Arsenic with Austen (23 page)

“Is—or was—there an entrance from the back?”

“That I don't know. Easy enough to find out from the property manager, I guess.”

“I'll go talk to them tomorrow.” Luke opened his mouth, but Emily held up her palm. “Don't go all official on me again. It's perfectly reasonable for an owner to be looking into a fire on her own property.”

“You got me there. And while you're in Tillamook, will you go to the cell phone store?”

She huffed. “All right. If you insist. But I'm getting the no-frills model, and I'm only giving the number to you and Katie and Marguerite.”

“No problem.” Luke turned to Marguerite. “When you were in Brock's car, did you see anything? Like a pile of clothes, or maybe a bag that could have held clothes?”

“
Mais oui,
there was a what-do-you-call-it? Athletic bag on the passenger seat. He moved it to the back so I could get in.”

Luke drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Wonder if it's still there.”

“
Non,
he took it into his room when we went back to the hotel.” At Luke's raised eyebrows, she added, “
Non,
Monsieur Luke, I do not allow myself to be seduced by suspects. I only wanted him to think I might so I could get him to talk. But he was not interested in talking. So I left.”

“Hell. Now I'll have to get a search warrant, and I don't know how I'm gonna show probable cause.”

“Couldn't you just go to his room to interview him and casually look in the closet?” Emily said.

“And casually open up his bag? Or casually take it away with me? I don't think that's gonna fly, Em.”

“There's always the chance he'll be cooperative.”

“Yeah, if he's already dumped the evidence. Still, I guess it can't hurt to try.”

He got up and turned to go, then pivoted back again. “Oh, I forgot to tell you—got the results of the autopsy on Beatrice.” He paused. Emily appreciated the drama but could have shaken him for keeping her waiting.

“It was arsenic.”

 

twenty-three

“For my own part, I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them.… I advise everybody who is going to build, to build a cottage.”

—Robert Ferrars to Elinor Dashwood,
Sense and Sensibility

Tuesday morning Emily drove to Tillamook. Marguerite stayed behind, having decided with characteristic abruptness that she simply must do some work on her article on the French Symbolists. She spread out her books and papers in the library, dressed in an old sweater and jeans and looking every inch the world-oblivious scholar.

The property management company had its office downtown, not far from accountant Wade Evans and attorney Jamie MacDougal. In fact, nothing in Tillamook's downtown was very far from anything else.

The office was abuzz with the aftermath of the fire. “Oh, Mrs. Cavanaugh, I'm so glad you came in!” said the manager after Emily had introduced herself. “I just tried to call you. We need you to sign the claim forms for the fire insurance.”

Emily sat across the desk from the manager, a pleasant-looking woman of about forty who, Emily guessed, was usually neater in appearance than she was right now—dark blond hair escaping from a loose bun, light blue shirt collar half in, half out of her navy jacket. “Where do I sign?”

“There”—she flipped pages and pointed with her pen—“and there. Thank you so much.”

“I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about the cottage that burned.”

“Certainly. I assure you, all your cottages are very well maintained. No electrical faults or anything like that. And we checked it after the last tenant left. We always have the places cleaned between tenants, and the cleaner is instructed to make sure appliances are unplugged, heaters off, and all that.”

“Excellent. My questions were along different lines. Did the cottage have a back door?”

“Um … Let me see … I'm not personally familiar with every single property, you understand. I might have a plan somewhere.” She stood and flipped through a drawer in the file cabinet behind her desk. “Oh yes, here it is. One Fifty Cedar.” She laid a set of drawings in front of Emily.

Emily checked the rear elevation. It showed a door leading into the half basement at the back of the sloping lot. “Do you know how secure this door was?”

“Well, as I say, I'm not personally familiar … But Mrs. Runcible insisted on dead bolts for all the outside doors.”

Emily frowned over the drawing. Surely even a dead-bolted door could be forced if one didn't care about leaving evidence. If one knew all the evidence would shortly be burned to a cinder.

Emily asked for a copy of the plans just in case they might come in helpful. With the scaled-down photocopies in a folder under her arm, she thanked the manager and turned to leave. An assistant passed her in the office doorway and whispered something to the manager.

“Mrs. Cavanaugh?” the manager called after her. “I've just been informed—one of your business tenants has given notice.”

“Oh, really?” Emily had thought all the downtown businesses were in good health. “Which one?”

“Sweets by the Sea. It seems … Well, they're not going out of business.” The manager gave a sheepish cough. “It seems they want to move into Mr. Runcible's empty spot. Apparently, Ms. Landau arranged it.”

“I see. Well, thank you for telling me. I'm sure we'll find a new tenant soon.”

Emily set off for the cell phone shop, which was down the highway back in the direction of Stony Beach. So Brock was a sheep stealer on top of everything else. No big surprise there. Nor was it surprising Mrs. Sweet would jump at a chance to cut off a connection with “one of them Worthings.” But it was enlightening that her animosity did not extend to the Runcible bloodline.

Emily felt an itch to get to the bottom of this decades-old mystery. Maybe Luke could help.

She found the cell phone shop but hesitated outside the door, as nervous as if she were going for her first job interview. Why hadn't she asked Luke to come with her? She knew nothing about models, features, prices. Her ignorance just begged a salesman to take unfair advantage.

If only she could call him and ask him to meet her here. But she'd have to buy a cell phone before she could do that. She squared her shoulders and pushed open the door.

She strolled around the shop, keeping close to the walls, examining the displays and trying to look like someone who had a clue. She read the cards describing the features of the different phones, but the words—well, hardly words, more like alphabet soup—meant nothing to her.
3G? 4G? GPS? Android? QWERTY?
Wait a minute, didn't QWERTY apply to typewriters? She thought the tech world had moved beyond that.

“Can I help you?” said a voice from behind the counter. She turned to answer and froze, a pounding like an old manual typewriter filling her chest. The voice belonged to a boy who could almost have been the double of Luke at eighteen.

Emily blinked, swallowed, then managed, “Please. I've never had a cell phone. I don't have a clue what I'm looking at.”

He grinned, his mouth quirking up on the opposite side from Luke's. When he came up to her, she saw his eyes were blue, not gray, and his hair was lighter and curlier than Luke's had been. She breathed a little more freely. At least she wasn't hallucinating.

“This is the newest and best model right here,” he said, reaching for a sleek black rectangle that looked like what most of her friends kept in their pockets—but not like anything she would call a phone.

“I was thinking of something totally basic. It's for emergency calls only. I don't need all the frills and furbelows.”

“Well, we do have last year's model for about half the price.” He reached for one that looked nearly identical to the first.

Even his hands were like Luke's, strong with long, square-tipped fingers. Before she could stop herself, she blurted, “Are you related to Luke Richards?”

“Sure. He's my uncle. You know him?”

“We're … good friends. I first met him when he was about your age. You look a lot like him.”

“Yeah, they all say that. The family, I mean.” He looked her up and down out of the corner of his eye, and his expression took on a wary respect. “Did Uncle Luke send you here?”

“He did. But he didn't mention he had a nephew working here.”

“Oh, I just started a couple weeks ago. He probably didn't know.”

Emily gave him her sweetest smile. “I'm sure he'll be very happy to hear you have a good job and take good care of your customers. What was your name again?”

“Brian.” He grinned and threw up his hands. “All right, you win.” He led her to the counter and pulled out a tray from the back of the display. It contained an object that reminded Emily of a Star Trek communicator. “This is our most basic, no-frills phone. Just a phone. It's got a kinda lame camera and you can text with it, but that's about all. They don't make 'em any simpler.”

“How much?”

“Contract or no-contract?”

Once he had explained what that meant, Emily opted for no-contract and waited while he did mysterious things with the phone. She got him to explain how to make a call and how to answer one. Anything more could wait till she got home and read the manual.

As soon as she was outside the store, she called Luke. “This is your local Luddite, speaking to you under duress from her brand-new cell phone.”

“Hey, you got one! Good girl. That didn't hurt too much, did it?”

“I'm sure it would have been more painful except that the clerk turned out to be your nephew. You should've warned me you had a young double walking around the county. Gave me quite a turn.”

“Brian's working at the cell phone store? Good for him. Yeah, sorry 'bout that. Never occurred to me you'd run into him. Did he take good care of you?”

“Once he found out I knew you, he did. Before that he was trying to sell me way more than I needed.”

Luke chuckled. “Just doing his job. But it's good to know I have a little intimidation power. At least in my own family.”

“So, aren't you going to ask for my new number?”

“Don't need to. The phone'll remember it. I'll make a contact for you as soon as we hang up.”

That was so much gobbledegook, but presumably he knew what he was talking about. “All right. I'd better head home. Oh, I got the plans for the cottage that burned if you want to see them.”

“Absolutely. Stop by the office on your way back, would ya?”

*   *   *

Emily stopped at the large chain grocery store on her way out of town, filling her cart with items from Katie's list and dreaming of all the wonderful things Katie would make with them. When she got to Stony Beach, she remembered she'd forgotten to buy stitch markers, so she pulled up in front of Sheep to Knits. Brock was just coming out of the shop as she approached. Instead of the suit she'd seen him in before, he wore white slacks, a navy double-breasted blazer, and a red ascot in the open neck of his white shirt. Today's role: the gentleman sailor.

“Brock, I didn't know you were a knitter.”

“Very funny.” He gave her a slightly acid smile. “Just talking to my tenant, like a good landlord.”

“I see.” Emily recalled with a pang that she'd never followed up on her promise to Beanie to reason with Brock about the rent. The way things were going, he was hardly likely to listen to her, but she had to try. “I hope you're not raising the rent on Beanie. I doubt she can afford it, and this shop needs to continue. It adds some class to the neighborhood.”

“Beatrice's rents were ridiculous. Nowhere near what the market will bear. She may have been rich enough to run her business like a charity, but I can't afford to.”

“Not even with your new tenant coming in? I find it hard to imagine you'll be charging Mrs. Sweet ‘market' rent. She may have hated Beatrice and, consequently, me, but I hardly see her jumping at the chance to—what, double her rent?”

Brock blinked and put up a hand to adjust his ascot. “Mrs. Sweet and I have come to a special arrangement she can well afford.” He put on a veneer of compassionate concern, but Emily could see a flicker of prurient interest underneath. “I am sorry, though, to deprive you of a tenant just when you're having other troubles. So sorry to hear about your fire.”

“News travels fast in this town.”

“I could see the smoke from my hotel. Desk clerk knew all about it. Such a tragedy.”

“Hardly that. More of a nuisance. The cottage was insured, and no one was hurt. Good thing it wasn't a windy day, though, or the neighboring houses might have caught—that could have been a tragedy.” She put all her professorial sternness into the last phrase, just in case.

Brock, however, was oblivious. “So, I hear it went up pretty quickly?”

“Uncontrollable by the time the fire department got there.”

She could have sworn she saw his mouth twitch toward a smile, but he swiftly pulled it back. “Any idea what caused it? Electrical fault, probably, huh?”

“The property manager assures me the wiring was sound and nothing was left plugged in. I believe the investigators are pursuing possible arson.”

Was that a spark of fear in his eyes? If so, he was a good enough actor to quell it. “Arson! Good heavens! Right here in peaceful little Stony Beach?” He furrowed his brow in apparent concern. “Are you sure this place is safe for you? It'd be so easy to just sell out and go back to Portland. Back to your friends, your job, your life. After all, what kind of life can you have in Stony Beach?” His voice was smooth, caressing, almost hypnotizing, like the voice of the Green Lady in
The Silver Chair.