Authors: Janet Bolin
37
I
BECKONED TO VICKI AND GARTENER AND
mouthed, “Come in.” They did. My sea glass chimes jangled. Vicki switched on the rest of my shop lights, causing me to blink in the sudden brightness.
Cassie seemed to shrink within herself. She didn’t get along with her mother, but would she protect her from the police? Would she tell them everything she’d told us?
“Cassie Turcotte!” Vicki’s authoritative police chief voice rang out, as startling as my door chimes at three in the morning.
Cassie struggled to her feet. “Yes.” Below the short sleeves of that wrinkled shirt, goose bumps popped out on her forearms.
Gartener asked in gentle and very resonant tones, “Did you want to talk to us?”
She shrugged. Although her arms were muscular, her shoulders were so thin that they resembled blades, and something like a knife twisted in my stomach. I wanted to protect this woman who was really little more than a child, who hadn’t lived a very happy life, and who had, perhaps, only been trying to make herself and her father happier.
“I heard you were looking for me,” Cassie mumbled toward her feet.
“We were.” Vicki seemed to relish playing bad cop.
Gartener could do it, too, especially if Vicki wasn’t around. Mostly, though, he seemed to stay silent and observe, especially when he wanted to make someone uncomfortable enough to confess—to just about anything. This time, he said in a friendly way, “We have some questions for you.”
I was going to be very interested in those questions, and in Cassie’s answers.
“Okay.” Cassie was trembling again, and so was her voice.
“We’d like you to come with us,” Vicki added.
Cassie folded her arms as if the action could control her shuddering. “Do I have to?”
“No,” Vicki snapped, “but if you refuse, we’ll arrest you, and then instead of going to my office here in Elderberry Bay, you’ll have a nice long ride to state police headquarters in Erie with Detective Gartener.”
Cassie glanced at me. “Can Willow come?”
The poor thing,
I thought,
barely more than a kid.
I stepped forward.
Gartener held up his hand. “Just you, Cassie. Do you have ID you can show us?”
She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her cutoffs. “Not with me.”
She looked so miserable that I answered for her. “She left her phone at the lodge where she was working in the kitchen. Your wallet, too, Cassie?”
“Yes,” the girl whispered.
Vicki rolled her eyes as if telling me to butt out.
“They’re fine,” Gartener said. “Ben locked them in the safe in the lodge.”
I had a nervous desire to giggle. The safe in the lodge? Where all that jewelry had definitely
not
been safe thirty years ago?
Smallwood and Gartener guided Cassie toward my front door. Between the two officers, Cassie looked diminished and forlorn.
“Vicki . . . Chief Smallwood?” I called.
She barely turned her head. “What?”
All I could think of saying was, “Kittens.” I meant, “Try to be like Sally and look after young and helpless creatures.” But I couldn’t tell Vicki what to do, and she probably wouldn’t appreciate it if I did.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Willow,” Vicki said. “After we clear this up and get some sleep.” Maybe she thought I was offering the kittens to her.
“Cassie can tell you who provided that asparagus—”
Cassie wrenched herself around to face me. “Don’t tell
anyone
what I said.” Her twisted face and tone were strangely fierce.
None of us could promise, and Vicki and Gartener ushered Cassie out the door and across the porch. Was Cassie sacrificing herself to save her mother, or trying to make
certain
that the police would interrogate us, and then Cassie wouldn’t have to accuse her mother directly?
“I should go, too,” Clay said. “I’m supposed to be at a construction site in four hours.”
“Cancel it,” Haylee and I both said at the same time. Unfortunately, my romantic mood seemed to have evaporated.
Clay looked as tired and dispirited as I felt. “I wish I could. Walk you home, Haylee?”
“No, thanks. It’s only across the street, and Neil’s murderer is either in Cleveland or—” She pointed outside. “In police custody.”
That was possibly true, unless the culprit was Neil’s former girlfriend, Bitsy, hiding out at Lazy Daze Campground and plotting how to continue getting away with murder.
“I’ll watch until Haylee locks herself in,” I said. “Do you need a ride home, Clay? It’s kind of late to call Fred.”
“No need—he met me at the beach parking lot this evening. My truck was still there when we walked past a while ago.” He rested one hand on my shoulder and the other on Haylee’s. He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Thank you both for coming to the gala with me. Talk to you later.” He waved and went out the door behind the others. The chimes jingled and subsided into silence.
I heaved a tremulous sigh.
“I’m sorry,” Haylee said. “The evening was a total bust.”
“No it wasn’t. I had a
great
time. Until—” I nodded toward Vicki’s cruiser easing away from the curb. All I could see of Cassie was the profile of her lowered head.
“What?” Haylee asked me. “Are you feeling sorry for Cassie? What if she murdered her own father?”
“What if she didn’t? What if she spends the rest of her life in jail, serving a sentence that someone else—maybe her mother—should serve? What if her mother goes on a murderous rampage and kills other innocent people?”
“How many ex-husbands do you think Yolanda hates?”
“I’d like to know what—or who—killed Cassie’s adoptive father, what’s-his-name Turcotte.”
Haylee tapped the toe of her sandal on my polished black walnut floor. “I told you there was something off about Cassie, last time we saw her.”
“Unless she was lying, she was too young to have murdered Turcotte. But now we know what she was hiding that night, don’t we?” I asked.
“What?”
“That Neil was her father and Yolanda was her mother.”
Haylee scoffed, “She didn’t have to hide any of that.”
That was true. “She’s young.”
Haylee yawned. “Vicki and Gartener will have to figure it out. But I agree with you about Yolanda. If nothing else, she deserves to be arrested for poisoning half the community and for generally being a horrible person.”
“And I’ll bet she murdered Neil. Even if she didn’t dump those kittens, even if they escaped and she didn’t notice at the time, Yolanda didn’t do anything to find them. She just drove away, and abandoned her daughter, who’s only about twenty-two, to cope with everything, including the murder of the father she’d met only recently. Yolanda is not only horrible, she’s evil, and if Vicki and Gartener don’t come to that conclusion, I’ll . . . I’ll—”
My diatribe seemed to have amused Haylee. “You’ll what?”
“Well, for starters, I intend to report everything Cassie told us tonight.”
“What a night.” Haylee patted her hand over another yawn.
“Why did you say it was a total bust?”
“I didn’t expect to meet the man of my dreams and have him come running after me with glass slippers or anything, but then to meet a guy like Ben and discover he’s way beyond my reach . . .” She wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s disappointing.”
“He’s not beyond your reach. He likes you. He danced with you.”
“The first time, he told me about the lodge being his late wife’s dream, and then about everything he’d been doing to follow her plans. I can’t compete with his memories of her. He obviously loved her very much.”
“He’s a good man.”
“I know, and his devotion makes him even more appealing. But there’s other competition, too. Zara—”
“He asked
you
for the last dance.”
“And then there’s Mona.” With great exaggeration, she moaned the first syllable of Mona’s name.
I laughed, both at her pronunciation and the memory of Mona’s persistence in chasing Ben around the banquet hall to talk him into her schemes. “The poor guy—he tried to give her some attention, but I could tell he wasn’t impressed about her calling his lodge ‘ho-hum’ and he also wasn’t about to hire her to redecorate a lodge he’s already finished decorating.”
“But he hasn’t finished decorating it.” Haylee’s eyes glinted with excitement. “The last dance with him wasn’t romantic, if you discount what a good dancer he is, and being in his arms—mmmmm—but at least he didn’t go on and on about how he missed his wife. We talked about decorating the lodge, instead. He wants you and me to help him with some of the recreation rooms he’s outfitting.”
“Us? Why?”
“He found an entire stash of old photos, and he would like you and me to visit the lodge, go through the pictures, and choose the most interesting ones for him to enlarge, frame, and hang.”
I clapped my hands. “Aha! He wants to see you again!”
“I’m not sure.”
I insisted, “He does!”
“And you,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, well, maybe he figured that was a good way to get you to do it. Besides, he’s probably heard of my excellent taste when it comes to interior decorating.”
She glanced up at my soaring white cathedral ceilings. “Your shop
is
beautiful.”
I let out a gurgle of laughter. “Yes, because
you
designed it and Clay carried out your plans!”
“But I wanted you to fall for it, and I knew your taste.”
“And Ben probably figures you’ll know his, too. When does he want us to come?”
“ASAP. Before Mona discovers he actually does have some empty walls in the lodge. He suggested tomorrow night.” She glanced at the clock. “That would be tonight. I guess we should try to get some sleep, if we can unwind.”
“That means he doesn’t have a Saturday night date with Zara!”
She dampened my enthusiasm. “He didn’t say
he
was going to look through the old photos with us.”
“But we’ll definitely see him.”
Smiling, she turned around and walked toward the door. “Yes. He’s adorable.”
I agreed, said good-bye, and watched until she safely crossed Lake Street and let herself into The Stash.
Finally, I went down to my apartment. The animals frisked about, welcoming me home. I took them outside, into the part of my yard we were allowed to use. I knew from past experience that the investigators might not release the crime scene for weeks.
I crawled into bed. I didn’t know about the dogs and kittens, but I was exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately.
38
T
O MY SURPRISE, I MANAGED TO WAKE UP IN
time to rush through the morning chores and open the shop.
What had happened to Cassie during what was left of the night after Vicki and Gartener took her away? Had they questioned her, sent her back to Lazy Daze, and then sent someone to arrest her mother? Would anything ever go well for that girl? Perhaps what bothered me most was having no way of reaching her except through the police. I didn’t want Cassie to think that no one would ever give her the benefit of the doubt.
Luckily, Ashley’s wide-eyed fervor kept our students occupied. I hoped that while worrying about the twenty-two-year-old Cassie, I wasn’t leaning too heavily on Ashley, who was only sixteen. She seemed to thrive at the job, though. She’d gained confidence.
Halfway through the morning, Clay called. “I just wanted to hear your voice,” he said.
What was I supposed to say? I probably managed something like a grunt. Very romantic.
“And to thank you again for last night,” he added.
“Thank you, too. It was wonderful.” I told him about Haylee’s and my plans with Ben for that evening.
“Our matchmaking worked?”
“I’m not sure yet. Ben may need more time to grieve and heal before he can be interested in another woman.”
“At least the three of us can be around when and if he needs to talk.”
“Starting tonight, with Haylee and me.”
“I wish I could join you, but I’m working late on a house we’re building down toward Erie. After we finish that, I’ll have more time to create occasions for Ben and Haylee to get to know each other.”
“Haylee and I walk the dogs on the beach most evenings, to the ice cream stand and back.”
“I’m missing out on a lot.”
He didn’t know the half of it. Stinking of kitty litter, crawling in culverts . . .
He added, “You won’t be surprised if I show up at the ice cream stand, say, around eight some evening with Ben in tow? We locals need to show him around.”
I laughed. “It’s a deal.”
“Meanwhile, I’ll swing by the lodge on my way home tonight. If your car’s still there, I’ll come inside to talk to you and Haylee. And Ben.”
We said our good-byes and I put the phone back in its charging station. The evening was looking better and better. I’d planned to walk to the lodge, but if Clay was going to check for my car in the lodge parking lot, I’d have to drive, and drag the night out as long as I could until Clay arrived. I’d never want to leave, in case Clay would appear two minutes later. With any luck, Ben had plenty of photos for us to sort through.
Vicki showed up just before my lunch hour. She was carrying a plastic supermarket bag, not the sort of thing I was used to seeing cops carry. I took her down to the apartment. She whipped a jar of homemade raspberry jam out of the bag. “I have raspberry canes all over the back of my place,” she said.
I thanked her and offered peanut butter and jam sandwiches for lunch.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she teased. Together, we made our sandwiches.
With Sally-Forth’s help, I left the kittens inside and ushered Vicki out to the patio. “The kittens are yours if you want them,” I told her.
Again, she said she couldn’t deprive Sally of them.
I plunked my plate onto my picnic table. “Well, they’re not going back to Yolanda. Or to Cassie, who could have confessed much earlier that she knew who owned them and had abandoned them.”
Vicki set her plate and glass of milk down gently, but pinched her lips together in a severe frown. “Cassie may not be in a position to have pets for a very, very long time.”
I could look almost as stern. “That girl didn’t kill her father.”
“How do you know?” Vicki challenged.
“I think her mother did it. Yolanda is mean and evil, didn’t like Neil, doesn’t treat Cassie well, and she left two innocent kittens outside to fend for themselves.”
“But what actual evidence do you have against Yolanda?”
I blew strands of hair away from my forehead. “According to Cassie, Yolanda bought the asparagus from someone named Brad, and then failed to wash it properly. So she ended up poisoning you and Edna and a bunch of other people with some horrible bacteria. She could have gone one step further and given her ex some rat poison in his medicine. Cassie said her mother left Neil when Cassie was a baby. Yolanda remarried, someone named Turcotte, and then left him, too. Cassie thinks Turcotte died long ago. Maybe you should look into his death, if all of Yolanda’s ex-husbands have been dropping off before their time.”
Vicki put her sandwich on her plate, took out her notebook, and scribbled in it. “Will do. Anything else?”
“Yolanda taught Cassie that Neil was a bad man, and well, you knew Neil. He was sweet, and Cassie noticed that, too. She said that if anyone was abusive in the relationship, it would have been Yolanda, not Neil.”
“So most of your opinion of Yolanda comes from the food poisoning and from what
Cassie
said?”
I defended myself. “Don’t forget the sidewalk sale. Yolanda fought with that blond woman. I found out who she is, by the way. She works at Lazy Daze.”
Vicki licked raspberry jam off her finger. “I figured it out, too. She’s Bitsy Ingalls, the campground’s owner.”
“I hear she broke up with Neil, at least a year ago, and wanted him back.”
Vicki gave me one of her stern looks. “Investigating again?”
“Someone told me.” I didn’t want to mention that I’d been in the campground at the time. Vicki would want to know why.
“So it’s A-B-C?” she demanded.
“What does that mean? I didn’t get much sleep last night, so I’m a bit slow today,” I reminded her.
She frowned. “Neither did I, though I was standing around outside the dance instead of having fun inside like the rest of you. A-B-C. Anybody But Cassie.” She gave me a weak grin. “Just kidding.”
I returned an even weaker grin and a dismal argument. “Cassie seems more like a victim than a villain to me.”
“Look, Willow, I understand why you identify and empathize with someone who’s hardly more than a girl. You want to rescue her. I do, too, but I can’t let emotion overcome reason.”
And I could? “It’s just that she seems so defeated. By a horrid mother, by her circumstances, by life. And she tried so hard to rise above it. She located her father. She went to work with him in his bakery. She said it was a dream job. She liked him. She wanted to get to know him better. She wouldn’t have killed him.”
“Maybe she’s been defeated by her own choices.”
But I wouldn’t give in. “After Yolanda and Bitsy fought, Bitsy may have tried to start a fight at my table. And while all this was going on, someone shoplifted those purple knitting needles from Opal and stole the quilt batting out of Naomi’s back room. Yolanda and Bitsy were going around that night causing distractions. On purpose, I suspect.”
Vicki raised her eyebrows. “And you already told me that you didn’t think the shoplifter and quilt-batting-lifter could have been Yolanda or Bitsy.”
I saw where this was going. “I guessed they had an accomplice,” I admitted reluctantly.
Vicki put her sandwich down again and flipped pages of her notebook. “And who did you tell me you figured might have been that accomplice?”
“A small woman wearing a pink plaid shirt, a woman with brown curly hair.”
“Like Cassie.”
“Exactly like Cassie,” I agreed, though it hurt to do it.
“And you know those scraps of paper you found?”
I nodded.
“They pieced together with scraps that were still in the torn garbage bag. Neil had handwritten a new will only two days before his death. In it, he left everything he had to Cassie. The bakery business and building and all his other assets.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“Not to his ex-wife, Yolanda, or to his ex-girlfriend, Bitsy, but to his daughter, Cassie, who has educational debts, had been unemployed until she found that short-lived job with her father, and has been living in a tent and a car.”