by Nancy CoCo
“Oh, that would have gotten him riled,” Irene said. “Henry’s dream since he was a child was to brew beer. He started off with one of those home-brew kits and perfected his recipe. Last year he sunk eighty thousand dollars into that equipment.”
“How could Warren target these men to create his own business?” I asked.
“Warren had been in banking for fifteen years. He knew all the ins and outs and the ways to get things you wanted.”
“Sounds like I need to talk to those three men,” I said, taking notes. “I’ll start with Henry. It seems as if he had the most to lose.”
“Be careful poking around,” Mrs. Tunisian said. “Someone out there thinks they have a license to kill.”
“Oh pooh,” Irene said. “This isn’t a James Bond novel.” She turned to me. “But do take care. If they suspect you’re investigating, you never know what sort of mischief they might pull.”
“We’ll keep our eyes out for anyone else who might have wanted Warren dead,” Mrs. Morgan said.
“Thanks, everyone,” I said and put Mal’s coat on and hooked her leash to her harness. “Come on, Mal,” I said. “Let’s go back home. Allie needs your company and I have a few appointments to plan.”
Chapter 4
The plan was set. I was going to go house to house to see if they would contribute to a scholarship fund in Warren Engle’s name. The three men with cause to kill Warren were on the path of houses I would visit. That way I had a reason to knock on their door without seeming as if I were investigating them.
I debated whether I should tell Douglas or not. Right now, all he knew was that I was going around the island asking for donations. He had no idea I would investigate as I went. On the one hand, I knew my investigating would upset him—or worse, he might think he needed to go with me and protect me. On the other, I hated keeping secrets from the man I loved. I suddenly knew how hard investigating must be for Allie.
What I really needed to do was to prove that none of these men who had reason to kill Warren actually did it. If I could rule out people as I went, I could narrow down who might have done it and why. That was the big question. Understanding why someone would kill a man and put his body on a sleigh was the biggest step to understanding who was responsible.
I supposed Rex Manning would be investigating Emma and Leigh Ann first. From what I understood, investigating the family was the main focus in any murder case. But as far as I was concerned, neither Leigh Ann nor Emma wanted Warren dead. It was clear how much they mourned him. I would be devastated if anything happened to Douglas. I couldn’t imagine how Leigh Ann was managing to be as social as she was. She was strong but showed no sign of relief or regret. There was no way she could have done it.
“I’m going out to ask for donations,” I said as I pulled on my leather gloves and picked up my donation bucket. “I left my route on the kitchen table.”
“Try not to overwork yourself,” Douglas said as he stopped to give me a quick kiss. “Give me a call or text every thirty minutes or I’ll be coming to check on you.”
“You worry too much,” I said and placed my hand on his cheek. “I’m a grown woman. This is simply a donation request. I’m sure most people will be kind about turning me down or helping me out.”
“The crime rate has gone up these last two years,” he said. “I’ll worry until you get home.”
“I’ll keep you posted. Good bye, my love.” We kissed again and I left the cottage. He watched me from the glass door. I suspected he knew I was keeping something from him. It made me feel a twinge of guilt.
* * *
I knocked on the first house and Gertrude Holmes answered the door. “Hi, Gertrude,” I said. “I’m taking donations for a scholarship fund for Warren Engel’s kids.”
“Oh my goodness, I was reading about that in the newspaper. What a tragedy. Come in, come in,” she said and held the door open for me and waved. “I understand you and Douglas saw the whole thing.”
“Oh no,” I corrected. “We saw his body fall out of a sleigh. We called 9-1-1.”
“Terrible, just terrible. Can I make you a cup of tea?”
“I would normally say yes, but I’m hoping to make it through a few of the neighborhoods today. If I stayed and had tea at each home, I’d never finish and Douglas would come tearing out to find me.”
“It’s good to keep a man on his toes,” Gertrude said with a wink. “But I understand. Promise you’ll come next week and we’ll share a cup of tea and some good gossip. I want to hear all about what it was like to find a body.”
“I’ll call you when I can check my calendar. I’m still working down at the McMurphy, you know.”
“Ah yes, how is Allie and the fudge business? Those two girls are quite the talk of the town these days.”
“Allie’s great. She makes better fudge than Liam did, but don’t tell her I said so or her head might swell. Her friend Jenn Christensen is really good at planning vacations and events for people. Why, the McMurphy is three-quarters full and it’s not even high season.”
“That’s wonderful.” Gertrude went to her back room and I waited in the hallway. When she came back she brought out a folded twenty-dollar bill. “Here you go. I know how hard it is to lose your father. It must be worse to find out he was murdered.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Do you want a tax receipt?” I reached into my pocket, where I had placed a pad of paper to write receipts on.
“No, thanks,” she said and placed the bill into my little fishbowl. “Some things are best done in secret.”
“Thank you, Gertrude,” I said. “I’ll call you in the next couple of days.”
* * *
The next five houses were pretty much repeats of my visit with Gertrude. People gave what they could. There were two other houses on the block where no one answered the door.
I liked walking along the plowed sidewalks, enjoying the Christmas decorations.
The next house on the block belonged to Henry Higginboom. My heartbeat picked up as I knocked on his door. No one answered. I frowned and peered in the window. His drapes were closed. I craned my neck to see if I could see if anyone was home. “Hello?” I said. No answer. So I walked around the house to check whether anyone was in the back. “Hello?”
No answer.
“Well,” I muttered. “No one’s home.”
The next house was a flat-out rejection. “Not that I don’t wish the girls well,” the older woman said.
I understood. Some seniors were on a budget. If they gave to everyone stopping by for a handout, they would be in need of one themselves. Still, I knew there were enough of them on the island who had more than enough money to give. Unfortunately, the rich didn’t tend to winter here.
The next house belonged to another suspect from the senior citizen gossip line, Ralph Finnish. I was a little less nervous this time. I figured a young guy probably wasn’t home during the day. I might need a new plan.
I knocked on the door. Waited a few breaths and then was turning to go when the door opened.
“Hello?” a man in his fifties said.
“Oh, you’re home,” I said as I turned around.
“I’m always home,” he grumbled. “Lost my job last year. Lost a lot of things. Who are you and what do you want? Are you selling Girl Scout cookies? Isn’t it early to do that? You look kind of old for a Girl Scout. So what is it?”
“Oh,” I said as he paused and looked at me with curiosity. He was wearing pajama pants, a T-shirt, and a ratty old robe. It was 4 p.m. and he looked as if he had spent the day in his pajamas. “I’m Frances Devaney. I’m a dear friend of Leigh Ann Engle. I’m here to collect money to start a scholarship fund for Warren’s children.”
“Yeah, I don’t care who you are, lady. I’m not helping that guy.”
“That sounds rather personal. Why not? What did Warren’s children ever do to you?”
“It’s not his kids, lady. It’s him. That guy robbed me of my property and my wife
left me because of it. I wouldn’t go an extra foot to save him from a fire.”
“Warren is dead,” I said. “Didn’t you know? That’s why I’m collecting money for his children.”
“What? Dead? What did he do? Something shady, I figure.”
“I don’t think he ‘did’ anything,” I said. “No one does anything to deserve being killed with a blunt object.”
“So, someone knocked him upside the head.” Ralph crossed his arms. “Good. That guy had it coming, you know. He was trading on people’s bad luck to get what he wanted. I swear, he’d been eyeing my property for years. The minute I get fired, he’s at the door claiming I haven’t paid my bills. Well, lady, I pay my bills, but he tells me I have to pay off the mortgage that day or he’s going to repossess my property. I’d just gotten laid off. My head was reeling. There was no way I would have been able to pay off the loans. So, bam. He repossesses it. I would have taken him to court over it, but he knew I couldn’t have afforded a lawyer.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Yeah, well, so am I. But you know, that guy did me a favor. I didn’t have to pay the taxes on the property. If I had paid off my loans I would have been out of work, penniless, and have back taxes to pay. So I guess not all bad things have unhappy endings.”
“So you aren’t mad at Warren?”
“What, you think I might have killed him? Ha!” He laughed until his eyes shone with tears. “Lady, I might have been hopping mad at him when he forced me to give up my property and my wife left. But after I calmed down and thought it through, I was glad. If I had any extra cash I would have sent him a thank you gift.”
“I see,” I said. “So do you have anything you want to give to his children during their time of loss?”
“All I got to give is a piece of advice. Bad things happen to everyone. You got to make lemonade, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. I’ll let Emma know you wish her and the kids all the best.”
“You do that, lady,” he said. “And if you ever need any electrical work done, give me a call. I’m a licensed electrician, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. Thank you for the information. I’ll keep my eye out for any jobs and send them your way.”
“You are one crazy lady,” he said and closed the door on me.
I walked down his shoveled steps and mentally crossed one suspect off the list. If the other two suspects felt the same about their losses, I was going to have to go back to the senior center to see who else I might need to investigate.
But it was growing dark and Douglas had texted me twice in the last fifteen minutes. It was time I gave up on my quest for information. Maybe tomorrow would bring better results.
Chapter 5
“I’m collecting money for Warren’s children. We want to start a scholarship fund for them.”
“Are you going door-to-door?” Jenn asked me.
We were in the lobby of the McMurphy. I sat behind my receptionist desk and checked my email. Mal was in her cuddle bed at my feet. Mella, the cat, was curled up in a chair by the fire. Jenn, always full of energy, danced around the room.
“Yes, I’m going door-to-door. It certainly is faster than putting up notices at the church or sending flyers out through the senior center.” My reading glasses were purple today and sat at the end of my nose, as I only needed them to read things on the screen. Right now, I was checking the hotel’s morning emails.
Jenn popped up beside me. “You don’t need to go door-to-door. All you need is a fund-me page.”
“A what?”
“A fund-me. It’s a website where people ask other people to donate money. Sometimes it’s for silly things, like a trip to the beach. But people can fund other people’s dreams—like money to patent an invention and such. Also, it’s a place where people ask for donations for things like scholarship funds.” She gently pushed me aside, took my keyboard, and brought up the site on my browser.
“Huh,” I said.
“Let me set up a page for you. You’ll see, people will donate. You’ll certainly get more for the fund than the money in that fishbowl.”
“Is it real money?” I asked. “It’s not that bitcoin game stuff, is it?”
“It’s real,” Jenn said with a laugh. She spent a few minutes creating a page and then published it. “See? Now all you have to do is wait. I’ll start by donating twenty dollars.” A few clicks and my total was twenty dollars. Within a few minutes someone else donated two dollars, then another donated five. Others began to donate and I watched, incredulous, as the money total increased. All by strangers.
“Wow,” I said. Then I frowned.
“What?” Jenn asked.
“Now I have no reason to go door-to-door.”
“Isn’t it great?” Jenn asked.
“Not really,” I muttered.
“Why, did you want to go door-to-door? Wait a minute.” She looked at me hard. “Are you investigating Warren’s murder?”
“I’m helping Leigh Ann,” I said.
“So Leigh Ann is investigating?”
“No, no, she’s not. She’s too overcome with grief and shock.”
“Oh, you’re investigating for her!”
“Shh,” I said and put my finger to my lips as I looked around Jenn to where Allie and Sandy worked in the fudge shop, making tasty treats to be shipped out for Christmas.
Online sales were Allie’s idea and they were going strong. The Christmas sales, along with Jenn’s winter events, were driving revenue Allie planned to put back into the McMurphy this spring, before the season started.
“You don’t want Allie to know you’re investigating?” Jenn whispered. Her eyes were wide.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want Douglas to know. That means the fewer people who know, the less chance he’ll find out.”
“Oh boy, keeping secrets from your new spouse . . . not good.” Jenn smiled at me. “You know if I figured it out, he will. You should tell him what you want to do and ask him to help you do it.”
“Help do what?” Douglas came out of the basement and walked toward us.
I bit my bottom lip and looked at Jenn. Jenn shrugged and waved her hand toward Douglas, as if to say here was my chance to come clean. I blew out a long breath. Jenn was right. He would figure it out very soon, and it would hurt him to know I kept something from him.
“I want to investigate Warren’s murder,” I said with my hands on my hips and my chin up, as if to dare him to stop me. “Leigh Ann is my friend and she needs fast closure. I know the police always start by investigating the family. That’s such a waste of time. You should have seen how heartbroken Leigh Ann was. While the police are wasting time on the family, the real killer is getting away.”
“You want to investigate.”
“I’m going to investigate,” I said. “I was at the senior center asking what the scuttlebutt was. They gave me three suspects. I already ruled one out.”
“How?” he asked, crossing his arms in front of him.
“Well, that’s not so important . . .”
“Frances . . .”
“Fine; I might have gone to his house to ask for a donation to the girls’ scholarship fund.”
“Frances, that was very dangerous. What if he had been the killer? You could have been hurt.”
“I had my phone,” I said. “If anything started to go wonky, I would have called you straightaway.”
“Frances!” Jenn said.
“It’s not a problem,” I said and raised my chin a fraction. “I spoke to him and he didn’t even know Warren was dead. He’s out of work and doesn’t get any newspapers or internet. He said he might have been mad when Warren repossessed his property, but it actually worked out in his favor. Warren saved him thousands on his taxes.”
Douglas’s hands were in fists. A little pulse ticked near his jaw and his eyes flashed. I don’t think I’d ever seen him this mad. I held my tongue and waited for him to exp
ress his anger.
“I’m glad you told me,” he said in a dangerously soft tone. “I will help you investigate.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said with relief.
“But you have to promise me to never, ever keep something like this from me again.”
“Okay,” I said. “But you should promise me the same thing.”
“I thought I did that in our wedding vows,” he pointed out.
I felt the heat of a blush rush up my neck and into my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I was afraid you would try to stop me.”
“I would have wanted you to talk about it with me and then we could come to a mutual understanding.”
“What, that I couldn’t investigate?” I put my hands on my hips. I noticed Jenn had wandered off into the fudge shop.
“No, that if you are ever determined to do something—no matter how foolish or dangerous—you will come and tell me what you are determined to do. Perhaps I can help you with the outcome you seek in a way that is less dangerous.”
“I didn’t want you to stand over me,” I said. “I thought that people would be more inclined to speak their minds to a little old lady. . . . I can be quiet calming.”
“And sneaky,” he said, loosening his fists. “How about if I promise to hear you out no matter what? It doesn’t mean I’ll agree or not point out the dangers—which you probably already know.”
“Fine.”
“Good.” He waited for two breaths. “Make the promise.”
“I promise not to keep anything from you except maybe a surprise party. . . .”
He snorted.
“Well, I might want to throw you a surprise party.”
“Fine. And I promise to always hear you out and understand that I can’t ‘put my foot down’ because I’m not your father and you are a grown woman with a mind and a heart of your own.”
“Oh! I like that.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and gave him a long kiss. “You are amazing.”
“I know,” he said, his arms around my waist.
“Okay, lovebirds,” Allie said as she came out of the fudge shop. “What’s this I hear about an investigation?”