A Fatal Slip (11 page)

“A little shaken up, but he’s going to be fine. You didn’t have to stay up.”

Bill shrugged as he took a sip from the mug in his hand. “I couldn’t sleep. Want some cocoa?”

“What I really want is some sleep. Do you mind?”

“Are you kidding? I’m worn out myself.”

He followed me into our bedroom, and as I changed into my nightgown, I asked, “Do you remember Jackson Mallory?”

My husband scowled. “He’s kind of hard to forget. I never did like that little weasel.”

“Why, because he took me to the prom? Surely you still can’t be jealous after all these years.”

Bill said glumly, “I’m not jealous. I just never cared for the guy. He always had an angle, even back in school. Why do you ask? Did you run into him at the hospital?”

“No, Butch Hardcastle brought up his name. He said Jackson paid Charlie Cobb under the table to okay one of his projects, and after Charlie took the money, he still shut down the job site. Butch said he heard Jackson was mad enough to kill him.”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Bill said.

“Which part?”

“Any of it. Like I said, I never did trust him.”

I kissed my husband. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For still carrying a grudge against an old rival,” I replied. “Sometimes I forget just how sweet you are.”

He shrugged. “I just don’t like the man.”

I went to sleep smiling. It was nice to know that my husband could still feel a twinge of jealousy even after all the years we’d been together.

 

The next morning, I packed a lunch before I left for Fire at Will. With David out, I doubted I’d get the chance to eat it, but if I didn’t bring my own food, lunch wouldn’t even be an option: there was no way I’d be able to get away long enough to buy something. Bill was still sleeping when I walked out the door, one of the advantages of his job over mine. He could set his own hours as long as he got his work done, but I
had
to be at the shop to wait on customers; otherwise I wouldn’t be able to make my payments on the building. There wasn’t much of a cost difference between my former rent and my mortgage payment, but there was definitely a psychological difference between the two. Hannah had begged off on our morning coffee to stay by David’s side, so I was a little out of sorts as I drove straight to Fire at Will without a caffeine jolt to start my day.

To my surprise, Jenna was waiting for me when I got to the shop. “Did you tell me you were coming by first thing?” I asked her as I unlocked the front door.

“No, but I wasn’t sure this could wait. I found out something this morning at the courthouse coffee roundup that you need to hear.”

“Come on in, then.” I flipped on the lights and started gearing up for the day. It was going to be a monster if the shop was busy, and for once I was hoping for blue skies instead of the rainy weather I usually loved so much.

As I put on my apron, I said, “I can listen and work at the same time, if you don’t mind.”

“I can help you,” Jenna said.

“I’ll be fine. Have you heard what happened to David?” She nodded as she took a seat at one of the tables. “Kyle Yates was at the hospital this morning, and he ran into Hannah. David’s getting discharged by eleven, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he shows up here before noon.”

“I don’t think Hannah would allow that,” I said. “I’m sure I can manage without him for at least one day.”

“Of course you will. Now for my news. I’m not sure if you realize it, but there’s a group of civil service workers who meet for coffee just about every morning in the basement of the courthouse. I have a standing invitation, but I rarely attend. This morning I thought I’d go by and see if anyone knew anything about Charlie Cobb, since he worked with them.”

“What did you find out?”

“Something pretty interesting. Charlie’s dad, Jerry, died forty-six days ago. Did you know that?”

“I might have read about it in the paper. He wasn’t murdered, too, was he?”

Jenna shook her head. “No, he had a heart attack. The reason his death is important is what the will said. Thelma at the clerk’s office told me about its contents, and I thought you should hear the exact way it was worded.”

“She didn’t reveal something she shouldn’t have, did she? I’d hate to think someone was compromising their ethics to help us.”

“No, it’s public record, if anyone cares enough to dig it out of the files.”

“What did it say?” I put down the bisque piece I was holding and gave Jenna my full attention.

“The will stipulated that each of the two heirs had to live forty-five days after the deceased to receive their inheritance, or their share would revert to the other beneficiary. It’s quite a coincidence that Charlie lived exactly forty-four days, don’t you think?”

“So what happens to his share? I’m assuming Jerry left behind a hefty estate.” Jerry Cobb had owned a plant on the outskirts of town, and he must have done well for himself, since he’d lived alone in a five-thousand-square-foot mansion.

“It was in excess of four million dollars,” Jenna said. “The interesting thing is that Charlie’s brother, Rick, gets it all now.”

“What would have happened to the money if Charlie had lived one more day?”

Jenna said, “It would have been a part of Charlie’s estate, so his daughter would have gotten it all. As things stand, she’ll barely have enough to finish college. At least that’s what Thelma said.”

“So Rick gets four million instead of the two he had coming to him. Would he kill his brother when he was already getting two million bucks?” The number was unreal to me, a phantom set of digits beyond my scope of comprehension.

“Don’t kid yourself. I’ve known people to kill for ten thousand dollars. Two million puts it entirely into the realm of possibility. We need to look into Rick Cobb’s alibi.”

“Shouldn’t the sheriff do that? I know how you feel about meddling, and I don’t want you to go against your beliefs.”

“I went to him with the information first,” Jenna admitted. “Do you want to know what he told me? The man had the nerve to remind me that I wasn’t on the bench anymore and that I should mind my own business and leave the investigation up to him. I’ve been defending him for years, and he has the unmitigated gall to say that to me. Perhaps you’ve been right. Sheriff Hodges has outstayed his welcome in office.”

“And yet our townsfolk keep reelecting him, don’t they?”

“They vote for him out of habit more than anything else. I’m sure of it. If he had one decent deputy, we could run him against the sheriff, but I’m afraid they’re all cut from the same cloth.”

“The election’s five months away, and if you want to find someone to run against him, you’ve got my support. In the meantime, though, we have to deal with Charlie Cobb’s murder. What should we do with the information about his brother?”

“I’m going to look into Rick Cobb’s whereabouts on the evening of the murder. That’s the first step. I’ll keep you informed.” She glanced at her watch. “I hate to run out on you, but I have a dentist appointment in three minutes, and if I’m not there on time, they’ll chide me as if I were a schoolchild.”

“Go. And, Jenna? Thanks for the information. Don’t take any chances digging into this, okay?”

“I won’t if you promise not to, either,” she said with a smile.

After Jenna was gone, I finished preparing for the day, wondering how David was doing. He would certainly be sore from the impact of the collision, but he was young, so I knew he’d bounce back quickly. The older I got, the longer it took me to recover from the aches and pains in my life.

The phone rang two minutes before I was due to open, but since there wasn’t a crowd outside my door clamoring to get in, I decided to take the time to answer it.

It was Sandy, the world’s greatest reference librarian. “I just have a second,” she said after identifying herself. “There’s something I’m tracking down, but I’m not sure what I’ve got yet.”

“You don’t have to touch base until you uncover something,” I said. “I know you have a full-time job, too.”

“This might be a factor. I was looking into the open court records on the Internet, and I found something interesting.”

“So you know about the will, too,” I said, trying not to sound too smug.

“What will? Carolyn, what are you talking about?”

I was confused, but I explained. “Charlie Cobb’s dad died a month and a half ago. Charlie was one of two beneficiaries, at least he would have been if he’d made it forty-five days after his dad passed away. Unfortunately, Charlie only made it forty-four.”

“I didn’t find any of that,” Sandy admitted. “That sounds like motive enough for murder. Do you want me to drop what I found and follow up on that?”

“No, Jenna brought the information to my attention, and she’s looking into it herself. If you didn’t find out about the will, what did you discover?”

“Charlie had a drunk-driving arrest in his past,” Sandy said.

“Is it significant?”

“I didn’t think so at first, but I started digging into the time he was arrested, going through old newspapers we have here on microfiche, and guess what else happened around that time?”

“I don’t have a clue,” I admitted.

“Nate Walker’s wife was killed. It was a hit-and-run, and they never found the guy who did it.”

I couldn’t believe it. “So you think he killed Nate’s wife, and Nate just realized it after all these years? Don’t you think he’d have known about it long before now?”

“Nate crawled into a bottle after his wife died. I doubt he knew much of anything then. Carolyn, what if he stumbled across this information and decided that Charlie killed Winnie? Would he take it to Sheriff Hodges, or would he want revenge himself?”

“I don’t know. It’s motive enough for murder, if it’s true. How do we find out, though? Do we walk up to Nate and ask him if he killed the man? I doubt he’d confess to us.”

“Let me keep digging,” Sandy said. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.”

“Thanks,” I said as the front door chimed. I half expected to see Martha come in with a report of her own, but it was actually a man with his thirteen- or fourteen-year-old daughter. From the expression on her face, she wasn’t all that thrilled about being in my shop.

“Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a customer.”

“I’ll touch base later,” Sandy said.

“May I help you?” I asked.

“We’d like to paint some pottery,” the man said firmly.

The teenage girl sneered at her father. “Correction.
He’d
like to paint some pottery,” she said. “I want to go back to bed.”

“Sarah, we talked about this. It’s after ten o’clock. We don’t have that much time left together before you have to go back to your mother’s.”

“Whatever. I just want this woman to know that I’m here against my will.”

My, wasn’t she a princess? Putting on my best smile, I asked, “Why don’t you give it a try? You might surprise yourself and have fun.”

“I doubt that,” she said.

“Would you like me to pick out a piece for you to paint, or would you like to find something yourself?”

She rolled her eyes at me, and her father either missed it or, more likely, chose to ignore it. If he could take it, so could I. As a joke, I picked up a bisque clown’s face, something I’d made a mistake ordering and wanted to get rid of. It turned out that clowns weren’t as universally beloved as I’d once thought, and I still had two faces lingering on my shelves like unwanted guests who refused to leave. “Would you like to do this one?”

“Why not?” she said, barely looking at the face.

I turned to her father and said, “I’ve got one more, if you’d like to do it together.”

It was mean, but I really did want to get rid of those clowns, and he seemed past caring himself. “That’s fine.”

I set them up at a station, then explained the process. “You apply the paint, I fire the pieces, then you can pick them up in a few days.”

The father frowned. “She leaves tomorrow afternoon.”

“It’s a real shame, isn’t it?” Sarah said.

“I’ll do a firing tonight, so they’ll be ready by lunch tomorrow.” One of my kilns was nearly full, so I wasn’t pushing it by making the promise.

“Perfect,” the man said.

“Stellar,” the girl chimed in, sarcasm thick in her voice.

I got out a wide range of colors for them, then busied myself dusting the shelves as they worked. The father chose white, red, yellow, and blue for his clown, while the daughter covered hers from fright wig to chin with black. It was going to be hideous when it was fired, but that was her problem, not mine. She did a few embellishments with other colors from the palettes, but I couldn’t get a close enough look to see what she’d done—quite frankly, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to anyway. The father put down his brush and said, “That was fun. Sarah, would you like to do something else while we’re here?”

“The only thing I want to do is leave.”

“Wait for me outside,” he snapped, apparently having had enough of her attitude.

She sullenly walked out, and he reached for his wallet as he said, “I want to apologize for my daughter. She hasn’t taken the divorce well.”

“The teenage years are the toughest,” I said. “She’ll grow out of it. Just give her some time.”

“I’m not sure I have that much time,” he said as he overpaid me for the clowns.

“That’s too much,” I protested, but he wouldn’t take his change.

“I figure you earned the rest as a tip. I’ll be by tomorrow to pick them up. If I can get her out of bed in time for her flight back to Virginia, that is. Knowing her, she’ll be ready at dawn—she’s in a hurry to get back to her mother.”

“Be patient,” I said. “That’s what she needs from you right now.”

“You sound like you’ve had experience with teenagers,” he said with a sigh.