A Fatal Slip (21 page)

“If you don’t mind me asking, who exactly did you get this inheritance from?”

“I don’t mind telling you at all,” Jenna said. “My aunt Rita passed away, and since no one on the planet could stand being around her, she left her money to me, some sort of consolation prize for putting up with her over the years, I suppose.”

I hadn’t been expecting that as an explanation. “Was she really that bad?”

“Carolyn, you have no idea. She was not just stingy with her money. She was stingy with her love. I don’t know what made her such a bitter old woman, but from what I’ve heard, she was born with a clod of dirt in her mouth. The woman acted as though she’d be charged a hundred dollars every time she smiled. When the funeral director showed me her final repose, complete with a slight smile, I made them do it over until she wore the scowl I’d seen my entire life.”

“She sounds like she was miserable.”

Jenna nodded. “I believe Abraham Lincoln said that people were just about as happy as they made up their minds to be, and I couldn’t agree with him more.”

“So why are we here celebrating, then?”

Jenna smiled slightly. “Because Aunt Rita wouldn’t have approved of me squandering part of my inheritance on a nice meal out.”

“Should we be doing it, then?”

“Are you kidding? If she’s watching us—looking up, not down, let me assure you—she’s fussing and fuming, which always made her happy when she was alive. So eat up, enjoy yourself, and we’ll toast the sour old bird with every drink.” Jenna studied the menu. “I’m having the duck. How about you?”

“I’ll have the salmon, if you’re sure.”

“You can do better than that, can’t you? Come on, live a little, Carolyn.”

“Maybe I’ll have dessert, too,” I said reluctantly.

“That’s the spirit.” Jenna waved to the waitress standing discreetly by. “We’re ready now.”

After we placed our orders and were served glasses of champagne, Jenna held hers up to me. “To enjoying life, and to Rita.”

“To Rita,” I echoed, then we tapped our flutes and drank.

The food was even better than its reputation. I planned to start saving for a return visit as soon as I got back to the shop. Maybe if I scrimped and saved for eight or nine years, I’d be able to come back. If Bill wanted to join me, we’d probably have to wait even longer.

Dessert was out of this world—a chocolate mousse and cake concoction that made my teeth hurt to look at. I knew exactly where every calorie I swallowed would end up, but I didn’t care. It was nothing short of extraordinary, and all of it was pure indulgence.

We were having coffee after our meal, and Jenna was waiting on her change from the check, though I doubted there’d be anything left of the two crisp, new hundred-dollar bills she’d handed over.

“How lovely,” I said, content beyond all belief. “Thanks so much for including me.”

“You were the perfect guest,” she said.

We were ready to go, so we walked out to Jenna’s car. She’d been gracious enough to drive us to the restaurant, and now I was glad I’d taken her up on her offer. I was so stuffed I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fit behind my own steering wheel.

I was buckling my seat belt when Jenna said suddenly, “Duck down.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Just do it.”

I released the belt, then slouched down in my seat. “Why exactly are we doing this?” I asked.

“Look over there.”

I peeked up over the dashboard and looked in the direction she’d pointed.

Jackson Mallory was getting out of his car, but that wasn’t the surprising part of the view.

He was escorting Rose Nygren to lunch, and the two of them looked like they’d been close forever. There was something comfortable about the way he put his arm around her waist to steady her, and the way Rose leaned into him as she spoke.

Once they were inside the restaurant, I sat back up in my seat and asked Jenna, “What on earth was that about?”

“They looked like they were up to something, didn’t they? I thought Rose was still pretty upset over Charlie Cobb’s death. Didn’t she just break up with his brother, Rick? That’s a pretty quick rebound.”

“She didn’t act the part of a jilted lover just now, did she?” I asked.

“That’s not what I was seeing, either,” Jenna said. “Do you suppose there’s a chance the two of them just got together?”

“I doubt it. They looked entirely too chummy to me. But what does it mean?”

“I don’t have a clue, unless Rose is leading some kind of secret life nobody knows about.”

I thought about that for a few seconds, then said, “I’d sure like to know more than I do. I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on Rose.”

Jenna started the car. “She’s not going to like the idea of you spying on her.”

“She’s just going to have to deal with it,” I said. “I can’t really afford to worry about what people think of me at the moment.”

Jenna nodded. “I’m sorry she spoiled our outing.”

“It’s fine. I won’t let it bother me. Honestly, I had a lovely time.”

“I just can’t help feeling that Aunt Rita had something to do with them showing up like that, haunting me from beyond the grave. It’s something she would do, if she has any power in the afterlife. That woman never could leave well enough alone.”

After Jenna dropped me off at my car in the parking lot above the River Walk, I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to talk to Rose about her lunch with Jackson, but they might not be back for hours. So what was I going to do in the meantime? I could go back to Fire at Will, but I’d been given a pass to play hooky for the rest of the day, and while I loved my shop, sometimes it was good to just get away. If I stayed anywhere near the River Walk, I knew I’d run into too many people I knew. Though it was still early afternoon, I decided to go home. Bill wasn’t working, at least he hadn’t been the last time I’d talked to him. Maybe we could catch a movie, or do something to get away from the cloud hanging over his head.

His truck was in the driveway, but he wasn’t in the house. I walked out to his shop and glanced in the window. He was happily working on something, joining two pieces of dark wood in some sort of complicated clamping system. It appeared that Bill had managed to put his troubles aside and lose himself in his work again.

I walked back to the house and turned on a movie. I lost interest quickly, though, and shut it off.

There were so many things troubling me about Charlie Cobb’s murder, I couldn’t sort them out. After grabbing a legal pad and a pencil, I curled up on the couch and started writing down what I knew. My list of suspects didn’t include my husband, though I knew he topped the sheriff’s roster of likely candidates. I did list Rick Cobb, despite Butch’s gut reaction to the man; Jackson Mallory; and as much as I hated to, Rose Nygren and Nate Walker. Charlie Cobb might have been killed by somebody else, but if he was, they didn’t make my list. And if that were the case, it would be up to Sheriff Hodges to figure it out, and that would probably mean that a killer would go free.

I’d read enough mysteries to know that three things were needed to establish a killer: motive, means, and opportunity. Drowning Charlie in a bucket of clay slip hadn’t taken as much strength as one might have expected, because whoever had done it had hit him in the head first, from behind. So the real question was how had they lured Charlie into the alley behind my shop in the first place? I couldn’t imagine him going there with a stranger, and that meant he had known his killer. The blow had come from behind, so Charlie had been comfortable enough with his murderer to turn his back on him—or her—a fatal mistake. I would have loved to ask the coroner for details of that blow. Had it come from a downward or an upward swing? Hodges would know, but I doubted the sheriff would share that, or any other piece of information with me. I stood and pretended to deliver a series of fatal blows to an imaginary victim in all sorts of positions, and finally concluded that the angle of impact probably didn’t indicate much about the murderer. The direction of the blow would have depended on where Charlie was when he was struck, and nobody but the killer had any idea. For instance, if Charlie had been bent over, say to pick something up, the blow would have come from above, though the killer might have been a great deal shorter than Charlie.

I was still swiping the air with an imaginary brick when I heard a cough behind me. “Do I even want to know what you’re doing?”

I looked at my husband and said, “I’m trying to get you off of a murder charge. I thought you were working in your shop.”

“I ran out of clamps, so I have to wait until the joints I glued up are dry before I can go on to the next step. Why aren’t you at Fire at Will?”

“I had something more important to do. Come here a second.”

He stepped forward. “What is it?”

I threw my pad on the floor in front of me. “Pick that up, would you?”

He looked at me as if I’d just lost my mind. “Why? You dropped it. Pick it up yourself.”

“Bill, could you, for once in your life, cooperate and do what I ask?”

He didn’t like it, but my husband leaned forward and reached for the pad. As he did so, I swatted him lightly in the head with my open hand. That theory was proven, at any rate.

“Hey, there’s no reason to hit me. I was picking it up, just like you asked me to.”

“I’m testing an idea,” I said. “Now, turn around for a second.”

He rubbed his scalp. “Not if you’re going to hit me again.”

“Stop being such a baby. This is important.”

He turned, and I swooped down on him from different angles until I was satisfied that I’d exhausted the possibilities.

When I stopped, Bill said, “That’s it. You’ve finally gone over the edge.”

“Anybody could have done it,” I said as I shook my head. “This didn’t prove anything. How hard do you have to hit somebody with a brick to knock them out?”

He took a step away from me. “I don’t know, and I don’t intend to find out. You just lost your test dummy.”

“I wasn’t going to try that on you,” I said.

“Well, don’t get mad at me for thinking you might.”

I sighed. “I was just hoping to eliminate somebody from my list of suspects, but all this proves is that anybody could have killed Charlie Cobb.”

Bill sat down heavily in the chair. “I don’t know if I’d say that. How mad would you have to be at somebody to hold their face down in a bucket of that mud until they drowned? I for one know that I couldn’t do it.”

“Neither could I,” I replied, then added, “Then again, maybe I could.”

He looked shocked. “I hope you’re going to explain that to me.”

“If somebody did something to you or one of the boys, I might be able to bring myself to murder. I’m not saying I would, but I can’t rule it out, either, not if I’m being honest about it.”

He nodded. “You’ve got a point.” Bill leaned over and grabbed my pad again. “Let’s see what you’ve got here.” As he read the list, I saw him smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“I didn’t make the roster,” he said.

“That’s because I couldn’t think of a motive for you,” I said, adding a slight grin.

“I hope you had more reasons than that to leave me off. So, what motives do the others have?”

I took the pad from him and studied the list. “Rick Cobb’s motive could be greed or jealousy.”

Bill frowned. “I understand the greed part after what you told me about the will, but jealousy? I thought Rose was dating him, not his brother.”

“Both brothers could have been after her; sibling rivalry gone bad. Could she have thought Rick would have enough money to marry her if he inherited his brother’s estate?”

Bill looked skeptical. “I don’t see Rose Nygren as being capable of that kind of murder.”

“I don’t, either, but I can’t rule her out.”

“So we leave her on the list,” Bill said. “I suppose we don’t have to look far for a motive for Jackson, do we?”

I hadn’t said a word to Bill about the bribe Jackson had given me, and I knew Butch wouldn’t have, either. “Why do you say that?”

“Come on. He’s the biggest contractor in our part of Vermont, and Charlie Cobb was a building inspector. You have to wonder if a little money passed between them under the table to get Charlie to look the other way. Maybe he started asking Jackson for more, or he could have threatened to shut down Jackson’s projects for violations. There’s plenty of motive for murder there.” He glanced over at my list again. “You’ve got Nate Walker on your list? Why?”

“Sandy was digging on the Internet and found something that might be a factor. It appears that Charlie Cobb was arrested for DUI around the time Nate’s wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver. They never found the guy, but what if Nate learned that Charlie had been the one who killed his wife? That’s motive enough.”

I saw a shiver go through Bill, and it had nothing to do with the temperature in the house. “I’d hate to see a list of motives like that for people with bad feelings toward me.”

“Me, too. That would mean somebody killed you.”

“That would be bad, too, but that’s not what I meant.” He tapped the pad. “It’s amazing how many people might have wanted to kill this guy. How can the sheriff focus just on me?”

“He sees only the obvious, and who knows, most of the time, he’s probably right. You were the one that half the town saw fighting with Charlie the day he died. Let’s face it, that argument wasn’t exactly low profile.”

“I know I’ve got a temper. So did Charlie.”

I patted my husband’s knee. “That’s why we’re trying to find out who might have done it besides you.”

“You know, something just occurred to me. The killer might not even be on that list of yours.”

I frowned. “I’ve considered the possibility, but if it was somebody else, there’s nothing either one of us can do about it.” I looked down again, then added, “We’ve covered means and motive, but opportunity is a little tricky. I’ve tried to ask everybody about their alibis, but nobody’s been all that forthcoming with their answers. The problem is that the sheriff has a right to ask them these questions. All I can do is hope one of them tells me something, and then I can try to prove if they’re lying to me. It’s not easy.”