“Are you feeling better, honey?” Maxine asked me when she arrived the next morning and shoved her sweater under the register.
When I’d unlocked the door, I’d ventured as far as the sidewalk. While the temperature was still unseasonably warm and the sky was clear and sunny, there was a little nip in the air. Maybe fall was just arriving fashionably late.
“What?” I asked.
“How are you feeling? Last night your father said you were under the weather. I was wondering if you caught what Cathy had.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine,” I said. “Did you enjoy game night?”
“It was a lot of fun,” she said. “Folks just sitting around, talking, and playing games. I even rang up a few sales last night. Mostly little stuff. But I did find a buyer for that Illya Kuryakin action figure. An NCIS fan. Took him a minute to realize that it was the same actor who plays Ducky. Paid full price too. He was going to haggle, but I told him I was new and wasn’t sure I was authorized to dicker.”
“I hope you didn’t feel you had to do that. Dad should have—”
“He was busy talking to the police chief and the mayor’s wife. You really get the big guns in here. It’s like the who’s who of East Aurora. Playing games, of all things.”
“They do say games are good for the mind. Einstein said that play was the highest form of research . . .” Then her words registered. “Dad was talking to the chief last night?” Probably settling the final details of my dowry. I hadn’t seen him this morning. Sleeping in, I supposed. But since he’d closed up last night, I decided to let him have his late morning. “I wonder what they were talking about.”
“Same thing everyone’s been talking about for days. What happened to Craig. Is it true what they’re saying? He was suffocated?”
“Preliminary findings,” I said.
Just then Cathy pushed the door open. “Good morning, everybody.”
“Someone’s chipper today,” I said. “Does that mean you . . .”
“Spilled the beans?” A smile erupted across her face, and I rushed to hug her.
“You were right,” she said. “He was through the roof.”
“Don’t mind me. I’m new here,” Maxine teased.
Cathy patted her hand. “I’d tell you, but I should tell Dad first. Is he upstairs?”
“Should be awake by now,” I said. “Go on up.”
“You can fill Maxine in. I’ll be down in a minute.”
As soon as Cathy was out of earshot, Maxine asked, “Pregnant?”
“It’s not a secret she was likely to keep for long.”
“She looks happy. That’s a tough job, bringing a child into this world.”
I suddenly remembered who I was talking with. Maxine was single, childless, and past an age where she would ever have children. I wasn’t sure if that was something that had ever bothered her. She was also good at reading faces.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Been there. Done that.”
Her words sank in. “You have a child?”
“I did, but I was young and it was a mistake. In the end, I had to give him up.”
“What happened?” But even as I asked, I could see the answer in the shape of her nose, the contours of her face, the slight cleft in an otherwise undefined chin.
I dropped the Magic 8 Ball I’d been cleaning, and it went careening across the floor. “Craig?”
Maxine’s lips pinched together.
I went over to hug her. “No wonder you were so upset. He wasn’t just your boss.” I squeezed her tighter. “Did Craig know?”
“By the time I found him, he was just so angry. Back when I had to give him up, I’d hoped that maybe somebody good would adopt him, that he’d be off somewhere living the life of Riley in a nice house with brothers and sisters and maybe a puppy. That didn’t turn out to be the case. I still planned on telling him, but I chickened out and decided to wait until after he’d gotten to know me a little better. Then there wasn’t any chance.”
I wasn’t sure if she was into hugs, but she was about to get another one, whether she liked it or not. I rocked her two or three times when the thought hit me. “That means Craig’s son . . .”
She sighed. “Is my grandson.”
“Liz!” Cathy called from upstairs.
“That was quick,” I said. “Is he excited?”
“He’s not up there.”
“What?” I ran past Maxine and up the steps leading to the apartment. The coffee and muffins I’d left for him were still sitting untouched. The door to his room, which had been shut this morning, was now wide open. Dad’s bed was made. In fact, Othello was lying on it. He blinked at me but didn’t move.
“This is how I found it.” Cathy started. “Do you think . . . ?”
I went straight to the closet where he normally locked up his gun. The small safe was locked, but lighter than it should’ve been had the weapon and ammo been inside. Since his retirement, Dad had a history of going out and trying to pretend he was no longer retired.
“I thought he promised he wasn’t going to do that anymore,” Cathy said.
“He did. He wasn’t going to sneak out anymore. He promised he’d tell me if he was going somewhere.” That way, even if I couldn’t talk him out of it, I could go with him. We’d joked about whether I was his sidekick or he was mine. But at least I’d know he was safe.
When I sat on Dad’s bed to think, Othello climbed on my lap.
“What’s this?” Cathy said.
Where Othello had been lying was a sheet of paper torn from an old steno notebook. It was crumpled and warm, with more than a few black and white hairs on it.
“‘Couldn’t sleep,’” I read aloud, “‘so I went out to check on a lead.’”
Cathy started laughing. “You know, he actually did tell you where he was going. Sort of.”
“What lead?”
I tucked the note into my pocket and went down to the shop.
“Maxine?” I called.
“Let me know if you need any help,” Maxine told a customer before meeting me near the door to the back room.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know anyone had come in. Your first week, and we’re already depending on you.” I glanced over to where the customers were in full browse mode. It’d take them nearly an hour if they circled the whole store at that pace. “When my dad was talking to the chief last night, do you know what they were talking about?”
“About what happened to Craig, mostly, I think,” she said. “Although I didn’t hear all of it.”
“Did they mention any . . . places?”
Maxine eyed me oddly.
“Dad likes to forget he’s retired sometimes.”
“Is he losing it? He seems so together.”
“Nothing like that. He just tries to prove he can still do the job. And then he gets in over his head.”
“So more like a midlife crisis kind of thing.”
“Exactly,” I said, but I’d never considered that possibility. “Did they talk about any places in particular that my dad might check out?”
Maxine scratched her nose with the back of her hand. “They mentioned the hospital. But the chief said he’d already gotten the security camera footage.”
“That was quick,” I said.
“They talked about some publishing house.”
“Do you remember the name?”
“Something about Buffalo Chips. I couldn’t tell if it was food or if it was like cow chips.” Maxine wrinkled her nose.
“Oh, that’s a local self-publisher!” Cathy said. “They charge way too much for chapbooks, though. And you have to buy like a bazillion copies. One woman in my poetry group checked.”
I glanced at the clock. They’d be open now, but I wasn’t sure my dad would sneak off there first thing.
“I’ll look up the address for you,” Cathy said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Are you sure your father’s the only one who has trouble sneaking off and playing detective?” Maxine asked.
I ignored the question. It was easier than coming to terms with the answer. “Anywhere else?”
“They mentioned the comic book shop, but I don’t think anyone would be there right now. The new owner was talking about coming back during the weekend when her son wasn’t in school.”
“That will be easy enough to check.”
Cathy handed me the address of the publisher. “Shouldn’t you call Ken and tell him what you’re up to?”
“Let me see what I find out first,” I said. I picked up the Magic 8 Ball I’d dropped earlier, shook it, and flipped it over.
“Outlook not so good,” it said. Good thing I’m a skeptic.
I took a slow walk past the comic book store first. The door was locked, and I peeked in through the window. They’d made a little progress cleaning up. The comics were all off the floor and put into boxes and bins, at least. Since the store wasn’t very deep, I could see all the way to the back wall. Those photographs of Craig and all those kids had been taken down.
It didn’t make sense to drive to the hospital if the police already had the camera footage. But if the police already had the camera footage . . .
I took off at a brisk walk toward the police station. Even as I opened the door, I could hear Dad’s jovial tones as he joked around with the guys. When one of them walked out with a half-eaten peanut stick, I knew exactly where my father had been this whole time.
“Hey, Liz!” Dad waved me back. By now the clerk knew me well enough to buzz me in as soon as my hand hit the doorknob.
“I see you got my note,” he said.
“Following a lead? That could have meant you were anywhere.”
“And go off investigating by myself without letting Ken know?” he said, wearing his most cherubic expression. “Since I couldn’t sleep, I picked up some doughnuts for the guys and came down here to see how it was going with the footage from the hospital.”
“And?”
Dad poked Ken in the arm. “Told you she’d be interested.”
“Of course I’m interested,” I said. “I almost walked in on the murder.”
Dad’s expression sobered.
Ken gestured toward the back of the station. “How about we take this discussion to my office?”
Ken’s office now had several large boxes bearing the Clean Queen label stacked up against one wall.
“Shouldn’t that be in evidence?” I asked.
Ken rolled his eyes. “I haven’t got a clue what to do with it. I can’t return it. It’s contraband. I can’t dump it in the creek. It’s like fifty proof—all the fish would end up pickled. And I can’t put it into evidence unless I want to call it a crime. Hank, do you think I have a career in this town if I arrest the mayor’s wife on an old moonshining charge?”
Dad started laughing. “I’d pay good money to see you try.”
Ken perched on the side of his desk and shook his head. “It’ll still be sitting here fifty years from now—”
“Well-aged,” Dad added.
Ken didn’t answer but tried to massage the tension from his neck.
“I have a suggestion,” I said. I took a quick accounting of the boxes. “And it’d probably only take you a couple of years to dispose of all of it.”
Ken looked up.
“It is a decent cleaner,” I said. “Nontoxic. Well, mostly. Organic.”
Dad sent me an admiring look. “Also saves money on the cleaning budget,” he offered.
“I couldn’t,” he said. “Could I?”
“Lock it up in the cleaning closet,” Dad said. “See what happens. Better than keeping several cases of hooch in your office for the next few years.”
“I’ll do that.” Ken grabbed a box.
Dad stood in his way. “Maybe when there are fewer people around to see it, though.”
“Good idea.” I watched Ken thank my father. Apparently they’d already forgotten whose idea it was.
“So what did you find?” I asked.
“Huh?” Ken said.
“On the surveillance camera,” Dad said. “Not a thing.”
“We looked for all our persons of interest, and we didn’t see any of them going into that hospital. It’s hard to cover all the entrances perfectly, though. The camera is pretty low resolution, and there are times when someone could have slipped in with the crowd that was coming and going. Lots of traffic in and out.”
“Dead end,” I said.
“We can still send it out and have someone run some of that new facial recognition software on it. They might come up with something that none of my men saw.”
“But now that you’re here, how about you come with me and track down another loose end?” Dad said.
“What’s that?”
“The publishing house that was going to publish Craig’s comic series. I thought maybe you and I could do a little harmless undercover work.”
“They’ve not been cooperating,” Ken said. “Not that they have to. We have nothing to connect them to anything criminal. We just asked if they’d answer a few questions, and they clammed up tight.”
“Sounds suspicious,” I said.
“What do you say, kiddo?” Dad asked. “Think you could play the part of an aspiring writer desperate to share her words with the world?”
“Why, I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I picked up a pencil.” I batted my eyelashes at him.
“Honey, I was there the first time you picked up a pencil. You stuck it up your brother’s nose. Your mother was so mad, I had to smuggle you dinner.”
“Everyone’s a critic.”