Murder on Cape Cod Read online

  “Go. We got it covered.” Derrick waved me toward the door.

  “Call me if something comes up.” I held thumb and pinky to my ear.

  Orlean only nodded. I stuffed the envelope in my small backpack and headed down the street.

  My first stop was Greta’s Grains. I’d invited Tim for dinner tonight. Our quiet evening for two on Thursday had been thoroughly disrupted by rescuing Derrick, and I was looking forward to reconstructing it. Tulia sold fresh cooked lobster meat at the Shack, and I could assemble a mean lobster salad with the best of them. Add a baguette from Tim, a bag of salad greens, a chocolate hangover cake from the patisserie, and bingo—homemade dinner involving zero cooking. My kind of hostessing.

  When I moseyed in the bakery’s back door and looked around the kitchen, though, my man wasn’t in evidence. I peeked into the front, where Greenhair from last night was wiping off a table.

  “Tim gone already?” I asked her.

  She ignored me and kept on wiping. At least I thought she ignored me until I saw the telltale earbud wires. I moved into her field of vision, waving one hand. She pulled one bud out.

  “Is Tim gone already?” I repeated.

  “He’s out on a delivery.”

  “Thanks.” I scanned the shelf of breads behind the counter but the baguette basket was empty. They must have sold out, and most of the rest of the breads were sweet. So much for my dinner baguette. But I’d be willing to bet Tim had some in reserve in a freezer either here or at his house.

  I took in the sun-filled room. Funny how different it looked at night when it was full of musicians, drinkers, and dancers: bigger, darker, more exotic. I headed out the back and was about to aim myself for the police station a couple of doors down when I veered course and crossed the street to the Book Nook, the bookstore Suzanne managed. Last week I’d seen a picture book called My Daddy featuring gorgeous hand-drawn artwork and lovely, simple words about all the things a daddy does for his child. I thought Cokey might like it, and frankly that Derrick would, too. He could use some positive reinforcement these days.

  Thinking of the night-and-day difference in the bakery’s front room reminded me of the note in my bag. The full light of a June Saturday on the Cape sure made the words on a piece of paper feel a lot less threatening than they had last night when I was alone in the dark. How could I be in danger right here in the middle of town? I was across the street from the police station, no less. The sunny air was mild, not yet too hot, and smelled of roses in bloom and a touch of seaweed, exactly like it should. It also sounded like a clutch of motorcycle nuts was cruising the Cape. I’d know that deep loud roar in the distance anywhere. With any luck they’d pass by Westham and keep on going. Riders who discarded their helmets the minute they crossed the line into New Hampshire (motto: “Live Free and Die” in my version) weren’t my favorites.

  A few minutes later I emerged from the bookshop wearing the kind of smile only an avid reader can. Not only did I now hold Cokey’s book in my hand, I also had an armful of four new cozies in a paper bag. Despite Suzanne’s disapproval, I’d indulged my addiction to justice-is-restored, nothing-offensive village mysteries. She was a shopkeeper who’d never heard of the principle of, The customer is always right. Or, more likely, simply didn’t care to follow it.

  I didn’t see a car coming from either direction, so I stepped off the curb to cross over to the police station. From just beyond Cape King Distillery down the block, a huge Harley-Davidson, all black and chrome, sprang to life. The driver revved the engine in a burst of noise. I silently cursed motorcycle owners who drove muffler-free. Our sweet town didn’t need that kind of noise pollution.

  As I frowned, the machine roared directly at me. What? What was the driver doing? I yelled and waved my arms. The motorcycle didn’t stop, didn’t swerve. Its deep vibrating noise deafened me. The decibels bounced off the brick of the police station opposite.

  “Mac!” someone yelled.

  I couldn’t see who’d called out a warning. The black-leather-suited driver and the death machine was almost on top of me. I stepped backward and tripped onto the sidewalk. The Harley sped past, spinning dust and gravel into the air. Its heat burned my bare legs. The smell of exhaust filled my nostrils.

  Chapter Thirty

  I lay panting on the pavement, heart athud, throat thick. The Harley was gone. The afternoon fell silent. My elbow smarted, scraped raw from where I’d landed on it, and my head pounded. My new books lay scattered on the pavement, covered with black bits of gravel. And I hadn’t even gotten a look at the license plate. Some amateur sleuth I was.

  Victoria dashed across the street. I pushed up to sitting as a customer hurried out of the Book Nook, followed by a slower-moving Suzanne.

  “Are you all right?” Victoria asked. “I saw that Harley try to run you down.” She extended a hand to help me up but I waved her off.

  “Thanks, but I’ll sit here for a minute if that’s okay. Did you get the plate?”

  “No, it happened too fast,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure the cameras in front of the station don’t reach over here.”

  A Cape Rescue ambulance roared up from a scant thirty yards down the street. I knew I was okay when I caught myself thinking that the EMTs should have just walked. I sat on the sidewalk in my daze, picturing the motorcycle coming at me, then tearing away after I hit the pavement just out of reach. I’d seen something, some flash of color. I gaped in the direction it had disappeared.

  “I think I saw a logo of some kind,” I said.

  “An identifying mark?” Victoria asked. She knelt in front of me. “Like a sticker?”

  “It happened too fast to really see. But I saw some orange lines, I know that. Like a spray of them.”

  She nodded. “It could be anything, of course. A Harley club or a cause. But it’s most likely to be from the dealership. They would decal the bikes they sell.”

  My thoughts seemed to be in a random jumble. I’d moved on from orange bits to Victoria. “Did you just happen to be standing in front of the station?” I gazed at her, with her Nordic hair aflame in the sunshine. “How’d you get over here so quick?”

  “I was walking out to grab some lunch.”

  “Was it you who yelled to me?” I asked.

  Victoria smiled. “It was. Really glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”

  I blinked at her. That might have been the first nice thing she’d ever said to me, and one of the first genuine smiles.

  Suzanne squatted next to me. “You okay, Mac? That guy looked like he was gunning right for you.”

  “I know. I think I’m okay.” I rubbed my elbow. “You said ‘guy.’ Did you see that it was a man?” The attack had happened so fast I couldn’t picture the driver’s face. As with the cyclist who nearly clipped Gin and me on the trail the other day, I thought the driver today had been slender. My attacker hadn’t been a stocky person. Could it be the same as the possibly malicious bicyclist?

  “No, I think you’re right.” Suzanne shook her head. “I was watching through the window but I couldn’t see if it was a man or a woman. Usually women don’t own those huge machines, but some do. That was a big honking helmet, tinted face shield and all.”

  “Right. The driver wasn’t wearing a little Harley helmet, the ones that don’t do anything to protect from brain damage.” Victoria pressed her lips together and gave her head a little shake.

  “The ones that look like Nazi helmets,” I added.

  Two EMTs were hovering but I waved them off. “I’m fine. I didn’t hit my head, and I can put a bandage on my scraped elbow at home.”

  “Permission to leave, Chief?” one asked Victoria.

  “You’re released,” she said.

  “While you’re here, I have something to tell you,” I said to Victoria as the EMTs climbed back into the ambulance. “I was coming across the street to give you a letter. I might as well give it to you now.”

  Suzanne straightened from her squat but remained in pla
ce, her arms folded across her chest.

  “A letter?” the chief asked.

  “It’s actually for Detective Haskins.” I stuck my hand out for her to give me a boost up to standing, and dusted off my rear end once I was on my feet. “Someone left a threatening letter in my door last night,” I murmured. Suzanne edged forward a few inches with studied casualness. Oh, well. The news would be all over town soon enough. I went on. “I called Haskins at the time. He was pretty busy and said an officer would pick it up at the shop this morning. But nobody did, so I thought I’d deliver it.” I shrugged off my pack and extracted the now-rumpled envelope.

  Victoria took the envelope. She lifted the flap and Suzanne moved even closer. Victoria closed the envelope and faced the station across the street, turning her back on Suzanne.

  “Thanks, Mac,” the chief said. “We’ll enter this as evidence.”

  “I put something else in the envelope that Haskins is going to want to see,” I said. “But I’ll need to explain it to him.”

  Victoria waited as if I was going to explain Cokey’s drawing to her.

  I shook my head. “I’m going to have to tell him myself. In person. Could you please ask him to call me when he gets it?”

  Victoria lifted one pale eyebrow. “All right, whatever. You’re sure you don’t need assistance here?”

  I shook my head. “But thanks.” After she hightailed it back across the street, I turned to gaze at the mess on the ground behind me. “Give me a hand with these books, Suzanne?” I stooped to pick one up.

  Suzanne retrieved the others. “Sit down for a minute.” She sat on the wooden bench in front of the store and patted the place next to her.

  Wow. So friendly all of a sudden, and to a cozy fan, no less. I sat, figuring I might as well take advantage of the outreach, plus my legs were a bit wobbly from the attack. I was pretty sure she wanted to get information out of me, but the info swap street could go in two directions.

  “So what did that letter say?” Suzanne asked without looking at me. “What was the threat?”

  “It was a kind of vague warning. No big deal.”

  “Then why did you give it to Laitinen?”

  “I was told to. Maybe the police can trace who wrote it, who left it. It’s not very nice to find a belligerent note stuck in your door.” I twisted to look at her. “I saw you at Bs & Bs last night.”

  She blinked. “Where?”

  “At the bakery. At Brews and Breads.”

  “Right. I saw you dancing for a while. Good band.”

  “They are. How late did you stay?” At the rumble of an engine, I cringed without meaning to. But it was only a big macho truck cruising through town, and it stayed firmly in its own lane on the other side of the road.

  “Until they closed at midnight.” Now Suzanne regarded me. “What, do you think I left you that note? Why would I do something like that?”

  She could have stuck it in my door before she went to the bakery. “I don’t know, why?”

  “No reason in the world. I didn’t kill Jake, you know. And I think it’s ridiculous that you and your ‘cozy’ group think you’re the sleuths in a book all of a sudden.”

  “Too bad about the way he died, wasn’t it?” I asked, with what I hoped was unstudied casualness.

  “Stabbing’s gotta be bad for the victim. You see it coming, and the death must be slow.” She hugged herself.

  Should I ask her? Why not? “How did you know Jake was stabbed?” We were in the sun across from a dozen or two police officers. What was she going to do to me? Although that attitude hadn’t exactly kept me safe from getting run down a few minutes ago. “The way he was killed wasn’t public knowledge.”

  “Sure it was,” Suzanne scoffed.

  “Maybe the method has leaked out by now, but you knew about it the day after Jake was killed. The police had kept it secret. The only way I know is that I saw the knife in him.” I shivered despite the warm day.

  She sighed. “Okay, so I have a source. My friend Gail works with the District Attorney’s office.”

  “Where the state police homicide unit operates out of.”

  “Exactly. She hears everything. And sometimes she tells me stuff.”

  So much for my great theory. “Is Gail the one who looks like Louise Penny?”

  Suzanne looked puzzled for a second, then laughed. “She’s the one. You saw her last night?”

  “Had me going there for a minute when you two came in.”

  “Don’t worry, she’s not a Canadian author. And I keep what she tells me under my hat,” Suzanne said. “Usually.”

  * * *

  It being Saturday, I expected Flo wouldn’t be working at the library today. She was one of the people I wanted to talk to, though, so I headed down Main Street to where I could conduct a few phone conversations in relative privacy, or at least not under Suzanne’s nose. I crossed side streets very, very cautiously, and stayed on the sidewalks as far away from the curb as I could. My legs were still shaky from the attack, and another sudden gun of an engine made me flinch right out in public. I was already creeped out simply knowing somebody somewhere was watching what I did, tracking who I talked to. Did I want to let that threat of “or else” stop me? I thought about it as I walked. No, I didn’t.

  I perched on a shady bench under a tree in front of Town Hall and texted Flo. I waited a few moments, but no immediate response was forthcoming. Next I called Tulia at the Lobstah Shack and reserved my claw and tail meat to pick up later.

  “How late are you open?” I asked after I put in my order.

  “Six, hon.”

  “Thanks. By the way, have you learned anything about Jake’s murder?” I asked, after checking around to make sure no disc-throwing youth lurked nearby.

  “Not about his murder, exactly. Did you see in the group text that I volunteered to find out where Deloit was on Tuesday?”

  “That’s right, I forgot.” Or maybe I hadn’t checked the message thread lately. “Any luck?”

  “Somebody saw her at Jimmy’s Harborside at around seven that night. And she was in the gift shop at two o’clock buying starfish earrings.”

  Which didn’t sound like Katherine’s style of jewelry. Maybe she had a daughter or a niece at home who loved starfish. Jimmy’s Harborside was a conventional seafood restaurant, popular with tourists looking for fried fish, surf and turf, and the whole lobster experience, complete with nutcrackers and bibs.

  “Good fact finding, Tulia. Do you know if she was eating alone at Jimmy’s?”

  “No,” Tulia said. “It was a customer who told me. She was remarking on a woman who’d been borderline rude to her and when she described the woman, I knew it was this Deloit character. I didn’t want to ask if she’d been with anyone else.”

  “But nobody knows where she was between two and seven?” I asked.

  “Nope. At least not that any of us have found out.”

  “Was one of us supposed to be checking into who that young woman was?”

  “I don’t remember.” A crash sounded in the background and Tulia swore in language only a sailor might utter. “Gotta go, Mac. Later.”

  I started to say “Later” but she’d already hung up. I opened my notes file and tapped in that information. Then focused on the list. The column under the question mark was still way longer than the list under the Truth heading. Checking alibis and mysterious person identities was supposed to be the job of the police. At least I hoped they were working on that. Were we duplicating their efforts? Or trying to?

  I called Norland next, but he didn’t pick up. He was likely out at a grandkid’s game or revarnishing his sailboat. What about Corwin? Mysterious stranger comes back to town. Sure, he and Orlean had a past to work out. But if he’d been incarcerated with Jake, he was surely on Haskins’s person-of-interest list. Or was he?

  It was time to bite the bullet, so to speak. I pressed the detective’s number. He didn’t have to pick up if he didn’t want to. For whatever reas
on, he actually did.

  “Detective, would you have a few minutes to chat?” I swore I could hear the swooshing sound of his eyes rolling. I continued before he could refuse. “I gave Victoria my threatening note to pass along to you, and another thing in the same envelope I think you’re going to want to know about. I happen to be free right now.”

  The sigh was unmistakable. Still, he asked me to meet him at the station in twenty minutes. I had just enough time to grab an ice cream cone from Neptune’s. Except it was one-thirty and, as far as I remembered, I hadn’t had lunch. Good thing ice cream cones included three of the four major food groups: cream, chocolate, and cookie. The only one missing was champagne, with beer allowed if you were hard up.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I was munching the last bite of my sugar cone when Haskins met me in the police station lobby. He gazed with sorrow at the chocolate on my fingers.

  “Sorry I didn’t get you one,” I said. “It’s my lunch.”

  “That’s okay. According to my doctor, I’m off all that delicious stuff, anyway. Milk, sugar, wheat. Everything that brings joy in eating.”

  I gazed up at him. “You don’t look very happy with those constraints. Tell me about it.”

  “No time to whine. We need to talk about this note.” He led me back to a small office devoid of wall decorations but with a white board covered in names familiar from this week, starting with Derrick Searle. I winced to see it. He gestured to a chair in front of the desk and took the seat across from me. He spread my bagged note flat on the desk before he spoke. “You called me about this at a little after ten last night, correct?”

  “That’s right. As soon as I got home and saw it. I mean, as soon as I got inside and locked the door.” Strictly speaking that was true, even though I’d spoken with Gin before I called him.

  “Have you been looking into the crime?” he asked, tapping the note in time with the words.

  “A little. I’m only trying to help. I’m sure you and the rest of the department have your hands full. Can it really hurt if some of us divvy up tasks and learn who was where, and so on?”