I frowned. So did Rory.
“So you don’t know if she went out the back door or not?” I asked. “Through the kitchen?”
“I never said she did,” Rivkah said. “I agree with Maisie that if she did go out that way, she might have taken that gun.” Her voice trailed off. “I could have sworn that was where I put it.” She got up without saying anything else and disappeared behind the swinging black door.
“That didn’t sound promising,” Rory said.
“Especially since she didn’t say that she’d gone through the kitchen.”
“Right,” she said, biting her bottom lip.
“It’s what you said, Maisie, and I’m almost sure it’s what my mother said,” I said accusingly.
“It gives us someplace to start,” Maisie said, oblivious to the fact that her grandmother’s story was like a kaleidoscope, full of different colors and ever changing.
“Someplace to start?” Rory asked.
“A lovers’ quarrel, you mean?” I said.
“Yes. Because a lovers’ quarrel has always been a motive for murder,” Maisie said, answering Rory’s inquiry with a definitive statement.
chapter
TWENTY-THREE
This already was turning out to be an übermessy investigation. In the course of one meal (albeit a very big meal), Maisie had come up with two definite killers.
The only good thing that came out of our powwow session was that Rory was doing better. She ate seconds and I think thirds, and even washed it down with two cups of Savta’s coffee. Seeing how well I knew her aversion to any weak cup of joe, after those two cups with no complaints, I figured she was coming around or she was more traumatized than I’d thought.
“Where are we going to find Veronica Russell?” I said when we stepped back outside. I had to pull out a pair of sunglasses to cover my eyes—coming out from the low-lit restaurant to the bright sunlight made them hurt.
“I don’t know,” Maisie said. “She and Zeke were staying at Dell’s bed-and-breakfast, but after what happened, Veronica probably left.”
“I wouldn’t want to stay so close to where it happened,” I said. “If they were dating, she has to be feeling pretty sad right about now.”
“If they are big-time businesspeople, or in Zeke’s case was big-time businesspeople, she probably didn’t stay in Chagrin Falls,” Rory said.
“Why not?” Maisie said.
“Because this place is . . .” Rory looked at me and smiled. “Quaint,” she said. “And they are in the big league and like to live like that.”
“Then how will we find her?” Maisie said.
“Maybe we should start somewhere else,” I said. “The crime took place here, right behind Ms. Devereaux’s place. The evidence has to be here, too, don’t you think?”
“Do you think she did it?” Rory asked.
“Who?” I said, Maisie saying the same thing right after me.
“The lady you just mentioned. Ms. Devereaux.”
“Oh no,” I said. “She don’t take no mess, and didn’t seem to like him the night he spoke at the meeting. But she wouldn’t kill a complete stranger. Or leave him at her back door.”
“I don’t think she did it either,” Maisie said. “Her store isn’t one of the ones that would need to be cleared out for the mall.”
“She didn’t do it,” I said. “But she is the person we need to talk to.” I remembered what my grandfather had told me when I had decided to investigate the last murder. He said she was the first person I should have gone to.
“Who is she?” Rory asked.
“She has the inside scoop on everything.” I nodded. “I’m sure she would have found out something with everything happening right in and around her shop.”
Debbie Devereaux owned the Exquisite Designs clothing boutique. And she was the epitome of that name. She was always dressed sharp, always ready with a quip and like I had said to Rory, knew what was going on in town. But unlike my mother and Rivkah, she didn’t dispense the information she had willy-nilly. You had to go to her, and like she was the Queen of Chagrin Falls, petition her to get her to tell you whatever she knew.
We walked into her shop in a clump, sticking together. We wended around the racks of clothes and waited for her to appear. I don’t think any of us, although for different reasons, were as ready as we thought for starting our own investigation.
“Hi,” Ms. Devereaux said, coming out from the back. “What are you girls doing here?”
“We came to see you,” I said.
She was dressed in a white sheath dress with glittery rhinestones dancing around the neckline that fit nicely over her still-present curves.
“What did you want to see me about?” she said, her eyebrows rising over her brown Wayfarer glasses.
“This is my friend Rory Hunter,” I said, backtracking some. Ms. Devereaux wouldn’t want to say much if she didn’t know who she was saying it to. “She came down to visit me and—”
“Got caught up in all of that murder mess?”
Rory looked at me. She shouldn’t be surprised anymore how fast word got around in our little neighborhood.
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t tell me you two”—she wiggled her finger from me to Maisie—“are trying to solve this thing.”
I opened my mouth to deny it, but didn’t want to lie to Ms. Devereaux. I respected her too much for that.
“We’re just trying to help our friend,” Maisie said.
Looking at Maisie, I smiled. I liked that she said Rory was our friend.
“By investigating?” Ms. Devereaux said.
“By helping the police have suspects other than my family and friends in their crosshairs,” I said.
“Good for the two of you,” Ms. Devereaux said. “But you better be careful.” Pointing a finger at us, she continued as she went behind the counter. “Because whoever killed that man, and I’m sure it could have been anyone in my back room that night, is still out there. They haven’t come forward and confessed, so my guess is they don’t want to be caught.” She started writing on something on her counter and, without looking up, said, “He or she just might be willing to kill again. And this time it might be one of you.”
“Do you know who he or she is?” Maisie asked.
“If I knew, I would have told the police,” she said. “They would be in custody and the three of you wouldn’t have to be running around here like the Keystone Kops.”
“We wanted to get a list of the people that were at the meeting the other night,” I said. “Do you have one?”
“No. People just came,” she said. I figured she’d ask me why I needed it, but she didn’t.
“I didn’t recognize a lot of those faces,” I said. “I hadn’t realized there were so many shop owners I didn’t know.”
“Most of those people weren’t shop owners,” Ms. Devereaux said. “I was surprised they were there—it was like a town hall meeting. Then after that man started talking, I realized that must’ve been why they were there.”
I looked at Maisie, wanting her to see that my idea to check shop owners was a good idea.
“How did they know about him? And how did they know what he was going to talk about?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “To both questions. I had no idea. I thought we were there for your announcement, Maisie. Took me completely by surprise.”
I looked at Maisie. The fact that people who were there were not shop owners meant, to me, that it wasn’t necessarily a disgruntled shop owner. It could just be a disgruntled citizen of Chagrin Falls.
“We were also wondering if you knew where we could find Veronica Russell,” Maisie asked.
“And who is that?” Ms. Devereaux asked. I knew she knew exactly who that was. They both had been in her back room and had, before the murder, s
tayed at her sister’s bed-and-breakfast.
“Zeke Reynolds’s, uhm, partner,” Maisie said, seemingly unsure of what to call her.
“Oh, the woman with the easel?”
I didn’t know why Ms. Devereaux was playing like she didn’t know. She had just freely given us information—now she wanted to be coy. But we needed to push forward if we wanted to get answers and help Rory.
“Yes.” I spoke up. “We were thinking if we could talk to her . . .”
“You don’t think the police have done that?” she asked.
“Do they know that the two of them argued?” Maisie asked.
“I know,” Ms. Devereaux said. “Stands to reason they would know, too.”
We lowered our heads, me trying to rethink the situation. I don’t know what Rory and Maisie were thinking.
I guess we hadn’t thought about what the police already knew and that we were probably retracing their steps, and that took the wind from our sails. The whole idea of being an amateur sleuth was to come up with something the police hadn’t thought of.
But now, thinking about that, the police would have had to be the ones who were the Keystone Kops if we were able to outsmart them that easily. And Detective Beverly was anything but.
“We wanted to ask Veronica, Zeke’s assistant, about something we just found out,” Maisie said. “Something the police probably don’t know about yet.”
Ms. Devereaux looked up from whatever she’d been doing and stared at us for a moment. It looked as if she was trying to figure out if we were trying to bluff her. Something I was sure she wouldn’t stand.
We didn’t say anything. I thought it smart of Maisie to come up with the idea of us chasing the gun and that being the reason, and even smarter that she didn’t say what it was. The police couldn’t have known about the gun found to be missing. It had only just happened.
“Veronica Russell and Zeke Reynolds booked one room, and later two, at Dell’s bed-and-breakfast. And after the murder, Veronica didn’t check out of her room. For whatever reason,” Ms. Devereaux finally said. She nodded her head toward Rory. “Curly Top over there would know that if she had checked into her room when she got in instead of trolling around the city in the middle of the night.”
“It was nine—”
I grabbed Rory’s wrist, gesturing for her not to say anything. She didn’t know Ms. Devereaux like I did. “Is she still there?” I asked.
“Best way to find out,” Ms. Devereaux said, “is for you to go and see.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Mm-hm,” she murmured. She’d gone back to writing whatever she was working on.
Once we got outside, Rory asked, “Who are the Keystone Kops?”
“Who were the Keystone Kops,” Maisie said.
“Bumbling, inept cops,” I said. “Who ran into and over each other trying to solve a crime.”
chapter
TWENTY-FOUR
We left with a renewed mission, and it even seemed that we had Ms. Devereaux’s blessing. She hadn’t said we were on the wrong track, she’d just told us to be careful. I think that helped each of us to feel more confident in what we were doing.
“Are we walking up to American?” Rory asked.
“We walk everywhere around here,” I said.
“I know,” she said, “and I don’t mind, but what if we have to make a quick getaway?”
Maisie and I stopped walking. We hadn’t thought of that.
We hadn’t considered what would happen if we were confronted by the killer, who may very well be Veronica. And perhaps it may turn out she was the killer and still had the gun.
“Good point,” Maisie said. “Whose car should we take?”
“Mine is at Win’s house,” Rory said.
“That’s where mine is, too,” I said. “At home.”
“We could take mine,” Maisie said.
“You have a fast car?” Rory asked. “One that can outrun bullets?”
We chuckled. “Maisie has a VW Bug,” I said. “A lime-green one.”
“To outrun bullets, we need Riya’s car,” Maisie said.
“This Riya must be one bad girl,” Rory said. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
“It’s best to wait,” Maisie said. “She’s kind of dangerous.”
Rory looked at me and I nodded.
“Let’s get your car, Rory,” Maisie continued. “It’s a rental, right?”
“Yeah,” Rory said. “How did you know?”
“Because Win said people in New York don’t own cars.” We turned the corner and headed up the hill to my house. “And, that way, if it does get shot up, you can just turn it in and let the rental company worry about covering up the bullet holes.”
“Maisie is the one who sounds dangerous,” Rory said.
I laughed. Maisie smiled, she seemed to like that designation.
“So. This place might be quaint, Bronwyn,” Rory said, “but there is definitely something criminal about this one.” She meant Maisie. If she thought Maisie was bad, Maisie was right, it probably was a good thing to keep her away from Riya.
As we walked, we tried to strategize about how to approach Veronica.
“We can’t just ask her right out if she killed the guy,” Rory said. “We need to figure out how to get her to confess to us.”
“Why not ask her right out?” Maisie asked, seeming genuinely not to understand why we couldn’t. “We catch her off guard and she may spill the beans.”
“We can’t just ask her that because she might not like it and, like Ms. Devereaux said, might shoot us,” I said, figuring that would make her see why being direct wasn’t a good plan.
“We’ve already discussed a getaway plan,” Maisie said. “That’s why we’re going to get the car.”
I rolled my eyes and Rory giggled. “I probably should change shoes,” Rory said, looking down at her heels. “Looks like we might have to do some running this afternoon.”
“Probably is a good idea,” I said. “And maybe grab a bulletproof vest.”
“I can’t believe we’re making light of this,” Rory said. “Or that we are going to question someone who might have killed a man.”
“I know.” I sighed. “You’re going to owe me big-time after this,” I told Rory.
“I’ll be forever in your debt if you help me with this. For the rest of my life,” Rory said. “That is, if your friend doesn’t get us shot.”
* * *
WE TOOK RORY’S car, but I drove. I figured if we did have to make a hasty getaway, I’d know the fastest way out. But after we circumvented running into Dell, Ms. Devereaux’s sister and the proprietor of the Rose Cottage Inn, and knocked on four of the five doors that were guest rooms, I thought maybe we’d worried for nothing. Veronica didn’t look like she’d hurt anyone.
Today her hair was loose and tousled, her eyes behind her dark-rimmed glasses puffy and her face, devoid of makeup, pasty. She had on yoga pants, a sleeveless tank top and no shoes.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“Hi,” I said, pasting on a smile. With all our talk about coming to speak with her, here I was, standing in front of her, at a loss for what to say. But I knew I needed to say something before Maisie decided to take over the conversation. “We were at the shop owners’ meeting the other night—”
“They’re sending someone else down,” she said. “You’ll have to talk to whomever that is when they arrive.”
“Oh no,” I said. “We wanted you . . . uhm, because we wanted . . .” I looked at Rory, then Maisie. I was stuck.
“To look at those drawings that you had the other night,” Maisie said.
“Yes,” I said. I followed Maisie’s direction. “To get a better idea of how things are going to be. How, you know, it will affect our shops.”
She star
ed at us and drew in a breath. “You own shops?” It didn’t seem as if she believed us.
“My family owns Crewse Creamery,” I said.
“My family owns the Village Dragon Chinese Restaurant.”
“I don’t think it will affect you,” she said, not even flinching when we mentioned Rivkah’s Chinese restaurant. “Our proposed strip runs on the adjacent leg of the triangle.”
“Any change affects us,” I said. “And while we’re not averse to the change, it’s good to get a handle on it so we’re prepared to speak to other shop owners about it.”
She gave us another once-over. “They did tell me to hold things down after . . .” She turned her head away and I saw her swallow hard. I surmised she might’ve been trying to hold back tears. “Until someone from the office got here.”
“So you think it would be okay?” I asked. “Might make it easier to get the support of the village if we talked to them.” I indicated the three of us.
Maisie had a stern look on her face. I don’t think she liked talking about selling our land even if it was a ruse to get in the door and question the woman about Zeke Reynolds’s murder. But she kept quiet and let me do the talking.
Veronica shrugged. “I guess it’ll be okay. It might even help.”
“It might,” I said.
We walked in single file. Rory the last one in the door.
“What shop do you own?” Veronica said to Rory.
“She’s representing the coffee shop,” I said, answering for Rory.
Rory frowned.
“Oh, the Dixby sisters,” Veronica said. Her face showed the same distaste for them as did Rory’s.
This time, once inside, we didn’t stay clumped together. We spread out and formed a triangle in three areas of the small room.
Each guest room in the inn had a small seating area off to one side and a queen-sized bed in the middle. Veronica had a corner room so there were windows on two of the walls, which let a lot of light in.
She had a suitcase flung open and things were haphazardly tossed about inside. I could see they were expensive clothes and shoes, and the way she had them in a disheveled mess, I could tell she probably had a lot more at home. Lined up against the wall were a pair of red-bottomed shoes. I glanced at Rory to see if she’d noticed them. She did—as soon as our eyes met, she came over to me and whispered, “That pair,” she pointed to the suitcase, “are Pradas.”
A Game of Cones Page 16