Читать книгу Obsession & Eyewitness: Obsession / Eyewitness - Carol Ericson - Страница 18

PINPRICKS OF SHOCK raced along Michelle’s flesh. And then she laughed. “A camera? That little thing?”

But Colin didn’t get the joke.

He opened his hand and the black device in the middle of his palm stared at her, like an evil eye.

Her smile collapsed. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“It’s a spy camera, but you don’t have to be James Bond to get one. Anyone can order one of these off the internet.”

“And what’s it doing on the ground outside my bedroom window?” She pressed her hand over her heart as if she could rein in its wild gallop.

Colin flipped the button over with his thumbnail. “It’s sticky on this side, just like the adhesive from your windowpane. Someone stuck this—” he held it up “—onto your window.”

Michelle tried to swallow, but her dry throat wouldn’t cooperate. “D-do you think that’s what he was trying to do last night? Place the camera?”

“Place it or retrieve it.”

“Once in place, why would he try to take it back?”

“The chips in these cameras are set to record for only so many hours.” He slipped the camera into the pocket of his sweatshirt. “Once the time is up, you have to retrieve them to download your recording.”

“Recording? Like a video camera?” The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention, and she had to grind her teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Yeah, it’s a video camera, Michelle.” They’d been squatting in the sand, and now Colin rose, hooking his hand beneath her arm.

Her knees quaked and she wedged her shoulder against the stucco wall of her house. Someone had been spying on her. Before she examined the why, she wanted to know the how. The how would make her feel more in control, make her take a detour from the land of feelings to the land of reason…and action.

“How does it work? How can something so small do so much work?”

The harsh lines around Colin’s mouth softened. “It’s those tiny computer chips. The device is remotely controlled. You can hook it up to your computer and download the video. This one looks like it needs a special attachment and maybe some special software.”

“That’s amazing.” And knowledge was power. She pushed off the wall and squared her shoulders.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about cases where these spy cameras were installed in women’s dressing rooms or bathrooms. The women don’t even notice them.”

“Do you know how to download the video?”

“If I had the right stuff on my PC, I could figure it out. But I have a better idea.”

“The police?” The wobblies came back in full force as Michelle thought about the cops on the Coral Cove P.D. watching video of her coming and going from her bedroom to her bathroom.

“Too slow. Too much bureaucracy.” He took her hand and pulled her away from the side of the house. “I have a buddy in the county sheriff’s department. Played football with him in high school. He does this sort of thing all the time.”

“How soon could he find out what’s on that thing?”

“I made him look really good on the football field. If I get the camera to him this morning, he might be able to get us a read by the end of the day.”

Michelle stumbled as she rounded the corner to her front yard and Colin caught her just as he’d done every time since he’d entered her life two days ago.

“Will your friend be able to tell anything about the person who planted the camera?”

“Before I realized what it was, I had my fingers all over the surfaces. Even if the perpetrator had left any prints, which I doubt he did, I pretty much destroyed them. If we can nail down the make and model, we could start tracing that way, but there are a lot of these things around.”

“Do you think it’s him, Colin? Do you think it was the killer who planted the camera and then returned to my house to retrieve it?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but it would be really interesting to find out if Amanda had one of these stuck to her window.”

“We’ll have to find out, won’t we?” She charged up the front steps and held open the door for him.

He stopped and wedged a knuckle beneath her chin. “Feel okay now?”

“I’ll feel a lot better when we nail this sicko.”

Colin grinned and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “That’s my girl.”

Despite the ball of fear lodged in her gut, Michelle floated into the house on wisps of hope. Had Colin Roarke just called her sweetheart and his girl in the space of two minutes?

She felt like a high school girl who’d just gotten a letterman’s jacket from the star football player. Only she’d gotten something much more important than a jacket from this star football player—she’d gotten consideration and admiration. And that was better than being a cheerleader and homecoming queen all wrapped up in one.

* * *

COLIN LANDED ON her doorstep five hours later with good news. “I dropped off the camera with my buddy Jake Powell. He’s working a case today, but he thinks he can get to our little project by the end of the day.”

“Jake Powell.” Michelle bit her lower lip. “That name sounds familiar.”

“I told you he went to CCHS. Since he’s a year older than I am, he was already out of school when you were a freshman.”

“Did you tell him it was me? That I might be starring in those images?”

“Of course. He knows you were the last one to see Amanda alive, and that the murder took place on the street in front of your house.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t worry. Jake’s totally professional.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “If he’s so professional, did he ask you why you were using him instead of turning the device over to the Coral Cove P.D. or someone in his department working on the case?”

“Touché.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “In our line of work, we know when to ask questions and when to zip it.”

She dragged her gaze away from the way his jeans tightened when he had his hands bunched in his pockets. She’d spent most of this Sunday afternoon cleaning house and trying to sweep away thoughts of Colin from her mind. She understood her attraction to him. Schoolgirl crushes died hard. But she’d had a harder time figuring out why his blue eyes smoldered when he looked at her or why his hands always reached for her.

Must be that protective instinct.

She cleared her throat. “Are we going to Amanda’s house now?”

“Good, you waited for me. I was afraid you’d traipse over there on your own.”

“Me, poke around a house that someone may be watching? The same someone who’s been watching me? No, thanks.”

“I knew you were smart.” He touched his finger to her nose.

She grabbed a sweatshirt from the hook by the door because from the look of things, the sun wouldn’t be out much longer.

As she pulled the door closed, Colin snapped his fingers. “Amanda’s husband might have moved back into the house. Didn’t you tell me he moved out during the separation?”

“He’s staying at his parents’ place.” She dangled her keys. “The house is on the other side of town in that new development.”

On the drive to Amanda’s house, Michelle asked about the case against the transient. She was still holding out hope that the police had caught the killer, but she shared Colin’s gut instinct that the cops had the wrong guy.

“Did the P.D. get anything more on Chris the homeless guy?”

“Nope. I think old Chris is enjoying his three hots and a cot right now. I don’t think he’s too concerned, since he knows he’s innocent…unless the cops try to railroad him.”

“They wouldn’t do that. I know Chief Evans wants Amanda’s murder solved before the summer tourist season, but he doesn’t have anything to prove. I heard he’s applying to a few big-city departments, so he probably won’t be around much longer, anyway.”

After driving through downtown Coral Cove, Michelle took a street that wound into the low-lying hills tucked against Coral Cove’s eastern border.

Colin whistled. “These are some nice houses up here, but I still like our side of town better.”

“They definitely get more sunshine up here.” Her car rolled along newish streets that formed a neat crisscross pattern. When she rounded the corner of Amanda’s street, she swallowed hard.

How many times had she visited Amanda up here? That night Amanda should’ve reconciled with Ryan, and the two of them would’ve come back here to make up.

She suppressed a shiver. Amanda had never suspected a thing. Or had she? Had someone been sending her faintly disturbing emails? Had someone left rose petals for her? Had she been hearing noises outside her window?

If so, she’d never mentioned anything to Michelle.

She pulled alongside a curb several houses down from Amanda’s. She pointed. “That’s her house, seven twenty-two.”

“Why are we parked here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to look suspicious.” Her cheeks heated up under Colin’s eyes shining with humor. “You know. Maybe someone’s watching.”

He nodded briskly. “Good idea.”

A couple of kids riding scooters in the street stopped to stare at them, but beyond that audience, Michelle and Colin slipped through the gate leading to Amanda’s backyard unnoticed.

“Do you know which one is her bedroom window?”

“It’s at the end.”

They crossed the small yard, a little overgrown since Ryan’s absence from the house. Michelle stopped in front of the last set of windows. “There’s another window around the corner of the house.”

“Okay. Let’s check here first.” Colin wiped his hands across the soft cotton covering his stomach. Then he trailed his fingers along the glass of the window, carefully outlining a grid pattern like he had done on her window.

“I don’t feel anything. You want to check around on the ground?”

“I don’t think we’re going to get lucky twice.” She crouched down and scanned the ground below Amanda’s window. An object like that little camera would jump right out at her on this light-colored cement.

“Nothing. You?” Colin brushed his long fingers together with a frown creasing his forehead.

“No. Let’s try the other window.”

They turned the corner to the side of the house. “This is another bedroom window and the small one farther down is the bathroom.”

She gritted her teeth against the sour taste that rose from her belly when she thought about someone recording her every move in her own bedroom.

Colin rubbed his hands together before continuing his examination of the surface of the window, like a blind man reading Braille.

Michelle couldn’t help the thought that slammed into her brain—what would those fingers feel like trailing along the bare skin of her body?

She dropped to her knees and combed through the dirt in the flower bed beneath the window. No roses here, just neglected impatiens. Ryan had been the one with the green thumb.

Now Amanda was as dead as those flowers.

“There’s nothing here, Michelle. No trace evidence of any adhesive on these windows, no camera.”

She flicked a dried leaf from a drooping flower. “If this is the same guy, why would he change his mode of operation? Why watch me when he never watched Amanda?”

“We don’t know that he never watched Amanda. We can’t find any evidence he did, but that doesn’t mean much.”

“Nothing means much, including that transient hiding out at Columbella House.”

He grazed the top of her head with his knuckles, and then dropped to his haunches beside her. “I thought you were halfway to believing the cops had their man.”

“I was hoping…until we found that camera at my place. No way a guy like Chris would have the means to buy a device like that.”

“Maybe the camera is unrelated to the murder.”

She puffed at a strand of hair sticking to the lip balm on her lips. “Not likely.”

“Who knows?” He took her arm and pulled her up as he straightened to his full height. “Maybe it’s a horny student hoping to catch a glimpse of his hot algebra teacher.”

Michelle stiffened. Like mother, like daughter?

Colin swore under his breath. “I’m an idiot, Michelle. I didn’t mean…”

She held up a dirt-smudged hand. “It’s okay. My mom wasn’t even a teacher.”

He placed his palm against hers, dwarfing her hand. “Enough sleuthing for the day. While we’re waiting around for Jake’s call, I’m going to take you out to dinner…after you wash your hands.”

She slid her hand from his and wiped it on the seat of her denim shorts. “You took me out to dinner last night.”

“Technically, that was lunch. I haven’t been to Neptune’s Catch since I’ve been back.” He nudged her toward the front of Amanda’s house, and she didn’t resist.

“Neptune’s Catch is an overpriced tourist trap.”