Emily bent and gave me a hug before setting out for her house. The second the front door shut, Minette flew out of the hutch and landed on the table. She’d been there all along, sitting inside a creamware jug on the top shelf.
“What if Emily had heard you?” I said.
“No one hears me if I’m quiet. If they do, they think I’m an insect.”
“And then they come after you with a flyswatter.”
I rose and began to clear the table. Minette was both wise and utterly naive. How had Ray kept her safe?
“I’m thinking something,” she said.
“What’s that?” I answered without turning around. I set the plates and cups in the sink.
“I’m thinking that Nick of the nursery was hiding things, and that he killed Alana.”
“Yeah.” I leaned back on the sink, rubbing my weary eyes. “Maybe he was hiding things in fresh shipments of plants. The ones he supposedly quarantines.”
Minette flapped her wings and shot for my face, stopping inches from my nose and hovering like a hummingbird. “But he does quarantine plants sometimes. I know he does.”
“Did Ray ever take you to Foley’s?”
“Twice. In his pocket. I love the smell there. But Kate, plants are too small. The pots are filled with soil, and if they’re not, the plants die.”
“Did you see Nick when you went to the nursery?”
“Yes. Do you know what else I saw? Nick taping big bags that had long tears in them.”
“Compost bags?” I recalled my visit to the nursery yesterday, when I’d seen Nick taping compost bags. I’d assumed the bags had been torn in transit.
“Compost and soil and bark. Both times, Kate. I’m thinking Nick has too many tears in the bags.”
CHAPTER 19
“Someone is hiding something in the bags,” I said. “Minette, you’re right! All those big, ripped bags! I’d fire a supplier who shipped so many bags in that condition.”
Minette did a mid-air, 360-degree loop and landed on her feet atop the microwave on my counter. “I knew! I knew! He’s hiding things in the bags!”
“It’s a perfect place to hide . . . something . . . I don’t know what. What is he sneaking in or out of the nursery?” I let go with a little roar of frustration.
“You have to find the bags before Nick touches them. Does Nick tear them open or does someone else do the tearing open before Nick sees them?”
“I don’t know, but Nick has to be working with someone else. He’s allowing his compost bags to be used as mules.”
“Mules?”
“Never mind, it’s an expression.”
“But we don’t know—” Minette stopped and put a finger to her lips. “There’s someone driving to your house. I hear a big car.”
I strode quickly to the side door and pulled back the curtain over the window just enough to get a look outside as a black Smithwell Police SUV lumbered up the drive. “Hide, Minette,” I said, letting the curtain fall.
“Is it a bad person?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” For a moment I felt frozen in place. I didn’t trust Rancourt and didn’t want him in my house. If he trapped me inside, I’d have no way out. “I’m going out the front door so I can talk to him outside,” I told Minette. “You stay hidden in case I have to come inside for some reason. I mean it—stay hidden.”
I grabbed a broom from the closet in the foyer, rushed outside, and began to sweep leaves from the bench by the door. Anything to look like I had a reason to be outside my house.
“It’s a never-ending job this time of year,” I heard Rancourt say.
Wheeling back, I saw him walking toward me, smiling affably. The gruff man I’d met at the police station had vanished for the moment.
“Yes, but autumn leaves are nice.” I had no idea what that meant or why I’d said it, except that I needed to say something and say it fast.
He stopped a few feet from me, stuffed his hands in his raincoat pockets, and looked out over my front lawn. “Until you have to rake them. I hope you don’t take care of this yard yourself.”
“I pay someone to do the big jobs.”
“Good, good.”
Leaning my broom against the side of the house, I said, “How do you know I don’t have a husband to do it for me?”
His hands still in his pockets, he looked back at me. “You’re not a fool, Mrs. Brewer. You must know I checked your background. You came to visit me—that’s unusual for a start—and I’m investigating the murder of your neighbor.” He shot me a semi-apologetic smile. His skin was pasty and his face bloated—fleshy from a diet rich in salt, I thought. “Look, I need to ask you about Mr. Landry. Can we go inside?”
I hesitated just long enough for him to get the idea that I wasn’t exactly at ease with him being there.
“That’s fine. Can we at least sit down out here?”
“On my landscape boulders out there,” I said, pointing.
Undoubtedly thinking I was a bit of a paranoid nut, Rancourt nevertheless followed me and sat on one of the boulders while I sat on another. “Last time I talked to Ray, he sat where you’re sitting,” I said.
He nodded. “And that was?”
“Day before yesterday. The afternoon of the day he was murdered.”
“Look, Mrs. Brewer, I can’t tell you much about the investigation—actually, I can’t tell you anything more than I already have—but you might be able to help me.”
“Officer Bouchard interviewed me the night Ray was found.”
Finally Rancourt took his hands out of his pockets. “That was before we had a homicide case. I understand you’ve been asking questions around town.”
“Am I not allowed to do that?”
“You can do as you wish. I can’t stop you from talking to people, though I’d prefer it if you were more circumspect. But I think you might be able to help me. Specifically, can you tell me what Mr. Landry said to you when he sat here on this rock?”
I hesitated again and he cocked his head, bewildered, I thought, that I was waffling over whether to help him.
“Ray told me not to trust anyone I didn’t know,” I said flatly. “Because of the Alana Williams murder. You may think that’s crazy, but as you now know, I live alone. And as you just said, I’m not a fool.”
“No,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “I don’t think you’re paranoid. Your neighbor was murdered, and I understand he was writing about Alana Williams at the time. Probably asking people about her. An unsolved murder. That’s why he spoke to me in the supermarket the day he died. You’re wise to be cautious. More cautious than you’re being, in fact.”
“You’re a policeman,” I said.
Rancourt frowned. “Did Mr. Landry tell you to be careful around the police?”
“Not specifically. Just people I don’t know, even if they say I’m supposed to trust them.”
Rancourt looked away toward the road, his eyes wandering over the scene as though my words had struck an unpleasant chord with him. “But you know something that might help solve his murder? Or think you know something?”
His haggard face and the sincere tone in his voice was beginning to win me over, just a little. Well, those things and the fact that I needed to trust someone with the information Ray had given me. “Tell me something first. Why did you disagree with Ray about the Alana Williams crime scene? He’s the one who found her, and his memory was sharp.”
“He was eighty-one.”
“I’m so tired of hearing that.”
“It has to be considered.”
“No, it doesn’t. And frankly, you wouldn’t be here if you thought Ray’s memory was so fuzzy.”
Rancourt laughed. “Points to you.”
“So why did you argue with him about the murder scene? It bothered him.”
“I’m sorry it did. I couldn’t publicly agree that he was right and I was wrong.”
I was aghast. “Why? Is your ego that important?”
�
�I was talking to the town manager. Mrs. Brewer, and the Williams crime scene is on record. Not public record, but still the record. Because it’s an unsolved case, we keep things from the public. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Rancourt wanted me to read between the lines. “I think I do. Wait here a second.” I went inside and retrieved Ray’s memoirs and drawing. Before going back out, I reminded Minette that she had to stay hidden. She was itching to follow me outside.
Back on my front lawn, praying I wasn’t making a terrible error in judgment, I handed Rancourt the drawing and sat. “Ray drew this after he talked to you in Hannaford’s. It’s how your recollection of the murder scene differed from his. The two differences are the position of the jacket and the absence of a heart-shaped necklace.”
His eyes on the sketch, Rancourt took a deep breath and then exhaled with a small groan.
“There’s more,” I said. “In his memoirs, he writes about the scene, and the differences are as he notes in that drawing.”
At last the detective looked up. “Yes, he mentioned in the supermarket that his memory of events was clear because he was putting them down in his memoirs. Writing his life story for the first time.”
“Welch heard that.”
“Welch talks a lot.”
I gave Rancourt the precious original copy of Ray’s memoirs. “I have copies, but I want this manuscript back.”
Rancourt took it in his hands, treating it gently, as though it was a rare piece of work.
“Nick Foley gave Alana that necklace Ray saw,” I said. “He put it on her, in the nursery, and she walked out wearing it.”
“Mmm.”
“I wonder if Alana was having an affair with anyone else.”
“Doubt it.”
“And there’s something else, Detective. Nick Foley was in danger of losing his nursery six years ago. He had terrible financial problems. Sheila Abbottson wanted him to sell the nursery, but according to her, Alana talked him out of it. She loved the nursery. Soon after that, Nick’s money troubles pretty much went away. He seems to be doing very well now.”
Rancourt shrugged. Now that I’d told him what he’d wanted to know, he was unwilling to return the favor.
“Funny thing about Nick’s shipments of compost, soil, and bark,” I continued. “So many of the bags are torn.”
“Are they?”
“Big bags. Split open. Like Nick took something out of them before stocking the shelves. Or someone else does. He uses an awful lot of tape to correct the problem.”
Rancourt was studying me with an intensity that unnerved me. “That’s interesting.”
“Very. Turns out Ray wasn’t so muddled, was he, Detective?”
“Hmm? No. No, he wasn’t. But his son told me he was imagining things. He was worried about him.”
“Ray Landry had an imagination, and he believed in a lot of good things other people didn’t, but he never imagined things that weren’t there. He saw what was there, he saw it clearly, and he remembered every single detail.”
“Yes, I think so too, Mrs. Brewer.”
Rancourt rose and I flinched.
“I’m sorry,” he said, thrusting out a hand. “Mrs. Brewer—Kate—I’m not your enemy.”
I got to my feet and took several steps back.
“I’ve been trying to solve the Alana Williams murder for six years,” he said, “and I’ve been stumped. And blind as a bat.”
“Ray saw things,” I said softly. Every single detail. That’s what Ray had told me. He’d said he had remembered every single detail of the murder scene. Nothing had escaped his notice. “He remembered Alana’s jacket. When he saw it, it was too neat, just like the killer had left it. The killer who loved her in his own selfish way and felt some remorse after killing her. When you saw it, it was in disarray, as though Alana’s pockets had been searched. Maybe so a clue wouldn’t be left behind? And then there was the necklace.”
Rancourt stared into my eyes, and I saw the pain in his. “I never saw a necklace.”
“But it was there when Ray found Alana. And that’s what he told St. Peter when she interviewed him in her squad car. Just Ray and St. Peter, alone in her car. She never told you Ray saw a necklace, did she? It never entered the official report.”
“No.”
“That’s why you shooed me out of your office when I wanted to talk to St. Peter. You didn’t want her to know Ray had told me about the necklace.”
“Yes.”
“There was no way for you to know she lied.”
“It’s my job to know.”
“I figured Nick had an accomplice. You began to suspect St. Peter after you talked to Ray in the supermarket.”
“I’d never heard from Ray’s own mouth what he’d seen that day,” Rancourt replied, his expression remorseful. “And I moved too slowly after I spoke to him. I should have kept him safe. Stay in your house, Mrs. Brewer, and lock the doors.” He whipped around, his stocky frame moving with extraordinary agility, and darted for his SUV. “And call your friend and tell her to do the same!” he shouted.
CHAPTER 20
I did as Rancourt told me—locked and bolted the front door—and from the foyer I went to the kitchen to give Emily a quick call before locking my side and back doors. I reached into my purse and dug around for my phone.
“Mrs. Brewer.”
I froze. Oh, Lord, no. “I left the back door unlocked,” I said, turning slowly around. “Didn’t I, Sergeant St. Peter?”
“Seems like it.” A sick, twisted grin settled on her face.
“Where’s your squad car?”
“Behind your house on Elm Street,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder. “Then I just walked through the woods.”
“Rancourt just left. He knows what you did.”
“What he thinks he knows and what he can prove are two different things.”
I shot a glance at my hutch.
“What are you looking at?” St. Peter demanded. She rested her hand on the handle of her gun and simultaneously unsnapped the holster with her thumb. “Do you have a weapon up there?”
“I have teacups up there. I don’t know about you, but I don’t keep guns in my hutch. What are you doing in my house?”
“You got too nosy,” she answered. “Too close. After six years of peace and quiet—why couldn’t you keep out of things?”
“Why did you murder my friend?”
She laughed. Actually laughed.
“Me? I’m the cleaner, Mrs. Brewer, not the killer.”
“You searched Ray’s house for his memoirs.”
“Yeah. But after Foley killed him. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“So Nick Foley is the killer and you’re the cleaner. Detective Rancourt knows that. And he knows you falsified Ray’s statement about the Alana Williams murder scene.”
“There’s no proof of that. Especially with you out of the way. You were the last one to talk to Landry.”
“Rancourt has Ray’s memoirs. Ray wrote everything down.”
“An old man’s notes? How long would it take a lawyer to tear into them?”
With a speck of relief I noted that St. Peter’s hand was still resting on her gun. She hadn’t yet taken the weapon from her holster. I had to stall her. Get her talking. Even argue with her. “How did you do it? You altered the scene, and with Rancourt there.”
She grinned again, pleased that I’d asked. It was an opportunity to tell me how brilliant she’d been. “Rancourt trusted me. That’s his basic flaw. He trusts his officers. Before he even looked at that woman’s body—”
“Alana. Her name was Alana.”
“He made a call to the station or the coroner—I forget which. Doesn’t matter. He hung back by his SUV. I had my gloves on, so if he saw me, it looked like I was examining her body. I reached down, ripped off the necklace. Did it in one second. The chain was so light and thin, it didn’t even leave a mark on her neck. I looked back at Rancourt and he
was still talking. So I searched the woman’s jacket pockets. Rancourt didn’t suspect a thing.”
“You were searching her jacket for anything that might incriminate Nick.”
“You got it. And it was insanely easy.”
“Did you kill her?”
“Don’t be absurd. I was cleaning up Nick’s mess. By now you must know that Foley is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s useful, but not bright. He didn’t have to kill that woman, but he did. He walked her back into the woods—I guess she thought they were going to kiss and hug. He told me she didn’t hesitate to follow him. He used a knife he’d stolen years ago. No one could trace it. So he wasn’t totally stupid.”
“I saw you at the nursery earlier today.”
“I needed to hold Nick’s hand. Again. He was about to lose it.”
“Alana threatened to expose what you two were doing with the nursery.”
“My, my, you have been a busy and nosy woman.”
Fear was making my mouth go dry. “Was it drugs?”
“Old-fashioned cocaine. It’s still popular for some weird reason.”
“You and Nick are still transporting it, even now.”
“Transporting.” St. Peter chucked. “I guess you could say that. Do you know what I make as a police sergeant? My paltry salary?”
I thought it odd, but she seemed to want to justify her actions to me. I encouraged her. “Not much, probably. Though more than a first-year schoolteacher, I’ll bet. Maybe more than an emergency room nurse or a fireman. You couldn’t take on a second job?”
She leaned forward, hissing at me. “After I’ve worked the sixty I do with the force?”
“That means you make overtime. What is that, time and a half?”
I thought she was going to hit me.
“So you chose a life of drugs and murder because you don’t make enough money?” I said. “Was it worth the risk?”
The doorbell rang and I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Don’t move,” St. Peter warned.
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