The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Chapter 16

When I got to Second Chance the next morning Mr. P. was sitting in a lawn chair in front of the open garage door, having coffee with Mac. “Good morning,” I said, walking over to them.

“Good morning, my dear,” the old man said with a smile.

I set Elvis down. He made his way over to Mr. P., sat in a patch of sunlight next to his chair and began to wash his face. Elvis was very particular about his appearance.

“Morning,” Mac said, getting to his feet. He gestured at his mug. “Would you like a cup?”

“I would,” I said. “But I can get it myself.”

He smiled. “I know you can.” He started across the parking lot.

I sat down in the folding chair he’d vacated and turned to Mr. P. “I’ve been thinking about Davis Abbott,” I said. “Do you think that he could have hurt Leila and killed Erin?”

“I think it’s a possibility,” he hedged. “I did a little more digging around last evening. The young man has an assault charge that was dismissed during his college years. He’s an affluent cliché. He tried a number of things but didn’t master any, he likes to gamble a bit too much, seems to like hard work a bit too little, and he has parents who got tired of supporting a dilettante son.”

I shifted in my chair. Elvis stretched and wandered into the garage. “Why was the assault charge dismissed?” I asked.

Mr. P. shrugged. “It was a barroom argument that escalated and ended up outside on the sidewalk. It went away when the young man who was assaulted refused to testify.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A payout?”

“Yet another cliché but I think so.” He took a sip of his coffee.

“And you know all this because?” I wasn’t sure I should be asking the question.

“Social media can be very informative. Just because one deletes something doesn’t mean it’s gone. And Davis and Stephanie share a bank account. She’s been very forthcoming with respect to her finances.”

I’d expected him to smile, to say something light, but he didn’t.

“You found something else.”

He nodded. “I’m afraid I did.” The breeze ruffled what few wisps of hair he had and he patted them down with a wrinkled hand. “It turns out that Stephanie is one of those people who keeps her bank statements going back several years. And she and Davis share a bank account, as I said. He was in Boston the day of Leila’s accident. He used his debit card to buy gas.”

“Do you think Stevie knows he was there?”

“I don’t. I don’t think she would have scanned those bank statements for me if she’d known they could implicate Davis. I do believe she cares about him.”

“So he could have sabotaged the heating system?”

He looked at me with one raised eyebrow. “He has the expertise.”

Had Stevie’s partner tampered with the water heater in Mac and Leila’s house? Had Erin somehow found out? Could it have been Davis that Nick had seen talking to her down on the waterfront? I had too many questions and not enough answers.

“So now what?” I asked. “I mean aside from our upcoming visit to the salt works.”

Elvis came out of the building behind us, gave an offhand murp as he passed my chair, and headed across the parking lot.

“I do have the name of the hotel where young Mr. Abbott is staying,” Mr. P. said. “Perhaps we can pay him a visit at the end of the day.”

“Perhaps we can,” I agreed. I tipped my face up to the sun for a moment. “Do you have any idea why Davis is still here in town?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t. I’d also like to know why he came here in the first place, and why he has stayed. And it is interesting that he got here the same day as Erin Fellowes did.”

Mac came out then with my coffee, stopping to hold the back door for Elvis. Mr. P. filled him in on what he’d learned about Davis Abbott. He was silent for a moment. “I would have said Davis isn’t capable of hurting Leila or, heaven forbid, killing Erin, but I’m beginning to see that I didn’t know any of these people as well as I thought I did.”

Mr. P. and I exchanged a look.

Mac shook his head. “Could we talk about something else, something normal?”

“Sure,” I said. I told him about Charlotte’s suggestion to look into offering classes at Legacy Place.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Mac said.

“I do as well,” Mr. P. said. “Despite Rosie’s opinion of the place it’s a beautiful building in an excellent location.”

Rose had gone to live at the seniors’ apartment building so her daughter, Abby, wouldn’t worry about her, but she’d complained that all the other residents did was talk about their ailments.

My phone rang then. I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. It was Avery. I frowned. “That’s odd,” I said. On occasion the teen would text me but I couldn’t remember the last time she’d called me.

“Hi, Avery,” I said.

“Oh good, you have your phone with you,” she said. “There’s kind of a situation going on.”

“What do you mean, a ‘situation’?” I asked. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the end of Bayview Street, you know, at the far end of the harbor.”

I knew where she meant. What the heck was she doing out there? There was no boardwalk, no businesses catering to tourists, no slips for boats. There were several office buildings and a pretty great view of the ocean but that was it. “Avery, what are you doing out there?” I said. I had a bad feeling I knew the answer.

“Well, see, Nonna and Rose are stalking that guy.”

I sat bolt upright in my chair. Mac was looking at me, frowning. He’d already figured out that something was wrong just from my side of the conversation. “What guy?”

“You know,” Avery said, a touch of annoyance in her voice, even though I clearly didn’t know. “The one who told Rose to go you-know herself when he was parked in front of our driveway.”

Her explanation may not have made sense to anyone else but it did to me. “Davis Abbott?”

“Yeah, that guy.”

By now Mr. P. was also watching me intently, concern etched into the lines around his mouth and eyes.

“Tell me exactly what happened. From the beginning.”

“Okay. Nonna and I picked up Rose because she had butter tarts for some awards thing at the library and she said if she brought them to the shop you and Nonna would eat them all.”

I took a breath and let it out slowly. “The library is not on Bayview Street. It’s not even close.”

“I know, but the butter tarts are in a cooler so they’re okay,” Avery said. “No one’s going to get food poisoning or anything.” She could go off on a tangent even easier than Rose could.

I took one of those deep, calming breaths Jess was always after me to try. “What happened after you picked up Rose?” I asked. The breath didn’t seem to help.

“She asked if she could try my smoothie and I said yes and then Rose said Nonna was wrong, that it didn’t taste like feet, it was pretty good and then she saw that guy go by in his truck and she whacked Nonna on the arm and said, ‘Turn around, turn around and follow that truck,’ and Nonna said, ‘What in heck are you talking about?’ and Rose said, ‘You’re letting a killer get away,’ and so Nonna did a U-ey right there in the street and we ended up here.”

She’d managed to spill out the whole story without taking a breath.

“So where exactly are you now? Are you at the very end of the street?”

“Right at the start of the trail that goes along the water. It’s kind of hard to miss because those TV people are here.”

I got to my feet. “Stay where you are,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

Avery promised she wouldn’t go anywhere and we ended the call. I took a large drink of my coffee. Both Mac and Mr. P. had stood up as well.

“What’s going on?” Mac asked.

Mr. P. put a hand on my arm. “Is everything all right?”

“Rose and Liz are following Davis Abbott,” I said. “I have to go see what’s going on.”

“I’m coming with you,” Mac immediately said, moving behind me to close and lock the garage door.

“Good,” I said, putting my phone back in my pocket. “Because it will probably take both of us to wrestle down Rose.” I glanced at Mr. P. “No disrespect to Rose.”

He took my mug and set it over by the old garage door. “None taken, my dear,” he said. “I know how Rosie can be when she gets set on something.”

We climbed into my SUV and headed across town. Neither Mac nor Mr. P. said a word about how fast I may or may not have been going. When we got close to the trailhead we discovered cars were parked on both sides of the road. There was only one lane clear. I saw a space that looked big enough for the SUV and managed to shoehorn it in.

We all got out. Mac looked around and then grabbed my arm. “Up there,” he said, pointing to a place about seven or eight cars ahead. “Isn’t that Liz’s car?”

“It is,” Mr. P. said beside me.

We hurried up the road. Avery was with the car, leaning against the front passenger door, phone in her hand, one earbud hanging down on her shoulder. She smiled when she caught sight of us. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I told them it was a bad idea to follow that Davis guy but they didn’t listen because I’m just a kid.”

I knew they wouldn’t have listened to me if I’d been there, but I didn’t say that. “Which way did they go?”

Avery pointed up the road.

“Please stay here in case they come back,” I said. “If they do, I have my cell.”

Mr. P. gestured with one hand. “Go ahead. I don’t want to hold you up. I’ll be right behind you.”

Mac and I headed down the road at a slow run. I could see what looked like a small crowd of people just ahead where the road rose slightly.

“I swear to God I’m going to put both of them on a leash when I get my hands on them. Or maybe I’ll weld a bell on a chain around their ankles or stick a GPS chip in their arms,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Mac said.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said, brushing my hair back off my face. “I know who the real culprit is.”

We finally spotted Rose on the edge of a small cluster of people. Liz was standing in front of her.

Mac pointed. “Sarah, that’s Davis,” he said about a man at the front of the small crowd watching the reality TV crew.

“That’s definitely the man who was blocking our parking lot,” I said. Davis Abbott didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “I can handle Rose and Liz. Can you . . . ?” I gestured in Abbott’s direction.

“It’s time Davis and I caught up,” Mac said. He veered off to the right and I came up behind Rose from her left.

“What took you so long?” she said without turning around. As a former teacher, she claimed to have eyes in the back of her head and there were times I could almost believe it. “We’ve been watching that young man for at least fifteen minutes.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I whispered.

Rose turned to look at me then. “I most certainly am not,” she snapped. “When I got hit over the head a few weeks ago the doctor did tests. He said I was very sharp. And not just for an old lady.” She pulled herself up to her full barely five feet, a look of righteous indignation on her face.

I closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, counted silently to five and let it out slowly, another technique Jess claimed would help calm and center me.

It didn’t.

I looked at Liz, cool and summery in a yellow flowered blouse while my back was wet with perspiration. I poked her with my elbow and she turned to look at me. “What’s your excuse?” I asked.

“I couldn’t let Rose follow that hooligan all by herself, could I?” she said.

I swiped a hand over my sweaty neck. “You know, it’s deeply disturbing that of the three people in your car this morning Avery was the most mature.” From the corner of my eye I could see Mac, his arm around Davis Abbott’s shoulders, moving the man away from the front of the crowd, toward us.

“Let’s go,” I said to Rose and Liz. We made our way around the clump of people and joined Mac.

Davis Abbott was about average height, dark, curly hair cropped close to his head and even features. A pair of sunglasses hung from the neck of his navy blue T-shirt. His mouth had a dissatisfied sulk. It occurred to me that Jess would have called him handsome in a pretty boy way, which would not have been a compliment. His eyes darted from me to Rose. It seemed pretty clear that he recognized us.

“What do you want?” he said.

Mr. P. had joined us by then. “We want to know what you’re doing here,” he said.

Davis gave an offhand shrug. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business where the hell I am or what I’m doing.”

Rose was beside me, and it seemed as though I could feel the irritation radiating off her body. “Did you kill Erin Fellowes?” she said. “Because that is our business.”

He seemed shocked at her words. He turned his attention to Mac. “Erin Fellowes? Leila’s friend? She’s dead?”

Mac’s arms were folded across his chest. “Did you kill her, Davis? Did you hurt Leila?” There was a hard edge to his voice.

“No. Of course I didn’t. I barely knew Erin, and Leila was the only person in Stevie’s family who was nice to me.”

“You’re supposed to be at a workshop in Nova Scotia.”

“Stevie told you,” Davis said. “Look, I changed my mind. I didn’t want to listen to her ragging on me about the waste of money so I didn’t tell her. I called my buddy Willie and asked him to cover for me, just so I could get a break. I wasn’t screwing around or anything. I just needed a break.”

It didn’t take his nose growing like Pinocchio’s to tell me he was lying. His eyes kept sliding away from Mr. P.’s face and he was talking way too much.

“Where were you when Leila was hurt?” Mac stood with his feet apart and his hands behind his back. There was something a little menacing about the posture.

“We know you went to see her right before it happened,” Mr. P. said. Was that true or was he bluffing? I wasn’t sure.

“I didn’t.”

I hoped he didn’t play poker. Not only was he a liar, he was pretty bad at it.

“We know you were in Boston.”

“You’re wrong. I haven’t done anything.”

“You threatened me,” Rose said.

“You dented the hood of my truck,” Davis countered.

Somehow I doubted Rose’s palm hitting the hood of his truck had caused any damage.

Rose got her phone out. “I guess we’ll just have to let the police decide.”

Davis got a sullen look on his face. “Fine. I went to see Leila. But not at the house. Outside her office.”

Mac’s expression darkened. “Why?” he asked.

“I wanted to talk to her about challenging that damn trust. There had to be a way to get at least some of the money sooner. I got a copy of the agreement. I figured if Leila was on board then Stevie would agree, too.”

“There’s no way Stevie would have agreed to that,” Mac said, shaking his head. “She adored Marguerite.”

“I could have convinced her,” Davis said, his tone that of a petulant child.

“Leila told you no.” The muscles along Mac’s jaw tensed.

Davis nodded.

“Did you try to kill her?” Mac said.

“No,” Davis said. “After I left her, I went to this bar. I got drunk and went home with a woman I met there.” He held up his phone. “She still texts me. I can send you some of her texts and some pictures of the two of us together if you don’t believe me.”

“You do that, young man,” Rose said.

“Why did you come to town the same day Erin Fellowes did?” Mr. P. asked. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. It was warm standing there in the sunshine. “And why are you still here?”

“I didn’t see Erin. I didn’t even know she was here. I swear.” Davis threw a quick glance over his shoulder.

Just like that I got it. “You’ve been watching the film crew,” I said slowly. “You have an idea you want to pitch to them.”

Davis nodded. “Yeah. Stevie and I, the whole back-to-nature thing. We could do a reality show. We’re trying to market our fruit butter. This would be perfect.” He held up his phone. “I even shot some video.”

Behind him Liz rolled her eyes and mouthed the words “pipe dream.”

“That wasn’t the only reason you came here, though, was it?” I said, keeping my tone conversational.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Davis said, but I noticed the way his eyes slid off my face.

“It’s an awfully big coincidence that you decided to pitch an idea to a film crew working in the same small town where Mac lives.”

“Coincidences happen.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

The information about the planned filming of the reality show pilot here in North Harbor had been all over the Internet for months.

I moved a step closer to Davis. He shifted from one foot to the other as though I were making him uncomfortable. “I guess that means it was also just a coincidence”—I put extra emphasis on the word—“that you ended up parking in the lot for the business where Mac works.”

“What are you getting at, Sarah?” Mac asked, his voice tight with suspicion.

“I think Davis was hoping to bump into you. Coincidentally, of course. He needed a backup plan in case his reality show idea didn’t pan out. I’m guessing his and Stevie’s money problems are worse than we suspected.”

Davis’s expression darkened and his mouth had a sour twist. I knew I was right.

“I’m guessing he was going to point out that breaking the trust now was the best thing for Leila. That it’s what Stevie wanted.” Another idea had occurred to me. Rose would say I was going out on a limb, but seeing the kind of person Davis Abbott was, I had a feeling I was right.

“We wondered how Erin knew Mac was here. They hadn’t kept in touch and Stevie hadn’t spoken to her in ages.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Except Erin did call, didn’t she? Only she spoke to you.” It was a guess but the flush that crept up his neck told me it was a good one. “I doubt she told you why she wanted to talk to Mac, but you thought you better get down here and push your own agenda, just in case.”

Davis mumbled something I didn’t catch and made a crude gesture with his left hand.

Mac pushed past me and grabbed Davis by the neck of his shirt. He was breathing hard, the veins standing out in his neck. “You scummy little weasel!” he growled. I thought for a moment that he was going to take a swing at Davis and I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. “Stay away from my wife,” he said in a voice edged with anger. “Stay away from everyone I care about or so help me I will find you and you’ll wish you’d never heard my name!” He let go of Davis’s shirt and walked away.

Mr. P. got the contact information for the woman from the bar and gave Davis his e-mail address for the photos he’d offered and told him to call Stevie.

“I’ll contact the young woman and check that alibi but I think it’s the truth,” Mr. P. said as we walked back to the cars. “I think he lacks the initiative to make up that bar story.”

“I think he lacks initiative, period,” Liz said.

Mac was waiting by the car. “I can’t believe what a lowlife he is.” He pulled a hand back over his head. “The first time Stevie brought Davis to a family event Jackson said he was a freeloader,” he said quietly to me. “I told Jackson that he sounded like a snob.” He shook his head. “I’m thinking maybe I should talk to him, at least listen to what he has to say.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed.

Avery was still leaning against Liz’s car. “Did you find the truck dude?” she asked.

“Yes, we did,” I said.

“So did he do it?” She seemed genuinely curious. She wanted to find Erin Fellowes’s killer and clear Mac’s name as much as any of us did.

“No,” Rose said. “It doesn’t look like he did.”

“Well, that sucks,” Avery said as she stuck her cell phone in her pocket.

I agreed. It did.

We all headed back to the shop, with Liz making a detour to drop off the butter tarts. I sent Avery inside to open the shop. We were only five minutes past opening time. I turned to Rose. “What you did could have been dangerous,” I said sternly.

Rose smiled. “No, it couldn’t,” she said. “I knew Avery would call and I knew you would come. There was never any danger.” She put her arms around me and gave me a hug. “I’m parched. I’m going to put the kettle on.”

I watched her go and when the door to the shop closed behind her I shook my finger at Liz.

“Why are you annoyed at me?” Liz asked. “I was watching over Rose. I should get a reward.”

I ran a hand through my hair and held up some strands. “Not only is my hair falling out, I found a gray hair last week,” I said. I pointed at her. “You and Rose gave it to me.”

Liz gave a snort of disdain. “It’s genetic. Isabel went gray very early. You should call Elspeth and have some highlights put in. They’d cover that gray.”

I let the hairs flutter to the floor. “I’m going to make coffee. Lots of strong coffee,” I said.

“I love you,” Liz teasingly called after me.

I knew what I was supposed to say. I lifted a hand but didn’t turn around. “Yeah, yeah, everybody does,” I said.

Later that morning I was on the way out to the garage just as Mac was on the way in. Mr. P. came to the sunporch door. “Do you both have a moment?” he asked.

“Sure,” Mac said.

We followed Mr. P. back to his computer. “I spoke to the young lady Davis Abbott had his assignation with,” he said. “I can safely say he has an alibi for his time in Boston. She had some rather”—he paused and adjusted his glasses—“revealing photos with time stamps. I don’t think there’s any need to show them to you.”

“I appreciate that,” Mac said dryly.

“I also found photos of Davis out drinking with that reality show TV crew on one of the crew member’s Twitter feed. He didn’t kill Erin Fellowes, either. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Mac said.

The list of Erin’s personal effects was lying on the table. Mac picked it up. “What’s this?”

Mr. P. and I exchanged a look. He spoke before I could. “Those were the things Erin Fellowes had with her,” he said gently.

“That was Leila’s,” Mac said, pointing to something on the list. Mr. P. and I both leaned over to see what he was talking about—the tiny carved bird.

“It belonged to Leila, or at least she owned one. She got it six or seven months before the accident and she kept it in her desk at her office. It was a replica of a nineteenth-century Japanese piece. She was studying Asian art from that time period before she switched her major. She said it was to remind her of the person she wanted to be.” He shook his head. “It’s probably not the same one.”

I looked at Mr. P. wondering if we were thinking the same thing. Could that tiny bird have been Leila’s? Was Charlotte right? Had Erin brought it to show Mac? And if she had, why?