“I’m trying,” I said. I was trying. It was just that I kept getting sucked into helping. I thought about what my Gram would say about good intentions.
She smiled. “Thanks, Sarah. I appreciate that.”
There was an awkward silence. “I should get back to Jess and Nick,” I said. I don’t really know what made me say what I said next. “Can you join us for a few minutes?”
She looked surprised. Then again, I was surprised that I’d asked. “Umm, thanks, but I have to get back to the station.”
I nodded. “Maybe another time.” I turned to head back to the table.
“I’m glad you’re home, Sarah,” she said.
It felt like she meant it.
“Me too.” I said.
Chapter 18
I had an appointment first thing in the morning to go through the storage area of a local motel to see if there was anything left after their recent renovation work that I might be interested in buying. I left Elvis at the store with Mac and drove up to the highway.
The storage room was like a time capsule from the 1970s. I started making a pile in the hallway of things I wanted, handing them to the young man the owner had sent to help me. I found two lamps; a sleek, curved-edge coffee table; a hanging wicker chair and several boxes of vibrant Fiestaware dishes.
The space was crammed with furniture, mostly bed frames, chests of drawers and boxy-looking chairs. I climbed over a couple of long, low sofas to hand a box of dishes to my helper, whose name was Brent. He had a bandage wrapped around his left hand. “Can you manage that?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, this is fine,” he said, holding up his hand. I gave him the box and scrambled over the sofas. One was piled upside down on the other. I thought I’d seen another lamp but now I couldn’t find it.
“Is there something else I can get for you?” Brent asked. He was maybe twenty years old, with spiked blond hair and strong arms and shoulders.
I had the feeling if I’d said I wanted the faux–Danish modern sofas he would have been able to throw one over each shoulder and carry them out to the SUV.
“I thought I saw another lamp,” I said. “Now I don’t know where it is.”
Brent looked around. He was taller. “Over there,” he said, pointing to the far front corner.
All I could see was a bunch of metal-framed chairs piled haphazardly on top of one another.
“I’ll get it for you.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He flexed his fingers in a crablike motion. “Yeah, I’m fine. This is just poison ivy. It doesn’t hurt. It just itches like crazy.”
He climbed over the chairs like a monkey making his way up a coconut tree, grabbed the lamp, handed it out to me and climbed over the chairs again. I got a better look at the gauze bandage that covered most of the back of his left hand. There was a red, itchy-looking rash on the back of his wrist, as well. I realized I’d seen the same rash just recently. On Jim Grant’s hand. And on Arthur Fenety’s.
“Did you say that was poison ivy?” I asked.
Brent rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh. I was in the park a couple of days ago, throwing the Frisbee around with some buddies. Stupid thing went into the bushes and I went after it. I guess there’s some kind of infestation of poison ivy all over the park.” He rubbed the bandage with the palm of his other hand and made a face. “It doesn’t hurt, but damn, is it itchy.”
What had Daisy told Charlotte and me? She’d dropped Arthur off and he’d cut through the park to get to Maddie’s house. Could he have had some kind of confrontation with Jim Grant? Grant had claimed he hadn’t gotten in town until the morning after Arthur Fenety had been killed. Could he have been lying about that?
Brent was talking to me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I zoned out. What did you say?”
“Do you want me to start carrying this stuff out?”
“That would be a big help, thanks,” I said.
With Brent’s help I managed to get everything loaded into the SUV. Then we walked back to the office and I paid for the pieces I’d bought. With a little work I was confident that everything I’d bought would sell.
Mac helped me unload when I got to the store.
“Sam called,” he said. “We’re going to get two buses of leaf peepers in about twenty minutes.”
“Is Charlotte here?” I asked.
He nodded. “And Rose and Mr. Peterson are on the sunporch.”
I headed inside and stuck my head around the sun-porch doorway. “Good morning,” I said. Mr. P. was on his laptop and Rose was sitting beside him.
“Good morning, dear,” she said.
Mr. P. looked up and smiled. “Hello, Sarah,” he said.
“Are you having any luck with the information Rose got out of Jim Grant?” I asked.
Mr. P. nodded. “Now that I know his mother’s full name I did a records search. She was married to Arthur Fenety, not that it was legal, of course.” He glanced down at a notepad on the table next to the computer. “Margaret Grant had a small yarn and fabric shop. It went out of business a couple of months after Arthur left town.”
“Do you think he took money from the business?”
Rose nodded. “I hate to call someone a liar, but yes, I do.”
“So why did Jim Grant lie to us?” I said.
“His mother losing her business is a lot better motive for murder than just losing a tea set,” Mr. P. said.
“Rose, did you notice that bandage on his arm and that rash on the back of his hand?” I asked.
“I did,” she said. “He told me it was an allergic reaction to furniture stripper he’d been using.” She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t think that’s true?”
“I’m not sure.” I looked at Mr. P. “Could you check something out for me?”
“Of course I could,” he said. “What is it?”
“I heard there’s a problem with an infestation of poison ivy in the park. Could you find out if that’s true?”
He nodded. “I can do that.”
“Sarah, do you think the rash on Jim Grant’s arm was poison ivy?” Rose asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Charlotte said that Daisy told you she dropped Arthur off by the park and he walked to Maddie’s house. Do you think Jim Grant might have met him in the park?”
I twisted my watch around my arm. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Rose about the possible rash I’d seen on Arthur Fenety’s arm. I didn’t want to lie to her, but it just seemed that I was getting pulled deeper into their investigation every day.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible.” I hesitated.
“Dear, is there something you’re not telling us?”
“Yes,” I said. “There was a mark on Arthur’s wrist. I noticed it when I checked for . . . his pulse. I just glanced at it and I thought it was some kind of scrape.”
“You think it was poison ivy?” Her blue eyes widened. “Do you think Jim Grant could have been waiting for Arthur in the park? Maybe he followed Arthur to Maddie’s house and poisoned him there.”
Mr. P. looked up from the keyboard. “You’re right,” he said to me. “The park is dealing with an infestation of poison ivy. It’s in all the flower beds and along the sides of a lot of the pathways.”
“Thanks,” I said. I looked at Rose. “We don’t know for sure that Jim Grant was even in the park, let alone that he saw Arthur. He said he didn’t get here until Tuesday morning.”
“And if James did follow Arthur, where did he get the poison and how did he get it into Arthur’s coffee cup?” Mr. P. asked. He looked at Rose. “We can’t jump to conclusions.”
She nodded. “All right.”
Mr. P. looked at me. “I’ll see if James Grant had any connection to a source of napthathion.”
Rose looked at her watch. “Liz should be on her way to Phantasy right now. Maybe she’ll find out something that will help Maddie.”