No Escape Claws

Chapter 12

On the drive back to the shop we decided the next step was to ask Mr. P. to get in touch with Molly Pace and see what she could tell us about her former husband.

“Do either of you know anyone who lives on the Pearsons’ street other than the judge?” I asked. “It would help if we could find out if anyone remembers seeing Gavin Pace around the time of the fire.

Liz shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I can’t think of anyone,” Rose said.

“I thought you two knew just about everyone in town,” I said.

“Not everyone, dear. I can’t keep up with all the grandchildren.” She leaned forward. “Can you, Liz?”

Liz waved a hand in the air. “Good heavens, no. And I don’t always get to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, although in my defense Monday is a terrible night to have them.”

I wasn’t sure how the Chamber meetings were connected, but I was afraid that if I asked Liz might tell me.

“You know, I could ask Elspeth,” Liz said. “She might know someone.”

“And doesn’t Charlotte know somebody at Shady Pines who used to live in that area?” Rose asked.

I stopped at the corner before turning onto our street, clearing my throat loudly at Rose’s referring to Legacy Place, the senior citizen’s apartment complex where she had once lived, as Shady Pines.

“Oh sweet girl, I think you’re coming down with something,” she immediately said. “Is your throat scratchy?”

So this was how we were going to play it.

“My throat is fine,” I said.

“You can’t be too careful this time of year,” she said. “Once the children go back to school all sorts of terrible bugs start making the rounds.” I could hear her fishing in her bag. Then she tapped me on the shoulder.

“Here, dear. Try this,” she said. Something dropped into my lap.

I glanced down. It was a Fisherman’s Friend lozenge.

“Pop that in your mouth. It’ll cure whatever you might have picked up.” Fisherman’s Friend were Rose’s cure-all for everything—extra-strong menthol lozenges that would make a cough lie down and surrender and clear every sinus cavity in your head.

It was impossible to miss the challenge in her eyes.

“Well, put it in your mouth,” she said. “It won’t do you any good sitting on your lap.”

“Let me help you,” Liz said.

From the corner of my eye I watched her unwrap the cough drop. The gleam in her eyes told me she was enjoying this way too much.

“Hold out your hand,” she instructed. I took my hand off the wheel long enough for her to drop the lozenge into my palm. I popped it into my mouth.

“Thank you,” I said. My eyes immediately began to water. Point, set and match to Rose, with an assist to Liz.

I parked the car in the lot and gave Liz back her keys.

“I’m going to stop by Channing’s office,” she said. “It occurred to me that he might have a contact at that consulting firm where Gavin Pace used to work. I’d like to know more about that young man.”

“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with Mr. Caulfield lately,” I teased. “I’m not going to have to start calling him Uncle Channing, am I?”

She narrowed her blue eyes at me and waggled one finger. “Remember what I told you. An Uber and a robot vacuum cleaner, Sarah,” she said. “And you’d be replaced. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

Liz came around the car and slid behind the wheel. Rose and I walked toward the back door. She put an arm around my waist. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said. “I would never replace you with a robot vacuum.”

“You don’t like robot vacuum cleaners,” I pointed out.

She nodded. “That’s true, but it’s not the only reason. I promise.”

I laid my head against the top of hers for a moment.

She stopped when we reached the back door. “Sarah, do you think it would be a mistake to show Mallory a photo of Gavin Pace and ask if she saw him around the time of the fire?”

I folded one arm up over my head, digging my fingers into my scalp. “I don’t know. She’s going to ask us who he is and why we want to know. Are you ready for those questions?”

Rose looked thoughtful. “I think so. I know we agreed not to tell Mallory that we believe her mother was murdered and I still agree with that, but we can tell her we’re talking to people, including people Gina worked with, trying to find out if she had any enemies. That’s not a lie.”

“That should work,” I said. Rose’s idea made me a little uneasy in truth, but Mallory might have seen someone in the neighborhood and we couldn’t afford not to find out.

I knew this was as good a time as any to tackle Rose about those notes Nick had showed her. She was about to go in the back door. I put a hand on her arm. “I need to ask you something.”

“Of course. What is it?”

I shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “I know you said it would be better if I didn’t know what you and Nick were talking about the other day, but I don’t think it is.”

She made an annoyed sound. “Honestly, Nicolas could not keep a secret even if you put duct tape over his mouth. Not that I would.” She looked up at me and I thought once again how she reminded me of a tiny, inquisitive bird. “He told you about that investigator’s notes, didn’t he?” She gave her head a little shake.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, counted to three and opened them again. “He did,” I admitted. “But to be fair, Rose, I pressured him.”

She all but rolled her eyes at me. “Sweetie, you smiling and batting your eyelashes can hardly be called pressure.”

I felt my cheeks get red. She knew me too well. “Okay, how exactly I pressured Nick is not what matters here. What matters is that something in those notes twigged for you. Please tell me what it was.”

“It might be nothing,” she hedged.

“So no harm done in telling me then.”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” she asked.

I raised an eyebrow. “I learned at the feet of the master.”

She smiled. “All right.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Did you know that Greg Pearson was in the car that day with his mother?”

“No,” I said. I shook my head. “That’s awful.”

“It had to have been,” she said. “And not just the accident itself, which was bad enough. There was an . . . incident afterward. The ambulance had just arrived. Greg had been arguing with his mother. One of the police officers who had responded had separated them. He took Gina over to the police car. Greg was sitting on the back bumper of Gina’s car. He got sick. The officer went to help him and when she turned back around a woman was . . . attacking Gina. She yelled and . . . and hit her.”

I kicked a rock and sent it skittering across the pavement. “It was Hannah’s mother, Jia, wasn’t it?” I remembered the way Jia’s hand had clenched into a fist, almost involuntarily it had seemed, when she talked about Gina.

Then I noticed Rose was slowly shaking her head. “No, dear,” she said. “It wasn’t her. It was Mallory.”

“Ah crap!” I muttered. I looked at Rose. “That’s ugly.”

“I can’t believe that that sweet child could have done anything to hurt her stepmother,” Rose said.

“Just because Mallory lost it with her stepmother after the accident doesn’t mean she had anything to do with the fire.”

“I know,” Rose said. She still looked . . . troubled.

“What am I missing?” I asked.

“What if the reason Mike Pearson agreed to the plea deal is because he thinks Mallory was the one who started the fire?”

For a long moment I just looked at her. “I don’t know what to say,” I finally said.

Rose nodded. “I know. But it explains why he took the deal and why he instructed his lawyer to tell us to back off. It explains why Gina’s friend Katy Mueller came here to try to get us to drop the case.”

“It explains a lot of things.”

I tried to imagine Mallory being responsible for her stepmother’s death. And I couldn’t reconcile the young woman who had pleaded with Charlotte to help her father also being the person who had killed the only mother she could remember. Yell at Gina because she drove drunk with one of the kids in the car? Yes. Hit her because Gina had run someone down? Yes. I was no different than Rose, who had insisted she just knew Mike Pearson wasn’t guilty. I just didn’t believe Mallory Pearson was guilty, either.

“But nothing is different,” I said, hoping the conviction I felt came through in my voice. “I have no idea whether Mike Pearson thought Mallory had played any part in what had happened and it’s not like he would tell us anyway. So the only thing we can do is figure out who did kill Gina.”

Rose stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. “I love you, sweetie,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

As usual Rose was a dynamo. She put Mr. P. to work getting in touch with Molly Pace. She got Charlotte to make a list of anyone they knew who might have a connection to the street where the Pearsons had lived. And she even had Avery make a pot of tea.

The teen came down the stairs looking quite pleased with herself. She was carrying a small tray holding three cups of tea and a coffee mug. She stopped in front of me. “That’s for you, Sarah,” she said with a shy smile.

“You made me coffee?” I said. “Thank you.”

“It might suck,” she said. She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I mean, it might not be very good.”

I reached for the stoneware mug and took a sip. “Hey, this is good,” I said.

She narrowed her gaze at me. “Good for real or good so you won’t damage my fragile self-esteem?”

“Good for real,” I said, taking another sip. “How did you learn to make coffee? You’re much more of a smoothie person.”

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “But I’ve seen Mr. P. make the coffee about a dozen times. It’s not rocket science, although it is math.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. I watched her head for the workroom with the tea and it occurred to me that being around Avery could only be good for Greg Pearson. I hoped their friendship would keep going.

The rest of the day was busy. Liam’s electrician came and finished the wiring work in the sunporch. Liam came by to put another coat of mud on the drywall late in the afternoon.

“If everything goes well, the office should be ready by the end of the week,” he said, shaking drywall dust out of his hair and all over the workroom floor.

“So what do I owe you, anyway?” I asked.

He named an amount that was way too low.

“C’mon, that can’t be right,” I said. “What about all the time you and Nick put in on this?”

“We’re going to put that on your tab,” he said, a teasing gleam in his eyes.

“In other words I’m going to owe the two of you. You’re going to get as much mileage as you can out of me owing each of you a favor.”

“That’s the plan,” he said with a grin.

I grabbed the collar of his flannel shirt, catching him by surprise. I pulled him sideways and gave him a noogie on the top of his head, just as Rose came by on her way to the garage—or somewhere.

“Sarah, dear, don’t do that,” she said. “You’re making a mess all over the floor.”

“Why do I put up with you?” I hissed at Liam, who wasn’t even trying to hide his grin. I didn’t need to whisper. Rose was already gone.

“Because I’m your brother and you love me,” he said, pulling away from me and putting one hand dramatically over his heart.

I nodded. “Yeah, I do, even though sometimes you drive me crazy.” I smiled. “And I really like how you’re not making a big deal over that bald spot.”

He put a hand on top of his head, frowning. “What bald spot? I don’t have a bald spot. You’re just screwing with me, right?” He looked around the workroom for a mirror.

“I’m going to go get the vacuum cleaner,” I said, gesturing in the direction of the shop. I started for the door then looked over my shoulder. Liam was trying to check out the top of his head in the shiny surface of a huge lobster pot.

“Gotcha!” I whispered.

Mr. P. was just coming down the stairs and Avery was at the cash desk, shining part of our collection of mismatched spoons with a soft cloth, bouncing up slightly on her toes as she worked. She glanced over at Alfred, then her eyes flicked to me. She seemed to be a ball of barely contained energy, which I knew meant something was up.

I walked over to join her.

“Hey, Sarah, do you want me to vacuum or finish these first?” she asked.

“Finish what you’re doing,” I said. “I’ll get the vacuum out.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

It seemed to me that I could almost feel the energy radiating off of her. “Avery, is there anything you want to share with me?” I asked.

Her gaze immediately darted to Mr. P., who had just joined us. I leaned to one side, folded my arms over my chest and raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.

A hint of a smile flickered across the old man’s face. “I hope it wasn’t presumptuous of us, Sarah. Avery and I have been doing a little digging into the history of your casket.”

He didn’t need to tell me that they’d discovered something. I could tell that from Avery’s fidgeting. “So what did you find out?” I said.

“Avery did most of the digging,” Mr. P. said, smiling at the teen. He gestured at me. “Tell Sarah what you learned.”

Avery set down the spoon and the cloth she’d been using and propped her elbows on the counter. “Okay, first of all we tried to find the guy who rented that storage unit and then skipped on the bill, but he’s gone.” She made a fluttering gesture with one hand. “He blew off some other people too, and—”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. P. narrow his gaze at her.

Avery stopped and shook her head. “And you probably don’t care about that stuff.” She brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “So anyway, we talked to a bunch of people and finally we talked to the guy’s mother and it turns out that he was just storing the coffin for another guy he knows.”

“Do you know who built it?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah, the guy he was keeping it for.” She frowned at me as though that should have been obvious.

“Do you know why it was built?”

Mr. P. cleared his throat. I looked at him. “I’m afraid this is going to sound like the punch line to a bad joke, but it turns out that coffin was built for the carpenter’s mother-in-law.”

I shook my head. I’d been hoping for a more heartwarming story. “He disliked her that much?”

I knew there were people who loathed their in-laws but it hadn’t been my experience. My grandmother had technically stopped being my mom’s mother-in-law when my father died and several years later Mom married my stepfather, Peter. But Gram had embraced the new family members. She was Liam’s grandmother as much as mine. She’d been the one who’d taken him out to practice driving when everyone else’s patience was fried, and taught him how to tie a necktie. Then again, there weren’t a lot of people like Gram. It struck me that she was practical enough to appreciate a casket as a gift.

“Ms. Hall says she’s cheap,” Avery said. Her eyes flicked to Mr. P. for a moment. “And cheap is the word she used, not frugal.”

“I remember,” Alfred said.

“She” had to mean the carpenter’s mother-in-law. I wasn’t exactly sure how Stella Hall—we had cleared out her late brother’s house—had slipped into the conversation. It had taken a turn that had gotten me lost. It was like talking with Rose. The last time we’d been cooking the topic had changed from Swedish meatballs to Steven Tyler and I still didn’t know how.

I held up both hands. “Hang on. What does Stella’s friend’s frugality have to do with the casket in my workroom?”

“I don’t think she’s Ms. Hall’s friend,” Avery said, wrinkling her nose at me. “She didn’t talk about her like they were friends. She held her mouth funny when she said ‘cheap.’”

The last comment was directed at Alfred.

“I have to concur with Avery,” he said. “There was a little disdain in Stella’s manner when she spoke about the woman.”

Rose was definitely rubbing off on both Avery and Mr. P.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, so this woman is not Stella Hall’s friend and she is tight with money.” I circled one hand in the air in a let’s-get-on-with-it motion. “And?”

Avery picked up her cloth again. “And so she was supposed to be dying and because she’s cheap she didn’t like the idea of a lot of money going for her funeral so her son-in-law made her that coffin and then before he could give it to her it turned out she wasn’t dying after all—and she really wasn’t, cause she’s still alive—and so he couldn’t give it to her because she might take it the wrong way so he got his friend to keep it for him and Mr. P. talked to the dude and he doesn’t want anything to do with it.” She finally took a breath and smiled at me as she reached for a spoon.

None of the scenarios I’d come up with for how the wooden casket had ended up in that storage unit were anywhere near that mundane. I felt a little bit disappointed. “Well, at least we won’t be selling anyone’s family heirloom,” I said.

“You know, I’ve always fancied the idea of having some of my ashes launched into space,” Mr. P. confided.

“There’s a place in England where you can do that.” Avery frowned at the back of the spoon she was holding. “They use a hydrogen balloon. Your ashes would be up in the stratosphere. You could even make it out into space.”

“That would be remarkable,” Mr. P. said.

The conversational train had jumped the track again. I thanked them both and headed for my office.

I drove home at the end of the day with just Elvis for company. Rose and Mr. P. “had plans.” They didn’t share what those plans were. Charlotte had left with Liz. I was going to pick up Gram and we were going to have supper at Charlotte’s. John had some kind of meeting. Elvis had been included in the dinner invitation at Charlotte’s.

I changed, took off my makeup and pulled my hair back in a loose knot. Elvis stretched, did a quick walk-through of the apartment and washed his face. We were ready at the same time.

Gram was just coming down the stairs as I was locking my door. “Perfect timing,” I said.

She smiled. “The key to a happy life.” She was carrying a small cookie tin and a book.

“John told me what you and Liz are doing,” she said. “I’m proud of both of you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But we really haven’t done anything yet.”

“It was horrible for Rob Andrews’s family when he went to prison. Nothing will change that but if you could clear his name maybe that would help a little.”

I thought about Michelle and her unwavering belief in her dad’s innocence. “I hope so,” I said.

When we got to Charlotte’s house we found her in the living room with Mallory Pearson.

“Mallory brought me a journal Gina started keeping while she was in rehab,” Charlotte said after she’d introduced the teen to Gram. She indicated a small leather-covered book on the coffee table. The cover was singed.

“We found it after the fire,” Mallory said. “I thought it might help. It was probably a stupid idea.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Gram said. “That journal will give Charlotte some insight into how your mother thought. That can be very helpful.”

Charlotte nodded. “Yes, it can.”

“I tried to read it but I couldn’t. She wrote about how things were going to get better but they didn’t. Not really.” She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands.

Elvis jumped up onto the sofa beside her. I moved to get him down, but Charlotte shook her head. The cat nudged Mallory’s hand and she began to stroke his fur.

“It was a lot worse for my brothers,” she said. “The only happy day we had in the year before the fire was one day in the fall when Dad took us to a Patriots game in Foxboro.” A smile pulled at her mouth. “She didn’t drink. Not that whole day. She bought Austin this stuffed bear in a Patriots jersey he slept with every night. Greg got a Patriots hat that he never took off. Gina was always ragging on him for wearing it in the house.” She looked away from us. “He hasn’t worn the hat since . . . and Austin stopped sleeping with the bear because it was in the house at the time of the fire and he kept saying it smelled funny even though Katy washed it three times.”

I thought about what Rose and I had talked about earlier. “Mallory, how were things between you and your stepmother?”

She shrugged. “Not good.”

Elvis had settled himself on her lap.

“We were fighting all the time. Mostly about her drinking, but about other things, too, like school and my clothes and what time I got home.”

She went very still then except for the hand stroking Elvis’s fur. “You don’t think I had something to do with what happened, do you? I swear I would never have burned down our house.”

I couldn’t help it. I glanced at the cat. He was blissfully settled in her lap. Mallory Pearson was telling the truth.

I had no explanation for it, but Elvis could tell when someone was lying if they happened to be petting him at the same time. His ears would flatten and he’d look at the person with half-lidded eyes, pupils narrowed, the picture of skepticism. Mac seemed to think the cat could sense the same kind of physiological changes that a polygraph measured. I had no idea whether he was right. I’d just seen Elvis do it enough times to know it wasn’t a coincidence.

“No, no,” I said. “None of us think you had anything to do with what happened. It’s just the more we learn about Gina the better chance we have of figuring out what really happened.”

It was a pretty lame explanation but luckily she didn’t question it.

Mallory looked at Charlotte once more. “Please don’t give up. You have to prove that it wasn’t Dad’s fault. I’m okay, but . . . but Greg and Austin need him.”

I pulled out my phone and scrolled through to a photo Mr. P. had found online of Gavin Pace. “Mallory, do you remember seeing this man anywhere in your neighborhood any time before the fire?” I asked, holding out the phone to her.

She studied the image. “He looks familiar, but I don’t remember seeing him anywhere in our neighborhood. Who is he? Do you think he’s the person Mr. Halloran saw?”

Charlotte put a hand on her arm. “He’s just someone who worked with Gina. We’re trying to track down her friends.”

Mallory picked at the hem of her Hey Violet T-shirt. “She pretty much didn’t have any friends left at the end. Except Katy. They’d been friends forever.” She looked at Charlotte. “Have you talked to her? Do you want me to call her or something?”

“We’ve already talked to her,” Charlotte said.

“She asked you to stop trying to help my dad.” The words weren’t a question.

Charlotte looked at me.

“I think Katy really cares about you and your brothers,” I said.

Mallory sighed. “I know she does. She stuck by . . . Gina when all her other friends walked away. And she even said if my grandmother really does want to move back to Washington we could move in with her.”

I waited for the “but” I knew was coming.

“But Katy tries to act like she’s our mother sometimes and there’s no way she could ever be that. Greg and I are having lunch with her on Thursday and she’ll probably start bugging us about this. She keeps saying we need to heal.” She put a hand on Charlotte’s arm. “We can’t heal without Dad.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Charlotte said.

I nodded. I wished I knew how we were going to do that.