Читать книгу Murder, Take Two - Carol J. Perry - Страница 12

Chapter 4

Pete was up in the morning, dressed, shaved, and ready for the day before I woke up—as usual. My alarm clock jingled at seven, and I awoke to the smell of coffee brewing and country music playing on the radio. He poked his head into the bedroom. “Want to go out to breakfast? I can’t find much of anything in the refrigerator.” That was usual too.

“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll be ready in a jiff.” I padded out to the kitchen, reached up for a good morning peck on the cheek, picked up my waiting cup of coffee, and looked around for the cat. “Did O’Ryan go downstairs already?”

“Yep. Sniffed at his empty red bowl and headed for greener pastures at your aunt’s place.”

“That’s what I usually do too,” I admitted. “But a restaurant breakfast with you sounds even better.” I showered, dressed, did minimal makeup in a hurry, and by eight o’clock Pete pulled the Crown Vic into the parking lot behind our favorite breakfast place. It doesn’t have a name. It’s in an ordinary-looking two-story house on a side street with no sign except a vertical neon OPEN sign in the window. We’re regulars, like most of the customers, so the waitress, calling us by our first names, led us to our favorite booth at the back of the long room.

By the time our breakfasts—ham and eggs for Pete, veggie omelet for me—arrived, I’d already restarted the conversation about murder. “Do you think Roger and Ray will actually be able to help their nephew?” I asked. “I hope the guy is as innocent as they believe he is.”

“Not going to give up, are you, Nancy?” Pete said, shaking his head with a grin. “Okay. Yes, they probably can. They’re good cops. Both of them. They have the old-school methods down pat. They’ll chase tips down every alley. They’ll dig up every scrap of evidence. They’ll ask questions lawyers never thought of. Yes. Cody McGinnis is lucky to have them on his side. Now can I enjoy my breakfast without feeling like I’m a character in ‘Nancy Drew and the Case of the Murdered Professor’?”

I gave up. For the moment. “How ’bout them Rays?” I said.

Pete dropped me off in the driveway behind the house on Winter Street. We managed as good a kiss as is possible while leaning across the radio- and radar-crowded console between us and agreed to call each other. O’Ryan waited for me on the back steps and followed me into the hall. I knocked on Aunt Ibby’s kitchen door. “Come on in,” she called. “It’s open.”

“I have a few minutes before I have to leave for work.” I said. “But I want to catch you up on what I’ve learned so far—even though it’s not very much.”

She looked up from her morning paper. “All ears.”

“Pete says that whatever the disagreement was between Cody McGinnis and Professor Bond, Cody is still angry about it.”

“Does Pete know what it is?”

“Cody told the police about it first thing,” I said, “and no, he didn’t tell me.”

“Too bad. But the twins will have that information anyway.”

“Uh-huh. Another thing. Pete says that Cody’s students at the Tabby have raised quite a lot of money for his defense.”

“No kidding. He must be a good teacher.”

“I checked the course curriculum, which looked wonderful to me. Complete with field trips.” I’m a great believer in field trips and sometimes took my own Tabby classes on several memorable ones—not always in a good way. “He even took them to the scene of the original crime.”

“Captain White’s bedroom?”

“Yes.” I sighed. “If the Bond murder closely duplicated the White murder, well, there was hardly anybody else in Salem so familiar with the details.”

“Except maybe anybody who’d paid close attention to McGinnis’s class,” she reasoned, “or read one of the dozen or so books that have been written about it.”

“Doesn’t make sense that he’d commit a crime that pointed so directly to himself, does it?”

“It doesn’t to me,” she said. “But then, that’s probably what Dick Crowninshield thought too.”

“Crowninshield had accomplices. The papers—especially the tabloids—have been speculating that there may have been others involved this time too.”

“I’ve read that,” she said. “One with a club or a lead pipe of some kind and the other with a knife.”

I checked my watch. “Have to go,” I said. “I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of information for the twins.”

“We haven’t heard from Louisa and Betsy yet, remember. And Rupert knew both Bond and McGinnis.” She wore a look of confidence as she picked up her newspaper. “You’ll see. Leave it to us. We’ll figure it all out.”

I patted the cat, wished my aunt a good day, then backed my blue Corvette out of the garage and headed for Derby Street. I decided to take my aunt’s advice and leave murder solving to the girlfriends and Mr. P.—at least for now.

WICH-TV is housed in one of the lovely old brick Federal buildings that fortunately escaped the urban renewal madness that gripped Salem, along with too many other New England towns, back in the 1950s. I’ve been with the station long enough to rate my own parking space in the harborside parking lot, and when the weather is nice, I always enjoy taking a deep breath of good salt air before I go inside. It was a beautiful morning, my tummy was full of good breakfast, and I looked forward to an interesting day at work. I was scheduled to cover the opening of a new toy store first, then a tour of a historic candy store after lunch. Toys and candy. What could be more fun? I love my job. Naturally, those cushy assignments would be cancelled if there was breaking news somewhere else in town.

I crossed the black and white tiled floor of the lobby and pressed the UP button beside the polished brass doors of the elevator. We call it “Old Clunky” with good reason, and I thumped and bumped my way up to the second floor. I pushed open the glass door marked “WICH-TV” and greeted Rhonda, the receptionist. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, isn’t it? Am I still on for Toy Trawler?”

Rhonda is surely not your everyday average receptionist. We don’t know exactly how many degrees she has, but she is one smart woman, and Bruce Doan has always left most of the scheduling up to her. She keeps track of all of the on-air reporters on a white board next to her desk. She pointed to the board where “Barrett: Toy Store: 10:00 a.m. America’s Oldest Candy Company: 1:00 p.m.” was written in purple dry marker. “Francine’s driving and filming. I’ve got some prep material for both places printed out for you. I understand the owner of the toy store does a good interview.” She handed me a folder.

“Thanks, Rhonda.” I rifled through the pages. “I wonder why it’s called Toy Trawler.”

“That’s easy,” she said. “Remember that old restaurant on Route One that was shaped like a ship? It’s in there.”

“I don’t think that was a trawler.”

“It is now. They took the masts off and cut it in half. The owner is a retired Gloucester fisherman.”

“Ship ahoy,” I saluted her and tucked the folder into my hobo bag. “I’ll go down to the dressing room and slap on some makeup, then find Francine and get going.”

Francine is my favorite mobile photographer. We work together well, and we’ve produced some darned good TV. We’ve also been through a few pretty hairy shoots together too. I took the stairs down to the first floor, where the dressing room has a good mirror and decent lighting. Rhonda’s a Mary Kay rep, so there’s always a box of samples down there to work with. I cut through the long, dark room with its black painted walls and an assortment of show sets—Sports Roundup, The Saturday Business Hour, Cooking with Wanda the Weather Girl, Shopping Salem, Tarot Time with River North. That last one was the same set where I’d done my short-lived call-in psychic show—Nightshades. My best friend, River North, has had much more success in that space than I ever did.

I ducked into the dressing room and added a little more eye shadow and redder lipstick, then smoothed out and sprayed my too-curly red hair. I texted Francine. “Where are you?”

“Outside. Motor’s running.”

“On my way.”

Francine had the WICH-TV mobile unit facing Derby Street, ready to roll. I climbed into the passenger seat. “Ever been to the Toy Trawler before?” I asked. “I haven’t, but I’m dying to see what the fisherman/toy guy has done to the place.”

“Captain Billy,” she said, pulling onto the street. “Wait ’til you see it. I took my sister’s girls there. I think adults like it even more than the kids do. He has a room full of the old collectible toys as well as the latest ones.”

“Sounds like fun. Then after that we go to a candy store. Gonna be a good day,” I promised, opening the facts folder Rhonda had prepared, trying once again to push all thoughts of murders, past and present, out of my mind.