Telling Tails

by Sofie Ryan

  Michael Vega and his wife lived in a two-story farmhouse-style home close to the downtown. The house had a small addition with a wide, shaded verandah and an attached barn. A carved gargoyle sat on the front corner of the verandah roof. Someone had a sense of humor, I thought.

  Michael Vega answered the door. He was just above average height, an inch or so below six feet, I guessed. He had cropped dark hair, a day’s worth of stubble on his face and the strong, muscled build of someone who worked out with weights, not the rangy body of a hard-core long-distance runner, I noted.

  Mr. P. introduced himself, offering his private investigator’s license as ID.

  “Does this have anything to do with Leesa Cameron?” Vega asked.

  “Yes, it does,” Mr. P. said.

  He nodded as though that had been the answer he was expecting. “Come in, please,” he said.

  We stepped into a living room with gleaming dark-wood floors and sunshine streaming through the windows. The space was neat without being fussy. Two sofas were at right angles to each other. A marble-topped table in the front window was covered with plants, and there was a stack of kids’ picture books on the low coffee table.

  A woman appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. She was curvy and petite, barefoot, with her dark hair piled on top of her head and paint on her black tank top. “Hello,” she said, walking over to join what had to be her husband. She had a warm smile, and I couldn’t see any tension between the two of them.

  Michael introduced us. “This is my wife, Caroline,” he said. She touched his shoulder as she perched on the arm of the closest couch.

  “Please sit down,” she said.

  “They’re here about Leesa Cameron,” Michael said, making the introductions.

  His wife nodded. “I thought so.”

  “Mrs. Cameron hired you to train her,” Mr. P. said, getting right to the point.

  Michael sat down on a black leather footstool that was placed in front of a wooden rocking chair with an upholstered seat and back. “Yes. I was training Leesa to run a half marathon as a surprise for her husband because Jeff was such an avid runner.” He rubbed a hand over his neck. “I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time believing she killed him.”

  “Why did she hire you?” Rose asked. She gave him her best sweet little old lady smile. “I’m not doubting your skill as a trainer; it’s just that the Camerons belonged to a gym. Why wouldn’t she use one of their trainers?”

  “I asked her that,” he said. “She told me that she wanted to surprise her husband and he knew both the trainers at the gym. She felt if she went to either of them Jeff would find out and it would ruin the surprise.”

  “Did you think that was odd?” Mr. P. asked, frowning a little behind his wire-framed glasses.

  Michael smiled. “I trained a woman once to run a full marathon—twenty-six point two miles. Her family didn’t know what was going on until they got to the race, supposedly just to watch, and she peeled off her hoodie and sweatpants and showed them her number.”

  “Some people don’t want the added pressure of their family’s expectations when they’re trying to get in shape or reach a goal,” Caroline Vega said.

  I studied Michael Vega. My instinct was that there was no way he’d been having an affair with Leesa Cameron. There was nothing evasive in his answers or his body language.

  “When did you last speak to Leesa?” Mr. P. asked.

  “We ran last Wednesday morning. It was a short run, though.”

  “Was she getting the miles in?” I asked.

  Michael turned his attention to me. “Yes, she was. She wasn’t a natural runner—you know she’d been a rower?”

  I nodded.

  “Her gait was a little awkward and she was still behind the time mileposts we’d set, but she was determined.”

  “I spoke to her Wednesday night,” Caroline said. “She called looking for Michael. He was filling in, teaching fitness classes for a friend whose wife just had a baby, so he wasn’t answering his cell phone.”

  “Do you have any idea what time she called?” Rose asked.

  Caroline tucked one leg up underneath her. “I do. I was right there on that sofa watching Gotta Dance.” She grinned and ducked her head. “My guilty pleasure. The kids are with Michael’s mom for the week and I’ve been painting quite late, so I fell asleep in front of the TV. The phone woke me up. The end credits were just rolling on the screen.”

  I pointed at the bold abstract canvas on the end wall of the room. “Is that your work?”

  “Yes,” she said, a smile spreading across her face.

  “You’re very talented,” I said.

  The painting, all shades of green and blue, had been drawing my attention since we’d stepped into the room.

  “Yes, she is,” Michael agreed, reaching out a hand to touch his wife’s leg. It was impossible to miss the easy, loving rapport between the two of them.

  “Did she leave any message?” Mr. P. asked.

  Caroline shifted her gaze to him. “She wanted Michael to know she wasn’t going to train anymore. She’d paid for the month but she wasn’t looking for a refund. She said to tell Michael to keep the money because she was canceling on short notice.”

  I saw Mr. P. and Rose exchange glances. Nothing we were learning was confirming any of our theories.

  “I don’t know if this is any help,” Caroline continued, “but it sounded like she was moving things. I got the sense that maybe she was packing. I know she was at home.”

  “Why do you say that?” Mr. P.’s forehead creased into a frown again.

  “I could hear the foghorn in the background.”

  He shot a quick look in my direction. I had a feeling he was thinking what I was thinking. The Cameron cottage was on West Penobscot Bay. I had heard the foghorn when Michelle and I were at the house that evening. The unique curve of the coastline meant that stretch of shoreline was the only place the Deer Isle foghorn could be heard.

  “I was going to call Michael when he had his break but I fell asleep again on the couch and wound up sleeping there until he came home.” She smiled and rubbed her neck. “My neck is still kinked.”

  “Mr. Vega, did Leesa use any online training programs or tools?” Mr. P. asked. Nothing in his expression indicated that he knew about the BodiBudi Michael Vega had bought for Leesa.

  Michael nodded. “She used a BodiBudi.” He wrapped his thumb and index finger around his left wrist. “It’s a silicone wristband. It has a computer chip and a digital readout.” He stopped and his eyes flicked from side to side. Then he shook his head, the beginnings of a smile coming to his face. He looked at his wife. “They think I bought it for Leesa. As a gift. Because we were involved.”

  Caroline smiled and shifted to look at Mr. P. “Michael ordered that fitness tracker for Leesa, the same way he’s ordered ones for, I’d say, fifteen other clients. None of whom he was involved with. We have four children, Mr. Peterson. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

  “Sixteen,” her husband said, quietly.

  She tipped her head in Michael’s direction. “Sixteen other clients. They get a better price and Michael gets a small commission. Leesa paid in cash. I can show you the receipt.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mr. P. said with a smile of his own.

  Caroline’s expression turned serious then. “I know you’re thinking that Leesa and Michael were having an affair, especially with all the secrecy Leesa insisted on.” She smiled at her husband and held out her hand to him. He caught it and gave it a squeeze. “I know the wife is always the last to know, but I know my husband and they weren’t.”

  Looking at the two of them, there was no way I didn’t believe her. Liz had insisted no man could be quite as perfect as Michael Vega seemed to be. This was one time she was wrong.

  Michael got to his feet
and put his arms around his wife’s shoulders. “Leesa didn’t talk about, well, anything personal, but I saw how hard she was working, training for this half marathon. She was desperate to reconnect with her husband. I know what the police believe, what the evidence says. I just have a really hard time believing it.” He let out a breath. “If she did kill Jeff—and that’s a very big if—it had to be something that happened in the moment. I know a crime of passion is clichéd, but I don’t see how it could have been anything else.”

  I remembered what Nick had told me about Jeff Cameron having been hit over the head and then drowned. There was nothing about that that said crime of passion. Nothing at all.

  “There is one sort of odd thing that happened,” Michael said.

  “What do you mean?” Mr. P. said.

  “It was a week ago Monday. I was on my way to The Black Bear for takeout and Jeff Cameron bumped into me on the sidewalk. He made a big issue of it, as though I’d done it on purpose. I apologized a couple of times and managed to get past him.”

  “Do you think it’s possible he knew you were spending time with his wife and thought there was something going on?” I asked.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Michael said. “But if that was the case, why didn’t he say something straight out? Or punch me in the nose for that matter?” He shook his head. “It was just strange.”

  We thanked the Vegas and left.

  “I believe them,” Rose said once she was settled in the front passenger seat of the SUV.

  “So do I,” Mr. P. said from the backseat.

  “What do you think about his story about seeing Jeff outside The Black Bear?” I said.

  “If we didn’t know Jeff was dead I’d be inclined to say he staged the whole thing to make it look like they’d had a confrontation. Which could be useful if one was going to fake one’s death.”

  “But he is dead.”

  Mr. P. nodded. “Yes, there is that.”

  I nodded my agreement. “Now what?” I asked.

  Rose reached for the ubiquitous tote bag at her feet. “I’d like to drop some cookies off to Nicole Cameron, if you don’t mind. I expect there will be a service of some kind and people will probably be stopping by.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” I said.

  I drove across town to Nicole Cameron’s house and parked at the curb. A U-Haul van was parked in the driveway, wheels turned hard to the right. I’d just stepped out of the car when what looked like a large beach ball covered in paper-mâché and possibly coconut bounced into the street and caromed off the front fender. I caught it and looked around.

  A woman was hurrying down the driveway across the street. “Sorry!” she called.

  “Go on in without me,” I said to Rose and Mr. P.

  “We won’t be very long,” Rose said.

  I walked across the street and handed the beach ball to the woman. “Thank you,” she said. “I guess the out-of-control snowball really was out of control.” She smiled. “I’m Deb.” She gestured at the kids on the lawn, who once again seemed to be making another movie. “I’m the director’s assistant, prop master, costume designer and lunch lady for this production.” She had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, warm brown eyes and a pair of retro tortoiseshell-frame glasses on her head.

  “I’m Sarah,” I said. I gestured at the beach ball. “Do I smell coconut?”

  “It photographs like snow and if you get hungry you can eat it.” She grinned.

  “Weren’t they doing some kind of creature-from-the-black-lagoon movie last week?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Sewer Pipe Swamp Thing.”

  I laughed. “Very creative.”

  “That’s all my daughter,” Deb said, pointing to a fair-haired girl about ten or eleven years old who was positioning a boy I was guessing was supposed to be Bigfoot in his bath-mat costume. “She’s the director and script writer. She got an old camera from her grandmother a couple of weeks ago and she’s been making movies with it ever since.”

  The girl looked around, spotted her mother with the beach ball and ran over to us. “It went into the street again, Bayley,” Deb said, pointing over her shoulder with one finger.”

  “Sorry,” the child said, making a face.

  “Say thank you to Sarah,” her mother said, indicating me with a dip of her head. “She’s the one who rescued it.”

  Bayley smiled at me. “Thank you for getting our ball,” she said. She had none of the shyness with adults that I’d had when I was her age. “We’re getting ants again,” she said to her mom. “I think they’re after the coconut. It’s just like with the slime.” She made a face.

  “Baking soda and shaving cream,” I said. “You can make some great fake snow with it.”

  Bayley’s eyes widened. “Awesome,” she said.

  “By any chance do you know how to make slime?” Deb asked. “We used corn syrup and food coloring, which is why the ants, plus it didn’t flow quite right.”

  “White glue and borax,” I said.

  “You must be a teacher.”

  I shook my head. “Former summer camp counselor, and I own Second Chance. It’s a repurpose shop.”

  “Repurpose. That means you have old things.” Bayley squinted in the sunshine.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Could we go, please?” she said to her mother. “I need stuff for my Godzilla movie.”

  “Make a list,” her mother said. “I’ll take you tomorrow.” She held out a hand and her daughter high-fived her; then Bayley turned to me. “Would you like to see my movie?” she asked.

  “I would,” I said.

  “Okay, stay right there.” She bolted across the grass to get her camera. It was attached to a makeshift tripod, an empty soda bottle duct-taped to a stool.

  Deb followed my gaze. “You don’t by any chance have an inexpensive tripod at your store, do you?” she asked.

  “I do,” I said. “It’s old but it’s in decent shape.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Ten dollars,” I said, cutting the price I’d been planning on asking in half. I liked Bayley’s energy and creativity.

  Deb made a face and looked from the kids to the house. “There’s no way I can get there today,” she began.

  I held up a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll set it aside with your name on it.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said.

  Bayley came racing back across the lawn with her camera. I leaned over the view screen and watched Sewer Pipe Swamp Thing. It was funny and creative and I loved the way the child’s eyes lit up when I laughed at the mom, aka Deb, putting the Swamp Thing in time-out for getting slime all over the kitchen floor. I caught sight of my car and Liz’s in the background of one shot and Leesa Cameron’s Audi in another. I had a feeling that someday I’d be watching one of Bayley’s movies on the big screen and I’d be able to say that I’d indirectly been in one of her first films. I clapped at the end and she grinned happily.

  “It was great,” I told her. “If I come back in a couple of days, will you show me this one when it’s done?”

  “Sure,” she said. She glanced in the direction of Bigfoot, whose costume was sliding sideways. “You should probably wait until Monday, though.”

  “Deal,” I said. She scampered back over to her cast.

  “You’ll probably see us tomorrow,” her mother said.

  I nodded. I could see Rose and Mr. P. coming down Nicole Cameron’s driveway. “It was good to meet you,” I said.

  Deb smiled. “You, too.”

  Mr. P. was quiet on the drive back to the shop, his head bent over his cell phone.

  “Michael Vega wasn’t having an affair with Leesa Cameron, was he?” I said.

  “He wasn’t,” Mr. P. said from the backseat.

  I glanced in the rearview
mirror. He held up his phone. “I found photos of Mr. Vega on the gym’s Facebook page teaching classes Wednesday night and leading a workshop all day Thursday and Friday.”

  “So who helped Leesa kill her husband?” I asked.

  Beside me Rose sighed. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” she said.

  Chapter 18

  “Maybe this is a case that can’t be solved,” I said.

  “Alfred, would you like pork chops for dinner?” Rose said. “And maybe a spinach salad?”

  “That sounds . . . very nice,” Mr. P. said. He sounded a little puzzled by the sudden swerve the conversation had taken.

  “Rose, are you ignoring me?” I asked. I shot a quick look in her direction.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “I thought that was obvious.”

  “It was,” I said. “I’m just not clear why you’re ignoring me.”

  “Because we’re not walking away from this case.”

  I held my breath for a moment and then slowly let it out. “So what are we doing next?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I didn’t need to take my eyes off the road to know she was sitting upright on the passenger seat, shoulders squared, chin out, a determined look in her eye that any student who had ever been in her class would know meant not to cross her.

  “Okay, when you figure it out, keep me in the loop,” I said.

  It was about half an hour later, just as I was settling a very nice vintage Ibanez jazz bass into its hard-shell case for a customer, that Chloe Sanders walked into the shop. She was wearing a sundress the same shade of blue as the streak in her hair.

  My customer headed for the door and I walked over to Chloe. She looked nervous, her right hand playing with the handle of the messenger bag she had over her shoulder. “Hi, Sarah,” she said. “Is Mrs. Elliot here?”

  “She’s out in the workroom.”

  “Could I speak to her for a minute?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Avery was hanging several jean jackets Jess had up-cycled for us on a tall coatrack. “Avery, I’ll be right back,” I said.