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“I’ll clear the table, Betsy.” Sam wagged his finger at Mrs. McKittrick when she opened her mouth to argue. “Please, let me help. My mother raised me right.” He gathered all the plates, put them in the sink, then joined Kit at the coffeemaker. “What was that about?” he whispered.
Kit looked over her shoulder. “Come with me.”
He followed her out the kitchen door onto the back porch, shivering at the chilly wind. He hadn’t brought a coat outside, but Kit seemed impervious to the cold so he said nothing.
“Connor and I have narrowed our suspects to four of the nurses or nursing assistants at Shady Oaks,” she said.
Sam knew he should be surprised that one of the nurses was involved, but he really wasn’t. “For which crime?”
“All of them. Crawford couldn’t have killed Frankie. He was dead before noon on Saturday and Frankie was killed Saturday night. Crawford could have stolen the coins, but he couldn’t have killed Benny, again, because he was already dead. Remember the vase that Evans mentioned in the interview this morning?”
“Of course.”
“Where is it?” she asked. “Because it wasn’t in Benny’s room at the time of his death.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, considering her question while she patiently waited. “Someone took it, presumably to watch whatever video the camera had captured so they could get the combination to Benny’s safe. Crawford?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. He would have needed to watch the video in Benny’s room, and no one was in there long enough to do that prior to Saturday at four fifteen a.m., when the coins were taken out of the building. The vase was planted on Wednesday and we never saw anyone on video removing it. It could have been removed after the camera was disabled sometime Friday afternoon, a few hours before Frankie was killed, but Crawford had checked into that cheap motel by then. He could have left the motel and returned to Shady Oaks, but we’ve examined the camera feeds from every entry and exit point and Crawford doesn’t show up in any of them. I’m assuming whoever stole the coins had to have viewed the video from the nanny-cam vase. They wouldn’t have known exactly when Benny would open the safe, so they’d be fast-forwarding until they found it. They could have been searching through days of tape.”
Clearly, she’d thought this out.
Sam let the logistics play out in his own mind. “So they removed the memory card from the vase, took it with them and viewed it somewhere else, then came back early Saturday morning to steal the coins. Why not just steal the coins directly after killing Frankie? Why did they come back?”
“Good question. I don’t think Frankie was a target for murder. I think Frankie surprised his killer. His killer was rattled enough to risk going into Georgia’s apartment to steal a knife to cover up what they had done.”
Sam played through the scenario in his mind. “That makes sense. His killer suspected that Frankie knew something about the planned theft, had maybe hidden some kind of evidence in his apartment, so they ransacked it. But how would they know that Frankie suspected? What would have made them think he had evidence that they needed to find?”
“Good questions. Maybe Frankie confronted them? Or maybe Frankie said something to Benny, and word got to the thief? They were upset with each other, Benny and Frankie. Benny might have let something slip to the wrong person. Like I said, I don’t think Frankie’s killer intended to kill him when they entered his apartment. They picked the time during Eloise’s birthday party for their search. Frankie discovered them and…”
Sam sighed. “If it was a staff member on duty, they would have had someplace they were supposed to be. They either used their break or slipped away to search Frankie’s place. They couldn’t risk discovery or have anyone notice they weren’t at their duty station. So that might be why they came back later to steal the coins from Benny.”
“And then Benny got agitated on Monday when Frankie was found and started saying that it was all his fault.”
Sam swallowed. “He wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Or maybe he was. He might have known that Frankie suspected someone was after the coins. Someone that Benny didn’t want to distrust. Frankie and Benny had argued the week before they died, right?”
“Eloise said that, yes. Benny said it, too, in his own way.”
“I read Goddard’s report of his interview with Georgia. She didn’t believe that Benny was aware that the coins were missing.”
“I think he would have said something if they had been. He would have called his daughter or granddaughter right away. So Benny didn’t know his coins were already gone, but he might have known who it was that Frankie had suspected?”
“Maybe. Lots of maybes, but that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?”
Sam closed his eyes. “It does. That means Benny was killed to shut him up?”
“I think so,” she said so gently that his eyes burned.
“Who?” he asked hoarsely. “Who are you looking at?”
“Someone entered his room at five a.m. yesterday, but they’d disguised themselves and used Devon Jones’s key card. Devon has an alibi, though—she was at the ER with her daughter. Whoever entered Benny’s room was around five-ten, but they wore platform shoes, so they could have been a few inches shorter. The nurses on duty that night were Janice, Roxanne, Amy, and Kaley. I’m starting to think it was Roxanne.”
He tried to consider it logically, shoving his emotion aside. “She had opportunity, for sure. You’re thinking that she’s been stealing for a while, like Emma’s father. Traveling and stealing.”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Her surface background check came back clean, but I’ll dig deeper into her history and check with her former assignments. I can do that from Shady Oaks tonight.”
Sam lifted his brows. “Shady Oaks?”
