by Darci Hannah
Giff kept driving while I thought about what he was saying. I didn’t really believe Tate would do such a thing, but Giff did make a sound case for further questioning. The moment I spied the narrow road flanked by trees, I instructed Giff to make a sharp left. He made another sharp left down an equally narrow gravel driveway, bringing us to our destination. As Giff turned off the car, I asked, “Do you think his sudden disappearance has anything to do with Silvia’s murder?”
Giff shrugged. “I did until I saw that picture. Honestly, I’m just as confused as you are. By the way, where are we?”
“Another man we need to talk to,” I said, peering at the rustic, ramshackle cottage before us that was clearly in need of a new roof. “Bob Bonaire. As much as it pains me to admit it, I don’t think we have the luxury of ignoring anyone who had a serious issue with Silvia Lumiere. Over the past month, that woman made Bob’s life a private hell. Clearly he’s not much of a housekeeper, but the man can cook. He’s one of the best on the peninsula, and that woman made him doubt it at every meal.”
“Let me guess. He also has keys to the inn?”
I looked at Giff and offered a wan smile. “Probably owns a black cape as well. I’m told they’re all the rage.”
Thirty-Eight
I knocked on the old screen door as Giff peered inside. “Damn,” he uttered. “Looks like he could use a dumpster in there as well.”
“Hush,” I whispered and knocked again. A heartbeat later a giant, shaggy figure of a man appeared at the screen, a smile on his face and a drink in his hand. It had only been two days, but Bob already had the appearance of a bear emerging from a long winter’s hibernation.
“Whitney!” The greeting erupted like a car horn. “And your fancy city friend! Well, don’t just stand there. Come on in.”
Bob, somewhere in his mid-forties, was a tall man, barrel-chested, mustachioed, and with hands the size of catcher’s mitts. His demeanor was laid back, efficient when it needed to be, and highly protective of his reputation as a chef. He was also a bit wacky, which was part of his charm. Bob stared at Giff. Unsure of what to do next, he cleared his throat and shoved out his hand. “PBR?” he asked.
“Ah, no thanks,” Giff politely demurred, staring at the opened can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. “But by all means, keep drinking. It’s what I’d do if Whitney showed up on my doorstep unannounced.”
Bob, apparently liking this answer, grinned. He turned and indicated for us to follow as he walked through the war zone of his living room toward the back deck. “Don’t mind the mess,” he told us. “I’m taking advantage of that woman’s murder by doing a little home improvement.”
The deck was also in need of a good scouring, but Bob was a bachelor and worked long hours at the inn. The whole house might have needed a little loving care, but no one could improve upon the view. Bob’s cabin was right on Cherry Cove Bay, with a little half-moon sandy beach and a pristine white dock. At the end of the dock was a covered boat hoist where his speed boat was currently parked.
Aside from the industrial-sized grill, the only furniture on the deck was an array of colored plastic deck chairs that had seen better days. He indicated for us to take a seat and said, “I assume you’re here because of Tate. Saw him at Shenanigans last night and we had a little chat. Whitney, Whitney,” he admonished. The deep-set brown eyes, full of accusation, settled on me.
I was taken totally off guard by his remark. Truthfully, I hadn’t come to talk about Tate and was a little disturbed he thought that I had. It was a small town, but as far as I knew, Bob and Tate weren’t particularly close. The fact that they’d been drinking together did beg to be explored.
“Did you and Tate make arrangements to meet at Shenanigans?” I asked.
Bob shook his head. “Nope. Again, I was just taking advantage of my time off.” The playful wink he used to punctuate this statement fueled my suspicions. “I went there for drinks and to meet some ladies,” he added. “Tate was already there. The lucky bastard was surrounded by a group of vultures. They were buying him drinks and giving him hugs. I had no idea you’d broken up with him.”
It was a difficult subject, being so fresh. Words failed me. Thankfully, Giff had plenty for the both of us. “These young vultures, did you know them?”
Bob opened another can of PBR. “I didn’t say they were young. I said they were vultures. It’s a ladies’ book club. Books and Brews, they call themselves. Don’t know what they read, but they sure can drink. I go on their meeting night because Francine Smith is in the club.” Bob’s bushy eyebrows wiggled as a wide grin appeared below his prickly mustache.
I perked up. “The woman who owns the knitting store?”
Bob nodded. “Recently divorced and the right age. I’d worked up the nerve to finally ask her out but found her hugging Vander Hagen instead. Sucked the wind right out of my sails.” He gave a sorry shake of his head.
Giff, filling with his own form of jealousy, frowned. “I think what Whitney would like to know is if he was hugging this woman back.”
Damn him. I didn’t want to know. I shot him a look as my insides curdled like sour milk on a hot day.
Thankfully, Bob laughed. “Nope. He was polite, but largely ignoring the lot of them. However, he was talking with Alexa Livingstone for a while. She’s in the book club too. Such a nice woman. I really don’t know how she got mixed up with that despicable painter. Obligation’s my bet. Too bad she’s not a little younger or I’d be all over those old bones.” He tossed Giff a knowing wink and raised his PBR.
Attempting to wipe the image from my fertile imagination, I blurted. “Bob. Do you happen to own a black cape?”
The bushy mustache quivered in question as Bob’s dark eyes narrowed. Giff cleared his throat, adding, “What Whitney means is, did you have any reason to go back to the inn Saturday night?”
This Bob understood. “Do you think I had something to do with that woman’s murder?” he cried angrily. “Do you honestly think I’d jeopardize my career by killing that pretentious food snob? Look,” he said, and turned the full force of his bearish intensity on me. “I was extremely insulted when that woman sent that first perfectly prepared meal back to the kitchen. But I handled it professionally. When it became an everyday occurrence, I was outraged. I would have given that woman a piece of my mind if Alexa and Fred hadn’t come to the kitchen to talk with me. They knew she was a handful, but they urged me to look beyond it. They swore she’d be a benefit to the inn, and she was. Whenever Silvia was dining with us the restaurant was filled to capacity. I still didn’t like it one bit. Sure, I wanted to strangle her. Who didn’t? But we all had our reasons to hate her. Right, Whitney?”
“I wasn’t fond of her, but I didn’t murder her,” I told him.
“Well, neither did I. But I took out my revenge same as you. You brought the goats. That was brilliant!” he said with a chuckle, as if I’d had something to do with them getting loose and wreaking havoc on the back lawn. “Us chefs, we have our own saying in the kitchen. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” Beneath the mustache, Bob grinned like the devil. I didn’t like that one bit.
Giff and his darkly subversive nature were, naturally, enchanted. “Are you suggesting that certain liberties were taken with her food?”
“Liberties?” Bob hooted.
Before he could reveal just what he’d done to Silvia’s food, I held up my hand. “Look, you’re a respectable chef and employed in our kitchen. This is a dangerous line of questioning.”
“Right,” he said, and cleared his throat.
“You’ve obviously given a statement to Officer MacLaren yesterday. Is there anything else you can think of that might be of interest on this case?”
“Are you trying to find her murderer, Whitney? Is that what this is about?”
“The sooner we find the killer, Bob, the sooner I can get Jack to clear the inn for business
. You want to get back to work, right?”
Bob cast a critical look at the mess that surrounded him, then glanced at his docked boat with something akin to longing. “I do,” he said. “All right. I didn’t want to mention this to anyone, because I like the guy. But you might want to talk to Fred Beauchamp. The crazy loon was trying to get into the old witch’s pants. Don’t know why. She treated him like dirt. But Saturday night, when I was alone in the kitchen, I heard a knock on the kitchen door. It was Fred. Silvia had kicked him out around midnight. Said he drove around for a bit, then decided to come back and surprise her. He wanted to sneak through the kitchen door, so I let him in. Thought he was going to pop the question. Terrible idea, but I was feeling particularly spiteful. Fred’s a good man, but that woman could make even the most docile lapdog turn into a rabid Ol’ Yeller.”
Thirty-Nine
“Keep heading north,” I told Giff as I took out my iPhone. “I’ll get directions from Tay. I also need to call Jack and tell him what we’ve just learned.”
As Giff navigated the congested traffic through Sister Bay, I made a few calls. The first was to Tay, who told me that Peter had unlocked the great white beast again. “We got a tarp from your dad and started unloading the whole trailer,” she informed me. “I’ll say one thing about the woman, she had great taste in furniture. The stuff we’re unloading would fetch a fortune at auction, not to mention at any antique shop. If these are the pieces she kept, I hate to imagine what she had to leave behind.”
“I’m glad you appreciate them. You and Giff are probably the only ones in Cherry Cove who understand their value.” Hearing his name, Giff perked up. “Antique furniture,” I told him, then addressed the phone once again. “Tay, have you guys come across anything of interest, something that might lead us to the person who actually killed her?”
“Nothing obvious. The paintings are interesting, though.” Tay described the handful of framed portraits yet to be delivered, omitting her mother’s. Peter had inspected that one, she had told us, insisting that only he and Jack view it before the unveiling. Most of the others I had seen myself last night. “Peter and Hannah are going through the books while Lance and I tackle the heavier furnishings and antiques,” she added. “Who knows, maybe Peter and Hannah will come across something odd in there.”
It was terrible of me to even think it, but I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in those two being able to detect an oddity in the ledgers. Peter, until last night, was a stoner. And Hannah, although brilliant in her own way, was never one to suffer tedious numbers. “Don’t get mad at me, but maybe you can have Brock Sorensen take a look at the ledgers and notebooks. He may be a faux-bearded beta male and a closet carnivore,” I added, mostly for Tay’s benefit—she and Brock had once shared an embarrassing evening together and the memory still haunted her—“but he sure can make sense of numbers.”
“That requires me to go to his office, doesn’t it?” Tay quipped teasingly.
“Bring Lance with you,” I suggested. “Show him what a real meat-eating man looks like.” Tay laughed at this. I then told her about our visit to Fred Beauchamp’s studio, including the missing key we found hanging there.
“And Jack has him in Sturgeon Bay for questioning? Good,” she said. “So what are you and Giff doing now?”
“We’re heading up to Alexa Livingstone’s place to see if she can help us any. Edna suggested it. And she’s right.”
“Of course,” Tay said. “Silvia’s biggest fan and the only person on the entire peninsula who doesn’t have a reason to want Silvia dead. Oddly enough that singles her out, don’t you think?”
“She’s got a solid alibi,” I told her. “She has a live-in housekeeper who confirmed she was home the entire night. Besides, why would she murder the woman she idolized?”
“Maybe for the same reason Fred Beauchamp might have done it. Silvia humiliated the man with that ridiculous portrait. What if Alexa’s unveiling was equally as embarrassing?”
“The thought did occur to me,” I told her. “But Edna Baker was at her unveiling. She claims that Alexa’s portrait was just fine.”
“But you’re heading there to see for yourself, because you, by nature, don’t trust Edna!”
I glanced at the peanut butter cookies in the back seat of Giff’s convertible. It was true that not long ago, Edna had stooped to bribery with Giff, tantalizing him with a home-cooked chicken pot pie dinner if he voted for her cherry pie, not mine, to win the highly competitive cherry pie bake-off. But Edna wouldn’t lie about a portrait. Still, there was something about Alexa that begged to be investigated. Worshipping someone as horrible as Silvia had to wear on a person, I thought. Then I asked Tay for the woman’s address.
“It’s in the ledger. Alexa’s portrait was the last one Silvia delivered. Just a minute and I’ll text it to you. Oh, I have to ask, any word on Tate yet?”
“He’s still missing,” I said, then gave her more instructions before ending the call.
As Giff heeded the directions on Google Maps that would take us to Alexa’s house, I made another call, this time to Jack. The moment he answered I told him what we had learned from our visit to Bob Bonaire, particularly the part where Bob had let Fred back into the inn through the kitchen door well after midnight.
“What?” Jack cried over the phone. He sounded furious. “That clay-sniffing weasel. He never mentioned a thing about entering the inn again once he’d left Silvia for the night. He obviously never thought we’d find out.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous. Bob works at the inn, and he’s not the most tight-lipped man on the planet. What did Fred tell you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jack gave a little laugh on the other end. The mere sound sent a bubbly tingle of pleasure shooting through me. I couldn’t help but smile. “Of course I should mind,” Jack said. “But I’ll tell you anyhow. Fred never veered from his original statement, including his utter denial at having Silvia’s room key in his studio.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Well, given what you’ve just told me, I might believe him about the room key. If Bob let him in through the kitchen door a little after midnight, Fred wouldn’t have needed the key.”
“True,” I said, thinking about it. “But what if Fred took it while he was visiting Silvia for the second time? Maybe she upset him. Maybe he had no intention of causing her harm until that moment. He could have taken the key, planning to come back even later to finish the job.”
“Three visits to the inn in one night?” Jack’s voice sounded skeptical. “That’s a bit much, even for a groveling potter like Fred.” The voice on the other end fell silent a moment. “You know what?” he finally said. “Maybe now I do believe him, but only about the key. What the devil was he doing back at the inn after midnight?”
“Really? You have to ask?” I shot Giff a look and rolled my eyes. “Booty call, Jack. The man was after a good old-fashioned booty call.”
Silence, and then a loud “Blagh” erupted over the phone. I could almost see Jack quiver in disgust. “I’m trying not to picture it, but it keeps popping into my head. Thanks, Whit.”
“Well, I don’t know if he was successful, so the imagery you’re suffering is all your own doing. Actually, Erik did mention that someone might have been in her room when he delivered room service, but he couldn’t be sure. Now we know his suspicions were correct. Fred was in there. Also, the Gordons might have seen Fred go in there as well but kept quiet about it. I don’t think they had a hand in her murder, but I also don’t think they were terribly upset by it either. Silvia cost them money. When I spoke to Stanley and Carol, Stanley mentioned that Silvia was seeing a man, one who couldn’t afford her. He obviously meant Fred.”
“Well, he swears he didn’t know about the portrait just as he swears he didn’t know about the room key. It’d been wiped clean of fingerprints anyhow, so we couldn’t link it
to him. However, re-entering the inn and not mentioning it? That demands another visit from me. Poor Fred. He won’t like that one bit. If I can get Bonner to make a statement I just might have something to hold our besotted potter on. Nice work, Bloom.” This was said in a mildly flirtatious way.
“Thanks.” I was blushing with pride. Thank goodness he couldn’t see me. “Just want to get the inn back up and running. Also, Jack, I hate to do this to you, but I’m going to have to take a rain check on dinner tonight. Instead I want you and MacDuff to come to the inn. Tate’s still missing. I know where he is, but I think it would help if all his friends came out in force to find him. Tate’s still a very important part of Cherry Cove.”
I’m not afraid to admit that I found the silence on the other end unnerving. At length Jack replied, “Yeah. Okay. I’ll grab Duffy and head on over, after I’ve dealt with Fred Beauchamp … for the second time today.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa!” Giff exclaimed the moment Jack had ended the call. He’d just turned off the main road and was now driving his little crop-topped beamer down a spotless brick driveway. The house waiting at the other end was a shock to us both. It was the kind of over-large, stately dwelling one saw springing up on the lawns of the newly monied, dotting the north shore of Chicago. Sister Bay had its share of beautiful homes as well, but this hidden gem stood out even among them.
