Nate began with a genial patter, speaking about French folk music as he strummed soft chords on his guitar and illustrated his words with a couple of simple but charming songs. He then moved on to more modern music.
“He’s pretty good,” Will whispered at one point. Piper nodded enthusiastically as she lifted her wineglass for a sip.
More patrons arrived, and Piper saw Megan and Erin join friends at the “drinks and nibbles” tables near the bar. Will and Piper had just been served their coffee when Piper spotted Tina Carson standing at the doorway and looking around uncertainly.
Piper leaned toward Will. “Do you mind if I ask Tina to join us? I called her about coming tonight, and she’s alone.”
“Fine with me,” Will said, and Piper caught Tina’s eye and waved her over.
“Hi, guys,” Tina said as she slipped gratefully into the chair Will snagged from a nearby table. “Looks like a good crowd showed up.” A waiter appeared at her side, and she ordered coffee and a dessert. Tina had clearly gone to some pains for the evening, with sparkly barrettes in her hair and a pretty lavender tunic and slacks replacing her usual coffee shop garb. Piper thought Tina’s face looked a bit drawn, though, and feared she may have dragged the hardworking woman out after a tiring day.
Nate opened his performance to requests, and the first one came from the lively bar area—a shout-out for the Cloverdale High fight song—which drew laughter.
“’Fraid I don’t know that one,” Nate said, genially. “Want to sing a few bars for me?”
Two young men who looked like former football players belted out the song together with beer mugs swinging. Nate quickly picked up on the tune and strummed accompaniment, eventually adding his voice to theirs at the final “Fight, Cloverdale, fight,” to much laughter and applause.
That loosened up the crowd considerably, and more requests were called out. Nate honored them, one by one, and Piper was glad to see waiters bustling about, delivering orders for more food and drink. Gradually, the requested songs turned more sentimental, and a few couples grasped hands and leaned a bit closer together. Piper was surprised when Tina suddenly raised her hand and asked for “Deep in My Heart, Dear.” “It’s from The Student Prince,” she explained, and Nate nodded.
“I always loved that song,” Tina whispered to Piper, “since somebody took me to a performance when I was young.”
Tina didn’t seem very old to Piper, but she knew that revivals of The Student Prince popped up regularly. The song was sweet and sentimental, and obviously meant something to Tina, since Piper noticed her dab at the corner of an eye during the performance.
Finally, Nate thanked the crowd for being such a great audience, and the spotlights illuminating the stage dimmed. Nate hopped down and headed toward Piper and Will’s table, his progress slowed by people complimenting his performance along his way. By the time he reached them, Will had grabbed a fourth chair for him.
“Nate, that was just wonderful,” Tina said, and Piper and Will agreed.
“Thanks,” Nate said. “And thanks for coming tonight. I just might have a job for a while longer because of this turnout.”
“That’d be great,” Piper said. “Did you get a chance to talk with the plumber?” she asked, adding, “Tina’s been helping with our information gathering, too.”
Nate threw Tina a grateful look, then said, “I did have a talk with Mr. Farber this afternoon.” He paused, taking a thirsty gulp from the beer he’d snagged along the way. He wiped his mouth, then said with a lopsided grin, “It was quite interesting.”
12
“I went to the shop right after we met up this afternoon,” Nate said, describing his visit to Ralph Farber’s plumbing showroom. “When I walked in, Farber was on the phone with one of his employees, and he wasn’t happy with the guy.”
Nate laughed. “Farber would be an intimidating man when he was in a good mood. He’s got shoulders at least three feet across and biceps that make you wonder if he does daily curls with the sinks and sump pumps he sells. When he’s in a bad mood, as he sure sounded when I walked in, well, let’s just say I felt like backing out of there, pronto.”
“What was he mad about?” Tina asked.
“Something to do with a job he’d sent one of his workers out on. It sounded like the guy messed up and Farber was trying to figure out how he could make things right. Eventually, with plenty of cuss words, Farber worked out a solution, though when he hung up, he looked ready to spit nails. That’s when he noticed me and said, ‘Yeah?’ like I’d better have a darn good reason for taking up his time.”
“Ouch!” Piper said. “What did you say?”
“Luckily,” Nate said, smiling, “I had time on my way over there to come up with a story. I still didn’t know if I’d end up being thrown out of his store, but I gave it a shot. I told him I’d seen an old-style sink at Alan Rosemont’s shop—which was true, actually—but that since the antique shop was now shuttered, I wondered if Farber carried anything like that.”
“Oh, a vintage sink?” Tina asked. “I love those.”
“Farber doesn’t,” Nate said. “But he did pull out a catalog that he was willing to order from if I found something I wanted. As I flipped through the book, I talked about Rosemont’s inventory, which led pretty smoothly, I thought, to Rosemont himself.”
“Good for you,” Piper said. “Did you get Farber talking about him?”
“Yeah, and without too much trouble. Farber’s not one to keep his thoughts to himself. I’d love to play poker with him sometime.”
Will grinned and said, “Me, too!” then added, “Assuming he’s not our murderer, of course.”
“What do you think?” Piper asked. “Could he have done it?”
“Well,” Nate said, and took another swallow of beer, “he sure didn’t have much use for Rosemont. He might have barely tolerated his existence if Rosemont didn’t happen to live right next door. Farber shared at one point that he would have liked to wrap Alan’s bagpipe around his neck more than once.”
“Wow!” Tina said. “That’s incriminating. Except,” she added, “would a murderer come out and actually say that?”
“Good question,” Nate agreed. “However, I did learn that Farber was at the fairgrounds Friday night.”
“Really?” Piper said, excited. “What for?”
“He told me one of the toilet facilities had backed up, and he had to run over and take care of it. He mentioned it because we got talking about my having to work late hours, and he said it beat getting called out in the middle of watching a good game on TV.”
“Right,” Piper said. “There was a Yankees’ game on that night, wasn’t there, Tina?”
Tina looked blank until Piper reminded her that Dennis Isley had been watching it. She then nodded vigorously. “Of course! The game with the fight in the stands.”
“Was Farber at the fairgrounds alone?” Will asked, and Nate shrugged.
“It sounded like it, but he didn’t actually say. He just groused about having to miss his game.”
Just then Aunt Judy walked up, giving Piper a squeeze on her shoulders and gesturing for the two men to keep their seats. “I loved your performance, Nate,” she said. “I can’t think why we haven’t come before, but we’ll certainly be here again.”
Nate thanked her, and Piper jumped in to tell her what he’d learned that day.
“Ralph Farber?” Aunt Judy said uncertainly. “He came to our place last May to install the new water heater. He’s not exactly what you’d call a charmer, but he does good work. I can’t imagine him murdering anybody.”
“Maybe that’s because you never had to listen to somebody’s incessant bagpiping ten feet from your bedroom window.” Uncle Frank had come up behind and caught most of what had been said.
“No, I haven’t,” Aunt Judy agreed, “but still. Ralph Farber?” She shook her
head. “It’s just hard for me to imagine anyone I know doing such a terrible thing. But I need to focus on keeping Nate from being wrongly accused.”
“Amen to that,” Tina said. “We’re all working toward that.”
Amy suddenly appeared at the swinging doors to the kitchen, dressed in her white chef’s jacket and hat. She waved to Nate, and he pushed back his chair.
“If you’ll excuse me, I think I have some dinner waiting for me.” He took off, and Aunt Judy slipped into his chair.
“Such a nice young man,” she said, watching him head toward the kitchen. She shook her head slowly, adding, “But I wish for his sake that he’d never come to Cloverdale.”
• • •
The next morning, Piper woke to bright sunlight streaming into her bedroom and the sound of birds chirping outside her window. She stretched leisurely, thinking pleasant thoughts of her preceding evening with Will until she read the digits on her bedside clock: seven forty-five. She’d overslept! Her stretch ended with a rapid whipping off of the covers. As her feet hit the floor, her thoughts raced over her morning schedule. Mrs. Peterson had arranged to come at eight to take a refresher course from Piper on canning. Piper needed to be dressed and ready for her arrival within fifteen minutes.
Water splashed and clothes flew as Piper dashed about, brushing her teeth with one hand while closing buttons with the other. At four minutes past eight, she hopped down the stairs to her shop, one shoe on, the other still in hand. As she slipped her foot into the second shoe, Piper paused to take a deep breath, then raised the shade on her shop door. There stood Mrs. Peterson, hands crossed in front over a large purse and a strained look on her face.
Piper unlocked her door and pulled it open. “I’m so sorry to be late, Mrs. Peterson,” she began, then stopped as she realized her customer wasn’t looking at her but rather to the right.
“Miss Lamb, did you see that?” Mrs. Peterson asked, pointing.
Confused, Piper couldn’t think for a moment. Then an ominous feeling fell over her. Piper stepped out to see what Mrs. Peterson was pointing to and groaned. On the brick section of wall between her shop window and the outer door to her apartment, someone had splashed paint—lots of it, and white, all the better to show up against the dark red brick.
“Oh no!”
“I think you’d better report this,” Mrs. Peterson advised solemnly. “It couldn’t have been an accident.”
• • •
“So, you didn’t see this when you arrived home last night?” Sheriff Carlyle asked. He’d responded to Piper’s call within the hour with Ben Schaeffer, for some reason, at his side.
“No, I didn’t.” Piper didn’t add that she hadn’t exactly been focusing on her shop’s front wall at the time, having been escorted to her door by Will and thinking of other things, such as the possibility of a good-night kiss (which, happily and quite pleasantly, had occurred). But surely she would have noticed something as glaringly obvious as that paint splash, especially since the streetlight illuminated the area quite well (much to the delight, she was sure, of any Piper-and-Will watchers).
“And you didn’t hear anything during the night?”
Piper shook her head. “But I’m a fairly sound sleeper.”
“The paint is dry,” Ben said, stating the obvious, as all three of them had already pressed a finger against it. “Taking last night’s temperature and humidity into consideration, I’d say this was perpetrated no later than four A.M.”
“It was already dry at eight, when I discovered the mess,” Piper said. “Including the dribbles along the sidewalk. I checked to make sure paint wouldn’t get tracked into my shop.”
“Three A.M., then,” Ben amended.
“Let’s just say sometime between twelve, when you stated you turned out your lights, Miss Lamb,” the sheriff said, “and daylight, when we’ll assume our vandal wouldn’t want to be seen out and about.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard to track down, wouldn’t you say?” asked Ben. “Just look for kids with white paint on their sneakers.”
“Possibly,” Sheriff Carlyle said, nodding. “Do you have any thoughts as to who may have done this?” he asked Piper. “Any problems or threats recently?”
Piper frowned. “The only thing I could mention is what happened two days ago. My garbage can was tipped over in the middle of the day, causing a huge mess for me out back. I would have thought it was kids except that my garbage can was the only one pushed over in a long string of cans in the alley.”
“Hmm,” Sheriff Carlyle said as Ben’s chin shot up in indignation.
“Such behavior can’t be tolerated in Cloverdale,” Ben said. “As we all know, juvenile delinquents left undisciplined grow up to be hardened criminals, and we don’t need that element in our town.”
“The garbage thing I can see as kids fooling around,” Sheriff Carlyle said. “But defacing a shop front with paint in the middle of the night seems much more than a prank. If it was graffiti, maybe. But this strikes me as something done in anger, as if someone was sending a message to you, Piper.”
“A message? To me? But what would that be?”
“I guess we’re going to have to figure that out.”
Sheriff Carlyle looked so serious that Piper shivered, though the temperature had already climbed close to eighty. But almost immediately she shrugged off the thought. Surely no grown person could be so upset with her, except . . . Charlotte Hosch suddenly popped into her mind. The candy maker had been angry and threatening over what she claimed were noxious pickling odors oozing from Piper’s shop. But Charlotte’s threats involved legal complaints, not petty vandalism. Piper couldn’t really imagine the woman sneaking about in the middle of the night and . . .
“Daddy! What’s going on?” Amy called out as she climbed out of her orange Toyota. Erin Healy was with her, and the two rushed over, soon spotting the cause of everyone’s concern. “Oh gosh!” Amy said. “What happened?”
“Nothing to worry about, sugarplum. Piper can fill you in,” the sheriff said as he jotted something in his notebook. Ben gazed at Amy with an odd combination of pseudo-official sternness and dewy-eyed pining, while Erin, Piper noticed with surprise, watched Ben with similar enthrallment, though in her own, much shier way.
Piper explained what she knew to the two girls, and the sheriff flipped his notebook closed. “Well, I’ve got to be going.” He gave Amy a peck on her cheek, then said to Piper, “You think about what I said. Get back to me if you come up with anything.”
“What?” Amy asked as her father and Ben took off. “What are you supposed to think about?”
Piper hustled them into her shop. “Your father thinks this might have been done by someone with a vendetta against me.” She pulled the Cloverdale phone book from under her counter and started flipping through the yellow pages.
“A vendetta? Who could have anything against you?”
Charlotte Hosch, for one, Piper thought but didn’t say out loud. The idea still seemed too far-fetched to be true. “I don’t know. All I know is I have to find someone to clean that mess off in a hurry or I’ll be losing more customers. Mrs. Peterson already took off instead of staying for her pickling and canning lesson.”
“She’ll be back,” Amy said.
Piper smiled, hoping she was right about that. But the thought of anyone doing such damage to her property deliberately and out of anger or spite lingered, making her highly uneasy.
13
As Piper waited to hear back from her insurance agent as well as the handyman she’d left messages with about her paint problem (did anyone answer their phones anymore?), she pulled out from under her shop counter the spiral notebook that contained her list of suspects.
“Did Nate tell you about his visit to the plumber yesterday?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” Amy said, looking pleased.
“And Amy
told me,” Erin said. “It sure sounded like Mr. Farber was angry enough to kill Alan Rosemont.”
“Plus he was at the fairgrounds late Friday night,” Amy said.
“Where he must have heard Rosemont playing his bagpipes,” Piper said, nodding. “Which just might have tipped him over the edge if he truly wanted to wrap Alan’s bagpipes around his neck. I think he deserves to be added to our suspect list.” She wrote Ralph Farber’s name into the notebook under Robby Taylor’s.
“So we have Gordon Pfiefle, Robby Taylor, and Ralph Farber. I’ll have to cross off Dennis Isley since he has an alibi.” Piper’s pen moved toward Isley’s name.
“What’s his alibi?” Amy asked.
“He was home watching a Yankees’ game—alone, but he knew about the fight in the stands. I checked, and there was a fight that night.”
“He could have heard about that from someone else,” Amy argued. “I’d say keep him on.”
“Hmm,” Piper said. “It seemed credible to me because he’d mentioned the fight to Tina in passing, not as a defensive answer to ‘Where were you Friday night?’ But maybe you’re right and that’s not enough. I’ll keep him.” She set down her pen.
Tina walked in at that moment, her eyes wide with shock. “Good heavens, Piper! What happened to your storefront?” A faint aroma of coffee and cooked bacon wafted in with Tina and reminded Piper she hadn’t had time for any breakfast. She told Tina all she knew about the vandalism, while Erin quietly excused herself and took off, promising to give Amy a call.
“Who could have done such a thing?” Tina asked.
“That’s what the sheriff and I have been wondering. I can’t imagine who.”
Tina’s eyes took on a funny look as her lips pursed. “I can,” she said. “That fudge-making harpy, Charlotte Hosch.”
“Oh my gosh, you’re right!” Amy cried.
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