Chapter 30

Chuck . . .

For not the first time since the EMT’s name was mentioned across a white linen-draped table, Winnie felt a cold shiver take root in her chest and spread its way across her body. Only now, instead of having to cover her reaction with a sip of coffee or a bite of (highly average and way too chewy) tiramisu, she could verbalize her thoughts aloud and know that they were safe within the confines of Gertie’s ambulance.

Peeking into the rearview mirror, she saw Greg still standing on the sidewalk beside her now-empty parking space looking as if he wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of his night. Part of her still felt bad for crushing his hopes for a real date, but another part of her—the part that valued honesty and despised games—knew she’d done the right thing.

She truly wasn’t interested in a relationship with Greg, Lance, or anyone else Renee or Mr. Nelson had subtly (or not so subtly) tried to foist on her. But adding them to her friend base? That she could do.

Especially when they hand me a brand-new name for my suspect list . . .

Yet even as the redhead took center stage in her thoughts once again, Winnie found her brain at war with itself.

Chuck Rogers was an emergency medical technician. He’d picked a career that was focused on saving people, not killing them. So the notion that he’d suffocate an elderly man to get his hands on a coin didn’t really mesh.

Then again, she’d be willing to bet that money—especially to the tune of seven and a half million dollars—had converted its fair share of previously upstanding citizens throughout history.

At the far end of Main Street, she turned right and then left, the not-so-quiet whir of the fifty-plus-year-old engine providing just the right amount of background noise with which to think. There was no denying the fact that Chuck had knowledge of the coin prior to Bart’s death. Greg, himself, had filled in that little detail at the repast.

Add in the fact that the baseball card collector had been seen looking at Bart’s house within days of his passing and—

“A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime!” She pulled into the driveway, cut the engine, and sighed with relief at the sight of Mr. Nelson and Bridget waving at her from the front porch. Pushing the driver’s side door open, she stepped onto the pavement and returned the wave.

“How’d it go with Master Sergeant Hottie?” Bridget called from her spot on Winnie’s favorite rocking chair.

“Pastor Lotty?” Mr. Nelson shook his head with obvious disgust. “I thought that fella was married.”

Even in the gathering dusk, Winnie could make out Bridget’s exasperated eye roll and her downstairs neighbor’s confusion as she stepped onto the porch and made her way over to the rattan chair positioned within arm’s reach of the chessboard. She pointed at the pile of black pieces to the left of the board and eyed Mr. Nelson. “So you lost? I mean . . . won?”

“He put himself in checkmate about thirty minutes ago. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the crowing from wherever you were eating on Main Street.”

“We were at that new place, Luigi’s—dinner was good, dessert was average. Mario’s is still better.” She swung her gaze from Bridget to the man sitting in the opposing rocking chair, happily stroking Winnie’s brown and white tabby cat. “Well, you certainly gave yourself quite a run, Mr. Nelson. What did that game last? Two, three days?”

“Three days.” Mr. Nelson smiled proudly at Winnie and then reached into his front pocket and extracted a five-dollar bill. “I won five dollars.”

“It’s not winning when you give it to yourself, Parker.”

Mr. Nelson hooked his thumb in the direction of Winnie’s rocking chair and scrunched his face tight. “Anytime I find myself wonderin’ why I didn’t get married, Winnie Girl, all I have to do is look at our next-door neighbor here. Bingo—mystery solved.”

She readied herself for a war of barbs between the pair, but it was for naught. Any offense Bridget might have taken from the man’s words was pushed aside for what really mattered.

“Parker said you left at six for your dinner with”—Bridget turned a disapproving eye on Mr. Nelson and enunciated loudly and clearly—“Master Sergeant Hottie and yet, here it is, seven thirty, and you’re already home. No movie? No after-dinner walk?”

“No. Just dinner.”

“People in his line of work do have crazy hours,” Bridget mused. “Maybe next time he’ll have a bigger window.”

“It was my choice to wrap it up when we did, Bridget.”

“Oh? Did it not go well, dear?”

“It went as well as can be expected considering our very different mind-sets.”

Bridget stopped rocking. “Meaning?”

“Meaning he went wanting it to be a date, and I went knowing I didn’t.”

“I was wondering why you didn’t dress up more . . .”

She looked down at her soft black jeans and white short-sleeved sweater and tried not to take offense. It was a nice outfit, but certainly not anything that screamed “date,” much to Renee’s (and now, obviously, Bridget’s) chagrin. Even her hair was in its normal workday ponytail.

“I happen to think my Winnie Girl looks pretty as a picture.”

“Thanks, Mr. Nelson.”

Bridget scowled at the man and then turned her attention back on Winnie. “Did you fight, dear?”

“Pastor Lotty is a man of the cloth. He shouldn’t be fighting,” Mr. Nelson said, as he, too, brought his chair to a standstill. “And he shouldn’t be dating if he’s married.”

Bridget reached across the space between their chairs and turned the dial in Mr. Nelson’s ear. Then, shouting loud enough to be heard by just about anyone with an open window in a one-block radius, she said, “Hot-tie. Not Lot-ty. Good heavens, Parker, you could drive a teetotaler to drink.”

Mr. Nelson looked across the porch at Winnie. “Hottie? You went out with a fella named Hottie?”

“His name is Greg. Greg Stevens. You’ve met him. He’s the one who came over last Sunday to see the Dessert Squad.”

“He seemed like a nice fella. A little stiff, maybe, but nice.”

“He’s former army,” Bridget interjected. “And so handsome.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong, Mr. Nelson. I’m just not interested in him as anything more than a friend.”

And potential case solver . . .

Abandoning Mr. Nelson’s chess chair, Winnie moved around the porch, stopping every few steps to collect her thoughts. When she was ready, she crossed to the portion of railing directly in front of the rocking chairs and faced her friends. “I want to run something by the two of you.”

“Is this about the Dessert Squad?” Bridget asked, resuming a slow rock. “Because a buzz is growing, dear. Growing fast.”

She couldn’t help but smile at the news. “I hope you’re right. We’ve had a decent first week so far, all things considered, but there’s going to need to be a lot more business to keep us running. Especially if I’m going to be able to keep Renee on the books.” Leaning her back against the railing, she settled in for what she knew could be a lengthy talk. “But no, that’s not what I want to run by you.”

Ever the competitor, Mr. Nelson quickly matched and surpassed Bridget’s rocking pace. “Is it a plan to win over that little girl?”

“Little girl?”

“The one that goes with that fella you are interested in.”

Bridget brought her rocker to a brief stop, her focus flitting between Mr. Nelson and Winnie. “There’s a fella with a little girl?”

She breathed in the lingering scent of bacon (Mr. Nelson’s favorite food regardless of the time or meal) still wafting from the man’s open front windows and imagined herself eating a piece instead of having to tiptoe through a verbal minefield. Say the wrong thing, and it would be midnight before she got to bed . . .

“There is a man that I like, Bridget. But he has a daughter—a teenage daughter, as a matter of fact.” She captured the ends of her ponytail with her right hand and brushed them across the palm of her left hand. “But I’d rather talk about that another time. Right now, I just want to toss around a theory pertaining to Bart and the person I think may have killed him.”

Both rockers stopped in unison as their respective occupants leaned forward. “You know who killed Bart?” Mr. Nelson and Bridget asked together in matching tones.

“Possibly.”

“Who?” Mr. Nelson and Bridget echoed together.

“Now hear me out.” She released her ponytail and flicked it back over her shoulder. “I could be way off base here, but it fits. Or, at least, I think it fits.”

“Tell us,” Bridget prodded.

She inhaled sharply and then let her theory serve as its countering exhale. “I think it’s Chuck. The EMT.”

Again, Mr. Nelson tried to adjust his hearing aids but found that they were already on full volume. “That red-haired fella in the uniform?”

“Yes.” She kneaded her temple with her fingertips in an attempt to ward off a headache she felt brewing just under her skin. Tension, no doubt. “He came to the repast with Greg, remember? And when Greg explained why they came, he said it was because Chuck had known Bart from a collectors club he’s been in since he was a boy.”

“I know that collectors club. Been meeting one Saturday a month for decades,” Mr. Nelson said. “Bart started it. In the beginning, they met at the old coffee shop. But after a few months, they moved to a meeting room at the Presbyterian church on the corner of Oak and Timber.”

Those were details she hadn’t known, but they certainly helped set the stage. “Apparently, Chuck started going with his dad when he was a kid. The dad, if I remember from what Greg said on Saturday, collected Lionel trains. Chuck was into baseball cards.”

“He still has that collection,” Bridget chimed in, “or did when I ran a who’s who profile on him when he started with the ambulance district.”

“So what’s this got to do with Bart?” Mr. Nelson asked. “Other than they were in the same club together?”

It was a variation of the same self-argument she’d had off and on throughout dessert with Greg. If Chuck had known about Bart’s coin all these years, why kill the elderly man now?

Because, with Ethel gone, he only had to kill one of them . . .

It was, of course, her leading theory and one she was eager to finally bounce off her neighbors.

“Do you realize that Bart’s coin was worth seven and a half million dollars?” It was a rhetorical question, really, because it didn’t particularly matter if they did or didn’t. What mattered was the fact that Bart’s coin was missing and there was every reason to connect that fact with the man’s murder.

Still, Mr. Nelson’s gaped mouth and Bridget’s near-deafening intake of air told her they hadn’t known.

Their reaction wasn’t a surprise. Most people wouldn’t know what a 1933 gold double eagle coin was worth. Unless, as Renee had surmised, they were a collector, too.

Like Chuck.

“You think that fella killed Bart for his coin?” Mr. Nelson asked, the shock in his voice still evident on his face.

Winnie nodded.

“But Mark buried Bart with that coin!”

“No. He didn’t.”

“He didn’t?” Mr. Nelson echoed.

“No.”

“But—”

“Mark told me he didn’t, Mr. Nelson.”

“Then what’d he do with it?”

“Nothing. He didn’t even know it was missing until I told him.”

Mr. Nelson’s eyes widened, but it was Bridget who held up her index finger like a teacher silencing her students. “But if this young man came into the kind of money you’re talking about, Winnie, why would he be looking at Bart’s house? I mean, we have a beautiful street, but the houses by the lake are far more la-di-da. And he wouldn’t have to remember suffocating an old man to death every time he walked into his kitchen to toast a bagel.”

It was a good point, and one she’d not really considered until that moment.

“Unless his looking at the house was a ruse.”

Bridget turned a sharp look in Mr. Nelson’s direction. “How would looking at Bart and Ethel’s house be a ruse?”

“To see if he left behind any evidence that could implicate him in the crime.”

“Exactly!” Winnie hadn’t meant to shout, but it was validating to hear someone else give voice to the thoughts that had been nibbling at her brain since Greg unknowingly forged a connection between Chuck and Bart. At least now, if she was way off base, she wasn’t alone.

“Well, there’s only one way to know if he’s a viable suspect, isn’t there?” Bridget leaned forward, retrieved her purse from the floor beside her rocker, and shoved her wrinkled hand inside. Seconds later, she pulled out her phone, scrolled through her extensive contact list, pressed a button, and held the phone to her ear.

“What are you doing?” Winnie whispered.

Her inquiry was met with a glare and a hush from Bridget, and a laugh from Mr. Nelson.

“Yes, good evening, Sam. This is Bridget O’Keefe with the Silver Lake Herald. I understand one of your EMTs—a Chuck Rogers, I believe—was one of two called to the scene when Mr. Bart Wagner’s body was found.”

“What is she doing?” Winnie tried again, this time directing her question at Mr. Nelson rather than Bridget.

Mr. Nelson waved her off and leaned across the armrest of his rocking chair to increase his chance of hearing everything the second it happened.

“Yes, Chuck Rogers . . . and Tom Colgan. Can you tell me when their shift started that day?”

Suddenly Bridget’s call made all the sense in the world. If they could verify that Chuck’s whereabouts were unaccounted for on the morning of Bart’s murder, maybe they could convince the police to question—

“They started their double at ten o’clock the previous evening?” Bridget looked up, met first Winnie’s and then Mr. Nelson’s eyes, and gently shook her head.

It was official. They were back to square one.