A Catered Fourth of July (20 page)

“O
h, it's you,” Libby cried, clutching her chest.

“You scared me.”

“I'm sorry.” Lucy, aka Lucas Broadbent, Longely Chief of Police stepped closer.

It was apparent to Libby and Bernie that he was not even remotely repentant.

“What do you want?” Bernie demanded.

“To talk to both of you,” he replied.

“Why don't you try calling instead of lurking around in the dark?” Libby demanded.

“I'm hardly lurking, although as chief of police if I wanted to lurk I am fully entitled to do so. As it so happens, I was coming down after talking to your father and heard your voices, so now I'm talking to both of you, as well.”

Lucy hitched up his pants. He was five-foot ten inches tall and weighed close to three hundred pounds. Since he'd taken over as the Longely Chief of Police his girth had increased every year. He reminded Bernie of an egg, with his smallish bald head, white skin, big belly, and small feet.

“Wonderful,” she muttered. “The perfect end to a perfect day.”

Lucy scowled at her. “What was that you said?”

“Nothing. I merely said it was wonderful that you wanted to talk to us.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” he demanded suspiciously.

“No, of course not. My sister and I love talking to you, don't we, Libby?”

“Absolutely. In fact, my father often comments on how much he misses the talks you two used to have.”

“Does he, now?” Lucy remembered their talks quite well. Enjoying them was not the phrase that came to mind.

“Oh definitely,” Bernie said, backing up Libby.

He took another step toward them. “I've had complaints about you.”

“Complaints?” Bernie said.

“About us?” Libby put her fingers to her lips. “Oh dear. That's terrible. I'm appalled. Was it something we baked?”

“We did have problems with the blueberry muffins this morning, didn't we, Libby?”

“I'll say, Bernie. The berries kept on sinking to the bottom.”

“That's because we put too much milk in the batter.”

“It was my fault,” Libby confessed. “I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.”

“My sister has a tendency to ditz out.”

Lucy put his hands on his hips and glowered at them. “You think you're funny, don't you?”

“I don't know about funny. Maybe moderately amusing,” Libby replied.

“Or mildly humorous,” Bernie suggested.

He shook a finger in their faces. “You two are going to get yourselves in a lot of trouble if you keep going down this road.”

“Which road?” Bernie asked. “You mean like going down Main Street? I don't know how we'd get to our shop otherwise.”

“No, Bernie. He means that as a threat.”

Bernie widened her eyes. “Wow, Libby. I did not know that.” She pressed her hands against her chest. “I'm really scared.”

“Me too.” Libby turned to Lucy. “Why are you threatening us? That really isn't very nice. We're just trying to make a living.”

“I'm not threatening you,” he told them, raising his voice in a fit of exasperation.

“It sounded that way to me. Didn't it sound that way to you, Libby?”

Libby nodded her head. “Indisputably.”

“I'm warning you.” Lucy's words came out through gritted teeth.

“Oh, why didn't you say that?” Libby asked. “Warning's much different than threatening.”

“I'm not so sure, Libby.”

“Maybe you should look it up on your cell, Bernie.”

“And maybe you two can stop talking and pay attention to what I'm saying to you,” he gritted out.

“Of course,” Bernie said.

“You had but to ask,” Libby reiterated. “So is this about the muffins?”

Lucy turned red. “No. It isn't about the muffins. It's about the questions you've been asking around town.”

“You should have said that in the first place.”

“I did,” he snapped. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“I didn't know I was doing anything,” Libby told him.

“What you're doing is sticking your nose into the Jack Devlin investigation.”

“It's true we're ascertaining a few facts,” Bernie conceded.

“You're doing a hell of a lot more than that. I just got off the phone with Rick Evans. He and his wife are not pleased.”

“They don't look like people who would be pleased. About anything. It's not our fault that his grand plan went bad.”

Lucy shook his finger at the girls again. “I want you to keep away from him. I want you to keep away from everyone.”

“We would,” Libby said, “if you'd do your job and start investigating and stop targeting Marvin.”

“You can complain to his lawyer after he's arrested,” Lucy said.

“Are you doing this because you don't like my father and Marvin is my boyfriend?”

Lucy sniffed. “I'm doing this because your boyfriend is guilty.”

“You have no proof,” Libby cried.

Lucy smiled. “The DA seems to think I do and that's all I need.”

“You are not going to arrest him,” Libby said.

“Yeah. I am. And I'm going to enjoy doing it, too. Now I'm telling you two for the last time, leave this alone.”

“And if we don't?” Bernie asked.

“You're likely to find yourself in jail, as well.”

Bernie turned to Libby. “He's threatening us again.”

“No, Bernie,” Libby corrected. “He's
warning
us.”

“You're right. They are the same thing.”

“If you think you can save him you are very, very wrong,” Lucy told them.

“No. You are,” Libby said before turning to Bernie. “I think we're done here, don't you?”

Bernie nodded.

“Good. Because so am I.” With that Lucy turned, got in his car, and drove away.

Libby and Bernie watched him go.

“He really wants Marvin bad,” Libby observed once Lucy had turned the corner.

“We've got to talk to the rest of the people on our list,” Bernie said.

“And we have to find out if one of the muskets was marked or not,” Libby added.

“Maybe Clyde can do that,” Bernie suggested.

As it turned out, he couldn't so Sean decided to do it, instead.

W
hile Bernie was out with Brandon talking to Sanford Aiken and Tony Gerard and Libby was filling a last-minute order for five coconut cream and four lemon chiffon pies, plus two strawberry shortcakes, Sean and Marvin were on their way to the Longely Police Department.

“I don't think this is a good idea,” Marvin said as Sean lit a cigarette and cracked open the hearse's front window.

“You never think anything is a good idea,” Sean observed.

“At the very least you should have told Libby where we're going.”

Sean inhaled and blew a smoke ring out the window. “No. I don't think so.”

“You don't want to tell her because she wouldn't think it was a good idea, either.”

“I don't want to tell her,” Sean said, “because she would have wanted to discuss it and we don't have time for that. Clyde said everyone is going into a staff meeting now and he's leaving the back door open for us.”

“Us?”

“Me,” Sean clarified. “I'll be in and out in five minutes maximum.”

“How about if someone goes in the back and sees you?”

“I'll tell them I'm visiting.”

“And if they find you in the evidence locker?”

“I'll tell them I got lost.”

“I don't know.” Marvin was thinking about the time he'd let Libby's father drive his Taurus and Sean had taken off with it. He'd never seen Libby so mad. “You know, you don't have to do this.”

“I think I do. Unless you want to go to jail, that is. We need to find out if the musket that blew up was marked or not.”

Marvin couldn't think of anything else to say except thanks so that's what he said.

“You're welcome.”

Five minutes later, Marvin pulled up into the back lot of the Longely Police Station. The building had been built as an afterthought about thirty years ago and looked it. Law enforcement was not a priority in a community where the police mostly dealt with DWIs, teenage beer parties, and domestic disturbances of a garden variety nature.

“You stay here.” Sean indicated the parking lot with a wave of his hand. “I'll be in and out in ten minutes tops.”

“You said five,” Marvin pointed out.

“I meant ten.” Sean started to get out of the hearse and stopped. “But if I'm not out in fifteen minutes, I want you to take off.”

“What about you?” Marvin asked.

“I can take care of myself.”

“I can't do that,” Marvin told him, a pleading tone in his voice. “You know I can't.”

Sean sighed and thought of what his eldest daughter would do if Marvin did what he was requesting. “I suppose not,” he allowed. He rubbed his chin in thought. “I'll tell you what. If I'm not out of there in fifteen minutes, I want you to come in and ask me if I'm all right.”

“I don't get it,” Marvin said.

“That's okay. You don't have to. Just say those words.” Sean had Marvin repeat them. “Good,” he said as he got out of the hearse.

He ground his cigarette out in the dirt and began walking across the parking lot. He reflected that he had made this walk thousands of times before as he headed toward the police station's back door. It had been what? Almost ten years since he'd been forced to resign from the police force. Ten years. Amazing. But everything still looked the same. The parking lot macadam was still pitted, the paint was still peeling from the back wall bricks, the garbage cans stilled smelled of old fast food.

Of course,
Sean thought,
I'm walking a little slower now.
But that was okay. He was thankful he was walking at all. Two years ago, he was in a wheelchair half the time and the other half he was hobbling around with a cane. God had granted him a remission. No one knew why. The doctors certainly didn't, but he didn't care. All he knew was that he could get from point A to point B without anyone's help and that was good enough for him.

He pushed on the back door. It swung open. He turned, gave Marvin a brief wave, and went inside. The locker room was empty, although he could hear people talking out front. The place where everyone was gathered was on the other side of the building, but the walls were thin and sounds tended to carry. He smelled the familiar scents of Pine-Sol, Febreeze, dirty socks, and sweat as he noted that the walls in the locker room were still a drab shade of tan, half the lockers were still dented, and the floor and benches still had spatters of paint and plaster on them from when the leak in the ceiling had been fixed.

He took a left, walked twelve feet, made a right and found himself in the place where the evidence was kept. Big cities had property rooms that were gated and had metal shelving and filing systems, but Longely was a small town so its evidence room was more like a cubbyhole. Its shelves were from The Home Depot, and its filing system consisted of a log book resting on a table that was supposed to be manned, but usually wasn't. Sean stepped around the table and went inside. He didn't need to consult the book to tell him where the muskets were because he could see them lying on the middle shelf.

He took a quick look around to make sure no one was coming in, even though he was positive he would hear them before they did, then slipped on the rubber gloves he'd brought with him, and walked toward the muskets. There were eight of them altogether and they had been divided into two groups. One group contained seven muskets, while the other one contained the musket that had killed Jack Devlin.

Sean began with the larger group. He picked up each musket and examined it from top to bottom before going on to the next one. They all looked the same to him. If there was a mark on any of them, he didn't see it. Then he got to the musket that had killed Jack Devlin. As soon as he picked it up, he noticed that it was slightly heavier. His eye traveled down the barrel to the stock.

Outside of the difference in weight, he couldn't see anything that might have passed as a mark. Then he held the musket up to the light. There. A thin line circled the bottom half of the gunstock, but it was so faint it was hard to see. Was that a mark or a scratch? It was possible to scratch steel. So maybe that's what happened. On the other hand, the line was straight and it circled the stock. What would have done that? It looked as if someone had etched the line with an etching pen, which was easy to come by.

It was highly probable that the scratch he was looking at had been made on purpose. Someone had marked the musket. If it had indeed been marked, that led to the next question. What purpose did the line serve?

Someone had to have picked out the gun and handed it to Devlin, but exactly how had they done that? From what Sean understood, Marvin had deposited the muskets on the bench and told everyone to take one. So how had the person handing the gun to Devlin picked out the doctored one? The line on the stock was so faint it would have been impossible to see unless it had been held up to the light. Maybe there was some other sort of mark on the barrel, but that had probably—almost definitely—been obliterated by the force of the explosion.

Sean turned the musket to check the barrel anyway. A small
ping
sounded as a piece of shot fell out and landed on the floor. He picked it up, put it in his pocket, and went back to examining the muzzle. The force of the blast had bent the metal outward. If there had been some sort of mark, it was gone now. He was thinking about where else a mark might be when he realized that the quality of the voices he'd been hearing in the background had changed.

More people were talking and the voices seemed closer, especially Lucy's. He could hear Clyde asking Lucy a question and Lucy telling him he'd take care of it—whatever
it
was—after he returned from the restroom. This was not good.

Sean quickly replaced the musket, taking care to put it back exactly as he had found it. He peeled off his gloves, stuffed them in his pants pockets, and hurried out of the property locker. He was almost at the back door when Lucy entered the room.
This will be interesting,
Sean decided as he saw Lucy's eyes widened, then narrow.

The flesh on Lucy's neck began to redden. “What the hell are you doing here?” he growled.

Sean smiled his most benign smile and patted his stomach. “I had to make a pit stop and this was the closest pit I could think of.”

Lucy crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you saying this place is a pit?” he demanded.

Sean watched the flush on Lucy's neck rise to his face. “Heaven forefend,” he replied, still smiling. “All I'm saying is when you gotta go, you gotta go.”

“And you just happened to be passing by?” Lucy's tone was sarcastic.

Sean's smile got even bigger if that were possible. “As a matter of fact I was.”

“Why?”

“I'm running an errand for Libby.”

“If I call her up and ask her what errand that would be?” Lucy demanded.

“Go ahead,” Sean challenged. “Call her. I don't mind.”

“I didn't ask if you minded or not,” Lucy retorted.

The two men locked eyes. A minute passed.

Lucy laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. His face was a lovely shade of rose. “What's the point?” he finally said. “She'd just lie for you anyway.”

Sean didn't say anything.

“How'd you get in?” Lucy asked, changing the subject.

Sean jerked his head in the direction of the back door. “Through there . . . obviously.”

“That door is always locked.”

“Not this time.” Sean shrugged. “I guess someone forgot.”

Lucy unlaced his fingers and brought his hands down to his sides. “Amazing.”

“Isn't it, though?” Sean replied, his face a mask of innocence. “You sound as if you don't believe me.”

“That's because I don't.” Lucy took a step toward Sean. “In fact, I have a good mind to arrest you.”

“For what? Unauthorized peeing?”

“Ha-ha. You always did think you were funny. I guess that's where your daughters get it from. No. For trespassing,” Lucy said just as Marvin came barreling through the door.

“Are you all right?” he asked, repeating the line Sean had given him.

“Better now,” Sean said. “Thanks for asking. We'd better get going. Don't want the butter to get rancid.”

Lucy's eyes went from Sean to Marvin to Sean again. “You were in the property room, weren't you?”

“I wouldn't call it a room. It's more like a nook, really. But no. I wasn't. Why would I be since you seem to have the matter so well in hand.”

Lucy shook a finger at Sean. “Those muskets better be exactly where they're supposed to be.”

“I'm sure they are.” Sean pushed Marvin through the door and said, “Not that he'd be able to tell.” Once they were outside and the door had closed behind them, Sean patted his pockets. He wanted to get out of there before Lucy changed his mind.