Gone with the Wool (14 page)

“No, it isn't fine. You seem nervous right now. What's going on?” Lucinda asked.

“You have to trust me. I can't talk about it. But I promise you there is nothing wrong.” She tried to pry whatever it was
out of him, but he was absolutely resolute and would say nothing more.

Lucinda was shaking her head, muttering to herself as we walked back to Cadbury Yarn. “I see our happily ever after crumbling right in front of me. I can deal with him straightening forks and having to wash his hands three times before he starts work. I can accept all his eccentricities, but I can't deal with him keeping secrets.”

“That was a wonderful experience,” said the retreater who always wore a gray wool poncho. She held up her finished butterfly proudly. “It turned out that crocheting wasn't so hard after all.” She had a bag on her arm and showed me that she'd bought a bunch of crochet supplies.

I was waiting on the porch as the group came outside in good spirits. I could see that some of them were still in line to pay for their purchases, including the two Danish women, who were admiring each other's monarchs.

Crystal walked outside with the last of them. “It looks like it was a success all around. The retreaters seem happy, and the store made a lot of sales.”

Crystal and I had become friends, and I considered mentioning the man in the storage room. But then I thought of the mess I'd stirred up with Lucinda when I'd brought up
the man I thought was a calamari fisherman. I decided to keep it to myself.

The retreaters were anxious to spend some more time wandering around the main part of town, so I took them back to the bus to drop off their packages and then let them go off on their own, setting a time to meet back at the bus.

“Coffee at Maggie's?” I said to Lucinda.

“Yes. I am too upset with Tag to want to go back there.” As we walked down Grand Street, I mused about how, with the strip of greenery down the middle, it really deserved to be called Grand Boulevard. I looked down the street toward the Butterfly Inn. The imposing yellow Victorian took up a whole corner.

“Poor Sammy. He can't go back to his room,” I said. Lucinda turned to me, perplexed, and I continued. “I never got a chance to tell you the whole story. His parents are staying at the Butterfly Inn. And he told them we're living together.”

Lucinda winced. “Now I get why he can't go to his room. I'm guessing you're letting him stay with you.” She knew my history with Sammy and smiled. “I wouldn't say poor Sammy. It sounds like he's got his dream come true.”

“He's staying in the guest house,” I said. “But you're right, he doesn't seem that upset.”

We continued on to Maggie's. Walking inside the small coffee place always gave me an instant lift. The scent of coffee was part of it, but it was mostly the atmosphere Maggie had created. She waved at us from the counter with such warmth that I felt instantly welcome. We started to get in line, but as she handed a customer their drink, she gestured for us to just sit down. “I'll bring you your regulars,” she said with a smile.

Lucinda pointed out a table in the corner near a window, and I sat and looked out at the street.

After a few minutes, the line died down and Maggie came over, carrying a holder with three drinks. “I love it when you two come in and give me a reason to take a break. Okay if I join you?” she asked, setting the paper cups in front of us and then waiting for our nods of approval before adding hers. Lucinda and I made a move for our wallets, and Maggie laughed. “Don't even waste your energy going any further. You know I won't take your money. It's professional courtesy.”

“Thanks for keeping your regular order for the muffins,” I said. “I really appreciate your support.” Though she hadn't said anything, I was sure that, like the others, she hadn't sold all the muffins the day before. I knew she knew why, too.

“No problem,” Maggie said with a warm smile. I looked over at the basket on the counter she used for my muffins. There were still half of them left, when normally by this time of day they would have been sold out long ago.

She saw me looking. “It doesn't mean a thing. Like I said before, everything is off-kilter this week. The power of Butterfly Week is amazing. Nobody is even talking about Rosalie's murder. They're just going about their business as if nothing's happened.” Maggie had dropped her voice, though there was no one else around to hear.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It's not like they dropped the investigation or anything, but I heard the funeral isn't going to be until next week. They're saying her family can't get here until then, but I think it's the work of the town council. This is Cadbury's week to shine. You can imagine what a damper it would put on the festivities to have a funeral procession parade through the center of town.”

“What about her family?” I asked, realizing I knew almost nothing about them.

“There's her husband, Hank, and two sons. Both of them went to college on the east coast and never looked back. I'm not sure if it was because of the small town or that they didn't want to have to deal with her.” Maggie took a swig of her coffee. “Her husband is an okay guy.”

“I wonder if I've ever seen him,” I said.

“Maybe not. He's on the quiet side and never makes himself the center of attention, the way Rosalie did. Plus, he has an odd schedule.”

“I think he might have come in the restaurant once with Rosalie,” Lucinda said. “It was right after we opened, and Tag dealt with them. They seemed to be checking out the place, and they didn't even stay to eat. I got the feeling she dismissed us as outsiders.” Lucinda seemed to be searching her memory. “I don't have any memory of him other than he was present. Everything seemed to be about her.”

“Sounds right,” Maggie said. “But you never really know with someone like him—if he was really that easygoing, or if he just let her be the heavy and was behind everything she did.” Maggie sounded like she was talking about something specific, but when I asked her, she seemed uncomfortable with the question and just said no.

“I suppose his true colors will come out now,” Lucinda said. “Now that he can't hide behind her.”

*   *   *

I saw several of the retreaters pass the window. They had pinned their crocheted butterflies to their jackets. I pointed them out to Maggie and mentioned what a good activity it had turned out to be. I thought about
mentioning the vanishing man in Cadbury Yarn, but I decided if Gwen wanted to rendezvous with a secret boyfriend in the stockroom, I wasn't going to spread the word around town.

*   *   *

“I didn't realize how late it was,” I said as Lucinda and I approached the small bus. When I looked inside I saw that most of the seats were already full and there was a din of conversation.

“There are two people missing,” I said after doing a quick head count. Someone called out who they were and said she'd heard them say they had to pick something up at the drugstore.

“I'll go round them up,” I said.

It had been a long afternoon, and I knew the group wanted to get back to Vista Del Mar for a little free time before dinner. Like everything else in Cadbury, Cadbury Drugs & Sundries was an independent shop. It wasn't like the big chain drugstores that were almost general merchandise places these days, although it seemed to be pushing the envelope when it came to the meaning of sundries, and it sold some food items and souvenirs. I noticed a couple of paper replicas of monarchs hanging from the ceiling as I walked in.

To say the store was packed with merchandise was an understatement. The shelves were higher than my head, and every inch of wall space was taken up. I almost expected to see merchandise hanging from the ceiling along with the butterflies. The way the store was laid out, there was no way to just stand in the entrance and look for my retreaters. I started down the maze of aisles, checking out the shoppers. The aisles
were narrow, and a man in a white jacket was blocking the one that had actual drug supplies with a red plastic bin filled with assorted products. He was about to put some of the stock on one of the shelves, but when he saw me, he started to move out of my way. I saw that his hands were full.

“Go on and finish what you're doing,” I said, stopping next to him.

“I appreciate your patience,” he said when he'd finished. “We're such a small store, there isn't room for a large supply of anything. Not good for a shelf to be empty.” I glanced down at the shelf as he added a container of tropical-flavored antacids to the ones already there, filled an empty space with some small boxes of laxative pills and finished by putting two bottles of bright pink stomach medicine in front of the one bottle left. He picked up the bin and started to move away. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

I laughed. “More like anyone.” I explained who I was looking for. I was sure he was the pharmacist and owner. I'd never met him, but I had heard about him. His name was Larry something; he'd bought the business about eight months ago and was divorced with a teenage daughter. But that wasn't what made him the topic of conversation. He looked like a shorter version of Clint Eastwood—younger, too. I guessed that he was in his forties. What made it even more newsworthy was the fact that the real Clint Eastwood had a ranch nearby.

There were a lot of jokes about what would happen if they met up, particularly since Larry had taken some of Clint's taglines and made them his own. I'd heard the most popular one was something like “Hey, let Dirty Larry make your day,” when he handed someone a prescription.

I introduced myself, and he did the same, just giving his name without any tagline. “Nice to meet you, Casey,” he said, extending his hand. “I think you'll find the women with the butterflies in aisle three. They were looking for tooth care supplies.” I waited to see if he was going to add a tagline now, but he just pointed toward the aisle. When I found the pair, I saw they'd been susceptible to all the store's extra merchandise, and they had a lot more than toothbrushes. I walked them to the front to check out, but not without picking up a bunch of stuff, too.

Lucinda poked through my bag of things when I got back on the bus. “Cat toys?” she said with a laugh.

I shrugged. “I thought maybe if Julius had something to amuse himself with, he wouldn't be so anxious to wander.”

With everybody on board, the bus pulled away from the curb.

Lucinda brought up Chloe and asked if I'd made any headway in clearing her. I was glad she seemed to have let up on her upset with Tag. I shook my head, realizing I'd been too preoccupied with calamari and crocheted butterflies to think about her. “If you had another suspect to throw Lieutenant Borgnine's way, he might not be so sure Chloe was the killer,” Lucinda said as the bus left the downtown area and passed through a street of houses.

I shrank back against the seat as I recalled my earlier encounter with the cop in the rumpled jacket. How had I managed to so successfully put it out of my mind? “There is one other suspect he has,” I said. Lucinda let out a gasp when I told her it was me.

The ride back was too short to discuss more. In no time we were on the Vista Del Mar grounds again. As Lucinda got off the bus, she seemed concerned and asked if I wanted to
talk about it more. But this was her time off, so I urged her to join the others as they headed back to their rooms to drop off their purchases and get ready for dinner. Cadbury was hardly a hustle-bustle town, but it was still far more peaceful on the rustic grounds of the resort. If only I could have let go and enjoyed the fading afternoon.

I was on a mission when I got home. I didn't even stop to give Julius his toys. No matter, he was already poking around the bag where I left it on the table. I was sure he'd probably like them better if he pulled them out of the bag on his own.

I sat down and grabbed my landline. Frank wouldn't be at the office now. He'd said never to use his cell number unless it was an emergency, but I decided being a suspect in a murder case qualified. I had hidden my panic from Lucinda, but now that I was alone, it came out in full force.

I punched in the number and tried to get my breath to sound regular.

“Frank, I'm a suspect,” I said as soon as he answered.

“Feldstein,” he said, sounding surprised. Then what I had said sunk in. “I can't say I'm surprised. I figured that cop with no neck would come up with something. Cops don't like it when you make them look bad by showing off that they were wrong and then solving their cases.” Frank let out a chortle. “You didn't do it, did you?”

“Of course not. This isn't a joke. Lieutenant Borgnine wasn't smiling when he started questioning me. And I'm sure you're right that he would love to get rid of me by sending me off to prison.”

“Calm down, Feldstein. We're not going to let that happen.” I heard some sizzling noises in the background, and Frank begged off for a moment. “Some of us are cooking our dinner,” he said when he returned.

“You cook?” I said, surprised. I had no doubt he ate, and a lot. He had the body to prove it. But somehow I'd pictured him living on sub sandwiches, cold French fries and donuts, with a liter of soda thrown in.

“Feldstein, I am a Renaissance man. I'm making a stir-fry over jasmine rice. And it's almost done. So here's my advice. Unless you can come up with some more suspects, you might have to just let him have the girl with the bright hair. Honestly, I'm thinking she really might have done it. The woman humiliated her in public and threw her out of the Princess Court. You said yourself the girl threatened her. You said the weapon was a kitchen knife from the place where the dinner was, which means she could have had access to it. And you make her sound like a tough tootsie.”