Hiss and Tell (17 page)

As the diners broke up, the Senator gestured for Sunny to join him, causing a lot of people to glance at her in surprise. That certainly didn’t untie the knot in her stomach.

For once, though, he didn’t launch into oratory. “I suppose I can’t fault your instincts,” he said. “But this has been difficult enough without having our name further splashed around.”

“I’m a guest here, sir, and I’m aware that involves obligations,” Sunny told him. “I’m not here to break any sensational stories.”

Sunny’s conciliatory manner seemed to placate the Senator. For now, at least. But just because she wasn’t putting out the news on her blog or the
Courier
, that didn’t mean Sunny intended to keep it all to herself. She headed off to the guesthouse and the privacy of her room, got out
her cell phone, and called her father. “Hi, Dad. Just checking in.”

“With everything else that’s going on, I’ve been debating whether to call you,” Mike said. “The furball has disappeared—apparently right after you left. You know how he takes off sometimes for a few days. I didn’t want to worry you.”

“No worry,” she assured her dad. “Turns out, he followed me here—stowed away in my bag, no less. You won’t believe the trouble he’s caused.”

“Oh, I’d believe it,” Mike replied in a dry voice. His relationship with Shadow definitely had its ups and downs. “Have you gotten hold of him again? Should I drive over with the cat carrier?”

“Right now he’s still on the loose, but I’ll do my best to try and coax him.” Sunny shook her head at the mental picture of trying to get Shadow into the carrier against his will. “I don’t think we have to worry about transporting him yet. How are you doing?”

“Enjoying a cat-free house.” As Mike replied, Sunny heard a female voice speak in a scolding undertone. Mrs. Martinson?

Don’t ask, don’t tell,
Sunny decided. She chatted for a moment more and then hung up. But she didn’t put the phone away, instead dialing Will Price’s number.

“Can’t really talk, I’m busy crime busting.” He must have recognized her caller ID, because he was doing a perfect Dudley Do-Right impersonation.

Sunny laughed. “And where are you pursuing this crusade?”

“They’ve got me patrolling the interstate through
outlet-land,” he replied. “No demon speeders rushing to get last-minute bargains will avoid the long arm of the law.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Sunny said. “But when you finish your righteous work, maybe you can come by and talk to me. There’s been a development.”

Will dropped the voice. “You think you’ve got something?”

“I think Lieutenant Wainwright has something,” she responded, “and I think we should talk about it. There are a couple of things to consider, and I think two heads are better than one.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll call you when I’m up there.”

Sunny closed her phone and then debated what to do. Maybe a quiet stroll through the nearby streets to see if she could get in touch with the feline avenger . . .

That thought got interrupted by an almost timid tap at her door. Sunny opened it to find Cillie Kingsbury and Carson de Kruk outside.

“Can we talk?” Cillie was almost whispering.

Sunny motioned them inside and closed the door.

“I saw that my grandfather spoke to you after supper,” Priscilla said. “I hope he wasn’t—too much. But you have to understand, this can be embarrassing.”

Murders often are,
Sunny’s snarky alter ego silently wisecracked.

“It’s just that everybody knows how my father is on TV.” Carson fumbled for words. “I hear how people call him Emperor Augustus and even make fun of him. He hates being laughed at, but he can live with it. That’s just his TV image. But this thing about cats, it’s beyond his control. I don’t know if you’re a cat person . . .”

Priscilla might have found out when she visited. But Sunny remembered that she’d cleared the living room of Shadow’s toys. And Shadow had been his usual standoffish self, not putting in an appearance when company came calling.

“I know we asked you here,” Cillie rushed in, “and you are a reporter and all, but do you think you could keep that part private?”

Carson’s eyes were pleading. “Dad’s not as impervious as he seems, and if this got out, it would really crush him.”

It took Sunny a moment to switch gears, understanding what they were concerned about. But she said, “Nobody’s going to hear about that incident from me—that’s a promise.”

The couple gave a simultaneous sigh of relief.

“But,” she warned, “there are probably tons of pictures and maybe film of Lee Trehearne and his security crew chasing that cat off Neal’s Neck. Some newspeople may begin asking questions.”

She decided not to reveal what the Senator had actually discussed with her, the discovery of where the murder weapon had come from. The prospective bride and groom had enough on their minds.

And Wainwright would probably kill me for letting the cat out of the bag,
Sunny thought.

When they asked her to join them downstairs in the living room, Sunny didn’t see any polite way to refuse. She was soon roped into a game of Scrabble, which Beau opted out of, dozing in an armchair. They did teams again. Peter Van Twissel performed a lot better than he had at beer pong—and a lot less belligerently.

By the time the scores were totaled up, a glance at her watch told Sunny that Will was probably on his way. While
the rest of the group headed upstairs, Sunny went outside to sit on the fieldstone porch.

If this were a movie, I’d look over and find Shadow sitting on the railing,
she thought. But when she turned her head, the railing was empty. Sunny shook her head.
He never was a cinematic cat.

Her cell phone began bleating. Sunny opened it and put it to her ear.

“I’m here,” Will said. “A little down the road from the usual place.”

Sunny got up, walked down the steps, and past the roadblock. Instead of a blue Kittery Harbor police cruiser, there was now a white sheriff’s department vehicle parked there, with a guy in a forest green uniform behind the wheel. She walked past him and turned the corner. Will’s black pickup sat about halfway down the block.

“Let’s just sit here quietly,” he suggested, opening the passenger door for her. “So what did Wainwright find?”

“You may have heard already,” Sunny said. “They found the murder weapon in a storm drain.”

“The only thing I’ve heard was a lot of standard-issue radio chatter,” Will told her. “Ingersoll wants me as far from this case as possible.” He looked tired after his shift, but his eyes gleamed with interest. “So what was the weapon?”

“A fishing knife,” Sunny began, but she was interrupted by a thump in front of them.

Sunny let out a stifled yelp, and Will went for his gun. But this wasn’t the mad murderer who went after people sitting in their cars. They turned to find a familiar figure sitting on the front hood of the pickup. It was Shadow, regarding them with enigmatic, gold-flecked eyes.

Shadow sat looking
in the window, his tail twitching back and forth. After being wakened from his new sleeping place, he’d thought the go-fast thing rolling to a stop looked familiar. Then he saw Sunny’s He come out. And what happened then? Sunny herself turned up.

Finally!

He watched as they talked, creeping closer as they got into the vehicle. He listened, too. The good thing was that they weren’t making any loud noises or hitting at one another. But as he spied on them, Shadow noticed their heads weren’t close together, either. And she and the male two-legs sounded serious rather than happy as they sat together.

For a wild moment, he’d hoped that maybe Sunny had gotten into the go-fast thing to go home. But she wasn’t
carrying anything, and she’d taken a lot of things with her when she’d left her place where the Old One lived.

Shadow gathered himself for a leap and landed on the front of the go-fast thing. Sunny and her He both jumped as he landed to confront them. Shadow sat very still, staring at them while his tail lashed around. He was angry at Sunny—for leaving, for pretending not to know him when she saw him before, for raising his hopes now when she obviously wasn’t actually coming home.

It wasn’t the kind of thing he could settle with hisses and claws. But he could show Sunny how he felt.
She’s not the only one who can go away,
he thought.

“That cat is worse than your dad,” Will burst out. “He shows up whenever we’re alone in the dark. But how did he manage to do it a half hour’s drive from your house?”

“He followed me here,” Sunny explained, stretching out a hand to the windshield. But Shadow didn’t respond with his usual paw against the glass. “Or rather, he stowed away in my bag. Shadow was pretty upset when I left. And he caused a pretty big stir today.” She explained about Augustus de Kruk’s reaction to seeing Shadow and the ensuing pursuit.

“Well, I can’t say I’m thrilled to see him turn up here.” Will took a long, deep breath. “What are you—we—planning to do about this?”

“I don’t know,” Sunny admitted. “After all that happened, I can understand him being skittish. But now he’s Public Enemy Number One on Neal’s Neck. I’m afraid he’s going to get hurt. And even if they only catch him, what am I going to do? Say, ‘Oh, that’s my cat,’ and take him away? I don’t think that will cut much ice with the de Kruks, Trehearne, or the Kingsburys, for that matter.”

She stared at the cat still sitting on the hood, and gave him the evil eye. “Problem is, I don’t think Shadow’s just going to go back home quietly.”

“I suppose we should try to catch him,” Will said. “Try and get your hand on the door handle without letting him see it.”

Sunny groped over, keeping her eyes on Shadow. “Got it,” she reported.

“And I’ve got mine,” Will said. “We’ll go for a count of three. I’ll take the left side, you take the right, and with luck we’ll have him surrounded. One, two . . .”

When Will yelled “Three!” Sunny flung her door open, jumped out, and went for the hood. She saw a wild-eyed Will on the opposite side—but no cat.

“He must have ducked under when he saw us coming out.” Will returned to the pickup, coming back out with a flashlight. “I’ll see if I can spot him—”

“There!” Sunny pointed as Shadow streaked out from under the pickup and disappeared into a stretch of roadside underbrush. The circle of light from Will’s flashlight was about a second behind him.

“It’s hopeless to try and find him in that jungle.” Will gave Sunny a sidewise glance. “He must be pretty peeved with you.”

“He must be.” Sunny couldn’t keep the forlorn tone out of her voice. “One of the members of the wedding party gave him something to eat today. But heaven knows how he’s getting along.”

“Knowing Shadow, he’ll manage to land on his feet.” Will changed the subject. “Tell me more about this knife.”

“Seems it belonged to Priscilla Kingsbury’s father, Lem,”
Sunny said. “He was quite a fisherman before that landslide caught his campaign bus. Anyway, there was a big chase scene where Lee Trehearne and his security people tried to run Shadow down. One of the guys was carrying a fisherman’s landing net, and your friend Hank Riker saw it. Lieutenant Wainwright came with a search warrant to look at the late Lem’s tackle box and came down saying that the gear had all been disarranged and the knife was gone.”

Will frowned in thought. “So what does this tell us?”

“Going by MOM, Beau Bellingham is still a possible candidate for the first murder,” Sunny said. “He had a nasty fight with Eliza Stoughton—motive. She was strangled, and he’s a big guy—means. And he has no alibi other than sleeping alone, which leaves him open on opportunity. None of it’s a slam dunk, but he’s the likeliest suspect.”

“But now there’s been another murder, and Beau had no known beef with Sheriff Nesbit—no motive.” Will took up the line of reasoning. “Unless I suppose Nesbit found out something about him that the rest of us haven’t. He left your beer pong tournament early, which again leaves him open on opportunity. But means . . .” His voice trailed off, then came back. “You’d need a very sharp knife to slit someone’s throat like that, and a knife used to gut fish would be ideal. And if it had been sitting around in a tackle box for years, that knife probably wouldn’t be missed, unlike grabbing something from a kitchen.”

“The question is, how would Beau even know about the knife?” Sunny argued. “It’s his first visit to Neal’s Neck.”

“It
is
hard to explain. He’d have had to pump Priscilla or somebody else in the family pretty thoroughly to get this information. On the other hand, the drinks were
flowing pretty freely the day before Eliza got killed. Priscilla or one of the others may have mentioned something in passing. Did Beau spend much time with Caleb Kingsbury? He’d probably be a font of information about the quirks of the property—and the folks who lived here.”

“Not that I saw,” Sunny said.

“The use of Lem’s knife does suggest someone familiar with the house and property. What about your friend Caleb?”

“I think everything bad in his life has already been spread out for media inspection,” Sunny replied. “Since Sheriff Nesbit died, I’ve had to reconsider Randall’s theory. Maybe we’re looking for a person with a secret so dirty, they’re killing to keep even the suggestion of blackmail away from their name. That sounds like somebody with a very public profile.”

“Like a governor, maybe,” Will suggested. “Governor Lem and his lovely wife have been bunking in his father’s old room. Lem—the young Lem—boy, this is getting confusing. Anyway, the Lem who’s still alive—did say he knew Nesbit in that blog post you put out today.”

“You read that?” Sunny said in surprise.

“Of course. I wanted to see how you were doing.” Then Will shrugged, his face twisting in annoyance. “And thanks to Ingersoll, you’re practically my only source for information out of Neal’s Neck these days. But forget about that.” He quickly shook his head. “We’ve got to use your position as an inside person to learn more. Ask about family history, without going into specifics about things like Lem Senior’s fishing. And the property itself—any oddball things there? Did Caleb or Priscilla ever sneak out of the
compound? Could they have mentioned how they managed to pull that off to someone else?”

“Oh sure,” Sunny said glumly. “That sounds easy enough to slip into a casual conversation.”

She and Will spent a few more minutes searching the shrubbery for Shadow, then Sunny told him she’d better head back. She walked past the roadblock, skirting the trooper, and into the guesthouse. As Sunny opened the door to her room, she half expected to find Shadow curled up on her bed, but there was no sign of him.

Just as well, I suppose,
she thought as she got ready for bed, but she had an uneasy feeling that she’d be paying for her current relief in other ways soon enough.

*

By the next
morning, there were other things to talk about. All of the guests were awakened at the crack of dawn by Priscilla’s brothers, who requested them to come to the big house. Once there, the whole family sat together watching one of the Sunday morning news shows. The comedy highlight for the day was the video footage of the Keystone Kops chase scene across the lawn yesterday. Augustus de Kruk stayed in the dining room for the whole scene. Apparently, he couldn’t even bear to see a cat on television.

Deborah Kingsbury, Lem Junior’s wife, winced while watching the attempt to trap Shadow with the net. “I’d seen that thing hanging around for years in our room. And when I suggested it might actually be useful—” She rolled her eyes in annoyance. “Your people just about tore the closet apart and made an enormous mess,” she complained to
Lee Trehearne, who sat through the whole thing looking like a volcano on the verge of erupting.

The scene ended with Shadow scampering off. Sunny thought he looked pretty good on TV. Unfortunately, Lee Trehearne looked even bigger and more red-faced than in real life when he next appeared on screen, explaining that he and his people had been trying to retrieve a guest’s pet.

It fell to the Senator to ask everyone to go along with the harmless deception.

“Fine,” Beau Bellingham said. “But whose cat is it supposed to be?”

“I’ll volunteer,” Sunny spoke up quickly. “I’m local, so it’s not impossible that the cat could have come along with me. And since I’m media, I’ll be able to handle any questions.”

Lee Trehearne looked as if he’d accidentally swallowed a razor blade, but he didn’t say anything. Priscilla and Carson thanked her warmly, the Senator less so. Even the Emperor Augustus unbent enough to express his appreciation when he rejoined them.

“Thanks,” Sunny told him. “Maybe you could do something in return and let me quote a few nice words from you about the area here. I know it’s not like the sort of resort that you’re used to visiting, but maybe you could say something about the fresh air and talk about how much you enjoyed the unspoiled scenery while flying in, and so forth.”

The Emperor Augustus wasn’t thrilled, but he suggested that she work something up and he’d look it over. That was enough of a win for Sunny. It would tickle Ken Howell and offer Ollie Barnstable a nice plug for the area that they could also co-opt for use on the MAX website.

Sunny was working on a draft of the statement to show
de Kruk when her cell phone rang. When she answered, she heard Ken Howell’s voice. “Well, the boys in Levett have made their move, and it’s a doozy. I just came out of the press conference.”

“About what?” Sunny asked.

“About who’s going to go on the ballot in place of Frank Nesbit,” Ken replied. “Don’t you know what’s going on?”

“To be honest, I’m a bit isolated up here,” Sunny told him. “So who’s the September surprise? What did they do? Name a party stalwart?”

“Even worse,” Ken said gloomily. “They named Lenore Nesbit—the old ‘vote for the widow’ trick. And it seems to be working. Nobody had the gall to ask her any hard questions, not even me. I think Will is up against it.”

Considering that Ken was one of the founding members of the breakaway Kittery Harbor faction with Mike, this sounded pessimistic indeed. “How does my dad feel?” Sunny asked.

“I’m trying to figure out how to break it to him,” Ken responded. “I mean what with his heart and all.”

“Oh, he can stand a little bad news,” Sunny told him.
At least Shadow isn’t around for him to try to kick,
she thought. “I just hope the furniture can take it.”

The rest of the day Sunny spent watching and listening. She decided to have lunch with the older crowd and see how they were dealing with the situation. It was another buffet setup, but outdoors on a fieldstoned terrace behind the house. Tom and Lem Kingsbury appeared with damp hair and shiny faces, apparently having taken quick showers after a morning’s workout on the tennis court.

Sunny paid special attention to Lem Junior, who’d risen
on her personal suspects list. He’d certainly known about his father’s tackle box, a handy source for a sharp knife. He had easy access, since he was staying in the room where the thing was stored. And for a governor with presidential aspirations, a bit of blackmail was easy to imagine turning into something to kill over.

On the other hand, Lem didn’t seem to be under any strain. He ate a hearty lunch and chatted amiably with the members of his family. He even joked a bit with Augustus de Kruk, who told him that if he put as much effort into politics as he did into tennis, he’d have been president already.

Lem took it good-naturedly. “I guess that’s the problem with this family. Politics is our sideline. Tennis is the business. If you’re up for a game, maybe Cale can be persuaded. He’s not as bloodthirsty as Tom or I.”

“It’s been a while since I even held a tennis racquet,” Cale told Augustus. “I’m not sure what kind of a game I’d give you.”

Maybe he should challenge the Emperor to beer pong,
Sunny’s irreverent side suggested.

“We’ll see,” Augustus said. “Maybe later in the afternoon.”

Deborah Kingsbury put a fond hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Anything to interrupt the unending marathon between you and Tom.”

She looked as cool and unruffled as ever–if she’d been helping her husband hide two murders, she certainly wasn’t showing any strain.
Although she was the one who drew attention to Lem Senior’s fishing tackle,
Sunny thought.
Did she do that innocently because she didn’t know about the knife? Or was it a more devious maneuver, ensuring
a lot of fresh fingerprints would appear on the tackle so that her husband’s wouldn’t be so obvious?

Sunny took a sip of chilled white wine.
Deborah
even complained about what a mess the security people made. So if Lem’s prints appeared somewhere they shouldn’t, he’d have a perfect explanation—they’re the result of him trying to tidy things up in a room where they’ve always slept.

“Some more wine?” Cale gestured with the bottle, scattering Sunny’s thoughts.

“No, thanks,” she replied. The problem was, all these politicians and their families had plenty of experience in not letting their true feelings show. Even with her reporter’s instincts, Sunny was having a hard time getting a read on them.