by Sharon Pape
“Oh, Merlin, I am so sorry,” I said. “I thought you two had gone home. You never stay this late.”
“Mayhaps one should be more cautious in future endeavors of such a nature.” The smack in the head seemed to have knocked his western accent out of commission.
“You played a part in this accident too, your lordship,” Tilly said, leaning down to put the ice pack against the rising bump on his forehead. “If you hadn’t eaten half the mini scones for tomorrow’s teas while I was paying bills, I wouldn’t have needed to bake more of them, and you would have been home an hour ago, enjoying dinner. Put your hand up and hold the ice. I can’t stand here holding it for you.”
“Those scones are not worthy of the name,” Merlin said indignantly. “They couldn’t satisfy the appetite of a child, much less a man.” He was clearly a proponent of the saying that a good offense is the best defense.
“Good job on the teleportation,” Tilly said to me. “Of course the landing could use a bit of work.”
Chapter 22
Patrick Griffin didn’t earn a spot on my list of suspects until he changed sides on the zoning issue. When he was in favor of the new hotel, he had no reason to have wanted Amanda off the board. But in turning against it, he instantly acquired a motive and rated another visit from me.
I decided that my best chance of getting him to open up would be to stage another impromptu chat—fellow shopkeepers hanging out, shooting the breeze. Luckily, he was a man of routines. Over time, I noted that unless he was delayed by a customer, he ate lunch at one o’clock. And if the weather was temperate, he preferred eating it outside. So I wasn’t surprised to see him sitting on the front porch of his antique shop when I strolled down that way the first sunny day to come along.
I was hoping he would initiate the chat; that way he wouldn’t think I had an agenda. With that in mind, I waved from the sidewalk as if I were merely passing by.
“Hello there,” he called to me. “Good timing, I have a sandwich with your name on it.” I stopped and pretended to consider the invitation. “My wife’s Yankee pot roast,” he coaxed. “Of all the great meals she makes, this one’s my favorite.” What he didn’t know was that I would have accepted his offer even if maggot stew was on the menu, the thought enough to make my stomach lurch.
“How can I refuse?” I said, grateful his wife stuck to traditional fare. I climbed the steps to the porch and sat in the other wicker chair. “I can’t believe how good that smells,” I said, immediately famished.
“I guarantee it tastes a hundred times better.” He wiped his mouth and hands on a napkin before digging into the thermal bag at his feet. “However,” he went on, handing me the foil-wrapped sandwich, “I must warn you that it comes with a disclaimer.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
“It’s the messiest thing to eat.” He pointed out the brown dots that ran down the front of his blue polo shirt. “On pot roast days I always bring an extra shirt. I’ve tried aprons and lobster bibs, but I manage to get gravy on me anyway. For that reason, I won’t be held responsible for any dry-cleaning expenses you incur.”
“Got it,” I said with a grin. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Smart girl.”
We ate and talked about the things people talk about when they don’t know each other very well: the weather, the well-being of our families, the state of business. At one point, Patrick excused himself and returned with two bottles of cold water from his mini fridge. It was such a pleasant lunch I had to remind myself to get to the subject of my visit before I missed the opportunity. There are only so many times you can arrange “impromptu” meetings without blowing your strategy.
“I guess you’ve heard the talk going around,” I said at the first lull in our conversation.
Patrick took a swig of his water. “What is it this week?”
I hated to wreck his day with made-up gossip, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one questioning his motives. “Someone overheard you and the mayor arguing about your change of heart on the zoning issue. Now people think you lied about wanting the new hotel to trick the mayor into putting you on the board.” I watched Patrick’s expression turn sour as I spoke.
He wagged his head. “Little-town rumor mills,” he said with disgust. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“May I ask what made you change your mind?”
“Why not?” he said. “In fact, maybe I should call a press conference to set the story straight before the good people of New Camel decide to lock me in a stockade and pelt me with tomatoes.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Sorry, Kailyn. I shouldn’t be attacking the messenger. If you want to know the truth, my political flip-flop was sort of my son’s fault.”
I was having trouble keeping my face neutral when my eyebrows were poised for flight.
“You’re shocked I’d blame my kid, right?”
“It was...unexpected,” I admitted.
“Before you judge me, let me explain. The last time we talked, I told you I wanted the new hotel because it would bring in more business.”
I nodded. If a customer interrupted us before he answered that riddle, I might be tempted to turn the offender into a frog. I’ve never messed around with transmutation, but there was no time like the present to give it a shot.
“But my son Chris has been against it from the start. He’s become quite the advocate of environmental protection. He even joined the high school HOP club last year.”
“HOP?” I repeated, after washing a bite of my sandwich down with water.
“It’s an acronym for Help Our Planet.”
“Oh, cute.”
“They’re a pretty committed group of kids. When he joined, my wife and I thought maybe there was a girl in the club he wanted to get closer to. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Turned out he’d found a subject he was passionate about.”
“You should be proud of him,” I said, down to my last bite of pot roast heaven.
“Sure we are,” he said with a chuckle, “but I’m talking about a kid who can’t keep his own little slice of the world clean. That’s a teenager for you.”
A drop of gravy had oozed out of his sandwich while he was talking and landed in the center of his shirt. He made a half-hearted attempt to wipe it with his napkin before giving up with a why-bother shrug. He had the standby shirt inside. “HOP arranged to have a speaker from the EPA do a presentation for the whole community. Summer was the best time to hold it in the high school auditorium. Once the school year starts up it’s much harder to hold an outside event there.”
I remembered finding a flyer about something to do with the EPA tucked under my windshield wiper. I must have thrown it away without reading it. “Did you attend?” I asked.
“I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t. I could make up all kinds of excuses, but the plain truth is that I just wasn’t interested.”
“I’m sure you weren’t the only one,” I said, hoping to make him feel he could tell me anything.
“In any case, Chris went up to the woman and talked her into stopping by my shop before she left town. He was hoping she’d help change my mind about the rezoning.”
“Did she?”
“Not entirely, but she laid the groundwork for Chris to win me over a few days later. The kid’s sly. He waited until after dinner when I was relaxed and watching TV—tired and vulnerable, as he put it. He hit me with a one-two punch to the conscience that I never saw coming. He said if I wanted to be a role model for him, I couldn’t be a hypocrite. Destroying wetlands in the hope of cashing in doesn’t fly when you get right down to it. Besides, didn’t I want to save the environment for my future grandchildren?”
“Low blow,” I said.
“You don’t have kids yet, Kailyn, but any father who says he doesn’t care about being a hero in his child’s eyes is straight out lying. Then the grandkid
thing finished me off.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, you’re a good dad and your son is growing up to be a good man,” I said, meaning it.
He laughed. “Thanks, but I still wish he’d clean his room.”
* * * *
That night I took Sashkatu home, fed everyone, and met Elise at The Soda Jerk. She’d called a few hours earlier in desperate need of some quality friend time and a BLT with a chocolate shake. Since Zach was old enough to resent having a babysitter, she’d been letting him babysit Noah. In theory, Noah liked the idea of hanging out with his brother instead of having adult supervision. In practice he hated it. He complained that Zach was stricter than the sitter was and “just mean for no reason.” As a result, Elise didn’t often leave them home alone. So when I got one of her save-my-sanity phone calls, I dropped everything that could be dropped and changed whatever could be changed to spend some quality time with her.
When I arrived at The Jerk, she was already seated in a booth, sipping a shake with a blissful expression on her face. The restaurant was busy for a weekday evening before the ski season. I recognized all the patrons, but they were only acquaintances, for whom a quick hello was adequate as I passed their tables. Just as well. Elise didn’t like to leave the boys for too long, and I didn’t want to cut into our limited time together.
I slid in across from her. “Hey there,” I said, “I see I have some catching up to do.”
She let go of the straw and came up for air. “This is definitely my addiction of choice. I could sit here all night long sipping shakes until I explode.”
“Not a bad way to go, all things considered.”
“How are my girls?” It was the gravelly voice of Margie McAndrews. She’d waited tables at The Jerk for as long as I could remember. She was tall and buxom, with tomato-red hair and earlobes that had stretched to triple their length because of her long-running devotion to chandelier earrings. We spent a couple minutes asking after each other.
“Two BLTs, extra crispy on the bacon, and a chocolate shake for you, Kailyn?” Margie asked once the schmoozing wound down.
“It’s pathetic how predictable we are,” I groaned.
“Make that two shakes,” Elise put in.
Margie’s sharply penciled eyebrows popped up. “So it’s a two-shake night, is it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You know I’ll have to cut you off after that.”
Elise laughed. “Well somebody sure has to. This one,” she said, using her chin to point in my direction, “she’s an enabler.”
Margie went off to attend to another table and place our order. “Something beastly happen at work?” I asked Elise when we were alone.
“No, some days it just gets to me—this feeling that I’m on an endless treadmill of sameness. And I have to jump off for a little while or lose my sanity.”
“You’re such a rebel,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You’re lucky Duggan doesn’t haul your butt off to jail for abandoning your children so you can sneak out to have not one but two shakes. What on earth are you thinking?” I was having trouble keeping a straight face.
Drunk on dairy and giddy with freedom, Elise cracked up. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said after catching her breath. “I saw Corinne DeFalco today. It seems our kids go to the same orthodontist. I bent the conversation around to the town board, and I got an earful. She’s in our corner, worried the hotel rezoning will be just the beginning and before long we won’t recognize our quaint little town anymore.”
“Does she happen to know which side Eddie is on?”
“No, she said he’s been tight-lipped about it from the beginning. If you ask his opinion, he says he hasn’t made up his mind yet.”
Margie came by with our shakes and a promise the BLTs were on their way.
“If Eddie is on the on the mayor’s side, they should have the votes to win,” I said. “Eddie is the linchpin; the outcome is in his hands.”
“Not necessarily. I wouldn’t put it past Tompkins to bribe someone over to his side with cold, hard cash. I just hope no one else winds up dead over this. We’ve had more than our fair share of murder lately.”
“Amen to that.” I winced at the pain knifing through my head. When would I learn not to drink cold liquids too fast?
“Where are you and Travis on finding the killer?”
“Sometimes I think we’re chasing our tails.” The busboy arrived with our sandwiches. I waited for him to leave before continuing. “Suspects keep popping on and off my list. Every time I think I have proof of motive and opportunity, I have the rug pulled out from under me.”
“Any idea if Duggan is having more success?”
“It’s not like he has me on speed dial.”
“But you are the apple of a certain cop’s eye,” Elise said with a sly smile.
“You mean Paul Curtis?” She nodded as she bit into her sandwich. “If I go to see him, he’ll think I’m interested in him. I can’t do that after I turned him down once before.”
“You could go to report a missing cat,” she suggested.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, “but I’m not making any promises.”
We spent the remainder of our precious time together talking about her boys, my aunt, and Merlin, who was always a good source of comic relief. Elise was describing Zach’s new girlfriend when it struck me that both he and Chris Griffin were both high school age. “Did a woman from the EPA do a presentation at the high school recently?” I asked once we’d moved on from the girlfriend. “I think it was open to the community.”
“Yes. In fact, Zach went with his girlfriend. She’s in that HOP club. He said the presentation was excellent. Although, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should point out that he also thinks every superhero movie is excellent. Likewise, my mac and cheese and a hundred other things.”
I laughed. “Thanks for the heads up. It’s great that the kids today care about saving the planet. Would Zach know if Chris Griffin is in HOP too?”
Elise wiped some mayonnaise off her chin. “I can answer that. Zach and Chris have been friends since they were little kids. Chris has been trying to persuade my son to join ever since he did. I think his girlfriend has a better chance of success. Why the sudden interest in Chris and the goings-on at the high school?”
“Just following up on something I heard today. I’ll fill you in on the details when we have more time.”
“I’ll also expect a full account of your visit to Officer Curtis,” she said as we slid out of the booth.
“I haven’t decided if I’m up for that.”
“Oh, you’ll go to report your missing kitty. Have you forgotten how long I’ve known you?”
Chapter 23
Filing a report that one of my cats was missing was going to take some serious acting on my part. I was lucky to have never been in that unenviable position. I did my best to imagine how I would react and managed to work myself into a nearly hysterical state, fretting over where the poor thing would find food or shelter, survive the traffic, stray dogs and potentially rabid raccoons. If I could tap into those feelings when I went to report the cat missing, I’d be golden. In this instance, it turned out to be a good thing my mother had gone on her familiar-gathering spree before she died. Although she’d done it in a misguided effort to fix the problems with her magick, having six cats would come in handy now. Curtis had met Sashkatu in my shop, but he had no idea how many other felines I had at home or what they looked like.
He was sitting behind the desk when I walked into the small precinct house at eight o’clock in the morning. His smile turned to concern once he saw my agitated state. It was clear I wasn’t there on a social call. “What’s wrong?” he asked, jumping up and helping me to a seat.
“Rosanthum is missing,” I said. I perched on the edge of the chair as though prepared to run if I heard a plai
ntive “meow” outside.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Can you give me a description?”
“She’s an American short hair, black, gray and white.”
Curtis typed the description into the computer. “I’d catch hell if I put out an APB for a cat, but what I can do is send e-mail requests to the local fire department and any cops from the Glen passing through this area to keep an eye peeled for her. You should tell your family and friends, everyone you know, and put up photos around town with your phone number, in case anyone spots her. When I’m off duty, I’ll cruise around looking for her too.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing since I woke up hours ago and realized she was gone. It must have happened when I took out the garbage last night. She’s never shown any interest in leaving the house. I don’t know what came over her.”
“Don’t torture yourself. We’ll find her.”
“Thank you.” But I wasn’t ready to leave yet. Looking around for a reason to stay, I spotted the coffee machine. “Do you mind if I have a cup of coffee before I go? I’m so bleary-eyed I can hardly see straight.”
“Sure...of course,” he said, already on his feet. “I should have offered you some. How do you take it?” He was already pouring coffee into a throwaway cup.
“A little cream or milk would be great.”
He brought it to me and took his seat again. I sipped the coffee until the silence in the room grew awkward. Curtis was fidgety, picking up papers on the desk and putting them down again, Stretching a rubber band that flew out of his fingers and across the room. He was probably searching for the right topic with which to break the silence. It was time to put him out of his discomfort.
“How’s the hunt for Amanda’s killer going?” I asked distractedly as if I were trying to make polite conversation, despite my Rosanthum being front and center in my mind.
Curtis pounced on the question like a starving man on a T-bone. “It could be better. Between you and me, I thought Duggan would have the case nailed down by now.”