A Whisker Оf Trouble

Chapter 8

Channing Caulfield might have been retired from the bank, but he was still working, at least part-time, for an investment firm in town. Liz called the office and set up a lunch appointment for the next day.

“You see?” I teased. “There’s no way we’d be able to see him on a Saturday if it wasn’t you he was going to be having lunch with.”

“Us,” Liz said firmly. “And remember what I told you: wear a dress. Short is good. Tight is better.”

I stuck my tongue out at her back as she headed for the door. “I saw that,” she said with a dismissive wave of one hand. “One of these days your face is going to freeze like that.”

Charlotte was at the cash desk. She laughed and walked over to me. “I see you got drafted to have lunch with Liz and Chucky Caulfield.”

I rolled my eyes. “Liz wants me to wear something short and tight.”

Charlotte folded her arms over her aproned front. She narrowed her brown eyes. “Do you still have that blue-gray wrap dress?” she asked.

“Not you, too,” I said.

“Chucky always did like the ladies.” Charlotte smiled. “And you look so pretty in that dress.” She reached over and straightened my collar.

That dress met all of Liz’s requirements. It was short and tight and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d be able to breathe, let alone eat, if I wore it.

“Why do you call Channing Caulfield Chucky?” I asked.

Charlotte smiled. “We were in the same first grade class. In those days Channing was the kind of name that would get you beaten up on the playground. The teacher very wisely called him Chuck. In a classroom full of Bobbys and Tommys, that very quickly became Chucky and it stuck.”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure he liked being called Chucky once we got a few years past first grade, but the name stuck.”

I put a hand on the back of my head and stretched my neck. I could use a cup of coffee and one of those peanut butter cookies, assuming there were any left in the staff room. “So don’t let Liz call him Chucky if we want to get any information out of him,” I said.

“Good grief, yes,” Charlotte exclaimed. “If she gets her knickers in a knot over something, she’s apt to do that.”

“I’ll try to keep her in line,” I said. “But I’m not making any promises.”

“I understand, dear,” Charlotte said with a smile. “Liz can be stubborn.”

I raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her. “As opposed to you?”

“I’m not stubborn,” she said, nudging her glasses up her nose with one finger. “I’m determined.”

I laughed. “So, what did they call you in first grade?”

“Charlotte,” she said. “Not Lottie. Not Charlie. Charlotte.” A sly smile crept across her face. “I was determined back then, too.”

I had just set the timer on TV so Elvis could watch Jeopardy! when Nick knocked on my door after work. “C’mon in,” I called. It was about a minute before six o’clock. I leaned down and scratched the top of the cat’s head. “You’re so spoiled,” I said to him.

He licked my hand and wrinkled his nose at me.

I went back out into the living room. Nick was standing just inside the front door. “I’m in,” he said.

“I just have to grab my jacket and I’m ready,” I said.

He was holding his phone and he glanced down at it. “Are you waiting for a better offer?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. I was hoping I’d hear from Liam. I sent him a text to see what his plans were and if he could maybe join us after all.”

I grabbed my red plaid jacket from the closet. “He’s probably working late.” I picked up my keys and bag from the chair by the door. “I’m leaving,” I called to Elvis.

“Why do you do that?” Nick said with a laugh. “You’re talking to a cat. He doesn’t know what you’re saying.”

I held up one hand. “Wait for it.”

The answering meow came from the direction of the bedroom. The cat had impeccable timing.

I gave Nick a smirk and went out into the hallway. “That doesn’t prove anything,” he said as he followed me out.

“Yes, it does,” I said as I locked the door. “It proves that my cat is smarter than you—”

“Careful,” he warned, his dark eyes gleaming. “You don’t exactly have a lot of options for dinner at the moment.”

“—might expect,” I finished.

Nick laughed. “Good save!”

His SUV was parked at the curb. “Is it okay if we drive?” he asked.

I nodded. “Sure. Are you on call?”

He shook his head. “No. But I may need to stop at the station later to talk to Michelle.”

“About the Quinn case?” I asked as I climbed in.

“I can’t tell you that,” he said. He shut my door and walked around the front of the vehicle.

“Sure you can,” I said when he opened the driver’s-side door. “You just don’t want to because you’re afraid whatever you say to me I’ll share with your mother and Rose.”

“And how is the investigation going for the state’s newest licensed private investigator and his merry band of senior citizens?” Nick countered.

“I can’t tell you that,” I said, deadpan.

He laughed and slid behind the wheel. “Truce?” he asked.

I nodded. “All right. No talking about your case.”

“Tell me about your cooking lessons,” Nick said as he pulled away from the curb.

“New rule,” I said. “No talking about your case or my cooking lessons.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Nick said, darting a quick look in my direction. “You must have learned something by now. When are you going to make dinner for me?”

I settled back against the seat with a smile. “When you lace up a pair of sneakers and come running with me.”

Nick didn’t run. He played hockey. He biked. He swam. I’d never seen him run. Jess claimed it was because he looked as if he were being attacked by a swarm of bees when he ran. For all I knew, she was right.

“New rule,” Nick said after a moment, his eyes fixed on the road. “No talking about my case, your cooking or anybody running.”

I laughed. “Deal,” I said.

I didn’t ask Nick where we were going for supper. I was sure we were headed for The Black Bear, so I wasn’t surprised when he turned onto the street by the waterfront.

“You’re not going to find a parking spot down here on a Friday night,” I said.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, almost as if Nick had some sort of magical powers, a car pulled away from the curb just two doorways from the pub. “Good, clean living,” he said, backing smoothly and expertly into the spot.

The pub was busy, no surprise, since it was a Friday night. Sam was talking to a server by the bar. He looked up and smiled when he caught sight of us, heading across the floor to meet us. “Hey, kiddo,” he said, wrapping me in a bear hug.

Sam was tall and wiry with salt-and-pepper hair and a close-cropped beard. He’d been my father’s best friend and even though I’d eventually gained a wonderful dad in my stepfather, Sam had played a fatherly role in my life, too. He was always ready to listen and he never said, “I told you so,” no matter how badly I messed up.

He pulled out of the hug and offered his hand to Nick. “We missed you last night,” he said.

“I missed being here,” Nick said. I noticed that he didn’t offer an explanation for where he’d been.

“Liam didn’t say you were meeting him,” Sam said, looking toward the back corner of the restaurant.

“Liam’s here?” I said.

Sam looked a little surprised. “Yeah. They got here about five minutes ago.”

They. Nick looked at me. He’d caught the word as well. It probably meant my brother was using his considerable charm on some business associates.

I looked around Sam and caught sight of Liam in one of the back booths. He was leaning forward, one arm propped on the edge of the table, having an animated conversation with someone I couldn’t see seated opposite him. I knew that body language. He was definitely charming someone, probably a woman.

“We’re just going to say hi,” I said to Sam.

“Sure,” he said, giving me a look that could best be described as amused.

Nick and I started across the restaurant. I gestured toward Liam, who was so focused on his companion that he hadn’t noticed us yet. She—because I knew it had to be a woman he was with—must have said something funny, because Liam was laughing.

I looked up at Nick over my shoulder. “You know what he’s doing, don’t you?” I said.

He grinned back at me. “Of course I know what he’s doing. Who do you think taught him how to do it?”

I laughed. “I’m not even going to dignify that with a snappy comeback.”

One eyebrow went up. “In other words, I’ve left you speechless.”

I poked him gently in the ribs with my elbow.

Just as we got to the table Liam finally looked up and noticed us. “Hey, what are you doing here?” he said, getting to his feet and sliding out of the booth. He wrapped Nick in an enormous bear hug, clapping him on the back the way guys did. “It’s good to see you, man.”

“You, too,” Nick said.

Liam turned to me.

“We just came for supper,” I said. “I called you. Twice.”

He shook his head and put a hand to his pocket. “I’m sorry. I turned my phone off when my meeting started and then I forgot to turn it back on.”

“How long are you going to be here?” Nick asked.

Liam smiled and pulled a hand over his neck. “Looks like a couple of weeks.”

“That’s great,” Nick said. “We’re still playing shinny and I could probably scare up a pair of skates for you.”

My brother grimaced. “I haven’t been on skates since last winter. It would probably be pretty ugly.”

“You pretty much just described the entire team,” Nick said with a shrug.

“You’re in the middle of something,” I said, smiling at Liam. “We’re going to get a table. I’ll see you later, right?”

“He’s not in the middle of anything,” a voice said behind me.

I turned slowly around to see Jess, leaning out of the booth.

“What are you doing here?” I said. Liam was having dinner with Jess? She hadn’t mentioned it early when she stopped by the shop to look at the wooden church pew. Liam was turning the charm on Jess? They’d known each other since she and I became roommates in college. As Avery sometimes said, What the frack?

“In about thirty seconds, eating mac and cheese,” she said, leaning sideways and pointing in the direction of a waiter approaching carrying an oversize-serving tray on each arm.

“We’ll let you get to it,” Nick said, taking my arm. He looked at Liam. “Give me a call when you have a minute.”

“Absolutely,” Liam said. He put an arm around my shoulders for a moment and kissed the side of my head. “I’ll probably see you at the house later.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Jess said to me, turning to give the waiter her own megawatt smile.

Nick looked around, spotted Sam and pointed questioningly at a table near the middle of the room. Sam nodded and Nick led me toward it.

I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, using the opportunity to look back at Liam and Jess. “Is she feeding him?” I asked.

Nick picked up my chair and moved it around the table so my back would be toward their booth. “We don’t care,” he said, enunciating each word carefully.

I made a face at him and sat down, taking the menu a waiter had just brought over.

“Thank you,” Nick said to the young man. “We’re going to need a few minutes.”

“I don’t care that Liam is having dinner with Jess,” I said. “It’s just that he’s not her type and she’s not his.”

Nick pulled out his chair, sat down and opened the menu the waiter had left at his plate. “The clams and chips look good,” he said.

“I’m serious,” I said. “They can’t be on a date, can they?”

He shook his head. “Who are you, Sarah? The person who writes the couple-matching algorithms for Match-dot-com? Leave it alone.”

“Fine,” I said. I bent my head over my menu and watched him under my lashes. As soon as he dropped his own head, I turned to look over at Jess and Liam again.

A crumpled paper napkin struck me on my right temple. I turned back to Nick. “Hey! What was that for?”

“Stop looking at them,” he said. “What the heck is wrong with you?”

I propped an elbow on the table and leaned my forehead against the palm of my hand. “I don’t know,” I mumbled. I turned my head and looked over at Nick. “What are you having?”

“Bear burger and fries,” he said.

“That’s sounds good,” I said, closing the menu and setting it on the table. I resisted the urge to glance over at Liam and Jess again.

The waiter came back for our order. After he’d taken it and headed for the kitchen, I looked at Nick. “What the heck is wrong with me?” I said. “Jess has known Liam since she and I were roommates in college. How many times have we all had dinner together?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “A lot.”

“So why does it feel all . . . weird seeing the two of them over there having dinner?”

He studied me for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he finally said, reaching out to set his knife spinning in a circle on the wooden tabletop. “You tell me.”

I pulled a hand back through my hair and sighed. “Liam was doing that thing he does.”

“That thing?” Nick asked, just a bit too casually, frowning across the table at me.

“That guy thing.” I made a circular motion with both hands. “You know, where he leans forward, smiles and tips his head to one side the way Elvis does when he’s trying to wrangle a bite of cookie from someone. That thing that you just said you taught him.”

“Oh, that thing,” he said, and his cheeks flushed with a bit of color.

“Jess is my best friend. I don’t want her to get hurt,” I said.

Nick actually laughed.

“Not funny,” I said, glaring at him.

He leaned against the back of his chair, still laughing. “Yes, it is, Sarah. Jess is probably the only person in the state, heck, maybe on the entire East Coast, who won’t fall for Liam’s charm.”

When I didn’t immediately say anything, he raised an eyebrow at me. “Because he is good. I did teach him well.” He leaned to one side and the balled-up napkin I pitched at him sailed over his shoulder.

Sam caught it before it hit the floor and lobbed it back into the middle of the table. “Play nice,” he said as he passed the table.

I looked at Nick. “Okay, new rule. No talking about the case, my cooking, you running or Jess and Liam doing anything.” I ticked each one off on my fingers.

He nodded. “Deal.”

We looked at each other in silence. “So, what do you think of the Sox’s chances this year?” he said finally.

This time I was the one who laughed. “We’re going to talk about the Red Sox?” I said. “What is there to say? You know they don’t have any depth in their pitching this year?”

Our waiter arrived then with our burgers. Nick waited until he’d refilled our coffee mugs before he spoke. “You’re right about the pitching roster,” he said. “I don’t like it, but you’re right. So how about we don’t talk about the Sox or cooking or running or Jess and Liam, but”—he held up one finger—“how about this one time, which won’t be construed as a precedent of any kind, we do talk about what Alfred and his merry band of angels have been up to? It’s pretty much the safest topic I can come up with.”

I looked at the plate in front of him. “Can I have some of your fries?” I asked. My burger had come with onion rings because Sam knew they were my favorite.

“As long as you don’t complain about me eating them with tartar sauce,” he said, grabbing two fries, dunking them in the little bowl of tartar sauce the waiter had brought to the table.

“Tartar sauce is for fish,” I said, picking up an onion ring with my fingers. Nick opened his mouth and I held up my hand and smiled sweetly at him. “Ketchup is for french fries. But if you want to eat them wrong, it’s okay with me.”

Wordlessly he pushed his plate toward me. I used my fork to take eight or nine fries and slid a couple of onion rings in their place on his plate.

“So, what’s happening with the Angels’ investigation?” Nick asked.

“Rose and Mr. P. are talking to most of the people the police have already questioned.” I took a bite of my burger. It was good, not that I’d expected anything else. Sam was particular about everything that came out of his kitchen.

“Did they find anything the police missed?” he asked. There wasn’t any condescension in the question as far as I could hear.

“Maybe,” I said.

He looked up at me. I filled him in on how Edison had cheated Teresa out of the metal moose sign and how she’d gone back to look for it and seen Ronan Quinn the morning of the day he was killed.

“You’re sure it was Quinn she saw?” he said, wiping a dab of mustard off the side of his mouth.

“Positive,” I said. “She’d talked to him once. She knew him on sight. I keep wondering what he was doing there so early. You think he was meeting Ethan?”

“I think Ethan would have mentioned that.”

I lifted the top of the bun and stuck two small onion rings on top of the burger patty. “Maybe Quinn was getting another opinion on the wine,” I said.

Nick shrugged, his mouth full.

“What was the old man like?” I asked, reaching for my coffee. “Based on what everybody’s said about him, I have to say he didn’t sound like a very nice person.”

Nick looked around for our waiter and, when he spotted the young man, held up his cup. He waited to answer my question until it had been topped up and then he leaned back in his chair with his hands wrapped around the mug. He’d demolished about three-quarters of his burger already.

“Edison Hall was a hard, rigid man,” he said. “Although he wasn’t quite so bad when his wife—Ethan’s mom—was alive. I think I said that already.”

I nodded.

“For all that, everything he did, everything was for Ethan and his grandchildren.”

“You mean the wine collection.”

“The old man worked hard all his life. The house had been paid for and he didn’t have any debt, but he didn’t have any savings, either. Stella said he got a little obsessed with leaving an inheritance after his wife was gone.”

I reached over and speared another two fries from his plate. “I understand that. Gram was the same way for a while. Finally Mom and I got together and told her if she kept going without things so she could leave money to us we’d take it all and donate it to the Future of Swift Hills Coalition.”

Nick laughed. “The group that wanted to build a condo development along the side ridge of the park? Didn’t Isabel and my mother work on some sort of campaign against them?”

I shifted sideways in my chair and reached for my own coffee. “They did. Once Gram realized we were serious, that pretty much put an end to all her talk of leaving an inheritance.”

“I told my mother that if she was foolish enough to leave anything to me I’d rent this place out and offer beer and chili to everyone as long as the money lasted.”

“What did Charlotte say to that?” I asked, swiping another fry while his attention was diverted.

Nick gave a snort of laughter. “You know my mother. She told me she wanted her urn set up on the bar and to make sure Sam and the guys played ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’”

I laughed, too. It was pretty much impossible to get the better of Charlotte.

Nick set his coffee on the table. There were two onion rings left on my plate. His hand snaked out and snatched the larger of the two.

“I saw that,” I said, shaking my fork at him.

“And I saw you steal those fries,” he countered.

I glared at him. “That onion ring is twice the size of the one you left for me.”

Nick pressed his free hand against his chest. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, his tone making it clear that he wasn’t the slightest bit remorseful. “Would you like to share this one?” He held up his fork with the onion ring speared on the tines.

“Yes,” I said. The moment the word was out of my mouth, I knew what he was going to do. But it was too late. He licked it. And smirked at me.

I definitely didn’t want that onion ring anymore, so I took advantage of the moment and snagged the last french fries from his plate.

We stared at each other for a long moment like a pair of Old West gunfighters with fast food instead of six-guns.

“Do we look as silly as I think we look?” Nick asked after a moment.

“Probably,” I said.

“Truce?”

I nodded. “Truce.”

I dipped the fries into the last bit of ketchup on my plate and thought about Edison Hall, determined to leave something for Ethan and his family. I straightened up in my chair. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You said the house ‘had been paid for.’ What do you mean by ‘had’?”

Nick’s expression grew serious. He set his fork down and leaned an elbow on the table. “I’m sure Stella will tell Rose and her cohorts if she hasn’t already, but keep this under your hat anyway, please?”

I nodded.

“Edison mortgaged the house and borrowed money against his life insurance to buy more wine.”

“Aw, crap!” I exclaimed softly. “Stella told us he’d borrowed money, but I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“The real estate market is better here, because of the tourists, than it is in other places. Even so, once the house is sold and the bank is paid back, there won’t be anything left.” Nick hesitated for a moment. “Did Stella tell you about Ellie?” he asked.

“She did. So there isn’t going to be any money at all for her surgery?” I tried to imagine what it would be like to have small children and be losing the ability to walk. I couldn’t. “What about some kind of fund-raiser?”

Nick made a face. “Aaron told me that Ellie has a thing about taking charity. To her it’s like begging.”

“When people want to help, it’s not begging,” I said. “And even if it were, I don’t see it as a bad thing.”

“I know, but she does. She doesn’t even want people to know there’s anything wrong.” He sighed. “You know, we’re talking about thousands of dollars. A bake sale or two would only be a drop in the bucket.”

I sighed softly. “If those bottles of wine had been the real thing . . .”

“It could have made all the difference,” Nick finished. “You know, it turns out finding the people who’ve been putting those fakes out there had become a bit of a cause for Quinn. It’s where he’d been putting most of his time and effort in the last six months. He was pretty much the best chance—maybe the only chance—to see these fakers brought to justice.” He swiped a hand over his chin. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

It didn’t, and I found myself wanting to do something about that.