Telling Tails

Chapter 2

“Jeff Cameron is dead?” I said, feeling dumbfounded by the direction the conversation had taken.

Rose nodded. “Yes.”

“And you know this how?” Liz asked, sitting down on the green vinyl chair by the bed. “The police didn’t find any body. All they found was you and some plastic tube thing by the side of the road.”

“It wasn’t a plastic tube thing. It was a boat fender. And you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying, have you?” Rose cocked her head to one side as she studied her friend, and then flinched at the motion.

“I’m listening,” Liz said, leaning forward in the chair. “You’re just not making a hell of a lot of sense at the moment.”

I covered Rose’s hand with my own, which caught her attention, exactly as I’d intended. “You saw Jeff Cameron’s body.”

She nodded again.

“At his house.”

Rose pressed her lips together for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “That has to be why I was hit over the head.” She held up her bandaged hand. “And before you all start in on me, I don’t have a concussion, I’m not a feeble old woman and I know what I saw.”

I knew that tone of voice and set of her jaw. Rose wasn’t going to be swayed from what she believed she’d seen.

Liz and Mr. P. both spoke at the same time.

I held up one hand. “Hang on,” I said. “Just hang on a minute.”

They both stopped talking.

I put my arm around Rose’s shoulders again, shifting on the noisy vinyl mattress. “Start at the beginning,” I said. “Start from when I left you with Jeff Cameron.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Yes, we do,” I said. “A dead man isn’t going to get any deader.”

Rose nodded. “I guess you’re right.” She tugged at the sheet over her legs and Mr. P. immediately pulled the cotton blanket up over her. She smiled a thank-you at him. Then she sighed softly and began. “I told Mr. Cameron that I would make sure his wife got his gift. He said that he didn’t want me to get in any trouble. I said that you would come around.”

I raised one eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Rose’s cheeks grew pink, and she looked down at the nubby blanket for a moment before looking up at me again. “It wasn’t a lie, Sarah,” she said. “I thought I could make you change your mind if I really had to.”

Liz made a small snort of skepticism, but I ignored it.

“Rosie, why didn’t you tell me what you were planning?” Mr. P. asked. There was no recrimination in his voice.

Rose stretched out her hand to him. He caught it, giving it a gentle squeeze before letting go again. “I’m sorry, Alf,” she said. “I probably should have; it’s just that you would have tried to talk me out of it.”

“Yes, I would have,” he agreed.

“That’s the problem,” she said, looking from Mr. P. to me. “Sometimes I get tired of being treated like I’m made of glass and might break.”

“After that whack on the head you took, it’s pretty clear your head, at least, is made of something other than glass,” Liz commented dryly. She reached forward once more and laid her hand on Rose’s leg for a moment. “And I’m glad it is,” she added. They exchanged smiles.

“Keep going,” I nudged.

“We were working out the details of the delivery when you came in.” Rose looked at Liz.

“I remember.” Liz leaned back in her seat, crossing one leg over the other.

“Avery was in Augusta, remember?” Rose said to me. “With some kids who had been in her history class. Their teacher organized the trip.”

After some problems at home, Avery had come to live with her grandmother and attend a progressive alternative school that had only morning classes. She worked afternoons for me. Now that it was July, she was spending more time at the shop.

I nodded. Liz raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“And she may have had my phone with her.”

“May have?” I asked.

“All right, she did have my phone. It ended up in her bag by mistake.”

Things were getting more complicated by the moment. “And that would be because . . . ?”

“I was showing Avery a video on my phone because she only has text and calling—no data on her own phone.” Rose’s gaze shifted over to Liz.

“Avery has a perfectly good computer at home with Wi-Fi,” Liz said. “She doesn’t need data on her phone because she spends too much time with her head bent over it as it is.”

Rose sighed. “You sound like you’re a hundred and six when you say things like that.”

Liz made a dismissive gesture with one hand. They’d had several versions of this conversation before.

“What happened after that?” I asked, reaching for the glass of water on the table next to the bed and handing it to Rose.

She took a sip before answering. “Liz wanted me to take her phone. I told her I’d be fine without a phone for one night and she left.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Liz nod.

“I think Mr. Cameron may have heard us talking,” Rose continued. “When I went back to the counter he said he needed to get going, so he gave me his cell number and asked if I’d call him about four thirty and he’d be able to tell me then when his wife would be home.”

“So that’s what you did?”

Rose nodded once more. “I had the address, and it just seemed easier to call a taxi and go over there myself. It wasn’t a lot different from having the gift delivered.”

“The driver didn’t wait?” I asked.

“I told him not to, so don’t get on Tim’s case.”

I cleared my throat for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. There were no answers up there. I looked at Rose again. “I’m assuming you had a good reason for not getting the driver to wait.”

“No, I had a stupid reason,” she said calmly.

I’d crossed the line, I realized. “I’m sorry,” I said.

She smiled and patted my hand the way she often did when she was humoring me. “I thought after I gave Mrs. Cameron her gift—her first name is Leesa, by the way—I’d walk down to Sam’s, call Alfred, and see if he wanted to join me for pizza.”

“Yes, I would have,” Mr. P. immediately said.

“I’ve been wanting to try the sausage and mushroom pizza ever since Sam told me he was getting that all-natural sausage from that little place in Lisbon Falls,” Rose said.

We were about to get way, way off track. “We’ll get one on the weekend,” I said.

“That’s a lovely idea,” Rose said. “We should see if Nicolas and Charlotte are free. And I could teach you how to make Caesar salad.”

Mr. P. cleared his throat. They exchanged a look and Rose gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Or maybe apple-carrot salad would be a better choice?” She looked over at Liz and I saw her eyes dart, briefly, in my direction.

She was still trying to play matchmaker between Nick and me. They all were—Rose, Liz, Charlotte, who was also Nick’s mom. Even Mr. P. apparently. That was why Rose had nixed the Caesar salad; the garlic would derail any romance, at least in her mind.

I rubbed the space between my eyes with the side of my thumb. We were officially off track into the conversational bushes.

Rose caught the gesture. “Do you have a headache, dear?” she asked. “I can just press this little button and have the nurse bring you a couple of Tylenol. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Rosie, you were about to tell us what happened after the taxi dropped you off at Mr. Cameron’s house,” Mr. P. interjected.

“That’s right, I was,” Rose said. She studied my face for a moment and seemed satisfied with whatever she saw there. “There were no lights on in the house, but it wasn’t really dark and I thought maybe Mrs. Cameron was in the backyard.” She leaned around me. “They’re renting the Baxter place while they look for a house to buy.” She directed her words to Liz.

Liz nodded. “Screened-in gazebo,” she said quietly to me.

“There was no one in the backyard,” Rose continued, “so I knocked on the side door, and when there was no answer I looked through the porch window.” She held up her bandaged hand. “And before anyone thinks I was just being nosy, I was trying to be certain Mrs. Cameron wasn’t home. I didn’t have my phone, so I couldn’t exactly call her, now, could I?”

“Where was Jeff Cameron’s body?” I asked.

“I was just getting to that,” Rose said. “When I looked through the porch window it gave me a bit of a view into the kitchen. Those cottages aren’t very big.”

“You saw Mr. Cameron in the kitchen,” Mr. P. spoke up from the foot of the bed.

Rose nodded slowly, her expression suddenly serious. “He was on the floor.”

“Were his eyes open or closed?” I asked.

“I didn’t see his face,” she said. She paused for a moment, replaying the scene in her mind, I was guessing. “I saw his watch and a bit of one cheek. His head was slumped forward like this.” She dropped her chin to her chest. “And of course those fire-engine red shoes.”

The Newton Gravity IVs Jeff Cameron had been wearing when he’d been at the shop.

“What did you do?”

“I tried to get a better look. I banged on the glass. I tried the door, but it was locked.” Rose was absently smoothing the bandage on her left arm. “Then something hit the back of my head—I’m certain it was that boat fender—and the next thing I knew I woke up to a very nice dog nudging me with his rather cold nose and I was two houses away.” She turned to Mr. P. “Remind me to make some dog biscuits.”

He nodded. I saw the lines pulling around his eyes and mouth again and knew Rose’s story worried him.

Rose focused her attention back on me. “Sarah, someone else was in that kitchen, someone in a pink hooded sweatshirt. I just caught a glimpse of her.”

“Her?”

“Yes. I think the person in the pink hooded sweatshirt was a woman. And not just because it was pink.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

Rose tugged at the neck of the hospital nightgown. “Will you think I’m being an old fool if I say I just have a feeling?”

“You’re not an old fool, but I think it would help if you could put your reasons into words.”

“All right.” Her gray eyes narrowed. “That sweatshirt.” She lifted her hands to her shoulders. “It was baggy. Avery has one that she wears—the black one—and the shoulders were the same. The seam at the top of the shoulder comes down onto her arm. It was the same for the person wearing that pink one. It didn’t fit right.”

Rose was very observant. I didn’t doubt for a moment that she’d caught that detail even though she’d gotten only a quick look at the person. “Anything else?”

“When the person—she—raised her head I keep feeling I saw something that made me think I was looking at a woman. Cheekbones maybe, or mouth. I can’t be sure.” She pushed back the blanket and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

I caught her by the arm. “Where are you going?”

“We can’t waste any more time talking,” Rose said, squaring her shoulders. “Leesa Cameron killed her husband. We have to do something.”