Tulle Death Do Us Part (27 page)

First thing the next morning, after a Werner-specialty homemade breakfast, I set Fee and Dolly up at the shop, and went to look at the
Yacht Sea
in its slip at the marina, hoping for clues to a forty-year-old personal attack. Instead
I found Eric McDowell himself—in grungy jeans on his knees shining brass.

“You’re into boats these days, Ms. Cutler?”

“You heard that I got covered in fish on the
Yacht C
?”

“Yes,” he said on a chuckle. “I presume you were sleuthing and thought you’d found this boat, since the old scavenger hunt case is open again. You know, fishermen rarely join the country club. You didn’t notice that there was a
Yacht A
and a
Yacht B
beside it?”

I took a deep breath, calling myself: stupid, stupid, stupid. “It was dark.”

“So I hear. At any rate, I would have given you the tour of this McDowell yacht at anytime.” He offered me his arm so I could climb aboard.

“I realize that now. You know, Councilman, you have always confused me.”

“You feel like dusting for prints, don’t you? Go ahead. Need help? I’m your man.”

He indicated that I should precede him as if I could wander around the luxury yacht at will.

“I was a suspect once, wasn’t I?” he asked. “Maybe I am again?”

“Maybe you took part in that old scavenger hunt.”

His brows furrowed and he crossed his arms to lean against the rail. “I don’t know how, but you
know
that I did, which is not an admission of guilt where Ms. O’Dowd was concerned.”

“Maybe. I like this boat. It has a history,” I said to gauge his reaction. “Zavier loves it. You must be glad your father got him out on bail this morning. Where are you going?” I
asked as McDowell swung himself over the rail and off his boat in one leap.

“To protect my brother, I’ll get custody if I have to.”

McDowell wanted to take Zavier away from their father? Why? I called Werner to share that bit of news and barely finished when I got another caller beeping in. I said a quick “bye, love you” to Werner and took the next call.

“Mad,” Eve said. “I had dinner at Jay’s last night. His grandmother is kind of psychic like him, and she knows a lot about the fiftieth. You might want to trump up a reason to go there and talk to her.”

“You never send me out sleuthing, Eve. What’s with you today?”

“Whatever you uncover might help Jay find his dad. I’d like to see that happen for him, ’kay?”

“You’re smitten.”

“From the minute I laid eyes on him. You knew that.”

“I did but I wanted to hear you admit it.”

I didn’t need to trump up anything more than a Purple Heart, thanks to a cooperative universe. Jay’s father had been wounded. He might even be dead.

I set my Garmin for Jay’s address. This global positioning system was the answer to my prayers. Every directionally-challenged person should own one. With it, I took a ride to Rhode Island to meet the grandmother who raised Jay, Airman Gilchrist, so well.

When his grandmother came to the door, my last hope for finding a living Robin O’Dowd vanished. Fee and my dad were in their early sixties. Jay’s grandmother might be Ethel Sweet’s peer, early eighties.

“Mrs. Gilchrist, my name is Madeira Cutler. I’m from Mystic.”

“Vintage Magic, right? You fit my grandson to his father’s uniform yesterday morning. You made a positive and lasting impression on him.”

“The feeling was mutual. As a matter of fact, he’s taking my best friend to the country club event. We’re double dating.”

“Eve, yes. I met her last night. You’re not as darklydressed as she is.”

How kind she was. I chuckled as Mrs. Gilchrist led me into a house straight out of the seventies. Red maple furniture, ruffled lampshades, a spinning wheel in the corner. In the open kitchen, harvest gold appliances and knotty pine cabinets. “Chai tea?” she asked, a trend almost too much with the times in this place. “Can I interest you in a fresh lemon square? Still warm.”

I was suddenly ten and she was Dolly Sweet trying to make me forget that I’d lost my mother.

“This is a home, not a house,” I said. “You’re making me feel like company instead of a stranger.”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yes, guilt. I wanted to ask you about the Mystick Country Club’s fiftieth. Eve said you might be able to help with the investigation, though I do have something for you.” I set the Purple Heart on the cobbler’s bench coffee table between us. “I found it in the lining of your son’s airman’s uniform.”

She picked it up lovingly, although her expression was shocked. “I didn’t know. He was awarded a Purple Heart
and then went missing soon after. I had no idea that Glen survived, and came back home, only to disappear again.” She took out a linen handkerchief with a crochet edging and wiped her eyes.

I let my throat work to keep me from joining her.

The woman with her hair in a gray bun and Victorian combs holding it together stood resolutely, went into the kitchen, and silently made me a chai tea, though I hadn’t said yes. And now she set a plate of lemon squares between us and sat in a big overstuffed chair across from me. I could tell she was still processing the news, but she seemed determined to remain in an upbeat mood. “Jay is an excellent judge of character, and your friend Eve is the first girl he’s ever taken home for dinner then talked about for so long after bringing her home.”

“We might have a match, but…well, she marches to her own drummer.”

“More than me with my old-fashioned taste? I’m disappointed.”

“A lot more.”

“Locks on her ankle straps, black and copper, goth, right?”

We laughed. “Really, why sit still for my questions, Mrs. Gilchrist? Especially after the news I shared with you.”

“One, I’m polite. Two, they reopened the scavenger-hunt case and the detective is your boyfriend, yes?”

“Yes.”

She raised her chin. “Well, as my grandson is fond of saying, granite is granite, impervious, no matter how hard you try to break it, unless you have the right tools to cut into it, make something beautiful of it.”

“I don’t understand.”

She pulled back the curtain and I saw the stonecutter next door, headstones lined the yard. I had parked on the other side, so this was my first sight of it.

“Family business. My oldest nephew runs it for me,” she said. “We use granite a lot in metaphors around here.”

As I drove home from Scituate, I realized that my trip had netted me some extra background information for our
This Is Your Life
segment.

Instead of going home I went directly to the police station.

“Billings,” I said, going in. “Is your boss—”

“Go right in, Mad,” Billings said.

“Don’t you have to announce me so he can complain—”

“New rule. You get to go right in, if he’s not interrogating a perp or answering to a government official. As for complaining, he hasn’t chewed any of us out in a couple’a weeks, thanks to you.”

I sailed right by him and into Werner’s office. He didn’t even look up, so I shut his door, easy-like.

He looked up but his frown turned to a grin.

I grinned as well, in anticipation, as he came toward me. I had never been pinned against this particular door before.

When we came up for air, I remembered him shutting the file in front of him when he saw me.

He now shook his head. “The O’Dowd case really doesn’t add up. I wish I knew who the guy you call Snake was.”

“That’s looking possible all of a sudden.”

“How can we make it a viable fact?”

“As in motivation, means, opportunity? Get this…”

I told Werner the details of how another puzzle accidently fell into place that could help lead us to that viable fact and I got another kiss for my brilliance.

“See?” I said. “Me sleuthing has perks.”

“Try reminding me about that the
next
time I pull you from the bottom of a well.”

“That’s old news,” I said. “Have I been as sloppy in recent years or during recent cases?”

“I plead the fifth,” he said

I threw my arms around him and we held to the embrace, our cheeks pressed together. Just content to hold on. Something else new to my life.

I hated to break the moment, but we had a case to solve and I had an idea that came with a timeline and a ticking clock. “You had an appointment with Eric McDowell today, didn’t you?” I asked, as a reason to step back and toy with my guy’s tie. “Did you find out why he wants custody of his brother, Zavier? Gimme details.”

“Details I got, but they have no basis in fact.”

Proving things was our—Werner’s—job. “Suppose you
interview all the suspects one more time and ask one more question.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding, his mind working.

“After you do that,” I said, “you’ll either have straight answers or reactions, all of which will be reason enough to bring it to the final segment of
This Is Your Life
.”

“In front of all those people?”

“I was thinking that we should move the dancing to before dinner, even through cocktails, so people can get the celebrating out of their systems. We have five guests that are, let’s face it—after perusing Dad and Fee’s backgrounds on them and their surprise guests—rather anti-climactic. By then, the attendees might want to go home.”

Werner grabbed his all-weather coat and opened his door so I could precede him out.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going home.”

“Why?”

Werner roared. “You still have to ask?”

Werner started my car, and left his in the lot. “I think that our attendees won’t want to be rude, even if we do want them to go.”

“Call an intermission and give them an escape route. You know that half of them will go.”

“Half of them is good.”

“It really turns me on that you understand my job,” he said, pulling into his driveway.

We ate a late dinner, then we went for a moonlight stroll and got back to our earlier conversation.

“I must admit that your plan is almost perfect,” Werner said.

“We have no choice,” I replied, “except to surprise our last entrant with an unexpected reading and as unexpected a past as possible, or it won’t work, except that really,
This Is Your Life
isn’t our party to alter.”

Werner stopped and turned to me. “You think your father and Fee would let us run the show instead of them?”

I hit speed dial on my phone, asked Fiona, who relayed the question to my dad, got my answer, and slipped my cell back into my pocket. “To quote my dad: ‘In a New York minute.’”

“Tomorrow and this weekend I have to return the unchosen formals while you interview our scavenger-hunt lot. Wish I could be with you.”

“I can’t believe that Sunday, we’re on.” He pulled me against his side. “We make a good team, kid.”

I usually shied away from any “team” statement that came from a member of the opposite sex, but this time, getting closer seemed the thing to do.

“Our version of
This Is Your Life
is starting to look like a sting operation,” I said.

“I’ll put officers in formal dress and pepper the audience with them.”

“It’ll be more entertaining than…well…a scavenger hunt. It also makes me think of the game Mousetrap—Snap. Snap. Snap.

“I can hardly wait.”

“Only one loose cannon to worry about,” Werner said.

“Who?”

“Wynona has a ticket to the ball, and frankly she’s got a couple billion motives for wanting Wayne dead. I’m looking forward to talking with her tomorrow.”

“Dollars?” I confirmed.

He shrugged and I understood. Cutting too close to the need-to-know bone for a detective.

“If she is her husband’s killer, be careful, she’s dangerous.” I took another step, then turned back to him. “She would have had the same motive for wanting Robin dead, wouldn’t she…if she were planning to reel Wayne in.”

“Yep, it always comes down to money.”

“Where have I heard that before?”