Monument to Murder by Margaret Truman

remembered that his cell phone had been off since he’d left Savannah. He turned it on and saw that Cynthia had tried to reach him a half-dozen times. “Call me,” she’d recorded in his voice mail. “It’s important.”
    He dialed his office.
    “Jesus, where have you been?” she said.
    “Atlanta. I told you I was coming here.”
    “Your phone was off.”
    “I know. What’s so important?”
    “Somebody broke in here last night and went through your office, left a mess.”
    “Damn! You call it in?”
    “Of course I did. Detective St. Pierre was here with a crime-scene type. They left an hour ago.”
    “I’m heading back now,” he said, “should be there by five. Hang around, huh?”
    “It gives me the creeps to be here,” she said.
    He didn’t say it, but it gave him the creeps, too.

CHAPTER   7

    Brixton decided that whoever had ransacked his office was an amateur.
    He’d broken into more than one office during his tenure as a Savannah detective and knew that a pro wouldn’t have destroyed the doorjamb during entry, nor would he have left things strewn all over the desk and floor. A pro would have jimmied the door neatly and made an attempt to put things back to prolong the discovery of the break-in.
    “What do you think they were after?” Cynthia asked as Brixton surveyed the damage.
    “I can’t imagine. Then again, maybe they weren’t after anything.”
    Her expression was quizzical.
    “From the looks of it, nothing’s missing. Any thief would have taken my surveillance equipment. My laptop’s sitting on the desk. Your computer’s still there. Nothing.”
    “Then why?”
    “Maybe somebody was sending me a message.”
    He sat behind his desk and poured them each a shot glass of scotch. “Just a possibility,” he said, and went on to tell her of the big man in the red pickup.
    “He’s been following you?”
    “It looked that way. At least that’s how I read it.”
    But then he waved away the scenario he’d just painted. He didn’t want to spook her and possibly prompt her to quit. Since coming to work at his agency four years ago, the most upsetting thing that had happened to Cynthia involved the idiot last year who’d been fired from his bartending job after Brixton proved that he was ripping off the house. The bartender had somehow discovered that it was Brixton who’d fingered him, and had showed up at the office waving a samurai sword. Cynthia had hidden under her desk while Brixton calmed the man down until he was able to lay him out with two short, well-placed punches. Then the police hauled him off. He was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and was remanded to a mental institution for evaluation. The last Brixton had heard of him was six months ago, when someone said that he’d moved to California. Perfect place for him.
    “What did St. Pierre say?” Brixton asked her.
    “Not much. The crime-scene techie dusted for prints on the door and some of the file cabinets. Detective St. Pierre wants you to call him tomorrow to file an official report. Want help cleaning up? I told Jim I’d probably be late.”
    “No, go on home. I’ll take care of it. It must have been traumatic walking in this morning and seeing this.”
    She shuddered and wrapped her arms about herself. “I was afraid he might still be here. I got out fast and called the police from the deli.”
    “Smart thinking.”
    She started to leave, stopped, and said, “I forgot to ask how things went in Atlanta.”
    “Okay. Wanda Johnson was helpful.”
    “Glad to hear it. Why don’t you get out of here, go have a nice dinner with Flo and call it a night. We can put things back together in the morning.”
    “Yeah, I might do that. See you tomorrow.”
    Her suggestion was appealing, and he almost acted upon it. But in the turmoil he’d forgotten that he was scheduled to follow the restaurant owner’s wife that night to see whether she actually did attend a weekly Tupperware party.
    According to the