Death of a Christmas Caterer (9 page)

Chapter 15

After they left Tiffany's house, Hayley drove over to the local True Value hardware store, where a Christmas tree farm had been set up behind the building by a local Boy Scout troop for locals to shop for the perfect tree to take home and decorate for the holidays. They also sold homemade ornaments, festive colored lights, wreaths, swag, and garland. It was like one-stop shopping.

Hayley was in need of a new Christmas tree skirt. While she had been making eggnog in the kitchen, Blueberry had eaten some strands of tinsel and had thrown up all over her old skirt. The stain came out easily enough, but Hayley didn't want to have to think about placing her wrapped presents on top of something that used to smell of kitty vomit.

She parked her car across the street and headed over to the lot, where about a half-dozen people were perusing the various trees in all shapes and sizes. Paul Applewood, the rosy-cheeked, pudgy, balding manager of the hardware store, greeted Hayley with a smile. “I thought I already sold you a tree this year, Hayley. Something wrong with it?”

“Oh, no, Paul, I just need a new skirt for the base. You have any nice ones left?”

“Got a real pretty one with a reindeer print the wife just finished last night. It's around back, underneath the big pine tree next to my truck.”

“Thanks, Paul,” Hayley said, smiling, before walking through the tree nursery to the back of the hardware store.

She heard a man's frantic, hushed voice as she rounded the corner.

“I don't know what the police chief wants, but he called my cell and left a voice mail asking me to come by the station to talk to him!” the man said.

Hayley recognized the deep, scratchy, manly-man voice immediately.

It was Ken Massey, Garth's former business partner.

“I heard on the car radio this morning that the coroner ruled Garth's death a homicide! What the hell am I going to do if Chief Alvares thinks I had something to do with it? He'll never leave me alone!”

Hayley followed the sound of his voice through a thicket of trees. She finally spotted Ken—a tall, distinguished-looking man, with graying temples, in a black waffle-knit ski jacket. He paced back and forth, with his Android phone jammed to his ear.

Hayley sidled up next to a very thick spruce tree, which hid her from his view. She crouched down and continued to eavesdrop on his conversation.

“You're my lawyer! I was hoping
you'd tell me
what to do!” Ken wailed before catching himself and lowering his voice. “We both know I can't be implicated in this. It would ruin me!”

Hayley leaned forward into the spruce tree, moving some branches aside to get a closer look at Ken on the other side. He was rubbing his eyes and shaking his head.

“This is bad, Ted. Really, really bad,” Ken moaned.

“Hayley, did you hear a word I said? The Christmas skirts are all the way around back. You're not even warm over here.”

The voice startled Hayley and she lost her balance, falling into the tree, which tipped over and crashed to the ground just inches from Ken Massey, who spun around, alarmed.

“What the hell!” Ken cried.

The sight of Hayley lying in front of him on top of a fallen spruce tree suddenly clicked in Ken's mind and his face soured. “Ted, I'm going to have to call you back. Bar Harbor's very own ‘Miss Marbles' just showed up on the scene.”

Ken stuffed his phone in his coat pocket as Paul Applewood helped Hayley to her feet, brushing branches and twigs off her.

“‘Miss Marple,'” Hayley said quietly, turning to face Ken.

“What?” Ken asked, annoyed.

“It's ‘Miss Marple.' You said ‘Marbles.'”

“I don't give a damn, Hayley! And I don't appreciate you spying on me.”

“Oh, she wasn't spying on you, Ken,” Paul Applewood said, trying to be helpful. “She was just looking for a Christmas tree skirt and got turned around. With all of these trees, it's like a forest here—”

“Stay out of this, Paul!” Ken screamed.

Paul Applewood reared back, stunned. He nodded and quickly shuffled off, mumbling, “I think I see some customers ready to pay for their tree.”

Ken stepped forward, with his dark eyes fixed on Hayley. “Now you listen to me. I've heard all of the stories about you—how you poke your nose where it doesn't belong, how you chase after people asking questions and pointing fingers. Well, I won't allow you to do that to me. You can tell that police chief brother-in-law of yours that I have nothing to say about Garth Rawlings's death because I don't know anything about it. I'm as innocent as they come—and if he thinks differently, he can talk to Rusty Wyatt.”

“Rusty Wyatt? The paramedic?”

“Yes. Rusty's a good buddy of mine. We met up at the gym last Thursday around four
P.M.
and worked out for about three hours. Crunch training, cardio, and weight lifting. We were on a roll. But then, Rusty had to take off because he was on call. Got word there was a dead body found at the scene of a fire. If your own paper is to be believed, Garth Rawlings died between five and seven.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Well, then. I was with Rusty right up to the moment he left the gym to meet his fellow paramedic at the scene with the ambulance. And he will be more than happy to back me up. And that, my dear, is what you call an airtight alibi.”

Hayley was inclined to believe him.

Except for the fact he was fidgety and flustered and his eyes shifted back and forth and the finger he was waving in her face was shaking slightly.

Ken Massey was nervous and upset.

And Hayley's experience told her that a nervous and upset suspect was more often than not guilty of something.

Chapter 16

Hayley made sure she was at the office extra early on Monday morning in order to catch up on all of the work she had ignored because of the dramatic events the previous week. Sal wasn't expected in today; he had driven to Augusta, the state capital, to do a story on a local congressman from the district. It was just Hayley and a handful of reporters holding down the fort.

And then, of course, there was Bruce Linney.

He blew through the door, eyes downcast, biting his lip, as he shook off his jacket and hung it on the rack. He wore a plaid green shirt and red sweater.

“Good morning, Bruce. You're looking festive today,” Hayley said. “Someone's getting into the holiday spirit.”

Bruce refused to make eye contact.

He just grunted a reply.

Hayley tried again. “Did you have a nice weekend?”

Bruce shrugged, crossed to the coffeepot, stopping just for a second before thinking better of it, and decided to keep going to his office in the back.

“Bruce, wait,” Hayley said.

Bruce froze in the doorway, so close to an escape.

“I think we need to talk,” Hayley said quietly, making sure that there were no other
Island Times
employees within earshot.

Bruce slowly turned toward Hayley. His face was flushed. The poor guy was dying inside.

“I don't want there to be any weirdness between us,” Hayley said. “I want us to go back to picking at each other and getting on each other's nerves and complaining about the other to anyone who will listen. Just like old times.”

“Me too,” Bruce said, eyes fixed on the floor.

“So, why don't we just forget what happened at the—”

“It's forgotten. And I'd appreciate us never speaking of it again.”

“Okay, that's good. Me too.”

Neither knew what to say next.

There was an awkward pause.

Bruce finally couldn't take the silence anymore and blurted out, “So, what does Sergio have to say about the Garth Rawlings murder?”

“I'm not sure. I guess he's still going over the evidence.”

“Come on, Hayley. He's your brother's husband. You're around him all the time. You must have heard something.”

“Bruce, just because Chief Alvares is family doesn't mean he shares anything pertaining to his open investigations with me. I'm just his kooky, young sister-in-law, who writes recipes in the local paper.”

“I was hoping that would go by without being commented on,” Hayley said.

“I'm just having a hard time believing, given your nosy nature, that you don't ask him for details on occasion. Or, at the very least, get your brother to divulge any pillow talk that might clue you in to what's going on.”

“Sergio is a professional. His reputation is above reproach. And he would never, ever display any favoritism simply because we're related by marriage. He gives me absolutely no extra consideration.”

Hayley's cell phone buzzed on her desk. She casually flipped it over to read the text on her screen. It was from Sergio: Going to warehouse to brush the place one more time for clues. Care to join me?

Hayley was proud of herself. She was getting exceptionally good at deciphering her brother-in-law's malapropisms.

Hayley quickly turned the phone over facedown again so Bruce wouldn't catch a glimpse of the text.

Okay, so maybe family did have its privileges.

But why tell Bruce and have to endure that infuriating smug look on his face, or worse, a lecture about professional ethics?

Hayley grabbed her bag from underneath her desk and threw on her coat.

“Where are you going?”

“We're low on office supplies, and you know how Sal hates it when we run out of his favorite Pilot Razor Point pens. I'll be back in a little while.”

Hayley scooted out the door, not looking back, knowing Bruce probably had a suspicious look on his face.

After driving to the warehouse and parking her car behind Sergio's police cruiser, Hayley crossed the street to the front door. She noticed Lex's workshop was closed and there were no signs of his construction crew. Maybe they were meeting at Lex's apartment while he was laid up.

Inside the kitchen Hayley found Sergio sitting at Garth's desk, poring over stacks of paperwork and contracts.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked.

Sergio shook his head. “No, everything seems to be in order. This man kept metaphysical paperwork.”

“I came across the contract agreement between Garth Rawlings and Ken Massey,” Sergio said. “It all seems to be on the up and down.”

“Garth paid him off with a tidy sum, so it's hard to picture Ken having any animosity toward him,” Sergio said, rubbing his eyes, tired from reading through the stack of papers.

He handed Hayley the contract and she read the terms.

It
was
a very generous buyout.

Nearly a hundred thousand dollars for Ken just to walk away.

Hayley and Sergio spent the next twenty minutes sifting through the file folders in Garth's office cabinet. They were nearly through all of it when Hayley stumbled across a white envelope stuffed with receipts from the current month of December. She spread them out on the desk and began reading through them. One of them caught her eye.

She picked it up and handed it to Sergio. “Take a look at this.”

“Who is Sammy Kettner?”

“Locksmith. He has a little shop next to Sherman's Bookstore.”

Sergio studied the piece of paper. “Looks like Garth had a key made recently.”

“Right. And look at the notation near the bottom. ‘Warehouse.' Tiffany said Garth was paranoid about the local competition stealing his recipe files so he kept only one key to this place.”

“Maybe he just lost his key and had it replaced.”

“He would need the original key to make a copy. You went over all of his personal belongings. Were there any keys found on him?”

“Yes—a key to his car, one to his house, and one presumably to here.”

“Well, did the key to the warehouse look shiny and brand-new like it was a fresh copy?”

“No, as I recall, it was all scratched up and the copper was fading.”

“Then maybe Garth had a key made for someone else. And that person would have had access to the warehouse, and could have locked it when he or she left, leaving behind a dead body and food burning in the oven. . . .”

Chapter 17

Hayley and Sergio entered the small locksmith shop and the bell above the door chimed. A wiry kid, with stringy brown hair down to his shoulders and thick black reading glasses, sat behind the counter, flipping through a comic book. He didn't even bother to look up. He kept his nose buried in the latest issue of
Aquaman
. The kid wore a sleeveless black t-shirt with a retro picture of the Justice League of America members. It was obviously a superhero lineup from the late 1970s. Hayley knew most of the characters because her son, Dustin, was a DC Comics fanatic.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman. The six-inch guy, Atom. The stretchy one. Not Plastic Man. No, he wore dark glasses. This one was . . . Elongated Man. And the blonde in the fishnet stockings? The one who could take out bad guys with her sonic cry. Oh, yes. Black Canary.
Hayley was quite proud of herself for identifying everyone on the t-shirt.

Sergio was at the counter, hovering over the kid, and clearing his throat before the eighteen or nineteen-year-old even bothered to tear himself away from his comic to see who had come into the shop.

“Can I help you?” he said in a flat voice.

He couldn't possibly have been less interested in helping anyone.

“We are looking for the owner,” Sergio said. “Mr. Kettner.”

“He's not here,” the kid mumbled before returning to Aquaman's exciting underwater adventures.

Sergio snatched the comic out of the kid's hand, finally getting his attention. “Well, I would really like to talk to him.”

Sergio slapped the comic facedown on the counter, but he kept an index finger on it to keep the kid from taking it back.

The kid eyed Sergio, annoyed, apparently unconcerned he was ticking off the town's chief of police. “He went Christmas shopping up in Bangor, so he put me in charge.”

The kid stood up. He was well over six feet and towered over Sergio.

It suddenly dawned on Hayley that this was Sammy Kettner's son, Connor.

The last time she saw him he was around eight years old.

Now he looked like the center for the Boston Celtics.

“Yeah, I'm filling in until he gets back,” Connor said, casually reaching for his comic book.

Sergio kept his finger pressed down on it.

Connor tugged on it a couple of times before giving up.

He scowled at Sergio.

“Maybe
you
can answer a couple of questions for me,” Sergio said, pulling the receipt out of his jacket pocket. “Do you recognize this receipt?”

Connor eyeballed it for a second and turned to glare at Sergio. “Yeah, it's one of our receipts.”

“Take a look at the date and time. Were you here working that day?”

“Yeah. Probably. But it was a Friday, so I don't usually get here until—close to three-thirty.”

“Well, the time stamp on the receipt is four-ten
P.M.
So, do you remember seeing Mr. Rawlings come into the shop that day?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

Sergio lifted his finger from the comic book and Connor seized the opportunity to grab it back. He put it under the counter, out of Sergio's reach.

Something on his computer screen caught Connor's attention. His eyes widened with concern and he plopped back down in the chair and began furiously typing on the keyboard. “Hold on a minute.”

Sergio glanced back at Hayley and shrugged. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” Connor wailed, slapping the side of the computer monitor in frustration.

The business phone on the counter rang and Connor scooped up the receiver. “Quick Time Locksmith. This is Connor speaking. Nathan! I didn't get it, bro! I've been bidding on it for two weeks and it got down to the wire and some lame dude from Oregon beat me by a couple of bucks! This is so wrong, dude! When are we going to find
The Joker
number six on eBay ever again? I'm never going to complete my series collection!”

Remarkably, Hayley knew exactly what Connor was talking about.

DC Comics published a comic-book series featuring the villainous Joker in 1975. There were only nine issues. Very rare. The only reason she knew about it was because Dustin spent the entire year when he was ten tracking it down for his own collection. He located the complete series in a comic-book shop down in Melbourne, Florida, and begged his grandmother Sylvia, who lived in nearby Vero Beach, to drive to the store and buy it for him as an early birthday present. And then, less than a year later, as he was helping his uncle Randy clean out an old storage space, which Randy had kept since college, Dustin found another lot of the complete
Joker
series. Randy was an avid comic-book fan, too, when he was Dustin's age. Now the kid had two sets: one to be preserved in plastic wrappers and the other one to be left in his room and read from time to time.

“Man, this blows!” Connor whined, slamming the phone down.

Sergio was seriously losing patience.

Hayley walked over to the counter and gently stepped in front of Sergio. “Connor, I don't know if you know me, but I'm Hayley Powell.”

“Dustin Powell's mom. Yeah, I know. I run into him at the comic book store in Ellsworth sometimes,” Connor said, near tears. He crossed his arms on the counter and rested his head.

“So I'm sure you know Dustin is a big comic-book collector too, and it just so happens he has not one but two number six issues from
The Joker
1975 series.”

Connor looked up, eyes suddenly full of hope. “Two? How did he get two?”

“It doesn't really matter. What matters is, I'm sure Dustin would be happy to give you one of them so you can complete your collection.”

“Really? For free?”

“Yes. Consider it my Christmas present to you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Powell! That would be so sweet! Man, Nathan's never going to believe this!” Connor said, grabbing the phone receiver again and punching in his buddy's number.

Hayley plucked the phone out of Connor's grasp and hung it up. “You can call Nathan with the good news later. First I need to teach you a little life lesson, okay? Here it comes. Nothing in life ever really comes for free.”

“Bah, humbug, Scrooge. How much do I have to come up with?” Connor sighed.

“Oh, I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about information.”

Connor stared at Hayley for a brief moment and then glanced at Sergio. He then slowly picked up the receipt again and stared at it.

“I really don't remember this Rawlings guy coming in here. My dad must have handled the order, but let me think. Four-ten. That's usually around the time I take my smoke break,” Connor said before catching himself and turning to Sergio. “Just don't tell my dad I smoke. Cigarettes, I mean. Not weed, which I know is illegal.”

Based on Connor's half-open eyelids and slow, hazy demeanor, Hayley was not inclined to believe him.

“Where do you take your smoke break?” Sergio asked, trying hard not to lunge across the counter and slap the kid silly.

“In the alley between our shop and Sherman's Bookstore,” Connor said. “Hey, this Rawlings dude is a chef, right?”

“Yes,” Sergio said. “Why? Do you remember something?”

“I think I remember seeing a green van parked in front of our shop with the guy's name written on the side. ‘Garth Rawlings Catering' or something like that.”

The pothead's memory was finally coming into focus . . . at last.

“So Garth used his own key to have the copy made and paid cash, according to the receipt,” Hayley said to Sergio, her mind racing. “But if he was so paranoid about a break-in, why did he have a second key made? Who was it for?”

“Maybe for the chick who was with him,” Connor said, pulling his
Aquaman
comic book out from underneath the counter and flipping it open to the page where he left off reading.

“He was with somebody?” Sergio asked, leaning forward.

“Uh-huh,” Connor said, gazing at the artwork in the comic. “This underwater stuff is a freakin' trip.”

Sergio snatched the comic out of Connor's hand and waved it in front of him.

“Focus, Connor. Work with me! You saw him go into your dad's shop with a woman?”

“No. I didn't see him at all. I must have gone for a pack of cigarettes when he pulled up. But I remember the green van and the woman who was sitting on the passenger side while it was parked there. She was hot. A total babe.”

“Can you describe her?” Sergio asked.

“Yeah, she was a few years older than me. She was wearing a bright green coat. Kind of matched the color of the van.”

“What else?”

“She had red hair. I'm talking bright red. I smiled at her and she smiled back, which totally got me excited, because you know what they say about girls with red hair.”

“What do they say?” Sergio asked.

“Freaky in bed.”

Hayley suddenly had an image of the young woman.

She knew who it was.

“Did she show her dimples when she smiled?”

“Oh, yeah. She had the cutest dimples. And a nice rack too. Just thinking about her now makes me want to—”

Sergio stuffed the
Aquaman
comic in Connor's mouth. “I don't want to hear it.”

Early twenties.

Bright red hair.

Dimples.

Green parka.

It had to be the same woman Hayley saw at the warehouse when she first hired Garth for the
Island Times
Christmas party.

Connie Sparks.

And she was lying about why she was there that day.

She wasn't a potential client for Garth.

She was his mistress.