by Nic Saint
“Three throats are better than one,” Alice agreed. Then her smile disappeared. “I don’t know if they’re up for it, though. I mean, this is murder, not jaywalking or littering or dog pooping.”
“We can ask. I’m sure they want to catch the guy responsible for Alistair’s murder as much as we do.”
A resolute look had stolen over Alice’s face. “You’re right. This murderer must be caught. I’ll call an emergency meeting of the HBNWC right away.”
“‘Before you do, let’s examine the facts.”
“There are facts, Nancy Drew?”
“You betcha, Veronica Mars.”
Alice wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brow. It was her ‘serious face’. “Hit me.”
Felicity winced. In light of recent events, Alice’s words seemed ill-chosen. But then she hunkered down, and started to present her case.
Chapter 16
As they convened around the coffee table, Alice and Felicity started to work out a plan of campaign. Though Alice would have to sacrifice some of the precious time she’d allotted to her snag-Reece-Hudson campaign, it was worth it. The safety of the community went before her love life.
Besides, since it had been her dream to become a cop all her life, and this seemed about as close as she would ever get, she was willing to put everything else on hold just to get this project up and running.
“So what have we got?”
“Well, we know that Alistair was shot once at close range, that the murderer drove up in a car but that no tire marks were found, so the killer must have parked a little ways away from where Alistair was found.”
Alice wrote all this down on the whiteboard the two women usually reserved for jotting down messages to each other and the odd bits and pieces of their mutual calendar. She’d wiped the board clean and was feeling like a real police person. In her imagination the board would soon be filled with crime scene photos and snaps of the victim. Well, perhaps not photos, exactly. It was hardly likely that the medical examiner would be that obliging.
Meticulously, she wrote down all the clues. “What else?”
Felicity checked her notes. “There’s the fact that Alistair and Mary have this ongoing feud with their kids about the sale of the land and the inn.” She looked up. “I just thought it might be useful. I wasn’t going to put that in the article, of course.”
Alice put this down under the heading ‘Suspects’. “Rob and Ruth Long. Good thinking, Fee. If anyone wanted Alistair dead, it would be them.”
“Sad, really. I mean, to have kids who want their father dead?”
“Well, we don’t know for sure they wanted him dead. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“No, but simply the fact that all they care about is getting their hands on the money is enough to make you feel sorry for Mary and Alistair.”
Felicity was right. She hoped that if one day she had kids they would be the prop of her declining years, not vultures waiting for her to croak. She tapped the board. “I don’t like this suspect list. Too short. Did Alistair have any enemies?”
“Not that I know of. He was such a sweet man. I think everyone loved him.”
“Not everyone. Remember that kid he got into an argument with last fall? Billy Conch? I think Alistair even spent the night in jail.”
Felicity’s eyes widened. “Billy Conch. He found the body!”
“No way.”
“Way.” She’d forgotten all about the incident. Billy had kicked his dog and Alistair happened to see it. So he went over, kicked the boy and asked how he liked it. The kid didn’t like it and neither did his father, so he called the cops and Alistair had to spend the night in jail.
“That’s not a reason to kill anyone,” Alice mused. “The Conches got even, right?”
Felicity shook her head. “The case attracted the attention of an animal rights group out of TriBeCa and they made a whole case about it. Camped out in front of the Conch place for weeks, remember?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So Stephen Conch lost his job over that. The power plant didn’t like all the negative publicity and they fired him. I can imagine he was pretty sore about it.”
Alice nodded and added Stephen Conch’s name to the suspect list, though without much conviction. She felt that he made a weak suspect and she didn’t hesitate to state her opinion that they would be wasting their time going after him. But since she believed in being thorough she dutifully jotted down the name.
Both women stared at the whiteboard.
“We need more information,” Felicity said, and Alice agreed.
“Perhaps the holy trinity will know more.”
“The holy trinity is bound to know more. They’re the holy trinity, after all.”
Alice laughed. “We’re doing this, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are.”
Alice held up her hand and Felicity high-fived it. They were going to solve this case or die trying. Well…perhaps not that last part. But they were going to do their utmost. For Alistair and Happy Bays.
Chapter 17
Virgil stared at his phone. It didn’t often happen that his mother called him during office hours, for she knew that Chief Whitehouse was a stickler for discipline and productivity.
“Mom?” he said, surreptitiously glancing in the direction of the chief’s office.
“Just heard about Alistair,” his mother said in her customary clipped tones. “Dreadful business! How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said, gulping a little. “I can’t talk now.”
“Sure, sure.” There was a brief pause, in which he fully expected Mom to hang up and leave him to get on with his work. Instead, she asked, “Who did it?”
“Mom!”
“What? You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”
“So?”
“So aren’t you supposed to know who shot Alistair Long in the head?”
“Not the head,” he said automatically.
“What was that?”
He bitterly regretted not having drawn a line in the sand the way Chief Whitehouse had told him. “Never discuss your work with anyone, Virgil,” the chief had said. “Once you start, you don’t know where it ends. Just make it clear from the get-go that they won’t get zip from you. Not even your own sweet mother.”
Instead, he’d made it a habit to discuss police business at the dinner table. And that was all fine and dandy as long as it concerned minor traffic violations. But murder? That was a whole other beast altogether.
“He wasn’t shot in the head, mom.”
“Well? Where was he shot then? Don’t make me drag it out of you, son. I’m your mother, remember? I fed you, I raised you, I put you through police academy. And you know my lips are sealed. I won’t breathe this to a living soul!”
At least that much was true. Mom was discretion personified. Maybe she would tell one or two friends, but that was as far as it went. He sighed. “I’ll tell you all about it tonight, all right? But now I gotta go. I’ve got work to do.”
“I expect a full report.” And with those words she promptly hung up.
He cursed silently under his breath. Just at that moment his boss appeared. The police chief, a stocky man with a gray buzz cut and perpetual scowl on his jowly face, didn’t look happy. “Who was that on the phone?”
“My mother,” he admitted, his cheeks reddening.
The chief grunted. “You didn’t tell her about the investigation, did you?”
“No, of course not. I would never—”
“Because you know she’ll blab. All mothers blab.”
“Not Mom,” he assured the chief.
“Especially your mother. She’s in that group—that vigilante thing—”
“The watch committee?”
“A bunch of gossipmongers led by my own flesh and blood. You talk to your mother, she’ll tell her vigilante friends, and before you know it, it’s splattered all over the front page of the Happy Bays Gazette. Mark my words.”
H
e marked the chief’s words, though he resented this slur on his mother’s character. “She wouldn’t do that,” he insisted.
“Oh? Remember the case of the neutered squirrel?”
He remembered. Peter North, Happy Bays’s resident vet, had been brought a pet squirrel to be neutered, and had allowed the rodent to bite him in the nose. He’d filed a report against its owner and before long the whole story had appeared in the Gazette, turning Dr. North into the town’s laughing stock.
“That wasn’t Mom.”
“You told her, didn’t you?” barked the chief.
“I did,” he confessed.
“Well then?”
Since Virgil had a sneaking suspicion Dr. North had spilled the beans himself while nursing his injured nose and pride over a beer at Jack’s Joint he felt it incumbent upon him to defend his mother’s honor. “I’m sure Mom would never blab.”
“I told you, all mothers blab. Anyway. Mind that you don’t.”
The chief poured himself a cup of coffee, and Virgil took this occasion to make a suggestion to his superior officer. “Chief?”
He interpreted the grumble emanating from the portly officer as permission to speak.
“Don’t you think we should accept the mayor’s suggestion and bring in some help on this case?” He had the distinct impression that the chief wasn’t up for the job. He knew that he himself certainly wasn’t.
“We can handle this,” the chief assured him sourly. “Just do as I say and we’ll solve this case in no time. Where are you in setting up the interviews?”
“They’re all coming in tomorrow, chief,” he assured his fearless leader. He’d arranged for all the usual suspects to drop by the station house first thing in the morning, though he didn’t have the first inkling what to do with them. He would have felt a lot better if the chief had accepted the mayor’s suggestion to bring in detectives from the East Hampton or Southampton police departments. They had the manpower and the expertise the HBPD sorely lacked.
“We’ll handle it,” Chief Whitehouse repeated gruffly, and disappeared into his office.
Virgil slumped in his chair. His had never been a forceful personality and in times like these, when his community was hit by a crisis of major proportion, he felt he needed to do more. What, he didn’t know, but…more.
Chapter 18
Rick had been in Paris for two whole weeks now, and Felicity keenly felt his absence. When his face popped up in the Skype window she felt the familiar tug at her heart. With his regular features, straggly blond hair and clear blue eyes Rick Dawson could have been a male swimsuit model, though he would have resented the comparison. He was a hard-nosed reporter and took his job very seriously. At the moment he was doing a Time Magazine feature on the G8 summit in Paris.
“God, am I glad to see you,” Felicity breathed.
Rick’s smile faltered. “You look a little pale, honey. What’s wrong?”
“You won’t believe this, but we had a murder.”
“Murder? In Happy Bays?”
“Yeah. Just this morning someone shot and killed Alistair Long.”
Rick started. “Old graybeard? But that’s terrible! Such a sweet man.”
Rick had been staying at the Happy Bays Inn when he and Felicity met a few short weeks before.
“And the big news is that Stephen assigned me to cover the murder for the Gazette.” She threw up her hands. “And I don’t know the first thing about writing a feature!”
“Good thing you have a boyfriend who does,” he quipped, but she could see he was worried about her.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “A little shaken, as we all are.” She wondered if she should tell him that she and Alice had decided to crack the case themselves, with no help from the police, but then decided against it. Rick would only worry and he had enough on his plate already.
“Just run your ideas by me,” he suggested. “And the moment you put something down on paper send it along so I can take a look.”
“Thanks, honey. How are you doing over there?”
He grinned. “I just interviewed the French prime minister. When I happened to mention my girlfriend is a baker he gave me his grammy’s recipe for croissants. They’re to die for.” His grin disappeared when he realized his verbal faux-pas. “Sorry about that. Highly inappropriate under the circumstances.”
“Send it along. I could use a treat. In fact we all could. Maybe I can even use it for my baking column.”
“I promised the prime minister you’d give his grammy the credit.”
“And I will. I’ll even mention her name on my video channel if you want.”
His smile returned. “Remember the YouTube video that brought us together?”
“How could I forget?”
Felicity had been taping her weekly baking instruction video when Rick had dropped by. Instead of welcoming him with open arms she’d pelted him with eggs, thinking he was some sort of crook.
“The moment the croissant video goes live I’ll send the link to the French PM. He said he’ll watch it with his grammy. Or grand-mère as he calls her.”
“Aw. That’s so sweet.” She sighed and stared at Rick’s reflection for a moment. She missed him. Though their acquaintanceship had been off to a rocky start they’d quickly reconciled and soon love had blossomed.
The fact that he was now in Europe and she on Long Island was the first test of their budding relationship, and she had the distinct impression their bond was growing stronger instead of weaker with the distance between them.
“I miss you,” she said with a hitch in her throat.
He smiled. “Same here, honey. Can’t wait to hold you in my arms again.”
“Rickie!” suddenly a voice came from behind her. Alice had joined the conversation.
“Hey, Alice. How’s things in the funeral business?” Before he’d finished the sentence it was obvious he regretted his rash words, for his cheeks glowed red. “I’m sorry. Once again, highly inappropriate.”
“It’s fine. As a matter of fact, now that you mention it, Mary talked to Uncle Charlie today and the police are releasing Alistair’s body this week. Which means that we will be able to have a look at the victim ourselves. Isn’t that great?”
Rick’s eyebrows rose. “Why would you want to look at the…” His voice trailed off as his frown deepened, understanding dawning.
Felicity, who’d been poking Alice in the ribs to stop her from spilling the beans, knew it was too late.
“Felicity? Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Um…”
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of conducting your own investigation?”
Alice grinned. “Oops. Wasn’t I supposed to tell?”
“No, you weren’t!” Felicity whispered fiercely.
“Honey,” Rick said, “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”
“It’s my idea, in fact,” said Alice, “so it’s bound to be great.”
“It’s a murder case, Alice,” said Rick seriously. “Please don’t get involved.”
“Well, we are involved now. Stephen handed Felicity the case.”
“Not the case. The story,” Rick pointed out.
Felicity inwardly cursed Alice. “Look, I want to do this right, but Chief Whitehouse is stonewalling me. I can’t get a word out of him.”
“Alice’s dad?”
“He’s a stickler for police procedure,” said Alice under her breath.
“So you see, there’s no other way to write this article than conduct our own little investigation.”
He was silent for a moment, emotions warring on his face, then he finally grunted, “All right, but use extreme caution. This isn’t some minor thing. This is a murder case. And as long as the killer is out there you’re endangering yourself by inserting yourself into the investigation.”
In spite of the graveness of his tone a smile lit up Felicity’s features. It meant the world to her to have Rick’s support.
&nb
sp; “Thanks, Rick. We’ll be careful, I promise.”
“Please do. Amateur sleuthing is no laughing matter,” he admonished.
Alice’s face returned to a mock expression of seriousness. “Yes, Brother Rick.”
Rick rolled his eyes. He hated the nickname Brother Rick, which his good friend Bomer Calypso had awarded him when they were both in college. Due to the fact that Rick liked to hole up in his room and study, Bomer, a real party animal, had started calling him Brother Rick and his room on campus his own private Trappist monk’s cell. The name had stuck to this day, much to Rick’s dismay.
“I’ll send you everything we got so far,” said Felicity.
“Which isn’t much,” added Alice, still leaning over her friend’s shoulder.
“I’ll have a look,” Rick promised, “and in the meantime try to stay out of trouble. Both of you.”
“Yes, Brother Rick,” Felicity and Alice intoned, and after one last eyeroll Rick disconnected.
“I think this murderer doesn’t stand a chance,” opined Alice. “Against the three of us and the holy trinity? Not. A. Chance.”
“I hope you’re right,” Felicity said thoughtfully. Rick’s warning that murder was not something to trifle with had struck a chord. There was a murderer on the loose in Happy Bays and if cornered he—or she—might kill again.
The thought frankly chilled her to the bone.
Chapter 19
“Rob! Here, boy—here!”
Rob jerked his head up. He’d just exited the car and was walking toward the Inn when the command arrested his attention. When he turned to look he saw that a young boy was calling his dog. He snorted derisively. Who in his right mind would call his dog Rob? Without breaking stride, he continued, rolling the small carry-on behind him. Maggie, tripping along in her high heels, seemed excited to be here. He wasn’t. He hated the inn, had hated it all his life, or at least for as long as he could remember.
“Here, Rob!”
He closed his eyes in annoyance, even when Maggie giggled. She seemed to think the whole thing a barrel of laughs. “Imagine, honey. That dog has your name. Isn’t that just hilarious?!”