The McClarity home had always had a warm, friendly atmosphere. I figured the reason was Sandra McClarity herself, but even after her death, the house smelled and felt almost the same. The family had removed the prized heirlooms, which included some of the antique furniture. I imagined as the rest of Sandra’s possessions were moved out, it would gradually lose the built-in warmth.
“Well, this has been a day to make the whole D.C. scandal seem not so bad. Falsely accused is decidedly better than getting killed,” I said out loud. I had lived alone so long, if I didn’t talk to myself, I probably wouldn’t exercise my voice box enough. I patted the can of Mace still in my pocket—I hadn’t remembered that potential weapon when Clint had interrogated me. When I pulled it out, the penny I’d found on the pathway in the park came with it and dropped onto my lap. I picked it up, noticed the date on it, and smiled. It was my biological mother’s birth year. “Thanks, Mama, for doing your best to stay close all these years. If you were trying to warn me to turn around because you knew Jerrell Powers’s dead body was just a little ways down the path, then thank you. I’ll try to pay closer attention next time.”
I put the penny back in my pocket and pulled the warm fleece blanket that was draped on the back of the couch over me. I tucked a corner of it under my back and grasped part of the top in my folded hands on my chest. I didn’t have the energy to get paper and pen, so I made a mental note of everyone I knew who did not like Jerrell Powers. Erin Vickerman was first on the list. Or maybe it should be May Gregors, followed by Pamela’s sister, Lauren.
Then there was Pamela herself. She couldn’t be ruled out yet, despite her apparent love for Powers. Not to mention Mark Weston, who had been protective of Erin since high school. If he’d thought Powers posed a danger to her, what would he do? Of course, Pinky and I would do whatever we could to help defend Erin, if it came to that. Even Archie Newberry was there for all three of us. Actually, in a town like Brooks Landing, the list of others like Newberry who would show their support was probably a mile or two long.
Sandra McClarity’s cuckoo clock startled me when the little bird popped out and crowed, followed by eleven more noisy appearances. Midnight. Yesterday was officially over and today had begun. I closed my eyes, convinced I wouldn’t be able to turn off my brain long enough to sleep.
• • • • • • • • • • • •
The ringing telephone awakened me Saturday morning. I sat up and glanced at the clock, amazed I had slept soundly for eight hours. I snatched my cell phone off the coffee table and braced myself when I read the display. I pushed the talk button and was greeted by a very upset Pinky on the other end. “Mark just left my shop and you are in the deepest doo-doo ever. I can’t believe you didn’t call me last night.”
“I didn’t call because you had an early day, and you needed your rest.”
“Who died and made you my mother?”
“Pinky—” I kicked off the blanket.
“Sorry, that was mean. I shouldn’t have yelled, but you were involved in a murder. Jerrell Powers’s murder, to be specific. Oh, my God!”
“Not in the actual murder—”
“I didn’t mean it like that. You have to tell me every single detail.”
My phone beeped, alerting me I had another call coming in. I glanced at the caller ID. “Pinky, it’s Erin calling, so I better take it. I’ll be down at the shop by nine and we’ll talk then.”
“Okay,” was her reluctant reply.
I hit the talk button. “Hey, Erin.”
“Don’t you dare try to act like nothing happened.” Her voice rose and I had to move the phone away from my ear.
“You’ve obviously heard.”
“Mark just called. It’s actually on the metro news stations, but they didn’t name the person who found the body. I couldn’t believe it when Mark said it was you.”
The media must have picked up the murder information from the Buffalo County Sheriff’s Office. There had been no reporters on the scene the previous night. And thankfully none of them had called me. Erin sucked in a loud breath, then continued, “You didn’t think that one of the first things you should do was to call your best friends? Especially since one of them was the victim’s victim?” Victim’s victim. That was a good way to put it, I thought.
“Erin. What would you have done about it anyway? And you know very well you got a better night’s sleep by not getting a call like that at midnight.”
“Well—”
“Why don’t you meet Pinky and me at our shops about nine? I will disclose every single solitary sordid detail.” Since it was Saturday, Erin had the day off from school.
“I’ll be there.”
We said our good-byes and hung up. I stood, folded the blanket, and smoothed it over the back of the couch. After a long, hot shower, I dried myself with a towel, then wrapped it around my body and made my way to the bedroom closet. Because of my previous career position, I had a wardrobe filled with suits, with both skirts and pants, and dresses with jackets that turned them into business attire; plus I had more casual, longer skirts and jeans. I no longer battled with my weight and I had finally accepted the fact that I had a curvy shape. My mother called it “an hourglass figure, like Marilyn Monroe’s.”
That had inspired me to dress up as the famous, although haunted, actress for a few costume parties over the years. When I styled my strawberry blond hair like Monroe’s, covered the sprinkling of freckles across my nose and cheeks with makeup, darkened my eyebrows, and wore red lipstick, I passed. As long as you didn’t look closely at my more generous mouth or my smaller ears with attached earlobes. And I’d gotten a pair of colored contacts to make my green eyes blue. Decked out as Marilyn from head to toe, I looked quite authentic, and almost fooled myself.
• • • • • • • • • • • •
Both Pinky and Erin were walking around in the coffee shop like chickens with their heads cut off when I got there at ten minutes before nine. Actually, in the bird world, Pinky was more like a swan, with her long, skinny legs and elongated neck, and Erin was more like a baby chick: small and compact. Pinky wore black leggings with a pink-and-purple-striped top that hung to her knees. Erin was in her usual outside-of-work outfit of jeans and a sweater.
Pinky opened her shop at eight o’clock for her clients, but I rarely had a customer before ten, so that was when the curio side opened. An occasional coffee shop customer would wander in and look around, but we were lucky if Pinky sold an item for us once a month.
As soon as she spotted me, Pinky grabbed my shoulders and steered me to a table. “You sit right down here. I’ll get your coffee and scone.”
Erin sat down opposite me. “You’ll have to talk between bites.”
Pinky plunked food and drink on the table, then slid onto the chair between Erin and me. “Shoot.”
I gave each detail I remembered, starting with looking at my e-mails, using the bathroom, finding the snowing snow globe . . .
“Wait a minute. Say that again,” Pinky said and reached over to check the temperature on my forehead. “You’re not spiking a fever.”
“One of your old snow globes just started snowing?” Erin asked in an “I want to believe you but can’t” voice. Her frowning expression backed up her tone.
“Not one of the old ones. It was one I’d never seen before. . . .” I filled them in on the scene, and how it looked like a snow globe made of the same materials we’d used in May’s class. They glanced at each other in a way that made me curious if they knew more than they were admitting to.
“Did you see the globe?” Both Pinky and Erin shook their heads, but neither answered. I continued my story. When I got to the part of touching the body with a stick, and having it topple to the ground, they grabbed my hands—Pinky my left and Erin my right—and squeezed. “Ouchy, you’re cutting off my circulation.” They eased their grips a tad.
“Cami, you were alone with Jerrell Powers’s dead body in the park at night and you l
ived to tell about it. I’d have died of fright,” Pinky said. Her hazel eyes were as round as the moon had been the night before.
Erin slowly shook her head back and forth. “That is the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
When I relayed that Clint and I had discovered the snow globe was missing from the shelf, they both squeezed my hands again. Pinky spoke. “And you’re sure you weren’t having some sort of premonition? Like when your mom comes—”
“I’m sure. More than sure. Positively sure.” I hadn’t used that expression since we were teenagers and I was trying to convince the others I was right. “And my mother’s visits are not premonitions or hallucinations. And they are not even real visits . . . oh, never mind. After I’d watched the last of the snow settle, I picked up the globe and studied it. I know what I saw.”
“Yes, but if you were having a premonition, you would see the scene. I mean, what if it was really one of your other globes, but the scene changed to show you what had happened, or was about to happen?” Pinky said.
I felt my eyes squint slightly. “Uh, no. I will say it one more time. I don’t have premonitions.”
“Then how do you explain it?” Erin asked.
“I have a theory.”
“And that is?” Pinky said.
“Someone planned the murder, captured the scene in the snow globe, and realized they’d accidentally left the globe. They saw me in here at the computer, waited until I went to use the bathroom, slipped in, and was about to grab it, but I came back faster than they expected, so they hid instead. Then, after I left, they took it and fled.”
Erin shrugged one shoulder. “That sort of makes sense.”
“And if that’s what happened, I’m glad you didn’t get bopped on the head. Or worse,” Pinky added.
We all knew what worse meant. “There is one major flaw in that explanation to consider,” I said.
Erin was the first to take a sip of coffee. “What’s that?”
“My shop door only locks with a key from the outside.”
“That’s true with your door, but you can lock my shop door from the inside, then pull it shut from the outside. They could have gone out that way,” Pinky said.
That widened the pool of suspects substantially.
A group of people came in for coffee, which put an end to our discussion. Erin left to run errands and I went into my shop to get ready for the day’s business. I unlocked the shop door at one minute to ten and my mother called me at one minute after ten. They’d heard about my walk through the park from Mark, who had stopped by their house. “Thank God you weren’t killed last night. Why didn’t you call us?” Mom’s voice was shaky.
Although I had planned to call my parents before they heard the news from anyone else, I was trying to think of a good way to do that without overly upsetting them. Plus, I needed to process major events for a while before I was able to talk to my parents about them. My dad had calmed down a lot over the years, but his Italian temper still rose quickly from time to time. I felt the need to phrase disturbing news in the most diplomatic way possible so neither one of them freaked out.
“Sorry, Mom, I meant to, but it’s been a little hectic. Kind of a late night. And I really wasn’t in any kind of personal danger.” Not that I could tell.
“Your brothers and sisters, not to mention your nieces and nephews, are all buzzing like bees. Like half the people in Brooks Landing seem to be.”
When I had gone to live with the Vanellis at age five, they had four children of their own. It was a busy, noisy household and a bit of a culture shock for me; I had been an only child in a quiet home.
“I’ll talk to everyone in the next day or so,” I promised.
“Yes, that’s one of the reasons I called. Susan wants to have the whole family over to her house tonight for a potluck.” Mom started coughing.
“Maybe that’s not such a good idea, especially for you, Mom. You should concentrate on healing.” Her coughing sound muffled, as though she had covered the receiver or moved away from the phone.
“Cami, it’s Dad.” He took over the conversation. “Your mom’ll be fine. She caught a little cold with her immune system being down the way it is. But don’t you worry, I’ll keep a close watch on her. Come to Susan and Mick’s place when you close up the shop. We’ll see you a little after six, then.”
That settled that. “Okay, Dad. I’ll bring some muffins.” We said our good-byes, and I moped about the whole thing for a minute. I dearly loved my family, but when I’d lived out of state I had more control over my personal life. With the exception of that one major incident, of course, but that was different. Another life-changing experience, but different. Maybe someday my parents would realize their baby was all grown up with a mind of her own.
After we’d hung up, I checked the phone messages. There was one from May Gregors, left at 11:57 the night before. “Hi, Camryn and Pinky, I must have left a bag of supplies in your coffee shop, maybe on one of the chairs. I am missing some figurines and snow globes. I know you’re not still at the store this late, but please call me when you get this message.”
Oh, my, Jerrell Powers’s ex-wife. I wondered if she had heard the news that morning. Or had she already known about it last night because she was directly involved in the crime? She was definitely on my list of potential suspects. It seemed a little strange she had phoned late at night to ask a mundane question when she knew we wouldn’t be there. Or was it a well-planned attempt to shift unwanted attention away from her?
I went into the coffee shop in search of May’s missing supplies. Pinky glanced at me then back at the customer she was handing a bag of goodies to. I looked around for May’s things, including under the tables and chairs.
“What are you doing?” Pinky asked when she was free.
“May is missing some snow globe–making supplies and thought she might have left a bag behind.”
“That’s strange. I didn’t find any extras here, last night or this morning.”
“Maybe they fell behind something, like these bags of coffee beans.” She had large burlap sacks against the side wall.
Pinky lifted an arm and waved. “Have at it, sweets. I sure didn’t see anything when I did my morning grinding earlier, but then again, I wasn’t looking for them.”
We searched for a couple of minutes, but turned up nothing that didn’t belong to Pinky. There were not many potential hiding places in that area, and to our knowledge, no one had gone in her storage room. “I’m always relieved when we move things and don’t uncover a mouse nest,” she said.
“Pinky, ew. What would make you think of such a thing?”
“Out in the country, living next to a field, mice would crawl in sometimes in the fall to find a warm spot to have their babies. I remember my mother moved the couch one time to clean and there was a nest underneath. I can still hear her screaming.” She shook her head and smiled at the thought.
I gave her a single pat on the back. “Okay, this is an old building, like, ninety years old, but I have never seen any sign of a mouse.”
“Good point. And I don’t see any sign of May’s supplies, either.”
“I’ll let her know we looked. Hopefully she misplaced them when she packed up last night and has found them by now.”
A pale Lauren Engle and a paler Pamela Hemley appeared from seemingly nowhere. I hadn’t heard the customer alert bell on the door ding and, judging from her look of surprise, Pinky hadn’t, either. Pam put her hand on a table for support and collapsed onto a chair. Lauren hovered protectively near her.
“Jerrell didn’t come home last night and I thought it was because he was afraid of . . . I mean, that he was worried about what Lauren would say,” Pam said in little more than a whisper.
Lauren rested a hand on her sister’s shoulder, then looked at me. “The assistant police chief paid us a visit very early this morning. He told us about, um, your, um, discovery in the park last night.”
“Jer
rell’s dead and they questioned us,” Pam said.
“God rest his sorry soul.” Lauren mouthed the words so no one would hear, but I read her lips. She caught me staring and lowered her eyes to look at Pam.
“I can’t believe he’s really gone.” Pam grabbed a napkin off the table and buried her face in it. She sobbed and Lauren patted her back. When Pam lifted her head and found my eyes with her own red, puffy ones, she sucked in a big gulp of air. “Tell us how he was.”
I searched for a word other than “dead.” But that was the one that was most accurate and summed it up the best: dead. That was how he was. “Well, when I saw . . . Jerrell, he was sitting on a park bench. And I honestly thought he was sleeping. But then he fell off, and didn’t move at all, and that’s when I realized he had . . . passed on.”
“They wouldn’t even say how he died. Just that it was being investigated as a homicide,” Pam said and more tears rolled down her face and dropped on her chest.
The police hadn’t told me to keep how he’d died a secret from anyone. I had no idea why they couldn’t give the poor ladies the basic facts. I’d heard somewhere, maybe from a movie, that there were sometimes key pieces of evidence that only the killer would know about. Maybe that was the case. And it was something for me to consider in the investigation I was secretly conducting. Maybe the police didn’t want Pamela and Lauren to know because the two of them were on their radar after all. They were surely on mine. “I’m sure the police will reveal whatever details they can when they can. But of course I can’t speak for them,” I said.
Lauren gave Pam’s shoulder a squeeze. “We should get you home, and let these ladies get back to work.”
“Home.” Pam said the word then wailed. “It’ll never be the same, knowing Jerrell will never be there again.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “Come on, Pam.”
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