A Novel Death: a Danger Cove Bookshop Mystery (Danger Cove Mysteries Book 10) (12 page)

On a whim, I called a couple local motels to ask about guests who fit the description of the gray-haired woman and emailed the photograph to the clerks. One wrote back immediately that he'd never seen the person in the picture, and the other one promised to ask the other employees. It would be nice to have a solid lead for Detective Marshall—go here, talk to this person from Cal's past, and stop asking people if I could have shot someone I'd only just met.

"Meri, are you in here?" Alicia knocked and stuck her head into my tiny office.

She had changed out of the dress she'd worn to the funeral and was now in a pair of track pants and a hockey jersey with Danger Cove's mascot on the front. Her auburn hair was pulled into a ponytail.

"Hey, Alicia, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, just checking on you," she said, her eyes concerned. "I know you don't like funerals, and you've had to attend two recently. Are you okay?

I gave her a reassuring smile. "I'm fine. Thank you for checking though."

She came in and sat on the corner of the desk and picked up the book. "Did you get to the part about his brush with a cult in the late nineties?"

"What? No, I haven't gotten there yet." Maybe I had sold the actor's biography short. "Look at this though."

I showed her the photo of Astra Clements and then the gray-haired woman's image from the online pictures.

"I think that's the same woman," I said.

"Wow," Alicia said, looking between the two images. "Why would she be here? Do you think she's Angel?"

"I don't know," I said and frowned at the book. "The photo of her and Cal didn't say what film they worked on together, but it shouldn't be too hard to find. Katya found an online database with Astra's films. We can just cross-reference that with Cal's movies."

"And what if she is his long-lost love?"

"Well, maybe the police would want to interview her. She was someone from his past who was at the bookstore when Cal was murdered. And she was skulking around the cemetery with Gibson Knox," I said.

Alicia's eyes grew wide, and I realized that I hadn't told her about that yet. I filled her in, though I left out the part about Adam Whitaker. One, it was embarrassing to get caught eavesdropping. And two, she seemed determined to play Cupid, and I wasn't sure I needed that right now.

When I recapped the discussion between Gibson and Astra, Alicia looked thoughtful. "I think I know what corner that house is on. We should drive over there. Maybe he's there and will talk with us," she said.

Finally, someone who was old enough to go with me but not crazy enough to bring a firearm. I stood up and grabbed my purse off the desk before good sense caught up with me.

"That's exactly what we should do," I said.

The little yellow house on the corner was surrounded by a white picket fence and had crisp white trim along the windows. It was across from a park, which was a block from the high school. This was definitely the house Karen was talking about.

Alicia and I looked around, but it was a quiet neighborhood, even on a Sunday. There were some kids playing in the park, but on the other side from us, and their voices were an indistinct, high-pitched buzz by the time they reached us. The house sat on a corner. On the opposite side from the street, a long driveway ran alongside the house, ending at a detached garage way in the back of the lot.

Taking a deep breath, I walked up to the front door and knocked.

And waited.

"I don't think anyone is here," Alicia said, her voice barely above a whisper.

The house did feel empty. The curtains were drawn in the front, so we couldn't snoop, either.

I knocked again, and when no one answered, I walked down the steps to the path that led to the sidewalk. At the corner I looked up the quiet street at the low fence with a gate that led to the backyard. Alicia stood beside me, and I hesitated to tell her what I was thinking.

"I'll stand out here and be the lookout," she said. "If anyone comes, I'll whistle."

And that was why I needed to bring Alicia with me. No need to tell her that I was thinking about snooping through the back windows. She just knew.

I handed Alicia my purse and walked down the sidewalk, trying to act casual, like I was just out for a walk. My entire body vibrated with nerves, but there was no one around to wonder about the young woman dressed for a funeral who was strolling down the street. I reached the gate, flipped up the latch, and stepped into the backyard.

It was a simple yard with a lovely garden and seating area in the far corner next to the garage. Someone had painted a mural on the side of the garage, and below that there was a patio that was a mosaic of colored stones. I turned back to the house and walked up to the back door. It had a glass panel, and I leaned forward to look in. All I could see was the service porch and a sliver of a view of the kitchen.

The small house had one more window facing the backyard, so I walked over to it. It was over a raised planter bed full of mint and lavender. Cautiously, I stepped onto the wooden edge and leaned in to look through the window, which was raised about six inches. It appeared to be a bedroom that doubled as an office. A laptop sat on the desk in the corner of the room, and a familiar messenger bag was slung over a chair back.

I'd found Gibson Knox.

Or at least, his things. And that might be good enough. I eased the window up a few inches, and it moved easily, so I kept going. Balancing on the back of the planter, I pulled myself through the window then tumbled over a cat tree and onto the floor.

It wasn't the most graceful of breaking and enterings, but I was new to this.

I jumped up and listened for any sounds, but the house was silent. Quickly, I walked through the house to make sure I was alone. It was tidy but warm. If this was a vacation rental, they'd sure done it up nicely. A painting of the lighthouse at sunset graced the fireplace mantel, and the soft green couch had a pretty hand-knit throw over the arm. I wandered into the kitchen, and my eye went to the refrigerator, which was decorated with dozens of photos—all of Cecilia Evers. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

Was Gibson Knox stalking her?

I hurried back to the bedroom and looked at the desk. It was messier than the rest of the house, with slim reporter's notebooks and papers strewn about. A small digital recorder sat on top of a stack of loose notes.

"Are you okay?" Alicia hissed her question through the window, and I jumped at the voice.

"I'm fine," I said, though I was on the verge of having a heart attack at the shock. "I found his office. And his notes. And he's got all these photos of Cecilia in the kitchen. It's creepy."

I hit play on the recorder, and a booming voice echoed in the room. My hands shook, and I fumbled with the device as Cal's voice bounced off the walls.

"—if you go near her, if you talk to her, and God forbid you tell her, I will kill you."

I found the dial and turned the volume down, but the recording was over. I rewound it and played it again. It seemed to be a message left on voice mail.

"I got your message. I don't see any need for us to talk. I'm not paying you a dime. And let me tell you something, you little—" Cal's voice stopped abruptly, and the recording picked up the sound of his deep breaths and an emotion that he couldn't have been faking. He wasn't that good an actor. "I promise you this. If you go near her, if you talk to her, and God forbid you tell her, I will kill you."

It ended, and I quickly looked at the rest of the items on the desk. The notebooks were labeled with Cal's name and dates, and I figured those were from when Gibson was Cal's ghostwriter.

"Oh my goodness," Alicia said on the other side of the windowsill. "That sounded like a threat."

I rummaged around Gibson Knox's desk for anything else related to Cal or to Cecilia, but unless I knew his password, I wasn't going to get into the laptop, and his notes were nearly illegible. And the one I could read seemed to be a grocery list, so that wasn't very helpful.

Under a celebrity magazine, I found a stack of printed emails and quickly perused them. Most of them were fairly routine correspondence between the writer and the actor—details of Gibson's plans to travel to Danger Cove, who he planned to talk with, his research on the films that Cal was in. Then they started getting more antagonistic. Particularly after Gibson demanded a meeting with Cal to talk about what he'd learned in Danger Cove.

You need to stop contacting people in Danger Cove. You're ruining my reputation in my hometown. Leave my family alone!!!

Shortly after that, it appeared that he fired Gibson through the publisher.

I was so involved in the emails I hadn't noticed the three cats that had suddenly appeared around me.

"Oh yikes," I said, backing away, only to find another one rubbing against my boots and purring.

They were all purring, and they seemed to like me. A short-haired gray cat rubbed her head against my hand and then licked me, her rough tongue tickling my skin.

"Oh damn it, that's weird. Don't do that, please," I said. "Shoo. Shoo."

I waved the papers at the cats, but they just kept watching me and purring.

The gray cat was the most affectionate, tapping my arm with her paw and rubbing her ears against my sleeve. Her purple tag said her name was Tink, and had I not been scared to inhale, I'm sure we would have gotten along wonderfully.

"You need to stay over there," I said, motioning for them to leave. "Over there. Go on."

They didn't seem to know commands or follow directions.

A large pale-orange cat flopped down on the papers and stretched out, knocking some of the documents onto the floor. I bent to pick them up just as I heard Alicia's panicked cry.

"Oh, oh!" Alicia said, and I heard a bump against the house as she scrambled off the planter. "Someone's coming!"

I dropped the items I was holding onto the desk and then tried to remember how they were when I arrived. It was messy then, and it was messy now, but I would have to hope and pray that it was messy in the same way. I ran toward the back door but skidded to a stop when I saw a bright-yellow VW Beetle parked in the driveway and heard the rattle of a doorknob coming from the kitchen.

I raced back into the office, launched myself across the carpeted cat tree, and landed in the herb garden. I got to my feet in time to hear a woman's voice inside calling out to Tink and her friends, and I reached up and slowly brought the window down until it was about six inches open again.

And then I ran like hell.

"I can't believe I broke into a high school drama teacher's house," I said, kicking off my boots and leaning back in my office chair. A dull ache throbbed in my temple, despite the generous application of wine and over-the-counter medications.

When we returned to the bookstore, Katya had immediately confirmed that Cecilia Evers lived in the yellow house by the park. So, from all appearances, Gibson Knox was a guest, not a stalker.

"In your defense, you didn't know it was her house," Alicia said, topping off my wine. "And you were worried that someone was stalking her."

"If they're friends, or romantically involved, why wouldn't he go to her uncle's funeral? After all, he knew Cal too," I mused out loud. "I mean, Gibson and Cal weren't on good terms, but if you wanted to support someone you care about, seems like going to a funeral with them would be a way to show it."

Not that I had strong feelings on the subject or anything.

Alicia sat on the desk next to me and crossed her arms. "Are you going to tell the police about Gibson's emails with Cal?"

I frowned, and that pesky headache thumped my forehead again. "Well, I can't very well walk in and confess to breaking and entering. Not when they already suspect me of far worse crimes."

"They don't suspect you of murder. They just think that you had opportunity and motive."

"Alicia, that is exactly what makes me a suspect."

She shook her head. "No one thinks you're a murderer."

I wasn't convinced of that. She hadn't sat through that interview with Detective Marshall. He definitely thought I was a killer. And he would continue to focus on me unless I could point him toward someone with a better motive.

I reached for my laptop and checked my messages, but the detective hadn't returned my email about Gibson showing up in the photos. Now that I'd read the emails between Gibson and Cal, I really wanted to know what it was that the actor was trying to keep out of the book. I glanced down at Cal's face looking up at me from the dust jacket, and I sighed.

"I'm going to have to read this book," I said. "We know more about Cal's life story, so maybe we can figure out what's missing from the book."

Alicia nodded. "It's a good place to start, but I've got to get home to make dinner for the soccer team. You're welcome to stop by, though there will be a lot of hungry teenage boys, and sometimes their manners can go missing."

I grinned and shook my head. "Thank you for the invitation, but I'm going to focus on the book."

Alicia went home to make a bushel of spaghetti for her son's soccer team, and I locked the door behind her and went back to my cozy office, turning off the lights in the store as I went. I settled in and picked up where I'd left on Cal's history.

The family history was what I was most interested in, but mentions of his son and other relations were scattered throughout the book. That meant I also had to read about his tryst with a costar during the yearlong contract on a soap opera in which he'd played twin brothers—one a brain surgeon and the other a psychopath. Though he didn't name her, the woman he'd been involved with was clearly the actress who played his daughter. Well, the brain surgeon's daughter. I think. That was a confusing passage.

Whenever his real family did arise, he was fairly effusive toward David and Cecilia. He was especially loving toward his sister, Lorraine, characterizing her as a saint for adopting Cecilia as a baby. Cecilia rated nearly as much space in the book as David, and Cal stressed her love of theater and that he had fostered it by paying for her education at a private arts academy in Seattle.

He barely mentioned Pippa after the divorce, but he did manage a few sly insults—such as how he was always attracted to redheads in his younger days, before he learned about the temper that came with the hair color. He also fit in a snide remark about how he missed some of his son's milestone events, like high school graduation, because the divorce cost him so much that Cal had no choice but to take any gig he could get, even if that meant flying all over the world.

I was so deeply absorbed in the book that I almost didn't hear the rattle of the door at first. When it registered, I sat up in my office chair with a start. The store was silent, with only sound the faint noise from a car passing by on Main Street. I started to think that I'd imagined the sound when I heard it again.

A clink of metal. A scrape. And it was coming from the back door.

Quickly, I snapped off the light and sat in the dark, blinking until my eyes adjusted. I stood and walked slowly out into the main area of the store, careful to avoid the tables stacked high with hardcover books. The only illumination came from the streetlamps outside and a faint overhead light in the window displays.

I started toward the back of the store. A hard thump against the back door sent me scrambling backward, my stocking feet sliding on the hardwood floor.

Another thump sounded, and I ran toward my office to grab my purse and cell phone, only to realize that I had left those in the break room, right next to the back door that someone was trying to enter.

"Damn it," I whispered.

And then another hard crash and the sound of splintering wood.

My breath was shallow and fast. I was on the wrong side of the room—all the phones were elsewhere. My cell phone was in the break room. The store's landline phones were by the cash register and in my office.

Another hard kick, and the back door gave way. I dropped to the ground and crawled behind the low shelf of new releases. I couldn't see who came in, but I heard the footsteps. Heavy footsteps coming right toward me.

I scooted backward and tried to blend in with the shadow of the gardening and outdoor activity shelves. Thankfully, my somber wardrobe palette helped me disappear in the dark corners of the bookstore.

The steps were heavy enough that I assumed it was a man walking around the store in the dark. He didn't seem to be making any effort to be quiet, which meant he probably didn't know I was there, crouched next to a bookshelf of cookbooks.

Whoever was in the store with me walked around for several minutes downstairs, and I couldn't get a good look at him without revealing myself. His steps echoed in the silent room, and I thought he might be behind the counter. If he was looking for the cash, he was going to be disappointed. It hadn't been a great sales day, and I'd already put the deposit in the office safe.

The footsteps came closer, and I shrank back against the shelves and held my breath, and a shadow passed over me as someone tall and imposing moved past me toward the back of the store. As he moved away I let the breath from my lungs slowly. All I could hear was the sound of my heart beating in my chest, and it was so loud and fast that I was certain it would tip the intruder to my presence.

But he kept going toward the back, and I heard a door open. The door to the break room was open, but he could be looking through the cupboards or the closet. And then I heard nothing.

For several long minutes, I listened for any sound, but there was nothing. A cold breeze drifted across the floor, and I shivered. Eventually, I crawled forward and peered down the short hall toward the back door, which was open and hanging at an angle from its hinges.

I stood up, my legs protesting after being crouched for so long, and slowly and silently crept across the room. There was no sound from the break room, but I wasn't brave enough to venture in there. Instead, I scurried around a table and into the office, shutting and locking the door behind me as I called 9-1-1.

*   *   *

The next hour flew by in a rush of chaos and confusion. First, the Danger Cove police officers made me wait outside while they searched the entire bookstore to confirm that no one was in there. Then they brought in the crime scene technician to photograph and dust for prints. And then I was stuck in my office, with Detective Lester Marshall blocking the door and questioning me with an incredulous tone.

I tried to peer past him to make sure that his officers weren't making a mess of my bookstore, but he moved to block my view and then looked down his nose at me with a raised eyebrow.

"And you were in the same room as the intruder, but you didn't see who did this?" he asked in a voice that indicated he didn't believe a word I said.

I pointed toward the broken back door and then at myself. "Do you honestly think I did that?"

Being petite had another advantage—no one was ever going to expect great feats of strength from me. Except, apparently, Detective Marshall. He still looked at me with suspicion.

"Nothing was stolen from the cash register?"

"No. I had already closed up and had the weekend's deposit in the safe."

"How convenient."

I shook my head. "What does that even mean? You think I faked a burglary? Why would I do that?"

"So nothing seems to be stolen?"

"Not that I can tell so far." I shivered a little as I wondered what that meant. "Did you look at those photos I emailed to you?"

Detective Marshall's mouth turned down into a deep frown. "I got your email. And your voicemail message."

"Did you talk to the gray-haired woman? I think she and Mr. Montague were involved a long time ago," I said. "And did you talk to the ghostwriter? His name is Gibson Knox—"

Detective Marshal held up a hand and gave me a stern frown. "Ms. Sinclair. I am the detective. You are the, well, you're not an investigator. Just leave this to me and my department. We know what we're doing."

"Detective Marshall, I'm not trying to insult you. But this is relevant information. It could help you solve this murder," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. "I mean, both Astra Clements and Gibson Knox were in town on the day of Cal Montague's murder. And I saw them talking with each other after the funeral."

"You seem awfully quick to point the finger at others," he said.

My gasp was loud and filled with outrage. "I'm trying to help you. I know that I didn't shoot Cal Montague. I thought maybe you'd want to find out who did."

He interrupted me with a long and loud sigh.

"I will look into it, Ms. Sinclair," he said with an insincere smile. "You're going to want to get that door boarded up tonight. You can pick up a copy of the police report in a couple days for your insurance claim."

I gave him an insincere thank you, pushed past him, and went into the break room, passing the evidence tech who was covering the doorjamb with fingerprint dust. That was going to give my mother a fit when she arrived.

I had called my mother as soon as I was off the phone with the emergency operator. Yes, I'm 30. But in times of trauma, you need your mom.

The phone in my hand buzzed, and Burt's number popped up on the screen.

"I heard what happened on the police scanner. I'm on my way over to take care of the door," he said.

"Police scanner?"

"I listen to it in the evening. It relaxes me," he said. Burt disconnected the call before I could thank him for his offer.

The store would be closed tomorrow anyway, because it was always closed on Mondays, so I could find someone to replace it in the morning. I also called Alicia and Katya, just so they'd hear about the break-in from me and not through the Danger Cove gossip network.

Detective Marshall followed me into the break room and waited for me as I grabbed my coat and purse.

"Since I'm here, I'll take that jacket now," he said.

I rolled my eyes but resisted saying that it was about time they came to collect the evidence in a murder case. Instead, I just set my purse on the table, reached into the closet, and came up with a fist full of air. With a sinking feeling, I reached in deeper, but there wasn't anything there. I looked on the closet floor, but there was no jacket there either.

Slowly, I turned to the detective.

"I guess whoever broke in did take something," I said. "Cal Montague's jacket is missing."