Geared for the Grave (A Cycle Path Mystery) (14 page)

W
e dropped one bag of cat food and the nail polish off at the bike shop, then started for Sutter’s house, which was really Bernie’s house.

“Best I can remember,” Fiona said as we started up Church Street, the dim streetlights casting our shadows onto the uneven sidewalk, “is that HighSail is that big faded blue house with the overgrown bushes and dirty windows over there.” She pointed.

“It’s got a nice mansard roof and widow’s walk.”

“If the gutters and railing weren’t falling off.” Fiona shook her head. “No wonder Sutter doesn’t know he has a cat; it probably got lost in rotting floorboards. Either Bernie was one crappy housekeeper, or he was in the middle of fixing up the place.”

I knocked on the front door. There were no lights on inside and no Detroit cop telling me to get lost. I put the cat food on the front porch by the door, handed Fiona a flashlight and followed her around back to a version of
wild safari invades Mackinac
.

“Can anyone say ‘lawn mower’?” Fiona stepped around a low branch with thick cobwebs catching the moonlight.

“If anything fuzzy or crawly with beady eyes slithers across our path, I’m out of here,” I said with a little shiver. “I don’t do bugs.”

“Girl, if Sutter catches us, bugs will be the least of our problems.” Fiona tried the back door. “Locked.”

“Island boy left the window open.” I slid out the screen and we stepped into a tidy but tired fifties kitchen with scuffed tan linoleum, matching Formica, a wood table and two chairs and dishes drying in the rack and a packet of Baby Ruth candy bars in the fridge. I just had to look. I tossed Fiona a Baby Ruth. “Dessert.”

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” Fiona sang out around a mouthful of chocolate, caramel and peanuts.

“I’ll look down here,” Fiona said. “You take the upstairs.” She put the flashlight on the counter and pulled open kitchen drawers.

I took the steps to the second floor, the old wood creaking with each footfall. Four rooms were in various stages of repair and repaint, with a toppled ladder in one, plus a splash of green paint across the floor. Looked like playing
This Old House
is how Bernie messed up his back.

I tore open the Baby Ruth and went in the next room to a hand-carved dresser and a humpbacked trunk with rusted locks, weathered straps and probably doubloons inside. Bernie had some interesting furniture. The floors were bare wood, and moonlight fell across a massive four-poster bed with its sheets and blankets tossed, an indent in one pillow and a robe at the bottom that was obviously all Sutter.

I stopped dead, swallowing a whole bite of candy in one gulp. My ex’s bedroom smelled of dirty socks and gym shorts. This room smelled warm and woodsy with a touch of spicy aftershave and a hint of danger. Not
gun
kind of danger, but more
who was this guy and what would I do if I ever found out?
I couldn’t breathe, and my heart was doing a slow, heavy thud, perspiration slithering between my boobs and other private areas I forgot I had.

This was the personal side of Sutter, the sexy side, the all-male side and more about the man than I wanted to know. Yeah, right. I backed out of the door and into the hall, then felt something brushing my ankles. I screamed, jumped, lost my balance and bounced down the steps like a hundred-and-thirty-pound bowling ball, landing at the bottom in a big, round heap. “Crap.”

“Don’t pass out! Don’t pass out!” Fiona pleaded as she smacked my cheeks. “We can’t have Sutter finding us in his house. He’ll kill us dead.”

My side hurt, my head hurt and I tasted blood. “Do I have all my teeth?” I asked Fiona, giving her a toothy grin.

“Split lip but no gaping holes. What the heck happened?”

“That’s what happened.” I aimed Fiona’s flashlight up the steps to Little-bit sitting in a pool of moonlight at the top.

“I think he’s laughing at you.”

“One day with Sutter and the furry little cretin’s turned into mini-Sutter.” I slowly unfolded myself, Fiona helping me up.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “You made a heck of a lot of noise.”

We headed for the door and Fiona handed me a napkin from the kitchen table so my split lip wouldn’t dribble telltale blood. We stumbled out the back door into the night, through the cobweb branch that had us swiping at our faces and whining like little girls. We rounded the corner to Church Street.

“Why, there ye be,” Irish Donna yelped, drawing Paddy to a stop. She scooted to one side of the cart and patted the empty space beside her. “You best be getting in, my dears, there’s a commotion at Rita’s Fudge Shoppe and Sutter be asking around for Chicago here. He’s wonderin’ where she be.”

“Why doth Thutter think I dith anything?”

“When things be going haywire these days, ye always seem to be in the thick of it. And what happened to your mouth?” Donna held up her hand, looking from me back to the house. “Never ye mind, there are some things I don’t need to be knowing about, but if you and Fiona here show up together, Sutter might get suspicious you two were into something you shouldn’t be.”

Fiona helped me into the cart. “Evie has a split lip, talks with a lisp and looks like she was shot out of a cannon—the
suspicious
ship has sailed.”

Donna hit the horsey accelerator by flicking the reins. I waved to Fiona while every bone in my body tried to fit back in place where it belonged to make an upright person.

“Hoth you know I wath here?”

“Mira Brindle be living next door for fifty years now and watching with her telescope. Her Herman used to be staring at boats out there in the bay. ’Tis my guess he did a lot more staring at Jeannette Holloway’s bedroom, but that’s another story. Since Herman sailed off to that great harbor in the sky, Mira’s seen fit to be taking over telescope duties. CNN and Joan Rivers all in one, she is, and at times she sees things we all wish she didn’t. She said you and Fiona were in Sutter’s bedroom looking around. She heard a thump over there and then she gave me a jingle on the phone being as that you and I’ve been spending time together.”

“I wath trying to see what Thutter knoths about the killer.”

Donna patted my hand. “No need to explain; we all be looking around a man’s bedroom one time or another, dearie. It’s when you stop looking and start doing that gets ye in trouble, mark my words.” Donna pointed down Main Street. “All the commotion must be in back, and I think there be a hint of burning in the air.”

She parked Paddy at the curb, and we headed for the alley behind Rita’s Fudge Shoppe, where the back doors were propped open wide. Rita and Dutchy and a gathering crowd stared wide-eyed into the smoke-filled kitchen as the stink of burned sugar filled the air. Sutter, Shamus, Smithy and nurse Jane Porter coughed and choked and sprayed the kitchen area with giant fire extinguishers, killing all the flames in sight with clouds of white foam.

“You did this,” Dutchy yelled at me, his face red, hair standing on end, finger pointing. “You called that attorney guy and you tried to burn us out ’cause you don’t like me and you don’t like Rita. You should be in jail,” Dutchy went on. “You’re a public nuisance. You should be off the streets. You’re ruining this island. Nothing’s been the same since you got here.”

“Thath’s crazy,” I said, my mouth still a mess. As I looked around, I could see that no one believed me and everyone believed Dutchy . . . except for Huffy? She stood in the front of the gathering, balanced on her bicycle, arms folded, glaring daggers at Rita and Dutchy and not me? I was not public nuisance number one in everyone’s eyes?

“That’s it. Everyone go home,” Sutter bellowed as he came out of the kitchen smudged with soot. “Fire’s out. Looks like papers were set too close to the stove and ignited some towels and aprons is all.”

“It’s arson, I tell you.” Dutchy pointed to me again. “And that Chicago girl did it. We’re not cooking fudge this time of night; the stove’s not in use. She came in and set the fire while Rita and I were out front closing up for the day. And you really think I’d leave papers by my stove?” Dutchy kicked at the dirt. “I’m not that stupid.”

“Accidents happen,” Sutter said, holding up the charred papers. “Get some help to clean up the place, and you’ll be up and running by noon.”

Dutchy started another rant, then stopped dead, his eyes now focused on Huffy. He looked back to the scorched papers in Sutter’s hand, then back to Huffy and swallowed.

“Fine.” Dutchy’s voice dropped several decibels and sounded a lot more reasonable than it had seconds ago. He held on to Rita, never taking his eyes off Huffy. “We can fix this,” he said. “It’s all going to work out just as it should. We got the message.”

“Glad to hear it.” Sutter cupped my elbow in a tight grip. “And you and I need to talk. Now.”

“You’re arrethting me?”

“What happened to you?”

“I’m innothent.”

“You should put that on business cards and hand them out.” Sutter’s mouth pinched together tight, drawing the soot on his face into hard lines. He fast-trotted me out of the alley, every cell of my body screaming to slow down, just like when we were on the dang horse. With no crowds to slow us down and not bothering with chitchat, we headed for the white clapboard building with the courtroom on the second floor and the police station below. Sutter barreled through the
Police Only
door and past the night clerk Molly, who was sipping a smoothie, and took me down the hall into a small office that was probably his.

“Sit.” He nodded at a plain wood, really uncomfortable-looking chair. “Do not go anywhere. Do not touch anything.”

He slammed the door, leaving me alone for the moment feeling cranky ’cause my mouth hurt and there were no folders on his desk to rifle through. On TV there were always files on the desk that had great info and they were lying out in plain sight for the hero . . . somebody like me . . . to find. Clearly Sutter needed to watch more TV.

At least my lip had stopped bleeding; but the front of my shirt was dotted in stained-forever red. I wadded up the napkin Fiona swiped off Sutter’s table and tossed it in the trashcan by the desk. A list of scribbled letters on the napkin stared back at me: first
t-t-a
, then
e-l-o
and
a-l-l
.
The rest of the letters were folded underneath where I couldn’t see them. I’d gotten this napkin off Sutter’s table at his house. Maybe it was a phone message and he didn’t have paper so he used a napkin? Been there, done that. It meant something if he wrote it down, and the biggest somethings right now were the Meatball mob and the Bunny business. That, or Sutter was into Words with Friends.

“Here,” Sutter said, barging in as I snapped my hand out of the trashcan minus the napkin. Sutter wiped sooty smudges from his face as he handed me one of those red, white and blue popsicles—would you expect anything but red, white and blue popsicles on Mackinac Island?

“Thanths,” I said, the ice instantly numbing my
throbbing lip, which must be the size of a softball by now.

“You don’t like Rita and Dutchy, I get that. So, did you set the blasted fire or what?” Sutter grumped.

Okay, here we go. Breaking and entering in the police chief’s house versus arson. Which to confess to? What happened to the days when my choices were deciding whether I want fries with that? I reached in my pocket and pulled out the half-eaten, totally gross and smashed-up Baby Ruth and slapped it on the desk. “I left cat food on the porch.”

Sutter looked from me to the candy bar and back, his eyes widening in recognition. “You were in my house!”

“It’s Bernie’s house, so don’t get all snippy, and I was checking on my cat, who is now most definitely
your
cat, so I couldn’t set fire to Rita’s shop ’cause I was busy falling down the stairs because Little-bit scared the heck out of me.” There was no reason to drag Fiona into this.

“What kind of name is Little-bit? I call him Winchester.”

“You’re naming him after a rifle?”

“It’s dignified; sophisticated; a place in England.”

I gave him a
you really expect me to believe that line of baloney
look.

“Okay, it’s a rifle. I should throw you in jail for breaking and entering.”

“I didn’t break a thing, and not a court in the land will convict me for looking after the welfare of a cat named after weapons, and in case you missed it, Huffy had more fire in her eyes than there was in the fudge shop, and she sure wasn’t looking at me.”

“She was staring at Dutchy and Rita.”

“You didn’t miss it.”

“Got any idea what Huffy and Dutchy and Rita got going on?”

“How about a little quid pro quo?”

“How about a little find your quid in jail?”

I took a bite of popsicle. “All I know is that with Bunny out of the way, Huffy gets Dwight, and the girl’s really obsessed with his house. For some reason”—
that shall remain a mystery to protect the guilty, like Irma and me
—“Huffy sort of thinks Rita and Dutchy might have a claim on SeeFar, and she’s not thrilled about it.”

“What’s that got to do with the fire and Huffy?” Sutter pulled the charred papers from his jean pocket and tossed them on his desk, ashes scattering across the top. “Looks like an accident to me.”