Catch as Cat Can

by Claire Donally

  “You say this guy broke in,” Mike said. “Wouldn’t Neil have been justified in shooting him? Self-defense or something?”

  Sunny shook her head. “Not the way this guy was killed. He was shot from the back. And it’s not as though Neil just walked into the store and found an intruder. The blood had frozen.”

  Her frown grew deeper. So, you’ve got a dead body in your freezer. It’s not impossible to get rid of. Lock up the shop, wait until things get good and quiet, and bring your car round the back where the deliveries get made. Open the back door, bundle the embarrassing body out, and drive away. You’ve got almost 3,500 miles of coastline to dump it, she thought, remembering a factoid she’d used in some of her promotional copy.

  So if Neil was the shooter, why did he need to show the body to me—or whatever other unlucky first customer he had today? What’s the advantage for him? And if the body in the freezer was a surprise to him, how did it wind up there? With all that coastline to choose from, why would someone take the risk and go to the effort of breaking into Neil’s place to dump a body there?

  She smiled at Mike. “If you smell something burning, it’s probably just a few brain cells. I don’t envy Will on this case. Not only is it a whodunit, but a whowuzit, and why’d he get killed?”

  They talked about other things as they finished the meal. Mike joked about whether having Abby around would cramp Mrs. M.’s style on the local gossip grapevine. “She might have to come to you for the latest info,” he said.

  Smiling, Sunny shook her head. “She’d probably get more from reading the Harbor Courier.”

  As she spoke, the phone rang.

  “That could be Helena right now,” Mike joked.

  Close, but no cigar, Sunny thought when she heard the voice on the other end of the line. It was Ken Howell, editor, publisher, most of the reporting staff, and printer of the Harbor Courier.

  “So, you forget your old friends now?” he asked.

  “Oh, I remember you,” Sunny replied. “The problem is, I don’t have much to say. Maybe you should be having this conversation with Will.”

  “I think you mean talking to the sheriff department’s public information office,” Ken corrected her. “I’d have better luck trying to get something out of Lenore Nesbit.”

  “Maybe you would,” Sunny agreed. “All I can tell you is that I walked into the fish store this morning and saw a dead body in the freezer. After that, it was all in the hands of the cops.”

  “You mean Will Price.”

  “And other people. I talked with Captain Ingersoll and Sheriff Nesbit. You know, the official people,” Sunny told him. “They’ve been working since the morning. By now, they must have assembled some more information.”

  “You’d think.” Ken didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “But not really. They still don’t have any identification on the fellow you found. And if they know anything else, they’re being mighty economical with it.”

  “You’re saying Lenore Nesbit is hiding something?”

  “I’m trying to decide if this situation merits a special edition,” Ken confessed. “We delivered this week’s issue around the time you discovered the body. It’s an expense, you know. And after the murders we’ve had in the last year or so, can I justify going up against the local dailies, or publish on my usual schedule?” He sighed. “Ollie is pressuring me to soft-pedal the story.”

  “Well, he would, considering his investment in the tourism market.” Including my job, Sunny silently added. “Do you think Lenore is actually stonewalling you?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Ken said. “But if I decide to go to press, what the hell am I going to say? You’re a pro, Sunny. What do you think?”

  “The victim seems to be an out-of-towner, non-local,” Sunny said slowly. “You’ve got the online edition now. Why not break the story there and hold back on print until more facts come to light?” She had a sudden inspiration. “Dad was wondering if the guy was homeless—wearing the wrong clothes for the local weather. That might be an angle to examine, using the murder to springboard into a more general concern.”

  “Yeah.” Ken’s voice sounded a little hollow. “’Cause if I guess wrong, the paper and ink bill might make me homeless.” He paused for a second. “I know that Will is supposed to be doing the investigating and this is his first case, so I can understand you backing him up.” His voice grew pleading. “But you really have nothing for me?”

  “Nothing more than I already told you,” Sunny assured him.

  Ken thanked her and hung up.

  And, Sunny was a little surprised to realize, I have no interest in getting involved.

  *

  The Harbor Courier restricted its coverage to a box on the home page of its virtual version, reporting the bare facts that had come out. But there was a jump to an editorial page, raising the homeless theory and promising to look into the homelessness situation in Elmet County. That was more than the other local news outlets managed to do with the story. The discovery of an unidentified dead body is hot news at first. But without identification or other developments, that kind of story got pushed into the back pages (or the TV equivalent) pretty quickly.

  Sunny had a hectic Friday, catching up with weekend reservations that had come in while she was away the day before. The weekend dragged, though, because Will was working and Mike was being very circumspect around Mrs. M. Sunny spent a lot of time binge-watching some cable shows and playing with Shadow.

  She did give in to curiosity on one point. Saturday evening she went online and checked how long it was supposed to take the FBI’s fingerprint system to identify someone. According to the websites she hit, it was supposed to take no longer than seventy-two hours.

  So, she thought, Will—and maybe Ken will have something to go on by Monday.

  She also got a heads-up from Ollie Barnstable on Sunday afternoon. “The police are going to let the store reopen on Monday,” he told her over the phone. “The crime-scene people have finished.”

  Sunny had a brief mental image of hazmat-suited CSI geeks dusting the frozen fish in the freezer for fingerprints. “I guess that’s good news,” she said.

  “We’ll see if that marshal is right about a spike in business.” Ollie seemed to have lost his nervousness about Val Overton. He sounded just like a demanding landlord.

  “I’ll wait until there’s a gap in the line before I remind Neil about his rent,” she told him.

  When Monday morning came and Sunny arrived at the MAX office, it seemed as though Val’s prediction was right on the money. The New Stores had much more foot traffic than usual. Sunny saw a steady stream of people pass her office window, on their way to gawk into Kittery Harbor Fish.

  But I don’t know how many of them are actually going inside to buy anything, that irreverent voice in the back of Sunny’s head spoke up. Maybe Neil should charge for guided tours of the crime scene.

  She wasn’t altogether surprised when her phone rang and she heard Helena Martinson’s voice on the other end. “Thank heavens the weather has moderated a bit today,” she said. “Abby and I are thinking of going downtown for lunch. Would you like to join us at the Redbrick? We can pick you up at the office.”

  Sunny agreed, smiling as she hung up the phone. Very smooth, Mrs. M., she silently complimented her neighbor. You’ll just happen to stop by right next door to the bull’s-eye for every gossip maven in town.

  She put in an hour or so getting the office squared away so she could have a leisurely lunch and then sat waiting for Helena and Abby to show up. Abby came in the door frowning and looking around. “What did this use to be?”

  “Barnstable’s Sweet Shoppe,” Sunny replied.

  “Right, right.” Abby smiled reminiscently and pointed at the right-hand wall—the one opposite from Kittery Harbor Fish. “That’s where the soda fountain was.”


  “We’re not going to get any service there nowadays,” Mrs. M. said. “I’ve really had a hankering for one of those Redbrick burgers all day. Shall we go?”

  Sunny got her parka and headed for the door. While she locked it, Helena took her daughter by the arm. “This is the place that was on the news,” she said, steering Abby over to the window of the fish store. Sunny trailed along, eager to see what kind of crowd Neil Garret was actually attracting. He looked pretty busy, standing behind the counter and dealing with several customers.

  Abby froze in mid-step, reeling back as if she’d been struck. If not for Helena’s grip, the younger woman might have taken a tumble to the pavement.

  “Are you okay?” Sunny hustled to take Abby’s other arm.

  In spite of looking as if she were about to collapse at any moment, Abby hauled them away from the store window and back to the MAX office. “That man in there.” She nodded back toward Kittery Harbor Fish, her voice a harsh whisper, her face looking as if she’d just seen a ghost.

  “You mean Neil Garret?” Sunny said.

  Abby shook her head. “That’s not his name. I know him—I’d know him anywhere. And he’s supposed to be in jail.”

  7

  “In jail?” Helena Martinson echoed, looking shocked. “What do you mean?”

  The same questions were floating around in Sunny’s head, but she had some practical matters to take care of—like getting Abby seated before she fell down. She unlocked the office door and maneuvered Abby and Helena inside, bringing the younger Martinson down for a landing on one of the office chairs. “Coffee?” she asked.

  Abby silently nodded. She looked as if she’d just received a serious jolt. Her perfect princess face was pale, her jaw hung loose. She swallowed hard a few times before she was able to thank Sunny when she returned with a cup.

  Sunny managed to get Helena into a chair rather than fluttering over her daughter like a mother hen. After Abby had taken a couple of sips of coffee and a little color had reappeared in her cheeks, Sunny said, “Now do you want to tell us about it?”

  “That man in the store,” Abby began.

  “The one behind the counter?” Sunny asked. After this buildup, it would be a heck of a thing if one of the customers had gotten such a reaction from Abby.

  She nodded. “The one you called Neil Garret. That’s not his real name. He’s Nick Gatto—and he’s a crook.”

  Now that Abby had begun to calm down, Helena started getting agitated. “How do you know that?”

  Abby took a long breath. “Mom, I guess there are some things you have to know. The streets in California aren’t paved with gold, you don’t get discovered by Hollywood while sitting at a soda fountain . . . and I wasn’t living in a convent the past few years.”

  Just the words to gladden any mother’s heart, Sunny thought. “So how did you meet this Nick Gatto?”

  “‘Nicky Suits,’ they used to call him. He was always beautifully dressed.” Abby actually smiled at the memory. “And I worked for him. I know it’s a cliché, but I was supporting myself between acting jobs by waiting tables. There’s a reason—you can set your own hours to accommodate auditions or rehearsals, even open up your schedule for filming something. I was good enough that I got offers to work in the front of the house, as a hostess, and let’s face it, my career wasn’t exactly setting Hollywood on fire. A lot of the stuff I did, I was just an extra—walking scenery.”

  “I’ve seen movies and TV shows where you acted,” Helena loyally disagreed.

  But Abby shook her head. “Usually about five lines, maximum. Anyway, when I heard about this upscale Italian place opening, I applied for a hostess job, and I got it. That’s where I met Nicky. It was his restaurant.”

  “And this restaurant landed him in jail?” Sunny asked.

  “No, the way he got the money for the restaurant put him in jail,” Abby said. “He was manipulating stocks.”

  “A guy named Nicky Suits was messing with Wall Street?” Sunny didn’t have much to do with high finance, just an anemic 401(k) from her days at the Standard. But the idea of an apparent mobster muscling into the stock exchange made her stare.

  “It’s not the big corporations that you hear about all the time,” Abby explained. “It’s what they call the small cap market, small companies trying to raise capital or going public. Nicky figured out how to use investment firms and force dealers to push up the prices of some stocks that he and his boss bought into for pennies and sold for big bucks. It’s not all that well-regulated, and he was doing pretty well.”

  “Well enough to buy a little respectability with a restaurant.” Mrs. M. didn’t sound happy. “And you worked for this man?”

  Abby nodded. “He was a good guy to work for, and the restaurant took off—until his, um, associates started hanging around. Nicky’s boss Jimmy just about turned the place into his private clubhouse. Then Jimmy started taking an interest in me.”

  “Oh, yes?” Helena’s approval reading was way down in the negative numbers by now.

  Abby looked as if she’d just taken a dose of very unpleasant medicine. “That’s not the point. What’s important is that Nicky helped me. When he saw that Jimmy was after me, he got me a job in a completely different business and helped me to move out into the Valley. I’d seen the handwriting on the wall for my acting career for a while. Nick got me working for a law firm, and I’ve moved on and up from there.”

  “And he did all this just because you worked for him?” Helena’s tone reminded Sunny of her own mom’s approach when digging into some messy situation in her teenage life.

  Except this is a lot more serious, she thought. It’s not promising when the good guy in the story is a gangster, saving Abby from a worse gangster.

  “We were—involved,” Abby admitted. “He was going through a messy divorce, and he really is—was—a nice guy, Mom.”

  “Mmmmm-hmmmm.” Helena was definitely reserving judgment on that score.

  “Anyway, he made a clean break when he got me the new job. The next thing I heard about him was when he got arrested. He pushed his luck on a deal and it blew up on him. The feds got involved, charging him with securities fraud, wanting to make an example out of him. The last I knew, he was supposed to be going off to federal prison.”

  “And instead he ends up in Kittery Harbor, selling fish.”

  Sunny could have smacked herself in the forehead. She should have seen the signs—Will’s interest in the incident with Shadow. He didn’t check into it because Shadow was her cat, but because it took place in front of Neil Garret’s or rather, she corrected herself, Nick Gatto’s store. That also explained Val Overton’s sudden appearance, chatting with her about Shadow’s misadventure. Sure, federal marshals delivered writs and chased fugitives. But one of their big jobs was running the witness protection system.

  Well, Val’s job had just gotten a lot harder, with a murder happening in her witness’ place of business. And Ken Howell was begging me for something juicy . . .

  Sunny quickly shook that thought away. Abby had stumbled across a dangerous secret, something with possibly fatal consequences, and now the three of them knew it.

  The situation hadn’t quite penetrated for Helena Martinson. She was still preoccupied with her daughter’s unwise life choices. But it had started to sink in for Abby. She was going from shocked to sick.

  Sunny spoke up in a firm voice. “Now, listen,” she said. “This story does not go beyond these four walls. It involves gangsters, and now murder.”

  She knew how Mrs. M. loved a good secret to spread around the gossip grapevine. The fact that it didn’t do her daughter much credit should dampen her usual enthusiasm—or so Sunny hoped. “So we’ve got to keep this under wraps,” she went on. “It may have already gotten someone killed.”

  That finally got through. “Subject closed,” Helena Martinson said. But j
udging from the look she gave Abby, they would be discussing many other matters soon.

  Abby simply looked apprehensive, whether from her discovery or from her mother’s reaction, Sunny couldn’t say.

  After a moment, Helena turned to Sunny. “I’m sorry, dear. With all of this. . . .” She made a vague gesture with her hand to include the whole mess. “Maybe we should take a rain check. Would that be all right with you?”

  “Don’t worry about it, I understand perfectly,” Sunny assured her neighbor. “There’s always something I can do around here to fill the time.”

  Silently, she added, Maybe I can get Will over for lunch instead. I definitely have a bone to pick with him.

  She got the Martinsons out of the MAX office, watching them set off in the opposite direction from Kittery Harbor Fish. Then Sunny went to the phone on her desk. She got through to Will’s cell phone and suggested lunch. “Unless you’re busy with Val Overton,” she teased.

  “No, no,” he said. “Where would you like to go? I’m up in headquarters—”

  “I was thinking of something simple,” she said. And private, she silently added. “Why don’t you pick up some sandwiches and lemonade? We can have a picnic in my office.”

  “Well, I guess that beats getting frostbite outside.” From Will’s tone of voice, the office sounded only marginally better. “What kind of sandwich would you like?”

  “Surprise me,” Sunny said. It’s only fair. I’m going to surprise you.

  Will arrived about fifteen minutes later with a paper sack. “Hope you don’t mind lemonade out of a bottle. I stopped off in Saxon and picked up meatball sandwiches at Avezzani’s.”

  “One of the fanciest restaurants in the area, and you pick up a meatball sub?” Sunny shook her head.

  Will grinned. “Before it went all fancy, Gene Avezzani’s folks ran a deli—and they made meatball parm sandwiches on garlic bread—best I ever ate. You should just count yourself lucky that I’m pals with Gene, and he still makes these things for me.” The smells seeping through the slightly greasy paper reminded Sunny that it had been a while since breakfast. She almost regretted what was going to happen next.