Silent Knife (A Celebration Bay Mystery) (5 page)

“There’s someone looking in the window.”

Bill turned toward the window. Two faces peered in from the other side. Bill nodded, smiled, waved.

“Meese, go out there and tell those two people the store will be closed due to, um, an electrical problem.”

“Yes sir.” The young officer disappeared.

Bill dispatched two others to cordon off the alley and wait for the ME.

“Johnson, see if you can find something to cover the windows with.”

“I’ve got a roll of brown butcher paper at the bakery,” Dolly volunteered. “I’ll show him.” Dolly turned Penny over to Fred, and the young officer followed her to the back door.

Dolly let out a screech as she reached the door.

A streak of orange flew into the room and past Bill’s feet. “What the—”

“Grace’s cat,” Liv said, hoping fervently that Ida and Edna had leashed Whiskey and taken him home.

In answer to her prayers, a white ball of fur galloped through the back door, followed by both Miss Ida and Miss Edna, who stopped to catch their breath.

“Sorry,” Edna said between gasps. “Whiskey, you come here.”

“Treat!” Liv screeched.

Chaz laughed quietly beside her.

Whiskey slid to a stop, twisted in the air, and galloped back to her.

Chaz leaned over and scooped him up in one graceful move. “Gotcha.”

Whiskey tried to wiggle free, but without success.

“We’ll take him.” Miss Ida came up to Liv, saw the body on the floor. “Edna, come look at this.”

Her sister joined them. Dolly and the young officer returned with scissors, tape, and the roll of paper. In the background, a siren wailed.

Bill pulled out his radio. “There’s no emergency. Turn the damn siren off and try to be a little discreet.” He signed off.

“Miss Ida and Miss Edna, would you two please take Whiskey home or go about shopping or whatever you were planning to do tonight. But keep him on a leash. And don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen.”

“Hmmph. We were next on the scene,” Miss Edna said.

“And we might have important information,” Miss Ida added.

The sheriff’s nostrils flared. “And do you have information?” he asked patiently, though with some effort.

“Well, we won’t know, will we, until you ask us some questions.”

“I will certainly do that. But there’s no reason for you to have to wait here when it’s late, and I really need someone to take Whiskey out of here.”

Whiskey barked at the sound of his name. The cat, who had disappeared beneath one of the trees, shot across the room.

Bill groaned. “Please.”

“Come along, Edna.
We
don’t want to be in the way. We’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning, Bill Gunnison.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Edna clipped the leash on the still wriggling Whiskey, took him from Chaz, and forced Ida out the door.

“And I only came in after Liv and Ted were already here,” Chaz said.

“And I came with Chaz,” Fred added. “I don’t mind staying, but I don’t much like the idea of Dolly being alone at the bakery.”

Bill rubbed his forehead. “She won’t be alone, the place is packed. And we’ll finish with you long before closing time.

“But you can’t stay here, and I don’t want the whole town to see us parading through the streets to town hall. Meese, go down to the Pyne Bough and ask Ms. Pyne if we can use her back room. Hank Ousterhout uses it to change out of his Santa suit, but he’s probably home by now, and I’m sure Nancy won’t mind.” He turned away. “Just tell her there’s been an accident and I need a few statements from the witnesses. Do not volunteer anything else.”

“Yes sir, no sir. I’ll go right now.” The young officer practically stumbled over his own feet to get out the door.

“As for the rest of you—Chaz, where are you going?”

Chaz had been easing toward the door, but he stopped. “I didn’t see anything. And I know the drill. No details in the paper. Hell, I won’t even report it. I don’t have room anyway what with all these highfalutin holiday goings-on. So I’ll just be moseying along.”

Liv made a face at him. He was always putting on some good-old-boy act that she didn’t buy for a minute. She’d checked him out online. She knew how many years he’d lived in Los Angeles, which probably helped him cultivate his already developed surfer look. Tall, buff, and blond. The
LA Times
had certainly perfected his investigative skills, but the closest he’d come to “homespun” was “homeboy,” and the only colloquialisms he’d heard were street slang and four-letter words.

“I don’t want any of this appearing in the paper. Got it? None of it.”

Chaz gave a one-fingered salute and started to leave.

“On second thought. Maybe you better stay with the others until I’m finished here.”

Bill decided to interview Penny on the premises and send her home. The rest of them trudged down the alley to the corner, where the smell of barbecue drew them toward the Corner Café. But Officer Meese motioned them across the alley to the back door of the clapboard building that housed the Pyne Bough, Gifts from Nature.

Nancy Pyne met them at the delivery door, looking as natural as the gifts she sold. No makeup and no bling. She was a small woman, dressed in a long black skirt and red hand-knitted sweater. Her long gray hair was held back in a raffia tie. She smelled slightly of cinnamon potpourri and incense. Nancy was a latter-day hippie, serene and unruffled.

Though not incurious.

“Come on inside where it’s warm.” She stood back while they filed into the storeroom, then closed the door behind them.

“What’s going on? Nobody will tell me anything, just asked if you could sit here for a while. Which you’re welcome to do. Was there an accident? No one was hurt, were they?”

Her questions were interrupted by the sound of a truck rattling down the alley outside. They’d turned off the siren, but the telltale red light that pulsed through the closed shades of the windows pretty much announced what it was.

“Was that an ambulance that just passed?” Nancy rushed over to the window and yanked at the shade; the shade snapped out of her hand and wound itself around the top bar, flapping like a panicked bird, just as another truck rattled by, this time one belonging to the county medical examiner.

Nancy froze, then slowly turned around. “It was a crime. Where?” She looked around the room, frowning. “Where’s Hank? It isn’t Hank, is it?”

“No,” Ted said. “It isn’t Hank.”

“Then who?” For the first time she seemed to notice Officer Meese. She turned on him. “Who?”

“Now, Nancy, leave the boy alone,” Fred said. “We just have to answer a few questions and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“You’ve been ordered not to say anything, haven’t you? Oh dear, there was a crime. Excuse me.”

She disappeared behind a madras curtain. They heard the door to the store open and close. It opened and closed again, and Nancy pushed through the madras curtain, holding a bunch of dried herbs in one hand and a cigarette lighter in the other.

She held the lighter to the stalk until it began to smoke.

“Uh, ma’am?” Meese began. Ted laid a hand on his shoulder.

Ignoring everyone, she moved toward the corner of the room, swinging the burning herb in an arc much like a priest at high mass. She circled to every corner and around the windows and doors, paying particular attention to the delivery door where they’d entered.

“There, much better,” she said. “There’s coffee and tea in the cupboard and a coffeemaker on the counter. Help yourselves. I have to get back to the front.” She disappeared behind the curtain again. A door opened and closed. This time she didn’t come back.

“Whew,” Fred said. “I was afraid she was gonna expect us to smoke that thing.”

“Sage,” Ted told him. “It drives out evil and protects those inside.”

“Hmmph,” Fred said. “No offense, but I’ll take my sage with turkey.”

“Might as well make ourselves comfortable,” Ted said. “We might be here for a while. I’ll make some coffee.”

Ted filled the carafe from a standing water cooler; Fred pulled the shade back down; Liv sat in a straight-back chair and watched Chaz Bristow wander aimlessly around the storeroom. One wall was covered with shelving and stacks of boxes. A shipping table ran halfway across the side wall, and was set up with string and tape dispensers, brown paper, box cutters, and mailing labels. A rack of broken-down boxes sat next to the table. The rest of the room had been turned into a lounge area, with several beat-up but comfortable-looking chairs, a cot, and a counter with minifridge, hot plate, and coffeemaker.

Chaz turned back to the room, and Liv, realizing she had been staring at him, looked away, but not quick enough.

He raised a sardonic eyebrow. He’d thrown his coat on a chair and pulled off the knit hat he’d been wearing. It left his dirty blond hair spiked and incongruous in the cozy, homespun room.

Fred eased himself down into a faded wingback chair. “Well, son, aren’t you going to start interviewing us?”

Meese started. “Uh, no sir. I’m just to wait here until the sheriff comes.”

Fred huffed out a sigh. “Well, I hope he hurries ’cause I really need to be out overseeing traffic. And I need to check on Dolly. What’s the world coming to, somebody going and murdering Santa. Even if he wasn’t the real one.”

Ted pulled a stool to the counter and sat. “Not Santa. He wasn’t in costume. And I think we should get away from calling him Santa. That would make headlines from here to Seattle.”

“I didn’t think about that.”

Liv, to her discredit, had. It was not because she was callous and unfeeling, she told herself. It was an ingrained response to disaster—something that every successful event planner was blessed with—the instinct to fix the problem before it got worse. The death of a person was terrible any time and worse when it was violent. She felt sorry for the dead man, but the livelihood of hundreds of people was in her hands.

She was already planning triage measures for when the news got out. Because it would. News always got out in Celebration Bay. And from there it would spread.

“What was his name?” Fred asked. “Does anybody know?”

“Penny called him Phil,” Liv said.

The minutes ticked by, Nancy didn’t return, and Liv just hoped she wasn’t speculating with her customers about the presence of so many official cars and trucks in the alleyway.

A knock at the delivery door made them all jump. Ted went to answer it. Another young police officer, holding a cellophane-covered tray of pastries, stepped inside and put the tray down on the coffee counter. “Sent these from the bakery.”

Meese shot him a desperate look. The other young officer shrugged and left.

They all had coffee, including Ted, the inveterate tea drinker, and the young Meese, who took his cup to a corner and tried to make himself invisible. Chaz was the only one of them who had any appetite, and he helped himself to a huge bear claw, which he ate while he poked around the room.

“I wonder how much longer Bill is going to be,” Fred said.

Officer Meese shrugged apologetically.

“I just wish he’d hurry.”

So did Liv. The night’s events were going on without her. The choir had stopped singing soon after the tree lighting. But there were sleigh rides, carolers, and church services. Fred should be out managing traffic flow. The officers should be out patrolling the streets. And why was the head of the security service
she’d
hired assisting Bill? Who was running the security team while he was examining the crime scene?

The crime scene.
How could this even be possible. In all her years in Manhattan, she’d never been involved in a crime scene, though knowing some of her former clients, there may have been a few she just hadn’t heard about. But not here.

Chaz finished his pastry and sat down on the stool in front of the counter to peruse the bakery platter. “I wonder what’s happened to Hank?” he said to no one in particular.

Liv started. “What do you mean?”

“Just that he should have ditched the ceremony and been home by now.”

“How do you know he isn’t?”

“There’s no Santa suit.” He chose a cranberry scone and gestured with it. “See, coat hangers and street clothes, but no suit.”

The others looked at the hanging clothes rack, where a pair of overalls, a sweater, and a thick hunting jacket hung in a row.

“Maybe he got waylaid by children on his way,” Fred said. “He usually does. Little tots can’t wait for tomorrow for Santa Village to open.” He smiled. “They just get so excited.”

“Hmm.” Chaz bit into the scone.

They fell into silence.

The back door opened. A shock of cold air preceded Hank Ousterhout still in his Santa suit. He shut the door but stopped just inside the room.

“Guess you’re wondering what we’re doing here,” Chaz said.

Hank pulled off his Santa hat and tossed it toward the clothes rack.

“I guess you’d say I am. But nothing would surprise me tonight.”

Just wait
, thought Liv, but she said nothing.

“As long as you don’t mind if I get out of this suit, you’re welcome. I see Dolly’s been here with some supplies.”

“Help yourself,” Fred said.

Hank reached past Chaz and took a jelly donut, which he polished off in three bites. Brushing his hands, he walked over to the clothes rack and saw the patrolman sitting on a box in the corner.

“You catch whoever stole my Santa suit?”

Meese shook his head.

Hank turned back to the group. “Then what are you all doing here? Has something happened?”

No one spoke.

“What?”

They must have all seen it at the same time, but Ted was the only one who voiced their question.

“Hank, what the hell do you have on your suit?”

Hank looked down. “Dang it, I knew better than to eat a jelly donut.” He brushed at the rusty spot on his stomach. Brushed it again.

“Hank, that’s not jelly,” Ted told him.

“So help me—it must’ve got dirty in that Dumpster. When I get my hands on the kids that pulled that stunt—they almost ruined the Santa Parade, not to mention it cost me fifty bucks just to get it cleaned in the first place. It’s on the sleeve, too.” He raised his arm to look at the cuff.

Against the white trim, it looked suspiciously like dried blood.

Ted moved slowly toward the annoyed man. “I think you’d better get out of the coat, Hank. It might be evidence in a crime.”

Hank looked at him like he was crazy. “The hell you say. What kind of crime? If some kid stole my suit to shoplift . . .”

“Not shoplifting, Hank,” Ted said gently. “The TAT Santa was found dead less than an hour ago.”

“The TAT Santa? I thought you were supposed to get rid of him.”

“Someone did,” Chaz said.

Liv glared at him.

“I don’t get it.” Hank rubbed his bearded cheek. Jerked his hand away and looked at the cuff. Brought it to his nose and sniffed. “That’s blood.”

“Let’s just get you out of the suit,” Chaz said, pushing himself away from the counter. “Bill will probably want to take a look.”

“Why?”

“Because someone may have worn your suit to commit a murder.”

“Are you saying someone killed that fella?”

“It looks like it,” Ted said.

Hank shook his head. “That’s sick. And I was out there talking to kiddies wearing—” He tugged the black belt off and threw it toward the clothes rack. Tore open the snaps of the jacket.

Officer Meese jumped up.

Ted got there first. “Hank, wait, just calm down.” Ted began to help him out of the jacket. Chaz silently scooped the belt from the floor and laid it on the counter.

“This is not how Christmas is supposed to be,” Hank said. “Not at all like it’s supposed to be.”

Liv couldn’t agree more. She didn’t know much about Hank Ousterhout, but she didn’t want him to be involved in what was obviously murder. He’d seemed so jolly—except when he’d come to her office complaining about Grace Thornsby. The manager of TAT, the woman who employed the ersatz Santa, and Hank’s ex-wife. The woman who was missing in action.

“This is just plum crazy.” Hank sank down on the cot.

Ted reached for his cell phone.

Bill Gunnison showed up two minutes later.

He stood just inside the door and looked around the room. His eyes finally came to rest on Hank.

“Bill, they think someone wore my suit to kill that hired Santa.”

“We did not say that,” Chaz said quickly. “Just that it’s something you should probably look at.”

Bill leaned over the counter where Chaz had gingerly folded the Santa jacket. “Meese, radio Johnston and tell him to get over here with an evidence bag. Hank, we’re gonna need those trousers, too.”

Hank looked down at the red velvet pants, pushed himself off the cot like an old man, grabbed his overalls from the clothes rack, and stepped toward the madras curtain.

Bill jerked his head toward Meese, who hurried after Hank. When they came back, Hank was back in his coveralls and Meese was carrying the Santa pants. He added them to the jacket and belt, just as two more officers came inside. They went straight to the red suit.

“When can I get them back?” Hank asked. “I need the suit for tomorrow morning. It’s Breakfast with Santa, then the official opening of Santa Village.”

He looked at Bill, then Ted, then Liv, and finally Chaz, but Chaz had turned his back and was watching the officers bag the Santa suit.

“Hank, I’m afraid you’re not going to get it back. It’s possible evidence in a crime.”

“But where the heck am I gonna get another Santa suit by tomorrow morning?”

Bill didn’t answer. Neither did anyone else.