1 The Big Kitty

by Claire Donally

  After a moment’s silence, Jane pulled herself together, becoming a businesslike veterinarian again. “I had an early lunch, so I thought I’d stop by and see how your patient was doing.” She colored slightly. “The furry one, not your father.”

  “I guess both patients could be better,” she told Jane. “Shadow is walking around a little lopsided, and my dad is bent out of shape because there’s a cat in the house.”

  Jane laughed. “I’ve seen that syndrome before.” Then she got serious. “On the other hand, there are some studies that show having a pet around can help a sick person’s recovery.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Sunny said, “because up to now all Shadow has done is raise Dad’s blood pressure.” She shook her head. “That’s not altogether true. Dad did promise to keep an eye on Shadow while I’m at work. Although he did ask what the difference was between Shadow resting and the cat’s normal day.”

  “Recovering cats rest by night as well as by day. So if your father has to get up at some ungodly hour to go to the bathroom, he won’t bump into Shadow wandering around on midnight patrol.” Jane smiled. “Shadow’s a healthy, resilient little guy. If he’s walking around, even a little lopsided as you say, that’s a good sign. I expect he should recover quickly. But it’s good to have someone keeping an eye on him, just in case.”

  She paused for a moment, then said a little too casually, “It was great seeing Will Price last night. Has he been helping you with the investigative story?”

  Several possible answers flitted through Sunny’s mind. No, he’s actually my helpless love slave sounded a little too silly (not to mention untrue), while Yes, and we’re also playing detectives in our spare time was perhaps too much information.

  She decided on the literal but uninformative truth. “He was the one who first responded to my 911 call when I found Ada dead, so he has an interest in the case.”

  “Ah.” Jane raised a hand to brush her blond hair behind her shoulder. “You don’t know if he’s … seeing anyone, do you?”

  Sunny put on her best helpful expression. “He hasn’t mentioned anything like that.”

  Jane nodded. “Just wondering. Well, keep me posted on how Shadow is doing. I called this morning to get his records back. It was good seeing you guys last night. We returnees ought to stick together.”

  Right, Sunny thought as she watched Jane walk out of the office. Maybe we can get together and form the Busted Lives Club.

  She threw herself back into work, trying to squelch that dismal thought.

  Will Price’s call a little while later didn’t help much on the cheering front, either.

  “I had a friend in the Portsmouth crime lab take a look at the gunk in the bottom of your wineglass.” He sounded even grimmer than his usual cop voice.

  “Oh,” Sunny said. With all the other excitement later in the night, she’d almost forgotten about their abortive undercover operation. “What were they? Some kind of knockout drugs?” She made a face. “That date rape stuff?”

  “Not unless Gordie was into necrophilia,” Will told her. “It was a mixed bag of sleeping pills. Addicts often carry them to come down from a long meth jag. That many pills, though, would have put you to sleep permanently. Gordie must have had a handful of them, and his sweaty palms glued them all together. It’s beginning to look like a Wile E. Coyote adventure,” he said wryly.

  “Who?” Sunny asked in confusion.

  “You know, the coyote from the Road Runner cartoons? The one who’s always coming up with a clever plan, which then falls apart, usually biting him on the butt.” He gave a dry chuckle, but Sunny just rolled her eyes.

  “It didn’t have to be Gordie,” she said, running back over the sequence of events again. “Somebody came up behind me when the fight got serious. At the time, I thought they were running to help separate the two guys.”

  “They?” Will repeated. “Not he or she?”

  “Come on, there was a bar fight going on, which kind of distracted my attention. I never really got a look at the person behind me,” Sunny confessed. “But whoever it was, they were close enough to drop something in my drink.”

  “Be that as it may, I’m very eager to have a chat with Gordie Spruance,” Will said. “He lives out in the country—outside the town’s jurisdiction. I can’t get Nesbit’s people to help on this, but Ben Semple and the guys in the department are stopping by to check around Ada’s house and keep an eye out for Gordie and his pickup.”

  “And what are you going to do if you get him?” Lurid images of blackjacks and waterboarding flashed through Sunny’s mind.

  “I’m going to show him the glob of pills in your glass and the other stuff that was used to try to get at you,” Will replied. “If he is involved, I ought to get some kind of twitch out of him. If he’s not involved, as you seem to believe—well, maybe all that stuff will shock him into talking about his criminal associates.”

  “And then maybe you’ll have something to take to the district attorney?”

  “Yeah.” Will sounded as tired as she felt. “Maybe, maybe, maybe.”

  After Will said good-bye, Sunny tried to occupy herself with the lowest kind of grunt work—the stuff she usually put off because it was so tedious. Unfortunately, that left her mind free to keep jumping around in very unsettling ways.

  She almost welcomed the interruption when the phone rang again.

  It was Ollie Barnstable at his most charming. “Sunny, I need you to go into my files,” he said. “Get the folder marked ‘Investment Opportunities’ and bring it to the Captain’s Table. I’m having a business lunch.”

  And apparently you want to impress whoever is eating with you by having a flunky appear, she thought.

  “So get to it.” With that encouragement, he hung up. Sighing, Sunny opened the cash box for a special set of keys. The back wall of the office held a row of file cabinets with Ollie’s personal files. They were supposed to be kept locked and never opened unless he asked for something.

  Sunny suspected that half the cabinets were empty or held old tax papers. Some of the drawers had pretty cryptic inscriptions.

  One of these days, preferably while Ollie is away on vacation, I’ll have a look into some of those, she promised herself. For now, though, she went to the first of the alphabetized cabinets, unlocked it, and searched under the Is.

  There it was—Investment Opportunities. Sunny slipped the file into a large envelope and headed for the front door, stopping to lock it on her way out.

  *

  The Captain’s Table offered the best dining in Kittery Harbor—not to mention the best views. The owners of the restaurant had renovated a warehouse in the old waterfront district, with outdoor dining on the old pier. Between the quaint buildings surrounding them and the vista of the cove that had served as an anchorage, the Captain’s Table would have drawn crowds of diners even if the food hadn’t been fantastic—which it was.

  “Just the place to go to impress some rich out-of-towner,” Sunny muttered as she set off down the sidewalk. Any trip downtown was like a journey into the past, especially the past of narrow streets. She could reach the waterfront district faster on foot than taking her dad’s truck.

  Main Street lost a couple of lanes at the Redbrick Tavern, another high-end restaurant and one of the few historic buildings not constructed of hemlock and spruce. Just as she reached the corner across from the landmark, Sunny stopped and stared as Gordie Spruance came out the front door of the tavern, rubbing the back of his hand against his mouth. He was wearing ripped jeans and a paint-stained gray hoodie, clothes more suited to O’Dowd’s than a nice place like the Redbrick. And, she noticed, he had the hood up—as if that could hide his beaky nose and the flaming acne across his cheeks.

  “Gordie!” Sunny yelled. “Hey! Gordie!”

  He took one look at her and ran around the corner. Sunny dashed after him, digging out her cell phone, wishing she’d put Will on speed dial.

  Behind her, she heard the roar of
an engine, then wild horn-honking.

  Sunny turned to see a huge blue SUV barreling through traffic—coming straight at her. The fight-or-flight response kicked in. If Sunny had been running before, she almost flew now, reaching the far sidewalk. But the big vehicle kept coming, climbing the curb.

  Oh my God! Sunny thought, hurling herself to the left. The envelope she was carrying slipped from under her arm, and her phone flew from her hand as she skidded along the sidewalk. The truck flashed by, going way too fast … then hit the brick wall of the tavern.

  They built things pretty solid back in the day. The wall may have shaken a little, but the front fender of the SUV crumpled. Sunny heard the bang! of an airbag going off, and a sort of rattling roar that built up to a huge crashing noise.

  She pushed herself up onto her knees as the door of the truck opened. The driver wobbled out, but he had no interest in Sunny. His hair flew wildly around his head, and he held a hand over his nose and lower face. Bright red blood dribbled between his fingers.

  A nondescript Toyota pulled up in the street. “Come on!” a voice yelled to the injured driver, who stumbled into the car as it fishtailed away. By the time Sunny got into the street, it was too far away for her to make out the license.

  Sunny lurched back to the sidewalk, managing to retrieve her phone and her envelope as people poured out of the tavern, staring at the abandoned SUV.

  Then a scream came from around the corner. Sunny forced her shaky legs into another run, skirting the rear of the SUV and swinging around.

  Bad idea.

  A young woman rammed into her, running blindly, still screaming at the top of her lungs. Sunny tried to step back, but the crowd from the tavern had surged after her, blocking any hope of retreat.

  Now Sunny knew what had made that rattle-crash sound right after the truck had hit. Like many buildings from the old days, the Redbrick Tavern had a slate roof. The shock of the crash had dislodged a bunch of the thin slabs of rock and they had cascaded down onto a passing pedestrian.

  Somebody in a paint-stained gray hoodie that was rapidly turning red.

  15

  The screaming woman finally quieted down just as screaming sirens announced the arrival of the Kittery Harbor Police. The first responding officer was Constable Ben Semple. He looked a lot more authoritative today as he ordered the crowd back, called for backup and an ambulance, and then asked if anyone had witnessed what happened.

  Sunny raised her hand, and he turned to her, his eyes going wide in recognition. “Ms. Coolidge!”

  She mustn’t have looked her best, because the next thing Semple said was, “Are you all right?”

  “You’ve got to call Will Price,” Sunny said, trying to keep her voice low and steady. She’d tried to get him herself, but her fingers were shaking so much, she kept hitting the wrong buttons on her cell phone. “I don’t know if you recognized him, but that’s Gordie Spruance under there.”

  More officers arrived, helping to herd the onlookers out of the way while Semple made a phone call and then knelt for a real examination of the bloody form on the sidewalk. The constable glanced at Sunny, giving her a brief, negative headshake. Rising back to his feet, he craned his neck to look at the roof.

  “Was Spruance trying to avoid the SUV when it crashed?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “Gordie was trying to avoid me. I was trying to avoid the SUV.”

  As she told her story, the constable began to get that glazed look she’d seen on his face before. “I don’t know what the sheriff’s going to make of this.”

  “That makes two of us,” Sunny muttered.

  Will arrived, using his badge to get past the police line. He looked bleary-eyed, as if Semple’s call had hauled him from a deep sleep.

  He’s on the swing shift, Sunny thought. That’s exactly what that call did.

  He also appeared to be a bit grouchy at being woken up. “Weren’t you supposed to call about wherever you were going?” Will demanded.

  “I had to deliver—” Sunny broke off, looking at the envelope she’d been carrying. “Oh, God. I’ve got to get this to the Captain’s Table. Ollie Barnstable’s been chewing me out ever since I agreed to do that story for Ken Howell. This will give him an excuse to fire me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t go,” Semple said. “You’re a witness to”—he gestured at the scene all around them—“whatever this is.”

  “Looks to me like someone leaving the scene of a fatal accident—at the very least.” Will took the envelope from Sunny. “I’ll head over to the Captain’s Table and get this into Barnstable’s hands.”

  “Also, tell him to call someone in to cover the office,” Sunny called after him. She turned to Semple. “Something tells me I’m not leaving here anytime soon, am I?”

  *

  Sunny’s suspicion turned out to be all too correct.

  After canvassing the crowd, Constable Semple wound up taking her and a couple other witnesses to the police station, where they were divided up into separate rooms and asked to give statements.

  By the time she finished with that, Will had reappeared. “Barnstable was wining and dining some foreign guy,” he reported. “And you were right, he was not happy when I told him what had happened. He seemed to think you tried to get yourself killed just to inconvenience him.”

  “I’d say it was a bigger inconvenience for poor Gordie.” Sunny shook her head. “How could this stuff be going on? This is Kittery Harbor, where nothing happens.”

  Will’s initial grin faded into a serious frown. “So would you mind going over the sequence of events again for my benefit?”

  She explained about getting the call from Ollie, bringing the package, seeing Gordie … and what had happened as a result.

  As she did, Will kept looking at some papers in his hand. “The getaway car—you said it was a Toyota?”

  She slowly nodded. “I saw the logo on the trunk. But I was still getting up. I never got a decent look at the license plate. I can’t even say if it was from Maine or New Hampshire.”

  “And the car’s color?”

  “It was one of those new bland metallic colors.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what you’d call it. Cream? Sand?”

  “Well, that falls in between the person who called it silver and the one that called it tan.” Will sighed.

  “And the one that almost hit me was blue,” Sunny suddenly said.

  “Yeah.” Will drew out the word a little. “Easy to check on, since it’s still stuck against the wall at the Redbrick. If you want to be precise, I believe it’s sport blue clearcoat metallic.”

  “A Ford Explorer.”

  Will gave her a bemused look. “That’s right. You must really fixate on logos if you noticed that bearing down on you while busily jumping out of the way.”

  Sunny shook her head. “I saw it before. That day you gave me a lift, that—that monster truck was following me on my bike.” She began to shake again. “It would have been really easy to wait till we got out on an empty road and—”

  Will grabbed her hands. “They didn’t then, and they didn’t now,” he broke in forcefully.

  “But you can’t put this down to a Wile E. Coyote foul-up.” Sunny paused for a second, struck by a thought. “Or can you? Was Gordie there to lure me into position for that truck? Or was he just really unlucky—in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  She gave an impatient headshake. “That doesn’t work out. Even if it was a two- or three-man operation, Gordie, the guy in the explorer, and the guy in the getaway car, how would they know I was going in that direction? So they had to be following me.”

  “I’d like to worry a little less about the theoretical implications of the attack and concentrate more on cold, hard facts—especially while they’re still fresh in your mind,” Will said. “What can you tell me about the driver from the Ford?”

  Sunny shrugged. “I only saw him for a few seconds, and not from a good angle. I was
on my hands and knees at the time, climbing up from the sidewalk.”

  She frowned, shutting her eyes, trying to call up a picture of the guy she’d seen stumbling from the wrecked SUV. “He had a bloody nose, that’s what really leaps out. The blood was trickling down between his fingers.” She opened her eyes and shook her head. “That bloody hand was covering everything from his nose to his chin. I just saw bright red—didn’t even notice the color of his eyes.”

  After a second she said, “He had a lot of hair. Long. Maybe it had been pulled back in a ponytail and got loose, because it was all over the place.”

  “Long hair,” Will repeated. “His hand couldn’t have blocked all of his face. Try to remember. Was he clean shaven, or did he—” He broke off with a frown. “That could be leading.”

  “What could be leading?” Sunny asked. Then the light went on over her head. “You think it might be that Ron Shays guy?”

  Again, Sunny tried to visualize the man making his way out of the blue Explorer, struggling to bring the edge of his masking hand into focus. Could there have been a beard under there? Or was this what Will was afraid of? Had he planted the idea in her head?

  “Sorry,” she said unhappily. “I just can’t say.”

  “It would have been nice.” Will straightened up the papers in his hands. “Because if you hadn’t realized it yet, I just lost my prime suspect in Ada’s murder.”

  “There’s still Veronica Yarborough and the Towles,” Sunny suggested. “Neither of them have alibis for all of Saturday morning. And do we know where anyone was on Friday night?”

  Will nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t rating the neighbors as hot suspects. Sunny wasn’t so sure. For all her airs and graces, Veronica Yarborough didn’t strike her as a good person to cross. As for Chuck and Leah … Sunny remembered how she’d felt when she found Shadow crying in the back of the pickup. If I found the person who hurt him—

  Protecting a pet suddenly seemed like a much stronger motive now.

  *