Free Murder in Focus by Medora Sale

angle for that. I want to get all that carving and stuff.” She looked back up. “All is not lost. There’s a break coming in the cloud mass—I’ll get it then.”
    Then, with her eye more on the suddenly cloud-filled sky than on her building, she waited until the sun had broken through. She smiled, looked once more through the viewfinder, and squeezed the shutter release. There was a gentle whir as the film advanced automatically. “There,” she said happily.
    â€œNow where?” asked Sanders, his natural impatience overcoming his curiosity to see her work.
    â€œNowhere,” she said. “Not for a minute. I just have to stop down a bit. I always bracket my shots.” She bent over the lens once more, made an adjustment, checked the viewfinder, and stepped back.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” asked Sanders.
    â€œMean about what?”
    â€œWhatever that was you said.”
    â€œJust a minute.” She glanced up at the sky and squeezed the shutter release. “Just one more,” she said, “and it’s on to the Department of Justice.” She repeated the same procedure, straightened up again, and looked at the sky. The sun had ducked once more behind a scrap of cloud.
    â€œI still don’t see . . .” said Sanders, bending over her to look down at the camera.
    â€œWhat?” said Harriet, and jumped. There was a click and a whir as the film moved forward once again. “Christ! There’s a wasted shot. That’s the last time I bring you along,” she said. “You rattle me.” She looked up. Cloud had taken over the western quadrant of the sky completely. “I wonder if it’s worth waiting.”
    â€œA friend of yours?” asked Sanders curiously, pointing at a slender figure, probably male, who seemed to be rushing across the lawn in their direction.
    â€œHmm? That guy? Don’t think so,” she said, still looking skyward. “What the hell. Let’s go get a beer. Any one of those shots ought to do.”
    Superintendent Deschenes parked his car in front of a small grocery store and headed for the grubby-looking restaurant next door. It seemed to be as good a place as any for a clandestine meeting; a dog dozing on the porch of the house next door to the restaurant was the only sign of life in the village. Frank Carpenter was sitting in a booth, almost unrecognizable in jeans and a sweatshirt, chatting up the waitress. He waved cheerfully at Deschenes as he walked in. “Over here.”
    When his coffee had been slapped down in front of him, Deschenes turned to his sergeant. “You blend in well. Any luck?”
    â€œWell, you said you didn’t want me to look as if I’d just come off parade,” he said. “And yes, no problems. They were pretty easygoing about letting us have everything. We have—or they have—several descriptions of him. And they’re remarkably uniform. He’s between five-eleven and six-one, medium to slender build, has black straight hair, deep tan, dark brown eyes, and a scar that runs from his eyelid—or maybe his eyebrow—all the way to his upper temple. A man fitting that description rented the Toyota from Avis Rent-a-Car at ten o’clock Monday morning. Paid in cash in advance for a twenty-four-hour rental, identified himself with an Ontario driver’s license issued to Richard Jarvis of Toronto—I have the number here; it’s being checked at the moment—and dropped the car off again outside the agency, forfeiting his deposit. By the time Ottawa police got there, the car had been efficiently polished up, no prints. Same guy in the same car turned up in Brockville dressed as a construction worker at the office of the company working on the secure area, flashed identification as some sort of inspector to the woman on the desk. She wasn’t sure what kind, just that he was ‘real polite and knew what he was talking