Free Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) by Karen Cantwell

Muir on the North side of Rustic Woods. The statue had been built to honor naturalist John Muir. By my estimate of the angle the photo was taken from, Colt had probably been parked on West Shore Drive, a decent distance away. He had a good telephoto lens for sure.
    The next picture was taken at 10:22 and a woman had entered the frame. She was blond and dressed in black sweat pants and a t-shirt, which was odd considering how chilly it would have been at 10:22 that morning. From the picture, her age was hard to pinpoint, although I was guessing over thirty. The hair color appeared to be concocted from a bottle. A large, flowery tote-bag was slung over her left shoulder. In the next picture they were both standing and in the next, both sitting. The woman hugged herself, probably to keep warm. There were three more pictures of them sitting, then one of her reaching into her bag, and another of her handing him a large manila envelope.
    Five pictures, all taken at 10:25, were of the woman rising then leaving. In one of them she had turned back around and pointed to the Asian man as if she was scolding him. Another picture showed her climbing into a red sports sedan. The license plate wasn’t visible from the angle of the photograph.
    After that, Colt had apparently begun following the woman because the next picture, shot at 10:35, showed her walking into a Sunny Way grocery store. Another picture at three minutes after eleven showed her coming out of a Quickie Mart carrying a heavily loaded plastic grocery bag. The last picture, taken at eleven fifty-nine in the morning, showed the woman coming out of yet another grocery mart with a similar bag. And that ended our photo journal of Colt’s whereabouts on Friday. What happened to him after 11:59?
    “What kind of car do you think that is?” I asked Howard.
    “Mercedes E-Class. E550. Two thousand eleven.”
    I looked at him, completely taken by surprise, but understanding that there was a reason he knew this fact.
    “I’ll never know why it is that you knew that off the top of your head, will I?”
    “Nope.”
    Those were the only pictures taken with Colt’s camera the day before, so our last photo-record of his whereabouts ended at 11:59 on Friday, November 5th.
    This entire time, we’d been standing outside of Colt’s car which was parked on Sassafras Lane in front of the Fetty’s house. I felt a little self-conscious, but no one in the few cars that drove by really seemed to give us a second glance. We considered having Howard drive the car back to our house, but changed our minds. Instead, Howard left a note, wedged into the steering wheel instructing Colt to call us ASAP if he returned.
    We locked up the GTO and were ready to leave in my van when the door to the Fetty’s house opened and Christina ran out with a smile on her face, waving to us. “Barb! Howard!” She was panting by the time she reached us at the sidewalk. “You missed him, some hooligan-looking man checking out your friend’s car very suspiciously.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper when she said “suspiciously” and bobbed her head three times.
    “How long ago?” asked Howard.
    “Hour ago, maybe? Uh huh, uh huh. Yup. Hour ago.”
    “What did he look like? Height? Weight? Skin color? Anything you can tell me.”
    She scrunched up her face and looked very uncomfortable as if he were asking her to recite a monologue from Macbeth or King Lear. Then all sorts of strange sounds came out of her mouth. “Er, eh, yeuuh, er...gee, yeah, ieeee...” Her face contorted this way and that in what I assumed was her way of summoning a decent description. I thought she might just give up the ghost and say, “Hell if I know!” when she caught sight of something far down the sidewalk. “Him!” she pointed. “That’s him down there, uh huh, uh huh.”
    Howard and I both turned our heads in the direction she indicated. A young man—or perhaps even a teenager—took off running at the far end of