by Jean Flowers
Next was Jules Edwards. Because I didn’t like him? I couldn’t think of another motive for suspecting Cliff and Daisy’s accountant. He’d hand-waved over the numbers at our meeting earlier, but maybe that was par for the course for accountants. I had little experience to call on. I found myself almost wishing that a financial audit would show him guilty of doing something illegal. No need to share that line of fuzzy thinking with Sunni. My second entry had a name but no really suspicious behavior.
I moved on to the quilting group, hoping for more useful entries. I started with the widow Molly Boyd. She’d shown up at Tuesday’s quilters’ meeting, the day after the storm and Daisy’s death, with a broken ankle, and I’d witnessed her telling two different stories about how she’d hurt herself. Wasn’t it obvious: A black eye or a scratched fist or a broken ankle was a dead giveaway that the person had been in a fight with the victim. How simple things were when you didn’t have to prove theories or substantiate common myths and fictional devices.
Molly, a short woman in her early sixties, ran the beauty salon across the street from Daisy’s Fabrics, the salon that hosted the meeting I’d come upon earlier this evening. I couldn’t think of what Molly would have against Daisy from a business point of view. It wasn’t as if Daisy had competed, offering to do her customers’ hair or nails while they chose their bolts of fabric. I knew little of Molly’s life outside of our quilting sessions, only what she’d shared over tea and stitching—that she was a widow, a grandmother, and a lover of reality-television shows. And I couldn’t help knowing what she sent and received through the post office—packages shared with a daughter in Maine, orders she placed with a plus-sized clothing store, requests for donations to a political party.
Whatever personal motive Molly might have had to dislike Daisy wasn’t evident. Neither was there an obvious reason why she’d lied about her injury. Needing a full entry, I wrote “lying” and “hosting after-hours meeting” as her suspicious behaviors.
Olivia (Liv) Patterson, on the other hand, held more promise, with one of the clearest motives I could think of. Competition with Daisy for greeting card–buying customers, the lifeblood of her business.
I thought back to the last time I saw Liv in the post office. I remembered letting her enter just under the wire on Monday, before Ben and I closed up as the storm swooped in. Liv had atypically refused to engage in a conversation on a Western-themed quilt she’d spent hours and hours on. Now I manufactured a reason: She didn’t want to support Daisy’s Fabrics, the only brick-and-mortar fabric shop in the area, by admitting that Daisy had helped her find appropriate designs. I congratulated myself on coming up with that idea, then quickly chided myself for creating a story well beyond the bounds of plausibility and evidence. Liz was entitled to an off day, a cranky hour or two, without being suspected of murder. Detective work was harder than I thought.
Andrea Harris and her husband, Reggie, were also prime candidates for violence against Daisy. Daisy was single-handedly trying to undermine their campaign for the farmers’ market proposal, which it seemed was a big part of their overall business plan. They’d both been headed for the meeting in the salon this evening. Acting like American citizens, with the right to assemble, I reminded myself, and moved on.
I couldn’t come up with anything suspicious for Terry Thornton, our young bride-to-be, who was probably too wrapped up in her wedding planning to care about much else; nor for Eileen Jackson, our hostess this week. If lying were suspicious behavior, I was the one who should go on the list, for fabricating a reason to call Eileen and draw her into giving me information useful to the investigation. I only hoped she and Buddy weren’t still looking for my sunglasses.
Fran Rogers was the last of the quilters on my list. She’d been part of the group, with Andrea and Liv, who were at the gathering in the salon. Fran was a pretty quiet woman, closer to my age, short and wiry, and always working on a quilt for a cause. One month she’d be talking about the children’s wing of the hospital, and their need for baby quilts; another month she’d have on her lap a quilt meant for a military unit in a country I’d barely heard of. Hard to imagine her fighting or arguing with anyone, let alone killing someone.
That was it for the quilt group.
I needed to broaden my scope. I jumped to Fred Bateman, Quinn’s boss, also an attendee of the alleged (by me) secret meeting. Such a nice guy. Quinn liked and respected him. I hated to put him on the list. But he was at the meeting. I snapped to attention. Quinn’s boss. Finally, I had a source to tap for more information about a potential suspect. My boyfriend. Why hadn’t I thought of him right away?
Sunni was due in a few minutes, but I figured I could squeeze in a call to Quinn. I was thrilled when he accepted on the second ring.
“I’m surprised you’re available,” I said, before I thought about it.
He chuckled. “And yet you phoned.”
“I was excited to talk to you.”
His pause was telling. “Something on your mind?”
Could he know me that well after less than a year of dating? That was both good and worrisome, but I didn’t need to decide that now. “I ran into your boss this evening.”
“Okay.” A questioning tone.
“He misses you.”
Another chuckle. “I talk to him every day. Sometimes twice a day. And I send photos of potential buys.” Another telling pause. “What’s up, Cassie?”
Busted. He was on a business trip, looking for merchandise; of course he’d be communicating regularly with his boss.
I heard a noise that could be a car pulling into my driveway. I carried the phone to the window and peeked out to see Sunni in the driver’s seat. Of all times for her to be early. No time to beat around the bush. “Fred was going into a meeting at Molly Boyd’s salon,” I said.
“Why does that matter?” Quinn asked. “Maybe he thinks it’s time to cover up his gray. Though he keeps telling me that people like a little gray in their antique dealers. It gives them an air of authenticity.”
My turn to chuckle. “This meeting was after hours.” I named the people he’d been with. “I’m just curious. Do you have any idea what he might be doing with them?”
I heard a warning throat-clearing. “Does this have to do with Daisy’s murder case? Are you still snooping around?”
“You sound like Ben.”
“Who also cares about your well-being.”
It was a good thing I hadn’t shared my special “Postmaster beware” notes with Ben or Quinn. I was about to inform Quinn that Sunni had backed down and welcomed me into her investigation, but it was just as well that the doorbell rang. Some things are better addressed face-to-face.
“Company?” Quinn asked.
“The chief of police.” An exasperated sigh floated over the wires. “She’s my friend, Quinn.”
“Please be careful, Cassie.”
“Always. I have to go now.”
“Skype later?” he asked.
“Can’t wait.”
I never did get an answer from Quinn about what Fred Bateman might have been doing hanging around with my suspects. Were all detectives so easily distracted? I doubted it.
* * *
I’d cleared my dining room table for work space and in a few minutes we were seated in front of a deep mahogany surface covered with papers, folders, and two laptops. I couldn’t help remembering a time when Aunt Tess would cover the same table with a lovely lace cloth on top of protective pads, and set out a fine-china tea service. What a change in entertaining style in just one generation.
“You first,” Sunni said.
“Me first?” I asked. A stall while I prepared myself for an orderly presentation.
Sunni nodded. “Show me what you’ve got.”
If Sunni meant to be intimidating, it was working. This wasn’t the atmosphere of working together that I’d hoped for
. I took her attitude as a sign that we were suspending our friendship for the moment while we got down to business, and that I’d better prove myself worthy of the new partnership.
I plunged in. I turned my laptop and placed it in the middle of the table where we could both see my document. I’d cleaned up my notes so they were arranged in two columns: Suspect and Motive. I’d left out “Anonymous” and his notes for the time being.
My mouth went sour as I realized how pitiful my efforts looked. A half dozen people. I’d eliminated the other three thousand or so citizens of North Ashcot without so much as a glance. And as for the rest of the state, it might as well not exist. I could hardly wait for the comparison with Sunni’s list.
I swallowed my misgivings and talked Sunni through my reasoning for each pairing: Molly—lies and meeting; Liv—card competition; and so on. Now I wished I’d added: Others—unknown motives.
The chief of police sat through my report, with an occasional question and a few uh-huhs.
When I was finished, she sat back and folded her arms across her chest. “Where’s Cliff?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I left him around quarter to seven.”
She straightened and tapped the edge of the laptop, its screen still glowing with my neat arrangement of suspects. “I mean, on your list.”
“Why would Cliff be—?” A dull moment.
“The husband. Always the first suspect. And where’s Tony? The guy who found Daisy’s body. The second favorite.”
What? I’d written down everyone in Daisy’s inner circle but those two. I flashed back to a conversation with Ben. He’d reminded me about husbands being prime suspects and it still never occurred to me to consider that possibility in this case. I’d been hanging around with Cliff Harmon, the husband, trusting him, presuming his innocence. I’d left him off the list for the same reason I put Jules on it—based on whether I liked them. Either I was a good judge of character with keen instincts or I was truly a babe in the woods.
And Tony? I wasn’t that well acquainted with the young man who worked at Mike’s Bike Shop, didn’t even know his last name, but I had no excuse for not factoring in the person who had been first on the scene. I had a lot to learn about solving homicides. Maybe I should have begun my law enforcement career with traffic violations, or abandoned vehicle citations, which were handled by civilian volunteers with more training than I’d had.
For now, I felt I had to defend the husband. “Cliff was miles away, at a training conference, probably seen by dozens of people, most of whom would be in law enforcement and security.”
“And maybe a few chiefs of police giving seminars,” Sunni added.
“The good guys,” I said.
“And wouldn’t that be handy?”
I searched Sunni’s face. Was she seriously considering Cliff a suspect? The Cliff I’d been consoling, helping, accepting food from? The supplier of this evening’s meal for both Sunni and me? “You think he hired someone? What possible motive could he have?”
“Cassie,” she said, using a grade school teacher tone. “There’s a reason spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and the exes of all of the above top the list. Whenever you have the capacity for love, you also have the potential for hatred and greed.”
“And the rest of the deadly sins,” I added, feeling my shoulders sag and my spirits hit bottom.
“A ripe environment for violence.”
“Depressing,” I whispered. Was there no possibility of romance? A happy marriage? Was it necessary to hold this worldview to succeed as a cop?
I thought of my ex-fiancé, Adam Robinson, who’d called it quits last year, by way of three text messages. My do your job warning letters paled in comparison with the hurt inflicted by Adam’s curt memos. We lived in the same city at the time, within walking distance, and saw each other regularly, but he chose to inflict his wound not face-to-face, but remotely and electronically.
Sunni knew about Adam and now seemed sorry for inadvertently reminding me of him. “I apologize, Cassie. I didn’t mean to dredge up old memories.”
I shook my head. “Not a problem. I only hope Adam is alive and well. I wouldn’t want the Boston Police Department banging on my door asking for my alibi if they find him otherwise.”
“I guess you’re over him,” Sunni said, her first smile of the evening.
On the whole, I was over Adam, happy I’d returned to my roots over one hundred miles away, and happy with Quinn Martindale, so I was surprised at my reaction to Sunni’s negative view of relationships. I found myself wondering about the chief of police herself, who shared little of her personal life. I knew that she’d been married briefly, divorced—ostensibly because each was married to a job (cop for her; defense lawyer for him), and had one daughter. As for the present, I didn’t see that she had much time for dating.
Sunni followed up on the question of Cliff Harmon’s status. “Granted, the details of Daisy’s murder don’t support a hired gun. It seems more spontaneous, an argument gone bad, and a handy opportunity for cover-up.”
“The storm,” I said, a bit relieved. I could no more imagine Cliff hiring a hit man than I could his wielding the blow himself.
“But I must tell you, there was motive there.”
I started. “Cliff had a motive to kill Daisy?”
“More on that later.”
I almost screamed how unfair it was of Sunni to withhold that information from me. Shouldn’t I be alerted since I was hanging around with the man, sharing meals? But the chief and I were just beginning our alleged collaboration, and I didn’t dare.
“Maybe we should go back to Tony,” I said.
“Tony Masters. Claims he was surveying the damage in the back of the bike shop. He saw that the tree branch was down in Daisy’s yard next door, thought he heard shuffling noises, and climbed partway up the fence to see what was going on, and, yada yada, I think you’ve heard this story.”
“I have. Does this mean we can pinpoint Daisy’s time of death? If he heard noises, it might have been the killer. Tony might have just missed him.”
“It’s not that cut-and-dried. Tony couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t the wind he was hearing, or something else falling in the yard. It’s close, though, according to the medical examiner. Daisy died about one o’clock, give or take, about a half hour before Tony found her.”
I wished I’d known that part of the timeline while I was compiling my list. I’d have to go over it again with that in mind. Liv had finished in the post office just before noon, which neither incriminated nor eliminated her. I couldn’t account for anyone else. “Do we need to consider Tony a suspect?”
“I doubt it. He’s clean. No record, has a wife and a new baby, goes to school nights to get his mechanic’s license, saving up to open a body shop eventually. His boss and his neighbors say only good things about all the Masters family.”
At least there’d been no harm done in my leaving Tony Masters off my list, no matter that I hadn’t thought of him in the first place. “Where do we go from here?”
“I hesitate to even say this, but it would be good to have you involved with the quilting group, see if there’s anything to this feud with Liv Patterson, or anything else that might be going on where ladies gather.”
“I can do that.”
“As for the farmers’ market thing—I’m glad for the tip about the letters to the editor. I’ll see if I can get Reggie Harris to cop to writing a response to Daisy’s letter. I’m sure he’s deleted it, if there ever was one, but I can ask nicely if he’ll let us have his computer, and his answer will tell us a lot.”
“Wouldn’t he be within his rights to refuse to surrender his computer without you thinking that makes him look guilty?”
“Right,” Sunni said with a wink in her voice.
I was beginning to appreciate my own job more and more. When so
meone entered my post office lobby, I had only the most pleasant expectations for our interaction. I made an assumption, mostly justified, that my role was to bring people together for mutual greetings and presents. And the occasional breakup letter.
Sunni continued. “Can you find an excuse to talk to Liv and Molly and the others privately and see if anything pops? Try to get their alibis, for one thing, and we’ll compare them with what they told me.”
“You don’t believe them?”
“You’d be surprised at what people don’t tell the police.”
“Okay, I’m to go undercover. I like the sound of that.”
“Don’t push it. Can I count on you to stay within the bounds of what I’m asking you to do?”
“Absolutely.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
She added a couple more notes to whatever document she’d been working on, sat back, and closed her laptop. I did the same.
“Is there anything else before we call it a night?” she asked.
A moment of truth. To show her my recent threatening mail or not? “Uh—”
“So that’s a yes?”
Apparently, my face had answered for me. I retrieved the sheet of paper that I’d found shoved under my door. She took it from me and immediately focused on the content.
“And there’s a reason you didn’t show this to me right away?”
“This is number two,” I said, getting it over with. “The first one came yesterday morning. It’s in my desk at the office.”
“Again, you weren’t planning to show these to me because . . . ?” Her eyes were questioning, her tone bordering on scolding.
“Because—”
She held up her hand. “Never mind struggling for an excuse. You didn’t show this to me right away because you thought I’d try to curtail your snooping even more. Or you just couldn’t see that it was anything but a prank.” She paused for a breath. “I’m taking this one and I expect the first one in my hands tomorrow morning. I’ll send Ross to get it.”
