Free The Probability of Murder by Ada Madison Page A

bag partway, checking that indeed it was chock-full of bills. Ariana had sufficiently convinced me of its evil nature that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I found it had all turned to ashes. Glowing ashes at that.
    Reflexively, I looked down at my purse every time a uniformed officer passed in front of me. What was the real reason I’d copied the names and numbers? The closest I could come to an answer was that, somehow, giving up complete control of Charlotte’s case hadn’t been an option.
    Charlotte had gone from “friend” to “case” in a matter of hours, I noted.
    The flowers in the fabric print of my purse seemed to radiate heat and warm my leg. In my oversensitive state, my purse seemed to be glowing from the ink on the copy paper. When I lose my sense of reason and give in to fantasy, I do it in a big way.
    I couldn’t have felt worse if I’d skimmed a few hundred off the top of the money bag I’d unlocked. No wonder most criminals were caught; their guilt must give them away every time.
    I thought about how Charlotte would never carry a fabric purse like mine. I had them in all colors and prints, to match the season—today’s was basically brown, with tiny green leaves in a William Morris–like design—but myelegant friend used only classic, dark leather bags. Except for the low-end duffel now on my lap.
    Whirrrr. Whirrrr. Whirrrr.
    The sound of helicopter blades rang through the hallway. This time, it wasn’t my imagination that all eyes turned to me.
    A call from Bruce to my cell. “Sorry,” I said to all within earshot, trying to shrink my already small frame.
    “We’re walking in,” Bruce said. “Just checking how you are.”
    I pictured the three guys in their approach shoes, a cross between a trainer and a walking boot, making their way from where they parked the car to the base of the climb. Unlike simply crossing a parking lot in front of the supermarket, the approach to the base of a mountain could be an arduous trip in itself, with rough terrain. It could be as long as my entire morning run. When I did a morning run, that is. This approach would take only about an hour, Bruce had said, as if it were no more trouble than getting the mail at the end of a driveway.
    “Don’t back step the rope,” I said to him, showing off my short glossary of climbing terms.
    “Uh, right,” Bruce said, and I knew I’d revealed my ignorance of context. Too late I realized I’d simply told him not to entangle his foot and fall upside down.
    I started to sign off with Bruce, ready to worry about snowstorms at high altitudes. If I was lucky, he’d be able to connect by cell, but nothing was guaranteed on a mountain, and I’d come to believe that Bruce liked that feeling. “Conquering planet Earth,” I’d called it.
    A shadow crossed my lap. I looked up to see Virgil, his bulk somehow threatening today, as if he were wearing a long, black hood and carrying a scythe.
    “It’s Bruce,” I said, showing him my cell phone. “He’s off on a climb with Kevin and Eduardo.”
    “Yeah, I know. No accounting for some people’s idea of fun, huh? Harnesses and hitches.”
    Virgil had also picked up some climbing vocabulary, though he was as likely as I was to strike out for a mountain to scale.
    The astute detective sensed the weight of the duffel as I tried to rise from the seat gracefully while clicking off my phone.
    When he took the bag from my hands, I flinched. If he noticed, he didn’t mention it.
    “Heavy,” he said. “A present for me?”
    “Sort of.”
    For the second time in less than a day—sixteen hours, to be exact—I sat in an interview room across from a Henley PD homicide detective.
    Virgil didn’t show as much surprise as I’d expected when he saw the contents of the duffel bag, certainly not as much as Ariana or I had. It was as if he’d known all along that I’d be bringing it his way.
    “You’re not surprised?” I asked.
    “You’ve had this since when?” he