The Mystery Before Christmas
- Автор: Дэйли Кэти
- Серия: A Cat In The Attic Mystery #2
- Год: 2019
- Язык: английский
- Год: Kathi Daley Books
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Mystery Before Christmas». Краткое содержание книги:
“I have, and it isn’t her.”
“It seems that an x-ray machine for the clinic is a pretty specific gift. Chances are that Doctor Nolan knows who is behind the gift. Maybe you should speak to him,” Dean suggested.
I nodded. “Thank you. That is a good idea. I’ll do that. Can you think of anyone else who might be Secret Santa, assuming that you are telling the truth, and it isn’t the two of you?”
Dean raised a brow. “You think we would lie?”
“If keeping your secret was important enough, then yes, I think you might.”
Martin laughed. “The woman just met us, and she already has us figured out.” He looked at me. “And yes. If we were Secret Santa and we didn’t want anyone to know, we would lie about it. But we aren’t Secret Santa, so I’m going to suggest you move on.”
“If it were me trying to identify Secret Santa, I think I would ask myself why now,” Martin commented.
“What do you mean?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“Everyone you have mentioned as a possible Secret Santa has lived in the area for a number of years, and everyone on your list has had the means to be Secret Santa for quite some time. If Secret Santa is someone who has lived in the area and had the means to buy gifts for members of the community for years and years, why now? Why not last year or the year before that?”
“So you think that Secret Santa might be someone new to the area?” I asked. It did seem that Martin had made a good point.
“Or someone who has recently come into wealth and felt moved to share it,” Martin answered.
“What about Mary Anderson?” I asked. “I understand she won the lottery.”
“She did,” Cass jumped in. “But she won her money more than five years ago, and she has lived in Foxtail Lake for a lot longer than that.”
“We found out that Buford Norris inherited a bunch of money,” I said. “Of course, while the Secret Santa gifts began before he died, there have been a lot of gifts delivered since he passed, so I guess it can’t be him. As far as you know, has anyone else in the community recently inherited a big chunk of money?”
“Justice Bodine,” Dean and Martin said at the same time.
“Who is Justice Bodine?” I asked.
“Justice is the heir to the Bodine Lumber fortune,” Cass said. “His family has been logging in the area for generations. Layton Bodine passed away over the summer, and Justice inherited everything.” Cass paused. “Justice has the means to have purchased the gifts, but to me, he doesn’t seem to have the right personality. In fact, I don’t think he has even been home since he received his inheritance. At the biweekly poker game a few weeks ago, the guys were talking about the fact that he took off for Paris months ago and no one has seen him since.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Dean admitted.
Martin shrugged. “Sorry that we couldn’t be more help.”
“It’s fine. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to me at all. Would you be willing to give me some personal information and maybe a few anecdotes for my column next week? It would really help me out.”
Both men agreed to my request, so at least our trip out to their estate wasn’t a total waste. Cass had told me from the beginning he didn’t think the brothers were Secret Santa. I guess he was right, but if it wasn’t them, I was getting pretty low on suspects. I still needed to contact Mary Anderson, which I would do tomorrow, but after Martin’s comment about the timing of the whole thing, I was beginning to have my doubts on that front as well.
“Do you know which Secret Santa gift was the first?” I asked Cass as he drove toward the restaurant where we planned to have dinner.
“Actually, I’m not sure. I think it might have been Billy Prescott’s wheelchair or perhaps the down payment on the diner. I suppose you can check with Billy’s mother and with Connie and compare dates if it is important.”
“I’m not sure it is important, but it might be. I can’t get Martin’s comment about why now out of my head. I wonder if Secret Santa didn’t start with a specific gift for a specific purpose, and then once that gift was given, he caught the bug and kept going.”
“I guess knowing the order which the gifts were given might be a good piece of information to have. You’ve spoken to most of the recipients. I’m sure if you give them a call, they will provide you with the dates you’re after.”
“I wonder if there have been any Secret Santa gifts that never made it to my list. The list I have has been created as folks have mentioned instances of gift giving to me, but I really have no way to know if I have them all. Is there anyone in town who would be the most apt to know all the local news? Maybe someone who enjoys gossip, and is in a position to know what is going on?”
“Nora Nottaway. She is usually in the know if something is going on.”
Of course, Nora had been sick, so I wasn’t sure she’d been spending as much time at the general store as she normally did, but I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to stop by and say hi. The real challenge would be to act naturally in spite of what I knew. Keeping secrets, I knew from experience, wasn’t always as easy as it might seem.
Chapter 16
Thursday
No one was more shocked than I was when Cass officially brought Ford Fisher in for questioning concerning Buford Norris’s murder. We’d talked about the fact that Ford had been withdrawn since Buford’s death, but Cass had seemed certain that Ford was not the killer he was looking for, assuming there even was a killer. Unfortunately, even the coroner couldn’t say for certain what had caused the blow to Buford’s head or even if the blow was the stimulus that caused him to pass out and freeze to death. The last I’d heard, it had been deemed equally likely that Buford had died as the result of an accident as it was that he’d been murdered.
“I know I was the one to say that some of the guys at the lodge suspected that something was up with Ford due to his odd behavior, but I really never believed he would kill one of his best friends.” Tom shook his head in disbelief as he, Aunt Gracie, and I discussed the situation over breakfast.
“So far, all I heard is that Cass brought him in for questioning,” I pointed out. “That doesn’t mean that he plans to arrest him. When I spoke to Cass about it before, he didn’t think Ford was guilty.”
“Maybe he found new evidence,” Gracie said.
“Perhaps or maybe he just stumbled across some information he needed to follow up on,” I countered.
“If it was as simple as that, why not just go to his house and chat with him?” Tom asked. “Why bring him into the station? That act alone makes him look guilty of something.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “I haven’t spoken to Cass. I only know about the situation at all because I spoke to Hope, who’d found out from Rafe, that Ford had been brought in.”
Rafe Conway was one of Cass’s assistant deputies.
“I know that Cass planned to have a discussion with a man named Rupert Wooly yesterday. Maybe Rupert had new information that cast suspicion on Ford,” I suggested.
“Rupert and Ford are friends of sorts,” Tom acknowledged. “I suppose if Ford is somehow involved in whatever is going on with Buford, Rupert might know about it. Unlike a lot of the guys, who live in the area full-time, Rupert tends to be a drifter who moves in and out of town on a whim, but when he is in town, he does tend to hang out with the gang from the bar.”
“Was he in town when Buford died?” I asked.
Tom nodded slowly. “I seem to recall he was. I think he left shortly after. I wasn’t even aware he was back.”