A Catered New Year's Eve

by Isis Crawford

“Absolutely,” Bernie lied.

  This time Sean raised both eyebrows. “Are you sure there isn’t something you want to talk about?”

  “Like what?” Bernie asked, acting the wide-eyed innocent.

  “You tell me,” Sean replied.

  “Okay. We could talk about the price of vanilla extract going up if you want,” Bernie suggested, employing a diversionary tactic. “It’s almost thirty dollars for an eight-ounce bottle. It used to be seven dollars. That’s an absurd jump, but all the big companies are using the real stuff now. Hence, the price jump. Talk about the law of unintended consequences. Which means we might have to raise our prices on some of our baked goods.” She stopped, took a breath, and chatted on. “Did you know that the vanilla orchid originated in Mexico and could be found only there for three hundred years and that now it only grows in three countries: Mexico, Tahiti, and Madagascar?”

  Sean put up his hand to staunch Bernie’s flow of words. “Fascinating, but that’s not what I meant.”

  “Sorry,” Bernie said, and she began to eat her toast while Libby sipped her chocolate. “I just thought you’d be interested. Then what did you mean?”

  “I think you know,” Sean told her.

  “No, actually I don’t,” Bernie lied.

  “Really?” Sean asked.

  “Yes. Really,” Bernie lied again, wondering if McCready had filled her dad in. It had been a while since he’d been the Longely police commissioner yet his sources seemed to be intact.

  “Interesting,” Sean observed as he finished off his first piece of toast.

  Neither Libby nor Bernie asked their dad what was interesting because they didn’t want to know. Finally, after five minutes of silence Sean spoke.

  “Remember Mrs. Sullivan?” he asked his daughters.

  “Not really,” Bernie said. Which was true.

  “Should we?” Libby asked.

  “She used to babysit you.”

  Libby and Bernie both shook their heads.

  “Sorry,” Bernie said, wondering where this was going. Her dad wasn’t one for strolls down memory lane.

  “She lives on Livermore,” Sean continued.

  Bernie took a deep breath. Now she knew where her dad was going with this. Livermore ran parallel to Cleary, the road they’d been chasing the SUV down last night.

  “I don’t think I’d like to live there,” Bernie said, attempting to redirect the conversation. “Too much noise. And traffic.”

  Sean went on as if his daughter hadn’t spoken. “She was telling me that now that she’s older, she has trouble sleeping at night so she spends time with a pair of binoculars looking for deer—evidently there’s a herd of them around there—and anything else of interest that comes her way.”

  “Poor lady. Sounds kind of depressing,” Libby noted. “Maybe she should try some melatonin. I hear it’s quite effective.”

  “That isn’t the point,” Sean said, getting angrier by the second, the fear that something could have happened to his daughters translating into a seething fury. “As I was saying, she called last night to tell me she saw the oddest thing.” Sean waited for one of his daughters to ask him what Mrs. Sullivan saw. “Any guesses?” he asked when neither of his daughters said anything. “No? Then I’ll tell you. She saw an SUV tear-assing down the road. A minute later, a van with A Taste of Heaven painted on the side careened down the road. She said it looked like the van was trying to catch the SUV. I told her that she must be mistaken, that she’d misread the van logo. But she said she hadn’t.”

  “We were going a little fast,” Libby admitted.

  Bernie shot her sister a dirty look.

  Libby corrected herself. “Very little.”

  But it was too late. The damage was done. Sean honed in on Libby’s admission. “So, you were on the road?”

  “Yes,” Bernie said, seeing no point in lying now. It appeared that the jig, as they liked to say in the old movies, was up.

  Sean took a bite of his second piece of toast, chewed, and swallowed before he continued on with his interrogation. Because, he realized, it was what this had become. “Judging from the time Mrs. Sullivan called me, I’m guessing she saw you after Ada got arrested,” he observed.

  Bernie didn’t say anything.

  “I think it’s time you told me what’s going on, don’t you?” Sean’s tone of voice was making clear that this wasn’t an invitation. But he didn’t give Bernie time to answer. Instead he held up his hand and said, “No. Let me guess. You thought the person driving the SUV was the person who called the cops on Ada.”

  “We think it could be,” Libby said, wishing she was somewhere else. She hated when her dad got like this.

  Sean steepled his fingers together. “Did you see who the perp was?” His tone was icy.

  “No. We couldn’t. Too much snow. But Libby managed to get the first two letters of his license plate,” Bernie replied. “We were hoping you could get Clyde to run a search.”

  Sean took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. “Let’s suppose Clyde comes up with a license plate number, which I doubt, given the number of vehicles like that around this area—what you’re talking about would take a task force. But let’s say for the sake of argument that he does. What then?”

  “Obviously, we’re going to ask the person why they took off when they saw us,” Bernie replied. “And if they’re responsible for turning Ada in . . .”

  Sean interrupted, “What makes you think this person is going to talk to you? What if he or she refuses to speak to you? You do realize he or she doesn’t have to answer your questions. You’re not the cops. You don’t have the power to compel the person to talk.”

  “We know that, Dad,” Libby interjected.

  “It’s not as if you leave someone shaking at the knees,” Sean continued, driving his point home. “What then?”

  “I don’t know,” Libby admitted.

  Bernie leaned forward. “We’ll think of something.”

  “Really,” Sean said, stretching out the word. He took his time finishing his second piece of toast, after which he wiped his hands on the napkin Libby had thoughtfully provided. “So, then would it be correct to say you almost killed yourselves for nothing?” he observed quietly.

  “That’s not fair,” Bernie protested, straining to hear what her dad was saying. This, she knew, was not a good sign because the angrier her dad got the softer his voice became.

  Sean wadded up his napkin and threw it on the side table. “I think it is. What you did was reckless and irresponsible.”

  “We’re fine,” Bernie countered.

  “Just by the grace of God,” Sean snapped. “The county called a snow emergency last night.”

  “We didn’t know,” Libby protested, throwing an I-told-you glance at her sister.

  “Well, you should have,” Sean told her. “You shouldn’t have been out on the road at all, let alone chasing someone. Especially in that van of yours. Which—correct me if I’m wrong—doesn’t handle itself well in the best of times, let alone in a blizzard. Jeez, you’d think you’d know better by now. How old are you two?”

  Bernie looked at Libby and Libby looked at Bernie.

  “Dad . . .” Libby began.

  “What?” Sean growled.

  Libby made her voice louder, more assured. “There were extenuating circumstances.”

  Sean crossed his arms over his chest. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” And Libby told Sean what they were.

  Chapter 33

  “You should have said something when you came in last night,” Sean complained. How was he to know that something was wrong, he thought. After all, he wasn’t a mind reader.

  “You were asleep,” Bernie said.

  Which wasn’t true, but he didn’t say that. “Then you should have woken me up,” he told Bernie instead.

  “Here,” she said, handing him the crumpled piece of paper with the smeared writing.

  Sean put on his reading glasses
. “The ink’s run,” he noted as he held the note up to the light hoping it would help, but it didn’t, so he brought it back down. Fortunately, he could still make out the letters. “Odd,” he said after he’d read and reread it.

  “The note?” Libby asked.

  “Yes,” Sean said. “It’s almost . . .”

  “Schizophrenic,” Bernie said.

  “I was going to say it’s like the person who wrote this couldn’t decide what he wanted to say, but your word works, too.” Sean paused for a minute. “And the tracker. That’s even stranger.”

  “In what way?” Bernie asked.

  “The tracker and the note are almost an embarrassment of riches.”

  Libby cocked her head. “How do you mean, Dad?”

  Sean took a sip of his hot chocolate. “It’s as if someone wanted you to find the tracker. I mean if they hadn’t left the note you wouldn’t have thought about a tracker. And as for the tracker, there are a lot better places to hide it than the one this person picked. So did they want you to find the tracker or not? That’s the question.”

  “I say not,” Bernie said. “I’d say whoever did it was a rank amateur.”

  “Which means they wanted to scare you off,” Sean pointed out as he put his mug down. “Which means you’re on the right track.”

  “I don’t see how,” Libby protested. “We don’t know anything.”

  “We know less than nothing,” Bernie seconded.

  “Well, the person who wrote the note and put the tracker on Mathilda thinks that you do,” Sean answered.

  Bernie sighed. “Is there any chance at all we could get fingerprints off the note? Or DNA?” she asked her dad.

  “I’m no expert, but probably not,” Sean replied. “Too much water.”

  Bernie sighed again. She and Libby seemed to be hitting one dead end after another. She was thinking about that when Libby told their dad about the notebook.

  “May I see it,” he asked.

  “Certainly,” Bernie replied, handing it over.

  Sean weighed it in his hand.

  “Well, at least we know Kate Silverman didn’t put it in the van,” Libby observed as she watched her father.

  “No we don’t know that,” Bernie said.

  “Yes we do, Bernie. Kate was at work when we left the van.”

  “You’re right, Libby. Actually, come to think about it that notebook could have been in Mathilda for a while. Ada could have put it in there when she ran out of the house on New Year’s Eve.”

  “True. And we wouldn’t have seen if she shoved it under the van bed liner.”

  “You would if you cleaned out and vacuumed the back of the van more frequently,” Sean couldn’t resist saying as he opened the notebook and skimmed through it.

  “The back of the van isn’t that bad,” Libby protested.

  “It’s not that good,” Sean replied. He pointed at the notebook. “So, this is the notebook Ada read from on New Year’s Eve?”

  “Yes,” Bernie said.

  “You’re positive?”

  “Absolutely,” Libby replied.

  “The one that Ada said contained proof that her dad was murdered?”

  “Yes, Dad,” Bernie assured him.

  Sean began to read. Bernie and Libby watched. The noises from the store percolated up from downstairs as they waited. Libby reached over, picked up her cup, and finished the last of her hot chocolate, while Bernie ate her second piece of toast even though she’d told herself she’d eat only one. Five minutes later, Sean looked up.

  “I can’t make any sense of this,” he said.

  “I know,” Libby agreed. “Neither can Bernie or I.”

  Sean continued to read. Ada’s father’s notebook was filled with random notes, doodles—Ada’s dad seemed to favor rocket ships and trucks—comments on the weather, and the places he’d gone for dinner and lunch. The entries were in ink and pencil. None of them were dated.

  “I don’t see anything here,” Sean said, stopping midway.

  “There wouldn’t be,” Bernie said and she told her dad what Ada had told her.

  Sean leaned down and massaged his left calf. Recently, those muscles had been cramping up on him. “Do you mind if I keep the notebook for a while?” he asked after he’d straightened up.

  “Of course not,” Bernie said. “What are you planning to do with it?”

  “Look it over a bit more,” Sean lied, running his thumb over the notebook’s black and white cover. He had an idea. But it was far-fetched. Really far-fetched. And he didn’t want to put it out there until he was sure. But if he was right . . . If he was right, it would send everyone down a very different path. He was thinking about how he was going to get what he wanted to do done when he realized that Bernie was talking to him.

  “Sorry, I missed that,” he told her.

  Bernie repeated herself. “Now you know why we were chasing the SUV.”

  Sean leaned back. “I do. But I still think it was extremely reckless behavior on your part and I want you to promise me you won’t do anything like that again.”

  “I promise,” Libby said, noticing as she spoke that the steely glint in her dad’s eyes had disappeared and his voice had returned to normal.

  Sean looked at his younger daughter. “And you?”

  “You would have done what we did,” Bernie said.

  “But you’re not me,” Sean pointed out, thinking that maybe his wife had been right after all about filling his daughters’ heads with his stories.

  “Okay,” Bernie said.

  “Okay what?” Sean asked Bernie.

  “What you said.”

  “Say it.”

  “Dad, I’m not sixteen anymore,” Bernie protested.

  “I’m aware of that,” Sean said, folding his arms across his chest and staring his daughter down.

  “Then why are you treating me as if I am?”

  “Because you’re acting as if you are. You’re not invulnerable, you know.”

  Bernie stopped slouching and sat up straighter. “I know.” “Sometimes I wonder,” Sean muttered.

  Bernie studied her father’s face, the worry lines around his eyes and mouth, and felt bad. “Fine,” she said after a minute had gone by. “I promise not to indulge in any high-speed chases in a blizzard. Happy now?”

  Sean wanted to say, “Don’t take that sarcastic tone with me, young lady.” But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Yes, I am happy. Very happy.”

  Libby looked from her sister to her father and back again and decided that a little lightening up of the atmosphere was in order. “What would you do now?” Libby asked Sean while he took another sip of his hot chocolate.

  Sean put down his mug and marshaled his thoughts as he looked out the window and watched Mrs. Crook park her Kia in front of A Taste of Heaven. A moment later, Amber scurried out of the shop with Mrs. Crook’s weekly order of a dozen triple ginger chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and eight almond croissants in hand.

  “What are you thinking, Dad?” Libby asked.

  Sean turned back toward his daughter. “I’m thinking that I’m grateful my ankle is better and I can walk without a cane again.” Last week, he’d watched Mrs. Crook almost take a tumble when her cane had slipped on a small patch of black ice, which was why Amber had run out to Mrs. Crook’s car to deliver her order today.

  “I’m glad too, Dad,” Libby said. “Now about those suggestions of yours . . .” she said, letting her voice trail off.

  “Ah, yes.” Sean took another moment to strategize before turning to her and saying, “As far as I can see, we have three basic lines of attack. The first one being the SUV you were chasing last night, but as I said earlier, I don’t think that Clyde’s going to turn anything up. I can’t even begin to guess how many registered black SUVs there are in this area, that’s if the vehicle even comes from this area.”

  “And the second line of attack?” Bernie asked.

  “The cyanide. But you’re not really equipped
to investigate that, either, so if I were you I would concentrate on Peggy Graceson and go from there. See what you can find out about her. See what you can find out about the argument between Peggy Graceson and Ada.”

  “Which means we need to talk to Ada’s aunt, Sheryl,” Libby said.

  “Evidently she was there when it happened,” Bernie informed her dad.

  He nodded and went back to looking out the window.

  “What are you going to do, Dad?” Bernie asked.

  “I’m working on it,” he told her as he continued studying the street. It was still empty except for people parking and hurrying into A Little Taste of Heaven to get an early lunch and mothers with children going into the kiddy barber three stores down. The weather didn’t encourage strolling.

  Once his daughters went back downstairs, Sean picked up his phone, called McCready, and asked him about an old case he remembered Ada’s dad, Jeff Sinclair, had been involved in.

  “That was a long time ago,” McCready replied. “What’s leaving the scene of an accident when you’re drugged to the gills got to do with anything?”

  Sean told him what it had to do with. Then he made his request. McCready squawked, but eventually relented and agreed to meet Sean at the Sunset Diner. After that, Sean called an old friend and colleague and asked him to join them there as well. He grinned when he hung up the phone. This was going to be fun.

  Chapter 34

  The Sunset Diner was located midway between Hollingsworth and Longely which was why Sean had chosen it. The diner was nothing to write home about visually speaking. It had been years since the diner’s owner had put any money into it. The neon sign had been missing its S and its i for the last ten years, and the place hadn’t been repainted for as long as Sean had been going there. In the interval, the silver paint had gone from bright to a dull grayish brown that blended in with the evening dusk.

  Inside, the booths’ red seats were crisscrossed with black tape, which covered the cracks in the leather, and the counter and tables were nicked and full of scribbles, courtesy of the people who had sat there over the years, but the coffee was strong, the pancakes were good, the bacon was crisp, and the waitresses let you sit for as long as you wanted to.