Telling Tails

Chapter 7

No one was home at the Cameron cottage. I parked in front and Rose and I got out. Elvis jumped up onto the back of the seat and peered through the passenger-side window. Rose stood at the bottom of the driveway and looked around.

“Tell me what you did, step by step,” I said.

“I went to the front door,” she said, gesturing with one hand.

“Did you knock or ring the bell?” We started walking slowly up the driveway.

“I rang the bell. When no one answered, I knocked.”

“And then you went to the side door?”

Rose nodded. “There is no side doorbell, so I knocked. When I didn’t get any answer there, either, I peeked through the window. That’s when I saw Jeff Cameron’s body. Then something hit me and the next thing I remember is the dog.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay, I want you to back up a little. When you got out of the taxi, did you notice any lights on in the house?”

“No.”

It would have been getting close to dusk when Rose arrived, about the time of day people turned their inside lights on, unless they were busy killing someone. “Wait a minute,” I said. “What about the candlesticks?”

“They were in a box wrapped in that pretty blue paper with a silver bow. The box was in my L.L. Bean bag, the little one with the blue bottom and handles. My purse was in there, too.” I remembered seeing Liz with the bag the night before.

I studied the front of the little house for a moment. Through the front window I could see a painting of the harbor on the living room wall. “Did you see anything through that window?” I asked.

Rose shook her head. “No, the curtains were closed.” She turned to look at me. “I’d forgotten that. Do you think it’s important?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I stood at the end of the walkway to the front door where it joined the paved driveway. “So you went to the other door and knocked.”

“Yes.”

“Where was your bag? Which arm?”

Rose frowned a little but she patted her left forearm. “Right here.”

“Show me what you did, as close as you can,” I said. I stood on the pavement, hands jammed in my pockets as Rose made her way to the side door of the house. She climbed the steps, knocked, waited and then went up on her tiptoes for a better view through the windows.

She turned to look at me over her shoulder. “Then whatever it was hit me. That’s it.”

“Back it up again,” I said. “You’re looking through the window.” I made a turnaround motion with two fingers.

“Yes.” She nodded slowly.

“What do you see?”

“The back of a chair, chrome like that table-and-chair set we sold last month to that couple from Portland.”

“What else?”

“Shoes,” Rose said. “Bright red sneakers—well, running shoes, I guess I should say.” She turned around again. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re hoping I might remember something else if I just tell you the first thing that comes into my mind, but it isn’t working. I don’t remember anything else.” Her voice was edged with frustration.

I nodded. “Okay. It was worth a shot. But could we keep going so I can at least go over the details from beginning to end? I’ve only had them in bits and pieces up to now.”

“Of course we can,” Rose said, giving me a smile. She faced the porch again, put a hand on the railing and peered through the window.

“So you saw the running shoes,” I said. “What happened then?”

Rose exhaled slowly. “I saw whoever it was in the pink hoodie. I think that person was dragging Jeff Cameron’s body.”

I moved a few steps closer up the driveway. “So that person crossed directly in front of your line of sight?”

“No. I just saw her—or him—from the side, and only for a moment.”

“What did you do?”

“For a minute I didn’t do anything. Then I stood on my tiptoes to try to get a better look and I called out and banged on the window. I tried the porch door, but it was locked. So I looked around for something I could use to break the glass, but I couldn’t find anything. I was going to go to the front door when something hit me over the head.” Rose raised a hand but didn’t say anything. I realized she wasn’t looking at what was right in front of her. She was seeing a memory replay in her head.

“Someone caught me,” she said slowly. Her hand went to her neck. She looked at me, comprehension spreading across her face. “When I started to fall. Whoever it was stuck me with something, just as I passed out.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

Rose came down the steps. “That’s what you were trying to get me to remember.”

I shrugged and gave her a smile. “I was hoping.”

She put her hands on her hips in mock annoyance. “Very sneaky saying it was worth a shot so I’d think what you were doing hadn’t worked and I’d relax.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and laid my cheek against her head. “You taught me well,” I said.

She reached up to pat my cheek. “You’ve always been a quick study, sweet girl,” she said.

We walked back down the driveway. Elvis was still perched on the back of the seat, studying the house as if he could somehow come up with the answers we were looking for.

Rose got in the passenger side and Elvis jumped down to settle himself beside her.

“Ready to head for the shop?” I asked. Rose didn’t answer. Her mind was somewhere else. She was stroking Elvis’s fur, a faraway look on her face.

I watched her until she realized the SUV wasn’t moving and turned her attention on me.

“Sarah, who was the other person?” she said.

Elvis scrunched up his nose as though he were considering the question.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Let’s say it was Leesa Cameron dragging her husband’s body.” Rose held up a hand. “And yes, I know she has an alibi, but for now let’s say she doesn’t.”

I stuck the key in the ignition but didn’t start the car. “Okay, let’s say that.”

“Who hit me over the head, injected me with—with whatever it was that knocked me out? She had help.”

Elvis murped his agreement.

Why hadn’t I thought of that before? In all the uproar, that little detail had slipped past me. I pounded lightly on the steering wheel. “Good question. Who was it?”

“Did you ever read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?” Rose asked.

Conversations with Rose could easily veer off on a tangent, so I didn’t bother asking how the creator of Sherlock Holmes was connected to Rose being hit over the head and most likely injected with something that knocked her out. “In an English class in college,” I said.

“Then you probably know what he said about eliminating the impossible so that whatever is left, even if it seems preposterous, has to be the truth.” She patted her white hair. “I’m paraphrasing, of course.”

“I know the quote,” I said.

Elvis nudged her hand and she resumed stroking his fur. “Well, I’ve always thought Sir Arthur was making things unnecessarily complicated. Instead of wasting a lot of time eliminating the impossible, in my experience it’s better to look at the most obvious answer first.”

If Nick had been with us, he would have rolled his eyes because I knew what she meant without any more of an explanation. “You think Leesa was involved with someone.”

Rose nodded. “Exactly, and it’s impossible to keep that kind of thing a secret in a small place like this. Not for very long.”

“So if”—I put extra emphasis on the word—“if Leesa Cameron did something to her husband because she was involved with another man, and if we can find out who that man is, we can figure this whole thing out.” Because of course that wasn’t impossible or improbable at all.

Rose beamed at me. “Well, now we have a plan,” she said.

On the drive back to the store, Rose and Elvis discussed cat treats. It seemed that she felt she should make some for him since she was going to make dog biscuits for Casey.

Second Chance is in a red brick building that was built in the late eighteen hundreds. We’re located on Mill Street where it curves and begins to climb uphill, about a twenty-minute walk from the harbor and easily reached from the highway—the best of both worlds for tourists. Gram holds the mortgage on the building and I’m working to pay her back as quickly as I can.

As we turned into the parking lot at the shop, Nick pulled in behind us. He got out of his truck and walked over to the SUV as we got out. He shot me a quick smile and focused his attention on Rose, putting both his hands on her shoulders. “Are you all right?” he asked.

He was tall, over six feet, with Charlotte’s eyes and smile. He was wearing a blue golf shirt and what I thought of as his work pants, ones that seemed to me to have at least a dozen pockets.

“I’m fine,” she said, smiling up at him. She turned her head and pushed her hair to one side so he could check out where she’d been hit on the head, and then she held out her arm and let him check the bandage the nurse had put on in the hospital. “I can take that off tomorrow,” she told him.

“Make sure you keep it dry for a couple more days.”

Rose nodded. “I will. Sarah wrapped my arm in a couple of plastic bags before I got in the tub last night.”

Nick glanced at me. “Very resourceful,” he said. He turned back to Rose. “Any headaches, blurred or double vision? Are you nauseous? Have you eaten?”

Rose held up a hand and ticked off her fingers. “No, no, no, no and yes.” She kept a completely straight face, so while I knew she was humoring him just a little, I didn’t think he did.

Nick looked at me again. “Show me the place on her neck,” he said.

Rose turned around and bent her head forward, and I showed him the tiny red mark. It seemed to me it had already faded a bit more. Nick pulled out his cell phone and peered at Rose’s neck through the phone’s camera lens.

“Is that some kind of magnifying glass?” I asked, leaning over for a closer look.

He nodded. “Fifteen times magnification.”

“You get all the cool toys in your job,” I teased.

Nick straightened up. “Actually, this came from Liam.”

“Liam my brother?” I said.

“Only Liam I know. Yeah.”

Rose straightened up and turned back around. “So what do you think?” she asked.

“It’s possible that spot is an injection site,” he hedged, pretty much as I’d expected.

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

“What do you remember?” Nick asked.

“Not a lot,” she said. “Pain on the side of my head and my neck. The next thing I knew I woke up to a very nice dog nudging me with his nose.” She looked at me. “Would you be able to drive me over after supper to take some biscuits to Casey?”

I nodded. “Sure.” I looked at Nick. “So?”

He frowned. “It’s possible Rose was drugged, but the only way to know for sure is a blood test.” He looked at Rose. “You can go to the hospital and have it done. I can call them.”

“Could you do it?” she asked. “I mean, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble? I got poked a lot last night. I feel a bit like a pincushion.” She gave him a guileless look that I probably would have fallen for myself if it wasn’t for the fact that she’d used the same look on me about a dozen times before I got wise to it.

Nick hesitated.

Rose leaned over and patted his hand. “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t.” He smiled down at her. “I can do it. I’ll get my bag and be right there.”

“You are a darling man,” she said. She gestured at his cell phone. “Is that the magnifying thingie?” She took the phone from Nick’s hand before he realized what was happening. “Oh, Alfred would love one of these. May I show it to him?”

Nick looked a bit uncertain, eyes darting from the phone to Rose to me. “Umm, all right.”

“Thank you, dear,” she said with a smile. “I’ll see you inside.” She got her tote bag from the front seat. Elvis jumped down and the two of them headed for the back door of the shop.

Nick opened the passenger door of the truck and from the backseat grabbed a black nylon backpack that I knew held all his medical supplies. He was trying to stifle a grin and not really succeeding.

“I know what you did,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, but the grin got loose and I knew for sure I was right. He was playing Rose just as much as she had been playing him. Sometimes seeing Nick and Rose interact was like watching Tweety Bird and Sylvester the Cat.

“I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night,” I retorted.

“Okay,” he said, the grin turning a little sheepish. “I know how Rose is when it comes to doctors and hospitals. I figured if I suggested me taking her blood right off the bat she’d say no, but if the hospital was the first choice I’d look a lot better.”

“Very sneaky,” I said as we started for the door. And that might have worked if Rose hadn’t been manipulating the situation to achieve the same end, although I had no idea what her reasons were.

He raised an eyebrow. “I prefer to think of it as resourceful.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him he wasn’t quite as resourceful as he thought.

“So what will this blood test do?” I asked.

“Based on what Rose just told me, I suspect that she could have been dosed with methohexital.”

“Which is?”

“A rapid-acting barbiturate. Dentists use it quite a bit. Rose could have been unconscious in seconds and awake again in as fast as five minutes. It can’t be detected in the bloodstream after twenty-four hours, which is why I want to get a blood sample now.”

“But they did blood tests last night,” I said.

Nick nodded. “Those would have just been routine tests, most likely just a CBC—that’s a complete blood count—and a creatine kinase test which they do to help rule out a heart attack. They wouldn’t have had any reason to test for methohexital.”

We stepped inside. Rose was talking to Mac. Elvis was on the workbench washing his face and ignoring both of them. There was no sign of Mr. P. Rose handed Nick his phone without comment.

“Why don’t we use my office?” I said.

Nick smiled. “Good idea.”

“Nick’s going to take a blood sample from Rose,” I said to Mac by way of explanation.

“I heard,” he said. “I can hold down the fort.”

“Thanks,” I said.

There were no customers in the shop proper, which was a good thing because the moment Avery caught sight of Rose she bolted across the room and threw herself into Rose’s arms. Her face was pale and unshed tears glistened in her eyes.

Rose gave me a baffled look and folded the teen into a hug. “My dear, what on earth is wrong?” she asked.

Avery pulled back, her eyes scanning Rose’s face. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” she said. “It’s my fault you got hurt.”

“Nonsense,” Rose said, brushing a strand of hair behind Avery’s ear. “First of all, I’m fine, as you can see. And second, what happened to me is the fault of the person who whacked me over the head. Why would you think that has anything to do with you?”

“I took your phone.” She pulled the cell from her pocket and held it out.

Rose smiled at her. “Child, that phone couldn’t have saved me, but a lovely dog did. His name is Casey. Would you like to meet him?”

Avery sniffed, swiped at her nose with the sleeve of her plaid cotton shirt and nodded.

“Splendid.” She reached into her bag and handed Avery a tissue.

I looked at Nick and dipped my head in the direction of the stairs to the second floor. He nodded and headed quietly for them.

Mac had come in behind us and was standing at the cash desk. I walked over to him while Rose explained to Avery how they were going to make dog biscuits for the Clarks’ big black Lab.

“I knew something was wrong when she got here,” he said, indicating Avery, who was smiling now as Rose held her hands and talked. “She wouldn’t tell me what it was, but she made me swear on your life that Rose was okay.”

“I guess that’s why my ears were burning,” I said with a smile.

Mac smiled back. He was Nick’s height, all lean, strong muscle with light brown skin and cropped black hair. He smelled like Ivory soap and peppermints. “Do I want to know about this blood sample Nick is going to take?”

“Probably not,” I said, “but I’m going to tell you later anyway.”

He laughed.

“Thanks for opening this morning,” I said.

“Anytime.” Mac’s eyes stayed locked on mine just a little longer than they needed to before he looked over at Rose. “I’ll put Avery to work sorting that box of postcards you bought from Cleveland. You should probably get Rose upstairs before she changes her mind or Nick does.”

I gave my head a little shake. “Umm, yeah, I should do that,” I said. I looked around. “I thought Charlotte was coming in.”

Mac nodded. “She was here. She and Mr. P. are working on something.”

“Do I want to know about it?” I asked.

He came around the cash desk.

“Probably not,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “but I’m going to tell you later anyway.”

Like he had just a moment before, I laughed.

I walked back over to Rose and Avery and dropped a hand on Avery’s shoulder. She turned and I could see that all the anxiety and fear were gone from her face. I smiled at her. “Kiddo, could you sort through that box of postcards that Mac has out on the workbench?”

“I was going to do that, Sarah,” Rose said.

“You should take it easy today,” Avery said, “shouldn’t she, Sarah?”

“Yes, she should,” I said, fixing Rose with a steely stare to make my point—which I knew she’d ignore.

“I’ll do it, Sarah,” Avery said. “Is it okay if I make the tea first?”

I nodded. “Absolutely.”

She gave Rose a quick hug and dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

I put my arm around Rose’s shoulders and we followed at a slower pace.

“I can’t believe Avery thought what happened was her fault,” she said. She was still holding her phone, and she tucked it into the pocket of her pink cotton sweater.

“She loves you,” I said. I hesitated, took a breath and let it out slowly before I spoke again. “You’re not going to do anything again like last night, right?”

She didn’t speak and she didn’t look at me. She just gave her head a little shake.

We found Nick in my office holding a cup of coffee and leaning against my desk. He gestured to the large mug beside him. “That’s for you, and, Rose, your tea is coming.”

I reached for the coffee and took a long drink, making a mental note to thank Avery for bringing the cup and Mac, who I knew had made the pot of coffee just the way I liked it.

Nick settled Rose on the small love seat in my office and very quickly and efficiently drew her blood. “I’m going to drop this at the lab,” he said.

“Thank you,” Rose said, reaching for the cup of tea that Avery had just delivered. “Nicolas is very good with his hands,” she said to me, bending her head to take a sip.

Nick’s mouth twitched as he tried not to grin. I glared at him and he wisely turned his attention to his bag.

“Good to know,” I said.

Nick slipped the shoulder strap of the black nylon first aid kit over his shoulder. Then he leaned down to give Rose a hug. “If you need any help with that dressing, let me know,” he said.

Rose kissed his cheek. “I will,” she said.

“I’ll see you and Jess tonight?” Nick said to me, raising an eyebrow.

I knew he was referring to Thursday Night Jam at the Black Bear Pub.

I nodded. “We’ll save you a seat.”

After Nick was gone, Rose stretched out her arm and studied the tiny bandage Nick had put in the crook of her elbow. “He really is good with his hands,” she said.

I grabbed my mug from my desk. “You could at least try to be a little less obvious,” I said.

“At my age I don’t have a lot of time to waste on less obvious.”

I made a face and Rose laughed. She studied her arm again. “How long do you think it will take before we get any results?”

“A couple of days, I’m guessing,” I said. “I think it may all be a little faster because Nick is using the medical examiner’s lab.”

Rose gave me a knowing smile over the rim of her china teacup. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I let Nicolas think he was winning a victory by getting me to ask him to do the blood sample.”

I shook my head.

She got to her feet and headed for the door, leaning over to kiss my cheek as she passed me. “Don’t worry, dear,” she said. “I would never use my powers for the forces of evil.”

“I’m pretty sure Darth Vader said the same thing,” I called after her. I could hear her laughing as she went down the hall.

I dropped onto the love seat and drank the last bit of now cold coffee in my cup. There was a knock on the office door. “C’mon in,” I called.

Mac poked his head into the room. “I saw Nick leave,” he said. “How did it go?”

“Nick’s taking the blood to the lab. Now we wait,” I said. “Not that I think that Rose is going to pass the time by knitting or baking a cake.”

Mac smiled. “Based on the conversation she’s having with Avery, she’s planning on making dog biscuits.”

“For Casey.”

“Please tell me Casey is a dog,” he said.

I nodded. “A very nice black Lab that found Rose by the side of the road.” I pulled a hand back through my hair. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do next. There was no way Rose was going to sit by quietly until Nick had the results of her blood work.

“What can I do?” Mac asked.

“Aside from sitting on Rose until we know more, I don’t know.”

He took the heavy pottery mug from my hands. “How about I head over to McNamara’s in a little while and get lunch for all of us. Charlotte and Alfred will be here, you know Liz is going to stop in and Rose is going to want to start working on this case, because it is a case, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “It is. Michelle doesn’t seem to think so and I’m not certain Nick does, either, but I believe Rose, and I want to know what happened to her.”