“Jeez,” McCready said as Sean got out of the hearse, “it took you long enough.” Then he nodded at the hearse. “You always did like to prepare ahead.”
“Well, it’s better than not preparing at all,” Sean shot back.
McCready shrugged. “Improvisation is a skill.”
“No, it’s a lack of forethought.”
McCready nodded at Sean’s cane. “What happened to you?”
“Tripped over my cat.”
“Does that thing have a sword in it?”
“They’re illegal in New York State.”
McCready shrugged. “Still the Boy Scout, I see.”
“No. I just like to stay inside the lines.” And Sean jerked his chin in the direction of the house McCready was standing in front of. “What happened to your house?” This one was definitely a comedown from the large Victorian Painted Lady two miles outside of the town of Hollingsworth that McCready had owned.
McCready shrugged again. “Divorce and then my daughter-in-law convinced me to buy one of these things. Biggest damned mistake I ever made.”
“Maybe she can get you your money back,” Sean suggested.
“Naw. She and my son got divorced and she took off for Vegas to make some other sucker miserable. So, are we going to stand here or are you coming in?”
“Coming in,” Sean answered.
McCready nodded toward the hearse. “And is your chauffer coming in or staying out?”
“Staying out,” Sean answered for Marvin. Marvin was a nice kid, but sometimes he didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut and Sean didn’t want to take the chance and have Marvin derail the conversation right when Sean might be about to worm some nugget of information out of McCready.
“This won’t take very long,” McCready told Sean as Sean stepped inside the house. “I already told you everything I know on the phone last night. You could have saved yourself the trip.”
“And miss the chance to see your lovely face? Never.”
McCready laughed as he took Sean’s jacket. “You don’t change, do you?”
“Why change something that’s perfection?” Sean said as he glanced around McCready’s house.
The place looked like one of those extended-living hotels salesmen stay at when they’re on the road. The walls were painted a beigey white, the prints on the wall were from one of those stores in the mall that specialize in reproductions, and the furniture in the living room consisted of a brown leather sectional, a coffee table, two end tables, and three chairs. An oversized TV hung on the far wall.
“It came furnished,” McCready explained, correctly interpreting Sean’s expression. “It was the demo model.”
“Convenient,” Sean said, taking a seat on the sofa.
“I thought so at the time.” McCready sat down on the armchair facing Sean. “To tell you the truth I miss the old days. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true.” He gestured out the window. “I’m dyin’ here. It’s like living in the middle of nowhere.”
“Maybe you should move back,” Sean suggested.
McCready nodded. “I’m thinking about it. Anything would be better than this. Even living on Rivington Street.” Rivington Street was Hollingsworth’s drug central.
“Well, at least Rivington wouldn’t be boring,” Sean observed. “Sinclair and Gover,” he prompted.
McCready interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles. Sean winced at the sound.
“And you’re revisiting this why?” McCready asked.
“I already told you last night,” Sean replied.
“Tell me again,” McCready ordered.
Sean did since McCready was in the catbird seat, as his wife had liked to say—not that he’d ever asked what the catbird seat was.
“You honestly think these two incidents are linked,” McCready said.
“My daughters do,” Sean explained. “Ada Sinclair certainly does.”
McCready shook his head. “You have my condolences. Ada really is a piece of work.”
“That’s what I told my daughters.”
McCready cracked his knuckles again. “She comes off like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”
“True,” Sean agreed. He hesitated for a moment, then said, “But in this case Peggy was poisoned. That’s clear. Maybe Ada’s dad was, too, given the circumstances.”
McCready leaned back. “I know what Ada Sinclair said about her dad, I know that she believes it, but I didn’t think it was true then and I don’t think it’s true now. Don’t you think we conducted interviews with the family?”
“I assumed,” Sean said. “And?”
“Ada’s dad had a prescription for what he took. Ada said he didn’t but he did. Evidently he was having back problems and the problems were getting worse. A lot worse. Plus, he was drinking the hard stuff and we’re not talking just one or two a day. And he was depressed about the business. His wife said he was blaming himself for Sinclair Enterprises going under.”
“Sounds like suicide to me,” Sean reflected.
“Or an unintentional death. You know, forgetting what you’ve taken.”
Sean nodded. He did know. He’d seen enough of it in his day. “Where did Ada’s father keep his pills?”
“In one of the kitchen cabinets.”
“Convenient,” Sean noted.
“Lots of people do that. I do that.”
“So, anyone could have gotten to Sinclair’s meds?”
McCready shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t like there was a combination lock on the kitchen cabinet or anything like that, if you get my meaning. But that said, pills are hard to grind up and hide in something. And these tasted nasty. I asked.”
“So then why do you think Ada said what she did?”
McCready sighed. “I don’t know what put a bee in her bonnet. Evidently she has issues, as they like to say these days. In our day”—McCready gestured to himself and Sean—“they would have said she was nutso.”
“What kind of issues?”
McCready took a minute to collect his thoughts, then said, “Family stuff. New wife, stepkids, lots of bad feelings. But that just amped everything up. From what I could gather, she was always the odd one out. And most importantly, she’d just had a fight with her dad earlier that day. I think she blamed herself and this was her way of . . . ,” McCready paused to summon the word he wanted, “deflecting.”
“I see,” Sean said. And he did. “But you know, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong,” Sean said, quoting an old saying.
“Doesn’t mean you’re right, either,” McCready countered. “Personally, I think Ada just made the whole thing up. She heard her dad and his partner fighting and it all went from there.”
“So they did fight?” Sean asked.
McCready nodded. “Evidently it wasn’t unusual. They fought all the time.” McCready scratched his chin. “It was the running joke. If one said something was black the other would say it was white.” He contemplated the view outside his window for a second before turning back to Sean. “Ada’s accusation was all speculation. There was no creditable threat. At least none that I could see. There was no way to prove anything one way or another. The only thing that was conclusive was that Ada’s father died from a combination of pain pills and alcohol.”
“You talked to the wives?”
“Of course I talked to the wives. They were both there.”
Sean shook his head. Two wives. He’d had his hands full with one.
“Neither was what I’d call broken up,” McCready recalled. “Just the opposite. In fact, I got the impression that the second one was talking about getting a divorce because she’d found out her husband was having an affair.”
“With whom?”
McCready frowned. “One of the secretaries. What else is new?”
“You had a motive right there.”
“The wife, the second wife, the partner. Yeah, we had lots of motives. But they turned out to be nothing. Most do, as
you know.”
Sean nodded, because he did. “And you talked to everyone else?” Sean asked.
McCready made an impatient gesture with his hand. “How many times do I have to repeat myself? For the last time, I did, and everyone was just as informative as the wife. Which was not informative at all.”
“Just covering the bases,” Sean said, making a show of apologizing.
“Like I just said, no one in the family had much to say,” McCready went on. “They were shocked, appalled, blah, blah, blah. I got the distinct impression that no one could have cared less about what happened to Ada’s dad. Poor guy. I can see why he did what he did. I’ll tell you one thing, he had lousy taste in women. That was for sure.” McCready’s face darkened. “Then Ada Sinclair starts in. Makes this huge fuss. Gets everyone going.”
“That must have been annoying,” Sean commented.
“I would have liked to have strangled her,” McCready admitted. “She even called the papers. The mayor called me in to reinvestigate.”
“And?”
McCready threw up his hands. “Total waste of money and manpower. The department came to the same conclusion as before.”
Sean leaned forward. “What did Ada do when you told her that?”
“She started screaming and crying and carrying on. They had to call someone in to give her a shot to calm her down.”
“And do you think there was anything in what Ada was saying? Anything at all?”
“Honestly?” McCready asked.
“Yes, honestly,” Sean replied.
“No, I don’t,” McCready told him. “Sinclair’s death could have been an accidental OD, it could have been suicide, it could have been murder, but the first two seem like the likeliest scenarios to me. I thought that then and I think that now.”
“So, you don’t go with Ada’s version of Joel Grover poisoning her dad and then killing himself in a fit of remorse? I mean you do have to admit the two deaths happening so close together does raise some questions.”
McCready snorted. “Agreed. However, Grover had a pistol for which he had a permit in the glove compartment of his vehicle. If he was going to kill himself why not use that? That’s what I would have done. Wouldn’t you?”
“Definitely,” Sean answered. “Why indeed?” he murmured to himself. Killing yourself by smashing into a tree was notoriously unreliable. A gun, on the other hand, was extremely effective. This was something everyone knew.
“Sometimes coincidences do exist,” McCready continued. “The weather was bad the night that Grover died and I’m thinking he was upset about his partner’s death and he had had a few too many drinks. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe his reflexes were slower than they should have been.” McCready took a deep breath.
Sean leaned forward and rubbed his left calf. He could feel his muscles begin to knot up. “Anything else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. General stuff. Stuff about the business.”
“Well, like I said—or maybe I didn’t—the business was on the verge of going under. That never puts anyone in a good mood.”
“Do you know why?”
“Something about the formula to their star product not working the way it should,” McCready answered. “Some test results. I heard rumors that a couple of the guys that tested it lost all their hair instead of the other way around.” McCready snickered at the thought. “But those were just rumors.”
“Evidently, they fixed whatever needed fixing,” Sean said. “Because they’re about to take the company public.”
“That’s what I heard, too. Do you realize how much money they’re going to make if this formula works?” McCready asked. “Some men will pay anything to get their hair back,” he reflected. He touched the top of his head. “Fortunately, that’s not my problem.” McCready glanced down at his watch. “And now it’s time for you to go because I gotta be out of here in five.”
Sean nodded and thanked McCready for talking to him. Then Sean got up, picked up his cane, and headed for the door. When he got there, he stopped and turned. “McCready, I don’t suppose you remember the names of those guys?” he asked.
“Which guys?”
“The ones who lost all their hair,” Sean said.
McCready grinned. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I do. Well, one of them anyway. He worked at the plant. Guess that taught him to volunteer.”
“Yeah. I learned that in the navy,” Sean observed.
“Me, I learned it in the army,” McCready said as he got up. Then he tore an edge off the newspaper sitting on the cabinet underneath the TV set, wrote the name down, and handed the scrap of paper to Sean. “Here. Go knock yourself out. Why do you want to know anyway?”
“Just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,” Sean told him. As Sean left McCready’s home, he’d pretty much decided that barring something startling, Sinclair’s and Grover’s deaths were as represented. But . . . He turned and knocked on the door. McCready answered.
“What now?” he barked.
“What percentage sure are you?” Sean asked him.
“Ninety-eight percent sure,” McCready replied before he slammed the door in his face.
Still, Sean thought as he limped over to the hearse, 2 percent is 2 percent.
Three days later in the name of thoroughness, Sean got hold of Jim Briggs and asked him about what had happened.
Nothing, as it turned out. The rumors McCready had heard were just that: rumors. According to Briggs, while the product hadn’t made his bald spot go away, it hadn’t made it any worse, either.
Chapter 17
Bernie and Libby didn’t leave A Little Taste of Heaven for the offices of the Sunset Gazette until a little after two in the afternoon. First, Googie had been late because he’d locked his keys in his car; then the credit card machine had gone down for the third time in a week and Bernie had to get on the phone and scream at her service provider for half an hour before they promised they’d send a technician out by the close of the day; then Mrs. Conteras had phoned in with an emergency order for ten dozen cookies for her gallery opening—evidently her assistant had forgotten to order them; and last, but certainly not least, Vicky Sinclair had shown up at the shop.
Libby had been wiping off the five small four-tops they’d installed a year ago when Vicky Sinclair had made her grand entrance. She’d strode in, pushing the door open with enough force to make it bang against the wall. The four customers waiting to be served had turned to look as Vicky Sinclair marched toward the counter, her diamond rings glinting in the light.
Then she’d caught sight of Libby and stopped. Libby hadn’t been surprised. Given Vicky’s narrowed eyes and clenched jaw and the fact that she’d never set foot in A Little Taste of Heaven heretofore, Libby hadn’t thought Ada’s stepmother was there for coffee and a muffin.
“I want to speak to you,” she’d exclaimed, pointing a finger at Libby.
“In the back,” Libby had said, going to close the door as a current of cold air snaked its way through the shop. Heaven only knows their heat bill was high enough as it was. And then there was the fact that they’d had one scene out front this week. They didn’t need another. “Now what’s this about?” Libby asked once they were in the prep room.
“What do you think?” Vicky asked impatiently, opening her sheepskin coat. It was warm in the back because both ovens were going. Her perfume, a floral scent, filled the air, making Libby sneeze.
Libby wadded up the paper towels she’d been using on the tables and threw them into the trash. “I haven’t the foggiest,” she said, annoyance spilling out in her voice.
“Foggiest? What does that mean?” Vicky demanded.
“It means I don’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about,” Libby told her.
Vicky tapped her long red fingernails on her thighs as she looked Libby up and down. “Don’t play games with me,” she snapped.
“I’m not,” Libby protested. “Either tel
l me what you came here to say or leave. I have work to do.”
Vicky took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m talking about my stepdaughter. Not that you don’t know.”
“What about Ada?” Libby asked.
Vicky tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear, then folded her hands over her chest while her right foot tapped out a rhythm on the floor. “I want to know where she is.”
“So does everyone else,” Libby replied.
“You met with her,” Vicky said.
“And she ran off,” Libby answered, wondering how she’d found out. Henry must have told her before he died. Otherwise, how would Vicky have known? The police hadn’t come by so that meant that they didn’t know. If they had, they would have wanted to talk to her and Bernie.”
“But you know where she went to,” Vicky insisted.
“I don’t know who you’re getting your information from, but you should find a new source,” Libby told her.
“Henry said you knew,” Vicky Sinclair informed her, proving to Libby that her guess had been correct. “He was quite clear on that.”
“Well, he was wrong,” Libby stated.
“I don’t think so.”
“Too bad we can’t ask him.”
“Isn’t it, though,” Vicky replied.
“I don’t suppose you had anything to do with what happened to him?”
Vicky Sinclair drew herself up. “That’s a dreadful thing to say.”
“You can always leave if you’re insulted.”
Vicky Sinclair sniffed and ignored Libby’s suggestion. “I’ll tell you what I told the police. You want to find out who ran over Henry find the little chippie he was seeing.”
Interesting, Libby thought.
“And no, I have no idea who that is,” Vicky Sinclair went on, answering Libby’s unasked question, “and I don’t care.” Then Vicky said, stated really, Libby thought, “I bet your sister knows where Ada is.”
“No, Bernie doesn’t,” Libby told her.
A Catered New Year's Eve Page 12