Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“Excellent idea,” he said, stretching and yawning. “The husband. The wife.”

I pulled out my phone and started typing into the Notes app. “Dominic Price. Fawn Stuhler.”

In short order, we had what we figured was a full list. In addition to Dominic and Fawn, we had Barry Vannett, Lowell Kokotovich, Violet Mullaly, Courtney Drew, Mason Hiller, and John and Nandi Jaquay.

“That’s eight,” I said. “Nine if you count the Jaquays separately.”

Rafe leaned over and looked at my phone. “Let’s rank them.”

“Do what?”

“A one-to-ten scale. One for not very likely to be the killer, ten for very likely.”

“What if we don’t agree?”

“We’ll add the points and do an average.”

It sounded reasonable, and we started with the spouses. We both gave them sixes and I tapped the numbers into my phone. “Next is Barry Vannett. His motive is murky, but I think he should be a six, too. He disappeared right before the fireworks on a beer run when they already had plenty of beer. So he had time to kill Rex.” I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned this to Rafe earlier, but better late than never.

“Hang on,” Rafe said, frowning. “You want to give the guy a six because he wanted more beer?”

“There was plenty in the cooler.”

My beloved shook his head and pulled out his phone.

“Who are you texting?” I asked.

“Jon, my buddy who runs the party store down by the Vannett cottage. He was working the night of the Fourth, and he’s one of those guys who knows the names of all his regular customers.” He pushed the Send button. “Just asked him if Barry was there that night, and if he knew the time.”

“You really expect him to remember?”

Rafe shrugged. “Jon has a great memory. Birthdays are his favorite.”

Before I could point out that recalling when a particular customer came into your party store on the busiest night of the summer was nothing like remembering a birthday, Rafe’s phone dinged with an incoming text.

He read it out loud. Vannett here that night to get six of Short’s Bellaire Brown for BIL. Had to get it from the back, so I remember.

I puzzled out the acronym as brother-in-law. “Okay, then I guess Barry’s down to pretty much a zero. Lowell’s next.”

“Not enough information,” Rafe said.

It was the same with Violet, Courtney, Mason, and the Jaquays. We simply didn’t know enough. I slumped down. “The only person we’ve eliminated is Barry Vannett.”

Rafe studied my phone. “Any progress is still progress. And maybe we’ll learn more tonight.” He nodded at the apartment, which was absent of human activity.

I sighed. “Are you sure this is where Courtney lives?”

“According to her old neighbor’s sister, who is dating my cousin Jim, yeah. Though who knows if the information is good. I usually figure Jim’s girlfriends have to be a little off to date him in the first place.”

“Kristen and I said that for years about your girlfriends.” I wriggled around to get more comfortable. No exterior or interior of any pickup truck had been designed for a person of my size, not ever.

“And you were right.” He yawned again.

“So what does that say about me?”

“That you have excellent—” He stopped. “Is that her?”

Through the windshield, I watched as a young woman climbed out of a pickup that had just pulled into the apartment’s parking lot. “Can’t tell,” I said, squinting and leaning forward, because surely that extra fourteen inches would make the difference. “If she’d turn . . . ah.” I sat back. “It’s Courtney.” Even from this distance I could see the tight ponytail and square forehead. Plus she was dressed in scrubs, which had been a clue right off the bat, but I hadn’t wanted to rely on that alone.

“Is that the other vehicle you saw?” Rafe gestured at the silver-colored truck.

“Could be,” I said. “But you know me and vehicles. All I remember is . . . hang on, isn’t that what’s-his-name? From the hardware store?”

“Luke,” Rafe said. “Luke Cagan. It certainly is.”

We watched as Luke shut the driver’s door of the truck and came around to the front, where Courtney was waiting. Hand in hand, they walked to the apartment’s front door and went inside.

Rafe looked at me and I looked at him.

“Huh,” he said.

I nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

“What else are you thinking? Because I know the wheels up here are churning.” He tapped my forehead.

“I’m thinking that the vehicle I’d seen on the second of July could indeed have been Luke’s. But why would Courtney and Luke have been out there, pretty much in the middle of absolute nowhere?”

We turned to study Luke’s truck.

“No idea,” Rafe said. “How about you?”

I sighed. “None.”

“That means our next step is obvious.”

It certainly was.

* * *

At the library the next morning, I wandered into the break room right about the time everyone else was wandering into the building.

“How long have you been here?” Kelsey asked, deftly scooting in front of me and putting her hand on the coffeepot before my preoccupied brain could order myself to get ahead of her. “Because you have that look,” she said over her shoulder. “The one that means you got here hours ago, long before most people hit their alarms for the first time.”

She was right, but hearing her say it out loud like that made me sound like a ladder-climbing overachiever, which didn’t feel like a good match with my chosen lifestyle here in the laid-back Up North.

“I had stuff to do,” I murmured, watching her fill the coffeepot’s bin to the overflowing point. Kelsey had an amazing ability to maximize the bin’s contents without making a huge freaking wet coffee-grounds mess all over the counter.

Josh and Holly came in together, bickering about the best way to grill steaks. At this point the argument had a good-natured flavor, but that could vanish in a flash, so I skedaddled back up to my office to continue what I’d been doing for the last three hours: using the library’s way-faster-than-the-marina’s Internet access to learn what I could about the properties on that dead-end road in the middle of nowhere.

The obvious step that Rafe had referred to last night was to drive out to the road—which I’d now learned was technically named 158th Street, in spite of the fact that everybody called it the road to Brown’s—and poke around to see what we could learn.

However, Rafe had already committed to helping a friend for a couple of days. This help was to reshingle the friend’s hunting cabin in the Upper Peninsula. The timing was good, because Rafe had just finished the last big drywalling project, and the drywall mud would take time to completely cure.

All of this meant Rafe would be out of town and unavailable for investigative efforts, and he’d made me promise not to go out there on my own. At the time of the promise, I had not had any problem making it, but I’d woken in the middle of the night and heard rustlings from the front of the houseboat.

“Kate?” I’d called. The rustlings continued. I’d eased out from underneath Eddie and padded forward. Kate was tossing and turning in her sleep, her hands over her face, murmuring, “No, no, no.”

I stretched out a hand, but pulled back, not wanting to scare her. “I wish I could help you,” I whispered. “I know this summer isn’t what you thought it would be. You have no idea how sorry I am about that. But I love you. So very, very much.”

Kate’s tossing and turning went on. I continued to murmur words of love and comfort, and at some point she fell into a deeper, more peaceful sleep.