“What fight? There was no fight.”
“Come on, Ellery. I have an eyewitness who reported that you and Trevor got into a verbal altercation only hours before he was found dead in your shop.”
“It wasn’t like that at all.”
“You have to admit the timing is pretty suspicious.” Sue leaned in closer, and he realized she was holding a cell phone. Was she recording him?
“Would you move please? I’m trying to close the door.”
“Have you been advised to retain legal counsel yet?”
“Get out of my face, Sue,” Ellery warned.
She must have seen he meant it. Sue drew back, her expression wary.
“Are you sure you want to take that attitude? With or without your interview, I’m running the story—” She jumped nimbly out of the way as he slammed shut the door. From the other side of the wooden planks he heard her muffled, “Are you sure you want to do this? This is your one chance to have your side of the story heard!”
Ellery ignored her, mentally replaying his conversation with Police Chief Carson the night before. Had Carson specifically told him he was a suspect? Ellery didn’t think so. But at no point had Carson told him he wasn’t a suspect. What if the lies Sue was spreading got back to the police chief? What if Carson started to believe there was more to Ellery’s final conversation with Trevor? Who was this eyewitness?
Ellery stepped back from the door, listening for the hoped-for sounds of Sue’s retreat. He couldn’t hear anything, so hopefully she had given up and was not circling the house, peering through windows.
This was unbelievable. All of it. The fact that Trevor would be murdered. The fact that Ellery would be suspected of that murder. It was like a book. Like a book he sold in a shop he had inherited from an eccentric aunt he’d never even known existed until she died and left him this crazy house in a crazy town where people dressed up like pirates and got themselves murdered in other people’s bookshops.
Was he dreaming?
Ellery considered this possibility but was forced to concede he was not dreaming. So, then, what did people do in this kind of situation?
Okay, silly question.
But what should he do? What could he do?
He could call a lawyer, but that was bound to look guilty.
He could pretend this wasn’t happening and carry on as normal. But normal seemed like a long time ago. He wasn’t sure he still knew how normal worked.
He could do as Chief Carson asked and get him that inventory, and then he could ask Chief Carson man-to-man whether he was the only suspect in Trevor’s death. Given how obnoxious Trevor had been, that seemed hard to believe. But maybe.
He would talk to the chief and figure out where things really stood. Maybe the situation wasn’t as grim as Sue made it sound. Maybe it was. Either way, when he finished talking to Chief Carson—assuming he wasn’t under arrest—he would call some kind of biohazard service to clean up the bloodstains in the store—Ellery paused to give his stomach a moment—and then he would call a security company to install an alarm system in the Crow’s Nest, and then…
And then…
Well, he’d burn that bridge when he came to it.
Chapter Six
The first stumbling block was the unwelcome news that Chief Carson was not in.
“Not in to me, or not in at all?” Ellery asked.
The baby-faced officer, whom Ellery vaguely remembered from the night before, looked puzzled. “Chief’s attending the autopsy of Mr. Maples. We don’t expect him back until after lunch.”
Lunch and autopsy. Two words that really didn’t go together. Ellery shuddered inwardly. “Right. Of course.” He considered, said awkwardly, “I don’t mean to be crass, but do you know when I’ll be able to open the bookstore for business again?”
Officer Martin shook his head. “No idea. That will be the chief’s call.”
“Right. I just wondered what’s usual in these cases.”
“We don’t have cases like this,” Martin said tersely. “There is no usual.”
“Sure, sure,” Ellery said quickly, and then probably made it worse by adding, “Could you tell him I stopped by?” As though this had been a social call.
But after all, none of this was usual for him either.
Officer Martin gave him a look that communicated serious doubts about Ellery’s solid citizen status, and Ellery headed off to put together a list of what, if anything, had been disturbed at the Crow’s Nest.
He had already verified the night before that the cash register was untouched. Trevor’s murder had not been part of a robbery gone wrong. But there was a slight possibility that the killer had entered the shop searching for something. The ending to a half-read mystery novel, perhaps? Yeah, no. But it didn’t hurt to try and come up with a reason for someone to enter the shop after-hours. Otherwise, Ellery was liable to remain Police Chief Carson’s one and only suspect.
It was probably Ellery’s imagination, but the tinkle of the bell on the front door sounded almost subdued as he let himself into the building. His nose twitched at the unpleasant and unfamiliar scents of a crime scene. He glanced automatically at the red-stained floorboards where Trevor’s body had lain, and then quickly away.
He dreaded the idea of being alone in the shop. Not that he imagined he was in any danger, certainly not in broad daylight, but there was no question the atmosphere felt different now, strange and unsettling.
Maybe that would change with time, but he didn’t have time. The Crow’s Nest hadn’t exactly been bustling with business before it had been the scene of a homicide. Trevor’s death was bound to be the death knell for the shop.
Maybe that was a selfish way of looking at things, but he had invested a lot in this little dream. And now his dream was turning into a nightmare.
“I thought it was you,” someone said loudly from behind him.
Ellery jumped and whirled around. Dylan Carter, the owner of the neighboring Toy Chest, stood in the doorway. Dylan was about sixty. He was small, slim, and always impeccably dressed—today in breeches and one of those white, blousy sometimes-I-feel-like-a-pirate-sometimes-I-feel-like-a-poet shirts. His eyes were blue; his silver hair was buzzed short on the sides, and the top—when not tied back in a bandanna—fell in a stylishly long swoop.
“What does that mean?” Ellery protested. Dylan was the closest thing Ellery had to a friend in Pirate’s Cove, so this accusation cut deeply. “I had nothing to do with it!”
Dylan looked taken aback. “Of course not. No one thinks that. I meant I recognized you going past the window of my store.”
“Oh.” Ellery flushed. Nothing like a guilty conscience—especially when you weren’t guilty. “I just… The editor of the local paper practically accused me to my face of murdering Trevor. I’m a little touchy.”
“Sue? Sue did that? That’s terrible.” Dylan seemed genuinely shocked. “That doesn’t sound like Sue.” His gaze moved past Ellery to the stained floor. His tanned face seemed to lose color. “Is that where it happened?”
“I don’t know where it happened, but that’s where I found him,” Ellery said.