5 A Bad Egg (20 page)

“Thank you.
Jeffrey, can I get you anything?”

“Thanks, but
I’m needed elsewhere.”

He was at the
door when he hesitated. “Did you find the pickle?”

“I did,” I
said. “Does he want it back?”

Jeffrey just
smiled. “No, it’s kind of his calling card. That’s how his family made their
money, and he gets a kick out of giving pickles away.”

I laughed at
the notion. “I’ll keep it someplace safe, then.”

After he was
gone, I thought yet again about how fleeting life could be. Money was no
guarantee of anything that really mattered, but I hoped that in the end, there
was someone there to comfort Curtis Trane.

I felt quite
a bit like Santa for the next little while, paying off the next dozen diners’
tabs that came my way. I didn’t tell a soul what was happening until it was
time to pay, and I got to share Curtis’s story again and again. Somehow, I
think that he would have approved of all of the delighted smiles and laughter
his kind gesture had generated. Using his money, I’d been able to spread more
sunshine than shadow, and at the end of the day, what better measuring stick
was there?

Chapter 16

“How’s your morning
been so far?” Moose asked me as he and Martha walked into the diner a little
after I’d paid off the last bill.

“It’s been
fine,” I said.

“I’m guessing
that there’s more to say than that. What’s this I hear about you giving away
free breakfasts? I know the place is yours to run as you please, Victoria, but
do you honestly believe that it’s a good precedent to set? Folks are going to
expect free food whenever we’re open.”

I didn’t know
why it surprised me that Moose had already heard about what had happened,
though he hadn’t gotten the complete story. Jasper Fork was like that. Folks
might not get all of the details right through the grapevine, but they got the
overall picture just fine, and usually in record time, as well. “I didn’t give
any food away at all,” I said.

Moose’s right
eyebrow shot up. “Are you saying that I heard it wrong, then?”

“No, but
there’s a great deal more to it than that.” I explained to him what had
happened, and my decision about how to deal with Curtis’s windfall.

I half expected
my grandfather to scold me for my behavior, but when I was finished with my
explanation, he nodded his agreement. “Victoria, that was precisely the right
thing to do.”

“I’m glad you
approve,” I said. “Jenny came in a few minutes ago. Are you ready to start
sleuthing this morning, or is it too early to go knocking on doors?”

“I don’t know
that we have a lot of choice in the matter, do you? I heard that Jessie has
already left town, with the sheriff’s blessing. Who knows how long our other
suspects are going to hang around?”

“I hadn’t
heard anything about that,” I said. “I wonder how much she ultimately gave to
Cal?”

“In the end,
he got twelve thousand dollars,” Moose said.

“How could
you possibly know that?” I asked. My grandfather had a great many connections
around Jasper Fork, but this seemed even beyond
his
scope of reach.

“Let’s just
say that I had a hand in getting him to return it all to her and leave it at
that,” Moose said with a big grin.

“Why on earth
would he give any of it back?”

“Well, it was
either repay the money, or face a jail sentence. It turns out that Cal was
doing a great deal more than using extortion and blackmail to accumulate funds.
We’ll probably never know how much he made on the side in his position, but one
thing’s certain: he won’t be making anything more there.”

“Did you get
him fired, Moose?”

“Let’s just
say that I played a small role in relocating him,” Moose said. “When will
people around here learn that they lie to me at their own peril?” While I knew
my grandfather as a sweet man at heart, I also understood that he had an edge
of steel in his heart.

“Is he
staying in town?”

Moose checked
his watch. “Hardly. He has another ninety-seven minutes, but he’ll be long gone
by then if he has any sense at all.”

“I’m glad
that you helped Jessie,” I said.

Moose just
shrugged. “She’s not a bad person at heart, Victoria. She just happened to fall
for the wrong man. It’s hard to hold that against her, don’t you think?”

I thought
about how Ellen had fallen for the same man several years before. “Yes, love
can be a dangerous thing, can’t it?”

“Not for us,
though,” Moose said with a smile.

“We both got
lucky, and you know it,” I said, matching his grin with one of my own.

“I never
denied it. So, who should we tackle first today?”

I conveyed the
conversation I’d had with Sam Jackson earlier, and in particular, I stressed
his concerns about Mitchell Cobb.

“I don’t know
why, but I still have a hard time seeing that man killing anyone,” Moose said.

“I know what
you mean, but Jackson was pretty adamant.”

“And you
believed him?” Moose asked. “Is he really off the hook in our books?”

I nodded. “I
think so. Why would he take the risk of incriminating himself for another crime
if he weren’t telling me the truth?”

“You spoke
with him; I didn’t. What does your gut tell you?”

“That he
didn’t do it. He’s not innocent, not by anyone’s definition, but I’m fairly
certain that he didn’t kill Gordon Murphy.”

“That’s good
enough for me, then. Who does that leave us?”

“We’re still
waiting to hear from the sheriff about Ellen and Wayne.” I’d looked around to
be sure that Ellen was in the kitchen when I’d said it. “If Crazy Betty can
confirm their alibis, then they’re both in the clear.”

“Then we can
add their names to Jessie and Cal, who are both off the hook, and according to
you, we can strike Sam Jackson’s name off as well.”

“In pencil,
though,” I told Moose. “I’m willing to admit that I could be wrong about him.”

“If I’m
placing a bet, it’s always going to be on you,” my grandfather said.

“Thanks,” I
said. “That just leaves us with Opal, Robert, and Mitchell. I’m not afraid to
admit it, Moose. I hope that Mitchell did it.”

“I know. It’s
going to be hard to accuse either one of Ellen’s parents of murder when they
were just trying to protect her.”

“If it is one
of them, I’ll get no joy from finding a killer.”

“Then let’s
go see what Mitchell has to say for himself,” Moose said.

The house was
clearly rented, and the state of the yard shouted that no homeowner lived at
Mitchell Cobb’s address. The grass was a good week past when it needed to be
mowed, and the landscape itself was devoid of flowers or shrubs or anything
ornamental that might make the place feel the least bit cozy.

I tapped on
the door, and to my surprise, it opened at my touch. Who doesn’t lock their door
anymore in this day and age? “Hello?” I called out. “Mitchell, are you there?”

“I don’t
think he’s home,” Moose said after a few moments of waiting.

“What do you
think we should do?”

“Let’s go in
and look around,” my grandfather said.

I wasn’t the
least bit surprised by his suggestion. Moose liked to take chances, and a lot
of the time I agreed with him. It was better to be bold and search than to wait
for clues to come to us, but we were dealing with a potential killer here.
Still, how many opportunities like this did we get? “Let’s do it, but we have
to be careful.”

“Always,”
Moose said as he walked into the house.

Once we were
inside the house, my grandfather pulled the door closed behind us. It made me
feel trapped for some reason, as though he’d just shut off our only means of
escape.

“Victoria,
are you okay?” Moose asked me.

“I’m fine.
How should we handle our search?”

“I don’t
know,” he said. “I’ve got a hunch that we don’t have a lot of time. I hate the idea
of us splitting up, but we can cover a lot more ground if you start at the
bottom and I take the top. We can work towards the center and meet back here.”

“Sure, that’s
fine with me, as long as we reverse things. How about if I take the upstairs
and you go to the basement? I’ve never been all that fond of the creepy things
that live belowground, and you know it.”

“It’s a
deal,” he said. “Call me on your cellphone if you find anything.”

“We’re not
going to just shout out loud for one another?” I asked with the hint of a
nervous smile. That was our normal way to communicate, after all.

“No, I think
the less noise we make here, the better.”

“It’s a
deal,” I said.

As I headed
upstairs, I began to regret our decision to split up almost immediately. I
constantly yelled at the television when Greg and I watched those Women in
Peril movies they showed late at night. Sometimes the lead characters did the
dumbest things, and I could never understand their motivation for putting their
lives at risk, and yet here I was, doing basically the same thing that I blamed
them for doing. Well, not entirely. I wasn’t alone in the house, at least. My
grandfather was just a phone call away, and no matter how old Moose might be, I
knew that he’d have my back.

The second
stair from the top creaked so loudly that I almost screamed as my foot hit the
tread. If Mitchell was upstairs, I’d just announced my presence, loud and
clear. I decided to play it safe, just in case he really was up there
somewhere.

“Mitchell?
Are you there? We heard a noise outside, so we thought we’d come check on you.”

We hadn’t
heard anything, as a matter of fact, but I wanted some plausible deniability to
the fact that my grandfather and I were actually trespassing on his property.

There was no
answer, and I finally started to breathe again.

The bedrooms
were rather austere, with no extraneous photographs, or anything that made it
appear that someone was actually living there. I wondered how the closets would
look, and the first one was normal enough, filled with men’s shoes, hanging
shirts and pants, and a few decent suits.

The second
closet was
nothing
like that, though.

As I opened
the door, a light switched on automatically, and I saw that instead of paint,
the walls were papered with photographs of Ellen. There were hundreds of candid
shots, dating back to when she must have been in high school, and in nearly
every instance, it appeared that she wasn’t even aware that she was being
photographed.

I felt my
breath choke in my throat. I could easily see this man as Ellen’s stalker.
Taking out my camera phone, I snapped a few shots, but as I looked at them, I
realized that they couldn’t begin to convey the overall creepiness of the
space. After I had a few photos as a record, I called Moose.

“Come
upstairs right now,” I said in a whisper. I wanted someone else to see what I
was looking at.

“I’ll be
right there,” he said.

As I hung up
the phone, I heard that top step squeak, and I knew that there was no way that
Moose had made it up the stairs that quickly.

Pulling the
door closed until just a crack of light peeked through, I looked out to see if
Mitchell was coming into the bedroom, and when I saw him darken the doorway, I
nearly cried out, solely as a reflex of panic. I managed to stifle it, though.
I had to. I didn’t want Mitchell catching me in that closet, but then again, I
couldn’t have him ambushing my grandfather, either.

I had to do
something, and I had to do it fast.

Chapter 17

I looked
around the closet for something that I could use as a weapon, but
unfortunately, there was nothing really there. No clothes hung on the wooden
rod, and no empty hangers, either.

They would
have interfered with Mitchell’s photo gallery, most likely.

The only
thing that
was
there was the closet
rod, a thick round piece of wood that looked stout enough to take a man down. I
tried to pull the rod from its holders, but someone had screwed the thing in
place on each end. The only way I was going to free it was with a screwdriver,
something I most definitely was not carrying on me at the moment.

But I did
have some change in my pocket.

Working as
fast as I could, I used a dime to try to unscrew the rod from its moorings.

It was a
complete and total failure.

I kept trying
to free it, though, and as I did, I heard the footsteps coming closer, faster
and faster.

There was
nothing that I could use to fight back.

Facing the
door, I decided to use the last option in my arsenal as I waited for Mitchell
to open it and discover me. I might not have any weapons that I could use in my
own defense, but I could still fight back. After all, I had two strong arms and
legs, and I’d use them as weapons to defend myself if that was my only chance
of getting out of there alive.

I knew that
if Moose heard the fight, he’d race to join in, no matter how bad the odds
might seem. It was entirely likely that we both would go down to a killer, but
at least we wouldn’t go down without fighting back.

Mitchell was
nearly to the closet door now, and I could hear my heart trying to beat right
out of my chest, when I heard the doorbell downstairs.

He hesitated,
and then it rang again.

Who could it
be?

I waited
until I heard Mitchell walk down the stairs, and once I was certain that he was
at the bottom, I raced out of the closet and through the spare bedroom.

Being careful
to skip the squeaking stair, I made my way down, only to find Moose standing
outside repeatedly ringing the bell.