Authors: Janet Bolin
35
T
HE PERSON WHO HAD FLED MY PORCH
crashed down through bushes beside the foundation. Branches snapped.
Hoping the intruder would jump up and run away, preferably far from me, I stood stock-still with my hand over my mouth.
Clay, however, sprinted across the street toward the side of my porch where the person would have landed.
Haylee pulled me out of my shocked stupor. “Come on.”
Tiptoeing across my yard, I heard leaves rustle and a distinctly female squeal. “Leave me alone!”
“Who are you,” Clay growled, “and what are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Cassie’s voice, tart with fear. She cowered among hostas with leaves the size of unfurled umbrellas.
Clay stood over her, not touching her, but looking tall and formidable in his navy blue suit.
Cassie struggled through the giant leaves toward me. “Willow, can I talk to you?” She was breathing quickly. She brushed her hands down her denim cutoffs, and then childishly swiped the back of a fist across her eyes. Light from the streetlamps and the moon showed tears welling up in her eyes. “Please? You can come, too, Haylee.” She must have retrieved the pink plaid shirt from the cottage deck before Gartener got there with his search team. It looked like it had been washed by hand and dried in a heap.
Clay didn’t budge.
“Where?” Haylee asked.
“Can we go into your shop, Willow?” She glanced from me to Haylee. “I need to talk to you two. Alone.”
As if she hadn’t added that last word, Clay asked her, “Why were you hiding on Willow’s porch?”
Cassie took a deep, shaky breath. “I wasn’t hiding from
Willow
.”
I put my hand on Clay’s sleeve. The muscles of his forearm were hard with tension. “You don’t have to worry about Clay.” I sounded surprisingly calm and reassuring. “He’s a friend, and I’d like him to come inside with us.” I knew there was no way he’d leave us alone with her.
She gulped. A car whooshed up Lake Street. Except for her noticeable trembling, Cassie didn’t move until it passed. “Can we go inside, now? Quickly?”
That car had frightened her. She was hiding from someone, either on foot as we had been, or in a car. I noticed that she stayed between us—all of us were taller than she was—as we rushed up the stairs and onto my porch. I unlocked the shop door. Clay opened it for us.
Instead of staying in their nice, comfy beds, Sally and Tally must have climbed the stairs. They whimpered on the other side of the apartment door. The kittens were probably with them.
“It’s okay, guys,” I called toward them.
“Don’t turn on any lights,” Cassie squeaked.
Haylee asked, “Why not?”
Cassie wailed, “I don’t want anyone seeing me!”
I’d had enough of these cloak-and-dagger heroics. “I need to turn on some lights, or you three will trip over things.” I touched Cassie’s elbow. “I’ll guide you to a seat at a sewing machine where you won’t be visible from outside.”
“Really, all I want to do is borrow a phone,” she objected. “I . . . forgot mine.”
Leaving Haylee and Clay by the front door, I started Cassie toward the rows of sewing and embroidery machines in my shop. “And you don’t want to go back for it?”
She shuddered. “No.”
“Weren’t you working at the lodge tonight?” How could the cleanup be done already?
“Yes, but the . . . someone was looking for . . .” She corrected herself. “
Stalking
me. I crawled out a window.”
I suspected she’d been about to say the police had been looking for her, but thought better of it and changed her words. This was quickly going from bad to worse. “Who was stalking you?” I asked.
“Someone who wanted to hurt me.”
Which didn’t necessarily eliminate the police. “Sit down here and I’ll turn on just enough light for Clay and Haylee to see where they’re going.”
“A phone?” she whispered.
“Just a second.” I ran to the switches beside the front door and turned on lights near the back of the shop.
Clay and Haylee marched to an arm’s length—their arms, not Cassie’s shorter ones—of Cassie and lounged against sewing tables. Haylee managed to look dangerous despite, or maybe because of, the smashing periwinkle silk dress. Clay folded his arms and stared down at the disconsolate young woman in front of him.
This was not the romantic ending I had visualized for the evening. I grabbed the cordless landline phone off its cradle and handed it to Cassie.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “Is it okay if I make a long-distance call?”
“
How
long-distance?” Haylee asked.
“Cleveland. I’ll pay you back, Willow.” A smudge of dirt on one cheek added to her girlish appearance.
“Don’t worry about it. My phone plan covers it.”
I noticed that she didn’t need to look up the number. Her fingers shook as she pressed buttons.
I went around to the next aisle to put bolts of fabric between us and give her some semblance of privacy, although I could still see and hear her. Haylee came with me, but Clay paced only a few sewing machines away from Cassie and appeared to be studying one of the hardanger examples displayed in an embroidery machine’s hoop.
Cassie partially covered her mouth with a hand. “Hi,” she said quietly. “It’s me.” Her voice was soft, but her tone wasn’t. “You have to come to Elderberry Bay.” She listened for a second. I couldn’t make out the other person’s words, but the voice sounded deeper than most women’s voices and higher than most men’s voices. If I’d had to bet on it, I’d have said Cassie was conversing with a woman. Cassie whined, “No, really. You have to come back. Just take my word for it. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t—”
The woman said something.
Cassie shut her eyes and muttered between her teeth, “I would have been fine. He wouldn’t have hurt me. Didn’t hurt me.” She glanced up toward me, hovering beyond the rack of linen. Tears ran down her cheeks. “He didn’t do
anything
. If you hadn’t meddled—”
Listening to the other person, she took deep sobbing breaths. “Fine,” she blurted. “When they allow me my one phone call, it won’t be to you. You don’t care. I don’t suppose you even know of a good lawyer.” Bitterness mixed with hurt in her voice, yet she didn’t seem surprised at the other person’s reaction. I suspected it wasn’t the first time that person had dashed Cassie’s hopes.
Cassie paled as she listened to a rapid-fire rant. Finally, she cried out, “I didn’t do anything! But you did. And you’re going to let me go to jail for what
you—
”
The woman on the other end must have interrupted her again. Cassie ducked her head and sagged down in her seat. Barely controlling sobs, she grated out, “And I wouldn’t visit you in jail, either.”
Carefully, she disconnected the call. Head still down and shoulders shaking, she held out the phone. “Here, Willow. Thanks,” she managed.
I took the phone from her limp little hand. “What’s wrong, Cassie?” From what I’d understood, not much was right.
Haylee found a box of tissues and handed it to her. Clay stood nearby, silent, not threatening, and ready, as always, to help. That last dance seemed like eons ago.
Even the dogs had become quiet.
Cassie wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and raised her chin. She stared somewhere between us. “Well, that was useless. I should have known. Sorry for wasting your time, Willow. I’ll pay you back as soon as I find my purse.” Her mouth twisted.
I didn’t want to pry, but Haylee had no qualms. “What was that about, Cassie? What was all that talk about jail?”
36
C
ASSIE MUST HAVE WANTED TO HIDE THE
trembling of her hands. She clamped them between her knees. “I’m scared the police want to arrest me. I tore something up and threw it away, but the police must have gotten hold of it and put it together. It . . . it showed a reason why I might have been tempted to kill my . . . my boss. Neil. But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t have.”
Tore it up and threw it away—the last will and testament of Neil Ondover? And I’d found the pieces in a garbage bag outside the cottage where I’d seen Cassie, and, later, the pink plaid shirt she was again wearing? As I understood it, Neil had known Cassie only about two weeks. During that time, had he written a will in her favor?
But if that were true, why would she tear it up and throw it away? Maybe he had changed his mind and written a new will that cut her out, and that’s the one she had destroyed.
Clay urged, “Talk to the police.” His empathy made me want to hug him. Actually, there were lots of reasons I wanted to hug him. Instead, I focused on Cassie.
She sniffled. “They’ll arrest me and put me in jail for a crime I didn’t do.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked. Vicki could be difficult, but she wasn’t irrational.
A tear wandered through the smudge on Cassie’s cheek. She looked younger than ever. And nearly desperate. “They were hanging around the lodge this evening, watching for me to come out. I . . . I ran away. I thought I’d be safe with you, Willow.”
The accusation was flattering, in a way, unless she actually believed I would harbor a criminal.
Clay flicked me a glance that warmed me. “People do feel safe with Willow. And they are. But are you sure they were watching for you and not for someone else?”
Cassie rubbed her fist in her eye. “Yes. One of the other kitchen staff went outside for a smoke and some cop asked if I was inside. My friend—or I thought he was a friend—said I was, then he came inside and warned me, so I crawled out the bathroom window. I couldn’t go back where I was staying.” She wiped her eyes. “I ran here.”
Haylee grabbed for a sewing machine as if to support herself. “Maybe they just wanted to talk to you, ask a few questions.”
Cassie bit her lip. “Maybe. But it scared me.”
The phone was still warm from her touch. I offered it to her again. “Call them and ask if they want to talk to you. If they say no, you can stop worrying. If they say yes, tell them where you are.”
She held me with that clear gaze. “Should I?”
“Yes,” Haylee answered.
“I’m not a lawyer or anything,” Clay said, “but I agree.”
“We’ll stay with you until they leave,” I promised, tilting my head in question toward Haylee and Clay.
They nodded.
Cassie twisted her hands in her lap. “I guess I could.”
I offered, “I’ll dial Chief Smallwood for you.” Vicki didn’t answer, so I left a message. “Cassie is at In Stitches with Haylee, Clay, and me, and she’s heard that you want to talk to her. Can you give me a call?” When I was done, I patted Cassie’s shoulder. “Sorry I didn’t get a yes or no after all.”
“Maybe I should just go,” Cassie suggested, “or you three might wait all night for nothing.”
I shook my head. “Chief Smallwood will phone back. Who did you call earlier? Was it Yolanda?”
Cassie shot me a suspicious glance, which wasn’t surprising. Maybe she’d seen me prowling around Yolanda’s cottage. “How do you know Yolanda? She didn’t stick around Elderberry Bay very long.”
“I was curious about who provided the asparagus that made so many people sick, and I figured out which cottage she’d been renting. Didn’t I see you inside it one night?”
She started to shake her head.
I pressed, “Monday night, right before you came here to wait for me on my porch? You said you’d seen me on the beach.”
“Yes, that was me in my . . . that was me you saw in Yolanda’s cottage. She gave me the key so I could use it until the rent ran out. But she had already left Elderberry Bay.”
“How do you know?” Haylee asked.
“I had a fight with her about it. I said she should stay and confess about the asparagus. She said it smelled, but I don’t think she bothered to wash it very well before she served it raw to people. She bought it from some guy named Brad. She said he was a farmer, but she was lying. I can always tell, with her.” A casual acquaintance would not have sounded as bitter.
Remembering the man that Haylee and I had seen gathering armloads of asparagus in a field that reeked of manure, I suggested, “Maybe she guessed that Brad had stolen it, and she didn’t want to admit that she may have bought and sold stolen produce.” And she’d handled that asparagus, too, ick.
“Yeah, maybe,” Cassie agreed with a sad little shrug, “but that doesn’t make it much better, does it? I found Brad’s address written on the telephone pad in her cottage. He may be a farmer, but his address is in the village.”
I didn’t know anyone named Brad, but I hardly knew villagers who weren’t Threadville customers or fellow firefighters. “Is Yolanda—” I wasn’t sure how to word it so that she wouldn’t feel worse. “A relative?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother?” Haylee asked.
“How did you find that out?” Cassie wasn’t very good at hiding things. At least not her relationship with Yolanda. But maybe she was hiding other important things. Like that she had murdered Neil. Or that she suspected who had. From the half of the conversation I’d eavesdropped on, and from the pain in Cassie’s eyes, I guessed that the girl was afraid that her mother had murdered her boss.
“I guessed,” Haylee answered. “She’s older than you, and you sounded like you were talking to someone you knew well. Some mothers and daughters develop that, well, a certain
tone
with each other.”
“Hateful, you mean,” Cassie spat out. “We don’t get along.”
That was obvious, if each of them was going to blame the other for Neil’s death.
“My mother didn’t kill Neil, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Again, I felt pity for Cassie and the bitter edge in her voice whenever she mentioned her mother. “She left early Sunday morning. I said she should stay and confess about the asparagus, but she just laughed and said no one would find her in Cleveland. Our last name is Turcotte, but she told everyone here she was Yolanda Smith. She made it up. Anyway, she said I was finally going to get my own way and stay here with my . . . new job.”
Neil beaming proudly at Cassie, and possibly writing a will that mentioned her . . . Cassie resembled Neil more than she resembled Yolanda. As Neil had been, Cassie was slight and wiry, with gray eyes, freckles, and curly brown hair. I asked softly, “Did you almost say your father? Was Neil your father?”
She covered her face and struggled to control her sobs. “Yes, he was,” she finally managed between her fingers. “And I only just got to know him. My mother’s second husband adopted me, but I don’t remember him, either. I was raised to believe that my real father, Neil Ondover, was a terrible person. My mother took me with her and left him when I was a baby, and she took me and left my adoptive father, too, and as far as I know, he died a long time ago. She threw a hissy fit when I told her that I’d found out where my real father lived and that I was going to go work in his bakery. She said I would become just like him. But you knew him. He was nice. He cared about people.
She
doesn’t.” She hiccupped. “If either one of them was abusive in that relationship, it had to be her, not him. It’s all so unfair. He died before he even got to
know
me. He probably didn’t even like me.”
“He did,” I said. “I could tell by his face when you were talking to us at the bakery tent on Saturday night.”
“Yeah, well, I guess he did, but two weeks is not long enough to get to know your father.”
“It’s more than some people have,” Haylee muttered.
Cassie gave her a sharp look.
“But I have three mothers, all of whom spoil me,” Haylee admitted.
And they all got along with Haylee better than Cassie’s mother got along with her. “My kittens,” I asked, using the word “my” to show I wasn’t giving them up to anyone who dumped them or who knew that someone else had gotten rid of them and had not done anything about it. “Were they Yolanda’s?”
“I don’t know what she was thinking, buying kittens. She can’t keep them in her apartment in Cleveland. So I guess she just dropped them off in the street the night she drove away. She probably knew that one of you Threadville ladies would take them in.”
I doubted that Yolanda had cared about the kittens. Maybe they’d only been possessions she could get rid of the moment they got in her way.
I
really
didn’t like Yolanda.
I also suspected that she’d done a few other things before she drove away that night.
She could have poisoned Neil, wrapped him in quilt batting, pinned the batting shut with knitting needles, driven his body up the riverside trail, trampled the snow fencing, dragged the batting-wrapped body into my yard, dumped it in the hole, and shoveled dirt over it.
Yolanda would have needed to leave car doors open while she hauled Neil’s body out and attempted to bury it. Maybe the inquisitive kittens had jumped out of her car that night and she didn’t know, didn’t care, or didn’t dare take time to round them up.
Poor Cassie. Yolanda was a very unpleasant person, to say the least. I hoped that the woman would never return to Elderberry Bay except under heavy police escort.
As if my thinking about police had conjured some up, Detective Gartener and Chief Smallwood walked quietly onto my porch.