Elvis padded into the room, jumped up onto Mr. P.’s desk and bumped Chloe’s arm with his head. She smiled down at him. “Hello,” she said.
“That’s Elvis,” I said.
She held out her hand and after he’d sniffed it Elvis let her stroke his fur. “What happened to his nose?” Chloe asked, indicating the long scar on the cat’s face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It happened before I got him.”
“Was it typical for you not to talk to Mr. Cameron all day?” Charlotte asked. Her hands were folded over the apron she always wore in the shop.
“It was if he had meetings most of the day. He’d just give me a list of what he wanted done.” She continued to stroke Elvis’s fur. He had a blissful expression on his face.
“He had a meeting yesterday?” I asked.
She nodded. “In Portland. You know that Helmark provides temporary employees for businesses?”
“I do,” I said.
“Jeff was trying to convince more companies here to use Helmark. He had a lot of meetings.”
Chloe Sanders was articulate, not surprising for a former debater, and she looked whomever she was talking to in the eye when she spoke. I couldn’t see any reason not to believe she was telling the truth. I thought about Leesa saying Jeff called Chloe the Roomba. It was hard not to think of him as a jerk.
“How late did you work last night?” Rose asked.
“I think it was about quarter to six when I left the library. They close at six.”
“Chloe, do you mind telling us what you did last night?”
She cleared her throat, pressing her free hand to her mouth for a moment. “No. I don’t mind. Mom and Dad went to New Hampshire for a few days. They’re big NASCAR fans. I went home, ordered a pizza and watched TV. Like I said, Jeff sent me a text giving me the rest of the week off. That was it.”
I glanced at Elvis and then caught Rose’s eye. I gave my head a little shake. I turned my attention back to Chloe. “Thank you for talking to us,” I said.
“You’re welcome.” She gave Elvis one last scratch behind his ears and then she turned to Charlotte. “It was so good to see you, Mrs. Elliot. If you need anything else, call me, please.”
“I will,” she said. “I’ll walk you out.”
I waited until they were out of earshot, and then I turned to Rose. Elvis was washing his face.
“You saw that?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
That blissful expression Elvis had been wearing while Chloe stroked his fur hadn’t wavered until she’d told us she’d been home alone all evening watching TV. Then it had changed to a look that was the antithesis of contentment.
“Chloe Sanders lied about what she was doing last night,” I said.
“Do you think it’s possible that lovely child had something to do with what I saw?” Rose asked.
“I hope not,” I said.
“Alfred and I will see what we can find out about her.”
I nodded, hoping that the young woman Jeff Cameron had derisively referred to as a Roomba hadn’t gotten herself into a mess that couldn’t easily be cleaned up.
Rose came up to my office at about four thirty. “I’m taking Avery home with me to bake,” she said, standing in the doorway.
“Do you want a ride?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Liz is coming to get us. She didn’t manage to find out anything about who Lessa Cameron has been working out with. She said she’s not throwing in the towel, though.”
I smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Rose yawned. “Would it be all right with you if we took the dog biscuits over to Casey tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said.
She smiled then. “Thank you, Sarah.”
“Hey, I like Casey, too.”
“I mean thank you for everything you’ve done in the last twenty-four hours.” She paused for a moment. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere,” I said, “so you won’t be able to find out.”
“I love you, sweetie,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I said.
I stayed late to finish cleaning the wicker chairs so I could get them painted. Elvis was happy to curl up on my desk chair with a few fish crackers while he waited. I was standing back, admiring my handiwork, when Mac came into the garage.
“Hi. I didn’t realize you were still here.”
“I want to paint these tomorrow,” I said.
He walked around the two fat chairs. “They look a lot better than when you bought them from Cleveland.” Cleveland was a picker I bought things from on a regular basis.
I wiped my hands on my jeans. “Yeah, scraping off a layer of chicken droppings is pretty much guaranteed to spruce up anything.”
Mac grinned.
“What are you working on?” I asked, pulling off the old flannel shirt I’d been wearing over my T-shirt while I worked.
“Just gluing the joints of that old nursery rocker. I already sanded it, so one of us will be able to paint it.”
I stretched one arm up over my head. “Thanks,” I said. “I couldn’t do all of this without you, you know.”
He turned and smiled at me. “Hey, you’re the one who keeps finding treasures under layers of chicken poop.”
“And you’re the one who keeps all of this running while I’m off being Dr. Watson to the Sherlock Holmeses who have their office in my sunporch.”
“What do you think about Alfred’s theory?” Mac asked.
I blew a stray clump of hair back off my face. “I admit it seems like a bit of a stretch, but on the other hand it also seems like a bit of a coincidence that Rose would show up at the cottage just when Leesa Cameron was moving her husband’s dead body.”
“I had the same thought,” Mac said. “The fact that there hasn’t been any activity on his cards or his phone is unsettling, though.”
I nodded. “I know. I only spoke to Jeff Cameron for a couple of minutes when he was here, and I spent maybe five minutes with Leesa Cameron when Michelle and I went to talk to her last night, but I can’t help feeling there was something wrong in that marriage.” I reached down and picked up the scrub brush I’d used on the chairs. “Which I guess makes sense whether you’re setting your wife up for murder or killing your husband.”
“It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?” he said.
I turned the brush over in my hands. “Let’s say for a moment that Mr. P. is wrong. That means Jeff Cameron ended his marriage with a text message. And was cruel enough to send a gift to his wife to mark the occasion, because, let’s face it, those candlesticks had nothing to do with remembering Leesa Cameron’s grandmother on what would have been her birthday. Who ends what was supposed to be a lifetime commitment like that?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes people make a commitment and they mean it when they make it, but after a while they find out they just don’t have what it takes to keep it.”
I set the brush back down on the stool I’d been using as a makeshift table. “As Avery would say, that doesn’t mean that then they get to act like a glass bowl.”
Mac grinned at my use of Avery’s euphemism for the word “asshole.”
“Maybe it would be better if we all waited to get married until we could keep our commitments,” I said.
That made him laugh. “There probably wouldn’t be nearly as many marriages.” He lifted one of the chairs off the drop cloth I’d been using. I moved the other and bent down to pick up one end of the canvas. Mac reached for the other two corners. We had a length of clothesline cord stretched across one end of the old garage and we draped the drop cloth over it to dry.
“Do you believe in marriage, Mac?” I asked. “I mean, in the idea of it?”
“Yes,” he said. He pushed back the sleeves of his chambray shirt. “I see it as a public affirmation of a private commitment.”
“You think we need that.”
He shrugged. “I can only speak for myself, and I know I want it. I want the person I’m with to know that I’m not going anywhere when things go bad, because at some point they will. That’s just life.” He narrowed his dark eyes and studied my face for a moment. “May I ask you something?”