A Catered Fourth of July Read online

  “He’s shutting down,” Bernie had said as Marvin had walked away.

  “I should go after him.” Libby had been about to take a step toward him when Bernie had put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.

  “Don’t,” she’d advised. “He needs some time alone.”

  Libby had acquiesced. In truth, she didn’t have the energy to argue with him or with anyone else, for that matter.

  They returned to the front yard. Standing out on the driveway, she felt as if the heat had soaked into her head and was turning her brain to mush. She was thinking that maybe she was getting sunstroke when Bernie nudged her in the ribs.

  “What?”

  Bernie handed her a water bottle. “Here. Have some of this.”

  Libby took a couple deep swallows and instantly felt better. “Come on,” she said after she’d taken a few more. “Let’s find out what David Nancy has to say for himself.” With that, she turned on her heels, walked up to the house, and rang the bell.

  A moment later, his wife Cora opened the door. She was a statuesque lady who was a good four inches taller and twenty pounds heavier than her husband, but there was nothing flabby about her, a fact that was immediately apparent because she was wearing the smallest bathing suit possible.

  Really, it isn’t a bathing suit at all, Bernie thought. Just a G-string with a couple pasties on top. “Nice outfit,” she couldn’t resist saying.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Cora favored her with a glittering smile. Her teeth were white enough to blind. “My husband says it’s wrong to hide God’s bounty under a bushel.”

  “I thought it was God’s light,” Libby said.

  Cora shrugged. “Whatever. Now, what can I do for you ladies?”

  “We’d like to speak to your husband,” Libby said.

  “Sorry,” Cora replied promptly. “He isn’t home. He’s down in the city seeing a client.”

  “Funny. I thought I saw his car in the garage,” Bernie said.

  Cora crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s because I drove him to the train station.”

  “He’s an industrial designer, isn’t he?” Libby asked.

  Cora nodded. “Not an easy thing to be these days, especially when everything’s being jobbed out to China.”

  “What does he design?” Libby asked, more to be polite than for any other reason. She didn’t know a lot about Nancy and his wife, they being relative newcomers to the area.

  Cora tittered and put her hand up to her mouth. “Sex toys.”

  “Interesting line of work,” Bernie observed.

  “He used to design perfume bottles, but his company got taken over.” Cora shrugged. “Now he does this.” She formed her lips into another smile. Her eyes didn’t follow along. “You’d be surprised how much money is in this kind of stuff, and, hey, money is always nice.”

  “Yes, it is.” Bernie agreed. She knew where some of that money was going, too. Plastic surgery was not cheap and from the looks of her, Cora had indulged in more than her share. She was one of those women who was never going to grow old, at least not if she could help it. From what Bernie could see, no part of Cora’s body had escaped the surgeon’s knife. She’d been nipped and tucked and Botoxed to within an inch of her life. Looking at her, Bernie thought maybe she’d wait to get some work done. Not that, given her financial situation, she was contemplating it any time soon.

  “Can I tell David what this is about?” Cora asked.

  “It’s about the shooting,” Bernie told her.

  Cora put a hand to her bee stung lips. “I was there.”

  “Were you?” Bernie decided Cora had to be talking about the shooting that had happened during the reenactment, not the shooting at Marvin.

  Cora shook her head. “I was late. It was terrible.” Her voice rose. “Frankly, I wish I hadn’t gone at all.”

  Bernie detected a sob or maybe a catch in Cora’s voice, but whether it was one or another, it was certainly more of a reaction than she had anticipated. Maybe too much of one, she thought as she looked into Cora’s eyes. They, unlike her voice, didn’t seem at all troubled. In fact, they seemed positively serene.

  Cora glanced from one woman to another. “Why would Marvin do something like that to Jacko?”

  “Jacko?” Bernie asked, keeping her voice neutral.

  “Yes. Jacko. Jacko Devlin. Jacko was his nickname,” Cora explained when neither Bernie nor Libby said anything.

  “I thought it was Devi,” Bernie said.

  Cora gave her a puzzled look. “Why would you think that?”

  “No reason.” Bernie took care not to look at Libby. “So he was a friend of yours?”

  “Yes, he was,” Cora replied.

  “A good friend?”

  Cora looked Bernie square in the eye. “Yes. A good friend. Why? Is that a problem?”

  Bernie shook her head. “Not at all.”

  “He certainly was a man who knew how to share himself,” Libby observed.

  Cora put her hands on her hips and her face an inch away from Libby’s. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning nothing.” Libby took a step back. “I was just making an observation.”

  “He was a wonderful man,” Cora said, “and it’s a shame that your boyfriend had to go and kill him. The world will be a less . . . exciting . . . place . . . with Jacko gone.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Bernie said.

  “Marvin didn’t do anything to him,” Libby said at the same time.

  “Everyone is saying Marvin did it,” Cora retorted.

  “Well, they’re wrong,” Libby told her.

  “People were there. They saw what happened.”

  Libby was just about to trot out the bromide about not always believing what you see, when her sister started speaking.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, you sound pretty mad at Marvin,” Bernie told Cora.

  “Of course I’m mad at him,” Cora replied. “Like I said, Jacko was my friend.”

  Libby opened her mouth to say something, but Bernie shot her a look and she closed it again.

  “Were you angry enough to shoot at him?”

  “Marvin?” Cora asked.

  Bernie leaned forward. “Yes.”

  “Someone shot at Marvin?” Cora asked.

  “About an hour ago,” Libby said.

  “And you think that I did it?” Cora demanded.

  “It crossed our minds,” Libby told her.

  Cora snorted. “That’s stupid.”

  “So people say.” Bernie nodded. “However, that doesn’t change the question.”

  Cora pointed at herself and scoffed. “Do I look like someone who knows how to shoot a gun?”

  “Why not? Lots of women do these days,” Bernie noted.

  “Maybe they do,” Cora answered. “But I’m not one of them.”

  “So you’ve never shot a gun?” Libby asked.

  “I’ve never even shot a BB gun,” Cora replied.

  “How about a cap pistol?” Bernie asked.

  Cora gave her an incredulous stare. “I think you’ve been out in the sun too long.”

  “Or a water gun?” Bernie asked. “Have you ever used one of those?”

  Cora shook her head in disbelief.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Bernie said.

  “How about your husband? Would he have shot at Marvin?” Libby demanded.

  “That’s just beyond moronic. Why would he do something like that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Cora told her.

  “Well, someone does, because someone did take the shot,” Libby pointed out.

  Bernie chimed in next. “Maybe your husband rigged Jacko’s musket, too,” she suggested.

  “David didn’t shoot anyone.” Cora’s voice rose. “He didn’t rig the musket. He didn’t do anything. Nothing. Nothing at all. What is it going to take to get it through your thick heads?”

  B
ernie smiled. “He didn’t do anything? Not even when he found out that you were having an affair with Jack Devlin?” she threw at Cora.

  Nothing like a good guess to keep things moving, Bernie thought as she watched Cora freeze for a moment, then recover. From the reaction she got, Bernie guessed she’d hit the mark.

  “That’s simply not true,” Cora protested. However, her voice lacked conviction.

  Bernie laughed. “Please. You know my sister and I are going to find out. Secrets are hard to hide in a small town like Longely.”

  Cora reached down and readjusted her thong. “Let’s say, hypothetically, I did have an affair with Jacko and my husband did find out.”

  “Hypothetically speaking,” Bernie said.

  “Yes. Hypothetically speaking. He wouldn’t have done anything.”

  Bernie decided Cora sounded rather sad about that fact.

  “For one thing, my husband doesn’t know one end of a gun from another. I don’t think he’s ever handled a gun in his life. He’s scared of them. Something about some childhood accident.”

  “He handled a musket at the reenactment,” Libby reminded her.

  “That was a prop,” Cora snapped back. “It was supposed to be strictly for show. You know, like in amateur theater.”

  “Evidently it wasn’t,” Bernie said.

  “No. It wasn’t,” Cora agreed.

  “You must have been upset when your affair, excuse me, your hypothetical affair, with Devlin was over,” Bernie said.

  Cora sniffed and pointed a perfectly groomed finger at herself. “So now you’re suggesting I did something with the muskets to make Devlin’s musket explode? Unbelievable.”

  “My sister didn’t say that,” Libby told her.

  “No. But she damn well implied it,” Cora shot back. “Both of you should make up your minds about who killed whom. I’m getting really confused here. First, it was Dave shooting Marvin and Jacko, and then it was me. Well, for your information, we don’t have any guns in the house.”

  “Can we come in and look?” Bernie asked.

  Cora would have raised her eyebrows if she could have. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Actually,” Libby said, “I think my sister is quite serious.”

  “I am,” Bernie said.

  “No. You may not. Absolutely not.”

  “No need to get upset. I was only asking.”

  Cora shook a finger at Bernie and Libby. “You have some nerve coming here like this, interrupting my sunbathing. You want to talk to someone about guns? Talk to Samuel Cotton. He goes hunting all the time. He and Rick Evans. They’re a real pair.”

  “Rick Evans hunts?” Libby was not surprised, given what Bernie had seen in the Evans’s basement

  Cora flung her hands in the air. “How can you not know this? Duh. Of course he does. He belongs to the Musket and Flintlock Club out past Hudson Valley. That’s where he got the idea for the reenactment. Muskets and Flintlocks puts one on every September. In fact, he tried to get my David to go.”

  “To the reenactment?”

  “To the meetings.” She sniffed. “As if.”

  “Why as if?” Bernie asked.

  “Because he’s . . . he’s . . . he doesn’t do things like that.”

  “Like what?”

  Cora shrugged. “Like guy things. Now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving, I’d like to get back to working on my tan.”

  “Libby, do you have a problem with that?” Bernie asked.

  “No Bernie, do you?”

  “You guys think you’re funny, don’t you?” Cora said.

  “Well, I do, but Bernie doesn’t.”

  “No, Libby. It’s the opposite way around.”

  Cora snorted, turned on her heel, and walked inside her house, slamming the door after her.

  “Oh well,” Libby said.

  “I guess we should work on a new routine.”

  “Guess so, Bernie.”

  They were heading for the van when they heard a man talking. The sound seemed to be coming from the back of the house.

  “No can do,” the man was saying.

  The sisters exchanged glances. As one, they followed the narrow gravel path around the side of the house to the back.

  David Nancy was sitting on a lounge chair talking on the phone. If his wife looked as if she spent every spare minute in the gym, Nancy looked as if he’d never set foot in one. His belly swelled over the band of his plaid bathing suit.

  “You were supposed to be down in the city,” Bernie said to him when she was a couple feet away.

  David Nancy snapped his head around, saw who it was, and groaned. “I’ll call you back later.” He clicked off and put the phone down on the side table next to his chair. “Obviously I didn’t make it.”

  Chapter 16

  David Nancy bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Charmed as always, I’m sure.”

  “Your wife told us you were in New York,” Libby repeated.

  He shrugged. “So you said.”

  With her middle finger, Libby pushed her sunglasses back up the bridge of her nose. “Evidently, she lied.”

  “Lied is a harsh word,” Nancy noted as he reached over and took a sip from the glass that was sitting on the table.

  “But an accurate one,” Libby answered.

  “It’s not lying if it’s in the service of a good cause.” He plucked an ice cube out of his glass and began sucking on it.

  “That’s a new one,” Bernie commented. “Tell me you don’t really believe that?”

  Nancy waved his hand in the air. “Okay. Bad sentence. She was protecting me.”

  Bernie batted her eyelashes. “From us two poor helpless females?”

  His smile was for real. “Helpless?” He chuckled. “That would hardly be the word I would use to describe either one of you.”

  Bernie was going to ask him what word he would use, but Libby cut her off before she could. “Why did your wife cover for you?” she asked again.

  “Because she is my wife, and that’s one of the things wives do.”

  “I wouldn’t do it,” Libby told him.

  “Maybe that’s why you’re not married,“ Nancy retorted.

  Libby scowled and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose again. She really had to get another pair. These didn’t fit right. But as Bernie had pointed out, what did she want from drug store sunglasses?

  “Are you going to answer me or not?” she demanded.

  “You want the truth?” he asked, parodying Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

  “I want the truth,” Libby said, playing along.

  Nancy sat forward and pointed at Bernie. “You want the truth?”

  “I want the truth,” Bernie answered.

  “You can’t handle the truth,” he said then laughed. “Okay. Kidding aside. Like I just said, Cora lied to you because I asked her to run interference for me. My office is in the back of the house. I could hear your van pull into the driveway then you two talking when you got out, and I didn’t want to be disturbed. I’m on an extremely tight deadline and I needed to get my work done.”

  “You don’t look as if you’re on a tight deadline,” Bernie observed.

  “That’s because I just e-mailed my renderings off to LA and am waiting for approval before I continue. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “So you have time to talk to us now,” Libby observed.

  Nancy’s affect changed. “No, I don’t. I’m tired and I don’t have the time or the energy to have a little chat with you. Have you guys not heard of calling ahead and making an appointment? And no,” he said before Libby could continue, “I didn’t shoot at Marvin or kill Jack Devlin.”

  “How do you know that’s what we want to talk to you about?” Bernie asked.

  Nancy snorted. “Well, I don’t think you’re selling Girl Scout cookies. Anyway, like I said, I could hear your entire conversation with my wife. One thing Cora was right about—you should talk to Samuel Cotton. He�
�s the one you want.”

  “Because he owns guns?” Bernie asked.

  “That and because he and Elise Montague had a thing going and it ended badly.”

  “I take it the ending badly thing had to do with Jack Devlin?” Libby inquired.

  “As so many things around here seem to do,” Nancy noted. “Go ahead. Talk to Cotton.”

  “Since we’re here, I think I’d like to talk to you,” Libby said.

  “One can’t always have what one wants, can one, dear?” he asked in a smarmy tone of voice.

  “Actually, one can,” Bernie told him.

  “What’s your heart’s desire? Perhaps I can help.” He looked Bernie up and down.

  Bernie played dumb. “Maybe you can. Maybe you can tell us who you were standing next to when you picked out your musket.”

  Nancy chuckled. “I don’t remember. The muskets were in a pile and I picked one up. If I remember correctly, I was busy trying to remember my lines.”

  Just as Bernie was about to reply, he sprang out of his chair. “Do you hear that?” he cried.

  “Hear what?” Bernie asked.

  “My fax is coming through. Now go.” He made a shooing motion with his hand. “I don’t have anymore time to spare for you two.” At that point his cell rang. He picked it up and started talking as he made his way to his office.

  They watched him step inside and shut the sliding glass door behind him.

  “Come on,” Bernie said when Libby didn’t move.

  “Do you think there’d be a shell casing around if he took a shot at Marvin?”

  Bernie considered the question. “No, I don’t. I think he would have picked it up. I think he’s too OCD not to. Now let’s go. We’ve learned everything we can here.”

  “And that is?” Libby demanded.

  “Not much,” Bernie admitted. “Not much at all.” She put her hand on Libby’s elbow.

  After a moment, Libby allowed Bernie to lead her away.

  Bernie had just finished backing out of the driveway when a green Miata roared past them and parked. As they watched, a skinny woman in a tank top, shorts, and flip-flops got out of the car and hurried toward the house. She rang the bell. A moment later, the door opened and she went inside.

  “I wonder who that was?” Libby said.