Telling Tails

by Sofie Ryan

  Chapter 4

  The cottage Jeff and Leesa Cameron were renting was the last one of six nestled among the trees overlooking West Penobscot Bay. Beyond the bay were Deer Isle, Swan’s Island and the Atlantic Ocean.

  The road curved inland just past the little green house. I pulled over, just beyond the cottage, and shut off the SUV’s engine. I could hear the mournful sound of the Deer Isle foghorn in the distance. Although it was almost twenty miles away across the water, something about the geography of the coast made the foghorn audible on this stretch of shoreline. It was a lonely sound in the near darkness.

  Trees and the growing darkness obscured part of my view of the house, but I could see a light on inside and there was a car parked in the driveway. I fervently hoped that Michelle and I would find both of the Camerons at home with a perfectly logical, reasonable explanation for what Rose had seen. Because I knew she had seen something. Her mind was as sharp as it had been throughout her teaching career. So something had happened in that kitchen.

  I studied the small house. It was surprisingly isolated, with trees on both sides and the cliffs leading down to the bay beyond the backyard. It would have been easy to sneak up behind Rose while she was distracted by whatever had been going on inside the kitchen.

  Michelle drove up then, turning in the Camerons’ driveway and parking in front of the house.

  I got out of the SUV and walked over to her. “Thank you for doing this,” I said.

  She smiled. “I don’t mind. I like Rose.” She must have seen the surprise I was feeling on my face. “Really, I do,” she said, locking the car and tucking the keys in the pocket of her gray skirt. Everything looked good on her. Michelle was tall and slim, with red hair and green eyes and the kind of quiet confidence that to me went along with being a police officer. “Okay, I’m not crazy about her detective work, but I kind of admire her persistence—and if you tell Rose I said that I’m going to deny it.”

  When their friend Maddie Hamilton had been arrested for the murder of the man she’d been seeing, Rose, Liz, Charlotte and Mr. P. had “investigated” and dragged me into their sleuthing. After they’d “solved” the crime, they had decided to open their own detective agency, Charlotte’s Angels, Discreet Investigations, the Angels for short. Mr. P. had completed all the requirements the state had in place to become a licensed investigator. Now Rose was apprenticing with him. They’d set up their office in the sunporch at the store, which pretty much guaranteed that I’d get pulled into their cases.

  I squeezed my thumb and index finger together and slid them across my lips like I was closing a zipper. Then I made a motion as though I was locking a tiny lock with an equally tiny key. I finished by pantomiming dropping the key into my bra. It was the same elaborate secret-keeping ritual we’d used when we were teenagers. Now that Michelle was back in my life, I realized how much I’d missed her.

  She grinned at me now. “Let’s go,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the Cameron house.

  “How are you going to do this?” I asked as we started up the driveway. We couldn’t exactly knock on the door and if Leesa Cameron answered ask her if she’d killed her husband earlier this evening.

  “I thought we’d do good cop, bad cop,” Michelle said. “I’ll be good; you’ll be bad.”

  “I don’t know how to be the bad cop,” I blurted. I looked at Michelle. She was laughing.

  “I’m kidding, Sarah,” she said. “We’re following up on what happened earlier this evening. That’s all.”

  “What if Jeff Cameron isn’t here?” I asked, smoothing a wrinkle out of the front of my blue-and-white-striped T-shirt.

  “Then we’ll find out where he is.” Michelle stopped in the middle of the driveway. “I’m sure there’s some logical explanation for what Rose saw,” she said. “I talked to the officer who responded to the nine-one-one call. He confirmed that no one was home here.”

  “How?”

  “There were no cars here in the driveway or parked nearby on the street. He knocked on both the front and the side doors and got no response at either one, and”—she put extra emphasis on the word—“and, yes, he took a look through a couple of windows and checked the backyard. He didn’t see anyone or anything.”

  I opened my mouth to point out that just because no one answered the door or was visible through the windows, that didn’t actually mean no one was home. Then I closed it again. I had no business telling Michelle how to do her job. She was a good police officer. But I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d just killed my husband, I was pretty sure I’d stay out of sight when the police knocked at my door.

  Michelle bypassed the front entrance, continuing up the driveway to the side door. As we passed the sleek silver Audi that was parked there, I rested my hand on the hood for a moment. It was still warm. Whoever had been driving the car hadn’t been at the house very long. I crossed my fingers that it was Jeff Cameron.

  Michelle gestured in the direction of the porch and spoke over her shoulder. “Officer Theriault did find a couple of sailboat fenders by the side steps. It’s possible Rose tripped on those stairs, fell and hit her head on one of them. If she was dazed, she could have wandered up the road to where she was found.”

  She didn’t believe Rose’s story about being hit over the head from behind, I realized. She’d come out of friendship for me—and I was grateful for that—but Michelle didn’t think Rose had seen Jeff Cameron’s dead body or been attacked by someone.

  I felt a surge of protectiveness. Rose wasn’t the feeble old woman some people seemed to think she was. She’d saved my life the previous winter and barely broken a sweat. She hadn’t tripped on the steps and hit her head. Maybe she hadn’t seen Jeff Cameron’s dead body being dragged across his kitchen floor, but she’d seen something.

  Four steps led up to a small landing by the side door. Rose was right. It was possible to see through the porch windows—which didn’t have any curtains or blinds that I could see—into part of the kitchen. I could see a section of floor and part of a doorway into some other area of the house. Because I have several inches on Rose, I could also see through the porch to the backyard.

  Michelle knocked and I realized I was holding my breath, hoping that it would be Jeff Cameron who came to the door. But it wasn’t. It was a woman. She was tall, with blond hair in a gamin pixie cut and blue eyes behind dark-framed hipster glasses. Michelle pulled out her badge and identified herself. “Are you Leesa Cameron?” she asked.

  The woman nodded. “I am. Is something wrong?”

  Michelle held up her ID. “I’m Detective Andrews. She gestured down the street. “There was an incident earlier this evening. A woman may have been hit over the head with a boat fender like that.” She pointed at the white plastic bumpers sitting in a galvanized bucket beside the porch steps.

  Leesa Cameron shrugged. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’ve only been home for about fifteen minutes. I can’t help you.”

  I didn’t want her to close the door. I put a hand on the painted wood. “Mrs. Cameron,” I said. “My name is Sarah Grayson. I own Second Chance, which is a repurpose shop here in town.” I glanced at Michelle and saw nothing in her expression that told me I should stop talking. “The woman who was attacked, Rose Jackson, works for me. She was dropping off a gift that your husband bought for you. I’m sorry, but it’s possible your husband was hurt as well.”

  Leesa Cameron’s expression changed from polite inquiry to something darker. Her blue eyes narrowed and her mouth pulled into a tight, thin line. It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. She sighed. “You better come in,” she said.

  We followed her through the small porch into the kitchen. It was very clean. The walls were white. So were the cupboards. The floors were pale white oak. There were no signs of a struggle, no blood anywhere.

  An old farm table had been repurposed as an island in the middle of the roo
m, and there was a retro aquamarine chrome table-and-chair set against the end wall—the only spot of color in the space. There were several cardboard boxes piled on the speckled Formica top of the table. A gray overnight bag was sitting on one of the matching aqua-colored chairs. We’d had a similar set in the shop a couple of months previously. The vintage table and chairs were in excellent shape and, like the whitewashed, solid-wood cupboards and granite countertops, suggested the cottage was high-end and likely came with a high-end rent.

  “You’re going somewhere?” Michelle asked.

  Leesa Cameron nodded. “I’m going back to Boston.” She cleared her throat and looked from Michelle to me. “I appreciate your concern about Jeff, but he’s fine. He’s a scumbag, but no one has hit him over the head with a boat fender, although it sounds like a good idea to me.”

  Michelle frowned. “Excuse me?”

  Leesa twisted the diamond-studded wedding band she was wearing around her ring finger. She was maybe a couple of inches taller than me although we looked the same height since I was wearing wedge-heeled sandals and she was in flip-flops.

  “Jeff met someone else. He’s gone, and so is everything that was in our joint investment account. If he’d been here when I got home, yeah, I might have hurt him, but he was already gone.” A cell phone was lying on the chrome table. She picked it up, scrolled through several screens and handed the phone to Michelle. “See for yourself.”

  Michelle read the text without comment.

  Leesa reached for an envelope on top of one of the boxes and passed that to Michelle, who raised an eyebrow. “It’s the statement from our investment account. Go ahead. Take a look.”

  Michelle returned the phone and took a single sheet of paper from the envelope. She looked it over, then put it back in the envelope and handed that to Leesa. “Have you and your husband been having problems, Mrs. Cameron?” she asked.

  Leesa’s mouth twisted to one side. “I didn’t think so,” she said. “I lost my job three months ago—I was a buyer for a chain of home decor boutiques that went out of business—but Jeff was making good money, so we didn’t have any financial issues. Part of the reason he took the job here was so that I could take some time to decide what I want to do next. When Jeff first started working for Helmark, we spent six months in India. This was supposed to be my time, my turn. And it was supposed to be a chance for the two of us to spend more time together, but he was always working.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “I guess it’s true. The wife is the last person to know.” She turned to me. “I’m sorry about your . . . friend, but I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t here and clearly Jeff wasn’t, either.”

  Michelle nodded, the motion almost imperceptible. “Do you mind telling me where you were?”

  “I was with Jeff’s sister, Nicole. I thought maybe she’d know where he went or who the other woman is, but she was as shocked as I am.” She folded her arms over her midsection and rubbed her left shoulder absently with the other hand. She had the strong legs, wide shoulders and sculpted arms of a rower, and I’d noticed the prow of a scull in the backyard when I’d looked through the porch. “Nicole being here is why we chose North Harbor,” she continued. “She’s all the family Jeff has aside from . . . well, me.”

  Leesa turned her attention to me again. “What did he buy?” she asked. “You said he got me a gift.”

  It seemed odd to me to buy a present for a woman you were about to leave, but there was no reason not to answer her question. “A pair of candlesticks.”

  She laughed again, her face twisting into a semblance of a smile. “Let me guess. They were silver. Kirk & Son.”

  “Yes.” How had she known?

  “There’s your proof,” she said. “I don’t know where Jeff is, but I promise you he’s fine. When we first got married, we were broke. Eating-ramen-and-peanut-butter-for-dinner broke. So broke that I sold the only thing of value I had, a pair of silver candlesticks that had belonged to my grandmother. Those ones he bought? His snarky way of making this square between us. They definitely weren’t any kind of a romantic gesture.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “They’re still yours. I’ll make sure you get them.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Could you leave them with my sister-in-law?” She gave me a wry smile. “I suppose I should say my soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law.”

  I nodded. She grabbed a pad of sticky notes from the counter and scribbled an address and a phone number. I took the square of paper and put it in my purse.

  Michelle pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Mrs. Cameron, what’s your husband’s cell number?” she asked.

  Leesa Cameron recited the phone number and Michelle punched it into her phone. “He won’t answer, Detective,” she said.

  She was right.

  “The phone is turned off,” Michelle said after a moment.

  “Jeff hired a student from Cahill College as an assistant for the summer,” Leesa said. “Chloe Sanders. She might know how to get in touch with him. She’s very keen. Hang on a second.” She grabbed her cell from the counter and swiped through several screens. Then she held up the phone and Michelle typed the number on it into her own phone. I repeated the digits silently to myself, hoping I’d remember them.

  “Thank you,” Michelle said. She cleared her throat. “Is there any possibility that your husband was involved with Miss Sanders?”

  Leesa laughed. “None. Oh, I’m not saying she wouldn’t have been interested. She hung on his every word and he’s a very good-looking man, but Chloe wasn’t his type. He called her a Roomba.”

  “You mean like the robot vacuum cleaner?” I said.

  She nodded. “He said having an assistant was like having a Roomba. He could just leave all the grunt work for her.”

  I was starting to think Jeff Cameron was a first-class jerk.

  Michelle glanced at me and gave a slight shrug; then she turned to Leesa and held out a business card I hadn’t noticed her pull from her bag. “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Cameron. If you think of anything else, please call me.” The other woman promised she would and we left.

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth?” I asked as we reached the street.

  “You think she isn’t?” Michelle raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know. Why would someone buy an expensive gift for a woman he was about to leave?”

  She glanced back at the house. “You heard what she said. It was his crappy way of making things even so he could leave the marriage without owing her anything.”

  “So he clears out their investment account but buys her those candlesticks so they’re even? That makes no sense.” I pushed my hair off my face, wishing I’d pulled it back into a ponytail the way Michelle had with her hair.

  She patted her pocket as if she was checking to be sure her phone was still there. “Sarah, one thing I’ve learned is that people do things that make no sense all the time.”

  “Maybe she killed him,” I said, kicking a rock with the side of my sandal, sending it skittering down the driveway into the street. “Maybe the story she just told us is her way of covering it up. If people think Jeff Cameron has run off with another woman, no one will be looking for him.”

  Michelle exhaled softly but didn’t say anything.

  “What did the text say?” I asked.

  “That it wasn’t working anymore, he’d met someone else and he was going to start a new life.”

  I shook my head in frustration, pulling at the bottom of my striped T-shirt. “C’mon, Michelle,” I said. “Who does that kind of thing? In the movies, maybe, but in real life? Who ends their marriage with a text?”

  “You’d be surprised.” She held up both hands. “That’s how people do things now, with a cell phone. Not face-to-face.”

  I wasn’t convinced, and it obviously showed in my expression.

 
“You don’t honestly think Leesa Cameron concocted this elaborate story as a cover, do you?” she asked. “How do you explain the statement from their financial adviser? Their account is empty.”

  “That would be easy to fake.”

  “And just as easy to check on.”

  I made a face.

  “Why don’t we go talk to the people who found Rose?” Michelle said. “I’d like to know if they saw anything.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” This conversation wasn’t taking us anywhere.

  We walked along the curve of the street past a small, pale blue cottage, identical to the one the Camerons had been renting. The next little house had been painted a deep shade of inky navy blue. An open porch stretched across the front like a welcoming smile.

  “It’s this one,” Michelle said. She pointed to the brass numbers by the front door. “Number twenty-four.”

  Just then a woman came around the side of the house followed by a large black Lab. The dog’s tail began to wag the moment he spotted us. The woman put a hand on its back. She said something to the dog I couldn’t hear and then the two of them started toward us. She was tiny and curvy, no more than five feet tall, I guessed, with dark almond-shaped eyes behind round tortoiseshell glasses. Her hair was pulled up on her head in a messy bun and she was wearing khaki shorts, a red tank top and Birkenstocks. “Can I help you?” she asked with an inquiring smile.

  Michelle pulled out her ID again. “I’m Detective Andrews,” she said. “This is Sarah Grayson.”

  “You’re here about Mrs. Jackson,” the woman said.

  “We’re just following up.”

  “Is she all right?” The woman looked from Michelle to me, concern pulling at the skin around her mouth. She gave her head a little shake. “I’m sorry. I’m Ashley Clark. Casey”—she put a hand on the head of the dog—“found her right over there.” She pointed at the clump of trees that shielded the property from the house next door.