Claws of Death

by Linda Reilly

  She jumped into the Saturn, started the engine, then headed in the direction of the clam shack. From there she’d take the side road that led to the hot dog place. It should only be a half mile or so up the road.

  The closer she got to the clam shack, the more Lara felt overwhelmed with sadness. She hadn’t even spoken to Gideon today, and already she felt as if their budding romance was over. Was she overthinking it? Misinterpreting his curt text?

  She hated that she even cared.

  Spying the clam shack up ahead, she made a quick left turn onto Crackneck Road. What a name, she thought gloomily. She hoped it wasn’t a prophecy.

  The hot dog place was only a short distance up on the left. When she spotted the sign, she made a quick left turn. She was shocked at the number of cars clogging the small parking lot.

  Lots of people. Lara liked that. She took a deep breath and headed inside the beige, flat-roofed building. The AC blasted her in the face.

  The scent of hot dogs, mustard, and onions wafted around her. She pulled in a deep breath. She felt suddenly hungry. Something about the smell of mustard always made her ravenous.

  Lara looked around at the jumble of booths and tables. Three college-age kids dressed in identical blue T-shirts took orders at the front counter, which had lines at least four-deep. An older man worked the grill, juggling hot dogs, fries, and onion rings with the precision of a surgeon.

  Claudia had told Lara she’d be wearing a straw hat with a hot pink bow. Lara glanced all around. In a corner booth, a little boy of about three shrieked with delight as a slightly older girl squirted ketchup at him. Their mom tried to intervene, which only made the little boy squeal louder.

  A finger poked Lara in the lower spine.

  “Yipes!” She whirled around.

  A woman so petite she barely reached Lara’s shoulder beamed up at her. “Sorry. Didn’t think you’d be so jumpy. I bet you’re Lara.”

  “You’d win that bet,” Lara said, unable to suppress a grin. “You must be Claudia.”

  At well under five feet tall, Claudia peered at her from underneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. Tied around the hat was a bright pink bow almost the size of the woman’s head. Her face was tanned to a toasted brown, and her blue eyes sparkled with more than a hint of mischief. Lara held out her hand, but Claudia grabbed her elbow instead and steered her to the booth she’d saved near the rear of the dining area. On the table were two bottles of water and a brown paper bag stained with grease. A stainless-steel napkin holder and a set of condiments sat on the far edge of the table.

  Claudia slipped into the booth and pointed at the seat opposite hers. “Sit. I got food for both of us.” She plopped her hat on the seat, then removed a foil-covered plate from the bag and set it down in front of Lara.

  Despite her misgivings, Lara was intrigued by the woman. She sat on her side of the booth and peeled the foil off her plate. A foot-long hot dog piled with sauerkraut sat next to a mound of shoestring fries. Junk food to the third power, her dad would’ve scolded.

  “Looks delish,” Lara said.

  Claudia ripped the foil off her own plate. “That’s their signature topping,” she said, nodding at Lara’s dog. “Eat first, then we’ll talk.”

  Lara sampled her hot dog. It was messy, but so yummy she didn’t care. Her taste buds danced in pleasure at the tangy blend of flavors. The fries were crisp and surprisingly hot. She squeezed a puddle of ketchup onto her plate for dipping.

  Claudia tore off a bite of her hot dog, chewed it with gusto, and swallowed. They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Claudia said, “How is it you never heard of this place? You live close by, right?”

  An alarm sounded in Lara’s brain. Don’t tell her too much.

  Lara swallowed a fry. “I only moved here last year,” she said. “I’m still getting my bearings.”

  “So,” Claudia prodded, “you said you live with an aunt?” She shoveled her last four fries into her tiny, bow-shaped mouth.

  “Yes, she’s a wonderful person. We get along really well.”

  Claudia nodded and swallowed at the same time. “You’re lucky. I live with my husband, and we don’t get along really well.” She laughed, then curled her lip. “You met my brother-in-law, right? Mr. Personality?”

  “If you mean Anthony, yes,” Lara said, squelching a smile.

  “Well, multiply his charming traits by a hundred and you got my husband, Hal. Hard to believe, right? Even more bizarre is that those two jokers make a living selling flowers.” Claudia grabbed a fistful of napkins from the holder and swabbed her lips. She crumpled them into a ball and dropped them on her empty plate.

  “How long have you been married?” Lara asked. She really wanted to ask her why she stayed with horrible Hal.

  Claudia rolled her eyes. “Seventeen glorious years. My dad hated Hal. Knew he was a jerk from the get-go.” She shrugged. “I didn’t listen to him, though. Just like he ignored my cigarette warnings.”

  Lara set aside her plate, which was empty save for a few overcooked fries. She didn’t want to stray from the reason she’d come here. “Your dad,” she said. “Did he ever talk about Donald Waitt?”

  Claudia studied her for a moment. “He did, but not the way you’d think. Me and my brother and my mom, God rest her soul, we’d all heard the story at least a dozen times about Waitt throwing the football at Dad’s eye. You know that story, right? I’m guessing that’s why you’re here.”

  Lara nodded.

  “In a weird way, Dad wore that injury like a medal of honor. Sometimes I think he was proud of it. Used to tell his buds it was an old football injury.”

  “Did his eye have permanent damage?”

  “It did—it skewed his vision a little—but it never bothered Dad. He said it gave him more perspective. He was a fantastic carpenter, you know. When he died, he still had orders up the yin-yang for hand-crafted furniture. He never got to finish his projects before the cancer took him.”

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Lara said. “He sounds like a character, and a nice man.”

  Claudia shrugged, then her face grew serious. “He had his moments. Ma put up with a lot, but she loved him. No one’s perfect, right?”

  “Right,” Lara said, looking away.

  Claudia folded her arms over the table and leaned closer. “I remember this one time, Dad was talking to my brother and me about the day Waitt threw that ball in his eye. For once he didn’t joke about it. He said Waitt showed absolutely no remorse for what he did, just kept insisting it wasn’t his fault.” She took a long swig from her water bottle.

  Lara’s pulse quickened. Maybe Claudia knew more than she realized.

  “That was the day Dad told us that other story,” Claudia went on, “about the man who was killed in the car crash. ’Course I have no way of knowing if any of this is true, but Dad wasn’t one to tell tales, if you know what I mean.” She frowned. “Anyway, he told us that about two years after the accident with the football, Waitt was driving his girlfriend to some babysitting gig. It was November, and the road was slick with freezing rain. They were running late, so Waitt was speeding. They were approaching a bridge, I guess, and a car was coming from the other direction. The other driver swerved to avoid hitting Waitt. The other guy lost control and his car went straight through the guardrail and into the river. He drowned before the rescuers could get to him.”

  Lara felt her stomach turn over. “What a terrible story. Waitt obviously survived,” she said.

  “According to Dad, Waitt’s car made it over the bridge seconds before that poor man went into the river.”

  “How did he know all that?” Lara asked. “Were there any witnesses?”

  “There were two witnesses—a couple driving home from some event at their church that night. They told the cops they saw Waitt’s car weaving like crazy before it got to the bridge. The other dri
ver had to swerve to avoid him.”

  An icy shiver wriggled down Lara’s spine. She could only imagine that poor man’s last moments—knowing he was crashing through the guardrail with no way to stop.

  “Waitt told the cops it wasn’t his fault. That his girlfriend begged him to drive fast because she was late for her babysitting job.” She shook her head in disgust. “What a creep, blaming it on someone else. Like he wasn’t the one at the wheel.”

  “A terrible, needless death,” Lara said quietly, but something poked at her brain. She looked over at Claudia. If it hadn’t been for Gideon’s uncle, Lara wouldn’t have known anything about Jimmy Rousseau, or his family. Claudia had given her some interesting tidbits about Waitt.

  Lara didn’t picture Claudia as a killer. Why would she take the risk? She’d admitted that her dad’s eye injury hadn’t adversely affected his life, or his career.

  But the car accident. That was a different story.

  “Did Waitt ever get charged with anything?” Lara asked.

  “Nope. He hadn’t been drinking. That probably saved him. Plus, the chick he was with told the cops that even though Waitt had been speeding, his car never swerved. She said the witnesses got that wrong.”

  One person’s word against that of two others.

  Claudia’s voice grew soft. “Less than a week later, everyone forgot about the accident. No one cared anymore, because the unthinkable happened.”

  “What was the unthinkable?”

  Claudia looked at Lara. “President Kennedy was assassinated.”

  Lara sagged, absorbing everything Claudia had told her. She glanced up at the wall clock. She’d been gone over an hour.

  “Claudia, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me,” Lara said, digging her wallet out of her tote.

  “You kidding? I enjoyed this. Hal’s managed to scare away most of my old gal pals, so I’m on my own most of the time.” Her expression changed, and Lara saw the loneliness in her eyes.

  “Still, I’d like to treat,” Lara said. “What do I owe you?”

  “I’ll agree to that. So long as it’s my treat next time. The whole thing with the waters was eighteen bucks, give or take.”

  Fortunately, Lara had that much in cash. She usually depended on her debit card for purchases. She slid the money over to Claudia.

  Claudia scooped up the cash. “Hey, I’m sorry if I came off like a flaming witch when I called you earlier. It’s my defense mechanism—bite first, ask questions later.”

  “You were fine.”

  “And you better go,” Claudia said. “You got that aunt, remember?” She grabbed her straw hat and swung her legs out of the booth. “You’re not really writing an article, are you?”

  Lara felt her face redden. “No, I’m not.”

  “What do you do, then?”

  “I’m a watercolor artist,” Lara said. She didn’t want to tell her about the shelter. Not until she was one hundred percent sure of Claudia’s innocence. She hoped Anthony would forget she’d ever mentioned the shelter.

  “Cool! Better than working with the sunshine brothers at the nursery, like I do.” She made a face.

  Lara grinned. She liked Claudia. “By the way, working with all those plants and flowers, did you ever hear of Queen Anne’s Lace?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’m very familiar with it,” Claudia said. “We carry it on occasion, mostly during the wedding season. It adds a nice touch to bouquets. I don’t think we have any in the shop right now. Why’re you asking about that?”

  “No special reason,” Lara said. Her fib quotient was off the charts now. “I’m working on a watercolor of a wildflower garden and I’m trying to decide if I want to include some Queen Anne’s Lace in the painting.”

  “Go for it,” Claudia said. “The white will make the other colors pop.”

  They cleaned up their table and dumped their trash in a barrel near the door. Claudia stuck her straw hat on her head, and together they walked out to the parking lot.

  “Can we do this again sometime?” Claudia said. “Now that I have your number, you don’t mind if I call you, right?”

  Lara hesitated. “Um, no, that would be great.”

  She was sure now—well, ninety-nine percent sure—that Claudia hadn’t killed Donald Waitt. The mention of Queen Anne’s Lace hadn’t triggered any reaction in the woman. Not even a blink.

  Claudia could, of course, be a sociopath. She might’ve told Lara exactly what she wanted to hear. The tale about the car crash might’ve been a total fiction.

  Except for something that nagged at Lara’s subconscious and wouldn’t let go.

  Lara stopped walking when they came up beside the Saturn. She jiggled her key chain. “Thanks again for meeting with me, Claudia. Is your car close by?”

  Claudia glanced out over the lot. “Yeah, the piece of crap is over there someplace. Only King Hal gets to drive the new car.” She turned sharply toward Lara. “Hey, you know what I forgot to tell you? About the car crash?”

  Lara’s ears perked like a cat’s. “No, what is it?”

  “That guy who drove off the bridge? Dad said he wasn’t alone that night.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “Nope. There was a kid with him. A little boy.”

  Lara felt her heart shift into overdrive. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  Claudia slowly shook her head. “Nope. Like Dad told us, after the president was assassinated, the country went into mourning. No one gave a flying flapjack about the accident anymore.”

  Chapter 23

  On the ride back to her aunt’s, Lara forced herself to focus on the road. Over and over, visions of a car sailing over a guardrail into a frigid river invaded her mind.

  A man.

  A little boy.

  The man drowned, but what happened to the boy?

  Bits and pieces of the distant past were beginning to form a picture. The problem was, there were gaps. Huge gaps.

  She remembered her history. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Miss Cleary in eleventh grade American History had drilled that into her students’ heads.

  Lara needed to find out more about the accident. In this case, Googling might not help. By modern standards the accident would be ancient history.

  It also might have nothing to do with Waitt’s murder.

  When Lara had first learned to paint watercolors, she’d often used too much water. The result was a runny landscape, colors melding into one another in messy blobs. The more she tried to cover them with extra paint, the worse it looked. Once she learned to control her brush, to blot it when needed, her skills improved. These days the techniques were second nature, but as a newbie artist she’d made loads of mistakes.

  That’s how she felt now. In a way, she was a newbie investigator. Not by choice, but by necessity. As professional as the police were, she felt sure they were aiming their efforts in the wrong direction. They worked with evidence, with witness statements, and whatever the forensics people turned up. All the right things.

  What they didn’t have was a blue-eyed Ragdoll cat with a penchant for pointing out abstract clues.

  Whoever murdered Donald Waitt had not only taken a life and devastated a family. The killer had also compromised Deanna’s freedom. Undoubtedly, the actress had her faults. Didn’t everyone? But she’d taken in two kittens and given them a loving home. In Lara’s book, that put her at the top of the “good” list.

  Lara was anxious, now, to get back to Deanna’s stone mansion. She needed to press the actress on details from the past. Claudia had said that Waitt’s girlfriend was in the car with him the night of the accident.

  Lara would bet anything that girlfriend had been Deanna.

  Deanna had invited her and Aunt Fran to lunch. Maybe they could make a date for Monday. Aunt Fran should
be feeling better by then. If not, Lara would go alone.

  Her head throbbing, she pulled into her aunt’s driveway. A familiar sedan was parked off to the side.

  Gideon’s.

  Lara felt her stomach tighten into a knot. He’d come over so he could ditch her in person. That was Gideon—a gentleman all the way. He’d probably say that it was him, not her. That he needed his space…blah, blah, blah. Either that or he was going to blast her for asking his uncle all those questions.

  Heart battering her ribcage, she shut off her engine. She felt heat rise upward from her chest, infusing her face with a hot flush.

  Then she saw him. He sat on one of the Adirondack chairs, staring off across Aunt Fran’s vacant field. Apparently deep in thought, he didn’t notice she’d arrived until she slammed her car door.

  Her legs felt rubbery as she walked across the yard. His face grim, he took deep strides toward her. He looked like a model from a men’s casual wear catalog. Black hair slightly mussed, cream-colored polo shirt over tan chinos.

  Don’t say a word. Let him speak first.

  He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the spot of coffee he’d spilled on his shirt a week ago and couldn’t get out to save his life. A giggle escaped her, mingled with tears. He was so hopeless at doing laundry.

  “I have only one thing to say.” He moved closer, until his face was only inches from hers. “I am an ass.”

  Lara burst out into laughter. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear.

  “Not that I’m disagreeing or anything, but why do you say that?”

  “Because I had the nerve to get ticked off when Uncle Amico told me you asked him all kinds of questions today. It was totally, totally unacceptable behavior on my part. Who am I to say you can’t talk to my uncle? Who, by the way, thinks you’re the greatest thing since raisin bagels were invented.”

  A massive wave of relief washed over Lara. “So that is why you were mad. It wasn’t because of, you know, last night? The stuff we talked about?”

  Gideon’s eyes widened. “Last night? Are you kidding? Lara, last night was everything I’d been hoping for. For so long, I’ve wanted to say so many things to you. It was such a relief to finally tell you how I feel. How I really feel.” His cheeks flushed pink. “When you said you feel the same way, I think I bumped my head on a cloud up there somewhere.”