by Anna Gerard
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him to think of me as Switzerland.”
“Uh-huh, neutral,” she muttered, making more notes. “That’d make you about the only one. That’s the problem with finding out who attacked him … pretty much everyone and his dog has a grudge against the man.”
She wasn’t kidding. Besides the Sisters of Perpetual Poverty, I knew of at least three more people—Becca, her father Travis, and Jack Hill—who all had serious axes to grind with Bainbridge. But since none of them had bothered to hide their enmity toward him, I wasn’t going to name names.
The sheriff, meanwhile, flipped back a few pages in her notepad, and then looked up again. “I’d like to account for everyone’s whereabouts around the time that Mr. Bainbridge was attacked. Your 911 call came at twelve twenty-two PM. Can you walk me through what you were doing for the thirty minutes before that time?”
I gave her the rundown—marching, breaking for cookies, everyone going off on errands while I hung with Sister Mary Paul—up until the time the brunette made her appearance.
She nodded in seeming satisfaction, and then asked, “So let me get this straight. Prior to the time you saw Mr. Bainbridge in the alley, there’s a period of about fifteen to twenty minutes where you can’t corroborate the whereabouts of any of the nuns except Sister Mary Paul, correct?”
“I-I suppose so.”
“What about Sister Mary George, specifically? Did you see in what direction she was headed during this time?”
“I think she was going to the drugstore to get some Band-Aids.”
I frowned. Surely the sheriff wasn’t implying that Sister Mary George had anything to do with the attack on Bainbridge! Still, who could deny that the Sisters of Perpetual Poverty seemingly had the strongest motive of anyone in town for wanting Bainbridge dead? And it didn’t help that (a) Sister Mary George had experience with knives and (b) she had been in the general vicinity of the ice cream shop around the time Bainbridge had been stabbed.
Cue number four on my mental list of ax-grinders.
But Sheriff Lamb was already chasing another line of questioning. “Whose idea was it for the sisters to move into your bed-and-breakfast?”
“Mayor Green asked me to do it as a personal favor. She said all the other B&Bs in town were full.”
The sheriff frowned. “Interesting. Just how long has your B&B been in business?”
“Officially? Since this morning.”
If Sheriff Lamb had been the one sporting the CSI: Miami sunglasses instead of Deputy Mullins, now would have been the time she whipped them off, spouted a pithy one-liner, and put them back on again. But all she said was, “You’ve been very helpful, Ms. Fleet. Do you mind if I ask a final question?”
“Be my guest.”
“Do you have any idea why Mr. Bainbridge might have been wearing Mr. Westcott’s penguin suit when he was stabbed?”
A very good question. But as I flashed back to the conversation I’d had with the man yesterday, I thought I had an answer.
“Actually, yes. Bainbridge told me that anytime he leaves his office, people yell insults while he crosses the square to the parking lot. So he started wearing disguises.”
“Disguises?”
I nodded. “Overcoats and ball caps and such—anything that made it harder to recognize him. Since his office is right next to the Taste-Tee-Freeze, maybe he took a shortcut through their back door and saw Harry’s costume hanging in the storeroom and decided it would make for better camouflage than a hat and coat.”
Said aloud, my theory sounded fanciful, but the sheriff seemed satisfied. “That’s very helpful, Ms. Fleet. I appreciate your cooperation. I don’t believe I’ll need anything more from you or Ms. Tanaka or the sisters, so all of you are free to go now.”
While technically we’d all been free to leave at any time—back to that polite fiction thing—I smiled. “Glad to help.”
The sheriff smiled back, momentarily looking far less intimidating than she had just thirty seconds earlier. “Oh, and there is one last witness I need a statement from. Could you let Mr. Westcott know I need to talk with him?”
I nodded again and hurried back toward the bandstand. I recalled Harry telling me he’d gone to high school with the sheriff. Would that give him a pass when it came to questioning, or would Sheriff Lamb be even tougher on him so as not to appear she was playing favorites?
I didn’t have time to debate that question with myself, however. I saw as I climbed the bandstand’s wooden steps that things had changed during the few minutes I’d been gone. The nuns now were standing in a circle, hands folded and eyes downcast while softly praying. Gemma was seated by Harry now, both of them looking even more somber, if that were possible.
Keeping my tone low, I said to Harry, “You’re the last one up. Sheriff Lamb wants to ask you a few questions.”
He nodded and silently rose, heading for the steps. I turned to Gemma.
“Good news for the rest of us. You and I and the sisters are all free to go. I know you need to get back to the coffee shop, but I’ll stick around until the sisters are finished?”
“It might be a while. They’ve got some heavy-duty praying to do now.”
I felt my stomach tighten into a fistlike knot.
“Why?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.
Gemma sighed. “While you were talking to the sheriff, I put in a call to a friend over at Cymbeline General. Greg Bainbridge died in surgery.”
Chapter Ten
Saying goodbye to Gemma, I left the sisters to their prayers and went back to the corner to gather up the signs we’d left at the bench. With the object of the nuns’ protest confirmed as deceased, it went without saying that the march was now a moot point.
The three sheriff’s department cruisers were still parked on the street alongside the antique shop. With the stabbing incident upgraded from attack to murder, doubtless the deputies would be redoubling their investigation of the crime scene and their questioning of witnesses.
“Nina! Yoo-hoo, over here!”
I spied the yoo-hooer immediately. Mostly because he was standing beneath the awning of the Weary Bones Antique Shoppe across the street from me. I left the signs propped next to the bench and crossed the street.
“Hi, Mason. Shocking, isn’t it?” I somberly greeted the man.
Mason was Mason Denman, the sixty-something owner of Weary Bones. It was an eclectic place right out of a picker’s dream, with goods ranging from gilded eighteenth-century French bed frames to nineteenth-century samplers to midcentury modern atomic wall clocks. Basically, it was the spot in town to find something you never knew you needed until you saw it artfully displayed there.
Mason was pretty eclectic himself. Trim and short, with a carefully coiffed black pompadour (the hair, probably real; the color, definitely not) and eyebrows like mutant black caterpillars, he was dressed in his usual uniform of dark dress pants and white long-sleeved shirt topped by a vest—today, blue-and-gray striped—and accented by a monochromatic gray tie. His one touch of color this day was a bright vintage handkerchief—turquoise polka dots on yellow—tucked in his vest pocket. It was always a different hankie every day, and I’d yet to see a repeat.
He gave his eyes a discreet swipe with the handkerchief before leaning in for his usual two-cheek kiss.
“Simply terrible,” he said with a sigh, and shoved the bright cloth back into his coat. “That hunky Deputy Jackson just gave us the bad news. Greg didn’t make it.”
“I know. Gemma told me before she went back to the coffee shop. I know it sounds cliché, but you just don’t expect something like this to happen in a nice little town like Cymbeline.”
“Well, get used to it,” a second male voice broke in. “And it’s all Bainbridge’s fault. He’s the one building things up so more outsiders move in. Pretty ironic he’s the first victim.”
The speaker was Jack Hill, charter member of the “I Hate Greg
Bainbridge Club.” Today his logo T-shirt was bright yellow. But despite the cheery color, the creamery owner did not look happy. Maybe he was mad that the paramedics had sliced up the penguin mascot suit.
Hoping to defuse things a bit, I stuck out my hand.
“We saw each other at Peaches and Java yesterday,” I reminded him, “but we haven’t formally met. I’m Nina Fleet. I live a couple of blocks north of the square, and I really like your ice cream.”
As I’d hoped, his lips flickered into a semblance of a smile at this praise of his product. “Thanks, glad to hear that. And please call me Jack.”
“Nina bought Mrs. Lathrop’s place,” Mason informed the other man as we shook.
“So you’re the one,” Jack said, seemingly forgetting about the murder that had happened right behind his shop. “I’ve been to the house a few times back in the day.”
“And that’s how you knew Harry?” I guessed.
He shook his head. “No, he was living on the West Coast then. We never actually met before a few weeks ago.”
“So you were a friend of Mrs. Lathrop’s.” I tried again, not sure exactly where his story was going.
“Actually, I did some work for her. This was back before Jill and I started the creamery, while I was still doing carpentry for a living. I’d been to her place enough times that I’d kinda taken a shine to it. When the house came up for sale, Jill and I kicked around the idea of buying it, but you beat us to it.”
“It’s a great house,” I agreed. “I’ve decided to try running a B&B out of it and see how that goes.”
“Yeah, that was Jill’s thought. I told her we already have enough to do running the creamery. I just wanted to live there.”
Then he switched subjects again. “I saw you talking to the sheriff a few minutes ago. Does she have any suspects? Are they about to make an arrest?”
“You know how it is. The police never tell anyone anything. I’m pretty sure at this point that everyone is a suspect.”
Jack raised his palms in a gesture of protest. “You can take me off the list. Not that I wouldn’t like to shake the hand of whoever did it, but I’ve got a dozen witnesses to say I was in the creamery when it happened.”
Then, with a smirk in the direction of the antique store owner, he went on, “But Mason could’ve done it. We all know there’s bad blood between him and Greg.”
I shot Mason a surprised look. Could he be suspect number five?
“Not me,” Mason protested, tearing up again. “I liked Greg. Well, mostly. We didn’t get along so well that time I complained about the restroom plumbing and it took him three weeks to get it fixed.”
“Gregory Bainbridge was your landlord?” I asked in surprise.
Mason nodded. “Bobby Short used to own our building, but he had some health problems a couple of years ago. Greg convinced Bobby to unload it so he’d have some ready cash in case things grew dire with his prognosis. He took Greg’s advice and put it on the market, and then Greg turned around and bought the building himself.”
“Yeah, he got it for a song, and then he practically doubled the rent once our leases were up,” Jack added.
I looked at Mason for confirmation, and he shrugged.
“Well, there’s that. On the bright side, we hadn’t had an increase in almost eight years while Bobby owned the building. Greg said he was simply readjusting the rents based on the current market.”
The ice cream shop owner gave a disbelieving snort. “Current market, my—”
“Jackie,” a woman’s voice interrupted. “You wanna give me a hand here?”
Jill Hill, Jack’s wife and creamery co-owner, had stepped outside the ice cream shop door. She must have recognized me from my original visit, since she gave me a regal dip of her chin that I answered with a friendly nod. Mason got a long-distance air kiss, which he returned.
I’d previously pegged Jill to be a dozen or so years younger than Jack, making her in her late thirties. Like the previous time I’d seen her, she had the full “Real Housewives of Atlanta” makeup thing going, from the heavy drawn-on brows a couple of shades darker than her foundation to the full, bright-red lips. Her black hair lay in a sleek, jaw-length bob frozen into place with industrial-strength hair spray.
Even dressed in a yellow Taste-Tee-Freeze–logo T-shirt and jeans like her husband, she looked as if she’d just stepped out of a glossy magazine ad. The only exception to the perfection—what some might call a flaw, but I thought rather endearing—was the sprinkling of Meghan Markle–like freckles across her nose.
“I know we’re upset about poor Greg,” she went on, “but folks are still wanting ice cream. I think all the excitement heats them up even more than usual, so everyone’s looking to cool down. I could use a hand.”
“Sure thing, baby. I’ll be right there,” Jack promptly replied.
Once she’d ducked back inside again, however, he turned back to me.
“I still do a little carpentry on the side. A couple of weeks before she died, I did an estimate for Mrs. Lathrop. One of the stair hand rails was loose, and a couple of steps needed fixing. You know, stuff you don’t want to neglect if you have guests staying there. I can stop by later this week to take a look, if you want. You can call me here at the store.”
He paused and gave me that little half smile again. “And don’t worry, I’ll give you the neighbor rate. Just don’t mention it to Jill.”
I responded with a noncommittal nod, trying to reassure myself that my internal Creep-O-Meter wasn’t going off. I waited until Jack had gone back inside before rounding on Mason.
“All right, tell me the truth about that neighbor rate,” I demanded, putting finger quotes around those last two words. “Maybe I’m just reading the guy wrong. Is he on the level with that whole carpentry thing, or was that offer a code for something out of Fifty Shades?”
Mason gave a sputtering laugh and then gestured me to move farther down the sidewalk. “If you’re asking if Jack plays around on the side, no way. He spends his spare time thanking the Lord Baby Jesus that he landed such a hot woman. But when it comes to Jill, we-e-e-e-e-ll …”
The black caterpillar eyebrows danced all over his forehead as he drew out the last word on a meaningful little tenor.
I gave him a look. “So you’re saying that Jill is the one who—”
“Oops, got to go,” he cut me short as he gestured toward a potential customer heading in his shop door. “Don’t worry, Jack’s a pro when it comes to carpentry. He’s built me a couple of cabinets way better than anything you could buy at Ikea. But if it’s gossip you want, feel free to stop by anytime.”
By the time I returned to the bandstand with the protest signs, the sisters were wrapping things up. With a final “Amen,” Mother Superior opened her eyes and glanced my way.
“I assume Gemma told you the unfortunate news, Nina?” she asked, expression unreadable behind the oversized glasses as she moved toward me. At my nod, she went on, “We have prayed for the repose of Mr. Bainbridge’s soul, and for justice to be served. And now we should return to your house. Sisters …”
They filed down the bandstand steps and headed back in the direction of my place. I shouldered the signs again and followed. I paused, however, for a look at the tree where Sheriff Lamb had been doing her questioning. She wasn’t there any longer, and neither was Harry.
I frowned. I’d been wondering how his talk with the sheriff had gone. But it was strangely coincidental that Harry had been trapped inside the walk-in freezer at the same time Greg was murdered.
Unless Harry had faked that whole freezer thing as an alibi, and he was the one who had killed Gregory Bainbridge.
So shocking was that unexpected thought that I literally gasped aloud. Could Harry have been the one who murdered the real estate developer? Did he belong on my suspects list as number five … or was it six now?
The more I thought about it as I followed the nuns across the square, the more plausible it seemed. Harry was
an actor. It would have been easy enough for him to feign friendly concern with Bainbridge over the fact that the real estate developer was persona non grata with the people of Cymbeline.
I warmed to my theory. Harry could have offered Bainbridge the penguin suit under the pretense of helping him make it to the parking lot unmolested. And once the man was in the costume, Harry could easily have stuck a knife into him. Afterward, he could appear alongside the rest of us telling the story of being conveniently stuck in the freezer as the murder happened.
The only thing unclear in this particular scenario was a motive on the actor’s part.
I lagged even further behind the nuns as I felt my enthusiasm for this mental exercise seep out of me like air from an untied balloon. Possible? Yes. Likely? No. Quite frankly, Sister Mary George was a more viable candidate than he.
Still, I continued to play the hypothetical scene through my admittedly overheated brain (with no shade to block the sun, our walk from the square was turning pretty darned toasty). Deep as I was in thought, I didn’t hear the fast-moving footsteps behind me until they were practically upon me.
And then a familiar voice directly behind me asked, “Uh, Nina, can I talk to you?”
Chapter Eleven
I gave a reflexive little shriek as I swung about and saw Harry Westcott literally on my heels. As I spun, the protest signs propped on my shoulder caught the opposite momentum. Totally unintentionally—at least, that’s what I told myself—they went flying out of my hands, passing within inches of Harry’s face.
He dodged and ducked and avoided the onslaught. We both stared a moment at the scattered signs; then, at the same time, we knelt to gather them up.
Had this been a “meet-cute,” we would have clunked heads together and then realized as we clutched our bruised foreheads that we were meant for each other. Fortunately, we avoided that well-worn (and painful!) cliché, mostly because I was busy checking out his hands to make sure he didn’t have a knife in one of them.
Once I had the signs back in my grasp again, I stood. “You were saying?”