Free Caged by Hilary Norman Page A

way of getting that from Joseph Mulhoon, at least not yet, the gardener – who’d checked out as a regular old guy – still on a ventilator at Miami General.
    ‘Maybe Moore was nosing around before Mulhoon,’ Martinez said, ‘and she’s too embarrassed to tell us.’
    ‘Doesn’t ring true to me,’ Sam said.
    ‘Think she’s been spending time there?’
    ‘Or maybe letting someone else do that?’ Sam said.
    The blood and cocaine on both their minds again.
    ‘Maybe she was meeting her lover,’ Martinez said. ‘Not exactly a love nest, but it takes all kinds.’
    ‘She said she thought the place was spooky.’
    ‘You thinkin’ she’s a suspect?’
    ‘Uh-uh.’ Sam shrugged. ‘Nothing’s impossible, as we know.’
    ‘I’d buy Beatty over Moore,’ Martinez said.
    ‘That’s just because you didn’t like him,’ Sam said.
    Both of them had checked out, too.
    ‘Bet he doesn’t consent to a swab,’ Martinez said.
    His cell phone rang.
    ‘Hey, Jessie,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
    ‘I’m so sorry, Al.’ She sounded upset.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ He felt his heart rate speed up.
    ‘Nothing except I have to work late,’ Jess said. ‘One of the girls lost a bunch of files on her PC, and I offered to help her after hours, but then I suddenly thought maybe I shouldn’t have offered without checking – ’ she lowered her voice almost to a whisper – ‘with my fiancé first.’
    Sam, glancing across, couldn’t help but see the smile on his friend’s face.
    The kind of smile that made everyone feel good.

TWENTY-THREE
    E lliot Sanders called, back in the office, to say that the glue analysis was going to take time, that they might never discover which brand had been used on the victims.
    ‘One thing, though,’ the ME said. ‘Unless it came from some big industrial-size container, it would be reasonable to say that the quantities needed for the job might have seemed unusual to a salesperson if someone purchased it from a store.’
    ‘If it was bought online,’ Sam said, ‘that’s going to be a whole lot harder to track down.’
    ‘Can’t help you there,’ Sanders said.
    Tracing the origins of the plastic dome-shaped cover was proving no easier.
    ‘I’m still thinking,’ Martinez said, ‘it was something made for display, like maybe at exhibitions.’
    ‘It could be a theatre prop,’ Beth Riley said. ‘Even a movie prop.’
    ‘Maybe it’s a component in some bigger scientific thing we can’t even begin to picture,’ Mary Cutter suggested.
    ‘Jeez,’ Martinez said. ‘Now all we gotta do is identify “thing”.’
    They’d drawn up chairs around Sam’s desk in the corner, Riley sitting below his old Florida Grand Opera poster for Aida .
    ‘Maybe it’s from a sci-fi movie,’ she said.
    ‘Turn it upside down – ’ Sergeant Alvarez, just arriving, glanced again at the photos on the cork board beside the poster – ‘and it could be a giant salad bowl.’
    ‘It would have no base,’ Sam said dryly. ‘It would rock.’
    ‘It kind of reminds me of something they might keep weird insects in at a zoo, or maybe in a lab,’ Riley mused. ‘It could get real hot and humid under there.’
    ‘Sam said right off the victims looked like specimens,’ Mike Alvarez said.
    ‘Or exhibits,’ Sam said. ‘So I guess “display” seems to be the link.’
    ‘I like the movie props idea too,’ Martinez said.
    ‘Let’s get on all that then.’ Sam got to his feet, feeling the need to energize again. ‘Movie sets, zoos, labs, exhibition companies – anyone who might have sold off our “thing”, or might be missing it.’
    ‘On it.’ Riley was up too.
    ‘Could just as well have come off a dump.’ Martinez saw Sam’s face, held up his hands. ‘I know, we gotta look anyway.’
    They were no closer to finding the actual crime scene. The Easterman house had yielded even less than the former gallery, and though their interviews with relatives, friends and colleagues were still