Death of a Dapper Snowman (14 page)

“Jeffrey, you tell Pam there’s nothing wrong with this haircut. Modern men aren’t afraid of a woman with some style. Tell her about the young
lawyer
who was trying to buy me a drink last night.”

“Lawyer?” Pam whipped around, eyes wide. “When did you meet with a lawyer? Why?”

“He was at the Lost and Found. I mean the Fox and Hound.”

“But why? Why was he there?”

“To drink beer and watch sports on TV, same as half the other guys there.”

I helped myself to a cup of coffee, as well as a plate of french toast, then sat at the kitchen table.

Pam didn’t respond to what I’d said about Logan, and in the silence, I realized my lie. Technically, he’d drunkenly asked me to buy him a drink. Oh, well. Same difference.

“Do you need a hand with anything?” I asked. “The food smells so good, I hope you don’t mind me helping myself.” I pushed my plate toward the center of the table, even though my stomach was grumbling for me to dig in. “I’ll wait until you’re seated before I start eating. Sorry about my bad manners. For the last few years, breakfast has been something I cram down my throat while I stand over the sink.”

“Hmm.” She didn’t turn around.

“I’m not complaining, though. I made my choices. And we had a good life, even though it was busy. I wanted to have dinner parties and have other couples over, but my fiancé wasn’t that social. He was competitive, more than anything. We had another couple over for a board games night, and he put them into bankruptcy.”

“Hmm.”

“Not real bankruptcy. Just inside the game.” I sniffed the air, picking up on the scent of french toast burning to the pan. “Earth to Pam, are you still there?”

With her back still to me, she said quietly, “I suppose it’s just as well the two of you didn’t get married.”

“As much as I hate to agree with you, I think you’re right. We’d still be dealing with lawyers and divorce paperwork now. Instead, I have a fresh start.”

“What about him? Is he having a fresh start?”

I snorted. “He’s having quite a
few
fresh starts, from what I hear.”

“Younger women, right?”

I waved my hand in front of my face, as though that would clear my anger. “Whatever.”

The truth was, I didn’t know much about the girls he’d been seeing. I’d blocked him from all of my internet accounts so I wouldn’t have to be informed of his every move. Unfortunately, we still had some friends and business contacts in common, so I did see him sometimes in group photos, often with his arm around one or more young women.

Girls flocked to him, of course. They didn’t care he was the kind of guy who screamed when he saw a harmless little spider under a plastic cup. They just wanted to get on board with a future billionaire.

“Gold diggers,” I muttered. “If he’s chasing those tramps around, he deserves to catch one.”

“Men!” Pam exclaimed angrily. “Always one eye roving around for something better and younger!”

I was surprised by how upset she’d gotten, and wondered if she had personal experience being dumped for a younger woman. As far as I knew, her previous marriage ended three years prior when her husband passed away. She’d only been with my father for about a year, and I didn’t think there’d been anyone else in between.

“Pam? I’m okay, really. But is something bothering you?”

By now, the kitchen was full of the unmistakable smell of burning food. She still hadn’t flipped over the french toast, and by now it had to be blackened.

Instead of moving the french toast, though, she started cursing like a sailor, and ranting about dirty old men chasing around young girls.

I didn’t know whether to comfort her or get out my phone and record her spectacular meltdown. Was this normal for her?

I’d only been back in town for a month, so I hadn’t spent enough time with her to know if she was genuinely outraged, or if this was her weird, funny side coming out. I stifled my laughter, just in case.

She kept ranting about foolish men and idiot girls who jumped into bed with anyone, using some curse words that threatened to peel the wallpaper in my father’s little kitchen.

The smoke detector let out a warning chirp. It would go off any second, thanks to the smoke, unless I did something. I jumped up and ran to open the window over the kitchen sink, then turned on the fan in the range hood.

“Pam, shush.” I gently took her by the shoulder and gave her a shake. “The window’s open now, and I don’t want the whole block to find out what a filthy truck driver mouth you have.”

She looked up at me blankly, like someone waking up in a strange location. I’d been smiling, chuckling along at her colorful rant, but now that I saw how spaced out she was, it wasn’t as funny anymore.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked. “Did you take your blood pressure medication yet?”

“Fools,” she said. “They’re just silly, old fools. We all are.”

I turned off the stove burner and took the spatula from her hand.

“Let me finish up here, Pam.”

“I’ve ruined it,” she said. Her eyes welled up with tears. “I ruined everything, just like I always do.”

“There’s plenty of french toast already. Honestly, you’ve made enough to feed an army.”

She blinked rapidly and turned away from me. “I think I’ll go have a nap. I didn’t sleep well last night, and you woke me up when you got in late from the bar.” She gave me another confused look. “Why are you staying here? You don’t think I need looking after, do you?”

“Go have your nap,” I said gently. “I’ll clean up here. Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay? Dad will be back soon, and everything will be back to normal.”

She muttered, “I doubt that very much,” and left the kitchen.

I tossed the burned french toast into the trash, then sat down to eat my breakfast. To Pam’s credit, the ones she didn’t burn were delicious.

Chapter 18
 

After I cleaned
up from breakfast, I checked on Pam. She was in bed, fast asleep.

Jeffrey jumped onto the bed, gave her a sniff, then curled up on the furthest corner of the bed, facing her.

“That’s right,” I told him. “You keep an eye on her. She probably misses Dad, on top of the stress of everything with Mr. Michaels.”

I patted his sleek gray body. He looked up, giving me a slow blink with half-lidded eyes. I ruffled the fur on his side and then smoothed it back down again. He really was a beautiful cat, with such shiny, dark gray fur. I could understand why they’re called Russian Blue cats. The gray is cool enough in tone that next to brown shades, such as the comforter on the bed, they do have a blueish cast.

“You have a good day,” I whispered as I kissed him between his soft ears. “My employees are probably running amok without me, so I suppose I ought to go in to the gift shop.”

His ears perked up.

“Sure, you can come to work with me some time. People like to see cats in small town shops, don’t they? Or is it just bookstores?”

In response, he winked at me.

I glanced over at Pam again, then left to go do something productive with my day. Jessica was right about my personality—I probably wouldn’t like meditation, if it meant doing nothing for an hour. I could certainly unwind with a good book or TV show, but I’d never sit around doing nothing.

With my new wool coat and cute lace-up winter boots on, I let myself out the front door and locked up. As I turned to leave, my eye was caught by something yellow resting between the snow-covered plant pot and porch railing. I reached down and retrieved not just one, but four envelopes, all yellow and the same size.

I would have put them in the mailbox where they belonged, but they weren’t addressed to my father’s house. They were for the deceased man, Mr. Michaels. I glanced over at his house next door, puzzling over how his mail had gotten onto my father’s porch. The envelopes didn’t have any snow on top of them, so they’d been dropped there recently.

They must have called there the day before, when I’d rushed out of the house and startled the carrot-crunching mailman. He’d dropped his bag, scattering its contents on the porch. That explained it.

Now what was I was supposed to do with these? They weren’t just junk mail. By the look of the portion visible through the address window, these were checks. The return address was from a company called R&F Brokers.

The moisture from the snow had made the envelopes soft. As I turned the envelopes over in my hands, the flap on one came loose. With a nudge of my thumb, it flipped right open.

My breath caught in my throat. I looked up and down the street, self-conscious of someone seeing me commit mail tampering. I knew it was a serious offense, but I really wanted to see what the checks were for. Was this what Mr. Jenkins had been searching for when he broke in?

I held the envelope loosely in one hand and shook it until the flap “accidentally” fell open, and the check fell out into my hand.

The check was from R&F Brokers, the same as the return address, and the dollar amount was just under a hundred dollars. My heart sunk as I double-checked the puny figure.

So much for cracking the case wide open.

I knew from my father’s stories, and from the true crime stories we both loved to watch on TV, that plenty of people kill each other over relatively small sums of money, but this was check was
too
small.

I held the other envelopes up one at a time and shook them until their checks “accidentally” fell out as well. These ones would have bought a few rounds of drinks at the Fox and Hound, but not much more.

I slid the checks back into their envelopes and walked down to my car.

“Back to our regularly scheduled programming,” I said to myself.

I started the car, but instead of going straight to the gift shop, I found myself turning in the direction of the police station.

Why was I going there? My guilty conscience wanted me to turn myself in for mail tampering! Or, at the very least, give the checks to whoever was in charge of the case against the costume shop owner.

I parked and went into the station with my head bowed contritely, on account of the envelopes I guiltily carried in one hand. Just inside the door, I bumped right into a tall man who was leaving.

“It’s you,” he said.

I looked up into the face of the man I’d been thinking of, costume shop owner Mr. Jenkins.
The murderer!

“This is all your fault,” he said.

We stood only a few feet inside the door of the police station. I looked down at his wrists. He wasn’t wearing any handcuffs. That meant he was already out on bail, or they hadn’t charged him after all. Without handcuffs, his hands were free for strangling.

“My fault?” I backed away from him, bumping up against a wall.

“Yes. All your fault.”

I waited for more of an explanation. The words were accusatory, but his tone was friendly. Downright convivial.

He continued, “That’s what I told the detectives. You came into my shop two days ago and started asking about Mr. Michaels and his shoplifting habit. That very night, I did an inventory and discovered I was missing some very precious cufflinks. I put two and two together, and realized it was him.”

“He stole your cufflinks?” I slid along the wall, toward the reception desk.

He smacked himself on the forehead with one hand. “And I’m such an idiot. Instead of filing a police report and going through proper channels, I decided to take matters into my own hands. That’s why I broke into the house.”

“Did you find them?”

He gave me a puzzled look. “Find who?”

“Your cufflinks. Did you find them?”

“I accomplished nothing. And do you know the craziest thing?”

I shook my head and kept stepping away, sliding my back along the wall.

“The cops actually thought I killed the old guy!”

“No way!” I widened my eyes and pretended to be shocked at this news. In all the action of his arrest, he must not have noticed me standing in the dark next door.

“Can you imagine?” He shook his head like even he, the murderer, couldn’t believe it. “Lucky for me, I was out of town for the entire window of time. Damn lucky. That was a pretty big window, between when Mr. Michaels was last seen until when he would have been killed, in order to be frozen straight through when he was found.”

“So, you have an alibi. A rock-solid alibi?” I kept a watchful eye on his long strangling fingers.

“An alibi for everything except the break-in.” He made a sour face. “Which is fair enough, since I did commit the break-in.”

“Were the cufflinks worth a lot?”

“The cufflinks? No, of course not.” He sighed, and his cheeks became more gaunt, as if he was deflating.

The man was a fool to break into someone’s house for cufflinks, but I still felt sorry for him. They must have had great sentimental value.

I remembered the envelopes in my hand and casually moved them to behind my back. One of the checks might be for his beloved cufflinks, but I wasn’t going to be the one to break the news. Nor did I want to explain about how all four envelopes had “accidentally” fallen open on my porch.

“I’m an old fool,” he said.

“Hang in there,” I said cheerfully. “At least you’re not being charged with murder.”