by Sofie Ryan
“That’s not helping,” I said. He gave me a look that seemed to suggest he wasn’t trying to help.
My dad answered the phone. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said. I knew he was smiling, and it seemed to me that I could feel the warmth of that smile coming through the receiver.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. “Is it cold there?” My parents lived in New Hampshire, where my dad taught journalism at Keating State College.
“It’s two-flap weather,” he said.
“That’s some serious cold,” I said with a laugh. Dad had a mangy pile-lined leather aviator hat with earflaps, which he wore only when it was really, really cold. My mother hated that hat. She said it made him look like he’d been out in the bush about a week too long. She and I had both bought him other hats over the years, but he liked his aviator hat more than any of them.
It had disappeared once under mysterious circumstances, and the entire neighborhood had been treated to the sight of my dad in a holey sweatshirt, pajama bottoms and unlaced Red Wings racing down the street after the garbage truck and then striding back, triumphantly holding the hat over his head like he was some kind of marauding Viking with a head on a pike. The hat had never been safer after that.
“Is Mom around?” I asked.
“She is,” he said. “Hang on and I’ll get her.”
“Love you,” I said.
He’d already set the handset down, but I heard him call, “Love you, too!”
After a few moments of silence Mom picked up the phone. “Hi, baby,” she said.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “Dad said it’s cold there.”
“You’ve heard the expression ‘a three-dog night.’ Well, we had an ugly-hat day.”
“I heard that,” my dad called out in the background.
Mom and I both laughed.
“So what’s new with you?” she asked.
I explained about Mac losing his apartment and Avery’s idea to create an apartment up above the shop. “That could work,” she said, and I pictured her reaching across the kitchen counter for a pencil and a pad of paper. “What were you thinking of for a layout?”
I shifted Elvis with one hand and pulled my drawing from underneath him while he muttered and murped with annoyance. I described my plan, and Mom made a couple of suggestions for the galley kitchen. I managed to scribble them on my sketch without having to make Elvis move altogether. He’d rolled onto his back and was watching me with a bemused look that seemed to say, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I talked to your grandmother this morning,” Mom said. “She’s going to call you later. She’s worried about Liz.”
“She doesn’t need to be,” I said, stroking the fur under Elvis’s chin, which immediately put me back in his good graces. I explained what Michelle had told me.
Mom gave a soft sigh of relief. “Isabel will be happy to hear that.”
We talked for a few more minutes and then we said good night.
I was about to set the phone up on the counter when it rang. “Gram,” I said to Elvis. He reached over and put a paw on the phone, cat for “well, hurry up and answer it.”
I picked up the receiver. “Hi, Gram,” I said.
“Hello, dear,” she replied. I found myself smiling all over again.
“Before you say anything else, Liz isn’t a suspect anymore in Lily’s death,” I said. “I had supper with Michelle, and they know Liz wasn’t anywhere near the bakery that night.”
“Thank heavens!” Gram exclaimed. “Liz would never hurt anyone. She’s all bark and no bite.”
“That’s because her bark is usually enough,” I said.
She laughed. “So are the Angels dropping the case?”
Elvis butted my hand with his head, and I began to scratch behind his left ear. “Not likely. Rose is determined to figure out who killed Lily.”
“She was a lovely girl,” Gram said quietly.
“Yes, she was,” I agreed. I swallowed a couple of times because all of a sudden there was a lump in my throat. This was the first time I’d let myself acknowledge that I missed Lily. We’d started to make a connection, as far as I was concerned, and I was sorry it was never going to become more than that now.
I cleared my throat. “Gram, what do you know about the Swift family?”
“What do you want to know?” she asked. I pictured her leaning forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “You’re thinking about Caleb Swift, I’m guessing.”
Elvis had started to purr. “Charlotte gave me the bare bones. And I seem to remember you mentioning it when Caleb went missing.”
“He seemed to just vanish off the face of the earth,” Gram said. “They found his sailboat drifting just past the mouth of the harbor the next day.”
“Liz said that Daniel Swift believed Lily knew more than she was telling.”
She sighed softly. “The Swifts founded this town. They’re old money, and sometimes with old money there’s a certain sense of entitlement. Or maybe ‘arrogance’ would be a better word.”
“Elspeth called Caleb a jerk,” I said. I started scratching behind Elvis’s other ear. There wasn’t even a momentary break in the purring soundtrack.
“I can’t really say about Caleb,” she said. “But his grandfather, Daniel, he’s an arrogant, entitled man.”
I’d seen Daniel Swift over the years. He was a tall, imposing man with a lined face from years of being out on the water and a deep voice. I knew his son and daughter-in-law had been killed in a plane crash years ago. Caleb was his only grandchild.
“Daniel couldn’t accept the fact that the police weren’t able to figure out what had happened to Caleb. He hired his own investigators, but they didn’t turn up anything either. He refused to even entertain the idea that Caleb had staged the whole thing and just walked away from his life, which was the speculation around town. Daniel was certain there was some kind of foul play.”
“Do you think he was right?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I don’t buy the idea that Caleb got bored with the money and the influence being a Swift gave him. I think it’s possible he was drinking and fell off the boat, but Daniel wouldn’t even think about that possibility. He’d always had blinders when it came to that boy. Understandable, I guess. Caleb was all he had left.
“Lily was one of the last people to see Caleb, and Daniel became obsessed with the idea that she knew something she wasn’t telling. He kept pushing the police to search her bakery. Finally, one day Lily just got fed up. She stopped Daniel on the street, probably much the way I hear she did with Liz, and told him he could search the building anytime he wanted to because she had nothing to hide.”
I remembered the anger in Lily’s voice when she’d accosted Liz. I wonder what it had been like when she’d confronted Daniel Swift.
“Did he?” I asked.
“He had the good sense not to,” Gram said. I could picture her ruefully shaking her head. “But that didn’t mean he let it go, either.”
I talked to Gram for a few more minutes and then we said good-bye. “Stay safe, my darling,” she said.
“I will,” I said. Just because the Angels were still in the private detective business didn’t mean I still was.
I took my floor-plan drawings to the shop with me in the morning. Mac had only a couple of tweaks. “Want me to start pricing materials?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’ll go down after lunch and do the paperwork for the building permit. Do you have any plans for Friday night?”
“Are you asking me out?” he said, the beginning of a smile playing across his face.
“No,” I said. “I’m asking you in. Do you want to start moving things out of the space upstairs?”
“You mean you don’t have a date?” he teased.
“Only with a furry guy whose idea of a good time
is getting scratched under his chin while watching Jeopardy!.” Elvis was sitting in the middle of the love seat, working on a knot in the fur on his tail. He paused long enough to meow his acknowledgment that it was him I was talking about and went back to it.
Jess and I had agreed to meet at her shop after work and walk over to Thursday-night jam together. She was just finishing a display in the tiny front window when I walked in. I waved at Elin, one of her two partners, who was behind the cash register. Jess hugged me, and I began peeling off my outdoor things. “How was your day?” I asked.
“Very good,” she said. “I started a quilt with those vintage rocker tees from that last box I got from you guys. Come take a look.”
I followed her into her sewing space, which was a small room off the main store. The quilt she had started piecing was spread over her worktable. “Oh, that’s nice,” I said.
She grinned. “I think so. Will you tell Mac thanks for me? He’s the one who found the shirts.”
I nodded. “I have some news that involves Mac.”
“What is it?” she asked, leaning back against the table.
“He’s going to move in to the shop. We’re going to make an apartment on the second floor.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“What prompted that?” Jess asked.
I explained about the building where Mac was living being sold and how Avery had suggested we turn the storage room into a small apartment.
“I think that’s a great idea, having Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious living above the shop,” Jess said, resting her hands on either side of the table. “You won’t have to worry about security, and the rent will help you get the building paid off faster.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “He is paying rent, right?”
I nodded. “Yes, Mac is paying rent. We’re being very professional about the whole thing.”
She gave me a saucy grin. “Would it be a bad thing to get a little unprofessional with Mac? Since you don’t want to start something with Nick.”
“You’re incorrigible,” I said.
She flipped her long hair over her shoulder. “Yeah, that’s part of my charm.”
I looked at my watch. “We should probably get going if we want to get a decent table.”
“Do you know if Nick is coming?” Jess asked as she pulled on her coat.
“He said he is,” I said. “Oh, and he said to tell you the nachos and salsa are on him.”
She clasped both hands under her chin and gave me a moony, love-struck look. “I love it when a guy buys me things to impress you. You think I could convince him that buying me a pair of diamond earrings is the way to your heart?”
“No,” I said, feeling in my pocket to make sure I had my phone. “And Nick isn’t buying nachos to impress me. He’s buying them because you bought them last time.”
Jess laced her fingers together and rested her hands on top of her head. “Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.”
I was out of witty comebacks. I stuck my tongue out at her.
Nick showed up just before Sam came out for the jam, sliding onto a chair between us that Jess had been guarding for the previous half hour.
“Tortilla chips and salsa are on the way,” he said.
“Nicolas Elliot, I may love you,” Jess said with mock seriousness, one hand pressed to her chest with her usual melodramatic flair.
“Are you sure it’s not just my hot salsa you love?” he asked, drawing out the word “salsa” and making it sound a little risqué.
“It is spicy,” Jess crooned, winking at him.
I rolled my eyes at them. “Will you two knock it off?” I said.
The waiter came to the table then and set the food between Nick and Jess.
Jess propped one elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “Ignore her,” she said to Nick. “She’s just jealous because there’s a little heat between us.”
I covered my face with both hands and shook my head while the two of them laughed. I was saved from any more of their wit by Sam slipping onto a stool onstage and starting on the intro to Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.”
We didn’t talk at all during the first set, although more than once Nick’s eyes met mine when we were both singing along with the music.
Finally Sam said, “Thank you very much. We’re going to take a little break and we’ll be back.”
The noise level in the pub immediately rose. Nick pushed back his chair and looked around for our waiter.
Jess leaned forward and caught my eye. “So when are you going to start work on the new apartment?” she asked.
“As soon as I get the building permit,” I said, grabbing the last tortilla chip from the basket.
“You mean the place Rose is going to move into?” Nick asked. He caught the eye of our waiter and pointed to the table. “Mom told me,” he added.
“No, she’s adding an apartment over the shop,” Jess said. “Mac’s going to live there.”
“You’re not serious?” Nick said. Even though Jess had been talking, he was looking at me.
“I am,” I said. “Do you have a problem with Mac?”
Nick wiped a hand across his chin. “No,” he said, but I noticed it had taken just a little bit longer than it should have for the response. “But make sure you get Josh Evans to draw up a rental agreement, you know, just to be on the safe side.”
He got to his feet. “Excuse me a second. I see someone I need to talk to.”
“Somebody’s jealous,” Jess said in a singsong voice.
I made a snort of annoyance. “More like somebody stays in touch with Liam and when my brother’s not around starts acting like him.”
“How is Liam?” Jess asked. She picked up the empty salsa dish, sighed softly and set it back down.
“He’s good,” I said. “Busy. He had dinner with Mom and Dad on Sunday, and Mom said he may be in town soon, something about a project he’s going to consult on.” I reached for my cup and drank the last of my coffee. “That reminds me, what’s the status of North Landing?”
Jess made a face. “I’ll know more tomorrow. There’s a meeting scheduled for six thirty.”
“Any idea what’s going to happen?”
She shook her head. “Not a clue.”
Over by the stage I spotted Vince Kennedy talking to Asia. Jess followed my gaze. “If it all falls through, it isn’t going to be good for Vince,” she said.
“Liz, either,” I said.
“Not to mention Jon West himself,” Jess added. “You think he killed her?”
I knew she meant Lily. “No,” I said, turning my empty cup in a circle on the table.
“Why so sure?”
“He just doesn’t strike me as the type.”
She frowned. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me. Elvis didn’t do that thing he does when people are lying, did he?”
“Maybe,” I hedged.
“Well, good for our little feline Sherlock Holmes,” she said with a grin. “You know, just because it wasn’t Jon West who killed Lily doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been someone connected to the development.”
Adam brought more nachos and salsa to the table. I thanked him while Jess grabbed a chip.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Jon West has investors,” she said around a mouthful of a lot of salsa and a little chip.
“Like?” I reached for a chip before Jess got them all.
“I don’t have a clue,” she said. “But rumor has it whoever they are, they have enough influence that the bakery property will just be expropriated if Caroline doesn’t sell to Jon West.”
I remembered West saying he could get the land by expropriation. At the time I’d thought he was bluffing to get Rose off his case.
“So who could do that?” I
said.
Jess shrugged. “I don’t know, but whoever it is, they’re walking around in big shoes.”
Chapter 14
After the band’s last song of the night, Sam made his way over to me, still carrying his guitar.
“I have a couple of boxes for you in my office,” he said as he reached the table. “You’re really going to let Liz’s granddaughter re-create a seventies hair band in your front window for Valentine’s Day?” he said with a smile.
“C’mon, where’s your sense of romance?” I teased.
He laughed.
“Is it all right if I pick them up in the morning?” I asked. “I didn’t bring the SUV.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Glenn McNamara told me you stepped in to help fill Lily’s place in the hot-lunch program,” I said. “Thank you.”
“It’s no big deal,” he said with a shrug.
“It is to the kids,” I said.
“How’s the detective business?” Sam asked with a sly smile.
“You heard?”
He nodded. “Eric’s art class came for supper last night. Alfred Peterson was with them.” He leaned in a little closer. “Are he and Rose a couple?”
“They’re seeing each other,” I said, pushing my hair back from my face. “I’ve kind of been afraid to ask exactly how much of each other they’ve seen, if you know what I mean.”
Sam’s smile got a bit wider. “Hey, love’s grand at any age.”
Vince Kennedy had been working his way over to us. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. He looked at Sam. “They need you in the kitchen.”
Sam made a face. “Please tell me it’s not the bread slicer again.”
Vince shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t know.”
Sam handed him the guitar. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said to me, and headed toward the kitchen.
Vince turned to me. He’d trimmed his gray-streaked beard into a goatee and he was wearing his hair a little shorter. It made him look a little younger, although I could see worry lines around his brown eyes.