On my way back up the hill to the market and the Pear Stirpes stall, I was stopped by Meri Sinclair, the young owner of the local bookstore, Dangerous Reads. She was petite, with dark hair in a short bob.
"Did you know the latest Elizabeth Ashby book was just released?" she asked. "I saved a copy for you, Maria."
"Thanks. I'll stop by the store later in the week."
"Or I could bring it to you next Saturday," Meri said. "I won't have my tent set up for sales, but I'll be here for the salsa contest. Which I'm going to win, just in case you were wondering. No one can beat what I call my 'dangerously delicious' roasted tomatillo salsa."
"Cassidi thinks she's going to win too," I said.
"Fortunately there are multiple categories, and we won't be competing directly," Meri said. "Otherwise, if my recipe beat hers, I don't want to think what might happen the next time I got my hair done."
"I had no idea how worked up people could get about a friendly little competition," I said. "I'm sure you and Cassidi are just teasing each other, but Jack Condor seems to think his whole future rests on winning the contest. Apparently he's never made salsa before in his life, and I'm not sure he's even eaten it, so I'm afraid he's in for a big disappointment."
"You'll never make me feel sorry for Condor," Meri said. "Did you hear what he did to the quilt guild a while back? Evicted them from their meeting place on a moment's notice. It all worked out, for them and for me. Their new location is near the bookshop, so a lot of the members stop in before or after the meetings. I assigned a whole shelf to quilt history books, and I can hardly keep it filled."
"I hope Condor's efforts to win the salsa contest have equally good effects on the market," I said. "Might balance out some bad luck."
"You mean because of what happened to Coach Andy yesterday?" Meri asked. "That's not the market's fault."
"Did you know the coach?"
"Not him personally, but his wife was a customer. She special-ordered quite a few business books from me."
"I heard she had her own business, but no one seems to know anything about it."
"Something to do with marketing," Meri said. "She told me once, but all I remember is that it was for a very specialized niche. One with a lot of money to spend, but nothing I'd ever heard of."
"You're one of the very few people in town who seems to have ever talked to her."
"Elizabeth Ashby did too," Meri said. "She even featured the coach and his wife in the latest book. Fictionalized, of course, but easy enough to identify."
"Maybe I'll stop by the bookstore tomorrow then, to pick up a copy." If there was anything useful in the book, it wouldn't be admissible in court, and Detective Ohlsen wasn't likely to find it persuasive, but I wasn't bound by court rules or police procedures. "No one can figure out why someone might have wanted to kill Coach Andy, but maybe Elizabeth Ashby saw something in him that no one else did."
"I hadn't thought of that," Meri said. "Maybe I'd better order some extra copies for when people realize the role that the coach and his wife play in the book, especially with him in the news now."
The sound of raised voices back near the mostly deserted demonstration table drew my attention. Jack Condor was shouting at the mayor. The last thing I needed right then was for the mayor to decide he didn't need constituents yelling at him for things that weren't related to his actual job and back out of doing the final judging.
*
I hurried over to calm things down.
"There you are," Jack Condor said. "Just the person to resolve this. You're relatively new in Danger Cove, so maybe you can be more objective than everyone else. I just need a tiny little concession for the salsa contest, and Mayor Kallakala won't even listen. He's always like that. I could ask him for a permit to build the town a new school for free, and he'd turn me down out of spite."
"I'll take care of this," I told the mayor. "You don't need to stay any longer. I appreciate your filling in at the last minute."
"Thanks, Maria," Kallakala said. "I'll see you next week."
Condor grumbled something, but I talked over him. "Don't you have to be at an open house this afternoon? I thought you were going to miss today's demonstrations because of it."
"I found someone to cover for a couple hours," he said. "I needed to be sure you hadn't made any last-minute changes to the event. You wouldn't want there to be any reason to disqualify me next week, would you?"
"Of course not."
"Kallakala would love to get me to quit," Condor insisted. "I just asked him if I could make a few ounces less than the required amount for the preliminary sampling, and he didn't even wait for me to finish explaining before he said no. You won't really need the full amount, and I don't have time to do all that chopping."
"I'm sorry," I said, "but everyone else is being held to that rule, so you will be too. We're not treating you any differently from the rest of the entrants."
"I bet if Merle asked for an exception, you'd give it to him."
"No, I wouldn't." And Merle would never ask. If anything, he'd been treated worse than the average market vendor while I was in charge. He'd graciously agreed to take the stall next to the first aid tent, which no one else wanted because of its association with a murder the previous summer. "I believe in rules, and it's my job to enforce them."
"That's what everyone says, but it's always a lie," Condor said. "Even Coach Andy didn't live up to his own rules. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but he wasn't as perfect as everyone thinks. Supposedly the reason he was such a good coach was because he was so strict with his kids, setting tough rules and enforcing them. But he still made exceptions for his favorites. And he wasn't as good at following the rules himself. I saw him yesterday, flirting with a hot redheaded bimbo less than half his age outside the first aid tent. Not exactly in keeping with the rules of marriage now, is it?"
That sounded a lot like how Keely had described Gabe's mistress, I thought. It was probably just me being desperate for a suspect, reading too much into the description. What were the odds that both he and the coach were cheating with similar-looking women? And what would Gabe's mistress be doing in Danger Cove a week after he died? Although, if she was still here for some reason, it made sense that she'd sought out Andy, not necessarily to have an affair with but simply because he was probably one of very few people she knew here in Danger Cove.
"Are you sure they were flirting?" I asked.
Condor shrugged. "No one could have a deep conversation with a bimbo like her."
I mentally counted to ten before saying, "How would you know she was an intellectual lightweight? Were you close enough to hear what they were saying?"
"Well, no, but really, you just had to look at her," he said.
And he had the nerve to say people were biased against him without really getting to know him and his ideas.
Somehow I held on to the remainder of my patience, despite the urge to ban him from the market. I'd managed not to exclude anyone permanently since taking on the manager's job, but perhaps if I'd been faster to kick a few particularly irritating people off the premises, the market would have run a lot more smoothly. And with fewer deaths.
Before I told Condor to go home, there was one more thing I wanted to know, just in case it really was Gabe's mistress. "What time was it when you saw them together?"
"Oh, no," he said, holding up his hands as if in self-defense, the rings glinting in the sun, and taking a step backward. "You're not going to pin Coach Andy's murder on me, just because I was unlucky enough to be the last person to see him alive."
I ignored his paranoia and focused on his implicit admission. "So it was shortly before the market opened? Right before the demonstrations were supposed to begin?"
He nodded reluctantly, letting his hands drop to his sides.
"I'm not trying to implicate you," I said. "You may have seen something useful for the investigation. You need to talk to Detective Ohlsen. Do you want me to call him for you?"
"You really need to talk to Ohlsen," I repeated.
"I didn't see anything useful," Condor whined. "I don't need this kind of attention. I already feel like I've got a target on my back."
"This can help turn your reputation around," I said, trying to sound like I believed it. "Everyone will see you as a hero if you help the police catch Coach Andy's killer."
"Oh, no, Maria." He raised his hand to shake a pointing finger at me. "You're not going to sweet-talk me into anything that will get me attacked. I'm used to people not understanding me, but it's even worse here at the market. I've been feeling people glaring at me from the minute I got here today. It's creepy. And it's weird because the feeling gets worse when I'm all alone, like when I used the porta-potty, and then when I jogged over to the beach to take a private call. It's like a ghost is popping up whenever I'm not surrounded by dozens of people."
"If it happens again, go find Officer Fields. He'll make sure you're safe."
"Yeah." He snorted. "Like anyone in Danger Cove, cop or not, would care if I got thrown off the cliff or beaten to death."
"If you feel unsafe, why are you here?"
"I told you. This is my one chance to prove I'm not a bad guy. I'm going to win your salsa contest, even if it means risking my life."
I watched as he stomped off to the parking lot. I still hadn't quite absorbed the possibility of a killer coming back to find more victims, and now Condor was claiming that he felt like he was being watched. Most likely, it was just his subconscious, aware that he was surrounded by people he'd treated badly, and the self-preservation instinct kicking in to encourage him to go where he wasn't hated.
Condor was probably safe from physical attack on his way out of the market and much more at risk of being arrested for Coach Andy's murder before he got the chance to compete in next weekend's salsa contest. After all, he'd admitted to being near the first aid tent shortly before the murder, and he might well resent the man for being given the special treatment that Condor himself craved. Which meant I finally had a viable suspect for the coach's murder. If so, it probably meant that the two cases weren't related, since I couldn't imagine why Condor would have wanted Gabe dead. On the plus side, that would mean that our fears of a serial killer stalking Keely and me were unfounded.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Keely Fairchild
After Maria left to talk to the mayor, I told Matt he didn't have to help the quilters if he had something else he'd rather do. He was already worried enough about the possible threat of a stalker, so I thought it might be better if he didn't have to watch me continuing to investigate the murder, and I was hoping to find the quiltmaker, Zoe Costa, again to ask her where she'd been when Gabe was killed.
Matt shrugged. "I like Dee and Emma. And I'd like to get a closer look at their latest raffle quilt."
Emma rushed up to meet us halfway to where the guild was packing up. "Well? Have you figured out who killed Gabe yet? His widow stopped by to buy some raffle tickets this morning and thank us for our flowers. She's so nice. And she's anxious to get back to Seattle and her kids, but that horrible Detective Marshall insists she needs to stay a little longer, and he won't say how long that will be. Do you have any idea?"
Matt and I walked with Emma to where the raffle quilt was still set up but all the chairs had all been lugged away. I didn't see Zoe among the workers starting to carefully unpin the unfinished quilt from the frame.
"I wish I could give you a definite answer." Unwilling to share the rumor that Marshall was on the verge of an arrest, which I feared would be of the wrong person, I settled for saying, "I'm sure Georgia would rather have the investigation done thoroughly than quickly. And it seems that quite a few people had a motive to kill her husband, so it could take some time."
"I guess it's a good thing that Georgia has an alibi, at least," Emma said. "She mentioned that Detective Marshall assured her he didn't consider her a suspect."
"But he did at one point apparently." And he wasn't confident enough of his conclusion to let her leave town, so maybe he'd lied about believing her alibi. "Do you know if it was just because all spouses are suspects or if he thought she had some reason to want him dead?"
"All I really know about her is that she's a quilter," Emma said. "During Gabe's presentation, he said she was the reason he got interested in collecting quilts."
By then, we'd made it to where Dee could overhear us. She snorted. "For all the wrong reasons, of course. During his presentation at the guild meeting, he said collecting Modern quilts was like collecting Amish ones in the 1700s. Someday the Modern quilts made in the early 2000s would be extremely valuable, and he'd have cornered the market. Like someone buying a Model T in 1908 and holding on to it until now. He thought he could cash in before then though, in twenty years or so, when people understood what he was doing."
"I'm surprised you let him speak at the guild meeting, if money is all he cares about."
"We wouldn't have if we'd known," Emma said. "When we invited him, all we knew was that he'd commissioned a work from Zoe, which suggested he was a true connoisseur. And he'd apparently been misleading her about his interest too. She spoke well of him up until the end."
"How did he even hear of Zoe?" Danger Cove, while a lovely place to live and home to many dedicated quilters, wasn't exactly a well-known artists' colony.
"She's been featured in some of the Modern quilt publications and had a show in Seattle last year," Emma said. "I think that's where he found her contact info. And he did seem to have a good eye for choosing textile artists. Dee and I are convinced Zoe's going to get even better with time. She's only been quilting for about five years, and already her work is in enough demand that she was able to quit her day job as a nurse to become a full-time professional artist. Most quilters can't do that. A lot of us spend forty hours a week in our studios, but we don't break even financially, let alone make a profit."
"Was Georgia involved in the decision to contract with Zoe for the Shoo-Fly quilt?" I asked.
"Not as far as we know," Emma said. "I got the impression Georgia left all the business decisions to her husband and he left all the decisions about raising their kids to her."
"Was that by mutual agreement or because he controls all the money?"
"A little bit of both, I think," Emma said. "He was a trust fund baby, so the bulk of his money was inherited. It makes sense that he'd want to control it. But I also think Georgia is happy being a traditional homemaker, throwing herself into her kids' many, many after-school activities."
I wondered how far she'd go to protect her children. And what she might consider a risk to them. Like their father having an affair with the redhead he'd brought to Danger Cove in his wife's place.
I wasn't as convinced as Detective Marshall was that Georgia could be written off as a suspect. Even if she had an alibi for her own husband's murder, I knew she didn't have one for Coach Andy's time of death. "Did Georgia know about Gabe's young friend coming to the guild meeting?"
Dee snorted. "I doubt it. If she had known and she'd decided to get revenge, it wouldn't have been just Gabe who got tossed over the railing. She'd have tossed the pair of them."
Emma shook her head thoughtfully. "I don't think so. That's what you'd do, Dee. Georgia isn't as overtly emotional as you are. I think if she found out about her husband's affair, she'd have made his life miserable in passive-aggressive ways, rather than direct violence."
"She might have had a financial motive to kill him rather than an emotional one," I suggested. "He was a rich man, I understand. Although he was also cheap. Maybe she got tired of dealing with his cre
ditors after he refused to pay them."
"He was definitely cheap," Emma said. "He got really upset when I told him he had to reimburse us for what we gave him for the nights at the Ocean View since he stayed at Coach Andy's for free. He eventually agreed to repay us, but I doubt he was actually planning to do it."
"Do you know anyone else he owed money to around here?" I asked. "They might have confronted him about the debt and then killed him when the argument escalated."
Emma scowled. "There's no one left in town for him to stiff, since he put everything on the guild's tab, no matter how minuscule or marginally related to the trip. He had the nerve to go to The Clip & Sip for a haircut and claimed it was our responsibility. Cassidi called to check, and I had to grit my teeth and tell her we'd cover it, because I was afraid he would cancel his presentation otherwise and we'd have wasted all the money we'd already spent. I even made sure there was a larger-than-usual tip because by then I had a good idea of how badly he would treat his stylist."
"He might have made purchases at other shops in town that even he couldn't justify as being related to his guild talk," I said. "There are plenty of places that cater to tourists. Like Stefan's gallery. And the historical museum. There are some nice things in the gift shop that might appeal to an art collector."
"Neither of them extend credit, so they're probably safe," Emma said.
"I hope you're right." Some of the rules about credit tended to get bent when dealing with art collectors and high-ticket items. Gabe was a well-known billionaire, after all, so the potential for making a good profit might have been viewed as worth the risk of trusting his promise that he'd send the agreed-upon price as soon as he got back to his office. I made a mental note to have a chat with both Stefan and the museum's director, just to be sure Gabe hadn't taken advantage of them.
First though, I still needed to talk to Zoe about her alibi. "Do you know where Zoe is? I was hoping to talk to her again before she left."
"She went over to Sunny Patches." The quilt shop was across Cliffside Drive in the little strip mall, along with an insurance agency and a dance studio. "Zoe had scheduled a machine-quilting demonstration for today before the market got moved to a Sunday, and she didn't want to disappoint anyone who'd signed up. She should be back to help with the last bit of work in about ten minutes."
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