A Tale of Two Biddies (8 page)

Chandra picked up a pair of knitting needles and one of two balls of brightly colored yarn that sat next to the hat. “I didn’t know Dickens was a knitter.”

Burke’s expression fell. “Oh my, I can’t say if he was or if he wasn’t, and I suppose I should know that, shouldn’t I? I hope one of you isn’t one of the judges.” He looked from me to Chandra, and when neither of us rose to the bait, he swallowed hard.

“I’d hate to think I’d been caught not knowing something I should know,” he said. “If I’m going to be in a trivia contest, I should know everything there is to know about Dickens. But the yarn isn’t for me. Or for Dickens. It’s for my wife. You see, while we were loading the boat over at the yacht club in Cleveland, she tripped and twisted her ankle. Poor thing! She wanted to get out and about this weekend, and instead she’s holed up back at the cottage. She’s a knitter, and I promised I’d see if I could find her some yarn and needles to keep her busy. Thank goodness for Miss Alice here! You ladies must be knitters like my wife. That’s why you’re here this morning.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, dear.” The wink Alice gave Chandra and me confirmed all my suspicions. Alice might be a little old lady, but she was nobody’s fool. “I have a feeling they’ve come to chat about something else. And we will,” she promised us. “Just as soon as I finish ringing up this sale.”

While she did, I took the opportunity to stroll to the back of the shop. Here, there was a display of patterns and magazines, and a rack of knitting needles and crochet hooks. One doorway on the back wall opened into a minuscule bathroom and another into an office that included a desk, two file cabinets, and no computer. I wasn’t surprised. I bet Alice and Margaret liked to do things the old-fashioned way.

Between the two rooms was a short hallway, and at the end of it a screen door that was open to let in the summer air and a view of the garden out back and the cottage beyond. The scene was straight out of a picture book with its pink roses (Margaret’s choice, no doubt), white daisies, and red geraniums, and the white cottage with its green shutters and trim.

While Alice put Mason Burke’s purchases into a bag, I drifted back to the front counter, my attention caught by a framed drawing on the wall behind the cash register.

It was a reproduction in a heavy dark wooden frame, a pen-and-ink sketch of a man in Colonial clothing standing behind a wooden counter. There was another man in front of the counter, also in knee breeches and a tricorn hat, and a woman sitting behind it, a mobcap on her head and her attention on her knitting.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Now that Burke had left, Alice came over and touched a finger to the picture frame. “I bought it at a garage sale years ago. Couldn’t resist. Margaret wasn’t thrilled.” As if Margaret might be within earshot, Alice glanced all around and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I told her I paid five dollars for the picture and that really got her knickers in a twist. She said I wasted my money. What she doesn’t know is that I really paid seven.”

“You hung it in a place of honor, so you obviously love the picture. That’s what matters,” I told her. “And the lady knitting is just perfect for the shop.”

When I glanced around again, Alice caught my look. She hurried over to the shelves where the yarn was displayed, patting and arranging. “It was a busy spring and I haven’t had a chance to restock our inventory,” she said, and I wondered what kind of businesswomen Alice and Margaret really were. Summer was—it had to be—the shop’s busy season, what with the island packed with tourists. “Don’t you worry,” Alice said, as if reading my mind. “These shelves are going to be overflowing in a couple weeks. Take a look.” She went back to the front counter, grabbed a yarn company catalogue, and flipped through the pages, pointing as she went. “I’m ordering this sock yarn in every color. And this . . .” She looked at a page that featured alpaca yarn in assorted natural shades of brown and cream and she nearly swooned. “And lots of sweater yarn, of course.”

Alice’s cheeks turned a color that Margaret would have liked. “And we’re going to paint. And replace the carpet. My goodness, I’m so excited just thinking about it, I can barely sleep nights.”

Chandra stepped forward. “Alice Defarge, have you turned to a life of crime?”

Alice’s mouth dropped open. But just for a second. That is, until she got the joke. Her laughter was as soft as the lightweight lime green cotton sweater she wore with black slacks. “You always were one to tease me,” she told Chandra. “We’re refinancing, dear. Just a couple more weeks until the papers are signed. And once the painting is done and the shelves are restocked, we’re planning a grand reopening. You’re both invited.” She looked from Chandra to me and her smile disappeared. “But that’s not what you’re here to talk about, is it? Not the grand reopening or the party we’re planning or how excited I am about the new yarn. You’re here because of poor Richie.”

“You’ve heard,” I said.

Alice shook her head. “Didn’t need to hear. Saw Hank Florentine walk by here this morning and knew from his expression that something was wrong. Man’s got a face like a thundercloud when there’s trouble. Then at the bakery . . . well, word is out about Richie and it confirmed what I suspected. I knew something was terribly wrong.”

“We wondered, Alice,” I said, “if there was anything you could tell us. Richie was over at Levi’s last night. That’s where he was found. Is your shop open late on Wednesdays?”

“Only until seven, and not much in the way of business after the dinner hour. Last night I closed up a couple minutes early, then Margaret and I had dinner. Beef stew. A lot of people say stew is a wintertime dish, but they’ve never tasted Margaret’s. It’s the best on the island, and we never get tired of it. After that, I went out to get dessert. You remember. You saw me outside before the fireworks started.”

“With the cotton candy. Of course.” I’d almost forgotten. “Did you see Richie when you were out?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Maybe yesterday afternoon. Or maybe that was the day before. I’m sorry.” She grabbed the yarn catalogue and tucked it under the counter. “When you’re my age, it’s sometimes hard to remember things like that. I did talk to Richie recently, I remember that, and—”

“Alice!”

The voice shouting her name from the cottage interrupted her, and Alice sighed with exasperation. “You’ll have to excuse me.” She hurried around the counter and to the back door. “Margaret’s a little hard of hearing so she thinks everyone else is, too. She’s always yelling!”

“Alice, where’s the peanut butter?” Margaret called out.

Alice answered just as loudly. “Where it always is. On the second shelf in the cupboard next to the sink.”

She turned back to us. “She’ll be happy now. At least for a while. Margaret’s eating lunch early so she can take over here at the shop and I can go watch the regatta. Now . . .” She gathered herself and remembered our topic of conversation. “Richie. Yes, Richie. I knew him all his life. Margaret and I . . . we were his landladies, you know.”

I didn’t know that, and if Chandra did, it was something she’d forgotten to mention.

Alice went on. “Richie’s parents . . . Lyle and Norma . . . they were the ones who rented our house from us. You know, back when Margaret and I moved here to the cottage so we could be closer to the shop. That was a long time ago, and the house had been in our family for years. We didn’t have the heart to sell it. And Lyle and Norma were so nice, and they had little Richie and he was such a sweetie. It was the perfect solution to our problem and we were so grateful knowing there was someone there to take care of the house and love it the way we always had. Then when Lyle and Norma both died in that terrible accident . . .”

This was something else I hadn’t known. I leaned forward.

Alice provided the details. “Richie was . . . how old do you think, Chandra? Maybe twenty at the time? He was living at the house with his parents and, I mean, my goodness, he was certainly old enough to take care of himself, so they decided to go on a vacation to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary. Hawaii, wasn’t it?”

Chandra nodded. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

“Helicopter crash,” Alice explained. “You know, one of those tourist helicopters that flies over the island to show off the sights. Richie was an only child, and after his parents were gone, he was left all alone. He stayed on at the house, and Margaret and I . . . well, we tried to make him part of our family. We invited him for holidays, but he never came.” Her shoulders sagged. “Poor boy lived all alone, and from what I’ve heard, that’s how he died, too. Murdered. Who ever would have thought a thing like that could happen to Richie.”

I dared to broach the subject we were there to talk about in the first place. “You’re well-connected here on the island, and so observant.” It was better than coming right out and telling Alice that she and her sister would someday have a statue in DeRivera Park with the words
Nosey Parkers
etched into its base. “Do you or Margaret have any idea who might have wanted Richie dead?”

Alice’s mouth thinned. “Nobody! My goodness, certainly no one we know. It must have been some sort of accident, don’t you think?” When neither Chandra or I answered, her face paled. “You think it was Mike Lawrence.”

I wanted to tell her we didn’t have enough information to think anything, but she didn’t give me a chance.

“Or Gordon Hunter,” Alice said. “I saw him at the party the other night and he was fuming about the damage Richie had done to his boat. Swearing up a storm. Which he really shouldn’t have done, considering there were children around. Then there’s that other man, of course, the one whose house—”

“Dan Peebles,” I supplied her the name.

Alice nodded. “The Used Car King of Toledo. Oh, I remember that day last fall. Don’t you, Chandra? I remember how mad he was when he came back to the island to take a look at the damage. Thought the man’s head was going to pop right off his shoulders. And I hear he’s back.”

There was no use denying it. “He’s checking on the new construction,” I told Alice.

“Well, it must be him.” To emphasize her point, Alice slapped a hand against the counter. “Because it couldn’t be Gordon. He’s been vacationing here on the island for years. And it certainly couldn’t be Mike. My goodness, I’ve known Mike since he was a toddler. There’s no way he would ever murder anyone.” She smiled brightly. “I hope I’ve been able to help.”

Chandra waited until we were back outside to say a word. “Well,” she finally asked, “what do you think? Was she able to help?”

“Not really.” I walked all the way down to the Orient Express before I started across the street. “Alice didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.”

“And what we already know is that if we take on this case—”

“We asked questions, just like you wanted to, Chandra. And now we need to step out of the way and let the professionals do their jobs.”

Oh, if only things were so easy. See, once we crossed the street, we saw that sometime while we were in the knitting shop talking to Alice, someone had started a memorial to Richie outside Levi’s front door. Already there were two bunches of flowers there, a single candle burning in a tall glass jar, and a photograph of Richie. If I had to guess, I’d say he was back in grade school when it was taken. It showed a goofy-looking kid with bushy hair and a gap-toothed smile. His ears were too big for his head and there was a scattering of freckles across his nose.

“Damn,” I mumbled, and Chandra didn’t have to ask what I was talking about. She knew. Just like I knew. And I knew the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach could only mean one thing—Richie might have been difficult. He might have been a loner. But we couldn’t let his death go unnoticed. We couldn’t turn our backs on justice.

We had no choice but to investigate.

W
hen Levi came around from the side of the building, I had to clear the lump out of my throat before I could say, “Hello.”

He strolled closer to the memorial and looked at the flowers and the flickering candle. “I’m going to need to move all this a little farther from the front door once the cops let me open for business again, but I’m not going to get rid of it.”

“I didn’t think you would.” Not exactly true since I didn’t know Levi well enough to know if he was sentimental. He didn’t look like he would be, I mean, what with the wide shoulders, the chipped-from-granite jaw, and those incredible blue eyes. He looked more like an avenging Norse god than the warm and fuzzy type. It was nice to find out he had a heart.

Nice, but hardly relevant.

I told myself not to forget it.

“Oh, it slipped my mind completely! I need milk and bread and coffee.” Chandra put a hand briefly on my shoulder. “I’m going to zip over to the grocery store. I’ll be right back!”

I wanted to tell her that she didn’t fool me, but she was gone before I had a chance.

Which left me alone.

With Levi.

“So you know what they found in the autopsy?” The island grapevine being what it was, I didn’t think I had to ask, but hey, it was better than the two of us just standing there looking down at our feet and wondering what to say next. “You know Richie was murdered?”

“Are you kidding? That’s all anybody can talk about.” Levi moved away from the memorial and toward the walkway that wound to the back of the building. I knew there was a stairway back there and that it led up to the second-floor apartment where he lived, but it wasn’t where he was headed. He walked right past the walkway to the souvenir shop next door, and rather than look like I was avoiding a conversation—even though I would have done anything to avoid a conversation—I followed along. “The bar is still officially considered a crime scene, so no one’s allowed in,” he told me.

As someone who depended on the tourist trade for a living just like Levi did, I knew if my business had been disrupted, I would have been upset. But Levi took it in stride.

I wondered why.

I gave him a careful look. “Bad timing, what with the weekend cranking up. You’re losing a lot of business.”

He considered this, but only for a moment. “I’ll live.”

“More than we can say for Richie.”

“Yeah.” His gaze wandered to the memorial, then back again to me. “Plenty of people have been by this morning. Even people who are just visiting the island. A murder creates quite a buzz.”

“Poison.” The word sent a shiver up my back. “It seems—”

“Impossible. And very—”

“Creepy.”

There wasn’t anything Levi could say to add to that, so he didn’t say anything at all. Instead, he moved out of the way of a group of tourists heading into the shop and leaned back against the building, his long legs stuck out in front of him, his arms crossed over the green and white plaid cotton shirt he wore with butt-hugging jeans. Yeah, I know . . . not exactly the outfit of an avenging Norse god, but he looked plenty delicious anyway.

“You don’t have any harebrained ideas about doing something about it, do you?” he asked.

I admit it, I was a tad touchy that morning. Then again, with everything that had been going on, I had an excuse. After all, I’d found a body just the night before, the Charles Dickens impersonators were piling up like leaves in an autumn windstorm, and my ears still rang with the not-so-harmonious melodies of Guillotine. I had a perfectly good excuse for flinching in reaction to Levi’s question as if I’d been sucker-punched.

His use of the incendiary
harebrained
didn’t exactly help.

I managed to control the spurt of anger that raced through my veins like wildfire. As for the sarcasm boat, that sailed the moment that one telltale word was out of his mouth. “Do I think I can do something about it? You mean, do I think it’s even vaguely possible for me to find out what really happened? That sounds like a challenge to me.”

“Challenge?” He laughed like he never thought of what he’d said as anything more than a matter-of-fact comment designed to point out that I might have the desire to investigate, but in no way did I have the smarts.

And that only made me madder.

I pulled back my shoulders. “I did a pretty good job solving the case when Peter was murdered.”

His smile disappeared. “You did,” he admitted, and I was ready to forgive him until he added, “except for the part there near the end when you almost got bumped off by the murderer.”

It was true, and not something I liked to think about because when I did, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. Naturally, the only practical way to deal with it was to get defensive. “
Almost
being the operative word in that sentence.”

“All right, all right.” He pushed off from the wall and stepped toward me. I stepped back. “I didn’t mean to make you mad, I just thought that I should remind you that investigating crimes can be serious business. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think a woman moves from Manhattan to an island in the middle of Lake Erie because she’s looking to make her life more dangerous.”

If only he knew how right he was!

Rather than point it out, I clamped my lips shut, and I guess he realized he wasn’t going to get anything out of me because Levi went right on.

“Handling the bad guys, that’s what the police are for. It’s their business.”

I agreed. Of course, I agreed. I’d said practically the same thing to Chandra not that long before. That didn’t stop me from shooting back, “And why is it your business to think you need to remind me about police business? Or my business, for that matter.”

He scraped a hand through his honey-colored hair. “Wow, I can’t say anything this morning without stepping in it. Can we start again?”

I folded my arms over my chest and forced myself to take a deep breath.

It wasn’t Levi’s fault that Richie was dead and that I knew if I didn’t try to figure out what happened, I’d feel as if I betrayed a fellow human being.

It wasn’t Levi’s fault I had difficult and demanding guests at the B and B and that I anticipated a week of running and fetching.

The electricity that zapped through my body every time Levi was around? Okay, so yeah, that was pretty much his fault.

His fault, and my problem, so really, it wasn’t fair to take it out on him.

I sucked in another breath to still the frantic beating of my heart and gave in with as much good grace as I could manage.

“We can start again,” I told him, then just so he didn’t get the wrong message, I added, “depending on what you’re going to say this time.”

“I’m going to say . . .” Levi scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m going to say that you were probably busy at the B and B this morning and I’d bet anything that you need another cup of coffee.”

He was right, but he didn’t give me a chance to admit it. He grabbed my arm. “If I invite you up to my place for some of my world-famous espresso, I’m afraid you’ll bite my head off, so come on. The bakery has decent coffee and it’s my treat.”

I ignored the heat that built where skin met skin and scrambled to keep up with him all the way to the park, then down the street from there to the bakery. It was close to the lunch hour and busy with the regatta that day and the weekend right around the corner, but we found a table outside in the shade and Levi went for the coffee. A couple minutes later, he was back and he set a to-go cup in front of me and took the chair across from mine.

With thumb and forefinger, he flipped the top off his own cup of coffee. “Look,” he said, “here’s what I meant to say and I did a lousy job of it. I know you’re an ethical person. You care about the truth, and about justice, and that’s all really admirable. And I know you’re smart, too. You proved that when you solved Peter’s murder. You’ve got a good brain. You look at a situation from all the angles, and you consider all the possibilities. You think of things that even the cops don’t consider. You’re creative, and imaginative. That’s all terrific.”

“But . . . ?”

He didn’t bother with a tiny sip; he took a big drink of the coffee. “But like I said, murder is serious business. You don’t need me to tell you that. All right, so I hardly know you. But like I said, you’re a decent person, and from what I could tell when I stayed at your place last spring when the electricity was out on the island, you’re a heck of a businesswoman, too. You came here to escape the rat race of the big city, right? Well, it would be a heck of a shot of irony if that came back to bite you. Truth is, I don’t want anything to happen to you. You shouldn’t want anything to happen to you. And if you go poking your nose—”

“Somewhere where it doesn’t belong . . .”

“That’s right.” He didn’t put sugar or sweetener in his coffee, but apparently he remembered I did because he brought along a couple packets of sweetener and two plastic stirrers from the counter where he’d picked up the coffee. He pointed across the table to my coffee with one of the stirrers. “Drink it before it gets cold.”

I wanted to tell him I’d make up my own mind about when to drink my coffee, thank you very much, but the coffee smelled nice and strong—just the way I like it—and he was right about my need for caffeine. With all that had happened back home that morning, I hadn’t had nearly as much coffee as I needed. I added creamer and sweetener, stirred and sipped.

I didn’t want to defend myself. Heck, I didn’t even need to, but I guess the coffee mellowed me because I suddenly felt conciliatory. Even if I wasn’t inclined to tell the whole truth and nothing but. “I never said I was going to investigate.”

True, because I really had never said it.

At least not to Levi.

“But you did go to see Alice and Margaret this morning.”

“What, I don’t look like a knitter?”

Since neither one of us apparently knew what a real, honest-to-gosh knitter looked like, Levi chose to ignore the question.

“You know . . .” I leaned forward, wondering if he knew the not-so-secret secret. “The Defarge sisters keep a pair of binoculars right by the front window.”

“Do they really?” He sat up, clearly taken by surprise. “I guess I’d better make sure I behave behind the bar. And at home. My bedroom faces the front of the building.”

This was something I so didn’t want to think about!

“They knew all about what happened to Richie,” I said, and damn it, my voice was a little too breathy for my liking. “I wasn’t surprised.”

Levi lifted one golden eyebrow. “And last night . . . what did the sisters see?”

“Nothing.” I hadn’t realized how much I’d been depending on the Defarge sisters for information until that very moment. I sighed. “By the time we were all outside watching the fireworks—”

“The shop was closed. So for once, when we needed the sisters to be looking out the window to see what they could see—”

“Margaret was already in the garden setting out the lawn chairs and Alice was out getting cotton candy.”

Levi sat back. “So even though nobody said anything about investigating . . .” He took a drink of coffee, the better to give me time to eat my own words. “It sounds like you questioned the sisters.”

I folded my hands on the table in front of me. “I didn’t need to. Alice offered the information. Besides, one morning of visiting neighbors does not an investigation make.”

“Which isn’t to say you’re not investigating. You know, one of these days . . .” Again, he pointed with the stirrer, but this time at me. “You’re going to poke the wrong person.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I assured him, then went ahead and took chance number one by asking, “What did you see last night?”

Now, this might seem like a perfectly ordinary and reasonable question, but believe me, I knew I was treading on not-so-solid ground. What Levi had—and hadn’t—told the police about the night of Peter’s murder had landed Levi in hot water for a while. See, that snowy night when Peter was killed, Levi did see something from across the street, but he kept that something a secret. As it turned out, he had his reasons and they were good ones, but they made him look like a suspect and even landed him in jail for a night.

Did that stop me from asking what he saw? Obviously not, and just to prove it, when Levi didn’t answer quickly enough I asked again. “You were behind the bar all night, Levi. At least until the fireworks started. And Richie was there all night, too. He helped you before the show, didn’t he? I heard he was bringing up cases of beer from the basement, and refilling the ice. Do you think Richie is the one who tampered with the guillotine?”

“I don’t think anything, because I don’t know anything.”

“So you’re telling me you never saw Richie go near the stage.”

He cupped both his hands around his coffee. “I’m telling you that Hank was at the bar until the wee hours of the morning and I went over everything with him. A couple times, as a matter of fact. He came by again this morning and we talked about it all again.”

“And you’re telling me that if you had anything to say, you already told it to Hank.”

“I am.”

“And while you’re at it, you’re telling me to mind my own business.”