Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

With the second reassurance of the day complete, I was ready for lunch. And since by this time I was all the way downtown and right in front of Shomin’s Deli—how serendipitous!—I opened the door.

Inside, the brick-walled, wooden-floored, and tin-ceilinged restaurant was a relatively busy place. Relatively, because with almost half the tables occupied and three people in line, it was very busy for April. In summer, “busy” would mean a line out the door and strangers would be sharing tables, which could sometimes be a lot of fun, but I was fine with the April emptiness.

Of the three people in line in front of the glass display cases, one was a library patron whose name I couldn’t remember, one was a minister from Aunt Frances’s church, and the third was Felix Stanton. It had taken me a second to recognize him, since he was wearing a tweed blazer over brown pants and dress shoes instead of a canvas coat and hiking boots, but I made the connection before the blank look on my face became too fixed.

I nodded at the first two and said hello to Felix.

“Minnie, right?” he asked. “Good to see you.”

I had a quick internal debate. Resolved: that it is best to share all information at all times. Since the winner of the debate was the part of me who thought that open sharing couldn’t possibly be a good thing when a killer might be wandering around, I kept my chats with the Gill brothers to myself.

“How are things going?” I asked. “Any new projects for the summer?”

He smiled affably and rocked back a little on his heels. “Have a number of things on the back burner,” he said. “Just working on which one to bring up front first.”

“Anything you can talk about?”

“Too early to say.” He smiled down at me. “But if you’re looking for a nice piece of property, just stop by the office and we’ll hook you up with something quality.”

At this point in my life, my financial priority was paying off the last of my student loans, not saddling myself with a mortgage, but I smiled at Felix. “I’ll keep that mind.” Then, before he could turn away, I said, “After I saw you the other day at Henry’s place, I ran into a neighbor of Henry’s, Cole Duvall.”

“And how is Cole?” Felix asked. “I haven’t seen him or his wife in some time.”

“Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “Cole said you’d been talking to Henry for months about developing his property, but you told me that you’d only recently approached Henry’s sons.” In the time it had taken me to speak those two or three phrases, Felix’s face had gone bright red. I hoped the man didn’t have a heart condition and kept going. “So either Cole has it wrong or I do, and I was just wondering which—”

“Are you saying I’m a liar?” Felix thundered.

The scent of coffee-flavored breath assailed me, but I looked at him calmly and didn’t step back. There were many occasions for which I was grateful for being height-efficient, and this was another one. A lifetime of being shorter than everyone over the age of thirteen had inured me to intimidation by size and/or voice.

“No,” I said evenly, “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Felix, now at the head of the line, turned away from me and tossed a bill on the counter. He looked back over his shoulder and said fiercely, “Anything that’s going on is none of your business, little missy. Just keep yourself to yourself.”

He snatched up the cardboard container that the young man at the register had pushed toward him, then stormed out.

“That was weird,” I murmured. I’d anticipated either a blank look or a smiling evasion, but to be blasted with vitriol over a simple question was so unexpected that I wondered what was going on inside Mr. Felix Stanton. Not that it was necessarily murder-oriented, but you had to wonder.

“Don’t take it personally,” a familiar voice said.

I turned and saw that Pam Fazio was standing behind me. “Thanks,” I said, laying down the money for my upcoming sandwich. “I appreciate that. I certainly didn’t expect to be berated in public by someone I barely know.”

“Well,” Pam said, opening her wallet, “I’ve known him for quite a while and he gets like this every so often.” She grinned. “He’s being even more Felix-ish than usual, is all.”

“Here you go, Minnie,” the counter kid said. “One Swiss cheese and olive on sourdough with Thousand Island dressing.”

I thanked him and took my sandwich. “So,” I asked Pam, “I shouldn’t lose any sleep over this?”

She shook her head, tossing her short black hair around. “Nah. He’s like that with everyone these days, right, Evan?”

The counter kid rolled his eyes. “You got that right.”

I shook off the icky feeling that had crept onto my skin during the unexpected confrontation. Onward and upward—there was something else I needed to do. “I have a quick question for both of you, if you have a second.”

“Sure.” Pam handed over her money to Evan, who nodded.

“A little while ago,” I said, hoping the story I’d manufactured was believable, “there was this guy in the library, and I think he left something behind. A nice leather notebook.” This wasn’t completely a lie—I had indeed found a notebook. Last summer, but still. “He was short, not much taller than me, with bright red hair.”

“Sounds maybe familiar,” Evan said, “but I haven’t seen anyone like that, not that I can remember.”

Pam grinned. “Short, eh? Looking to pick on someone your own size for a change?”

“No one’s my size.” I sighed dramatically. “I gave up on that a long time ago.”

“Well, like my grandma says,” Evan said seriously, “you never know what’s around the corner.”

This was true, and a good thing to remember.

I thanked them both and walked out, thinking hard.

• • •

After stopping at a few other downtown businesses, asking after a short red-haired man, and receiving similar answers to Pam and Evan’s, I walked back toward the library slowly, so slowly that I figured I could save some time by eating and walking simultaneously. The first bite, however, was so good that I knew I wanted to be mentally present for every chew. I looked around for a place to sit that was in the sun and out of the wind, and found one in a narrow park that ran from downtown to the waterfront.

The sun on my face felt almost warm as I sat, and I mentally crossed fingers and toes, legs and arms, that the weather would be this nice for the book fair, coming to a library near me in one week, two days, and twenty-one hours. Or thereabouts.

But there was nothing I could do about the weather other than worry, and since one of my life goals was to worry as little as possible, I pushed weather thoughts aside and thought about Felix Stanton.

Thought about the chances of Henry being killed because he wouldn’t sell his property to Felix for the construction of a condominium project.

Thought about the odds of Felix assuming that Henry’s sons would sell the property. Looking at it from Felix’s point of view, selling the property only seemed reasonable. Mike, Dennis, and Kevin lived hundreds of miles away and returned to Michigan once a year. Why wouldn’t they want to get rid of what would be an encumbrance to them? That property would only be a financial drain; it only made sense to sell.

If Felix had designs on Henry’s property, if Henry had refused to consider selling, and if Felix had, in fact, killed Henry to get access to the land, the fact that Henry’s sons wanted to hang on to the property had to have been a bitter blow.

Then again, maybe Felix had been telling the truth about not working out a plan for the property until after Henry’s death. Which meant one of two things about Henry’s neighbor Cole Duvall. Either Cole hadn’t remembered correctly about Felix talking to Henry last fall, or Cole had intentionally misled me.