Cold Turkey (22 page)

But then, on the realistic side, I couldn’t see Doris Quinn, or even Cindy, endorsing me. Unless I paid them a hefty fee to do so. Whichever of them inherited the business would try to sell it intact and at a fee that would leave me so deeply in debt I’d never dig myself out.

The relief that accompanied that thought surprised me. I didn’t really want to be an accountant anymore. But that was probably just the bad taste left in my mouth from my last job. More likely, I just didn’t want anything to do with Brody’s business. Whoever took over his work would probably discover he’d been a considerable crook.

We passed Aunt Gerda’s old café on the other side of the street and reached her new business, only one store away from the corner. She unlocked the door, let us in, switched off the burglar alarm, then flicked on the lights.

The place always amazed me. Shelves of books lined one wall, sticking endwise into the room to allow for the maximum amount of storage. She stocked everything from old hardbound classics to paperback mysteries, romances and science fiction, anything that the residents of our small town might enjoy to help unwind from their high-tech jobs. She’d told me she had an amazingly high turnover rate, with books rarely staying on the shelves for more than a month.

Along the other side of the room stood heavy display cases holding collectible figurines and plates and a few pieces of silver. She made it a point never to stock anything truly valuable, to avoid the insurance costs and the danger of break-ins. Since I’d been in last, she’d added a display of skeins of handspun yarn, some of her weavings, and a rack with movable arms that displayed about twenty quilts.

The back wall held the movies. You could look through the catalogues she’d created that displayed the covers by category, stick on a “rented” tag, then tell her what you’d selected. Then she’d find it in the filing cabinet drawers where she kept them all stored. A fairly efficient system, all in all.

While Nancy and Lucy browsed through action/adventure, arguing the merits of Roger Moore versus Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, the door opened and a couple of other women came in. One went to the books, and another to the catalogue labeled “Comedies”. More people, apparently attracted by the lights, began to drop in. Nancy settled on a Roger Moore, Lucy chose a Pierce Brosnan, and three of the others argued the humor—and vulgarities—of some of the recently released comedies. Gerda beamed at them all. Probably deciding how much turkey chow she could buy at the local feed store from this night’s profits.

Peggy stuck her head around the door. “So when did you decide to start opening nights?”

“I’ve obviously been overlooking a huge window of opportunity,” Gerda agreed. “But what I really need is for someone to invent a vending machine where the customer just runs their card through, and out would pop the video of their choice, with all their information saved for my records.”

“Excuse me?” Barbara Hatter appeared in the doorway, and Peggy moved aside to let her in. She looked every bit as mousy as she had at the breakfast, with those large, sad brown eyes that tore at my heart. “Oh, I didn’t know you were so crowded.” She started to back out.

“Barbara!” Lucy Fairfield cried. “You look like you’ve gone through the wringer since I saw you last. What’s wrong?”

So much sympathy, so much warmth, accompanied those words, that tears sprang to the mousy little woman’s eyes. “Oh, Lucy, I’ve missed you!” she cried, and embraced the other woman. Lucy had that effect on people. “I—I just came in to see if I could rent something soothing for tonight. Dave’s working, and the house gets so lonely.”

Soothing, not companionable, she’d said. I couldn’t help but think of Dave’s distress.

“Come over here, sit down and tell me all about it.” Lucy wrapped an arm about her shoulders and led her to the tiny table with its two chairs where Aunt Gerda ate her lunch and served tea to friends. “Now,” Lucy went on as she pressed Barbara Hatter into one of the seats. “I hear Dave’s been upset over something. Anything I can do to help?”

“No.” The tears slipped down Barbara’s cheeks. “There’s nothing anyone can do. That horrible man—” She broke off.

“Surely not Dave!” Lucy exclaimed, but softly, so as not to attract the attention of the other customers.

Gerda inched closer, and so did Peggy and I. None of us are gossips—at least, not the unkind variety. We honestly cared. If someone were in trouble, the SCOURGEs put their heads together and came up with some way to make life a little better. Except in my case, I remembered, reflecting on the weekend they’d let me in for.

“No.” Barbara dragged out an already damp-looking handkerchief and applied it to her eyes and nose. “That Brody.” She spoke the name with loathing.

“I know,” Lucy agreed as if she hadn’t been dating the man. Or maybe because she had. “What happened?”

“Dave…” Barbara swallowed, then forged ahead. “Dave invested all our savings in some scheme Brody hatched. We lost everything. Everything! All our savings, our retirement money, our emergency fund. All gone. And then—” She broke off.

“What happened, then?” Lucy’s voice was so gentle, so soothing, it could caress a confession out of a hardened criminal.

“We heard Brody came out of it unscathed. He didn’t loose a dime of his own! Not one single, solitary penny, that cockroach!” And for Barbara, that was pretty harsh language.

“When did you hear that?” I asked gently. “On Tuesday?”

Barbara stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “Honestly, Annike, I’ve been sick about it. I thought Dave…” She shook her head. “He just exploded, then all that anger just melted away, and he was so depressed! I was afraid—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was afraid he was going to hurt himself.”

Kill himself, she meant. I knelt in front of her, taking her hands. “What happened?”

She sniffed. “It—it was a couple of hours before he had to go to work when he got that call. From—from a friend in Meritville who also lost money in the scheme, though not as much as we did. Dave exploded, then—then he just walked out of the house and got into the truck and drove off, and I didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do. It was only about four o’clock. So I called the Still, and Carrie—she’s the new receptionist,” she added for my benefit, “—she promised to keep an eye out for Dave, then I just waited…”

Waited for the sheriff, or a deputy, or the highway patrol to bring her word of an “accident,” I guessed. God, that must have been an awful evening for her.

“Then Carrie called at last. Dave was a little late, but he hadn’t been drinking or anything—he never does, but I was afraid… But he was all right except for being depressed. Then he heard Brody had been killed, only it didn’t cheer him up, like I thought it would. If anything, he only got more depressed.”

I heard a slow intake of breath behind me and didn’t have to look to know the sheriff had joined us. I rose, but he touched my arm, shook his head, and strolled out the door. I followed.

“So, what are you going to do about the dinner sign-ups?” he asked.

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Apparently he didn’t want to discuss that unsettling bit of information about Dave Hatter, who now apparently had both the motive and the time to kill Brody. I followed Sarkisian’s lead. “Get on the phone, I suppose. It would have been better to have a sign hung on the bulletin board at the post office where everyone goes almost every day.”

“But not over a holiday weekend,” he pointed out, quite unnecessarily. “You look like the best thing you could do would be to go home and get some sleep.”

“I’ve got work to do, first. I’ll sign you up for a casserole, shall I?”

“Do you want half the town down with food poisoning? I’ll bring cans of olives or cranberry sauce.”

I actually smiled. “I’ll hold you to that. And while I’m waiting for my aunt,” I added, the light of battle filling me once more, “I’ll sign up everyone in her store.”

He nodded. “That ought to clear them out fast. Goodnight.” He waved and headed across the street toward the corner where he had left his Jeep.

Next to, I remembered with a sinking sensation, my own car with its resident turkey.

Tonight, before I went to bed, I swore that damned bird would be roosting—or for preference roasting—elsewhere.

Chapter Fourteen

That damned bird stayed right where it wanted to stay. I gave up trying to move it after receiving a few flesh wounds and left it where it sat, a smug expression on its beak, for the night. I admit it. I was just too tired for the fight. Beaten by a bird. Vilhelm, if he knew, would never let me hear the end of it.

It didn’t seem possible, but when I got upstairs and glanced at the chiming clock on the mantel, it claimed it was still a few minutes shy of seven p.m. I would have guessed midnight, at the least. I checked on my poor parakeet and gave him a new seed treat, which renewed his evening cheep session. I sat on the edge of my bed watching him attack his mirror and tell it, among other things, that it was a dirty bird and needed a bath. I’d have to let him out of his cage for a good flap around the room first thing in the morning. At the moment, though, he seemed to be enjoying himself, so I let myself out into the hall, caught two cats trying to let themselves in to visit him, and closed the door. Still armed with Dagmar and Furface, his teeth settled companionably in my wrist, I headed for the kitchen phone.

Peggy, showing amazing insight, either had not returned home yet or was avoiding all calls. She probably had one of those ID things on her phone that let you know either the name or number of the person trying to reach you. I wondered how many of those menaces lurked in Upper River Gulch, and if Gerda’s ID would be a warning not to touch the phone and to unplug the answering machine. I suspected I was getting a lot of that, lately.

But my second call reached Ida Graham. “What a hoot!” she exclaimed as soon as I’d said hello. “Who’d have thought a good old fashioned pie fight could be such fun! Haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years.” And she’d even stuck around to help clean up the mess. I was impressed. But then, she’s on the SCOURGE elite squad. That has to explain a lot. “So, watcha need?” she went on.

“A phone tree.” I told her about Cindy’s idea of organizing a potluck. “I foresee no main dishes, only a hundred deserts. And with my luck, they’d all be pumpkin pies.”

“Ouch.” Silence stretched while she apparently considered the horrors in store for Sunday evening. “Right. I’ll get calling. We’ve already got a tree set up. We’ll assign things. That’s safer than giving people a choice. And we can sign others up at the park clean-up, remember?”

“Oh, I remember.” I wasn’t likely to forget the clean-up—if it happened, which seemed a bit iffy because of the weather. How did the town get the decorations hung for the assortment of winter holidays if the clean-up event wasn’t held? I wondered if it had ever happened before, or if I’d go down in town history as the first to create this disaster. “At least we’ve got bait to entice the work crew,” I added.

“I don’t come out for minnows or flies,” Ida informed me.

“How about a couple bottles of experimental cranberry orange liqueur?”

“You mean you’ve actually gotten them out of old Cartwright? I am impressed.”

I hesitated. “When you’re making those calls, why don’t you ask for cookies and punch and coffee, as well.” I hung up quickly, grinning at Ida’s groan.

That one call made me feel a lot better. I had no doubts about her efficiency. I turned to tomorrow’s page in Peggy’s book of lists and checked my progress. I’d asked for rakes and trash bags, but I’d forgotten about pruning shears, not to mention hammers and nails for fence repairs. I made a mental review of Gerda’s tool shed, but knowing the toughness and determination of the shrubs around the park, we’d need gas-powered chain saws, not the hand-operated pruners my aunt felt safer using. My best bet would be to find a handyman.

“You off the phone?” Gerda called from the living room. She sat on the bench of her loom but plied the pair of carders on the teased hanks of turquoise wool, blending three different shades into a beautiful mix. She pulled off the first bat and rolled it deftly in her hands into a log-shaped rolag. Clumsy and Mischief curled about her feet, while Furface watched from the privileged vantage point of Gerda’s recliner.

“Want some tea?” I asked.

She considered, then nodded. “I’m too tired for dinner.”

“Well, you’re going to get some, anyway. Omelet okay?” Without waiting for an answer, I pulled the carton of egg substitute from the refrigerator and set to work chopping mushrooms, onions, garlic and herbs. We still had the cinnamon oatmeal bread from breakfast, so I made thick slices, buttered them and shoved them into the oven to broil.

The aromas made me realize how hungry I was. I hadn’t had so much as a single bite of pie that day. Which seemed odd, considering I’d had a couple of facefulls.

Gerda followed her nose and appeared in the kitchen door. Absently she began to pull out plates and silverware. “Poor Dave Hatter. And poor Barbara. How awful it would be for her if Dave killed Brody. And the worst of it is, I don’t think anyone would blame him if he had.”

“Sarkisian would. And so would a jury. None of them lost their life savings because of that jerk.”

“No,” agreed Gerda. “It all seems so unjust. The only bright side is that I don’t think I’m chief suspect anymore.”