Читать книгу A Catered Valentine's Day - Isis Crawford - Страница 12

Everyone in the room was silent for a moment.

Finally Bernie said, “I don’t know how Clayton expects to keep this quiet.”

Clyde took a sip of his tea and put the cup on the table. “You’d be surprised,” he observed. “He and Miss Lucy are the best of friends. There’ll be an investigation, but it’ll be very discreet. “

Sean smiled. Miss Lucy was Clyde’s nickname for the Longely chief of police.

“Then why does Clayton want us to look into this?” Libby demanded.

Sean shrugged. “That’s easy. Because we can go places and say things that the police can’t.”

Clyde tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “How old…” He stopped and started again. “From what you observed…”

Bernie rescued him. “Do I think Ted Gorman has been dead for a while?”

Clyde nodded in gratitude. “Exactly.”

Bernie thought for a moment. “I’ve never seen someone whose been dead for a while, but Gorman looked okay to me.” She turned to her dad. “I mean I’d notice, right?”

“You certainly would,” Sean told her. He didn’t feel it was necessary to go into all the details of decomposing bodies.

Clyde snagged the last lemon square. “So the question is, where has Ted Gorman been all this time?”

“And who died in the car crash?” Sean added.

Libby leaned forward. “How about Ms. McDougal?”

Sean shook his head. “I looked up the obit on line. She died several weeks before.”

“Then where is she?” Libby demanded.

“I wish I knew,” Sean said.

Libby began fidgeting with the hem of his blouse. “This is going to be a shock for Marnie, Ted’s wife,” she said.

“For sure,” Bernie said.

“Do you know how she’s doing?” Sean asked.

“She’s still running the store,” Libby replied. “They closed Just Chocolate for two days.”

“That’s what you did when Mom died,” Bernie pointed out.

“I was afraid to lose the business. You’re not around and people go elsewhere. Marnie must have felt that too.”

“Retail is tough,” Sean heard himself say.

Libby nodded. “The store opens no matter what.”

This was true, Sean thought. In that way it was harder than being a police officer. “So how much are we being paid for taking on the case?” he asked.

Sean watched Libby’s expression. Her lips were turned down. He felt bad he’d asked.

“I didn’t ask for any money,” she stammered.

“I didn’t either,” Bernie chimed in. “It didn’t seem right.”

“But Clayton has money,” Sean pointed out. “Lots of money.”

Libby reached up and fixed the doodad that was holding her hair in place.

“Not really,” she said. “Marvin says he’s way overextended.”

Bernie chewed on her cheek. “Rapid growth will do that to you. Did you know that funeral homes are one of the most rapidly growing businesses in America right now? They—”

Sean interrupted. “Not now.”

“Don’t bark,” Bernie told him.

Sean took two deep breaths.

“I’m not barking,” he replied when he was done. “I just thought we’d established a policy. I thought we’d agreed that if we took any more cases we would ask for payment.”

“No. We discussed it. We didn’t agree to it.”

“I could swear we did.”

“Well, we didn’t.”

Sean turned to Clyde. “Don’t smirk,” he told him.

Clyde put both his hands up in the air. “I’m not.”

“Yes, you were.”

Clyde didn’t answer. Sean sighed again. In the old days, back when he was working with his men, this wouldn’t have happened. Discussing something meant that it happened the way he wanted it to, but somehow he’d never been able to make that happen with his wife and daughters. He gave up. Like he always did.

“Marnie is not going to be happy when she finds out about this,” Sean observed. “Not happy at all.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Clyde replied.

“Yeah,” Sean said. In his experience people took it badly when they found out that someone who was supposed to be buried wasn’t.

Clyde nodded. “Remember Ned Hawkins?”

Sean laughed. “How could I forget.” He turned and explained to his daughters. “About twenty years ago, a funeral director ended up burying bodies in a dump site instead of in the cemetery and, to make a long story short, this guy Ned Hawkins shot him. Just went into the funeral home and popped him one. Said he deserved it for all the pain and grief he’d given to everyone’s families. The judge let him go. Allowed him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“I don’t think Clayton is worried about getting shot. I think he’s worried about getting sued,” Bernie said.

“Different times, different worries,” Sean observed.

“He could get sued for millions,” Bernie said. “Although I honestly don’t see how this is his fault. I mean he’s supposed to bury bodies. I would think the cemetery would be the place that got sued.”

“He owns part of the cemetery,” Sean informed her.

“You’re kidding,” Libby cried.

“Not at all. Anyway, it doesn’t matter whether this is his fault or not,” Sean told his daughter. “After all, these days people get a million for spilling hot coffee on their laps.”

“Where do you think Ms. McDougal is?” Libby blurted out.

“Heaven only knows,” Sean said. “Maybe whoever did this reburied her somewhere else in the cemetery.”

He doubted it, though. It was more likely that they chopped Ms. McDougal up and threw her in the Hudson River, or used her body in some satanic rite, but he kept quiet in deference to Libby’s sensibilities. He rubbed his forehead. Something told him things were going to get very complicated by the time this was over, very complicated indeed.

“Now, who discovered this?” Sean asked instead. “How did this come to Clayton’s attention?”

“We already told you,” Libby protested.

“Yes, but you were both talking at once when you burst in here. I missed half of what you were saying.”

Bernie stood up and began pacing around the room. “The groundskeeper. He noticed the dirt around the grave site had been disturbed, and when he came over to take a better look he realized that someone had been digging something up…”

“It’s hard digging when the ground is frozen like it is now,” Clyde observed. “Although the winter has been pretty mild.”

“Hmm.” Bernie moved her ring up and down her finger. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“That’s because you’ve never had to dig holes,” Sean told her. “Anyway, go on with your story.”

“The groundskeeper called Marvin’s father, who came out immediately.”

“Did the groundskeeper see anyone?”

Bernie shook her head. “If he did, Clayton didn’t say anything about it to me.”

“What’s the groundskeeper’s name?”

Bernie and Libby looked at each other. Sean waved his hand in the air. “Not a big deal. We can get it later. Someone will have to talk to him. Go on.”

Libby continued. “Clayton said that when he got there he could see that the ground had been dug up and replaced, so he got the groundskeeper to clear the hole. He went in to take a closer look, and that’s when he realized the coffin lid had been unscrewed.”

Sean studied a lady getting out of her car down the street. She was dressed in a fur cap, fur coat, and suede boots, clothing that might be appropriate for the arctic, but this was Westchester and it was thirty degrees out. Oh well. There was no accounting for people’s taste. Or their personal thermostats. He, for example, was like a furnace. Or anyway, that’s what Rose used to tell him. Funny, but Inez had said the same thing to him the other day.

He directed his gaze back to his daughters. “To recapitulate what Clyde said, it seems to me like we have three, maybe four problems here. One being, what happened to Ms. McDougal? Two, who did Marnie identify as her husband. Three, how and when did Ted Gorman die. Finally, what the hell is going on here?”

He could see Bernie looking at him. “You have an idea, don’t you?”

Sean reached for his teacup but decided against it. The tea made his mouth pucker. What he really wanted was some of Bernie’s Scotch, but Libby would just yell at him if he asked.

“Let’s just say I have a theory,” he replied.

He was just about to lay it out for them when Amber burst into the room.

“The building inspector and some construction guy are both in the kitchen and they want to speak to someone,” she cried.

“Building inspector?” Libby repeated.

“That’s what he said. Said he was from the town.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“I just told you.” Amber smoothed back her ponytail. “They’re in the kitchen and they want to speak to someone. Now.”

Bernie groaned. She closed her eyes for a second, and opened them again.

“I probably should have told you this before—” she began, but Libby cut her off.

“No kidding. This is about that friggin’ oven, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But I’ve been hoping…”

“Hoping what?” Libby asked.

Bernie took hold of Libby’s arm and started steering her toward the stairs. “I’ll tell you on the way down.”

Sean caught a glance from Clyde.

“Why don’t your dad and I continue talking?” Clyde said.

Bernie threw him an absentminded kiss. “That’ll be great.”

Sean watched as Amber, Libby, and Bernie headed out his bedroom door.

“Not good,” Clyde commented.

“Not good at all,” Sean agreed.

He didn’t know what Bernie was going to tell Libby, but he did know that it wasn’t going to be good. Anything having to do with building inspectors and kitchens never was. They rarely came around to tell you what a good job you were doing. They only came around to tell you how bad you were screwing up.