Gin Jones - Helen Binney 01 - A Dose of Death (15 page)

The next morning, before Helen had a chance to call Geoff Loring, Lily and Laura were knocking at the cottage’s front door. Laura was carrying a canvas bag, presumably containing brunch, as an apology for their unannounced visit. Except, with Laura’s hit-or-miss baking, she might need to follow up later with an apology for the food.

Helen let them in, and Laura bustled over to the kitchen island with her canvas bag. Helen watched long enough to see that Laura had brought what appeared to be a mountain of irregularly shaped home-made bagels, before settling at the kitchen island with Lily.
“Are you two going to show up every day from now on?”

Lily shook her head.
“We’re just following up on the security arrangements.”

“
The alarm company was out here yesterday, and the owner’s planning to send you the proposal on Monday,” Helen said. “As far as I can tell, he’s planning to make this cottage safer than the governor’s mansion.”

“
What about the human component?” Lily said. “You were supposed to find someone to stay with you until the killer is caught.”

“
It’s all been arranged,” Helen said.

Laura paused halfway through pulling the foil off the top of the cream cheese tub.
“You found a roommate? Already?”

“
Are the bagels ready to eat?” Helen said. “I’m starved.”

“
I know they look a little funny, but I think they taste good,” Laura said. “Considering this was my first time with any kind of yeast breads.”

“
I’m sure the bagels will be fine,” Lily said, from long experience with placating her sister about her cooking. “I’m more interested in hearing about the roommate. Who is he? When’s he moving in?”

“
You don’t know him,” Helen said. “He’s a woodworker. Needed a better workshop space.”

“
An artist?” Lily said, radiating suspicion. “Maybe I should check him out before he actually moves in. What’s his full name?”

“
I told you I’d handle this,” Helen said, except then she heard a vehicle coming up her gravel driveway and realized it was probably Tate. Too late to warn him off until her nieces left. If people were so intent on visiting her, was it too much to ask that they call ahead? “That’s probably him now.”

“
Do you think he’d like a bagel?” Laura said.

Lily could learn a lot
—too much, maybe—from a stranger’s reaction to a bagel, especially if this was one of Laura’s misses instead of one of the hits. “I think he’d like to be left alone.”

“
I’ll take him a bagel,” Lily said. “Everyone likes bagels.”

Helen glanced out the window. Tate had backed a big black pick-up truck to the garage, and was getting out of the driver
‘s side while Adam was getting out of the passenger side. “Better make it two. He brought a helper.”

Helen snagged her ugly spare cane on the way out to the garage, resigned to the fact that there was no way she would be able to get to Tate and warn him off before the determined, more mobile, bagel-bearing Lily pounced on him. Helen had to trust that Tate would be as unencouraging with Lily as he was with everyone else who interfered with his woodworking.

When Helen reached the pick-up, Tate and Adam were already rolling a large, metal work table down a ramp from the truck bed and into the empty garage. Lily was waiting for them inside with two bagels wrapped in paper napkins.

“
Hi. I’m Helen’s niece, Lily,” she said, handing Tate a bagel.

“
Thanks.” Tate placed his untasted bagel on the just-moved table before heading back up the ramp.

Lily, still clutching the second bagel, followed him to the truck, although she had enough sense to stay off the ramp and out of the way. At least for the moment.

“I hear you’re an artist,” Lily said.

Tate picked up a toolbox and carried it down the ramp.
“Woodworker.”

Lily stayed beside him.
“Have you been doing that kind of thing for long?”

“
Decades.” Tate returned to the truck with Lily shadowing him.

“
You must be really good, then. Where do you sell your products?”

Tate carried a milk crate full of assorted tools to the garage.
“I can afford the rent here, if that’s what you want to know.”

“
Did you give Aunt Helen your financial information?”

“
Your aunt’s satisfied with the deal. That’s good enough for me.” He tapped Adam on the shoulder. “This isn’t a spectator sport. You’re supposed to be helping, so you can be rid of me, at last.”

“
I don’t want to be rid of you,” Adam said as he joined his uncle on the truck’s bed to help maneuver the tool cabinet onto a hand truck. “I keep asking you to stick around, in fact. Nobody wants you to leave, except for you, so I have to accept it.”

“
See?” Helen said to Lily. “Some people defer to their elders’ wishes.”

“
Some people aren’t me.” Lily turned her sights on Adam, making Helen think she’d made a mistake in bringing him to her niece’s attention. Despite Adam’s legal training, he just didn’t have the extensive experience that his uncle had with deflecting difficult questions.

Lily sauntered over to the hapless Adam.
“This bagel’s for you.”

“
Thanks,” he said, and unlike his uncle, he immediately unwrapped the napkin to check it out. “What kind is it?”

“
Home-made kind,” Lily said. “Just eat it, and tell me what you think of it.”

“
You made it?” Adam broke off a bite-sized piece and studied it carefully.

“
My sister did.” Lily pointed at Laura, who was arranging five place settings on the table of the back deck. “She likes to cook.”

Adam still hesitated.
“Is she any good at it?”

“
You’ll find out as soon as you taste it,” Lily said.

“
Have you tried it yet?” Adam said.

“
She’s my sister,” Lily said. “I eat her food all the time.”

“
But you haven’t tried the bagels yet.” He looked down at the bite-sized piece in his hand warily. Then he broke off a second piece. “Here. You go first.”

Helen relaxed and leaned against the back of the truck. Adam might not have as much experience as his uncle, but he wasn
‘t the soft touch he appeared to be.

Lily took the offered chunk of bagel and cream cheese, and popped it into her mouth. She chewed determinedly for several seconds and then swallowed, sticking her tongue out, as if she were a reality-show contestant who had to prove she
‘d really eaten some disgusting thing. “Good stuff. Sticks to your ribs.”

Helen couldn
‘t tell if the bagel had actually been good or not. Lily had a lot of practice eating and praising Laura’s food, even when it was horrible. 

Adam had automatically looked down at Lily
‘s ribs, except that his gaze never got much farther down than her breasts before it darted back up to her face. He popped the bagel bite into his mouth and chewed. And chewed. And chewed.

It took him longer than it had taken Lily, but eventually he swallowed it.
“Good flavor,” he said, with obvious diplomacy.

Lily smiled and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially.
“You don’t have to eat the whole thing. Just put it next to Tate’s, and I’ll inadvertently knock them both into the trash bin when I go past the table.”

“
I wouldn’t want to hurt your sister’s feelings,” Adam said, before popping another bite into his mouth and heading off to grab some of the wood stock from the piles in the truck.

If he believed that as long as his mouth was full, Lily couldn
‘t interrogate him about Tate, he’d seriously underestimated her.

Lily shadowed him the way she
‘d done with his uncle. “What kind of work do
you
do?”

“
I’m a lawyer.” Adam laid the armful of wood onto a pallet in the far corner of the garage and returned to the truck with Lily at his heels. “I took over my uncle’s practice when he retired.”

Uh-oh. Dangerous territory there. No need for Lily to know that the woodworker and the lawyer uncle were the same person. Helen needed a distraction. She grabbed one of the lengths of wood stock from the truck, propped it up on her shoulder with her non-cane hand, and began carrying it over to the garage.

“Aunt Helen!” Lily said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“
I’m making up for the nuisance you’re being,” Helen said. “This stuff won’t move itself.”

“
You can’t carry that and still use your cane properly,” Lily said, taking the wood from her and carrying it into the garage.

“
That reminds me.” Adam paused halfway between the truck and the garage. “I’ve looked everywhere at the offices for your other cane. It’s definitely not there.”

“
Thanks for looking,” Helen said, watching Lily collect several pieces of wood stock from the truck.

Without Lily
‘s interrogation efforts, it didn’t take long for them to empty out the truck bed. The two-car garage still looked cavernous, with nothing but the worktable, lathe, tool boxes, and wood stock in it. Tate hadn’t even brought the two directors’ chairs, probably to discourage her from visiting him.

Lily brushed her hands against her jeans, and said,
“So. When are you bringing the rest of your stuff?”

Tate gave Helen a questioning look, before answering.
“I don’t need a whole lot of equipment. Most of what I had in my old studio was junk, nothing to do with my current work. When I started wood turning, one of the things that appealed to me was how little equipment it required. Makes it easy to move too. Now that I have the space, I may invest in some other table tools, though.” 

“
I’m not talking about your work stuff,” Lily said. “I mean your other things.”

“
I live pretty simply.” Tate tossed a set of keys to Adam. “Do me a favor, would you, and take the truck back to your cousin, and pick up my car? I’ll be here, working out some details with my landlord.”

Lily said,
“I’ve got my laptop in the cottage, if you need to draw up a rental contract.”

“
That won’t be necessary,” Helen said. “Why don’t you go see how Laura’s doing? I need to talk to my new tenant for a minute.”

Lily looked she wanted to argue, but she
‘d always known when it was time to retreat until a better opportunity arose. For the moment, she was willing to leave Helen and Tate alone in the garage. Lily joined Laura on the back deck, far enough away that she couldn’t hear the conversation inside the garage.

“
Lily hasn’t given up interrogating you,” Helen said. “She can be a bit stubborn.”

“
Like aunt, like niece,” Tate said. “Why does she think I need to move more things over here?”

“
She doesn’t want me to be alone,” Helen said. “No one does. It’s very annoying.”

“
You’re easily annoyed.” He wandered over to the tool cabinet, unlocked it, and began checking the contents.

“
What did you want to talk to me about in private?”

“
I figured you wouldn’t want your nieces to hear that there’s been another remote control burglary,” he said. “Maybe it will give the cops some more information to go on, now that they’ve got a reason to pay attention.”

Helen leaned against the work table.
“Tell me about it.”

“
It probably happened a few days ago, before the murder, but no one noticed anything was missing until yesterday.”

“
Are they sure it’s the same guy?” Helen said. “Most of the other burglaries happened in the spring and fall, not in the summer.”

“
Definitely the same guy,” Tate said. “The only thing that was stolen was fourteen remote controls.”

“
Not likely to be anyone else, then.” Helen thought for a moment. “Who has fourteen remote controls lying around to be stolen, anyway? According to the newspaper accounts, the average for these burglaries has been around three.”

“
The average number of things operated by remote in each household is probably escalating too,” Tate said. “In this case, several were for advanced equipment, like HVAC controls and security cameras that the homeowner could adjust from anywhere in the house. The cops weren’t saying if they’d gotten any useful images. I’m guessing they didn’t, or they’d have been crowing about it. All they said was that there were actually fifteen remotes in the victim’s house, and the burglar missed one.”

“
Still, fourteen is a lot,” Helen said. “And the homeowner didn’t notice the minute they were stolen, which suggests they weren’t actually used much.”