Cold Turkey

by Shelley Freydont

  “Don’t say it,” Ted warned. “Hunting is very popular in”—he lapsed into a hillbilly twang—“these here parts.”

  Bill scowled at Ted. “I remember the day when you weren’t averse to taking out a gun and having some sport.”

  “That’s before—before I left town and got me some culture.”

  Liv’s ears pricked up. Ted never talked about himself and she was on the alert for any morsel he dropped. But he didn’t say more.

  “I take it you’ve got men combing the woods for clues,” Ted said, deftly turning the subject.

  “Yep.”

  Liv crossed her arms. The hardest part about being new in a close-knit town was the inevitable lack of trust. She was slowly becoming accepted, but it was a hard-fought battle. “Clues for what?” she prodded.

  “For something that can tell us more about what happened,” Bill said.

  “The deer? The hunter?” The lightbulb went off. “The shell casing? I didn’t see one. Of course, I wasn’t looking for one. But shotguns expel casings, right?”

  “You have been doing your homework,” Ted said.

  “Are you sure Henny didn’t shoot him? Maybe it wasn’t a hunting accident. The guy was trespassing.”

  “Well, let’s put it this way. If Henny Higgins shot a trespasser, he’d be more likely to brag about it than lie about it, even if he had to go to jail for it.” Bill pushed to his feet. “I’ll check out the Inn. Do you have a list of the participants in the race?”

  “Sure, unless they were last-minute entries. I won’t get those names until the committee hands them in, but I’ll make you a copy of the preregisters.”

  Liv pulled up the Turkey Trot folder, opened the entry spreadsheet, and clicked Print. She heard the printer in the outer office warming up. She got up and went out to retrieve the papers, expecting Bill to follow her, but he didn’t. She couldn’t hear them talking over the noise of the printer, and she had no doubt that Bill was giving Ted details that weren’t for the public.

  And Bill wondered how Ted always knew things. Really.

  When the papers were printed, Liv stapled them together and was quickly perusing them when Bill came to the outer office, buttoning his jacket. She handed him the list.

  “Thank you, Liv.”

  Ted grabbed his own jacket. “I’ve got to run out to Dexter Kent’s to check on the pumpkin-growing contest. I’ll walk you out. See you later, Liv?”

  “Of course,” she said and gave him a look that said she knew what he was doing and she expected him to tell her everything. “I have to run home and change, but I’ll be back to get a little work done.

  “No rest for the weary.”

  “Not when there’s another holiday around the corner.”

  Ted and Bill left and Liv began turning off lights. She’d go home, shower, have a quick lunch, and be back within an hour.

  She strolled down the sidewalk, where the stores were decorated in the burnished oranges, yellows, and golds of autumn. The shops looked busy. Even the few vacant stores had been decorated, and Liv was optimistic that they would soon be housing permanent businesses.

  A Stitch in Time, the fabric and quilt store, displayed a festive Thanksgiving quilt. Books and puzzles were sprinkled with paper leaves in the window of the Bookworm. Pumpkin incense wafted into the air as a customer left Bay-Berry Candles. There was a line out the door of the Buttercup Coffee Exchange and another one at the Apple of My Eye Bakery.

  Liv wondered if the townspeople ever got tired of holidays. Liv didn’t; what she had gotten tired of was the demands of spoiled clients. Here, everybody pulled their weight. Offered to help. Looked out for one another. Well, almost everyone.

  It was a great place to live and work. The only unfortunate thing was that the huge influx of visitors brought more accidents, more arguments, and sometimes violence. They needed more security than the county sheriff’s department and a volunteer traffic patrol could provide. Which was why Liv had begun interviewing private security services.

  She cut across the green and was just crossing the street toward home when she saw Pudge, Eric, and Joe getting out of a parked Humvee that took up nearly two parking spaces. Pudge beeped the lock and the three started off down the sidewalk.

  Liv crossed the street and followed.

  “I still say we should wait for Max.” This from either Eric or Joe.

  “He knew we had an appointment this afternoon,” Pudge said.

  “He must have a good reason for not being here. Do you think something happened to him? Especially since he bet you all that money. Ten thou isn’t chunk change.”

  Ten thousand? Liv thought they meant ten dollars. These guys were something else.

  “Eric, are you accusing me of anything?”

  “No, Pudge. That’s not what I meant.”

  “You mean he might have turned tail and run?”

  “No, but where is he?”

  They obviously didn’t know that their friend was dead. Liv certainly wasn’t going to be the one who broke the news to them, but she might help Bill figure out who they were.

  “He’s unreliable, and that’s a liability. We may have to rethink his position in this endeavor. Ah, here it is.” Pudge opened at door and they went inside Harper Realty.

  They were looking for property? A vacation home? Ski chalet? Somehow they didn’t look like people who enjoyed small-town living. Pudge had called it an “endeavor.” Maybe they were looking for an investment property.

  Outside investors. The old double-edged sword situation. They could be a boost to the economy but it was a crapshoot whether they’d stay within the town’s idea of quality of life.

  And now what? Should she leave them to it and give her nemesis, Janine, a call and pump her for info, or should she leave it to Bill?

  The least she could do was get the license plate number. That would be helpful in identifying them.

  She backtracked to the Humvee and entered the license plate number in her phone. Then she called Bill. It went to his voice mail. She told him where the men were, then gave him their license plate number. She’d done her duty.

  But curiosity got the best of her and she peeked in the window of the real estate office. The door opened and the men walked out, accompanied by another man. Liv ducked her chin into her coat.

  “We’ll take my car,” said the agent, Jerry Harper. “Easier than trying to follow.” The men walked around the corner to the parking lot behind the stores.

  Okay, Liv knew it was none of her business, but the more she could learn, the more helpful it would be to the investigation. And besides, she needed to know what was going on. The devil’s in the details. A good event planner noticed details, fit them into a system so nothing would come back to bite you in the butt. She didn’t know how any of this could affect her events, but she did know that four men, two of whom were only barely athletic and one of whom was totally out of shape, had run the race. Now the only really athletic one was dead and the other three were looking for real estate.

  Liv deliberated, then turned around and nearly ran into Janine Tudor. She was dressed for success in an autumn-colored power suit and heels. Her shoulder-length hair, which everyone knew she had colored and cut in Albany every six weeks, swung over her face as she came to a startled stop. Her nose automatically lifted.

  “How come those three guys went off with another agent?”

  “Commercial property,” Janine said, the words dripping with disdain. She started to walk past Liv.

  Liv turned around and walked with her. “Don’t you do commercial property?”

  “Yes, but Jerry takes the really big deals. I really should go off on my own. Open my own office.”

  “What are they looking for?”

  Janine’s nostrils pinched together. “How should I know? I didn’t get the listing.” She brushed past Liv and headed toward the municipal parking lot.

  Liv ran to catch up. “Well, you must know what kind of property they were l
ooking at and where.”

  “They’re taking a look at the old cannery today.”

  “The cannery?” They couldn’t have the cannery. Liv had plans for the old brick building. “What do they want the cannery for?”

  “Really, how should I know?” Janine shouldered away from her.

  Liv stepped in front of her.

  Janine sighed dramatically. “If you must know, it’s some sports thing.”

  “An arena?” Liv imagined snarled traffic. Where would all the ticket holders stay? The Inn and B and Bs already operated at full capacity. They would have to build big hotels, which would mean more traffic, more security problems; they would lose their reputation as a quaint family destination town. It would be disastrous.

  “Football or hockey arena? Theme park? Putt-putt?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “A gun club.”

  Liv stared at her. “A gun club? Like a firing range?” Men were going to be shooting three blocks away from Main Street? There had to be an ordinance against that.

  “Well, bigger than that. A private resort for gun people. Hotel, restaurants, bars . . . Those kinds of things. I guess it’s a real popular pastime.”

  It would destroy the character of Celebration Bay, not to mention the influx it would bring of firearms and the possibilities of more accidents like the one today. “Janine, does the mayor know?”

  “Of course. He thinks it’s a great idea. A real boost to the economy.”

  Chapter 4

  “Do you know what will happen to property values around here?” Liv asked.

  “They’ll skyrocket.”

  “Commercial property, maybe. But the price of homes . . . ? How many people do you know who would want to raise their children near a gun club?”

  Janine stopped, looking genuinely horrified.

  “People visit here and move here for the safety of small-town America. They bring their families here because it’s quaint, Norman Rockwell stuff. But with guns in use within the town limits, I think the residents will have a fit. The tourists will stay away in droves. It’s bound to impact downtown businesses. I don’t think gun enthusiasts, even exclusive ones, will spend their time shopping at places like A Stitch in Time and Bay-Berry Candles. I wonder if the mayor thought about that?”

  Liv let her question trail off, leaving Janine to surmise the rest. From Janine’s mouth to the mayor’s ear. No one understood the influence she had over him, but maybe she’d use it for good for a change.

  In the meantime, Liv was going to check things out for herself. She cut through the parking lot that ran behind the shops and broke into a jog as soon as she had cleared the main drag.

  It took only a few minutes to reach the old cannery, whose closing years before had put most of the town out of work. The town had moved on, turning to tourism and gradually becoming one of the most popular destination spots on the East Coast. The cannery had not fared so well. It sat empty and forlorn in a deserted section of town. Its windows were broken out, the walls were spray-painted with graffiti, and it was surrounded by a huge employee parking lot, now unused except by the weeds that pushed their way through the cracks in the tarmac.

  But Liv never passed by without seeing it as it could be revitalized—in a town-appropriate way. The Cannery. Shops. Fine dining. Indoor activities for winter. Skating rink? Children’s activities. But not a gun club open to exclusive members from out of the area who would stay in an exclusive hotel and eat in the exclusive hotel and shoot the place up and leave town.

  No way. That was not part of Liv’s vision. She had left exclusivity behind and she wouldn’t see it try to get a foothold here. And she knew that others would feel the same way.

  She slowed down when she saw a black sedan parked at the entrance. Making sure the men were inside, she jogged over to the building and tried to look in a window, but years of neglect and grime made it impossible to see what was going on inside.

  She carefully made her way over the rubble, taking mental notes to have the area cleaned up, until she found a broken window that looked into the main room.

  She heard their voices, the vaulted ceilings and brick walls echoing every word.

  “It is zoned for commercial use.” Jerry Harper’s voice. “You’ll have to get variances for hotel and any firing ranges.”

  Liv scooched closer and looked inside.

  “Not a problem,” Pudge said. “I have a number of shares that I’m willing to open to local investors. I think we can handle any problems that arise from zoning.” He looked from Eric to Joe.

  They both nodded and Liv got a flash of one of her former clients who had muscled, literally, another convention group out of a hotel with a little help from his friends.

  Things were looking bleaker by the minute as she listened to them reel off a list of things that would be included in their big plans. And there was the dead guy. Maybe that would make them think twice about opening a business here. Or maybe they had . . . No, that was crazy. Murder was an extreme way to get rid of an unreliable partner. They could just buy him out. Or were Max’s shares the available ones that Pudge had just mentioned?

  “Well, I’ll have to get my accountant to crunch some numbers,” Pudge said. “Send in an inspector, a contractor, some investors and see what we can work out.”

  “Good, good,” Jerry said. “I can get to the paperwork immediately.”

  There was handshaking all around and the men turned toward the door. Liv took off around the back of the building and ran along the shore back to town.

  • • •

  “I thought you were going home to change,” Ted said when she burst into the Events office, out of breath and with a stitch in her side to beat all stitches.

  “I was, but we’ve got problems.”

  “To do with the dead man?”

  “Not sure about that.” Liv huffed out a breath. “But his colleagues have plans for the cannery.”

  “What?”

  “I was walking home when I saw them go into the real estate office, and a few minutes later they came out with Jerry Harper. They went to look at the cannery.”

  “Uh-oh. Your baby.”

  “Yes,” Liv said, rubbing her side and finally getting her breath under control. “I ran into Janine and she said they’re planning to open a private gun club, high-class, a whole closed community. They have investors.” She sat on the edge of his desk. “What kind of people belong to a private gun club outside your general effete BBC English aristocrat?”

  “Sportsmen and rednecks?” Ted ventured.

  “Rich rednecks.”

  “They’d have to be. The cannery is abandoned but the property is worth a chunk of change. The owners haven’t budged in the thirty years it’s been closed.”

  “They said something about getting local investors.”

  Ted’s eyebrows lifted. “For a private gun club? Around here? Seems far-fetched.” He frowned. “Most of the people around here practice out-of-doors with tin cans. Even the rich ones then hang out at a local watering hole. Are you sure about this?”

  “Pretty sure. It’s more than just a firing range. Evidently this is some posh upscale do. They’re planning a big hotel, cigar bars, pampered wilderness trips, skeet, and competitions. Competitions! Are they crazy? We can’t have guns everywhere. Celebration Bay is a family-oriented destination town.”

  “No, we can’t. But how do you know this?”

  “Janine told me some of it, against her will, I have to admit.”

  “Janine? Maybe she was just trying to rile you. Was blood drawn?”

  “Of course not. She was pretty upset that she hadn’t gotten the client. Clients. That’s probably why they came here in the first place: not to run the race but to mingle with the locals in order to promote their plans for the cannery. Ugh. I knew they didn’t look like runners.”

  “Wow,” Ted said. “That would certainly change the face of Celebration Bay.”

 
“It will destroy it. This is a disaster.”

  Ted rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “There was talk a while back about turning the cannery into a convention center. But people around here were against it. There’s no way we could accommodate the crowds. The traffic problem alone was overwhelming. It never got off the ground. No wonder Janine was upset about not landing the deal. She could retire on the commission.”

  “To be honest. I’m not sure she knows the breadth of the deal.”

  “What do you mean? You didn’t learn this from Janine?”

  Liv hesitated. “Not exactly.”

  “Liv?”

  “Well, I figured as long as I was dressed for running I might as well run over and check out what they were doing. When they went inside I found a broken window and eavesdropped.”

  “Are you crazy? What would you have done if they’d caught you?”

  “Say I was jogging by and wondered why a car was parked outside.”

  “Well, don’t do it again, please.”

  Liv sighed. “Maybe when they find out their partner is dead, they’ll change their minds and pull out.”

  “We can but hope.”

  “Oh, Janine said Mayor Worley knew about it and thought it would be good for business.”

  “What a numbskull.”

  “Why didn’t you know about it?”

  “Me?”

  “You always know everything.”

  “Thank you, but I only know everything as soon as it hits the grapevine.”

  “And this hasn’t?”

  Ted shook his head; he was still frowning. “So either it was very hush-hush or it’s in its beginning stages.”

  “The latter, I think. It sounded like they hadn’t even gotten zoning information.”

  Ted hoisted himself out of his chair. “Well, nothing can happen before Monday. Why don’t you call it a day? I have to go out to Dexter’s and then I’m going home.”

  “I thought you already went.”

  “Never made it.”

  “Because Bill was telling you the details of the case?”

  “I don’t know where you get these ideas. Come on. Let’s lock up.”

  “What has he learned?”