The Quiche and the Dead

by Kirsten Weiss

  Chapter 9

  “What about the Baker Street Bakers?” she asked as we whizzed down Highway 1.

  “Oh, I like that one.” I slowed at a stoplight, moving into the left-hand turn lane. The sun, a plump tangerine-orange, floated on the horizon. I lowered the visor, squinting at the stoplight. A truck filled with garlic rumbled past, rocking my VW.

  “I think the name’s got pizzazz,” she said. “It’s more marketable, really says something about our sleuthing brand.”

  We turned toward the docks, driving past restaurants and a boutique hotel. Boat masts pierced the horizon, rose-gold streaked with cobalt.

  The cat’s stomach growled. He lay crumpled in Charlene’s lap, and she ruffled his fur.

  So far, I hadn’t seen him move of his own accord, aside from the occasional yawn.

  “Did you need to bring the cat?” I asked.

  “Frederick gets lonely.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Five years. I got him when he was a scrawny kitten, mewling on my front porch.”

  “He doesn’t move very much.”

  “Of course he doesn’t. He’s got narcolepsy. You have no idea how difficult it is for him between the narcolepsy and his deafness. If I left him at home, he wouldn’t have any social interaction.”

  The cat stretched, claws extended, and went limp. Narcolepsy. Right. Frederick was lazy and knew a good thing when he had it.

  “After we hit the harbor, what’s say we stop at the microbrewery for dinner?” Charlene rubbed her hands together. “Pumpkin ale!”

  “It’s probably out of season.” My current finances were veering me dangerously close to my college ramen diet. I glanced at her. She leaned forward in the car seat, grinning. “But why not?” I said. “It’s been ages since I’ve eaten there.”

  I pulled into the harbor parking lot. Charlene draped Frederick over her shoulder, and we walked to the harbormaster’s off ice, a gray clapboard building overlooking the small bay. The sunset reflected off its square windows.

  Charlene knocked on the door and strode inside without waiting for a response. “Loomis! Where are you, you old dog?”

  A bearded, white-haired man swiveled in his seat. He rose, gripping a harpoon, his frame somehow broad and gangly at the same time.

  I stiffened, imagining him in a black ski mask. But it was broad daylight, and even though we were alone with him, and he brandished a weapon, I’m sure we were perfectly safe. Perfectly. Safe.

  “Char! What are you doing here?” He kissed her on the cheek. “And how’s my favorite cat?”

  Frederick’s ears swiveled toward him. Deaf my eye! The cat knew when he was being discussed.

  “We’re looking for information,” Charlene said.

  “You and Frederick?” The blade of his harpoon glittered, wicked, beneath the overhead lamp.

  “Me and Val. She’s assisting me with my investigation.”

  I waved a limp-wristed greeting. Assisting? It was clear who thought she was the Sherlock Holmes and who the Watson was in this relationship.

  “Information’s not free, lass,” he said.

  Charlene peered at him over her spectacles. “It had better be today.”

  “What investigation?” he asked.

  “We’ve heard there have been strange lights spotted over the harbor,” I said. “What can you tell us about them?”

  “I go home at six o’clock.”

  “So you know the lights appear later at night,” I said.

  “They wouldn’t be much of a story if they happened during the day,” he said. “But you got me, I’ve heard about the lights in the sky.”

  “What exactly have you heard?” I asked.

  He rubbed the back of his neck with one wrinkled hand. “Fish stories, I reckon.”

  “UFOs?” Charlene asked.

  I stared at her. My jacket suddenly felt too tight, and I shifted my shoulders. UFOs?

  “I couldn’t say about aliens,” he said. “Most of the harbor activity takes place in the early morning and daytime. There’s a bit of night fishing that goes on, and a class that runs night dives, rain, shine, or fog. They’re at slip thirty-eight now, getting their equipment ready.”

  “Did Joe Devlin stop by and ask about the lights?” I asked.

  “Not of me.”

  We thanked him and crossed the parking lot to the pier, waves lapping at the pilings.

  “It’s 1947 all over again,” Charlene said, stopping beside a red and gray fishing boat. “Strange lights in the sky, a coverup.”

  “1947?”

  “Roswell! A UFO crashed in New Mexico at Roswell, and the government covered it up.”

  Uh-huh. “If Joe didn’t talk to the harbormaster, maybe he spoke with the night divers,” I said, refusing to engage in one of Charlene’s conspiracy theories. UFOs. Ha. I chafed my hands together to warm them.

  A point of heat flushed the skin between my shoulder blades.

  Stomach knotting, I looked to the parking lot, then down the dock. I knew that feeling. We were being watched.

  My breath caught. My ex, Mark, walked toward us on the pier, his hands in the pockets of his khakis. His navy fisherman’s sweater stretched tight across his chest. Either he hadn’t spotted us or he was pretending he hadn’t, staring down at his loafers as he neared.

  Blowing air into my hands to hide my face, I hunched my shoulders, turning away to examine a tugboat thick with barnacles. Had he seen me? Or had someone else been watching us?

  “What’s wrong?” Charlene asked.

  “Um, are you sure Frederick’s warm enough?”

  “Well, if you’re thinking of dumping him on that nasty tugboat to warm him up, you can think again.”

  Mark’s footsteps thunked past us, and the muscles between my shoulders relaxed.

  “Of course not,” I said. “I was admiring the lines of this boat. The wharf area is beautiful.” That, at least, wasn’t a lie. The sky had turned bluish purple, and the boats gleamed, bobbing in the softening light.

  “All San Nicholas is picturesque,” she said. “Haven’t you seen the postcards? Come on.”

  I followed her to slip thirty-eight, where a tall motorboat with a blue awning docked.

  Charlene hallooed.

  A bronzed Poseidon in a surfer T-shirt, his hair thick and blond, stepped onto the deck. He grinned, teeth gleaming, and his gaze traveled from my head to my sneakers. “If you’re here for the dive, you’re a couple hours early.”

  “No, I’m Val Harris. This is my friend Charlene McCree.”

  She nodded. “We’re here to ask you about the UFO—”

  I coughed. “A friend of ours, Joe Devlin, was at the harbor a few weeks ago asking about some strange lights. You might have heard he died recently. We’re following up for him on some unfinished business.” Which made us sound like a pair of ghost hunters, laying an uneasy soul to rest. I shuffled my feet, torn between embarrassment and suspicion. I had to stop suspecting every person I met was a potential robber/murderer. It was exhausting.

  “Oh, yeah, killed in that pie shop.” Squinting, he tugged on his ear as if there were water in it.

  “Did Joe Devlin speak with you?” Charlene asked.

  “He came out with us one night into the bay. Didn’t dive, just sat on deck. He said he wanted to enjoy the night air. But it wasn’t the best night for stargazing.”

  “Stargazing?” I asked. So he had come into contact with Joe.

  “That’s what it looked like he was trying to do, staring up above the cliffs, except it was overcast.”

  “Do you remember when this was?” I asked. From the bay, Joe could look up at the cliffs by Miss Pargiter’s house. Were the lights and her trespassers somehow connected? But what did that have to do with his death?

  “Must have been a Wednesday. That’s when we do all our night dives.”

  “How late were you out?” I asked.

  “We usually return right after midnight.”

&nb
sp; “Did you see any odd lights that night?” I asked.

  He laughed. “I was underwater with half a dozen night divers. All the lighting was odd.”

  Charlene pushed her glasses up her nose. “How much—”

  “Thank you,” I said, “you’ve been a big help.” Taking Charlene’s elbow, I hauled her up the pier.

  “What are you doing? We can surveil the cliffs from his boat!”

  “Or from one of the opposite cliffs.” I could only imagine what a boat trip would cost me.

  She frowned. “Joe used a boat.”

  “I get seasick.”

  “There are pills for that,” Charlene replied.

  “How about a beer?”

  “Oooh, can we get the fried artichoke hearts too?”

  “I’m counting on the fried artichoke hearts.” If I was going to blow a week’s worth of dinner money, I might as well live it up.

  * * *

  We got a table on the patio with the other pet owners. Warming ourselves beside a snapping fire pit, Charlene and I discussed the case in low voices.

  Wary, I watched the entrance to the patio. No one had seemed to have followed us to the microbrewery. Had I imagined someone watching us at the docks, my paranoia running amuck?

  “If Joe thought he had a serious case,” I said, “would he have told the police about it?”

  “Would Shaw have listened? No one listened to Pargiter when she complained about trespassers.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Old people might as well be invisible in this town,” she said. “No one takes them seriously.” She sipped her beer. “Granted, Pargiter is a weirdo.”

  “All right. What if it’s Joy?” I asked. “It sounds as if she spent a lot of time at Joe’s house. She could have slipped a castor bean into his coffee bean supply, figuring it would kill him, and waited for him to die. She said she thought he was in good health, but she could have known he had a weak heart.”

  “Joe did love his morning coffee. But we don’t know that’s how the castor bean was administered. And she wouldn’t have broken into Joe’s house. She had a key.” She fed Frederick a morsel of chicken breast.

  He ate it, his eyes shut, then rolled onto his back, a Roman emperor waiting for his stomach massage after a rich meal.

  “Maybe the cops are right, and the break-in and casebook don’t have anything to do with the murder,” I said. “It’s a little strange Joy’s spending so much time at Pie Town, since that’s where her uncle died.”

  “Maybe she’s trying to be nice to you.”

  A seagull alighted on the glass patio wall. Fluttering to the brickwork, it snatched up a crumb by our table. A terrier barked at the bird, and it lifted off, flapping into the darkness.

  “Joe’s Victorian has got to be worth something,” I argued.

  “At least a cool two mil.”

  I choked on my beer. “Two million dollars?”

  “You’ve seen the housing prices in this part of California. His house is old, but it’s big and you can see the ocean from the second floor. It’s only a sliver of blue, but it’s there, and that’s what counts.”

  Sparks shot from the fire pit, vanishing high into the air.

  “I’ve been looking at rentals,” I said, “not places to buy.” Because I’d known I wasn’t anywhere near to being able to buy a house. But two million bucks for an old Victorian? What was the plumbing like? “Had Joe remodeled recently?”

  Charlene laughed. “That old cheapskate? No way. But he’s had realtors sniffing around. That place is worth money.”

  “So Joy does have a motive.”

  “Not to break into her own house wearing a ski mask.”

  I waved aside her dissent. “So our suspects are Joy and person or persons unknown, someone Joe might have encountered in one of his investigations.”

  “Like your ex-boyfriend, Mark. He’s blond, and he’s on the library board, don’t forget. And he’s a weasel.”

  “But he’s not bloated. And he said he only joined the board recently. Even if there was something hinky going on there, it’s not likely he’d be involved.”

  “I’m glad you don’t hold a grudge. But that boy was a liar when he was a kid, and I don’t trust him now,” Charlene said.

  “When he was a kid?” He’d certainly told me a lot of lies. Most of it had been stupid stuff to impress me, and I’d let him off the hook when I’d found out his real age, his real income, his real family status. And there were the white lies, told, he said, because he wanted to make me happy. But then came the big lie—he’d never wanted to marry me, even though he’d been the one to ask. Why had he proposed? Had he been carried away by the moment?

  Charlene licked beer foam from her upper lip. “Oh, yes, I’ve got Mark Jeffreys’s number. He busted my window playing ball and tried to blame it on his little sister, but I’d seen what happened. We need to learn what his game is.”

  His game? Thoughtful, I sipped my beer. San Nicholas was a quaint beach town. It was awfully small for someone with big plans, like Mark. Why had he insisted on returning here? Was it the lure of being a big fish in a small pond? “All that may be true,” I said, “but it doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Still, all the more reason for you to talk to him tomorrow.”

  “I’ve already spoken with him, and he didn’t know anything.”

  “You spoke with him in public, in front of other library board members. He’s not going to give up the dirt under those circumstances.”

  “But—”

  “Talk to him.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather manage the interrogation?” There was no way I was going to talk to him by myself.

  “Uh-uh. You two have things to discuss. Alone. Find out what Joe was doing with someone on the library board.”

  “I’d rather slam my fingers in the walk-in fridge.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  Chapter 10

  I sat in my VW outside Mark’s realty office and gnawed the inside of my cheek. He worked on a shady side street in a blue and white, craftsman-style bungalow. A picket fence caged its garden, bursting with flowers. They shimmered in the light from the lowering sun.

  My stomach churned. As much as I hated the idea, I needed to talk to Mark. Aside from the gamers, Pie Town had been empty again today. And the library board had been the only other viable trail in the casebook to follow.

  A seagull landed on the picket fence and dug his beak into his wing, picking at a ruffled feather.

  Blowing out my breath, I told myself to get out of the car. Mark wasn’t an ogre. It was better that we’d broken up before the wedding than after. I just wish he would have told me his misgivings before I’d staked my future on San Nicholas and Pie Town. But I’d been having second thoughts too. I’d pushed them aside, pretended they were normal prewedding jitters. Why had I ignored my instincts? Had it been insecurity? Desperation? Denial?

  I stepped out of the car, not bothering to lock the door. In spite of Joe’s murder, San Nicholas was still the sort of place where you didn’t need to worry much about crime. Passing the wooden sign advertising the realty office, I walked up the steps and knocked. A black cat uncurled from a patch of sunlight beside a wide-leaved plant and yawned.

  A slender woman in a red wrap dress and Miss America hair opened the door. She flashed her teeth. “Why, hello! Come on in. How can I help you?”

  “My name’s Val Harris. I’m here to see Mark.”

  The corners of her cupid-bow mouth turned down. “He’s on the phone right now. If you take a seat, I’ll tell him you’re here as soon as he’s free.”

  So Mark had a receptionist now. That was new. “Thanks.” I sat on the leather couch and checked out the home improvement magazines on the coffee table. One heel bouncing on the floor, I picked up a magazine and thumbed through photos of bathrooms.

  The receptionist made a call. “Mark? Val Harris is here to see you.” She paused, flicked a glance at me. “
I see. Yes.” She hung up, her expression less friendly. “He’ll be with you in a moment.”

  “Thanks.” I stopped on an article about paint colors and mood, pressing my hands harder on the slick paper.

  Mark leaned out of his office. He ran a hand through his blond hair and every strand sprang back into exactly the right place. The man used more hair product than I did.

  He smiled. “Hi, Val. Come on in.”

  Ache speared my chest. I faked a smile in return, following him into his office.

  He shut the door behind us. Bookshelves lined the walls. A leather couch sat on one side of the room, facing a coffee table and two matching wingback chairs. His desk stood near the opposite wall, its back to a window overlooking a shady yard filled with ferns. I concentrated on the view. It hurt to look at him.

  He motioned me to one of the chairs, and I sat on the couch.

  Mark took the chair he’d offered me. “So what can I do for you? Have you changed your mind about that lease?”

  “No. I can’t afford to move Pie Town, and I like my location.”

  “The location isn’t doing much for you now.”

  “We have had a few slow days since Joe’s death. But Pie Town wasn’t responsible for that. Once the police find out who killed Joe, customers will return.”

  He raised a brow. “So, Val, what do you want?”

  I wanted his help. I wanted to edge into the question of the library board. I wanted to run, shrieking. “I want to get my stuff out of your storage locker.”

  He shifted in his chair. “Now’s not really a good time.”

  “Just lend me the key. I won’t take anything that’s not mine, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  He made a face. “Come on, Val. You know it’s not. Things are jammed in there, and you’d have to dig through it to get to your stuff. Something might fall on you and get broken.”

  “Or break me?”

  “Right.”

  I propped my head on my fist. “When will be a good time to get my things? I’ve found a new place to live, and I need them.”

  He shifted some papers on his desk, not meeting my gaze. “Maybe in a couple weeks. Things are busy. The real estate market is heating up. Look, I’ll call you.”