The St. Paul Conspiracy Read Online Free

Sometimes I would bring rolls. She was a nice lady.”
    “Did she ever mention anyone who might be after her? That she was concerned about? Was there ever any hate mail lying around? Disturbing phone messages? Anything like that?”
    The woman’s eyes were wide with innocence. “No.”
    “How about people she saw, dated? Ever talk about any of that?”
    “We never talked about things like that. I didn’t know her like that. I might see her in the morning and say, ‘You have a date last night?’ She would just kind of smile and nod.”
    “Was she seeing anyone right now?”
    “She might have been, but I don’t know who it was.”
    “Is it ‘might’? Or do you know?”
    Terror edged into her eyes. “I think she was seeing someone. Yes.”
    “Why do you think so?”
    “When she’s dating someone, she gets up really late. She works late and I think her dates are late.”
    “And if she’s not seeing anyone?” Lich asked.
    “Then she’s a pretty early riser, has coffee, reads the paper, exercises. But if she had a date, it seemed like she liked to sleep in late.”
    “Anything else that tells you she was seeing someone,” Mac continued.
    “No, just that she seemed to be sleeping in late.”
    “And you don’t know who she’s seeing?”
    “No. She never said. If he ever stayed the night, he was gone before I ever got here.”
    “How many days a week do you come?” Lich asked.
    “Three.”
    “Three?” Mac asked, “Seems like a lot for someone who lives alone.”
    Gloria said, “Ms. Daniels, she liked things perfect.”
    “Neat freak, huh.” Lich said.
    “Not so much that as just a perfectionist,” Gloria answered. “Just the way she was.”
    “When you arrived here this morning, did anything seem out of place, you know,” Lich asked, and then pointed up, “other than the obvious?”
    Gloria vigorously shook her head. “No, everything seemed pretty normal.”
    “How’d you get in?” Mac inquired.
    “Front door. I have a key.”
    Mac went to look at the front door for a second. There was a dead bolt, fairly new. He examined the lock and the door. It was clean, no scratches, no signs of forced entry. He walked back to the kitchen.
    “Gloria, is your key for the deadbolt?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was the deadbolt locked this morning?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is that a new lock?”
    “It was put in a few months ago.”
    Mac looked past her to a stairway going down the back. “Is the back entrance down those stairs?”
    The cleaning lady nodded.
    Mac and Lich went down the steps and looked at the back door. Unlike the front door, the knob was very old. There was a deadbolt, but it wasn’t locked. Through the door was a single-car garage with a garage door and a dead-bolted side door to the left. This dead bolt was newer looking. As with the front door, there was no sign of forced entry.
    “Wonder if the same key opens both?” Lich said.
    “Let’s see.”
    They headed back up, and the cleaning lady confirmed that both doors had the same key. Mac did some quick mental gymnastics. No evidence of forced entry. No evidence of robbery. Maybe somebody had a key?
    Just then a couple of other younger detectives from robbery homicide showed. Mac chuckled. Bill Clark and Al Green looked like a couple of IBM guys. They were tall, with short black hair, blue suits, and red ties.
    “I must not have gotten the memo.”
    Green and Clark at first looked blankly at him. Then they looked at each other and just shook their heads, “Fuck you, Mac,” Green replied. “The captain ordered us down to give you a hand. So, what do you need smart ass?”
    Mac chuckled and gave them the rundown on what they had so far, which wasn’t much. “Let’s start door knocking on all these brownstones and checking the apartments across the street. Use some uniform guys, and I’ll get Peters to send some more down.” Mac was also thinking the newsies would be there soon, and he would need to control them and the crowd. The