Mr. P. nodded. “We’ve all been assuming he was completely aboveboard.” He held up one veined, wrinkled hand. “And maybe he was.”
“But maybe he wasn’t,” I finished. I pointed to the photo Alfred was still holding. “So how does Thorne Logan tie in to this? You do have a photo of him talking to that woman who seemed to be promoting exactly the kind of thing Edison ended up losing his money in.”
“What if Mr. Logan is the one in the white hat?” Mr. P. asked. “What if he was talking to that woman because he was trying to get more information about the con? What if he wasn’t part of it at all?” He held up the photo. “What if he was trying to catch the people who were? He was at Feast in the Field twice and he tried to buy a bottle from Edison Hall’s collection. We’re just assuming he’s part of the con. That doesn’t mean he is.”
It didn’t seem like a good time to point out that I hadn’t assumed anything. “I don’t know,” I finally said.
It was far-fetched. But there was also a vein of logic that ran through the old man’s reasoning. I pulled a hand over the back of my neck. The headache had crept up over the top of my scalp. “I can’t tell you you’re wrong.”
“I think it’s worth doing a little more digging into Mr. Quinn’s background,” Mr. P. said.
I let out a slow breath. “I think it is.”
He smiled. “I’ll let you know what I find out.” He headed for the sunporch, moving quickly like a man with a purpose, which in fact he was.
Charlotte walked over to me. She held out a blue message slip. “Someone from Seaward Properties called. They want some measurements off the chandelier from Doran’s.”
She was referring to the chandelier that Mac and I had brought into the shop. It had once been the focal point of the Portland department store. I’d bought it back in the fall along with several mannequins and a few other things. It had almost been sold twice.
I held up my crossed fingers. “Maybe third time’s the charm.”
“Oh, I hope so,” she said. “I hate to think of that beautiful old piece ending up out of the state or even worse.”
“Not going to happen,” I said. “I think Mac’s made the sale, but if we can’t find a home for that light here in town, I’ll twist Sam’s arm until he lets me hang it down at The Black Bear.”
Charlotte laughed. “I think a chandelier is just what that place needs.”
I went up to my office and called the Seaward office. We set up a time for someone to come take some measurements.
Elvis had come back upstairs while I was on the phone, settling himself on my desk directly in front of the phone so that when I went to hang up I had to reach around him to do it.
“Mrr?” he said in what seemed—at least to me—to be an inquiring tone.
“If this newest development proposal actually goes ahead”—I held up my crossed fingers—“we may finally have a home for that big brass chandelier.”
His response was to yawn.
“You may not be impressed, but I thought I was going to have to coerce Sam into hanging it down at the pub.”
I looked at my watch. “Mac and Rose should be back anytime now,” I said to the cat. His ears twitched and he lifted his head to look around.
I wondered what Rose would think of Mr. P.’s new line of inquiry.
Then in some kind of unexplainable thinking process, my brain lined up the last things I’d said to Elvis. When I didn’t immediately say anything, he nudged me with his furry head.
I reached over to stroke his fur. “I’m stupid,” I said to him.
He murped softly.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” I said, “but I am. We could have called Sam.”
Elvis blinked his green eyes at me. He had no idea what I was talking about.
Sam knew everyone and he ran a bar. The odds of him knowing someone who knew someone who could tell us more about the two wine dealers had to be good. I didn’t know Ronan Quinn, but I wanted the person who had killed him caught. And I wanted the person who had scammed Edison Hall caught. I wanted whoever it was to pay—hopefully financially so Ethan’s wife, Ellie, could have that operation she needed. I liked it when the world was fair, when the bad guys got what was coming to them. Even though it didn’t always happen, I wanted it to.
Sam answered the phone on the third ring. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I need to pick your brain,” I said. I leaned back in the chair and Elvis took that as an invitation to climb down and settle himself in my lap.
Sam laughed. “Whatever I have is yours.”
“What do you know about wine?” I asked.
“Box or bottle?”
I laughed. “Very funny.”
“I’m more of a beer guy, but I like a good California merlot,” he said. “Does that help?”
“I was thinking about something a little more high-end,” I said. I explained about Ronan Quinn.
“That’s the guy whose body you found at Edison Hall’s old place.”
Elvis laid his head on my chest and I began to stroke his fur. “That’s him. We’d like to know a little more about him. Do you maybe know someone?” I didn’t finish the sentence.
“We?” Sam said.
“Stella Hall hired the Angels to look into Quinn’s death. She thinks it might be connected to all those bottles of wine that Edison bought that turned out to be worthless.”
“So you’re in the detective business again?”
I could picture him behind his own desk in his office, feet propped on the corner of the desk.
“No, I’m helping, that’s it,” I said. I leaned back a little in my chair and Elvis gave a small sigh of contentment. “I like Stella.”
“So do I,” Sam said. “I can think of a couple of people I can call. Can you give me some time?”
“Take all the time you need,” I said. “I appreciate this. Thank you.”
“Hey, I’m happy to help.”
I pictured him smiling because he was the type of person who really was happy to help anyone.
We said good-bye and I leaned over and hung up the phone.
“Sam is on the case,” I told Elvis. He started to purr, which probably had more to do with the fact that I was scratching behind his right ear than his enthusiasm for Sam’s help, but I decided to rationalize it as the latter anyway.
I spent the next hour downstairs in the shop helping Charlotte with customers. We sold another guitar, a wooden rocking chair and a bread pail. Charlotte spent several minutes explaining the bread-making process to the young man who bought the pail, even writing out her favorite recipe on a piece of paper.
I put my arm around her shoulders once we were alone in the shop. “I’m so glad you were here,” I said. “The only thing I could have told him about bread was to read the best-before date on the little plastic tag before you buy it.”
Charlotte shook her head, smiling at the same time. “You can’t use that ‘I can’t cook’ line anymore. Your gravy last night was very good.”
“It came from a package.”
“So does my angel food cake,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with using some shortcuts.”
“True,” I said. “But you make the strawberry/rhubarb sauce. You even grow the berries and rhubarb yourself.”
She smoothed the front of her apron. “And at Thanksgiving I chopped a few dried-up leftover cranberries from the bottom of my vegetable crisper, microwaved them with half a bottle of marmalade that was in the gift basket I won at the animal shelter fund-raiser and added what juice I could squeeze out of half a wizened lemon, and you all thought I spent half the afternoon in the kitchen.” She smiled at me. “Things are seldom as perfect as they appear, and that includes cooking.”
I was at the workbench taking the paintings I’d bought from Cleveland out of their frames when Sam called back.
“Linda Fairchild,” he said, reciting a telephone number. “She’s a lawyer in New Hampshire—Manchester, I think—and she’s been involved in a couple of civil lawsuits over all this fake wine business. She’s expecting your call.”