by Kathi Daley
Wilma handed my card back to me after the purchase processed. “Doris is a very sweet woman who has been a staple in the community for a lot of years. She knows a lot of people, so from that standpoint, I can see why you might consider that she might be the one behind the matches, but figuring out who would best be suited to be matched with applicants is a skill that, if done right, would require a good amount of intuition and insight.”
I slowly bobbed my head. “I get what you’re saying. While Doris is sweet as pie, she isn’t the sort that strikes you as being overly bright. You think I’m looking for someone with a superior intellect. Someone who is more observant than others. Maybe someone who can read subtle clues and recognize patterns.”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Someone like you.” I pointed out.
“Yes, someone like me, but I can assure you that I’m not the person you are looking for.”
“If you were the person I was looking for, would you tell me?”
“Absolutely not.” She smiled.
So based on this exchange, it was still equally likely that Wilma was both Ms. Cupid and not Ms. Cupid. “Any idea who Ms. Cupid might be if, in fact, it’s not you?”
Wilma paused; I imagined to consider the question. “Actually, I might need to think about this for a while. Offhand, however, the Cunningham sisters come to mind.”
“I thought of them as well. They’ve lived in the community forever, they know a lot of people, and they are both very intelligent. I did consider the fact that neither are married, so I’m not sure they have the background they might need in matters of the heart to make the pairings.”
“That is true,” Wilma admitted. “I honestly can’t remember if either of the sisters has even dated seriously. Like I said, the question of who might be matching up all the single people in our community is a complex one, and I’ll need to think about for a bit. If I come up with anything, I’ll text you if you want to leave me your number.”
I jotted down my cell number and pushed it across the counter.
“Do you know if Cass has figured out what happened to Dale Conover?” Wilma asked, effectively changing the subject. “Most everyone who stops in has something to say about it, but no one seems to know what’s really going on.”
“I know he’s working on it, but I haven’t seen him or talked to him in any depth since Tuesday. I guess if he figures it out, we’ll know.”
“Quite a few of my customers think that the person who burned down the man’s house with him in it was an acquaintance of the romantic sort. Probably an ex.”
“So, Dale dated frequently?” I asked. I’d never met or even heard of the guy before his name popped up as part of my Ms. Cupid research.
Wilma chuckled. “Like a dog in heat. And he wasn’t the sort to keep time with one woman at a time. I was surprised to hear that he was one-half of one of the matches. I really can’t imagine why he would have applied with Ms. Cupid when he clearly wasn’t the settling down type.”
I thought back to the brief discussion I’d had with Lissa. I’d heard about the Dale and Lissa match through another party who’d been told by Lissa that she’d first met Dale after Ms. Cupid had matched them. I called and spoke to Lissa, who confirmed this, which is when I arranged to meet with her on the day of the fire. I normally would have called and spoken to Dale as well, but in this case, I hadn’t. Lissa had insisted that it would be best if she made all the arrangements and that we met at his residence, which was where he worked. That had sounded fine to me, so I left it at that, but now that I thought about it, I really had no evidence that Dale had even been a client of Ms. Cupid. I guess I just assumed as much, but not every match was between two clients. Could it have been that Dale was matched with Lissa, but had never actually applied? I realized this might be worth looking into. I really didn’t have any evidence that Lissa and Dale had been a Ms. Cupid match other than the verbal assurance from Lissa that she had indeed been paired up by the somewhat famous matchmaker.
“I should get going,” I said to Wilma. “I have interviews to get to before my volunteer shift at the shelter this afternoon.”
“I heard you were doing that. Good for you. It’s really something special Naomi is doing with those animals she takes on.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’ve been thinking of adopting a small dog. One who I can bring to work with me. Of course, I’d need a well-behaved non-barker. I can’t have a dog who would bother the customers who came in. I don’t suppose any of the dogs you work with come to mind?”
“How large a dog would you like?”
“Maybe midsize. I know I said small, but now that I think about it, I wouldn’t want a dog so small that I had to carry it everywhere. I also wouldn’t want one of those monster dogs that wouldn’t fit in the passenger seat of my car.”
“There is an older golden retriever named Maggie, who might work for you. She’s a quiet dog whose elderly owner adopted when she was just a pup. The owner had to go into assisted living, so she was forced to find a new home for Maggie. Naomi is being very particular about who she chooses to adopt the dog. She’s looking for a mature woman with a quiet home. Someone who likes to walk, since Maggie enjoys a daily stroll, and someone who won’t leave her home by herself a lot of the time.”
“She sounds perfect for me. I sound perfect for her. Is she well behaved?”
“Very. If you’re interested, you should call Naomi right away. I think she is going to choose a new mom for Maggie very soon.”
“I’ll call her right now. Maggie, you said. I think Maggie and I will get along just fine.”
I thought so as well and suspected that Naomi would agree.
After I left the post office, I headed toward Cass’s office. If he was in, maybe he’d have a few minutes to discuss the thoughts that had run through my mind while speaking to Wilma. I know that on some level he considered Lissa to be a suspect in Dale’s death simply because while she called him incessantly, it didn’t appear that he’d called her much at all after the first few weeks of going on their first date. At this point, I had to wonder if Dale and Lissa had even been matched by Ms. Cupid. Could Lissa have been lying about that?
Luckily, Cass was in his office when I arrived. I asked if he had a few minutes, and he said he did, so I sat down across the desk from where he was sitting.
“I was just at the post office speaking to Wilma, and she said something that got me to thinking.” I then launched into the explanation of how I’d first learned that Lissa and Dale had been a Ms. Cupid match and how since I’d never actually spoken to Dale, I only had Lissa’s word on that. “This led me to question the whole thing,” I said. “It was Lissa who suggested that I allow her to talk to Dale rather than contacting him personally, and it was Lissa who suggested we meet at his house.”
“So you think she may have orchestrated the meeting to provide an alibi of sorts for Dale’s murder?” Cass asked.
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t know. I guess that seems sort of farfetched. But we’ve both felt that things seem off for some reason. Wilma told me that Dale was a player who dated often and usually dated more than one woman at a time. He doesn’t seem the sort who would sign up for Ms. Cupid, nor does he appear to be the type Ms. Cupid would match with someone who had come to her looking for love everlasting. And then there’s the fact that after a brief period as a couple, Dale stopped calling Lissa while she continued to call him. What if Lissa met Dale through some other means than Ms. Cupid? What if my intel was incorrect and they hadn’t been a Ms. Cupid pairing? What if when I called Lissa, she jumped at the chance to make their connection out to be something more than it was, so when I brought up Ms. Cupid, she went with it?”
“So again, are you saying that you think Lissa used the setup and the meeting you had planned as a way of diverting suspicion away from herself after she’d decided to kill the man who probably had already moved on from her?”
I shrugged. “It’s a th
eory. I can’t say that it’s a good theory, but it is a theory.”
“It’s actually not a bad theory,” Cass agreed. “I’ll look into it further. It has been in the back of my mind all along that there was something off about the relationship between Lissa and Dale. I even looked into Lissa’s background a bit. It seems she was in therapy after her parents died in a house fire when she was twelve.”
“That seems significant. Who raised her after her parents died?”
“Her brother, who is eight years older than her. I suspect that he’s the reason she moved to Foxtail Lake in the first place. I don’t have all the details yet, but I do plan to dig around some more.”
“Call on line two,” Gwen had poked her head in through Cass’s office door, scowled at me, and then delivered her message.
Cass picked up the phone. “Deputy Wylander here.”
I watched his face as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. I could tell right off that the news he was receiving wasn’t of the pleasant sort. After a minute, he thanked the caller and then hung up. He looked at me. “There has been another house fire and according to an anonymous source, another death by fire.”
“Who?” I gasped.
“Mayor White.”
Chapter 10
I’m not exactly sure why I went along with Cass to respond to the call, except that I followed him out of his office when he left, and when he climbed into his official sheriff’s vehicle, I climbed in the passenger side, and he didn’t argue. Like Dale Conover, Mayor White had been working in his home office when the fire started, and like Dale Conover, he’d been unable to get out in time. The fire had been extinguished by the time we arrived. Cass told me to wait in the vehicle, and I complied. He spoke to the fire chief while I used the time to call the individuals I’d set up interviews with. Ms. Cupid would have to wait. If the mayor had been shot, as I suspected, and the house set on fire, as I also suspected, it seemed there were bigger fish to fry.
Once I made my calls, I had little to do other than to let my mind wander. I watched the firefighters as they cleaned up, and then I watched as the official coroner’s vehicle pulled up and two men went inside. They returned with a black bag on a gurney a short while later. I wasn’t sure where Cass had gone. He’d walked around to the back of the house with the fire chief shortly after we’d arrived and I hadn’t seen him since.
If, as I suspected, the person who killed Mayor White and then set fire to his house was the same person who killed Dale Conover and then set fire to his house, then Lissa probably didn’t kill Dale, as Cass and I had begun to suspect. I remembered that Mayor White had been one of Dale Conover’s patients, so if I had to guess at this point, I’d have to say that someone who would be hurt by whatever Mayor White discussed with Dale was most likely the killer. Of course, I had no idea why the mayor had been meeting with Doctor Conover, or what they had been discussing. Cass had fragments of Conover’s notes, so maybe he’d managed to put things together over the past week.
I was seriously considering calling a cab and heading back into town to get my car when Cass walked back around the structure. He climbed into the vehicle and pulled away.
“So, what happened?” I asked. “Was the mayor shot like we suspect Dale Conover was?”
“He was shot,” Cass confirmed. “The fire department was able to respond sooner than they had to the fire at Dale Conover’s place, so the damage to the structure was minimal, and Mayor White’s remains were in much better shape than Dale’s had been. I’m hoping an autopsy will give us additional information about both deaths. At this point, I’m assuming the deaths are related. Both men died in their home office, and both fires seem to have been started in a similar manner.”
“So this probably clears Lissa,” I pointed out.
He nodded. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it clears Lissa, but I don’t know of any reason Lissa would have to kill Mayor White.”
“I was thinking that the killer, assuming that both men were killed by the same person, must be someone who would be hurt if whatever Mayor White discussed with Dale during his therapy sessions came out.”
“I had the same thought,” Cass admitted. “I’m going to have to cancel my volunteer shift at the shelter today. I’m sorry to leave you to play with the dogs on your own, but this can’t wait.”
“It’s not a problem. Maybe I can bring some food to your office when I’m done.”
He hesitated.
“You have to eat.”
He nodded. “Actually, that sounds good, but call first. If I’m done doing what I need to do to follow up on today’s incident, I’ll probably prefer to go out and eat. We can meet somewhere.”
“Okay. I’ll call you when I’m done at the shelter, and we can figure it out from there.”
Once we got back to Cass’s office, I picked up my car and headed to the shelter. I had one-on-one doggy training today before the playtime Cass and I did on Fridays. I was going to miss Cass’s presence during playtime, but I did understand that with two high profile murders to solve, he was going to be a busy guy.
When I arrived at the shelter, Naomi was chatting with one of the other trainers. She waved me over, so I joined them.
“I just spoke to Cass,” she said. “You usually seem to know what is going on. Do you know what happened?”
“I don’t have all the details,” I answered Naomi’s question. “I do know that Mayor White was in his home office when a fire was set to his home.”
“I’m really not all that surprised,” the woman who’d been chatting with Naomi when I arrived joined in. “I heard from a friend who works for the town as a freelance bookkeeper, that Mayor White invited several large hotel chains to visit the area with the hope of luring them into developing resorts in our community without even getting approval from the council first.”
“I was at the town council meeting this week,” I said. “My name is Callie, by the way.”
“Ellen,” she introduced herself. “It’s true that White was pretending to go through official channels, but according to my friend, Polly, he was doing his own thing behind the scenes.”
“Polly Thorndike?” I asked. I seemed to remember she worked for the town in a freelance capacity.
“Yes, Polly Thorndike,” Ellen confirmed. “And she told me that not only has he been negotiating with developers behind the backs of everyone who should be involved, but she also said he’s doing all sorts of other things the council hadn’t authorized.”
“Like what?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure, but I think he has been doing audits and stuff. I suppose he wants to trim the fat from the budget so he can afford to lure people in with their fancy new resorts. I know when Hank Bradford found out what was going on, he threatened to shoot the man and hang his carcass in the town square if he didn’t back off with his pro-development stance.”
Okay, that sounded needlessly violent, but I knew that Hank owned the Foxtail Lake Inn, and it made sense that if a large hotel chain got a foothold in the area, he’d eventually be out of business. I also knew that Hank was the sort to say things he really didn’t mean, so I doubted he would have killed the guy. Besides, what I knew which these women might not have put together, was that Mayor White’s death was most likely connected to Dale Conover’s death, and I couldn’t see a single reason why Hank would kill Dale.
“How long has White been mayor?” I asked. He hadn’t been mayor when I’d lived here before.
“A couple of years,” Naomi answered. “The man moved to Foxtail Lake several years ago and immediately began positioning himself to run for town council. Once he was elected, he used his political clout as a steppingstone to become mayor. Initially, it seemed like he’d make a good mayor, and I thought someone from out of the area might bring a new perspective to local politics, but since he’s been in office, he’s made some decisions that I’m not at all a fan of.”
“Walter Bowman would make a
good suspect in Mayor White’s murder,” Ellen said.
“Walter Bowman, the pharmacist?” I asked. “Why would that sweet old man want to kill Mayor White?”
“I guess you heard that Walter is looking to sell his business so he can move closer to his daughter.”
I nodded. I had heard that.
“Well, Walter had the place all but sold, but then Mayor White stepped in and started picking the sales agreement apart, and the next thing Walter knew, his buyer was backing out.”
“Why would Mayor White do that?” I asked.
“Because Walter wanted to sell to a couple from Aurora who planned to leave things exactly as they are. Meanwhile, Mayor White put in an offer on the same property with the idea of tearing that whole block down as part of his redevelopment project.”
“There are six businesses on that block.” I pointed out.
“There are. The bank is already set for relocation, and I’m pretty sure a sales agreement with White has already been negotiated. The diner on the corner closed a year ago, and I believe that White has an option on that property as well. The owners of the hunting and fishing store, the hairdresser, the pet shop, and the pharmacy have all held out. I think White knew that if he could get one of the three to sell, the others would be forced to comply. Walter didn’t want to be the one to bring the whole block down, so he decided to sell to the couple from Aurora. Of course, White was never going to let that happen, so he got in the middle of Walter’s deal. I know Walter was madder than a cat with his tail caught in the screen door when he found out about White’s involvement with the loss of the sale he thought was a done deal.”
It was beginning to sound as if there were quite a few folks in the community who wouldn’t be all that upset about Mayor White’s demise, but I seriously doubted that any of the folks mentioned killed him.
Several of the other trainers came in while we were chatting, so Naomi called everyone together to begin the training session. I had to admit that I was impressed with Naomi’s commitment to making sure the dogs she placed in forever homes were healthy and mostly free of negative behavior patterns that could very well land them right back in the shelter. Once the training class was done, I headed toward the playroom where Cass and I normally played with a group of dogs for ninety minutes. During the warmer months, we’d use the time to take the dogs out for a long walk around the property, but during the winter, we made do with endless games of fetch. I always enjoyed these sessions, but I had to admit that I wasn’t having nearly as much fun as I did when Cass was doing the shift with me.