A Whisker of Trouble

Chapter 6

When I went downstairs Elvis and Charlotte were with two women who looked to be interested in an old card file cabinet that Avery had found in a Dumpster behind the library. Mac was in the workroom with the parts of . . . something spread across the workbench.

“I take it you saw Liam,” I said.

He held a small metal gear up to the light and frowned at it. “I did. He’s going to give me a hand with the rest of the drywall out in the workshop, probably on Sunday.”

I’d had plans to turn the old garage into a workshop from the very beginning. Aaron Ellison, who plowed the parking lot in the winter, also owned a roofing company and he’d given me a good deal on a new roof after Mac got his mother’s old grandfather clock working again. We had a woodstove for heat and several massive shelving units that had come from an old warehouse Liam had been renovating for storage.

Mac and I had insulated and drywalled three of the walls. All that was left was the fourth and part of the ceiling and now it looked as though that would be finished soon as well.

“How did the detecting go?” Mac asked, settling the gear on a piece of cloth by his left elbow and turning to give me his full attention.

“All right,” I said with an offhand shrug.

He studied my face for a moment without speaking.

“Do you remember that gray Cape Cod diagonally across the street from Edison Hall’s house?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“It turns out a friend of Josh Evans’s just bought it a few weeks ago.”

“Someone you know.”

I nodded. “Paul Duvall.” I was taking way too long to get to the point, but I knew Mac wouldn’t rush me. “He saw Teresa at the house a couple of times and she was around last week as well.”

“A lot of people would have been around last week,” Mac said. “We were all over town. It was the spring pickup.”

“I know,” I said, fidgeting with a button on my shirt. “The thing is, it looks like Teresa might have been at the house the morning we found Ronan Quinn’s body.” I blew out a breath. “And she might have been trying to avoid being seen.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes and no.”

Mac reached for a rag on the bench and wiped his hands. “Tell me the yes,” he said.

“Paul saw Teresa’s van driving down the street sometime before six in the morning.”

“And the part that makes you not so sure?”

“The person who thinks Teresa was hiding by the garage is four.” I folded my arms over my midsection.

Mac tossed the rag back onto the bench.

“You know some of Teresa’s background,” I said. “You know she was arrested more than once when she was a teenager. And you’ve seen what a black-and-white person she is.”

“I’m guessing Rose wants to talk to her.”

I nodded. “She does.” Through Jess I knew that Teresa had had several run-ins with the police when she was younger, all stemming from Teresa taking things that she believed were rightly hers. I also knew something a lot of people didn’t, that she’d spent some time in a psychiatric hospital after the death of her mother when she was twelve. Maybe it was because we’d both lost parents when we were young that I felt a kinship, a connection with her. Maybe if I hadn’t had Rose and Charlotte and Liz to wrap their arms around me—and my mother and Gram—when my father died, the same thing might have happened to me.

“I don’t know how much they know about Teresa’s background and it’s not really my story to tell,” I said. I raked my hand back through my hair and watched a few strands fall to the floor. Why did it seem as if that happened a lot more when the Angels had a case?

“So tell Rose that,” Mac said. He picked up a small spring between his thumb and forefinger, studied it for a moment and then set it down again. He looked at me and just a glimpse of a smile played across his face.

“Tell me what?”

Rose was standing at the far end of the workroom. She always claimed she had ears like a wolf, and I was inclined to believe her.

I smiled at Mac. “Thanks,” I said softly. I’d told Nick more than once that sometimes he underestimated his mother and her friends. Mac had just (nicely) pointed out that I was doing the same thing.

I walked over to Rose.

“What is it?” Rose asked. “It’s something to do with Teresa Reynard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

She looked up at me, her head tipped to one side. And then she smiled. “You’re a kind person, Sarah,” she said.

She must have seen the confusion on my face.

“I called Liz when we got back. When she was a girl she went steady with Teresa’s grandfather. She went steady with half the male population of North Harbor, but that’s not really relevant.”

Rose knew about Teresa’s background.

Why was I surprised about that? Between the three of them, she and Liz and Charlotte had gone to school with, taught—in the case of Rose and Charlotte, or dated—in the case of Liz, most of the male population of North Harbor over the age of twenty-one.

“I’m not saying I think you’d ambush Teresa—” I began.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she interrupted. “I can be a bit of a pit bull when we’re working on a case. But I promise I’ll be a pussycat with Teresa.”

I swallowed back a smile, leaned over and gave her a hug. “How about I get in touch with Teresa and get her to stop by?”

Rose nodded. “That’ll be fine.” She looked at her watch. “Heavens! It’s almost time for me to get to work. What do you need me to do?”

“There are two boxes of grade school readers that I’d like to put out on display,” I said. I looked back over my shoulder and frowned. “I’m just not sure where they should go.”

Rose looked thoughtful, her tongue caught between her teeth. “What if I rearranged things in the hutch?” she asked, referring to one of my first purchases for the store, a monstrosity we hadn’t been able to sell in almost a year. At the moment its shelves were showcasing everything from Avery’s trophy candleholders to a collection of Depression glass plates. “I can spread everything else around the store.”

“Sounds good,” I said. Rose had a good eye for displaying things in unexpected ways like a collection of cocktail glasses on a tray next to a vintage rubber ice pack and several patent medicine bottles.

“I’ll just get Alfred a cup of tea and then I’ll get started,” she said, bustling past me.

I walked slowly back to Mac, wondering if there were any other private investigators who drank so much tea. “I’m going to grab some lunch and do some paperwork. Would you get Avery started cleaning that silver service I bought from Helen Craig?”

“Will do,” he said, rooting through the bits of metal strewn in front of him. “Did you talk to Rose about Teresa?”

I nodded. “She agreed not to go pit bull on Teresa. And I agreed to ask Teresa to stop in.”

He grinned. “That’s good.”

I found myself smiling in spite of myself. “Well, not to overkill the metaphor, but you know what she can be like when she sinks her teeth into a case.”

Mac groaned and shook his head. “Go eat, Sarah,” he said. “I think you’re suffering from low blood sugar.”

I laughed and headed for the shop.

A black paw appeared around the side of my office door as I settled on the love seat and began to unwrap my roast beef sandwich from McNamara’s. Elvis had impeccable kitty radar when it came to lunch. He stopped for a drink from his water bowl but ignored the kitty kibble in his dish, jumping up instead to sit next to me on the love seat. He leaned forward and sniffed in the direction of the sandwich on my lap, then looked expectantly at me.

I pulled a small bit of roast beef from between the slices of French bread and offered it to the cat. “You’re so spoiled,” I said as he ate.

He made a low, contented sound in the back of his throat. After he’d had a taste of my sandwich, Elvis was happy to sit next to me on the love seat and wash his face while I had my lunch. When I finished eating I moved behind the desk. I’d sent a text to Teresa and I knew I had about an hour before she showed up.

When I went downstairs just before one thirty, I found Rose standing in the middle of the store, head cocked to one side, hands on her hips, frowning at something.

I walked over to join her. She’d brought out an old wooden dressmaker’s dummy that Mac had trash-picked. Avery had named it Francine. Rose had attached a small globe to the top of Francine’s neck, topped it with an oversize hat swathed in lavender tulle and hung about half of our collection of costume jewelry necklaces around the dummy’s neck.

“What do you think?” she asked, her mouth pulled to one side. “Is the hat too much?”

I studied the figure, my arms folded over my chest. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it makes her look very worldly.”

Rose rolled her eyes at my pun and swatted me with the back of her hand as I started for the door to the workroom. I stopped to look at the bookshelf where she’d arranged the grade school readers along with a pair of Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots, an Etch A Sketch and some other toys from the seventies that had been in a box in our under-the-stairs storage space. I turned to look back at her. “Looks good,” I said, gesturing at the shelves.

“Thank you,” she said, brushing off her hands. “Avery went and got the toys for me.”

“I’ll thank her, too,” I said.

Mac and Mr. P. had their heads bent together over something in the middle of the workbench. Avery was sitting on a stool at the far end, rubbing the handle of a silver milk jug with a soft cloth. When she saw me coming she set the jug in front of her, held up her hands like a spokesmodel showing off the newest car model. “Ta-da!” she said.

The old silver had polished up even better than I’d hoped. “Nice work, Avery,” I said with a smile.

She grinned back at me and pushed the stack of bracelets she was wearing back up her left arm. “It’s kind of pretty. I thought maybe we could set the long table with that yellow-flowered china and put the tea stuff in the middle with maybe some plants?”

“I like that idea,” I said.

“So, can I do it?” she asked. She made a motion as though she was going to flip her hair over her shoulder and then remembered that she couldn’t.

Avery had cut her hair to chin length a couple of weeks before and dyed a wide strip in the front cranberry red. Both the color and the style suited her. Liz had grumbled that now they couldn’t go anywhere that boys weren’t looking at Avery.

“I look right back at them,” Liz had said. “So they get the message, look but don’t touch!”

We’d been having dinner at Charlotte’s and Avery had looked up from her mashed potatoes and waved her fork in Liz’s direction. “Yeah. I might as well become a nun.” She’d frowned. “Do you have to be Catholic to be a nun?”

“You can date when you’re forty,” Liz had retorted.

Avery had regarded her grandmother thoughtfully across the table. “Do you know how old you’ll be then, Nonna?” she’d asked.

“I’m perfectly capable of doing the math, thank you very much,” Liz had replied tartly.

Rose had opened her mouth to say something and Liz had fixed her with a baleful look. “Say one word, Rose Jackson, that has anything to do with my age and you’ll be wearing that dish of potatoes for a hat.”

Straight-faced, gray eyes twinkling, Rose had held up her right index finger and written the number one hundred followed by two plus signs in the air. Charlotte had wisely leaned over and whisked the potatoes to the other end of the table.

I looked at Avery now, her enthusiasm for decorating a table in the shop evident on her face. “Yes, you can do it.”

She clapped her hands gleefully together like a little kid. “Thanks, Sarah,” she said.

“Thanks for getting that box of toys out for Rose,” I said.

“No problem,” she said.

I moved over to Mac and Alfred. They were studying the top section of what looked to me to be a wooden clock case. “Let me see what I can do,” I heard the older man say. He looked up at me and smiled.

Mac turned around. “What’s up?” he asked.

Before I could answer, the bell rang at the back door. I held up a finger. “Hang on,” I said.

Teresa Reynard was at the door. “Hello, Sarah,” she said. “It’s after one thirty.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. By my guess it was less than five minutes after. “Please come in.”

She stepped into the back entry. Her thick mass of curly hair was loose as it usually was. She was wearing work boots and her hands were jammed in the pockets of her brown canvas jacket.

“You said in your text that you wanted to talk to me about Edison Hall.” Teresa was a very literal-minded person, far more so than Paul Duvall.

I gave her a small smile. “Yes. My friends are trying to find out what happened to the man whose body was found at the house.”

“I didn’t kill him,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t think you did,” I said. I led her into the workroom.

“Hello, Teresa,” Mac said. His eyes met mine. “I’ll get Rose,” he added softly as he passed behind me.

“Teresa, this is my friend Alfred Peterson. He’s a private investigator.”

Mr. P. smiled. “Hello, Teresa,” he said.

“Hello,” she said. “Sarah said you wanted to ask me some questions about the man who died at Mr. Hall’s house.”

“Yes, I would,” Mr. P. said. He gestured at a stool. “Would you like to sit down?”

Teresa shook her head. “No, thank you.” She studied him for a moment. “Are you a real private investigator?” she asked.

The question didn’t faze Mr. P. “Yes, I am,” he said, nodding. He pulled out his wallet and took out some kind of ID I didn’t even know he had. He held it out to Teresa, who studied it carefully and then nodded before handing it back.

Rose came in from the shop. “Hello, Teresa,” she said.

Teresa frowned slightly. “Are you an investigator, too?” she asked.

“I’m learning,” Rose said.

“You’re an apprentice?”

Rose nodded. “Yes.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Teresa. “What did you want to know?” she asked. She hadn’t moved. She was still standing, feet slightly apart, hands in her pockets.

“You know who Ronan Quinn was?” Mr. P. asked.

“Yes.”

Alfred waited for a moment and then seemed to realize Teresa wasn’t going to say anything else.

“You know someone killed him,” Rose said.

Teresa’s expression didn’t change. “I’ve heard people talking. I think it’s probably true.” She looked at me. “I already told Sarah I didn’t kill him.”

“My dear, when were you last at Edison Hall’s house?” Mr. P. asked.

“Tuesday, last week.”

“Why?” Rose asked. She smiled at Teresa.

If Teresa was unsettled at all by the questions, it didn’t show. “I was there to get what belonged to me.”

Rose and Mr. P. exchanged a look. “And what was that?” he asked.

“A metal moose.”

“You mean a toy?” Rose asked, frowning.

“No,” Teresa said. “A metal moose.” She pulled her hands out of her pockets and held them about three feet apart.

Mr. P. smiled as he seemed to figure out what she was talking about. “Like the old sign markers along the trail to Moose Lake?” he asked.

“Not like one of them. It is one of them.”

“If it was yours, why was it at Edison Hall’s house?” I asked.

Teresa shifted and looked at me. “Because he cheated me.”

“Cheated you how?” Rose said.

“He was at a flea market, selling some gas station signs.” She shook her head. “Nobody wants those anymore. I heard him tell someone that he had other signs in his garage, so I asked if I could see them.”

“He said yes?” I asked.

Teresa nodded. “I picked out six signs that I wanted to buy. We settled on a price. I wrote it all down. People aren’t always honest.” She looked at me. “I don’t mean you, Sarah.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“How did Edison cheat you?” Mr. P. asked.

“I didn’t have enough money on me,” Teresa said. “I had to go to the bank. When I got back, he had the signs wrapped in an old blanket.” She pressed her lips together. “I counted to make sure all the signs were there, but I should have looked at each one.”

“Bait and switch,” Rose said softly.

“He replaced the moose with something else,” I said.

“A sign for the Moose River Lodge,” Teresa said. “He’d shown it to me. I didn’t want it, but he said it was the one I picked. He lied.”

“So you were trying to find it,” Mr. P. said. He gave Teresa a sympathetic smile.

“It was mine,” she said. “I paid for it. I tried to find it before, but I couldn’t.” She looked at me again. “I knew you would be starting to work at the house and I didn’t have any way to prove to you that the sign belonged to me.”

“Your word is enough for me,” I said.

“The sign belongs to me,” Teresa said. “I paid for it.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her left pocket and held it out to me. I took it from her.

It was the handwritten receipt she’d created. The signs and the prices she had offered were listed in Teresa’s square, block printing. Her signature was at the bottom. What I took to be Edison Hall’s signature was underneath.

I offered the piece of paper to Rose, who looked it over, frowning, and then gave it back to Teresa.

“I believe you,” I said again. “I’ll talk to Stella. If we find the sign I’ll make sure you get it.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“When you got to Edison’s house that morning, what did you do?” Mr. P. asked.

“I parked my van at the corner,” she said. “And then I walked back to the house.” Her eyes weren’t quite focused on Alfred. It was almost as though she was running down a list of what she’d done in her head. And for all I knew, maybe she was.

“I wanted to look in the garage,” she continued. “There was an old folding door leaning against the side window and I couldn’t see anything, so I went around to the back.”

“You didn’t see the moose sign,” Rose said.

Teresa shook her head. “No. It was too dark inside the garage. And it didn’t look like the signs were in there anymore.”

“Did you get inside the garage?” Mr. P. asked.

“No,” Teresa said.

Another look passed between Mr. P. and Rose. “Why not?” he asked.

“Because Mr. Quinn showed up.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “It was maybe quarter to six in the morning and Ronan Quinn was at Edison Hall’s house? You’re certain?”

Teresa blinked at me. “Yes,” she said.

“What was he doing?” Rose asked.

Teresa shrugged. “Waiting, I think.”

“Waiting for what?’ I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Luckily Mr. P. was better at phrasing questions than I was. “Why did you think he was waiting?” he asked.

“Because he parked his car in the driveway, got his briefcase out of the backseat, and then he went around to the back of the house. He stood by the door and looked at his watch.”

“Did you see anyone with Mr. Quinn?” Rose asked.

“No,” Teresa said. “I went back to my van.”

Rose sighed softly and I touched her shoulder. “Did you see anyone on your way to the van?”

Teresa nodded. “I passed a man walking up the sidewalk.”

“Was he old or young?” Mr. P. said.

She thought for a moment. “Younger than you are but older than Sarah.”

That was a pretty big age spread, but all Mr. P. did was nod. “Did you see his face?”

“For a moment as he walked past me,” Teresa said. Her eyes darted from side to side as though she was trying to pull something out of her memory.

Mr. P. looked from Rose to me and gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. I took it to mean he wanted us to stay out of the conversation for now.

“What color hair did the man have?” he asked Teresa. At the same time I saw him reach behind himself with one hand and give Avery’s arm a squeeze. She’d been so quiet I forgot that she was still polishing the tea service. She raised her head, looked around and then pulled her earbuds out of her ears.

I had no idea what Alfred was up to, but apparently Avery did. She sat still as a statue for a minute or so, then reached for a pad of paper Mac kept on the bench and pulled a pencil stub out of her pocket. Without saying a word, she bent her head over the paper. It seemed obvious that she was drawing something, but I didn’t know what and with Avery’s body hunched over the pad, I couldn’t tell. Was she trying to draw the man Mr. P. was slowly getting Teresa to describe? If that was what he was up to, it was way too much of a stretch.

I was wrong, of course.

Teresa finished describing the man and Avery looked up from the paper maybe thirty seconds later. She slipped off her stool, walked over to Teresa and held out her work. “Is this the man you saw?” she asked.

“Yes,” Teresa said, looking from Avery to Mr. P. “That’s him.”

Avery turned the notepad around so we could all see it. My first thought was, why hadn’t I known that Avery could draw so well? My second was that the face she’d sketched looked very familiar.

“Rose, why do I know that face?” I asked, scanning my own memory trying to pull out a context for the familiarity.

Mr. P. was also looking at Rose. “It is, isn’t it, Rosie?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

Frowning, Avery tipped her head to one side and studied her own work. After a moment her frown turned into a grin. “Holy crap,” she said. “It’s that guy that keeps hitting on Nonna, isn’t it?”

“What guy that keeps hitting on Liz?” I asked, totally confused.

“Channing Caulfield,” Rose said. “The former manager of the North Harbor Trust Company.”