I shrugged. “Lucky guess?”
Of course, that’s what I wanted to believe. Much more comforting than the thought of a stalker following the habits of Benny and me.
“Huh,” was Trooper’s reply.
He didn’t believe it, either.
“Is there anything in your house that might be of value to someone else?” Trooper continued. “Something another person would know about, since it seems he knew about the camera. A piece of jewelry or fur? I’m throwing everything out here. Artwork? A significant amount of cash? Diner money, maybe?”
“No to the jewelry, et cetera. As for cash, we do so little cash business these days, especially from tourists. It’s all credit card transactions, sometimes even for small amounts. I just keep it in the safe at the Bear Claw, but no more than a couple of days’ worth before it gets deposited.”
We’d been skirting around the issue of the connection between my intruder and Oliver’s killer. It was time to bring out the cookbook.
Trooper and my mom were impressed at its heft as they passed the volumes between them. I was glad that Trooper didn’t question its provenance.
On the other hand, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t, since Chris had provided cover by prefacing my action with a likely story.
“Charlie has been going through all of Oliver’s personal spaces, to see if there was anything that he left behind that might help the investigation.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so impressed with Chris’s ability to come up with a cover so quickly without actually lying.
“I remember you asked if Oliver was writing a cookbook,” Mom said. “You didn’t mention you’d found a complete draft. Do you think this is why he was killed?”
“I see he’s using a different name here. Blanchard?” Trooper noted. “But that’s not unusual, is it? Using a pen name?”
We all shook our heads.
When Annie arrived, we gave her a quick summary of what she had missed.
“Should we make sure Manny’s okay?” I asked. “If we’re thinking that my intruder is also Oliver’s killer, couldn’t he think that Manny has whatever he’s looking for?” I pointed to the cookbook.
“Now that he knows Manny is Oliver’s father, that could be,” Mom said. “And he’d know if he was at the Bear Claw when Manny made the announcement.”
Or if he read the Bugle, I thought, but held back, proud of myself.
Mom shivered visibly. “Oh, I hate that he might have been at the diner. The killer.”
“Let’s go back to our suspect list and assignments,” I suggested. “The only one who doesn’t seem fully vetted is Stanley Burke. At the memorial service he said something interesting to me. How Oliver was ‘difficult.’ That was the term he used, then he said Oliver was putting everyone in danger, or something like that.”
“That doesn’t sound like he’s the killer,” Mom said. “More like Stanley’s another potential victim.”
“Does he have an alibi?” I asked, looking at the paired deputies, my mom and Annie.
“Does anyone know what Stanley does, or did, for a living?” Annie asked, by way of not answering my question. “I didn’t think of asking him. Some deputy, huh?”
No one commented on Annie’s performance.
“It shouldn’t be that hard to find out what he does,” Chris said. “I’ll check it out in the Bugle database. We have a new Anchorage directory that’s searchable.”
“He seemed like a nice man when I talked to him at the memorial. Nothing like what he said to you, Charlie,” Annie said.
“As a matter of fact, I might be able to log in from here,” Chris said. “Want me to try it now?”
Trooper kept out of this back-and-forth. I had the thought that he might be overwhelmed. After all, generally he worked with only one deputy, a real one, so to speak, and not four make-believe ones.
When he said, “Anybody hungry?” I knew I was right.
* * *
* * *
Benny wandered into the dining room as soon as we set out all the food from the Bear Claw. It didn’t seem to matter to him whose dining room he traipsed through. Mom’s furniture was old and dark mahogany; mine was a light contemporary set. Benny found his way around the legs of any table.
It was a good thing Chris had thought to bring Benny’s own food. Chris opened the small duffel he’d used for Benny’s treats and toys, trying to entice him to come to him. Once he opened a bag of tuna treats, his strategy worked.
Nice job making friends with my cat, I thought, though I kept my eye on the pair, lest Chris try to make the wrong kind of physical contact. Benny liked to have his chin scratched, for example, and his back rubbed, but his stomach was off-limits. Not to be confused with dogs I’ve known.
Tammy and Bert had stuffed the cooler with deli meat and cheese sandwiches, potato salad, carrot and raisin salad, and, something new to our menu, a tasty tomato and mozzarella combo with basil and balsamic vinegar.
As much as we’d all declared full disclosure from now on, there were a couple of one-on-ones that looked a little suspicious. And I was part of each pair.
First, Annie cornered me with news regarding Pierre. “What if he really does want to stay, Charlie?”
“It’s even stranger that he wouldn’t have found another way to get to where he’s supposed to be for his magazine article. Why couldn’t he have gone into Anchorage to get another rental, for example? It’s the wrong direction, but at least he’d have had a car right away. It does sound as though he really wanted to stay around, maybe get to know you better?”
It wasn’t the first time I was in a quandary when Annie wanted advice with a relationship problem. I had to tread this narrow line between getting her hopes up and being brutally honest about the chances of success with Tom, Dick, or Harry. Not even my history of a failed engagement held her back in seeking my opinion. Maybe the reason she kept coming to me was that she knew I’d always be there for her no matter which way the chips fell. In the long run, that was good enough for me, and I plunged in with advice.
“Have you tried just asking him outright?” I asked. “How long do you plan to stay in Alaska, and is it because of me?”
Annie gasped.
I guessed not.
The two of them would probably just keep going until they were down to bald tires on Pierre’s rental.
The second off-the-books pairing was with Chris, who came up to me in Mom’s kitchen when all the others were at the tantalizing buffet spread in the dining room.
“About those letters,” he said. “We’re still going to try to get them translated first, right? Before we get everyone all excited.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. In fact, I know someone,” I said. “No one remotely connected. I’m planning to try her this evening.”
Chris and I had discussed this briefly in the car, how we didn’t think it was wise to ask Pierre, or even Nina, who’d taken French all through school. It had to be someone with no vested interest, like my college roommate who worked for the United Nations school project in Anchorage and spoke six languages. I figured one of them had to be French.
As the group was finishing dinner, clearing dishes, talking about leaving, deciding what to do next, we heard a yelp from Chris.
“Aha.”
He’d gone off to a corner with his laptop, keyboarding now and then, eyes on the screen. Apparently he’d gotten results.
“Stanley Burke owns Burke Press, a book publisher specializing in home and garden topics. The company is in Eagle River.”
“Part of Anchorage,” Trooper said.
“Home and garden. That would include cookbooks,” I said.
Chris created the story line. “Oliver wants to publish a cookbook with his brother’s company. Brother Stanley finds out some or all of the recipes have been pla
giarized. Maybe he catches it before he releases it, maybe not.”
“That’s right,” I said, locating my tote and pulling out my tablet. “We don’t know for sure whether this was published or not. I’ll do a search.”
“Back to the drawing board,” Chris said. “But for now, we have good reason to believe that Stanley would be angry at being involved in something like this, and he’d be worried that he and/or his company would experience some fallout. Maybe lose his business license. Maybe even be hit with a big lawsuit.”
“We might have our motive,” Mom said.
“I don’t see that it was published, but he could have taken it down,” I said. “There are a couple of other places I can search. I’ll keep on it.”
“Kendra must have known about this,” Mom said. “You’d think she would have mentioned it.”
“We know Kendra was at work on Monday afternoon,” Trooper said. “I need to find out where Stanley was. I’ll ask him to come in for an interview.” He frowned and looked at Chris. “None of this is on the record.”
Chris held up his hands. “This meeting never happened.”
“Thanks,” I said.
* * *
* * *
The logistics were settled with relatively little fuss. Trooper would follow Annie home and make sure the inn was okay, though it wasn’t a likely target. There were always people moving in and out of the big house and the cabins. One of his volunteers would be on call for her if anything seemed the least bit off.
“I should be fine. I still have six people staying at the main house who are not part of Beth’s tour,” she said, then screwed up her nose. “Unless one of them . . . ? No, no, never mind.”
Annie didn’t want to think one of her guests might be a murderer any more than I wanted to think Victor or any of my staff could be guilty.
Following Trooper’s plan, I would be staying with Mom, with a volunteer in a car out front all night.
Chris was on his own, which he said was fine with him. Still, Trooper said he’d put someone on call for him, also.
All this because someone had invaded my home. It was unsettling to think the invasion and the murder were connected. If my home had been broken into last month, none of these precautions would have been thought necessary. It would have been a run-of-the-mill incident, confined to the annals of police reports, chalked up to delinquent teens on a spree.
There was no telling what else might happen if we didn’t end this investigation soon.
The meeting that never took place broke up at a reasonable hour, leaving time for a phone call. I left Mom playing with Benny and the new wand toy she’d brought back from Germany.
I went back to my old bedroom, where I’d dropped my overnight bag. It had been a good fifteen years since I called this little room home. Not much had changed since I left.
My pastel-colored jewelry boxes were still stacked on my dresser. I wondered what was in them now but was too distracted to take on the project of opening them to find out. It was unlikely that I’d be able to find the keys to the tiny locks anyway. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn any jewelry since I’d taken over the Bear Claw. I’d even abandoned my watch once the time was more accurately displayed on my phone. I laughed when I spotted the ceramic giraffe, the neck of which held my rings.
On one wall was a collage of photos arranged in the shape of a heart. I took a closer look. Ski weekends. Hikes. Concerts. Dances. I found myself searching for Chris. Would I even recognize him with hair, instead of his current shaved military style? Surely he was in one of the group photos.
Why was I bothering to look?
I moved away from the photo array and sat on my bed, on a comforter I didn’t recognize. I figured Mom had pulled it from the linen closet and switched out a dusty one as soon as she knew I’d be staying overnight. Heaven forbid I’d have to sleep on a bed with less than pristine linens. I pulled my duffel toward my feet and unloaded my things.
When I was in high school, Dad helped me create a little nook by pushing my single bed against a wall and stringing up a dark red drapery on a long rod that ran the length of the bed. Strands of lights around the perimeter finished the look, which was basically that of a fortune teller’s booth at a carnival. Except that at the head of the bed was a large tribal wall hanging of the Eyak River, evoking an entirely different, tranquil image.
What had I been thinking?
I sat back, cross-legged, phone in hand, my laptop on my lap. Not quite as comfortable as I remembered the position being when I was a teenager. I opened my phone and scrolled for Lacey Thompson’s name.
“I hope it’s not too late to call,” I said when she picked up.
“Nope. Miles to go, as they say. How are things in the hinterland?”
“Meaning any place outside the two thousand square miles of Anchorage?”
“Thanks for the extra thirty-seven.”
And that’s the way it usually started with Lacey and me. Fun trivia about our hometowns, home teams, or the latest joke we’d heard.
Tonight, since it had been a while since we spoke, we rehashed an old favorite.
“What do you call a penguin in Alaska?” Lacey asked.
“Lost. Penguins live in Antarctica,” I answered, and we chuckled.
“Okay, now the reason for the call?”
“I need a favor. But first, do you know anyone in the publishing business in Eagle Creek?”
“No, can’t say that I do.”
“How about anyone at a real estate firm in Anchorage?”
“No. Is this a riddle? Or a joke? A publisher and a real estate agent walk into a bar?”
I laughed. “We need to come up with a punch line for that one. This time it’s serious, though. And for this particular favor, I have to clear you of knowing anyone involved.”
“Trust me, if it’s anyone over the age of twelve, I don’t know them.”
“So the project is going well?”
“It’s always going well. I love working with minds that are still shapable. But sometimes I miss grown-ups. I hope this is a grown-up favor.”
“Very. Is your French still good?”
“Mais oui!”
“Even I know what that means.”
I gave Lacey a rundown on what I needed.
“An English translation for three short letters handwritten in French,” she repeated. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“Yes, and I will owe you.”
“Can you scan them right now?”
I was about to confirm, until I remembered I was at my mom’s, not at home where a real scanner was. My phone wouldn’t do well with the wrinkled old letters. It would have to be tomorrow, but Lacey promised to get to the letters as soon as she received them. We signed off with an even worse joke than the one about the penguins.
TWENTY-FIVE
The longer I sat on my childhood bed, the more comfortable I became. For one thing, no one had invaded this room recently. For another, I’d paid a visit to Mom’s kitchen and carried back a plate of small cheese biscuits and stuffed celery to snack on. My fridge at home seldom had anything as tasty.
I browsed on my laptop, looking for an Oliver Blanchard who’d published a cookbook in the last thirty years. No luck. Then I searched for all the books published by Burke Press in that same period. I found that they’d been in business almost thirty years. I scanned their list of specialty cookbooks and, though I hadn’t been planning on shopping, ordered one on Alaskan wild mushrooms for the diner.
Nothing by Oliver Blanchard, however, or by any of Oliver’s last names.
Even with striking out in my search, I felt a little more confident that we were closing in on the end of the investigation and, hopefully, putting a murderer behind bars.
First, Stanley Burke was now a strong possibility as his brother’s
killer. The rift went beyond being left out of a will or an obituary in a small-town newspaper. We weren’t talking solely about a stolen recipe or two, but a man’s business potentially ruined by scandal, accusations of fraud, if our suspicions about the recipes were correct. Trooper was taking care of exploring that angle by bringing Stanley in for questioning. I came close to asking Trooper if I could sit in on the interrogation, but decided not to push my luck with respect to my new deputy status.
I was disappointed but not surprised that Trooper had taken the cookbook manuscript with him. I hadn’t had time to read it in detail. When Chris and I flipped through it at the airport in Anchorage, the only recipe that stood out was the cherry cheesecake mousse that we’d been making for years. I made a note to ask Willow about the legality of using other people’s recipes, realizing that it would be a moot point if the volumes were relegated to an evidence room for the indefinite future.
The second hopeful development was that civilian forensics techs had been sent to my house. Surely the invader couldn’t have been one hundred percent careful, even though he did know enough to cover the Bennycam. I’d read that sometimes all it took was a partial print to ID someone—assuming the person was in the system, which I chose to believe they were.
Third, I had someone reliable and neutral to translate the letters, almost certainly love letters. In other words, probably not useful to the investigation, but one never knew. Maybe Genevieve had spelled out M. P. M. in the other letters. Lacey would be able to start on the English versions as soon as I could get home to my scanner tomorrow.
Besides all those pluses, Mom and Benny were safe, Chris and I were friends again, and Dad was due home tomorrow, adding to a sense of normalcy. Dad would want to do something special for Seward’s Day, which came on the perfect date every year—the last Monday in March, after the serious months of winter weather, and before Alaska’s epic swarms of mosquitoes found their way to our picnics. I reminded myself to order a good supply of tiki torches, bug spray, itch cream, and candles before they were sold-out.
Mousse and Murder Page 23