A Fatal Slip (8 page)

I looked around at my friends’ faces and realized just how rich I was. “I don’t know what to say.”

“A yes will suffice,” Jenna said.

“Yes,” I said.

Butch grinned. “That’s what I can appreciate, a woman of few words.”

“Watch it,” Sandy said.

“That’s good advice,” Jenna added.

Butch said, “What say we move on and figure out how we’re going to attack this thing? I’ll start digging into Charlie’s business connections and see if I can turn anything up there.”

“He’s a building inspector,” I said.

“I know that. I’m just wondering if he was putting the squeeze on somebody, and they decided to squeeze back. Inspectors have been known to look the other way on the job, if the price is right.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?” Jenna asked icily.

“I’ll plead the fifth on that one, if you don’t mind, Your Honor.”

Sandy said, “I’ll look into his background and see if I can dig up anything that way.”

Jenna added, “I’ll make a few discreet inquiries as well.” “Good,” Butch said. “I’ll tell Martha to look into his social life. What are we missing?”

“We need to talk to neighbors, friends, acquaintances—maybe one of them wanted to see him dead,” I said. “I can do a little digging there. Just be careful, everyone.”

“Take your own advice,” Butch said as he squeezed my shoulder. “We can’t afford anything happening to you.”

After the crew left, I prepared the shop for the day’s customers. David came in a few minutes before we were due to open with a sheepish look on his face. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Come now, you’ve got to do better than that. I want details, young man.”

“It’s nothing all that interesting,” he said. “I just overslept. Don’t tell Mom, will you? She’s been giving me grief about my punctuality lately. She’s going to go nuts when she hears I was late for work.”

“I won’t say anything to her if you won’t.”

He looked relieved, but I added, “Though I’ll have to dock your time card. It’s our busiest season, David, and I need you here on time every day.”

“I really am sorry. I’ll do better.”

He looked suitably chastened. “Enough of that then. Help me get things ready for the day.”

There were half a dozen people waiting on us when I unlocked the front door and opened for business.

I came back after helping a customer with a purchase and found David dabbling with clay.

“What’s that?”

He grinned at me sheepishly. “I was showing someone how to make little clay animals a little bit ago.” David loved playing in clay, and it was nice to see that working with it all day hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm.

I took the small figurine from his hand and studied it. It was a whimsical little frog figure, and I couldn’t wait to see it finished. “How long have you been doing these?”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I just make them when I’m bored.”

“Well, you should make some for us to sell.”

“Are you serious?”

I nodded. “It’s just the kind of thing we’d do well with. Can you make anything besides frogs?”

David grinned. “I can make snakes, squirrels, dogs, cats, you name it.”

“Then you should.”

David started pinching off some clay when I said, “Not now, though. Wait until we don’t have any customers.”

That didn’t happen the rest of the morning. David and I were so busy I barely had time to give the murder investigation a second thought. There was a lull a little after one, at which point David asked, “How did you know we’d be so busy?”

“Would you accept woman’s intuition as an answer?”

“You know better than that,” he said.

I pointed outside, where the rain was finally letting up. “Bad weather always increases our clientele. Hadn’t you noticed?”

“No, not really,” he said, “but I guess it makes sense.” His stomach growled, and he asked, “Is there any chance I could get a quick lunch before you take yours? I skipped breakfast.”

“Go on. I can handle things here until you get back.”

“I won’t be long,” he said as he rushed out the door, still wearing his apron.

I was restocking our inventory shelves in the paint-your-own section when the front door chimed. I’d been hoping the sunshine now peeking through the clouds would bring me a bit of respite, but apparently, it was not to be.

Kendra Williams walked into the shop, a woman less welcome than most in my place of business.

“Kendra, what brings you out on a drizzling day? I thought you had a business to run.”

She looked around my empty shop. “Carolyn, I have more customers than you do when I’m closed.”

“As much as I appreciate your commentary, I’ve got work to do. Despite what you see right now, we’ve been busy all morning.”

“Don’t you think I realize that?” she said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on your shop all day.”

“That’s taking the neighborhood watch a little too far, don’t you think? I’m not sure I like you stalking me.”

“This is serious. I’m worried about Rose.”

I peeked out the window and saw that Rose Colored Glasses was still closed, though she normally opened before any of the rest of us along the River Walk, with the exception of Nate’s coffee shop. “Maybe she’s sick.”

“She’s not. When she didn’t come in, I closed Hattie’s Attic and went by her place. She’s not there.”

“Kendra, you’re overreacting. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for her absence.”

She gestured outside, making her muumuu travel in waves I didn’t want to surf. “You know how busy it’s been today. Rose wouldn’t have missed a day of sales like this for anything in the world, and we both know it.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “Maybe she just had to get away.”

“Exactly,” Kendra said triumphantly. “But why?”

“There could be a thousand reasons,” I said.

“Name three.”

Honestly, this woman was driving me mad. “Maybe she got a little wanderlust and decided to drive down to Boston.”

“She hates big cities, and you know it.”

“I don’t know it, but I’ll take your word for it. Okay, how about if she headed into the mountains? She loves nature. If you don’t like that reason,” I said before Kendra could protest, “she might be visiting a sick aunt, or maybe she just felt like chucking it all and went to the movies. There’s certainly enough days I feel like getting away from the shop myself.”

“I can see you’re not going to take this seriously,” Kendra said huffily.

“Until you give me a better reason that I should be, you’re absolutely right.”

“Somehow I expected better from you, Carolyn.”

“Life’s full of disappointments, isn’t it? Since you’re here, you saved me a trip. There’s something I want to ask you.”

Her eyes narrowed to two slits. “What is it?”

“How well did you know Charlie Cobb?”

Kendra shook her head fiercely. “No, ma’am, I won’t stand for it, do you hear me? You’re not pinning that on me.”

“I’m not trying to pin anything on you. I’m just asking how well you knew him.”

“He was just another face in the crowd, and that’s all you’re going to get out of me.”

“You seem a little too agitated by such a harmless question. You don’t have anything to hide, do you?”

“Carolyn Emerson, every time someone in Maple Ridge gets a cold, you start asking me if I have the sniffles, as if I’m some sort of instrument of doom. I’m tired of it, and I won’t stand here and take it from you.” Kendra stormed out of my shop, but I wasn’t surprised by her behavior. There had been a few murders around town, and for some reason, I always seemed to be in the middle of them. Kendra had connections with the deceased as well, but then most folks in Maple Ridge did. After all, we were living in a small town in New England.

Her rant aside, I wondered if she could be right about Rose. I knew she’d been upset when I’d seen her at Shelly’s, but I didn’t think she’d harm herself or try to run away from her problems. Rose was no ingénue, and I knew she’d suffered through a few broken hearts along the way. She’d buck up, and if a sudden trip out of town was what it took for her to get back on her feet emotionally, it was no concern of Kendra’s, or mine.

I must have still been scowling when David came back from lunch. “Sorry if I took too long,” he apologized.

“What?”

“At lunch. I got held up at Shelly’s.”

“Did something happen?”

“If you call a crush of tourists swooping down on her like vultures something happening, then yeah, something happened. I’d suggest you go somewhere else for lunch.” He slapped his forehead. “I didn’t even ask if you wanted anything yourself. I could have brought your lunch back to you and saved you a trip. I’m sorry, Carolyn.”

I patted his cheek. “That’s fine. You’ve got more important things on your mind than me.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He favored me with that grin of his, and I could see what his girlfriend Annie saw in him. David was sweet, and he could be quite charming when he put his mind to it.

“Call me on my cell phone if you get swamped,” I said as I traded my apron for my jacket.

“You won’t need that. It’s warming up nicely.”

“I’ll take it anyway, just in case. See you soon.”

He glanced around the empty shop. “Take your time. It looks like we’ve had our rush for the day.”

“If they were only that easy to predict,” I said.

I thought about going home for lunch, since I knew Bill was there working on another order, but I decided I wasn’t in the mood for company, not even my husband’s. I walked over to In the Grounds instead, ordered a sandwich and a soda, then took it outside. Tourists were starting to mill around the walk again, and I couldn’t find a free bench. The tourists were a mixed blessing, no doubt about it. One of our previous waterfront tenants had been quick to proclaim that the ideal situation would be for the tourists to send their money to us but not bother to come by themselves. It was that kind of attitude that had driven him out of business in the span of a single season, a modern-day record for Maple Ridge, Vermont. I personally liked the influx of fresh faces, especially after a long winter of memorizing every wrinkle of every single person who lived in town year-round.

I knew Nate kept a few outdoor picnic tables in the back of In the Grounds for his employees, so I decided to take a chance one of them was free. The location didn’t have the view that a brook-side seat did, but there shouldn’t be the traffic, either.

Blessedly, both tables were deserted. I sat down and enjoyed my sandwich in solitude, something more desirable at the moment than scenery. David was right: the rain had blown out, and the clouds had given way to a lovely blue sky. The sun was a welcome sight, and I enjoyed the way it warmed me to my bones as I ate.

I was just finishing my sandwich when Nate came out the back door of his shop. The look on his face caught me off guard, and it took me a second to realize that what I saw in his expression was fear. What on earth did he have to be afraid of? Certainly not me.

“Carolyn, I didn’t know you were back here,” he said, trying now to look calm.

“Sorry to intrude, but I couldn’t find a seat out amongst the tourists. Nate, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said a little too quickly. “Why do you ask?”

“You look a little on edge,” I said. “If you’d like to talk about it, I’m here.”

“Nothing to talk about,” he said abruptly. “I’ve got to go.”

Before he managed to get away, I asked, “Nate, how well did you know Charlie Cobb?”

He spun and looked at me. “Why do you want to know that? I didn’t know him at all.”

“Are you saying he never came into In the Grounds?”

“We get a lot of people here, Carolyn. I can’t be expected to remember all of them.”

Nate climbed into his battered old Subaru and sped away, nearly spraying me with gravel as he left.

How odd. Was it a rule that the business owners in Maple Ridge had to act oddly today? If so, no one had bothered to give me the memo. No matter. There was a killer on the loose in our small town, and I was sure of only one thing:

my husband wasn’t who the police should be looking at. But knowing Sheriff Hodges as I did, I had a feeling the only way the real culprit would be brought to justice was if I had a hand in the investigation myself, no matter what anyone else thought about it.

Chapter 5

“Carolyn, is your cell phone turned on?” David asked as I came back into the shop. “I’ve been trying to get you practically since you left for lunch.”

“I don’t know. Let me check.” I pulled it out of my purse and saw that I’d let the battery die again. Desite Bill’s constant nagging about keeping the phone charged, I still forgot to do it. “It’s dead. Do you know where I put that backup charger?”