By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (22 page)

“You may give us the missing link. What do you remember about the guy who picked up the racket in Darwin’s shop?”

“Football player from the high school, just taking up tennis. It struck me as odd that someone new to the game would place a special order for a racket. One racket’s as good as another for a beginner.” But what if he’d picked up something besides a racket? “Special orders. They could be drug transactions taking place in the backroom.”

Gunnar reached for a muffin. “That’s what I think.”

“It’s a fancy system for passing drugs. Why do it that way?”

“Darwin hides his profits. He’s probably got an inventory of old rackets he’s paid next to nothing for. He sells them at high prices to certain regular customers. The drugs go out with the racket. As far as his books go, he’s bought low and sold high, a legit business practice.”

“Why would Darwin kill Ramirez?”

“Drug dealers find lots of reasons to blow each other away. Ramirez could have complained about the quality, refused to pay, or even blackmailed Darwin.”

Val watched a woman ambling along the sidewalk with a sailor-suited boy. A collie, his fur ruffling in the breeze, kept pace with them. “Moms, kids, dogs—they belong in Bayport. Murderers and drug dealers don’t. Let’s get rid of them.”

“I’m working on it. I’ll put the DEA on to Darwin. They’ll want to talk to the football player who ordered a tennis racket. You know his name?”

“Kyle. The team captain. I don’t know his last name, but most people in town probably do. High school football’s big around here.”

The woman, the boy, and the collie passed by the house. A gust blew the boy’s hat off. Gunnar jumped up off the porch and scrambled after the cap rolling down the street. He picked it up and presented it to the little sailor. The boy donned the cap and then shook Gunnar’s hand by way of thanks. The dog extended a paw, which Gunnar also shook.

Careful, Val told herself. Tony had been good with kids and dogs too. Hardly a sign of a steadfast character.

Gunnar returned to the porch. His phone chirped as he sat down on the glider. While he took the call, Val chewed a muffin without tasting it.

He closed the phone and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “That was Chief Yardley. Darwin wasn’t home. His girlfriend said he left before midnight and never came back. Assuming he came here to set the fire, he might be afraid you recognized him. He’s on the run.”

A lump of muffin stuck in Val’s throat. She washed it down with iced tea. “I’ll be glad when they catch him.”

“It may take time. Sheriff’s deputies and the state police are on the lookout, but he could be three states away by now.”

“What comes next? You tell me to take a plane for the Bahamas?”

“You’re more likely to run into Darwin in the Bahamas than here.” Gunnar squeezed her hand. “The police are watching his house and this neighborhood. If he comes back, they’ll catch him.”

“I hope you’re right.” She stood, walked to the porch railing, and scanned the sky. Only shades of gray, her least favorite color. “It started out a beautiful morning, but it sure has changed.”

Gunnar joined her at the railing. “I can trust you to keep our talk private, right? Drug investigations are sensitive. You never know who’s involved.”

“You can trust me.” But could she trust him? Together, they’d worked out the answer to one question: Why had Darwin stalked her? The question obsessing her for the last five days remained unanswered: Who murdered Nadia? “Could Nadia have somehow gotten on to Darwin? Maybe he murdered her too.”

“Oh. That’s the other thing the chief said to tell you. Darwin has an alibi for the night of the murder. His girlfriend said he was at a bar with her. The bartender confirmed it.”

Val covered her ears. “Stop. I’m tired of hearing about people with alibis. I’m even beginning to think it’s a sign of guilt. Darwin could have hired a hit man to kill Nadia while he was in a bar.”

“His legitimate business and his illegal operations are tied to tennis rackets. He’d be stupid to commit a murder with a racket or hire someone to do that.”

“Darwin’s not known for his brains, and he’s practically a one-man crime wave. Drug dealing, car tampering, arson, and hit-and-run. He’s guilty of everything except murdering Nadia? That’s hard to believe.”

“His crimes fall into a pattern. He uses cars and fire as weapons, first against Ramirez and then against you. He was afraid you knew about his other crimes, which all go back to the drug dealing.” Gunnar glanced at his watch. “I’ve got some work to do on this case. With what you told me, I think we can crack it. You’ve been a great help.”

His lips grazed hers, a touch of skin, light and swift. No heart.

She grabbed his wrist and kept him from going down the porch steps. “Don’t leave yet. You owe me some answers.”

Chapter 24

Gunnar held up the wrist Val’s hand encircled. “No need to shackle me. I won’t run away from your third degree unless it goes on too long. What do you want to know?”

She could ask him to list every lie he’d told her, but that might take longer than either of them wanted to spend in each other’s company. She released his wrist. “You said Vince was keeping tabs on me all day Saturday. When did you decide I was in danger?”

“Friday, when you told me about your brakes failing.”

He’d made sure she was never alone from then on. He’d shown up at her door Saturday morning, unshaven, his clothes rumpled, spots on his shirt from Friday night’s crab dinner. It shouldn’t have taken her this long to figure out why. “You didn’t go back to your B&B Friday night.”

“I spent the night in my car, watching your house. I thought you might be in danger and shouldn’t be alone.”

“Which is why you tried to spend the night even closer to me. In the house. In my bed. Of course, I didn’t know I shouldn’t be alone. I thought something different was happening between us. Does the handbook for an IRS agent have a chapter on seduction?”

“Am I supposed to apologize? I hoped you’d want to . . . but you didn’t.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Listen, it’s been hard for me to balance things for the past week. I liked you a lot, but I had a job to do. Now it’s all out in the open, and we can—”

“The past week?” Another layer of fog in her brain lifted. “I get it. I finally get it.” The words of a dying man explained Gunnar’s interest in her and why he’d hesitated to tell her those words.

“What?”

“A Spanish speaker’s T is like our D. What Ramirez said probably sounded more like ‘dennis’ than ‘tennis.’ Vince concentrated on the docks, and you focused on tennis and a woman whose last name starts with a similar sound—Val Deniston.” She backed away from him. Until today, she’d have described his eyes as blue, but now they reflected the color of the overcast sky. Chameleon eyes.

“Put yourself in our shoes. A few months ago, right after you moved here, the drug situation got worse in this area. Your last name sounds like what a drug dealer started to say before he died. I believed you were innocent after I got to know you. I just had to convince the DEA.”

Excuses, excuses. “Exactly when did you get to know me? Yesterday you asked me who I hung out with, as if you expected me to name my lowlife friends.”

“I feel like I’m playing tennis and can’t get a serve in. I open my mouth, it’s a double fault.”

She could wield a tennis metaphor too. “At least you knew all along who was on the court, but I just found out. You, undercover investigator. Me, target of investigation. But now you have your culprit. The game’s over.”

She marched into the house, slammed the wood door behind her, and flopped on the sitting room sofa. How stupid of her to fall for Gunnar. Friday night, he’d kissed her passionately, not out of passion, but because he wanted to come in out of the rain.

Her grandfather came into the room from the kitchen. “I’m going to the supermarket to pick up a few things. Do you want to know which recipes I’m trying today?”

She shook her head. “I trust your judgment. I should do that more often. You were right about Gunnar.”

Granddad’s bushy white brows rose halfway up his forehead. “You mean he murdered Nadia?”

“Of course not. He was working undercover here, tracing laundered money. That’s why he came to the Eastern Shore, and why he’ll leave once he finishes his assignment.”

“Can’t say I’ll mind seeing the back of him. Stay inside while I’m gone, Val, and don’t open the door to strangers.”

Val turned her hands palms up. “What am I, six years old? The chief already warned me to stay put. I know I’m under house arrest.”

She dead bolted the front door behind him and went into the study. Nadia’s spiral notebook sat on the desk, open to the page where Val had jotted information about the company that analyzed cosmetic samples. No point in speculating on whether Nadia’s research had given Chatty a motive for murder. The chief wouldn’t listen to more speculations. When she talked with him at the police station Wednesday, he’d stressed one simple fact about the crime—only someone who’d seen the burned racket could have made a duplicate of it to use as the murder weapon. She’d argued against this theory at the time because it made her cousin look guilty. But since then, she’d come across others who’d seen the prototype of the murder weapon.

She turned to a blank page in the spiral book and wrote Luke, Irene, and Chatty. Val added Monique to the list, drew a line, and jotted Bigby with a question mark after it. She’d already worked out how he could have seen the prototype, by raiding Nadia’s trash.

Of the five people on the list, Monique definitely had no alibi. What about the others? Val pulled the card with the chief’s cell phone number from her pocket and called him.

“Hey, Chief, it’s Val. Anything new?”

“Darwin’s SUV turned up. Abandoned on a country road about twenty minutes from here. We’re still looking for him. He might have arranged for someone to pick him up.”

She sighed. Darwin was probably out of the reach of the local police by now, but if the DEA wanted him, they might catch him. They could cast a wide net. “By the way, Chief, did you have a chance to check on Bigby O’Shay’s alibi?”

“Did you forget I’m running a police department here, not a PI service at your disposal?”

“But he was stalking Nadia.” Maybe. Val reminded herself she had only Chatty’s word for that.

“I’m trying to find the man who was stalking you. Right now, you’re keeping me from doing that.”

“Sorry. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

She hung up and looked at the page where she’d written the five names. She couldn’t cross off any of them yet. She tossed the notebook onto the desk. Strange how the pages at the back, like those at the front, were crinkled at the edges. The middle pages looked flat, unused.

She opened the notebook from the back. Nadia had written on fifteen pages. Val flipped through them. Each one had a date at the top and a list of six to ten addresses. No two pages had the same set of addresses, though some addresses appeared on more than one page. The recurring addresses were all highlighted with a yellow marker.

What did these notes mean? An organized person like Nadia might divide a notebook into sections for different topics. Dated pages with comments about tennis matches in the front of the book, dated pages with addresses at the back. The dates at the front corresponded with the tennis team’s matches from April through June. Those in the back covered random days from the same period, the most recent one last Monday, when Nadia had borrowed Kimberly’s car and left the spiral notebook in it. On the previous Wednesday, she’d borrowed Chatty’s car. Val turned the page. Sure enough. That date appeared in the book. These notes might relate to Nadia’s car switches.

Val flipped through the pages again. A few of them had no highlighted addresses on them. On some pages, three or four highlighted addresses appeared under one date, but not necessarily the same three or four always together. Other pages had only one address highlighted. Did the highlighted addresses have any significance other than all of them occurring more than once?

The doorbell rang. Val jumped up. Her grandfather’s caution against answering the door to strangers echoed in her mind. She peered out the study window. Her cousin stood on the porch in her church clothes, a calf-length beige skirt and a white top. Val opened the door for her.

Monique handed her a grocery bag. “I went by Althea’s to pick up my serving dish. She gave me leftovers from yesterday’s buffet to share with you.”

“Come in.” In the months since Val moved here, her cousin had been in the house only once. Val had invited her and her children for homemade ice cream while Granddad went to an Orioles game. Granddad and Monique mixed together like vinegar and oil, only when forced and not for long.

Monique followed Val to the back of the house, apparently taking no notice of the recipes strewn on the dining room table or the chaos left by Granddad in the kitchen. “What happened last night? I heard rumors at church about police cars on this street.”

Val carried the mixing bowl with the muffin batter residue to the sink. “We scared off an arsonist last night, before he had a chance to start a fire.” No shocked response from her cousin. Not even curiosity about who was included in Val’s “we.” Monique must have already known about the arson attempt. From church gossip or another source?

Monique gripped her by the shoulders. “A few days ago, I asked you to help me. Now I’m asking you—I’m begging you—to stop. Give up trying to clear me and go back to cooking. I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt because of me.”

Val shook off Monique’s grip, rinsed a sponge, and wiped the counter. “The police don’t think the arson had anything to do with Nadia’s murder.”

“It’s not just the arson. Someone ran you off the road and messed up your car.” Monique grabbed the sponge from Val. “Stop cleaning and listen. I have a lawyer. He’ll hire a private investigator. I don’t want you in the middle of this.”

Val folded her arms. Her cousin could have warned her off yesterday, when they’d spent time together in the car and at Nadia’s memorial service. What brought this on today? Val had a suspicion. “Granddad called you this morning, didn’t he?”

Monique threw the sponge in the sink. “He never asked me for anything before now. I was the invisible relative, invited to funerals but otherwise ignored. I couldn’t turn him down, especially since he’s right.”

“Don’t worry. From now on, I’ll leave the questioning to the police.”

“I’m back, Val.” Granddad called out from the front of the house. He stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Oh, we have company.” He raised an eyebrow at Monique.

She gave him a barely perceptible nod.

Val interpreted their silent messages, Granddad asking if Monique had completed her mission and receiving confirmation. “Monique brought us leftovers from yesterday’s potluck, more than enough for lunch.”

“Good. I need a break from my own cooking.”

Val stifled a laugh. She could use a break from his cooking too, given the mess left behind the two times he’d tried to cook.

“Congratulations on your newspaper column,” Monique said. “I’m looking forward to reading it.”

“Thank you kindly.” Granddad set his grocery bag on the counter. “Why don’t you join us for lunch, Monique?”

Monique looked as startled as Val felt. “Um . . . sure.”

Even if Val’s snooping didn’t lead to Nadia’s murderer, at least it was leading to a truce between two family members.

Nadia’s name never came up during lunch. Instead, the conversation revolved around Monique’s children and Granddad’s column. Val’s thoughts, though, wandered from the table talk to the notebook’s list of addresses.

After lunch she detoured into the study as she walked Monique to the door. “I want you to look at something.” She showed her cousin the back pages of the spiral notebook.

Monique glanced at them. “Nadia’s writing. Where did you get this?”

“Someone in her realty office found it. Do the addresses listed on those pages mean anything to you? Look at the highlighted ones.” Val handed her the notebook.

Monique leafed through the pages. “They’re spread out. Four in or near Bayport, two in Treadwell, and two even farther away, in Easton. I don’t know where this last one is, Marsh Drive.”

“I’ll look it up online.” Val sat in front of her computer, entered the address on Marsh Drive, and studied the satellite map that came up. “It’s a small road that dead-ends at the bay. The place looks like a waterfront property, big house, expensive. I’ll try the addresses in Treadwell and Easton.” She pinpointed the properties and zoomed in on the images.

Monique peered over her shoulder. “They’re all big homes too. They might be going on the market. Maybe Nadia gave sales pitches for them. I’ll drive by the Bayport addresses and let you know if I see any For Sale signs outside them.” Monique jotted the addresses on a slip of paper.

“Look at the dates on the pages. Could any of them be the day Nadia borrowed your hatchback?”

Monique leafed through the pages in the spiral and glanced at the wall calendar hanging over the desk. “Could have been this one.” She pointed to a page with an early June date and two highlighted addresses on it.

The highlighted addresses were clustered in the first half of April, early to mid May, and early June. Had anything special happened on those dates?

After Monique left, Val checked back issues of local and regional newspapers online, focusing on the dates corresponding to Nadia’s highlighted addresses. The newspapers covered county and town government meetings, Chesapeake Bay environmental issues, local crime, and human interest stories. She also skimmed the front pages of nearby city papers. The
Baltimore Sun
and the
Washington Post
featured the Middle East crisis, Congressional disputes, and violence at home and abroad. In half an hour of browsing the newspapers online, Val found no common threads among the dates with highlighted addresses.

Her cell phone rang.

Monique briefed her on the addresses she’d copied from Nadia’s notebook. “One’s an older two-story house, nicely kept. No signs in front. It’s the type of place Nadia might have sold, unlike the next one I drove by—a bungalow with sagging gutters and moss on the roof. She wouldn’t have made much commission on that.”

Any commission is more than no commission. “What about the other addresses?”

“Commercial real estate, not residential. One belongs to a mortgage settlement company. The other’s a garden apartment complex. Nadia didn’t sell commercial property.”

“Thanks, Monique. Talk to you later.” Val hung up and stared at the spiral notebook.