by Fran Stewart
I widened my eyes. “I don’t hate Dr. Gunn.”
Mac screwed his mouth to one side. “You know I’m not talking about him. I heard you broke up with Mason.”
Damn you, Moira. I bet you told him.
“Well?” Mac’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Kill him. I know you considered him with some contemptuousness.”
Ah, I thought, the big words, three or more syllables. I glanced around to see just whom he thought he could impress. Nobody was within earshot except a couple of cops, my cousins, and Gilda. Hmm. Bouncy, bubbly, cute-as-a-button Gilda. Was the show for her benefit?
“I haven’t spoken to him since before my trip,” I shot back. As an afterthought, I added, “And you know that perfectly well.” Of course, he had no way of knowing that, but it sounded good.
He grimaced and asked me where I was last night.
“Home,” I said, aware that I had no way to prove it.
“Alone?”
Just the ghostie and me. “Alone.”
“You’re pretty calm for someone who’s just seen your boyfriend dead.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I said with more than a little venom.
Harper closed his pad and opened it again.
Mac glanced over his shoulder, probably wondering what I was looking at. He turned back to me. “Are you going to answer my question?” His supercilious tone irked the heck out of me.
“I dinna care for this constable.”
Me, neither. I looked Mac square in the eye, which was a bit difficult considering how he was six foot four and I was only five foot six. My nose was level with his armpit. “You didn’t ask me anything,” Only a small note of asperity crept into my voice. Before he could contradict me, I said, “All you did was comment that I was pretty calm under the circumstances.” I knew quite well I’d most likely fall apart when I got home, but this wasn’t the place or the time to be squeamish. I certainly wasn’t going to give Mac Campbell the satisfaction of seeing me squirm.
“Your shop is closed, you know.”
I didn’t roll my eyes at him, even though I wanted to. “I know. It’s a crime scene now.”
“We’ll be going over it for fingerprints.”
“What would be a finger prince?”
I grimaced at Dirk, hoping he would be quiet. I’d answer all his questions later. Didn’t he realize my tongue was tied right now?
Mac leaned closer to me. “Care to tell me what you’re worried about?”
Harper leaned closer, too. I threw him a glare, turned back to Mac, and said, “When I came in this morning, all I saw was the bookcase lying down where it was pushed over.” I may have sounded a bit peevish. “Naturally I touched it. I had no idea there was a . . . a body under it. Anyway, we all work here, so you’ll find all our fingerprints, here in front and in the back, too.”
“My, my, aren’t we being defensive?”
“Also, I looked out the back door this morning.” I raised my chin and refused to blink when he began to grumble.
Dr. Gunn called him over. It was a good thing. I wanted to scratch Mac’s eyes out. Impertinent, pompous butthead. I stomped after him, determined to find out what had happened to Mason, but Harper put out a hand before Mac could tell him to get rid of me.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Mac growled over his shoulder.
“I need some air.” I reached for the door handle, hoping to push my way out through the crowd of onlookers that stood outside the semicircle of yellow crime-scene tape, but Harper’s firm hand grasped my arm.
“I think you’d better stick around,” he said in an undertone.
Mac bellowed after us, “You leave and you’re under arrest! And hand over your key to this place.”
I didn’t make a scene, but only because of the crowd outside. And maybe just a little bit because of Harper’s shoulders and his charcoal eyes.
Everything inside me felt raw. How could this have happened? How could Mason be gone? Why in my store? What was I going to do about the blood? I took a deep breath to quell the panic that rose now that I wasn’t doing anything. Why him? Why me? Crudbuckets.
Officer Harper placed a hand on my elbow and steered me to the carved bench in front of the shoe display. “Sit,” he told me. “Stay here.”
Did he think I was an Irish setter? I sat.
I looked at the ghillie brogues and tried to imagine that I was a customer trying on a pair of those no-tongue shoes. I tried to remove myself from this scene. It didn’t work. I stared at the curtains that hid three little dressing rooms where customers could try on kilts and shirts and tartan skirts.
Harper came back with a glass of water. I took a sip and then another and another. Good grief, I felt dehydrated. Maybe finding a body does that to you; all the adrenaline uses up resources . . .
“. . . ing better now?”
“Huh? Oh, yes. Yes, I am.” I looked back at the dressing rooms. “Maybe the murderer’s back there.”
He followed my gaze and shook his head. “Joe already checked it out.”
He pulled a card out of his shirt pocket and wrote something on it. “I want you to call me if you think of anything else.”
I glanced at the card and stifled a grin when I saw his first name. He’d written his cell number below the e-mail address printed on the card.
“Anything at all. You call me.”
Mac bellowed his name, and Harper touched me lightly on the shoulder. “Sit here and rest. I’ll be back.”
* * *
I never knew a morning could drag by so slowly. Gilda and the guys ended up sitting with me, Gilda on the bench and my cousins on the blue-and-green tartan carpet that covered that half of the ScotShop. Harper didn’t seem to be in a hurry to come back. It felt like hours later—although it may have been a lot less.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the police station to be fingerprinted,” he said. “It’s for comparison only.” He herded us through the shop and out the back door, “so we can avoid the crowd out front.” It took some deft footwork on my part to be sure nobody ran into Dirk as we walked down the alley and up two blocks to the station.
The desk sergeant, a redheaded Irish Murphy in this town of Scots, ushered us into a bare conference room. “I need to collect the keys to your shop,” he told me. “All of them. Chief’s orders.”
I looked at Gilda, remembering that she’d forgotten her key this morning. That was why I’d had to let her in. We both had spare keys, too, but we didn’t need to mention that to Murphy. I pulled my key off my ring. “Here you go,” I said, nodding to Murphy. “That’s it.”
“Anybody else here have a key?”
All three of my employees spread their hands in the time-honored gesture of innocence.
When Murphy’s back was turned, I winked at Gilda. Sam and Shoe grinned. Dirk looked faintly disapproving. Murphy paused at the door. “The chief will be here in a minute or two.”
I’d watched enough TV to know you shouldn’t leave a bunch of witnesses together in one room because they might bend their stories to match one another’s. Of course, we didn’t have anything to worry about, so I relaxed back, as much as possible, into one of those molded plastic chairs that never fit anybody’s anatomy.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Shoe kept us in stitches with his straight-faced imitation of Mac Campbell. With his index finger stretched across his brow line like Mac’s one eyebrow, Shoe leaned over me and intoned, “You leave and you’re under arrest, because I need to arrest somebody, and it might as well be you.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I countered. “The town needs the tax money my shop generates.” As an afterthought, I added, “Maybe he’ll arrest you instead.”
Sam wound up and threw an imaginary pitch. “Can’t arrest either of us. We
’re needed for the Fourth of July game.” Hamelin and the nearby town of Arkane took turns hosting the annual baseball game between the Hamelin Pipers and the Arkane Archers. This year it was our turn. The teams may be strictly amateur, but the competition is fierce. Sam’s our best pitcher, and Shoe is our star batter.
“That reminds me,” Shoe said. “I think I left some of my old gear at the shop a month or two ago. Do you know where it is?”
“What?” I said with mock ferocity. “A month or two? Ha! Your stuff’s been cluttering the storeroom all winter. It’s a wonder I didn’t throw it out.”
Shoe staggered back as if he’d been hit. “No! No! Not my glove. Even if it is my spare one.”
I laughed. “I’ve been storing your spares? Should have burned them all. Your glove is there for sure. I saw it this morning when I went in the back. And your smelly old shoes.” It was on the tip of my tongue to mention his bat, but of course I didn’t. That was nothing to joke about.
I swallowed hard and lightened my voice. “Don’t forget you’re supposed to pick up a dead bolt lock and install it on the back door. Get four keys.”
Shoe started to answer but stopped when Mac strode into the room and paused, like a Force 1 hurricane that couldn’t make up its mind which way it was headed. Harper was right behind him. Mac swung around and barked at me as he moved in my direction.
“I’m splitting you up.” He pointed at me, his index finger coming uncomfortably close to the heavy weave of my sweater. “Come with me.”
I went. Harper spoke to Gilda, and two more officers waited in the hall, apparently one for each of my cousins. Dirk, muttering Gaelic imprecations under his breath—what was he whispering for?—followed me down the hall.
Mac was going to have to get his hearing checked. I told him my story, not once, not twice, not even three times. The first time, Dirk put in little additions here and there, so I stuttered a bit. The next time it went smoother.
After about the fifth repetition, Mac peppered me with obnoxious innuendos about my love life going to pot and my jealousy of Mason and Andrea. “If I’d wanted him back,” I told him, “I’d have killed her, not him.” If I’d been into murdering somebody, I probably would have knocked off both of them, but I didn’t say that out loud.
Mac finally took me back to the first room. The others were already there. Harper was nowhere in sight. As we stood shaking out legs cramped from so much sitting in awful chairs, an officer stuck her head in the door and motioned to Mac. I’d seen her at the shop but couldn’t recall her name.
He turned back to us. “Stay here. I’ll tell you when you can leave.” And out he went.
A quarter of an hour later, Sergeant Fairing—that was her name—came back. “Mac says you can go to the Logg Cabin for lunch, but you’re not to talk about what happened here.”
As if we’d want to. I kept seeing Mason’s face—what was left of it. Harper walked in then and gestured toward the door. “I’ll be going with you.”
Shoe grunted. “Babysitting us?”
“You’re grown-ups. Ought to be able to behave yourselves, but this keeps it official.”
As we walked past the ScotShop, the few people hanging around the crime-scene tape wanted to know what was going on. Harper, who accompanied us as far as the restaurant door, stepped forward. “I can’t comment, and these people”—he gestured to the four of us—“will get in big trouble if they talk about it, so don’t even ask them.”
They oozed away. “Enjoy your lunch if you can,” Harper held the door open for me. “Try not to think about it.”
Right.
Nothing on the menu looked good. I settled for a salad.
Gilda had been strangely silent. I felt sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do to help. Her hand shook as she lifted a soup spoon to her lips. Not surprising. It’s not every day you get questioned about a murder. It’s not every day you see a corpse, for that matter. I wasn’t feeling so chipper myself. I held my hands out over my salad and lowered them quickly to my lap. They weren’t shaking quite as bad as Gilda’s, but they weren’t too steady, either.
We need a change of mood. I whipped out my phone and scrolled through the photos. “Gilda, do you want to see a picture of Bruce?”
“Bruce?” She sounded almost strangled. What was going on? “Who’s Bruce?”
When I showed her the Sinclairs’ dog, she brightened a bit. “I always wanted a Scottie.”
“Yeah, me, too, but I think Shorty wouldn’t like the idea.” I passed the phone around the table. Thinking about a dog was much happier than thinking about a murder.
13
A Wee Cup of Coffee
“He what? Why would Mac arrest Shoe?” Outside my kitchen window the next morning, two male cardinals chased each other around the bird feeder, red feathers flickering in the early morning light. I knew how they felt. I wanted to peck Mac’s eyes out.
Gilda bellowed at me—not her usual breathy voice at all. “It was his baseball bat!”
“Well, of course it was.” I shifted the phone to my other ear. “We have to get him a lawyer.”
“It’s already done.” Gilda was back to her breathy voice. “Shoe called Sam, and Sam called Bart, and Bart went over to the jail right away, and Bart said Shoe would be out of jail as soon as we could get bail raised.”
“How much is bail?” I eyed Dirk. He and Shorty seemed to be having a conversation.
“Forty thousand.”
I choked on my tea. “Dollars?”
“Yes.” She sounded awfully prim. “The judge said the crime was hee-nus. It’s right here in the morning paper. Andrea wrote the artic—oh, I’m sorry, Peggy. I shouldn’t have mentioned her name.”
“That’s okay, Gilda. Not a problem.” My blood pressure is skyrocketing; my teeth are gnashing; my fist is clenched; not a problem at all. “I have to get dressed, Gilda. See you at the shop.” I dropped my spare shop key into my purse.
Dirk looked up from where he knelt beside my cat. “Ye dinna sound cheerful.”
“Of course I dinna sound cheerful. Shoe’s been arrested.”
“That is verra poor luck for him. Will they hang him, d’ye suppose?”
“Hang him? Of course not. We don’t hang innocent people in Vermont.”
“Then why are ye worriting?”
Hmm. “Good thought, Dirk. I’m gonna go get dressed.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Dirk and I walked out to the driveway and found my neighbor, Mr. Pitcairn, sweater-clad and slightly stooped, standing by my car. Dirk fingered his knife and I put out a restraining hand, remembering at the last moment to switch the movement into a quick check of my hair.
“When you’re through waving your arm about, would you give me a lift to the Auto Shop?”
I laughed and reined in my arm. “Your car isn’t working?”
“I don’t drive it very often, and wouldn’t you know it, the one time I want to go somewhere, I can’t find my key. If you’d just drop me off there, Ethan keeps the information on file.”
“Of course. Happy to.” Spouting the Auto Shop’s slogan, I said, “‘We have most everything, know most everything, and repair most everything.’” I popped the locks and held the back door open for Dirk. Mr. Pitcairn stared over the car at me as I stood there. I bent and looked into the backseat as if to check for something, being careful not to bump heads with Dirk.
Mr. P chatted interminably all the way into town. He talked about his yard, the weather, what a shame it was to have had a murder in my store, how much he liked my new shawl, and the increase in traffic on our road in recent years. I tried to be polite, but I was too aware of Dirk’s scowl in the rearview mirror and all too aware of his comments. He didn’t seem to like poor Mr. P. Of course, he didn’t seem to like anyone. Any man, that is. I’d caught him watching Gilda rather
closely, but with an air of—of what? Pity? I wondered why.
“I’m sorry I missed your dinner last night. Mac kept us at the station and I just forgot to call.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find another time.” He thanked me profusely as he got out.
“It’s nothing, Mr. P. You’d do the same for me if my car weren’t running.”
“Yes.” He slapped the car roof. “I suppose I would at that.”
“Yon man isna good,” Dirk commented as we watched Mr. Pitcairn’s receding back.
“I feel sorry for him. He must be awfully lonely. I wish he’d get a hobby or something.” I made a U-turn and headed back the few blocks toward the police station.
“What would be a hobby?”
“Something to occupy his time, like collecting stamps.” Dirk opened his mouth, but I waved him quiet. It’s not easy to explain philately to someone who’s never written a letter.
* * *
The station was housed in a squat building near the center of town. I’d never thought it looked particularly ominous, but now it did. Shoe was somewhere in that stark brick edifice, locked in a cell. Did they have visiting hours? Or could I just walk in and say I wanted to see him? I sure did hope Bart Cartwright was a good lawyer, since nobody had enough money to bail Shoe out. Just before I reached the door, I looked over at Dirk and muttered out of the side of my mouth, “Quit scowling. You look positively grim.”
“And who is to see it except your own self?”
“Let’s hope nobody else can, or we’ll have a riot on our hands.” I reached for the door, but it banged open and practically pushed me off my feet. I felt a momentary shiver, as if I’d walked out my front door into a misty morning.
When my head cleared, I found Police Chief Mac Campbell in front of me with a particularly nasty sneer on his concrete face. “Nice footwork, Peggy. Where’d you learn that? In tap dance school?” He looked over his shoulder to be sure his minions had heard his cleverness.