He blinks. “Without a what?”
I round on him with both arms flying out to the sides. “I’m a suspect, okay? I’m a suspect in his murder. There. I said it. He’s a real estate developer. He was going around to all the business owners on Main Street yesterday. He wanted to buy us all out. We all turned him down—all except Patrick Donohue at the Toy Store. A few of us were talking about him last night and it got pretty heated. I thought maybe you would want to put me on the suspects list. I thought you would want to ban me from the investigation.”
He studies me until I talk myself out. Then he nods. “All right. If that’s what you’re concerned about, I’ll go in alone. I just want you to know I never considered you a suspect.”
“What about now that you know about the real estate deal?” I asked. “Don’t you want to clear my alibi or something?”
“Well, for a start, is there anything about the scene that could indicate foul play?”
My head shoots up. “What?”
“Foul play, Margaret. You keep talking about suspects and investigations and alibis and stuff. How do you even know he didn’t die of natural causes?”
I open my mouth and close it again. “Well…. I guess I don’t…. really.”
“Exactly.” He turns to the door, sweeps it open, and plunges into the house. He leaves me standing there with my mouth open.
Now I really don’t know what to think. What if Mark died of natural causes? What if I worked myself up into a state of high anxiety over nothing? Maybe I’ve been thinking so much about murder investigations and whatnot that I can’t get them out of my head. I can’t stop seeing murder everywhere.
A few minutes later, David comes back. He strips off a pair of latex gloves and pulls out his phone. “Good news, Margaret. He was murdered.”
I gasp out loud. “What?”
“He was injected with something in the neck. There’s a very clear puncture wound on the side of his neck with a very clear circular chemical burn around it. He was poisoned with something. I don’t know what.”
“I didn’t see that,” I remark.
“That’s because you’re a good citizen and a good investigator. The mark was on the left side of his neck. His head was flopped to the left, so his chin and the folds of skin covered the mark. You wouldn’t have seen it unless you tampered with the body which, of course, you didn’t.”
I stare up at him in amazement. “Wow.”
He punches a button on his phone and speaks into it. “Send the forensics team to 43 Westminster Street, along with three blue-and-whites to block off the street. Thanks.”
He hangs up and turns to me. “Listen, Margaret. We know each other. I like to delude myself that we know each other well and that we’ve gotten pretty close these last few months. I think I understand your character well enough to know how you would react to someone coming along and offering you a tempting price to buy your candy store. I also think I understand your character well enough to know how you would react to finding a dead body in a house. I think I can safely remove you from any suspect list. So….do you want to come inside and help me work up the crime scene?”
I swallow hard. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“I’m sure. I’m sure I would rather work it up with you than with anyone else. Now please stop arguing and come on. We’re wasting daylight out here.”
He reenters the house. My heart skips a beat. How can I resist an invitation like that? Maybe being part of this community really is paying off. He understands who I am and what I’m all about. I’ve proven myself, to him and the rest of West End, more than once. Now I’m reaping the rewards.
I find David squatting next to the body. It doesn’t look so scary, now that I’m accompanying an official law enforcement officer. David speaks to me without turning around. He never questions my presence at a crime scene. “We’ll send the body down to Peterborough for an autopsy, of course. We’ll have to run a chemical analysis to find out what they used to poison him.”
“Poison is considered a woman’s weapon, isn’t it?” I remark.
“You never know. A lot of people shy away from violence. Who else did you say he hit up to buy their businesses?”
“All the people on Main Street,” I reply. “I was talking to Stacy and Simone and Mr. Stewart last night. They were all pretty bent out of shape about it. That’s when we ran into Patrick Donohue who told us he was going for it.”
“Did he say why he went for it?”
“He said he didn’t want to die behind the counter. He said any sane person would take the money and run…or something to that effect.”
“If that’s the case…. hello! What’s this?” David bends closer to the body and nudges the wrist with his pen.
I sidle over to him. “What did you find?”
“He’s wearing his watch, and look at this. He has gel in his hair. It looks like he was on his way out the door when the killer hit him.”
I snort out loud. “How could he be on his way out the door without his clothes on?”
David stands up. “How many men do you know that put on their watches and gel their hair before they get dressed?”
I look away. “Well, it’s like you said. I don’t know that much about men.”
“I do,” he returns, “and I’m telling you he wouldn’t. He would have gotten dressed. Then he would have put on his watch. Then he would have gelled his hair, and he wouldn’t have done any of those things unless he was about to leave for work.”
“Then where are his clothes?” I ask.
“That’s what I want to know. Let’s spread out and take a look. I’ll go upstairs to his bedroom. You look downstairs.”
He dashes up the stairs two at a time, and I’m left to wander around the way I did before. Now that I have David’s permission, I look a lot closer at everything this time. I go into the kitchen and rifle through the fridge. I search the guest bedroom and the parlor, but I don’t find anything until I come to the laundry room.
I pop open the washing machine and then the dryer. I stand there staring into it for a long moment. A brown suit sits in the bottom of the tumbler.
David comes breezing down the hall. “Did you find anything?”
“You were right. He did get dressed first. The killer took his clothes off, probably to wash off the evidence. Look.”
He peers into the dryer. “What does that prove? He could have put his suit into the dryer.”
“No way,” I tell him. “Look at how crumpled and misshapen it is. See the tag? It’s wool. No one in their right mind would put a suit like that through the washing machine, much less the dryer, and Mark Sheridan took extra care of his clothes. He took extra care of everything related to his appearance.”
“Yeah. I got that upstairs. You should see his bathroom.”
“He would never put a wool suit in the dryer. A suit like that has to be dry-cleaned.” I scan the rest of the laundry. “There must be some other evidence that the killer cleaned up after they injected him.”
David moves to the corner and steps on the pedal that opens the wastebasket. It pops up and he squints inside. Then he lifts out a stain stick between his gloved fingers. “There’s one piece of it right there. The label says, ‘Not To Be Used On Sensitive Fabrics Such As Wool, Silk, or Rayon’.”
I nod, but before I can answer, a tall man enters. The words Forensics Team emblazon the lapel of his white lab coat. I pull my head down between my shoulders. “I better go.”
“You don’t have to,” David insists.
I shake my head and start for the door. “Zack is covering the store for me. I have to get back. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Thanks,” he calls after me. “Thank you for calling it in, and thank you for tipping me off about the real estate deal. I won’t forget it.”
I won’t forget it, either. I won’t forget that I really could have been a suspect in a murder case. Only my reputation and my personal relationship with him saved m
e.
4
I sit alone in my living room when someone knocks on my front door. I open it to find David standing there. “Hey. I was wondering if you’d like to go out to dinner with me—nothing fancy—just a casual dinner at the Happy-Go-Lucky. You don’t have to change your clothes or anything. Just come as you are.”
I glance back into the house, but there’s nothing to see. As usual, Zack is out with…. someone or other. I’m on my own. “Okay. I’ll come.”
I grab my handbag and accompany him to the car. I walk around to the passenger door and stop to wait for him to open it, but he’s scowling at his phone. He taps out a message, and when he finishes, he slips his phone into his pocket and gets into the driver’s seat without noticing me.
He starts the engine. I go into a tailspin of confusion. He’s never done that before. In all the time I’ve known him, he always opened the door for me. Always. Now he doesn’t even notice the slip-up.
I stumble forward, too stunned to react. I open the passenger door and get in. He puts the car in gear and motors to the Happy-Go-Lucky Café. He yanks the emergency brake and kills the engine when his phone plings again.
He takes it out and frowns at the screen while he types another message. I stare at him in astonishment. This is way out of character for him. He has never gotten fixated on his phone in the middle of a date before—not that this is a date, mind you. Still, he never once made me feel second to his phone—until now.
He gets out. This time, I don’t even wait for him to open the door for me. I open it myself and meet him on the sidewalk. We walk into the café together. He doesn’t open the door for me there, either. He doesn’t even notice what’s bothering me.
Stacy rushes around making a big deal over us. She seats us in a corner booth and hands us our menus. The minute she leaves, David’s phone sounds yet again. He spends an inordinate amount of time answering it. He doesn’t even look up between texts. His eyebrow twitches in intense concentration.
I give the menu a cursory scan to decide what I want. Then I sit silently waiting for him to finish twiddling with his phone. It takes a lot longer than I care to admit. Stacy comes around to retrieve the menus. “Do you both know what you want?”
“I do,” I tell her. “I’ll have the mushroom frittata.”
David gives his phone another hard glance before he sets it face up on the table next to his plate. “I don’t know what I want yet, Stacy. Give me a minute.”
She leaves and he picks up the menu. He looks at it for half a second and lays it aside. Just then, another text comes through. The same process repeats. He types madly for several minutes until Stacy returns. “I want the steak omelet,” he tells her.
When she leaves for the second time, he ignores his phone for a minute or two. He looks around the café, but he doesn’t register anything in front of him, especially not me.
I whirl in indecision. Should I say anything? Should I make a big deal out of this? That kind of behavior drives me up the wall, but he’s never done it before. In six months, he’s been kind, attentive, chivalrous to a fault, and unfailingly considerate.
I decide this must be a fluke. He means too much to me to come to any other conclusion. I measure my words with extra care. “Is…is everything all right?”
He shrugs, but he won’t look at me. “It’s just this case. I’m preoccupied. That’s all.”
I don’t believe it for a second. For one thing, he asked me out to dinner, not the other way around. If he was so preoccupied with the case, he wouldn’t have done that. He would have locked himself in at the police station like he usually does when he’s up to his earlobes in a case.
For another thing, he’s been preoccupied with cases before. He’s even asked me out on dates while he was preoccupied with cases. That never stopped him from paying attention to me and he certainly never kept his nose glued to his phone during a date.
When our food comes, he doesn’t look at me once. He doesn’t speak through the whole meal. He wolfs his omelet. Even before he finishes, he gets another text. I purse my lips and wait for him to answer it before I try to speak.
“Who was that?” I ask. “What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing.” He doesn’t look up from his phone. “It’s just some stupid detail about the case.”
I sit in silence watching his thumbs fly over the screen. Whatever’s going on with him, it’s not nothing. It’s just about as far from nothing as can be. The worst part is I feel him slipping through my fingers. If this goes on, he’ll be taking his phone on dinner dates instead of me.
All at once, he snaps the cover closed and tosses the phone in his pocket. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. Can you manage to get yourself home? I’m really sorry. I have to go. It’s urgent.”
I blink at him. “Are you sure? Is it really so important you can’t give me a ride home?”
He gets to his feet so fast he knocks over his chair. He dives to pick it up, but he’s already halfway to the door. “Sorry. It’s an emergency. I have to go. I’m sorry. I’ll have to catch up with you later.”
He tosses a fifty dollar bill on the table and charges out of the café. I sit rooted to my chair. What in the name of God just happened? Who is this guy? When I look up, I see Stacy behind the counter with her mouth open and her eyes as big as saucers.
I sit there for what seems like an eternity trying to process everything that happened. Is he trying to dump me? How could he be when he’s the one who has been actively keeping this relationship going? Maybe something bothered him about me and he doesn’t know how to break it off.
My guts turn to water thinking about it. Could it be I made a mistake giving my heart to this man? I can’t reconcile his behavior tonight with all the rest of the time I’ve spent with him. It just doesn’t make any sense. Just looking at Stacy’s stunned visage confirms it. Even she is shocked by this display of…. I don’t know what to call it.
I finally pull my head out of the clouds, but I can’t finish my food. I take the fifty dollar note and give it to Stacy. It’s more than enough to cover the tab and the tip, but I can’t face her over the register right now.
I walk out into the still night air. West End slumbers in silence. I don’t see any trace of David or his car. I breathe a heavy sigh and set off for home. Thank goodness I won’t have to explain any of this to Zack.
I walk past Simone’s shop when a clipped footstep startles me into turning around. Patrick Donohue comes toward me from the Toy Store. He nods to me. “Good evening, Ms. Nichols.”
I smile in relief. “You don’t have to call me that, Patrick. We’re all neighbors here. Please, call me Margaret.”
He doesn’t relax. “I keep hearing about how you solve mysteries.”
I blush and lower my eyes to the sidewalk. “Well, not really. I’m just nosey. That’s all.”
“I hear you have a website set up, and that you’re offering your services for hire. Is that true?”
I cast a despondent look around. I never would have solved any mysteries without David’s help. Now I don’t know if I can count on him. I don’t even know if I would want to work on a case without him to confide in. I know he feels the same way—at least, he used to.
“If it’s true,” Patrick goes on, “I want to hire you.”
“You do?” I ask. “What for?”
“I want you to look into Mark Sheridan’s death. I want you to find out who killed him, but mostly I want you to find out if our purchase agreement is still good, now that he’s dead.”
“I would imagine it is,” I venture. “He must have had a will. His heirs will inherit the contract. If they still want to go ahead with the development, you should be all set. Then again, I suppose that depends on the terms of the contract. Maybe you should take it to a lawyer. I’m not really an expert on this sort of stuff.”
“That’s the problem,” he replies. “I don’t have a copy of the contract. Sheridan came into my store and I signed that document
he showed me. He said he would get it notarized and send me a copy. Then he turned up dead. I don’t even know if he signed the contract himself.”
I knit my brows in concentration. “Hmm. That is a problem, isn’t it?”
“So will you look into it?” he asks. “I’ll pay you. I’m not short of cash. I just want to make sure the agreement is still good. I’ve been holding out for an offer on the toy store. I don’t think I’ll get another one coming down the road any time soon.”
I nod. “All right. I’ll look into it. I better get home now.”
He bobs another curt nod. “Thank you, Ms.…. I mean, Margaret. Good night.”
He walks away first. I stand there in the dark until he vanishes into the shadows. Now I really don’t know what to think. Should I investigate Mark’s death? Should I get David’s permission first? I don’t even want to talk to him after tonight.
I walk home and sequester myself in my bedroom. When Zack comes home, I pretend to be asleep so I don’t have to talk to him. Jiminy, what is my life becoming, when I can’t even talk to my own son?
5
All the next day, I go through the motions of running my business. Underneath my skin, I feel battered and bruised. I can’t escape the creeping suspicion that David and I are already finished. He didn’t come right out and say so, but no one has to draw me a map.
The realization throws a wet blanket over me. All the light and happiness and joy drain out of the world. I can’t get excited about anything now. My candy store—the store I worked so hard to build, the store I nurtured with my heart’s blood—none of it means a thing. The murder case doesn’t interest me. I don’t want to see or talk to anyone ever again. I want to crawl into a hole of depression and never see again.
Zack shows up at noon to relieve me for the rest of the day. I was never so happy to get out of there. I plan to go back to my bedroom and wallow in misery until tomorrow morning when I have to come back for another shift.
The candy store is a prison for me now. Every minute of every day weighs on my nerves and costs me more energy than I can muster. I might as well be chopping coal in a mine underground somewhere.
Keep Calm and Candy On Page 3