“This is my treat,” she said. She held up one hand. “Don’t waste your time arguing.”
“We should have a barbecue tonight,” Rose said as we headed inside to pay the bill. “Do you think it would be too short notice for everyone?”
“Yes,” I said. I knew “everyone” for the most part meant Nick.
Liz went to move past me and as she did she put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t screw with the master,” she said softly.
The rest of our trip was uneventful. Liz asked to be dropped at her house, saying she had things to do. I didn’t ask what. When we pulled into the lot at the shop I noticed that Mac was out in the old garage and I headed over to him while Rose went to brief Mr. P.
Mac was on his knees working on the leg of a low wooden rocking chair. He smiled when he caught sight of me and got to his feet, wiping his hands on the front of his jeans. “How did it go?” he asked.
“Natalie has an alibi,” I said. “Unless Mr. P. can poke holes in it, we’re back to square one.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t see how it could have been her. She would never have hurt Leila and if she wanted to hurt Erin she didn’t have to come here to do it.”
“We must have missed something. Rose and Mr. P. are going to go through everything again. Maybe they’ll see something we didn’t see before.”
His mouth twisted to one side. “Maybe we aren’t going to find any answers.”
I was shaking my head before he finished speaking. “The answers are out there. We just have to ask the right questions.”
Mac took a couple of steps closer to me. “Sarah, this isn’t your fight.”
“You ever watch Bonanza?” I asked.
Mac’s eyes darted from side to side in confusion. It occurred to me that Rose was rubbing off on me, at least conversationally. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly.
“Gram and I used to watch it in reruns when I was a kid. It’s a western from the 1960s set in the 1860s—the adventures of the Cartwright family, who lived on the Ponderosa ranch.” I grinned at the memory. “After watching a few episodes I tried to rope Maddie Hamilton’s garden gnome with a piece of Gram’s clothesline.”
Mac started to smile.
“Don’t laugh,” I warned, waggling a finger at him. “I got pretty good at it, especially considering I couldn’t convince Gram to buy me a horse so I had to do my roping from my bike.”
Mac was grinning by now. “Not that this insight into your childhood isn’t fascinating but I’m guessing this somehow ties in to everything that’s been happening.”
I nodded. “Yes, it does. To be specific, the Bonanza theme song does, which Gram taught me and which I used to sing as I was practicing my cowboy skills.” And then I sang a bit of the song to him. “If anyone fights any one of us, he’s gotta fight with me!”
I put a hand on his arm. “Seriously, that’s how I feel. That’s how all of us feel. We’re going to figure this out. And if I have to lasso the bad guy with a length of clothesline I will.” I gave his arm a squeeze and headed for the shop. I’d meant every word I’d said, now all I had to do was make it happen.
About an hour later I headed down to the sunporch from my office. I had a cup of tea and a couple of questions for Mr. P. He looked up and smiled when I appeared in the doorway. “Is that for me?” he asked, indicating the cup and saucer in my hand.
“It is,” I said, setting it down on the table far enough away from his computer that it wouldn’t get knocked over and cause a problem.
“Thank you,” he said. “Your timing is impeccable. I’ve been checking Natalie Welland’s alibi and I’m ready for a break.”
“It checks out, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Yes, my dear, it does.” He took a sip of the tea.
I shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly wondering if what I was about to ask him was silly.
“You have something on your mind,” he said, his eyes kind behind his wire-frame glasses.
I nodded. “I do, but now I’m second-guessing myself.”
“Why don’t you tell me what it is, instead?”
“Remember that little carving that Erin Fellowes was carrying in her pocket?”
“I do,” he said.
“If I described it to you do you think you could possibly figure out where it came from?”
“I can certainly try.” He studied my face. “Do you think it’s important?”
I raked a hand back through my hair. “Maybe. Mac thinks it was the same carved figure that Leila kept in her desk. He didn’t know where it came from but he said Leila said it was to remind her of the kind of person she wanted to be.” I blew out a breath and walked over to the window to stare outside for a moment. “I went to see Sam the other day. He has this little brass monkey—about two inches high—on his desk. My father gave it to him a long time ago after . . . after Sam said something that pretty much destroyed the band they were in together. I don’t know what it was but I do know they didn’t speak for a while over it. They patched things up because, well, Gram said they were as close as brothers, but Sam has always kept that little monkey because he says it’s a reminder to choose his words carefully.”
“Sammy is a very wise man,” Mr. P. said.
I turned away from the window. “Natalie told us that Erin helped her pack up Leila’s office and she asked for a photo of herself and Leila, a pillow and that little carved bird.”
“Maybe Erin gave it to Leila.” He reached for his tea again.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. If her best friend gave that little carving to her she would have told Mac. It means something.”
“Do you have any idea what?”
I closed my eyes for a moment. When I looked at Mr. P. again there was no indication in his expression that he thought I was off on some wild-goose chase. “I don’t know,” I said. “It meant something to Leila and it meant something to Erin. Of all the things she could have asked Natalie for, aside from that photo, the only thing she wanted was a pillow and that little bird. And it was important enough that she brought it with her. Why? If we can figure that out, maybe we can figure out everything else.”
Mr. P. nodded. “How can I help?”
I moved back over to his desk. “I thought if we could find out where it came from maybe we’d be able to find out when Leila bought it and then we could work backward and try to figure out what was happening in her life at the time.” I made a face. “That made a lot more sense in my head than it does when I say it out loud.”
He smiled. “It makes sense to me, my dear. Tell me everything you remember about that carving.”
I described the tiny bird as carefully as I could. Mr. P. set to work on his laptop and I went back up to my office. Less than half an hour later he knocked at my door. He was carrying his computer.
“You found something?” I asked.
“You tell me,” he said. He set the laptop on my desk, and I came around to look at the screen. “Is this the carving Erin Fellowes had with her?”
“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “Mr. P., you’re a genius.”
He smiled. “Thank you, Sarah. I wouldn’t say I’m a genius.” He glanced briefly at the screen again. “It occurred to me from your description that what we might be looking for was a netsuke.”
I frowned. “I’ve heard the word but I don’t exactly know what that is.”
Mr. P. took off his glasses, pulled a small cloth from the pocket of his gold shirt and began to clean them. “Netsuke originated in seventeenth-century Japan. Traditional kimono had no pockets, which meant men had to carry their belongings—tobacco, money—in containers, which were fastened to the sash of the kimono by a cord. The cord was held at the top of the sash by a netsuke, like a toggle.”
“That’s why the holes,” I said, remembering Erin turning the tiny carving over in her fingers.