The Big Kitty

by Claire Donally

  Excuses, but not an apology, she thought. You really are a prince among men, Ollie.

  The opening door interrupted Barnstable’s self-serving speech. “We’re closed,” he called, without even looking at the visitor.

  Sunny turned around to recognize one of the constables she’d seen driving past the office in the last few days.

  “Ms. Coolidge, I have to take you to headquarters,” the cop said.

  That got Ollie’s attention. He goggled when he saw the uniform. “Oh, now what the hell is this?”

  The constable ignored Barnstable, concentrating on Sunny as he spoke. “We have a report that you left the scene of a crime. The sheriff would like to question you.”

  “What crime?” Ollie’s question almost came out as a moan.

  “Attempted murder,” Sunny told him.

  The constable spoke at the same time, but his answer was shorter.

  “Murder.”

  21

  “Murder?” Sunny echoed weakly. Then her voice got louder. “What are you talking about? I’m fine.”

  The constable looked as if he’d just taken a big, healthy mouthful of spoiled milk.

  He probably wasn’t supposed to give that away, Sunny thought. But who got killed? Then she remembered the boom of the shotgun going off. She’d thought the SUV had gotten damaged. But what if it was the driver? That mental image made her queasy and weak in the knees.

  The young man took her by the arm and tried to recover his authority. “You have to accompany me now, ma’am.”

  Sunny turned stricken eyes to Ollie Barnstable, who stared at her with something between amazement and fright. “Don’t call my dad!” she begged. “This would just about kill him!”

  Sunny clung to the hope that they’d quickly resolve this mess and she’d catch a little rest after the events of the early morning and the late afternoon. But that hope quickly died when she arrived at the police station. The place looked even busier than on her last visit, and it only got more so as people in state police uniforms appeared. Apparently a killing received a full-court press.

  Then she got to sit down in an interrogation room with Sheriff Nesbit and a guy in a rumpled suit who turned out to be Lieutenant Wainwright, a state police homicide investigator.

  For the next couple of hours, it wasn’t so much good cop/bad cop as tough cop/furious cop.

  “What the hell was the big idea of leaving the scene?” Nesbit demanded.

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea to stay around where their car stopped,” Sunny replied with complete honesty. “Not when I saw one of them trying to aim a shotgun at me earlier.”

  “But why didn’t you stay put after you’d gotten safely away and reported the crime?” Wainwright asked.

  “I wasn’t thinking straight,” Sunny admitted. “My boss told me I had to get to the office for an urgent meeting or he’d fire me, so I was freaked out even before I saw the guy with the gun.” She shrugged helplessly, looking at the men. “I need the job.”

  She glanced over at Nesbit. “Besides, I had no idea there had been a murder! When I made the other reports, it always just ended up in me wasting—uh, spending—a lot of time on them and then being told that whatever happened wasn’t really a crime.”

  The sheriff swelled up so much, Sunny was afraid he was going to explode.

  “What other reports?” Wainwright asked as Nesbit sputtered.

  “I’ll send for the files,” the sheriff said shortly. He went to the door while Sunny happily outlined for Wainwright some of the things that had happened since she started looking into Ada Spruance’s death.

  The state police investigator listened, nodded, and then asked, “Do you own a gun, Ms. Coolidge? Have you ever handled one?”

  Sunny stared at him. “No.”

  “Do we have your permission to search your car for any weapons?”

  Sunny began to wonder if this was the time when she should start talking about a lawyer. But she gave her permission.

  “She could have tossed it anywhere between the shortcut and reaching town,” Nesbit growled.

  Sunny stared back and forth between the two lawmen. “What’s going on?” she said. “The only gun I know about is the shotgun one of those guys was carrying. I thought I heard it go off when they hit a major bump—”

  “It did,” Wainwright told her. “Wrecked the SUV’s transmission and did quite a job on the driver’s right ankle. He was a small-time Portsmouth thug named Eddie Deever.”

  “He bled to death?” Sunny asked, horrified.

  “The constable dispatched to the scene found two men dead, both with bullet holes in their heads,” Nesbit said. “Probably nine millimeter.”

  “And you think I shot them?” Sunny’s voice rose to an indignant squeak.

  “They match the descriptions you gave of two men involved in an altercation while you were recently in a known criminal hangout,” Nesbit said.

  “I was in O’Dowd’s trying to talk to Gordie Spruance—you remember, the guy who got killed the next day? I think those two staged a fight to distract me while somebody else dumped a handful of pills in my drink!” she replied heatedly.

  Both of them glanced at Lieutenant Wainwright and shut up.

  “It raises an interesting question,” Wainwright said. “The kill shots were at very close range. Deever’s usual partner in crime, Vernon Galt, was the other person in the car. As you reported, he had a shotgun.”

  He looked at Nesbit, gesturing to Sunny. “If they’d been chasing this young woman with the intent of killing her, I don’t think they’d have let her come that close with a weapon.”

  The sheriff didn’t have anything to say to that, so Wainwright went on. “The fact that Galt let the shooter get so close suggests that he considered that person to be a friend.”

  Wainwright turned back to Sunny. “This young woman already gave a description of the two to the police in another complaint—that doesn’t make her look like a friend.”

  Nesbit looked like a kid who’d just seen all his Christmas gifts go up in flames. For one bright moment, he must have thought he could get a quick solution to a murder case and get rid of a political thorn in his side at the same time.

  Instead, he obviously faced a lot more work. There was no way for him to pass off these two most recent murders as “accidents,” and there went Elmet County’s so-called spotless crime record.

  Wainwright assumed the lead in the interrogation, taking Sunny through the whole chain of events. Along the way, he asked Sunny a number of questions she couldn’t answer—for instance, had she noticed the SUV following her before the attack?

  “I don’t know,” Sunny had to admit. “I saw it in the rearview mirror, zooming up, about half a mile after I left home.”

  The state police investigator thanked and dismissed her, but she still had to wait for her statement to be typed up so she could sign it.

  Finally she was free to go—and found a strained-looking Will Price waiting for her.

  “Well, at least they’re not locking you up,” he offered.

  She managed a wan smile. “There is that.”

  “I called your dad to let him know you’d be a little delayed,” he went on. “I didn’t tell him why.”

  Sunny nodded, wondering if tonight would be another anxious bout with her dad’s angina. “Thanks,” she said.

  The streets around the police station were pretty quiet early on a Sunday evening as they made their way toward the New Stores. Will told her he’d parked near the MAX office, figuring that would be easier for escorting her home.

  “And I am escorting you,” he insisted, “even if they screwed up this attack.” He shook his head. “Looks like the Wile E. Coyote curse continues. I mean, how many times do you hear about hit men launching an attack and killing their own car?”

  Sunny relaxed a little as they strolled along. “Actually they may have gone two for two, if they’re the ones who planted that bullet gizmo. First they killed
my car—at least the steering—and then their own.”

  “Bumbling henchmen,” Will joked.

  But all of a sudden, Sunny shuddered. “It’s a shame their boss doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor.”

  Will nodded, his face grave again. “This time one of the henchmen got seriously wounded. The damage to Deever couldn’t have been fixed with a couple of bandages and a little bed rest. He would have had to go to a hospital, and Galt must have said as much when he called for help.”

  “How do you know he called for help?”

  “We found a cheap cell phone in Galt’s pocket. According to the records, he used it to make a lot of calls to another cell phone that, remarkably, isn’t answering anymore. Whoever got the call must have flown over there to beat the squad car.”

  “So you’re saying they called their boss for help, and this was his answer,” Sunny said faintly.

  “Well, hospitals are bound to ask embarrassing questions and make annoying reports to the police,” Will explained. “So Mr. Genius decided to terminate Deever. And since Galt was likely to disagree, and he had a shotgun, he got taken out first.”

  “Brrrr,” Sunny said, “that’s cold.”

  “One man’s cold is another man’s business model,” Will replied.

  “Ron Shays,” Sunny burst out.

  Will nodded. “We know he likes to set up businesses with locals and then get rid of them. So he sets himself up in Portsmouth and recruits some goons. But this time the cycle ran a bit faster than usual. He ended up getting rid of his local talent before he even made any money.”

  “Do you think he’s still in Portsmouth pulling the strings?” Sunny asked.

  “The Portsmouth cops lost track of him almost a week ago,” Will pointed out. “But I bet he was in Kittery Harbor today, pulling the trigger. Problem is, now he could be in the wind anywhere.”

  “No,” Sunny said, and she said it quite definitely. “It’s like you said—Shays hasn’t made any money. Would you imagine a druggie with poor impulse control giving up on six million dollars?”

  Will looked at her for a second, speechless. “Put that way, you might have a point.”

  “The question is, how do we make him stick his neck out?” Sunny smiled as the glimmerings of a plan began to come together in her mind. “Do you mind taking a little time before seeing me home? I need to talk with Ken Howell.”

  22

  Ollie Barnstable was gone from the office when they finally got there, but Sunny called his cell phone. It would not be business as usual tomorrow. She needed a free hand to conduct phone interviews and even have news crews come in if she was going to accomplish what she hoped to do. He wasn’t happy when he heard that, but Sunny gave him a pretty stark choice. Do nothing and let the town endure a wave of bad publicity from a double murder, or let her undertake this project and give the local media an alternative story to cover.

  “Which headline do you think would be better for tourism?” she asked. “‘Two Thugs Murdered in Kittery Harbor’ or ‘Search Continues for Lottery Millions’? No, I can’t guarantee finding the ticket. But either way, the problem will be finished by tomorrow.”

  The next step was to convince Ken Howell to use his media contacts and get some publicity. “It’s a straight news story,” Sunny told him. “Tomorrow evening I’ll make a last-ditch attempt to find Ada’s ticket. Ada asked me to help before she died, and Gordie did, too.”

  That was all literally true, but Sunny was hoping that a paranoid mind might start wondering what else Ada and Gordie had told her.

  Ken worked up a story, including quotes from Sunny, and promised to do what he could with it.

  Then Will saw Sunny home. She and her dad had a rerun of the stew for dinner, and she went to bed early—tomorrow was going to be a long day.

  *

  Sunny sat in the kitchen listening to the local news radio over breakfast. She usually did that to catch the weather report. Today, though, she listened for the lead stories. Had terrorists done something awful overnight? Had a political scandal broken? Had some Hollywood starlet gotten herself arrested for some stupid crime? So far, the answer was no. It sounded like a fairly quiet news day.

  The morning news team bantered a bit with the weatherman, and then got serious to report the pair of bodies discovered in Kittery Harbor. A moment later they lightened up again, talking up the missing lottery ticket.

  “Sources close to the family say that they’ll attempt a final search of the house this evening,” the female anchor reported.

  “That’s cutting it pretty fine,” her male counterpart said. “They only have until tomorrow to submit a winning ticket.”

  Sunny grinned. The seed had been planted.

  She did try to get some work done at MAX during the day, and in spite of the crime stories, tourism interest seemed to be picking up again. But she also had to make time for interviews. The phone kept ringing, and Sunny found herself either answering questions or agreeing to visits from camera crews.

  Then came a very different call.

  “Oliver Barnstable, please,” a male voice said from the telephone receiver.

  “I’m sorry,” Sunny replied, “but Mr. Barnstable isn’t in the office.”

  “He goddamn well isn’t answering his cell phone, either,” the voice said, losing a whole lot of politeness in the process. “I’m tired of leaving messages, too. So here’s something you can give to him person to person. If Ollie imagines that by ducking me he won’t have to pay what he owes, he’s got another think coming. I’ll start legal action to put liens on the insurance money he’s expecting from that fire in Sturgeon Springs. If he thought the meth lab thing was embarrassing, wait till it goes into the legal record that he’s defaulting on payments. I’m sure you’ve got a direct line to the big man, so you just tell him that.”

  “But I don’t—,” Sunny began. That was as far as she got before the phone clicked off in her ear.

  She hung it up and sat for a moment, staring as if the handset might suddenly jump up and smack her in the head. I guess the signs were all there, she thought. He’s gotten erratic with my pay and even offered to sell back his piece of the Crier at a loss. It looks like Ollie does have money troubles. And if so, where is that going to leave me?

  The answer was way too familiar for too many people these days—out of a job.

  “I’ve got to find out,” Sunny muttered, getting out the cash box where the key to Ollie’s supposedly secret files was kept. It was like the awful compulsion to stick the tip of your tongue into the gaping hole after the dentist drills out a cavity and before he fills it. She hurried over to the bank of cabinets along the back wall, painfully aware that everything she was doing could be clearly seen from the street outside.

  All I need is for Ollie to come strolling in on his way to lunch. Sunny hesitated with the key, then thrust it into the lock. To hell with it.

  She found the file she was looking for just a couple of dividers ahead of the “Investment Opportunities” folder she’d collected to deliver to him a few days ago. This one was headed “Bills,” and it was stuffed with pieces of paper. The latest ones all seemed to be in shades of red with some version of “past due” on them. Even the Land Rover that Ollie was so ridiculously proud about—the dealership hadn’t gotten a lease payment for months.

  If this keeps up, he’s going to be asking if he can borrow my old mountain bike, Sunny thought as she slammed the drawer shut and locked the cabinet again.

  She went back to her desk feeling curiously light-headed. When Gordie had bad-mouthed Ollie, she’d just taken it in a sort of business-as-usual way. She’d even laughed when Will had outlined a motive, opportunity, and means case against her boss.

  But if Ollie was up against it financially, then he had a real motive to get money out of Ada somehow. What had Will said? Big money—big motive? If he were desperate enough to pressure Ada into selling her house—or even to go snooping around in there, trying to find that b
lasted ticket …

  Yeah, he could have sent the birdlike little woman flying.

  So—motive and means, Sunny thought. Then she realized she might have a perfect witness: Mrs. Martinson. Her dad’s lady friend must have been up early, baking that damned coffee cake for him. Helena Martinson’s house was on the same block as Ada’s, just across the street and a bit farther down.

  Sunny dug out the local directory and got the number. Luckily Mrs. Martinson was home, answering on the second ring. “Hello, dear, I’ve been hearing a lot about you on the radio. Are you really going over to Ada’s tonight?”

  “I am,” Sunny told her. “But I just thought of something else. You were probably up the Saturday morning when Ada died.”

  The older woman sighed. “I’m up most mornings,” she admitted, then paused. “You mean was I across the street when this terrible thing happened? I never even thought of it that way.”

  “We don’t know when it happened,” Sunny said quickly, not wanting to upset her neighbor any further. “I was just wondering if you might have seen anything out of the ordinary.” Given Mrs. Martinson’s weakness for gossip, Sunny was sure the woman would keep a close eye on her own block.

  Probably has a periscope in her kitchen to maintain surveillance, she thought.

  “If I saw anything suspicious, the police would have already heard about it,” Mrs. Martinson said. “But there was nothing, not even a car.”

  Sunny suddenly realized how tight her shoulders had gotten. But just as she relaxed them, her neighbor went on. “Except for that Barnstable fellow, driving around the neighborhood in that ridiculous safari truck of his. He was always looking for houses with realty signs, or where an owner had passed away, or where the house was getting run-down because the elderly owner was a little overwhelmed.”

  She paused for a second. “Like Ada.”

  “Ollie made an offer on the house,” Sunny admitted.

  “Did he, now?” Helena Martinson said tonelessly.

  Somehow, Sunny managed to thank Mrs. Martinson and hang up the phone before her neighbor put any more of that picture together. She found herself gnawing one of her knuckles—a bad habit she thought she’d gotten rid of years ago—as she mulled this new information over.