The woman in the heels said she really wanted to buy one since they were a part of history. I rolled my eyes to myself. I had this thing about people and their desire for a part of history. Or what they thought was a piece of history, anyway. A paperweight from the desk of a dead guy didn’t qualify in my book, even if he was murdered.
She picked up a brass bust of Teddy Roosevelt and a tall glass piece with a green jellyfish suspended inside. I remembered seeing them on the desk. Someone asked Kevin what the one looked like.
“It was a globe inlaid with semiprecious stones on a silverplate base. It was quite heavy for its size,” he said. Then he looked uncomfortable with what he’d said. The mention of it stirred my memory, and I shuddered as I recalled seeing the globe lying on its side. I realized the red I’d seen on it wasn’t pieces of ruby.
Meanwhile, I heard rumors starting to circulate among the growing group of shoppers. Someone mentioned that one of Sheila’s scarves had been on Drew’s desk, too. Suddenly there was a run on those. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not for Sheila. She might make some money, but it only brought more attention to the fact that one of her scarves had been in the room when Drew died.
Dinah and I slipped into the dining room to get away from the crowd. Apparently they hadn’t put it together yet that the free samples of soup were prepared by the same person who had made the soup Drew drowned in. Dinah and I took some soup samples and sat down at one of the small bistro tables. Kevin had made a nice cream of asparagus with a touch of curry. From our table, we could see that Kevin had joined Dorothy in dealing with the crowd.
Everyone seemed occupied, which gave me an idea. I pointed upstairs. “What do you think? There may never be another chance like this. I’d like to see Drew’s office. Maybe the white lacy stuff is still hanging on the drawer.”
“We have to be stealth,” Dinah said with a twinkle in her eye. She crumpled her soup cup and got up.
“Wait a second,” I said, sitting back down again. I’d worn no-show white socks with my slip-ons, but somehow the socks had slipped down and were in a bunch right at my arch. I pulled off both socks, stuck them in the pocket of my khaki slacks and put the shoes back on. I could practically feel a blister forming as we threaded through the crowd toward the stairs.
My heartbeat picked up as I checked to make sure no one was looking in our direction. A rush of adrenalin surged through me as I started up the stairs with Dinah right behind me. We moved quickly, and when we were out of sight, I let my breath out. We’d made it.
It seemed eerily quiet after all the racket downstairs.
The first time I’d been up here, I hadn’t paid much attention to the hall. Now I noitced that the second floor went over only the front half of the building. There were two open doorways and one closed one, which I guessed led to a bathroom from the ancient days when this was a house.
I was curious to see what Drew’s office looked like now that the crime scene investigators and detectives had finished with it. The desk was cleaned of tomato bisque residue, and the paperweights had been moved downstairs. The CSIs must have taken the bowl and the rest of the soup. I wondered how they handled keeping a bowl of soup as evidence.
I didn’t see Sheila’s scarf. Did that mean they’d taken that as evidence also, or was it just so soup soaked it had gotten trashed? This time I noticed there was a desk lamp, a three-tiered paper holder and a telephone. I supposed last time I’d been in the office they had all been on the floor. Someone had tried to clean the carpet, but residue of the red still showed in the beige pile. There were some shelves in the back with books about antique and collectible prices. I noticed a printer on the bottom shelf with a USB cord to nowhere. I guessed Drew must have brought in a laptop.
What I didn’t see was anything hanging off a desk drawer.
“Maybe whatever it was is in the drawer now,” Dinah whispered.
I hesitated. So far all we’d done was look at what was readily seeable; opening drawers seemed to be crossing a line. What was that saying—in for a penny, in for a pound? It seemed silly to sneak up here and not check out everything. Besides, if I was careful, no one would know. I took out one of the no-show socks and used it as a hand cover so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints.
“Clever move,” Dinah whispered.
The drawers were mostly empty. One had a bunch of blank labels and some postcards. I looked at one. It was lime green and announced that a new shipment of goodies had arrived and encouraged the recipient to make sure and come in. Another had some pencils and pens, stamps and a copy of The Greed Machine. We’d had a signing for it. The author had bragged that he knew how to grow money, which basically amounted to diverting it from other people’s pockets into his. I had a feeling it must have been Drew’s personal bible.
I stood back and looked around again.
“I think we’ve covered it here,” I said softly. I walked out and headed for the other bedroom/office. “I wonder what Mr. Kevin has,” I said, slipping inside. His office was slightly smaller and the furnishings were plainer. The desk was antique, but plain wood rather than the inlaid squares of Drew’s desktop. There was a bookcase with a few books. All appeared to be cookbooks, and the one that seemed the most handled was on restaurant design. There were some restaurant equipment catalogs and also a binder. I flipped open the binder and saw it held a collection of recipes, including one for the tomato bisque soup.
Dinah sat down on the love seat while I continued to looked around. I took out one of my no-show socks again and used it to open the desk drawers. There was a phone book, some pens and pencils and two packages of fruity mint gum, which I thought sounded like an upset stomach waiting to happen.
I was sliding the drawer shut when I heard noise on the stairs. Voices that were growing louder. I turned toward Dinah. She’d heard them, too. I think we must have had matching panic faces. Operating on instinct, she slid behind the love seat and I crawled under the desk, grateful that it had a modesty shield across the opening, so no one could see me from the other side.
This was the problem with snooping around. You could get caught. I squeezed under the desk as far as possible, but I still had a view of the feet and pants’ bottoms of the two people who came in the office. Two legs had faded jeans and not the kind thrown in vats of bleach or washed with rocks to look that way. These appeared authentically paled by countless washings. The feet were in work boots that looked as though they’d seen their share of action. The other legs wore dark olive green dress trousers, and the shoes were loafers with tassels, or as I called them, men’s party shoes. I also noticed something white and balled up under the desk. In my panic I must have dropped my no-show sock. I silently snatched it and put it in my pocket.
“So, here are the plans and costs,” the jeans-and-boot person said. He was shifting his weight and had a deep voice. “We’d be enlarging the kitchen and dining room by adding onto the side and back. We’d take out the storage room and use the space for another downstairs bathroom.”
I listened with interest. I’d already figured out the other feet belonged to Kevin. It was kind of a no-brainer since it was his office and I recognized the olive green trousers from before. So, Drew was barely out of the picture and Kevin already was getting estimates from a contractor. One more sign Kevin wasn’t exactly inconsolable over the loss of his brother. Kevin asked some questions about how long it would take to put on the addition and said he needed to be able to stay open during the remodel.
I was so busy listening I almost forgot where I was and started to shifted around to a more comfortable—no strike that, less uncomfortable position. My legs were beginning to hurt from being jammed under my chin. I started to stretch them out, but quickly realized they’d stick out past the end of the desk and probably be in plain sight. Forcing myself not to groan, I wrenched them back. Didn’t they want to take their discussion downstairs where they could actually see the areas Kevin wanted changed? I thought longingly. Then I could get up
and stretch and we could make our escape.
No such luck. Instead Kevin sat down at his desk, though thankfully he didn’t pull his chair in or stick his legs underneath. I had squeezed sideways now so as to take up less space. I peeked under the bottom of the modesty shield and noticed something was moving. I was so contorted by now I could have auditioned for the Cirque du Soleil, but I saw that Dinah had come out from behind the love seat and was crawling against the wall toward the door. Mr. Work Boots was standing in front of the desk and must have been blocking Kevin’s view of her because they just kept talking like nothing was going on. Work Boots was saying he needed a check to get started, and judging by the drawer opening, Kevin was going to give it to him. I watched Dinah’s feet disappear out the door.
Kevin kept talking—and not getting up from his desk. I was beginning to feel a little panicky, like maybe I’d never get out of here, or worse, be discovered. Then I heard the scrape of his chair as he pulled it closer to the desk. I turned and saw that his knees were moving under the desk and any second they were going to hit me.
And for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a valid reason I could give for being there.
My heart was pounding and the adrenalin rushing, but it wasn’t a good feeling this time—more like it was making me nauseous. I took a few deep breaths and prepared to face the consequences. His knees were so close I could smell the cleaning fluid from his pants. I battened down my personal hatches and prepared to hear him scream when his knees made contact.
There was a sound all right and it was loud, but it wasn’t human.
CHAPTER 10
KEVIN’S SHOES TOOK OFF LIKE A SHOT IN RESPONSE to the loud whine. Mr. Work Boots followed close behind. I gave them a moment, then race crawled out from under the desk. When I got downstairs there was pandemonium as everyone was rushing out the back door.
I followed the crowd and found Dinah standing with the others in the parking lot.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said hugging her.
“You didn’t think I’d just leave you there. It’s lucky I was listening when Dorothy mentioned the alarm on the back door. All I had to do was push the door and it went off,” Dinah said, glancing around at the frantic faces of the group in the parking lot. “Though, I just wanted to create a distraction, not cause a panic.”
Kevin moved through the former shoppers, checking everyone to see if they were holding any merchandise. Dorothy was leaning against the building, looking very pale.
“I suppose everyone overreacted because of the murder,” I said as Kevin stopped in front of a woman in designer jeans and heels, holding a lamp. Judging by his body language, I suspected that he thought she’d tried to leave with the lamp and set off the alarm in the process. Too bad he didn’t take the time to think it through. I mean, if she was trying to steal a lamp, would she just hang around waiting to get caught?
In the distance I heard the whine of sirens. “Uh-oh. We better get out of here,” I said, grabbing Dinah’s hand. We took off and as we ran, we both got the giggles. By the time we reached the bookstore café, we were breathless and laughing so hard, tears were running down our cheeks.
“What’s up? You two look like you just did something naughty,” Bob said as we both flopped into chairs at a table by the window.
“Us?” I said with my best innocent, middle-age widow look, which made us both start laughing all over again. Bob shook his head with disbelief as a hook and ladder roared past the window.
Bob was very serious about his barista duties, and his round body shape suggested that he did a lot of taste testing of the cookies. He had a small clump of hair on the bottom of his chin that looked like a shaving mistake. Is that even called a beard? And he always reminded us that he was working on a screenplay—some kind of alien adventure story. Maybe the idea for his face hair came from that.
When we finally regained our composure, I tried twisting my body to get the kinks out. “It wasn’t fun being squished under that desk,” I said.
Bob brought us drinks and some cookie bars he’d just made using a recipe of mine. Since I’m only a marginal chocolate fan, they were more or less chocolate chip cookie bars without the chocolate chips. Instead I added more nuts and bits of dried apricot. After seeing our condition, Bob must have figured we’d had enough caffeine, so he brought us both camomile tea.
We looked out the window and saw the hook and ladder had pulled around the corner from the Cottage Shoppe. Two firemen had jumped off and were headed toward the front door carrying axes. Most of the shoppers had left, but a few were hanging around to watch what was going on.
“I guess someone must have freaked when the alarm went off and called for the works,” Dinah said, wincing with guilt. A rescue ambulance stopped in front of the store and another fire truck followed. Two police cruisers came from the other direction and barely stopped before the doors flung open and four uniforms popped out. A black Crown Victoria pulled up and Detective Heather got out of the driver’s side as her partner got out on the other side. Instinctively, I shrank back from the window as if her detective eyes could pick me out from across the street and a half a block down.
Maybe she couldn’t boil an egg, but she could sure wear a suit—though I couldn’t imagine how she functioned in the pencil skirt and the heels. Barry occasionally made reference to some of the ucky places he had to go. Places with bugs and rodents, and he wasn’t talking butterflies and field mice. Personally, I’d want to wear armor.
Kevin Brooks came out and met up with the emergency people. It appeared there was lots of pointing and apologizing. All the uniforms headed back to their various vehicles. Detective Heather made no move to leave and continued talking to Kevin. Her appearance wasn’t lost on him. Even from across the street, I could tell he’d be glad to do any egg boiling necessary. I was relieved to see he had apparently let the lady with the lamp go and was now holding it himself.
“I suppose it must be a shock to her that she can’t get Barry. She does have a lot going for her besides looks,” I said, watching her conversation. “She’s smart, focused, ambitious and—”
“Cold as an iceberg,” Dinah said, finishing my sentence.
We ate the cookie bars but shunned the tea as we watched the hook and ladder roll past the window, shaking the floor as it went. Neither of us wanted to do anything to mess with the nice afterglow of the adrenalin rush.
“What’s going on?” Even though the voice was coming from behind us, I recognized the speaker as Adele. When I turned, she was standing next to the table, following my gaze. Lately, she’d been getting a little more serious about her clothes. They were still outrageous, but ever since the Koo Koo the Clown signing, she’d been going for blander colors. I called this outfit the Butterscotch Kiss. She had on pants and a top in a dark golden yellow with a crocheted scarf the same color tied around her head. She’d barely mentioned their date except to say he really liked her, but she wasn’t into dating a clown, even if he was a published one.
“Somebody went out the back door of the Cottage Shoppe and set off an alarm and the cavalry was called in,” I said. My lips started to quiver as I looked at Dinah, and I had to fight to keep the giggles from coming back.
“How come you know so much about it?” Adele sounded jealous that we knew what was going on rather than interested in the answer. She sat down at the table before we had a chance to invite her to join us. Leaving out our little side trip upstairs, I told her we’d gone over there to check out the specials. I gestured toward the banners on the windows.
“And probably snoop, too,” Adele said. “Pink, I know how you operate.” Shocked, I turned my head toward her, thinking she knew what we’d done, but then I realized she meant snoop in a general sense, as in talk to people and look around, not in the more specific sense of sneaking into private offices. “So, what did you find out?” Adele demanded.
Why not tell Adele? I told her what Dorothy had said about Drew cutting salaries
as well as the money the consignees got. “The other saleswoman, Trina, was the most upset. And Drew and Kevin were fighting all the time about something.” I turned to Dinah. “Maybe it had something to do with the plans Kevin has for the place.” Dinah nodded with interest.
“Pink, you’re sure taking your time solving this. Sheila could be tried and convicted if you don’t get the lead out. I’m a better sleuth than you are,” Adele said with a snort. “Just from what you said I can see there are two prime suspects. The saleswoman who found him—Trina. How much more prime can you get? Who says his head was in the soup when she got there? Or the other one. Maybe she was telling you how upset Trina was to get the heat off of her. Whose to say she didn’t bop him and leave and let her coworker find him?” Adele seemed pleased with herself, but then her eyes widened as if she’d thought of something else even more self-satisfying.
“By the way, I had a little conversation with Mrs. Shedd about the Milton Mindell event. I told her I should handle it all by myself since it’s a kids’ event.”
My adrenalin high faded. Was Adele out of her mind? So many kids showed up, we had to give out numbers in advance. And mixing Milton’s temperamental personality with Adele’s divaness spelled disaster in red letters.
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