by Fran Stewart
“A snake.” The S came out like a hiss.
* * *
Harper scoffed when I told him Wantstring had kept the same password for twenty years, but eventually he asked, “What was in the files?”
“We could only open two of the locked files. One was a romance novel. The other was the cover art.”
He cocked his head to one side.
“The constable looks like the wee black dog when he does that.”
“You look like Scamp,” I told Harper.
“I appreciate the compliment.”
“No, really. He cocks his head like that when he’s thinking.”
“You can tell when a dog is thinking?”
I pushed my chair back a few inches. “You’ve never had a dog, have you?”
“I sure did.” Harper sounded indignant. “I had a GBBD when I was a kid.”
“Gee what? I’ve never heard of that breed.”
“Stands for Great Big Brown Dog. Best kind ever built.”
I scoffed. “Not as smart as a Scottie.”
He must not have had an answer to that one, or maybe he decided it was time to get back to the subject at hand. “What does a romance novel have to do with Wantstring’s murder?”
“He wrote it. With another professor. Somebody named Denby Harper. Same last name as yours. They used a pen name. Denbi Marcas.”
Harper got a really funny look on his face. I had no idea what was wrong, but he swallowed, hard, a couple of times. “Romance novel? They wrote a romance novel?”
“This was number twenty-four or twenty-five,” I explained. “Karaline wasn’t sure how many, but they’re a very successful writing team, apparently. If you like that sort of thing.” What was wrong with him? He looked like he’d swallowed a black fly. “Anyway, there’s another locked file on the thumb drive, and we thought maybe it—and maybe the novel, too—had something to do with why he was killed?” I couldn’t keep the question mark out of my voice. The whole idea sounded inane.
Harper shuddered. What on earth was wrong with him? “My . . . Denby . . . Denby Harper was my dad.”
“Oh, Harper.” I reached for his arm. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“And I”—his mouth took on a stern cast—“had no idea my father wrote novels.”
I didn’t know what to say. My dad was a woodworker. I knew everything there was to know about him.
“I thought I knew him,” Harper said. It made me wonder whether my own dad had any secrets.
After a few moments, during which I traced the blue veins on the back of Harper’s hand, he pulled his hand away from me and asked, “Do you know what’s in the other file?”
“No. The usual password didn’t work, and Karaline couldn’t think of another one.”
“Fairing’s good with computers. Maybe she can crack it.” He picked up a small wooden cube and spun it around on his palm.
I reached for it. “I used to love these puzzle boxes when I was a kid.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Where’d you get it?”
“Emily Wantstring found it hidden in a boot.”
I looked at him, and I could feel my eyes go out of focus. “My dad’s a woodworker,” I said. “He showed me a lot of tricks.” I studied the box carefully, touched a finger to it here and there. Twisted something. Applied pressure. Twisted again. Yes.
Inside was a little piece of paper.
M W < 3 E F
Marcus Wantstring loves Emily Fontini. He’d finally changed his password. The one to the final file.
* * *
I’m going to marry this woman someday, Harper thought, but he knew better than to say anything too soon. She was a woman who needed time. Time to get used to him. Time to get to know him. Marriage would have to wait.
But the file had nothing to do with the romance novel. It was a draft of a letter to someone named John Nhat Copley, reprimanding him for—Harper sucked in his breath—for complicity in a scheme to promote identity theft, and informing him that he was henceforth—what an old-fashioned word—barred from classes not only in the microbiology program, but the entire biology curriculum.
Harper leaned back in his chair. Identity theft. Was this the answer? Or the key to how to find the answer, how to crack the ring?
Peggy interrupted his thought process. “I need to let Karaline know what’s happened, and I have to pick up that SRM20 tomorrow at Kittredge.” She laid a hand on his arm. Harper felt it all the way to his toes. “Be careful, will you?”
He touched the tip of her nose with his index finger. “You, too.”
I couldn’t leave like this. It felt like there was too much still hanging. “Senator Calais,” I said. Something niggled in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t call it forward.
Harper’s gaze sharpened. “She’s the one who got knifed.”
“That’s right. She’s recovering slowly . . .” She needs a ghost, I thought, and smiled at Dirk, who hovered nearby listening.
That something that had been bothering me clicked. “You don’t suppose . . .”
“What?”
“I was just thinking. Somebody tried to assassinate her shortly after Dr. W was killed.”
“And?” Harper sounded guardedly optimistic, I thought, borrowing Dr. Marston’s phrase.
“Maybe Dr. W had already tried to call her about this identity theft thing. If her name registered in the recently called section of his cell phone, maybe they were afraid to let her live.”
“Maybe,” Harper said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“I have to drive up to Kittredge in Winooski tomorrow to pick up that mixer for Karaline,” I reminded him. “The manager—Chester Kerr is his name. Did I tell you he wears red suspenders all the time? Anyway, he absolutely promised it would be there.”
“It might be a good idea for you to call him before you leave.”
“I was planning on leaving about six so I don’t miss too much ScotShop time.”
“He might not open until ten. Call first; then you won’t make the trip for nothing.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Get a good night’s sleep, Peggy.”
Naturally, Dirk was full of questions.
I was almost asleep when I remembered that Emily had told me she’d called UVM on Wednesday, and one of the grad students had told her Dr. W’s car was parked there. My last thought before I drifted off was, I ought to tell Harper about it.
39
Anyone for Martial Arts?
Tuesday morning, I woke up with a crick in my neck. I must have slept with my head at a funny angle. My stiff neck didn’t stop me from eating, though. I shoveled in a huge breakfast and called Kittredge at seven thirty, hoping to hear a voice mail informing me how soon they’d open. Chester answered, and I could imagine his suspenders bursting with pride. “It’s here. We had a sewage line get stuck late yesterday, and nobody can get here to fix it and clean up until sometime this morning, so we’re closed, but I had to be here for that, and I thought I’d stick around until you got here. Be sure you use the facilities somewhere else, because you won’t be able to do it here.”
I was pretty sure Chester had a wife. Or sisters.
“Somebody else called a few minutes ago to ask if you were going to pick it up today.”
“Really? Do you know who it was?”
“She didn’t leave a name.”
Karaline. She’d probably called from the hospital. But why hadn’t she called me directly? “Well, if she calls back, tell her I’ll be there by ten thirty at the latest, probably more like ten.”
He said something else. It sounded like, She called yesterday, too, but his words sounded choppy. I looked at my phone. Two percent. Phooey. I said good-bye, hoping he’d hear me, and plugged it in. If I dressed fast, I could mak
e it.
I wouldn’t say I set a world record, but I was at my front door in only a few minutes. “Come on, Dirk. Let’s leave.”
“Will ye call the constable to let him know ye are leaving?”
“No, he may still be asleep. Here, you carry the shawl while we drive over to Karaline’s to pick up her SUV.”
* * *
Emily woke early. She’d been doing that ever since Marcus died, almost as if she were taking on his habits. He was always up early. He always ate an enormous breakfast—which he cooked himself. He always walked to work. Emily’s breath caught.
He always walked to work. Always. So why had that grad student said his car was there? She hadn’t questioned it at the time, but they only had one car, and Emily had used it to drive to Burlington after the break-in. So Marcus couldn’t have driven it to UVM. He couldn’t have, anyway, because that was Wednesday, three days after he was already . . .
She reached for the phone. He won’t be up this early, she thought, but I’ll leave him a voice mail.
* * *
When Harper’s phone rang, it took him a moment to bring his thoughts back to the present. “Harper here.”
“Oh.”
The voice sounded flustered. “Can I help you?”
“I thought I’d get your voice mail. This is Emily.”
Harper listened to what she said, but he didn’t see any problem. People mistook one car for another all the time. “Thanks for letting me know,” he finally said. “I’ll look into it.”
He wrote himself a little note, knowing all along he’d never do anything with it. He pulled his in-box toward him and lifted the stack of three or four items, most of which he knew had been there for days. He slid the note underneath. The papers right above it were fastened with one of those round, curly paper clips. He never used those. Give him a jumbo gem clip any day.
He pulled the clipped items out, saw it was Fairing’s fender file, and laughed. The young officer reminded him of Sarah, his little sister. Not so little, he reminded himself, and started to jot a note to call Sarah tomorrow on her twenty-ninth birthday, but the driver’s license photo of a guy in suspenders caught his eye and stopped him in mid-phrase. Peggy had been talking about suspenders. Some guy at the food equipment place.
He looked through the item. Owner of possible dent-and-run. Cessford Kerr. Home address in Winooski. Two other possibles, guy named Featherstone lived in Bennington, and woman named Harvey was from Burlington.
Winooski. The equipment place was in Winooski. What had Peggy called the manager? Chester Kerr. Cessford Kerr? Blazing badges, was she driving right into the clutches of the gray parka guy? He checked weight and height on the license and compared them to his memory of the gray parka on skis. Could be.
He stood and walked to the wall map. It wasn’t far from the bottom of the Perth trail to where the fender bender happened. They could be connected.
He called Peggy, but her phone rang five times before it went to voice mail.
He looked up the Kittredge address and plugged it into his GPS.
* * *
“The sun, ’tis well above the horizon. Should ye not stop and call the constable?”
We’d made good time. I’d probably be there by ten thirty. “Why are you so anxious to have me call him?”
“I dinna like ye being out here wi’ no one knowing where ye are.”
“You know where I am. That’s good enough for me. With your magic hands, I couldn’t be safer.”
“Mistress Peggy . . .”
He sounded so serious I glanced over at him.
“Keep your eyn on the road,” he ordered. “But ye need to know this: I dinna understand what I did, why my hands . . . I dinna ken if I could do it again.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “Something in you responded to the need. Karaline is your friend. We both did what we could.”
He didn’t look pacified, but I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t understand it, either.
“All right. You win,” I said, pulling into the next scenic overview. “I’ll call.”
But when I reached for my phone, that pocket on my purse was empty. “Crapola on toast! I left it charging at home.”
I pulled back onto the road. “Dirk, I need to talk something through. Are you willing to be a sounding board?”
“I am nae bored.”
Once we got that straightened out I said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Usually a good idea,” he said. “One maun think.”
“Hush! And quit laughing at me. You remember having lunch with the grad students? Am I crazy or did PD have a brown scarf around his neck?”
“Aye. That he did.”
“I think it’s the one Emily was telling me about. The one she gave her husband.”
“He gave away a wee gift from his wife?”
“No. No, I think . . . This is nuts, but I saw a stain on that scarf.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see him lean forward and look at me. “What are ye saying?”
“I think PD is the killer.” Before Dirk could object, I pressed on. “He’s short. He would have had to disguise his voice because we’d already talked with him.”
“Aye.”
“And he has the scarf he stole from Dr. W. Can’t you see it all fits together? What do you think?”
“Since my dagger doesna appear to work so weel now that I am deid, I think we maun stay well awa’ from the wee bug building.”
* * *
Harper wanted a perfectly clean, dry road; there was no way he could make any time on a snowy road with icy patches where trees shadowed the asphalt. Maybe she’d have a flat tire. Maybe she’d get hungry and stop for a bite to eat. Just in case, he examined the parked cars in the few towns he went through; he’d recognize her brown Volvo anywhere.
He kept trying her phone. He kept getting voice mail.
He had to stop her before she got to Kittredge.
Between towns, he broke the speed limit by a wide margin.
He was almost there before he thought that he should have called Tolly Smith. She could have had a SWAT team there on a moment’s notice.
* * *
I pulled into an empty parking lot at Kittredge. I’d probably have to go around back somewhere to get the thing loaded, but for now I wasn’t sure just where, so I settled Karaline’s SUV fairly close to the front door.
Dirk preceded me into the showroom. I saw—or thought I saw—someone bending over behind the counter, but I was still blinded by the bright sunlight outside. As my eyes adjusted I walked forward calling out, “Chester? Is that you?”
He rose, and everything seemed to happen at once.
It wasn’t Chester. Dirk jumped in front of me. Through him, I could see PD in his black ski mask. “You’re . . . I recognize you.”
“This is for John Knot,” he cried—at least that was what it sounded like, and his voice sounded high-pitched with fear, excitement, anger? I couldn’t tell and didn’t care, because as he shouted, he flung a spray of liquid at me. I could barely see the test tube in his hand—with Dirk in front of me, everything looked hazy.
He whipped off his ski mask, and I gasped, inhaling some of the horrible-tasting liquid. “That’s enough microbes to kill a dozen people. You’re dead already,” said Stripe, “only you can’t feel it yet.”
* * *
By the time Harper made it to Kittredge, his hands were so tight on the steering wheel, he thought he’d have to peel them off, but her car wasn’t in the parking lot. He drove past a big white SUV and circled the building just to be sure. In back he saw two cars. One was a gray Ford with a smashed right rear taillight. It had to be Chester’s car.
He called Tolly Smith, asked for backup, and reached for his Glock. He knew it was stupid not to wait, but there was no time
to delay. Not if Peggy’s life was on the line.
* * *
Somehow I found my voice. “Wait! Don’t do anything.” I was talking to Dirk, but Stripe didn’t know that. I reached out and touched Dirk’s arm. The cool water-like feeling was calming.
“How d’ye know she isna hiding one of those wee cannons?”
He had a point, but I thought maybe Stripe would have used it already if she’d had it with her. After all, she’d shot Karaline without a second thought. “I have to find out what’s going on.”
“You’re going to die—that’s what’s going on.”
I rubbed my other sleeve across my face to get the liquid out of my eyes. “You probably got some on yourself.”
I heard tears in her voice. “That doesn’t matter. Without John Nhat, nothing isn’t worth it anymore.”
Poor grammar, a piece of my mind said. “Who the heck is John Knot?”
“Not Knot. His name was John Nhat Copley.”
“Was? What happened to him?”
“Wantstring found out what he was doing, and he had to leave. He didn’t even answer my last e-mail about the senator. It doesn’t matter if I die.” There was so much venom in Stripe’s voice, every S sounded like a hiss.
“The senator? Is John the one who knifed Senator Calais?”
“He . . .” Stripe’s voice wavered. “He succeeded?”
“Don’t you listen to the news? Of course he didn’t succeed. He was arrested.”
She snarled and took a step forward.
Dirk must have felt the threat, as well. “Ye wee nathaira. Ye willna last a heartbeat once I get my hands on ye.”
I hung on to Dirk. If I had to die, I wanted him nearby to ease the pain. Of course, the one I really wanted at the moment was Harper. Why hadn’t I called to say good-bye?
Stripe edged closer. I backed up and pulled Dirk with me.
* * *
Harper tried three back doors off the loading platforms. All were locked. The fourth one opened without a squeak. He ducked inside. He wanted to shout her name, but Chester was probably desperate. Harper was bitingly aware that Chester could be hiding in here anywhere, tucked behind any one of these enormous shelves.
