Gone with the Wool (21 page)

“You don't have to whisper now,” I said with a laugh. “They're not even close. There's no chance they'll hear us.”

“This is more fun.” Still crouching low, he turned on the car and put it in reverse, and it began to roll down the driveway. When it rolled into the street, he suddenly sat up, turned on the headlights and stepped on the gas. We more or less burned rubber for a few moments until we landed in front of his house and he veered into his driveway.

“Help yourself to whatever you need,” he said when we got into his kitchen. There was still a faint smell of spaghetti sauce in the air. He pulled open the door to the pantry. Since he did so much cooking for the kids who hung out at his place, his pantry looked like a storeroom. He bought pasta by the case, and there were several huge cans of tomato sauce.

“What are you making tonight?” he asked.

“I'm sticking with the orange theme and making carrot muffins.” He'd watched me bake enough to know what I needed and loaded it all up in a couple of plastic shopping bags.

He noticed me sniff the air, and he shook his head. “You didn't eat again.”

He pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and told me to sit. “Hope you don't mind leftovers.” He put some water on to boil and some sauce on the stove to heat up.

“I'm almost afraid to ask, but have you found out anything that will help Chloe?”

His teasing face had turned serious. Even with our earlier talk about Hank being a suspect, I was pretty sure he knew everybody still thought she had stabbed Rosalie. And I was sure he wasn't happy that she was keeping such a high profile.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” I said. His face instantly lightened.

“Were you planning to tell me?” he asked. The water began to boil, and he swished some leftover spaghetti in it. At the same time, the sauce had begun to simmer, filling the air with a delicious smell.

He put a plate together and set it in front of me. “I just found out most of it,” I said. The food looked delicious, and I picked up my fork, ready to dig in.

“Wait. You get the good stuff.” He went to the refrigerator and came back with a block of hard cheese. He held a grater over my plate, and curls of Parmesan cheese hit the hot sauce. It was all I could do to wait until he finished to take my first bite.

He sat down next to me as I began to twirl the noodles on my fork. “I love a girl who eats.” He gave me a few moments of eating time before he nudged me about telling him what I knew.

“Did you know about the Hardcastles owning some commercial property in town?”

He shook his head ruefully. “I guess that's why I'm still a beat cop and not a detective.”

I told him the bits and pieces that I'd picked up. “I haven't talked to all the tenants, but I'm pretty sure Rosalie did the same thing to all of them. It seems like now that she is gone, they're all off the hook. That certainly gives them all a motive.”

“There's something missing in what you said. Like names. Who are these people that Rosalie was squeezing?”

“The thing is, between Rosalie swearing people to secrecy and now Hank asking them to keep it quiet as well, the people I've talked to don't want their names made public.”

“I'm not the public,” he said. “We're talking about my sister's future here. I already feel like I failed with her. The hair, the clothes. But prison?”

“You can't do anything with the information anyway. Remember, you're off the case. There are a few more people I need to talk to.”

“You don't really think anyone is going to admit they did it, do you?” he asked.

“No, but I want to get the whole picture before going to anyone with my theory.”

He reached over and touched my arm. “I trust you.” He looked at the plate and the food still on it. “Go on and finish.” It didn't take much urging, and in no time, all that was left was a smudge of sauce. I heard Dane laugh.

“I knew I'd figure out a way to get you to come over for dinner.”

The food had done wonders for me. Dane walked me outside to the Mini Cooper, and I gave him a spontaneous hug, thanking him for dinner and the baking supplies. I'm not sure who was more surprised.

As I drove past my place, Sammy was just walking his parents out the door. I stepped hard on the gas and took off, hopefully before any of them noticed.

When I reached downtown Cadbury, the street fair had closed up for the night. The flaps were down, and the Lord of the Butterflies must have gone home. Only the strings of lights and the giant monarchs hanging from the trees remained. The stores were in the process of closing, and all the things from the sidewalk sales were being brought inside.

When I drove past the Blue Door, I saw there were still quite a few diners. Since I wanted to talk to Tag when he was alone, there was no reason to rush.

In the meantime I thought I'd make a visit to Cadbury Drugs & Sundries. Now that I knew it was part of the Hardcastle real estate holdings, I was curious to see what I could find out.

Since it stayed open all night, Cadbury Drugs was not winding down like the rest of the businesses. However, the table that held items for the sidewalk sale had been brought inside.

The interior was almost too brightly lit, and it felt out of sync with the stores around it. I asked the older woman handling the checkout at the front where the owner was.

“He's in aisle three, putting up stock. He's always putting up stock. That's what happens when you try to have too much variety and not much of any one thing.” I found aisle three and saw Larry, who was wearing his white pharmacist coat and putting out boxes of bandages.

“Hey, Dirty Larry,” I said, putting out my hands like they were six shooters. I expected a smile; instead, he looked at me like I was nuts. I should have let it drop, but I spent too much time explaining why I'd greeted him that way.

He stood up, and his eyes moved around the store nervously. “The town council came down on me for the whole Clint Eastwood thing. I didn't understand it, exactly, but they kept talking about how everything in Cadbury had to be authentic and I was a fake Clint Eastwood.” Larry shook his head at the nonsense of it all.

I smiled inwardly. I hadn't been sure how I was going to break the ice with him, but he'd provided the perfect means. “It's tough being an outsider,” I began. “They gave me the same business about my muffins. I had all these cute names for them like Merry Berry and Ebony and Ivory, but the town council said I had to call them exactly what they were.”

I looked around the interior of the store. “Isn't this building owned by the Hardcastle family?”

He suddenly had a wary expression. “Yes, why are you asking?”

I remembered how Crystal had thought I was thinking of opening up a bakery when I asked about her mother's store. “I'm thinking of opening my own bakery, and I just wondered how the Hardcastles were as landlords.”

“They seem okay to me.” He had an impassive expression.

“I'm asking because I heard that everything changed recently and Rosalie Hardcastle was dealing directly with all the tenants. How was she to work with?”

He seemed uncomfortable, but the direct question left him nowhere to go—or so I thought.

“It's really irrelevant now,” he said, “after what happened.” He rocked his head in concern, though I couldn't tell if it was real or feigned. “And Cadbury seems like such a friendly town.”

“I was at the Blessing of the Butterflies service,” I said, as though it meant I knew some kind of secret. “What about you?” I noticed the clerk had come down the aisle with a customer in tow. They stopped next to us.

“I didn't go to the service. No time.” He answered quickly and put the box of bandages he was holding on the shelf, as if to end our whole exchange.

“But didn't you go out to Vista Del Mar that night, right around the time of the service?” the clerk asked. I heard Larry suck in his breath, but his expression didn't change.

“Is there something you need?” he asked, glancing from the clerk to the man with her. Apparently, he thought by ignoring her comment, I would, too. But I don't think he expected the clerk to ignore his question about needing his assistance.

“He does everything around here,” she chattered on to me. “He's a full-service pharmacist. When somebody at Vista Del Mar needed a prescription, he not only filled it,
but delivered it.” She turned back to her boss. “You can't have forgotten.”

“Of course, that's right.” He forced a weak smile.

“I suppose the cops talked to you and asked if you'd seen anything,” I said.

He tried to brush me off by dealing with the clerk and the customer with her.

The clerk held out a strip of paper and a brown paper bag. “He wants to return this and get the cash back.” The man had a determined expression, with his arms folded.

Larry read over the receipt and checked what was in the bag before shaking his head. “The best I can do is offer you a store credit,” he said. He kept the receipt and merchandise and scribbled something on a card and handed it to the customer.

“Customers,” he said with an annoyed tone when they had walked away. He showed me the receipt and the contents of the bag, and I understood why he was upset. It showed the customer had bought a box of allergy medicine. It listed the brand, the size of the box and even the dosage. The name on the credit card was there, too, though only the last four digits of the credit card number appeared. The item in the bag was a bottle of generic aspirin. It was obvious he wasn't going to respond to my comment about the cops, so I repeated it.

“You didn't say if you had to talk to the cops,” I said.

He seemed uncomfortable. “No. Nobody at Vista Del Mar knew I was there except the person I brought the prescription for, and I think he left the next day.” He seemed to have realized what he just said. “I try to steer clear of trouble. I didn't realize my clerk knew where I went,” he said half to himself. “You're not going to go off and tell the cops anything, are you?” His tone sounded almost threatening.

Before I could respond, two women came down the aisle, and he recognized them as business. “Well, it was very nice talking to you. And you're right about us outsiders sticking together. You never know what can happen.”

No, you don't
, I thought to myself. “I just put you on my suspect list,” I said out loud, after I'd exited the store.

I walked back to the car and got my muffin ingredients and carried them to the Blue Door.

In the time I'd spent at the drugstore, the restaurant had emptied out, and Tag was looking through the menus, making sure they were all pointing in the same direction. I checked the dessert counter. There was some cake left, but knowing that the muffins were selling out again, I didn't take it as a mark against me. With no name attached to the cakes, they were just generic and probably didn't seem special. I would talk to Lucinda about putting my name back on them.

The cook had his backpack slung over his shoulder and gave me a wave as he headed to the door.

Tag looked distraught. “Did you tell her all the secrecy was really about adding calamari?”

“No, I just left things as they were,” I said. I took my supplies to the kitchen and came back into the dining room. He was sitting at one of the tables and pulled out a chair for me.

“You don't think that Lucinda isn't going to come home after the retreat?” The poor man seemed almost panicky. Even so, he thought to straighten the fork on the place setting in front of him.

“She'll get over it,” I said. The idea of me being a relationship helper seemed pretty funny considering my own difficulty with managing them. “She's not upset about whether you really added calamari to the menu—it's that you left her out of something.” I glanced up at him and hoped that I was
giving him a knowing look, thinking that if he thought I already knew about why Hank had been visiting him, he might start talking.

It seemed he was too busy checking over the other place settings, and I realized I was going to have to be a lot more obvious. “I know who the man really is and why he was here.”

Tag appeared stricken and sucked in his breath. “I didn't tell you,” he said. “You have to make that clear.” He started muttering worriedly to himself, and I put my hand on his arm to reassure him.

“You're not the only one this happened to,” I said, and his head shot up.

“There were others?” He seemed surprised and relieved at the same time. Then it was like somebody unzipped his mouth and the words just tumbled out. “I didn't want to tell Lucinda about the rent increase until I'd worked out a solution. I thought if I found a way to increase the business, I could compensate. I was trying to drum up some catering business. I brought the cheese tray for the butterfly group to give a sample of what we could do. And I was talking to the manager of the Cora and Madeleine Delacorte Café about letting the Blue Door supply some sandwiches and salads.”

“So that's what you were doing when you dropped Lucinda off on the night of the murder.”

He flinched at the word murder. “I couldn't tell her what I was doing at Vista Del Mar. I mean, I would have had to tell her eventually, if it worked out.” He stopped and seemed overwhelmed with it all. “It was such a terrible time after that Hardcastle woman told me about doubling the rent. And then when she made me that offer—I certainly wasn't going to let her be a partner in the business.” He put his hand up and began to run his fingers through his thick brown hair.
“I just thought I was protecting Lucinda. Isn't that what men are supposed to do?”

“Maybe in the old days,” I said. “But now we women are right there with you guys, taking care of business. Lucinda isn't some frail flower who wilts at problems. She's helped me out of lots of sticky situations.”

“Right,” he said with a sigh, and then his expression changed. “I should have figured it out. You're probably investigating Rosalie Hardcastle's death. I thought it was a given that it was the princess with the tattoo.” He'd begun thinking out loud. “But she's Dane's sister. You'd be trying to defend her by finding another suspect.” I watched his mind begin to churn. “Another suspect like me. But if what you said was true about other people getting the same offer I did, one of them could have done it.”

“Why don't you just tell me what happened,” I said.

“What happened when?” he asked. I should have known. Tag was such a precise person, he needed exact questions.

“Let's start with the night she was killed.”

“After I dropped off the cheese tray and Lucinda, I talked to the manager of the café, and then I went home and spent the night worrying,” he said. “I was supposed to give Rosalie my answer on Monday.”

“And then?” I urged.

“When I heard she was dead, I didn't know what to do.”

“Did Hank Hardcastle contact you?”

Tag was sitting up straight now. “No, I got in touch with him. I wanted to make it clear that I wasn't going to take that offer. He's a hard one to connect with since he works nights. We arranged to meet here.” Tag looked toward the front door and the porch beyond. “That's when you saw him.”

Tag started to play with a spoon and then caught himself.
He seemed terribly upset by what he was doing and quickly put it back into perfect alignment with the rest of the silverware. “I was shocked. He didn't know anything about the deal I'd been offered. Or the rent increase. He told me that when they inherited the property, Rosalie had insisted on handling it and he'd let her. He apologized for what she'd done, over and over. He seemed terribly embarrassed and went on about her ruining the Hardcastle name. Said that his mother would be horrified if she knew what he had let happen. That's when he told me there would be no rent increase as long as I agreed never to tell anybody what she had done.” Tag froze. “This can't count, because you already knew, right?”

“No, he can't blame you for me finding out. He sounds like a desperate man. Desperate to cover up what she'd done.” I didn't say anything, but this time Tag got what I meant.

“You mean he could have killed her?”

“He could have just been pretending he didn't know when he talked to you. He could have found out what she was doing, and maybe he thought there was no other way to stop her.”

Tag didn't seem to want to think about it. “Well, now that it's out in the open, maybe you could tell Lucinda what happened. Be sure to tell her I did it all for her own good.”

“I think she would much rather hear it from you.”

“You're right,” he said. His spirits seemed a whole lot lighter when he got up. He put on his jacket and left.