Crook, Line and Sinker (A Hooked & Cooked Cozy Mystery Series Book 4)

by Lyndsey Cole

  Pam uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “You didn’t think it was a tiny bit suspicious that Dwayne Dunn, who is homeless, would have a backpack full of cash?”

  “It is unusual but—”

  “But what? What if it was stolen?”

  “What if it wasn’t? What if Dwayne Dunn has cash because, well, that’s what he does?”

  “And the letter? Weren’t you worried about him last night because of what he wrote in the letter?”

  “I didn’t read the letter until this morning after he didn’t show up for work, and yes, it did worry me.”

  “Now, the biggest mystery. How did you and Cal know where to look for Dwayne? Even his brother didn’t have a clue where to start.”

  This question was one she did not want to answer. How on earth was she supposed to explain how they knew where to go without pulling Cal into the mess or making herself look even guiltier?

  “We followed Patches’s howling.” It just came out before she could think about how ridiculous it would sound to Pam. It wasn’t the whole truth but it was ultimately how they found the campsite.

  Pam laughed. “Right. You must think I’m really gullible. I’m curious how Cal will answer that question. He’s next on my list. I’ll find him working out back, right?”

  Hannah nodded. A knot the size of one of her bowls of chowder formed in her stomach.

  She watched Pam head toward Cal and her new cottage and quickly sent a text message to him. We followed Patches’s howling. She realized the message might not make sense to him at first, but with some luck, he’d figure out the meaning once Pam grilled him about finding Dwayne’s body.

  As Hannah left her office, she nearly ran straight into Clara. “There you are. Shall we continue our conversation about Dwayne? I have something I want to show you.” Clara leaned on her cane as she headed toward Cottage Four.

  “I’ll be right there,” Hannah answered.

  11

  Hannah turned back inside and went to her apartment. She snapped a leash on Patches. Nellie danced around, expecting a walk, but Hannah had something else in mind.

  She walked with the two dogs to Cottage Four. The door was slightly ajar. Hannah knocked and peeked in. “Mind if I bring a couple of friends inside?”

  Clara turned around and saw the two dogs. A smile lit up her face. “Of course not. Is that Dwayne’s beagle?” Clara bent down to rub Patches behind his ears.

  “Yup. And this beauty is my dog, Nellie. She’s been keeping an eye on Patches to make sure he doesn’t escape again. At least, that’s what I told her to do, but who knows? Maybe they were both plotting the great escape.”

  “Those two? I doubt it.” Clara waved her hand, welcoming Hannah and the two dogs. “Look at those sad eyes.” She took the leash from Hannah and sat on the end of her bed, keeping her hand on Patches’s head. “So, where were we before Officer Larson showed up to talk to you?”

  “You were telling me who you thought might want Dwayne dead,” Hannah reminded Clara. She sat on the soft recliner in the corner of the room. Nellie lay down at her feet.

  “Dwayne’s brother, Marty, was always envious of him. And that’s putting it nicely. Of course, Marty was the handsome and athletic one so all the girls were always swooning over him. But his brother was the smart one, and that didn’t sit well with Marty. He wanted it all.”

  “But Marty’s successful and wealthy and has a beautiful wife, at least according to an article I read. Maybe he grew up and let go of his jealousy.” Hannah thought about the times she was jealous of her sister and was embarrassed to think she had actually torn Ruby’s clothes on purpose or told Ruby’s boyfriends mean secrets about her.

  But that was when they were teenagers. Now, they might squabble, but when the chips were down, they always helped each other.

  “That’s all true but Marty is successful because of Dwayne. I suspect that’s what bothers him.”

  “What do you mean?” Hannah couldn’t understand what Clara was referring to. The way everyone had been talking about Dwayne, he didn’t have much to offer anyone.

  “Dwayne was always coming up with ideas. Some good, some bad. Many of his ideas made money, good money, but I always suspected that eventually he was bound to have one idea that would be worth big money.”

  “Dwayne had a lot of money?” Hannah pictured the one-hundred dollar bills in his backpack.

  Clara laughed. “Probably not with that scheming wife of his. She spent every last penny he had, then kicked him out when she decided he wasn’t any use to her anymore.” She continued to stroke Patches during their conversation. Her fingers tried to slip under his collar. “This collar is tight. Do you mind if I loosen it?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Clara struggled with the buckle and flexed her hands in frustration. “These old hands just don’t work properly anymore. You’ll have to do it.”

  Hannah knelt next to Patches and loosened the collar. It slipped off before she could catch the bar in a new hole. He shook his whole body, his long, silky ears flying back and forth over his head.

  “I bet that’ll make you happier.” Hannah rubbed his back and picked up the collar. “I guess I should check his tags and make sure his rabies vaccination is up to date.” The tags clinked as Hannah slid them apart. “Rabies looks good. He even has an I.D. tag.” Hannah pursed her lips and squinted her eyes. She looked at Clara. “The I.D. address is for my Great Aunt Caroline. Why would Dwayne have her name and address on his dog?”

  Clara extended her hand to take a look for herself. “Makes perfect sense to me. Dwayne didn’t have an address so he used Caroline’s.” She handed the collar back. “I have something he gave me a while back.” Clara dug around in her purse. “I kept it with me in case I ran into him and he needed it back. Here it is.” She pulled out a paper that she handed to Hannah.

  “What is this?” Hannah asked after taking a look at the drawing.

  “He told me he was developing some kind of clarification process for grape juice. It doesn’t make sense to me but he asked me to keep it safe.”

  Hannah studied the drawing again. “It looks familiar but I have no idea where I would have seen something like this before.”

  “Did Caroline leave any papers for you?”

  Hannah laughed. “I have a filing cabinet of papers. I took a quick glance at everything after I moved in and I haven’t thrown anything away. Do you think Dwayne gave her drawings, too?”

  “I know he did. She told me she had a file she was keeping for him. Your aunt was pretty close to Dwayne, one of the few people in town who saw through his odd behavior and appreciated his talents.”

  “I wish I got to know him better. What I saw was a kindness and also a calmness.” Hannah stood. “I’m going to search that filing cabinet to see what I can find.” Hannah paused. “You said Marty is successful because of Dwayne. Do you think these drawings could be part of some invention he was working on? Something he was making money from?”

  “It’s possible. Marty handled all of Dwayne’s work.”

  “The night before Dwayne disappeared, the night I found Patches, I found something else, too.”

  “Oh?” Clara’s eyebrows shot up.

  “A backpack full of cash. The police have it now, but where do you think it came from?”

  “I have no idea, but I think your aunt’s filing cabinet is as good a starting point as any. If you can find the folder Caroline had, there could be more information inside.” Clara stroked Patches’s head again. “And, if I were you, I wouldn’t mention this to anyone else, especially his family. They aren’t the most trustworthy bunch. Have you met them yet?”

  Hannah nodded. “I had the pleasure to meet Marty and Ebony right after the police found Dwayne’s body.” She grimaced.

  “Were they devastated?”

  “More like rude and angry. And you wouldn’t believe what Marty said to me about Patches.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He
said he told Dwayne he would send Patches to the pound if it was up to him.” Hannah shook her head at the memory. If she had her way, she’d like to send Marty to the pound for a few days. Too bad it wasn’t an option.

  “I’m glad Patches found you instead of Marty. He’s a lucky boy, and if you need help walking him or anything like that, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m already kind of attached to him.” She leaned over and rubbed the sides of his head with both hands.

  Hannah opened the door. “I’m glad you decided to stay here, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the information you provided. Now I’ll have to figure out a way to pry more details out of Marty and Ebony.”

  “Oh! I can help with that, too. The Hooks Harbor Garden Tour is tomorrow and I have a couple of extra tickets to the garden tour fundraiser party that’s an invite-only affair tonight.”

  Hannah remembered the article about the garden tour and the fundraising event in the article Samantha showed her. It wasn’t really her cup-of-tea kind of activity. “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of work to do here.” As nice as the event sounded, Hannah couldn’t imagine how a garden party would help her find out about Dwayne’s murder.

  A grin spread across Clara’s face. “You might want to reconsider. There will be fancy food, drinks, and a raffle to raise money for the garden club. Oh, and did I forget to mention that the party is at Marty and Tami Dunn’s garden?” She waved the tickets in front of Hannah. “Are you sure you can’t find the time to attend?”

  Hannah stopped dead in her tracks. “Well, that does sound like an exciting, not to be missed, occasion. I’ll definitely be there.” She snatched the tickets from Clara’s outstretched hand.

  “Here’s a tiny bit of advice: If you don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, you should wear something nice, and flowery.”

  Hannah groaned. She looked down at her t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. “Not appropriate?”

  Clara shook her head.

  “I’ll have to raid my sister’s closet.”

  “And think about doing something with your hair besides that long braid.” Clara patted Hannah’s arm. “Your look is perfect for the casual atmosphere you have here but I know this crowd. If you can, at least, look like you fit in, you’ll have a chance that they’ll lower their guard and talk candidly to you about Dwayne.” Clara raised her eyebrows.

  Hannah sighed.

  “It’s just a suggestion.”

  12

  Hannah put the problem of what to wear to the garden party in the back of her brain. First, she wanted to look through her filing cabinet to see if she could find the folder Great Aunt Caroline had of Dwayne’s papers.

  She barged into her office with both dogs, completely focused on her mission.

  “Finally,” an exasperated voice said. “I thought you would never show up.”

  Hannah startled, then said a silent bad word about this unwanted visitor.

  Ebony Dunn sat cross-legged on the office chair. Her right leg was crossed over the left and her sandaled foot jiggled up and down. Hannah had a momentary panic attack when she sized up Ebony’s ensemble as she sat like a prima donna—white linen pants, gold draped on every possible body part, and toenails painted to match her green silk blouse.

  Hannah would be so out of her league at the garden party if this was the kind of outfit she had to wear.

  “Well? Can’t you even offer me a drink?” Ebony scowled. “Oh, never mind, I’ll save my thirst for the garden party later. You probably don’t have anything but cheap, rotgut wine, anyway.” She used here pinky finger to dab something—a blob of spit?—off the corner of her mouth.

  Hannah opened the door to her apartment and ushered the dogs through before she sat in her chair behind her desk. The desk she was happy to have as a buffer between herself and this snob.

  She laced her fingers in front of her chin. “I don’t have any vacancies at the moment,” Hannah said, even though she was pretty sure that Ebony wasn’t here about renting a cottage.

  “Vacancies? You think I’d stay at this dump?” She brushed some imaginary dust off her immaculate pants.

  Hannah clenched her jaw and sat silently. She wasn’t going to make this easy for Ebony.

  Ebony’s voice got softer. “You must have been one of the last people to see Dwayne.” She wiped her cheek, but if there were any tears, Hannah sure as heck hadn’t seen them. “Did he leave anything here? You know, maybe with the expectation that he would be back?”

  “He did.”

  Ebony’s eyes blinked several times. “What did he leave? Papers?”

  “No, he left his companion in my charge.”

  “Companion? He had a girlfriend behind my back?” Ebony’s eyes turned dark, almost black, as she lurched forward.

  “He left Patches. His dog?” You fool, she added to herself. “He asked me to look after Patches if anything happened to him.” The fact that Dwayne asked this in a letter didn’t seem like an important detail that Hannah needed to share with Ebony. “Which makes me wonder, Ebony, why would Dwayne think something might happen to him?”

  Hannah kept her eyes locked on Ebony’s until she shifted her skinny self in the chair and looked out the window. “I wouldn’t have a clue. Dwayne and I weren’t, well, we weren’t close anymore.”

  “Then why do you think if he left something, you would be entitled to it?”

  Ebony’s sandal enclosing her perfect green toenails landed on the floor with a thump. “Because I’m still his wife,” she sneered. “And Dwayne didn’t have a will that I’m aware of, so what was his is now mine. And if you think you can hide something from me, you are in for the fight of your life. I’ll even fight you for that dog if I have to.” An evil grin broke her mask of a face. “If you don’t cough up something that I might actually want.”

  Ebony stood and put her hand on the doorknob but stopped and turned back toward Hannah. “Think of it this way, we can help each other. When you find those papers, tell me and not his greedy brother, and Dwayne’s little doggie can stay with you.”

  The door slammed behind Ebony and as far as Hannah was concerned, she hoped it hit Ebony on her skinny behind. Ha. Who was she to call Marty greedy?

  Hannah had serious doubts about going to the garden party after that conversation. In the first place, she hated crowds, but more than that, she despised people who thought they were better than everyone else.

  And Ebony Dunn fit that description to a T.

  But if she could uncover any piece of evidence that would help find Dwayne’s murderer, it would all be worthwhile. Plus, she had to protect Patches. There was no knowing what a creature like Ebony Dunn would do to that poor dog, but Hannah could guess that it wouldn’t be a good outcome for him to end up in her clutches.

  She pulled the top drawer of the file cabinet open. Her fingers sifted through the tabs as quickly as her eyes read the labels. Everything was connected to running the business. She repeated the process in the second drawer, her determination strengthening with each passing file. Nothing again. The same outcome in the third drawer.

  Her patience wore thin.

  Hannah sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the bottom drawer. It was the final one. She had to find something helpful here.

  This was the drawer she had tucked all the miscellaneous folders into when she reorganized Great Aunt Caroline’s system. The folders she didn’t think she still needed but she was afraid to throw away.

  Just in case.

  One of these folders might hold a clue.

  Slowly, her fingers pulled each folder up as she focused on the label, trying to decipher if there could be a second meaning. As she proceeded from front to back, she set a few folders aside in a pile. When she got to the back, she picked up the separated pile and returned to her desk for a more thorough search within the manila parcels.

  Before she could start, the door opened. She moved the pile of folders into a drawer, out of sight.

  Samantha plunked herself onto the c
hair. “You won’t believe what I’ve been doing.” Her cheeks were pink, her eyes sparkled, and her short silver curls looked windblown.

  “Blake McVee took me out on his boat. We didn’t go too far, but, Hannah, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think I ever knew the meaning of life before. Being out on the wide open ocean, bouncing over the waves, with the gulls soaring overhead and the salty mist flying around us—pure bliss.” She sank back in the chair and her eyes went all dreamy with the memory.

  “And what did his wife, Tiffany, think about you tagging along?” Hannah asked, hoping to bring some reality into Samantha’s fairytale.

  “Tiffany?” Samantha flopped her wrist downward. “She went back to their estate in New York. She doesn’t like his boat, and apparently she read him the riot act about dragging her here to this pile of sand, as she referred to your wonderful location. She won’t be back.”

  “How convenient for you,” Hannah mumbled, more to herself than to Samantha, who either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the comment. “I’m glad you’ve been out enjoying yourself while I’m trying to track down what happened to Dwayne.” She certainly wasn’t taking Samantha to the garden party. She would surely just go all goo-goo eyes over the fancy event and forget what the goal was.

  Samantha leaned forward. “Lighten up. I found out something interesting.”

  Hannah listened.

  “There’s a garden party tonight at Marty Dunn’s house.” Samantha smiled like a Cheshire cat. “Blake invited me to go with him.”

  “What? Why is he going? He doesn’t live in Hooks Harbor.”

  “He knows all the wealthy people here and likes a good time.”

  “You’re juggling fire. What if his wife finds out? She’s probably friends with those people if Blake knows them.” And so much for Hannah going to the garden party and staying in the background. Samantha would be certain to blow that idea.

  “It’s not a date. He only wants a little company. He said he hates to go alone and he was pretty upset when Tiffany ditched him.” Samantha pouted. “I thought you’d think this was great. I can keep my ears open and listen to all the chatter about Dwayne. You know I have amazing hearing when it comes to eavesdropping.”