Dead, Bath, and Beyond

by Lorraine Bartlett

  Timing was everything, and she needed to wait as long as possible without alerting the hurrying dark shadow. He moved a little closer, a little closer . . .

  “Oh!” The gasp was involuntary. She stood straighter and stared at the furtive figure. Don Parsons! What are you doing out in the rain?

  She couldn’t think of a single reason. Not one that she liked, anyway.

  Puzzled and more than a little concerned, she continued to watch Don scurrying along the parking lot and looking over his shoulder. Where on earth was he going? Frowning, she edged farther forward, worried now about losing sight of him. Then . . . she did.

  “Swell,” she muttered and moved along Artisans Alley until she reached the end of the building and saw headlights flare. She’d let both Don and Nick park in Artisans Alley’s back lot for the past couple of months while more than one Dumpster had been planted in front of Sassy Sally’s.

  A car rolled out of the parking lot and turned right toward Main Street, away from her.

  It took her all of half a second to decide what to do. Katie ran for her car, unlocked it, and jumped in. She started the engine and eased it into gear but did not turn on the headlights.

  She waited until Don had gone a couple of blocks, switched on her lights, and started following him.

  Through the pouring rain they drove, a very short parade of two cars, one of which didn’t even realize it was part of the event. Katie switched the windshield wipers to high and closed the gap between them to one block, figuring that Don wouldn’t have a clue the car in his rearview mirror was following him.

  Because why would he? Normal people living in a small village didn’t pay attention to the vehicles behind them—especially when the driving conditions were less than optimal—unless it was to check if it was someone they knew.

  So Don drove, and Katie followed. She glanced at her gas gauge, grateful to see that the tank was almost full. Where was he headed? The hardware store? That would make sense, really. She could come up with an easy half a dozen reasons for him needing to stop there . . . but, no. Not only was it closed, but he passed that, too.

  As Don drove past every business on Main Street, Katie began to run out of ideas. Where on earth was he going? The rain, thankfully, was dribbling off to a sprinkle, and there was enough traffic that Katie was sure he didn’t suspect her presence, but . . . where was he going? Where—

  The left turn signal on Don’s car blinked, and he went down Parma Townline Road. Katie slowed to increase the gap, then made the same turn. They were outside the village limits now, and the area was a mix of residential homes and small farms.

  There were also fewer cars, so Katie let the gap between them increase further. She wasn’t worried about losing sight of him; there weren’t that many places for him to go.

  One mile, two miles . . . then at close to three miles down the road, Don’s blinker went on again. The brake lights flared, and the car turned into a driveway that led to an odd cluster of buildings with varying shapes and sizes.

  Katie’s foot came off the gas pedal, and she let her car coast. She’d get the address of this place, whatever it was, and come back later to check it out.

  As she drew closer, she watched as Don jumped out of his car. Yard lights flicked on, and a man Katie didn’t recognize walked out of the largest building. Don hurried toward him. Katie could see that the men were talking, and then, just as her car passed by, she watched, wide-eyed, as Don held out his arms and the two men gave each other a huge hug.

  Twelve

  Katie spent another night tossing and turning as she replayed the events over in her mind.

  One. Don sneaking down the sidewalk.

  Two. Don driving through a rainstorm by himself.

  Three. Don greeting another man—a man who clearly wasn’t his life partner—with a huge hug.

  Four. Katie suddenly suspicious of Don’s actions. He’d asked her to trust him, but could she after what she’d seen? Though she wanted to trust her friend—yearned to trust him—how did she reconcile that wish to trust with the possibility that . . .

  Pushing away the thought, she determinedly thought about sitting on a beach listening to the soft wash of waves on the sand, concentrating on her breathing, and fell into a sleep that was punctuated by unwelcome dreams.

  The sun brought her awake from a blurry chase scene that involved boats, faceless bad guys, candles, and, oddly, cats in a bathtub.

  “Was it you two?” she blearily asked Mason and Della, who’d wrapped themselves into two furry circles at the foot of her bed. Two untouching circles, that was, because though the two unrelated cats tolerated each other, they weren’t best buddies. “It was mostly dark in the dream, so it was hard to tell.”

  The felines stared at her, unblinking.

  “Right,” she said snarkily, but sliding out of bed in a way that didn’t disturb her pets. “You’re cats. You wouldn’t tell me even if you wanted to, because it could lead to the destruction of the mysterious allure that is the hallmark of your species.”

  “Meow?” Della asked.

  Katie stopped, a little ashamed of herself. “Sorry about that,” she said, turning back to give her cats quick snuggles. “Looks like I got out on the wrong side of the bed.” After they’d closed their eyes and started purring, she kissed them both on top of their heads and headed for the shower. Maybe a few cold shots of water would help to wake her up.

  An hour later, she was sitting in her office, sucking down coffee as if it was the last liquid left on the planet. The caffeine helped her body to function, but it wasn’t helping her to focus on the pile of tasks that needed doing.

  Out on the main sales floor, a number of customers circulated among the booths. More than normal, but not nearly what they’d seen the day before. As Katie had expected, that had been an anomaly, and with a wry smile, she started to delete the spreadsheet she’d worked on the evening before, the one that showed her calculations of when she’d be able to hire someone to fix the gutters by the side entrance that needed to be done before winter. She didn’t want the water to freeze and become a slipping hazard.

  At the last second, though, she stopped herself from deleting the document. After all, you never knew. Instead, she slid it into a folder titled “Long-Range Planning.”

  “Someday,” she said out loud and was pleased at the sense of optimism that washed through her. “Someday,” she said again, promising herself. Then she shook out her hands, took a deep breath, took another one, and got down to work.

  Once again, the hollowness in her stomach brought her to the realization that she hadn’t eaten lunch. She was tempted to skip the meal, since Andy had texted her that morning that he wouldn’t be able to meet her at Del’s due to being short-staffed once again, but she knew that skipping meals wasn’t the wisest way to lose weight. Yet, it was tempting.

  Still thinking about it, she got up from her desk and, stiff from sitting so long without moving anything except her hands, almost fell over. “Whoa!” She grabbed the edge of the desk. Looks like what she needed more than anything was to walk around and stretch her legs. She’d been warned by numerous older friends that she would need to start taking care of herself better now that she was in her thirties, but somehow she’d assumed that need would be at the end of the decade, not at the beginning.

  Grimly, she stood and leaned over in an attempt to touch her toes. It was an epic fail. Her hands barely reached past her knees. After a little effort and light bouncing, she managed to touch the tops of her shoes, but that wasn’t exactly satisfying.

  How on earth had she let this happen? Okay, the separation from Chad had sent her to ice cream more than once, and then his death had pushed her to add chocolate syrup. And then Ezra’s death and her immediate plunge into making Artisans Alley a money-making enterprise, and then . . . and then there she was, having been either too emotionally ber
eft or too busy to do little more than minimal maintenance on herself for well over a year.

  Still, it was only a year. And she was still young, since there was no way that thirty-one could be considered old. All she had to do was work a little. That wouldn’t be so hard. She vowed to take a walk around the sales floors once every hour. A few minutes was all it would take, and wasn’t she always thinking she needed to get to know her vendors better? And right that moment would be a perfect time to start.

  But the moment she stepped outside her office door was the moment she saw the empty vendors’ lounge, which was the moment she remembered talking to Gwen and, after that, seeing Gwen in deep conversation with Duncan. Her new and uncomfortable knowledge of Don’s activities had pushed all that out of her head.

  She went back inside her office and grabbed her purse, jacket, and the new sign that she’d ordered the week before. Locking the office door, she hung the new WILL RETURN sign on the door, moved the clock hands around to an hour away, paused, moved them to an hour and a half away, and headed out.

  Thanks to the willingness of people to talk about wooden boats, it only took her two phone calls to find the name of the marina where Duncan kept his craft. She’d started with the manager of the marina where Seth kept his boat, who had in turn provided the name of a marina that he knew kept a lot of wooden boats.

  The manager of North Coast Marina frowned. “Duncan who? McAllister? Nope, not sure I—”

  Katie had interrupted him to describe Duncan and what she knew of his boat.

  “Oh, I got it,” the manager had said. “You’re talking about Mac! Sure, his boat is here, but I doubt he’s interested in selling.” Wanting to purchase a large wooden boat like Duncan’s had been Katie’s cover story to everyone but Seth. “Still, I don’t suppose it would hurt to talk to him. He’s around most mornings.”

  She’d written down directions to the marina, but as she neared the location, she tossed the piece of paper onto the passenger’s seat. There was no need for a specific address when there were so many signs of a pending marina in front of her. Large warehouses, expanses of flat grass crowded with boats on trailers, trailers without boats, pieces of boats, even, and half a dozen trucks, tractors, and cranes moving it all around.

  Katie parked off in a far corner of a parking lot and hoped her car wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. After dodging three trailered boats being hauled across the lots, she was grateful to enter the door of the marina’s office and get out of the way of the hustle and bustle.

  Inside, however, it wasn’t much better.

  The man at the desk hung up the phone, looked at her, and growled, “Where the hell is he?”

  Katie blinked. “I’m sorry?” She was pretty sure this was the guy she’d talked to on the phone earlier, but his question didn’t make any sense.

  He stabbed his index finger in the air, indicating he’d be right with her, and picked up the phone. “Chris, where the hell is Trevor? He was supposed to be at the Langdons’ at noon . . . No, I don’t care if it took longer at the Garfields’ than he thought. The Langdons needed him there at noon, and it’s almost one o’clock. Get him there now!” He slammed the phone down, but just as he looked up at Katie, the phone rang.

  The man glared at the instrument. “I love my job,” he muttered. “I love my job.” Picking up the phone, he said, “North Coast Marina . . . Yes, ma’am, we’re absolutely getting your dock out of the water this week . . . Yes, I realize it’s already Thursday afternoon, but—”

  Behind Katie, the office’s door opened and a well-dressed couple in their sixties stepped in. The man’s face was stormy, and his fists were clenched.

  “Now, honey,” said the woman, “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. There’s no need to get all upset about this.”

  “I’ll take them to court,” the man said tightly. “I said last year if it happened again I’d sue. I’ve had enough of their excuses, and you should have, too.”

  Katie decided to get away while the getting was good. She smiled at the man on the phone, edged away from the couple, who were now in a quiet but fierce argument, and went back outside.

  Pulling in a breath of fresh air, she looked around the marina and considered what to do next. She’d intended to ask about Duncan in the office, see if she could get some impression of him, anything that might help her figure out what was going on, but that obviously wasn’t going to work out.

  “Now what?” she asked out loud. A loud burst of laughter made her look in the direction of the lake. At least she assumed there was a lake out there somewhere since she was mostly seeing paths that must lead to floating docks. She was surprised to see so many sailboats still in the water; she’d been under the impression that most boats came out right after Labor Day.

  Then again, maybe this was where boats hung out if the marina was doing some extra work. Or maybe this marina happened to have a lot of people who didn’t mind boating in the chillier weather of fall.

  She decided to walk around for a little while, then head back and see if she could catch a few uninterrupted minutes with the manager. A wide concrete sidewalk flanked the line of covered boats closest to her. Off to the right, she caught sight of some wooden boats, so she set off that way.

  Only a few of the slips were empty, and she smiled to see some of the names people had painted on their boats. Sodium Free. YachtSee. Deeper in Debt. Idle-Ours. After Math. Whatever Floats Your Boat. Hang on . . . “After Math?”

  She walked back a few steps and studied the boat, a large wooden job, remembering that Duncan had been a teacher. Had he been a math teacher?

  “You looking for someone?”

  Katie turned. “Hi,” she said, smiling. The gray-haired woman standing nearby was lugging two big buckets of soapy water and had towels slung over her shoulders. “Do you need help with that?”

  “If you’d asked thirty yards ago, I would have said absolutely, but since I’m here, I’ll say thanks, but no thanks.” She thumped the buckets down on the dock that ran between After Math and its neighbor, also a wooden boat, and reached down into the bucket. Pulling out a sponge, she squeezed out the extra water. “You looking for Mac? He was here this morning.”

  Katie’s breath quickened. “Do you think he’ll be back today?”

  The woman shrugged. “No idea. He comes and goes, like most of us retired folks.” She shot Katie a look. “If you’re looking to buy Mac’s boat, you’re wasting your time. He’s not interested in selling.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Katie murmured. Thinking fast, she said, “But let’s pretend that he is. Does Dunc—I mean Mac, does he take good care of his boat?”

  A snort started off her reply. “I wish my husband took care of me like Mac takes care of After Math.”

  Katie laughed. “I know what you mean.” She paused, then asked, “Does he take the boat out often?”

  “Often?” The woman stood there, soap suds dripping onto the dock in small plops. She smiled, and the corners of her eyes went all crinkly. “If by often you mean he’s out on the water every chance he can get, then I suppose he’s out often enough.”

  “Even on the weekends?” Katie asked. “I mean, I can imagine a lot of people wouldn’t want to take out a really nice wooden boat on a weekend. Especially holiday weekends, when there’re so many people boating that don’t really know what they’re doing.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Her new friend rolled her eyes. “Take Labor Day weekend. Remember how nice it was? This place was packed. All my husband and I wanted was to get out of here and out onto the open water, and I swear it took us an hour when it normally takes five minutes. Holiday boaters kept getting in our way. It’s enough to drive you to drink.” She grinned. “Which, luckily, we happened to have on board.”

  “How about Mac?” Katie nodded toward After Math. “Was he out that weekend, too?”

 
“None of your damn business.”

  Katie flinched at the sound of Duncan McAllister’s voice but held her ground. “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  “You stay away from my boat,” he said, stepping close to her. “And from me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a murder investigation going on.”

  “And that’s your business how?” His voice was low and growly.

  “Because my friends are involved,” she said, keeping her chin up and her gaze fastened on Duncan’s face. She would not, repeat would not, let the size of this man intimidate her. “If my friends are involved, I’ll do what I can to help them, including asking questions about you.” She pointed her index finger at him but stopped short of poking him in the chest, even though he was close enough—and she was sorely tempted.

  “You stay away from my boat,” he repeated. “And stay away from me.” He pushed past her, strode onto the dock, stepped up into his boat, and disappeared from view.

  “Well,” Katie said brightly to her new friend. “Looks like—”

  But the woman gave her a baleful glare, and then she, too, retreated to her boat.

  “Swell,” Katie said under her breath. “Just swell.”

  Instead of doing what a responsible owner of a close-to-thriving business would do, which should have been return to the location of said business and get back to work, Katie decided that since she was out and about, she may as well take a joyride to Fairport and stop at Marcie Kimper’s house for a casual chat.

  She’d come up with a couple of decent explanations for stopping. One, seeking reassurance for her vendors that the purchasers of the insurance agency weren’t going to sell their policies to a huge, uncaring corporation; two, that she’d met and liked Josh’s new office manager, Erikka, and hoped that Marcie would give her a solid letter of recommendation.