Gone With The Whisker

Chapter 17

Ash arrived with Hal Inwood, and after one look at my face, he put his arm around my shoulders and ushered me into the front passenger seat of their unmarked police vehicle.

“You’re going to sit here until I come back for you,” he said in a gentle but firm voice. “If you get up before then, I’ll handcuff you and put you in the back seat.”

I laughed. Or at least, I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a sob. Which, since I wasn’t given to crying in front of police officers in general and Detective Inwood in particular, showed me Ash was right and that I should sit down. “Then I guess I’ll stay.”

He settled me down, gave my shoulder a squeeze, and hurried off. I closed my eyes and put my head back. Ash had left the door open, and a soft breeze was curling around my ankles. A small patch of sunshine inched its way across my lap; birds twittered.

I felt myself relaxing and was, quite possibly, asleep when a knock on the car roof made me jump.

“Awake,” I said. “I’m awake.”

“That’s obvious,” Hal Inwood said dryly. “We’ve cleared the building. No one’s here.”

I climbed out of the car. No way was I going to enter into a conversation with Hal at an exaggerated vertical disadvantage. Given my tidy and efficient height, I’d long ago grown used to being almost a foot shorter than most men, but unnecessary height discrepancies weren’t to be borne.

“What did you find out?” I asked, glancing at the bits of metal that had almost killed me.

Hal pulled his notebook out of his shirt pocket and flipped through pages. “The general contractor for the renovation project said no one was scheduled to work today, as they’re waiting for the furnace installer to get back from vacation. I contacted all the subcontractors, and none of them had any worker stop at the site for any reason today.”

A funny feeling formed in my stomach. “And the air conditioner?”

Hal shut the notebook and looked up. “It was an old one, one of the window units used when this was still functioning as a hotel. There are a pile of them stacked up in a corner, waiting for someone to take them away.”

“So someone . . .” I didn’t want to finish the sentence.

“Yes.” Hal nodded. “Someone picked up that air conditioner and intentionally pushed it out the window. The contractor said he’d unlocked the back door this morning as he’d hoped for an early delivery of plumbing fixtures, which did not happen.” He tapped the notebook with his pen. “Do you often walk past this building?”

Predictable Minnie. “This summer, when I’m at the library, I’ve walked this way almost every day, right after lunch. I like to see the construction.”

He reopened the notebook and made new notes. “And the bookmobile schedule is posted on the library’s website, correct?”

“Well, sure.” Even to my own ears, I sounded defensive. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Hal tucked his notebook into his shirt pocket. “Ms. Hamilton, it seems clear that this was a direct attempt on your life. I urge you to take steps to ensure your safety.”

I looked at the heap of metal. Looked at him. “What do you suggest, exactly? Hide out for the rest of my life?”

“You should tell everyone who cares about you. The more people who know, the safer you’ll be.”

But I didn’t see it that way. “The more people I tell, the faster word will spread and whoever did this will hear about it and try even harder to . . . to do whatever.”

“At least tell Mr. Niswander,” he said.

I wavered on that one. “I’ll think about it.”

And I did. Over and over. Most of me shrank from the idea, but by the end of the day I’d decided Hal was right, that I should tell Rafe. If our positions had been reversed, I’d certainly want to know. And I’d be furious if he didn’t tell me.

“You win, Detective,” I said out loud to an invisible Hal Inwood as I left the library that evening. “I’ll tell Rafe tonight.”

Since I was mostly thinking about how to frame the story, my feet went in the same direction they always did and I ended up walking past the old hotel. By now someone had been by to clear away the scattered bits of former air conditioner. The only thing indicating I’d almost died was a hand-size chip out of the sidewalk.

Dragging my toe over the chip, I eyed the windows—all now closed—and wondered about the whos and whys.

Was I really a target?

Who would do such a thing?

If so, why?

I kicked away a tiny piece of former sidewalk and then saw I’d managed to get my shoe covered with concrete dust. “Bad as being at the house,” I muttered. “Construction can be murder.” The common phrase caught at me, and I wished I hadn’t said it out loud. Or even thought it. But suddenly, the jumble of ideas circling around in my brain coalesced into something new.

My feet started moving, then moved faster and faster. Because what I suddenly needed, what I wanted more than anything else in the world, was to talk to Rafe.

* * *

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said.

“In what way?” Rafe unscrewed the cap from a water bottle and offered it to me. “Can’t believe we’re being so proactive?” he asked. “Can’t believe we abandoned our plans to paint the upstairs bathroom? Or you can’t believe we’re doing something so incredibly cool?”

I squinted at him. “How is sitting in your truck doing nothing a cool thing?”

“Clearly, you have no idea what’s cool and what isn’t.”

This was true, and had always been. My career choice alone made that obvious, but there was also significant backup evidence: my preferred entertainment (reading), preferred beverage (lemonade made by my aunt), and preferred method of travel (tie between a bookmobile and walking).

“Let me guess,” I said. “You are the arbiter of coolness in Chilson.”

“No, but I’m good friends with who is. And so are you.”

Ah. Kristen. He was right, she was very cool. “Should I text her and ask her to rate our current activity?”

“No, no,” Rafe said, yawning. “I’m confident she’d agree with me.”

I made a mental note to ask next time I saw her. But I hadn’t seen much of her this summer due to her restaurant’s surging success, and I wasn’t sure I’d remember to ask in September, when things would slow down. Then again, Rafe was probably counting on that, so I pulled out my phone and added a reminder to my calendar.

“Are you really texting Kristen?” Rafe asked, leaning over.

“Nope.” I saved the reminder and tucked the phone away. “Do you really think we’re going to learn anything doing this?”

Two hours earlier, after I’d gone back to the houseboat, given Eddie a snuggle and a treat, and read on the whiteboard that Kate was working until close at Benton’s and would be going out afterward to eat at Fat Boys with the store’s staff, I’d headed up to the house and told Rafe the air conditioner story. And how my dusty toe had led me to, if not direct dot connection, the coalescing of old facts into new arrangements. Pink bumper stickers. Courtney Drew. Home health aide. Access to medications. Nicole’s back pain.

He’d hugged me tight, then called Ash. “Hey, buddy. I hear Minnie almost got squished by an AC unit.”

I started to sputter indignantly, saying that if he didn’t believe me he could just say so instead of calling the cops, but he rolled his eyes and slung his free arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. “Shh,” he whispered, and said into the phone, “What’s the deal?”

Due to having one ear against Rafe’s chest and the other ear covered by his arm, I couldn’t hear Ash, and heard Rafe’s voice mostly as a deep rumbling vibration. What I could hear, though, was along the lines of “Any idea who did it?” and “Any chance of catching whoever it was?” and “Don’t worry. I’ll keep her safe.”

I burrowed deeper into his warmth. Not that I needed to be any warmer, really, but being so close to him felt good. Discounting the winter months I spent with Aunt Frances, I’d lived more or less on my own since college. I’d grown accustomed to it. Had even enjoyed the solitude and the time spent learning to be myself. But now it seemed I was entering another phase in my life, one including that I would, every so often, be taken care of by a man named Rafe Niswander.

And it was turning out that I didn’t mind the feeling. As long as he didn’t get too carried away.

“Safe,” I’d murmured into Rafe’s shoulder. “You really think you can do that?”

“Yes.” He’d kissed the top of my head and I’d closed my eyes against a rush of emotions that made my throat swell.

“It’d be easier, though,” he’d added, “if you’d be okay with being encased from head to toe with bubble wrap.”

I hadn’t been, of course, and now the two of us were whiling away the evening sitting in his truck and watching the front door of an apartment building from half a block away. More specifically, the apartment building where Courtney Drew lived.

We’d been parked on the street outside Chilson’s take-out Chinese restaurant for more than an hour, watching cars drive past, watching cars pull into the building’s parking lot, watching people walk up to the building, watching people walk out of the building. It was remarkably boring.

“Let’s do a list,” I said.

Rafe squinted at me. “A bucket list, you mean? Number one is all the pro football fields in the country. We’d start with the current ones, but to do it right, we’d need to visit the sites of the previous fields, too. And while we’re at it, we should visit all the major league baseball fields and hockey arenas. Maybe that’s where we’d start, with the original six national hockey league teams. Yeah, I like that a lot.”

He would go on for hours if I didn’t stop him, so when he took a breath, I cut in. “A list of murder suspects.”

“Excellent idea,” he said, stretching and yawning. “The husband. The wife.”

I pulled out my phone and started typing into the Notes app. “Dominic Price. Fawn Stuhler.”

In short order, we had what we figured was a full list. In addition to Dominic and Fawn, we had Barry Vannett, Lowell Kokotovich, Violet Mullaly, Courtney Drew, Mason Hiller, and John and Nandi Jaquay.

“That’s eight,” I said. “Nine if you count the Jaquays separately.”

Rafe leaned over and looked at my phone. “Let’s rank them.”

“Do what?”

“A one-to-ten scale. One for not very likely to be the killer, ten for very likely.”

“What if we don’t agree?”

“We’ll add the points and do an average.”

It sounded reasonable, and we started with the spouses. We both gave them sixes and I tapped the numbers into my phone. “Next is Barry Vannett. His motive is murky, but I think he should be a six, too. He disappeared right before the fireworks on a beer run when they already had plenty of beer. So he had time to kill Rex.” I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned this to Rafe earlier, but better late than never.

“Hang on,” Rafe said, frowning. “You want to give the guy a six because he wanted more beer?”

“There was plenty in the cooler.”

My beloved shook his head and pulled out his phone.

“Who are you texting?” I asked.

“Jon, my buddy who runs the party store down by the Vannett cottage. He was working the night of the Fourth, and he’s one of those guys who knows the names of all his regular customers.” He pushed the Send button. “Just asked him if Barry was there that night, and if he knew the time.”

“You really expect him to remember?”

Rafe shrugged. “Jon has a great memory. Birthdays are his favorite.”

Before I could point out that recalling when a particular customer came into your party store on the busiest night of the summer was nothing like remembering a birthday, Rafe’s phone dinged with an incoming text.

He read it out loud. Vannett here that night to get six of Short’s Bellaire Brown for BIL. Had to get it from the back, so I remember.

I puzzled out the acronym as brother-in-law. “Okay, then I guess Barry’s down to pretty much a zero. Lowell’s next.”

“Not enough information,” Rafe said.

It was the same with Violet, Courtney, Mason, and the Jaquays. We simply didn’t know enough. I slumped down. “The only person we’ve eliminated is Barry Vannett.”

Rafe studied my phone. “Any progress is still progress. And maybe we’ll learn more tonight.” He nodded at the apartment, which was absent of human activity.

I sighed. “Are you sure this is where Courtney lives?”

“According to her old neighbor’s sister, who is dating my cousin Jim, yeah. Though who knows if the information is good. I usually figure Jim’s girlfriends have to be a little off to date him in the first place.”

“Kristen and I said that for years about your girlfriends.” I wriggled around to get more comfortable. No exterior or interior of any pickup truck had been designed for a person of my size, not ever.

“And you were right.” He yawned again.

“So what does that say about me?”

“That you have excellent—” He stopped. “Is that her?”

Through the windshield, I watched as a young woman climbed out of a pickup that had just pulled into the apartment’s parking lot. “Can’t tell,” I said, squinting and leaning forward, because surely that extra fourteen inches would make the difference. “If she’d turn . . . ah.” I sat back. “It’s Courtney.” Even from this distance I could see the tight ponytail and square forehead. Plus she was dressed in scrubs, which had been a clue right off the bat, but I hadn’t wanted to rely on that alone.

“Is that the other vehicle you saw?” Rafe gestured at the silver-colored truck.

“Could be,” I said. “But you know me and vehicles. All I remember is . . . hang on, isn’t that what’s-his-name? From the hardware store?”

“Luke,” Rafe said. “Luke Cagan. It certainly is.”

We watched as Luke shut the driver’s door of the truck and came around to the front, where Courtney was waiting. Hand in hand, they walked to the apartment’s front door and went inside.

Rafe looked at me and I looked at him.

“Huh,” he said.

I nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

“What else are you thinking? Because I know the wheels up here are churning.” He tapped my forehead.

“I’m thinking that the vehicle I’d seen on the second of July could indeed have been Luke’s. But why would Courtney and Luke have been out there, pretty much in the middle of absolute nowhere?”

We turned to study Luke’s truck.

“No idea,” Rafe said. “How about you?”

I sighed. “None.”

“That means our next step is obvious.”

It certainly was.

* * *

At the library the next morning, I wandered into the break room right about the time everyone else was wandering into the building.

“How long have you been here?” Kelsey asked, deftly scooting in front of me and putting her hand on the coffeepot before my preoccupied brain could order myself to get ahead of her. “Because you have that look,” she said over her shoulder. “The one that means you got here hours ago, long before most people hit their alarms for the first time.”

She was right, but hearing her say it out loud like that made me sound like a ladder-climbing overachiever, which didn’t feel like a good match with my chosen lifestyle here in the laid-back Up North.

“I had stuff to do,” I murmured, watching her fill the coffeepot’s bin to the overflowing point. Kelsey had an amazing ability to maximize the bin’s contents without making a huge freaking wet coffee-grounds mess all over the counter.

Josh and Holly came in together, bickering about the best way to grill steaks. At this point the argument had a good-natured flavor, but that could vanish in a flash, so I skedaddled back up to my office to continue what I’d been doing for the last three hours: using the library’s way-faster-than-the-marina’s Internet access to learn what I could about the properties on that dead-end road in the middle of nowhere.

The obvious step that Rafe had referred to last night was to drive out to the road—which I’d now learned was technically named 158th Street, in spite of the fact that everybody called it the road to Brown’s—and poke around to see what we could learn.

However, Rafe had already committed to helping a friend for a couple of days. This help was to reshingle the friend’s hunting cabin in the Upper Peninsula. The timing was good, because Rafe had just finished the last big drywalling project, and the drywall mud would take time to completely cure.

All of this meant Rafe would be out of town and unavailable for investigative efforts, and he’d made me promise not to go out there on my own. At the time of the promise, I had not had any problem making it, but I’d woken in the middle of the night and heard rustlings from the front of the houseboat.

“Kate?” I’d called. The rustlings continued. I’d eased out from underneath Eddie and padded forward. Kate was tossing and turning in her sleep, her hands over her face, murmuring, “No, no, no.”

I stretched out a hand, but pulled back, not wanting to scare her. “I wish I could help you,” I whispered. “I know this summer isn’t what you thought it would be. You have no idea how sorry I am about that. But I love you. So very, very much.”

Kate’s tossing and turning went on. I continued to murmur words of love and comfort, and at some point she fell into a deeper, more peaceful sleep.

Though I went back to bed, sleep didn’t return, and as the sky brightened, I gave up and headed into the library after leaving what I hoped was a cheerful message for Kate on the whiteboard.

Now my research was done and I wasn’t sure I’d learned anything useful. Yes, thanks to the search capabilities of the county’s website, I had a list of the current property owners and the dates the properties had last been sold. And thanks to Google Earth’s imagery, I could see . . . not much. The satellite had flown over in summer and the only things visible were leaves, leaves, and more leaves. Tree cover that dense could conceal anything from small barns to decent-sized houses, especially if they’d been there a long time.

I sighed and tried to refocus my attention on my immediate surroundings and on the work I should be doing, but my thoughts stubbornly remained elsewhere. Kate needed me to find the killer and I wouldn’t fail her. Would. Not.

So at lunchtime I opened a blank spreadsheet and typed in the ranking numbers Rafe and I had assigned, hoping that a different view of the data would give me some ideas. But at the end of the exercise, I sighed. “This is so not useful.” I slouched in my chair and looked at the names and numbers. “Names,” I said. “Names and numbers and names and numbers and—”

A flash of inspiration struck. If I couldn’t figure out who killed Rex and Nicole, maybe I could figure out who hadn’t, which was almost as good. Little of my theoretical lunch hour had expired, so I grabbed my purse and headed up the hill.

The noon hour at Lakeview Medical Care Facility was a busy place. Visitors were ambling in and out, residents were being escorted to and from lunch, and employees were walking to and from the parking lot on their own lunch hour.

I hurried inside and stopped at the front desk. “Is Heather working today? I have a question for her, if that’s okay.” After a brief consultation with his computer, the receptionist said, “She’s here, but she might be on lunch.”

After thanking him, I pivoted left. Heather’s summer lunchtime spot of choice was outside in a small courtyard, under the picnic table umbrella if it was hot, out in an Adirondack chair if it wasn’t.

I pushed open the door and immediately spotted her sitting in the sun, her face tipped up to its warmth. “Hey, there. Are you awake?”

“Mmm.” She watched with slitted eyes as I dropped into a chair next to her. “Not really. What’s up?”

“How do you feel about tattling on a coworker?” Then, seeing her face darken, I quickly went on. “Okay, that sounded bad. What I should have said was . . .” What, exactly? Once again, I’d jumped in without being prepared. “I’m trying to figure out the movements of some people on the Fourth of July. To help the police figure out who murdered Rex Stuhler.”

Heather’s eyes opened wide. “You think someone here is a killer?”

“Of course not. But it can happen that one person’s movements confirm someone else’s, and that person’s confirms another’s, and so on, if you see what I mean.” I didn’t know exactly what I meant, but either Heather was humoring me or I’d sounded at least vaguely convincing, because she was nodding.

“Sure, I get it. Who are you wondering about?”

“Lowell Kokotovich. Do you know if he went to the fireworks on the Fourth?” I was trying not to get my hopes up; there were a lot of employees at Lakeview, and the odds of her happening to know were—

“His wife did,” Heather said. “I only remember because of that murder. Their youngest is scared of fireworks, so they hadn’t planned on going, but some friends of hers from downstate dropped in unexpectedly, and she went with them.”

“Exactly what I needed to know.” That put Lowell in the clear for Rex’s death, and making a case for Lowell’s wife being a killer seemed beyond far-fetched. “Thanks, and sorry for interrupting your lunch.”

“Glad to help,” Heather said as she clambered out of the chair. “And now I have to go train a new CNA. Hope I can break her of habits she learned when she was a home health aide.”

That was a problem I’d never thought about. “I figure you’re talking about bad habits?”

Heather shrugged. “Every organization is different, and what’s okay in one place is against the rules in another.”

That didn’t make sense to me. “Aren’t the rules about health care the same no matter where you are?”

Heather had been about to open the door, but she paused. “Let’s just say in some places the procedures are more relaxed.”

“Like what?” I asked, frowning.

“Medications are a big one. I hear some places, like assisted living facilities, let CNAs distribute medications, but we certainly don’t.”

“And home health aides? Can they?”

She sighed. “I’m sure it happens.”

“But they shouldn’t?”

“Not in a million years. They shouldn’t be touching any medications, they’re not trained for it. Um, Minnie, are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said automatically. “Just . . . thinking. Thanks for your help.”

The entire time I walked back to the library, all I could think about was Courtney doling out Rupert’s medications. It worried me so much that when I got back to my office, I dug out Rupert’s application for outreach services and called the phone number he’d put on the form.

“Hello,” Ann Marie said.

“Hi, this is Minnie Hamilton, and—”

“Sorry, but we can’t come to the phone right now . . .”

I waited through the message, then left one of my own. To call me as soon as they could.

* * *

At six o’clock sharp I left the library, making the day an occasion of sorts—the first day in recent history I’d actually left work at the time I was scheduled to be done. I’d also traded hours with Donna so I could take most of the next day off, sacrificing my Sunday afternoon for the sake of Friday investigative efforts.

This was not as much a sacrifice as it sounded, because the upcoming weekend forecast of cloudy with a serious chance of rain was not nearly as attractive as the forecast for the next two days, which was abundant sunshine with the ideal summer temperature of seventy-six degrees.

I took the long way back to the marina, skirting downtown and its accompanying crowds. Another couple of weeks and the people would start to thin out, but now it was still full-bore tourist season.

“Huh,” I said out loud. In the six years I’d lived in Chilson and the many summers I’d spent here as a youngster, I’d enjoyed the crowds. Welcomed them, even. The tourists and summer people brought an energy with them. Added excitement. Created an atmosphere that was completely absent in winter. But this summer I’d been annoyed by the masses of humanity.

A broad smile spread across my face. It had taken a while, but I was becoming a local! Not to other locals, of course, because I hadn’t been born in Chilson, but to the unknowing outsider, I would be tagged as Being from Here.

“What do you think?” I asked Eddie, shutting the houseboat’s door quickly to keep him from slipping outside. Of course, if he’d been determined to get out, nothing I could do would prevent that, but I felt a need to make the effort.

My furry friend, who was curled in the middle of Kate’s sleeping bag, lifted his head half an inch. “Mrr?”

I smiled and rubbed the side of his face with my index finger. “What’s your opinion on tourism? A boost for many local businesses and therefore we should do our best to increase the numbers? Or are tourists changing the very fabric of our community and we should do our best to diversify the economy?”

Eddie sighed and sank deeper into his nest.

“Yeah,” I said, leaning down to kiss the top of his fuzzy head. “The answer to both is yes, isn’t it?”

“Mrr,” he said, yawning.

I patted his hip and stood. “Hope you’re okay that I leave you alone again. But . . .” My voice trailed off, because I’d turned while talking and was now reading Kate’s whiteboard message.

Working late at Benton’s. Closing and doing end-of-month inventory, so don’t wait up.

This was followed by a drawing of a curly-haired stick figure lying in a bed. I peered at the sketch, trying to make out what was on top of my stomach, then smiled. It was a stick figure Eddie.

* * *

I was still smiling when I parked in the side lot of Mason Hiller’s convenience store. It lasted as I walked to the front, and remained stuck on while I opened the door and walked inside. Then it dropped off.

“Oh,” I said. “Um, hello.”

The kid I’d met the first time I’d stopped looked up. “Hey.” As I approached the counter, he put down what he’d had in his hands, which wasn’t his cell phone, but a graphic novel.

This, of course, distracted me completely. I nodded at his choice of reading material. “Is that Mooncop?”

He eyed me, suspicion clear in his expression. “Yeah. You know it?”

“Sure.” The bookmobile carried a healthy stock of graphic novels, and I enjoyed reading them. “I won’t tell you the ending, but it’s great. Have you read the Sandman series?”

The kid’s face lit up. “Neil Gaiman is, like, the best ever!”

I did not disagree, and we launched into a rousing discussion of his work. “This is so cool,” he eventually said. “My parents tell me to read a real book. I can’t wait to tell them the bookmobile lady reads graphic novels, too.”

“If they don’t believe me, have them give me a call,” I said, laughing. “But I have to confess that I stopped by to talk to your cousin.”

“Mason?” The kid made a face. “Yeah, he almost fired me that day after you were here the first time. Sorry. I was nervous about being here on my own and it came out all wrong.”

I nodded. Understandable. Not commendable, but understandable. “Is there anything else you remember?”

“About Mr. Stuhler and Ms. Price?” He shook his head. “Nah, I didn’t know them. Mason, though. He’s worked here for a long time, and I think he said he knew them both.”

I tried to remember exactly what Mason had told me. Hang on, he’d said he didn’t know either one of them. And that’s when he’d turned all cranky on me. “You sure?”

The kid shrugged. “Pretty sure. But it’s hard to hang with Mason these days. All he talks about is money, money, and again, money. And how he doesn’t have it.”

Though we chatted a little longer, he didn’t have any more information. As I drove toward Chilson, I thought about what I had learned.

Mason was focused on money, which seemed like a red flag, at least of a sort. But why would that make Mason nervous to talk to me about Rex and Nicole?

Did any of it connect to murder?

And if so, how?