There was only one witness I wanted to talk to here. Others had said they’d heard Dale and Chloe fighting, but the most detailed, and damaging, statement had come from Janet Rader. She was the prosecution’s key eyewitness-or rather, ear-witness. I’d debated whether I should even bother talking to her. Even if she tried to hedge on the witness stand, the DA would get her to confirm what she’d said to the police-which was plenty. But I had to see if I could find any weak spots.
“I’ll take this one, Alex. But feel free to step in if you think I’m missing something.”
He nodded. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I waited a few seconds and raised my hand to knock again, but the door unexpectedly opened, leaving my fist in midair. A slender young man stood in the doorway. I’d expected an older woman in her seventies. I told him we were here to speak to Janet Rader about Chloe Monahan and Paige Avner.
“Oh, you want my mother.” He looked from me to Alex. “You don’t look like cops. Who are you?”
“We represent Dale Pearson, and we’re speaking to all the witnesses listed in the police reports.” I always try to make it sound like everyone else has talked to me.
“I-I don’t really think she’s up to it. Maybe she could call you?”
Alex chimed in. “It’ll take only a few minutes, really-”
A voice came from somewhere behind the young man. “Evan? Who is that?” He told her. “It’s okay, let them in. I’ll talk to them.” A taller, stocky woman with short graying hair, wearing black rubber nurse’s shoes and polyester slacks, came to the door and gestured for us to come in. “I don’t want you saying in court that I refused to talk to you.”
She’d obviously been a witness before. When witnesses refuse to talk to me, I always make them admit it to the jury. It shows they’re biased against me. Sometimes that helps. More often, it doesn’t.
Evan started to follow us into the tiny dining area off the kitchen, but Janet waved him off. “I can handle this myself. You go finish figuring out what’s wrong with my computer.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Now go.”
He went. Janet put on a pair of round wire-rimmed glasses that had been hanging from the neck of her T-shirt and gestured for us to sit down at the dining table. “I assume you want to hear about that night.”
“I do.” I took a notepad out of my purse. “How well did you know Chloe and Paige?”
“I didn’t know them beyond saying hello when we passed on the walkway. But I saw their comings and goings quite a bit. I used to be a manager at Target, but I’m retired now, so I’m home a lot.”
“Did they have a lot of visitors?”
“Not lately, no. When Chloe first moved in, she seemed to be pretty popular. A lot of young men came around.”
“How do you know they were there to see Chloe? Why not Paige?”
“Because I’d see them leave with Chloe.”
See them leave. There weren’t any windows that offered a view of the walkway. “How did you see them leave?”
“Through the peephole in my door. And sometimes I’d see her coming or going with them when I was out doing chores or laundry.”
Aha. Janet was the Gladys Kravitz of the building. Every apartment building has one. “Did you ever meet Dale Pearson?”
“Well, of course. He was here almost every day.”
“Can you describe your first meeting?” I expected to get some vague I-don’t-know type of answer. Wrong.
“He was knocking on their door, and when no one opened up, he kept on knocking and knocking. I thought he’d break the door down, so I went out and told him they weren’t home. He got really angry, said Chloe knew he was coming.”