“Hard to say,” Guy says. “For such a sweet girl, Laura got a lot of people upset.”
“How about you?” Hammond asks. “Were you able to get back those shares?”
Guy flushes and averts his gaze. “Not yet.”
“Do you know if she had a will? Because if she didn’t…” His voice trails off, as if imagining the possibilities.
I roll onto my side and begin to clean my stomach. This has gotten quite interesting.
Guy says, “I’ve no idea. She’s always said she didn’t have family. And how many twenty-six-year-olds do you know who have wills?”
The sheriff bares his teeth in a nasty grin. “Then you better hope she doesn’t. Because according to your contract, if she doesn’t, those shares revert to you.”
Guy’s look of surprise comes a bit late, and I know he’s already considered this. A motive for murder, perhaps? Or perhaps he only thought of it after the body was found and believes admitting it would be gauche.
Mal looked up as Robbi came out of Guy’s office. The conversation, which under Deputy Debba’s stern watch was confined to small talk, trickled to a halt.
Mal slipped off the bench and filled a cup from the water cooler. “Here.” He handed it to her. “You all right?”
She took the water with a grateful smile. After a few sips, her color began to return. “Thanks.”
He wanted to ask how it had gone, but the deputy had kept an iron grip on the conversation and seemed unlikely to loosen the reins now. Instead, he said, “Barring some dramatic confession, they’ll probably let us go soon. Would you like me to help you get your things from your car?”
Her eyes brightened, sending a rush of warmth through him. “Yes, please. But I’d like to get Falcor settled in the mews first, if that’s okay.”
He felt himself grinning, told himself to knock it off. Whatever he was feeling, it was inappropriate under the circumstances. “When I first got into the herding demonstrations, the guy I got Scarlett from showed me the ropes. First thing he told me was, ‘Tend to your animals first.’”
She smiled. “My father used to say that too. He was a Master Falconer. I started helping with his birds when I was seven.”
The office door opened, and the sheriff sauntered out with Guy in his wake. Trouble trotted behind, looking pleased with himself.
“All right,” Hammond said. “We’ve got a couple of guys searching Miss Bainbridge’s cottage. We’ll be searching all y’all’s places next. Vehicles too.”
“Not without warrants, you won’t,” Joanne said.
Hammond barked a laugh. “Got something to hide, Miss Little?”
A pink flush crept up Joanne’s neck. Mal knew she was sensitive about her name. And who could blame her? If she’d been a smaller woman, it might have been endearing, but Mal could only imagine the teasing the big woman had endured over the years. She jutted her chin and gave the sheriff a defiant stare. “I just don’t want your grubby hands pawing through my unmentionables.”
“She means her Granny panties,” Cara said in a stage whisper, and was rewarded by a spate of nervous laughter from the rest of the Troupe.
Hammond said, “I’d’a thought you’d all be anxious to get this thing solved. After all, one of you is probably a cold-blooded killer.”
“You can search my place,” Dale said. “I don’t care.”
It should have proven something, Mal thought, but it didn’t, because what better way was there for a killer to throw off suspicion—assuming he’d gotten rid of the evidence?
But the sheriff just beamed at Dale and said, “That’s the spirit. That’s the kind of cooperation that’ll help us put whoever did this behind bars.”
Joanne said, “You don’t even know for sure yet that someone did it. And why are you searching her place without a warrant? The Supreme Court ruled that—”
The sheriff heaved an annoyed sigh. “Miss Bainbridge is deceased, Miss Little. She has no next-of-kin. And that cottage she lives in is part of the faire, which means Guy Cavanaugh owns it. And, just so you don’t keep rambling on like a broken record, I’ll go ahead and tell you, Guy has given his consent.”
He turned toward the others. “So, how about it? Are y’all really going to make me get warrants for all those cottages? If there is a killer, that just gives ’em a chance to destroy the evidence.”
While Dale and Cara signed permissions for the search, Mal reached for the falcon’s carrier.
Guy beat him to it, his forehead furrowed with concern, and said to Robbi, “The sheriff hasn’t finished with Laura’s place yet. Do you need a place to stay?”
Robbi’s stricken expression told Mal she hadn’t thought beyond getting the falcon into the mews and her car looked at.
He put his arm around her shoulders and said, “We’re just on our way to get Falcor settled and then pick up her things. She can stay with Elinore and me for a while.”
Guy cocked his head with a knowing grin. “Staking your claim already, Mal?”
Mal felt his face go red. He’d overstepped and come off looking like a possessive ass. But Robbi had been through a lot today. Was it too much to hope she could have some time to process it all before a player like Guy moved in on her?
Mal dropped his arm. “I’m not staking any claims,” he said, his voice tight.
“Boys,” Robbi said lightly, reaching for the carrier. “Enough. Just point me to the mews.”
“No, no.” Guy handed her the carrier and raised both hands. “I didn’t mean to butt in. You two run along and get acquainted.” He shot Robbi a charming smile that made Mal want to kick his teeth in. “We’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other later.”
Chapter Four
The mews and attached weathering yard were exactly what Robbi had hoped for. Right behind Laura’s cottage for easy access, it had a double entrance with a fridge and some shelves for storage in its small foyer, natural grass flooring, plenty of room for Falcor to stretch his wings, a scale for weighing the kestrel twice a day, and a shallow fountain with a constant supply of fresh, filtered water. A small tree stood in the center of the space, with several perches of various heights and diameters scattered among its branches. The combination of wire walls and slatted and solid wood panels gave her bird several places to retreat, room to fly, and a choice of sunlight or shade.
Falcor would feel safe here.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “It looks brand new.”
She slipped on a leather glove, opened Falcor’s carrier, and held out her hand. He stepped onto the glove, and she gently placed him on the nearest perch, where he shook out his feathers and stretched. He swung his gaze toward Trouble and Tuck, who sat just outside the enclosure. Then, apparently deciding they were neither threats nor small enough to eat, he turned his attention back to Robbi.
Mal stood watching, the inner door at his back. “Laura spent days studying YouTube videos and looking at plans. She wanted it to be perfect for you.”
Robbi blinked. Laura was good at handcrafts, but hopeless with a hammer. “She built this?”
He laughed. “No way. She wanted it to stand upright. But she supervised every step of the way.”
Slowly Robbi turned around, taking it all in. Everything she’d ever said she wanted in a falcon enclosure, here it was. She swallowed the lump in her throat and said, “She always liked to get the details right.”
He nodded. “I can’t even count the hours she spent researching period patterns and fabrics for her costumes. Or the exact ingredients for a historically accurate recipe. When she did take liberties, she made sure they were well thought out.”
“Conceptually accurate.” Robbi smiled at the memory. Laura had been meticulous about documenting which of her pieces were authentic replicas and which were what she termed “conceptually accurate” originals.
Mal’s sad smile echoed her own. “She’d be glad to know you like this place.”
Peeling off her glove, Robbi stepped away fro
m the perch. “It feels weird to talk about her in the past tense.”
“Aye, it does.”
Falcor cocked his head, fixing a suspicious eye on Mal. Then he shook out his feathers again and flew to the fountain for a drink.
“He looks comfortable,” Robbi said. “I’ve got a cooler of mice and quail for him in the car.”
As if there was nothing unusual about a woman with a cooler full of dead mice, Mal fished his keys out of the small leather bag at his waist and said calmly, “Ready when you are.”
The man wasn’t much for small talk, Robbi thought, as they made a detour to Mal’s cottage to pick up his phone, but the silence felt comfortable. It gave her time to process what had happened, even as the presence of a near-stranger kept her from breaking down. As they hiked past the tourney grounds and through the Seasonals’ campground toward the employee parking lot, she thought again how surreal they must look, a woman in khakis and a man in a kilt, trailed by a cat, a collie, and a potbellied pig.
When they reached the lot, Trouble and Scarlett hopped into the cab of Mal’s four-door pickup, while Tuck sat on his haunches and squealed until Mal picked him up and set him in the back seat. The pig stood on his hind legs, front hooves on the back of the seat in front of him and looked at the other two animals with a bewildered expression. Robbi could almost see the question on his face: Why are they up there and me back here?
Mal gave Robbi a sheepish grin. “I know. I spoil him. At least it will keep him out of Joanne’s barn.”
Despite—or maybe because of—his obvious affection for a pig, Mal seemed like a nice guy. His grief for Laura seemed genuine, though less intense and less conflicted than she’d have expected from a recently jilted lover. But the flash of possessiveness he’d shown when Guy picked up the hawk box worried her. She’d just gotten free of Jax Connelli, and the last thing in the world she needed to deal with right now was another man who thought he owned her.
As they chatted on the way to Old Reliable, she looked for warning signs. But there were no more red flags, and by the time he’d pulled up beside the car and popped the hood, she just felt grateful for his help.
While Miss Scarlett watched Mal work his magic, Robbi sat on the grass giving belly rubs to the pig. Trouble, of course, was too refined for such familiarity. Tuck had just plopped himself in her lap with a happy groink when the sheriff pulled up and rolled down his window.
Without preamble, he said to Robbi, “Whatever happened to Miss Bainbridge, it doesn’t look like it took place at her cottage. There’s no reason you can’t stay there—unless you’re worried about being there alone.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, though the thought of staying in the cottage without Laura made her chest ache. She knew from experience that a house was never so empty as when someone you loved was missing from it. “Thank you.”
He acknowledged her thanks with a flick of his fingers, then rolled up the window and pulled away.
It took Mal another half-hour to get the engine running. Robbi only half paid attention to his diagnosis; like her father, she was non-conversant in the language of machinery.
“The only thing I need to know is whether it’s a lost cause,” she said. “Or do you think I can keep her running for a few more years?”
Mal shut the hood and wiped his hands on his shirt. “Sure. If by ‘running,’ you mean sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t. The bright side is, you won’t need a car around here ‘til the season ends next fall. You can always catch a ride with one of us if you need to run into town.” He fixed her with the clearest blue gaze she’d ever seen. “I mean, if you stay.”
“I’m going to stay,” she said. “At least for now.”
She looked away, hoping he wouldn’t see the truth behind her words. That she had nowhere else to go.
Chapter Five
Mal pulled out a few car lengths behind Robbi’s mini-SUV, hoping his repairs would hold until they made it back to the faire. Trouble peered back at him from the rear window. Wondering what the cat was thinking, he glanced over at Tuck. There was nothing enigmatic about the little pig. He wallowed happily in the front seat, taking up more and more of the available space until Scarlett’s haunches were on Mal’s thigh.
“Sorry, girl,” he said, and she turned to give his chin an apologetic lick. “I didn’t have the heart to put him in the back again, what with all this empty space.”
But the drive was short, and they all arrived in one piece, with Robbi’s Old Reliable bucking and wheezing its way into the employee parking lot. They transferred her luggage and equipment into the bed of his truck, and she squeezed in beside Tuck, with Trouble on her lap.
Mal took them down the vendors’ road past the tourney field and onto what Guy called Cottage Lane and the rest of them called the Loop. Guy’s castle stood at one end, with the seven year-round cottages placed at intervals along it, just far enough apart for privacy. The inside of the Loop and the areas between the cottages were mostly forest, cut through with the occasional convenient deer trail.
He turned right and drove the long way around the Loop, pointing out each cottage as they passed. Cara’s, with its herb garden and its frilly purple curtains, then the one he shared with Elinore—with the garden, horse barn, sheep enclosure and shearing shed behind—then Joanne’s, with her barn and forge. Her Friesian mare, Freyja, looked up as they passed the pasture, then returned to grazing.
Watching the horse, Robbi felt a pang. She hadn’t ridden since her sophomore year in college, when she’d lost her childhood mount, a blue roan Arabian she’d called Atreyu, after one of her favorite characters in The Neverending Story.
“Laura’s house is next,” Mal said. “Then Dale’s. And then you’re back at the castle at the beginning of the Loop.”
“What about Miller?” Robbi asked.
“He has a place beside the mill. The new mill, not the old one. Guy built it when he bought the faire. One-stop shopping. Bakery, mill, and living quarters, all in one place.”
“Sounds convenient.” She scratched the cat’s jaw distractedly. “But isolated. Does it ever make him feel like he’s…well…not a part of things?”
He hadn’t thought of it that way. Miller had been here when Mal arrived, and nothing could have seemed more natural than placing the little man’s living quarters next to his mill. He’d assumed Miller had asked Guy to arrange it that way, but it had never occurred to him to ask.
“It’s a working mill,” he said. “Why trek across country when you can live right there?”
He rolled to a stop in front of Laura’s cottage and cut the engine, then shot out a hand to stop her as she reached for the door handle. “Wait.”
Crime scene tape, which the sheriff’s department must have used to mark off the area, lay in a pile beside Laura’s herb bed. The front door of the cottage stood open.
He made it there before her, barely, Scarlett at his heels, and gestured for Robbi to wait until he’d cleared the house. Of course, she entered right behind him, stopping only when she saw the mess inside. The sofa cushions lay on the floor, slashed open, the feather stuffing drifting across the hardwood. The drawers had been upended, their contents strewn around the room. A quick glance into the other rooms—kitchen, bedroom, workroom, bath—showed equal disarray.
Robbi blinked at the chaos. “Do you think the deputies did this?”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe this is standard procedure.”
“The sheriff didn’t seem that keen on standard procedure. Maybe this is his way of making a point.”
“Maybe.”
Or maybe it was Laura’s killer, if there really was a killer, looking for something. If he hadn’t found it, he might be back. Or she. No point in jumping to conclusions.
He pulled out his phone and dialed the sheriff’s office. The deputy on duty patched him through to Hammond, who grumpily allowed that his deputies might have been a little over-zealous in their search.
; “Over-zealous?” Mal tried without success to keep the anger from his voice. “The place is trashed.”
“Look, I’ll have a talk with ’em tomorrow,” Hammond said, and before Mal could answer, he ended the call.
Mal recapped the conversation for Robbi, then added, “Just because it was the deputies who wrecked the place doesn’t mean it’s safe here. I wish you’d stay with us tonight.”
She gave him a tired smile that made him want to pick her up and tuck her into bed. The impulse made his ears grow warm.
“I really need some time alone with all this,” she said. “I appreciate the offer. But I think I can handle myself.”
He thought of the ease with which this pretty little woman had put Joanne into the water. “I remember,” he said, “but I still don’t like the thought of leaving you alone here. At least let me check the rest of the house before I go. And take this.” He handed her his cell phone. “I have a pager you can call if you need anything.”
“A pager?” He could read it on her face: Who uses pagers anymore?
“It’s been a while since I used it, but it’s easy enough to reactivate.”
There he went, Galahad-ing again. Elinore would give him all kinds of grief if she could see him now. And he would deserve it. The problem was, he was no longer certain of his own motivations. It had been a long time since he’d felt this kind of attraction for a woman. And that had not gone well.
Not well at all.
With Mal gone, the shadows seemed deeper, the chill in the air more biting. It wasn’t Mal’s absence, per se, that made the difference, but rather the loss of human contact. At least, that’s what she told herself.
Robbi locked the door and, after a quick change out of her damp clothes into sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt, looked around for a phone. She had Mal’s, but that was for emergencies. Surely, this far out in the boondocks, her friend would have a landline. Instead, she found Laura’s cell phone on the kitchen counter. She blinked. Shouldn’t the sheriff have taken it as evidence? Maybe they’d already downloaded what they needed.
Trouble Most Faire Page 4
