The Big Kitty (16 page)

Sunny had had enough of tiptoeing around her boss. “Ollie, did you even read the paper? There’s no mention of mad murderers roaming the streets of Kittery Harbor, just a local story about local questions. Ada Spruance spent her whole life in this town. I think she deserves better than to have ‘accident’ stamped on her forehead before being dumped in the nearest grave. There are questions that had to be raised.”

She took a deep breath, wondering how she could get through to him. “I mean, my parents knew her. I bet yours did, too.”

Ollie was, after all, a hometown boy who’d gone off to the big city and then come back, flush with cash.

He cleared his throat, actually sounding a little embarrassed. “Yeah, Mom and Dad knew her before she became”—the word “crazy” hung unspoken in the air—“the way she was.”

After that, the subject got dropped, and Ollie toned down the sarcasm while they discussed a couple of business
matters. But even so, Sunny had the uncomfortable feeling that if interns could handle the website, she’d be out of a job.

She sat feeling gloomy after Ollie hung up, trying to get work done and only creating more for herself.

Then Will Price walked in, going directly to the newspaper rack and picking up a copy of the
Crier
, holding it at arm’s length to admire the front page. “So there it is,” he said. “A lot of questions—but you missed the million-dollar one.”

“You mean the six-to-eight-million-dollar one,” she told him.

“I mean the big question: why did Gordie Spruance murder his mom?”

His casual attitude toward the whole affair ticked Sunny off. “Well, if you’re so sure that you have a line on the killer, it’s a shame you didn’t outline your case for the story.” She paused to glare at him. “Oh, that’s right. You were staying on deep background for political reasons. So I got to make a target of myself stirring the pot while you watch to see what comes to the top.”

He fiddled with the paper uncomfortably before finally saying, “I wouldn’t quite put it that way.”

“So what have you turned up that makes Gordie a stronger suspect than the Towles—or the Ellsworths, for that matter?”

“Well, I might start with that six to eight million you mentioned,” Will offered. “A big-money motive is a strong motive.”

“So is love—and the Towles really love their dog, Festus. Ada wanted him destroyed.” Sunny also pointed out
how the local dog-cat-chicken controversy had hurt the Ellsworths’ business. “They love their land—the family’s been farming there for four generations.”

“We can rule the Ellsworths out on opportunity,” Will told her confidently. “Saturday is a big day for their self-picking operation. Nate was there all morning, running hayrides full of tourists to and from the apple orchards. And Isabel was behind the counter, selling doughnuts and cider.”

Sunny nodded. “And do the others have alibis?”

“Chuck and Leah Towles took Festus for a walk in Windward Point Park,” Will reported. “It was morning, but not too early. A jogger spotted them around the same time you discovered Ada’s body.”

“That doesn’t let them off the hook,” Sunny objected. “All we know is that Ada died sometime before I found her. You didn’t take her liver temperature or anything, did you?”

Will rolled his eyes. “People watch a couple of
CSI
shows, and then they expect miracles.”

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Sunny said. “If your jogger is the first time somebody spotted the Towles, either of them could have gotten up earlier.”

Will doggedly continued down the list. “Veronica Yarborough sleeps late on Saturdays.”

“And probably every other day, too,” Sunny muttered.

“On weekdays, though, she has staff coming in,” Will went on, ignoring her comment. “Not so much on the weekends, unless she’s having a party. The Saturday in question was not a party weekend. That means the first corroboration on her movements was a luncheon date well after the presumed time of death.”

“That leaves her in the picture, too,” Sunny argued.

“Although I expect she’d prefer having one of the servants throw Ada down the stairs,” Will said with a wry smile. “After all, that’s the sort of job that could soil her lily-white hands.”

“So what about Gordie?” Sunny pressed on.

“We can’t trace his movements from the night before until almost eleven in the morning, when one of our officers apparently woke him up to give him the news about what happened to his mom,” Will reported. “The last time he was seen before that—by anyone who’ll admit to it, at least—was one a.m., the last call for drinks at O’Dowd’s.”

“Is that place still around?” Sunny asked in shock. “When I was home from college, my friends and I used to sneak over there because they’d serve us even though we were underage.” She shook her head. “It was pretty down and dirty.”

“Well, it’s only gone further down and gotten dirtier,” Will told her. “And I don’t say that just because Gordie Spruance hangs out there. It’s, like, lowlife central for Kittery Harbor.”

He ticked off the points on his fingers. “So, we’ve got a strong motive, we’ve got at least possible opportunity, and as for means …”

Sunny remembered Gordie heaving around that big bag of cat food. “Yeah,” she reluctantly agreed, “he’s strong enough to have done it.”

“What hit me last night, the clincher as far as I’m concerned, is what’s happened to you in the last few days.” He frowned, trying to organize his case. “That bullet in your car, the hose outside your house—”

“I can’t imagine Gordie coming up with those slick criminal plans,” Sunny told him.

“But could you see him as the guy who screwed both of them up?” Will asked.

That stopped her for a second, but she shook her head, remembering the lost, scared look in Gordie’s eyes when he talked about his mother. “I just don’t buy it. He was really upset about Ada’s death.”

“Sure, he was upset,” Will argued. “It’s called regret. Remember, Sunny, he’s a tweaker. No impulse control. He could freak out and kill someone, then still feel really bad about it afterward. As for those half-assed booby traps and stuff—hell, they just stink of tweaker.”

“So that’s your case? Stinks, and what-ifs, and conjectures?” Sunny said. “If you had anything solid, you wouldn’t be here talking to me.”

Will grimaced. “True. If I had even a scrap of real evidence, I’d risk going over Nesbit’s head straight to the district attorney. We did everything but put both cars under a microscope, hoping to find Gordie’s fingerprints, but all we got were smudges. He may be a tweaker, but he was smart enough to wear gloves.”

“So what are you going to do?” Sunny asked.

“Well, you said it—he’s upset. After stewing about it for a few days, he might be ready to talk.”

“You’re going to question him?” Sunny stared in disbelief. “How are you going to do that? On what pretext? You can’t just haul him down to the station. What are you going to charge him with—drugs?”

Will shook his head. “I don’t think Nesbit would go for
it—even if it were a simple drug bust. We’ve got to go at this a different way.”

“We?” Sunny said.

“I’m a cop. He’s just going to shut up the minute he sees me,” Will told her. “But you—you grew up with Gordie. I could see it when you guys were talking. He responded to you.”

“So you think he’d confess a murder to me?”

“I think he might mention something to you that we could use,” Will said. “Gordie is in O’Dowd’s most nights. If you happened to come in for a drink, it would be the most natural thing in the world for you to have a little chat with him.”

He saw the look on her face. “Hey, I’d be right outside the window for backup. If I see anything weird, I’ll be right in there.” Will shrugged, spreading his arms. “Just talk to the guy, that’s all. I get an hour for meal break. So if you came in there, say ten thirty, eleven o’clock …”

*

How did I
let him talk me into this?
Sunny wondered as she pulled her dad’s pickup into a space in front of O’Dowd’s. It was a long, low wooden building in need of a coat of paint. The place didn’t even have a proper sign, just a neon beer advertisement in one of the small windows.

Sunny opened the door and slid down to the pavement. She shook her head in amusement when she recognized the tan truck parked next to hers. Gordie Spruance’s.

Well, at least I know he’s in there.

She looked around until she spotted Will’s patrol car parked across the street.

Okay. No more putting it off.

Finding her hands suddenly damp, she wiped them on the sides of her jeans. From what she remembered of the decor in O’Dowd’s, she’d chosen essentially the same outfit she’d worn to clean Ada’s house, with the addition of an old leather jacket.

Her dad thought she was going out searching for Shadow again.

Maybe I’d be smarter if I were doing that,
Sunny thought ruefully. Instead, she straightened her back and headed for the gin mill’s door.

The unpainted wooden panel had swollen over the years, sticking in its frame. Sunny had to pull hard to open it.

She stepped into a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. A place that serves underage drinkers wouldn’t care much about a nonsmoking law. Or maybe the regulars consider this their private club.

In a way, the smoke served a useful purpose. It cut the stink of stale beer and less pleasant substances that had soaked into the raw wood walls and floors over the years.

The jukebox was playing loud country music with an amped-up bass thumping away, battling with the high-decibel babble of voices all trying to make themselves heard over the din.

A loud—and familiar—laugh cut across the noise. Sunny was shocked to discover that she recognized the
woman behind the bar. Back when she last went to O’Dowd’s, her male college friends all hoped that Jasmine the barmaid would fall out of the skimpy outfits she wore.

Nowadays, I think folks might be afraid of that happening,
Sunny thought.

As Jasmine threw back her head for another laugh, doughy flesh jiggled wherever her tiny tank top didn’t reach. And the unnaturally black hair that Sunny remembered now had an inch and a half of gray roots showing on either side of the center part.

No, Jasmine was not the barroom femme fatale anymore, explaining why a couple of guys at the bar were checking Sunny out as she stood by the door. She studiously avoided their gazes and then spotted Gordie sitting alone at one of the tables scattered around the room, a beer in front of him.

Sunny dug out a bill and headed to the bar. “Can I get a glass of red wine?” she asked Jasmine.

She’d already noticed that beer only seemed to come by the bottle or pint, she didn’t want to be drinking hard liquor under the circumstances, and soda would have made her motives for being there, alone, seem even more questionable than they already were.

The barmaid scooped up a stemmed wineglass from a shelf behind her—Sunny noticed it was dusty—and the wine itself came from a box.

Not a big seller, apparently,
she thought.
I just hope it hasn’t turned to vinegar.

She left a tip, strolled over to Gordie’s table, and sat across from him.

He looked up from the half-empty beer he’d been contemplating and stared as if she were Dracula’s daughter, inflamed zits showing up even more clearly on his pale face. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the mood to go out for a quick drink. Been a while since I was in here, though.”

But as Sunny put down her drink, she found some things never changed. Ever since she could remember, the tables at O’Dowd’s had been cheap rounds of plywood on top of heavy steel pillars. The bases never sat straight, and the tops could give you splinters at a moment’s notice. They still could. The table wobbled, causing her wine to slop around in its glass.

“Heard you wrote a piece about Mom in the paper.” Gordie looked down at his beer. “Sorry, I haven’t read it yet.”

“It was more about the unfinished business she left behind,” Sunny told him.

“If you mean the ticket, I haven’t found it yet.” She had to strain to hear Gordie over the rowdy background noise. “Maybe she never actually bought the damned thing. Mom was getting a little older. She’d started losing track of stuff sometimes.”

“I know you’re depending on that money to fix up the house and get things on an even keel,” Sunny said. “Not getting it would be a real killer.”

She’d decided to approach this talk the same way she did search engine optimization for her website—throwing out keywords and checking the response.

The word “killer” didn’t seem to have any effect on Gordie. She decided to try another.

“Poor Ada changed a lot from the way I remember her as a kid. But I guess we all have.” She smiled, gesturing to Gordie. “Look at you, how you’ve slimmed down. I hope you didn’t do it the dangerous way—with amphetamines or something.”

Gordie flinched and took a quick look around the nearby tables. A bit of an overreaction, since they were all empty. Okay. She could mark down a definite hit at the mention of amphetamines.

“I hope you don’t mind that I wrote that article,” she went on. “Maybe I should have mentioned it the last time we talked.”

“Why?” Gordie asked. “Did you say something bad about me—or Mom?”

“No, but ever since I visited with you, somebody’s been playing tricks on me.”

Except for a little interest, Gordie wasn’t really showing a reaction.

“Yeah, somebody got into my car, somebody was making trouble outside my house—”

Again, nothing appeared to register with Gordie. He blinked at her, a little puzzled, and said, “That’s messed up.”

All right,
Sunny thought,
looks as if I’ll have to up the ante.

“It made me wonder if someone was afraid of that story I was doing.” She gave him a hard look. “Afraid that something might turn up to suggest that what happened to your mother wasn’t an accident.”

She had all of his attention now. “What do you mean?”

“When’s the last time your mom used those cellar stairs?” Sunny asked.

For a long moment, Gordie’s eyes refused to meet hers. “I dunno,” he mumbled. “But then, I haven’t lived there in a while.” He looked as if he were trying to push something away.