The Longest Yard Sale (3 page)

I stood and grabbed the bottle of wine off the counter. The cork slid out easily. I busied myself pouring two glasses of wine, hoping CJ would drop the subject, regretting we'd gotten to it in the first place. I sat back down and passed him one of the glasses.

“We have a closed-container law in Ellington,” CJ said. Trust him to notice I'd walked across the common with the open bottle under my arm.

“Arrest me, then.”

“I wouldn't mind cuffing you.” CJ grinned.

Another blush coursed up my face.

“DiNapoli's doesn't have a liquor license,” CJ said.

“Cooking wine.”

“What are you planning on cooking?” CJ asked with a half smile that always melted me.

“Beef Wellington?” I had no idea if it needed wine or not. A talent for cooking eluded me. But the last thing I wanted to do was get the DiNapolis in trouble, and I wanted to forestall whatever it was that CJ had showed up to talk about. I didn't think it could be anything good after the day he and the police department must have had. “I ran in to Bubbles today. He was coming out of Stella's apartment as I left for the yard sale.” Darn, I didn't mean to venture into that topic, either. “Did you know?”

“That he was seeing Stella? No.”

I gave CJ a look, letting him know that wasn't what I meant.

“I did know he was here. He's been here for about six months.”

“What's he doing here? I thought he was wing commander for one of the missile bases out west.”

“He got caught up in the whole scandal with the missileers cheating on their tests, sleeping on the job, and not securing the vault.”

Missile launch officers were tested constantly to make sure that, if the time came, they could turn the key without thinking about it. I didn't know how the tests were administered or what kinds of questions were asked, because all of that was classified. I did know the pressure to score 100 percent on every test was intense. If they missed one question on either of two monthly exams they weren't eligible to advance for a year. Not good for a career.

It wasn't a glam job like flying fighter jets. Since the end of the Cold War, the career field led nowhere. The best way to get a promotion was to get into another field, which wasn't great for morale. Missileers worked varying shifts, going out to the missile sites, then deep underground, where huge, steel blast doors locked them within a dingy space full of noisy equipment and speakers that continuously blasted codes. They spent the night with a crew partner, taking turns sleeping. Since the early '90s, crew partners didn't have to be the same sex. I had a friend who joked about her husband spending the night with another woman a month after they'd married. It was his crew partner, but more than one crew team had ended up in a relationship.

“Did he know his officers were cheating?”

“He says he didn't. I believe him. But since he was at the top of the food chain and the troops were his responsibility, he got the blowback.”

“Was he fired?” Being fired in the military wasn't the same as being fired in the civilian world. It usually meant being removed from your current position and sent to another base with less responsibility. It almost always ended any possibility of future promotions. CJ had always said Bubbles was a fast burner—meaning he was getting promoted “below the zone,” or early. He'd made colonel early and was on the fast track to becoming a general.

“Yes. Now he'll never make general.”

“He must be really disappointed.”

“He's had a great attitude. He started a financial planning company with a civilian he knows from Hanscom. They both have a couple of months left until they retire.”

CJ, of all people, knew how disappointing it was to have your career end under a cloud. He'd retired quickly and quietly after one of his troops accused him of fraternization and said she was having his baby. By the time the truth came out, CJ was already out of the air force and the chief of police in Ellington. A lawyer had approached CJ about suing to get back in, but CJ was content with his new job.

“How'd he end up here?”

“He wanted to come. His kids are with his ex-wife, Jill, in Nashua. His parents are in Maine. Bubbles had planned to come back to this area eventually, anyway.”

“At least something worked out for him.”

“I didn't come here to talk about Bubbles,” CJ said.

I grabbed the bottle of wine and poured the rest of it into my glass. “I'm sorry about the traffic.” I took a drink. “No. Actually I'm not. It was a great event, and Nancy was really pleased. There are other events that cause traffic problems in Ellington. It just goes with the territory, right?”

“It was a great event. I'm happy for you. But that's not why I'm here. I want to talk about us.”

Damn, I was afraid of that. “We've talked about us. You agreed we'd date. That we'd date other people. That we'd take this slow.”

“For how long? That was six months ago. We were happy.”

“It's me, CJ. I have to figure out why it was so easy for me to turn my back on nineteen years of marriage. Why I wouldn't even listen when you said you didn't sleep with Tiffany.” I stood, slamming the kitchen chair into the cabinet behind it. CJ followed me into the living room. I plopped into my grandmother's rocking chair so I didn't have to sit next to him on the couch. It sat by the window that overlooked the town common. “Until I figure that out, I can't come back.”

“Are you really pulling the ‘it's me, not you' crap on me?”

“I don't want to hurt you again.”

“You are hurting me.”

I looked out the window over the common toward Great Road. The lights blinked out in Carol's store. “I'm sorry. It's the best I can do right now.”

CJ studied my face. “Okay, then.”

CJ wheeled around, knocked his leg on the corner of the trunk I used for a coffee table, cursed, and left. He didn't slam the door, but he pounded down the steps out to the porch. On the sidewalk, he looked up at me for a moment before striding down the sidewalk toward Great Road. Something about the way he said “Okay, then” had sounded so final. I tried to convince myself that my stomach hurt because of all I'd eaten at DiNapoli's and not because of what had just happened with CJ.

Last April, after a wacko almost killed me, CJ and I had spent the night together. I'd felt so safe after the scariest day of my life. But in the morning, CJ launched into logistics. Should he give up his apartment and move in with me? Or should I move in with him? Better yet, let's find a new place for a fresh start. I'd said no. The look on his face as he'd said good-bye that morning would never leave me.

I curled my legs up in the chair and tilted my head back against the solid oak. My phone rang. It was Seth, a temptation I had no energy to deal with now. I ignored it, skipped my planned bath, and flopped on my bed fully dressed.

CHAPTER 4

Someone pounded on my door. My bedroom door. I leaped up, still dressed in my clothes from last night. Only two people had the key to my apartment, Stella and Carol. I flung my bedroom door open. Carol stood there with her hand raised to knock again. Her face was about the same color as the blank canvas at her store, only stained with tears and mascara—a Jackson Pollock painting come to life.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I glanced at my alarm clock, which read seven
AM
. I'd slept through the night.

“Come with me. Please.” Carol turned and ran through my apartment, stopping only briefly at the top of the steps to make sure I was following her. I don't think she'd have noticed if I was buck naked. She, on the other hand, had changed from what she wore yesterday into black leggings and a red sweater.

I hurried to catch up with her on the town common. “What's going on?”

“It's awful,” she said.

“What?” I asked. Carol shook her head. A shiver went through me. I hoped she and Brad were okay. We stopped at the front door of her shop. She pulled out her keys. Her hands shook worse than mine had the night Stella tricked me into singing karaoke with her at Gillganins. I took them from her and unlocked the door. I flipped on the lights as we went in, scanning the place.

“Is this about your painting?” I asked. Nothing looked any different than it had last night.

Carol shook her head “no” as I trotted after her through the shop to her studio. She stopped so abruptly I almost plowed through her.

It took me a minute to process what I saw. A man on his back sprawled across the floor wearing jeans and a blue dress shirt with French cuffs and gold cuff links. Around his face was a frame, a dark, heavy frame.

“Oh, my god,” I said, looking away. The man was dead. Really, really dead. “Who is that?”

“I was hoping you'd know,” Carol said.

I steeled myself and took another look at the guy. His sandy-colored hair appeared recently trimmed. He wore a gold wedding band. His long, denim-covered legs were askew. He didn't seem to have any wounds other than some bruising on his neck. His square-jawed face was mottled.

“I have no idea who he is,” I said. I had no idea why Carol would think I did. “He looks like he's been framed. Picasso's blue period.”

Carol's eyes widened in shock at my wisecrack. I chided myself for how heartless I sounded. But I'd spent a lot of time around military cops during my marriage to CJ. They had the same dark sense of humor civilian cops did.

“Have you called the police?” Obviously she hadn't, since I didn't hear any sirens and no officials were here, but my brain wasn't functioning on all cylinders. “Call 9-1-1. I'll call CJ.” I'd rather CJ hear this from me. I knew he'd come, and I wanted him to know I was here before he arrived, especially after last night.

“They said we should wait outside,” Carol said after we made the calls.

“CJ said the same thing.” But neither of us moved. I continued to study the room and stole quick glances at the body, as if one activity or the other could answer the multitude of questions I had.

I focused in on the frame around the guy's neck. It was black and about two inches thick, with carved curlicues. “Isn't that one of the frames you bought at the yard sale?” I asked. It looked like one I'd seen in the box of frames when we'd searched the place yesterday.

“A man is dead on my floor and that's what you're worried about?” We took another step toward the man. “How do you think he died?” Carol asked.

I looked around again. Anything was better than looking down at that blue-faced body. “Nothing's knocked over or seems out of place. You didn't move anything, did you?”

“No,” Carol said.

“So there wasn't a big brawl in here. No rope hanging from the ceiling, so it doesn't read suicide, but what do I know? I can't tell you what happened, but I can guess.”

Carol continued to get paler as we talked. “What do you think happened?”

“Someone strangled him.” Saying it out loud made me go from not-so-cool observer to involved. That man was someone's son, brother, husband. The thought punched into my soul.

“Why'd you think I'd know him?” I asked.

I looked at Carol. She was so calm. Maybe she was in shock.

“You know so many people,” she said. “Should we look through his pockets for an ID?”

“No. The last thing we need to do is mess up the crime scene. You didn't touch anything, did you?”

Carol shook her head. “I saw him and ran to get you.”

We heard sirens and hustled outside as a fire truck pulled up.

A couple of EMTs ran into the shop but came out quickly. As they did, the first cop cars showed up, with CJ not far behind them.

“You two okay?” CJ asked as he hurried by, barely waiting for our affirmative responses. But he did a double take when he realized I was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday. He opened his mouth to say something, but someone called to him from inside the shop.

If I could have shut out the noise and forgotten that terrible blue face, it was another lovely morning—rosy sky, dew glimmering on the grass of the town common, the sun lighting the steeple of the church.

“Why'd you come get me?” I asked in a low tone. Police officers and technicians scurried in and out of the store.

“I panicked. You felt safe and were close by.” Carol shuddered. “I don't even know how he got in,” she continued. “The back door was locked when I came in, and the front door was locked when I came to get you.” Other than the large plate-glass window in the front, the half window on the door, and some skylights scattered throughout, there wasn't another window to crawl in through.

We entwined our arms, clinging together.

“That frame was positioned so perfectly around his neck. It must be a message of some kind,” I said.

“A message,” Carol squeaked out. “Who's the message for? What kind of message is it supposed to be?”

“I'm not sure. It's just a thought.” I shouldn't have said anything. But thoughts flew around my brain like hummingbirds seeking nectar. The two most puzzling were why the frame and why in Carol's store.

The chimes at the Congregational church rang out. Before long, people would start showing up for church and wonder what the heck had happened.

“Do you think this has anything to do with the missing painting?” I asked.

Carol shrugged. She started to say something but cut off her comment when two officers arrived and separated us.

Scott Pellner escorted me to his patrol car. “Get in,” he said, holding the front passenger door open for me. We didn't trust each other but had made an uneasy peace over each of us knowing the other's secret. Mine had to do with a night with Seth and his with lying to his wife about his application to be the chief of police. She liked the idea of the status Pellner would have as chief, but he'd withdrawn his application without telling her. He wanted to stay out on patrol instead of being stuck behind a desk.

“Walk me through what happened,” Pellner said. He had dimples that softened an otherwise severe face. They flashed even when he wasn't smiling, which he certainly wasn't doing now.

I tried to be as succinct as possible. After Pellner quit asking me questions and taking notes, he looked me over. “Yesterday was a goat rope. You created a lot of work for us.”

Goat rope. Yeesh, I'd forgotten Pellner had served in the military and sometimes used the lingo. He might think yesterday was a mess, but I didn't. I clasped my hands together. “The city created the work. I just implemented the town manager's idea.”

“Not what I heard. I heard it was your idea. Thus your goat rope.”

“CJ didn't have any complaints.” At least not about the yard sale, although I remembered his glare as he'd fought to get down Great Road.

“The traffic problems, the fender benders. A brawl broke out during one of them.”

“Poor you, having to do your job while I brought tourists and tax dollars into town.”

“Then there were the suspicious fires. We're damn lucky nothing more serious happened and no one was injured.”

“I thought the fires were small.”

“The one out at the chicken coops got pretty big. Bedford called for backup.”

“Nancy thinks they were set by someone trying to ruin our event.”

“That someone was pretty darn sophisticated. They found timers at three of the fires. The ashes out at the chicken coop fire are still too hot to sift through.”

I wondered why CJ hadn't mentioned that last night. I must have wondered out loud because Pellner snorted.

“The guy would do anything for you. And you don't even appreciate it. You're running around with Seth.”

“CJ and I agreed to take things slow. To see other people.”

“But he doesn't know you're seeing Seth.”

“No. And it's not your business.”

“It is when I see a great guy like Chuck mooning around because of you.”

I hated it when people called Charles James Hooker “Chuck.” CJ was not a Chuck. I climbed out of the car and firmly closed the door. Pellner might have considered it slamming, and one of the technicians jumped. I looked over at DiNapoli's. Rosalie stood in the window, motioning me in. I was surprised to see her there so early on a Sunday morning.

I shook my head and mouthed “later,” not sure if she understood me or not. Carol stood on the sidewalk next to another officer. Her eyes looked glazed, and she stared off, maybe at the church steeple. But I don't think she saw it.

I went over and whispered in her ear, “Did you tell him about the painting?” just as CJ walked out of the shop. Carol shook her head “no.”

CJ planted his hands on his hips and barked, “You two come with me. Now.”