by Reagan Davis
I take the box from him and toss it aside. “Maybe I can improve your day,” I tease.
“I’m listening,” he says.
The tone of his voice is serious, but the glint in his eye when he cocks his eyebrow and smirks tells me we have different ideas about how to improve his day. Focus, Megan!
“What would you say if I told you I have a theory about how Claire ingested the peanut oil?”
“I’d apologize in advance for hugging you so hard you might break in half,” he jokes. “Wait. Are you serious?” he asks, straightening his spine. “You figured out how Claire was poisoned?”
“I think so,” I reply. “Maybe,” I add to manage his expectations in case I’m wrong. “When Claire was here, she was flipping through a pattern book...”
I continue, telling him about Claire’s habit of licking her thumb and finger with each page turn, and how my dad mentioned it was a habit she had back when she was his assistant. I tell him Mitchell’s theory that such a habit is an effective way to catch a cold.
“If you can pick up a cold, you can pick up other things too. Like peanut oil,” Eric surmises, coming to the same conclusion I did.
“Exactly,” I concur.
“Babe, that’s brilliant!” He wasn’t kidding about hugging me tight. He lets go when I gasp for air. “But we checked every book in the den for traces of nut products.”
“My dad says Claire preferred magazines to books,” I tell him.
Eric unlocks his phone, and his thumbs move across the keyboard so fast they’re practically a blur. “I’ll send a team to confiscate every book, magazine, and piece of paper in the cottage, not just the den. We’ll check all of them for traces of peanut oil.”
It’s ironic that a book, something Claire claimed to love and is her legacy, might be the instrument of her demise.
While he types and sends instructions to his team, I attach Sophie’s leash and put on my jacket.
“I’m going to walk Sophie.” I kiss him goodbye.
“Wait, I’ll come with you.” He finishes typing, sends a message, and shoves his phone in his pocket. “Let’s order dinner, and we can walk Sophie together before it gets here,” he suggests.
“Aren’t you going back to work?” I ask.
“We haven’t seen each other all day,” he reminds me. “What do you feel like for dinner?” he asks, holding the door for Sophie and me.
“I’ve been craving Irish nachos since Dina mentioned them earlier,” I confess, stepping into the parking lot.
“You saw Dina Langley today?” Eric asks.
I nod. “I also saw Brooks Wiley and Piper Peters.”
While we walk, Eric phones in our dinner order to the pub. Then I tell him about my discussion with Dina and her revelation that Brooks and Jules offered her money to convince Claire’s family to sell the Familia film rights.
“Even if Brooks and Jules convince Claire’s family to sell the rights, it won’t matter,” Eric says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because Claire bequeathed Familia rights to Dina,” he discloses. “Claire’s family has no say whether they will make the books into movies.”
We arrive back at Knitorious, and I stop at the back door while Eric unlocks it. “Why would Claire leave something that valuable to her assistant?” I ask, flabbergasted.
Eric shrugs and holds the door for Sophie and me. “I don’t know,” he replies. “But I don’t think Dina knows yet that she’s the beneficiary.”
“Being the beneficiary might make her the next target,” I say.
However, if she did know, it also gives her a motive to kill Claire.
Chapter 19
While we wait for dinner to arrive, we turn Eric’s apartment upside down, looking for his laptop cord. He hoped it would be in his office at the station, but it’s not.
“It’s not here,” I state the obvious, reassembling the sofa cushions.
“It’s not anywhere,” he grumbles.
“Did you check your car?”
He nods.
“My car?”
He nods.
“The store?
He holds up his index finger. “Not yet. But only because I never work in the store,” he reasons, opening the door and thudding down the stairs.
“Bring my purse when you come back. I’ll check it just in case,” I call after him.
I doubt his cord is in my purse, but goodness knows I’ve found stranger things in there, so there’s no harm in looking.
While Eric searches the store for his laptop cord, I put his apartment back together and feed Sophie her dinner.
Our food arrives while he’s searching the store, so he comes back upstairs with dinner and my purse, but no laptop cord. I search my purse while he unboxes the food and sets the table.
“No cord,” I say, shoving everything back inside.
“It’s like it disappeared,” he says. “I swear I left it at the house the other day when I was working from home doing budget stuff,” he insists.
“I’ll look again when I go home.”
“No point,” he says, “I searched the house so thoroughly you’d swear I had a warrant.”
While I satisfy my craving for Irish nachos, and Eric digs into his steak and fries, I tell him about my discussion with Brooks Wiley and his reluctant admission that he and Jules are close.
“We’ll have to take Brooks’s word for it,” Eric huffs. “I haven’t questioned Jules. I can’t get near her.”
“Why?” I ask. “Just because she’s famous doesn’t mean she’s above the law.”
“No, but it means she can afford to surround herself with multiple layers of handlers and lawyers who won’t let me access her.” He cuts a piece of steak. “I can’t even get her on the phone, which means I can’t verify whether Brooks was with her when Claire was killed. Until I talk to her, Brooks’s alibi is unverified.” He shoves a piece of meat in his mouth.
I think about the business card Jules gave me, and her request for me to contact her after I passed along her gift to Claire.
“What if I talk to her,” I suggest. “Jules will meet with me. Alone.” I sound more confident than I am.
Eric looks dubious. “Without her entourage?”
I nod. “She was alone when she visited me the first time,” I reason. “And if someone is with her, I’ll refuse to talk to her unless we’re alone.”
“The situation has changed since Jules visited you on Wednesday,” Eric reminds me. “With Claire dead and Jules knowing I want to talk to her, she might not come.”
“Her goal hasn’t changed,” I counter. “She and Brooks are still trying to secure the film rights to Familia.” Full, I slide the rest of my nachos toward him. “I can try, and if she doesn’t come, we’re no further behind. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that.”
“Even if she shows up, I can’t question her.” He pushes his empty plate aside and pulls my leftover nachos into its place. “In fact, don’t even tell me. Plausible deniability. It’s better if I don’t know what you’re up to. Jules Janssen lawyered up. Anything she says to me wouldn’t be admissible because I’m a cop.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not.”
After dinner we watch an episode of our favourite home renovation reality show. By the time I get home, I’m physically spent from moving boxes of books, and mentally exhausted from trying to make sense of what we know so far about Claire’s death. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle that only has outside pieces—it doesn’t make sense.
My dad and Zoe are already asleep, so I tread quietly through the house while I get ready for bed and put Sophie outside one last time before we turn in.
While Sophie is in the backyard doing her final perimeter check for the night, I walk through the house, gathering the dog toys she left scattered around the floor. I swear this corgi has enough toys for ten dogs. I’m about to drop the armload of squeaky, stuffy, bouncy toys into Sophie’s toy box when I see it. Plain as day
. Eric’s laptop cord. Sitting in the bottom of the empty toy box. I must’ve gathered it up with Sophie’s toys and dropped in there by accident. I unload the toys I’m carrying into the box and pull out the laptop cord. I snap a picture of the cord with my cell phone and text it to Eric.
Me: Look what I found!
Eric: OMG! Where was it?
Me: Sophie’s toy box.
Eric: The one place I didn’t look.
Me: Want me to drop it off?
Eric: Stay there. I’ll pick it up. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.
Me: Text me from the driveway so Sophie doesn’t bark and wake up Dad and Zoe.
Eric: K.
Sure enough, ten minutes later, Eric texts to let me know he’s outside. I slip on the fuzzy slides I wear for excursions into the garage, grab the laptop cord, and silently close the front door behind me.
“Sorry,” I say, hopping into the passenger seat of his car and lunging the cord at him.
“Sorry for what, babe? You found it!”
“I suspect I might also be the one who lost it,” I explain, telling him how I probably scooped up the cord with Sophie’s toys and deposited it in her toy box.
“Actually, I think it was me. On Thursday morning, when we expected your dad and Zoe to arrive before dinner…”
While Eric and I argue over who was the last person to clean up Sophie’s toys and lose the stupid laptop cord, his phone dings.
“Phillip,” Eric says.
Phillip is my next-door neighbour at home and at work. I glance over Eric’s shoulder, and it doesn’t look like Phillip is home; his house is dark, and his floral-wrapped delivery van isn’t in the driveway.
“Is everything OK?” I ask.
It’s late for Phillip to be texting without a reason. He gets up horribly early most mornings to receive deliveries at his florist shop.
“There’s someone in the store,” Eric replies, typing a response.
“Wilde Flowers?” I ask, assuming he’s referring to Phillip’s store.
Eric shakes his head. “Knitorious.”
“What?!”
“You should wait here,” he suggests, tossing the laptop cord in the backseat and starting the car.
I close the car door and buckle my seatbelt. “No way.”
“Babe, you’re wearing dragonfly jammies and fuzzy slides.”
“Drive,” I insist, unwilling to argue. “Or I can drive myself and meet you there.”
On the short drive to Knitorious, Eric summons backup and reminds me three times to wait in the car.
He parks in the farthest parking spot and turns off the ignition.
“Wait. In. The. Car.” He tries to look stern, but it doesn’t suit him.
“Be careful,” I say. “Maybe you should wait for backup.”
“They’re already here,” Eric informs me. I look around. Nothing but bushes, darkness, and Phillip’s floral-wrapped delivery van. “It’s probably a false alarm anyway,” he says, trying to ease my worry. “Phillip said he saw someone using a flashlight, but it could’ve been a head light reflecting off the display window,” he reasons. “I’ll be right back. I love you.” He kisses me then exits the car, closing the door silently behind him.
A tap on the rear passenger-side window makes me almost jump out of my skin. Phillip is squatting next to the car and tapping the window with a key. I push the button on the armrest and unlock the door.
“Geez, Phillip, you scared the life out of me!” I say when he crawls into the backseat.
“Sorry, Megan!” he hisses. “I was hiding in my van,” he explains in hushed tones. “There’s someone in your store. I heard them through the wall. I didn’t see your or Eric’s car in the parking lot, and I worried it might be a critter. I looked through the front window and saw a silhouette. They were carrying a flashlight.”
“Were they near the cash register?” I ask.
If I were going to rob a store, I wouldn’t choose a yarn store. We have hardly any cash. We do a lot of sales online, and most of our in-store sales are debit or credit.
“No,” he replies. “They were near the back room.”
Maybe they’re stealing yarn? What other reason could someone have for breaking into a yarn store?
“Did you get your April bouquet?” Phillips whispers. “I left it with Connie and Zoe yesterday.”
“Yes,” I reply. “Thank you. It’s gorgeous, Phillip.”
“Well, I got the most beautiful delivery of cherry blossoms. I know they’re one of your favourites, and I thought they might add to the ambience at your dad’s book signing...”
While Phillip and I discuss April flowers, I contemplate how absurd this is; we’re out here talking about seasonal blooms while the love of my life is potentially taking down a dangerous intruder less than a hundred metres away. My phone dings, making Phillip and I gasp and jump.
Eric: Suspect apprehended! You can come inside.
Between the car and the store, Phillip and I ponder whether the intruder is someone we know, and why they broke into Knitorious. We can’t remember the last time a local business was robbed. We’re locked arm-in-arm and cling to each other for dear life.
I open the back door, and a uniformed officer stands aside so Philip and I can enter the store together, like conjoined twins, because I’m not letting go of him, and he’s not letting go of me.
Three uniformed officers crowd the back room, plus Eric. One of the uniformed officers stands aside to reveal the intruder, cuffed and sitting on the stairs that lead to the apartment.
Chapter 20
“Piper Peters!” I gasp and bring my hand to my mouth.
Phillip inhales sharply. “Piper!” he wheezes, sounding dramatic and horrified. Then he whispers in my ear, “Do we know her?”
“Yes.” I nod. “We know her.”
An officer approaches us and asks Phillip to go with him to provide a statement.
“Will you be OK without me?” Phillip asks.
“I think so.” I nod, unable to take my eyes off Piper. “How about you?” I ask. “Will you be OK?”
“You’ll know if I’m not,” he says, prying our arms apart. “I’ll scream your name so loud they’ll hear me on the other side of the lake.”
“I’ll be right here, Phillip.” I throw my arms around him. “Thank you!”
Piper isn’t wearing her authentic Victorian-era mourning attire. She’s wearing black leggings, black running shoes with black soles, and a black hoodie. A black backpack rests nearby. She looks like a cat burglar. She wasn’t kidding when she said she packs an outfit for every contingency.
“Nice PJs,” Piper says, smiling. “I love dragonflies.” She greets me like we’ve bumped into each other under normal circumstances.
“Piper, what are you doing here?” I demand.
“Stealing Claire’s books,” she explains as though it were a foregone conclusion.
“What books?” I screw up my face in confusion and look back and forth between her and Eric.
“The signed books you helped Dina remove from the rental cottage,” Piper explains calmly. “I was told they would be here. But it appears I was misinformed.”
This explains Piper’s preoccupation with the back room at the book signing today, and yesterday when she was here to purchase the felted items. She was casing the joint.
“Who told you that?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say,” she coos in her posh British accent.
“We asked her,” Eric interjects. “She won’t tell us either.”
“I already know who told her,” I inform him. “I just want to hear her say it.” Piper extends her bottom lip out and blows a stray lock of hair from her face and rolls her eyes like a sulky teenager. “Why did Brooks Wiley tell you where to find Claire’s signed books?” I inquire.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know to whom you’re referring,” Piper insists, looking at her feet and feigning ignorance.
<
br /> “How do you know it was Brooks?” Eric asks.
“Because when Brooks and Dina discussed where to move the books, I offered to store them here”—I gesture to the nearby storeroom—“but when Dina and I came here to drop them off, Zoe convinced us they’d be safer at chez Martel, so we took them there instead. Dina couldn’t reach Brooks to clear it with him, but assured me she’d contact him and let him know about the last-minute location change. I guess she forgot.”
“How were you planning to move the books?” Eric asks Piper. “There aren’t any vehicles in the parking lot.”
Good observation, Eric!
“Upon locating the books, I would contact my partner in crime, at which time he would arrive with a vehicle to transport them to an undisclosed location.”
“Where’s the undisclosed location?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Piper admits. “He didn’t disclose it to me.”
I sigh. “How did she get in?” I ask Eric.
“She busted the lock,” he replies, fanning the door to show me the damaged hardware.
“Where is Brooks now?” I ask, glaring at Piper.
Piper shrugs. “I’ve no idea,” she replies.
“I think she’s telling the truth,” Eric says. “Piper, what were you and Brooks planning to do with the books?”
“I planned to preserve my half,” she explains, “for posterity.”
“You and Brooks planned to split the books?” I clarify. “He would keep half of them and you would keep half of them?”
“That’s right,” Piper confirms. “They’ve increased in value, you see. Because they are the last books Claire will ever sign. Brooks said he planned to capitalize on their value. Strike while the iron is hot, is how he said it, if I recall. He lined up buyers on an online forum for collectors. I have no interest in profiting from Claire’s death, I just want to preserve the books for future generations.”
Have the books increased so much that Brooks decided it would be worthwhile to kill Claire so he could sell them? Did Brooks and Piper conspire to kill Claire together? Or did they join forces just to steal the books? Why would Brooks want a partner to steal the books, anyway? If he stole them alone, he could’ve sold all of them instead of half. But this way Piper gets caught in the act instead of him. I think Brooks Wiley doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. Or maybe Brooks had no intention of giving Piper half the books; that would explain why he didn’t tell her where the undisclosed location is. Maybe after Piper stole the books and served her purpose, Brooks was planning to kill her too.