"She was upset?" I repeated. "I got the impression she didn't like Marc."
"She didn't. She liked him as a kid, he was really fun and creative, but he… I don't know, he didn't live up to expectations, I guess." She stared off for a moment. "Still, she was crying when she called. And my mother doesn't cry often."
"I can imagine."
"Why did Marc call you?"
Sheila shook her head. "He said he was going to make boxes. Carved boxes. And he wanted to know if I would sell them in my shop."
"Would you have?" I asked. Looking around, the gallery had a fairly eclectic mix of objects. It was more of a fine craft than traditional art gallery. There were ceramic bowls and blown glass pieces as well as paintings, sculptures and textiles.
"Sure," she said. "Marc was actually very talented. Not disciplined, but talented. He said he had a little money and he was going to use it to start his furniture business. But he was going to start small-with the boxes. If that went well, he'd make bigger pieces. He was quite excited about it."
"But you must have thought that was just talk," I said.
"I suppose I should have, given Marc's track record." Sheila smiled. "But he said he had been inspired by someone to turn over a new leaf, and I believed him. He'd even picked out a display area for the boxes." She pointed to the center of the room. "I'd asked him to make me five, and we would see what happened."
The display case was filled with glass vases that had the texture of sand, as if they were unearthed from some archeological site. But a tag on the table explained that the pieces had been made by an artist in New Jersey. I could picture Marc's boxes sitting there instead, even though I really had no idea what they would have looked like. Still, it was nice to think of Marc as happy, excited, focused-the man I knew-instead of the person I'd been hearing about for days. And strange to think I might have been the inspiration.
The customer at the front of the shop waved toward Sheila. "Excuse me," Sheila said. "I hope you find what happened to Marc. He really was a wonderful guy in so many ways."
I took one more look around the little shop. It was pretty. A place for up-and-coming artists to show their work. But it was something at the back of the shop that caught my eye. The quilts were small, but even from a distance they looked quite beautiful and remarkably familiar.
I should have left, but I walked to the back wall of the gallery. Three two-foot square quilts hung on the wall, each with tiny appliqued flowers, machine embroidered details, and intricate quilting.
"They're Nancy's," I accidentally said out loud. "They have to be."
CHAPTER 50
I knew it would probably get me into trouble, but I had to call Jesse anyway and tell him what I'd learned at the gallery. I dialed his number as soon as the train back to Archers Rest had pulled out of Grand Central. It's generally frowned on to make calls on the train, since tired commuters aren't that interested in listening to the details of someone else's day, but I didn't care.
Only it wasn't working out as I had planned. Jesse wasn't at the police station. I had to call Bernie to get Jesse's mother's number, who gave me Jesse's. I could hear his daughter playing in the background, and I immediately felt guilty for interrupting their time together.
"How did you get my number?" he asked me as soon as I identified myself.
"What difference does it make?" I said. "I got it. I butted in. I snooped. Yell at me later."
As my voice got more exasperated, I could hear his voice relax. "What did you do?" he asked.
I told him about my visit to Maggie and to her daughter's gallery. Jesse didn't seem too surprised by the idea that Marc was trying to sell carved boxes to an expensive gallery. "Except he didn't actually make the boxes," he pointed out. "He just talked about making them."
"But he would have needed money to do that. Maybe that's why he only offered the doctor five thousand dollars."
"You don't need ten thousand dollars to make boxes," Jesse countered. I could hear Allie calling for him. "Look, Nell, I don't know how many ways I can say this. You need to stay out of this. I can't keep you from talking to Maggie or her daughter, any more than I can keep anyone in town from gossiping about this, but…" He stopped. "I'll be in the office tomorrow. You should come by."
That evening I sat in the kitchen with a little notebook, writing out every clue and every suspect. If Jesse was going to let me be a part of the investigation, I wanted to have something to say.
When Eleanor and Nancy finally closed up shop and Nancy left for the night, I stopped my work and made my grandmother dinner. While I cooked, she sat at the table looking over my notebook.
"What is this?"
I turned red. "It's my list of suspects," I admitted.
"Carrie, Natalie… these aren't suspects. These are my friends. Your friends," she said.
I put a plate of chicken tacos and rice in front of Eleanor and a second plate at my place. I sat down but was too excited with my theories to actually eat. I told my grandmother about my weeks of detective work.
"Carrie needed money to open her own business. She said so," I said. "Plus she was having an affair with Marc, then he started going after me, so she was upset and jealous and she killed him," I said as we headed back to town.
"Based on the fact that she gushed about him."
"And she had his keys."
"Why did he give her his keys?" Eleanor asked.
"So they could meet at his place. They couldn't exactly go to her house. They couldn't get a hotel room in town. It makes perfect sense."
"If Carrie knew about the money. If she was having an affair with him. If she had his keys," my grandmother reminded me.
"Okay. Natalie. She had tons of motive."
"Yes, she did."
I looked at her. "You don't think it was Natalie."
"She doesn't have the stomach for that kind of thing." I realized Eleanor was considering each suspect as carefully as I was. "Susanne had the same motive."
"I don't think so. For all her faded glamour girl stuff, she's a pretty smart person. If she were going to kill Marc, I think it would have been planned out," I said.
Eleanor smiled. "So we're ruling Susanne out because she's more of a premeditated killer and we've got a spur-of-the-moment murder on our hands."
"Do you think she did it?"
"Not really. I think you're right on that one."
"Ha." I smiled. "Okay, who's left?" Eleanor glanced over at me. "You said he didn't do it," I said.
I didn't feel like playing this game anymore, and I wasn't hungry either.
The next morning I went to Jesse's office early. Maybe it was better leaving the investigation to the experts. As an amateur I kept coming back to the same suspect. I was anxious to hear what Jesse had come up with, especially if he finally was willing to be open with me about the investigation. The problem was, Ryan was the only suspect Jesse wanted to talk about.
"We have to consider it so we can rule him out," he said. "Ryan punched Marc on two occasions on the day he was killed. Plus he admits that he saw you and Marc kissing in the shop, so he knew where Marc was."
"He was at Moran's Pub when Marc was killed."
"So he says."
"No. I checked with the bartender."
"You checked your fiance's alibi?"
"Yes." I didn't want to say any more, but Jesse would find out anyway. "The bartender remembers him, but he can't be specific about the time, and Moran's is only a few blocks away. Besides, Ryan was on the phone saying he'd made a big mistake."