A Catered Fourth of July (8 page)

T
he room was eight feet by ten feet wide. It was cooler than the rest of the basement and smelled of oil and metal. The walls were painted a high gloss white and lined with shelves. A recliner and a small TV sat in the left corner of the room. A large metal table with two stools stood in the middle. A collection of coffee cups, take-out containers, and rags smelling vaguely of oil were strewn over the top.

As Bernie looked around, she saw lots of guns, lots of gun paraphernalia, and realized she was in the room of a serious gun collector.
This is it
, she thought.
Rick Evans is responsible for what happened at the reenactment
. Then she took another look around and thought,
maybe not
. What she didn't see was anything resembling the muskets that the reenactors had used. She stepped up and studied a pair of mother-of-pearl handled dueling pistols displayed in a red velvet-lined case. Next to that were a Walther PPK, a German Luger, a Lancaster Oval Bore, a Browning, a Beretta, and a Glock. All of them were in their cases. All of them were neatly labeled.

She was especially taken with a tiny pearl-handled revolver that was simply labeled
LADIES GUN
. 1875. W
YOMING
.
The trouble with owning something like that,
she thought, is I'd never be able to find the damned thing among all the junk I carry in my bag. Of course, she'd certainly be able to find the AK-47 on the next shelf, or the Sterling submachine gun, the Colt carbine, or the Uzi, not to mention the Remington rifle, the Winchester, or something called the Needle gun. Again, all were neatly labeled.

As Bernie studied the guns, it occurred to her that they must be worth quite a bit of money. She moved around the room, spotting boxes of ammo, rods for cleaning the rifles, bags of rags, bottles of oil, and a machine she thought Rick Evans used to refill his bullets. A couple targets were tucked in one corner. She didn't see anything that looked like the muskets used in the reenactment. Of course, they could be hidden somewhere, but that seemed unlikely. Why hide something from yourself? Nevertheless, she took another look through the room just to make sure.

She was still looking when she got a call from her Dad. The moment she picked up, she knew that she shouldn't have.

“Where are my picks?” Sean asked.

“No hellos? No hi, how ya doing?” Bernie replied.

“Don't start with me, Bernie. What are you doing?”

She told him.

She heard a sharp intake of breath, then silence. That meant that her Dad was really mad.

“Don't you want to know what I found?”

“No. I want you to stay out of my desk.”

“Would it help if I told you I was looking for some Scotch tape?”

Silence.

“I'll snap some pics and send them to you. You don't have to look at them if you don't want to.”

More silence.

“Come on, Dad,” she wheedled. “I need your opinion.”

There was another moment of silence, then Sean said, “I'll see,” and hung up.

“Okay,” Bernie said to herself as she took out her cell and began snapping pics of the gun collection. Then she sent them off to her dad with a text. What do you think?

Her dad didn't reply. Not that she had expected him to. It would take him a little while to cool off.

Bernie dawdled for a couple minutes, looking around a bit more. Something was bothering her, but she couldn't figure out what it was. Then she had it. Rick Evans had never mentioned anything about guns. He'd never given the impression that he knew anything about them.

But so what?
Bernie thought as she eyed the items in the room. That really didn't mean anything. There was no reason why he had to say anything. On the other hand, he had given the clear impression that he knew as much about muskets as Marvin did, which was to say that he didn't know anything at all. Hence, Rick Evans was lying by omission.

Maybe
lying
was an inaccurate word. Maybe the word she wanted was
dissembling
. Whatever term one applied, the truth was that he had the capability of loading up his musket with shot, swapping it out with one of those Marvin had gotten from the costume store, and handing it to Jack Devlin.

After all, Rick Evans had come up with the idea for the reenactment. Maybe the whole thing was just a way to help him get to Devlin. Maybe Marvin was just collateral damage, a convenient scapegoat. Maybe Devlin wasn't supposed to die. Despite what Brandon had said, maybe Rick had wanted to just hurt Devlin. Maybe he wanted to teach him a lesson he'd never forget, especially when he looked in the mirror every morning.

Bernie thought about how Devlin's face had looked and shuddered. Devlin would have been seriously maimed or blinded if he had survived. Was it possible to calibrate the misfiring of a musket so that whoever was holding it would be hurt, but not killed? Was that even possible? Bernie would have to ask her Dad and Brandon, but she was pretty sure she knew the answer already. It wasn't.

She took a deep breath and blew it out. She had no proof of anything. The entire case she was building in her mind was strictly circumstantial. It was even less than that, really. She was stretching the facts to fit her hypothesis. She could see no muskets in the basement and nothing to indicate that Rick even had any. Bernie wondered how many people involved in the reenactment had muskets in their houses. She wondered how many were gun collectors. How many were hunters?

Good questions.

Bernie's cell rang. She looked down. It was her Dad. Not answering it wasn't an option.

“Are you out yet?” he asked when she picked up.

“On my way.” Well, she was. Almost.

“Hurry up. If you get caught, I'm not bailing you out of jail.” He hung up before she could ask him if he'd had a chance to look at the pics.

Bernie took a final look around, put her cell phone back in her bag, and walked out of the room, taking care to close the door behind her. She threaded her way through the basement, went up the stairs, and through the house. At the back entrance, she let herself out, locked the door, carefully reattached the key to the wreath, and left the Evans house.

The heat hit her full force. She stood for a moment, wiping the sweat off her neck and regretting the fact that she was going to have to walk to the nail salon. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of another option.

Bernie pulled the water bottle from her bag and took a sip as she walked to the front of the house. She put on her sunglasses to block the sun's glare and looked around. It was still. Nothing was moving. No one was outside on the front lawns. No one was on the road.

The only sounds she could hear were the droning of the air-conditioners and the buzz of a lawn mower off in the distance. Even the birds were quiet in the noonday sun, lulled into a torpor by the heat.

She walked to the corner, made a right, and continued until she was on one of the smaller, secondary roads in the development. A quarter mile later, she made a sharp left. The last thing she wanted was Gail passing her on the way home from the salon in the event that she'd finished early. It wasn't likely to happen, but Bernie decided it paid to be careful. She'd pushed her luck far enough for one day.

If Gail saw Bernie, she'd stop and offer her a lift. Then she'd want to know what Bernie was doing in that part of town and why she was on foot. Frankly, Bernie couldn't come up with a good answer. Call her crazy, but somehow a reply like,
Oh, I'm just walking back to meet my sister after breaking into your house,
probably wouldn't be well received
.
Nor would
, And by the way, is there anything you want to tell me about your husband's gun collection?

Bernie took another drink of water, found a tissue, and blotted the sweat off her face. She didn't want her eyeliner and mascara getting into her eyes. The stuff was supposed to be waterproof, but she had her doubts. She'd gotten her cell phone back out to call Marvin and tell him what she'd found, when he called her. She punched the ANSWER button. “Hello.”

“I think someone took a shot at me.”

“Ha-ha. So not funny,” Bernie told him.

“I'm not kidding,” Marvin said.

B
ernie came to a dead halt in the road. She figured maybe she'd heard wrong. “Excuse me?”

“I said someone shot at me,” Marvin repeated.

Bernie could hear the panic in his voice. She leaned against an oak tree. The heat was making her light-headed. “What makes you think that?”

“There's a bullet hole in my windshield,” he said, his tone turning sharp, “that's why I think that.”

“Were you in the car at the time?” Bernie asked.

“No. I'd just gotten out.”

“Did you see who did it?”

Marvin coughed. “No.”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Bernie said, straining to find a credible explanation for what had just occurred.

“How could it be an accident?” Marvin demanded.

“Someone might have been firing at a target and missed. Bullets can travel a long way.” She couldn't fathom why someone would want to shoot at Marvin. She could understand Jack Devlin being killed, but Marvin? To her knowledge, he had no enemies. “Where were you when this happened?”

“Where I am now. At the funeral home.”

“Very efficient of whoever it was,” Bernie noted.

“I thought so.”

Bernie was silent for a moment as she pictured the place. The odds of a bullet accidentally finding its way into Marvin's windshield from the surrounding area seemed unlikely, to say the very least. The area was mostly private housing with retail establishments running down a main road. Although there was a gun range in Longely, it was nowhere near the funeral home. She took another sip of water. Could someone have fired from the road? From the parking lot? Maybe whoever took the shot was aiming at someone else. She would like to believe that.

“What car were you driving?” Bernie asked.

“The Taurus. Why?”

“That car is extremely common. Maybe someone mistook you for someone else.”

“I hope so.” But Marvin didn't sound convinced.

She switched her cell phone to her other ear. “When did this happen?”

“Not that long ago.”

Bernie fought an impulse to sit down under the tree. She should have had something more than a blueberry tart to eat before she left the shop. She should have had the Parma ham, caramelized onion, Fontina cheese, and arugula sandwich that she had wanted. She couldn't go without eating actual food anymore. If she did, she'd get the shakes.

“How long is not that long ago?”

“About an hour,” he answered.

“An hour?” Bernie fanned herself with her hand.

“That's what I just said.”

“Why did you wait to call?”

“Because I was tied up with the police. They're finishing up now.”

“When did they get there?”

“Almost immediately. Our tax dollars at work.”

“That was fast,” Bernie observed.

“They said they were in the neighborhood.”

“Interesting,” Bernie muttered.

“What did you say? I didn't get that.”

“I just said they responded really fast.” She wondered if the Longely PD was keeping an eye on Marvin.

“They said they were investigating a shoplifting complaint at Target,” Marvin explained. The store was just down the road from the funeral home.

“So what did the police conclude?” Bernie prompted when Marvin didn't say anything more.

“About Target?”

“No. About your getting shot at.”

“Oh. They think that I did it,” Marvin said after another moment of silence.

Bernie couldn't believe what she was hearing. “You're kidding me, right?”

Marvin's voice quavered. “I wish I was. They told me they think I did it to deflect suspicion away from myself.”

“That's absurd,” Bernie huffed.

“That's what I told them, but I'm pretty sure they didn't believe me.”

“You don't even have a gun!” Bernie exclaimed.

“I guess they think I do.”

“You don't know one end of a gun from another,” Bernie continued. This thing was just getting sillier and sillier. Well, one thing was for certain. The Longely PD hadn't been following Marvin after all. A fact that was good and bad.

“You should tell them that,” Marvin said.

“I intend to.” Not that it would make a difference.

“I think I should call a lawyer,” Marvin opined.

“I thought you'd done that, Marvin. You said you were going to.”

“Well, I haven't.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I guess I was waiting for this to go away, but it's not going to, is it?”

“Most definitely not.”

“I can see that now. Things are just getting worse. They . . .”

“They who?” Bernie asked.

“The police,” Marvin clarified. “They said something about getting a warrant to search the house. My father will have a coronary if that happens. How's he going to explain that to our clients? Hell, how am I going to explain it to our clients?”

“Don't worry.”

“Don't worry?” Marvin yelled into the phone. “Are you insane?”

Bernie held the phone away from her ear until he stopped shouting. “Maybe a little bit.”

“I don't even know who to call.” Marvin's voice was plaintive. “The lawyer my dad uses does stuff like real estate.”

“My dad will know. Come over to the flat and have some coffee and cake and we'll discuss strategy.”

“I don't want to discuss strategy.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“Sleep. I want to wake up and find that this whole thing is a bad dream.” There was a short pause then Marvin said, “I'm tired. I want to go to bed.”

“Marvin, you can't go to bed and pull the covers over your head.”

“I didn't say anything about covers, Bernie”

“You have to fight this, Marvin,” she told him as a car went by. The Miata slowed down, and for a moment, she thought the driver was going to stop and ask for directions. Then it sped up and turned the corner, leaving a vague smell of exhaust in its wake.

“But I don't want to fight,” Marvin wailed, responding to Bernie's last comment. “I just want this thing to disappear.”

“Libby and I are trying to make that happen.” Bernie watched a butterfly land on a daisy growing by her left foot. “We really are. But we can't do it without your help.”

“All right,” Marvin said grudgingly after a minute had gone by.

Bernie shifted her cell to her other ear. Her face was slick with perspiration. She was positive that the suntan lotion she'd applied earlier was now on the face of her cell phone. “So you'll come to the flat?”

“Yes, I'll come. I don't want to, but I will.”

“And drive over in the Taurus. I want to look at the windshield.”

“I can't. The cops are impounding the car.”

“That's absurd.”

“Tell me something I don't know,” Marvin said. “But what can I do?”

“Stall them until Libby and I get there,” Bernie told him.

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don't know, Marvin. Figure something out.” Bernie hung up and called Libby. The phone rang and on the seventh ring went to voice mail. “Come on, Libby, pick up the phone,” Bernie urged as she called again.

But Libby didn't answer. Then Bernie's phone went black.

“Arrrgh,” Bernie cried. She'd run out of juice.

She slipped her cell back in her bag and started walking. She didn't think it was a good omen for how the rest of the day was going to go.