Chapter Nine
I was back home by 10:00 a.m. Sam wasn’t there when Claire dropped me off, which was a relief. I had no desire to rehash the morning’s ill-advised adventure in the conversation I knew would inevitably follow. At least Sam hadn’t had to come up with bail money.
I’d already taken Chris Sanchez’s advice and done an internet search for Lincoln Landry. It turned out she’d been mostly right about a couple of things. First, he wasn’t hard to find. And second, Landry didn’t work in a gas station, but close. He was a car mechanic.
I popped into the house and took the Poodle pack out for a quick play session in the backyard. Then, with apologies all around, I left the dogs again and drove back to New Canaan.
Fred’s Fine Motor Repair was located on a side street near the downtown area. The business was housed in a squat brick building that was older than I was. A parking lot out front was littered with vehicles in various states of repair. Most appeared to be of foreign origin: BMWs and Mercedes rather than Toyotas and Mazdas. The garage next to the office had just two bays, but there were cars up on both lifts. Even so, there didn’t seem to be much activity going on.
The office had a glass door. A buzzer sounded loudly enough to make me jump when I pushed it open. The small room must have also served as a waiting area because there were several tattered chairs pushed against one wall. A table between them held a stack of magazines that had been current the previous summer.
“Be right with you!” someone called from the garage.
Two minutes later, a door behind the counter swung open. A man wearing a jumpsuit with the name FRED stenciled on the pocket came inside. He was busy wiping his hands on a dirty rag, which gave me a few moments to study him.
He had dark, curly hair and the kind of chiseled features more likely to be seen on a fashion runway than sliding out from beneath a car. Even in the baggy jumpsuit, his body looked impressive. When I glanced up again, I was startled to find myself locking gazes with a pair of piercing brown eyes. The man had been assessing me with the same intensity with which I’d focused on him.
Now he favored me with a slow, sure, grin. We’d just met, and I already knew that the man was a player. And obviously he knew I’d liked what I’d seen. Dammit.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for Lincoln Landry.”
“That’s me.”
I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him. Maybe he thought we were flirting, making a connection. If so, I was ready to shut him down.
I pointed toward his pocket. “Your name tag says Fred.”
“That’s right.” He was still grinning.
“But that’s not your name?”
“Fred’s the owner. He hasn’t worked in the garage for more than a decade. But customers don’t know that. Fred, the owner, says that people like to deal with the man in charge. So we all wear name tags that say FRED on them. That way everybody’s happy.”
“Except maybe me,” I muttered. “So you’re really Lincoln Landry?”
“Linc, please. No one calls me by my full name except my mother.” He extended a hand over the counter so we could shake. “And you are?”
“Melanie Travis.”
“Well, Melanie Travis, what can I do for you? I see your Volvo out there. If you’re having problems with it, you’ve come to the right place. Foreign cars are our specialty.”
“No, my car is fine,” I said. “I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about a friend of yours. Lila Moran?”
Linc screwed up his face in concentration. “Who?”
“Lila Moran,” I tried again. “She worked at James and Brant in Stamford?”
He still looked blank.
Now what? I wondered. I’d never met Lila, so it wasn’t as though I could describe her. Was it possible that Linc had so many girlfriends, he couldn’t keep them all straight?
“She lived here in New Canaan on the Mannerly estate?”
Finally I saw a glimmer of recognition. “Oh. You mean Lily Mo.”
Lila Moran . . . Lily Mo? I supposed that was close enough.
“Sure,” I said. “Lily Mo. When was the last time you saw her?”
He thought back. “Maybe three, four, days ago when she dropped off her car.” He pointed to a silver Kia that was sitting outside in the lot. “She’s due back anytime to pick it up.”
“She’s due back . . . ?” I repeated slowly. Was it possible he didn’t know? “Lila isn’t coming back to get her car. I’m very sorry to have to tell you that she was killed in her home at the beginning of the week.”
“Killed?” Linc sounded as though he didn’t understand the word. “Like, she’s dead?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry for your loss. I thought you would have already heard the news. The police are investigating what happened.”
“My loss?” Linc shook his head, as if he was still having a hard time processing what I’d told him. “Wait a minute. What are you talking about?”
“Lila told her friends that you and she were a couple,” I said. “Wasn’t she your girlfriend?”
“No.” It was the first definite thing he’d said since the conversation began. “No, Lily was not my girlfriend. She told you that?”
“She told several people,” I confirmed.
“And now she’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He sagged back against the wall behind him. “I can hardly believe it.”
“If Lila wasn’t your girlfriend, what was the nature of your relationship?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t call it a relationship.” Abruptly Linc straightened. “Lily and I met at a bar a couple of months ago. We had a few drinks, spent a little time together . . .”
“How much time?”
“Two weeks, no more than that. She lived in an odd little house behind a big gate. The place was in the middle of a forest. And it was falling down around her ears. Going there gave me the willies. It was like visiting the witch’s cottage in a Grimms’ fairy tale.”
“Is that why you stopped seeing her?” I was guessing that he’d been the one to end the relationship—or if he hadn’t, he’d still remember it that way.
“Nah, that wasn’t it. Lily was just too intense for me. Everything was guarded with her. She never said a single word without thinking about it first. Me, I’m more of a free spirit. I like to take things as they come. Life’s too short to sweat the small stuff. And that wasn’t her style at all.”
“Was there anything inside the cottage—one of her possessions maybe—that Lila seemed particularly concerned about?”
“Not that I can think of.” Linc was back to looking baffled. “Why?”
“I was wondering whether the person who killed her might have been looking for something.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” He stopped and frowned. Something had occurred to him. Linc didn’t appear to be the brightest bulb. I figured I’d better grab the thought before he lost it again.
“What?” I asked.
“A couple times when I was with Lily, she got these phone calls. She’d look down at the number, drop whatever she was doing, and say, ‘I have to take this.’ Then she’d go into another room and shut the door. Like she wanted to make sure that I didn’t hear what she was saying.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“No way. Why would I want to do that? It’s not as if she was my girlfriend or anything. If Lily wanted to keep secrets, it was none of my business. Just like what I was up to on the side was none of hers. Plenty of fish in the sea, you know what I mean?”
Linc winked at me then. He actually winked. Was there a woman in the world who would find that juxtaposition endearing? I sincerely hoped not.
“Detective Hronis is the man in charge of the investigation into Lila’s death,” I said. “If you think of anything else, you should give him a call.”
Maybe that would earn me some brownie points with the police, I thought.
“That’s not going to happen,” Linc told me. “But if you want to give me your number, I’ll call you instead.”
There I was, stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, I had no desire to give Linc my phone number. On the other, he might realize after I’d gone that he actually did know something useful.
Before I could think too much about the wisdom of the impulse, I scribbled the number down on a piece of paper and pushed it across the counter. Linc looked at it, then slipped it into his grimy pocket.
“You’ll be hearing from me, Melanie Travis,” he called after me as I let myself out.
* * *
I left New Canaan and drove straight to Graceland Nursery School to pick up Kevin. He wiggled back and forth as I was buckling him in his car seat.
“Where are we going now?” he asked. “Time to get a Christmas tree?”
I walked around the Volvo and slid into the driver’s seat. “No, that’s tomorrow.”
“That’s what you said yesterday.” He pouted.
“No, that’s what you said yesterday.”
“I’m confused,” Kev told me.
“So am I,” I admitted. But it wasn’t just Christmas that had my head spinning. For me, it was more of a cosmic “I have no idea what to do next” kind of thing.
I glanced back at him over my shoulder. “But you know who’s a good person to talk to when you’re confused?”
“Santa Claus?” Kev squealed happily.
“No. Aunt Peg.”
“Oh.” He slumped in his seat.
“She has puppies,” I reminded him. “I bet she’ll let you play with them.”
He perked up a bit at that. “Puppies with funny names. Are they Poodles?”
“No, these three look like Australian Shepherds.”
“Shepherds.” Kevin turned the word over in his mind. “There were shepherds in the manger when Jesus was born.”
I thought about explaining the difference. I truly did. But there was traffic on the Merritt Parkway, and I needed to keep my eyes on the road. So instead I said, “These will be just the same.”
“Cool beans,” Kev replied.
I’d called ahead, and Aunt Peg was expecting us. In fact, the front door to her house was open before we were even halfway down the driveway. There was an enormous pine cone- and cranberry-covered wreath on her door, but I noted that she had yet to rehang the Christmas stocking that had been on her mailbox.
Five Standard Poodles came spilling down the outside steps to greet us. Once I’d gotten Kevin out of the car, we took a minute to return their enthusiastic greeting. Still, it hardly took us any time to reach the house.
That wasn’t fast enough for Aunt Peg, who was radiating impatience. She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest and her sneaker-clad foot tapping on the threshold. When we all reached the porch, Aunt Peg quickly ushered the Poodles inside the house, then turned to confront me.
“So,” she said with relish, “I hear you almost got yourself arrested this morning.”
“Shush!” I looked around for Kevin. Luckily, he’d followed the Poodles down the hallway. It looked as though the gang was heading toward the kitchen, where the puppies were stashed. “If you tell Kevin, he’ll tell Sam.”
“Meaning you don’t intend to?”
“I’ll own up to it eventually,” I said, shrugging out of my coat. “I just want to make sure the incident has the right spin when he hears about it. Let’s get Kev settled with the puppies. Then we can talk.”
Kevin had shed his outerwear as he’d trotted down the hallway. I followed behind and gathered everything up. When Aunt Peg and I reached the kitchen, my son was pressed against the baby gate that barred the doorway.
“How come they can’t come out?” he asked.
“They’re just babies, so it’s safer to keep them confined,” Aunt Peg told him. “But we can go in.” She slipped her hands beneath his armpits and hoisted him over the waist-high gate. “Now sit down on the floor and give them a call.”
The blue puppy was curled up, asleep, on a sheepskin mat. The two black males were wrestling over a stuffed toy. But when Kevin clapped his hands, all three fuzzy puppies came galloping across the floor.
The trio had grown and changed, even in the two days since I’d last seen them. The puppies were steadier on their feet now, and they liked to hear themselves bark. Their tiny ears flapped up and down as they ran. Kev giggled with delight as all three Aussies tried to climb up in his lap at the same time.
“Enjoy yourself,” Aunt Peg told him. “Your mother and I are going to chat for a few minutes. While we’re doing that, see if you can guess which name goes with which puppy.”
She poured me a cup of instant coffee. Usually, I have to make my own, so I took that as a sign of her eagerness for updates. There was a plate of brownies on the counter, along with a mug of Earl Grey tea. Busy with the puppies, Kevin didn’t even notice the sweets. I figured that meant we could speak with privacy.
I grabbed my coffee and the brownies and sat down at the kitchen table. Aunt Peg brought her tea and joined me.
“You’ve been talking to Claire,” I said, nabbing a brownie from the plate between us.
“Of course I’ve been talking to Claire,” she replied. “Somebody has to keep me apprised of what’s going on. It sounds as though the two of you had quite an adventure.”
“Not on purpose. The plan was to slip in and out before anyone noticed we were there.”
“You can’t seriously have believed that would be possible.” The snort that accompanied that statement was rather rude. “Josie Mannerly is a famous recluse, with enough money to ensure that people have to respect her wish for privacy. If anyone could come and go from that estate on a whim, the tabloids would be all over her. Especially now, after what happened there.”
“You’re right.” I sighed. “It was an ill-conceived idea from the start. But Claire was determined and I didn’t want her to go by herself.”
“So she told me. She seemed to think that you should be absolved of blame. I’m withholding judgment myself.” Aunt Peg paused for a large bite of her brownie. “Tell me everything. Start with the caretaker who waylaid you.”
Despite her request, I couldn’t start there. If I wanted the narrative to make sense, I had to backtrack. Aunt Peg had spoken with Claire about the morning’s events, but she didn’t know about the conversations I’d had the day before with Karen Clauson and Chris Sanchez. So I summarized those first. Then I jumped ahead to our encounter with Hank Peebles.
“I can understand why Lila was afraid of him,” I said. “I know he scared the crap out of me.”
“Do you suppose Karen Clauson was correct and there’s something he wants inside that gatehouse?”
“Maybe.” I stopped and frowned. “But apparently, he has a key to the place. So if he wanted to conduct a search, what would prevent him from entering anytime he wished?”
“Maybe the object he’s after is new,” Aunt Peg mused. “Or maybe he just found out about it. Perhaps he used the key to let himself inside the cottage the other day, not realizing that Lila was home at the time.”
I nodded slowly. “You could be onto something. Because Lila’s car was in the shop for repairs. So Peebles could have seen that it was gone, and figured he had free access to do whatever he wanted.”
“Thereby precipitating the confrontation that led to her death,” Aunt Peg said triumphantly.
I picked at my brownie. Chewy and oozing with chocolate, it tasted homemade, even though I knew it came from a bakery downtown.
“Except that Lila was shot,” I pointed out. “If Peebles thought the cottage was empty, why would he have brought a gun with him?”
“Maybe that was Lila’s gun.” Aunt Peg played devil’s advocate. “Maybe she accosted him, and he disarmed her. Have the police found the weapon that was used to kill her?”
I rolled my eyes until she got the message.
“You mean to tell me that even after your friendly chat this morning, Detective Hronis isn’t keeping you informed of new developments?”
“I wouldn’t exactly characterize our talk as friendly,” I told her. “It was more like the good detective was advising me to stay out of his way.”
“Oh pish. That’s what the authorities always say. You know they don’t mean it.”
Earlier in the year, Aunt Peg had struck up a friendship with a detective from the Stamford Police Department. It had been the highlight of her summer. The two of them had become so chummy that she’d even added Detective Sturgill to her Christmas card list.
I didn’t seem to have the same kind of luck with the police.
“They do mean it,” I said.
She gave me a knowing smile. “Then it’s a good thing you’ve never been particularly adept at following directions.”