Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

Will rolled his eyes. “People watch a couple of CSI shows, and then they expect miracles.”

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Sunny said. “If your jogger is the first time somebody spotted the Towles, either of them could have gotten up earlier.”

Will doggedly continued down the list. “Veronica Yarborough sleeps late on Saturdays.”

“And probably every other day, too,” Sunny muttered.

“On weekdays, though, she has staff coming in,” Will went on, ignoring her comment. “Not so much on the weekends, unless she’s having a party. The Saturday in question was not a party weekend. That means the first corroboration on her movements was a luncheon date well after the presumed time of death.”

“That leaves her in the picture, too,” Sunny argued.

“Although I expect she’d prefer having one of the servants throw Ada down the stairs,” Will said with a wry smile. “After all, that’s the sort of job that could soil her lily-white hands.”

“So what about Gordie?” Sunny pressed on.

“We can’t trace his movements from the night before until almost eleven in the morning, when one of our officers apparently woke him up to give him the news about what happened to his mom,” Will reported. “The last time he was seen before that—by anyone who’ll admit to it, at least—was one a.m., the last call for drinks at O’Dowd’s.”

“Is that place still around?” Sunny asked in shock. “When I was home from college, my friends and I used to sneak over there because they’d serve us even though we were underage.” She shook her head. “It was pretty down and dirty.”

“Well, it’s only gone further down and gotten dirtier,” Will told her. “And I don’t say that just because Gordie Spruance hangs out there. It’s, like, lowlife central for Kittery Harbor.”

He ticked off the points on his fingers. “So, we’ve got a strong motive, we’ve got at least possible opportunity, and as for means …”

Sunny remembered Gordie heaving around that big bag of cat food. “Yeah,” she reluctantly agreed, “he’s strong enough to have done it.”

“What hit me last night, the clincher as far as I’m concerned, is what’s happened to you in the last few days.” He frowned, trying to organize his case. “That bullet in your car, the hose outside your house—”

“I can’t imagine Gordie coming up with those slick criminal plans,” Sunny told him.

“But could you see him as the guy who screwed both of them up?” Will asked.

That stopped her for a second, but she shook her head, remembering the lost, scared look in Gordie’s eyes when he talked about his mother. “I just don’t buy it. He was really upset about Ada’s death.”

“Sure, he was upset,” Will argued. “It’s called regret. Remember, Sunny, he’s a tweaker. No impulse control. He could freak out and kill someone, then still feel really bad about it afterward. As for those half-assed booby traps and stuff—hell, they just stink of tweaker.”

“So that’s your case? Stinks, and what-ifs, and conjectures?” Sunny said. “If you had anything solid, you wouldn’t be here talking to me.”

Will grimaced. “True. If I had even a scrap of real evidence, I’d risk going over Nesbit’s head straight to the district attorney. We did everything but put both cars under a microscope, hoping to find Gordie’s fingerprints, but all we got were smudges. He may be a tweaker, but he was smart enough to wear gloves.”

“So what are you going to do?” Sunny asked.

“Well, you said it—he’s upset. After stewing about it for a few days, he might be ready to talk.”

“You’re going to question him?” Sunny stared in disbelief. “How are you going to do that? On what pretext? You can’t just haul him down to the station. What are you going to charge him with—drugs?”

Will shook his head. “I don’t think Nesbit would go for it—even if it were a simple drug bust. We’ve got to go at this a different way.”

“We?” Sunny said.

“I’m a cop. He’s just going to shut up the minute he sees me,” Will told her. “But you—you grew up with Gordie. I could see it when you guys were talking. He responded to you.”

“So you think he’d confess a murder to me?”

“I think he might mention something to you that we could use,” Will said. “Gordie is in O’Dowd’s most nights. If you happened to come in for a drink, it would be the most natural thing in the world for you to have a little chat with him.”

He saw the look on her face. “Hey, I’d be right outside the window for backup. If I see anything weird, I’ll be right in there.” Will shrugged, spreading his arms. “Just talk to the guy, that’s all. I get an hour for meal break. So if you came in there, say ten thirty, eleven o’clock …”

*

How did I let him talk me into this? Sunny wondered as she pulled her dad’s pickup into a space in front of O’Dowd’s. It was a long, low wooden building in need of a coat of paint. The place didn’t even have a proper sign, just a neon beer advertisement in one of the small windows.

Sunny opened the door and slid down to the pavement. She shook her head in amusement when she recognized the tan truck parked next to hers. Gordie Spruance’s.

Well, at least I know he’s in there.

She looked around until she spotted Will’s patrol car parked across the street.

Okay. No more putting it off.

Finding her hands suddenly damp, she wiped them on the sides of her jeans. From what she remembered of the decor in O’Dowd’s, she’d chosen essentially the same outfit she’d worn to clean Ada’s house, with the addition of an old leather jacket.

Her dad thought she was going out searching for Shadow again.

Maybe I’d be smarter if I were doing that, Sunny thought ruefully. Instead, she straightened her back and headed for the gin mill’s door.

The unpainted wooden panel had swollen over the years, sticking in its frame. Sunny had to pull hard to open it.

She stepped into a cloud of cigarette smoke. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. A place that serves underage drinkers wouldn’t care much about a nonsmoking law. Or maybe the regulars consider this their private club.

In a way, the smoke served a useful purpose. It cut the stink of stale beer and less pleasant substances that had soaked into the raw wood walls and floors over the years.

The jukebox was playing loud country music with an amped-up bass thumping away, battling with the high-decibel babble of voices all trying to make themselves heard over the din.

A loud—and familiar—laugh cut across the noise. Sunny was shocked to discover that she recognized the woman behind the bar. Back when she last went to O’Dowd’s, her male college friends all hoped that Jasmine the barmaid would fall out of the skimpy outfits she wore.

Nowadays, I think folks might be afraid of that happening, Sunny thought.

As Jasmine threw back her head for another laugh, doughy flesh jiggled wherever her tiny tank top didn’t reach. And the unnaturally black hair that Sunny remembered now had an inch and a half of gray roots showing on either side of the center part.

No, Jasmine was not the barroom femme fatale anymore, explaining why a couple of guys at the bar were checking Sunny out as she stood by the door. She studiously avoided their gazes and then spotted Gordie sitting alone at one of the tables scattered around the room, a beer in front of him.

Sunny dug out a bill and headed to the bar. “Can I get a glass of red wine?” she asked Jasmine.

She’d already noticed that beer only seemed to come by the bottle or pint, she didn’t want to be drinking hard liquor under the circumstances, and soda would have made her motives for being there, alone, seem even more questionable than they already were.