A Catered Fourth of July (12 page)

Libby thought for another moment. Where was everybody? That was the question. Rick Evans was presumably at his office in the city. He went in every morning. It was a little after twelve so Samuel Cotton should be at school overseeing the summer camp the town was running, which left David Nancy, who worked at home, as the most likely suspect.

Libby smiled. At least it was a start. She always felt better when she had a plan.

T
he moment Bernie parked the van in David Nancy's driveway, Libby hopped out, walked behind the garage, and contemplated the view from there. She could see two hearses parked out back of Marvin's father's funeral home. They shimmered in the heat. A dragonfly buzzed by her cheek as she watched a linen supply truck pull up to the funeral home entranceway. A moment later, the driver got out. He carried one large laundry bag under each arm. Libby noted that she had no problem reading the truck's logo.

“Dave Nancy has a clear shot at Marvin from here,” she said as Bernie came up behind her. She waved her hand in the air to indicate the area that she meant. “It would certainly be easy enough to do.”

“If he's a halfway decent shot,” Bernie pointed out.

“Hopefully, that's one of things we'll find out.”

“Even if he is, I don't see why he would do that.” Bernie was less than enthusiastic about her sister's theory.

“Well, there is that minor point,” Libby admitted. Off-hand, she couldn't think of any reason why David Nancy would take a shot at Marvin.

Marvin hadn't been able to come up with a reason, either, but that didn't mean there wasn't one. After all, that's what investigations were all about. When she'd asked Marvin if he knew why, he'd just looked at her and said, “I have to move the sprinklers and then I'm going to go inside and lie down.”

“He's shutting down,” Bernie had said as Marvin had walked away.

“I should go after him.” Libby had been about to take a step toward him when Bernie had put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.

“Don't,” she'd advised. “He needs some time alone.”

Libby had acquiesced. In truth, she didn't have the energy to argue with him or with anyone else, for that matter.

They returned to the front yard. Standing out on the driveway, she felt as if the heat had soaked into her head and was turning her brain to mush. She was thinking that maybe she was getting sunstroke when Bernie nudged her in the ribs.

“What?”

Bernie handed her a water bottle. “Here. Have some of this.”

Libby took a couple deep swallows and instantly felt better. “Come on,” she said after she'd taken a few more. “Let's find out what David Nancy has to say for himself.” With that, she turned on her heels, walked up to the house, and rang the bell.

A moment later, his wife Cora opened the door. She was a statuesque lady who was a good four inches taller and twenty pounds heavier than her husband, but there was nothing flabby about her, a fact that was immediately apparent because she was wearing the smallest bathing suit possible.

Really, it isn't a bathing suit at all,
Bernie thought.
Just a G-string with a couple pasties on top.
“Nice outfit,” she couldn't resist saying.

“Isn't it, though?” Cora favored her with a glittering smile. Her teeth were white enough to blind. “My husband says it's wrong to hide God's bounty under a bushel.”

“I thought it was God's light,” Libby said.

Cora shrugged. “Whatever. Now, what can I do for you ladies?”

“We'd like to speak to your husband,” Libby said.

“Sorry,” Cora replied promptly. “He isn't home. He's down in the city seeing a client.”

“Funny. I thought I saw his car in the garage,” Bernie said.

Cora crossed her arms over her chest. “That's because I drove him to the train station.”

“He's an industrial designer, isn't he?” Libby asked.

Cora nodded. “Not an easy thing to be these days, especially when everything's being jobbed out to China.”

“What does he design?” Libby asked, more to be polite than for any other reason. She didn't know a lot about Nancy and his wife, they being relative newcomers to the area.

Cora tittered and put her hand up to her mouth. “Sex toys.”

“Interesting line of work,” Bernie observed.

“He used to design perfume bottles, but his company got taken over.” Cora shrugged. “Now he does this.” She formed her lips into another smile. Her eyes didn't follow along. “You'd be surprised how much money is in this kind of stuff, and, hey, money is always nice.”

“Yes, it is.” Bernie agreed. She knew where some of that money was going, too. Plastic surgery was not cheap and from the looks of her, Cora had indulged in more than her share. She was one of those women who was never going to grow old, at least not if she could help it. From what Bernie could see, no part of Cora's body had escaped the surgeon's knife. She'd been nipped and tucked and Botoxed to within an inch of her life. Looking at her, Bernie thought maybe she'd wait to get some work done. Not that, given her financial situation, she was contemplating it any time soon.

“Can I tell David what this is about?” Cora asked.

“It's about the shooting,” Bernie told her.

Cora put a hand to her bee stung lips. “I was there.”

“Were you?” Bernie decided Cora had to be talking about the shooting that had happened during the reenactment, not the shooting at Marvin.

Cora shook her head. “I was late. It was terrible.” Her voice rose. “Frankly, I wish I hadn't gone at all.”

Bernie detected a sob or maybe a catch in Cora's voice, but whether it was one or another, it was certainly more of a reaction than she had anticipated.
Maybe too much of one,
she thought as she looked into Cora's eyes. They, unlike her voice, didn't seem at all troubled. In fact, they seemed positively serene.

Cora glanced from one woman to another. “Why would Marvin do something like that to Jacko?”

“Jacko?” Bernie asked, keeping her voice neutral.

“Yes. Jacko. Jacko Devlin. Jacko was his nickname,” Cora explained when neither Bernie nor Libby said anything.

“I thought it was Devi,” Bernie said.

Cora gave her a puzzled look. “Why would you think that?”

“No reason.” Bernie took care not to look at Libby. “So he was a friend of yours?”

“Yes, he was,” Cora replied.

“A good friend?”

Cora looked Bernie square in the eye. “Yes. A good friend. Why? Is that a problem?”

Bernie shook her head. “Not at all.”

“He certainly was a man who knew how to share himself,” Libby observed.

Cora put her hands on her hips and her face an inch away from Libby's. “Meaning?”

“Meaning nothing.” Libby took a step back. “I was just making an observation.”

“He was a wonderful man,” Cora said, “and it's a shame that your boyfriend had to go and kill him. The world will be a less . . . exciting . . . place . . . with Jacko gone.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Bernie said.

“Marvin didn't do anything to him,” Libby said at the same time.

“Everyone is saying Marvin did it,” Cora retorted.

“Well, they're wrong,” Libby told her.

“People were there. They saw what happened.”

Libby was just about to trot out the bromide about not always believing what you see, when her sister started speaking.

“If you don't mind my saying so, you sound pretty mad at Marvin,” Bernie told Cora.

“Of course I'm mad at him,” Cora replied. “Like I said, Jacko was my friend.”

Libby opened her mouth to say something, but Bernie shot her a look and she closed it again.

“Were you angry enough to shoot at him?”

“Marvin?” Cora asked.

Bernie leaned forward. “Yes.”

“Someone shot at Marvin?” Cora asked.

“About an hour ago,” Libby said.

“And you think that I did it?” Cora demanded.

“It crossed our minds,” Libby told her.

Cora snorted. “That's stupid.”

“So people say.” Bernie nodded. “However, that doesn't change the question.”

Cora pointed at herself and scoffed. “Do I look like someone who knows how to shoot a gun?”

“Why not? Lots of women do these days,” Bernie noted.

“Maybe they do,” Cora answered. “But I'm not one of them.”

“So you've never shot a gun?” Libby asked.

“I've never even shot a BB gun,” Cora replied.

“How about a cap pistol?” Bernie asked.

Cora gave her an incredulous stare. “I think you've been out in the sun too long.”

“Or a water gun?” Bernie asked. “Have you ever used one of those?”

Cora shook her head in disbelief.

“I'll take that as a no,” Bernie said.

“How about your husband? Would he have shot at Marvin?” Libby demanded.

“That's just beyond moronic. Why would he do something like that?”

“I don't know. That's why I'm asking you.”

“I don't know, either,” Cora told her.

“Well, someone does, because someone did take the shot,” Libby pointed out.

Bernie chimed in next. “Maybe your husband rigged Jacko's musket, too,” she suggested.

“David didn't shoot anyone.” Cora's voice rose. “He didn't rig the musket. He didn't do anything. Nothing. Nothing at all. What is it going to take to get it through your thick heads?”

Bernie smiled. “He didn't do anything? Not even when he found out that you were having an affair with Jack Devlin?” she threw at Cora.

Nothing like a good guess to keep things moving,
Bernie thought as she watched Cora freeze for a moment, then recover. From the reaction she got, Bernie guessed she'd hit the mark.

“That's simply not true,” Cora protested. However, her voice lacked conviction.

Bernie laughed. “Please. You know my sister and I are going to find out. Secrets are hard to hide in a small town like Longely.”

Cora reached down and readjusted her thong. “Let's say, hypothetically, I did have an affair with Jacko and my husband did find out.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” Bernie said.

“Yes. Hypothetically speaking. He wouldn't have done anything.”

Bernie decided Cora sounded rather sad about that fact.

“For one thing, my husband doesn't know one end of a gun from another. I don't think he's ever handled a gun in his life. He's scared of them. Something about some childhood accident.”

“He handled a musket at the reenactment,” Libby reminded her.

“That was a prop,” Cora snapped back. “It was supposed to be strictly for show. You know, like in amateur theater.”

“Evidently it wasn't,” Bernie said.

“No. It wasn't,” Cora agreed.

“You must have been upset when your affair, excuse me, your hypothetical affair, with Devlin was over,” Bernie said.

Cora sniffed and pointed a perfectly groomed finger at herself. “So now you're suggesting I did something with the muskets to make Devlin's musket explode? Unbelievable.”

“My sister didn't say that,” Libby told her.

“No. But she damn well implied it,” Cora shot back. “Both of you should make up your minds about who killed whom. I'm getting really confused here. First, it was Dave shooting Marvin and Jacko, and then it was me. Well, for your information, we don't have any guns in the house.”

“Can we come in and look?” Bernie asked.

Cora would have raised her eyebrows if she could have. “Are you kidding me?”

“Actually,” Libby said, “I think my sister is quite serious.”

“I am,” Bernie said.

“No. You may not. Absolutely not.”

“No need to get upset. I was only asking.”

Cora shook a finger at Bernie and Libby. “You have some nerve coming here like this, interrupting my sunbathing. You want to talk to someone about guns? Talk to Samuel Cotton. He goes hunting all the time. He and Rick Evans. They're a real pair.”

“Rick Evans hunts?” Libby was not surprised, given what Bernie had seen in the Evans's basement

Cora flung her hands in the air. “How can you not know this? Duh. Of course he does. He belongs to the Musket and Flintlock Club out past Hudson Valley. That's where he got the idea for the reenactment. Muskets and Flintlocks puts one on every September. In fact, he tried to get my David to go.”

“To the reenactment?”

“To the meetings.” She sniffed. “As if.”

“Why as if?” Bernie asked.

“Because he's . . . he's . . . he doesn't do things like that.”

“Like what?”

Cora shrugged. “Like guy things. Now, if you wouldn't mind leaving, I'd like to get back to working on my tan.”

“Libby, do you have a problem with that?” Bernie asked.

“No Bernie, do you?”

“You guys think you're funny, don't you?” Cora said.

“Well, I do, but Bernie doesn't.”

“No, Libby. It's the opposite way around.”

Cora snorted, turned on her heel, and walked inside her house, slamming the door after her.

“Oh well,” Libby said.

“I guess we should work on a new routine.”

“Guess so, Bernie.”

They were heading for the van when they heard a man talking. The sound seemed to be coming from the back of the house.

“No can do,” the man was saying.

The sisters exchanged glances. As one, they followed the narrow gravel path around the side of the house to the back.

David Nancy was sitting on a lounge chair talking on the phone. If his wife looked as if she spent every spare minute in the gym, Nancy looked as if he'd never set foot in one. His belly swelled over the band of his plaid bathing suit.

“You were supposed to be down in the city,” Bernie said to him when she was a couple feet away.

David Nancy snapped his head around, saw who it was, and groaned. “I'll call you back later.” He clicked off and put the phone down on the side table next to his chair. “Obviously I didn't make it.”