A Catered Fourth of July Read online

  “Maybe we should get that iced-coffee maker,” Bernie mused, going off on a tangent for a moment. “The glass one that looks like a piece of sculpture.” She’d first seen the machine in a restaurant supply place down on the Bowery a couple months ago, then in a café in Dumbo and had been lusting for it ever since.

  “For four thousand dollars? I don’t think so.”

  “But it is so cool in a techno-Japanese kind of way.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t, but that’s four thousand dollars we should be spending on other things like fixing up this van or getting another cooler before the one we have really does die.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Bernie said sadly.

  “I know I’m right.”

  No doubt about it. A little Taste of Heaven’s business had suffered in the heat. No one seemed to have an appetite, although to be fair, their picnic basket business was doing well. Libby turned around and looked out the window. The sunlight was blinding. Cars baked in the sun. Flowers wilted in the yards. The lawns, usually emerald, had taken on a drab olive color. They were at Acre Avenue. In another few minutes, they’d be at the funeral home.

  Bernie cleared her throat. Libby turned and looked at her.

  “One more thing. The police are about to impound Marvin’s Taurus.”

  “Oh no,” Libby cried.

  “Oh yes. Evidently, they’re treating it like a crime scene.”

  “Wonderful. Poor Marvin. Not only does he get shot at and called a liar, he gets his vehicle taken away. I’d say he’s had a really sucky day.”

  “To say the least.” Bernie turned onto Maiden Lane. “I want to see Marvin’s Taurus before they tow it away.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe it will tell me—us—something.”

  Libby looked at her sister. “Like what? That it needs to have its windshield replaced?”

  “Among other things,” Bernie replied.

  “So now you’re a forensic expert.”

  “Listen, it can’t hurt.”

  Libby looked out the window again. Even the crows had settled down for a nap. “I suppose you’re right. It can’t. So what did you find in the Evans’s house?” Libby asked, changing the subject.

  “Which do you want first? The good news or the bad?”

  “The good news.”

  “Rick Evans is a gun collector.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “He doesn’t collect muskets.”

  Chapter 14

  Bernie and Libby arrived at the funeral home ten minutes later. As Bernie followed the road around to the rear parking lot, they could see that Marvin’s Taurus was already on the tow truck. Then they caught sight of Marvin standing next to the truck.

  Hangdog was the word that came to Bernie’s mind as she looked at him. “Damn and double damn,” she cursed, pulling in next to the tow truck. She slammed on the brakes and rolled down her window. “I knew we should have gone faster,” she muttered.

  “I think we were going as fast as the van could go,” Libby told her.

  Bernie was about to reply when Marvin walked over. “I asked the driver to wait, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “Do you mind if I give it a try?” Bernie asked as she got out of the van.

  Marvin shrugged. “Be my guest, but I don’t think it’ll do any good.”

  Bernie smiled. “Oh, I’m not so sure about that.”

  Marvin frowned. “Why? What do you have that I don’t.”

  Bernie’s grin grew wider. “Girl power.” With that she advanced on her prey.

  While Bernie sashayed over to the tow truck driver, Libby got out of the van and walked over to Marvin. It had only been a day since she’d seen him, but he looked as if he’d aged a couple years since then. His complexion had grown grayer, he’d developed black circles under his eyes and a stoop to his shoulders.

  “Hey. How ya doin’?”

  “Not too well,” Marvin responded.

  “I can tell.” As Libby hugged him, she could feel the stubble on his cheek and the rapid beat of his heart. They stayed like that for a minute.

  “You smell nice,” he told her when they separated.

  “Thanks. Bernie told me what happened.”

  “I figured she would.”

  “So you didn’t see anything?”

  Marvin shook his head.

  “Are you sure?” Libby pressed. “Sometimes people see things and they don’t realize that they have.”

  “I’m positive.” Marvin flicked a gnat off his polo shirt. “I was busy thinking about the Jack Devlin thing. I wasn’t paying any attention to my surroundings.”

  “Okay,” Libby replied.

  “I mean”—his voice rose—“it’s not as if I expected to get shot at.”

  “Of course not.” She put her hand on his arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  Marvin smiled weakly.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened from the beginning. Maybe we can make sense of it.”

  Marvin shrugged. “I don’t see what difference it’s going to make.”

  “Humor me on this.”

  “If you think so . . . although I really think this is just going to be a waste of time.” He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember the sequence of events. When he was done he opened them again. “What do you want to know?”

  Libby took two steps back so she was partially in the shade—which helped a little, but not as much as she would have liked. “You can start by telling me where you were coming from.”

  “Spenser’s,” Marvin answered promptly. “I was picking up Dad’s dry cleaning.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I paid for the suit and came back here.”

  “You didn’t stop anyplace else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you notice anyone following you after you left the store?”

  Marvin shook his head. “No. Scratch that. I’m not sure. I mean, it’s not as if I was checking in my rearview mirror or anything.”

  “What roads were you using?”

  Marvin thought for a moment. “Ashcroft, Beech, then Main.”

  Those are local roads that don’t have much traffic on them. If someone had been following Marvin, he would have noticed, Libby thought. She was beginning to understand why the police had taken the view they had. “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing. Nothing unusual. I got here and drove around to the back entrance the way I always do. I remember I was reminding myself to check with the florist about the floral arrangements for Mrs. Fields’s funeral. Her family wanted all white gladioli around her casket. Weird. Like it was a wedding instead of a funeral.”

  “Maybe it is to them,” Libby commented.

  “Maybe,” Marvin said before returning to his monologue. “Anyway, I turned off the engine and pocketed the keys. I stepped out of the Taurus and that’s when I heard this humming sound. I thought it was a bee or a wasp or maybe some kind of bird so I looked around, but I didn’t see anything. Then I saw the hole in my windshield.” Marvin stopped for a moment. “I didn’t know what it was at first. It just didn’t compute. Then I realized someone was shooting at me.”

  “Whoever it was shot at you after you got out of your car?” Libby asked, wanting to make sure she got the sequence of events correct.

  Marvin nodded.

  “He missed and hit the windshield instead?”

  “Yes.” Marvin swallowed.

  Libby reflected that he still looked unsettled and his voice was still a little on the shaky side. Of course, given the circumstances she’d be pretty shaken up, too.

  “Thank God. If I’d still been sitting there . . .” His voice trailed off. He shivered at the thought.

  “But you weren’t,” Libby said firmly.

  “No. I wasn’t. Two more minutes . . .” His voice trailed off again.

  “The shooter probably wasn’t even aiming at you, Marvin. It was probably an accident.”

  M
arvin visibly brightened. “You think so?”

  “Absolutely,” Libby lied. “Now, tell me what happened afterward.”

  Marvin took a deep breath and answered. “When I realized what it was I just . . . I . . . I panicked.”

  “Understandable. It’s not every day a person gets shot at. At least not in Longely.”

  The corners of Marvin’s mouth edged up into a small smile. “At that point, I ran inside and called the police. Now I wish I hadn’t,” he said bitterly. “I should have stayed and looked around. Maybe I would have seen something.”

  “No no, you did the right thing,” Libby reassured him.

  Marvin scowled. “No, I didn’t. Calling the police has made things worse. Now they think I did it, and on top of everything else, they’re impounding my car. Heaven only knows when I’m going to get it back.”

  “That should be the least of your problems,” Libby told him as she watched the interaction between Bernie and the tow truck driver.

  Bernie was listening intently to what the man had to say. Her head was cocked to one side and her eyes were locked onto the driver’s eyes. You would have thought he was revealing the secrets of the universe. From what Libby could see, the only thing Bernie wasn’t doing was batting her eyelashes at the driver. Libby wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t coming next.

  He, on the other hand, was busy gawking at Bernie’s ample tatas. In the couple feet between the van and the tow truck, Bernie had managed to unbutton the top two buttons of her blouse. Something told Libby it wouldn’t be long before the driver winched Marvin’s car down so Bernie could take a look at the windshield.

  “So,” Libby said to Marvin, wrenching her gaze away from Bernie and returning to the matter they’d been discussing, “where were you parked when this happened?”

  He pointed to a space a foot away from the door. “There. Next to the hearses.”

  “That’s your usual spot?”

  Marvin nodded. “We like to leave the spot next to the door free for deliveries.”

  Libby didn’t ask what deliveries he meant. She didn’t want to know. She studied the area. “I don’t get it. How did the bullet hit the windshield instead of going through the rear window first?”

  “Because I backed in, obviously. The front of the car was facing out,” Marvin explained.

  Libby nodded. That made more sense.

  They heard a clunk as the Taurus came down. Score one for Bernie.

  Libby felt a quick pang of envy at Bernie’s prowess with the opposite sex and suppressed it.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Libby heard the tow truck driver saying to Bernie.

  Bernie grinned. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Are you going to go over and look, too?” Marvin asked Libby.

  She shook her head. Privately, she thought that what Bernie was doing was a waste of time, but she wasn’t going to say that to Marvin. “I’m sure she’s got it covered.” Instead, she walked into the middle of the parking lot and looked around her.

  The funeral home was surrounded on three sides by expensive housing developments situated on gently rising hills covered in grass with an occasional bunch of wildflowers thrown in. There were no trees, no tall grasses, nothing, as far as Libby could see, for a sniper to hide behind. A sniper in Longely? She shook her head. There might as well be hippos parading down the main square.

  Maybe there were. She brought her palms together and touched her fingers to her lips. Could Marvin have been the intended victim? Could Jack Devlin’s death be an accident? It seemed so unlikely, but unlikely didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. She supposed she’d just have to wait and see.

  She dropped her hands to her sides and turned toward the funeral home. A busy main road filled with retail establishments of one kind or another ran in front of it. No one could have taken a shot from the front of the building. They would have had to have driven up the narrow road to the back. If that had happened, Marvin would have heard them coming. If by some remote chance he didn’t, he certainly would have seen them leaving.

  “What are you doing?” Marvin asked as he joined her.

  “Just thinking.” She stepped back to where Marvin’s car had been. As far as she could see, the only place the shot could have come from was the backyard of one of the houses in the development and that seemed highly unlikely. Unless of course, some kid was shooting his BB gun out in the backyard.

  She went over and joined Bernie and the tow truck driver. They were staring at the Taurus’s windshield. Maybe Bernie was right after all. Maybe looking at the windshield was going to help.

  Libby pointed to the hole. “Do you think a BB pellet could have done that?” she asked Bernie.

  The tow truck driver answered instead. “Not likely. It would’ve had to have been very close. Otherwise, it would have just cracked the windshield.”

  “How about a musket shot?” Bernie asked him.

  “A musket is a rifle and that scatters shot. It would have peppered the windshield.” He pointed to the hole. “I’m pretty sure a twenty-two made that.”

  “How come?” Bernie asked.

  “Because I hunt and because I was an armorer and that makes me an expert on weapons.”

  “Armorer?” Bernie repeated. “Doesn’t that have to do with knights and swords and stuff like that?”

  The tow truck driver laughed. “Maybe back in the day, but now it has to do with the U.S. Army. I took care of weapons in Iraq,” he explained.

  “So you know about bullets and all the rest of that stuff,” Bernie said, fluttering her eyelashes.

  The tow truck driver grinned and leaned forward. “Yes ma’am. You could say I have it down cold.”

  Libby left Bernie and the tow truck driver to their flirtation and drifted away. So much for my theory, she thought. She went back to staring at the housing developments on the hills above the funeral home.

  “What are you looking at?” Marvin asked as he came up beside her.

  “Nothing really. Just trying to figure things out.” She began chewing on the inside of her cheek, realized what she was doing and stopped. She would have loved a piece of chocolate—it helped her think—but that wasn’t an option at the moment. It was simply too hot. The chocolate would melt in the heat.

  She made a face. Okay. Shooting at Marvin was one of two things—an accident or on purpose. If it was an accident, it was a no harm no foul kind of situation and she didn’t have to worry about it. However, if it was an on purpose deal, she did. If it was on purpose, the question was who had done it and why? Good questions. Of the seven reenactors, Rick Evans was the first one that came to mind given his conduct toward Marvin and the fact that he was a gun collector. But the other reenactors might have guns, too.

  Why would Rick do something like that? What would he have to gain? Nothing, as far as Libby could see. He would gain no advantage whatsoever, especially since the police had already tagged Marvin for Devlin’s death.

  Then there was the how. Rick and Gail Evans’s house was a solid twenty-minute drive away from the funeral home. In order to have executed this particular maneuver, Rick would have had to have driven over there, run through someone’s backyard, and taken the shot from there. No other possibility that Libby could see. But that was taking an awful risk. If he were caught, it would be a difficult thing to explain. What would he say? That he was hunting turkeys? That he’d been seized by a sudden inexplicable desire to rid the area of crows?

  Libby clicked her tongue against her teeth and studied the houses in the developments again. They all faced toward the road. She was looking at the rear of the houses and their backyards. All of them had large windows. She wondered if the windows were sealed. If they weren’t, someone could have taken a shot at Marvin through one of the windows. No need to even go outside.

  She stared at the houses again. There was something else. She just couldn’t figure out what. She watched a cardinal fly by and land on a tall, white fluffy weed. It reminded he
r of a ball of cotton.

  Cotton. That was it! She’d been thinking of cotton weed, which made her think of Samuel Cotton. The third grade teacher. His house was up there. He’d been a colonist in the reenactment, although he was supposed to have been a redcoat. Speaking of redcoats, David Nancy lived in the next development over and he had been a redcoat, too. Either one could have handed the musket to Devlin or taken a shot at Marvin or both.

  Libby thought for another moment. Where was everybody? That was the question. Rick Evans was presumably at his office in the city. He went in every morning. It was a little after twelve so Samuel Cotton should be at school overseeing the summer camp the town was running, which left David Nancy, who worked at home, as the most likely suspect.

  Libby smiled. At least it was a start. She always felt better when she had a plan.

  Chapter 15

  The moment Bernie parked the van in David Nancy’s driveway, Libby hopped out, walked behind the garage, and contemplated the view from there. She could see two hearses parked out back of Marvin’s father’s funeral home. They shimmered in the heat. A dragonfly buzzed by her cheek as she watched a linen supply truck pull up to the funeral home entranceway. A moment later, the driver got out. He carried one large laundry bag under each arm. Libby noted that she had no problem reading the truck’s logo.

  “Dave Nancy has a clear shot at Marvin from here,” she said as Bernie came up behind her. She waved her hand in the air to indicate the area that she meant. “It would certainly be easy enough to do.”

  “If he’s a halfway decent shot,” Bernie pointed out.

  “Hopefully, that’s one of things we’ll find out.”

  “Even if he is, I don’t see why he would do that.” Bernie was less than enthusiastic about her sister’s theory.

  “Well, there is that minor point,” Libby admitted. Off-hand, she couldn’t think of any reason why David Nancy would take a shot at Marvin.

  Marvin hadn’t been able to come up with a reason, either, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. After all, that’s what investigations were all about. When she’d asked Marvin if he knew why, he’d just looked at her and said, “I have to move the sprinklers and then I’m going to go inside and lie down.”