Blown Away

by Clover Tate

  “He’s helping with the locks,” Dave said. “The frames on these windows are almost rotted out. Even with the locks, they won’t be supersecure.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said.

  Dave set down the drill again and returned to the couch.

  Jack explained. “The other night Emmy asked me to help find who killed Miles. I’d heard from a couple of people that Avery was down at the docks the night Miles was killed, and I just couldn’t get past that.” He focused on Bear. “After talking with Dave, I know I was wrong. Obviously, it was all a mistake. And now, with the fire—it couldn’t have been Avery.”

  “Because she’s in jail,” Dave said.

  Embarrassment made me look away. Jack hadn’t been wrong about Avery being at the dock, just wrong about what it meant. I couldn’t tell him about her meeting with Miles now. Not with Dave listening.

  Dave looked from Jack to me. “You guys talk? I thought you’d only just met.”

  “Um, sure,” I said at the same time Jack mumbled “Uh-huh.” I’m not sure which of us was more embarrassed.

  “There’s a jar of something weird on the water heater,” Dave said, steering us away from the awkward moment.

  My mom’s kombucha. “It’s a fermented beverage my mom is making for me.”

  “There’s something floating in it. I think it’s gone bad.”

  “It’s supposed to be there. Don’t worry about it—it tastes better than it smells.”

  “Maybe there’s another way to get information about Miles’s plans,” Jack said. “You’re right—I know he had them. He talked about the restaurant he wanted to start, about how he’d take some of the ideas he introduced at the Tidal Basin and really run with them.”

  “If he was going to start a new restaurant, he’d need capital,” Dave said.

  These guys were frustrating. “I know. That’s what I said. That’s why I wanted to see the plans, see if I could figure out who else might be involved.”

  “I still can’t believe someone burned down Miles’s cabin,” Jack said, fixing me with those disturbingly velvet eyes.

  “I was nearly run off the road. It had to be arson.”

  “Did you get the car’s make?” Dave asked.

  “No. Too dark, and I was caught too off guard. I couldn’t even tell you if it was a car or a truck.”

  “You left your name with the emergency dispatcher, right?” Dave said. “If so, we can expect a visit from the sheriff.”

  “I know.” The day was starting to get to me. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and that exhaustion had been chased with a funeral and arson. And the day wasn’t even over. Once the sheriff arrived, undoubtedly with Deputy Goff, my biggest fan, it would get worse.

  “One thing must be true, though,” Jack said. “No one would go to the trouble of burning down the cabin if there wasn’t something incriminating in there.”

  “It has to be about the restaurant,” I said. “Has to be. Now we’ll never know.”

  Jack shifted in his seat. “I know a little about it. Miles wanted to open a family-style place like they used to have at the old logging camps, where everyone shares a table and chooses from a few things he’d prepare each night, depending on what was in season and what seafood he could get.”

  I could imagine a place like that. It was an original idea, homey. And the food would be several steps above what any logging camp would serve, of that I was sure. “Do you know when he planned to open it, or where it would be?”

  “Nope. I really don’t,” Jack said. “He talked about it like it was a sure thing, but I never heard anything concrete.”

  “What about financial backers?” I asked. “Did he mention anyone?”

  “No one.”

  Dave and Jack sat without talking, each holding a beer bottle. Behind Dave, Avery’s usual vase of flowers was gone—shattered during the break-in—and days of mail was spread over the table by the front door. I needed to get the place back to Avery’s standards. Tomorrow. Tonight I had to get some sleep. Tomorrow I’d have to deal with the fire marshal, the sheriff, and heaven knew what else.

  “Oh well. You guys, I’m beat. Stay up as long as you’d like, but I’ve got to get to bed. Could you let Bear out before you turn in for the night?”

  “Wait,” Dave said. “I have something to show you.” He pulled a duffel bag from behind the couch and withdrew a paper roll from its depths. I immediately recognized it as Miles’s restaurant plans.

  I hopped to the edge of my seat. “That’s them. The plans.”

  “You had them all along?” Jack said. “How—I mean, what—”

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” I barged in.

  “You don’t need any excuses to get in trouble.” Dave looked to Jack, then me. “Neither of you do.”

  “How did you get them?” Jack asked.

  “When I was at the service today, I was thinking about the murder, too. I couldn’t stop thinking about how unfair it was that Miles died and Avery was set up to take the blame. So I drove out to the cabin straight from the funeral.”

  Dave. That sly dog. “I can’t believe it.” Avery had better wake up to Dave soon. He might be quiet, but that old trope about still waters running deep could have been written about him. “How did you get in? When I left, I locked up behind me.”

  “Not a big deal.” Dave pulled back the plans. “The plans go straight to the sheriff tomorrow morning.”

  “Unless he shows up here tonight,” Jack pointed out.

  “Well, it doesn’t do us any harm to look at them now, right?” I said. “I mean, they already have your fingerprints on them.” Mine, too, I thought.

  Dave hesitated. Jack said, “Emmy’s right. Looking won’t hurt.”

  “All right, I guess.” We cleared the pizza box from the coffee table, and Dave unfurled the plans, holding them down at opposite corners.

  “This doesn’t look like the whole thing,” Jack said.

  “You’re right,” I said. They were the plans I’d seen in Miles’s cabin. They focused on the restaurant portion of what looked to be a larger complex. They showed an open kitchen, similar to that of the Tidal Basin, with a large fireplace in the dining room. I imagined rough-hewn walls, a wood floor, and river rock surrounding the hearth. It would have been a fabulous place.

  “I can’t tell where it was supposed to be,” Jack said. “In Rock Point?”

  “Nehalem Resort. Hopkins Management,” Dave read from faded blue letters in the corner.

  “Frank. That’s his company.” I let that sink in. He had certainly talked about building a resort, and he was one of the town’s biggest boosters. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Miles’s cabin had burned down right after I’d discussed him with Frank. “Frank was the financial backer.”

  Jack seemed to read my mind. “What if Frank lent Miles money, then Miles frittered it away?”

  “Miles did take that culinary tour of Asia last summer,” Dave said. “I liked the guy a lot, but he wasn’t a solid planner.”

  Unlike Dave, I added silently. “Would that be a reason to kill someone? Sue him, sure, but murder?”

  “Maybe it was a crime of passion. Frank got angry, and boom,” Jack said.

  “But framing Avery.” I shook my head. “Someone thought it all out.”

  “Why frame Avery at all?” Dave said. “I don’t get that part. Sure, a murderer might want to frame someone, but Avery?”

  “There must be more to the story,” I said. “We’re not understanding something.” Frank couldn’t be a murderer. He was a nice man. Conventional. Not a killer. “I keep going back to Sam Anderson, but he has an alibi for the night.” I told them about him and Deputy Goff. Dave seemed unimpressed, but Jack had me repeat the story twice, especially the “cup of Goffee” part.

 
Finally, he set down his beer bottle. “It wasn’t public knowledge, but Sam was ready to fire Miles. He told him so just a few days before Miles died, and Miles told me. Miles was too unreliable, Sam said. He probably suspected Miles was planning on starting something up of his own. But I don’t see him killing Miles, planned or otherwise.”

  Sam had told me as much. Deputy Goff would give him an alibi for the night of the murder, anyway. So it was back to Frank. But why? “I wish I could just ask Frank, but he’s in Bandon Dunes now. Golfing. But before he left . . .”

  “Before he left, what?” Jack said.

  “Before he left I asked Frank about Miles and what it would take to open a new restaurant. He didn’t say anything about backing Miles.”

  “So, either he was lying—” Dave started.

  “Or . . .” Jack let the sentence hang. “The fire.”

  “First thing tomorrow,” Dave said. “First thing, you’re going to see the sheriff.”

  chapter twenty-seven

  I’d never before noticed how loud my bedside clock was. In my quiet bedroom, the second hand’s tick as it crept around the dial was torture.

  Jack had left a few hours ago, and Dave and I had turned in not long after. It had to be past midnight now. I had decided what I had to do. It was risky, but I had no alternative. I just needed to make sure Dave was sound asleep first. I’d thought about enlisting Stella in my plan, but remembering her grief at Miles’s funeral, I didn’t have the heart to call her. Moving as quietly as I could, I slipped from bed, already dressed in jeans and a black sweater. I tossed a black hoodie over my arm.

  I tiptoed to my bedroom door and cracked it open. Out of some sort of honor, Dave had refused to sleep in Avery’s room and was stretched out on the living room couch—probably not comfortably so, either. Sneaking past him wouldn’t be easy. Luck was with me, and Dave’s breathing was steady and slow. Asleep. Bear lifted his head, jingling his collar. Damn. I hadn’t thought to remove it, and I froze, holding my breath. Bear laid his head down again, although his eyes still followed my movements. Dave slept on.

  Still holding my breath, I crept out down the hall, through the living room, and past Dave. He didn’t move. A sliver of moonlight through the curtains outlined his shape. Now into the kitchen and out the back door. Quietly. The new bolt Dave had installed stuck for a moment, and I held my breath as I eased it open. At last, it gave.

  Outside, crisp night air filled my lungs. I walked as lightly as I could over the driveway’s gravel and pulled my bicycle from the side of the house. The car would definitely awaken Dave.

  Once I’d walked my bike from the gravel driveway to the asphalt road, I hopped astride, clicked on my lights, and pedaled toward town. The night was colder than I’d thought, and I shivered in my sweater and hoodie. It was unusually clear, and the moon cast shadows through the fir trees. So far, no traffic, but that wasn’t unusual out here, certainly not at this time of night. When I got closer to town, I saw a few houses with lights still on and televisions flickering. The Tidal Basin’s parking lot was just about empty—again, not unusual for midnight.

  At last I arrived at Strings Attached. I carried my bicycle up the stairs and leaned it against the railing, where it couldn’t be seen from the street. Although I could have come up with a legitimate excuse to be in my own store and workshop, I saw no need to raise suspicions. I entered the store and locked the door behind me. I padded to the workshop and turned on the tiny light above the stove.

  My plan was to break into Frank’s apartment using the old stairway that once connected the floors. My side of the door was simply latched shut. I undid that easily. I was less sure of what was on Frank’s side. The door was an old three-paneled Victorian, probably original to the house. And like everything else in the house, it wasn’t square. I shone my flashlight where the door met the frame. The crack was wide enough that I could tell Frank also had a latch on his side of the door.

  I took a thin spar from my workbench and slipped it into the crack. It was a tight fit, but by sawing it gently I edged it up toward the latch and lifted. It flipped up on the first try. Man, this was turning out to be a cinch.

  Carefully I pulled the door toward me and padded up the stairs. Frank had used the stairwell as a storage area, and I dodged a pair of skis and two boxes of papers before I got to the top. I’d only been up here once, to sign my lease. I remembered the trappings of a vacation bachelor pad: a nice recliner, television set, a king-sized bed through a doorway.

  I’d made it in, a regular Pink Panther. Now to see if I could find where Frank kept his business files. If he had a deal with Miles, he’d have a record of it somewhere.

  A scraping sound—a window opening?—yanked my pulse into overdrive. I retreated to the stairwell and crouched, my heart pounding in my ears. For a moment, then two, I heard nothing. I let out my breath and stood. Once again—but this time even more cautiously, if possible—I mounted the steps.

  And came face-to-face with a man.

  chapter twenty-eight

  “Jack! What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Shhh. Not so loud. I could ask you the same question.”

  He stepped back, and I climbed from the stairwell. “You know why I’m here. The same reason you are.”

  “You came up the connecting stairs.”

  “Yes.” Standing so close to Jack in the dark had its appeal. Too bad I couldn’t enjoy it more. “How did you get in?”

  “The door. It was an easy lock to pick.”

  We stood, silent, for a moment. “Did you have a particular plan?” I asked.

  “No. I thought I’d look around, see if I could find a contract or something showing that Miles and Frank were in business together.” From the streetlight through Frank’s kitchen window, I saw Jack’s jaw clench.

  “Same here,” I said. “Well, I guess we’d better get busy.”

  I glanced through the small apartment. On the ocean-facing side of the apartment was a living room with a small table near the kitchen for dining. The stairwell emerged in the middle of the apartment, next to the kitchen.

  “There are a couple of boxes on the stairwell. Let’s go through those first,” I said.

  The wooden stairs creaked as we descended. I sneezed at the dust. Frank hadn’t swept down here in a while. Hopefully we wouldn’t leave too obvious a trail.

  “Gesundheit,” Jack said. He lifted the lid of one of the Bankers Boxes and trained his penlight on its contents. “Files. They’re all labeled.”

  “At least he was tidier about records than his housekeeping.” I blew a dust bunny from another box and tipped its lid aside. I pulled out one fat file and flipped through its contents. I pulled another and did the same. “Looks like he owns a miniature golf course in California. All these files are from California.”

  “These, too,” Jack said, and replaced the box’s lid. “Plus, they’re at least two years old. He must keep more-recent files somewhere else. Let’s try upstairs.”

  He lifted his penlight and led the way toward the back. As I’d hoped, a closed door led to a small bedroom with a computer desk, chair, and filing cabinet. Frank’s office. “If you take the desk, I’ll check out the filing cabinet,” Jack said.

  “All right.” I twisted the blinds closed and turned on my own flashlight. On the desk was a computer mouse, but no computer. Frank must have taken the laptop with him. A dirty coffee cup and a mouse pad sat to its right. On the left were a few still-sealed envelopes—the power bill, the water bill. Underneath was my rent check. I’d wondered when he was going to deposit it. Frank must not be hurting for money. That was one point in his favor, anyway. If he’d killed Miles, it hadn’t been for the cash.

  “Finding anything?” Jack whispered. A drawer of files stretched in front of him.

  “Not much.” On a Post-it, Frank had scrawled a phone number. A boarding pass for a
past trip to Palm Springs lay next to it. Nothing obviously connected to Miles or to a restaurant.

  “Wait. Jackpot.” Jack pulled a file from the drawer with Miles’s name written in blue pen. He opened it on the desk, his hand brushing mine. “Look.”

  “A promissory note,” I said.

  Jack tapped the top of the page. “Dated almost a year ago. A hundred thousand dollars.” He looked at me. “So Miles did owe Frank money.”

  I shook my head. “Okay, so Miles was in debt to Frank. Why would Frank kill him for it? Sure, that’s a lot of money, but Frank is doing all right. His car probably cost almost that. Besides, with Miles dead, there’d be no way to repay him.”

  Jack replaced the promissory note but hesitated over the folder. At last he slipped it back into the drawer. “You’re right.”

  “Nothing else in there?”

  “No.” Jack glanced around the room, his penlight illuminating a trail across Frank’s pictureless walls, over the desk, to the closet. “I’m feeling creepy about being here. Maybe we should leave.”

  “There’s got to be something else. Some other reason. Let’s just spend another five minutes.”

  “I don’t know. Miles owed Frank money. What else could there be?”

  “Just a couple more minutes,” I said.

  “All right. But that’s it.” Jack glanced back at the door.

  “Relax. Frank is out of town, golfing. We’re fine.” I opened the closet door and ruffled through an overcoat and two puffy jackets.

  “Just coats,” Jack said, clearly still nervous.

  “There’s more.” Pinned to the wall by a long tweed coat was a portfolio standing on its end. It nearly reached to my waist. “Check it out.” I pulled it from the closet.

  “What is it?”

  “A portfolio. Artists and architects use them for storing sketches and things like that.” My gut tingled. This was it. I was sure. “If Frank has a copy of the restaurant plans, they’d be in here.” I laid the portfolio on the carpet and unzipped it flat to reveal sheets of architectural sketches. Yes. But it was much more than plans for a restaurant. A plan for a mess of buildings and parking lots unfolded.