Death Takes Priority (11 page)

Buster plopped his package on the counter. “Yep, and here they are. I'm sending them to my buddies in Maine, where it's too cold to fish.”

Ben pretended to smell the package, and there ensued a little fishing/post office/old guy humor. I was elated when Ben turned and released me for the day. “I'll take this,” he said. “In fact, I can close up if you want. You look like you could use a break.”

Nothing sounded better than a little downtime before dinner with the chief of police.

*   *   *

I left the post office before four, carefully planning my schedule before Sunni would arrive for the drive to Pittsfield. Thanks to Ben's generosity, I'd have time for a stop at the market and a phone call to Linda. I hadn't spoken to her since Monday, and unless Wendell's murder made the news in Boston—the evil Boston, as I'd been made aware—she wouldn't know about it. The idea of forgetting everything and taking a nap also sounded good.

I had mixed feelings about dinner with Sunni. I had to figure out how to interrogate a professional interrogator without her knowing it, even though she'd already admitted she expected it. Talk about impossible. I might as well just ask her my questions outright. Either way sounded daunting. I hadn't anticipated how tricky it would be to be friends with a cop. We were still feeling our way around these obstacles and I hoped the relationship would survive.

I stopped at the market on the way home for some real food, and contingency snacks in case the trend of having visitors continued. I ended up buying a chicken, once again longing for the time when I could pick up a cooked chicken dinner, complete with mashed potatoes and vegetables, within a block of my apartment. I figured it wouldn't kill me to prepare a chicken from scratch, and it might even taste better. For backup, I piled my cart with cans of tuna, cookies, crackers, and an assortment of cheeses. I threw in some ginger ale, in case my digestive system couldn't handle the shock of good nutrition.

Each time I pulled into my driveway, as now, I had the same thought: One of these days, the garage would be free of furniture and packing boxes—some on the way in,
some on the way out—and I'd be able to use my garage for its original purpose of storing a vehicle.

Loaded with bags, I walked around to my front steps, careful not to trip in the dark. I felt him before I saw him—Quinn Martindale, taking the tall paper bags from my arms.

Maybe I didn't need that downtime after all.

Q
uinn, who'd probably been waiting—for the second night in a row—on my front steps, traded me three bags of groceries for one UMASS sweatshirt, mine, looking cleaner than it ever had.

“I wanted to get the hoodie back to you as soon as I could,” he said.

“I've really missed it,” I said.

We fell into a comfortable banter while Quinn helped put things away. He picked up the chicken, tossed it like a football, from one hand to the other. “My specialty,” he said. “Need help cooking this?”

“Sure, great,” I said, then realized I already had dinner plans. “Uh . . . maybe tomorrow night?”

“Sorry,” Quinn said. “I didn't mean to invite myself.”

“You just beat me to it,” I explained and told him my reason for putting him off this evening.

“You're having dinner with my jailer,” he said, but with a smile.

I set out my newly acquired crackers and cheese and convinced him that we had time for a snack before I had to leave. And, yes, he could slip out the back if Sunni arrived early to pick me up.

“Aren't you concerned that someone might have seen your name and number in the directory? Someone at the telephone company office, for example? I would have expected you to split as soon as you learned your contact info was out there in the phone book.”

“Don't leave town,” he said, in a voice that I assumed was meant to sound like Sunni's. “Remember?”

“She said it like that?”

Quinn nodded. “Even though she spent some time checking out my mom's situation, and admitted that it's clear I'm not a suspect back there. I guess she's still trying to find an angle, something to charge me with until she can find a connection between me and Wendell Graham. I can see her point in a way. Why would the guy have my names on a piece of paper in his pocket?”

I didn't know, but it occurred to me that I should have asked Wanda that question. I was pretty sure I'd have a chance to talk with her further, like when she'd ask me to report on my progress as an investigator.

“Do you know Wendell's sister, Wanda, by any chance?” I asked Quinn.

“No. Should I?”

“She's a graphics designer. I thought you might have run into her. Maybe she made business cards for Ashcot's Attic?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. But, you know, this has been a good lesson for me. I'm not sure I'd leave town anyway, even if the entire North Ashcot police force weren't on my tail.”

“All five of them?”

“Two at a time,” he said. “The worst thing that can happen now is that someone comes from San Francisco and slaps me with a subpoena. I'll just go back and do what I have to do.” My confusion must have shown, because he waved his hand. “Let me start again. My mom is innocent, but she told me things about her relationship with her new husband that might sound like she had motive. The prosecutor is bound to ask me that question and my testimony would go against her. I also have some credibility issues if Mom's defense attorney were to call me. As her son, I'm a very unreliable witness anyway, as far as a jury is concerned.”

“It sounds like lose-lose.”

“You got it. Which is why I'm here. To make it harder for the prosecution, which stands to gain if I have to testify. But now I'm thinking that they're not going to take a chance on cross-examining a witness when they don't know what the witness is going to say. So unless I go around telling everyone what I just told you, they have no idea how I'd answer their questions.”

“No wonder I didn't go to law school. Too complicated. And meanwhile, the trial is going on?”

“It is. Leaving town, taking a new name for a while, was my idea, and I'm starting to think it wasn't a very good one. I get reports almost daily from my mom's attorney, a man I know I can trust.”

“Was there anything in the letter I gave you that would help you figure out what to do?”
Hint, hint.

“As a matter of fact, it might have. I have a contact now and I'm working it out.” He might have noticed my frown and heard my sigh of frustration at the wishy-washy answer, because he added, “I know I'm being vague, but I have to be right now.”

He hung his head in a way that said he was considering saying more. At least that's what I wanted to think. “Okay,” I said, unable to stay ticked off.

“It's ironic, isn't it—fleeing one murder trial where I could be a witness, and I end up with the threat of another where . . .” he began.

“Where you might be the defendant,” I finished. There seemed no hope of having my curiosity satisfied. At least Quinn hadn't ignored my question completely. But what was I doing entertaining someone so slick at revealing only as much as he chose? Was I that desperate for company?

“I've thought about it a lot,” Quinn said, back to his initial track. “It's crazy. And I was so careful not to interact with law enforcement around here. My driver's license is the same, as I've told you. I didn't change the registration. I just made sure I kept to the speed limit, and I was lucky enough this past year not to run a light or bump into anyone. Things were going fine.”

“Until a murder victim shows up with your contact information in his pocket.”

Sitting across the coffee table from me, he threw open his arms to encompass my living room. “But then there's this. And I'm glad I met you.”

I covered my embarrassment by refilling our coffee mugs
and helping myself to a slice of Jarlsberg, but he might have heard my low, “Same here,” followed quickly by, “Do you mind sharing with me what you did in San Francisco? Work-wise, I mean.”

“Hey, we've shared a sweatshirt,” he said, arms open again. “I was a computer programmer.”

“Connected to the telephone company in any way?”

“Do you mean could Wendell have wanted my expertise or to consult on some telephone matter? Nope. Except that I had a phone, of course. I worked for a big grocery chain, writing code for inventory control. That's why I chose antiques out here. You know all those spy novels and witness protection dramas—they always tell you to avoid what you did in your other life. If you were high tech, go low tech, et cetera. If you were great at football, go for baseball.”

“Or knitting,” I suggested.

He laughed, which was my goal. “I'm also kind of a handyman, woodworking type, so being around old furniture has been fun.”

“Are you back at work now?” I asked Quinn, flitting back to the present.

“Fred told me to take the week off. I hope it's not his way of firing me, but I don't think so. He's a good guy.”

Quinn caught me looking at my watch. I regretted that he had to leave, not only because I was sure he had an excellent chicken recipe.

“I probably should get ready,” I said.

He rose. “Sure. You have an important date. Maybe you can ask her if she still thinks I'm guilty of anything.”

“Not you, too.” I explained how Wanda had pressed me into service to find out how the investigation was going.

“I never meant to put the heat on you,” Quinn said. “I was teasing, really. I hope you don't think I've been hanging around just because you have the police chief's ear.”

I assured him I didn't think that. I just had to convince myself.

*   *   *

In the few minutes before Sunni arrived, I had a quick conversation with Linda, across the state, via Skype.

“You are really stirring things up there,” she said. “I can't wait to meet this fugitive of yours.”

“He's not exactly—”

“I know. I'm sorry. And I'm really sorry about Wendell. I feel bad about dissing him last time. I hope they catch whoever did that to him. Are you working on it?”

“Me? What do you mean?”

Linda shook her finger at me, a possible disadvantage of visual phone calls. “Come on. When did you ever let a little detective work get by you?”

“Join the club that thinks that.”

“I can't believe you don't recognize the talent you have. Remember that lost revenue program we had, where we tried to uncover ways we were losing revenue? Didn't you take the prize for the most money recovered, from misuse of media mail, money order fraud, and I forget what else.”

“That was just part of the job.”

“Yes, but you excelled at it. Do you mean to tell me you're not putting those talents to use on an investigation of the murder of an old friend? In a town where there are four cops?”

“Well, not technically, but—”

“Aha.”

My turn to shake a finger at the face on the screen. “And there are five cops.” I had to admit to Linda that I was sort of involved. “Only peripherally,” I said.

“Of course,” she said, in a tone that sounded incredulous. “But after your dinner with the police chief tonight, it will be centrally, I'll bet.”

“We'll see.”

Linda shared news of her own recent date, the real kind, where you had dinner at a nice restaurant at the top of a skyscraper, and ended at a club with dancing. She'd met this new guy, Noah, at a retirement dinner for one of our old bosses. She'd already sent me a smartphone photo of him, the lights of Boston in the background.

I listened to a few water-cooler tidbits about people I'd worked with. I decided not to share the insights I'd picked up from Ben about how small-town North Ashcot viewed big-city Boston. She had enough to hold against my hometown without more ammunition. But, apparently, selfish as the big city was, there were more opportunities for meeting people with only one identity.

*   *   *

The twenty-minute ride from my house in Sunni's black Explorer was quiet, with intermittent talk of the weather (too cold for this time of year), movies (holiday shows were mostly kid-flick fare), an upcoming referendum on more
STOP
signs in town (sure) and one on a betting parlor (no way), and Sunni's daughter who'd be going off to college next year. I wondered if I should warn the young woman
that she shouldn't pick a school in the parasitic city of Boston if she ever wanted to come back home.

We arrived at Russo's early enough to choose seats against the wall, Sunni's preference. I imagined she was always surveying her environment. The restaurant was a noisy little Italian place in a cluster of eateries just off the main street in Pittsfield, the largest city in Berkshire County. The funky décor included the high tables and chairs that seemed to be so popular in restaurants and coffee shops these days. Climbing up was easy for someone of my height—it was more like sliding across. But not so for Sunni, who, once she reached the red vinyl seat and shoved herself back, claimed she wasn't planning to descend except to go home.

“I don't think I've ever seen you out of uniform,” I said.

She fluffed her brown-red hair. “It happens.”

“Nice sweater set. It's almost the post office blue.”

“I know it's a fifties look, but they're back. In case you hadn't noticed.”

I had noticed, and commented on how much snazzier the bolero-type cardigan was. “It's not my Aunt Tess's sweater set.”

After a brief chat about wardrobes, Sunni dropped her casual tone. “Let's get right to the business stuff,” she said. “That is, my business, not yours.”

Uh-oh.
A warning. “Sunni, I assure you it's not my intention to interfere with your business.”

She looked doubtful, then patted my hand as if I were an unruly kid. “It's not that I couldn't use a little help, Cassie, and real leads or information, delivered to me directly,
would be most welcome, but nothing is served by rumors and innuendos, and those seem to spread like wildfires in the hills. And as far as snooping around without a badge and weapon . . .” She trailed off with a “needless to say” gesture.

“I understand completely.” I hoped Sunni didn't think I'd spread any rumors. She needed only to ask my frustrated customers to learn that my lips had been sealed in that regard. Whatever the citizens were spreading, they didn't hear it from me.

“I know you're close to Quinn. I'd like to think you and I are friends, too, Cassie, but when it comes to the law and major crimes . . .” She opened her palms, which I took to mean that, once more, I could fill in the rest.

“I'm glad we're friends, and I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that.” Or get myself arrested, I added to myself.

“Or get hurt in any way,” Sunni added, as if she'd heard both my spoken and unspoken thoughts.

Once that was settled, I realized, my true intentions for the dinner flew out the window.

We ate caprese salad and pasta (I decided against a chicken dish, hoping that I'd have one tomorrow evening), and affogatos for dessert. We talked about her quilting (she'd just finished a special one for her daughter's future dorm room) and my adjustment to managing my own post (slow), books we'd read and television shows we liked (crime drama for both of us), and a new set of shops coming to downtown. It also turned out that neither of us wanted a betting parlor in town.

“Not unless they triple my staff,” Sunni said. “And my ammo budget.”

It was nice to be in agreement. No talk of Wendell Graham, Quinn Martindale, or murder.

Anyone listening to our conversation would have thought we were just friends.

Wasn't that what I'd hoped to find back home in North Ashcot? A friend to share the small things with. A meal, a conversation, a few laughs.

Why was I disappointed when that's how the evening turned out?

*   *   *

Back at home, I found myself in withdrawal. I'd spent so much of my time and mental energy the last three days on the phone book theft, the Scott/Quinn revelation, Wendell's murder, being stalked for gossip, meeting Wanda again after nearly twenty years. And, not to be neglected, new feelings for Quinn Martindale—mixed as they were, since I had no reason to believe he really was who he now claimed to be. I told myself that, by this point, Sunni would know the answer to the last question, and that she would have found a way to warn me about hanging around with him if there was anything to worry about. I hoped I hadn't missed a cue.