The marina stretched out along Seneca Lake’s shoreline complete with a cadre of small motorboats. In the distance I saw three rowboats with fishing lines dangling into the water. My guess was that Eli and Stuart used one of the wooden docks for their angling.
“This is a far cry better than the dock at Kashong Point,” I said to Theo as we walked toward the lake. Both of us carried the bags of muffins and cookies as well as bottled iced teas. “Look—those docks have built-in wooden benches, and thankfully they’re not close to the edge.” I picked up the pace and took a step up onto the dock.
“Yeah, I suppose your last experience at Kashong Point is still ingrained in your head.”
“Not my most pleasurable moment, but I still wound up getting the information I needed. I think this time it might be a tad easier with the boys.”
We put our bags on the bench and turned away from the water to the road.
Theo laughed. “Easier? If you can sift through all the other babble they come with.”
“I came prepared to sift. Whoa, those two were fast. Here they come now.”
Eli and Stuart thundered toward us and plopped themselves on the long wooden bench. “What kind of muffins? They better not be oatmeal,” Eli said.
“Double chocolate for starters.” I opened the bag, retrieved two of the giant treats and handed them to the boys, making sure they had plenty of napkins. Without waiting to see if they were thirsty, Theo handed them the bottles of iced tea, which they promptly accepted.
I gave them a few seconds to enjoy the moist chocolaty muffins before I got to the real reason for my trek to Dresden. “We know you guys had to have seen that body up close and personal, especially since you described that tattoo so well. What else did you see? Blood? Like from a gunshot wound? Or something else? It’s really important.”
“It must be,” Eli replied, “’cause that doofy deputy asked us the same thing. Only we didn’t tell him anything.”
Stuart used the side of his hand to wipe chocolate from his face even though he had a pile of napkins on his lap. “Yeah. Once you tell them one thing, they have fifty zillion other questions for you, so we just shut up.”
Hmm, these kids are smarter than I thought.
“I promise we won’t have a bazillion questions, but we need your help to find out who could have killed Frank Liguori and Davis Brewer.”
“Brewer,” Eli said. “The stiff from the woods?”
“Yes. He managed a crew of seasonal workers.”
“That guy?” Eli’s eyes widened. “I know who that guy is. I mean, was. He was over here yacking with my father in the main office a couple of days before we found him. I remember because I went into the winery building to find the nitro hammer weapon to my Lightseekers action figure. I must’ve dropped it when I was playing around with Stuart in the banquet room.”
Then, as if to verify, Stuart chimed in. “Yeah, and good thing you found it, too. Under one of the chairs. You’re getting pretty good at launching it with a rubber band.”
“That’s ’cause my father took my slingshot away. But he doesn’t know I always have a rubber band or two in my pocket.”
I looked at Theo and rolled my eyes but he didn’t notice. He took a seat next to the boys and leaned toward them. “Was your father talking or was he arguing with Davis Brewer?”
Stuart gave Eli a kick on the ankle and both boys laughed. “Kind of hard to tell with Mr. Speltmore.”
“Brewer told my father that if he knew what was good for him he shouldn’t switch teams or he’d be working with a shyster.” Then he crinkled his nose at Stuart. “What’s a shyster?”
“It’s someone who’s not on the up-and-up,” I answered. “Usually someone unscrupulous in business dealings. Did he say anything else?”
“Only that Brewer should worry about his own butt.”
“Your father used the word butt?”
Eli groaned. “He used the word hide but that’s so jerky. Anyway, Brewer said he already took care of things close to home and that my father shouldn’t get into bed with, with . . . oh, yeah, with ‘someone who had a criminal record.’ The laughs on him. My father doesn’t even get into bed with my mother.”
At that moment I thought Theo would split a gut. He turned away and feigned a coughing fit. Meanwhile, I checked the time on my cell phone and knew I had to speed things up.
“Actually,” I said, “we need to talk with you about the other dead body—Mr. Liguori’s.” I opened the second bag of baked goods and placed a few of the jumbo cookies on a paper plate, then held them out for the boys. “Blood or no blood on the body?”
“It looked like someone poked him in the back of his neck but we could only see him from the side. There was dark red stuff but it was dried up. The rest of him looked okay. For a dead guy. He wasn’t like, full of bullet wounds, and no one slashed him or Stuart would have heaved his guts out.”
Stuart stuck out his tongue at Eli. “Would not.”
I remembered the preliminary postmortem for Brewer and he, too, suffered some sort of puncture wound in the neck before the second half of his death equation, aka “the fatal accident,” kicked in. Like it or not, I began to think both murders were connected, but what was the missing piece?
“Is there anything else you can think of?” I asked.
“Not about the body but other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“Well, for one thing, the plastic was ripped off from a stack of cases near the forklift. Like someone was really pissed.”
Or it was the scene of an altercation and someone grabbed on to it.
“And a few of the cardboard boxes were dented.”
“Excuse us for a second,” Theo said, “I need to speak with Norrie.”
Eli and Stuart kept munching while Theo and I moved toward the edge of the dock and out of earshot.
“I didn’t see a forklift when we were in the storage area,” Theo said. “And if someone loaded up cases of wine to go on the delivery trucks, they would have noticed Frank’s body, don’t you think?”
“Inside job?”
“Maybe. The rear of that building has a huge garage door. Frank’s killer could have entered from there, got into a fight with Frank and used the forklift to deposit the body onto a palette. Then, he or she drove the forklift back to the docking area outside the building. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to drive one of those mini-lifts. Our Linde is so easy I could do it in my sleep.”
“Eli saw that forklift when he and Stuart found the body. But no one else knows it’s been moved. And as for the ripped plastic sealer, that could go unnoticed, too. Well, I can’t very well say anything to Deputy Hickman.”
“The good news is that you got the information you were after. We now know Frank suffered some sort of wound to his neck. And we can definitely surmise there was a struggle. That’s more than we had before we trekked over here.”
“More, but not enough. Anyway, we’d better send the boys on their way before Mrs. Landrow decides to go out looking for them.”
We turned away from the lake and walked toward the boys. This time it was Eli who used part of his arm to wipe his face.
“Thanks for telling us about what you saw,” I said. “And be careful not to go snooping around. There’s a dangerous person out there, understood?”
Good grief. I can’t believe I’m the one saying this.
Stuart lifted his chin toward Eli. “Aren’t you going to tell them about what we smelled?”
“Oh, yeah. It was gross. Not like a dead animal gross, and I should know ’cause the dog brings them home, but a yucky old lady perfume gross. Like Aunt Doris.”
“Perfume? I didn’t smell anything when we showed up.”
“It was gone by then,” Eli said. “But I bet if you sniffed the guy real close you’d smell it.”
Then Stuart made a choking gesture with a hand over his throat. “It was gagging gross. If my mother put on that stuff I’d have to sleep outside.”
I tried not to laugh. “Whatever it was, I’m sure you won’t have to smell it again.”
Eli furrowed his brow and looked directly at me. “You know how you always know a skunk smell? This was worse and I’ll always know it.”
“Come on, you two better get going. My car’s a few yards away and you can grab your fishing rods.”
“I’ll grab one more cookie first,” Eli said. No sooner did he snatch one of the M&M’s shortbreads than he elbowed Stuart and pointed to a man a few yards away. “I think that guy was listening to us. He might’ve been under the dock.”
“Nah. He was getting his fishing junk together. And he’s carrying a bucket. The dude had better luck than we did.”
“Yeah, but we got good cookies and muffins.”
I glanced at the man, who was now a good ten or so yards away from us. Tall, lanky and unmistakable blond hair. A shade most beauticians would have to work their tails off to duplicate. But it was the T-shirt he wore that caught my attention. Mainly because I’d seen the exact same T-shirt on the Coors man seated next to me at the Dresden Hotel on Friday night. It was a faded green shirt but the lettering was still legible—Penn Yan, Est. 1833, New York. Nothing like hometown pride. Either that, or it was on sale.
“I recognize that man,” I whispered to Theo. “I’ll tell you in the car.”
The four of us ambled toward my Toyota, too slow to catch up with the man in the Penn Yan shirt. Somehow something didn’t feel right. “Listen, I’ll just give you boys a lift home. And do me a favor, stay close to home, will you?”
“Geez,” Stuart said. “You’re as bad as my mother. At least Eli’s staying over again tonight and maybe even tomorrow. I think we drive her so crazy that she’s glad when we go outside and leave her alone.”
I looked at the two of them and sympathized with Mrs. Landrow. One of those boys was enough to drive anyone nuts; both of them were a recipe for disaster. I reminded them again to stick close to Stuart’s house and asked that they not mention the muffins and cookies.
“We’re not idiots,” Eli said. “But it means we’ll have to choke down that oatmeal.”
Once we dropped the boys off, I told Theo about the man with the Penn Yan T-shirt. “He sat next to Bradley and me at the Dresden Hotel Friday night. He’s one of the poker players. And awfully chatty with the bartender. Told him Brewer had some run-ins with his workers but nothing that would raise an eyebrow. Also mentioned the woman who came in late to their game. Called her by name—Barbara. I’m positive it’s Barbara Stanowicz, Brewer’s former secretary. According to the bartender, who also knew who she was, Barbara was pretty hot. Especially for being an older woman. And the Coors guy alluded to something going on between her and Brewer.”
“Won’t be the first time a younger man succumbed to the charms of an older woman.”
“True, but I don’t think that’s the case. Bradley and I saw her lip-locking another poker player after they left the game. I may be way off base but if she’s the glue that’s holding all of these pieces together, I think I may know one way to find out.”
“What’s that?”
“Her perfume. If it turns out to be the same perfume Eli and Stuart smelled in the wine storage area, then I’d put Barbara at the scene of Frank’s death. Or should I say murder, given the puncture wound the boys described?”
“How do you plan on accomplishing that?”
“Heavy perfume can linger for weeks or more. When my great-aunt Tessie died, you know, the one who left me the apartment I have in Little Italy? Well, she also left my mother her jewelry box. Her lawyer shipped it to us a month after the funeral. Anyway, when we opened it, we could smell Aunt Tessie’s perfume—Arpege by Lanvin. Real flowery stuff. If what those boys said was true, maybe Barbara’s lingering scent is still on something in Brewer’s office, and if so, all we’d need to do is wave it under Eli’s nose.”
“That doesn’t even come close to being circumstantial evidence.”
I kept my eyes on the road but smiled. “It doesn’t have to be. It just has to point us in the right direction.”