Kathy got up from the table, taking the cookbook with her. “It’s going to take at least forty-five minutes to cook, so I’d better get started.” She set the book aside, set the oven temperature, and took the chicken out of the fridge. Next, she pulled the aluminum foil out of the pantry and lined a baking sheet.
“I have to admit,” she said as she put the chicken in the oven. “I’ve been thinking an awful lot about Ronnie Collins.”
“I can’t think of him as Ronnie,” Tori said, frowning. “Just Collins. Ronnie sounds like it might be a fun name for a fun person. Collins is just plain dull.”
“And he probably burgled your house,” Anissa pointed out.
“Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that,” Tori muttered.
“So, if he’s so protective of Lucinda,” Kathy went on, “why shouldn’t he be the one to kill Charlie Marks? You think he’s dull, but maybe he just keeps himself under tight control.”
“So controlled he could shoot a man in cold blood?” Anissa asked.
“Why not?”
“And the motive?” Tori asked.
“Like I said. He might have felt he was protecting Lucinda.”
“What kind of a threat was Charlie Marks to her all these years later?” Anissa asked.
“Bringing up the whole rape thing. Nobody wants to relive that kind of a nightmare,” Tori said.
“I don’t know. We have no proof that Collins even knew Marks was living in the area.”
“Okay, we know that Mark Charles cut lawns in the summer. What if he left a flyer on the door of the property Collins owned? He doesn’t live there, but I’m betting he wasn’t going to cut the grass at the place—not and get his fancy butler outfit covered in grass stains.”
“So you think he could have called Mark Charles and recognized the voice after more than twenty years?”
“Maybe.”
“Except that Mark Charles disappeared in December. He’d hardly be cutting lawns at that time of the year,” Anissa pointed out. “And I didn’t see a snow blower on the property when we cleared it out.”
“A snow blower is a lot heavier to haul around than a lawnmower,” Tori agreed.
“So where could Charlie aka Mark have run into Collins?” Kathy asked.
The three of them sipped their wine, the only noise in the kitchen being the aging fridge, which seemed to be humming awfully loud.
“Remember what Tammy at the hardware store told us,” Tori said. “Mark Charles used to come to Warton for groceries and to go to the pharmacy. Collins could have run into him there. He wouldn’t have confronted him in town, but what if he found out where the guy lived and paid him a visit, shot him, and pushed his truck over the bluff into the bay.”
“How would we know if Collins even owns a gun?” Kathy asked.
“Everybody in these parts seems to own at least one gun,” Anissa said. “I’m a minority in more than one way around here.”
“I don’t own a gun,” Kathy said firmly.
“No, but Tori does.”
“I’ve never used it,” she said defensively. “But I have thought about getting rid of it. In fact, I didn’t think to look to see if it was still in the closet after the break-in.”
She got up from the table and left the room. She was gone for an awfully long time before returning to the kitchen. “It’s gone.”
“What? Your Gramps’s gun?”
She nodded. “I think I’d better call Detective Osborn. He might think the theft of a shotgun was at least worth noting.” She went into the other room to make the call.
Kathy got up to make the barbeque sauce for the chicken. “Well, I won’t sleep better knowing that some creep has Mr. Cannon’s gun,” Kathy said.
“And if that creep is Ronnie Collins?”
“Especially if it is. Tori practically accused the guy of ransacking the place. What if the stoic butler comes back gunning for Tori?”
“You better not say that out loud to Tori,” Anissa warned.
“Scare her? I’m scared,” Kathy admitted. She took out the ketchup, brown sugar, cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and yellow mustard and started mixing.
“Is that all you’re putting into the barbeque sauce?” Anissa asked.
“When it comes to my sauce, less is more,” Kathy asserted.
Tori returned to the kitchen. “Big surprise—Osborn’s off duty. I had to leave a message.”
“The guy deserves a couple of hours off a week,” Anissa said reasonably.
“He seems to take off those hours only when we need to talk to him,” Tori grumbled.
Kathy removed the chicken from the oven and began brushing on the sauce. “We should eat in about half an hour. More than enough time for another glass of wine.”
“I’m game,” Tori said and played bartender once more, while Kathy selected peas as their vegetable, and took out some frozen rolls as the meal’s accompaniment.
Tori and Anissa began discussing repairs to the docks out back, but Kathy’s thoughts kept circling back to the missing shotgun and the fact that Ronnie Collins had been violent in the past. Was it possible he could summon up that kind of rage on Lucinda’s behalf once again?
29
Anissa left a little after eight, and Tori and Kathy retired to their shared office once again.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Rick Shepherd,” Tori said, pulling up a Google search box on her computer. “I didn’t like the way he threatened me. I wonder if he’s been in trouble in the past.”
“I thought you looked him up right after you first met him,” Kathy said.
“I did, but I didn’t dig very deep.” She typed in the businessman’s name and hit the enter key. Seconds later, she got a lot of hits, but not many of them referred to the local Rick Shepherd. She narrowed down the parameters: Rick Shepherd, Ward County, New York. Bingo! Rick Shepherd Enterprises came up first. She ignored those links and concentrated on the more pertinent ones.
One was a story from the Rochester newspaper—a rags-to-riches kind of tale. Except that during the “rags” portion of Shepherd’s life, he’d been arrested for petit larceny on more than one occasion, as well as domestic abuse. But according to the account, he’d found success in real estate and had been a model citizen ever since.
“Well, he wasn’t displaying that kind of moral character when he threatened me,” Tori said with chagrin.
The phone rang. Tori glanced at the caller ID and frowned. “Speak of the devil.”
“Rick Shepherd?” Kathy asked, aghast.
“Apparently.”
“Are you going to answer it?”
“No way.”
They let the answering machine take it.
“Ms. Cannon—Rick Shepherd here. I’ve given you plenty of time to sign that proposal. You won’t get a better deal from anyone else. Sign now. I wouldn’t want to see Cannon’s Bait and Tackle suffer a terrible fate.”
The connection was broken.
“Well, that was stupid,” Kathy said. “The answering machine just recorded the message, which is absolute proof he’s a threat.”
“I wonder how long it will take before he realizes that.”
“My guess is not long. We’ve got to record it and get it on the computer—and better yet, on the cloud, in case he realizes we’re not as stupid as he is and have recorded it and are keeping a sound file.”
“What’s the easiest way?” Tori asked.
Kathy pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll take a video of you playing the message. The machine gives the time and date, right? And when we’re done, I’ll upload it to the net.”
“Okay.” Kathy held her phone in a horizontal position. “I’ll say ‘go’ and then hit the record button. Give it an extra second or two before you do anything.”
Tori nodded.
“Go!”
Tori wished she’d taken time to see how her hair looked before she agreed, but then hit the answering machine playback.
“Sunday
. Eight twenty-seven PM,” said the flat, electronic voice of the answering machine, and then Shepherd’s threat rolled around again. When it finished, Tori hit the save button, Kathy hit the video end icon, and all was well.
“I’ll save this right now. It might be months before you’d need to produce it, but I don’t think it would hurt for you to leave Detective Osborn another message.”
“Why him? He isn’t going to be interested in this kind of a threat.”
“Well, then just call the Sheriff’s Department. It’s not an emergency, so you don’t need to call nine one one,” Kathy advised.
Tori hesitated. Was the Sheriff’s Department’s dispatcher going to take her seriously?
A big bad man threatened to ruin my bait and tackle shop if I don’t cut him in for a majority of the profits on the resurrection of my little motel.
Yeah, she could almost hear the dispatcher yawn from boredom.
“I’ll call Detective Osborn and leave a message,” she decided. “He’ll probably just pass it along down the hierarchy, but that will be his decision—not mine.”
Kathy shrugged. “Okay. And while you do that, I’ll go make sure all the doors and windows are locked. That man scares me.”
“You and me both,” Tori said as she plucked Osborn’s card from her desk drawer once again.
Tori made her call and left a message, hanging up the phone just as Kathy reentered the room. “Um, what kind of a car does Rick Shepherd drive.”
“I think it’s a Mercedes. It looked expensive.”
“Black?”
“Yeah.”
“Um … I think he might be parked by the side of The Lotus Lodge.”
“What?” Tori said and practically exploded out of her office chair.
“I turned off the light in the kitchen so we could see better. Come on,” Kathy said in a low voice—as if someone might be listening.
The women crept into the kitchen and gazed through the window in the back door. Suddenly that window looked like it could be a big liability should someone decide to smash it. The lock was only inches from its bottom. If broken, all someone would have to do is reach around and unlock the deadbolt.
Again, Anissa’s words came back to haunt Tori.
Honey, if someone is determined to get inside, locks won’t keep them out.
Just how determined would Rick Shepherd be?
Kathy and Tori watched as a figure dressed in black emerged from the corner of The Lotus Lodge, holding what might have been a baseball bat … except baseball bats are shorter and more stout than the item held in the dark form’s hand. Something that looked an awful like—
“Tell me that’s not a shotgun,” Kathy said with a tremor in her voice.
“Or a rifle?” Tori asked, sounding just as scared.
“Nobody in their right might would threaten you with a gun just to strike a deal for a piece of The Lotus Lodge … would they?”
“I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”
Kathy quickly reached for the light switch that suddenly bathed the front of the house in white light.
The figure stopped dead.
It was Rick Shepherd.
And he was holding a shotgun.
“What do we do?”
“Get on the phone and call nine one one!” Kathy hissed, and Tori rushed to the kitchen wall phone. “There’s no dial tone!”
“He must have cut the wires. Get one of the cell phones!”
Tori ran for the office, leaving Kathy to stand guard in the kitchen. But there were no weapons at hand. Grabbing a large knife was a bad idea. It could be turned against them—and Kathy hated the sight of blood. She could handle it on a piece of raw meat; from a cut—or worse, a stab wound—not so much. Instead, she came up with the rolling pin Tori had left out earlier in the day. Fat lot of good it would do against a shotgun, but she needed some kind of reassurance.
By the time she got back to the door, Shepherd was halfway to the house.
“Tori!”
Tori came racing back to the darkened kitchen, cell phone in hand. “Yes, that’s the address. Hurry! No, I won’t keep calm—there’s a man with a shotgun coming toward my door.”
“We’d better get out of here,” Kathy yelled, just as the butt of the shotgun came through the window with a shattering crash.
“Don’t move!” Shepherd ordered as he fumbled to unlock the door. “And drop that phone!”
“There’s a Sheriff’s cruiser on the way!” Tori yelled back.
Shepherd entered the kitchen and flipped on the light switch. “Yeah, well I’ve been listening to the police scanner and the nearest cruiser is halfway across the county. They won’t be here for at least half an hour, and by then we’ll have our stories straight, won’t we ladies?”
“Stories?” Kathy asked.
“Yes, how this was all a misunderstanding.” He shoved the barrel of the shotgun toward Kathy, indicating she should put the rolling pin down. She set it on the counter and took a step closer to her friend.
Tori leaned forward, squinting at the shotgun Shepherd held. “Hey, that looks like my Gramp’s gun.”
Shepherd’s grim was lopsided. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
I wish, Kathy thought.
“You broke into my house on Saturday night!” Tori accused the man in black.
“Entered, but I’m not the one who broke in. That was Lucinda Bloomfield’s toady, Collins.”
“That wasn’t much of a stretch,” Kathy said, considering what he’d taken. “But it was you who ransacked our office and bedrooms.”
Shepherd feigned innocence. “Who me?”
“Lucinda Bloomfield may have sent her employee, but she wouldn’t have had him trash our home,” Tori said. She seemed determined to defend the woman.
“She’s no saint,” Shepherd said grimly. “I’ve known her too long—witnessed what she’s capable of.”
“And you’re better?” Kathy charged.
“We were cut from the same cloth. Now, where’s that agreement I sent you?” he demanded.
Tori raised her head so that her chin jutted out. “I shredded it.”
That would be some feat since they didn’t possess a shredder.
“Liar. But that’s immaterial. I have another copy.” Holding the shotgun propped under his right arm, index finger wrapped around the trigger, Shepherd reached into his jacket and withdrew a sheaf of tri-folded pages. He tossed them in Tori’s direction. “Sign. And then we’ll attend to that message I left on your voice mail.”
“No.”
A silhouette appeared behind Shepherd.
Keep him talking, Kathy silently implored of her friend.
“If we’re going to go into business together, the terms of the agreement have to change.”
“No change,” Shepherd said. “Now pick it up and sign it.”
Tori picked up the papers. “I don’t have a pen.”
“I do.”
Again, Shepherd dipped into his jacket and withdrew a ballpoint pen. He tossed it to Tori, who missed catching it. Kathy bent to pick it up. The casing was black, and in gold lettering it said Shepherd Enterprises, Inc. She handed it to Tori.
“Sign it!” Shepherd thundered.
Tori’s gaze dipped from the barrel of the shotgun then rose to take in Shepherd’s face.
Suddenly the screen door was ripped open. The shotgun flew to the right and exploded with a deafening roar, plaster raining down from the gaping hole in the ceiling. Before Shepherd could turn, a man with a baseball cap pounced, knocking Shepherd against the counter. Kathy swung the rolling pin, smashing it against Shepherd’s left ear. He went down with a wail that could curl hair and Kathy found herself looking to Ronnie Collins’s brown eyes.
“Sorry to burst in on you ladies like this, but I thought you might need a helping hand.”
30
“Now let me get this straight,” Detective Osborn said, staring straight at Tori. “You say Collins broke into your ho
use, but that it was Shepherd who trashed it.”
“That’s right.”
Shepherd had been taken away by ambulance to the nearest hospital—not all that close in rural Ward County—and with a Sheriff’s Department escort. The deputies would stick with him until it was figured out what was what and who did what to whom. At that moment, Osborn looked totally perplexed.
“And why did you show up here tonight?” he asked Collins.
“I’d just left The Bay Bar and was headed home up Resort Road when I saw Shepherd get out of his car and carrying what looked like a shotgun. I waited in the shadows until I saw him break the window on the front door. I was afraid for the ladies here, and thought I should make it my business to be sure they were safe.”
Just then, a knock sounded and they looked around to see Avery Simons, Lucinda Bloomfield’s property manager, standing there looking in. “I’m just a delivery boy. I’ve come to present an envelope.”
“Where’s your employer?” Osborn demanded, taking possession of said item.
“Home in bed. Collins,” he nodded toward his co-worker, “asked me to bring this here.”
“Is that true?” Osborn demanded.
“Yes. I called him and asked him to bring it after we subdued Shepherd.”
“That had to be more than an hour ago,” Osborn said, sounding annoyed.
“I didn’t get the message right away. I was otherwise occupied.” Simons didn’t mention what he’d been paying so much attention to and Tori was just as glad.
Osborn opened the envelope and glanced at the contents. “So?”
“So,” Kathy said, picking up the narration. “When I found that piece of paper, hidden in a pile of newspapers, I thought the list of names and numbers might have some special significance.”
“But that wasn’t the case,” Collins said smoothly. Despite his redneck façade of camouflage jacket, grungy jeans, and a Red Wings ball cap, his diction belied his appearance. “If you look on the other side of the page, you’ll see it has far greater meaning.”
Osborn’s gaze darted back and forth for long seconds. Finally, he looked up. “I don’t get it.”
A Reel Catch Page 21
