by Rickie Blair
A high-pitched squeal came from the sidewalk.
“Owww! Why don’t you watch where—”
With a desperate glance at the broken glass, I planted both hands on the wooden railing and leapt over the banister, landing with a thud on the hall below. The front door was wide open. I raced through it.
Patty lay crumpled on the sidewalk. She wasn’t moving.
I ran up and bent on one knee beside her. “Patty?” I shook her shoulder. “Patty?”
No response.
“Are you okay? Talk to me.”
Patty groaned and sat up, pressing a hand to her head. “Who was that?” she asked groggily.
After glancing at the deserted street, I helped her to her feet. “I didn’t see him. Can you describe him?”
“I’m afraid not, hon. I was looking at my phone, checking our app to see if I was in the right place… and somebody barreled right over me. Bloody cheek, if you ask me.”
She gave her head a rueful rub while bending over to search the grass. “Do you see my phone anywhere?”
Patty’s bright pink cell phone cover was covered in sparkly fake gemstones that spelled P-A-T-T-Y in heart-shaped letters, so it was easy to spot. The glass on the front was cracked.
“Drats,” she said, staring at the screen. “That’s a shame.”
I jiggled anxiously beside her. “We have to go.” A quick check of the street showed no sign of the cop yet.
Patty wasn’t listening. “I love this phone. Daaaaarn it.” She gave the screen an experimental tap. “Oh, look, it’s still working.” She held it up. “See?”
Grasping her elbow, I propelled her down the walk toward the metal pergola, swinging the gate open with my other hand. “That’s great. Why don’t we take it home and look at it there?” I urged her onto the sidewalk.
Patty was still tapping. “I’ll send Clark a text that we’re on our way.”
“Clark is here?”
“Of course he is, and he’s dying to see you. He’s at a funny little sports bar on Main Street. You weren’t answering my texts, and the app gave this address as your last known location, so I left him at the bar and…”
This was too much information for me. I zoned out so I could concentrate on getting Patty out of there before the constable returned.
Too late.
A police car drew up alongside us and the officer got out.
“Ladies.” He tipped his hat. “Out for a stroll?”
“Yes,” I said. “Nice day for it, too.”
He inclined his head toward Lucy’s porch, where the front door stood wide open. “What happened there?”
Before I could deny anything, Patty put her size-six right in it.
“Verity, you forgot to close the door. We’d better go back,” she said brightly, twisting around.
I gripped her elbow more tightly and swiveled her back. “No need. The constable will look after that door. Nothing to do with us,” I said, nodding in his direction while I marched Patty by.
At the next corner, I made an abrupt right turn and frog-marched her a quarter of a block before stopping. “Patty, what are you doing here?”
She gave me a startled glance. “Visiting you, naturally. Hey, were you surprised? I told Clark you’d be really surprised. Were you surprised?”
“Definitely. How did you find me, exactly? And what app were you taking about?”
“Hail+HeartY.” At my confused glance, she added, “You know—that one we have on our phones? I wouldn’t have thought of it, except you weren’t answering my texts.”
I winced, recalling Patty telling me to use that app to “call for help.” I slipped the phone from my purse and clicked it back on. It beeped to inform me of twelve waiting texts. All from Patty.
I made a mental note to scour my phone of any and all mystery apps.
Then I stepped back to assess her injuries. “Patty, your knees are skinned and your forehead’s scraped. You’ve been assaulted. We should report this.”
She brushed grass clippings off her yoga pants with one hand while waving the other dismissively. “It wasn’t his fault. I stepped onto the walk just as he was running down the path. Couldn’t be helped.”
“So, it was a man?”
“Couldn’t say. I told you, I didn’t see him—or her. So there’s not much sense in reporting it to the police.”
I mulled this over. If we reported it, I’d have to explain why we were in Lucy’s house. Still, we’d uncovered vital evidence—
My heart caught in my throat. I had asked Lorne to remove that vital evidence. Why had I done that? I scrunched up my eyes. Just once couldn’t I reflect on the consequences of my plan before springing into action?
“Verity?” Patty placed a hand on my arm. “Are you sorry I’m here?”
Opening my eyes, I reached out and wrapped her in a bear hug that surprised even me. Tears pricked the back of my eyes. For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then I took a step back, and smiled.
“I’m delighted to see you Patty. And it was a huge surprise.”
She grinned in return. “I knew it. I told Clark so. I said…”
“Where did you say Clark was?”
“Down the street. There was a big bird on the sign. It looked like a heron. Or maybe a parrot. Or—I know—it was a…”
I nodded. The Tipsy Jay’s attraction for Clark was obvious—three big-screen TVs tuned to sports channels. “Let’s go get him.”
Patty hobbled gamely beside me as I walked away. Hopefully the rest of the team had managed a cleaner escape.
Chapter Fifteen
It wasn’t easy to pry Clark away from the big screens at the Tipsy Jay. I had to mention to Katia, sotto voce, that if she ran out of Guinness, it might be easier for Patty to get her husband out of there.
Katia readily agreed. Clark had been rather loud in his insistence that she change the channel to a football match between Leeds United and Manchester, even though the other patrons wanted tennis. There may have been a bit of shouting before we arrived.
Once we regained the street—Clark was swaying, which Patty blamed on jet lag—I offered to drive them to Rose Cottage and get them settled in. After that… I had things to do. Well, only one thing, really—check in with Emy and Lorne to make sure they hadn’t been arrested.
Patty insisted on going to a B&B, but since their suitcases were propped up by their feet, she was only trying to be polite.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You’ll stay with me. There’s plenty of room.”
Patty opened her mouth to object, but before she could say anything, Clark threw his arms around me in a mushy hug.
“Exshelent. Good show.” He stepped back and looked around, then raised his hand with a flourish. “Lead on.”
I ushered them down the street toward my aunt’s truck. As we passed Anonymous, I glanced through the window. Fritz was conferring with a man in a chef’s hat. Probably ordering more sea urchins.
Then, because apparently there weren’t enough mysteries to keep me busy, I pondered the name. In my younger days, I’d thought “urchins” were wily youngsters like Dickens’ Artful Dodger. When I moved to Vancouver, I discovered they were spiky ball-shaped creatures with edible gonads. Some of the world’s tastiest sea urchins were harvested off Canada’s west coast. Still—yuck. No one could mistake me for a gourmet.
Since the spare room at Rose Cottage held only a cot, I moved Patty and Clark into Aunt Adeline’s bedroom after removing some of my clothes. After explaining the kitchen layout to Patty, and making coffee for Clark, I bowed out.
“I’ll see you later for dinner.” After contemplating that for a moment, I added, “We’ll go out.”
When I glanced back from the doorway, Patty was bent over, peering into the cupboards next to the stove. I closed the door, fervently hoping she wasn’t contemplating any baking.
By the time I slid gratefully into a chair at the 5X Bakery, Lorne and Emy were already seated. Lorne was working his way t
hrough a slice of chocolate cake, so he only nodded at me, mouth full.
Emy pulled the hat and mustache from a box on the floor beside her. “What are we going to do about these?” she asked, twirling the fedora on her outstretched finger and raising her eyebrows.
“We’ll have to come clean.”
“Give them to Jeff, you mean?”
I nodded ruefully. “Maybe we can do it… anonymously.”
Emy rummaged in the box for the newspaper clipping, and placed it on the table. Next to it, she laid the mustache. It was the same shape as the one in the photo. The fedora was also identical.
The idea that Lucy had driven a known killer to Leafy Hollow days before her death made me queasy. But what if it wasn’t Lucy in that picture?
I picked up the clipping for a closer look. The driver’s features were impossible to make out through the windshield, so I concentrated on the hands resting on the wheel. Were those small hands, like Lucy’s? Or large, like…
Replacing the clipping on the table, I pictured Sue’s outdoor-roughened fingers as she adjusted the scope on her binocular. She had often been in Lucy’s home office. Often enough to plant evidence. But evidence of what, exactly?
“Did Sue Unger inherit a lot of money?” I asked.
Emy looked surprised. “Sue? Not that I know of. Although…” she said, her forehead wrinkling. “She lived in an apartment over the jewelry store until a few years ago. Sue worked as a plumber back then. Then she bought that land and spent a fortune renovating the house.”
“And building her blind?”
Emy nodded. “Exactly. No one has any idea where the money came from to buy that property. Sue doesn’t work as far as anyone knows.”
“Has anybody asked her?”
She rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”
Emy was right. Sue normally rebuffed questions about her personal life. I’d assumed that her whispered conversation with Lucy at our book club meeting was literary chitchat. Until my discovery of the book cache in Lucy’s office, it never occurred to me they might have something in common—something they wanted to discuss. But still—why keep it confidential?
I shoved the hat, the mustache, and the newspaper clipping back into the box, uncertain what to do next.
“Uh-oh,” Emy intoned.
Lorne and I jerked our heads up at her warning.
Emy was staring at the front window. She drew a finger across her throat. “Busted.”
I swiveled around as the bell tinkled over the front door.
Jeff walked through and let the door close behind him. He regarded us with a no-nonsense expression, his police cap firmly on his head.
Emy jumped to her feet. “Hi, Jeff. Are you looking for a lemon cupcake? I didn’t make any today, sorry. But I do have—”
He held up a hand. “No cupcakes, thanks Emy. Just a few questions. I see the usual suspects are here.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I mean—it saves me having to round you all up.”
I lowered my head into my hands. Great. Just when we’d been getting along so well. I parted two fingers to take a look.
“Jeff,” Emy said, in her best wheedling tone. “You’re jumping to conclusions again.”
Sighing, I rose to my feet. “Never mind, Emy.” Turning to Jeff, I said, “Yes, we went to Lucy’s. And yes, we went inside—which wasn’t illegal, since Emy’s mom has a key. Lucy and Thérèse were friends, you know.”
Jeff opened his mouth, but I sliced a hand in the air to stop him. “The broken glass on the stairs had nothing to do with us. That was somebody else.”
His eyes narrowed. “What glass?”
“Somebody broke in while we were there,” Emy said. “They smashed a vase in the stairwell.”
“I think they were there all along,” I said.
Emy raised a hand to her mouth with a gasp. “Oh, crackers. You mean, while we were searching the office, somebody was…”
“Wait a minute,” Jeff said. “You were searching? For what?”
With my gaze fixed on Emy, I ignored his question. “I think we interrupted them. Remember that cluttered table in the office? Lucy was a bookkeeper. She had a tidy mind. She wouldn’t have left her office like that. I think someone rifled through those papers because they were looking—”
Jeff raised his voice. “For what?” He pointed at me. “Spit it out, Verity.”
Emy, Lorne and I exchanged glances.
Then I retrieved the fedora and mustache and handed them over, along with the clipping.
Jeff glanced from one object to the other. “You’ll have to explain this.”
By the time I brought him up to date—and Emy had made coffee, placed a raisin-walnut scone on a plate, and pulled out a chair for him—Jeff was shaking his head. He sat down, scrutinizing the objects.
Emy casually pushed the butter dish closer to his plate.
“This makes no sense,” Jeff said. “Are you telling me that Mrs. Rupert had something to do with Lucy Carmichael’s death?”
We nodded in unison.
“Why? What possible motive could she have?”
“Um…”
Jeff rose to his feet, leaving his walnut scone untouched. “It’s a shock losing a friend, and it’s always difficult to accept suicide—but there’s no evidence to support this theory of yours. I’m sorry.”
“There is,” I said. “Dozens of villagers paid Lucy to monitor their online dating apps and flirt on their behalf. We believe she was blackmailing them.”
For once, Jeff was speechless.
“A ghostwriter for online dating?” he said finally. “I didn’t know that was an option.”
I gave him a sharp look, and he held up a hand.
“I’m not interested for myself. But it does open up a new line of inquiry.”
“Lucy charged big fees, according to the records on her computer. But some payments were larger than others. We think those were people who had something to hide.”
“We’ll search her computer, but”—Jeff held out his hand, palm up—“I’m guessing you already have a list.”
I retrieved my purse and handed over the spreadsheet we’d printed in Lucy’s office.
He perused it. “These initials could be—”
“Aliases, yes. We haven’t worked them out yet.”
Jeff nodded, folded the paper with a decisive swipe of his hand, and slid it into his notebook. “If you have any thoughts on who these aliases represent, don’t keep them to yourself.”
I nodded miserably. Jeff was deep in his professional persona. Hopefully, it wouldn’t interfere with our Friday night dinner. Probably not a good time to bring that up, though. I looked away, humming nervously under my breath.
He pressed his lips together before heading for the door. “Please,” he said over his shoulder. “No more investigating.”
Emy gave me a shove and tilted her head in the direction of the door.
I followed Jeff. We stepped outside.
“Are we still on for Friday?” I asked.
“I hope so.” He smiled—one of those deep, soulful smiles.
The effect on my spine was such that I propped my arm on a lamppost to keep from melting into the pavement. I smiled back, a little more goofily than I’d intended.
Jeff’s smile vanished, his expression turning serious. “Verity, you should curb your curiosity.”
Huh? I released my hold on the lamppost.
Jeff fanned his fingers to forestall my protest. “Only when it comes to police work. Otherwise, it’s—an admirable trait.” He smiled again.
I relaxed again. Then his expression turned solemn once more, and I stiffened.
A woman could get whiplash this way.
Jeff stepped nearer. A whiff of Old Spice tickled my nostrils as he bent his face to my ear. “I don’t want to have to worry about you all the time,” he whispered, his breath warming my neck. Then he stepped away and gave me a searching loo
k. “Why don’t you let the authorities handle this one?”
I nodded wordlessly, then watched as he walked away.
Back in the bakery—I’m not quite sure how I got there—I sank into my chair and fingered the tablecloth. “Well, that’s it. We’re done investigating,” I said dreamily.
I looked up to see Emy and Lorne staring at me incredulously.
“You’re not giving up that easily, are you?” Emy demanded.
Dropping the tablecloth, I said, “I don’t see what else we can do.”
“We can visit Mrs. Rupert and ask if she knew Lucy.”
I sat up straight. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. She’s been the target of a lot of criticism around here, and I bet she’d welcome a friendly visit from three Leafy Hollow residents who don’t wish her ill.”
The idea of interrogating a total stranger—never mind one with a criminal record for murder—set the vein in my neck pulsing. “I’m not doing that,” I stammered.
Emy ducked behind the glass-fronted counter to fill a plate with coconut-maple butter tarts. She walked back to the table and set it in front of me. “You haven’t tried these yet. It’s my latest recipe. I really need your opinion.”
I eyed the plate. Maybe I should try Emy’s new butter tarts, in case some inedible tea-time treat waited for me at home. That way, I could beg off as having already eaten.
I bit down, savoring the burst of syrup, followed by chewy coconut, with just a hint of…
“Is that cardamom?” I asked, once I’d swallowed.
Emy grinned. “Do you like it?”
“It’s hard to tell after only one bite.” I raised the butter tart for another nibble, then drew back. “Wait a minute. You’re bribing me.”
Emy grinned and leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “Is it working?”
“I guess it can’t hurt to talk to her. But you’ll have to do the actual talking.” I crammed in another bite. Mowing lawns and edging perennial beds took a lot of energy.
After Emy swung her Closed sign to face the sidewalk and locked up, we walked across the street to the hardware store. Derek Talbot was perched on a bench, sandwiched between the blue-haired girl and Sue Unger. The women’s protest signs lay propped up on the bench beside them, and they were sipping soft drinks with Derek. I looked about. There were no other marchers.