“I’m not sure,” Aiken confessed. “I saw him handing something to Devlin.”
“What?”
“I-I thought it was a musket,” Aiken stammered, “but then I started thinking about it and I’m not sure anymore.” He hung his head.
“Then why did you tell the police Marvin handed Devlin a weapon?” Bernie demanded.
“But I didn’t,” Aiken protested. “I told the police I thought he did. That’s different.”
“Evidently not to the police,” Bernie told him.
Aiken took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Are you saying I’m responsible for the police suspecting Marvin?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“That’s not fair,” Aiken wailed. ”You wouldn’t want me to lie, would you?”
“Not at all. I’d just like you to tell the truth.”
“I’ve already told you,” Aiken whined. “I can’t be sure. It was all so confusing out there and we were all hot and running around trying to get everything in order for the show to start. It was chaos. No one was paying attention to anyone else. Were you watching?”
“No,” Bernie admitted. “I was setting up.”
Aiken smiled triumphantly. “See.” He shook his head and straightened up the display of flashlights next to the register. “Such a pity how this turned out.”
“Yes,” Bernie agreed. “I really feel bad for Marvin.”
“No. I meant for Rick. Poor guy. He was trying so hard to make Longely a tourist destination. What is it they say about no good deed going unpunished? I think this is going to affect his chances of running for mayor, don’t you?”
“Probably,” Bernie said.
Aiken tsk-tsked.
“You sound as if you care.”
“I do,” Aiken said. “I was going to vote for him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s going to help the small businessman. He’s going to get us tax credits. He’s going to get the sidewalks cleared in the winter. Stuff like that. If you were smart, you’d get behind him, too.”
“I’ll think about it,” Bernie lied.
“Good.” Aiken glanced at the clock and back at Bernie.
“Hey,” she said. “Did you see Chuck Grisham at the reenactment?”
“Why?”
“He said he was there, but I didn’t see him.”
“He was there. He just left early.”
“Why do you suppose he did that?”
Aiken shrugged. “Maybe he just couldn’t stand watching us anymore. We were pretty lame.” Aiken glanced at the clock again. “Now if you don’t mind, I have a big order to fill.”
Bernie nodded. “Well, I’ll get out of your way. There’s one other thing I’d like to clear up if that’s all right with you.”
“And what would that be?” Aiken asked in the voice of the long suffering.
“I’m wondering why you told Brandon that story about Monica Lewis?”
Aiken put down his coffee cup hard enough that a little of the brown liquid sloshed over into the top. “Story?”
“Story,” Bernie repeated firmly.
“That wasn’t a story.”
“Monica says it was.”
“So you’re accusing me of lying?” Aiken demanded.
“How about embellishing?”
“This is the thanks I get for trying to be helpful?” Two blotches of color appeared on his cheeks.
“Now you sound like my mother,” Bernie told him.
“It wasn’t a story,” he insisted. “It was the truth. You of all people should thank me.”
“For what?”
“For trying to help Marvin.”
“You just told me you told the police that Marvin gave Devlin the musket. How’s that helping him?”
“No. I told you that I told the police that I thought I saw him doing it. But then I started feeling bad. I mean, what if I was wrong? So I told Brandon about Monica because I knew he would tell you.”
“Well Monica says everything you told Brandon is a lie.”
“She would say that, which is funny given that she’s constitutionally incapable of telling the truth,” Aiken responded.
“In fact, she says”—Bernie closed her eyes trying to get it right—“that you had a thing going with David Nancy’s wife.”
Aiken wet his lips. “That’s absolutely rot.”
“Monica says that you weren’t too fond of Jack Devlin, either. She said that you blamed him for cutting your affair with Cora short. She said you were furious with Devlin.”
Aiken leaned forward. “Why should I be furious with that jerk?”
“Because he took Cora away from you,” Bernie said.
“Ha. He was welcomed to her as far as I was concerned.” Aiken drained the last of his coffee from his cup, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the wastepaper basket below the counter. “All she ever talked about was herself. She was exhausting. David was glad to have her off his hands. Gave him a rest.”
“Who gave who a rest?” Tony Gerard asked as he walked in. Then he looked at Aiken and Bernie and said, “I can come back at another time.”
“No no,” Bernie said. “I was just coming to see you.”
“She’s investigating Devlin’s death,” Aiken explained.
“I thought that was all settled,” Gerard said.
“Not according to her.” Aiken nodded in Bernie’s direction.
“I thought they were arresting Marvin.”
“She’s trying to prevent that,” Aiken informed Gerard.
“Do you mind if I talk?” Bernie said to Aiken.
He shrugged. “Not at all. Be my guest.”
“Then who do you think is responsible?” Gerard asked Bernie.
“For Devlin’s death?” Bernie asked.
Gerard nodded.
“How about you,” Bernie said.
“Me?” Gerard yelped. “Are you nuts?”
“You were there. You could have handed Devlin the musket as well as anyone else.”
“But I didn’t.” Gerard raised his hand. “I swear it.”
“He didn’t,” Aiken echoed. “He was helping me get my uniform on straight.”
“Then who did?” Bernie demanded.
“I don’t know,” Gerard said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Bernie said.
Gerard looked at Aiken and Aiken looked at Gerard. Neither man replied.
“If you don’t know, why did you say what you did to the police?” Bernie asked.
“Marvin kept on yelling at us,” Gerard said. “It was very confusing. The whole thing was confusing. First, he wanted us to go here, then he wanted us to go there. He wanted us to take the muskets, then he wanted us to wait, then he told us to take them.”
“He couldn’t decide what he wanted,” Aiken said. “He was very nervous.”
“Yeah, but he shouldn’t have taken it out on us,” Gerard said to Aiken. “It just made things worse.”
“Is that why you fingered him?” Bernie asked in as casual a tone as she could manage. “Is it because you were pissed?”
“I didn’t finger anyone,” Aiken cried. “I wish you’d stop saying that. What I’m trying to tell you is that everything was chaotic. In truth, I’m not really sure what I saw.”
“In truth. Now that’s an interesting phrase coming from you,” Bernie said.
“You have no right to say things like that to me,” Aiken snapped.
“I have every right,” Bernie retorted.
“I think you should leave,” he told her. “I think you should leave now.”
“I think maybe you’re right,” Bernie said. This was getting nowhere. But as she turned to go, she had another thought. Granted her idea was far-fetched, but it also explained Aiken’s and Gerard’s conduct. “Did someone tell you to say what you did about Marvin to the police?” she asked, turning back.
“No,” Aiken said.
“Absolutely not,” Ger
ard told Bernie. “Why would you think something like that?”
“Because it’s the only thing that makes sense,” Bernie answered.
“Not to me,” Aiken declared.
Bernie pursed her lips while she studied the two men, not sure if she believed them. “If you want to do the right thing, you know where to find me.”
As she walked out the door, she shook her head. She didn’t expect to hear from them.
Chapter 34
It was one o’clock and the noonday rush at A Little Taste of Heaven had subsided to the point where the sisters could leave. They were having what Sean was referring to as a working lunch in their flat above the store. He was eating a fried egg, peppered bacon, and avocado sandwich on two slices of toasted multigrain bread, while Libby’s sandwich consisted of egg salad with capers, scallions, and black walnuts on lightly toasted challah. Bernie was tucking into a salad composed of arugula, radicchio, baby frisée, shaved Parmigiano, prosciutto, and homemade roasted peppers.
Everyone was drinking minted iced tea out of tall frosted glasses. A bowl of perfectly ripe white Pennsylvania peaches and a plate of chocolate chip blondies and gingersnaps sat on a tray in the middle of the coffee table waiting to be consumed when everyone finished their main course.
“I don’t agree,” Sean said to Bernie after he’d shoved the piece of bacon sliding out of his sandwich back in with his thumb.
Bernie speared a piece of arugula lightly coated with walnut oil and lemon dressing and conveyed it to her mouth. She loved the arugula’s peppery taste coupled with the salad dressing’s tang. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no reason to think that either Gerard or Aiken were covering for someone else, that’s why not. Or at least I don’t know of one.”
“But,” she objected, “it explains why they were acting the way they were.”
“I can think of a hundred other reasons,” Sean replied before he chomped down on his sandwich.
Looking for support, Bernie turned to her sister. “What do you think, Libby?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say since I wasn’t there. What does Brandon say?” she asked, passing the buck.
“He was asleep in his truck when I talked to Aiken and Gerard.”
“I see.” Libby took a bite of her sandwich. She liked egg salad. She liked it a lot. It was forthright and pure and lent itself to an infinite number of variations. In fact, it tasted good—no, it tasted great—without any additions, especially if it was made with homemade mayo, freshly ground pepper, Malden salt, and fresh eggs which had been properly boiled. That meant putting the eggs in the water, bringing the water to a boil, then turning the flame off, and covering the pot. Take them out after ten minutes and you’d have perfect hard-boiled eggs.
“Okay,” she said after she’d taken another bite of her sandwich. “If what you say is true, who do you think is responsible for putting Aiken and Gerard up to this?”
“Rick Evans,” Bernie promptly said, the name springing from her lips unbidden.
“Why him?” Sean asked.
“For a variety of reasons,” she explained. “I figure he would want to distance himself from the reenactment debacle, given that he’s into politics. There’s the fact that he’s jealous of Devlin. Plus Rick was there. He knows about guns, has a major gun collection, and was the one who started the whole get-Marvin thing in the first place.”
“Okay, let’s suppose you’re correct about all the stuff pertaining to Rick Evans,” Sean said.
She nodded and took another bite of salad while she listened to him.
“There are certain implications that spring from your assumption.”
“Go on,” Bernie said.
“For openers, your scenario means that Aiken and Gerard colluded in Devlin’s death. In order for what you’re saying to work, they had to have known what was happening before the event and agreed to lie for Rick Evans. So we have two men who are not only complicit in Devlin’s death, but are also complicit in making false statements to a law enforcement official. That’s pretty serious.” Sean paused to take a sip of his iced tea. “Do you really think that either Aiken or Gerard is capable of helping plan a murder and carrying their part through?”
“All they had to do was lie,” Bernie countered.
“Lie convincingly to law enforcement officials in a time of maximum stress,” Sean said. “That’s not as simple as it sounds. Most people can’t do something like that well. At least not unless they’re pathological liars or career criminals.”
“Maybe they didn’t think the results would be so bad,” she hypothesized.
Sean snorted. “First of all, that has nothing to do with what we were just discussing and second of all, both men are members of the gun club. I’m pretty sure they all knew what over-priming a gun would do.”
“I guess when you put it like that I see your point,” Bernie said.
“Plus,” Sean continued, “that means Rick Evans would have had to trust Aiken and Gerard not to chicken out and run to the authorities.”
Bernie thought about Aiken and Gerard. They seemed like shopkeepers, not the kind of men who would plan a murder, see the results, and go about their business. On the other hand, as her mother had always said, “appearances could be deceiving.”
“Maybe Rick did trust them.”
“Why would he take that chance?” Sean asked. “What possible advantage would he gain?”
Bernie ate another couple bites of her salad while she considered what her father had just said. “Okay,” she said, thinking out loud. “How about if Aiken and Gerard were the people who planned the murder? How about if they were the ones who went to Rick Evans with a plan to murder Devlin.”
“Again, I ask why would they do that?” Sean took a sip of his iced tea.
“They all had a common goal,” Bernie promptly replied. “They all hated Devlin.”
“But even so, I still don’t see it. At least not with those three.”
“ Bernie,” Libby added, “your scenario still doesn’t answer what is to my mind the main question here, which is how did Devlin get the musket?”
“Obviously, someone, most probably Rick Evans, handed it to him,” Bernie snapped. “It was marked, remember.”
“I know the musket was marked,” Libby retorted. “I haven’t forgotten. I’m not an idiot.”
“I never said you were, Libby.”
“You implied it, Bernie.”
Sean hit the arm of his chair with the flat of his hand. Bernie and Libby turned toward him.
“Focus, people,” he said.
“Sorry,” Libby muttered. “I’m just worried.”
“We all are,” Bernie told her.
The sisters were silent for a moment.
Libby was the first one to speak. “I’m sorry, but how Devlin came into possession of the musket is still not obvious to me.”
“Why?” Bernie asked.
“Glad you asked,” Libby said, warming to her subject. “Marvin took all the muskets out of the shed and put them in a pile, agreed?”
Bernie and Sean nodded.
“That’s what everyone said,” Bernie replied.
Having finished her sandwich, Libby reached over, grabbed a blondie, and bit into it. The combination of brown sugar, butter, chocolate chips, and walnuts is divine, she thought. Sometimes simple was best, in food and in life . . . simple being something that the case they were talking about was definitely not.
“So that being the situation,” Libby went on, “think about this. You have eight muskets. One of them is marked. How do you know that the one you need is on top? Obviously, you don’t because you aren’t the one who brought them out of the shed. So what do you do in that case? Go through them and bring what you’re doing to everyone’s attention? I think not.”
Libby paused to take another bite of her blondie. “Then we come to the second problem. How do you make sure that someone other than Devlin doesn’t grab the booby-trapped musket? G
iven the circumstances, that would have been really hard to do. In fact, it would have been impossible. What would you say? ‘Hey. Use this one because that one is going to blow up in your face?’ Probably not a good strategy. At least, not if you don’t want to end up in jail.”
“Let’s say you’re right.” Bernie finished her salad and set her plate down on the coffee table. “Have you considered the possibility that whoever did this brought the musket with them and handed it to Devlin there?”
“Yes I have, but where would they hide it?” Libby demanded. “It’s not like it was winter and everyone was wearing a long coat. People were either wearing redcoat uniforms or blouses and breeches, all of which are formfitting. There was no place to hide anything, especially not something as large as a musket.”
“How about in the bushes?” Bernie suggested.
“What bushes?” Libby asked. “There are no bushes there. It’s all grass with a couple of benches thrown in.”
“So what’s your point?” Bernie asked her sister. “Do you have a better solution to offer?”
“No, I don’t, and that’s exactly my point. We’re pretty much in the same place knowledge-wise that we were in when Devlin got shot. We still don’t know who handed him the gun, we don’t know why he was targeted, and we don’t know who took a shot at Marvin, right Dad?”
“You’re partially right. We don’t know everything.” Sean finished his sandwich, reached over, and grabbed a peach. Juice dribbled down his chin when he took a bite. “If we did, the perp would be in custody and we would be celebrating. However, we do know more than we did before in terms of motive.”
“Slightly more,” Bernie conceded.
“Maybe a lot more.” Sean wiped the juice away with a napkin then put the napkin down on the coffee table. “Let’s go over what you guys have found out so far.”
Bernie had been in the middle of cutting a slice out of a peach and wrapping it with a piece of prosciutto that had been left over from her salad. As her father finished speaking she popped it into her mouth. “Nice summer combination. I think I like this better than prosciutto and melon,” she said as she organized her thoughts and licked the juice off of her fingers. A moment later, she was ready to begin.
A Catered Fourth of July Page 21