Almost forty-five minutes passed before the manager called back. Sarkisian listened, thanked her and hung up. For a long minute he sat in silence, then a deep sigh escaped him.
Cold, uncomfortable dread settled like lead in the pit of my stomach. But I had to ask. “Who?”
He looked up, troubled. “It’s rented in the name of Margaret O’Shaughnessy.”
“No,” I said, even though I knew how ridiculous it was to protest. “It can’t… I mean, okay, maybe Peggy went in for a bit of petty embezzling, but not murder. Can you actually envision her taking that damned letter opener and stabbing someone? Even Brody? Oh, I know she demonstrates how to do it, but that’s a lot different than actually doing it.”
The look he gave me held a wealth of disillusionment. “I’ve run into a few people who seemed even less likely. You just can’t tell what lies deep inside a person.”
“But-not someone I’ve known almost all my life,” I finished lamely, then brightened. “Tony-”
He cut me off. “Yeah, I know. If Brody threatened Peggy, or just seemed like a threat to her, Tony might have jumped in and either done the murder or helped her cover it up. I’m not leaving him out of the equation.”
“I still can’t…”
He held up a hand, silencing me. “I know, but try to look at the facts, without the emotions and loyalties or whatever. Brody’s spent a great deal of time going over these books. He may have noticed the oddity of that same amount going to the one company every single month. And he might have confronted her with it.”
“But the money just doesn’t add up to enough…”
“It’s not the amount,” Sarkisian pointed out, “but the being caught.”
“But murder?”
He shook his head. “I think I’d better talk to her before I come to any conclusions.” He rose. “I’ll take you home, first.”
I nodded. We locked away the books, then set off on the drive back to Upper River Gulch. The rain had stopped some time earlier, but the sky looked like it might let go again at any moment. Neither of us said anything until we’d turned onto the second street past Last Gasp Hill. Then, as we neared Peggy’s, I asked, “Can I come with you?”
He hesitated. “Sure you want to? It might not be pleasant.”
“I-” I shook my head. “It might make it easier for her.” To do what, I had no idea. I just didn’t want her to face what might come alone, even if it were just her disillusionment in her protégé.
We pulled into her driveway to find the old Pontiac poking out of the carport. Lights showed behind curtains, and almost as soon as we came to a stop the porch light flicked on. Peggy opened the front door and peered out at us. “Annike? Are you all right?”
“Sorry to bother you, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, I need to talk to you.” Sarkisian waited for Peggy to step back and usher us into her cluttered but comfortable living room.
She waved us to chairs, then perched on the edge of her sofa. “What’s up?”
“We found out about Discount Office Supplies,” Sarkisian said.
Her eyes widened in dismay, then she gave a philosophical shrug. “Well, that was clever of you.”
The sheriff blinked. “You aren’t going to try to deny it?”
Peggy peered over the top of her glasses. “Would it do me any good?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Besides, I’m proud of it,” she added.
“Proud? You’ve been paying a dummy company every month. Ms. O’Shaughnessy, that’s called embezzling and in case you weren’t aware, it’s illegal.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. A bit unorthodox, certainly, and I admit I didn’t want to be caught at it, but I was only doing what was right.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” I suggested.
Peggy nodded. “You’ll appreciate this, Annike. It all started at last year’s Christmas party at the Still. Hugh Cartwright always puts on such a spread and he was in such a good mood because the raspberry liqueur was selling so well. So when I suggested that he make a pledge to support the homeless shelter, he agreed, even on the amount.”
“So he made a pledge,” Sarkisian murmured, his gaze narrowing. I began to see what had happened.
Her face worked. “But when I brought him the first check to sign, he refused. He actually said he’d changed his mind. And after he’d pledged!”
“He didn’t do it in writing, did he?” I asked.
“I should have made sure he did,” fumed Peggy. “He had the nerve to claim the pledge wasn’t legally binding! And then he gave that exact same amount to himself every month and called it a bonus, just to spite me because I called him a skinflint to his face.”
“So you came up with a creative way to make him honor that pledge anyway?” Sarkisian sounded resigned.
Peggy raised her eyebrows. “Well, wouldn’t you?”
That silenced the sheriff, but I got the distinct impression he didn’t wholly disapprove of Peggy’s outrageous stunt. “Is that why you lied about being at the shelter on Tuesday?” I asked.
She hesitated, then nodded. “I really didn’t want to bring attention to how much time I spend there. How much the place means to me.” She straightened, and her chin came up in defiance. “It’s important work, you know.”
Sarkisian stared at her, frowning, then looked to me.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that my aunt can help out with this. Hugh Cartwright listens to her, sometimes. I think she can shame him into endorsing what Peggy did.”
He nodded, obviously relieved. “We’ll have a talk with Ms. Lundquist, then.”
Peggy beamed at him. “Did you want to arrest me? That would have been quite an experience. I’ve never been arrested before.”
“One can only wonder why not,” Sarkisian muttered as we at last headed out the door.
“No one’s dared, I expect.”
He climbed into the car, then turned to look at me. “If she didn’t really mind our finding out, it doesn’t seem likely she’d panic over Brody’s finding out, either.”
“Or Dave’s,” I agreed. “And Tony would have known it wasn’t a matter of life and death to her, so that lets him out, too.”
His expression went blank with that look I was beginning to recognize as a rapid review of facts. “Hatter’s prints weren’t on the ledgers,” he announced abruptly. “Only on the inventory sheets waiting for processing.”
I groaned. “You mean we’ve been wasting our time on the wrong thing?”
Sarkisian ran a hand through his curly pepper-and-salt hair. “Hatter had been going through papers. Maybe he knew what he was looking for, maybe he was just doing it as part of his job. But someone didn’t want him doing it?” He made the last a question.
“Not Peggy,” I asserted. “She was fiddling the books, not the inventory-” I broke off, realizing what I had just said.
“Fiddling the inventory,” Sarkisian repeated, an odd expression in his gray eyes. “Damn.”
We fell silent, then reason intervened and I shook my head. “Sorry. That doesn’t make sense. The employees can get all the bottles-”
“The experimental batches,” he corrected. “Good for personal drinking, but not for resale. Hugh Cartwright will never let anyone have the bottles with labels bearing the Brandywine Distillery seal. Because,” he added with emphasis, “they sell for so much money.”
“So Dave might have caught someone making off with stock?” I warmed to this line of thinking until I realized it didn’t let out Peggy, or for that matter, Gerda. “Anybody in the whole damned town could have been stealing from the Still!” I said in disgust. “Dave might even have been taking bribes to keep quiet about it.”
“Until his conscience got the better of him, perhaps?”
We crested the hill to be greeted by a bright spotlight focused on Aunt Gerda’s gate. Or more accurately, on the fence post beside it that Simon’s van had knocked over the night of the murder. The halogen bulb flared from a massiv
e battery, illuminating Simon, his van, a new post and the remnants of cement mixing.
Sarkisian slowed to a stop, and Simon waved to us. “A bit late, isn’t it?” Sarkisian called to him.
“Thought I’d better do it before it started pouring again.” Simon’s mouth twitched into a lopsided grin. “I’ve felt damned guilty about this.” He turned back to his labors.
Sarkisian guided the Honda along the winding drive-missing most of the potholes, I noted-and stopped again behind the garage.
The front door opened, and Gerda came out on the deck and looked down at us. “Annike? I was getting worried.”
“It’s been a long evening,” I agreed as I crawled out of the car. Right now, I wanted my bed and twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep. I’d be lucky if I got six.
“Is that the sheriff? Good. I’ll be right down.”
Sarkisian waited while Gerda hurried back into the house. She emerged a couple minutes later, wrapped in her purple cloak, and came down the stairs.
“Here!” With an air of triumph, she thrust out her hand, holding a piece of paper liberally smeared with garbage. “The cash register receipt for my vanilla, with the date and time of purchase printed right on it.”
“Your alibi?” Sarkisian took it by a corner, eyeing the crumpled, slimed thing with distaste. I could only hope it would satisfy him.
Simon’s rattling old van pulled up beside him. “All done, Gerda,” he called. He opened up the back and dragged out a spare fence rail. “I’ll shove this in the crawlspace.” With the board balanced on his shoulder, he opened the garage, felt around until he found Gerda’s spare key, then unlocked the low doorway that led to her tool storage area. He came out several minutes later. “Some of that floor insulation has come loose,” he said as he returned the key to its not-very hidden home. “I’ll come by in the morning and fix it.”
“You know where the spare keys are?” asked Sarkisian.
“Well of course he does.” Gerda regarded the sheriff as if he’d just said something particularly dim. “He’s been doing odd jobs for me practically since he moved here.”
The key. The murderer had to have had access to a key to Gerda’s. I’d forgotten that. Again.
I glanced at the sheriff and recognized the calculating look in his eyes as they rested on Simon. Lowell had just given away the fact he knew where to find the spare key. Just how many people around here shared that knowledge?
I had the horrible sensation it was going to become very important to discover the answer to that.
Chapter Seventeen
My head ached. I wanted to go to bed. I didn’t want to think about the murder-or rather, the murders-any more. I still had tomorrow to survive. And that meant dealing with the Dinner-in-the-Park. Owen Sarkisian was never going to have the time to call the school officials for permission for us to hold it in the cafeteria, which meant I was stuck doing it. Leaving the sheriff talking to Gerda and Simon, I dragged myself up the stairs, let myself into the house and went into the kitchen. Next Thanksgiving, I swore, I would be hundreds of miles away from Upper River Gulch.
For several minutes I just stood there, glaring at the phone. I had no way of reaching anybody. Anyone high enough in the school hierarchy to have the authority to give permission also would have the sense to have an unlisted phone number. Frustrated, I tried calling a couple of party rental firms before admitting it was too late on a Saturday night and I hadn’t a chance of getting through. I sank onto the kitchen chair, and at once the manx Hefty scrambled up my leg, using all his claws, and into my lap. I was so tired I made no more than a token protest, then just sat there, cradling the purring beastie. Infinitely better than cradling That Damned Bird. Tedi Bird, for God’s sake. I felt like crying, but at the moment it would take too much effort.
If I was going to put that much energy into anything, it ought to be solving the problem of the dinner. If I couldn’t rent a pavilion, maybe we could make one. Tarps, lashed together, to create one giant canopy covering for the entire park. We could anchor it to trees on one side, the electrical pole on another, and with sufficient ropes we could probably reach across the street to another tree on the fourth corner. Or maybe with sufficient rope I could just hang myself.
With an effort, I dragged my thoughts from the wistful back to the practical. Everyone around here had a tarp or three. They were part of the requirements for country living. Never mind that with all this rain, everyone would already be using them to protect things of their own.
“Why are you just sitting there?” my aunt demanded. I looked up to see her swirling off her new cape to drape over the back of a chair in front of the pellet stove in the dining room. “Don’t you have phone calls to make?”
I nodded. “How many tarps have we got?”
She had stooped to pick up Dagmar, and straightened at this with her arms full of purring gray and white fur. “Whatever for?”
I told her my plan.
She settled the cat across her shoulder. “Whatever for?” she repeated. “Do you really like roughing it? What’s wrong with the school cafeteria?”
I closed my eyes. “Fine. You call and make the arrangements.”
“The sheriff already took care of that. Didn’t he tell you?”
There was going to be a third body, any minute now. I was going to kill Sarkisian. “You mean I’ve been sitting here, frantic, and all this time…”
She shook her head. “Really, Annike, you worry too much. We told you at the beginning, just assign jobs, and everyone will pitch in and do their part.”
Even the sheriff, with two murders to solve. “Let’s give him the turkey as a thank you present,” I suggested. I felt amazingly better, even though Gerda refused to consider my generous impulse. Most likely, Sarkisian had delegated as well and had someone in his department take care of it. I’d have to call-scratch that, I’d drop by-with heartfelt gratitude for Jennifer if I survived all the way to Monday.
The change of venues meant I had to activate the phone tree again, first to arrange for a decorating committee in the morning and secondly to let everyone know they wouldn’t have to come to the dinner armed with beach umbrellas. While Gerda put on a kettle for much needed tea, I telephoned Ida.
“More decorating?” the woman demanded in tones of foreboding when I’d explained the situation to her.
“Hey, it’ll be dry. And the school already has some stuff up for the kids.”
Ida snorted. “Paper turkeys and pilgrims, colored with crayons.”
“You can have a real turkey,” I tried.
Ida, sensibly, ignored me. “Well, I’ll see who I can round up. What a pity today’s refreshments got ruined in the rain.”
“Throw the cookies back in an oven to dry them out?”
She laughed and hung up.
Maybe-just maybe-I could go to bed soon. We made a pot of chamomile infused with oat straw, then Gerda took her turn at the phone. She called Hugh Cartwright. He answered on the fifth ring, and judging from the sound of his “What do you want?” that belted over the wire instead of a more conventional “Hello,” his mood could not be described as good.
“To give you a piece of my mind,” Gerda responded promptly.
“Gerda?” he bellowed, then his tone dropped to a querulous grumble, still audible from a distance of ten feet away from the receiver.
She made appropriate soothing noises while he unburdened himself about his views of people who were so self-absorbed that they could commit murder on his business premises without any thought or consideration for what this was going to do to his work schedules. When he finally ran down, Gerda proceeded to give him the lecture of his life about reneging on promises. To my amazement, he did not resort to shouting again.
Gerda listened to his mutterings in his own defense for a minute, then cut him short. “You’re not fooling anyone. You’re just an old skinflint and ought to be ashamed of yourself. Now, you’re going to call Sheriff Sarkisian right now and tell him
you wouldn’t dream of pressing charges against Peggy. Then you’re going to call Peggy and apologize to her for breaking your word. Is that understood?” She listened for a moment, smiling. “Thought so. All right, you too. See you at the dinner tomorrow.” She hung up and turned back to me, beaming. “All taken care of.”
I stared at her. “What hold do you have over him?” I demanded.
She actually blushed. “Oh, he wanted to marry me a couple of years back.”
If I hadn’t already been sitting I would have fallen. I settled for clutching Hefty. “You… He…”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Annike.” She sounded as stern as when she’d talked to Cartwright. “Certainly being rich would be nice, but not if it meant having to put up with that man.” She sniffed. “He doesn’t like cats.” And she walked out of the room before I could think of anything else to say.
I finished my tea, then got ready for bed. It just went to show, there were all sorts of things you didn’t know, even about your nearest and dearest.
The roar of an engine missing on one of its cylinders woke me up all too early Sunday morning. I shoved my feet into slippers, dragged on my comfortable old bathrobe, and hurried out to the deck in the drizzling rain. Through the trees, I could just make out something large and oddly colored down near the gate. Simon Lowell’s old hippie van. I went back inside, donned jeans, a sweatshirt and tall rubber boots, and hiked down to meet him.
By the time I got there, it was pouring. Simon stood beside the fence post he had put in last night, frowning. “What’s wrong?” I called as I approached.
He looked up and shook his head. “Ground’s too wet. I’ll probably have to take it out and reset it during a dry spell.”
As I commiserated with him over this, another ancient engine drew closer and labored its way up the last steep portion of hill that led to Gerda’s. Adam Fairfield’s Chevy appeared around the bend. Any hope I had that he might just drive on up the lane faded as he pulled in at the gate, blocking it. He climbed out.
Cold Turkey Page 21
