Sketcher in the Rye: Page 6

  “I guess she thinks he’s a good catch.”

  Zeke vanished from the kitchen and immediately popped up a foot in front of her. “You mean like a fish?”

  “No, but I suppose that’s where the phrase may have come from. These days, it usually means someone who’s got money, looks, personality, the whole package.”

  “This Aaron has the whole package?”

  “According to Helene. I myself have no idea if he does and no plans to find out.” That should certainly satisfy the marshal. Especially since it was none of his business to begin with. There went her patience slipping a notch. Instead of waiting for his reaction, she continued on her way to the stairs. When she walked into the study, he was already ensconced in the armchair.

  “How would you describe me?” he asked her.

  This conversation was getting stranger by the minute. “Let’s see,” she said, taking a seat behind the desk. “Tall, slim, strong face with good bone structure and a scruffy moustache. Oh—and dead, of course.”

  “My moustache is scruffy?”

  “Is that really the thing you’re going to focus on?” she said in exasperation.

  “How about my ‘abs’ then?”

  “Your—wait a minute,” she interrupted herself. “You were eavesdropping.”

  “Based on what?” He sounded all huffy and defensive.

  “You don’t even know what ‘abs’ are. If you did, you’d know I’ve never seen yours.”

  For a moment, the marshal’s expression reminded her of Hobo’s the time she caught him eating a box of doughnuts he’d grabbed off the table. “I was curious,” he grumbled, as if that was somehow her fault. “Besides, I can’t protect you if you keep me in the dark.”

  No way was she going to let him turn things upside down to make her seem guilty. “Are you saying I’d be in danger because I didn’t tell you about something that was never going to happen?” She heard the anger building in her voice, but she couldn’t reach the brake. “And by the way, Marshal, you’re not the only one entitled to secrets. You’ve got a lousy double standard when it comes to that.” She’d had no idea she was going to say those words until they erupted from her mouth. Apparently Eloise’s remark had made a bigger impression on her than she’d originally thought.

  “Any secrets I’m hangin’ on to can’t do you any harm,” he said tightly. “Whereas secrets you keep from me stand a good chance of endangerin’ your life.”

  So Eloise was right; he did have other secrets. Rory tucked that confession away for future scrutiny and tried to formulate a response that would put him in his place. Nothing came to her. The worst part was that she was going to wake up at two a.m. knowing exactly what she should have said. “I have a right to expect privacy,” she said, relying on her default position. “Do we really need to debate the subject again?”

  “No, ma’am,” Zeke said. “I’ll do my best to keep you alive with the limited resources at my disposal.” He gave her a little bow from the waist that oozed with sarcasm.

  Rather than repeat for the millionth time that she didn’t need protecting, Rory curtsied back in kind. There was a time when Zeke’s disregard for her rules would have made her consider moving out of the house and severing her connection with him permanently, but that time had passed. She knew it, and by now he knew it too. It would take something far more serious to drive her away.

  As if to signal the end of their debate, Hobo started barking ferociously from the vicinity of the front door. Rory knew the dog’s full repertoire and this bark was especially nasty.

  Chapter 6

  Zeke was waiting by the front door when Rory and Hobo returned from their perimeter check of the house and grounds. “All he wanted to do was chase squirrels,” she said, stopping to set the day’s mail on the half-moon table she’d bought for that purpose. Her cheeks were a wind-whipped pink from the late day cold front plowing through the area. “I checked all the first-floor windows, and there were no signs of anyone trying to break in.” She unhooked the dog’s leash and put it on the table. Freed, Hobo headed off to the kitchen, where they could hear him noisily lapping water from his dish. “No footprints in the flower beds either,” Rory said, shedding her jacket and throwing it over the newel post.

  “Ground’s cold and dry, not the best conditions for catchin’ them,” Zeke said, combing his hair back between his fingers. “I’ve been rackin’ my brain to figure out who or what could have sent Hobo into such an all-fired rage.”

  Rory had been wondering the same thing without any better success. But since the bills still needed paying, she retrieved the mail, sidled past the marshal and started back up the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” he asked as if he’d expected her to stay right there until they’d figured out a reasonable explanation.

  “To empty out my checking account,” she said, shuffling through the letters in her hand as she went. She didn’t have time to waste on idle conjecture, a hard concept for the marshal to grasp, since he’d had nowhere to be and no deadline hanging over him for well more than a hundred years.

  “In my day,” Zeke said, “if I bought something, I paid hard cash for it on the spot. If I didn’t have the money, I did without. It was a whole lot simpler that way.”

  Rory wasn’t listening to him. She’d stopped abruptly on a riser midway up. One of the envelopes had no postage or return address. She turned and plunked herself down on the step as she tore it open. Inside there was a folded sheet of paper with a single line that could have shot out of any printer: “Leave police work to the police.”

  Zeke vanished and was instantly seated on the step above her. “What have you got there?” Rory held the paper up for him to see. “Since when do cops send threatenin’ notes?” he asked.

  “Technically it’s not threatening. There’s no ultimatum, and there’s no mention of retribution if I don’t comply. And why are you assuming a cop left it?”

  “Why would anyone else write a demand like that?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured.

  “Any chance this is Leah’s attempt to keep you out of harm’s way?”

  “No way. The note isn’t just telling me to stay out of the murder investigation. It’s telling me to steer clear of all criminal investigations. There’s no way Leah would ever ask that of me. Besides, if Hobo had seen Leah out there, he wouldn’t have been barking like that. He adores her.”

  “Whoa there, darlin’. Don’t go makin’ the mistake that the person who left this note is willin’ to stop at advice.”

  Rory knew he had a point, but she wasn’t going to close up shop and sit in the house trembling with fear about what might come next. If nearly losing Hobo during the dognapping case hadn’t made her change careers, the note didn’t stand a chance. She stood, and without waiting for the marshal to move aside, she continued on her way up the stairs. Her leg missed clipping his elbow by no more than an inch. She was feeling bulletproof.

  “You do know advice isn’t the same thing as a dare, right?” the marshal muttered, following her up the stairs like any ordinary person. Rory chose not to reply. She went into the study and sat down at the computer. The marshal planted himself sidesaddle on the front edge of the desk so he could still see her. “With the limited information we’ve got, it’s my hunch your friend Cirello wrote the note,” he said, not waiting for an answer. “We already know Gil filed a police report about the damage to his climate gizmo; it’s possible Cirello caught the case.”

  “I know he’s the obvious one,” Rory said, “but it’s hard for me to imagine him sneaking around to stick a note in my mailbox. He’s too much of an in-your-face kind of guy. If he wanted to say that to me, he would do it in person in that snide tone of his that makes me want to rearrange his features.”

  “Not very ladylike,” Zeke observed dryly. In spite of the disapproving tone, his moustache was twitc
hing with a barely suppressed grin. “You sound like a gangster on a TV show.”

  Rory brought up her online checking account. “I’m not the least bit interested in sounding ladylike.”

  “My apologies—I keep forgettin’ that callin’ a female a ‘lady’ these days is considered an insult.”

  Rory filled in the amount she owed the electric company.

  “If not Cirello, then who?” he asked.

  “The saboteur,” she said, doing the same with her phone and credit-card bills.

  “Why would he care? He’d still have the police after him.”

  She hit “submit” and logged out of the account. “Because we’ve had a better success rate,” she said, looking up at him with a smirk. “Maybe he, or she, thinks they stand a better chance of getting away with the crime if we’re not involved.”

  Zeke clucked his tongue at her. “You’d best watch out there, darlin’; my mama was always remindin’ me that pride goeth before the fall.”

  Rory looked up at him with a mixture of amazement and interest. The marshal had never once mentioned his parents—or any other family members, for that matter. “Your mother was a Bible thumper?”

  “Not really, but she did have her favorite passages, and she never tired of tryin’ to drum them into my rebellious little head.”

  Rory was having a hard time imagining Zeke as a boy. All sorts of questions were bubbling up inside her, but she tamped them down. Talking about his childhood was bound to be a lengthy conversation, one best left for a time when there was less on their schedule.

  ***

  “It was downright neighborly of James to call,” Zeke said from the passenger seat.

  “Neighborly?” Rory repeated with surprise. “I think he’s working on some angle, and I’ve been trying to figure out what that is.” They were on their way to interview James Harper. At thirty-four, he was the oldest of Gil and Ellen Harper’s children. According to Gil’s information sheets, James lived with his own young family minutes away in Halesite, the area of Huntington where Nathan Hale had been hanged by the British during the Revolutionary War. As soon as Zeke heard they’d be conducting an interview there, he’d been as jubilant as a schoolboy on the first day of summer vacation. He’d recently taken to researching American history, the perfect hobby for the marshal, who’d played his own small part in the country’s past.

  “Everyone has an angle, darlin’,” he said, “even you.”

  “But most of us wait for trouble to come knocking. We don’t put out the welcome mat and invite it in for tea.”

  “Okay, here are your two possibilities. Either James is innocent and wants to put the speculation behind him, or he’s guilty and thinks he can push us in another direction by bein’ one of the first to talk to us.”

  “Thanks, that’s very helpful,” she said dryly.

  “I was merely tryin’ to point out that we’re not goin’ to know the answer until we speak to the man. And maybe not even then.”

  Rory slowed and pulled onto the shoulder of the road beside a pole with a small bronze plaque at the top.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Zeke asked, turning so far to the right, then the left, that the motion more closely resembled an owl than a person.

  “Human beings can’t swivel their necks like that,” she reminded him, “unless they happen to be possessed by the devil.” At her suggestion, the marshal had been using television to reeducate himself in the movements of the living. It had worked well enough until he tried out some moves he’d seen on the Syfy and FX channels and wound up traumatizing an elderly couple in the supermarket. After that she’d banned him from watching any show that featured nonhuman life-forms or strange, paranormal beings.

  “Right, like in The Exorcist,” he mumbled, still trying to figure out why they were parked on a street of small businesses.

  “We’re stopping here because you demanded to see the place where Nathan Hale was hanged,” she told him.

  “How far away is it?”

  “About two feet to the right.”

  Looking even more perplexed, Zeke opened the car door and got out. He was paying so much attention to moving correctly that he almost smacked his head on the bronze marker. Rory winced in anticipation of disaster. An impact with a solid object would scatter his image, and there were too many people around to witness it. Thankfully “almost” didn’t count. The marshal spent a minute reading the sign, then folded himself back into the car with a look of disgust and disappointment.

  “That’s it?” he grumbled. “The man was a patriot, a hero, and that tiny sign’s the only tribute to him?”

  “I’m sure there are other places where he’s more properly honored,” Rory said off the top of her head. “This sign just marks the place where he died.” The marshal would probably research the topic until he was satisfied, but for now she needed to focus him on their case. He sat sullen and brooding as she pulled back onto the road, no doubt thinking about the significance of his own time on Earth if someone of Nathan Hale’s stature merited such meager recognition . She didn’t try to draw him out about his feelings or try to paint things in a better light. The best medicine for his current distress was immersion in work.

  Five minutes later, they reached the home of James Harper and family. It was an impressive new Victorian, one of the many that had been springing up all over the Island for the past twenty years. It had all the typical hallmarks of that style, including a wraparound porch, peaked eaves and a turret or two. But as beautiful as it was, in Rory’s eyes it lacked the character and warmth of the original, nineteenth-century house her uncle Mac had so lovingly restored and left to her.

  “Big son of a gun.” Zeke’s voice came from out of the ether. He’d disappeared before Rory turned onto the block so that none of the Harpers or their neighbors had a chance to see him or his vanishing act. Over time, he and Rory had decided it was the most efficient way to conduct interviews. By remaining invisible, he didn’t expend as much of his energy; plus, it eliminated the chance of anything going awry with his appearance. When his energy level dipped, he would start to lose cohesiveness. No matter how creative Rory was, it was next to impossible to explain why the marshal was suddenly missing body parts.

  James Harper answered the door looking relaxed and stylish in chinos and a blue open-weave sweater. He greeted Rory with an easy smile and a dry handshake. If he had something to be worried about, it wasn’t apparent to her. He ushered her inside and led the way to a large den that flowed from the gourmet kitchen. Forsaking the traditional layout of a Victorian, the architect had embraced the open concept with twenty-foot ceilings and as few walls as he could manage without the whole structure collapsing. Except for the sound of their footsteps on the hardwood floors, the house was quiet. The children might still be at school, but where was the young Mrs. Harper? Rory knew from the info sheets that she was a full-time mom. Perhaps James had made sure she’d be otherwise occupied. Another good reason for him to be proactive about scheduling the date and time of the interview.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked after inviting her to have a seat.

  “No, no thanks,” she said, choosing one of the upholstered armchairs. The seating in the room formed a semicircle around the stone fireplace, where a fire crackled pleasantly.

  James settled himself on the couch directly across from her and lounged back against the cushions. “I’m not exactly sure how this works,” he said. “Until Matthew died, I’d never been interviewed by the police or investigated by anyone. It’s all very unnerving.”

  Then why aren’t you unnerved? Rory wondered. James appeared to be caught in a paradox of his own making. Why say that you’re agitated when you’re doing such a dandy job of acting calm, cool and collected? Would the real James Harper please stand up?

  “I understand,” she replied, her sympathy no more real than his a
lleged jitters, “but I’m sure you’ll do just fine.” She rummaged in her purse for a minute and came up with a mini legal pad and a pen. “I have to say I was a little surprised when you called. Most people aren’t so eager to be interviewed by an investigator.” She gave him the benign, unreadable smile she’d perfected in the bathroom mirror back when she was a newly minted detective. “You may be the first person ever to contact me before I had a chance to call them.”

  James shrugged. “I’m not a procrastinator. If something needs doing, I prefer to get it done.”

  Rory ratcheted up her smile by a notch. “Too bad everyone doesn’t share your philosophy; it would make my life a lot easier. Will your wife be joining us?”

  “No, she’s busy as usual ferrying the kids around. With three of them, I don’t know how she keeps track of who has to go where. I’d probably end up taking one of the boys to my daughter’s ballet class, tutu and all,” he said with a chuckle.

  Rory shook her head as if she shared his amazement about his wife’s organizational skills. “So,” she said, uncapping her pen, “I assume you know why I want to speak to you.”

  “My father just told us all to cooperate with you.”

  “That’s all he said?”

  “Well, no, there was something else, something weird about ferreting out a spy. I should tell you that my father gets these episodes of paranoia from time to time where he’s sure someone’s stealing from him or the company.” He paused for a sigh of forbearance. All that was missing was some eye rolling. “What I mean to say is that we’ve been through this kind of thing before.”

  Nice way to throw the onus back on your father, Rory thought. But was it fact or fiction James was trying to feed her? Unless she saw evidence that Gil was in need of psychiatric help, he was the one who’d hired her, and he was the one who had her loyalty. “My understanding is that the climate control system in the greenhouse was damaged, which would mean he’s right this time.”