Much Ado About Felines (Whales and Tails Mystery Book 4) (9 page)

I glanced around the room. There weren’t a lot of patrons in the library, and the checkout desk faced the door, so there was little chance the man could have ducked in and hid between the stacks. I was trying to make up my mind whether to have a look for myself when the woman spoke again.

“You’re one of the owners of the new bookstore,” the library volunteer said. “I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve seen you.”

“Yeah, I’m Cait.”

“I’m Angie. I just moved to the island in April. I’ve been meaning to come in to check things out. I guess you can tell by my choice of Saturday activity that I love books.”

“Please do stop by when you have a chance. My partner’s name is Tara. Either of us would be happy to show you around. We have a coffee bar and a cat lounge as well, if you like coffee and cats.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that. I’m not much of a coffee drinker and I really don’t care for cats, but I love books.”

“Are you a member of the Mystery Lovers Book Club?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Cody West mentioned to me that he spoke to someone named Angie from the library about Roxi Pettigrew’s death.”

“Yeah, that was me. I’m still having a hard time believing what everyone’s saying about her. She seemed so nice. In fact, she was the one who told me about the book club. We volunteer at the church together on Tuesdays. The kids loved her. Everyone there was pretty upset by what happened to her.”

“Do you know why anyone would want to hurt her?” I asked.

Angie shrugged. “Not really. I know she had a problem she was working through. We really weren’t close enough for her to confide in me, but I could tell she was dealing with some heavy stuff. And it seemed like it was more than just the loss of her husband, although that would be enough in and of itself to send most people into emotional turmoil. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to try to get on with her life.”

“Did she ever say anything to you about needing money?”

Angie frowned. “Not really, although she did say something about someone giving her money once. I remember she was late for our group at the church maybe a month ago, and she mentioned that she had to go to the bank to deposit some money that one of her friends had given her.”

“Did she say which friend?”

Angie bit her lip as she appeared to be considering my question. “I think she said the friend who gave her the money was named Greg.”

Greg Westlake, I realized. As unlikely as it seemed, maybe Greg and Roxi really did have a thing going on. He didn’t seem to be Roxi’s type at all, but if she needed money and he had it…

I chatted with the woman for a few more minutes, then returned to the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. The man was nowhere in sight. The only thing to do was to return to the bookstore.

“The guy totally vanished,” I informed Tara as soon as I got there.

“What do you mean, he vanished?” Tara asked.

“I was following him just fine until he turned on to Harbor. I followed him around the corner, but he was gone. I wasn’t that far behind. There was no way he made it to Second Street, so I figured he’d slipped into one of the buildings between Main and there, but I didn’t find him in any of the places that were open.”

“He can’t have just vanished.”

“Apparently he did, despite what common sense would dictate. Where’s Destiny?” I noticed for the first time that the girl wasn’t around.

“Her mom came by on her lunch hour. They went out to talk, but she said she’d bring Destiny by after. As far as I could tell by the brief exchange I overheard, Destiny doesn’t want to go back to school. I can’t say I blame her. The poor thing is starting to show. I bet she gets teased.”

“I’m sure that would be hard on her. Maybe her mom can have her homeschooled.”

“I don’t see how she could possibly take that on. She already has two jobs,” Tara reminded me.

“True. Maybe you could homeschool her.”

“Me?” Tara shrieked.

“Why not? You’re supersmart and you always did well in school. Destiny can work here part-time and do her schoolwork in the office part-time while her mom’s at work. It seems like a good way to keep track of her, and make sure she doesn’t fall too far behind during her pregnancy.”

I could see Tara was considering it. “Do you think Destiny would go for it?”

“You won’t know until you ask.”

Tara went to help a customer who had come in, so I decided to call Finn. It occurred to me that if Roxi had deposited the money Greg had given her into the bank, there had to be a paper trail.

Finn confirmed that he’d checked into Roxi’s financial records and found an account with over fifty grand in it.

“Fifty grand? That makes no sense. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. She opened the account with a five-thousand-dollar deposit about six weeks ago. There were a series of smaller deposits for a grand or two each, followed by a deposit for fifteen grand. Then she withdrew twenty grand. After that there were a bunch of small deposits as well as two large ones, one for ten grand and, most recently, one for thirty-five grand.”

“Becky Wood told me Roxi sold Jimmy’s boat. I’m not an expert on the going rates for boats, but thirty-five grand sounds about right. It was a large boat, though I heard the engine was on the way out. Ernie Wall gave Roxi five grand about six weeks ago, after she came to work with a black eye. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the five grand he gave her is what she used to open the account. I also know that Tony Sommers gave Roxi fifteen grand, and although Brianna just found out about it, it seems that fifteen grand most likely came from him. Stacy told me Jimmy was in debt to some thug for twenty grand, so I’m going to assume she used the twenty grand she withdrew to pay the guy off.”

“Seems like a reasonable theory, which confirms a lot of what I’ve already discovered,” Finn agreed.

“I spoke to Angie at the library today. She told me that Roxi was late for their church group a couple of weeks ago because she had to stop off at the bank and deposit some money a friend gave her. She thought his name was Greg. I recently heard that Greg Westlake told his mother that he was moving out of her basement and in with Roxi. At first I figured that rumor was just bragging on Greg’s part because Roxi was way out of his league, but what if Greg gave Roxi a large amount of money and she rewarded him the way she seems to have been rewarding everyone else who gave her money?”

“With sex.”

“Exactly. It seems it might be worth your time to have a chat with Greg,” I said.

“I’ll head over to his place now.”

My phone rang just as I was getting into my car to head back to town. It was Cody.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I’m down at the dock to see if anyone knows what Jimmy might have been in to before he died. I’ve already had two people tell me Danny hasn’t shown up at his boat for two days.”

“Two days? It rained yesterday, so I suppose it makes sense that he might have spent the day in town, but he had charters on Sunday, and I’m sure he would have gone home by now even if he didn’t have any today. Are these people reliable?”

“The guy with the bald head and big gut who works in the marina office told me Danny didn’t show up for his charters on Sunday. He knows because a representative from each group came into the office and asked if he had a way to contact Danny. He said he called Danny’s cell and left a message.”

I had to admit that sounded bad.

“And the other source?”

“That guy with the long hair who lives a couple of slips down from Danny.”

“Caleb?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He said he hadn’t seen Danny since Saturday, and his boat hasn’t left the slip since he came in from his last charter on Saturday.”

“I’m coming over,” I decided. “Where exactly are you?”

“Standing in front of Danny’s boat. I took a look around and nothing looks disturbed, but there’s no sign he’s been here recently either.”

“Okay, stay where you are. I’ll be right there.”

It wasn’t like Danny to just disappear, and although he did tend to miss some messages regarding changes to his previously scheduled charters, it wasn’t like him to flake out entirely. I remembered him telling me that he had charters all day Sunday when I’d spoken to him on Saturday. He’d seemed to be planning to meet those obligations, so why hadn’t he? More importantly, where was he and why hadn’t he called? We’d had rain the previous day, so I hadn’t had the occasion to call him with last-minute reservations. When he hadn’t shown up last evening, I’d assumed he was hanging out at the bar, as he often did. I was really worried.

I was tempted to call Tara to ask her if she’d seen or spoken to him, but I didn’t want to send her into hysterics if she hadn’t. I figured it was better to head to the marina to find out what I could before I sent my best friend into panic mode. Danny was a capable person who, I believed, could look out for himself, but given all the odd things that had been going on, I felt a lot less confident than I normally would.

When I arrived at the marina I found Cody and Max waiting for me on the deck of Danny’s boat. It was a beautiful day, and even if Danny didn’t have any tours scheduled I would think he’d be working on the boat. He had an old boat that required quite a lot of tender loving care, which meant that when he wasn’t on the water he was usually working on it.

I looked around the marina. It was pretty deserted. A Tuesday during the off season didn’t normally lend itself to a lot of tourist activity even if the weather cooperated.

“Do you know if Danny had any tours scheduled?” Cody asked me.

“Yeah, he has one in about an hour. He really should be here by now. And I know he had four charters on Sunday. Tara mentioned to me that the first charter of the day had canceled, which left three. I did see a notation next to the last one, indicating that they were going to call Danny that day to confirm because they had a potential conflict. That still left the middle two charters.”

“Which must be the two the guy in the marina office mentioned to me.”

“Gus.”

“Yeah, Gus. He gave them Danny’s cell number, but he never picked up.”

“I’m surprised neither of the customers has called Coffee Cat Books to complain.”

“Gus must have handled it.”

“I say we hang out to see if either Danny or his customers show up for the charter scheduled for this afternoon,” I said. “In the meantime, I’m going to walk over to have a chat with Caleb.”

Caleb and Danny were friends. Caleb ran a fishing charter, and they both lived on their boats and both depended on the seasonal tourist dollar to survive. Chances were if Danny was up to anything Caleb would know about it.

“Hey, Caleb, you in there?” I called from the dock.

He poked his head out of the cabin. “Hey, Cait. What are you doing here? Did you bring me coffee?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I wanted to ask about Danny. Cody told me that Gus said Danny missed his Sunday charters.”

“Yeah. He didn’t show up for the entire day.”

“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” I asked.

“Not a clue. We talked on Saturday. He told me he was having dinner with you and that he might stay at Maggie’s due to the storm. He mentioned he had a busy day on Sunday and that he planned to take every charter he could while folks were still looking to go out. I never saw him come back on Sunday, but I had an early group, so he might have returned while I was gone. It really doesn’t make sense that he’d flake out on his groups unless he had a really good reason.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “The whole thing makes no sense.”

“Guess you could ask Gus if he saw Danny on Sunday before the charters he missed. Gerrie was around as well.”

Gerrie was a sixty-four-year-old widow who lived in the boat at the end of the dock closest to the wharf. She was a seasonal resident who left the island every October and returned the following May. During the five months she was on site she liked to sit on her deck and people watch. If Danny had come home on Sunday morning she’d know about it.

Unfortunately, Gerrie wasn’t at home, so I headed over to the marina office to chat with Gus, who was always around. He was an interesting sort of person, as salty and crusty as an old whaling captain, but as far as I knew, the closest he ever got to the sea was his office at the entrance to the marina. He’d once let it slip, after he’d had a few shots, that he didn’t know how to swim and was terrified of the water.

“Hey, Gus,” I greeted him.

“Young Hart.”

“I came to ask if you saw Danny at all on Sunday.”

“The kid missed his charters. Caused a huge hullabaloo that I had to deal with.”

“I know. And thank you for taking care of things. I was wondering if you saw him before that, though. He spent the night at Maggie’s, but I know he planned to return to his boat once he left there in the morning.”

“Didn’t see him.”

“And you haven’t seen him since Saturday?” I confirmed.

“Nope. If he’s going to miss any more charters someone needs to call his customers to give them a heads-up. I don’t want to have to deal with the fuss I did on Sunday again.”

“I will. He has a reservation today, but I’ll stay to deal with it if he doesn’t show up. If you see or hear from him will you please call me, or ask him to call me? I’m really starting to worry about him.”

“I’m sure the boy is fine. Probably just tied one on and forgot all about his customers. If I do hear from him, I’ll call you.”

I thanked Gus and returned to Danny’s boat to wait. Cody was on his phone, so I sat down on the edge of the deck and cuddled with Max, who was thrilled to have me around in the middle of the day. I looked out at the water and wondered if I should call Finn. Danny would kill me if I got him involved and it turned out he’d simply been shacking up with some chick he’d met somewhere along the way. Danny did have a tendency to throw responsibility aside when it came to his infatuations with the women who seemed to fade in and out of his life.

Cody hung up and walked over to join me. He sat down next to me.

“I don’t suppose that was Danny?” I asked hopefully.

“Finn.”

“What did he want?”

“He got a lead that Garrett Goldman had been seen hanging around with the same guy Jimmy had been right before his death, so he went out to his place to talk to him. When he got there he found Garrett unconscious in his living room. He’s alive, but just barely. They’re airlifting him to the hospital in Seattle.”

Garrett Goldman was a crusty old fisherman who owned a large lot on the north shore of Madrona Island. His land had its own dock, which gave him easy access to the open sea. Jimmy and Garrett had been friends, so it sort of made sense that they might have been involved in the same business deal.

“Oh, no. Poor Garrett. Did Finn have any idea what happened?”

“Only that he had been beaten up. I doubt we’ll know more until Garrett regains consciousness. Finn is going to have a look around his place, but as of a few minutes ago, he hadn’t picked up anything new.” Cody pointed to a group of Asian men who were getting out of a van. “It looks like Danny’s group is here.”

“I’ll go talk to them,” I offered. “Call Finn back to tell him about Danny. If he’s mixed up in whatever the others were, he could be in real danger.”