I glanced longingly at the coffeemaker, which was running but not finished brewing. “Shower first,” I said. “Then coffee. Then I swear I’ll be a better audience for your jokes.”
“You people and your coffee.” She rolled her eyes. “Shower fast and you can have some french toast.”
I thanked her for the offer I couldn’t refuse and hustled off to the bathroom.
While I showered, Jeffrey sat on the counter and howled, deeply concerned that I was getting wet. I had to leave the shower curtain partly open so he could see that I was okay. After the terrifying (according to Jeffrey) shower, I got dressed in some of the new casual clothes I’d picked up the day before. The brown cords and emerald green blouse looked smart and chic and were a different look for me.
When I’d lived in Portland, I’d alternated between ultra-conservative gray business suits at work and comfortable jeans and polar fleece on the weekends. I didn’t have much in the dressy casual range, but thanks to my new favorite boutique, that was about to change.
I found her in the kitchen, making enough french toast to feed five of us. Jeffrey made happy warbles as I put some food out on his plate.
“You’re spoiling the cat,” she said.
“He’s still growing, Pam. I would hold back on the canned food if he was getting chubby, but he’s perfect. Lots of good muscle. Right, Jeffrey?”
She kept frying french toast at the stove, her back to me.
“I didn’t mean with the food,” she said. “I mean the way you talk to her.”
“Not her. Him.”
“Whatever. I heard you in the guest room, carrying on with him. If you talk to the cat like he’s a person, there’s not going to be any room in your life for a real man.” She sighed. “It’s bad enough you went and practically shaved your head.”
I turned to Jeffrey, who had gobbled his wet food and moved on to the bowl of dry kibble Pam had set out for him.
“Jeffrey, you tell Pam there’s nothing wrong with this haircut. Modern men aren’t afraid of a woman with some style. Tell her about the handsome lawyer who bought me a drink last night.”
“Lawyer?” Pam coughed. “When did you meet with a lawyer? Why?”
“He was at the Lost and Found. I mean the Fox and Hound.”
“But why? Why was he there?”
“To drink beer and watch sports on TV, same as half the other guys there.” I hovered near her shoulder. “Do you need a hand with anything?”
“Sit,” she commanded. “Eat.”
I helped myself to coffee and french toast, taking both to the kitchen table.
“This is great,” I said. “For the last few years, breakfast has been something I cram down my throat while I stand over the sink.”
“Hmm.” She didn’t turn around. “The corporate lifestyle. Busy, busy.”
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “But it could have been better. I wanted to have dinner parties, but my fiancé wasn’t social. He was competitive, actually. We had another couple over to play board games, and he put them into bankruptcy.”
“Hmm.”
“Not real bankruptcy. Just inside the game.” I could smell something burning. “Pam, are you burning something?”
With her back still to me, she said quietly, “I suppose it’s a good thing the two of you didn’t get married or have children to fight over.”
“Sure,” I said. People kept saying that to me, along with how good it was we didn’t have children. It never made me feel like any less of a failure, but I’d learned it was easier not to disagree.
“What about him?” she asked. “Is he having a fresh start?”
I snorted. “Probably.”
“Younger women?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. I told her how I’d blocked him on my social media accounts so I wouldn’t have to be informed of his every move. Unfortunately, we still had some friends and business contacts in common, so I did see him in group photos, often with his arm around one or more young women. When we were a couple, he avoided loud music and crowds, but now that he was single, he sure popped up at a lot of parties for someone who hated to go out.
Girls flocked to him, of course. They didn’t care he was the kind of guy who screamed when he saw a harmless little spider under a plastic cup. They wanted to get on board with someone who had both family money and a future that promised fat bonuses.
“Men!” Pam exclaimed angrily. “Always one eye roving around for something better and younger!”
I was surprised by how upset she’d gotten. As far as I knew, her previous marriage ended five years prior when her husband passed away. She’d been with my father for less than a year, and I didn’t think there’d been anyone else in between.
“Pam? Is something bothering you? Has Finnegan done something? You know he’s always been friendly to people. That’s just his way. He’s very friendly.”
By now, the kitchen was full of the unmistakable smell of burning food. She still hadn’t flipped over the french toast, and by now it had to be blackened.
“Friendly,” she said with distaste. “Of course you’d take his side. You people stick together.”
“What people?” I asked lightly. “Do you mean the Irish?”
Instead of answering, she started cursing under her breath. I hadn’t spent enough time with her to know if she was genuinely outraged, or if this was her weird, funny side coming out. I’d seen her rant about my father before, and it usually sputtered out after a few minutes of running its course.
The smoke detector let out a warning chirp. It would go off any second unless I did something. I reached carefully over Pam to flick on the fan in the range hood and then opened the window over the sink. I looked across into Mr. Michaels’ kitchen and felt my stomach knot instantly. It was hard to forget about what had happened next door when the crime scene was your kitchen view. I’d talked to Pam for a few minutes the night before, about how Leo Jenkins was no longer in police custody. She hadn’t seemed worried, saying at least she knew who to look out for, but then she’d suddenly remembered seeing another man lurking around the neighborhood a few weeks earlier. I’d tried to get more details to pass on to Tony, but she’d been tired.
“Pam, do you remember anything else about that guy?”
She snapped, “I can’t keep track of everyone all the time.”
I sighed. “Last night, you told me you saw someone skulking around the neighborhood, knocking on Mr. Michaels’ door. Do you remember if he was old or young?”
“Heck if I know,” she said before moving on to words more flavorful than heck.
I gently took her by the shoulder and gave her a shake. “Easy now. Shh,” I said. “The window’s open now, and we don’t want the whole block to find out what a filthy truck driver mouth you have.”
She turned her head and looked at me blankly, as though she’d just awoken in a strange location. I’d been smiling, somewhat amused by her colorful ranting, but now that I saw how dazed out she was, it wasn’t as funny anymore.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked. “Did you take your blood pressure medication yet? Or is it thyroid pills?”
“Fools,” she said. “They’re just silly, old fools. We all are.”
I turned off the stove burner and took the spatula from her hand.
“Let me finish up here, Pam.”
“I’ve ruined everything,” she said.
“There’s plenty of french toast already. You’ve made enough to feed an army.”
She blinked rapidly and turned away from me. “I need a nap. I didn’t sleep well last night, and you woke me up when you got in late from the bar.” She gave me an accusatory look. “Why are you staying here? You don’t think I need looking after, do you?”
“Go have your nap,” I said gently. “I’ll clean up here. Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay? Dad will be back soon, and everything will be back to normal.”
She muttered, “I doubt that very much,” and left t
he kitchen.
I tidied up and sat down to eat my french toast. To Pam’s credit, the ones she didn’t burn were delicious.
Chapter 25
With a stomach full of breakfast, I left Pam to her nap and showed myself out. When I’d arrived the night before, I’d found her vehicle crookedly blocking both spots at the back of the house, so I’d parked in the front. I left through the front door, and as I locked up, my eye was caught by a yellow envelope resting between a snow-covered plant pot and the porch railing. I reached down and retrieved not one, but four envelopes, all yellow and the same size.
I would have put them in the mailbox for Pam to retrieve, but they weren’t addressed to my father’s house. They were for the deceased man, Murray Michaels. They must have fallen there the day before, when I’d startled the carrot-crunching mail carrier. He’d dropped his bag, scattering its contents on the porch.
Now what was I supposed to do with these? They weren’t just junk mail. By the look of the portion visible through the clear address window, these were checks. The return address was from a company called R&F Brokers. The moisture from the snow had made the envelopes soft. As I turned the envelopes over in my hands, the flap on one came loose. With a barely-perceptible nudge of my thumb, it flipped right open.
My breath caught in my throat. I looked up and down the street, self-conscious of my mail tampering. Opening someone else’s mail was a serious offense, but I really wanted to see what the checks were for. Was this what Mr. Jenkins had been searching for when he broke in?
I gave the envelope a gentle shake. The check fell out into my hand. The check was from R&F Brokers, the same as the return address, and the dollar amount was for only $43.77. My heart sank as I double-checked the puny figure. So much for cracking the case wide open. People killed over relatively small sums of money, but $43.77 was too small. The memo line held only an alpha-numeric code.
I shook the other envelopes until their checks “accidentally” fell out as well. The others would have bought a few rounds at the Fox and Hound but not much more. I slid the checks back into their envelopes and went to my car.
I’d planned to work on some orders and data entry at the store, but it could wait. I glanced over at the envelopes on the passenger seat, noting that the address of R&F Brokers wasn’t far from the hospital where my father was recovering. I entertained the notion of going to R&F myself and finding out what Murray Michaels had been pawning and how frequently, but then I quickly dismissed the idea. As intrigued as I was, getting myself further involved in the investigation would be rash.
I drove to the police station with the intention of hand-delivering the checks to Tony, but once I’d parked, my body felt as heavy as cement. The station had once been a friendly place for me, but most of the people I knew had all retired. For the first time in my life, I viewed the red brick building as intimidating.
The front door opened, and the instant I saw it was Tony Milano, I knew my dread about entering the building was actually dread about seeing him. I heard my father’s voice in my head, telling me to jump back in the saddle. Considering some of the moments I’d shared with Tony during our brief fling, my father’s advice took on a comically inappropriate tone.
I jumped out of the car and waved at him. “Tony Baloney!”
Shaking his head, he walked over toward me. “Stormy, I can only do what the law allows. If you want someone shot, get your own gun.” He stopped in front of me and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. “On second thought, stay away from weapons. Someone with your temper shouldn’t own anything more deadly than one of those gardening fork things, and even that’s questionable.”
“How about a crossbow? I just bought one. It’s in the trunk with my dynamite and my nunchakus.”
He ruffled the white hairs at his temples and fixed me with his dark brown eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Helping with the Michaels case.”
“We don’t need any help,” he said, spitting the word help with distaste. “Pam Bochenek gave us a description of the guy she saw skulking around the place a few weeks ago. The guy was big, dark hair, bearded, and looked like a drifter. Sounds a lot like your friend from the vet clinic. The one who calls himself a lawyer.”
“Do you mean Logan Sanderson? He’s not your guy.”
Tony straightened up and scratched about two days’ worth of stubble on his chin as he looked down his nose at me. “And how do you know that? Are you his alibi?”
“Never mind about Logan. Why’d you let Creepy Jeepers go?”
“Creepy Jeepers?” Tony’s mouth threatened to betray him with a grin, but he fought it. “You mean Leo Jenkins? He was out of town during the week-long window that Michaels disappeared. We could charge him for the break-in, but in light of the fact he was looking for some items that the man had stolen from him in the first place, I don’t know. We might look the other way.”
“What items?” I asked. “What was Jenkins looking for?”
“He didn’t have anything on him, but he claimed he was looking for a pair of cufflinks and a bag of none-of-your-business.” He looked me up and down as he stepped back. “You’ll read about it in the paper with everyone else once we get this business cleaned up.” He started walking away, calling back over his shoulder, “Stay out of trouble.”
Chapter 26
Portland, Oregon, is not exactly New York City, but I’d forgotten how busy city traffic was. Cars zoomed by, changing lanes without signaling, the drivers distracted by their phones, speeding toward congested intersections like red blood cells toward a wound. By comparison, in Misty Falls the traffic jams lasted all of a minute, and nobody dared honk since they probably knew the person in front of them.
When I got to the hospital, I did something I hadn’t done in ages; I paid for parking. Sure, it was tricky to order a grande vanilla latte in Misty Falls, but you never paid a cent for parking.
I stretched my arms and back as I walked into the hospital. I found my father’s floor without incident, but when I got to his room, he was sleeping. I took a seat on the hard-backed chair near his side, expecting him to open his eyes at any moment. The room had another bed, but it was unoccupied. The window had a view of a small city park with green grass. Unlike our town, which was further inland and much higher in elevation, Portland hadn’t received any snow yet that winter, and would get no more than four or five days of frozen precipitation, at the most.
After ten minutes of the pleasure of watching Finnegan Day sleep, a dark-haired woman in pale green scrubs came in.
She saw me and said sweetly, “You’re as lovely as I imagined. Which one are you, the sunshine or the rain?”
I got up to shake her hand. “My reputation has preceded me. You could say I’m the rain. Stormy Day.”
The woman was forty-something, with flawless dark skin, a high forehead, and chin-length curly hair. She had an energetic presence and quick eyes, darting around to check everything in the room. She reminded me of my dental hygienist in Portland, who was from Jamaica, but it must have been because of their similar bone structure, for she had no accent. Her handshake was firm enough to make me wonder if mine was weak.
“Your father is quite the man,” she said breathlessly, as though talking about meeting her favorite actor. “He says I should move to Misty Falls now that my son’s off to college.”
“Oh, did he?”
Finnegan Day continued sleeping peacefully, unaware of my accusatory glare. My father loved his town, but he didn’t go around recruiting random people into moving there. His interest in this woman had to be personal. And here I’d thought those days were behind him.
The woman said, “I have to admit I’m curious. He’s been telling me about your town ever since we met.” She walked around the bed, tucking the blankets in along his sides.
I checked her name tag, and everything clicked into place. Dora Jones. We’d spoken on the phone when I called to check on him, and she’d been so friendly.
Dora finished tucking him in and said, “How about you? Are you glad to be living back in your hometown again? Hanging out with your old friends?”
“Somewhat,” I said. “It sounds like you’ve been spending a lot of time with my father. You two must talk a lot while you do whatever it is you do. Exactly what is that, Dora? Are you a physical therapist?”
She made the face people make when someone gets the title of their occupation wrong. “I’m an orthopedic nurse,” she said, enunciating each syllable carefully. “I’ve been with your father through everything, including the surgery.”
“Did you get to use the power tools?”
She squinted for a few tense seconds before laughing. “You’ve got your father’s sense of humor.” She wagged her finger at me. “Power tools. You really had me going.” She patted my sleeping father’s arm. “We’ll have to tell him when he wakes up.”
We both turned and watched him sleep.
Gazing at him tenderly, Dora said, “Poor ducky. He’s been living with a lot of pain.”
I chuckled. “He does live with Pam Bochenek.”
Dora’s expression contorted, her smooth brow wrinkling. “It’s a shame he took that tumble, or he might have delayed the surgery for years.”
“That tumble?”
Dora turned to give me a knowing look, sisterly warmth in her eyes.
“Sometimes I wonder if someone pushed him,” Dora said icily. “Your father claims he slipped in the bath, but the injuries weren’t consistent with the fall he described.”
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