by Clover Tate
To my right, a door led presumably into the less diner-friendly areas of the kitchen, where onions were chopped and dishes scrubbed. Directly to my left at the bar was a middle-aged couple deep in conversation.
“It’s just surfing, honey. It’s no more dangerous than scuba diving,” the man said.
“Maybe if you’re twenty. I just don’t see what you have to prove.” The woman dabbed her mouth with her napkin.
In the kitchen, in the place Miles presumably held, a harried-looking man with curly hair and a bulldog posture checked a computer screen mounted above the table where plates sat, getting final swirls of sauce and pinches of chopped green herbs. He moved quickly and efficiently, clearly in charge. Would he have wanted this job enough to kill Miles for it?
Stella’s voice broke into my thoughts. Standing next to her was a paunchy man with thinning red hair. “Emmy, I’d like you to meet Sam Anderson, the Tidal Basin’s owner. Sam, this is Emmy Adler. She has the new kite shop in town, Strings Attached. I thought you should meet since you both own businesses in town.”
“A pleasure,” Sam said, but his glance skittered to the kitchen, then the dining room before returning to her. “Enjoying your evening?”
“I am. This cioppino is amazing.”
At last his gaze settled on me. He smiled. “Thank you. It’s one of Miles’s recipes. It calls for grilling some of the seafood first on fir boughs. Oregon touch, you know?”
I remembered Stella’s hint that Sam had been angry at Miles’s flakiness. Not that he’d reveal it to me, a stranger. “I’m sorry about the chef. Losing him must be awful for you, personally and professionally.”
“Well—” He looked away.
“And so suddenly,” I prompted.
“I hated the guy,” Sam said decisively.
My spoon hit the bowl with a clatter. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Sure, I could tell you what a tragedy it is—not to say that it isn’t—but he’d gotten on my last nerve.”
“You hated him?” I still couldn’t get past that.
Sam pulled up the stool next to me. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not true.” He ran his fingers through the few strands of reddish hair stretched over his skull. “It’s been a lot to take with everything else.”
“I imagine,” I said, having no idea what he was talking about.
“Miles was a brilliant chef, but I’m a businessman. You know, running a business yourself.”
I nodded.
“I couldn’t depend on him. I asked him time and again to run the menus by me, give me an idea of what food bills might be, but half the time he’d just show up with something he’d bought off some fisherman on the dock, and it would cost a fortune.”
“I’m sure that could be frustrating for someone like you.”
“I shouldn’t have said ‘hate,’” Sam repeated. “That’s the East Coaster in me talking. I just meant that he could drive me to distraction. I came out to Oregon to mellow out, not sweat bullets every night hoping that my chef would turn up.”
How much would he tell me? “And then having to deal with the sheriff.” I held my breath.
“Oh, sure. Sure. They wanted to see everything, talk to everyone. Looking for the murder weapon.”
Miles had been stabbed, and the gash was wide. I shuddered. It could have been a kitchen knife. The Tidal Basin, “The Pride of Rock Point,” according to the chamber of commerce, might be a lot deadlier than its upscale, easygoing decor indicated. “How did you know?”
“They asked a lot of questions. When I told them a knife was missing, they flipped out.” Sam rose, and I swiveled in my seat to follow him.
“You mean the murder weapon came from here?” The couple next to us raised their heads. I mustered a smile and lowered my voice. “From your kitchen?”
“I doubt it. Stuff goes missing here all the time. Gets thrown out with the garbage, grows legs, you know. No biggie.”
Sam Anderson was a talker. I bit my lip and plowed ahead. “I heard there was quite a scene here the other night.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Where’d you hear about the mushroom hunters?”
Mushroom hunters? Bizarre. “Stella mentioned it.”
He nodded. “Yeah? Well, there you have it.” He glanced at the curly-headed chef, who’d taken a deep swig from a water bottle before reaching for another plate. Sam wasn’t going to tell me more, whether it was because of the couple next to me clearly straining to hear more or because of the busy scene in the kitchen that drew his attention again and again. “Anyway, nice to have met you. Glad you enjoyed the cioppino.”
A quick handshake, and he slipped back through the kitchen.
The woman next to me leaned over. “Was that the owner?”
“Uh-huh.” He’d told me, a stranger, quite a lot. I hoped he was equally honest with the sheriff.
“I heard that the chef was murdered. Someone found his body yesterday.” Surfing forgotten, the man was all ears.
“That’s what I heard, too,” I said.
“Grisly.”
Miles’s death had thrown ripples throughout Rock Point. It still remained to see what they would uncover.
* * *
By the time I left the Tidal Basin, the crowd was thinning. My landlord, Frank, occupied a table at the edge of the bar, where he could keep an eye on the basketball game. He waved a hand and smiled. Stella brought me my coat.
“Does Frank come here often?” I asked.
“He loves it here. He was one of the restaurant’s first investors. Did you get anywhere with him—Sam, that is?” Stella said. “I was hoping that with a fresh audience he might tell you more than he’d tell me.”
“He said it was mushroom hunters who threatened Miles the other night. Isn’t that strange?”
“Mushroom hunters, huh? Not as strange as it sounds. Mushroom hunting draws a queer crowd, and they get testy about their territory. I’ve heard stories . . .” She shook her head.
“Sam was frustrated with Miles, too, although he wouldn’t get into details.”
“That’s not news. He’s talking to you, though. That’s good.”
“One last thing. The sheriff wanted to know if any of the kitchen’s knives were missing.”
“So Koppen is looking into this angle. We can take comfort there.”
I still bubbled with adrenaline from questioning Sam, but I hadn’t uncovered anything new, except possibly the mushroom-hunting detail. That was a drag. “Nothing new to tell the sheriff.”
We were running through the details of having Stella work at Strings Attached, when a fleece-bedecked couple hesitantly pushed open the front door. “Are you still open?”
“For another half hour,” Stella said. “I’d be happy to seat you.” Then, to me, “I’ll let you know if anything else comes up. Drive safely.”
On the street, a wind had kicked up from the ocean. It could mean a change in the weather—not a surprise in spring in coastal Oregon. I thought about Sam’s changing moods and the mysterious mushroom hunters. Each had shown strong feelings about Miles—stronger than Avery’s, or at least stronger than she’d admit to. But it was Avery’s name Miles had written in his calendar. Besides the surf’s constant grumble, the night was quiet. Probably much like two nights ago, the night Miles had come down to the docks.
I looked toward the darkened pier. If the sheriff was right, and Miles thought he was meeting Avery here, he would have walked from the parking lot, past the vacant office at the dock’s mouth, and toward Avery’s boat. Did he have a flashlight? A flickering mercury lamp over the office was the dock’s only illumination. It would have been easy for the murderer to hide in the shadows, to loop an arm around the chef’s neck . . .
“Emmy.” A man’s voice shattered the silence. Heart in my throat, I slammed against the Prius. “I’m so
rry, did I startle you?” The man stepped into the streetlight. It was Jack Sullivan.
“No, I—” It took me a minute to regain my breath. “I just didn’t expect to see anyone, that’s all.”
He stood a moment, hands in pockets. We looked at each other. The gray in his eyes had turned almost steely in the dark. “Well,” he said finally. “Take care.”
He turned to enter the Tidal Basin.
chapter seven
The next day was Monday, my day off, and I was at loose ends. I’d already taken Bear on his morning walk, studiously avoiding the spot Miles’s body had washed up, and returned to the house for breakfast. I kept thinking there was something I should be doing, but I simply paced the living room, hearing the old planks creak beneath my feet. I couldn’t shake my cloak of anxiety.
Worse, Avery wasn’t out of bed. Usually she was an early riser, and it was the scent of her coffee brewing that woke me. At last, I knocked on her bedroom door. At her faint “Yes?” I barged in.
“Avery, I’m worried about you. Aren’t you going to get up and go to work?”
The curtains were drawn, but I made out her figure twisting in the sheets as she rolled to face me. “They’re covering for me today. I just don’t feel like going in.”
Bear jumped on the bed, and Avery reached a hand toward him. Good old Bear. I drew back the curtains. “What’s your story, morning glory? Rise and shine, turpentine.” It was a saying we’d started when we were in art school. It had seemed funny at one point, and now it was habit.
Avery merely groaned in reply.
“Maybe you’d feel better if you went on a walk. It’s raining, but not hard. There’s coffee downstairs. I could make you some eggs.”
“No, I just want to rest.”
I moved closer. “Miles’s death is hitting you hard. I get that. But there’s no reason you should sink into a black hole.” I didn’t want to say it, but I wondered if I should call her doctor. “I mean, you’re not sick, right?”
“They think I killed him. Everyone does. You should see them looking at me at the Brew House.”
“They’re just curious. You didn’t kill Miles. You know that. Sheriff Koppen will figure it out, too.” God willing.
“You should have seen them at poetry night. Mrs. Mendez recited a poem that had a line about ‘murdered dreams,’ and everyone swiveled to look at me. One of the customers even had the gall to ask what the body looked like. As if I knew.” She pulled the sheet over her head. “I can’t go back. Not right now.”
“They’ll be sorry once the truth comes out. If you stay away, it’ll only make them think you’re guilty,” I said. Avery didn’t respond. “You can’t stay in bed all day, you know.”
She pulled up the sheet and ignored me.
“Avery,” I said.
“There’s one thing you could do for me.”
“Sure,” I answered eagerly.
“Could you make me some of your mom’s tea—that one that puts you to sleep?”
I sighed in exasperation. “I’ll bring you a cup of coffee. Black.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “I know this is bringing up a lot of grief for you, so take it easy. But don’t let it defeat you, either.”
“Thanks.”
I couldn’t tell if she really heard me or not. “When I come back this afternoon, I expect to find you up and showered.” Maybe I’d been a little harsh. I softened my voice. “Listen. I’m sorry. I can’t possibly know how you feel. But there’s no reason you should bear all this pain. They’ll find the murderer. They will.”
She said something unintelligible, then rolled to face the wall and pulled Bear closer. I gave up.
I rode my bicycle to Strings Attached, hiding the rest of the Lassitude Tea in the shop’s kitchen so Avery wouldn’t be tempted by it. Then I went to the Brew House for a booster cup of joe and ran into Dave, whose store was also closed on Mondays this early in the season.
He leapt to his feet when he saw me. “Avery isn’t working today.”
“She’s still in bed.”
“Still?” The circles under his eyes showed that Dave hadn’t slept all that well himself. It wasn’t Miles’s death that had kept him up, though. It was Avery. I knew that. Dave was fair, and I’m sure he was always friendly when Miles came to rent a kayak or saw him at the Tidal Basin—heck, he’d even referred to Miles as a “friend”—but he couldn’t have been happy thinking of Avery and Miles together. At least I could cross Dave off the suspect list since he was with me when Miles was murdered.
“She’s taking . . . all this . . . hard.”
He rubbed his fingers over his close-cut beard. “I wish there was something I could do.”
A few locals had looked up from their coffee and were unnaturally quiet. Undoubtedly, they hoped to catch some scoop on the murder. I didn’t want to stick around.
“Is that coffee to go?” With meaning, I looked at the people at the next table, then back to Dave. “Why don’t we take a walk to the old part of town?”
Understanding passed over his face, and he slipped on his jacket. “Good idea.”
Above Main Street, where the streets sloped up to the bluff, was Old Town. It was really just four or five blocks of Victorian homes. A few of the homes had remained in their families over the years, but many had been converted to guesthouses or offices. The street’s trees were bright green with new growth, and daffodils splashed gold in many front gardens. The salty tang of the breeze reminded me that the ocean was only a short walk away.
“I’d been hoping to see Avery this morning,” Dave said.
“Like I said, she’s in bed. Doesn’t want to get up. She says everyone is looking at her like she’s guilty.” I tossed my paper cup in a street garbage can and buried my hands in my pockets. “Dave?”
“Yes?”
He was so deliberate, a clear thinker. “Do you have any ideas of who might have killed Miles?”
We walked a few more steps before he replied. “I’ve thought about it, even wondered if it might have been a random killing. I can’t think of anyone in Rock Point who would have done it.”
“I don’t see a random killer taking his body out on a boat and dumping it in the ocean, then planting an obviously fake meeting with Avery.”
“No. Someone planned it.” His shoulders tightened, probably at the mention of Avery.
“I’m worried the sheriff won’t look any further than her,” I said.
“That bothers me, too. He’s a good sheriff, though.”
Good sheriff, fair sheriff. That’s all anyone said about Koppen. All I knew was that he suspected Avery, and he was wrong. “I think he’s way off base. I wonder—have you ever thought of looking around for a little information that could set him back on track?”
Dave shot me a sideways glance. “What do you mean?”
He knew what I meant. I simply returned his look.
He shook his head. “No way. We could make a lot more trouble for Avery that way.”
“What do you mean?”
He stopped on the sidewalk and turned to me. “Say we found some terrific piece of evidence—a letter, or a conversation with someone—that nailed the murderer. Well, both of us obviously want to protect Avery.”
“Sure.” I wasn’t sure where he was going.
“The prosecutor could say we tampered with the evidence or influenced a witness. We’d mess up the case.”
Damn it. He was so logical. “We can’t just sit around, though. What if we look for hints, then feed them to the sheriff? That’s all.”
“Not a good idea. The best thing we can do is stay clear of the investigation.”
To Dave, it was open and shut. Wait and expect that justice would prevail. Well, life wasn’t a Frank Capra movie. Happy endings were not guaranteed. “Fine.” At least Stella saw things my way.
Dave’s thoughts had moved on, and we continued our walk up the hill. “Poor Avery. I wish there was something I could do.”
I bit my tongue. He’d nixed my suggestion, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do something. “She needs to get out of the house. At work, she’ll just run into nosy people who’ll ask upsetting questions.”
Dave’s pace slowed. “What she needs is to get outside. She loves the outdoors.”
“Yes. That’s a great idea.”
His pace picked up. “I’ll take her kayaking. There’s a spot up the river where the cormorants are nesting now. She’d love that.”
“That’s perfect. Exactly what she needs. Take some sandwiches with you—it’s getting close to lunchtime.”
Now Dave was antsy and started down the hill. He’d only gone a few steps before he stopped. “You coming with me?”
I’d noticed the sign on the especially gaudy Victorian mansion behind me. “Morning Glory Inn & Teahouse,” it read. Annabelle Black’s place.
“No,” I replied. “I’ll stay up here.”
* * *
Annabelle and I hadn’t exactly hit it off during our first, brief meeting, and now seemed as good a time as any to mend fences. Rock Point was a small town, and the smallest grudge could escalate into years of tension if it wasn’t nipped in the bud. Besides, the Morning Glory Inn attracted out-of-towners, some of whom surely would enjoy flying kites. It was lunchtime. Why not stop in?
My enchantment with the Victorian house’s gingerbread facade and old-fashioned screen door came to a screeching halt once I’d passed into the main hall. The place was festooned with doilies. Seriously. It would take a dozen tatting clubs a decade to churn out the number of doilies Annabelle had strewn on chairs, slung over end tables, and even framed on the walls.
“May I help you?” came a voice from the adjoining room. Annabelle appeared from a broad-arched doorway that must have once led to the living room and now housed a lounge. She wore a flowered apron over a prairie-style dress with an obscenely low neckline—like what a burlesque performer might have worn in a covered-wagon routine.