A Whisker of a Doubt

by Cate Conte

  She answered on the first ring. Her wild red hair was tamed by a green scarf, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. When she saw it was me, she visibly relaxed. “Maddie! Hi, sweetie. Come in.” She kissed my cheek, then stepped back and clasped my hands. “You’re not upset with me, are you?”

  “Upset? Why?” I asked.

  “Ah, well. Because I’ve been a bit of a liar.” She motioned me inside and closed the door. “My leg and all.”

  “Whitney. Whatever is going on there, it’s really not my business.”

  “But it’s not right. I know that. But my ex-husband was completely at fault for what happened, and to add insult to injury he was trying to deny me health-care coverage as part of our divorce. It was dragging out and I needed to make sure I had insurance. I was very upset and I took it to the extreme. Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course,” I said, still not sure what I was forgiving her for. She wasn’t committing insurance fraud on me. “Listen. I need to talk to you though. It’s about Virgil.”

  Whitney took a breath. “I wondered when you’d come. Do you want to sit?”

  I shook my head, choosing to stay at the door just in case. “Is Paul here?”

  “No. He had a meeting in Boston tonight.”

  I looked her straight in the eye. “I know about Virgil’s alter ego. And that Paul represented him,” I said.

  She nodded slowly. “I figured as much.”

  “Why did you pretend to hate him?”

  “Because he didn’t want anyone to know about his other career and how successful he’d become. June wouldn’t have liked it,” she said, making a face. “Why that man put up with her.… Anyway. He liked the anonymity too. He was very modest and didn’t want attention for helping animals. He just wanted to help them. It became very awkward for him when I started dating Paul. He did think about changing agents, but I swore I’d never tell anyone. And I kept my promise.”

  I watched her carefully, trying to gauge if she was telling the truth. “But you were over there yelling at them. We saw you.”

  “I was yelling at June,” she corrected.

  “Where did you meet Paul?” I asked.

  “At a fundraising event in Boston last year. It was for animals.” She smiled wryly. “Virgil sent him.”

  I leaned against the door, still trying to process how very wrong I’d been about Virgil Proust. And not that it should change how I felt about his death—no one deserved to die that way regardless of their beliefs—but it seemed like a greater loss than ever when I looked at all he’d been doing for the animals.

  “So was Paul still representing him? Nothing had changed?”

  Whitney frowned. “Of course not. They were friends and business associates. Why?” It seemed to dawn on her as she was saying it. “Oh, Maddie. You thought Paul or I … I can’t believe you would think that.” She looked so disappointed, I felt even worse.

  “No, Whitney, please. I was reaching. Trying to think of anything that made sense,” I admitted. “And when I realized your leg was actually not damaged, I started wondering why you would fake that. It was an awful thing to even consider, and I’m so sorry.”

  We stared at each other for interminable seconds. I waited for her to throw me out, but instead, she started to giggle. I watched in fascination as the giggles turned into laughter until she was nearly bent over holding her stomach she was laughing so hard.

  I had no idea what was so funny and was starting to wonder if the stress of all this might have gotten to her when she straightened up and wiped her eyes, regaining control.

  “I’m sorry. That was really funny, though. I love that you think we’re that devious. Paul will think it’s funny too. Not that any of this is funny,” she hastened to add. “Besides, the night Virgil died, Paul was off-island. At a meeting in Boston with his art cronies. And I was”—she winced a little—“at Blue Heaven. It was tango night. I got home right before I saw you, when all the police cars had shown up. I can definitely prove it.”

  Tango night. I resisted the urge to laugh too, at the ridiculousness of all of it. “I never believed Katrina did it anyway, but now that I know the truth about Virgil, it’s even crazier anyone would think that. So I’m reaching.”

  She watched me, the remnants of laughter fading from her face. “When you put it that way,” she said, “it is hard to fathom. Are you going to come sit? You’re making me nervous standing by the door.”

  I followed her into the living room. “I wanted to be able to run if you and Paul decided to try to kill me if I had uncovered your crimes,” I said, only half kidding.

  “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that,” Whitney said. “So I guess I’ll make some tea.” She went to the stove to boil water.

  “Thanks.” I thought about my list at home and figured it was worth asking. “What’s up with Harvey? Do you know anything about him?”

  “Harvey Hackett?” Whitney glanced at me.

  I nodded, not wanting to give too much away.

  She made a face and turned back to her task. “I find him spineless. Says whatever pleases the person in front of him at the moment.”

  “Really?”

  “For sure. But too spineless to kill anyone, either.”

  “Harvey was the one who brought the cat problem to the Audubon board. And who started the poison petition.”

  Whitney’s hands stilled. She turned to me slowly. “I’m sorry?”

  I spread my hands wide. “It’s true.”

  “But he … well, Monica loves the cats. She definitely wears the pants over there. Come to think of it, that’s a common theme in this neighborhood,” she mused.

  “But what did he have to gain by lying about it and being against them?”

  Whitney carried over two mugs of tea and sat down, handing me one. “That,” she said, “could be the million-dollar question.”

  “Do you think Virgil threatened to tell Monica what he’d done?” I asked, taking the mug. “And maybe she wouldn’t have let it slide?”

  Whitney stared at me. “So you think Harvey killed Virgil?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “But I’m running out of suspects, and Virgil did threaten him.”

  “Well if he did,” Whitney said, “he would’ve had to sneak up on him and do it quick. Like I said, the man was spineless.”

  Chapter 45

  Sunday, January 3: twelve days after the murder

  1 p.m.

  The next afternoon I paused outside the grooming shop, peering inside. Lucas was in there—his Subaru was out front, so I’d already known that—and I was trying to decide about going in. I didn’t see anyone else inside, which was good. I definitely didn’t want an audience. I was more nervous about this than I’d been for our first real date, and I’d been pretty nervous then.

  I hadn’t called. I didn’t want to give him a heads-up in case I chickened out or changed my mind. But it was time to clear the air. My visit to Whitney’s yesterday had left me more frustrated than anything and made me realize I wasn’t getting anywhere with the other puzzle in my life. Maybe if I cleared this up, I’d have more brainpower to spend on Virgil Proust. Whichever way this went.

  Squaring my shoulders, I marched to the shop door and pulled it open. Lucas glanced up from where he’d been stocking some kind of shampoo on a shelf, and his eyes widened when he saw me.

  “Maddie. Hi. What are you … I’m glad to see you.”

  “Hi,” I said, nervously shifting my weight from foot to foot. “Sorry if this is a bad time.”

  “Not a bad time at all.”

  I glanced down as the dog I’d seen with Lucas on the street the other day trotted over to me. “Hi, Oliver,” I said, bending down and offered my hand for him to sniff. He did, gingerly at first, then licked my fingers, looking up at me, tail wagging. I glanced up at Lucas. “If you have an appointment, I can come back.”

  Lucas shook his head slowly. “I’m not grooming him. He’s mine.”
>
  “Oh.” I shook off the way that made me feel. He’d gotten a dog and I hadn’t even known about it. When had he had time to get a dog anyway?

  “He’s the reason I was gone,” Lucas said.

  My hand stilled on Oliver’s head. I rose slowly. “What do you mean?”

  He held up a finger, went to the door and turned the closed sign around, then locked it. “Let’s go out back.”

  I followed him into the little room he used as a kitchen/office, Oliver at my heels. He opened the fridge, pulled out a water, and offered it to me. I shook my head. He opened it and took a swig. I could tell he was having a hard time figuring out how to begin.

  “So,” I prompted, sitting down at the little table.

  Lucas sat across from me. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I just needed to know. So tell me.”

  He smiled, a little. “Fair enough. I did go to Boston for the gig and the conference. And the ferries did shut down.”

  I waved my hand. “I know all that.”

  “So while I was waiting for them to get up and running again, I got a phone call. From my ex.”

  I could feel my heart sink. This was one of the scenarios that had been running through my head. He’d never really told me why he’d come out to Daybreak, other than he loved islands and wanted to open his business here. He’d wanted a challenge, he said. But I’d made up other reasons, and of course one of them was that he’d had his heart broken and was looking to get far away from whoever broke it and have a fresh start.

  And when he was gone, I imagined that she’d realized her mistake and called, begging him to come home and take her back. So of course, he had.

  I didn’t say any of this. Instead I said, “Your ex what? Wife? Girlfriend?”

  “Girlfriend. I would’ve told you if I’d been married before, Maddie. Give me some credit. Anyway, she told me she was getting rid of Oliver.” At the sound of his name, Oliver’s tail started to thump again.

  I blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Oliver was our dog together. When we split, I wanted to take him but she—Amy—wouldn’t let me. He was always more my dog, and I knew she just did it to hurt me, but she threatened to take me to court and everything if I didn’t let her keep him.” His eyes flashed as he spoke, though I don’t think he realized it. “So I felt like I didn’t have a choice. The only thing I asked her was if she could please call me if she ever couldn’t keep him. She agreed.”

  “How long ago did you … break up?” I asked.

  “Right before I came here. So two years or so. And I never heard from her. Until the night before I thought I was coming home from Boston. She called and said she was getting married and moving to Texas. And she couldn’t take Oliver because her boyfriend’s dog didn’t like him.” He grimaced. I could tell what he thought of that. Pretty much the same thing I would’ve thought of that. Bye, honey, nice knowing you.

  “And she wanted you to come get him?”

  Lucas nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Why did that have to be such a big secret?” I remembered Craig’s words: He was in jail, Maddie.

  “It didn’t,” Lucas admitted. “But I felt like it wasn’t really the thing to tell you over the phone. That my ex-girlfriend had called and I’d dropped everything and run to Virginia. Since we were still … new, I didn’t want to wreck things.” He moved his shoulders in a miserable half shrug. “Not like I didn’t anyway, but I had good intentions.”

  “I think you know me well enough by now to know that I would do anything for an animal, so I wouldn’t have thought it was weird at all.”

  “Well, there’s more. I’m sorry, this is kind of a hard story for me to tell…” He cleared his throat. “Amy isn’t the most stable person in the world, and when I heard her on the phone I got the sense she wasn’t telling me something. So I booked a flight out the next day, and when I showed up at her place, Oliver was already gone. Her boyfriend had dropped him off at a local shelter after she called me. So I asked if the boyfriend was home.”

  I winced. “Oh no. You didn’t.”

  He nodded. “I did. Got in a fight with the guy. Got a couple of good punches in too. But the drama queen called the cops and I got hauled off for assault and battery. I accidentally slugged the cop too, so that didn’t help.”

  My eyes widened. Lucas was not a violent guy. I’d never even seen him raise his voice. “God, Lucas. So what happened?”

  “Like I said, I got hauled off to jail,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “And the worst, most stupid part of all is that I lost my cell phone during this … altercation. I had no numbers to call anyone. And I only had one credit card with me, and it didn’t have enough money on it to pay the twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine I got. They also sentenced me to ten days in jail. I guess I was lucky. They could’ve given me up to a year. First offense and all that.”

  “Lucas, why didn’t you call a lawyer or call … information or something for Grandpa’s house number? Or your family? Isn’t your family down there?” I couldn’t believe he’d let this get so out of hand. It sounded completely nuts. But if I was honest with myself, I could see exactly how one thing that went sideways could lead to another, and another—a total domino effect of insanity that no one could predict.

  He sighed. “I used my one call to call the shelter where she said they’d dropped Oliver off at. But they had no dog that came in with that description.”

  I was feeling really, really bad. The whole time I’d been cursing Lucas, railing at myself for trusting him, and thinking mean, horrible thoughts about the whole situation, he’d been suffering. “I … can’t believe you didn’t try to call me,” I said finally. “At any point. I could’ve helped.”

  He gave me a look. “You had a lot going on at the time. And I didn’t want to freak you out. That’s not the kind of thing you call a new girlfriend with. Plus, how many scams have you heard about where some guy calls you from somewhere else and asks for money for some sad story?”

  That made me laugh, but I wasn’t sure it was appropriate to laugh right then, so I pretended to have a coughing fit. “I think that’s for like, fake men. You know, Russian bots or whatever.”

  “Still. Calling you for money was probably the last thing I would’ve thought of doing.”

  “Okay, well why didn’t you call and ask for help with Oliver? And so what happened, anyway? Are you going to finish the story?”

  “Yes. Right. So after I got out, I went straight to the shelter that I’d spoken to. I didn’t know where else to go, and I wanted to see for myself that he wasn’t there. I didn’t know if Amy had told me the wrong place on purpose, or if her boyfriend told her the wrong place—on purpose or otherwise.”

  “God. It had been a week. He could’ve been adopted.” Or worse, but I didn’t say that. I looked down at the pup, who was curled into a content ball at Lucas’s feet. Pit bulls still got a bad rap, especially down south.

  “I know. It was probably the worst experience of my life. And then thinking about how I’d surely screwed things up with you—” He shook his head. “But I didn’t know what else to do besides try to go track him down. Otherwise I would go back and finish what I started with that piece of … anyway. So when I’d called the first time I’d told the woman on the phone what happened and she said she would keep her eye out. But when I went back, no one had seen him. I checked all the cages just to make sure. I was really bummed. Just as I was about to leave and start hunting him down through other shelters, this woman races in. She’s one of the volunteers—she was there when I’d called the first time and heard the story. The woman on duty called her to see if she’d found out anything while I looked around for myself.” He smiled that adorable half smile that had won my heart in the first place and still made it skip today. “And she apparently has contacts at a bunch of shelters. She’d been inquiring about Oliver because it really bothered her. When she heard I was there, she couldn’t believe it be
cause she had a lead, but they had no way of getting in touch with me—”

  “Because you’d lost your cell phone,” I finished.

  He nodded. “And of course I couldn’t go back to Amy’s house to look for it or I’d get arrested again. So I had to go get another one when I got back.” He reached into his pocket and held up the newest iPhone. “At least I got the new version, right? So anyway. This woman, Kristy, she had a friend who’d just taken in a foster. Older pittie, terrified of the shelter so someone took pity on him and took him home. He’s only eight. Not so old, but … too old for that crap.”

  “Of course,” I murmured. I’d barely noticed that I’d relocated myself to the floor next to Oliver and was stroking his soft fur. He rolled over, tail thumping, and offered me his belly. What a sweetie. “Why did she do that?” I asked. “Your ex?”

  “Because she’s heartless,” he answered. “Like I said, she didn’t care like I did. He was a trophy to her. A thing she used to get even with me for messing up her life. But Ollie was with me for a long time … through a lot of stuff. It nearly killed me to lose him.”

  “I bet. So you went to this foster home?” I prompted.

  He nodded. “Kristy called the woman and she said to come right over. It was him. When I got there, he was so happy to see me.” He reached down to rub Oliver’s head. “And it made the whole debacle worth it.”

  “I’m sure,” I said softly. I could feel my throat choking up with tears. He did exactly what I, or Katrina, or Adele, or any of us would have done. Maybe more. Going to jail must’ve been horrible. “I totally would’ve helped if you’d called,” I said, looking up at him finally. “I wish you had. You should’ve just … trusted me.” As I said the words, I was cringing inside. I’d been so ready to believe the worst about him. But in my defense, staying quiet and disappearing were never good things to do.

  “I know. The longer it went on too, the harder it felt like it would be to call you,” he said. “I figured after a certain point you wouldn’t take my call. And you weren’t exactly pleased to see me when I got back.” He said it with no judgment, but I felt like a jerk just the same.