by Molly Macrae
“Her car is there,” Mercy said. “Her suitcase is there.”
“We don’t know if she had some kind of little overnight bag, though,” Shirley said.
“Has!” Mercy shouted. “What kind she has! And it doesn’t matter. There’s milk in the fridge and peaches sitting on the counter.”
“What about her purse?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say. She has several.”
She hadn’t had a purse with her the night before. Not unless she was able to fit it somewhere between her skintight clothes and her skin. “What about her wallet?”
They looked at each other, then at me.
“What about her classes at Northeast? Does she have class on Monday? Would she skip class? Does she have friends she hangs out with?” I’d hit a patch of head shaking, which made me think Mercy didn’t have her finger on the pulse of Angie as much as she thought. And then I suddenly wished I hadn’t thought of the word “pulse.”
“What?” Mercy asked, searching my face. “What is it? You’re worried about her, too, aren’t you?”
I didn’t want to answer that. I didn’t know how to without upsetting the twins more than they already were, and possibly needlessly. Their whole to-do over Angie was probably needless. I couldn’t believe she’d never been out of contact with Mercy for more than twelve hours.
“What were Angie’s plans yesterday?” I asked. “Was she doing anything for the festival? Helping out at a booth?”
“We were busy with the historical society’s booth,” Shirley said.
“Giving Evangeline a hand,” said Mercy.
In other words, they didn’t know where Angie was during the afternoon. She’d looked upset when I saw her at the courthouse. Then she’d run to the man in the shadows. It hadn’t looked like a lovers’ tryst. More like she was being comforted. “Did she know Reva Louise Snapp?” I asked.
“That woman was an itch,” Mercy said. “With a capital B.”
“And Angie knew better than most,” said Shirley.
“Why’s that?”
Mercy pretended she wasn’t making shushing motions at Shirley. Shirley pretended not to notice them.
“Angie and Dan Snapp were married,” Shirley said, scraping her chair back out of range of Mercy’s foot. “She needs to know it, Mercy, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in coming to your senses and cutting your losses.” Shirley turned to me again. “Angie and Dan were married and divorced before she married Max and became an untimely widow. That girl has not had an easy time of it.”
“How long ago did she divorce Dan?” I asked.
“Oh no, you’ve got it wrong,” Shirley said. “It was the other way around. Dan divorced Angie. Because of that bit . . . because of what Mercy said.”
A growl was building in Mercy’s throat and finally exploded. “Reva Louise Snapp deserved to die!”
I should have kept the next question bottled up. “Does Angie have a gun?”
Chapter 18
“On a more positive note, the Spiveys won’t be coming over for breakfast again anytime soon,” I told Ardis later over the phone. I hadn’t called her right away. After Shirley and Mercy left, I sat down at Granny’s spinning wheel and worked the treadle for a while. I could have dug out some carded wool and started spinning, but the rhythm of the treadling was soothing enough. Sitting in a rocking chair would have worked, too. Or wrapping my arms around my knees and rocking the way Geneva and Angie had done the night before.
Shirley and Mercy hadn’t left quietly. They’d screeched their way out the door like a couple of itches with a capital W.
“But I am kind of worried about Angie,” I told Ardis.
“What are you kind of worried about most? Her whereabouts or her state of mind and her aim?”
“She does have a gun?”
“Max Cobb hunted. So, unless she sold his guns, yes. But do you really think milquetoast Angie would have the gumption to shoot someone in cold blood?”
“I think we can’t rule her out. Did you know she was married to Dan Snapp once upon a time?”
“Well, well,” Ardis said.
“I got the feeling it didn’t last long.”
“I wonder how long Dan and Reva Louise were married.”
“That’s something else we need to find out. I wonder if we’d get straight answers from Dan.”
“I wonder if Dan ran into Angie and decided he’d finally had his fill of Reva Louise.”
“I wonder—oh, here’s another call and I do believe it’s Deputy Dunbar. Call you back, Ardis.”
“I’ll call you, hon, after I wrestle Daddy in and out of a bath.”
• • •
Clod’s call was short and sour. The sheriff was allowing the Weaver’s Cat to reopen. Clod wasn’t interested in hearing anything about Angie Cobb and he cut me off almost as soon as I mentioned her.
“So that’s your latest gig, is it?” he asked.
“What?”
“Kath Rutledge, Finder of Lost Persons.” The smirk behind that remark came through the circuitry of my phone loud and clear, and at that point I understood Reva Louise’s need for a phone-slamming app. I didn’t have one, either, so I did the next most satisfying thing.
“Oh, hey, do you hear that?” I asked Clod as I walked toward the back door.
“Hear what?”
I opened the back door. “This.” I took the phone from my ear, held it near the doorjamb, and gave the door an almighty slam.
My phone rang again almost immediately. Caller ID showed it was Clod. I didn’t answer.
• • •
In my profession as a textile preservation specialist, I had always spent time researching and preparing ahead of any action I undertook so that I could move forward with confidence that I would avoid unintended consequences. Maybe, after my months in Blue Plum, my specialist chops were slipping. Slamming the back door in Clod’s ear and ignoring his second call were both supremely satisfying, but that satisfaction bore unanticipated results.
After ignoring Clod’s call, I jotted a few notes about Angie in my new sleuth’s notebook and decided that digging into Dan Snapp’s background was at least as important as finding out more about J. Scott Prescott. I’d just started doing the dishes when I heard a car pull into my gravel drive, going way too fast. It skidded to a stop, a car door opened, feet pounded up the back steps, the kitchen door burst open, and Clod Dunbar came barreling in.
“What the—” I’d been washing my chef’s knife and spun around with it still in my hand, sending soap bubbles flying. A blob of suds splattered Clod’s uniform shirt.
He was in an alarming tizzy. I was alarmed, too—as who wouldn’t be if a large man with a gun burst into her kitchen while she was doing dishes?—but I wasn’t within a hundred miles of being in the same state as Clod. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, that made me happy. Happy, but not docile.
“What the heck do you think you’re doing, Dunbar?”
He jumped back. I might have gestured with the knife.
“Put the knife down,” he said. The tizzy portion of his state had evaporated, leaving behind his typical, starched cop mode.
I put the knife on the counter—more like smacked it on the counter. “What makes you think you can come barging in here? Scaring people half to death, banging doors . . .” Banging doors.
His flinty eyes looked from me, engaged in my quiet, domestic, morning chores, soap still dripping from my elbows, and then those flinty eyes glanced toward the table where my phone lay.
“Really?” I pointed at the phone. “You thought I might be—”
“You said you heard a noise. I heard a bang. You didn’t answer when I called back. A woman was shot to death yesterday. Do the math.”
“Huh. Does a slammed door really sound that much like a gunshot?”
“I’m paid to think the worst.”
“But not about Angela Cobb, who hasn’t been seen since last night?”
“I will tell yo
u again. Please listen and see if you can follow these simple instructions. Leave the detective work to the professionals.”
My question about Angie was pretty dumb-sounding. Three-quarters of the population of Blue Plum might not have been seen since the night before. To add immaturity to lame, I put my hands on my hips and said, “Yeah, but did you know this? Angie and Dan Snapp were married and she owns guns.”
Clod walked to the door without answering.
“So I take it you haven’t made an arrest yet?”
He turned at the door, still without answering, and looked as well aware of the effort it was costing me not to say, “What?” He added another five or ten seconds of waiting before saying, “Thank you, Ms. Rutledge, for wasting police time.” Then he nodded and walked out the door. Without closing it. Slob.
“Hey, I’m not the one who misinterpreted a cheap sound effect and I didn’t ask you to come over here all macho and ready to save me, so don’t tell me who wasted police time.” I shouted that after him, but only when I heard his car backing out of the driveway and only from the safety of the kitchen.
The phone rang a few minutes later and I sidled over to the table to see who it was, feeling somewhat phone-shy. But it was Ardis, checking back in as she said she would. I told her we were good to open at our usual Sunday time—one o’clock.
“That’s good,” she said as though I was trying to cheer her up and not doing it well. “Yes, it’s good to have work to look forward to, and also the joy of making sure they cleaned up every bit of fingerprint dust, and in the meantime I can go back to lolling in my living room.”
“What gives? You don’t sound happy about reopening or lolling. As if I believe you ever loll.”
“I can loll with the best of them, hon, and you know I’m happy about the shop, but what about the investigation? Did we miss the boat on that? If they’re allowing us to reopen, does that mean they’ve made an arrest? I’ve had one or two more thoughts about the case, and I hate to think all our efforts were a waste.”
“I don’t have any confirmation of this, but from all the signs . . .” I hesitated, flashing back on the “sign” of Clod bursting in the back door because he’d heard a bang. “No, I’m pretty sure they haven’t arrested anyone. And I have absolutely no confirmation of this, but I don’t think they have any idea who they’re looking for, either.”
“Well,” Ardis said, and I could hear the smile returning to her voice. “I know I shouldn’t feel so pleased about that news, especially not if the person we’re looking for is dangerous.”
“But it puts a bounce in your Bargello, doesn’t it?”
“I was going to say spunk back in my spinning. I’ll see you at the Cat. Let’s make it noon, in case we need to clean up after the deputies.”
• • •
No sooner had I disconnected than the front doorbell rang again. If I’d known I was hosting a Sunday morning open house, I would have thrown on something more stylish than one of Granny’s old blue chambray shirts and blue jeans. Feeling front-door-shy, too, since my surprise visit from the Spiveys, I was careful to look first. But when I saw who stood on the mat, I leapt to let her in.
“Sally Ann!”
She stood, head bowed, hugging herself as though keeping herself warm or keeping herself together. She looked up long enough to say, “Hey, Kath,” then stared at her toes again.
I opened an arm, wanting to put it around her and bring her inside, wanting her to know there were people other than herself ready to give her the hug she needed. But I stopped short, turning it into an air hug and waving her inside instead. Too much had been going on in the last twenty-four hours, and I couldn’t bring myself to touch her, to chance being zapped by whatever soup of emotions she was feeling.
“Come on inside, Sally Ann. Would you like some coffee?”
“Tea’s good. If it’s no bother.” She looked as though she hadn’t slept and her voice was as thin as the wisps of hair slipping loose from the knot at the back of her head. She had on a too-large Mel’s on Main T-shirt and a pair of baggy cargo pants and looked altogether waifish.
She followed me to the kitchen and I didn’t have the heart to sigh at the lack of coffee drinkers showing up on my doorstep. While I filled the kettle and warmed the pot again, she stood in front of the bookcase touching each of Granny’s cookbooks with her forefinger.
“Do you do any of the cooking at the café?” I asked. I couldn’t remember seeing her at the stove or in the prep area the times I’d stuck my head in the kitchen.
“No. I never took the time to be interested. That’s what Mama said. She and Reva Louise, though . . .” Her voice trailed off as her finger slid down a book spine and she ended up with her arms wrapped tightly around herself again.
“How are you holding up?” As soon as I asked, I was irritated with myself. I’d been asked the same question countless times in the days after Granny died and I’d vowed never to ask it of anyone else. There wasn’t really anything wrong with the question. Well-meaning people asked it. Good and caring people. But they were people who wanted to hear that the recently shattered weren’t going to be in pieces for long. They wanted answers that would affirm what they needed to hear—that death, when it touched their own lives, would be survivable. Hearing the right answer allowed them to hold their breaths and run past or fly over that terrible black void.
Or maybe I just hadn’t moved past Granny’s death as well as I thought I had and could use a cup of tea myself. Or something stronger than tea or coffee, except it was too early.
“Sally Ann, you don’t need to hold yourself together while you’re here. I don’t care if you’re holding up or feeling hollowed out. If you need a friend to fall apart on, you go right ahead and do it, okay?”
Her face started to crumple. I grabbed the box of tissues off the counter, but when I turned back, she had the back of her hand to her mouth and she was shaking her head.
“I knew I’d come to the right person.” She started to say something else but choked up. She closed her eyes and that seemed to get her past it. “Sorry. I was going to say that you’re a straight shooter. Isn’t that awful? Made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I really am doing okay. Sort of. Probably because I’m in shock or something. But I’ll work through it.”
“Do you want to sit down?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I guess.”
She didn’t sit until I put a mug of tea down on the table. Then she sat and moved the tea away. I’d expected to see her put her hands around it, the way people do, gaining strength from the ceramic warmth. But the way she moved it, dismissing it and not looking at it again, jogged my brain out of its Midwestern-comfort-beverage mode.
“I wasn’t even thinking, Sally Ann. Would you rather have iced tea? It won’t take a second.”
“That’s okay. Don’t bother. I don’t want to take your time. I came to ask a favor.”
“If I can. Sure.” I sat down across from her.
“It’s Mel. Will you go see her?”
“Where is she?”
“The café.”
“Really? The café’s open? You’re not going in today, though, are you?” At each of my questions Sally Ann sat farther back in her chair. Geneva had told me more than once that I needed lessons in interviewing techniques. It wasn’t such a bad idea; she just put it in an annoying way, insisting I could learn everything I needed to know by watching Joe Friday in old episodes of Dragnet. I was pretty sure I could think of better role models. But Sally Ann needed someone calm, then and there, so I told myself to relax and stop peppering her. “Sorry, Sally Ann. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Mel closed up early yesterday. Last night. About seven.” She shook her head. “I left after . . . I left earlier, but a couple of the other waitresses came by afterward and told me. They said someone from the sheriff’s department came by. And Mel was being weird before that, but then she cleared the place out. Customers, staff. Locked up. But she’s still there. Sh
e never left.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw her.”
“I mean, how do you know she didn’t go home and come back?”
“Same clothes. Same apron she had on when I left.”
Or same clothes and apron put back on. But that wouldn’t be like health-inspector-conscious Mel. Of course, neither was spending the night at the café.
“Any idea what she’s doing in there? Have you talked to her? And what would you like me to do?” Again with too many questions, but I kept my voice low and slow and tried to look relaxed. It must have worked. Sally Ann sat forward again.
“You know how you can see into that part of the kitchen, at an angle, from the back door?”
I didn’t, but I could picture it and I nodded.
“I went and knocked this morning and I could see her standing in there. Standing. Just standing. And I’m sure she saw me, but she didn’t come to the door. Didn’t wave. Nothing.”
“You don’t have a key?”
“She must’ve turned the dead bolt. I’m worried about her. I want you to go see her. Talk to her.” Sally Ann must have seen my reluctance and rushed on. “I’d go again, but she won’t open the door for me. Neither one of us is touchy-feely, you know? There’s not a lot of cozy about Mel or me.”
“But you’re both hurting. And you’re sisters.”
“No. We’re not. She and Reva Louise are and Reva Louise and I are.”
I’d forgotten. Reva Louise was the sister in between. “But surely—”
“Kath, I’ll remind her of Reva Louise. That isn’t a good idea right now. That’s just between you and me, though, okay? But it isn’t a good idea.”
I wondered about her “right now.” Did she mean reminding Mel of Reva Louise would be okay in a few days or weeks? In fact, it probably would be, time being a healer. But what was Sally Ann worried would happen “right now”? That didn’t sound good. And Mel locking herself in the café and not going home didn’t sound good, either.
“Aren’t there already a lot of things that will remind her of Reva Louise?” I asked. “That she’ll have to be the one going in early, again, to start the baking will remind her if nothing else does.”
