by Kathi Daley
“I’m not sure. Cassie will need furniture, and you have plenty to get us started. I’m sure there are some personal things I’ll want to bring with me. I’ll give it some thought.”
Cody poured the eggs into the skillet. “Just let me know what you want to take, and I’ll move it over when you are ready.” He popped bread in the toaster. “Did you want to do something this evening?”
I glanced at Sammy. “It’s not like we can go out.”
“Maybe we can pick up some Chinese food and watch a movie. We’ve been so busy that we’ve barely had time to enjoy the Christmas tree you took so much time with.”
I glanced at the tree, as well as the lights along the mantel. “A cozy night in would be nice, and I did record a couple of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies we still need to watch. I should be home between five-thirty and six. I can pick up the food if you only plan to work half a day.”
“How about I text you later, and we can work it out?” He set the food on the table.
As soon as Cody sat down, Sammy started to fuss. Cody started to get up.
“I’ll get him,” I offered.
“No, that’s okay.”
“You were up with him half the night. I guess it’s my turn.” I crossed the room and picked up the baby, and he stopped crying. Okay, that was a first. He normally would only stop crying if Cody picked him up.
“Your eggs will get cold,” Cody warned.
“I can reheat them.” I jiggled the baby a bit and then sat back down at the table with him in my arms. “He looks sort of flushed.”
Cody frowned. He got up, walked around the table, and put a hand on his forehead. “He does feel warm. Maybe we should take him to the emergency room.”
I brushed the baby’s hair back from his face. “I’ll call Siobhan. She’s had a lot more baby experience than we have. She’ll know if we should panic or wait it out.”
Cody took the baby while I called Siobhan, who promised to come right over. Before she married Finn and they had Connor, I believed she’d be the Hart sibling never to marry or have children. She’d seemed so driven by her work, but then she reconnected with Finn, and everything changed.
“Just give him some of the infant Tylenol his mother sent with him, and keep an eye on his temperature,” Siobhan suggested after she’d taken his temperature. “He only has a very mild fever. If it gets worse, then yeah, I’d take him to the ER.”
“How much do I give him?” I asked, holding up the Tylenol box.
“The dosage is on the package. I’d keep him home, though. If he is coming down with something, it wouldn’t be a good idea to take him to day care.”
I glanced at Cody. “Fridays in December are really busy for us.”
“I can work from home, and I’ll reschedule the movers for next week. Sammy and I will be fine. You go ahead and go to work. Don’t forget to get the Chinese food on the way home.”
I thanked Siobhan and sent her on her way, and then went upstairs to shower and dress. I trusted Siobhan’s advice. She was a great mother who took excellent care of Connor. But I couldn’t help but worry about Sammy. He was so tiny. I hated to think that he wasn’t feeling well.
When I came back down, Jingles was pacing and meowing. “What’s with the cat?” I asked.
Cody shrugged. “I have no idea. He was sleeping, and then he jumped up and started pacing.”
He had food and water and a clean litter box, so his basic needs had been met. “I’ll take him with me. I have a feeling he is trying to tell me something.”
“If he does lead you to a clue, don’t go off sleuthing by yourself. Call Finn and let him follow up on it if that is even what the cat is after.”
“I will.” I leaned forward and kissed Cody on the lips. Sammy was in his arms, and he looked pretty happy and content now. “I’ll call you later. If you need anything, call or text. If Sammy’s fever goes up, and you decide to take him to the ER, I want to know right away.”
“I will. Have a good day and remember, no sleuthing on your own.”
“Yes, Dad,” I teased. I knew Cody loved me and was only worried about my health and well-being, but sometimes he could be so overprotective. Of course, at times, I had ended up in some dicey situations, so maybe he was right to worry about me.
“Okay, what’s the deal?” I asked the cat after we’d loaded into my car.
“Meow.”
“It seems like you settled right down once you realized I was going to bring you with me. Did you just want to be sure I wouldn’t leave you behind?”
“Meow.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame you. The kid has a set of lungs on him, that’s for sure.” I started the ignition. “My plan is to head to the bookstore, so if you want me to take a detour, you are going to need to let me know.”
The cat curled up on the passenger seat. I pulled away from the estate and headed toward the peninsula road. It was possible the cat might still have something to show me, but maybe we were where we needed to be for him to point me in the right direction. When we arrived at the intersection where I would turn left to go into Pelican Bay, the seaside town where Coffee Cat Books was located, the cat jumped up and started howling.
“What is it?” I slowed and pulled over to the shoulder. “What do you want me to do?”
“Meow.”
I looked toward my right. “Do you want me to turn right toward Sunset Beach?”
“Meow.”
I hesitated and then did as the cat instructed. The road we’d turned onto led out to the beach and provided access to a housing area, but eventually, it came to a dead end. I wasn’t sure why Jingles wanted me to go in that direction, but he seemed insistent, so I may as well see where he led me. When we got to the road that turned away from the beach toward the small housing development, he started yowling again, so I made the turn. The road eventually dead-ended at a yellow house with white shutters. Jingles got up and started clawing at the passenger side door. I stopped the vehicle.
“What now?” I asked.
He continued to claw at the door.
“What am I supposed to do? Go up to the house and tell whoever answers the door that my cat wants to check out their private, personal space?”
“Meow!”
I exhaled slowly. “Okay. Hang on.” I took out my phone and called Finn.
“What’s up?” he asked upon answering.
“Jingles brought me to a house out near Sunset Beach. I’m not sure what to do. He seems really insistent that we get out. I assume he wants us to check out the house.”
Finn paused and then asked, “What street are you on?”
I looked around for a sign. “Sandy Way.”
“Thirteen sixty-two?”
“Yup.”
“That’s Tom Miller’s house. If the cat wants to go in, I think we should let him. Just wait in the car. I’ll be there within fifteen minutes.”
“Okay.” I hung up and looked at the cat. “Finn is on his way. He said to wait.”
The cat lay back down. I guess he was content with that answer. While we were waiting, I called Tara to let her know I’d be late getting into work. I hoped the ferry wasn’t too full. If it was, she was going to have her hands full taking care of all those customers with only Cassie for help.
Thankfully, Finn arrived sooner than he’d estimated. He had a key to the house, which had been found along with other keys at the scene of the fire. I let the cat out of the car, and he ran up to the house. “Is it okay to go in?”
Finn nodded. “I have Tom’s daughter’s permission.” Finn used the key to open the door, and we followed the cat inside.
The house was fairly messy, but I wouldn’t say it was dirty. There were newspapers, discarded Christmas decorations, and a few items of clothing strewn around, but there weren’t any dishes sitting around, and the trash cans had been recently emptied. We followed the cat into the kitchen, where we found a few dishes in the sink. The cat headed through the kitchen to the laundr
y room. He paused at a basket filled with dirty laundry.
I wrinkled my nose. “You want us to look through the man’s laundry?”
“Meow.”
Finn pulled on a pair of gloves. He took each item out of the basket, looking through the pockets if the garment had any, and then set it on the floor. About halfway down, he came to a pair of pants. Inside the pockets, he found four quarters, a small gold key, a piece of paper with a phone number written on it, and a bullet casing from a rifle.
“So, are we thinking the clue the cat wanted us to find is the key, the phone number, or the bullet casing?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Finn answered. “But I’d sure like to find out.”
Chapter 6
When Jingles and I arrived at Coffee Cat Books, Tara and Cassie had their hands full. I dropped off Jingles in the cat lounge and then jumped in to help. While the bookstore portion of the enterprise did well, it was the coffee bar that kept us hopping. The fact that Coffee Cat Books was located on the wharf across from the ferry terminal had a lot to do with that. Folks would get off the ferry and walk across the wharf to grab a coffee and perhaps a muffin before heading into town to window-shop.
“Nonfat latte extra foam,” the woman at the counter ordered.
I wrote down the instructions on the cup and then passed it on to Cassie, who was making the drinks. It appeared that Tara had been cornered in the bookstore by a customer who seemed to have a whole lot of questions about the new inventory.
“That’ll be three seventy-five,” I said.
The woman paid for her drink, and I looked toward the line to greet the next customer. “Alex,” I greeted Alex Turner. “Are you going to work as our store Santa this year?”
I’d first met Alex five years ago when he’d applied for the job as our bookstore Santa. He’d not only become a close friend, but he was such a huge hit as Santa that we had him come back for a few days every year.
“I am.” He smiled. “Tara wants me to be here afternoons from the eighteenth through the twenty-fourth.”
“I’m looking forward to it. How is Willow feeling?” Willow was our part-time employee, who’d been out sick all week. She and Alex were raising her son together, and while they were about as close as any two people could be, the status of their relationship was somewhat undefined.
“She’s feeling better. She hopes to be back to work next week. By the way, I heard about Chappy’s boat. Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” I assured Alex. “Both he and Cosmo were at O’Malley’s when the fire started.”
“That’s good. After what happened to Tom, I was worried. I can’t imagine who would have set fire to the Santa House. The whole thing is a tragedy.”
“Finn, the gang, and I are working on a few theories. Did you know Tom well?”
“Not really. I ran into him from time to time, and we chatted. We both had roles as Santa, so we had that in common, but I can’t say that we were close friends.”
I glanced at the line behind Alex and realized we should wrap this up. “I’d love to chat with you about this further, but there is a line to deal with. Are you going to be in town for a while?”
“I have a couple of errands to take care of before I head back to the north shore. I could come back in about an hour.”
“That would be perfect. And your coffee is on the house.”
Alex left, and I greeted the next customer. It seemed that the line had only grown since I’d shown up. At least Tara was ringing up the customer she’d been helping with books, so maybe she could help Cassie and me, and between the three of us, we could get everyone taken care of.
“I just spoke to Carmen Simpson. She told me that it was Conway Granger who shot down the reindeer in town,” Tara informed me as soon as she’d joined us at the coffee counter.
“Conway Granger burned down the Santa House too?”
“No. That’s the surprising thing. We assumed all the vandalism that took place around town was connected to the fire at the Santa House, but it looks like the reindeer was an isolated incident.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“According to Carmen, who works at Shots,” Tara referred to a local bar, “Conway was in town on Wednesday singing the blues about this, that, and the other, and ended up having way too much to drink. When he left, he was driving that old truck of his, and one of his buddies decided to follow him home to make sure he’d make it safely. Apparently, the friend witnessed Conway pull over to the side of the road, grab his shotgun out of the truck, and shoot the reindeer overhead. Then he got back into his truck and drove home, where I guess he slept it off.”
I handed the woman I’d been helping her change. “So why are we just finding this out now?”
“I guess the friend didn’t want to cause any trouble for Conway, and Conway didn’t even remember what he’d done, so no one said anything. But when word began to circulate that it was assumed the same person was responsible for the fire at the Santa House, the shooting of the reindeer, the vandalism to the nativity scene, the chopping down of the tree in the park, and the fire on Chappy’s boat, the man figured he’d better speak up.”
“Does Finn know about this?”
Tara nodded. “Carmen told me that Finn brought Conway in this morning. He has an alibi for the time of both the fire at the Santa House and the one on Chappy’s boat. He admitted to being completely smashed on the night he shot the reindeer out of the sky and, as I said, he didn’t even remember doing it. He didn’t think he was responsible for the nativity scene or the Christmas tree in the park, but because he couldn’t remember what he’d done that night, he couldn’t be sure. However, the friend said that Conway went straight home after he shot Rudolph, so it looks like he is only on the hook for that.”
I smiled at the last woman in line and took her order. Once Cassie had made the beverage and sent the woman on her way, I turned to Tara. “So it is possible that all the events happened independently?”
“I don’t think so. Remember the mistletoe. It was found on Chappy’s boat, at the nativity scene, and at the fallen tree in the park. I think we can assume that those three events are related. I have no idea if the person who did those things also burned the Santa House and killed Tom. I guess that will be up to Finn to unravel.”
“I guess.” I glanced at the clock. “Alex is coming back by. I wanted to speak to him about Tom and about the Christmas Eve party. He told me you’d already arranged for him to be Santa next week.”
She nodded. “A lot of people have been asking about him. He sure is popular with the kids and their parents.”
“He does have a way with people of all ages. I oftentimes wonder if he and Willow will settle down and build on the family they’ve started.”
“Maybe someday.”
The store was empty by the time Alex returned, so I suggested the two of us chat in the cat lounge. I started off by inviting him to the Christmas Eve party at Mr. Parsons’s. He informed me that Mr. Parsons had already mentioned it, and both he and Willow planned to attend. I then asked him about Tom and whether he knew anything that might shed light on a motive for anyone to want him dead.
Alex paused, I assumed to consider my question. “So you think that the fire was directed at Tom specifically?”
“I’m not sure. It is possible that someone just wanted to burn down the Santa House and Tom was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I think it would be a mistake not to at least consider that he was the target all along.”
“I guess it makes sense that he could have been. Everyone knew Tom was the Santa on weekdays. I’m assuming the fire was set with some sort of a remote igniter?”
I nodded. “Someone planted a timer that set off a small explosion that started the fire which, according to Finn, was accelerated so that it would burn hot and fast.”
“So the person who set the fire had experience in such things. It seems that to place a timer and to set up and control an explosion would ta
ke a certain amount of expertise. I certainly wouldn’t know how to go about doing something like that. Would you?”
I frowned. “No. You make a good point. The majority of the population of Madrona Island probably couldn’t have pulled it off.”
“What about Gil Errington?” Alex suggested. “I know he was angry with Tom for closing down the business they built together the way he did, and he is ex-Army, so he probably could have pulled off the bomb.”
“Gil’s name has come up before, but why would he use the Santa House to kill Tom if he wanted him dead? If Tom was the target and didn’t simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, why would the killer choose that particular method of eliminating him?”
Alex slowly shook his head. “No idea.”
“Finn and I found some things in Tom’s home. A key and a bullet casing from a rifle. Do either suggest anything to you?”
“No. Like I said, Tom and I chatted from time to time, but we weren’t good friends or anything.” He paused and drummed his fingers on the table. “I wonder if the bullet casing matches the rifle Conway just happened to have in his truck, which he used to shoot down the reindeer. Maybe the reindeer weren’t the first casualty of his drunken hunting. Maybe he’d shot at other targets while on benders during the weeks before the reindeer were shot down. Maybe Tom happened to observe Conway during one of those drunken shooting sprees, and maybe Conway didn’t want Tom telling anyone what he’d seen, so he killed him. At the very least, I’d match the bullet found in the reindeer with the casing found in Tom’s house.”
My eyes widened. “That’s a good suggestion. I’ll call Finn. The reindeer shooting occurred after Tom was dead, but you make a good point. Perhaps Conway was responsible for shooting something else before the fire at the Santa House.”
Chapter 7
