The Deadly Art of Deception

by Linda Crowder

  “No problem,” said Kenny, a shake in his voice. The two men were about the same age, but Jack had at least forty pounds of muscle on Kenny. Jack was normally an affable sort, but when he’d been drinking, he could be downright nasty.

  Jack turned his attention back to Dan, who had moved within a few feet of him. “She killed m’boy, Dan. Everbuddy knows it.”

  “Simmer down, Jack, that’s the beer talking.” Dan’s voice was firm but friendly, seeking to calm the older man, who was a good bit taller and stronger. Not taking my eyes off them, I pulled Taylor off her barstool and edged her toward the kitchen.

  Jack spat again and again. He had to apologize to Kenny, who moved his chair as far away as he could without hitting the next table. “Hell, Dan, don’t gimme that crap.” His voice took on a high-pitched, sing-song tone. “I cain’t arrest her. There ain’t no evidence. Ya’d have plenty of evidence if ya’d just git off yer ass and look fer it!”

  In a small town, everyone knows everyone else’s sore spots, and we all knew Dan hated any insult to his physique. Combine that with a slur to his law enforcement abilities, and it was no wonder his face turned as red as it did. Dan may have gotten his job through family ties, but he wasn’t without credentials. He’d been a detective in Anchorage before coming to Coho Bay, quite a coup for a man in his early thirties. When tourists treated him like a hick, all he could do was smile and nod at them, but I’d seen him punch a local man for less than what Jack had just said. “You watch your mouth, Jack. Nobody wants to listen to a drunken fool. You get outta here before I run you in.”

  “Oh, ya would arrest me fer speakin’ the truth, but her,” he gestured to Taylor, “you let her run around all she wants after killin’ my boy.”

  Dan put a hand on Jack’s arm, but he shrugged it off. I think he might have taken a swing at Dan if Frank hadn’t stepped between them. A foot taller than the two other men, he was surprisingly muscled, a fair rival to Jack’s bulging arms. How had I not noticed that? Frank’s voice carried an authority I’d never heard from him before. I felt the heat rise on my face and wondered where this side of Frank had been hiding all summer.

  “I’ll walk you home, Mr. Lennon,” he said to Jack. “I’ve been wanting to see that table you told me about. The one you built from a tree that got hit by lightning.”

  Jack stood for a moment, his eyes blinking up at Frank as though he didn’t know who he was. I held my breath and got ready to run, but I needn’t have worried. Apparently thinking better of starting a fight with Frank, Jack shoved Dan out of his way and headed out the door. Dan and Frank exchanged looks, then grabbed their coats and trailed out after him. Before the door even stopped swinging, the room burst with excited conversation. The crisis over, I leaned back against the counter and started to shake.

  “Never dull around here,” said Mel. She was standing next to Taylor, shotgun in hand. I don’t think the men had even glanced her way during their standoff.

  “You coulda said something so I’d known you had my back.”

  She smiled. “Always, little sister. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  “You people are nuts,” said Taylor, coming out from the counter and climbing back onto her barstool.

  “Why thank you,” said Mel, returning to the kitchen. The fact that Bent had let her come out without him was proof enough of how badly I’d overreacted. My pulse began to return to normal.

  “She ever actually shoot anybody?” asked Taylor.

  “Not that I know of.” I climbed onto my own stool. “Did you get a load of the muscles on Frank? When did that happen?”

  Taylor tilted her head at me. “What rock have you been under?”

  “So sue me. I never noticed.”

  “Mel says you’ve been flirting with him all summer.”

  “I have not!”

  “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Besides, I don’t blame you. I could go for him myself.”

  Something in the pit of my stomach turned. Taylor is my friend, maybe my best friend, but she’s not always easy to love. If she’s attracted to a man, she sleeps with him, just like that. When she turned twenty-one, she had a different man in her bed every night for a week. She’d called me a prude, but a week of wishing we had thicker walls in our apartment had not been my idea of a good time. More than once she’d slept with a guy she knew I had my eye on. Any guy who’d jump into bed with Taylor wasn’t the guy for me, but that didn’t excuse her behavior. There was nothing between Frank and me, but I still didn’t like the idea of her moving in on him.

  “Get your own guy,” I told her.

  “Come on, Cara. Get in the game. You like him and he likes you. Why aren’t you sleeping with him?”

  “Tay!”

  “You’re twenty-six years old. What are you waiting for?”

  “Cara, are you all right? Your face is red.” I don’t know when Mel had come in from the kitchen, but from the grin on her face, I’d say she’d heard most of the conversation. I stuck my tongue out at her, and she laughed and passed through to the dining room, coffeepot in hand.

  I’d lost my appetite, so I pushed the plate toward Taylor. “I’m sorry about Jack.”

  “You’re not doing yourself any favors waiting for him to make the first move,” Tay continued, ignoring me. “A guy needs to know he’s not gonna strike out, or he won’t even try.”

  “Jack,” I repeated, ignoring her. I was not in the mood to defend my values.

  “Have it your way.” She picked up her fork. “I feel sorry for Jack. I’m sure my coming back has stirred things up for him. Losing Johnny like that...” She shuddered. “After he’d lost his wife, it’s enough to drive a man out of his mind.”

  “I suppose so, but he shouldn’t go around saying you killed Johnny. That’s crazy.”

  “He’s been saying it since the day Johnny died. He’s not going to stop now.”

  “Nobody killed Johnny. It was horrible but it wasn’t murder.”

  “Maybe it’s easier for him to have someone to blame.”

  “I don’t see you blaming anybody.”

  Taylor pushed what was left of the roll around her plate with her fork. “I blame myself.”

  “Tay—”

  “No, Cara. Let’s not talk about it, okay?”

  Memories of that grim day stole in like the fog creeping over the bay. Johnny’s death would be exactly a year ago on Saturday. I didn’t know much about grief, but anniversaries were supposed to be hard on people. Maybe that was why Taylor had come back when she did. They’d only been married a couple of years, but they’d been inseparable during that time. The only time anyone would see them apart was when Johnny felt “the call of the woods” as he called it. When that happened, Johnny would take off with his sketchpad, and she would busy herself at their island home or, as she had on that day, come into town and visit me at the gallery.

  The whole town had turned out that evening to watch Dan bring Johnny’s body down to the dock. Since he’d already been dead by the time he was found, there had been no urgency, and Dan had waited until the last tender left before calling in the state police boat that would take Johnny’s body for autopsy in Juneau. I’d stood on the dock with my arms around Taylor, who’d been sobbing since she’d heard the news.

  She’d thrown herself across Johnny’s lifeless chest, and the crowd had stood by in silent sympathy. Then Jack had pushed his way through. “Get away from m’boy!” he’d shouted, grabbing Taylor’s arm and yanking her away from the body. It had been a heart-wrenching sight. Only after the state police had threatened to arrest him had Jack allowed Dan to take him home. I had stood on the dock with Taylor, watching with her until the boat disappeared, pushing away my own pain to be strong for her. I’d known Johnny since grade school, but while there’d been some heat between us, we’d never been more than friends.

  “You can make allowances for him if you want,” said Mel, coming to trade her empty pot for a full one, “but he was out of line then an
d he’s out of line now.”

  “Let me help,” I said, sliding off the stool. At every table I visited, the questions were many but the answers few. Nobody defended Taylor, her being an outsider, but neither could they bring themselves to defend Jack’s behavior. People felt bad for him, but whether they liked her or not, they just couldn’t blame Taylor for the bear attack that had killed her husband.

  There was a knock at my door that night. I was engrossed in a thriller—always a mistake in a quiet house on a dark night—and the sound startled me into dropping my book. “Crap,” I said, flipping through the crimped pages but not finding the one I’d been reading. From the way my heart was pounding, maybe that was for the best. I dropped the book on the table and went downstairs. The next day was Thursday, the one day in the week where there were no cruise ships, so the whole town took the day off. I had given Taylor my bedroom because there was still far too much darkness in the circles beneath her eyes. She needed sleep and as much of it as she could get. As was my habit on Wednesday nights, I would be up half the night reading anyway, and on those nights, I often fell asleep on the couch even when I had the place to myself.

  I went down the steps, finding my visitor already standing in the entryway. “You should lock your door.”

  “I never lock my door. Do you want to come up, Frank?” I stood back, and he walked past me and started up the stairs. I went to the door and poked my head out. There were a few porch lights, nothing out of the ordinary, but somehow tonight the shadows seemed menacing. I shook my head, dismissing the sense of foreboding. I have got to stop reading scary books late at night. I locked the door and padded up the stairs.

  Frank was standing in the kitchen, his hands on his hips, waiting for me. When I reached the top of the stairs, he crossed to the window and looked down onto the road. “Don’t you have curtains?”

  “Did you come here in the middle of the night to criticize my decorating?”

  He stepped back. Switching off the lamp, he joined me in the kitchen where the light over the sink cast a dim glow. “Just worried about your safety. Yours and your friend’s. Where is she?”

  “Sleeping. Why are you suddenly concerned about my safety?” He raised one eyebrow and looked down at me. An electric charge ran through my body, and I took a step back, bumping into the counter. How had I never noticed he was so tall?

  “Asks the woman whose sister had to pull out a shotgun today.”

  So he had noticed. “Jack was drunk. Tay’s coming back set him off. He’ll calm down now he’s got it out of his system. Can I get you a drink?” I pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge and reached into the cupboard for a glass.

  A lopsided grin stole across his face. “Need to see ID for that?”

  “Nah, it’s low fat. None of the hard stuff for me.”

  He took the glass I handed him. “He was swearing a blue streak all the way home. Took both of us to get him inside.”

  “You didn’t leave Dan alone with him, did you?”

  “Simmons left when I did, why?”

  “Jack hates Dan. Has since long before Johnny died.”

  “Simmons seems decent enough. Lennon got a reason?”

  “Dan’s uncle was chief of police when I was a kid. When he retired, word is Jack lobbied for Johnny to get the job, but Johnny didn’t want it. The city hired Dan instead.”

  “Word is? Don’t you know?”

  “I was away at college when it happened.”

  “If his son didn’t want the job, why does Lennon hold it against Simmons? Doesn’t like outsiders?”

  “Dan’s not an outsider, he’s from Homer. Jack just wants what he wants, is all. He doesn’t take no for an answer.”

  “What did he think of his son being an artist? That couldn’t have set well with him.”

  I drank my milk, wondering why Frank was suddenly so interested. There’d been some epic battles between the two, but Johnny had followed his heart and Jack had fallen into a bottle. He’d gotten ripping drunk at Johnny’s wedding and the rift had only partially mended. “Maybe guilt is part of why Jack drinks. Something changed in him when Johnny died.”

  Frank wandered around my apartment, stopping to look at my books, though it was too dark for him to read the titles on the spines. “Probably doesn’t like me,” he said at last.

  “Don’t take it personally.” I stood, watching him. There was something about him tonight so different from the lighthearted, easygoing man he’d always seemed to be. I am intense by nature, in almost everything I do, and it’s hard for me to picture myself going through life as breezily as Frank. Tonight I was seeing a serious side to him, and I had to admit I found it appealing. There was something about him that made me feel safe. Maybe it was just the late hour and maybe I was more tired than I realized because my thoughts weren’t making much sense even to me.

  Frank paused at the window, and I saw his body tense. He ducked to one side and peered out, his face masked in the shadows.

  “What is it?” He motioned for me to join him but pushed me behind him. Suddenly not feeling safe, I peered over his shoulder. “What are we looking at?”

  “Wait for it,” he said, still staring at the street.

  There was nothing there. No lights, no people, no movement except the leaves that were bumping down the street in the wind. “I don’t see anything,” I whispered when I couldn’t be quiet any longer.

  “It’s gone now—wait, there! Did you see that?”

  I looked intently in the direction he was pointing, wondering if he were pulling my leg, when I saw it too. There was someone there, standing in the shadows, hidden by the awning of the building across the street. I stepped back, banging my shoulder into a bookcase. I rubbed the sore spot. “Who would be out this late?”

  “Can’t be Lennon. He was passed out cold when I left.” Frank looked again. “Could be Simmons. That’s the city office building, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but wouldn’t he have gone home?”

  “Maybe he was worried about you too.”

  I stopped whispering and took another step back, careful to avoid the bookcase this time. “I’m fine. Except for strange men coming around in the middle of the night scaring me half to death.”

  Frank was still looking out the window. “I don’t think he’s trying to scare you. He probably doesn’t know you’ve seen him.”

  “I wasn’t talking about him.”

  Frank turned to look at me. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “Then tell Mr. Shoes down there to go home and go to bed. Then you do the same.”

  “You have a gun for protection?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Lock the door behind me.”

  “If I promise to do that, will you get out of here so I can get some sleep?”

  “If that’s what you want.” He looked down at me with an expression I didn’t recognize, but I felt my body respond to it. I didn’t think it was the sudden scare causing this tingling.

  “Let’s go then.” I followed him down the stairs and locked the door behind him. I locked the deadbolt for good measure and went back upstairs. Out of curiosity, I went to the window and looked down at the city building. There were two sets of shoes visible now. Apparently Mr. Shoes wasn’t dangerous, because neither set of feet appeared to be in a hurry to move on.

  “What was that all about?” I asked the bookcase beside me. Bookcases not being inclined to tell you what they might be thinking, I turned off the light in the kitchen and settled myself on the couch. I fell asleep wondering whether I liked the new, heroic Frank more than I had the old, comfortable one.

  Chapter 4

  I slept fitfully and wasn’t very happy when Taylor woke me up the next morning by running the coffee grinder. The noise broke into a dream I’d been having that had something to do with Frank and nothing to do with reality. I stomped off to the shower, and my mood did not improve when the hot water gave out while I still had a head full of suds. By the tim
e I’d toweled off, combed my hair and brushed my teeth, I was feeling a little more human but not very much more charitable toward Taylor for waking me up on my day off.

  “You must’ve been thirsty last night,” said Taylor with disgusting cheerfulness when I came out of the bedroom. “You’re almost out of milk.”

  It’s a good thing the last part of my shower had been cold. “Um, yeah, I guess I was.”

  She held up the two glasses I’d forgotten to wash. “Doing a little double-fisted drinking?”

  “Frank Baker was here last night.” Why should such an innocent statement make me feel so guilty?

  Taylor raised an eyebrow. “And you served him milk? Caribou King, you can’t seduce a man by plying him with milk.”

  “I wasn’t trying to seduce him. Especially with you snoring away in my bed.”

  The playfulness fell away from her face and she frowned. “I don’t snore.”

  “Of course you don’t,” I said, happy to have diverted her.

  “So why was Frank here last night?”

  “He wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Really? Wanted to make sure I was okay?” Taylor put emphasis on the word “I” and grinned at me.

  “That’s what I said. He stopped by on his way home.”

  “Stopped by on his way home?”

  “Why are you repeating everything I say?”

  “I thought Frank was living in your Dad’s cabins.”

  “So?”

  “Cara, the cabins are on the other side of town and a mile up the road to boot. Not too far from the mill, as I remember. You sure you want to stick to that story?”

  I grabbed my sweater and started for the stairs. “I’m going to Mel’s. If you’re done making fun of me, you can come along.”

  Taylor laughed, and my anger melted. Her laughter was like the sound I imagined fairy bells making, and nobody can be angry with fairy bells in the air. She followed me down the steps. “When did you start locking the door? Did Frank say something to scare you?”