Buy a Whisker

by Sofie Ryan

  Vince was a tall, wiry man who never seemed to be completely still. His hands or his feet were always moving. I sometimes wondered if he was keeping time to a song only he could hear. “I just wanted to say thanks for the deal you gave Asia on that guitar she bought from you last week.”

  “It’s a good beginner guitar,” I said. “I’m glad she likes it.” We both looked over to the stage, where fifteen-year-old Asia Kennedy was talking to Eric, The Hairy Banana’s bass player when he wasn’t giving art lessons or creating graphic novels. Asia’s spiky blond hair was sticking out all over her head. I could see her strong rower’s shoulders and legs under her long-sleeved blue T-shirt and the argyle leggings Jess had made.

  “I know you gave her the family rate and I appreciate that,” Vince said.

  I turned back to face him. “I’m glad Asia likes music,” I said. “It got me through my teenage years more or less unscathed. She’s a good kid.”

  Vince’s expression turned serious. “She really is,” he said. He shook his head. “I’d better get this back to Sam’s office,” he said, holding up the guitar. “Thanks again, Sarah.”

  I smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  I stopped at the pub in the morning to pick up the boxes of KISS gear for Avery, and Elvis and I had breakfast with Sam. The conversation eventually turned to the development proposal and Lily’s death.

  “Do you think someone could have been that upset with her refusal to sell that they could have killed her?” I asked.

  Sam raked his fingers through his beard. “On purpose? Nah. I can’t see it. Take Vince, for example. That development goes ahead, his problems are pretty much solved.” He reached for his coffee. “If he could just get market value for that old building of his father’s, the old man would be able to stay in that nursing home until he dies.” He took a sip from his mug. “But could you imagine Vince killing Lily—killing anyone—over that?”

  I couldn’t.

  “Or what about Liz? The Emmerson Foundation holds the mortgages on two buildings that would come down for North Landing and they’re both in default, but I don’t see Liz shoving Lily down a set of stairs.”

  I didn’t say that wasn’t exactly what had happened. I just nodded in agreement.

  * * *

  Friday turned out to be a busy day at the store. The Angels spent most of the day working on a timeline for the last twenty-four hours of Lily’s life, when they weren’t waiting on customers. I saw Charlotte and Rose on their cell phones at different times. Mr. P. was still digging into Jon West’s background.

  I’d waffled all morning, but in the end I hadn’t told them what Jess had told me. An unsubstantiated rumor that someone with enough influence to push through the expropriation of Lily’s Bakery and had invested in North Landing didn’t have anything to do with Lily’s death, as far as I could see.

  I knew Mr. P. and Rose were up to something I probably wasn’t going to like, my new hands-off policy or not. They left so quickly at the end of the day that Rose left her big tote bag behind.

  When she wasn’t waiting on customers, Avery spent all of her time cleaning up the mannequin parts and putting the figures together. By the end of the day, all four of them were assembled in the workroom. They gave me a start when I came around the corner and discovered the four figures standing there, naked except for their wigs.

  Liz came to pick up Avery and Charlotte at the end of the day.

  “There’s a meeting tonight about the status of the harbor-front project,” Charlotte said to me as she came down the stairs carrying her coat. Avery had taken her grandmother out back to see the mannequins. “I’m going with Liz.”

  “I heard,” I said, holding her heavy wool peacoat so she could slip her arms into it. Jess and Nick had talked a bit about the meeting at The Black Bear. “Jess will be there, too.” Charlotte’s bright yellow scarf had fallen to the floor, and I bent to pick it up. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  She took the scarf from me and tied it loosely at her neck. “I truly don’t know,” she said.

  Mac and I agreed to meet back at the store at seven thirty to start clearing out the upstairs storage room. When I got back to the shop about twenty-five after, the Ellisons, father and son—whom I’d hired to do snow removal—were in the parking lot with a front-end loader and a dump truck, taking away some of the massive snow pile at the end of the small lot, so I had to park on the side street. A shooting star arced across the harbor, and I closed my eyes and made a wish. Aaron Ellison waved from the cab of the loader as I hurried across the empty lot.

  Mac was waiting for me by the back door. “Where did you park?” he asked.

  “Around the corner,” I said, pointing up the hill.

  “I’ll walk you back to your car when we’re done,” he said.

  I unlocked the back door, and when we stepped into the workroom, I gave a start of surprise. Avery had moved “the band,” and for a moment I thought there were two people standing at the far end of the room.

  “They better be going in the window tomorrow,” I said to Mac. “I thought someone had broken in.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said as he unzipped his heavy jacket. “I caught sight of one of them out of the corner of my eye this afternoon and for a moment I wondered why you and Charlotte were doing the wave.”

  I laughed.

  The first thing we did in the upstairs space was move the few pieces of furniture down into the workroom. “I think we should take all the quilts downstairs as well,” I said, looking at the stack of boxes by the door. “They’ve been selling like hotcakes.” I waved a finger at him. “Oh, and I forgot to tell you. Jess is making some kind of rock-and-roll quilt with those old T-shirts we sold her.”

  “That sounds like something we could hang on the wall next to the guitars,” Mac said.

  I nodded. “I thought the same thing.” One of the reasons Mac and I worked so well together was that kind of similar thinking often happened.

  He picked up two boxes of glassware that were also going downstairs. Even under his gray T-shirt I could see his muscles move. He’d pushed back his sleeves, and I could see the smooth, dark skin of his forearms and smell his clean scent of Ivory soap and peppermints as I reached for one of the boxes of quilts. I wiped the back of my hand over my forehead for a moment. What the heck was I thinking? Maybe Jess was right. Maybe it had been too long since I’d been on a date.

  When Mac came back upstairs, I was still standing in the same place, staring at the same box.

  “Sarah, are you trying to move that with the power of your mind?” he asked.

  I smiled and shook my head. “No. It wouldn’t get very far. I was just thinking.”

  “About what?” He rested one hand on the top box of quilts.

  “If we take the chair out of my office, we can move the credenza backward and over a little bit, which means we can access the storage space in the eaves.”

  “That’s not going to give you a lot of seating space in your office,” Mac pointed out.

  “I don’t think I’ve had a single customer up there in the last seven months,” I said, glancing through the open door to the hall. “Aside from Elvis, and he seems to think the desk chair belongs to him, the only other person who spends time in my office is you, when we’re working on a quote.”

  “Okay. Let’s at least take a look,” he said.

  We crossed the hall and went into my office. “See what I mean?” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “And if we angled your desk just a little, that would give you a bit more space for the love seat.”

  “Let’s try it.”

  We set the chair in the hall, and then Mac adjusted my desk a little to the left so it was on a slight angle. The credenza was moved down and the love seat forward, and suddenly we had easy access to the storage space in the eaves.

&nb
sp; “Perfect,” I said with a grin.

  Then we heard the sound of something falling downstairs.

  Mac and I exchanged a look and he went out in the hallway to listen. After a moment there was another sound I couldn’t quite identify.

  “Stay here,” Mac said in a low voice. “And call 911.”

  He was on his way down the stairs before I could tell him not to do anything stupidly heroic. I pulled out my cell and was about to call the police when I remembered Rose’s bag. She’d been in such a hurry to leave with Mr. P., she’d left it behind on the desk chair in the Angels’ “office.” It was probably her we’d heard. She’d borrowed my gram’s spare keys from Charlotte to get into the apartment. I knew there was an extra key to this building on that ring. Rose had probably borrowed the keys again.

  I remembered how I’d launched myself into the apartment bedroom and almost knocked her head off. I didn’t want Mac to tackle Rose and maybe break her hip. And I certainly didn’t want her to be arrested for B and E. I hurried down the stairs, moving quickly and quietly just in case it wasn’t Rose moving around downstairs. Mac was just disappearing around the door to the storeroom.

  “Hey!” he called out sharply. That was followed by the sound of a scuffle. I bolted across the shop, thinking this whole thing was stupid. We should have just called 911 and stayed put.

  Mac had the intruder on the floor, one knee in the small of the person’s back. He looked up at me. “Sarah, what are you doing down here? Did you call 911?”

  “I thought it might be Rose,” I said. I could see that it wasn’t and I felt my knees begin to shake. The intruder was taller and male, based on his build. I reached over and flipped on the overhead light.

  And discovered it was Vince Kennedy lying on the storeroom floor.

  Chapter 15

  My mouth hung open for a moment before I could speak. “Let him up,” I finally managed to say to Mac. “I know him.”

  Mac got to his feet and pulled Vince up with him by one arm.

  Vince was wearing jeans and a black hoodie. He was disheveled, his hair standing on end and the sweatshirt twisted to one side.

  “What the hell are you doing, Vince?” I said, the fury rising in my chest leaving a sour taste in the back of my throat.

  I was right in front of him, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Last night you were thanking me for Asia’s guitar, and tonight you’re breaking in to my store.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vince said, and finally he did look at me. “Things have been a little tight.”

  “So you decided it would be a good idea to rob a friend?” Mac asked, his voice tight with anger.

  “I knew you had at least a couple of guitars here that were worth some money,” Vince said. He couldn’t meet my eyes for very long. His gaze kept sliding away.

  “Why didn’t you ask someone for help?” I pulled a hand down over the back of my head. I was angry and troubled all at the same time, the emotions churning in my stomach. “I would have helped you. Sam would have helped you. Why would you do something like this?”

  Vince swallowed hard and didn’t say anything.

  “What do you want to do?” Mac asked. He was still holding Vince by the neck of his hoodie. “I know what gets my vote.”

  Part of me wanted to let Vince walk out the door. Another part wanted to call the police and let Vince spend the night in jail. I was furious. I was sad. I felt . . . betrayed. Then something sticking out of the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie caught my eye. It looked like . . . hair?

  I reached over and snatched the dark wig—because that’s what it was—from his pocket. It was one of the wigs that went with the KISS costumes I’d gotten from Sam. My hand was shaking as I held it up. I took a step closer to Vince. “I hear these things bring big money on the street.”

  The color drained from his face.

  “Cut the crap, Vince,” I said, my voice suddenly raw-edged with angry intensity. “Why did you really break in here?”

  I could think of only one reason, and it made my stomach sick.

  He didn’t answer.

  I looked away. “You can tell me or you can tell the police,” I said softly.

  “I came to get that . . . wig.”

  I focused on him again. “Why?”

  “Because when the old guy Peterson was having lunch at the pub the other day, I heard him say he’d found security footage of the person who’d been hassling Lily Carter before she died.” His eyes met mine and stayed there this time. “I was afraid if you saw the video and then took a close look at the wig, you’d realize it was me.”

  Mac muttered an oath and let go of Vince’s arm.

  “The mouse?” I said, staring at him. It couldn’t be true. “The mixed-up salt and sugar? The eggs thrown at the front window? Everything? That was you?”

  Vince nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because Lily wouldn’t sell.” His voice rose. His emotions were right at the surface. “She just kept using the same lame excuse that the development would be bad for the downtown. Do you know what it costs to keep my old man in that nursing home?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. I knew he wasn’t expecting me to. “Thousands every month. His savings are just about gone, and his pension just isn’t enough. I’ve looked at other places, and believe me, you wouldn’t put a dog in them.” His right hand was flexing and then squeezing into a fist at his side. Flexing and squeezing, flexing and squeezing. “The money Jon West was offering would have meant my father could spend the rest of his life living with a little dignity. And he damn well deserves that.”

  “I can’t believe you would do something like that to Lily,” I said hoarsely, shaking my head.

  “Yeah, well, I’m desperate, Sarah,” he said, and his mouth twisted to one side. “I hope you never know what that feels like.”

  I got right in his face. “You don’t have a monopoly on bad things happening to you, Vince,” I said. “Don’t move. Not an inch. You try to leave and you won’t have to worry about Mac handing you your head because I’ll personally lay you out like a welcome mat at the front door.”

  I gestured to Mac. We took a few steps away from Vince.

  “What do you want to do?” he said.

  I couldn’t read his feelings in his face.

  “We can call the police.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Sam had been like a father to me ever since my biological father died, which in a weird way made Vince feel like family. I looked away for a moment and then met Mac’s gaze again. I still had the wig in one hand, and I fingered the dark hair. “I’m having a really hard time believing that Vince was the one pulling those stupid tricks on Lily.”

  Mac rubbed his left shoulder with his other hand. “I don’t know the guy, so I’m not making excuses for him, but when people are desperate, they do things they would never do in other circumstances.”

  “I’m going to call Sam,” I said. Maybe it wasn’t exactly logical, but I thought possibly Sam could talk some sense into Vince.

  Mac’s expression didn’t change. “All right.”

  “Do you think I’m wrong?” I asked as I pulled out my phone.

  “Not my place to judge, Sarah,” he said.

  “You never do,” I said. “Thank you for that.”

  I turned and punched in Sam’s number. When he answered, I explained what had happened. “If you can come and get him, I won’t call the police.”

  Sam muttered a couple of choice swearwords. “I’m on my way.”

  I hung up and walked back over to Vince.

  “Sam’s coming to pick you up,” I said. “My options were him or the police. And the only reason I didn’t call the police is because Sam’s been like a dad to me and I know he considers you a friend.”

  “Thank you,” Vince said so softly I could barely make out the words.
>
  “I’m not done, Vince,” I said. My arms were folded across my chest, hands clenched. “You have twenty-four hours to tell Detective Andrews that it was you who was harassing Lily. I don’t want her to waste her time in that direction when she doesn’t need to.”

  He nodded wordlessly. We waited the rest of the time for Sam in silence.

  Sam didn’t say a word to Vince, at least not in front of Mac and me.

  “Thank you,” he said to Mac, offering his hand.

  “Thanks for coming up here,” Mac replied. They shook hands.

  “I’m not going to make any excuses,” Sam said, but he looked over his shoulder to where Vince was standing, shoulders slumped in his sweatshirt, by the back door.

  “Good plan,” I said. I could hear the anger in my voice. I hadn’t made any effort to hide it from Sam.

  He leaned in and hugged me. “Thank you,” he said softly against my ear. “I know you did this for me.”

  After they were gone, Mac and I walked back inside.

  Mac studied me, narrowing his eyes. “I can see the wheels turning,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not certain yet,” I said slowly.

  “You think Vince really did break in here to steal a couple of guitars?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

  “So he came to get that wig. So you wouldn’t figure out he was the one harassing Lily Carter.”

  I set the wig back in the box on the workbench. “Maybe. I’m not certain. I need to check on a couple of things.”

  * * *

  Sam had clearly been expecting I’d show up for breakfast the next morning. He had everything ready for blueberry pancakes, along with a chopped-up sardine for Elvis.

  “Sam, what was that fund-raiser you loaned Vince the Rickenbacker for?” I asked.

  He came over and poured me another cup of coffee. “Fairy Godmothers. They grant wishes to kids who are seriously ill. Vince and Eric subbed for a couple of guys out of Boston who couldn’t make it for the show.”