Bookplate Special (5 page)

“At the new food pantry just out of town. They held the dedication this morning.”

Baker waited for her to continue.

“A lot of people were there. Apparently Pammy wanted to speak to the guest of honor. She made a rather loud fuss, and was asked to leave.”

Baker looked very interested. “Who asked her to leave?”

“Someone in a suit. I think he was part of Mr. Paige’s entourage.”

“Mr. Paige?”

“Stuart Paige. Have you ever heard of him?”

“It would be hard to live in New Hampshire and
not
hear about his good works.”

“Yes, well, apparently he gave the Food Shelf half the money they needed to open their new facility.”

“And did you speak to the deceased following the event?”

Tricia shook her head. “I didn’t see her again until I found her out back.”

“And what time was that?”

“About an hour or so ago.”

Baker checked his watch. “Approximately three fifty?”

Tricia nodded.

“And other than seeing her at the dedication, you hadn’t heard from her since this morning?”

“I heard
of
her—but I didn’t talk to her.”

Baker frowned. “What does that mean?”

“She apparently spent the morning going around town putting in job applications and listing me as her last employer.”

“And were you?”

“No! She hung around my store during the last couple of weeks, disrupting things—but she didn’t work for me.”

“Did her ‘hanging around’ anger you?”

Tricia chewed the inside of her lip, knowing where this line of questioning was going to lead. And what would he think when she told him about the forged check?

“I wasn’t happy about it. In fact, yesterday she spilled coffee on a customer’s foot. That was kind of the last straw.”

“But you waited until this morning to throw her out?”

“I did
not
throw her out,” Tricia said, and realized her voice had risen higher than she would’ve liked. She took a breath to calm down. “I asked her to leave. We had a civil conversation, and Pammy agreed it was time to go.”

Baker nodded, but said nothing.

“There was one other thing . . .” She hesitated. Did she really have to tell him about the check? He—or his boss—was sure to think it was a motive for murder. No one but she knew about it—unless Pammy had gone around blabbing about it, which she doubted. Angelica hadn’t mentioned it.

“You were saying?” he prompted.

“Her carelessness in spilling coffee on one of my customers really annoyed me,” Tricia blurted. “I could’ve been sued.”

Baker eyed her, waiting for more.

She could still say something about the check. She ought to say something about the check.

Why didn’t she say something about the damn check?

Maybe because she knew she hadn’t killed Pammy. It wasn’t pertinent to her death. Baker might follow in his boss’s footsteps and waste a lot of time trying to pin the crime on her—letting Pammy’s killer get away with murder.

“Look, I was in my store, with witnesses, all day. That is, until I came across the street to eat my lunch and talk to my sister.”

“Sister?” Baker asked.

Tricia glanced in Angelica’s direction. “Yes, she owns this café. She hired Pammy today.”

“Why?”

Tricia sighed.
Probably to bug me
. “You’ll have to ask her.”

Baker looked over at Angelica, then shifted his gaze back to Tricia—assessing them? “Tell me what you saw when you found the body.”

“Pammy. Headfirst in the garbage cart. I suspected she might be dead because she wasn’t moving. I had to force myself to touch her. I found her wrist, but I couldn’t find a pulse.” The stench of rotting food and the revulsion she’d felt at touching the dead had worked together until—“And then I threw up.”

Baker nodded, his expression bland. “Yes, the deputy told me.”

“I didn’t mean to contaminate the crime scene. It just . . . happened.”

“How do you know about contaminating crime scenes?” Baker asked.

“I own Haven’t Got a Clue, the mystery bookstore across the street. I read a lot of crime stories.”

“How many is ‘a lot’?”

“Not as many as I used to. Only two or three a week.”

Baker didn’t roll his eyes, but he looked like he might want to. Something captured his attention, and Tricia looked to her left. Someone had entered through the open back door—a man Tricia recognized from her last brush with murder. A member of the county’s Medical Examiner’s office greeted Baker with a curt nod.

“Have we got a probable cause of death yet?” Baker asked.

The man had a laminated ID card on a lanyard around his neck. The name on it was Ernesto Rivera. “Suffocation, most likely. Her face was covered by a plastic bag full of trash. Looks like she panicked when she couldn’t get out of the garbage cart. She couldn’t reach the edge of the can. Looks like she tore the trash bags apart while struggling. Her fingernails have all kinds of debris under them. We bagged ’em, and will know more once we get her on the table.”

Tricia cringed at that piece of information. Pammy—her chest and abdominal cavities emptied like a gutted deer. Her scalp peeled forward until—

Tricia shuddered again. Why had she read so many Kay Scarpetta mysteries? The knowledge she’d picked up about autopsies made for an interesting read—if not applied to someone you’d actually known.

“Did she fall into the garbage can?” Baker asked.

“No way—the thing’s about four foot tall. She was on her back. Someone had to put her in there.”

Tricia’s thoughts, exactly.

“Thanks, Ernie.” Baker turned to question Angelica. “You’re the owner?”

Angelica sighed theatrically. “Yes. Angelica Miles. Soon to be published, I might add. Penguin Books,
Easy-Does-It Cooking
, twenty-four ninety-nine—available on June first.”

It was Tricia’s turn to roll her eyes. Much more information than
anyone
needed to know.

She leaned against the counter stool and listened as Captain Baker took Angelica through the same set of questions. His demeanor was just so different from that of his boss. If the circumstances were different, she decided, she might even like him.

“And why was it you hired Ms. Fredericks?” Baker asked.

Finally, the question Tricia had been waiting to hear answered.

Angelica sighed, looked over to Tricia for a moment, and then turned back to the captain. “I figured it would keep her out of my garbage.”

Baker blinked in disbelief. So did Tricia.

“Of course,” Angelica continued, “I had no idea someone would actually kill her and put her
in
my garbage cart.”

“Wait a minute,” Tricia said, leaning forward. “What do you mean, ‘keep her out of my garbage’?”

Angelica shrugged. “She came by every day—after closing, of course—and poked through my cans to see what she could salvage.”

“I don’t understand,” Captain Baker said.

Angelica sighed impatiently. “To take.”

“But it’s not like you throw out anything valuable—something Pammy could actually use or sell,” Tricia protested.

“Apparently she thought I did.”

Baker held up a hand to interrupt. “What am I missing here?”

“It’s no secret Pammy was a scavenger. I believe she was employed as an antiques picker at different periods of her life,” Angelica said.

“What’s that got to do with the café’s garbage?” Tricia asked.

“Pammy was a freegan,” Angelica said matter-of-factly.

“A what?” Baker asked, confused.

“A what?” Tricia echoed.

Angelica frowned. “She Dumpster dived for food.” Taking in the incredulous faces before her, she continued. “Of course, lots of freegans give you some lofty explanation about alternative lifestyles, bucking convention, and minimizing waste in a materialistic world. I think they’re just a bunch of cheapskates looking for free food.”

“Pammy salvaged food out of Dumpsters?” Tricia asked, feeling the blood drain from her face. Pammy had cooked for her—had provided the food she’d used to prepare those meals. Had she found it by—?

The thought was too terrible to contemplate.

“How do you know all this?” Baker asked Angelica.

“Pammy told me—last week when we talked, and today, in between customers.”

“How long was she here today?” Tricia asked.

“About two hours. A regular little chatterbox, that one.”

Baker eyed Tricia. “Ms. Fredericks told you she was a freegan—but in two weeks she didn’t tell your sister?”

“Apparently not.”

He looked back to Angelica. “And you didn’t tell her, either?”

Angelica laughed. “Of course not. Well, just look at her. She’s already a lovely shade of chartreuse.”

A lump rose in Tricia’s throat. “How long have you known?”

“For a week or so. I knew someone was going through my garbage the day we opened. I caught Pammy at it one day last week.”

“You should have told me.”

“Why? You’d have been freaked out—like you are now. Believe it or not, I don’t live to just irritate you, baby sister.”

It was Tricia’s turn to frown. So now Angelica decided to spare her feelings. Hadn’t she informed her that Pammy had cooked for her?

Right now, Tricia couldn’t remember.

A wave of guilt passed through her. Here she was worrying about eating food past its prime—food that obviously hadn’t sickened her—and Pammy had been killed. Where were her priorities?

“Did the deceased tell you where she planned to stay tonight?” Baker asked Angelica.

Angelica shook her head. “And I didn’t have her fill out a job application, either. I needed someone right away—she walked in the door. I figured we could catch up on the paperwork after the lunch crowd had gone.”

Baker turned to Tricia. “Did Ms. Fredericks tell you where she planned on staying?”

“No. But she said she’d ‘hooked up’ with some local people.”

“Probably more freegans,” Angelica said.

“Do you know any local freegans?” Baker asked the women.

Angelica shook her head once again.

“I didn’t even know they existed until just a few minutes ago,” Tricia said.

“Can you think of anybody we can ask?” Baker asked.

“You might try talking to the other food vendors in the area. There’s the Brookside Inn, the Bookshelf Diner, the Stoneham Patisserie, and the convenience store up near the highway. That’s about it. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the local freegans went to Milford, or even Nashua or Portsmouth. They’re much bigger than Stoneham. They’d scavenge—or, as I’m sure they’d say, ‘salvage’—much more food from grocery and convenience stores than restaurants and bakeries.”

“Do freegans try to hustle food from charities like the Food Shelf?” Baker asked.

Angelica shook her head. “I shouldn’t think so. But it’s something you could ask Libby Hirt about.”

“Who?”

“Libby Hirt.” She spelled the last name. “She runs the Stoneham Food Shelf.”

“The one your friend crashed this morning?” he asked Tricia.

She nodded.

Baker made a note. “Did the deceased have a car?”

Tricia nodded. “She’d been parking it in the municipal lot.”

“Make and model?” he asked.

“I have no idea. I don’t think I ever saw her drive it the whole time she was here. In fact, when she left the dedication, she walked back into Stoneham.”

“She probably couldn’t afford the gas for it,” Angelica added.

At least not until she’d cashed Tricia’s forged check.
You should say something
, a little voice within her nagged.

“Can we narrow it down? Did she have an out-of-state license plate?” Baker asked.

“Maybe. She was originally from Portsmouth, but had lived in Connecticut for the past couple of years. I think,” Tricia added lamely.

“I thought you said she stayed with you for two weeks?” Baker asked.

“She did, but we didn’t spend a lot of quality time together.” At his puzzled look, she clarified. “My store doesn’t close until seven most nights. On Tuesdays, I host a book club. That doesn’t usually break up until after nine. A couple of times Pammy didn’t come in until after I’d already gone to bed.”

“Didn’t you ask where she’d been, what she’d been doing?” Baker asked.

Answering truthfully was going to sound awfully darned cold. Still . . . “No.”

Baker turned away. “Placer.” The deputy stepped forward. “Grab Henderson and scout out the municipal lot down the street. See if you can find a car with Connecticut plates. Ask around. See if anyone has noticed a car parked in the lot for the past two weeks.”

“Sure thing, Cap’n.”

“Captain?” Rivera waved to Baker from the back entrance.

“If you’ll excuse me, ladies.” He left them and rejoined the technician.

Angelica watched him go. “Nice set of buns.”

“Ange,” Tricia admonished.

“And wasn’t he just the nicest thing? Quite a change from Wendy Adams.”

“Yes,” Tricia agreed. She gazed at the captain, who filled the back doorway. He did have a nice set of buns at that.

 

 

“She’s dead.
She’s really dead,” Ginny murmured for at least the hundredth time. “I admit I didn’t like her, but I never wanted her dead.”

“Ginny, please,” Tricia implored, not bothering to lift her gaze from the order blanks before her. As it was, her last sight of her . . . kind of, sort of . . . friend had not been a pleasant one. Was that how she’d always remember Pammy, as a pair of stiff legs?

“But I feel guilty,” Ginny said, then grabbed a tissue from the box under the counter and blew her nose. “I didn’t want her around, and I got my wish. But I never thought—”

Tricia sighed. She removed her reading glasses, setting them on the counter. Captain Baker had dismissed her some twenty minutes before—and it would be another hour before she closed shop for the day. It seemed like weeks since her day had begun, and she was looking forward to a nice, quiet evening, although she wasn’t sure she was up to reading a murder mystery. Not just yet, anyway.