“Nicholas lost some money with the Perkins guy?” Eduardo said.
I said he appeared not to be that upset by it, but several other people threw out comments that it might have been an act. “Someone could have overheard me,” I said. “The bookstore was crowded. I thought I kept my voice down, but who knows?”
“What did the person on the mountain bike look like, Pink? Isn’t that the most obvious question?” Adele said.
“We didn’t get a good look. Whoever it was flew past us,” Dinah said, finally joining in. “They flew past Emily, too.”
Rhoda threw out a question about the bike. Did we know what it looked like or at least what color it was? Both Dinah and I had noticed only that it had wheels.
“If you want to know about mountain bikes, you can ask Logan. He knows all about them. He goes riding up in the mountains all the time,” Elise said. She didn’t seem to have any sense about what she’d just said. Everyone focused on her and I knew what they were thinking. If you wanted a suspect, Logan was a good choice. He’d lost money, his reputation and probably a lot of his real estate business. The implication of what she’d said finally sunk in and Elise looked horrified. “It couldn’t have been him. He wouldn’t do anything like that. Besides, he was ...” Her voice trailed off and then she muttered something about her being at Christmas bazaar all afternoon. She cut herself off abruptly.
Suddenly the big question was where had Logan been yesterday afternoon?
CHAPTER 23
DINAH AND I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT; AS soon as the group broke up, we checked the bookstore café for Logan. When he wasn’t there, we headed to Le Grande Fromage. Though I wondered if Logan would still be using a table as his portable office. Those two men had been pretty hostile to him and I was sure there must be others just as angry. I wanted to get there quickly, before Elise warned him to come up with an alibi. She’d rushed off to a hair appointment, so there was a chance she hadn’t talked to him.
The sun was burning off the clouds and shining in the window of the French café. The fragrant wreath wrapped in tiny white lights made it seem festive. The lunch crowd was clogging the place and the line at the counter went all the way to the back of the restaurant and blocked my view of the tables.
Dinah was trying to keep the kids from getting jostled by the crowd. Finally the line moved up and I got a clear view of the area where Logan always sat. To my surprise it appeared to be business as usual for him. He had his laptop on the table and seemed to be reading something. I pulled Dinah and the kids with me and we made our way across the small restaurant.
“Mind if we join you?” I said, pulling out a chair. Logan did a double take as his empty table suddenly filled up. He stammered something about expecting someone, but I countered by saying we’d leave when they showed up. Dinah went to join the line to get food and the kids and I stayed behind. I made some small talk about the weather and the book launch party. It was to soften him up before I started asking the real questions and it was a stall while I tried to figure out exactly how to put it. I couldn’t very well just ask him where he’d been the afternoon before. I kept looking at him, trying to picture him on a bike with a helmet to see if it matched my slip of a memory. If only the rider hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I would have recognized Logan’s odd hairline if it had gone past.
One of the things Dinah had done was teach the kids how to take part in the conversation. Ashley-Angela pulled out the little crochet swatch Adele had taught her to make and showed it to Logan. The kids might have been accustomed to being included with adults, but Logan didn’t seem to feel the same about kids. He blew out his breath a few times and I knew he was wishing we’d leave.
“I have a bike, too,” E. Conner said. Logan didn’t seem to be listening, and I suddenly realized the kids were like loose cannons. Dinah was coming back with a tray of drinks and I was trying to get up from the table and take the kids. “What’s an alibi?” E. Conner said. I turned to Logan, hoping he was still tuning out as I tried to grab the kids and make a fast exit. “I can get up myself, Aunt Molly. That’s what Aunt Molly wanted to know if you had in case you were the one who killed that man on the mountain,” E. Conner continued.
Let’s just say we didn’t have to leave the table. Logan grabbed his stuff and pulled his jacket off the back of the chair and was out the door before Dinah even arrived with the drinks.
“Did I miss something?” she said, looking at the empty chair.
Dinah apologized for the kids a bunch of times and I told her not to worry. We’d just have to come up with another way to figure out if Logan was the killer. In the meantime, why not branch out and check up on the other list of possibles. I gestured toward Luxe, but Dinah looked at the kids. “After what just happened maybe you’d rather go alone,” Dinah said.
I wasn’t worried since we hadn’t said anything about Nicholas being the possible murderer in front of them; besides, they were good cover. Who would think we were investigating anything with a couple of kids in tow? There were a few customers in Luxe and I noticed that Nicholas had some additional sales help. “He could have left the store and followed Emily,” I said in a low voice.
A smile lit up Nicholas’s dark eyes as he came over to us. He pointed the kids to a low table with drawing supplies and cookies. Dinah seemed relieved to get the kids out of the way before they could say anything. “What can I show you, ladies?” he said. “Christmas is just around the corner and so is Hanukkah. Books are nice, but so is a silver bowl.”
Nobody could say I didn’t think fast on my feet. “Well, actually I was looking for some accessories for a mountain bike. I don’t know anything about them, so I’m not sure what kind of accessories there are.”
Nicholas seemed surprised. “The only accessory I can offer is a weatherproof jacket.” He took us over to a rack on the wall and pulled out a forest green one. “I think you’d be better off at a sporting goods store,” he said. Dinah gave me a tiny nod of approval as she saw what I was doing.
“Do you know anything about mountain bikes? I realize you might not have anything here, but maybe you could give me an idea of what to look for when I go to a sporting goods store.”
“A bike store would be even better,” he said. “I have a mountain bike, but I’m not really an expert in the accessory department.” I tried to hide my excitement.
“Really. Do you ride a lot?” I said, feigning polite interest.
He gave me a quizzical look. “Frankly, I don’t use it very often. I didn’t know you were so interested in bicycling.” The door opened and Eduardo walked in. He nodded in greeting to Dinah and me, and then gestured to Nicholas and headed to the back of the store. “If you need any other help, just talk to one of my assistants,” Nicholas said, walking away from us.
“That was a little abrupt,” I said to Dinah. “It was almost like he didn’t want to talk about his bicycle. Great. We’re two for two washouts now.” I went with Dinah as she got the kids. They got up from the table quickly and showed us their drawings. Ashley-Angela’s slipped from her hand and sailed to the floor and E. Conner accidentally stepped on it. She started crying when she saw the footprint on her picture of fairies. He started crying when she socked him. Dinah was a firm believer in kids behaving well in public—so we hustled them out fast.
Back on the street, Dinah tried to smooth things over. I took Ashley-Angela’s picture and tried to give the footprint a positive spin, which wasn’t easy. The tread of his sneaker pretty much took over the paper. I kept looking at it and it stirred something in my mind.