“Maybe Ted hid something behind the light up there.”

  While Libby watched, Marvin dragged the ladder over, climbed up two steps, and looked.

  “Nope,” he said. He was climbing back down when Libby’s cell rang.

  “What, Bernie?” Libby said into it.

  “Get back here,” Bernie whispered. Her voice was so low Libby could barely hear her. “Get back here now.” Then she hung up.

  “We gotta go,” she told Marvin. “We really gotta go.”

  “I figured,” he said.

  They were running out the door when Marvin stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Wait,” he cried.

  “For what?”

  “I have a friend who always hid everything in the garbage.”

  “The garbage?” Libby echoed.

  Marvin nodded. “He took the garbage out every week. He figured his wife would never look in the bottom of the garbage can.”

  “Kind of like hiding something in plain sight.”

  “Exactly,” Marvin said. “Just give me a moment.”

  “That’s all we have.”

  Libby watched as he hurried over to the garbage cans. She was right behind him. She peered over his shoulder as he opened the lid on the first one. It was empty.

  “Try the second,” she urged.

  “I was just going to.”

  Libby held her breath as Marvin took the lid off the second can. He pulled the bag of garbage out.

  “Anything?” Libby asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “There is.”

  He leaned in and pulled out a knotted-up black plastic bag. He started untying the knot.

  “What are you doing?” Libby cried. “We have to get out of here.”

  “One second.” Marvin untied the knot, opened the bag, and pulled out a folded-up brown paper bag. Libby watched as he opened that up.

  “Anything in there?” she asked.

  Marvin pulled out a cigar box. “There certainly is.”

  “Super,” Libby said. She tugged at his sleeve. “Come on. We have to go.”

  “I know,” Marvin said.

  They ran out of the garage and jumbed into Marvin’s car. Marvin pressed the button and Marnie’s garage door came down.

  “Let’s go,” he said and they took off.

  Bernie watched Marnie putting on her coat. She glanced at her watch. This was not good. It would probably take Marvin and Libby another couple of minutes to get here. She had to delay Marnie somehow.

  “I’m so sorry for the mess,” she told her.

  “It’s okay,” Marnie assured her. “Those cartons should have been put away.”

  “At least let me pay for the oil.”

  “There’s no need.”

  Bernie reached for her bag. “I insist. Tell me how much?”

  Marnie wound her scarf around her neck. “I don’t know. With the cranberries something like twenty bucks.”

  “Let me write you a check.” And Bernie started fishing around in her bag. Anything to buy time.

  “You can give me the money tomorrow,” Marnie said. “Or even the day after. It really doesn’t matter.”

  “It’ll only take a second,” Bernie said as she continued to dig. “Otherwise I’ll forget.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll remind you,” Marnie told her. “Look, I’m so tired my bones are aching. I can hardly stand up. I have to go home.” And she went over and clicked off the light. “After you,” she said.

  Bernie waited outside while Marnie set the alarm and locked the back door. Please let Libby and Marvin have returned the garage door opener, she prayed. Please.

  “Are you parked in front?” Marnie asked.

  Bernie nodded.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Marvin’s vehicle.

  She put her hand to her mouth. “Just a second,” she cried.

  Marnie turned toward her. Bernie pretended to look in her bag. “I’m sorry but I forgot my cell.”

  Marnie shook her head and trudged back toward the store.

  “I’m sorry to be such a pain,” Bernie told Marnie as Marnie punched in the security code.

  Out of the corner of her eye Bernie could see Marvin pull up to the Saab, jump out of his car, yank open the door of the Saab, and lean in. Then he jumped back into his car and backed out. Bernie breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’m sorry,” Bernie said again as she followed Marnie into the store. She tried to look contrite. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight.”

  “Neither do I,” Marnie snapped. “But whatever you have I hope it passes.”

  Bernie decided that under the circumstances she would have been equally miffed.

  Chapter 22

  S ean regarded the cigar box Libby had placed before him, then glanced back at Libby, Marvin, and Bernie.

  “Nice,” he said as he ate a piece of the lemon curd pie Libby had brought up to him a little while ago. “Did you put more lemon zest in?”

  “Just a bit,” Libby replied.

  Sean took a sip of his coffee and set his cup in its saucer. “It works well.” Then he cut off another piece of pie and conveyed it to his mouth.

  “Would you mind turning on the TV?” he asked Bernie when he was done chewing.

  Libby leaned forward.

  “Aren’t you going to open the cigar box?” she asked.

  “No.” Sean took a sip of his coffee and readjusted himself in his wheelchair.

  “Why not?” Libby wailed.

  “Because considering the way you got it I’m inclined to throw it in the trash. Simply put, by looking at it I’d be condoning the criminal activities you’ve committed to acquire it.”

  Bernie rolled her eyes.

  “I’m serious,” Sean told her. He’d given the same speech to his men in the past. Of course he’d also told them that garbage out in the street was fair game. They’d found some of their best evidence that way. But that was different. Unfortunately, this trash hadn’t been on the street.

  Marvin put his fork down and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

  “Don’t be angry with Libby and Bernie.”

  “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed.” Go for the maximum amount of guilt. That was his motto.

  “Okay, then don’t be disappointed,” Marvin said. “This is all my fault.”

  Sean glared at Marvin until he dropped his eyes. “How is it your fault? Did you make them do this at gunpoint? Did you threaten to kill them if they didn’t comply?”

  “No…no…no,” Marvin began to stutter.

  Libby turned to Marvin. “He’s just being sarcastic,” she explained. “He does that when he’s annoyed. Just ignore it.”

  “Ignore me,” Sean spluttered. “Now you’re going to ignore me on top of everything else?”

  “That isn’t what I meant and you know it,” Libby retorted.

  “Well, what did you mean?” Sean said. “Tell me. I insist.”

  Libby started to hem and haw. Sean immediately felt guilty. Libby never responded well to his sarcasm, a fact his wife had constantly pointed out to him. She called it bullying. But he wasn’t bullying, he was just trying to make sure that Libby and Bernie remembered what he was saying. He wanted to make sure they knew it was important. Unfortunately, he never did convince Rose of that.

  Bernie put her glass down on top of the magazine she’d been paging through.

  “Give me a break,” she said to him. “You know you’re not going to throw the cigar box out, so why don’t you just open it and tell us what you think?”

  Sean ate another piece of the tart. “What difference does it make? You’ve already seen the contents. What could I possibly add to the equation?”

  “Your experience,” Marvin told him. “You’re the only one here who actually knows anything.”

  “Really?” Sean said.

  “Absolutely. I hear that when you were chief of police you solved more crimes than anyone else.”

  It was true. He had. Not that he was going to admit it. That would be bragging. But Sean decided the kid was definitely growing on him. Despite Marvin’s clumsiness and bad driving and his idiot of a father, Marvin was turning out to have some redeeming features. After all, he was the one who had found the cigar box. That earned him some points. Even if the conception was boneheaded in the extreme.

  “Thanks,” he told Marvin. He looked back at Bernie. “At the very least you should have called me and asked my opinion before trying the stunt you pulled.”

  “It was my fault,” Libby said.

  Bernie chimed in. “No. It was mine.”

  “I’m the one you should be blaming,” Marvin told him.

  “That’s enough,” Sean said. “I don’t care who’s at fault here. It doesn’t matter who made the suggestion. What matters is that everyone went along with it.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Libby urged. “Tell us what you think.”

  “Both of you could have been arrested.”

  “But we weren’t,” Bernie said.

  Sean fixed his daughters with his guilt-inducing look, a look he’d perfected over the years—a look his wife suggested he patent.

  “How would it look if I had to bail you out of jail?” Sean demanded. “Do you know how embarrassing that would be? The local paper would have a field day with that. You’d probably lose business.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Bernie retorted. “We’d be exceptionally busy. Notoriety sells, as you well know.”

  Sean did know. Every time the girls had a murder case, A Little Taste of Heaven was packed with people wanting to know the latest. It was a fact of life. People were attracted to the violent. They always wanted to know the gory details. Ask any cop who had to deal with rubber-neckers at the scene of a traffic accident.

  But he wasn’t going to admit that fact to Bernie. He also wasn’t going to admit that he was dying to see what was in the cigar box. Not opening it was, to use one of Rose’s favorite expressions, cutting off his nose to spite his face. He suspected—no, he knew—that Bernie and Libby suspected as much but had the good manners not to mention it.

  Sean ate another piece of his lemon curd tart while his daughters watched. They can wait a little longer, he thought as he put his fork down. He took another sip of coffee. Then he turned to Bernie.

  “So where’s Rob these days?” he asked.

  Bernie snorted. “Good question.”

  “You two have a fight?”

  “Can we change the subject?”

  “So you did have a fight.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Was the fight you don’t want to talk about a bad one?”

  “Dad, stop it,” Bernie said.

  “If you insist.”

  “I do.”

  “Too bad. I liked him.”

  “I did too.”

  Sean reached over and picked up the black plastic bag.

  “This is the way you found it?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “We opened it up, but we put everything back the way we found it,” Libby said.

  Sean nodded absentmindedly as he opened the bag, took out a crumpled brown paper grocery bag, and set it aside. Then he turned the plastic bag upside down and shook it. Nothing came out. Next he opened the grocery bag and removed a grease-stained paper bag.

  “Good camouflage job,” he remarked.

  He studied it for a moment, then opened it and took out the cigar box. When he was a kid he used one of his father’s cigar boxes to keep his treasures in. They’d been typical boy things: an Indian arrowhead, a crystal that he’d found down in a cave in West Virginia, a lump of what he’d later been told was fool’s gold, a starfish he’d found on the beach, a musket ball from Gettysburg, a piece of ocean glass, and his prize possession, a small fossilized insect that he’d found apple-picking with his mom.

  He’d carefully wrapped up each of his treasures in pieces of flannel that his mother had given him. The box itself had been cheap. His dad had smoked stogies. They were all he could afford, and their smell had worked its way into his soul, not to mention his mom’s drapes. But this box was not cheap. It was actually a humidor with a glass top.

  “Expensive cigars,” he observed. “Cohibas from Cuba.”

  “I didn’t think that kind of thing was allowed into this country,” Marvin said.

  “They’re not,” Sean told him. “Not that that means anything. People smuggle them in all the time. At one point some people were getting as much as a thousand dollars a box for them.”

  “A thousand dollars,” Libby echoed. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I think so too,” Sean answered. “But lots of people don’t. Especially the people around here.”

  Most of which, as his father would have said, had more money than sense.

  “Have you ever smoked a Cohiba?” Marvin asked.

  “Once to see what I was missing, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.”

  “Do they still cost that much?” Marvin asked.

  Sean took a sip of his coffee. “No. The price has come down considerably. Even though there’s still an embargo on Cuba, lots of people go down there now.” He ran his finger around the edges of the box. “So what does this box tell us?” he asked.

  “That Ted Gorman had money?” Libby replied.

  Sean nodded. “Or rich friends. What else?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Bernie said, “That he liked his pleasures. That he was willing to spend money on himself.”

  Sean nodded again. “Very good.”

  Marvin pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But how do we know that this cigar box is his?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it could be someone else’s.”

  Sean answered, “There is that chance, but after all, you told me you found the box in Ted Gorman’s garage, a garage that was locked. Plus, the box was in his trash can and it was wrapped in a plastic bag as well as a brown paper bag. It seems to me as if the odds favor the box belonging to him.” Sean looked at Bernie, Libby, and Marvin. “Are we agreed on that?”

  “Yes,” everyone chorused.

  “Okay,” Sean said. “Now that we’ve settled that, let’s see what’s inside.”

  Bernie, Libby, and Marvin leaned forward a little while Sean undid the small clasp. That done, he carefully flipped the lid open with the tip of his index finger. He knew that there was no reason to open it like this—this box would never be seeing the inside of the CID lab—but old habits died hard.

  He surveyed the contents of the box. It wasn’t exactly overflowing with stuff.

  “Did you rearrange any of the papers?” he asked Libby.

  “No.”

  “This is the way they were when you opened the box?”

  Libby nodded. “I looked through the papers, but I put everything back in the same order I took them out in.”

  “So the bottom papers are still on the bottom?”

  “That’s what I just said,” Libby replied.

  Sean noted there was a peevish tone to her voice.

  “Just making sure,” he told her.

  Marvin put his plate on the coffee table and leaned a little farther forward. Sean just hoped he wouldn’t tip over. He’d done that once before and it hadn’t been a pretty sight.

  “Why are you asking?” Marvin inquired. “Is it that important?”

  “Probably not in this case,” Sean replied. “But the order the things are found in the box provide a rough timeline for us.” He saw that Marvin looked puzzled. “It makes things easier to put together,” he explained. “I just wanted to make sure that I’m reading things correctly.”

  “Do you want any help?” Bernie asked.

  Sean shook his head. He was now totally engrossed with the matter at hand.

  The first thing he took out was an envelope addressed to Ted Gorman. Looked like a greeting card. He lifted it up and read the postmark. The envelope had been mailed from Hudsonville, the next town over, on November 29.

  “When did Ted hit the tree?” Sean asked as he pulled the card out of its envelope.

  “I’m not sure,” Bernie said. “But I can look it up online if you’d like.”

  “Please,” Sean said.

  He could do e-mail, but he had more trouble with the Internet and he figured he was too old to learn. Especially if he didn’t have to because he had someone like Bernie to do it for him. Instead Sean studied the card while Bernie sat down at the computer.

  The card was a bright yellow and had a picture of two golden retriever puppies cuddled in a basket. Sean opened the card.

  It said Come cuddle with me. Underneath he read Make that soon. It was signed Didi Mullet. She’d drawn little hearts around her name. The whole thing looked as if it had come from a female between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.

  “Who’s Didi Mullet?” Sean asked. “Does anyone know?”

  “No,” Libby said. “But a Cyna Mullet works at Just Chocolate.”

  Sean turned the card over. There was nothing on the back. He slipped it back into its envelope and put it on the coffee table in front of him.

  “Mullet is an unusual name,” he said. “I wonder if they’re related.”

  “Want me to Google her?” Bernie asked.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Sean replied.

  “Not at all,” she said.

  Sean watched her fingers fly over the keyboard. Even when his hands worked properly he could never go that fast. They were too big and clumsy.

  “She’s not on Google,” Bernie told him a moment later. “Let me try Anywho.”

  Libby got up and watched over her sister’s shoulder as she typed.

  “Nothing is coming up here either,” Bernie said.

  “Let’s see what Clyde can do.” And Sean gave him a call. “Nope,” he said after he’d hung up. “It seems as if he and the missus have taken off for a law enforcement convention in Las Vegas.”

  “How inconsiderate,” Bernie remarked.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Sean said. He’d gone to a lot of them in his day. The seminars were always a waste of time, but they were a good excuse to hang out with the guys.

  “It looks as if we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Bernie said.

 

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