No Escape Claws

Chapter 14

Nick called me about a half hour after Elvis and I got home.

“I did a little digging to see what Mike Pearson had said about where he was when the fire started.”

“And?”

“And basically he didn’t offer any explanation other than one of the firefighters remembers him saying he’d just been out driving around. But no one else heard him say that and as far as I can find out after that, he didn’t say anything. It was just one more detail that made him look guilty.”

“Crap,” I muttered. “I was hoping you might come up with something that would give us another direction to go in.”

“Sorry,” he said. “If I come up with anything else I’ll let you know.”

• • •

Liz came in the next morning at about ten o’clock carrying a small bag from McNamara’s. I was just coming down the stairs. “Is there something in that bag for me?” I asked, linking my arm through hers.

“Why would I bring something for you?” she asked. “Have you done anything to deserve a treat?”

“Yes,” I said, squaring my shoulders and tossing my hair. “I’m a joy to be around. I spread sunshine wherever I go.”

“You spread something,” Liz said. “I’m not sure it’s sunshine.” She glanced at the top of the stairs. “Do you have a couple of minutes?”

I nodded. “Sure. I was going to call you.”

We headed up to my office. I got Liz a cup of tea and a fresh cup of coffee for myself. The bag from McNamara’s held two blueberry muffins.

“So what’s up?” I asked.

“I had supper with Channing last night,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at me and pointed one French-tipped finger at my face. “And don’t start with me, Miss Sunshine.”

I broke my muffin in half. “How’s Channing?” I asked.

“Fine,” Liz said. “He found some more interesting information about Gavin Pace.”

“How interesting?”

“He couldn’t find a job for several months after he lost his. It turns out Sam’s pub and the school weren’t the only places his wife chose to make a scene. Word got around.”

“So he has some incentive to keep this job,” I said. The muffins were good. I licked a bit of blueberry from my thumb.

“A little more than you’d think,” Liz said. “He’s still in a probationary period. He could still be let go.”

“So he lost his job and Gina kept hers, at least for a while.”

Liz took a sip of her tea and nodded. “And from what Channing could find out Pace is up to his eyeballs in debt from his divorce.”

The office door moved and Elvis came into the room. He launched himself up onto the desk and settled himself on one corner. “Mrr,” he said to Liz.

“Hello, cat,” she said.

“Do you think he might have blamed Gina for any of what happened?”

“Try all of what happened.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Channing talked to a couple of people who used to work with young Mr. Pace, all on the understanding that what they say would stay off the record.”

I nodded.

“It seems that he was pretty vocal about putting the blame for all of his problems squarely on Gina. Sounds like a motive for murder to me.”

I wasn’t sure, although I tended to agree with Rose’s assessment of Gavin Pace.

“Rose and Mr. P. are talking to someone who lives near the Pearsons’ former house,” I said. “Maybe she’ll remember seeing him.”

“I think we’re going to have to pay him another visit.”

I nodded. “I think you’re right.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Liz asked.

I explained what I’d learned from John at supper the previous night.

“I knew there was something off about those so-called projects,” she said.

“I think you should tell Wilson what’s going on,” I said. I realized I was beginning to sound like a broken record on that subject.

She waved my suggestion away. “And let the culprit get away with it because my brother can’t keep his mouth shut? I don’t think so. I do have an idea, though.”

I popped a piece of muffin in my mouth and made a go-on gesture with one hand.

“I’m going to get in touch with Marie’s son. Marie was a meticulous record keeper. She kept Wilson’s files just so and I know she kept a journal. Maybe she kept some kind of notes, maybe she wrote about what was going on.”

“It’s worth a shot,” I said.

Liz drank the last of her tea and got to her feet. “Bring Rose and Alfred up to date, please,” she said.

I looked at my watch. “They should be here anytime now.”

“I can’t stay,” she said. “I’ve got places to go and things to do.”

“Is one of those things Channing?” I asked. A crumpled paper napkin whizzed past my head as she left.

• • •

I knew the moment Rose and Mr. P. walked in that they’d had some kind of success.

“So what did you find out?” I asked as Rose took off her sweater and unwound the gauzy scarf from around her neck.

“Well, Denise makes a lovely zucchini bread,” Rose said. “She uses pecans instead of walnuts.”

Denise.

I was pretty sure she was the woman who lived near the Pearsons, the former girlfriend of the son of the senior Casanova who had lived in Rose’s old apartment building. Or something like that.

“I’ll, uh, remember that,” I said. “Did she recognize Gavin Pace?”

Rose shook her head. “No, she didn’t.”

Then why did she look so pleased? It had to be more than just the pecans in the zucchini bread.

“But she did remember seeing a homeless man wandering around the neighborhood,” Mr. P. said. “It seems he relieved himself in someone’s yard and the police came and rousted the man.”

“And you think he may have seen something?” I said.

“Yes I do,” she said, brushing a bit of sparkly thread that had probably come from her scarf off of the front of her pale yellow top. “I suspect that being homeless, just like being old, means people don’t really pay attention to you. So who knows what he might have seen?”

I straightened a pillow in the tub chair and brushed a clump of cat hair from the seat, making a mental note to ask Avery to give the chair a good vacuuming. “But how are we going to find this man? Were there any security cameras?”

“I’ve already taken care of that,” Rose said airily. “And no, as far as Alf could find out no one had a security camera. But I called Nicolas. There should be some kind of report since the police were called. The man, whoever he was, would have had to have given them his name and told them where he lived. We’ll find him.”

She seemed confident and I hoped Nick came through for her.

“Liz was here,” I said. I told them what Channing had unearthed about the precariousness of Pace’s job.

“I knew he wasn’t being straight with us,” Rose said. “Everything he said was nothing more than twaddle.” She looked at Alfred and me. “I think another visit to that young man is in order.”

It was about a half hour later and I had just finished selling an iron bed frame and helping the customer fit it into the back of her car when Nick pulled into the lot.

“Hi,” he said, walking over to me.

“Hi yourself,” I said. I studied him for a moment. “I know that look. You found Rose’s homeless man.”

“In a way.”

I brushed a bit of dirt off the front of my gray pants. “What does ‘in a way’ mean?”

“Is Rose here?” Nick gestured at the shop. “I’d rather just tell the story once.”

“She’s here,” I said. “When I came out she was showing a customer a set of dishes. By now she’s probably sold him the dishes and the flatware.”

It turned out Rose had sold the man dishes, flatware, a tablecloth and napkins. He was just walking out with two large paper shopping bags. Avery was with him carrying a large cardboard box.

Rose turned to Nick, a gleam in her gray eyes. “What did you find out?” She beckoned to Charlotte, who was fitting pale pink tapers into a cut-glass candelabra. She joined us, still holding one candle.

“What about Alfred?” I asked.

“He’s in the office with Liam,” Rose said.

“Liam’s here?” I said. I seemed to be losing control of my day.

“He just got here.” She gestured toward the street. “He found a blackboard.”

“A blackboard? What for?”

“The office, dear,” she said with just a hint of impatience in her voice.

I decided to stop while I was ahead. A bit confused but ahead.

Nick cleared his throat. “First of all, your homeless man wasn’t—isn’t—homeless.”

Rose frowned. “But Denise said he relieved himself on the rhododendrons across the street from her house.”

“Yes, he did,” Nick said. “Because he was drunk. Not because he was homeless. They threw him in a cell until he sobered up. Because it was so close to Christmas they didn’t charge him with anything.”

“But you know his name. We can talk to him.”

Nick swiped a hand over his chin. “You already did. It was Gavin Pace.”

Charlotte and I just stared at each other. I hadn’t expected Nick to say that.

Rose was nodding. “I told you that young man had a weak chin.”

“And a taste for pickle vodka apparently,” I said, sotto voce, to Nick.

The phone rang then. Charlotte touched my arm. “I’ll get that,” she said.

“I’ll call Liz,” Rose said, patting her pockets in search of her cell phone. She spotted it over on the cash desk and started toward it. “Sarah, are you coming with us?” she called over her shoulder.

Nick swiped a hand over his mouth again and hissed, “It’s go or probably have to post their bail.”

“I’m coming,” I said.

Rose grabbed her phone and turned to look at Nick. “What about you, Nicolas? Would you like to come along?”

He smiled. “Thank you, but I have to go to work.”

It registered then that he was wearing his work clothes, a knit shirt and dark pants with a multitude of pockets.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You really should thank Michelle. She’s the one who looked up the report.”

“I didn’t know she was back.”

“Last night.” He hesitated. “I told her what’s going on. I hope that’s okay.”

I nodded. “It is. I don’t like keeping this kind of a secret from her. And she’d find out anyway.” I gestured at his mom and Rose. “They’re not exactly subtle.”

Nick followed my gaze. “Try to keep them out of trouble.”

“Hey, this is not my first rodeo,” I said.

“I take it that means you have rope and know how to make a lasso.”

I grinned at him. “Yes on both counts.”

“Let me know how it works out,” he said. He stopped to give his mother a kiss and he was gone.

Liz arrived about a half hour later. “I thought you had places to go and people to see,” I said.

“I’ve gone and I’ve seen,” she said. “And you have entirely too much time on your hands.”

“Do we have an appointment?” I asked as she tossed me the car keys.

“We don’t need an appointment,” she said.

“What if he isn’t there?”

She gave me a look. “Mr. Pace isn’t exactly lighting the work world on fire. I don’t think we need to worry about that.”

And we didn’t. Gavin Pace came out to the reception area to meet us. He didn’t look very happy to see us. “I already answered your questions,” he said. “I don’t have anything else to tell you.”

“Would you like me to tell you what your ex-wife said about you, young man?” Rose asked. “I’ll give you a hint. She called you something that rhymes with ‘glass bowl.’ And that was the nicest thing she said.”

I stifled a smile at her use of an expression Avery started using when Liz got after her to clean up her language.

“Could you please keep it down?” he said, looking around. The young woman at the reception desk was watching us, not even trying to hide her interest.

“Maybe we should talk somewhere a little more private,” Liz suggested.

“Fine,” he said. “Come back to my office.”

The office was even more cluttered than our previous visit. Pace didn’t make a move to clear off the chairs but we weren’t going to be there very long so it didn’t matter that we had nowhere to sit down.

Liz didn’t waste any time. “You lied to me,” she said. “I don’t like that.”

“I didn’t lie,” he said but his eyes slid off her face as he said the words.

“You said you hadn’t seen Gina in months when in fact you were caught by the police watering someone’s rhododendrons in her neighborhood the night she died. Then you told a touching story of how she inspired you to stop drinking, which, judging by the contents of your bottom-left desk drawer was also a lie. Would you like to go three for three?”

“Fine,” he said. “I saw Gina the day she died, but I didn’t kill her.” He pulled a hand back through his hair a couple of times. “She ruined my life. I lost my job. Molly wouldn’t take me back. And Gina? Nothing happened to her. People were falling all over themselves to help poor little Gina.” His voice had turned mocking and mean. “So yeah, I told her how she’d ruined my life and how I hoped she’d rot in hell. Then I had a couple of drinks—just to relax and the next thing I know the cops are hassling me.”

Rose’s phone had given a low buzz while Gavin was talking. Someone had sent her a text. She slid the phone out of her pocket, checked the screen and then silently handed it to me. Nick. Based on the estimated time of death for Gina Pearson Pace is not your killer. He was still locked up.

Somehow I’d known that all along. I looked at Gavin Pace. Rose was right about the weak chin and the rest of him matched it.

Liz, meanwhile, had reached her limit for listening to his complaining. She took a couple of steps forward so she was right in his face.

“You, young man, are a bum,” she said, punctuating her words with one pointing finger. “Gina Pearson didn’t ruin your life. Your problems are your own and unlike her, you still have lots of time to fix them. So get a haircut, lose the attitude, clean up this office, get to a meeting and stop bellyaching!”

She turned and stalked out of the office as only Elizabeth Emmerson Kiley French can. Rose and I trailed after her, leaving Gavin Pace standing in his office with his mouth hanging open.

“I feel a little like the man who walks behind the elephant,” Rose confided.

We caught up with Liz at the main entrance. “Are we ready to go?” I asked.

“I am,” she said. She looked at Rose. “Are you?”

“We may as well,” Rose said, settling her purse over her arm. “I don’t imagine we’ll get any more information out of Mr. Pace now. And he’s not our killer.” She showed Nick’s text to Liz.

“I suppose you think I should have kept quiet,” Liz said. She patted her blond hair. Not a single one was out of place.

“Do you think your little outburst is actually going to make anything better?” Rose asked.

Liz smiled. “It made me feel better,” she said. “Let’s go home.”