SIX 

I recognized her. It was the not-so-hot waitress who had served Brenda and me last night at the Casa di Pizza. She shook her head so her long, straight hair fell around her shoulders in a glossy wave. I wondered what kind of shampoo and conditioner she used. The cold dry winter air of the North Country always gave me staticky flyaways.

“Piper,” the woman said. “Piper Preston. I’m supposed to bring this to Georgie.” She reached into her bag and I saw the detective stiffen and put his hand automatically on his sidearm. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. This girl could barely serve up salad and pizza without help. She couldn’t possibly be dangerous.

You’ve been wrong about people before, that obnoxious little voice in my head piped up. Fine. A little caution wouldn’t hurt.

Piper reached farther into her giant purple Coach bag so that her entire arm disappeared into the depths—which was saying something, because she was quite tall and had correspondingly long appendages. What could a young woman of her age possibly need a bag that big for? At least it wasn’t carrying a little dog, that I could tell. It seemed to be mostly empty, but she finally came up with a piece of paper.

“I’ll take that,” Detective Hawthorne said in a voice that would scare the Crypt Keeper. Piper didn’t seem to notice, but handed him the paper. He scanned it, turned it over to examine the other side, then held it out to me. “Salad dressing,” he said in the same tone he might have said, “Murder.”

I reached for it and read the title. Ah. Franco’s Thousand Island dressing recipe, the one he’d found in one of the unused upper floors over his restaurant. I scanned the first couple ingredients. As I’d suspected when I’d tasted the dressing, this recipe was a little different from the one we served here. A little thrill ran though me. Was this it? The smoking gun of salad toppings? The Maltese Falcon of the Thousand Islands? The concoction that would force the tour boat guides to change their spiel?

“Thanks for bringing this over,” I said to Piper. “And thank Franco for me, will you?” It was all I could do to not pull out a stainless steel bowl and start mixing up a batch right then.

Piper gave her gorgeous hair another toss, then adjusted her creamy white hand-knit hat to the perfect slouchy angle. “No problem. It’s nice to get out of the restaurant for a while. I wish I could think of another errand to run.” She cut her heavily fringed eyes to Detective Hawthorne. “Uh, can I go now?”

A tiny muscle in his jaw twitched. “Yes,” was all he said. Piper threw the straps of her bag up over her shoulder and left.

I folded the photocopied recipe into quarters and put it in my pocket. It would be wrong of me to let it go public before Franco had a chance to take the credit for finding it. But tomorrow, when the Bonaparte House was turned back over to me, there was a salad on my personal menu.

Detective Hawthorne zipped up his jacket and shoved his hands into black leather gloves, then headed for the door. “Till next time,” he said.

Was it illegal to throw something at a state trooper? Probably. But he was outside before I could find anything within arm’s reach. I donned my jacket, grabbed my purse, and followed him out.

A few minutes later my little blue Honda and I were motoring out of town, headed toward Watertown, the North Country’s biggest city, population twenty-five thousand or so. Located just a few miles from Fort Drum, home to twelve thousand Army personnel and their families, Watertown was where most everybody, Army and civilian alike, came to shop. Most of the major retail and restaurant chains were here, but if you couldn’t find what you wanted, the next big stop was Syracuse fifty miles farther south. And if you couldn’t find it there, well, you’d probably just order online and have somebody else do the driving.

I pulled into a parking space at the Salmon Run Mall and shut off the engine, which also killed my 1980s music in the middle of a Bruce Springsteen song. In addition to doing some early holiday shopping, I needed to outfit my car for the upcoming winter. Jumper cables were in a plastic milk crate stored in the hatchback, along with deicer. I’d need to pick up a second can to store in the house. If my locks froze, the can in my car would be useless since I wouldn’t be able to get to it. My list also contained a case of water bottles. Half a dozen was a good number to keep in the car, opened and with some of the contents poured out so the bottles wouldn’t crack when the water inside froze and expanded. A box of protein bars, a new ice scraper and snow brush combination, a couple of bottles of dry gas, an extra hat and gloves, some cat litter—poured under a spinning tire, it would provide enough traction to get moving again on slick ice or snow if I got stuck. I already had a couple of blankets stored back there as well. Winter came early, hit hard, and stayed late this far north, and it paid to be prepared.

My shopping for essentials didn’t take long. Since I couldn’t go home, I stopped in at the department store, shopped for a while, and picked up a very cute pair of black leather dress boots, along with a cherry red cashmere sweater that was cut a little lower than my normal clothes. A look in the dressing room mirror told me the sweater was flattering and fit me perfectly, and the soft, delicate knitted fabric was darn near irresistible.

Cal would approve, I thought. She’d been trying to unfrump me for years. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about my appearance. It was just that during the spring and summer, my jobs were so varied at the Bonaparte House, from reservations clerk to supply orderer to line cook, that clothes had to be cool, practical, comfortable, and easily washable. And during the winter, well, clothes had to be warm in my drafty two-hundred-year-old home. So like most everyone else in northern climes, I wore a lot of fleece and flannel.

I paid for the boots and sweater, wincing only slightly at the price as the clerk ran my credit card. I loaded up my arms with bags and headed for the parking lot.

The air was cold, colder than before I’d gone into the mall. My breath came out in a frosty whoosh as I placed my bags in the car, then raced around to the driver’s side to turn on the engine and let it warm up. A thin layer of frost had formed on the windshield while I’d been inside. I could let the defroster melt it off, or I could scrape. Since my gloves were currently residing on the passenger seat, scraping was out. I shoved my hands in my pockets and got inside, even though it was no warmer in there yet than it was outside.

Shivers ran through me in waves as I waited. Finally, two circles of clear glass appeared on the windshield, fanning out slowly until a view of the parking lot presented itself. A woman in a long dark blue coat was walking briskly past my car, pulling a fur-trimmed hood up over her head as she did so. I’d only gotten a glimpse of her before the hood went up, but I thought I knew who she was. And I needed to talk to her.

I put the window down a crack and left the motor running as I followed the woman, who was walking at a good clip. Not that I could blame her. Did I mention it was cold?

She ducked into a late-model white Beemer, one I’d seen around Bonaparte Bay, just as I caught up. She started when I knocked on the window, but rolled it down halfway.

“Georgie! You shouldn’t sneak up on people.” She relaxed and gave a little laugh.

“Hi, Lydia. I thought I recognized you. Doing some shopping, like everybody else in the North Country?” Lydia hadn’t been carrying any bags. In fact, I hadn’t even seen a purse. Well, maybe she was a minimalist and carried only a wallet and phone, which could be stowed in pockets. Good idea, frankly.

Her face darkened as her lips twisted down into a frown. “My new boss decided part of my job description was driving to Watertown to buy socks for his dead father. Apparently nothing he has—had—are good enough to be buried in.”

I knew I didn’t like that little brat, Ben MacNamara, and here was a concrete reason why. Lydia Ames had worked for his father for at least ten years, and instead of giving her the day off when the man died, he sent her on a ridiculous errand. I wondered what would happen to her, whether Junior would keep her on at the law firm, or if she’d even want to stay. It wasn’t necessarily easy to find a job in Northern New York, so people tended to stick around, even if they weren’t happy. I glanced down at the Beemer. She’d married well—and divorced well—a few years ago and she’d gotten a nice settlement, if rumors were true. Maybe she could leave if she wanted to.

“Did you find the socks?” I shivered and pressed my hands farther down in my pockets, hunching my shoulders against the wind, as if that would do any good. “You don’t have any bags.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Penney’s doesn’t carry the specific brand anymore, so now I have to go to the men’s store across town. At least I’m getting paid mileage in addition to my exorbitant salary.”

“Will the office be open again soon? I hate to ask, but I need a copy of the Bloodworth Trust file. It’s kind of important.” The sooner we knew for sure we’d identified all the potential heirs, the sooner I could breathe easier.

She tilted her chin down and looked up at me. “I can’t give it to you. You know that.”

I blew out a breath. “Yes, I know. It was worth a shot. As I said, it’s important to me. What do I have to do to get it?”

“Have Melanie and Liza sign an authorization saying you can pick up a copy of the file. I’m manning—womaning—the office and Junior will be in and out. It’ll take me a couple of days to copy everything—some of the original documents are probably old and fragile—and I’ll have to get it approved by him, of course. Even if you produce an authorization, I’m just an underling. It’s not my place to make decisions of any kind.” The frown returned to her face. She reached over and turned the heater on full blast. Her hair blew back over her shoulders. What I wouldn’t have given for a little of that heat right about then.

“Thanks. Should it say anything special, or just that they give you permission to release the file to me?”

She rattled off instructions, which seemed easy enough to remember.

“I suppose you all want to know how much money the trust is worth? You already know it will dissolve in February of next year.”

“Since the money isn’t mine, it doesn’t really matter how much there is, does it?” I laughed. My words belied the reality. I was dying to know. In fact, it was a little surprising that Melanie wasn’t curious enough to ask herself. But my mother was an oatmeal raisin on a tray of chocolate chip cookies. Odd. She hadn’t been back in my life long enough for me to know what she was made of. Or maybe she had asked, already knew, and just chose not to tell me.

“Well, I’m curious myself,” Lydia said, echoing my thoughts. “Jim MacNamara always kept the trust file in a locked cabinet in his office. Only he had the key, and he did his own filing on it.”

Interesting. Was there some kind of confidentiality requirement in the trust that would keep even longtime office personnel from accessing the records? It seemed like overkill, frankly, although of course, data security was a big deal these days. Not that it would have been when the trust was created. Just what was in the trust file? I was even more curious than I’d been before.

“The office is still open for now. It’ll be a couple days until the medical examiner releases the body and the arrangements are made. Junior’s been there dealing with the detectives and the crime scene techs. He’s frazzled. This is awful of me to say, but I don’t know if he’s upset about his father, or if he’s worried about actually having to work, now that the law firm is his.”

So as I’d assumed, Ben MacNamara would be taking over. “Were Ben and Jim close?” A wet drop, then another, landed on my cheek. Snow.

“Not especially. I think Ben was always closer to his mother. Not surprising, since she babied him, treated him like the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of MacNamara, and still does. But personality-wise, he and Jim were an awful lot alike.”

I blinked rapidly as a snowflake landed on my eyelashes. The sky was the dull gray of a Navy battleship, which signaled a storm coming in. Time to wrap this up and get home. Well, not home. Back to my room at the Camelot, at least for tonight. “Where is Ben’s mom these days? I never really knew her.”

“Rosemary? Last I heard, she was living in the Carolinas with her new husband. She calls Junior on the office phone all the time instead of just calling his cell. I think she gets a snooty thrill out of having her calls go through an underling, also known as me.”

“None of my business, but are you planning to stay on?” The snow was picking up. Last question. Even if I’d had more, I would have tabled them for now.

Lydia looked thoughtful. “Honestly, I’m not sure. My house and car are paid for, and I’ve got money left from my divorce settlement. But I’ll stay on for a few months at least. Not for Junior. Jim MacNamara was a player, but I respected him. And a lot of people in Bonaparte Bay were his clients. It’s going to take a while for Junior to get up to speed on all our files and he’s going to need my help. I can’t just walk away and leave everyone in the lurch.”

I nodded. Lydia had a work ethic I could relate to. “It’s been great talking to you. I’ll get you that authorization.”

“Drive safely,” she said as the window rolled up between us.

The snow was coming fast and furious by the time I got back to my car, which was still running. I shook the loose snow out of my hair and brushed off my coat, again wishing I was wearing one of the two pairs of gloves currently inside the vehicle. I opened the door and got in, instantly grateful for the warm air blasting out of the vents, which would dry me off in no time. I unzipped my coat so my arms were less constricted, buckled up, and reached into one of my shopping bags on the passenger seat for the bar of dark chocolate I knew was there.

Huh? The bag was empty. In fact, all the bags were in disarray, with the contents strewn on the seat, underneath a layer of plastic shopping bags, which was why I hadn’t immediately noticed. These bags had not just fallen over and the contents spilled. Somebody had been pawing through them. I checked the backseat. Empty, the same as I’d left it, but the floor mats were askew. I took a deep breath and engaged the lever to pop open the hatchback, bracing myself to go back out into the snow. Yup, the milk crate was overturned and one corner of the carpet covering the spare tire compartment was lifted up. In the ten minutes or so I’d been talking to Lydia just a few yards away, somebody had tossed my car.