by Sharon Dunn
Ginger clicked the keys on the computer and waited for her email to open. “In the first place, you said they wanted to talk to both Earl and me.” Her throat constricted. Where was that man? “In the second place, I need to find some evidence that points to someone other than us.” Ginger watched the counter on the unread e-mails line click up to twenty-four, then twenty-five. “In the third place, I haven’t checked e-mail or blogged since we left Three Horses. We told readers we’d post about our bargain hunting adventures.”
“We haven’t had any bargain hunting adventures.”
Her counter was up to forty-three. “And in the fourth place, I want to find my cat before they put me in the slammer.” Her voice wavered. “Animal control hasn’t picked her up. She has to be around here somewhere.”
“Finish your blog, and I’ll help you look for her.” Kindra took a sip of her iced latte. “Then you can mark that off your list.”
Ginger recognized one of the e-mail addresses: [email protected]. “I can check another thing off my list. I know where Earl is.” She read the e-mail.
Sweetheart, having trouble finding you. Left messages at the front desk. Called your room. Invention floor closed, but there is still hope. Fiona Truman from the Shopping Channel is still holding auditions for inventors to market on her channel. Need to do some prep. Auditions are tonight in the restaurant at eight. Can you be there? Could use a cheerleader. See you soon. Love, Earl.
That was it? Come and be his cheerleader? His priorities were pretty clear: invention first, wife second. Despite her feelings of rejection, she would be there at eight. They had to get this invention off the ground. Too much was at stake to give up.
“Ginger, is everything okay?” Kindra’s voice seemed to come from very far away.
Kindra was probably not the best bargain hunter to share marital strife issues with. Except for a rather large Beanie Baby collection, the kid lived alone. The stuffed animals probably never fought. The worry had built up enough in Ginger that it was going to spill out sooner or later. “Did I have that ‘I have left the building look in my eyes again?”
“You and Elvis.” Kindra’s freckles and the blond ponytail always made her look younger than twenty. “We’ve got two missing guys, Earl and Xabier. At least Earl is sending you e-mails.”
Ginger’s attention drifted to the coffee shop window. Outside the European candy outlet store, Victoria Stone trotted by. She jogged in place and turned toward Ginger. “Looks like our resident celebrity is out exercising.”
“What?” Kindra tore the lid off her latte and licked the foam out of the inside.
Ginger pointed through the window and waved at Victoria.
Victoria darted across the corridor and poked her head in the coffee shop. “You should come with me, Ginger.” She pumped her arms and twisted side to side. “I’m doing three miles today.”
Ginger pointed at her laptop. “I’m right in the middle of something.”
“Some other time then. We’ll work out together.”
“Definitely, before I leave.” Ginger wasn’t sure if she could keep up with the likes of Victoria. Water aerobics didn’t hold a candle to three miles of running.
“Sounds good.” Victoria ran in place for a few seconds before trotting back out to the corridor and jogging out of view.
“Could that shade of purple in her workout suit be any louder?” Kindra pressed biscotti crumbs into the table. “She certainly wants to call attention to herself.”
“She’s a celebrity. That’s what they do.” Ginger glanced at Earl’s e-mail again. Vicky wasn’t the only one trying to get attention. The worry she’d been storing bubbled up and spilled over. “All Earl can think about is getting someone to notice his invention. Financially speaking, we need to do that, but it’s like he’s lost sight of me.” She closed the cover on her laptop and leaned a little closer to Kindra. “I think he lied to the police about what time he got into town. I saw him on the convention floor hours before Dustin was found dead.”
Kindra’s mouth formed an oval. “This is your husband you’re talking about.”
“I know he didn’t kill Dustin. I think he lied because he thought a police investigation would interfere with getting a distributor for his invention. This dream is consuming him.”
“He was kind of bossy when we were getting ready for the trip.” Kindra shifted slightly in her chair and stared at the customers milling through the shop. “I just figured the change was temporary. We all know he’s a good guy.”
Ginger flipped the laptop open again. She clicked the Delete button on Earl’s e-mail. “I just don’t know what to do.”
Kindra shook her head. “You need to have a talk with him. Ask him straight out.”
“The advice from the peanut gallery is wise.” Ginger turned her attention back to her computer. One thing at a time. Deleting emails she could deal with. “Arleta and Suzanne can answer some of these comment e-mails from the Livin’ Large blog. Where are they anyway?”
“Arleta said something about going fishing, and Suzanne’s doing some more shopping.”
Ginger lifted her fingers off the keyboard. She reread the e-mail on her screen as the warning hairs on the back of her neck came to attention. “This is interesting.”
“What’s that?” Kindra angled her head to see the computer screen.
“When I say interesting, I mean interesting in a scary way. This first one was sent the day we left Three Horses.” Ginger slid the laptop so Kindra had a better view.
Kindra read aloud. “‘I have been following your blog for some time. Boy, do I need help getting my spending under control. It is so great that you will be in Calamity. I will be there too. Maybe we could meet and you can help me before I spend again. LOL.’”
Ginger tapped the screen. “Now read the one that was sent yesterday.”
“‘Where were you? I looked for you and your husband out on the convention floor. There was no booth with a Pepper Light like you wrote about in your blog. Is this some kind of hoax? Are you a liar? I bet your credit card debt is as big as mine. You’re just a fake. A big fake’”
Kindra twirled her fingers around her ears, the international sign for “This person is one slice shy of a loaf.”
“She even signed it Crazy in Calamity.”
Ginger sighed. “Looks like I have my first cyberstalker. I don’t think she or he can track me down.”
“Isn’t your e-mail address GSalinski?”
There was that pinching at the back of her neck again. She hadn’t thought of that. Ginger closed her laptop. “Aren’t you going to blog?”
“And encourage these kinds of e-mails?” Ginger laced her fingers through her curls. Fog drifted over her thoughts. What was the one thing she could deal with?
“I’m sure the rest of our readers are pretty normal.”
Outside, Victoria Stone jogged by again. She lifted her chin as though posing for an unseen camera, pivoted, and ran toward the stairs that led back up to the hotel. The two detectives coming down the stairs stopped her.
Ginger yanked on a single curl and let it spring back into place. “Let’s go find that cat.”
Ten minutes later, Ginger stood at the entrance of the Squirrel Lovers convention. No bulky security guard tried to stop Ginger and demand that she get a badge when she wandered onto the convention floor. While Kindra combed the street and the front side of the hotel with a picture of Phoebe, Ginger had decided to retrace the cats steps the night she disappeared.
A crowd had gathered around the stage. The woman whose face had been on the keynoter billboard the other night, Martha Somebody, spoke from the podium. “Binky will be dearly missed. He was a bright spot at all our conventions.” The crowd nodded in agreement. “We have decided to complete the final days of the convention, but it will now be as a memorial to Binky.”
More nods and a flutter of applause.
A large, white carnation bobbed by Martha’s ear when she sniffled and w
iped her nose. “Mr. Alex Simpson, Binky’s owner and trainer, would like to say a few words in honor of this great squirrel.” Martha stepped down from the stage, lifting the hem of her muumuu by tugging at the waistline.
Mr. Simpson had shed his bathrobe from last night for a navy suit and pink tie. He began his elegy by resting his head on the microphone. Sniffles and whimpers floated up from the mourners. Slowly, Mr. Simpson raised his head. “Binky was very special to me …”
Ginger skirted the edges of the convention floor, calling for Phoebe in low tones. She had hoped to be unobtrusive in her search, but with a funeral going on, that just wasn’t gonna happen. Martha stood at the edge of the mourners, craning her neck in Ginger’s direction, her eyebrows furled so intensely they had become a unibrow.
Ginger offered a spastic smile and checked under a table that sold squirrel feeders. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to be looking for a cat. Her attention was drawn to the poster of the water-skiing Binky on an easel by the door. The advertisement said that Binky would still be skiing in the marina today and tomorrow. Ginger rested her palm on her hip. Hmm. A dead water-skiing squirrel. That would be something to see.
“Do you want to know a dirty little secret?” Martha had come up behind her. Her thick glasses made her eyes appear unnaturally large.
Ginger tried to think of a time when a dirty little secret was actually something you wanted to hear.
“I saw you looking at the poster.” Martha’s carnation dangled precariously below the stem of her glasses.
“Binky is dead. Shouldn’t you take it down?”
“The dirty little secret is that there is always a Binky in training.” She pulled the flower from behind her ear and tugged at the petals. “He’s a huge draw for the conventions, and we get outside revenue from spectators who come to see him. Most important, it’s good PR for our squirrel friends. The new Binky is named Leonard.”
“A replacement … a twin.” Ginger made sure she understood correctly. “Like Lassie.”
“Exactly. I’m going to miss the old Binky.” Martha tore another petal from her flower. “And the way he had to die. I just feel so guilty.”
“Guilty?”
Applause rose up from the crowd. Mr. Simpson finished speaking and stepped down from the podium. A slide show with pictures of Binky flashed while a woman played “Danny Boy” on the violin. The music was too loud to talk over. Martha trudged back to the stage. The lights on the convention floor dimmed as a spotlight shone on the violinist. Mr. Simpson made his way toward the back of the convention floor, stopping for a brief hug from Martha.
Ginger stared up at the open window Phoebe had gone through. Phoebe had made a strange sound when she was up on the window sill. Had she seen something that upset her? Maybe the murder had happened out there with only a squirrel and a cat as witnesses and the squirrel had been silenced.
Sad and fearful thoughts about Phoebe invaded her brain. She had poured all the leftover love she had into that cat after her last child left home. What would she do without her Phoebe? Her stomach clenched.
Ginger navigated through the dark room toward the back door, bumping into only one display table. When she pushed the door open, noonday light on the boardwalk nearly blinded her. She shaded her eyes. From the window where Phoebe had sat, she would have had a view of the boardwalk on one side, and on the other side, the dock where the larger boats were housed along the back of the Wind-Up. The boardwalk was too public, but maybe whoever had killed Dustin had met him closer to the larger boats where there had been less light.
The back door swung open again, and Mr. Simpson stepped out. He made eye contact briefly and then turned his back to her. A hand went up to his face. Probably wiping away tears. No need to disturb him.
The boardwalk brimmed with people sauntering past the shimmering lake. This was the last place she had held Phoebe. An orange cat scampered to the Dumpster behind the Little Italy restaurant. Phoebe wasn’t in the habit of hanging out with other cats, but maybe hunger had overridden her antisocial tendencies. Since the cat refused to wear a collar or tags, she would blend right in with the other alley cats. The orange cat sat atop the closed half of the Dumpster. The animal meowed plaintively when she saw Ginger.
“Have you seen my Phoebe?” Ginger stiffened and shook her head. She had to stop talking to cats or she would be a candidate for membership in the nutty old lady club.
The alley smelled of rotting things, dirt, and spicy tomato sauce. Ginger placed a protective hand over her nose and peered inside the Dumpster. The orange cat leaned in as well. Something furry, gray, and motionless was buried beneath the refuse. Her heart pounded. She pushed cardboard and noodles out of the way and tugged.
Not Phoebe. She exhaled. The fur was artificial. The bear suit was the one Xabier had worn, the one Dustin had died in. Someone had taken a knife or scissors and shredded the suit, revealing three layers of fabric. These things were well made. She turned the suit to its satiny lining. Lasagna fell on the concrete.
Her fingers touched something hard, bumpy. She slipped her hands into a pocket and pulled out two necklaces. Near as she could tell, diamond necklaces. Had someone shredded the suit looking for these? That didn’t make sense. She’d found them in ten seconds. Certainly the person who shredded the suit would have found the necklaces. They must have been looking for something else. In any case, this could mean that Dustin was the jewel thief. It was the bargaining chip she needed in order to talk to that lady detective.
She hung the suit over her arm and clicked open her purse to put the necklaces in. Feet padded on concrete behind her. She turned slightly. Something hard made contact with the side of her head. Sunspot sparks crowded her field of vision. But this was no migraine. She swayed.
Her view dimmed to blackness.
Cynthia Mallory wiped the sweat from her brow as she and Jacobson walked down the stairs of the Little Italy Hotel to the Mermaid restaurant. The cool of the basement was a welcome change. Outside, late-afternoon temperatures had pushed into the low one hundreds. Even though she had long since shed her blazer, her sleeveless button-down was soaked. Jacobson’s face wasn’t even glistening. What kind of a person didn’t sweat when it was over a hundred? She toyed with the idea that Jacobson was a robot. That had to be it. She was a part of some wild police experiment to reduce costs by replacing people with machines.
Jacobson veered her eyes over to her partner after taking a sip of her iced tea. “What are you staring at?” She held up the glass bottle. “It’s diet iced tea. I can’t do any better than that.”
Mallory shook her head. “It’s not that.” This heat was getting to her. Of course her partner wasn’t a robot. “I’m sorry I was such a diet nazi. You can eat whatever you want.”
They walked under a flashing neon mermaid into the restaurant where the primary feature was an aquarium that occupied a whole wall. A small shark swam in circles around fish of assorted colors. Restaurant booths featured blue vinyl seats and pink tablecloths. An abundance of plants, in the corners and hanging from the ceiling, flourished. Bright lighting revealed three patrons in the restaurant and only one who matched the description of Gloria Clydell.
The first Mrs. Clydell rose from the booth as they approached. The thick cardigan and floral print dress didn’t hide her thinness.
Mallory leaned close to Jacobson and spoke under her breath. “Wish we knew the contents of Clydell’s will for sure. Give us more leverage to get her to tell us where the kid is.”
Jacobson whispered, “A secretary is a pretty reliable source. She remembers the day Clydell came in and signed on the dotted line.”
Gloria moved within a few feet of them. Simultaneously, they lifted their heads and smiled at Dustin’s first wife.
“Thank you for meeting me here.” Gloria held out a hand to Mallory. “I have sun and cold sensitivities. This place makes me feel like I’m outside.”
The haunting impression of Gloria’s hand lingered on Mallory�
�s palm, like touching carved wood.
“We can understand that.” Jacobson had already pulled her notebook from her purse.
Gloria’s hand fluttered to her neck. “Do you two want anything?” She sat down in front of a piece of blueberry pie and a glass of milk. “They have really good desserts.”
Both detectives shook their heads. Mallory’s mouth watered. The pie did look yummy.
“You said you were supposed to meet your husband the night he died. You weren’t in his Day-Timer.”
“It was a last-minute thing. He said he had another appointment out on the pier and that he could meet me right after that.”
“That must have been Edward Mastive. Do you know who he is or why they were meeting?”
Gloria shook her head. “He just told me to meet him outside.”
Jacobson took a seat in the booth opposite Gloria while Mallory remained standing. “Nothing is official yet. Mr. Clydell’s assets will probably be frozen until the investigation is concluded.”
Jacobson leaned a little closer to Gloria. “The rumor, though, is that your son inherits the hotel.”
Gloria exhaled. “Dustin was full of surprises.” She tilted her head. Her face paled. “I suppose this makes things look pretty bad for my son.”
“No one can find your son, Mrs. Clydell. Do you know where he is?” Mallory loomed over her.
Gloria’s hand trembled when she patted her hair. The trembling might be health related, and it might be nervousness.
Gloria shook her head. “I am not hiding my Xabier. He hasn’t been in touch with me. He doesn’t own a cell phone.” She placed one swollen hand on top of the other. “I’m worried.”
Nothing in Gloria’s Clydell’s mannerisms suggested she was lying.
“What prompted your visit with Dustin?” Mallory leaned against the booth.
“I’ve been divorced from Dustin for fourteen years. This is the first time in six years that I’ve seen him. I send him a card at Christmas with a current picture of Xabier, and he sends, I mean sent, me, a card on my birthday. That was the extent of our communication.”
