Cancelled by Murder (12 page)

“Sorry—I wasn't trying to put something over on you. Not completely, anyway. But I do believe I have the skills and at one time I thought of applying. And in the job I have, I have to know a lot about postal rules and regulations, and a law is a law, right?”

“A lot of homicides in the Boston postal system, were there?”

Since Sunni was still in a relaxed frame of mind—maybe it was the low-end cupcakes—I chose to chuckle at her comment and continue, sticking closer to current reality this time. “I'm close to this case,” I said. “And even though I'm in the quilting group only because of you, there are some members who might be intimidated when they have to deal with you professionally, whereas I'm just another fellow gossiper.”

“So you've decided that Daisy's killer was a member of the quilting group?”

I blew out a breath, my stress level having caught up with me. “Sunni, you know that's not what I mean. I have a feeling you know exactly what I'm proposing.” I took another breath and went all out. “Yes or no?”

The silence nearly strangled me. Sunni took her time. Another bite of cupcake. Another sip of coffee. At least she still hadn't gone for her handcuffs, I reminded myself. Her face gave nothing away, which I chose to interpret as her giving my words serious consideration.

“You know,” she finally began, “I have to give you credit
for not throwing it in my face that you helped immensely on a case last year.”

“I didn't do all that much,” I said, softly, recalling with reluctance an upsetting time when I'd been back only a couple of months.

“Tell you what,” she said, replacing her mug on the table. “I could use a serious brainstorming session. Why don't we start with that and see where it gets us?”

“Great,” I said, feeling better than I had all week. “Maybe I'll be deputized before the night's over.”

“Don't push your luck.”

*   *   *

I was glad Sunni had suggested a break before we got down to the details of the investigation. She needed to make some calls and agreed to meet me at my house in an hour, at nine o'clock.

“It's about time I got out of this office,” she'd said.

I sent a quick text to Quinn before starting my car.

1 mtg over, another starting. Skype later?

I turned my key and got on the road for home, glad I'd have time to get my thoughts organized. So far this week, I'd scribbled things in my notebook as they'd occurred to me, intending to put them in order. Now was the time. I didn't want to ruin the chance I had to work with Sunni by appearing amateurish. Never mind that I was, in fact, an amateur.

There was still light left to the day as I pulled into my driveway, excited to be on this new path of cooperation. I'd climbed three or four steps before I saw a piece of white
paper sticking out from under my door. More ads, I thought. I played a guessing game with myself. The opening of a new Japanese restaurant. A discount on dry cleaning. A coupon for breakfast cereal. An offer for housekeeping service.

I reached the landing, unlocked my door, and entered, dodging the rest of the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet. I continued my internal guessing. A lost kitty, a kid looking to mow my lawn at a reasonable rate.

I bent down and picked up the sheet.

And the winner was: another handwritten note, with only a few words.

One last warning. Back off.

I slammed the door shut and turned the key in the lock. I hoped I hadn't locked myself in with a madman.

I
leaned against my front door, breathing hard, clutching the second note. With a stab of fear, I realized I couldn't presume that the messenger had left the note and disappeared. He might be in my house right now.

I pushed myself away from my door, opened it, and stepped outside. I took a breath. Should I call Sunni? Was I becoming one of those frantic, pesty-citizen stories she'd be relating to someone next month? I tried to override my fright and think.

The first note, the
do your job
admonition, had been sent through the postal system—addressed to Postmaster, stamped, and delivered to my office via the usual route by the mail truck. It could have come from anywhere. This second warning was not in an envelope. This time, the sender, assuming it was the same person, had made a brazen move—a sheet of paper stuck under my door. It was just now
turning dark, so the culprit must have marched up my front steps in the daylight. He was telling me he knew where I lived and didn't care who saw him. But if he'd broken in, the note wouldn't have been sticking out the door; it would have been inside.

Now that I'd settled that, I reentered my living room, treading softly, and carrying Aunt Tess's old cast-iron frying pan. Confidence and bravery aside, I crept through my rooms, holding my breath at each new threshold, checking corners, looking for anything out of place.

Not that I had a clue what I would do if a person with a knife or gun leaped out of my closet, or pulled my feet out from under me from a hiding place under my bed. I couldn't shake the creepy thoughts. All I could do was make sure my windows and doors were locked. I made the rounds, doing a three-sixty spin now and then to be sure there was no one over my shoulder. The fact that locks were in place and that nothing seemed disturbed didn't calm me as much as it should have.

Back in the living room, I took my phone from my purse and sat on my rocker, tempted to call Sunni and ask her to rush over. I wished I'd told her about the first note. At the time, I believed the note had nothing to do with the investigation of Daisy's murder. Now I wasn't so sure.

Still, I resisted sounding the alarm. No need to overreact. I was safe; my house was locked up, and I could use the next forty-five minutes before she was due, to pull my thoughts together. So what if I was jittery and jumped at each shadow created by the lights of a passing car, at every old-house creak and refrigerator noise? Suddenly, the ice cube maker had all the crashing sound effects of a B&E and the ticking
of Aunt Tess's grandfather clock was louder than a Boston club on a Friday night.

It took a few minutes to adjust to the fact that I was now operating with permission from Sunni. There was nothing I had to hold back from the chief of police. I knew there would be caveats and limits attached to what she could tell me, but I felt I'd finally made the team. I waited for the feeling of safety that should give me. It wasn't speeding toward me.

*   *   *

By eight forty-five, with the help of a large mug of coffee, I'd almost finished a list of people I had reason to suspect in Daisy's death. I couldn't bring myself to call any of them murderers or even potential murderers; they were citizens of my hometown. Friends, acquaintances, customers; not killers. I jotted down names and what I called their suspicious behavior.

First, there was the note writer. The words and phrases themselves should not instill fear in a typical reader of thrillers like me.
Do your job, go home, warning, back off
. These were phrases associated with mild outbursts, not ransom notes or bomb threats. But in the context of my snooping around, being seen with the victim's husband, entertaining the chief of police in my home (and feeding her), the note writer, Anonymous, had to be considered at least a person of interest. Thus, my first entry listed a specific suspicious behavior, but no name. Not the best start.

Next was Jules Edwards. Because I didn't like him? I couldn't think of another motive for suspecting Cliff and Daisy's accountant. He'd hand-waved over the numbers at
our meeting earlier, but maybe that was par for the course for accountants. I had little experience to call on. I found myself almost wishing that a financial audit would show him guilty of doing something illegal. No need to share that line of fuzzy thinking with Sunni. My second entry had a name but no really suspicious behavior.

I moved on to the quilting group, hoping for more useful entries. I started with the widow Molly Boyd. She'd shown up at Tuesday's quilters' meeting, the day after the storm and Daisy's death, with a broken ankle, and I'd witnessed her telling two different stories about how she'd hurt herself. Wasn't it obvious: A black eye or a scratched fist or a broken ankle was a dead giveaway that the person had been in a fight with the victim. How simple things were when you didn't have to prove theories or substantiate common myths and fictional devices.

Molly, a short woman in her early sixties, ran the beauty salon across the street from Daisy's Fabrics, the salon that hosted the meeting I'd come upon earlier this evening. I couldn't think of what Molly would have against Daisy from a business point of view. It wasn't as if Daisy had competed, offering to do her customers' hair or nails while they chose their bolts of fabric. I knew little of Molly's life outside of our quilting sessions, only what she'd shared over tea and stitching—that she was a widow, a grandmother, and a lover of reality-television shows. And I couldn't help knowing what she sent and received through the post office—packages shared with a daughter in Maine, orders she placed with a plus-sized clothing store, requests for donations to a political party.

Whatever personal motive Molly might have had to
dislike Daisy wasn't evident. Neither was there an obvious reason why she'd lied about her injury. Needing a full entry, I wrote “lying” and “hosting after-hours meeting” as her suspicious behaviors.

Olivia (Liv) Patterson, on the other hand, held more promise, with one of the clearest motives I could think of. Competition with Daisy for greeting card–buying customers, the lifeblood of her business.

I thought back to the last time I saw Liv in the post office. I remembered letting her enter just under the wire on Monday, before Ben and I closed up as the storm swooped in. Liv had atypically refused to engage in a conversation on a Western-themed quilt she'd spent hours and hours on. Now I manufactured a reason: She didn't want to support Daisy's Fabrics, the only brick-and-mortar fabric shop in the area, by admitting that Daisy had helped her find appropriate designs. I congratulated myself on coming up with that idea, then quickly chided myself for creating a story well beyond the bounds of plausibility and evidence. Liz was entitled to an off day, a cranky hour or two, without being suspected of murder. Detective work was harder than I thought.

Andrea Harris and her husband, Reggie, were also prime candidates for violence against Daisy. Daisy was single-handedly trying to undermine their campaign for the farmers' market proposal, which it seemed was a big part of their overall business plan. They'd both been headed for the meeting in the salon this evening. Acting like American citizens, with the right to assemble, I reminded myself, and moved on.

I couldn't come up with anything suspicious for Terry Thornton, our young bride-to-be, who was probably too
wrapped up in her wedding planning to care about much else; nor for Eileen Jackson, our hostess this week. If lying were suspicious behavior, I was the one who should go on the list, for fabricating a reason to call Eileen and draw her into giving me information useful to the investigation. I only hoped she and Buddy weren't still looking for my sunglasses.

Fran Rogers was the last of the quilters on my list. She'd been part of the group, with Andrea and Liv, who were at the gathering in the salon. Fran was a pretty quiet woman, closer to my age, short and wiry, and always working on a quilt for a cause. One month she'd be talking about the children's wing of the hospital, and their need for baby quilts; another month she'd have on her lap a quilt meant for a military unit in a country I'd barely heard of. Hard to imagine her fighting or arguing with anyone, let alone killing someone.

That was it for the quilt group.

I needed to broaden my scope. I jumped to Fred Bateman, Quinn's boss, also an attendee of the alleged (by me) secret meeting. Such a nice guy. Quinn liked and respected him. I hated to put him on the list. But he was at the meeting. I snapped to attention. Quinn's boss. Finally, I had a source to tap for more information about a potential suspect. My boyfriend. Why hadn't I thought of him right away?

Sunni was due in a few minutes, but I figured I could squeeze in a call to Quinn. I was thrilled when he accepted on the second ring.

“I'm surprised you're available,” I said, before I thought about it.

He chuckled. “And yet you phoned.”

“I was excited to talk to you.”

His pause was telling. “Something on your mind?”

Could he know me that well after less than a year of dating? That was both good and worrisome, but I didn't need to decide that now. “I ran into your boss this evening.”

“Okay.” A questioning tone.

“He misses you.”

Another chuckle. “I talk to him every day. Sometimes twice a day. And I send photos of potential buys.” Another telling pause. “What's up, Cassie?”

Busted. He was on a business trip, looking for merchandise; of course he'd be communicating regularly with his boss.

I heard a noise that could be a car pulling into my driveway. I carried the phone to the window and peeked out to see Sunni in the driver's seat. Of all times for her to be early. No time to beat around the bush. “Fred was going into a meeting at Molly Boyd's salon,” I said.

“Why does that matter?” Quinn asked. “Maybe he thinks it's time to cover up his gray. Though he keeps telling me that people like a little gray in their antique dealers. It gives them an air of authenticity.”

My turn to chuckle. “This meeting was after hours.” I named the people he'd been with. “I'm just curious. Do you have any idea what he might be doing with them?”

I heard a warning throat-clearing. “Does this have to do with Daisy's murder case? Are you still snooping around?”

“You sound like Ben.”

“Who also cares about your well-being.”

It was a good thing I hadn't shared my special “Postmaster beware” notes with Ben or Quinn. I was about to inform Quinn that Sunni had backed down and welcomed me into
her investigation, but it was just as well that the doorbell rang. Some things are better addressed face-to-face.

“Company?” Quinn asked.

“The chief of police.” An exasperated sigh floated over the wires. “She's my friend, Quinn.”

“Please be careful, Cassie.”

“Always. I have to go now.”

“Skype later?” he asked.

“Can't wait.”

I never did get an answer from Quinn about what Fred Bateman might have been doing hanging around with my suspects. Were all detectives so easily distracted? I doubted it.

*   *   *

I'd cleared my dining room table for work space and in a few minutes we were seated in front of a deep mahogany surface covered with papers, folders, and two laptops. I couldn't help remembering a time when Aunt Tess would cover the same table with a lovely lace cloth on top of protective pads, and set out a fine-china tea service. What a change in entertaining style in just one generation.

“You first,” Sunni said.

“Me first?” I asked. A stall while I prepared myself for an orderly presentation.

Sunni nodded. “Show me what you've got.”

If Sunni meant to be intimidating, it was working. This wasn't the atmosphere of working together that I'd hoped for. I took her attitude as a sign that we were suspending our friendship for the moment while we got down to
business, and that I'd better prove myself worthy of the new partnership.

I plunged in. I turned my laptop and placed it in the middle of the table where we could both see my document. I'd cleaned up my notes so they were arranged in two columns: Suspect and Motive. I'd left out “Anonymous” and his notes for the time being.

My mouth went sour as I realized how pitiful my efforts looked. A half dozen people. I'd eliminated the other three thousand or so citizens of North Ashcot without so much as a glance. And as for the rest of the state, it might as well not exist. I could hardly wait for the comparison with Sunni's list.

I swallowed my misgivings and talked Sunni through my reasoning for each pairing: Molly—lies and meeting; Liv—card competition; and so on. Now I wished I'd added: Others—unknown motives.

The chief of police sat through my report, with an occasional question and a few uh-huhs.

When I was finished, she sat back and folded her arms across her chest. “Where's Cliff?” she asked.

“I don't know. I left him around quarter to seven.”

She straightened and tapped the edge of the laptop, its screen still glowing with my neat arrangement of suspects. “I mean, on your list.”

“Why would Cliff be—?” A dull moment.

“The husband. Always the first suspect. And where's Tony? The guy who found Daisy's body. The second favorite.”

What?
I'd written down everyone in Daisy's inner circle but those two. I flashed back to a conversation with Ben.
He'd reminded me about husbands being prime suspects and it still never occurred to me to consider that possibility in this case. I'd been hanging around with Cliff Harmon, the husband, trusting him, presuming his innocence. I'd left him off the list for the same reason I put Jules on it—based on whether I liked them. Either I was a good judge of character with keen instincts or I was truly a babe in the woods.

And Tony? I wasn't that well acquainted with the young man who worked at Mike's Bike Shop, didn't even know his last name, but I had no excuse for not factoring in the person who had been first on the scene. I had a lot to learn about solving homicides. Maybe I should have begun my law enforcement career with traffic violations, or abandoned vehicle citations, which were handled by civilian volunteers with more training than I'd had.