CHAPTER 8

After a restless night, I woke late the next morning, and while I ate my eggs and toast at the kitchen table, I deliberately set aside what I knew and what I thought I knew about the murder of Brigit Gundersen and vowed to approach the case with fresh eyes. I downed a cup of coffee to get me through the first hour or two of what was bound to be a long day, then headed out the back door to my detached garage.

I planned to visit Town Hall—I knew Julia, Royce, and probably Cassie were working on the dance decorations—but my first stop would be the bakery for donuts and another cream puff. Then the police station. The donuts were a peace offering. I hadn’t talked to Gilroy since yesterday afternoon, when we’d gotten into a silly argument in his office.

But as I drove Main Street, I caught sight of Royce Putnam coming out of Grove Coffee, a tall cup and a pastry bag in his hands. He looked like he was making his way to Town Hall, so I grabbed a parking spot half a block ahead, dashed back down the sidewalk, and intercepted him. Lucky for me, he didn’t seem to think I was impertinent. In fact, he stopped in his tracks, smiled broadly, and said a cheerful good morning.

“Rachel, is it?” He switched the pastry bag to his right hand, freeing his left, and pushed his sliding glasses up on his nose. His wedding band sparkled in the bright sun.

“Yes, Julia’s friend.”

“Are you still trying to discover the identity of Wayne Gundersen’s mystery woman?”

I smiled—a little sheepishly, I think—and said yes.

“Need any help?” he asked.

I was taken aback. “Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to you. I have some questions you might be able to help me with.”

“Fantastic. Let’s head back to Grove Coffee, shall we?”

Normally people ran from me the moment I revealed my investigatory intentions, but not Royce. He made a sharp pivot on the sidewalk and strode eagerly for the coffee shop, holding the door for me when I got there. I ordered a caramel macchiato, we grabbed a corner table, and I wasted no time in getting to my questions.

“Royce, if you had to guess, who do you think this mystery woman is?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” He opened his pastry bag. “Mind if I eat while we talk?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Well, then, it seems to me that our woman does exist. She’s not a figment of Brigit’s imagination, which is a possibility I entertained until I found out about the dark hairs on her husband’s suits.” He took a bite of his powdered donut and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“How do you know where she found the hairs? Did she tell you?”

Royce shook his head. “Charlie told me yesterday, after Julia and Cassie went home. He said Wayne had a talk with him two days ago. It was probably a heads-up in case Brigit talked to Anika. Charlie’s his friend, so Wayne wanted to get his side out. He did the same thing when he and Brigit had rip-roaring fights. Wayne talked to Charlie, and Brigit talked to Anika. And vice versa.”

I leaned back in my chair, sipping my coffee and mulling things over. One second I considered Wayne a suspect, and the next I didn’t. I needed less supposition and more solid facts.

“You’re thinking what I’m thinking,” Royce said.

“Which is?”

“That Wayne wouldn’t tell Charlie that Brigit found hairs on his suit if he intended to kill her. It makes him look undeniably guilty, and I mean for more than the affair. For her murder.”

“That’s right.” Then again, by the sound of it, the Gundersens’ marriage had been a volatile one. “But we only have Charlie’s word for it that Wayne said anything to him.”

Royce nodded and took another, decidedly larger, bite of donut.

“Then again,” I went on, “it would be foolish of Charlie to lie about that. All we’d have to do is ask Wayne what he said to him. I bet the police have already asked Charlie what he knows about the affair.”

At that moment it occurred to me that I was treating Royce as a partner in our unofficial murder investigation, though I hadn’t eliminated him from my list of suspects. If he was playing me, trying to feed me misinformation, trying to misdirect me . . . I watched him pry the lid from his coffee cup and heard him ahh with satisfaction as he took his first sip.

He glanced up at me. “I could ask Wayne what he told Charlie.”

“Could you?”

“Sure. Neither of them would think anything of me asking. They use me as a sounding board in their domestic squabbles all the time. Royce, let me tell you what Brigit did now. Royce, you won’t believe what Anika said to me yesterday. I’m retired and I’ll be seventy soon, so they think I must be enthralled by their disagreeable lives.”

I laughed. “You sound like Julia.”

“Do I?” Grinning broadly, he flopped back in his chair, looking pleased by my comparison. “Julia is one of the good ones.”

One of the good ones? What did that mean? She’s a pal? A good woman?

Before I could get nosy and ask, he said, “Speaking of Julia, I’ve got to run. She and the rest of the crew are waiting for me at Town Hall. It’s only one more day until the dance, and we’ve lots to do yet.” He stuffed his napkin into his coat pocket, stood, and grabbed his coffee.

“It’ll be beautiful,” I said, rising along with him. “Though Julia’s a little reluctant to go.”

“Is she?” He frowned. “But she seems to be enjoying herself. Making the decorations, anyway.”

I couldn’t back out, could I? I had to explain what I meant. Just a bit. “Well, you know, she’ll be serving punch instead of dancing.”

“But she can dance. Why couldn’t she dance?”

“She’s not attending the dance.”

“She’ll be there, won’t she? She said she would.”

Royce was now competing with Gilroy for the Dense Man Award, and I feared he might win. “Yes, but she’s serving punch,” I said emphatically.

“She volunteered.” Royce dropped back into his seat, and I followed suit.

“Don’t tell Julia I said anything, okay? She just, you know . . .”

Befuddled, Royce watched me, waiting for clarification. But I wasn’t going to spell it out any better than that. Julia would kill me. “She’ll be there,” I said with a smile. “Don’t worry.”

“I hope so,” Royce said. “She didn’t say anything to me about not wanting to go.”

I thrust out a hand. “No, no. She wants to go, just not as a server.” Cut your losses, Rachel, and be quiet.

“But we need servers, and she volunteered.”

I couldn’t help myself. Royce’s sweet thickheadedness was driving me to speak. I plastered a smile on my face to minimize the sting of my words. “Well, she’s in her sixties, so she’s expected to volunteer, isn’t she? She’s got endless time, no needs of her own, and she’s enthralled by other people and their disagreeable lives.”

Recognition passed slowly over Royce’s face. Thankfully, he smiled back at me, his good humor intact. “Using my own words against me, Miss Stowe?”

“Well . . .”

“Serves me right—and I see your point. We over-sixty folks are looked on as the punch servers, not the served.”

I decided then and there that Royce Putnam was no killer. He was off my suspect list. “You stand on the sidelines and watch other people’s lives.”

“Handing them punch.”

“Julia deserves to have someone hand her a cup of punch now and then.”

“We all do.” Royce took another swig of coffee and rose once more to his feet. “I’d better get to work. I’ll ask Wayne what he said to Charlie. Maybe I’ll ask him a few other things while I’m at it. Mind a partner in your detective work?”

“Frankly, it’s just what I need. I’m getting nowhere on my own.”

“Good. I’ll pay Wayne a visit at his office later today and give you a call if I discover something.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and gave the screen a swipe. “What’s your number? And don’t look so surprised that I have a cell. I’m not fossilized. I have a DVD player too, and I know how to change the time on it.”

I gave him my number, and he swiftly added me to his contacts, working his phone like a teenage pro. “Do you think he’ll be there so soon after Brigit’s murder?” I asked.

“Wayne’s a workaholic. If I know him, he’ll cope with her death by working.”

I watched as Royce made his way to the door. We hadn’t resolved the important questions—not to my satisfaction, anyway. I’d wanted to know if he had any romantic feelings for Julia, and if so, what had possessed him to ask another woman to the dance. But one thing was clear to me: Royce had no idea that Julia had romantic feelings for him. Judging from our conversation, he wasn’t capable of decoding that fairly basic male-female signal, the proof being how long it took him to understand that Julia wanted to attend the Valentine’s Day dance, not be a server at it. He’d never considered the idea.

All that aside, he was keen to help me solve Brigit’s murder, and considering my lack of real progress, I was grateful. As I downed the rest of my coffee, I wondered if Royce’s job at the Records Section had given him an eye and nose for detail. Now his cell phone proficiency made perfect sense. As head of the department, he had to know how to operate a computer and navigate Town Hall’s system—at a bare minimum. Royce might be very good at sleuthing.

But though he was now off my list—Julia would tell me it’s about time—his daughter-in-law, Cassie, was not. What about Cassie’s “hissy fit,” as Anika had called it, in the Records Section over a copy of her birth certificate? I wasn’t buying that Brigit being a tad slow with it was the cause of her murder, but I needed to find out if there had been bad blood between the two women. Something that happened long before the dust-up between the two at Town Hall. Something that had made it inevitable.