Stuck on Murder (15 page)

Brenna sucked in a lungful of air about to proclaim Nate’s innocence, but Tenley pinched her elbow.

“Ouch,” she said, rubbing the spot. Tenley frowned at her and she muttered, “Darn mosquitoes.”

“In April?” Phyllis asked.

“You’re right,” Brenna said. “It must have been a horse-fly.”

Phyllis gave her a curious glance and then circled around them. “I’d better be off. I promised Cynthia I’d check in on her today.”

They watched as she clicked down the walkway in her narrow heels, then they turned and hurried back to Vintage Papers.

They hustled into the shop, where Matt was waiting. He was standing by the workroom table and Brenna had the feeling he’d spent his time pacing and, judging by the now empty grape bowl, eating.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

“Waylaid by Phyllis Portsmyth,” she said.

“Didn’t you used to date her nephew?” he asked Tenley.

There was an awkward silence, and Brenna looked back and forth between them to see who would break it first.

“Don’t remind me,” Tenley said, forcing a carefree air that Brenna knew she didn’t feel. “He was duller than dirt. I must have been out of my mind. Needless to say, Phyllis has never forgiven me for dumping him.”

Matt grinned, and Brenna couldn’t tell if he was happy because Tenley called her old boyfriend dull or because she’d annoyed Phyllis or both.

“So how did it go? Did you find anything?” he asked Brenna, bringing her attention back to the task at hand.

“Pretty well, considering we had no time,” she said.

“Did the old bat suspect anything?” he asked.

“No! You were fabulous,” Tenley said. They gave each other a high five.

Brenna smiled at them and put the picture she’d taken from Ripley’s office in the box with Cynthia’s stuff. She’d have to figure out how to make that work so that Cynthia didn’t notice its addition to the memorial and Ms. Sokolov did. She’d worry about that later.

“I didn’t see anything in the Rolodex,” she said. “But I found these receipts in his top drawer.”

She emptied her pocket of the wadded-up receipts and sat down and smoothed them out on the table top.

“A restaurant in Bayview down by the Cape,” she said. “It’s dated a week before he died. Here’s one for a gas station down there and, hmmm, a motel, too.”

She exchanged a look with Tenley.

“An affair?” Tenley asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Anyone feel up to asking Cynthia about that?”

“Not me,” Tenley said. “But I wonder . . .”

She fished the picture of the mayor and Ms. Sokolov out of the box and put it on the table in front of Brenna.

“Look at the way she’s looking at him. She’s obviously in love with him. Do you think he and Ms. Sokolov might have been doing the horizontal mambo?”

“Oh, ick,” Matt groaned and clapped his hands over his eyes. “Did you have to go there? I don’t want to picture that. I’m going to be scarred for life. I’m going to need therapy.”

“Anyone care to ask her?” Brenna asked, smiling at Matt’s dramatics.

They both shook their heads no.

“I did manage to take one other thing out of the office,” Brenna said. “I got it out of his locked file cabinet. I didn’t mean to take it, just look at it, but she was on her way back and it was the best clue I’d found.”

She opened her backpack purse and withdrew the manila folder labeled “Morse Point Lake.”

Tenley looked at it and then at her in horror.

“Would that be considered stealing evidence?” she asked.

“Not if I plan to return it,” Brenna said. “It’s just a temporary loan.”

Matt and Tenley exchanged a look, and Brenna knew they thought she was pushing it, but how could she leave it behind when it might give them some answers?

“I promise I’ll have it back before anyone knows it’s missing,” she said.

“Okay, then,” Tenley said, still looking uncomfortable.

Truthfully, Brenna had no idea how she was going to get the folder back into the office, but she’d worry about that when the time came.

“I have to get in to work,” Matt said with a regretful glance at his watch. “Let me know what you find and call me if I can help with anything else.”

“Will do,” Brenna said. “Thanks for everything.”

“Anytime,” he said.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Tenley offered.

They were keeping Vintage Papers closed for the day. Tenley had called the Porter twins earlier and told them that she and Brenna were suffering from a bout of food poisoning. People generally didn’t ask for many details when it was a stomach thing. They just didn’t want to know.

Undoubtedly, the twins had spread the word throughout town by now. Of course, if anyone had seen them in the town hall earlier, they’d know it was a big fat lie, but that was the risk they’d had to take.

Brenna had never lived in a place where gossip moved by word of mouth faster than it did in the daily news. Truly, who needed the Internet when they lived in a town like Morse Point?

She flipped through the memos that filled the folder, scanning them for a name. She stopped when she found an architect’s rendering of the townhomes and a blue print for building around the lake.

Brenna peered at the paper. She frowned. The plans included where her cabin was now. Ripley wanted to develop the entire lake. He had planned to get rid of Nate and the cabins all along.

Brenna felt a surge of fury heat her insides like a fireball. She flipped through the pages of plans, getting angrier by the moment.

Tenley came back to join her, and Brenna filled her in on what she’d discovered.

“What’s that?” Tenley asked. She was pointing to a handwritten scrawl in the corner of a piece of paper.

“CRC, Cappicola Redevelopment Corporation,” Brenna read. “That must be who Ripley was working with.”

“I sincerely hope not,” Tenley said.

“Why? Do you know them?” Brenna asked.

“Only by reputation,” Tenley said. “They tried to put the squeeze on my father’s firm once. They are, how do you say, well connected.”

“They’re mob?” Brenna gaped.

“Yep. They own most of the town of Bayview and the surrounding waterfront,” Tenley said. “My father said they’ve been trying to extend their reach across Massachusetts for years.”

“The receipts!” Brenna said. “Ripley was in Bayview just days before his death.”

“So, that’s why he was in such state,” Tenley said. “Nate was ruining all of his plans by not selling to him, and who knows what kind of bite the Cappicolas were putting on him. These are luxury townhomes they were planning. They would have made a fortune off of these.”

“This proves there is a more likely suspect,” Brenna said. “We have to tell Nate.”

She scooped up the folder and stuffed it back in her purse. Tenley grabbed her purse and they hurried out the front door to Brenna’s Jeep. It was a quick trip out to the cabins. Brenna noticed that Tenley had a white-knuckled grip on her armrest but she said nothing, so Brenna didn’t slow down. Once the cabins were in sight, it was impossible not to notice that a cluster of media cars were parked in their communal drive.

Nuts! Brenna banged her hand on the wheel. They would be mobbed by reporters if they parked anywhere near the cabins.

Tenley must have come to the same conclusion as she said, “Take your next right. We can park at the boat launch and work our way back.”

Brenna passed her own drive and took a sharp right. She parked alongside the narrow gravel road that led to the boat launch and they scrambled out of the Jeep.

Tenley led the way through the woods. They had to push aside the bud-covered, whiplike branches of several forsythia bushes as they crept back toward their side of the lake. The reporters seemed to be milling around Nate’s cabin, looking for any sign that he was home.

Brenna knew he had moved to the cabin beyond hers, so she and Tenley picked their way along the water’s edge past her cabin to the cabin beyond. The shades were all drawn and it appeared to be deserted. She wondered how to approach it without setting Hank off in a dog explosion that would alert the reporters.

She fished in her purse until she found a peanut butter cracker. It might work.

Instead of going to the front of the cabin, where they’d be visible to the reporters, they snuck around to the back door.

“Nate,” Brenna called, her voice just above a whisper. There was no answer, so she whispered his name again, this time a little louder. “Nate!”

The shade to the right of the door moved a fraction and she gave a tiny wave.

She could hear Nate talking to someone in the cabin, and she wondered if he was coaching Hank before he opened the door.

The door opened and he motioned them inside. Brenna held out the peanut butter cracker and Hank chomped it before he could get a bark out.

The cabin had the musty smell of a place that hasn’t been lived in for a long while mixed with the smell of fresh paint. Tarps covered the hardwood floor in the living room, and a paint tray had a roller perched on its edge. She noticed Nate was wearing paint-splattered jeans and a faded Yankees T-shirt.

“I figured I might as well make this place rentable during my exile,” he explained.

Tenley shut the door behind them and peeked out the window.

“I don’t think anyone saw us,” she said. They all visibly relaxed. Hank shoved his wet nose into Brenna’s palm looking for another cracker.

“Can I get you both some lemonade?” Nate asked.

“Yes, please,” they said in unison. The trek around the lake had made Brenna parched and she knew Tenley must feel the same.

“To what do I owe the unexpected pleasure of your company?” he asked while he poured three glasses of lemonade in the small kitchenette.

Brenna and Tenley followed him and sat at the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen and the main room.

“I had to show you what I found,” Brenna said. She fished the folder out of her purse and put it on the counter.

Nate put a glass in front of each of them and took the folder in his hands. He opened it and began to leaf through the sheets of paper. He read each one, slowly and carefully, but his expression remained neutral.

Brenna sipped from her glass but her eyes never left his face. She was waiting for his reaction—surely he must be furious—but he never gave one. Not even so much as a flicker of an eyelash did he give up.

Instead, he plunked the folder onto the counter. Obviously, he wasn’t getting the big picture.

“Ripley was planning to develop the lake where our houses are right now,” she said.

“I see that,” he said with a nod.

Tenley glanced between them. “CRC is Cappicola Redevelopment Corporation,” she said. “They’re mob.”

“I thought that sounded familiar,” Nate said. His gray gaze fastened on to Brenna. “Where did you get that folder?”

She glanced at Tenley. She was feeling uncomfortable, very much like the time she ditched school in the ninth grade and her father caught her. She glanced away from Nate’s penetrating stare.

“The mayor’s office,” she mumbled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t catch that.”

“The mayor’s office,” she said. “I told his secretary I needed more photos to use in the memorial Cynthia asked me to make, and I sort of took the opportunity to look around.”

“And steal,” he added. Brenna noticed that his nostrils flared ever so slightly when he was annoyed.

She would have protested, but a sharp rap on the front door caused them all to turn around. This time there was no stopping Hank as he propelled himself across the floor in a ferocious chorus of barks. He skidded to the door and then jumped up on his hind legs as if he’d open the door and let the person in himself.

“Nate,” a deep voice called. “It’s Chief Barker.”

Brenna snatched the folder off the counter and stuffed it back into her purse.

She watched as Nate approached the door. Her heart was hammering in her throat. Had the chief come to see them about their visit to the town hall? Did he know she’d taken the folder? How much trouble would they be in for this? She really didn’t care for the idea of a night in jail.

Nate had trouble turning the deadbolt on the front door. It would have been a fabulous stall tactic if it had been planned, but it was just that the lock was old and suffered from a lack of use.

Finally, he pulled it open. “Hi, Ray, how can I help you?”

Chief Barker entered the cabin with Officer DeFalco behind him. Neither of them looked very happy and they moved to stand in front of Nate.

“Hi, Nate.” The chief ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, but in light of some new evidence. I’m going to have to arrest you for the murder of Mayor Jim Ripley.”

“No!” Brenna and Tenley shouted together.

“Sorry, ladies,” the chief said. “I have no choice but to bring him in.”

“May I ask what new evidence?” Nate asked.

Chief Barker considered him for a moment. Then he nodded. “I might as well tell you as your lawyer will find out soon enough. A witness saw your truck parked on the boat ramp on the night Ripley was killed.”

“Aw, come on,” Brenna protested. “He lives by the lake. Of course his truck would be parked there.”

“Not on the boat ramp, it wouldn’t,” DeFalco said. “Not unless he was unloading something.”

“Well, that’s just . . .”

Nate took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. Brenna’s protest died on her lips as his silver gaze met hers in a look so intense it left her breathless. She knew he was trying to silently communicate his innocence. It was unnecessary. She nodded to let him know that she believed him. He looked relieved and the corner of his mouth turned up.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be all right,” he said.

Officer DeFalco turned Nate around and cuffed his wrists while he read him his Miranda rights.