by Clover Tate
The little girl. “So you know them.”
“Uh-huh. I’m not surprised they’re selling morels. They need the money.”
“Do you know what he was doing the night Miles was killed?” I had a suspicion I sounded like a petulant kindergartner.
“Do you think he broke into the Tidal Basin and stole a knife, then tracked down Miles and killed him? Oh, then hid the knife at your house?”
“He might have.” I took a long sip of tea. It scalded the inside of my mouth, but I didn’t care. “He sounds pretty desperate. Maybe Sam Anderson had something to do with it.”
“Deputy Goff says you’re set on Sam Anderson for some reason. Why is that?”
“Well, he was down on the dock the night Miles was murdered, for one thing.”
“Yes, he was. We know that.” He stepped forward. “How about you? How do you know it?”
My gaze darted through the store as I pondered a suitable response. “Word gets around.”
“I see.” He wasn’t convinced; I could tell.
“Look, Miles wanted to open his own restaurant. Maybe Sam didn’t want the competition.”
Somehow Sheriff Koppen conveyed rolling eyes even as his expression didn’t change. “So he murdered his own chef, the chef that had earned his restaurant such a great reputation? He’s somehow managing to run the Tidal Basin now without Miles.”
Good grief, he was enraging. “Maybe he hired the morel pickers to do his dirty work for him; then he took the body out to sea.”
This time the sheriff’s face cracked. Into anger. I found myself wishing he’d go back to the same old impassive expression. “Ron has a bad temper, but he’s not a murderer.”
“And neither is Avery.”
We stared at each other. A face-off.
I didn’t know how the sheriff did this to me, but once again I was roiling mad and humiliated, all at the same time. “Fine,” I managed to spit out. A moment passed. “I’m sorry,” I said, this time sincerely.
The last two times I’d seen him, he’d softened at this point and let me off the hook. Today, no dice.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll question Ron about the scene at the Tidal Basin, and I’ll find out what he was doing the evening Logan was killed. I’ll question Sam Anderson again, too.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. His breath came evenly, but almost too evenly. Forced. “Emmy. Promise me. Leave this alone.”
I nodded, eyes wide.
“I don’t want to be taking your body to the medical examiner any time soon.”
* * *
I was uneasy all morning at Strings Attached. As soon as the sheriff left, I called Avery’s lawyer, but I had to cut the call off when a customer came in. I was never able to get back in touch with her. Business was good, but not brisk enough to keep my mind from wandering back to Avery and the sheriff’s warning. I recognized a few customers as locals, and they wanted to get a front-row view of the accused’s roommate. Those “customers” I sent on their way as soon as it became clear they weren’t really interested in the kites. Even my trusty sketch pad failed me as my few attempts at a new tail for the comet kite languished.
During an afternoon lull, I bit the bullet and called my mother.
“Finally,” she said simply.
“Well, it’s been superbusy here.” How much had she heard? Maybe she’d called for another reason. To warn me that Saturn was in Libra or something.
“I guess. Superbusy now that Avery’s in jail.”
Damn. She was unusually calm. Too calm. I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Well, like I said, it’s been busy.” I half wished someone would rush into the store demanding a kite so I could get off the phone, but the sidewalk outside was silent.
“Tell me what happened. All the newspaper said was that Avery was charged with killing the chef from the Tidal Basin and was being held without bail.”
“It’s all a huge mistake. Someone is setting her up. The sheriff thinks she was down at the docks when Miles Logan was murdered, but she was home. They say—”
“Honey, you don’t have to explain. I know Avery is innocent.”
Mom’s reassurance brought a lump to my throat. Like a little girl, I felt like crying. “Thanks, Mom.”
“This is why you called for the name of an attorney, right?”
I sighed. “Yes, Mom.”
“Why didn’t you tell us? We might have helped.”
“There’s nothing you could have done. It’s just a matter of letting the sheriff do his work.” Now I was sounding like Deputy Goff.
“The sheriff might take care of the evidence, but who’s taking care of you and Avery?”
“Oh, Mom.” I cleared my throat and pretended I was totally self-sufficient. “I’m fine. You keep forgetting that I’m adult, well beyond the years of needing someone watching my every move.”
The phone whooshed with my mother’s exhale. “I know that. You’ve been quite clear about it, and the croning circle agrees—”
The croning circle? “Mom—”
“But when your roommate and best friend is wrongly jailed for murder, a little support is in order. You can’t argue with that.”
“You’re right. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be you doing all the work. I’m just fine. I have friends here. People helping me.”
“I can’t just let you suffer, you know,” she said.
“I know, I know.” Here’s the thing: if she came, I’d be in worse shape than if she stayed home. I’d end up stuffed with quinoa and herbal remedies, and I’d feel like I had to pacify her when she was supposed to be taking care of me. I was supposed to be proving my independence. Instead, I was walking a fine line and risking falling back into my old pattern of letting her run my life.
Then an idea struck. “How about this?” I said. “How about if I call you once a day to give you an update?”
The other end of the line was quiet.
“Mom?”
“I’m thinking. You’ll call me once a day, you say?”
“Every single day. I’ll let you know what’s going on. That way you can stay in touch, and you’ll know I’m all right.”
“I still don’t really know what’s going on, though.”
“I can’t talk much right now because I’m at the shop. But I’ll call you tonight, all right? Then once a day.”
I could tell she still wasn’t completely satisfied, but she couldn’t think of a reason to argue, either. “All right,” she said at last. “Once a day, starting with tonight. But if I don’t hear from you, I’m driving straight over.”
“You’ll hear from me. Things will be fine. You’ll see.”
* * *
I knew I couldn’t put iT off any longer—I’d have to stop by the Brew House and tell Trudy that Avery might be out for a while. Hopefully she’d understand why I wasn’t completely honest about Avery the last time we spoke. I taped a “Back in 15 minutes” sign on the front door and hurried to the café.
The Brew House was busy with people scattered among the tables, sipping lattes and grazing on cookies and Avery’s famed carrot cake. Trudy was stocking the pastry case with cookies. When she saw me, she closed the case and gestured for me to join her in the kitchen.
“Any news about Avery?” she asked.
“Oh, Trudy, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth earlier. I was hoping she’d be out again and I wouldn’t have to stir up any drama.”
“Don’t worry about it. I understand.” A timer dinged, and she opened the oven to stir a batch of granola, releasing a wave of cinnamon and coconut.
“What do you need to keep things running here?” I had no idea of how to run a café, but someone had to do the books and order the supplies at the very least. I assumed that had been Avery.
“I can manage the staff and run the café, no problem, as long a
s I can get someone to open so I can drop Kaylee at day care. But payroll’s coming up. And we need to take care of some bills.”
There was a reason I went to art school and not business school. I could do this, I told myself. It would be good for me. “Is there a place Avery keeps her paperwork?”
“Back here.” She pointed to a locked cupboard in the corner with a folding chair nearby. “I’ve been putting the day’s sales receipts and bills in there, too.” She slipped a key from her ring and handed it to me.
“Thanks. If you don’t mind, I’ll take them with me and sort it out tonight.”
“Emmy,” Trudy said, “how’s Avery? Have you seen her?”
“She’s getting by. It’s awful.”
“She shouldn’t be in there.”
“No.” I piled an envelope full of cash-register receipts and any paper that looked important into my arms. “I’m going to visit her tonight. I’ll tell her you said hi.”
“Do that.” She reached out as I turned. “Keep in touch.”
With my free hand I lifted the counter that gave access to the kitchen, then hastily let it return to its place as I scooted back into the kitchen. Trudy jumped out of my way.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“That’s Ron.”
Standing in the café’s door was Ron, the morel picker, surveying the room. He hesitated, then strode to the counter. My heart kicked into overdrive. He doesn’t know you, I had to remind myself. Relax.
“I’d like a regular coffee,” he told Trudy. I melted into the background.
“Sure, Ron,” Trudy said. “On the house. It’s the least I can do to thank you for fixing that gutter. I wouldn’t have even noticed it was overflowing if you hadn’t said anything. Here. Have some carrot cake, too.”
He took his order to a table and glanced around again before taking a seat.
“Do you know him?” I asked Trudy when she stepped back into the kitchen, keeping my voice low. The music—an Eric Clapton album; Trudy liked her 1970s classics—made sure we wouldn’t be overheard.
“Sure. He brings his daughter in sometimes, too. They’ve had a rough time of it, and I don’t think it’s going to get better any time soon.”
“What do you mean?”
Trudy turned off the oven and pulled out a cookie sheet deep with granola. “About an hour ago, Sheriff Koppen came in. Ron was here, too. I’d hired him to do a few odd jobs around the building. Avery would have approved,” she assured me. “The sheriff told him he had some questions for him and led him out.”
“To his office, I bet.”
“That’d be my guess.” She hung her oven mitt above the stove. “I’ll let this cool.” She glanced out at Ron. “He’s brave to come back. I guess he wanted to show he had nothing to hide.”
Ron methodically dug into the carrot cake, almost deliberately not looking up. “What do you mean?”
Trudy propped a hand on her hip. “It’s a shame. The whole town will know he’s been questioned about Miles Logan’s murder. He’ll be lucky if he ever gets a job now.”
* * *
Once I’d closed the shop, it was hard to remember why I’d been so eager for the day to end. Frank wasn’t taking me to the Tidal Basin for a splurgy dinner. Jack hadn’t seen fit to call. All I had waiting for me was a cold, empty house. And Bear. At least I had Bear.
I figured I had an hour or so to make dinner and take Bear to the beach before I had to leave for Astoria and the county jail.
Shaded by a group of fir trees, the side of the house facing the driveway was dark as I pulled up. It would be lighter at the front of the house, where the porch faced the ocean and the setting sun, but from the angle I arrived, the house might well have been abandoned. Frank’s warning came back to me about losing the house. I clutched the steering wheel more tightly. Unease crept over me. Except for the ocean’s steady grumble, it was quiet up here. Remote.
“Hey, Bear,” I called as I unlocked the front door. Silence. “Bear?” Normally he’d be running in circles in the front hall at my arrival. My pulse leapt. “Bear!”
A few yips and scratching on wood told me he was somewhere near the kitchen. I dropped my purse and ran in, nearly blinded by adrenaline. “Bear!” I yelled again, my voice contorted with fear. His yips came from the laundry room. I opened the door, and he rushed into my arms and licked my face. “Bear, you’re all right. How did you get in there?”
He backed out of my arms and started barking again. Then I saw it. The kitchen’s cupboards were flung open, dishes smashed on the floor and counter. Broken jars of condiments made a minefield of the floor.
Someone had broken in. Someone had come into the house and ransacked it. My breathing tightened, and I stood, frozen, gasping tiny breaths. I looked toward the dog. He pranced from one leg to another in distress, but he didn’t act like anyone else was still in the house. What else would I find?
I grabbed the cast-iron skillet from the stove to use as a weapon. Steadying myself, I passed back through the hall and into the living room. Avery’s family photos had been swept to the ground as if an arm had wiped across the mantel in one swoop, and the vase of flowers had been upended. Otherwise, the living room was relatively unscathed.
Avery’s bedroom was next. “Come on, Bear,” I whispered, my voice cracking. I didn’t want to be alone.
As I’d feared, Avery’s bedroom had been deconstructed in pure anger. Usually, it was an oasis of calm with its cream walls, framed drawings, and ever-present vase of flowers on the bureau. Now the curtains were ripped from their rods, and the bureau tipped facedown. The closet suffered the worst of the violence. Every single item, from Avery’s lovely pastel sundresses to the chambray shirts she wore around the house, was ripped from its hanger and shredded.
The fury the intruder must have felt still resonated through the house. It was palpable. I forced my breathing to slow. I hadn’t had an asthma attack in years, but the tightening in my lungs warned me that my clean spell might be ending. I closed my eyes tight and opened them. Deep breaths, Emmy. Deep.
One more room to visit.
My bedroom door was ajar. This could not be good. Skillet held high, I gingerly pushed the door open with my foot. I groaned and fell back against the door frame. Not here, too. The covers on my bed had been pulled back, and some kind of toiletries—shampoo? soap?—were dumped all over the mattress. My oil paints had been squeezed from their tubes in viscous smears on the sheets. The closet’s contents were strewn across the floor, and the curtains yanked from the windows. Every one of my dresser drawers had been pulled clean from the bureau, their contents dumped.
But the mirror above the dresser. A crack severed it diagonally, probably made with the fireplace’s poker, which lay beside the bed. My blood ran to ice. Scrawled across the glass in the paint from a tube of oils read a single word: “KILLER.” Next to it was a crude drawing of a hanging man.
chapter twenty
“You’re not staying here tonight,” the sheriff said hours later. He’d found me on the porch, staring at the blackened sea and swaddled in blankets. Inside, a few people still lingered, taking photographs and dusting for fingerprints. Curiously, Deputy Goff wasn’t among them. Sheriff Koppen said she’d “taken a few days off the case.”
“Did you hear me?” the sheriff said.
“Yes. I’ll pack up a few things and leave.” The fight had gone out of me. From below I heard the surf, but the sky was too cloudy for stars. I just wanted to sit, to not move, to not think.
Still staring toward the ocean, I felt the couch give next to me. I looked toward the sheriff. For once, he didn’t have out his notepad.
“I’m sorry about all this. Rock Point’s a small town. I wish I could say that everyone held to the belief that a person is innocent until proven guilty, but they don’t. With the news about Avery being held—”
&nb
sp; “I think it’s the same person,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“I think whoever broke in today is the same person who hid the knife in Avery’s room.” It was a campaign to frame her and to scare me off.
I returned to staring toward the ocean, and the sheriff was quiet. He shifted. “I didn’t want to say anything—didn’t see the need to—but we received a letter today.”
I whipped my head toward him. “From whom?”
“Not signed. An anonymous letter. Someone said he—or she—saw Avery down by the docks the night Miles was killed.”
“A setup. They’re framing her.”
“The letter writer wasn’t the only witness, Emmy.” I refused to reply. “People are talking, and they’re coming up with their own conclusions.”
“You think they’d carry out some kind of vigilante justice?”
“I wonder if they have,” he said. “Tonight.”
“There’s one thing I wonder.” Koppen didn’t reply. “Why did they write the warning on my mirror and not Avery’s?”
“That worries me, too. Maybe they mistook the bedrooms. Or maybe their anger is shifting focus to you.”
I didn’t even have the energy to feel afraid. I was emotionally wrung out. “Oh” was all I managed.
“It’s a small comfort, but it looks like there was only one intruder.”
“I guess it only takes one to . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
A crime-scene technician, camera case in hand, stuck his head out. “We’re done here. I’ll take this back to the lab.”
“Gotcha. We’ll catch up tomorrow.” The sheriff stood. I was grateful he’d left the porch light off, because I didn’t want to be blinking up at him. “I talked to the Brewsters this afternoon.”
“Who?”
“The Brewsters. Ron and Monica.”
Oh yes. The image of Ron sitting forlornly at the Brew House that afternoon seemed so far away. I’d ruined his chances of supporting his family. It was just another contribution to today’s massive heap of failure. “Did you learn anything?” I asked, although I could guess what Sheriff Koppen would say.