Guardian of Lies by Steve Martini Page A

indignant. “I know what I took and what I didn’t take.” She looks at me, imploring. “That proves it, don’t you see? Someone else was there. Besides, I didn’t have time to take anything more even if I’d wanted to.”
    “Why not?” I ask.
    “Emerson was in the shower. I could hear the water running. I knew he would be coming out any moment. I didn’t have time to take anything else. It was all I could do to grab the coins on the desk and write the note. I barely got out the door as it was.”
    “What note?” I ask.
    She looks at me, puzzled. “I already told the police about it. The note I left for Emerson, the one on his desk. I told him I was taking some coins, but only enough to get back home to Costa Rica, and please not to follow me. I told him that if he did I would go to the police.”
    This leaves Harry and me looking at each other. We have a list of items found by investigators at the scene, supplied by the police to the public defender’s office, part of early discovery. Harry flips through the list, running his finger down each page. When he finishes the last page, he looks up at me and shakes his head.
    “There was no note, Katia. The police didn’t find any note,” I tell her.
    “I don’t understand,” she says.
    “Has anyone explained to you what the investigators found at the scene?”
    She shakes her head. Katia is in the dark. Even the public defender hasn’t told her everything.
    “They found Emerson Pike’s body on the floor in the study. The maid, did you know her?”
    Katia nods.
    “She was stabbed to death downstairs. They found her body at the foot of the stairs, near the dining room.”
    “Poor lady. Emerson called her to come to work that evening,” she says, “to clean up after I cooked. It was late. She didn’t want to be there. You remember?” She looks at me. “The plantains.”
    “Yes.”
    “I prepared the meal that afternoon. The guests came and left. Only two couples. Emerson wanted her to clean up.” Katia’s talking about the maid. “I told him it could wait until morning. But he refused, said no, and he called her.” She slumps back into the hard metal chair, realizing for the first time the enormity of what has happened.
    The police have questioned the guests, but according to the reports, they know nothing.
    “There were fourteen drawers of coins.” Harry eases off the subject. “The locks on the drawers were broken, and according to the police all of those coins are missing.”
    “I didn’t take them,” she says.
    “I know.” Harry is starting to believe her. It’s the problem of there being almost too much evidence, when all the ducks line up too neatly.
    “Both Pike and the maid were stabbed with a knife from the kitchen downstairs,” he says. “The police found it. There were no fingerprints on the weapon. Whoever used it washed and dried it, then left it on the sink. There was just a single tiny spot of blood near the handle. What they call a trace. The blood matched that of the maid.”
    “I don’t understand,” she says.
    “The police are assuming that whoever killed Emerson fled down the stairs and ran into the maid. They may not have wanted to kill her, but they panicked. They had to kill her in order to escape.”
    “What does this have to do with me? I didn’t go out that way. I went out through the garage, down the back stairs. I had to use the remote control from Emerson’s car to open the gate.”
    “And how do we prove that?” says Harry.
    “My fingerprints. They must be on the door to the garage,” she says.
    “Unfortunately, your prints are all over the house,” says Harry. “You lived there for several weeks. Even if we found your prints on the back door, there’s no way to prove when they were placed there. It could have been that night, or it could have been two weeks earlier.”
    You can see the hope as it dies in Katia’s eyes. Then another spark: “The remote,” she says. “The one for the gate