CHAPTER 4
I walked into my shop—and near chaos—a little while later. Lincoln had said he wanted me to be fingerprinted but told me I could go after I reminded him they already had my prints on file from a previous case. He also said that he needed to speak further with Tulia.
Orlean wore her blue latex work gloves as she jabbed the register. A line of people ten deep waited, some holding retail items, others outfitted with backpacks and biking outfits. My half-brother was nowhere in sight. I frowned. He had a habit of coming in late and today wasn’t a good day for it. Sometimes he had a good reason for being delayed. I thought he sometimes relied on my good faith, which was running thin right about now.
Orlean spied me and scowled from under the Orleans Firebirds cap she wore every day. “Derrick’s gonna be late.” She bit off the words.
“How late?” I murmured to her.
“Eleven.”
Ugh. That was an hour from now. “You can go back to your work,” I told her. “Thanks for handling things. I got this.” To the line of customers, I said, “I’ll be right with you all, and I apologize for the wait. We had an unavoidable delay this morning.” I hurried to my office, grabbed the cash tray out of the safe, and made it back to the counter in record time. I sold a tube, a pump, and a light to the first customer. The second bought matching his-and-her red cycling shirts. Everybody else wanted rentals. The busyness distracted me from dwelling on the mental image of Annette’s corpse in the Lobstah Shack walk-in. It also distracted me from praying Derrick didn’t have anything to do with Annette’s murder. He’d been a suspect once before in a homicide.
The last person in line was a local named Doris Sandersen. She owned Paws and Claws, a pet supplies shop on the other side of the Lobstah Shack.
“What’s going on at Tulia’s, Mac?” she asked in her deep voice, her dyed-black hair stark against heavy pale makeup. “All those cop cars. I saw you leaving there. Is she okay?” A lover of both dogs and cats, Doris wore a yellow sweatshirt with an appliqued beagle on the front. Siamese cat earrings with eyes of tiny blue topaz stones adorned her earlobes. She smelled like she’d smoked a cigarette on the way over here.
“They asked me not to talk about it.” I glanced around. I didn’t know the shopkeeper well. What I did know was that she and Tulia had had an ongoing dispute about the smell of lobster shells in the alley. “I know Tulia is fine, though.”
“I’m her neighbor.” She lowered her chin to give me a stern look, which revealed a line of white roots that divided long thick bangs from the rest of her hair. “I have a right to know what’s going on. All that police presence is bad for business. How do I even know I’m safe?”
I gave her a little smile, even though she was clearly concerned for herself, not for Tulia. “There’s no danger, as far as I know. I’m sure the authorities will release the information soon.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her type to have broken the law. It’s criminal the way she stinks up the alley.”
I gaped. “Doris, what in the world do you mean by ‘her type’?” She couldn’t mean Tulia’s Wampanoag heritage. Could she? What century did she live in?
“Nothing, nothing.” She batted away the thought.
“I’ve been in that alley plenty of times. I’ve never noticed a bad smell,” I said. Actually, Doris’s garbage smelled worse. One of her cats lived in the store, and Doris dumped its fragrant litter in the trash.
Her nostrils flared. “You don’t have to try to operate a respectable business next to hers.”
Did she think my shop wasn’t respectable? Deep breath in, deep breath out. “Can I help you with anything else?”
“Mac, you know I don’t ride a bike.” Her voice dripped disdain. “I walk everywhere in town.”
I kept my mouth shut. She turned and stalked out. Sheesh.
In a brief lull, I grabbed my sandwich—always ham and cheese—out of my bag, stashed it in the little fridge, and poured a mug of coffee from the carafe in the office. Orlean must have had time to make it before things got busy.
In the repair area, she tuned up a bike set on one of the two stands. “What went down over there?” She didn’t look up.
I moved in to stand next to her. “Tulia found a body in her walk-in cooler.” A shudder rippled through me. “The person was murdered, Orlean.”
She lifted her face. “No sir!”
“It’s true. Tulia called me before she called the police. I went over to help her out a little.”
“Who died?”
“Annette DiCicero.” Lincoln had said not to talk about it, but Orlean was far from a gossip. “Do you know her?”
“Pretty lady, right?” Orlean focused on her work again. “Heard she got the Miss New Bedford crown a few years back.”
“I didn’t know that. I can see how she would have been beauty queen material. The poor thing.”
My mechanic nodded.
“Keep it under your hat, though, okay?” I trusted Orlean. “I don’t want what happened to get out before the police release the name and the news.”
“ ’Course. Lincoln on the case?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll figure it out. But three murders in Westham in five months. Kinda eerie, doncha think?”
“Exactly my thoughts.” Had our beautiful little seaside town turned into Cabot Cove?