Hare Today, Dead Tomorrow

by Cynthia Baxter

  As I got out of the car, the place seemed unusually quiet. That didn’t mean Ethan wasn’t lurking in some dark corner somewhere, I realized, waiting to pounce on me when I least expected it. I kept an eye out for him as I knocked on the back door. There was no response, from either him or his stepmother.

  Next I tried the barn out back, a dilapidated building I’d noticed but hadn’t ventured into before. The sounds of something being slid and dropped, over and over, told me I might have found the man I was looking for.

  Sure enough, when I peeked inside, I saw Gordon pulling cardboard cartons of wine off a dolly and loading them into the garage.

  “Mr. Thorndike?” I called softly, not wanting to startle him.

  He turned around, barely gave me a glance, and went back to what he was doing.

  “I don’t want to bother you,” I began, “and I can see you’re busy—”

  “I remember you,” he said without looking back at me. “You’re that veterinarian.”

  “That’s right.”

  I took a deep breath. “Mr. Thorndike, first let me say how terribly sorry I am about your daughter. I can imagine how devastated you must feel.”

  “Thank you.” For the first time since I’d walked in, he stopped shoving boxes around and looked me squarely in the face. “Somehow, I have a feeling that’s not what you came here to say.”

  “No.” I took a deep breath. “Last night, I spoke with some of Cassandra’s friends.” My voice cracked as I uttered that last word.

  Still, I’d gotten her father’s attention. “Go on,” he prompted.

  Maybe it was the emotion in my voice, or maybe he also had questions about her “friends,” but he suddenly seemed extremely interested in what I had to say.

  I took another deep breath. “One of them said something about Cassandra being excited about a new venture she was about to undertake. And she mentioned that Cassandra’s father had something to do with it.” My heart felt like it had leaped out of my chest and become lodged in my throat as I added, “Do you have any idea what she might have been talking about?”

  “Well, sure. That’d be the new winery.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t expected this to be easy, yet Cassandra’s father seemed to know exactly what I was talking about. “What new winery?”

  “Look, Cassie was one of those kids who took a while to find herself. You know, to figure out what to do with her life.” He shook his head slowly. “That girl tried a lot of different things. Art, acting...even modeling, from what I understand.”

  Let’s hope you never really do, I thought.

  “But lately she’d developed an interest in the wine business,” he went on. His eyes shone, as if someone had turned on a light. “Of course, I couldn’t have been more pleased that she wanted to follow in her old dad’s footsteps. A couple of years ago, she started learning the business by working in sales. You know, going around to East End restaurants, trying to convince them to serve our wines. She took to it better than I ever expected. Began asking a lot of questions, too, showing a real interest in the process. I was only too happy to teach her everything I know. Only too happy to help her get started, too.”

  “Do you mean started in sales?” I asked, confused.

  “I mean started with her own winery. She’d certainly learned enough about the sales and marketing end of things to give it a go. True, she had a ways to go in terms of learning how to actually run a vineyard, but I figured I could help her as she went along.”

  A soft look had come into his blue-green eyes, as if he was seeing the scenario play out—at least, the way he’d originally envisioned it. “I was looking forward to working side by side with her. I’m getting on in years, so I figured this was a good way to make sure Cassie had a secure future. After all, she was going to inherit all this eventually, anyway. Why not start making it hers now?”

  I just nodded. Suddenly another thought popped into my mind: the age-old issue of sibling rivalry.

  “What about Ethan?” I asked. “Did he ever show an interest in the wine business?”

  “Ethan? Nah. He’s not stable enough to take on something that ambitious. Besides, he’s much more of a loner than Cassie ever was.

  “Interestingly, it was Joan who was against the idea,” Gordon continued, almost as if he was talking to himself.

  “Joan?” I repeated, surprised. “Why? Wasn’t she pleased that Cassandra had found something she was excited about?”

  Yet even as I asked the question, I already knew the answer. Joan probably knew Cassandra Thorndike better than anyone else, including her own father. And like so many of the other people who knew the beautiful but flighty young woman, Joan had no illusions about who Cassandra was—and who she wasn’t. Maybe Gordon Thorndike was convinced that his daughter was ready to take on the role of effective businesswoman, but I could imagine Cassandra’s stepmother thinking otherwise.

  “Joan was convinced this would turn out to be another dead end,” Gordon replied, as if he’d read my thoughts. “She insisted that I was fooling myself. She kept telling me that sooner or later Cassandra would lose interest. In fact, Joan and I got into quite an argument about it, just a couple days before...”

  He shook his head thoughtfully. “I know she’s sorry now. I’m sorry, too, that she’s got this weighing her down. Sometimes I think Joan doesn’t really understand how much she means to me. And how grateful I am for all the work she’s done, helping me raise those two kids. I can’t imagine a more thankless job, given how difficult they could both be.

  “But this time, I’m sure Cassie was going to follow through. I’d never seen her so excited about anything. She was so full of plans for this new venture the two of us cooked up! Why, she talked about it nonstop.” Chuckling, he added, “Practically drove us all crazy the last few weeks. Babbling on and on about getting distribution all over the country and planning special promotions....She had a lot of good ideas, that girl. It would have really been something, sitting back and watching her succeed.”

  The soft look had faded from his eyes. Instead, I saw the same dead look I’d seen the first time I met him, when he’d wandered around the kitchen, dazed.

  “Thank you for telling me all this,” I told him, realizing it was time for me to go. “I know how difficult it must be.”

  He’d already turned away, and I suspected that the words I was saying weren’t really going in. I mumbled good-bye, then slipped out of the barn and headed back to my van.

  Once I was alone, the windows rolled down and the fresh air flying into my face, I didn’t know whether to feel exhilarated or defeated. Deep in my gut, I had a feeling I’d just found a major piece of the puzzle. Yet I didn’t begin to have a sense of how it fit in with all the rest of the pieces.

  The fact that Cassandra had been murdered as she was about to embark upon an exciting new venture— starting her own winery—only made the whole thing that much more tragic.

  I was contemplating calling Forrester to get his take on my discovery about the new path Cassandra Thorndike was about to follow when my cell phone rang. I pulled over to the side of the road and answered without bothering to check the Caller ID.

  “Dr. Popper,” I answered crisply.

  “Jessica? I’m glad I got you. Listen, I was wondering if you and I could talk.”

  Even though I hadn’t checked to see who my caller was, I recognized the voice immediately. I tried not to sound surprised as I answered, even though this was the last person in the universe I expected to hear from.

  Chapter 15

  “I’ve met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”

  —Hippolyte Taine

  Robert Reese had called me from his restaurant on the South Fork, which was less than a half hour’s drive from the Thorndikes’ home on the North Fork. Still, the ride seemed endless as I agonized over his reason for getting in touch with me.

  The possibility that he’d come up with a piece of evidenc
e that pointed to his ex as Cassandra’s murderer put a knot in my stomach the size of one of Jean-Luc’s espresso-flavored crème brûlées.

  I tried to act matter-of-fact as I strolled inside. I found him sitting at one of the front tables with a cup of coffee in front of him. It appeared to be untouched.

  “Robert?” I said gently, not sure if he’d heard me come in.

  “Thanks for coming, Jessica,” he said dully, glancing up only for a moment. “Especially since our last conversation wasn’t exactly the most congenial.”

  “This is a difficult time for all of us,” I replied, telling myself to stop fantasizing about slugging him in the head with a Starsky and Hutch lunch box. Instead, I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down.

  “I’m not sure I trust you enough to talk to you about this.” He was silent for a few moments before adding, “But I don’t know who else to talk to. Look, I know you’re on Suzanne’s side. I understand that the two of you have been friends for years and that you’re trying to do what’s best for her.”

  I simply nodded.

  “Besides,” he went on pensively, “I don’t see how Suzanne could have anything to do with this.”

  “With what?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath, as if he wanted to brace himself for what he was about to say. “Someone’s been sabotaging the restaurant.”

  I gasped. “Sabotaging Granite? How?”

  Robert shook his head, as if in disbelief. “At first, I thought I was just imagining it. Or that the things that were happening were simply mistakes. Like that night last August, when one by one the customers starting spitting out their coffee, so outraged they practically stormed out of the restaurant. I tasted some myself and realized somebody had mixed cayenne pepper in with the grounds.

  “I apologized profusely, passed out a round of free desserts, and put the incident behind me. But then, a few nights later, something else happened. Peculiar things kept turning up in the salad. The top of a ballpoint pen, a piece of someone’s credit-card receipt...Not only the kind of thing that upsets the Board of Health, but also instantly loses customers.”

  Robert’s face sagged, as if the mere act of relating these unsettling events was aging him. “I started keeping an eye out for strange occurrences,” he continued. “And I noticed they were getting more and more commonplace. One night I got complaints that the pasta was too salty. I tasted it, and even I nearly spit it out. It was as if it had been boiled in water with an entire cup of salt in it. Another time, all the seafood in the refrigerators just vanished! Bay scallops from right here in Meconic Bay, local oysters and clams, flounder, striped bass—it all disappeared just before we opened for dinner. The financial loss was nothing compared to the fact that we disappointed one customer after another.

  “It was amazing how quickly we started losing business. Nothing too significant at first, but I’ve noticed that over the past eight or ten weeks we’re down nearly fifteen percent compared to this season last year.”

  “Have you spoken to your staff?” I asked.

  “Sure. I brought each of them into my office, one at a time. Everybody from the busboys up. I like to think I’m pretty good at reading people. But I couldn’t get anything out of any of them.”

  “What about the police?”

  Robert shook his head. “First of all, no real crimes have been committed, at least nothing I can prove. But even more important, if I can’t get to the bottom of it, I can’t expect some outsider to figure out what’s happening here.

  “At first I thought maybe somebody was playing a series of practical jokes,” he continued. “That maybe some members of the kitchen staff were just goofing around, or maybe up to something more onerous like trying to get somebody fired. But I’m starting to think it’s something much more serious. That somebody is out to ruin Granite.”

  He looked at me expectantly, as if it were my turn to speak. But I was at a loss for words. In fact, I still hadn’t figured out why he was telling me all this.

  Then he leaned forward. In a low, earnest tone, he said, “I saw you talking to Jean-Luc the first time you came in here. Did he say anything to make you believe he secretly has it out for me—or maybe even has some other reason for wanting to see the restaurant fail?”

  My mind raced as I debated whether or not it was in my best interest to be completely honest with Robert. My first priority was finding Cassandra Thorndike’s murderer—and absolving Suzanne of guilt. I wasn’t particularly interested in solving the mystery of who was trying to grind Granite to dust, unless it had something to do with finding the killer.

  On top of all that, I still didn’t know who I could trust. Was Robert the enemy? Was Jean-Luc? For all I knew, both of them had been involved in Cassandra’s murder.

  “No.” I finally said, deciding to keep what I’d learned about the Jean-Luc-and-Preston connection to myself. “Not that I recall.”

  “I hate to think anything ill of the guy,” Robert said thoughtfully. “I mean, Jean-Luc’s been with me since the beginning. I trust him like a brother—and I know him as well as I know myself.”

  Bet you don’t, I thought. But I remained silent.

  In fact, I’d actually begun to feel a little sorry for Robert. Someone was clearly trying to ruin his business, and I had a pretty good idea who that someone was. I also suspected that the jovial pastry chef who secretly loved whips as much as he loved whipped cream wasn’t acting alone. My theory was that Jean-Luc and Preston were working together to destroy Granite, for reasons I could only guess at but which I suspected were either monetary gain, personal satisfaction, or both.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,” I told him. “But I barely know Jean-Luc—and I don’t know anyone else on your staff at all.”

  “I knew it was a long shot,” he said. “But if you find out anything, you’ll let me know, right?”

  “Of course,” I told him, thinking, Around the same time I learn to make perfect puff pastry.

  As I left the restaurant, I pondered all I’d learned about Jean-Luc’s duplicity. He had lied about so many things. Pretending to be as French as a tarte tatin when he was as American as apple pie—or a slice of New York cheesecake. Claiming to despise Preston DeVane, his employer’s number-one competitor, when the two of them were as tight as a leather thong. And now this: the revelation that he was doing his darnedest to destroy the business of a man who considered him a loyal friend.

  He certainly was turning out to be a complicated man. But did that mean he was capable of murder?

  Jean-Luc wasn’t the only complicated man I’d encountered since this whole episode had begun. I hadn’t forgotten about the scissors incident that got Ethan Thorndike thrown out of the Sewanhacky School or my determination to find out more about it. Glancing at my appointment book, I decided I had time to squeeze in at least one more stop—even if going back to the North Fork from the South would take me a bit out of the way.

  I made it to Theo Simcox’s house in record time. I knew he was at home, because his car was parked in the driveway.

  As I peered through the screen of the back door, I could see him sitting at a laptop computer he had set up on his kitchen table. On the screen was a picture of a sleek, brand-new sedan.

  So he’s finally decided to unload that tired old jalopy, I thought with satisfaction. Good. A man his age needs a reliable car.

  “Mr. Simcox? Theo?” I called through the screen.

  He turned around, looking surprised to have a visitor. “Dr. Popper,” he said warmly. “You caught me indulging in one of my vices: wasting time on the Internet.”

  “Something many of us are guilty of these days,” I commented, smiling.

  “I’m thinking it’s finally time to get myself a new car,” he explained, closing his laptop. “My Dodge wouldn’t start this morning. Again. It’s a big investment, but I guess I’ve got to bite the bullet.”

  “Sounds like a wise decision.” I hesitated, wondering if we’d sp
ent enough time making idle chitchat, then said, “If you have a moment, there’s something I’d like to ask you about.”

  “Of course. Come on in. You don’t mind if I don’t get up, do you? Seems the annoying arthritis in my knees is acting up a bit today.”

  After I’d sat down opposite him at the kitchen table and refused his offer of coffee or a cold drink, I got right down to business.

  “Theo,” I began, “I know you’ve been friends with the Thorndikes for a long time. Do you know anything about an incident Ethan was involved in while he was at the Sewanhacky School?”

  Frowning, he replied, “You must mean him piercing that girl’s hand with the scissors. Her name was Lisa or Liza—something like that.”

  I nodded. Since Theo was such a close friend of the Thorndikes, I wasn’t surprised that Gordon and Joan had been open with him about what must have been a devastating episode. “How bad was it?” I asked. “Was it just two kids playing a game that got out of control or something more serious?”

  He stared at me for a few moments, as if debating just how forthright to be. “The girl was stabbed thirteen times. She ended up getting something like twenty stitches.”

  “And Ethan was responsible?”

  “Yes. He came right out and admitted that he’d done it. Practically bragged about it, in fact. But to be fair, Ethan has come a long way since then,” Theo insisted. “He does pretty well as long as he takes his medication.”

  He hesitated, then added, “Of course, when he doesn’t take it, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

  “I didn’t know about the medication,” I said, more to myself than to Theo. “Or that he’s not consistent about taking it.”

  “That’s why Joan and Gordon keep him close to home. They feel responsible. Not only to make sure he’s safe, but to make sure he doesn’t hurt anybody else.”

  “I understand Ethan was thrown out of Sewanhacky after that,” I said.

  “He certainly was. But he finished up at the local public school. Ethan may have his problems, but the boy is smart as a whip.”