by Sofie Ryan
He grinned and then his expression grew serious once more. “Nobody’s giving up, Sarah. We will find out who killed Ronan Quinn.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
He smiled again. “I am.” He gestured at the back door. “I better go take a look at this bed.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.
He headed across the parking lot and I thought again how much he was like Charlotte. They had the same smile that reached all the way to their brown eyes.
I put the cabinet and my tools in the garage. As I came back out, Nick was heading to his SUV. “Work,” he called to me, “but we’re still on for tomorrow night. Save me a seat.”
I nodded.
I went into the shop. Charlotte was in talking to Mr. P. Mac was rewrapping the iron bed frame. “Nick got a call,” he said. “But I think he might take this.”
“Okay,” I said. “If he does and I’m not here, give him the family discount.”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“I need to do something,” I said.
“Okay, we’re good here.” He studied my face. “Do you need any help?”
“No, I’ve got this,” I said. “I won’t be very long.” I hadn’t told Rose or Michelle or Nick about those six missing wine bottles and it was past time that I did. But before I said anything, I wanted to be certain they weren’t at the house.
When I walked out to the SUV, Elvis followed me. I opened the driver’s door and he hopped onto the seat. “Oh, what the heck?” I muttered. I motioned for him to move over.
“Want to come inside with me for a moment?” I said to the cat when we pulled in to the driveway at the Hall house.
“Merow,” he answered, leaning sideways to look around me. I picked him up, pulled my keys out of my pocket. Across the street Paul Duvall and Alyssa were playing hockey on their front lawn with a large neon orange ball and plastic hockey sticks. There was a makeshift net at one end of the grass made with a tarp and wooden stakes stuck in the ground. I waved and then Elvis and I headed for the back door.
Very quickly I realized that there was no way I could search for the missing bottles by myself. There were just too many boxes to check.
Elvis followed me from the living room back to the kitchen. He immediately began prowling around the stack of boxes. “There aren’t any answers there,” I said to him. He tipped his head to one side, seemed to consider my words and then went back to what he’d been doing.
I walked over and stood in the doorway. I looked across the floor and tried to picture Ronan Quinn’s dead body, hoping somehow I’d remember something I hadn’t thought of before. But there were no answers lurking in my memory. I felt my stomach turn over as I thought about Quinn’s body. He couldn’t have been in the house more than a few minutes when he was killed; he’d still been wearing his jacket. There had been something dark on the collar that I realized now must have been dried blood. The white mark on his left pant leg had come from the whitewashed back porch, I knew now. I’d brushed the same mark off my own pants. And the bits of black asphalt that were stuck to the sole of his shoes had most likely been deposited in the driveway outside by the tires of his car when he drove over the partially paved road and then picked up on his shoes when he walked around his car to take his briefcase from the backseat.
I crouched down and put one hand on the floor, concentrating on the image of Ronan Quinn’s shoes. Elvis padded over and nudged my hand with his head. “Murp?” he asked.
I looked at him. “The person who had the best chance to take those missing bottles was Ethan. How do we even know he came from the hospital that morning? How do we know he was even there at all?” Elvis gave me a blank look.
“Exactly,” I said.
I remembered the drive out to the house the morning we’d found Quinn’s body. Tiny clumps of asphalt had stuck to the tires of the SUV and Elvis had made a fuss over the tar smell in the car. I reached over and stroked his fur. “If Ethan was here before we were the day of the murder, he would have parked in the garage to hide his car,” I said. “He couldn’t chance anyone seeing it. And if he drove over that same stretch of road that we did, there should be bits of asphalt on the floor in there.”
“Mrrr,” the cat said.
“Let’s go look,” I said.
I picked him up and went out to the garage. The sky had clouded over and it looked as though rain was close.
The key to the side door was on the ring Stella had given me. The inside of the building was dark and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust. No so for Elvis. Almost as though he knew what I was looking for, he started across the floor, sniffing the wide planks, but I was the one who found the bits of asphalt on the battered wooden floor.
Elvis made his way over to me, sniffed the tarry black bits and sneezed twice. There wasn’t any doubt what we’d found.
A drop of water landed on the top of my head, followed by another and another. Obviously the rain had started and just as obviously the roof leaked. A drop of water landed on Elvis’s paw. He lifted his foot, shook it and glared at me.
I straightened up and picked him up as well. “It’s just a shower,” I said. “The house is closer. We’ll just wait it out.” We sprinted to the back door. I set the cat on the kitchen floor and he shook himself and made a sour face.
I leaned against the counter and pulled out my cell phone. “We need to know if there was any other paving going on in this area either before or since,” I said. “Otherwise those bits of asphalt we just found don’t mean much.”
“Hello, Sarah,” Mr. P. said.
“Hi,” I said. “This is probably going to sound crazy, but is there any way to find out where the town has been paving in the past two weeks?”
“Public Works would have a schedule,” he said. “Would you like me to check it for you?”
“Please,” I said. At my feet Elvis suddenly lifted his head and looked around. Was someone outside? It was probably Paul. “I’ll call you back,” I said.
“All right, my dear,” Mr. P. said, sounding a little distracted, which told me he was already on his computer. “It should only take me about five minutes.”
I looked down at Elvis at my feet. His green eyes were narrowed and his tail was twitching.
I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck almost as though a faint breeze had blown through the old building. I turned around slowly.
Ethan Hall was standing in the doorway.
Chapter 19
“Hi,” I said, hoping nothing in my face gave me away. I held up my phone. “I was just making a list of what we’re going to take back to the shop.”
Ethan reached over and took my cell from my hand. My heart began to pound in my chest. “I’m not finished, but hang on a sec and I’ll find it for you,” I said, reaching out to get the phone back.
Ethan glanced at the screen and dropped it into his pocket. “Nice try, Sarah,” he said. “But we both know you’ve figured out that I killed Ronan Quinn.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Paul called you.”
Ethan shrugged and gave me a smile that reminded me of nothing so much as a crocodile. “He lets me know what’s going on over here and if he wants to come over when his kid’s asleep and have a cigarette or a beer, I figure it makes us even.”
I thought of Paul and Alyssa outside playing hockey on the lawn. “You and Paul played hockey together.”
Ethan nodded. “For a couple of years. He wasn’t as good as I was.”
“Why did you do it?” I asked. Keep him talking, I told myself. Build a rapport. Stall. Look for a way to gain an advantage.
“Oh, c’mon,” he said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured that part out yet?” He glanced in the direction of the wine bottles.
“Those missing bottles,” I said slowly. “You sold them, didn’t you? Y
ou passed them off as the real thing and sold them.”
Ethan didn’t say anything, but one eyebrow went up and he gave me a sly smile. “They belonged to me. And if people are too stupid to do their due diligence, well, that’s hardly my fault.”
I brushed a strand of hair away from my face and shot a quick glance to the left to see if there was anything I could use as a weapon. There wasn’t. “Did Thorne Logan really approach you about buying one of those bottles, or were you just trying to steer us in his direction?”
“Both, actually,” he said.
Elvis pressed against my leg, watching Ethan intently. The warmth of his small body helped keep my legs from shaking. “Quinn found out what you were doing.”
Ethan sighed. “It wasn’t any of his business. I hired him to tell me what those bottles were worth. That’s it. He started talking about lawsuits and I thought I might get some of my money back. Then I found out the chances of that happening were pretty slim.”
“The day before he was killed, that afternoon you were here, he noticed the missing bottles, didn’t he?” I could see the back door out of the corner of my eye, but there was no way I could get to it.
“I’d paid him. I thought he was leaving town.” An ugly expression flashed across his face. “Then he wants to come out here to check on the glue that was used for the labels.”
“You’d already had a plan to slowly sell all that wine to people just as unsuspecting as your father had been. You’d already started.”
Ethan held up both hands. “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!” he said. “Give the lady a prize!”
“So why did you kill him?” I asked, clenching my hands in my pockets to keep them from shaking. “Why didn’t you just tell him the missing bottles got broken?” I pretty much knew the answer, but it was another way to buy a minute or two and I was going to grab every one I could.
“Because he wouldn’t let it go at that!” He sucked in a deep breath and raked his hands back through his hair. “He just would not let it go! He threatened to have me arrested. He wouldn’t do what he was hired to do and just go home.” He looked at me again. “Remind you of anyone?”
“He must have made you crazy,” I said, ignoring his last comment.
He looked at me and gave a snort of humorless laughter. “Oh, don’t pretend you understand so we can build a connection.” He made air quotes around the word “connection.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t understand. Why couldn’t you just wait to sell those bottles?”
Ethan looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. “Wait? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting? I’ve been waiting for years to get out of this Podunkville little place, waiting for the day when I didn’t have to play the dutiful son, waiting for the day when that old man who was never satisfied with anything I did would just die.” His voice got louder and his manner more agitated with each word. “And when he did, you know what I ended up with? A wife who pretty soon isn’t going to be able to walk, another freaking millstone around my neck, and an inheritance that is worth less than what I’d get for taking the bottles to the recycling center.” He shook both hands in the air. “Don’t tell me to wait. I was a good son. I’m a good person and the whole damn thing backfired on me!”
“Is that why you’re going to Hawaii? Because you’re tired of waiting?”
Something changed in his expression and the manic behavior disappeared as if a switch had been thrown in his head. “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to Hawaii and that’s why I won’t be coming back.” He exhaled and smiled. “It’s going to be very sad, really. I’m going to have an accident learning to surf and my body will never be found. And I’ll finally get to live the life I was meant to live all along without my old man and everyone else dragging me down.”
Some of what I was feeling inside must have shown on my face.
“Don’t give me that look,” Ethan said, a heavy edge of sarcasm in his voice. “It’s not my fault. Why couldn’t Quinn just stay out of it? Why couldn’t you?”
“You can’t kill two people in this house,” I said. “People will get suspicious.”
“I know,” he said, “but I don’t recall saying you’re going to die here. I am going to kill you, but not here.” He made a sad face. “You’re going to have a tragic accident on the way back to your store.” He put a hand to his chest. “So very tragic.”
Then his arm snaked out and whipped around my neck like a rope. He pulled a small plastic bottle of ginger ale out of his jacket pocket with his free hand, managed to unscrew the cap and pressed the opening to my mouth. “Drink,” he ordered.
I pressed my lips tightly together.
Ethan slapped my face. Tears filled my eyes, but I kept my mouth tightly closed.
He grabbed my nose, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.
I held my breath as long as I could, but eventually I had to open my mouth to breathe.
Ethan forced some of the liquid into my mouth. I sputtered and spit, but some of it went down. He repeated the process twice more.
“I’m going to vomit,” I choked out. I wasn’t, but I needed a moment to breathe, to think.
He let go of me and took a step back. “That’s probably enough,” he said. I was bent over, hands on my knees, trying to get my breath. “You don’t have . . . to . . . do this,” I managed to gasp out.
“You sound like Quinn,” Ethan said. “The thing is, neither one of you gave me a choice. He was going to call the police. I would have lost my job. And he would have made all the rest of those bottles completely worthless to me. What choice did he leave me? It was him or me and I picked me.”
He looked away from me again and shook his head as though he were seeing himself back in the kitchen with Ronan Quinn. “It was poetic justice, you know, him being killed with a bottle of wine that cost less than ten dollars.”
Chapter 20
His attention had shifted. It was now or never. There was a stack of boxes, about shoulder height, to my left. I used my knee and one arm to knock them over between Ethan and me.
“Run!” I yelled to Elvis, and then I bolted for the living room.
Ethan hollered an obscenity and scrambled over the cartons after me. I pushed a floor lamp sideways and heard the glass shade smash as it hit the hardwood behind me. Ethan was only a few feet back.
“Get the hell back here!” he shouted.
I turned and shoved a worn leather club chair at him. It skidded across the floor and caught him in the legs, knocking him off his feet. Elvis had jumped up onto a stack of boxes. He leaped from there to the sideboard against the wall. I swept both hands at the boxes and sent them down on top of Ethan. They only held blankets and tablecloths, so they weren’t very heavy, but all I needed was a few extra seconds to get to the door and get out.
There was a vintage standing metal ashtray, missing one foot on the bottom, leaning against the sideboard and hutch. When I shoved the boxes, it fell on my own foot.
I stifled a scream, kicked it out of the way and ran for the door, breathing hard. My right foot skidded on the loose bit of hall carpet. I slid into the half wall, banging my knee on the corner edge. The pain almost knocked me off my feet, but somehow I managed to stay upright. I slid along the expanse of drywall and banged against the front door.
Ethan lunged for me, catching the edge of my sweatshirt and pulling me toward him. “You stupid cow,” he roared.
I tried to twist away from him and slammed into two boxes stacked on a wooden chair. At the same moment Elvis launched himself with a loud yowl from the sideboard, landing on Ethan’s back, claws digging in through the man’s shirt. Ethan yelled another obscenity and reached over his shoulder for the cat with one hand while the other slapped over my mouth and nose.
I couldn’t breathe. I fell back against the boxes, my elbow pushing down the flaps of t
he top one. I felt around blindly inside for something, anything to use as a weapon. My hand touched something heavy and metallic. I grabbed and swung my arm up and out as hard as I could, making very satisfying contact with the top of Ethan’s head before my left leg gave out. His eyes rolled back in his head, his hand slipped from my face and he dropped to the floor.
Elvis jumped down, shook himself and made his way over to me. He climbed onto my chest, where he sat down and looked at what I’d just used to brain Ethan Hall. It was a can of Spam.
“Merow!” he said.
I pushed my hair back out of my face. I looked over at Ethan and nodded. “Poetic justice.”
Chapter 21
I managed to get to my feet, pick up Elvis and get the front door unlocked. Ethan was out cold. I could see his chest moving, so I knew he wasn’t dead, and beyond that I didn’t much care.
I stumbled out onto the stoop as Nick’s SUV fishtailed to a stop at the curb. Mac was already out of the passenger side running across the lawn to me before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. He caught me as my leg gave way again and I half fell down the front steps.
“Sarah, are you all right?” he asked. Nick was sprinting across the grass toward us.
I nodded.
“Where’s Ethan?” Nick said.
I jerked my head in the direction of the house. “He’s in there.” I held up the can of Spam and grinned at them. “I spammed his scam.” It struck me so funny I started to laugh. “I spammed his scam,” I said again.
“She’s in shock,” I heard Nick say to Mac, but it seemed as though he were talking from the end of a long tunnel. “Ambulance should be right behind us.”
I wanted to ask him what made him think I needed an ambulance. I had Elvis and him and Mac and a can of Spam. What more did I need?
I looked up at Nick and wondered what was wrong with his head that it had gotten so out of focus. Mac, on the other hand, looked wonderfully in focus. It struck me that laying a big wet one on him sounded like a marvelous idea, but before I could tell him that, the world suddenly went dark.