Teresa frowned slightly. “Are you an investigator, too?” she asked.
“I’m learning,” Rose said.
“You’re an apprentice?”
Rose nodded. “Yes.”
The answer seemed to satisfy Teresa. “What did you want to know?” she asked. She hadn’t moved. She was still standing, feet slightly apart, hands in her pockets.
“You know who Ronan Quinn was?” Mr. P. asked.
“Yes.”
Alfred waited for a moment and then seemed to realize Teresa wasn’t going to say anything else.
“You know someone killed him,” Rose said.
Teresa’s expression didn’t change. “I’ve heard people talking. I think it’s probably true.” She looked at me. “I already told Sarah I didn’t kill him.”
“My dear, when were you last at Edison Hall’s house?” Mr. P. asked.
“Tuesday, last week.”
“Why?” Rose asked. She smiled at Teresa.
If Teresa was unsettled at all by the questions, it didn’t show. “I was there to get what belonged to me.”
Rose and Mr. P. exchanged a look. “And what was that?” he asked.
“A metal moose.”
“You mean a toy?” Rose asked, frowning.
“No,” Teresa said. “A metal moose.” She pulled her hands out of her pockets and held them about three feet apart.
Mr. P. smiled as he seemed to figure out what she was talking about. “Like the old sign markers along the trail to Moose Lake?” he asked.
“Not like one of them. It is one of them.”
“If it was yours, why was it at Edison Hall’s house?” I asked.
Teresa shifted and looked at me. “Because he cheated me.”
“Cheated you how?” Rose said.
“He was at a flea market, selling some gas station signs.” She shook her head. “Nobody wants those anymore. I heard him tell someone that he had other signs in his garage, so I asked if I could see them.”
“He said yes?” I asked.
Teresa nodded. “I picked out six signs that I wanted to buy. We settled on a price. I wrote it all down. People aren’t always honest.” She looked at me. “I don’t mean you, Sarah.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“How did Edison cheat you?” Mr. P. asked.
“I didn’t have enough money on me,” Teresa said. “I had to go to the bank. When I got back, he had the signs wrapped in an old blanket.” She pressed her lips together. “I counted to make sure all the signs were there, but I should have looked at each one.”
“Bait and switch,” Rose said softly.
“He replaced the moose with something else,” I said.
“A sign for the Moose River Lodge,” Teresa said. “He’d shown it to me. I didn’t want it, but he said it was the one I picked. He lied.”
“So you were trying to find it,” Mr. P. said. He gave Teresa a sympathetic smile.
“It was mine,” she said. “I paid for it. I tried to find it before, but I couldn’t.” She looked at me again. “I knew you would be starting to work at the house and I didn’t have any way to prove to you that the sign belonged to me.”
“Your word is enough for me,” I said.
“The sign belongs to me,” Teresa said. “I paid for it.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her left pocket and held it out to me. I took it from her.
It was the handwritten receipt she’d created. The signs and the prices she had offered were listed in Teresa’s square, block printing. Her signature was at the bottom. What I took to be Edison Hall’s signature was underneath.
I offered the piece of paper to Rose, who looked it over, frowning, and then gave it back to Teresa.
“I believe you,” I said again. “I’ll talk to Stella. If we find the sign I’ll make sure you get it.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“When you got to Edison’s house that morning, what did you do?” Mr. P. asked.
“I parked my van at the corner,” she said. “And then I walked back to the house.” Her eyes weren’t quite focused on Alfred. It was almost as though she was running down a list of what she’d done in her head. And for all I knew, maybe she was.
“I wanted to look in the garage,” she continued. “There was an old folding door leaning against the side window and I couldn’t see anything, so I went around to the back.”
“You didn’t see the moose sign,” Rose said.
Teresa shook her head. “No. It was too dark inside the garage. And it didn’t look like the signs were in there anymore.”
“Did you get inside the garage?” Mr. P. asked.
“No,” Teresa said.
Another look passed between Mr. P. and Rose. “Why not?” he asked.
“Because Mr. Quinn showed up.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “It was maybe quarter to six in the morning and Ronan Quinn was at Edison Hall’s house? You’re certain?”
Teresa blinked at me. “Yes,” she said.
“What was he doing?” Rose asked.
Teresa shrugged. “Waiting, I think.”
“Waiting for what?’ I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Luckily Mr. P. was better at phrasing questions than I was. “Why did you think he was waiting?” he asked.
“Because he parked his car in the driveway, got his briefcase out of the backseat, and then he went around to the back of the house. He stood by the door and looked at his watch.”
“Did you see anyone with Mr. Quinn?” Rose asked.
“No,” Teresa said. “I went back to my van.”
Rose sighed softly and I touched her shoulder. “Did you see anyone on your way to the van?”
Teresa nodded. “I passed a man walking up the sidewalk.”
“Was he old or young?” Mr. P. said.
She thought for a moment. “Younger than you are but older than Sarah.”
That was a pretty big age spread, but all Mr. P. did was nod. “Did you see his face?”
“For a moment as he walked past me,” Teresa said. Her eyes darted from side to side as though she was trying to pull something out of her memory.
Mr. P. looked from Rose to me and gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. I took it to mean he wanted us to stay out of the conversation for now.
“What color hair did the man have?” he asked Teresa. At the same time I saw him reach behind himself with one hand and give Avery’s arm a squeeze. She’d been so quiet I forgot that she was still polishing the tea service. She raised her head, looked around and then pulled her earbuds out of her ears.
I had no idea what Alfred was up to, but apparently Avery did. She sat still as a statue for a minute or so, then reached for a pad of paper Mac kept on the bench and pulled a pencil stub out of her pocket. Without saying a word, she bent her head over the paper. It seemed obvious that she was drawing something, but I didn’t know what and with Avery’s body hunched over the pad, I couldn’t tell. Was she trying to draw the man Mr. P. was slowly getting Teresa to describe? If that was what he was up to, it was way too much of a stretch.
I was wrong, of course.
Teresa finished describing the man and Avery looked up from the paper maybe thirty seconds later. She slipped off her stool, walked over to Teresa and held out her work. “Is this the man you saw?” she asked.
“Yes,” Teresa said, looking from Avery to Mr. P. “That’s him.”
Avery turned the notepad around so we could all see it. My first thought was, why hadn’t I known that Avery could draw so well? My second was that the face she’d sketched looked very familiar.
“Rose, why do I know that face?” I asked, scanning my own memory trying to pull out a context for the familiarity.
Mr. P. was also looking at Rose. “It is, isn’t it, Rosie?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
Frowning, Avery tipped her head to one side and studied her own work. After a moment her frown turned into a grin. “Holy crap,” she said. “It’s that guy that keeps hitting on Nonna, isn’t it?”
“What guy that keeps hitting on Liz?” I asked, totally confused.