Wuthering Kites

by Clover Tate

  She closed her eyes again. “I unlocked the door and pushed it open. Emmy had hung a row of kites near the window that we’re waiting to ship out, so it was darker than usual. When my eyes adjusted, I saw the body.”

  I’d been holding my breath. I forced myself to let it out. The sheriff was silent, letting Stella continue.

  “At first I thought maybe Emmy had dropped a bolt of nylon from the kites she was working on, but then I saw it was a woman, and she clearly was—I mean, she wasn’t—you know.” Stella clasped her hands. “I screamed.”

  “She did,” I said. “I heard it and ran downstairs.”

  “Stop there a moment,” Sheriff Koppen said. “The door was locked when you came in?”

  “I think so.” She shot me a glance. “I tried to remember earlier. I’m sure I put the key in the lock, and the tumbler turned, but I’m not sure the bolt pulled back.”

  The sheriff turned to the shop’s windows. They were original to the house. Each clasped shut with a simple latch, and all the latches were closed. He pushed back the kites Stella had mentioned earlier, which covered one window, and they fluttered pastel as they scooted down the rod that held them. That window also latched shut.

  “Pardon me,” he said and passed by Stella to the kitchen. Pulling a glove from his jacket pocket and putting it on, he tested the back door. The knob didn’t move. It, too, was locked. “The bolt?”

  On the back door, I normally used both the doorknob’s lock and the bolt. Since there was a window in the kitchen door and someone could break the glass, reach through, and flip the bolt open, I kept a key on a string hanging out of reach.

  “The key is on that bit of kite line below the cupboard,” I told the sheriff.

  He tried the bolt, and it held. “Any other doors?”

  I pointed to the door closing off the stairs up to my apartment. “There’s that.” I closed my eyes. Had I unsnapped the bolt when I came downstairs at Stella’s scream? I remembered the cold brass between my fingers. “It was bolted. When I heard Stella, I ran down the stairs and opened it.”

  “And there’s the outside entrance to your apartment,” he said.

  “Yes. Should we check it?”

  “Not right now. When did you use it last?”

  “Last night. I sat on the beach at the fire pit at Avery’s. I got home at about ten. I parked in back and came up the outside stairs. I locked up, I’m sure. It’s habit.”

  My gaze caught the kitchen’s wall clock. The reporter was supposed to arrive in fifteen minutes. She might even show up early, since she was driving down from Seattle, and it wasn’t easy to estimate how long traffic would take.

  “I’m expecting the reporter soon,” I said. “Maybe I could give her a call, and we could go up to the Brew House to talk?” I looked at the sheriff hopefully.

  “All right. That’s fine for now. I’ll need a formal statement later. Who else has keys to the shop?”

  “Just me. And Stella. That’s it.” Stella and I exchanged glances. Surely he wouldn’t think either of us could have killed this stranger.

  “No one else fills in sometimes—your sister, maybe?”

  “Yes, but she always gets the key from me first. Just a sec.” I went into the front room and reached for the cash register but drew my hand back before touching it. “We keep a spare key in the register. Could you open it?”

  With gloved fingers, he pressed the “sale” button and the drawer popped open.

  “Lift the coin tray. There.” The brass key lay flat where it always was. I shook my head. “I don’t get it. No one should have been able to get in the shop.”

  “I’ll take this to test for residue to see if it’s been copied lately.” He slipped it into a plastic evidence bag. “When we’ve finished here, you’ll want to get your locks changed.”

  “Definitely. Ace can do it for me.” Ace was Rock Point’s chief plumber, part-time tow truck driver, and all-around handyman. I stayed behind the counter, keeping my eyes from the body. “I’ll just call the reporter now, if you don’t mind.”

  Nodding his assent, the sheriff knelt beside the body. I held my phone in one hand but my gaze was riveted to the sheriff. Still wearing gloves, he picked up the woman’s purse sprawled at her side and gathered a collection of lipsticks and pens and a stray earring. “No wallet or phone,” he said.

  So, it was a robbery? Still holding my phone, I watched. He slipped a piece of paper from a purse pocket.

  “Emmy Adler, Strings Attached. Ten o’clock, October 27.” He raised his eyes to mine. “That’s when your meeting with the reporter is?”

  Dumbfounded, I nodded.

  “I guess you won’t need to make that call after all.”

  * * *

  • • •

  That afternoon while Strings Attached teemed with people bearing cameras and cases full of tools and endless evidence bags, I sought refuge at the Brew House, Avery’s café a block off Main Street.

  “It was the reporter?” Avery, her navy Brew House apron highlighting her peaches-and-cream complexion, leaned forward, eyes wide.

  “Looks like it,” I said as Trudy, the Brew House’s manager, slid an egg-and-cheese sandwich onto the table in front of me. The café’s sounds—espresso machine hissing, wail of Charlie Parker’s saxophone from the record player, clinking of breakfast plates—were comforting background noise. Once the sheriff had let us go, Stella walked home and I came straight to talk with Avery and debrief. It wouldn’t be long before the whole town would know I’d found a body again . . . and this time in my shop.

  “There’s no way someone could have gotten in,” I said. “The doors—everything—were locked.”

  “Someone did get in,” Avery said. “Two people, at least. She didn’t kill herself, did she?”

  I remembered the ring of purple on the reporter’s neck. “Nope. Definitely not.”

  Avery pushed the plate toward me. “Eat. I know how you get when you don’t.”

  I didn’t feel hungry, but when the scent of buttered toast and melted cheese reached my nose, I discovered I was suddenly ravenous. I tore into the sandwich and washed down the few first bites with water. Between swallows, I said, “I was upstairs the whole time. The reporter must have shown up early, and someone killed her and ran off, and I didn’t hear any of it.”

  As the words left my mouth, I knew they weren’t true. From the looks of her, the reporter had been in the shop for hours, probably overnight.

  “So, it had only just happened,” Avery said.

  “No,” I added reluctantly. “She must have arrived last night for some reason.”

  “Why? That doesn’t make any sense. You didn’t get a call from her, right?”

  “No call.” I set down the remains of the sandwich and pushed it away. It didn’t look so good anymore. “She didn’t have her phone. Or a laptop, or even a pencil and paper. You know, the intended murder victim could have been me.”

  From the frozen look in Avery’s eyes, she’d clearly had the same thought.

  “You think a murderer was simply passing through town? Maybe it was a robbery gone bad.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why the reporter showed up early and how she got into the shop.”

  “I’ll never forget seeing her,” I said, shaking my head. “I suppose the sheriff will get in touch with her family.”

  “It’s awful,” Avery agreed.

  “Hi, Em. Hi, Avery.” My sister, Sunny, as cheerful as her self-chosen name advertised, plopped into the chair next to me and sprawled over its smooth oak arms. “Are you finished with that?” Without waiting for a reply, she dug into the rest of my sandwich.

  Avery and I looked at each other. Subtlety would be lost on Sunny.

  “I found a dead woman in Strings Attached this morning.”

  “That’s hilarious,” Su
nny said, her mouth full of sandwich. She swallowed. “I’m headed down to Marcus’s campaign office. He said I could put out lawn signs. I was going to get a sandwich to go, but now I don’t have to.” She wiped her fingers on my napkin.

  Sunny was the odd combination of hippie girl and financial genius. She’d cut her dreadlocks to chin length a few months earlier, leaving dark blond hair partially obscuring the formula for interest she’d recently had tattooed on the back of one shoulder. When she’d quit college last summer and shown up unexpectedly at Avery’s house, where I’d lived, we’d all worried about her, my parents especially. It turned out that she wasn’t interested in fermented foods or feminist theater or whatever her major had been at the experimental liberal arts college she was enrolled in. She wanted an MBA. She’d been accepted into an undergraduate business program in Portland starting in January and, until then, was staying with Avery.

  “Emmy’s telling the truth, Sunny. She found a body. In the shop.”

  Sunny choked. “What?”

  I filled her in on the morning, and she listened with her usual intensity. She asked the same questions the sheriff had about locks, doors, and timing. When I finished, she sat still a full minute without moving.

  Trudy leaned over the counter. “Avery? You have a minute to help with sandwiches?”

  “We’ll talk soon,” Avery said and rose to join Trudy in the kitchen.

  Sunny snapped out of her reverie with a surprisingly lighthearted smile. “Well, I guess that’s that, then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t concern us.”

  “What?”

  “I mean”—Sunny slowed down, as if she were explaining it to a kid and not her older sister—“it’s none of your business.”

  “But the reporter was coming to see me. We found her in my store. Of course it’s my business.”

  “I mean, you don’t have to figure it out. She wasn’t killed because of you, right?”

  “I guess not.” Sunny’s words were finding their home. My mood was beginning to calm.

  “There you go. What do we have to do with her death? No one killed her because she was planning an article about kites. The fact that she was at Strings Attached is a coincidence. Don’t let it worry you, Em.” She tossed the napkin on the table and rose. “Like I said, it’s none of our business. Let Sheriff Koppen deal with this one.”

  chapter three

  I checked my phone. No call yet from the sheriff. I couldn’t bear the thought of returning to Strings Attached while it swarmed with police, so I trudged up the hill to Stella’s house.

  The hill above Rock Point’s downtown—if “downtown” wasn’t too grand a description for a fishing village—was roughly divided into two neighborhoods. On the right was Old Town, full of gingerbread-laden houses just beginning to host bed-and-breakfasts and business offices. On the left was a newer neighborhood of midcentury homes. Stella lived in one of the ranch-style houses set into the hill, so that to reach the main level, you had to walk up a flight of stairs. On the lower level was the garage and, next to it, her painting studio.

  As I walked, I considered Sunny’s words and decided she was right. As awful as it was to stumble upon a murdered woman in my shop—I rubbed at the goose bumps rippling down my arms—this was the sheriff’s business to resolve. Yes, it was unfortunate that it happened at Strings Attached, but I couldn’t help that. I’d answer Sheriff Koppen’s questions as thoroughly as I could, then leave the case to him this time.

  I was approaching Stella’s house. “Hi, Madame Lucy,” I yelled up at the white cat in the living room window. That cat had seen enviable sunsets from her perch. I paused on the sidewalk before mounting the steps to Stella’s door. Since when had there been a tow truck and two dented cars—one up on blocks—next door? I vaguely remembered Stella’s neighbor Mrs. Collier as a quiet woman who’d poked her white-haired head into Strings Attached once or twice but who seemed to keep to herself. I definitely didn’t see her rehabbing a 1979 Pinto in her driveway. And was that a broken dishwasher next to it?

  Stella met me at the door. Her firm hug was reassuring. “Emmy, how are you?”

  “I came to ask you the same thing.”

  “I’m all right, I guess. Come in.”

  Stella’s living room was one of my favorite places in the world. Chairs from a variety of eras, linked by harmonious upholstery, ringed a circular coffee table. In its center was a vase of maple branches turned the amber, orange, and rust of autumn. Stacks of books surrounded the vase. Western light flooded the room, touching on Stella’s landscapes and the paintings of some of her friends. I always had to spend a moment looking at one of her paintings in particular, a rare portrait. It was of Stella’s son, whom she’d given up at birth and who had died last spring.

  Madame Lucy jumped down from the window and rubbed against my legs, probably disappointed that I was wearing jeans and not black wool pants to better catch her fur.

  “I was just going to make a fire,” Stella said.

  “It’s a little chilly, I guess.”

  “Looking at a fire is so meditative. I could use some of that about now.”

  “I hear you.” I crumpled newspaper while Stella built a tepee of cedar sticks in the fireplace. “Sheriff Koppen said he’d call when they were ready to leave Strings Attached.”

  “No call yet?” She rested two oak logs inside the firebox to warm while the kindling crackled with fire.

  “No.” I chose the grass green 1940s armchair to settle into. Madame Lucy jumped into my lap. “I stopped at the Brew House and filled Avery in. Sunny dropped by, too.”

  The fire now a warm rush of flames, Stella sat down across from me. Madame Lucy abandoned my lap to cross the table to Stella, rustling the bouquet of leaves as she passed.

  “Sheriff Koppen is a decent man. A good sheriff, too,” Stella said. “By the time you get back, the body will be gone, and you won’t know anything ever happened there.”

  I looked her in the eye. I didn’t need to say a word. She knew I’d never forget this morning. Neither would she.

  “Maybe your mother can do a cleansing. You know, light sage, recite a few incantations,” she said.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Uh-oh. Mom would have a field day with the murder, and once it got to the Portland news, there was no way I could hide it from her. I opened my eyes again. “She’ll be in Rock Point just as soon as she can get her hands on the right astrological chart to prove I should move home immediately.”

  “You don’t need to know what the planets are doing. You need a burglar alarm.”

  “Or Bear. It’s time he moved back in with me.” Bear had been my family’s Australian shepherd and was now mine but had stayed behind at Avery’s while I got settled in my new apartment. The fire’s warmth reached my side, and I pressed my hand against my sleeve to absorb its heat. “Avery and Sunny will miss him.”

  “I’d say that they should get their own dog for protection, but I have a feeling Dave is spending more time at Avery’s house now that you’ve moved out.”

  “And now that Avery seems to finally be waking up to the possibility of more than friendship.” Dave owned a local outdoor store and had clearly been in love with Avery for months. Everyone knew it, except for Avery.

  I looked up to start another of our chats about Avery’s cluelessness about Dave, but Stella’s absorption in the fire told me her mind was somewhere else. I bet I knew where, too.

  “That poor reporter. Strangled. I wonder if someone followed her from Seattle, or if it was random,” Stella said.

  “If it was random, we all need to be careful.” I glanced at Stella’s front door.

  She caught my examination and said, “I’m perfectly safe, don’t worry. What about you?”

  “As soon as the sheriff tells me the coast is clear, I’ll get Ace over to change the
locks.” I thought Stella flinched, but I might have been mistaken.

  “I don’t suppose you’re opening the shop tomorrow?”

  I stretched my feet toward the fireplace. “I’d like to give it a day first. You know, let things settle a bit. Maybe the sheriff will have figured out what happened by then.” The fire popped, and we both jumped, Stella momentarily dislodging Madame Lucy. Time to change the topic of conversation. “What’s going on with Mrs. Collier?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I noticed all the junk in her driveway.”

  Instead of Stella’s expression relaxing as I’d expected, she drew her eyebrows together in frustration. “Mrs. Collier went to live in a retirement community. The stairs were getting to be too much for her.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  “Ace moved in.”

  I sat upright. “What?”

  “He and his wife finally split up.”

  “No kidding.” This was turning out to be a day of surprises. While Ace spent a lot of time hanging out on his decrepit boat at the old dock with his cats Yin and Yang to escape “the old lady,” as he’d put it, I’d somehow never considered that they might divorce.

  “It happened just last week. A day later, that old Pinto was up on blocks in the driveway, and he’s out there working on it night and day.” Now she was really worked up. “He keeps the house windows open, too, and plays Creedence Clearwater Revival at full blast. If he’d just spend a fraction of that time, say, mowing the lawn or hauling all those beer cans to the recycling bins, I wouldn’t mind having him as my neighbor.”

  Stella was more of a sunshine-pop sort of woman, and as an artist, the visual was important to her. Ace’s visual was sure to be alarming. “It’s getting cold out now. At least he can’t leave his windows open for much longer. Maybe he’s just mourning his marriage.”

  “I tried to talk to him nicely about it. I brought over some homemade tea cookies and asked if he might put the car he’s working on in the garage.”

  “And?”