The summer friendship between the two women had gone into a long period of hibernation after they went off to college and started their separate adult lives. But when they had both found themselves back on Rainshadow it was as if they had never been apart. There was still a lot of history to catch up on but the old bond between them had snapped back into existence immediately. It was as if they had never been apart.
“So this Jeremy Gaines was a client of yours?” Rachel asked.
“Ex-client.” Charlotte sipped some tea. “Can’t imagine why he came here or why he was in my shop last night.”
“Got any ideas?”
Charlotte smiled wryly. “You sound like the chief. The answer is no idea whatsoever.”
“How did your association with Gaines end?”
“Badly. And from the way you phrased the question, I think you’ve been reading too much suspense and mystery fiction.”
“Not like there’s much else to do here on Rainshadow,” Rachel said.
“Which brings up the obvious question—why did we both come back?”
“Don’t know about you,” Rachel said, “but I needed a change and I’ve always had this fantasy of operating a bookstore. You didn’t answer my question.”
“I more or less fired Jeremy as a client. He got pissed. Made a pest of himself for a while.”
“Stalker?”
“My family was starting to think so,” Charlotte admitted.
“And then he shows up here inside your shop. You know what? I’ll bet he wasstalking you. Probably came here last night to do something very nasty inside Looking Glass. That’s the sort of thing stalkers start out with.”
“I suppose it’s a possibility,” Charlotte said.
“Lucky he dropped dead of a heart attack when he did. Guys like that, they just keep going and the violence tends to escalate. The only way to stop them is to kill them.”
A chill shivered through Charlotte. “You speak from experience, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “I do.”
Chapter 10
“WORD AROUND TOWN IS THAT THE GUY WHO DROPPED dead in Charlotte’s shop was stalking her,” Myrna said. “Probably came here to vandalize her store or leave a dead rat on the premises in order to frighten her. Good thing he dropped dead when he did.”
Slade stopped at the desk and scooped up a stack of printouts. “It was convenient.”
Myrna started to say something else but she got distracted by Rex, who came bouncing down the hall from the direction of the break room.
“Oh, good,” Myrna said. “Looks like he finished the rest of today’s loaf of Thelma’s zucchini bread.”
“You gave him some more?” Slade asked.
“It’s either that or I start dumping the bread off the cliff at Lighthouse Point. No human being could possibly eat as much zucchini bread as Thelma is making this year. She had a bumper crop of zucchini, enough to go into commercial production.”
Rex vaulted up onto Myrna’s desk and chortled a greeting. He clutched a black beaded object.
“What on earth does he have in his grubby little paws?” Myrna asked. “He’d better not be bringing a dead bird in here. Hmm. Looks like an old evening purse, one of those tiny little bags ladies use to hold a lipstick and a compact.”
Slade looked at the beaded purse.
“Damn,” he said. “Rex must have snuck into Charlotte’s shop while we were getting Gaines’s body ready to transport.”
“Uh-oh,” Myrna said. “If it came from Looking Glass, it’s probably not just some old evening bag. It’s probably a valuable antique.”
“Probably,” Slade said.
Rex put the purse on the desk. He selected a few shiny paperclips from Myrna’s stash and put them into the bag. When he was satisfied, he grabbed the purse and jumped back down to the floor. Then he dashed off in the direction of Slade’s office.
“Something tells me the purse may have lost some of its value,” Myrna said.
“I’ll put it down as an office expense,” Slade said.
“Speaking of Charlotte, how’s she doing? Must have been quite a shock for her, walking in on a dead body like that.”
“She said something about conducting an inventory, so I think she’s recovering.”
“Not to change the subject, but how was your date last night?”
“We both survived it,” Slade said.
The door of the station opened. Kirk Willis, Slade’s one and only officer, entered. He used both hands to remove his sunglasses in a practiced, deliberate gesture.
Myrna smiled but said nothing.
“Heard the dead guy was a stalker,” Kirk said.
Kirk was in his early twenties, a tall, still-gangly young man who didn’t look a day over nineteen. He had been with the department for less than a year when Slade had arrived to take over as head of the department. Kirk had made no secret that he was not enthralled with his job. He had entered the police academy only after he had been forced to accept that his dream of working as a ghost hunter down in the catacombs was not going to happen. Kirk could pull a little ghost light but not enough to make him a Guild man.
Police work was a fallback profession as far as Kirk was concerned. Winding up in a small department in a town that was nothing more than a dot on the map on an island that wasn’t even on a lot of maps had been a soul-crushing experience for him.
Kirk’s attitude had improved briefly after they had taken down the drug runners who had ducked into the harbor earlier that week, but Slade didn’t expect the newfound professional pride to last long. He empathized with the younger man. After all, he was planning to get the hell off the island, himself, as soon as possible. But being a short-timer was no excuse for an unprofessional attitude. He was going to have to have a chat with Kirk. There was a job to be done, and as long as Kirk was getting a paycheck from the town of Shadow Bay he was going to do that job right.
“The stalker theory makes sense,” Myrna said. “I heard that Gaines was a former client of Charlotte’s back in Frequency. Evidently he tried to date her and she declined.”
“Explains what he was doing on the island,” Kirk said. “Right, Chief?”
“It does,” Slade said. “And for the moment, that is the official theory of the death.”
Kirk and Myrna stared at him, eyes widening.
“Official theory?” Kirk repeated cautiously. “Are you saying it might not be the correct theory?”
“We are going to conduct an investigation to rule out homicide,” Slade said. “But this will be a very low-profile project. Neither one of you will say a word about it outside this office. Not to anyone. Is that understood?”
“You got it, Chief.” Kirk’s dark eyes brightened with enthusiasm. “You really think someone murdered Gaines?”
“Yes, and before you ask, it wasn’t Charlotte.”
Myrna cleared her throat. “And we know this, how?”
Slade raised his brows. “I used to work for the FBPI, remember? I’ve done a lot of crime-scene investigation. The psychic evidence at the scene of Gaines’s murder tells me that Charlotte was not the killer.”
Myrna nodded. “You’re the expert on paranormal forensics. But you’re sure this is murder, not a heart attack?”
“I’m positive,” Slade said.
“Poison, maybe?” Kirk offered. “They say some poisons don’t show up in autopsies.”
“That’s true,” Slade said. “But there’s another possibility. A severe shock from a power source can stop the heart. We’ll know more when we have the three basics.”
“Means, motive, and opportunity,” Kirk said. He was practically vibrating with enthusiasm now.
“Right.” Slade looked at him. “You’re good with a computer. I want you to do a background check on Gaines. There’s reason to believe that he was involved in black-market antiquities. He may have made some enemies.”
“I’ll start on it right away.”
Slade looked at Myrna. “Any luck locating Gaines’s relatives?”