by Molly Macrae
While I enjoyed that image and finally began to relax, Ardis nudged my shoulder. “Look sharp and don’t laugh. Stubborn cop, short cop, and ghost cop just walked in.”
THIRTEEN
Geneva thought the appearance of any law officer would be improved with a swagger. If Clod and Shorty had seen her, they could have learned how to do it from the swagger master. Even without her guidance, Clod’s official deputy posture and blank face gave nothing away. And although Shorty’s uniform might look as if it wanted to yawn, his posture was no less crisp and no more communicative than Clod’s.
Geneva’s swagger didn’t give anything away, either, and neither did her yell. “All rise!”
I started to get up. Ardis stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be respectful, but we don’t want it going to Cole’s head. Or hers. Do you think they’ve solved it that fast? She looks triumphant.”
“She looks like her hero,” I whispered back. “Barney Fife.”
Joe couldn’t have heard Ardis from where he sat, but he took the same casual approach to Clod’s entrance. He re-crossed his ankles but otherwise didn’t interrupt his languid ruminations by so much as glancing at his brother.
When Sierra saw the deputies, she cut her current gallery circuit short and marched over to meet them. “Well?” she said, stopping in front of Clod. “Did the ex-husband do it?”
Before answering, Clod dismissed the deputy who’d been standing at the entrance of Belinda’s shop, and then he turned back to Sierra. “The sheriff will release an official statement later today.”
“But Belinda’s ex did do it, didn’t he?” Sierra asked. “I mean, I’m sorry, I truly am. I’m beyond horrified. I can’t even tell you how . . . I’ve never been involved in something like this. But I have to be practical. I don’t want to sound callous, but if you’ve arrested him, can we reopen? This afternoon?”
“As I said, the official statement will come out later today.”
“That doesn’t tell me what I need to know.” Sierra looked as though she wanted to stomp her foot. I felt her pain. I often wanted to stomp a foot when Clod was being officious. Usually his.
“Here’s the way it works,” Clod said. “You tell us what we need to know and then we’ll give you what information we can. If it helps, it’s been my experience that a situation like this won’t hurt your business. It might even help. Ms. Buchanan and Ms. Rutledge will probably back me up on that.”
Clod, Shorty, and Geneva looked at us. Sierra didn’t. Ardis and I nodded anyway.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Shorty said with his Willie Nelson twang. “Looked like you had a good turnout this morning. Folks’ll be back.”
“Is that your professional opinion?” Sierra asked.
Shorty didn’t appear to take offense, but Geneva huffed a bit.
“What about tomorrow?” Sierra demanded.
“We’ll know when the official statement comes out later today.” Clod, still playing cool cop, sounded just as calm repeating that for the third time. Geneva gave him a thumbs-up. Sierra might have swallowed something rude.
Shorty took on the role of placatory cop. “Would you be more comfortable sitting down, Ms. Estep?”
“No.”
“Fine, we have a few questions, then,” Clod said.
“The Arts Council Board will have a few, too,” Sierra snapped. She immediately put both hands to her mouth and looked at the floor. “Excuse me,” she said in a smaller voice. “I’m sorry. I’m rattled.”
“We understand,” Clod said.
“Thank you.”
Ardis used her honeysuckle to cut through the last shreds of Sierra’s bravado. “Sierra, honey, come sit next to me and we’ll get through this together.” She patted the chair on the other side of her. Sierra came and sat on the chair’s edge, and Ardis patted her knee.
“Thank you,” Sierra said again.
“Be sure to thank Ms. Rutledge, too,” Clod said. He followed that remark with an odd, guttural noise.
“Gesundheit,” Geneva said, and pretended to wipe something from her sleeve.
Everyone else looked blank.
“I mean,” Clod said, “you should thank her, because if she’d gone nosing around in storage closets earlier, then you wouldn’t have had even as much business as you did. You would have had to close earlier.”
“Zing!” Geneva shouted.
“Zing, indeed,” Ardis said, sitting up straighter and skewering Clod with an affronted glare.
That actually made me laugh, and between Ardis’s seeming non sequitur and my reaction, Clod lost some of his starch. He scratched a spot below his right ear. His resemblance to Rogalla’s Bruce, puzzling over the presence or absence of possums, really was uncanny.
Ardis muttered a soft oops. Then she went on the offensive. “We don’t have time for tasteless jokes, Coleridge. I believe I can speak for Kath, Ten, and Gen—and Sierra—when I say that we’re happy to help with your investigation into this terrible crime in whatever way we can.”
“Thank you, Ms. Buchanan.”
“So sit down and ask your questions.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Clod and Shorty pulled chairs around to sit facing us. Now that it was getting serious, Joe pulled in his legs, put his elbows on his knees, and rested his chin on the tips of his fingers. Shorty stifled a yawn.
“Before we get into the specifics of the incident this morning,” Clod said, “I’d like some background information to flesh out the details of the report.”
Sierra tipped her head, trying to bring his request into focus. “Like . . .”
“What you know about how this enterprise got started. The impetus. The people involved. The people interested in its success. That kind of thing.”
Now Shorty tipped his head at Clod, and Joe’s eyes shifted from phantom fish at his toes to his brother’s face. That kind of thing? What did Clod mean by that? What was he fishing for?
“Everyone I’ve met is interested in the Vault’s success,” Sierra said. “And I think you know that Garland Brown was a huge supporter. He and the Arts Council recognized, early on, that there’s been a revitalization of the arts community in Blue Plum and the surrounding area. Now, with the Vault, we’re in the forefront. The details of the renovations—”
Sierra continued, but the easily bored ghost caught my attention when she propped her elbow on Shorty’s shoulder. “Lecturey,” Geneva said through a yawn.
It did sound like a practiced spiel, like something Sierra had delivered in one form or another while making the rounds of Blue Plum civic clubs. When she stopped for breath, Shorty, who didn’t seem to be on the same page as Clod (and might be as easily bored as Geneva), uttered something odd: “Arrrr.”
Sierra cut herself off and stared at Shorty. “Excuse me? Are you mocking me?”
“No, no,” Shorty said, turning pink. “Sorry. I’m in the middle of a never-ending remodeling project for my folks. Renovate, repurpose, revitalize, rejuvenate—those Rs you’re talking about haunt my nightmares. But you’re right; this place has the Rs covered.”
“Revenant,” Geneva said. “Regurgitate.”
“Ridiculous,” Ardis muttered beside me.
“Let’s move on,” Clod said. “Who took the reins, so to speak, after Mr. Brown’s death?”
“No one person that I can think of,” Sierra said. “The project was virtually complete when he . . . died. The members were devastated, of course, but plans for the opening were in place, and it was more a question of dotting Is and crossing Ts.”
“Joe? Ms. Buchanan? Ms. Rutledge?” Clod asked. “Any insight on that?”
Rutledge. Arrrr. Russell.
“Ms. Rutledge?”
“Oh, sorry. But why would Russell kill Belinda? If they were on such good terms that he was helping her in the shop, then I don’t get that.”
“Thank you, Ms. Rutledge,” Clod said. “We’ll take your opinion into consideration.”
“
And please be sure to wipe your feet,” Geneva said. “He’s dripped sarcasm all over the floor.”
“She has a point, Coleridge,” Ardis said. “Kath does, I mean.” She sat forward and looked at me and Joe. “Are either of you members of the Arts Council?” We shook our heads. “Are you familiar with the accused?” We shook our heads, again.
“I don’t know him, either,” Sierra said.
“That clears that up, then.” Ardis sat back, crossed her arms, and looked at Clod as though she planned to revoke his parole. “We can add little or nothing to help you flesh out your report.”
“Some of us have no flesh at all,” Geneva said.
Clod, who tended to watch his manners with his elders, thanked Ardis with less sarcasm than he’d thanked me. “Even so,” he said, “Ms. Estep, will you please give us a rundown on how this place operates? Is each shop independent?”
“Are they even shops?” Shorty asked. “Most of them aren’t any bigger than the booths out at the flea market. Joe’s isn’t even as big as the closet where you all found the body.”
“Call Joe’s a shoppette, then,” Ardis said. “You don’t mind that, do you, Joe?”
“Suits me.”
“Ms. Estep?” Clod said. “How the Vault operates. A general idea, if you don’t mind.”
Sierra launched into another recitation. Geneva groaned, then lay on her back, floated up to the ceiling, and pretended to snore. I felt like joining her. Instead I wondered what Clod was gleaning from this. Was he absorbing the information, or were he and Shorty looking for something else? Were Ardis, Joe, and I being used as extras in a scene they’d engineered?
“Excuse me, Ms. Estep,” Ardis interrupted. “The Arts Council obviously hired the right person for this job. I applaud your grasp of details and your energy. If you don’t mind, though, I have another suggestion for Deputy Dunbar.”
“What would that be, Ms. Buchanan?” Clod asked.
“If you have more pertinent questions that might wrap this up faster, why don’t we get to them? You’re busy, we’re busy, and I have a sitter I’ll need to rescue from Daddy sooner or later.”
Clod’s excellent poker face didn’t tell me how he felt about Ardis’s interruption. But why did he break eye contact with her? Was it a cloddish lapse in manners? Easy enough to believe. Or did he not trust his poker face to her expert scrutiny?
“Are storage rooms and the back door normally kept locked, Ms. Estep?” Clod asked.
“Yes.”
“Yesterday, when Ms. Moyer reported the vandalism to her tablecloth, Al Rogalla and I went out the back door. It wasn’t locked. But I understand your merchants were still moving things in.”
“And you can always get out,” Sierra said. “But it’s locked from the outside. It takes a key to get back in.”
“We also came back in,” Clod said.
“It should have been locked,” Sierra said.
“Was it locked properly today?”
“The last time I checked, yes.”
“When would that have been?”
During the second or two it took Sierra to answer that question, Geneva floated back down beside Clod and stuck her thumbs in an imaginary belt. A glance at Joe showed a narrowing of his left eye. Ardis leaned very slightly forward, although she might have been reacting to Geneva more than to Sierra’s minuscule hesitation.
Or did I imagine all of that? And imagined that Clod and Shorty were looking for significance in insignificant words and actions?
“I didn’t go around checking all the doors before we opened this morning,” Sierra said. “I did before I went up to my apartment last night. It was locked then. I’ve told the merchants not to leave it unlocked.”
“She did,” Joe said.
“Who has keys?” Shorty asked.
“All the merchants,” Sierra said.
“Board members?” Clod asked.
“Not all,” Sierra said.
“Did Garland Brown?” Clod asked.
“I’m sorry; I should know that, but I don’t.”
“We’ll need a list of the merchants and their contact information.”
“Your deputies went around collecting that information before closing us down, didn’t they?”
“It will be better to have an official list,” Clod said. “Board members, too, whether or not you know if they have keys.”
“But when did this happen?” Sierra asked. “She was in her shop.”
“You saw her there?” Shorty asked.
It didn’t surprise me that Sierra sounded defensive by then. Geneva surprised me, though, by maintaining her focus and standing beside Clod. She had great respect for the fictional cops in ’50s and ’60s television shows, but she often showed less respect for him. If possible, she now looked more stuffed and starched than he did.
“We had a sort of pep rally before we opened,” Sierra said. “I thought it would be fun. Get us in the spirit and get us going for the day.”
“What time was that?” Shorty asked. “And where?”
“Here in the gallery. Nine-thirty.”
“Ms. Moyer attended?” Clod asked.
“Of course. I brought donuts. Everyone shows up for donuts, right?”
“Was Ms. Moyer’s ex-husband at the rally?” Clod asked.
“I—there were some people I didn’t know. People here to assist the merchants. The musicians. The caterer.” Sierra looked at Joe. “Did you see her ex?”
“Sorry,” Joe said. “I missed it.”
“Where were you?” Clod asked.
“In the shoppette. Had a few more browns to tie.”
“Isn’t that always the way?” Shorty said. “You can always use another fly.”
“That’s been my experience,” Joe said. “I heard the cheering, though. It sounded nice and peppy.”
“Well, I’m sure Belinda was there,” Sierra said. “She was hard enough to miss. And the ex must have been there, too, unless he had one more thing to tie. But you still haven’t said when it happened. Or how.”
“We’ll be able to answer those questions better when the official statement is released later today,” Clod said.
Geneva’s staunch pose slipped then. She shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. I couldn’t tell if she meant it as a comment on Sierra’s repeated question or Clod’s repeated lack of information.
“Ms. Rutledge,” Clod said, “a few questions for you.”
“Excuse me, may I go now?” Sierra asked.
“Not just yet.”
She’d already started to get up and dropped back into the chair with the grace of a sullen teen. If Geneva’s hollow eyes could skewer, they would have skewered Sierra.
Sierra wrapped her arms around herself and crossed her legs. Closing herself off?
“Ms. Rutledge?”
Had Clod actually asked me a question? I glanced at him. Talk about skewering. “Sorry. Would you mind repeating that?”
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
“Good. Then I haven’t missed anything. What would you like to ask?”
“When you found Ms. Moyer this morning was the storage room door locked or unlocked?”
“Locked.”
“Locked,” Sierra echoed. “See? Properly locked, like I said.” Her arms didn’t unlock themselves, though.
“I asked Joe to open the closet for Kath,” Ardis said. “And as we’ve already established, merchants have keys.”
“Thank you, Ms. Buchanan. Ms. Rutledge, are you in any way a part of this business?”
“This—”
But Geneva got in ahead of me. “Absolutely not!” She reared back and looked at Clod. “She did not murder that woman!”
A jolt of adrenaline like a lightning bolt woke up every last cell in my body. Was that what he meant? “Did you really just ask—what do you mean by ‘this business’? Are you asking if I’m involved in this murder? Because the answer is absolutely not!”
Clod didn’t close
his eyes and massage his forehead, but I could hear it in his voice. “No, Ms. Rutledge.” He swirled a finger around the gallery. “I only meant this business. Are you part of the Blue Plum Vault? Are you expanding your business horizons?”
“False alarm,” Geneva called. “False alarm. It’s okay, folks. Huge relief. My bad. But are we expanding our business?”
I did close my eyes and massage my forehead. “No, we aren’t expanding.”
“We have quite enough excitement in our lives as it is,” Ardis said. “And quite often too much.”
“There’s no need to be insulting,” Geneva said. “I was only asking.”
Then Clod asked the question I’d been dreading, the one I knew he or Shorty would have to ask. I’d been trying to think of a reasonable answer to it from the moment I’d opened the door and found Belinda. Answering the question I thought he’d asked—did I have anything to do with her death—had been easy, if horrifying. This question, though . . .
“Why did you need to get into the storeroom this morning?”
Because I heard a ghost mourning.
Ardis started to say something. Clod put up a hand. “I want to hear from Ms. Rutledge.”
Because I knew I’d find a body.
“Does it matter why?” Joe asked.
“I think it might,” Sierra said.
“Ms. Rutledge?” Clod prompted.
“A dustpan,” Geneva said. “Tell the flatfoot you were looking for a dustpan.”
“She was looking for a dustpan,” Ardis blurted.
“Popular item,” Clod said. “Ms. Moyer had one in her hand.”
“I wonder if that was another oops on my part,” Geneva said.
“One more quick question, Ms. Rutledge,” Clod said. “About the scissors in Ms. Moyer’s back. They’re labeled ‘Weaver’s Cat.’ Any idea why?”
My shoulders rose. If I’d been a cat, and on my feet, I would have danced away from Clod’s question with my back arched.