Buy А Whisker

Chapter 4

I turned around and hustled Avery back out to the SUV.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Just go,” I said, putting one hand in the middle of her back and pushing her ahead of me while I fished my cell phone out of my pocket with the other.

We got as far as the sidewalk before Avery braced her feet. She swung around to face me and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on,” she said. She had the same stubborn look I’d seen many times over the years in her grandmother’s eyes.

“There was . . . an accident,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

“You mean Lily’s dead,” she said flatly, “because if she were just hurt, you’d be in there helping her.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Yes,” I said. “Lily’s dead. Please go sit in the car while I call 911.”

Avery looked over at the bakery. “All right,” she said after a moment. She started for the SUV.

“Avery,” I called after her.

She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at me. “Keep your phone in your pocket for now, please.” I didn’t want her to text her friends with the news before the police had a chance to contact Caroline.

After a moment’s hesitation she nodded. “All right.”

I turned my back to the SUV, swallowed against the sudden sting of tears and called 911.

The first patrol car arrived in minutes. I explained about finding Lily’s body. The officer asked me to stay outside and went in to have a look for himself. After that things got very busy, very quickly. Avery and I waited in the SUV and watched the action swirl around us. When I saw Michelle’s car pull in at the curb ahead of us, I nudged Avery.

“I’m going to talk to Detective Andrews for a minute,” I said.

Detective Michelle Andrews and I had been best friends growing up, at least for two months of the year. We were both summer kids in North Harbor, and each year we’d just pick up the friendship where we’d left off the previous summer. Then at fifteen Michelle had suddenly stopped talking to me. It wasn’t until last winter that I’d found out why. Now we were slowly rebuilding our relationship.

“So stay here,” Avery finished. “Yeah, I know.”

Michelle smiled when she caught sight of me. “Hey, Sarah. What’s going on?” she asked. She was wearing a dark navy parka and heavy-soled boots. A cardinal-red hat was the only spot of color I could see on her. Michelle was tall and lean with red hair and green eyes. Everything looked good on her.

“I came to pick up five dozen rolls for the hot-lunch program at the elementary school.” I stopped for a moment, seeing Lily’s body at the bottom of the basement steps in my mind. “Lily . . . Uh, there was no sign of Lily anywhere. I found her at the bottom of the basement steps. She’s dead.”

Michelle’s eyes shifted to the bakery for a moment and then came back to me. “Did you touch the body?”

Lily had already gone from being a person to a body. I reminded myself that Michelle was just doing her job. “No,” I said.

She frowned. “How did you know she was dead, then?”

This time I was the one who looked away for a moment. “I don’t think anyone’s neck could be at that angle and still be alive,” I said quietly.

“I’m sorry, Sarah,” she said, laying her hand on my shoulder for a moment.

I brushed a strand of hair back off my face and took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears that were threatening again. “It’s all right. Better it was me that found her and not her mother.”

Michelle nodded. “Okay, tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

There really wasn’t that much to tell, but I went over everything that had happened from the time I’d picked up Avery until the patrol car arrived. As I finished, Nick Elliot’s black SUV angled in at the curb in front of Michelle’s car. He got out, grabbed his gear from the backseat and walked over to us.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s Lily Carter,” Michelle said.

He swore, almost under his breath. Then he looked at me. “Sarah, what are you doing here?”

“I was picking up rolls for the hot lunch at the school,” I said, rubbing my gloved hands together. “I, uh, found her.”

“Hey, I’m sorry.” His free hand moved as though he was going to touch my arm, and then he stuffed it in his jacket pocket like he’d suddenly thought better of it.

“Sarah, where’s Avery?” Michelle asked, looking around.

I pointed toward the SUV. “She didn’t see anything,” I said. “We both came back outside as soon as I realized Lily was dead.”

“I’m just going to talk to her for a second,” she said.

I realized she probably wanted Avery to corroborate my story. Friends or not, she had to do her job.

She looked at Nick. “I’ll see you inside.”

He nodded.

I watched Michelle walk down the sidewalk to my car. Avery was already getting out. I turned back to Nick.

“What happened?” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

I pulled my scarf a little tighter around my neck. It was so cold our breath hung in the early-morning air like little smoke signals. “I don’t know. When we got here, there was no sign of Lily. The door was unlocked—which was wrong. Lily never unlocks that door before seven thirty. We went in and . . . she was at the bottom of the basement stairs.”

Nick swiped a hand over his chin. “If they’re like the stairs going down to most of the basements along here, they’re an accident waiting to happen—skinny steps, high risers. I don’t know why we haven’t had more accidents like this.”

I looked down at the sidewalk and scraped at a chunk of ice with the toe of my boot.

“What is it?” he asked.

I looked up at him. His head was tipped to one side, and there was concern in his brown eyes.

“Nick, maybe this sounds crazy, but I know Lily’s morning routine. I’m in here early at least a couple times a week, getting rolls for the school or coffee and a muffin for myself. She wouldn’t have left that front door unlocked, and she wouldn’t have been on those stairs, not in the morning. She always got everything ready for the next day before she left at night.”

Nick shifted the silver case he was carrying from one hand to the other. “She could have forgotten about the door, and people don’t always stick to their routines.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t know Lily. She did things the same way all the time. All the time. She told me once she thought maybe she was a little OCD.” I stamped my feet on the brick sidewalk. The cold was beginning to seep through my heavy boots. “If it were anyone else, I’d agree with you, but not Lily. And you have to have heard how much upset there’s been over her refusing to sell for the North Landing project.”

“Wait a minute. You think someone killed Lily?” he said, a frown forming between his eyebrows.

I remembered what Jess had said about desperate people doing stupid things. Killing Lily went way beyond stupid. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something off about this.”

Nick did put a hand on my arm then. “Sarah, I promise, if there’s anything even a little suspicious about Lily’s death, we’ll look in to it.”

“Thank you,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder. “I should check with Michelle and see if Avery and I can go.”

“I’ll call you later,” he said. “I might have some questions.”

“I’ll be at the shop all day,” I said, managing a small smile.

We walked back to Michelle and Avery.

“You two can go,” Michelle said to me as we came level with the SUV, “but I’ll need to talk to you later.”

I nodded. “You know where to find me.”

Michelle and Nick headed for the front door of the bakery. I walked around the SUV to get in the driver’s side and couldn’t help looking back at the building. Nick was just going in the door. He turned and looked back at me, raising a hand when he caught sight of me. I lifted my own hand in return.

Avery had already fastened her seat belt. Now she shifted in her seat. “What did the detective ask you?” she said.

“She just wanted to know what happened.”

“Yeah, that’s what she asked me, too,” she said. She slumped back against the seat as I pulled out of the parking spot, navigating carefully around the glut of police and other investigative vehicles.

“So do you think that developer guy killed her?” Avery asked.

I almost drove though the stop sign at the corner.

“Nobody said Lily was killed,” I said firmly. Even as the words came out, I was aware that, technically, I’d said it to Nick.

“Oh, c’mon, Sarah,” she said, sliding down so she was sitting on her tailbone with her knees pressed up against the dashboard. “I know what’s going on around town, and I know Lily was the only person keeping that development thing from happening. And now, big surprise, she’s dead. What are the odds of that happening?”

I reached over and flicked her knee with my thumb and index finger. “Sit up,” I ordered. “If I have to stop fast, you’ll find out what the odds are of you choking on your shoulder belt.”

She made a face, but she straightened up.

There were no cars behind us, so I turned to look at her before I crossed the intersection. “I don’t know what happened to Lily. Neither do you. Let the police do their job. It doesn’t do anyone any good to speculate.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. “But I’m right. I told you there was something creepy about that old guy last fall and then he ended up dead.”

The “old guy” Avery was referring to was Arthur Fenety. He’d come into Second Chance a few days before his death. Avery had pronounced him “skeevy” at the time, and in truth I’d agreed with her, although I hadn’t said so.

I was uncomfortably reminded that his death was the reason Rose and Alfred Peterson, along with Charlotte and Liz, had gone into business as Charlotte’s Angels. They’d had only two cases since Fenety’s murder: the missing set of false teeth I’d told Nick about and a would-be suitor who wasn’t the woman she’d pretended to be—or, it turned out—even a woman at all. I knew Rose was going to be all over Lily’s death if she thought there was anything suspicious about it. I also knew there was no point in telling Avery to keep her suspicions to herself. Like most teenagers, she had the ability to suddenly lose her hearing with respect to certain subjects.

We drove over to McNamara’s. I parked in front and turned to Avery.

“I know. Keep a cork in it.” She must have seen the surprise on my face. “That’s what Nonna would say,” she said. “And I will. Lily’s mom and her friends shouldn’t find out about what happened to her from someone telling someone telling someone else.”

“Thank you,” I said. Sometimes Avery could be surprisingly thoughtful.

I bought her a hot chocolate and a scrambled-egg-and-ham sandwich from Glenn McNamara. Then I asked him if he had enough rolls in his freezer to sell me five dozen, explaining only that there had been a problem at Lily’s without saying why. When he found out they were for the hot-lunch program, he wouldn’t take my money.

“A few rolls aren’t going to break me, Sarah,” he said with a smile.

“I owe you,” I said, smiling back at him.

The smile got bigger, and he raised his eyebrows at me. “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me,” he said in a pretty good Marlon Brando impersonation.

I laughed. “Anytime, Glenn, as long as it doesn’t involve doing anything with a horse’s head.”

It was almost time to open the store. I decided to detour there first and then take Avery and the bags of frozen rolls to the school after that. I’d already called to let the vice principal know that we were running a bit late, again without saying why.

“As soon as Mac gets here, I’ll run you over to the school,” I said to Avery as we pulled into the lot at the shop. “You can call me when you’re done.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. She’d finished the sandwich in about four bites, but she was still nursing the giant hot chocolate.

Mac and Rose came in together about ten to nine.

“Avery, dear, what are you doing here?” Rose asked when she caught sight of the teenager. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the elementary school?”

“Yeah, we got held up,” Avery said.

“What happened?” Rose asked as she took off her coat.

I shot Avery a warning look, which she either didn’t catch or—more likely—decided to ignore. “Well . . .” She let out a breath. “Lily’s kind of dead.”

“Dead?” Rose repeated, her eyes widening.

Mac caught my eye, and I gave a slight nod.

Rose put a hand to her chest. “Oh, my word,” she said. Then she looked at me. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Michelle and Nick are there.”

“But Lily’s so young.”

I could see the thoughts turning in her head, or as Jess had once described it, the hamsters running on their wheels.

I walked over to Rose and took her coat from her, laying it across the counter by the cash register. “This is not a case, Rose,” I warned. “This is a job for the police.”

She nodded at once. “Oh, of course, dear,” she said.

I didn’t believe her for a moment.