Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

drove me back to campus and waited while I picked up my belongings. Liz and Clinton were in her office, and I told them what had happened.
    Clinton shook his head sadly. “Such violence because of such a precious object.”
    Liz said, “Yeah. As the newly minted girlfriend of a cop, I’m finding that’s m ore the norm than I ever knew.”

    It turned out that Kevin had been on the scene that day, on the other side of the police blockade. As soon as he saw Jennifer, he’d jumped in his car and gotten out of there. I didn’t blame him.
    Kendall continued to refuse to talk, and his attorney entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. The judge denied bond, though, stating that Kendall was a flight risk since he wasn’t a U.S. citizen and that he was still a danger to Jennifer. So he was sitting in jail until trial.
    Kevin and Jon believed they had enough evidence for an airtight case. An examination of Kendall’s financial records showed that he was indeed near bankruptcy, and his house was in foreclosure. They also found several checks written to Wally from Kendall’s business account. Stan the Junk Man was able to show from his records that each of those checks was written immediately after Wally had been on a hoard clean with Stan. So it looked like Wally had been taking valuable things from hoards and selling them to Kendall, who then re-sold at a profit. It had been going on for about a year. There wasn’t any way to tell how Kendall and Wally had come to know each other, since Wally was dead and Kendall wasn’t talking.
    About a week after the showdown at Kendall’s shop, Jon showed up at the library. Liz wasn’t expecting him, and the way her face lit up when he approached the reference desk was wonderful to see. Jon winked at her and grinned at me. “Hey, Deputy Brodie. How’ve you been?”
    I laughed. “Happily retired from police work, thank you. What brings you here? As if I didn’t know?”
    “Just came to say hi to my best girl. And, to give you some good news.”
    “Give me good news? What?”
    Jon looked smug. “We’ve got our murder weapon.”
    “Excellent! When did that happen?”
    “Several days ago, some sanitation workers turned in a gun they found in a dumpster near Brashier’s shop. It was registered to Michael Lindsey, but it had Kendall’s prints all over it. We got the ballistics report this morning, and the gun matches the bullets from Lindsey, Wallace, and Brashier.”
    “That’s great .”
    “Yep. As it turns out, Kendall has an airtight alibi for Wallace’s murder. That’s the one thing he has told us. So we think now that maybe Kendall sent Lindsey with Wallace that morning to search, and Lindsey shot Wallace when they fought over the page. Then Kendall probably killed Lindsey because the page was torn, and he didn’t get the other fragment out of Wallace’s hand. He dumped Lindsey’s body on Brashier’s property to point a finger at Brashier because he didn’t like Brashier. Plus, according to some of the other book dealers, they’d accused each other of dirty dealings in the past. And, obviously, Kendall shot Brashier when they argued, and he dumped the gun shortly after he left Brashier’s shop.”
    “So you have to drop the charges against Kendall for Wally’s murder.”
    “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. Between the evidence and Paulo’s testimony, we’ve got him at the very least for Brashier’s murder, and then of course there’s Jennifer’s kidnapping, which was witnessed by an entire SWAT team.” Jon stuck out his hand. I shook it, and he gave me another grin. “Case closed.”

February

    It was Valentine’s Day. I leaned my head against the cool window of the bus and watched Wilshire Blvd. crawl by. Traffic was heavier than usual – probably guys who’d forgotten the date and were out buying last-minute cards and flowers. I’d gotten Pete a card, and a nice gift – new hiking boots – both of which were hidden in the trunk of my VW at home. I’d considered sending him flowers at work, but then decided against it. Pete hadn’t said a word to indicate that he remembered what day it was, and he’d invited Kevin and Abby to dinner. They’d accepted, which wasn’t that strange – I knew from living with them that neither Kevin nor Abby were fans of Valentine’s Day and its crass commercialism. But the first time we dated, Pete had made a big deal of Valentine’s Day, even sending me flowers at work. So I had no idea what he