A Whisker Оf Trouble

Chapter 2

I reached for Elvis. I didn’t need to get any closer to tell that the man lying on his side on the brown-and-gold-cushion flooring was dead. There was a dark stain on the collar of his jacket and what looked to be dried blood matted on the back of his head. I was guessing he’d been dead for hours, certainly not as long as a day. He looked to be in his early forties, dressed in a dark wool jacket and good-quality black trousers. There was a wide smudge of white on one leg of the pants and bits of black asphalt stuck to the soles of his leather shoes. A wine bottle lay on its side about a foot from the body.

Mac and I backtracked to the living room, being careful not to touch anything.

A half wall to the left, just inside the front door, made a bit of an entryway. Rose was waiting there, her face pale. “It’s not Stella, is it?” she asked.

I shook my head and a bit of the color came back to her face. “It’s a man,” I said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

“Maybe someone who was homeless,” she said. “Maybe he came in looking for somewhere to sleep.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Mac and I exchanged glances. The dead man was wearing what looked to me to be nice clothes and expensive shoes. I doubted he was homeless.

We went back outside. I handed Elvis to Rose. “Would you put him in the car, please?”

“Of course,” she said.

Mac had taken a couple of steps away from us and pulled out his phone, calling 911, I guessed. Now he came back to stand beside me. “Police are on their way.”

I sighed and rubbed one shoulder with the other hand. “Have you ever seen that man before?” I asked.

He shook his head and put the phone back in his pocket. “Never.”

I glanced over at the SUV. Rose and Elvis were in the back and she was feeding the cat something, probably something it would be better I didn’t know about.

“He wasn’t homeless,” Mac said. “Those shoes he was wearing? They set him back more than a thousand dollars.”

I didn’t ask how he knew. Instead I asked the next most obvious question. “What’s a man in thousand-dollar shoes doing in Edison Hall’s kitchen?”

He didn’t say anything at first. “It wasn’t an accident, Sarah,” he said finally, looking over his shoulder at the house.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, thinking about the dried blood in the dead man’s hair. Mac was right. However the man had died, it wasn’t accidental.

A patrol car, the ambulance and a dark blue car all arrived a few minutes later. I walked across the grass toward the car.

The driver got out and gave me a half smile across the roof of the car. “Hi, Sarah, what’s going on?” she asked.

Detective Michelle Andrews was tall and slender in jeans, a shirt the color of chocolate pudding and a tan jacket. As usual, her red hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail.

The patrol officer was already going up the front steps.

“Edison Hall’s sister, Stella, hired us to clean the place out,” I said as Michelle came around the car to stand next to me. “This morning was our first day.” I stopped to clear my throat. “I could . . . uh, smell something as soon as I unlocked the door. I thought it was a mouse. It was a man, dead on the kitchen floor.”

Michelle’s green eyes narrowed, but other than that, nothing changed in her expression. “Do you recognize him?”

“No,” I said. “He’s not from around here, at least as far as I know.”

Mac was still standing at the edge of the driveway.

“Anyone else here with you besides Mac?” Michelle asked.

“Rose and Elvis,” I said. “They’re in the car.”

“I’m going to have a look inside the house.” She fished a pair of plastic gloves from one of her jacket’s pockets. She looked at me for a long moment without speaking. “You know how this works,” she finally said.

I nodded. “We’ll stay right here.”

Michelle started across the grass and I walked back to Mac. “We can’t go anywhere, not for a while at least,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s not cold and it’s not raining.” He looked over his shoulder at the small white bungalow, then turned back to me. “There are worse places to be.” His gaze slid past me. “Sarah, Nick’s here,” he said quietly.

Out on the street a black SUV had pulled over to the curb at the end of the line of police vehicles. Nick Elliot got out, carrying a boxy silver case, which I knew held all the gear he needed to do his job. He’d been working for the medical examiner for months now. He started toward us in his usual uniform of navy windbreaker and black pants.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Mac.

I cut across the lawn and met Nick at the curb. “Hi,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“We found a body in the kitchen.”

“Anyone you recognize?”

I shook my head. “No one I know.”

Nick made a face. “I know there’ve been problems with drifters breaking into some of the summer places.”

“I don’t think this was a drifter,” I said.

I looked up at him. He was just over six feet tall with broad shoulders and sandy hair he wore much shorter than when we were young. He was even more handsome and charming and funny than he’d been at fifteen, but sometimes when I looked at him, all I saw was the boy I’d had a crush on when we were teenagers and not the man he was now. And sometimes I caught myself falling into the teasing relationship we’d had back then in which we didn’t talk about anything directly.

“What do you mean you don’t think this is a drifter?” he asked.

I cleared my throat, wishing I hadn’t said anything, but it was a little late now. “You should see for yourself, but the man doesn’t look like a drifter. He’s wearing what looks to be very expensive shoes and a nice jacket.”

Nick had explained to me once that it was his job to figure out what had happened at a potential crime scene; had a crime actually been committed or not? It was up to the police to work out the who, how and why.

“Was the door locked when you got here?”

“The front was,” I said. “I don’t know about the back.”

Nick patted one of his jacket pockets. Checking for gloves? I wondered. Or his phone? “Did you notice if anything was disturbed in the house?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ve been inside that house, Nick. You can’t exactly tell if a box is out of place.”

He nodded and grimaced. “Yeah, good point.” Then he looked over at the house. “Is Michelle inside?”

I nodded.

“I take it she asked you to wait.”

“She did,” I said, suddenly feeling more than a little uncomfortable. This was the third time I’d found myself connected to a case Nick and Michelle were investigating.

“Okay, so you and Mac found the body,” Nick said.

“Strictly speaking, Elvis found the body.”

He raised an eyebrow and didn’t completely manage to keep a smile back. “I’m going to need to ask him some questions.”

“I’ll tell him not to leave town.”

Nick did smile then. “I should get to work,” he said. “I’ll need to talk to both you and Mac later, though. You’ll both be at the shop?”

I nodded, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “We can’t do anything here. As soon as Michelle says we can leave, we’ll head back. I’m going to have to call Stella at some point. This is going to move our timeline back.”

Nick looked over his shoulder at the house again. “I’m guessing she and Ethan want to get the house on the market as soon as they can.”

I knew that Nick and Ethan Hall—Edison Hall’s son—had played hockey together in high school. I wasn’t sure whether they’d reconnected when Nick moved back to North Harbor.

“I think it’s been a bit overwhelming for Ethan,” I said.

“The old man was never one to throw anything away,” Nick said. “I was in the garage a few times back when Ethan and I were in school. You couldn’t fit a car in it—that’s for sure.” He gave his head a slight shake at whatever memory had just slipped into his mind. “Anyway, I’ll talk to you later.” He started for the front door, raising a hand in hello to Mac as he cut across the lawn.

I walked up the driveway to rejoin Mac. He was standing by the front fender of the SUV. “Nick will have some questions later,” I said.

“I thought he would,” Mac said. He inclined his head in the direction of the car and lowered his voice. “You know Rose is going to see this as a case they can investigate.”

I sighed. “I know.”

They included Rose, Alfred Peterson, Charlotte and Liz French, another of my grandmother’s closest friends. They called themselves Charlotte’s Angels, a play on the movie and the television show Charlie’s Angels. Since Rose, at least, saw them as the three detectives—she’d dubbed herself Farrah Fawcett because she had the best hair—that meant Alfred was Bosley. And since they’d set up their detective office in my sunporch, where they used my Wi-Fi and drank my tea, by default I was Charlie. When I pointed out to Rose that, since they were Charlotte’s Angels, Charlotte should be Charlie, Rose had just smiled sweetly at me and said, “She’s Kate Jackson, dear. She can’t be Charlie, and you own the building.”

I didn’t even try to argue with her logic.

The Angels had been involved in two of Nick’s cases since he’d taken the medical examiner’s job. He’d explained how dangerous it could be for them to be mixed up in a criminal investigation. He’d pointed out that they weren’t detectives, that they had no training in law enforcement. He’d even threatened to have Michelle arrest them all. They’d pretty much ignored him.

“You didn’t tell Nick that Rose is here,” Mac said, narrowing his dark eyes as he studied my face. The corners of his mouth twitched.

“He didn’t ask,” I said. “And do you want the two of them to get into it yet again over the Angels getting involved in this case?”

Mac gave up trying to stifle the smile. “So, who were you trying to protect? Him or her?”

I leaned sideways and gave him a long, appraising look. “Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “Nick’s built like a hockey enforcer. He works in law enforcement. She’s barely five feet high in her sensible walking shoes and she’s blind as a bat without her bifocals.”

Mac looked at me, unblinkingly, the way Elvis did sometimes. “Her, then,” he said.

“Obviously.” I rubbed my left shoulder with my other hand, trying to work out a knot that had settled in when Mac reminded me that Rose was going to look at this dead body as an invitation for the Angels to investigate. “I should talk to her before she gets any ideas.”

Something caught Mac’s eye and he looked past me. “Sarah,” he said, a note of caution suddenly in his voice.

I turned to see what he was looking at.

A small silver car had just parked at the curb. I could see Ethan Hall behind the wheel. “What’s he doing here?” I said.

Mac touched my arm. “I’ll go.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. I’ll do it.”

He inclined his head in the direction of the SUV. “Talk to Rose,” he said. “I’ve got this.” He started for the street before I could argue the point anymore.

I walked around the side of the SUV, opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel, turning to face Rose and Elvis. The cat straightened up and licked his whiskers. I knew it was pointless to ask Rose what she’d been feeding him.

“Can we leave now?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Michelle and Nick are taking a look around inside. But it shouldn’t be much longer.”

She leaned sideways to look past me. “Is that Ethan Mac’s talking to?”

“Uh-huh.” I turned back around and flipped down the sun visor.

The cat craned his neck as though he were trying to see what Rose was looking at. She patted her lap and her climbed up on her knee. “What’s he doing here? Did you call him?”

“He probably came to see if he could get a better idea of how long it’s going to take us to clear everything out.” I pulled the elastic out of my ponytail and raked my fingers through my hair. Then I looked at her in the mirror. “This is not a case, Rose,” I said.

She reached forward and patted my arm. “Has Nicolas gotten his knickers in a knot, dear?” she asked.

“No. I didn’t tell him you were here.” I didn’t add that I didn’t see the point in the two of them having the same argument they’d already had at least half a dozen times. Nick was dead set against his mother—and Rose and Liz, whom he thought of as family—investigating crimes. Rose was just as fixed in her opinion that it was none of his business.

I understood why Nick worried, but I could also see Rose’s point of view—which meant a couple of times they’d been arguing I’d managed to get on the wrong side of both of them.

She smiled. “Thank you, Sarah. That was probably for the best.” She smoothed her white curls with the hand that wasn’t stroking Elvis’s fur. “He’s such a worrywart. I’d say he’s such an old woman about things, but really, none of us are anywhere near that bad.”

Elvis gave a soft murp of agreement.

“I think in this case, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Rose continued. “Thank you for having our back, sweet girl.”

Both she and Elvis were smiling at me and I wasn’t exactly sure how we’d gotten from me warning Rose to stay out of this investigation, to me having her back.

Mac and Ethan Hall had started up the driveway. “I should go talk to Ethan,” I said.

“Of course,” Rose said. “Elvis and I will stay here.”

I saw the cat’s green eyes dart over to Rose’s bag. I was pretty sure I knew how Elvis, at least, would be passing the time.

I got out of the car and met Mac and Ethan in the middle of the driveway. Ethan Hall was easily six feet tall with deep blue eyes that seemed to lock on to your face when he spoke to you, and blond hair in a modified brush cut. He looked over at the house. “Sarah. Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.

“The police are inside,” I said. “Detective Andrews should be out in a minute.”

His mouth twisted to one side. “How could someone have gotten into the house?”

I didn’t think he was looking for an answer. His gaze came back to me again. “You didn’t recognize the . . . you don’t know who it is, do you?”

“No,” I said. But I described the body, including the expensive clothes.

“Wait, was it a dark brown wool jacket?” he said slowly. “Three-quarter length?” He made a chopping motion just below his hip.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know who that is?” Mac asked, lines tightening around his mouth and eyes.

Ethan swallowed hard and swiped a hand across his chin. “Maybe . . . yes. I’m not sure.”

Before I could say anything Michelle came out the front door. She looked around and started over toward us.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Mac. I intercepted Michelle on the worn brick walkway.

“What is it?” she asked. She must have seen something in my expression.

I gestured over my shoulder. “That’s Ethan Hall,” I said. “I don’t know if you know him. This is—was—his father’s house.” I cleared my throat. “I think he might know who . . . the body is.” I made a motion in the general direction of the house behind her.

Her gaze never left my face. “Why do you say that?” she asked.

“He asked about the dead man. When I mentioned the jacket he wanted to know if it was dark brown and hip length.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.” She walked over to Ethan and I followed. “Mr. Hall, I’m Detective Michelle Andrews.” She kept both hands in her pockets. “Sarah says you may know who our victim is.”

Ethan shrugged. “I’m not certain, but it’s possible it’s a man named Ronan Quinn.”

“Can you describe him to me?” she asked.

“He’s, um . . . maybe a couple of inches shorter than me and his hair’s dark with some gray in the front.” He made a sweeping gesture in the air with one hand. “Like I told Sarah, the last time I saw Ronan he was wearing a dark brown jacket.”

Michelle nodded. “And when was that?”

“Here. Yesterday afternoon.”

“What kind of business did you have with Mr. Quinn?”

Ethan shifted from one foot to the other. He seemed a little uncomfortable. “He’s a wine expert I hired to value my father’s collection of wine so it could be sold. There were a couple of bottles he wanted to take another look at. That’s why we were here yesterday.”

“Would you be willing to come take a look at the body and see if it is Mr. Quinn?” Michelle asked.

Ethan hesitated, closed his eyes for a second and then nodded without speaking.

Michelle looked at Mac and me. “You can come, too.”

We followed her back into the house. Nick was in the kitchen taking photographs. I saw a flash of surprise in his eyes when he caught sight of us, but he didn’t say anything.

Michelle stuck out her hand, stopping us in the doorway to the kitchen.

Ronan Quinn—if that was who the dead man was—was lying half on his side, half on his back as though his legs had just collapsed underneath him. I kept my eyes on the bottom half of his body. I’d seen the battered back of his head once, and that was enough.

Ethan swallowed and turned away. “That’s him,” he said. His face was pale. “That’s Ronan.”

Nick looked up from his camera. “Wait a minute. The guy you hired to appraise the wine collection?”

Ethan nodded. “From Boston, yes.”

“Did Mr. Quinn stay behind yesterday?” Michelle asked.

Ethan shook his head. “No. We left together, maybe three thirty, quarter to four. Ronan said he had some calls to make.”

“Do you remember if he had a cell phone with him?”

“Yes. An iPhone. And he had a briefcase. The old-fashioned kind with a flap and buckles.” He looked around. “I don’t see it.”

“We’ll look for it,” Michelle said. “Thank you.”

Mac and Ethan were already on their way back outside. Michelle and I followed them. Ethan stood at the bottom of the steps. He had one arm crossed over his midsection and he was running the edge of his thumb repeatedly over the ends of his fingers.

“This is my fault,” he said. “It’s my fault Quinn is dead.”

“What do you mean?” Michelle asked.

“I told you my father had a wine collection.” He pressed his lips together for a moment before he continued. “He had a lot of collections. You’ve seen the house. But he told me the wine was worth a lot of money. He spent a lot of money on it—more than I realized. It turns out the whole collection is fake—cheap wine in bottles with fake labels and fake provenance.”

“You think these fakes had something to do with Mr. Quinn’s death?” Michelle asked.

Ethan nodded. “I . . . I pushed him to find as much evidence as he could about the phony bottles so we could go after the people who conned my father. When Quinn asked me to meet him here yesterday, he said he was onto something, but he wouldn’t say what.” He let out a breath. “I should have let it go.”

Nick had come out onto the front steps. “This isn’t your fault,” he said.

Ethan looked up at him. “I set it in motion, Nick,” he said. “I was so damn mad when I found out the whole thing—those bottles of wine—was a con job. You know the old man was no wine connoisseur. He was a couple-of-beers-on-a-Saturday-night type of guy. Quinn said he’d seen this kind of thing before. He’d been involved in several other cases just in the past year and a half. He told me that we might be able to sue in civil court if we could find who sold all the fakes to my father. He said even if the law can’t get them, then at least we can hit them in their wallets.”

He smoothed one hand down over the back of his head. “The worst part is the whole wine collection thing? It was for me and Ellie and the kids. He wanted to leave something to us. How many times did I tell him it didn’t matter? You know what he was like. When he got his mind set on something, there was no point talking to him.”

Nick nodded. “I know. And if you had screwed up, he would have been the first person to tell you to man up and take responsibility, but this isn’t your fault.”

Ethan just shook his head.

“How did you come to hire Mr. Quinn?” Michelle asked.

Ethan laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “There was an article in the Boston Globe about the trend in buying wine as an investment—and, ironically, about the dangers of getting scammed. Ronan Quinn was quoted as an expert. I got in touch with him. He’s . . .” He paused for a moment. “He was one of just three people in New England qualified to properly appraise a collection.”

“How did he know the bottles were fake?” Nick asked.

“Inconsistencies in the documentation, problems with the labels. In the case of one of the bottles that was opened, the quality of the wine made it pretty clear.” He shook his head again. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

“Mr. Hall, could you come down to the station?” Michelle pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, glanced at it and then looked at Ethan. “Anything you can tell us about Mr. Quinn could help.”

“I want to help,” Ethan said, “but could it wait? My wife is having a very small procedure at the hospital. I’ve been there since”—he glanced at his watch—“quarter to six. I just came over for a moment because I forgot to give Sarah the key for the garage.” He slid a hand back over his hair. “I really need to get back. I’ve been gone for way too long already.”

“All right,” Michelle said. “Go back to your wife.” She handed him her card. “Once you get home, please call me.”

“Thank you,” Ethan said. “I will.” He turned to me. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I should have done a better job of keeping you in the loop as far as the wine and everything was concerned.” He made a helpless gesture with one hand.

“We’ll talk in a couple of days,” I said. “Don’t worry about this.” I indicated the house behind us. Stella was our client and in the end, what happened next would be up to her.

Mac walked Ethan to his car. They shook hands and Ethan left. Michelle looked at Nick. “Keep an eye out for the victim’s cell and his briefcase.”

“I will,” he said. He glanced at me, almost smiled and then went back inside the house.

“You can go now, Sarah,” Michelle said. “But I’ll need to talk to both you and Mac”—she glanced over at the SUV—“and Rose.”

“We’ll be at the shop for the rest of the day,” I said. The crime scene van pulled in at the curb then.

“I’ll talk to you later, then.” She touched my shoulder and then headed across the lawn toward the van.

I joined Mac. “We can leave,” I said. I pulled the car keys out of my pocket. “When Stella asked us to clear out this place, this wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“It’ll work out,” Mac said, one hand on the passenger door of the SUV. “The guy is a stranger. They won’t have a client. They’re not going to get involved this time.”

In the backseat Rose was writing furiously in a small notebook while Elvis craned his neck, seemingly trying to read what she was writing.

I looked at Mac. “I think there’s half a jar of Charlotte’s cucumber relish in the refrigerator at the shop,” I said.

He frowned. “And why would I want Charlotte’s cucumber relish?”

I gave him a tight smile as I reached for the driver’s door handle. “Because I’m pretty certain you’re going to have to eat your words.”