A Whisker Оf Trouble

Chapter 16

Rose was in the Angels’ office with Mr. P. when I went downstairs.

“Hello, dear,” Rose said. “Did Mac tell you we’re finished in the living room and one bedroom?”

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet,” I said, “but that’s good to know. Thank you.” I looked at Mr. P. “Do you have a minute? I have some information I think you might find useful.”

“Of course,” he said. “Go ahead. Rosie is up-to-date.”

I leaned against the doorframe. “It occurred to me that Sam might know someone who could tell us more about Ronan Quinn, so I called him.”

“Of course,” Rose said. “We should have thought of that sooner. What did he say?”

“He put me in touch with a lawyer who had worked on a couple of lawsuits over the fake wine with Quinn. I just got off the phone with her.”

“I was on the wrong track, wasn’t I?” Mr. P. said, pushing his glasses up his nose with one finger.

I nodded.

“I’ve been looking into Mr. Quinn’s background and he really was what he appeared to be, a decent man trying to stop whoever was taking advantage of people like Edison Hall.”

“I did learn one thing that might be helpful,” I said. “I told you that Sam’s contact was a lawyer, so she was pretty circumspect about what she said, but she didn’t seem to have a very high opinion of Thorne Logan, and by the way, his real first name is Thornton.”

Mr. P. reached for a pencil and wrote the name on the pad of paper next to his laptop. “Thank you, Sarah,” he said. “So far we’ve been hitting a dead end trying to find contact information for the man. I tried the number on the card as well. I got the same message you did. This will help.”

“There’s something fishy about this man,” Rose said. “Who runs a legitimate business and doesn’t have a proper voice mail message?”

“Any luck on tracking down our mystery woman?” I asked.

Mr. P. shook his head. “Whoever she is, she’s very good at covering her trail.”

“Charlotte and I have a few more people to talk to,” Rose said. “We’ll find her.”

I smiled at her. “I have no doubt about that.”

Mr. P. was frowning at his laptop.

“Problem?” I asked.

He shook his head, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Sarah, look at this photo of our unidentified woman.”

He’d found another angle from the security footage. I could see her fully face-on. “What am I looking for?”

Mr. P. touched the screen with his finger. “Look at her cheekbones and the angle of her jaw.”

Rose leaned around me so she could see as well. Alfred picked up the photo of Thorne Logan and handed it to me. “Do you see it?” he asked.

Logan had the same strong jaw and high cheekbones.

“They’re related,” I said.

Rose looked from Mr. P. to me. “What?” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Mother and son?”

I nodded slowly. “I think so.”

“I told you there was something fishy about that young man,” Rose crowed.

“If you could just prove Edison had met Purse Lady, I’d say you were onto something,” I said, slipping one arm around her shoulders. “Go ahead and say it.”

Her gray eyes sparkled. “Charlotte found three people who remember him talking to her at the seminar.”

I gave her a hug. Then I put my hand over my heart. “Rose Jackson,” I said. “You are onto something.”

I left them and went out to the old garage. Avery had finished priming the cabinets. As usual she’d done a good job. The teenager was meticulous with a paintbrush and Mac and I were slowly letting her work on more finishing projects.

Mac was looking at the potato baskets. “Hi,” he said. “Did you get these from Cleveland?”

I nodded. “I’m thinking once they’re cleaned up I may dip them.”

He nodded. “Good idea. We’ve had a couple of designers in lately working on show homes, and those baskets are exactly the kind of thing they like.”

“Rose said you’re through two more rooms at the house.”

Mac fished the keys to the Hall house out of his pocket and handed them to me. “The old man actually had a system to those boxes. Rose noticed that they were stacked in concentric squares, more or less. Then we realized that each—can I say ring when I’m talking about a square?”

“Sure.”

He smiled. “Okay, each ring is one kind of item—books, glassware, et cetera.” He smoothed a hand over his cropped hair. “And most of the boxes actually have a list of the contents inside.”

I smiled back at him. “That’s going to save us some time and Stella some money.”

“How’s the detecting going?” Mac asked.

“It turns out that Ethan knows the mystery man in the photo.”

Mac’s eyebrows went up.

“He’s a wine broker with possibly less than stellar business practices.”

“Do you think he had anything to do with Ronan Quinn’s death?”

“I don’t know anymore. I agree with Mr. P. and Rose that it has to be tied to those bottles of wine, but other than that . . .” I shook my head. “They did find out that Edison was at that financial seminar and that he talked to the mystery woman. And it looks like there may be a connection between this broker and the woman with the purse, although I don’t know how they’re going to find either one of them.”

“Maybe the police will come up with something.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I’m starting to think that this is a case where angelic interference isn’t going to help.”

“Don’t count Rose and Alfred out,” Mac said. “They’re like Elvis when he smells a mouse, assuming he also had computer skills.”

I laughed at the mental image that popped into my head. “Yeah, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” I said. The keys to the Hall house were still in my hand. “Mac, can you handle things here?” I asked. “There’s something I need to do.”

“Sure,” he said. “Is there anything you want me to work on?”

“I bought a couple of paintings from Cleveland,” I said. “I started taking them out of the frames and then I got sidetracked.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mac said. “Shall I get Avery to start cleaning the baskets?”

“Please,” I said. “And thank you for the coffee earlier. It was just what I needed.”

“I thought so,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

Mac started for the shop and I walked over to my SUV. I wanted to see the wine collection for myself. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find that no one else had noticed.

The cartons of wine bottles were still in the kitchen at the Hall house. I opened the top of the closest box and looked inside. Mac had said that most of Edison’s boxes had a list of the contents inside. Maybe these boxes did as well.

The box held four bottles, stored upright, which didn’t really matter, since the contents were the equivalent of Kool-Aid. Taped inside was half a sheet of loose-leaf. I pulled it free and at the same time lifted out one of the bottles.

Edison Hall had listed the details about each of the bottles in cramped, spidery handwriting on the paper. I spent the next twenty minutes checking boxes, looking for some kind of clue, even though I had no idea what it would look like. In the end, all I discovered was that there were six bottles missing.

I did a quick search of the kitchen. There were no bottles on the shelves or in the cupboards. Ethan had said his father’s entire collection of wine was at the house. “Maybe I misunderstood,” I said. I was talking to myself, I realized. I was so used to talking to Elvis that now I was talking to myself.

I grabbed the flashlight that Mac had left on the counter and went down to the musty basement. The missing bottles weren’t there, either.

Paul and Alyssa were in their front yard kicking around a couple of what looked like beach balls. When I went out to the SUV, Paul raised a hand in hello and I walked across the street to join them.

“Hi, Sarah,” he said. “How’re you making out in the house?”

“Pretty good,” I said. “We’re planning a sale in a couple of weeks. There’s a very nice wooden r-o-c-k-i-n-g h-o-r-s-e.” I glanced at Alyssa, whose forehead was knotted in concentration as she tried to bounce one of the balls off her knee.

Paul smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll try to get over and have a look. Alyssa is into p-o-n-i-e-s at the moment.” He glanced over at the empty bungalow across the street and lowered his voice. “Have you heard anything about the investigation? Do the police have any idea who killed that man?”

I followed his gaze for a moment. “Nothing so far,” I said. I realized that I had a photo of Thorne Logan on my phone. “Could you look at a picture?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

I found the image of the wine dealer and held out my phone. “Did you ever see him over at the Hall house?”

Paul studied the photo. “Sorry, Sarah,” he said. “He doesn’t look familiar. Did he have something to do with Mr. Quinn’s death?”

“I’m just fishing,” I said, stuffing my phone back in my pocket. I smiled. “I better get back to the shop. It was good to see you.”

I walked back across the street. It seemed that Thorne Logan or Thornton Logan or whatever he called himself was another dead end for now.

I went right up to my office when I got back to the shop. There were six bottles of wine on Edison Hall’s list that weren’t in the house as far as I could tell. They nagged at me. Had Quinn taken them for evidence? Did his killer have them?

It occurred to me that maybe Ethan knew. “I’m as bad as Rose,” I muttered to Elvis, who was making himself comfortable in the middle of my desk.

When I tried Ethan’s cell phone, the call went straight to voice mail. Then I remembered that Stella had given me Ethan’s home number.

Ellie Hall answered the phone. I could hear little voices singing the ABC song in the background. “Hi, Sarah,” she said. “Ethan’s teaching, that’s why you couldn’t reach him. Could I help you with something?”

“Possibly,” I said. “We’re trying to do a detailed inventory out at the house and I wanted to be sure that none of the bottles in Edison’s collection get misplaced, you know, in case the police do ever need them as evidence in a case.” That was true as far as it went. “You don’t have any at your house, do you?”

“No,” she said. “Ethan left everything at his father’s house so Mr. Quinn could go through the boxes. Everything in the collection is there. And you don’t need to do an inventory. I remember Ethan saying his father had a list inside one of the boxes.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Thank you. We’re hoping to have the estate sale in about two weeks.”

“That would be wonderful,” Ellie said. “Ethan and I appreciate you continuing, under the circumstances. I’m sorry that you had to . . . find Mr. Quinn.” She had a warm, friendly voice, laced now with a touch of apology.

“I’m just happy we can help.”

“I was supposed to be there, first thing that morning,” she said, “to pack those dishes Stella wanted to keep. I keep thinking that I might have walked in on the killer.”

“I’m glad that didn’t happen.”

“I had to have a small procedure done and they had a last-minute cancellation at the clinic. I almost said no, but Ethan insisted that I go.” She hesitated. “I’m guessing Stella told you about our situation, about the surgery I need on my back. I mean, it’s not really a secret.”

“She did,” I said. “I’m sorry that collection turned out to be worthless.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry that Edison was taken advantage of.” She cleared her throat. “He was a prickly man, but I know he cared about Ethan and his grandchildren. What he did, buying all those bottles as an investment, that was for us.”

I thought about the meticulous details kept on every bottle I’d seen in Edison Hall’s kitchen. It didn’t seem fair that things had ended the way they did.

“We’ll do everything we can to make as much money as possible from the estate sale,” I said.

“Thank you, Sarah,” Ellie said. “I, uh, don’t want to be a charity case. I guess I’m like Ethan’s dad in that way.” The little voices in the background were getting louder.

“I understand,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I did.

We said good-bye and I hung up. Elvis had moved off the desk. Now he regarded me from his perch on the love seat.

“This whole thing bites,” I said.

He immediately craned his neck in the direction of my desk drawer.

“No, not those kinds of bites,” I said. Elvis blinked his green eyes at me and began to wash his face.

I looked around the office, hoping somehow I’d find inspiration. My old black leather phone book was on my desk. I’d had it for years, adding and crossing out phone numbers and e-mail addresses as I moved from one radio station to another in my past life, to my life here in North Harbor.

I slid the book closer, across the desk. I still knew a couple of people who worked in radio in this area. Maybe they’d be willing to help. Ellie had just said her situation wasn’t a secret, so I wouldn’t be violating her privacy.

“If I can’t catch the bad guys, maybe I can give the good guys a leg up,” I said to Elvis.

He stopped washing his sleek black fur and turned to look at me, paw paused in midair. The expression on his face seemed to say that he thought my analogy was pretty lame, which it was. I just hoped my efforts wouldn’t be.