Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (7 page)

Daniel grunted.

“I suppose I’d better let you get to work.”  Mackay pushed
himself to his feet, the effort Daniel suspected it cost him well hidden. 
“Really I come by because Ellie makes better coffee than I get at my office.”

“Yeah, she does.”  Daniel chuckled.  “Don’t try to steal
her.”

“I tried before you came.  She turned me down flat.  Heard
you were young and sexy, she said.”  There was amusement in the sheriff’s brown
eyes.  “Guess she was right.”

“Women always think so,” Daniel agreed smugly, then thought
fleetingly about Sophie and wondered if she thought he was sexy.

He and Mackay were both laughing when he walked the other
man out to his car.

Alone again, Daniel mulled over his next move.  Go back out
to the storage facility to view more video footage?  Start interviewing the
people most closely connected to the auction to save Misty Beach?

Damn, but he hoped Sophie worked fast.  He had an itch under
his skin.  Whoever had killed Doreen Stedmann was desperate.  He might not be a
danger to anyone else if he – or she – had found what he’d been looking for. 
But if he hadn’t…  If he hadn’t, that desperation would be tightened a notch or
two, and now he knew he could kill if he had to.

“We did all wonder that, without consulting any of us,
Doreen invited her…well, she isn’t really a niece at all, is she?”  Joyce
Ervin’s small, tight smile never faltered, but the delicate pause conveyed her
opinion of trusting someone who wasn’t really a relative at all. 
“Miss…Thomsen, I believe her name is.  But, oh!  You know that.  Wasn’t she the
one to find poor Doreen’s body?”

“Yes, she was,” Daniel said with what he considered
remarkable restraint.  He was unsettled by the power of his outraged instinct
to defend a woman he didn’t really know.  “She was concerned when Ms. Stedmann
failed to show up as promised and wasn’t answering her phone.”

When he mentally ranked the busybodies in town, Joyce came
up number three.  He’d already liked her the least of the group; both Elaine
and Louella had more redeeming qualities than Joyce did, in his opinion.  They
liked to know everything, but were more inclined to step up to help when they
discovered someone had suffered a misfortune.  Funny, too, because they were
both kind of wizened and pruny looking, while Joyce was pleasantly plump with
an ample bosom that suggested a big heart beating beneath it.  Her permed,
steel-gray curls were as tight as her smile, though.

“Supposedly this Miss Thomsen can accomplish things none of
us can.”  Joyce sniffed to express her opinion of that.  “It was just like
Doreen, though.  Not wanting to say anything bad about the dead, you
understand, but she did tend to take over any project and do exactly as she
pleased no matter what anyone else said.”

This wasn’t the first time Daniel had heard the opinion
expressed today, although Joyce was the most openly bitter.  Maybe, he
reflected, it was even true that Doreen tended to take charge and, well, charge
ahead once she had the reins.  On the other hand, so far as he knew, Joyce
appeared on the list of auction volunteers but had yet to do much of anything. 
The quantity of stuff in that storage unit told Daniel somebody had been
working hard, but it wasn’t this woman.

“For all she knew,” Joyce continued, “we have someone who
has all the skills this Miss Thomsen does right here in our community!”

“I understand Elaine Terwilliger has some experience putting
on auctions,” he said, knowing full well that Joyce disliked Elaine every bit
as much as she had Doreen.

“So she says.”  Joyce looked as if she was smelling some
mayonnaise past its best.  “Now I have quite a talent for organization.  If
Doreen had only asked, I’d have been glad to jump right in and do what needed
to be done.”

“Ms. Thomsen does have professional experience with
auctions,” Daniel couldn’t resist informing her.  “She’s started work already. 
She has a computer program designed to handle auctions start to finish, and is
already entering items.”

Joyce gasped.  “After finding our dear Doreen only
yesterday?  Brutally murdered?  How can she?  Apparently any family feelings
only ran one way between those two!”

Daniel was the one who was afraid he smelled something that
had gone bad, and he knew who it was.  Nonetheless, he didn’t stir from his
seat on an uncomfortable chintz sofa in the Ervins’ living room.  He might not
like this woman, but she could be a fount of gossip.

“She tells me that making the auction a success is the last
thing she can do for a woman who meant a great deal for her.  She’s determined
to fulfill Doreen’s last quest.”

“Oh.  Well.” 

He had to change the subject before he said something he
shouldn’t.

“I understand that Ms. Stedmann never married,” he
commented.  “You have any idea why?  Did she suffer a tragedy?  Just never meet
anyone?  Or did she prefer women?”  He raised his brows.  “You seem to know
everyone.”

“People do tell me things.”  Joyce leaned forward slightly
and even lowered her voice, although they were alone in the house, so far as
Daniel knew.  Mr. Ervin – whose first name Daniel couldn’t recall – hadn’t left
any impression on Daniel, who didn’t even know if the guy was retired or still
working.  “I’m
quite
sure she wasn’t inclined toward…you know,” Joyce
all but whispered.

“Oh?” he murmured, leaning forward himself to encourage her.

“I’m afraid she had a male
friend
.”  Going for
scandalized, the old biddy sounded more avid than anything.  “If you know what
I mean.  A married man.”

“Did she.”  Huh.  Now that was interesting.  “I know it goes
against the grain for you,” he lied, “but it would be a big help to me if you
could tell me who.”

She pulled back as if shocked.  “Oh, no.  I couldn’t.  My
gracious.  Doreen and I were such dear friends.  Even now…  No.  The idea of
betraying that kind of confidence.”  She shook her head firmly.

Daniel knew damn well that Doreen Stedmann would no more
have confided anything that personal in Joyce than she would have seen a problem
and not tried to fix it.

“I never know what information will help when I’m
investigating a crime as terrible as this one,” he coaxed.

“I can’t believe her personal life had anything to do with
her murder.”  There was steel in Joyce’s voice now.  “Surely she interrupted a
thief.  The…arrangement I mentioned has been going on for years.  I shouldn’t
have said anything.”

She wouldn’t relent, but she’d succeeded in making him
curious.

Daniel escaped, trying to decide who would have known Doreen
well enough to be able to tell him if, in fact, she’d had a long-running affair
with a married man.  If so – how the hell had they kept it a secret?  As he’d
told Sophie, nobody in town developed hemorrhoids without becoming the subject
of commiseration and advice.  He tried to picture a man in Doreen’s age range
sneaking through back yards and scaling fences to let himself in her back door
for illicit sex and realized he was grinning.  Inappropriately, but he couldn’t
help himself.

Truthfully, he had trouble picturing Doreen having sex at
all, but he felt bad about that.  He hoped he still enjoyed bedroom gymnastics
when he was in his sixties.  Seventies and eighties, too, although he’d rather
he didn’t have to work as hard for it as Doreen’s married lover must have.

Would Sophie know? he wondered.  He was reluctant to ask her
in case she didn’t.

Elaine Terwilliger next, he decided.  She might be more
forthcoming than Joyce.  Worse come to worse, he’d turn to Louella Shoup.  What
she didn’t know probably hadn’t happened.  Now Louella, he could imagine
sneaking through backyards, likely carrying binoculars the better to see with,
my dear.  Spry and scrawny as she was, she could probably make it over the
fences, too.  A few times, he’d had an uneasy feeling when he was home that he
was being watched, and had pulled all his blinds and double-checked that the
slats were closed tightly.  He’d imagined the unseen watcher to be more
malevolent than Louella Shoup, but in this town she was the best bet to be
peering in windows.

He drove a few blocks and turned a corner after leaving
Joyce’s house, then pulled to the curb and reached for his phone.

Sophie answered on the third ring.  “Chief Colburn?”

He hoped her formality was because one of his officers was
within earshot.

“Just wondering how it was going.”

“More slowly than I’d like.  I swear a quarter of the items
don’t have an attached procurement form, so I don’t know who the donor is and
will have to research value besides.  So far I’m not finding any of the more
valuable items Doreen told me about, either.”

“Could she have kept the pricey things somewhere else?”

“I suppose it’s possible.”  She sounded doubtful.  “But why
would she?  It never seemed to occur to her that anyone would be dishonest, or
she wouldn’t have handed out so many keys to the unit.”

“That’s true,” he conceded.

“Have you gone through her house yet?”  Her apprehension
leaked out.

“A walk-through only.”  An uneasy feeling told him he might
have made a mistake.  “I’m going there next.”

“You’ll let me know if you find anything auction related?”

“Yes, of course.  Is Officer Grissom being a help?”

Five of his six officers were barely old enough to shave. 
Abbot Grissom was the exception.  In his early fifties, he’d kept the same job
for close to thirty years, showing no ambition to apply to the county for a
position as detective, or to rise to chief of the Cape Trouble police
department.

“Yes, he’s very kind.”

She sounded like she meant it.  In the next second, it
occurred to Daniel that he was missing a good bet there.  Grissom might be as
useful a source of gossip as the biddies.

He glanced at his watch.  “You going to be out there much
longer?” he asked, keeping his voice casual.

“Oh – another hour, at least.”

“All right.  After I check out your aunt’s house more
thoroughly, I might stop by.”

“Is it…do you know something?” she asked hesitantly.

“No.  I’m sorry.”  Although with a little luck, he’d find
out more about Doreen from her house.  How could she have had a long-time
lover, for example, without there being some evidence of his existence and
identity?

“Marge said you planned to watch more of the video.”

That might be a task for Grissom, too, Daniel thought.  The
older officer would be more likely to recognize people seen only in profile,
say, than Daniel would.

“One of us will,” he agreed.  “I’ll be out there before you
pack it up.”

Five minutes later, he was letting himself into Doreen
Stedmann’s small bungalow again, using the key he had kept after retrieving it
from beneath the plant pot on the front porch.  He’d figured that key was the
next best thing to a note that said,
Come on in and make yourself at home!
 
Of course, the killer presumably had Doreen’s set of keys and could let himself
in any time, so maybe Daniel wasn’t doing anything but shutting the barn door
after the horses were out.  Still, he thought it unlikely that a man – or woman
– shaken after having just bashed a woman’s head in would then rush over here
and let him or herself into Doreen’s house through the front door despite the
twitching curtains up and down the block.  Eventually…maybe.  But not yet.

He’d suggest to Sophie that she have the locks changed as
soon as possible.

*****

Either the storage facility was a popular afternoon
destination, or word had gotten out that the unit in which Doreen Stedmann had
been murdered was standing open and the mysterious niece was working out here
in plain sight.  Sophie swore that every ten minutes or so, one vehicle or
another circled slowly around the backside of the building and crept by the new
unit.  Heads turned.  It was like being involved in a minor accident on the
freeway, when every single passing motorist slowed to stare.  No, she thought
with black humor, this was more like one of those tours of scenes where
notorious crimes had taken place.

In fact, not many of people rubber-necking had gotten a look
into the original unit, because right after lunch she and Officer Grissom had
hauled the contents of another set of shelves over here, and he had carefully
locked behind them.

Not twenty minutes after she’d talked to Daniel, a black SUV
came to a stop right in front of the open space where Sophie sat on her folding
chair behind the card table.  Officer Grissom stepped forward as if to shield
her, then relaxed when a man got out.

“Mr. Billington.”

Sophie rose to her feet, careful to school her face to
friendly openness even though her stomach had clenched.  During the limited
time she’d spent in Cape Trouble as an adult, she hadn’t only avoided the sight
of the river and the ramshackle resort and sand dunes on the other side of it. 
She’d also avoided the people she remembered from her childhood summers.  She’d
seen old Mr. Billington a few times, but not his nephew.

Benjamin Billington had changed; of course he had.  But he
was already in his early twenties then, she thought, not a kid like she’d
been.  His brown hair was graying at the temples and he’d thickened a little at
the waist, but she would have recognized him even if they’d bumped into each
other in Portland.  The resemblance to his uncle was greater than when he was
young.  He had the same broad face and forehead punctuated by a striking
widow’s peak.  He wasn’t handsome, but not homely, either.  He was taller than
his uncle, she thought, but not much; maybe five foot eight or nine, but
stocky.  Powerfully built.  He hadn’t run to fat at all.  She would have
considered him a pleasant looking man if she didn’t hate so desperately any
memory of seeing him passing their cabin, sometimes on foot, sometimes driving
an open Jeep that carried cleaning equipment.  He had worked for his uncle
then, if only during summers.  He might still have been in college, she
realized now.  Then – well, he was only another grown-up, one so common a sight
she’d paid him no more attention than she did the faded curtains at the kitchen
window in the cabin that her family rented every summer.

He nodded and said, “Grissom.”  Then he appraised her with a
long look, smiled and held out his hand.  “Sophie Thomsen.  I won’t swear I’d
have known you, but it’s a pleasure to see you.”

“Mr. Billington.”  She made herself accept his handshake.

“Benjamin, please,” he said.  His expression became grave. 
“I wanted to tell you how sorry I was to hear about Doreen.  I understand she
considered you family.”

“I considered her family, too.”  Unexpectedly, her lips
quivered and she had to momentarily press them together.  “I’ll miss her more
than I can say.”

“This whole community will miss her.  From what Uncle Harlow
said, she accomplished more than the whole city council put together.  I don’t
know why she never ran for office.”

That made Sophie smile, if shakily.  “Aunt Doreen thought
the council members were a bunch of self-important, stuffed shirts.  She used
to tell me that she wasn’t setting herself up to get out-voted  when she had
determined to set out on a mission.”