Caroline shrugged.
“I’m not from around here,” she said. “How could I even have known Mr. Doleson owned the facility without you telling me? I just knew it was Norris’s bin.”
“And the reason you brought this with you?”
The chief held up a pair of bolt cutters,
“Norris had lost his key,” she said. “So careless of him. That was one of the reasons he needed our help.”
She sat back and smiled calmly at him. The chief asked her the same questions several times over, in slightly different ways. Caroline remained steadfast and showed no further signs of anxiety. She even smothered the occasional yawn, which meant she was either a consummate actress or not too worried.
Or maybe just exhausted. I was yawning myself.
I heard noises on the back porch—stamping noises, as if several people were shaking the snow off their boots. I tiptoed out of the powder room and set another pan of water over the camping stove to heat as Michael and Horace came in, laden with sleeping bags.
A minute or two later, Caroline Willner strolled into the kitchen.
“Would you like some more coffee?” I asked.
“I don’t suppose you have the makings for a martini?” she asked. “I would kill for a martini. That wasn’t a confession, by the way, just a cliché.”
Michael grinned.
“I could throw one together,” he said.
“Make it two,” I said.
“Three,” he corrected.
“Extra dry, with an olive,” Caroline said. “In fact, under the circumstances, I wouldn’t say no to an extra olive. Thank you, dear.”
Michael went into the pantry to rummage for ingredients. Caroline sat down, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes. For a few seconds, she looked every minute of her age, and I wondered if we shouldn’t be urging her to go to bed instead of plying her with alcohol. Then her eyes opened and I felt reassured by the slight twinkle in them.
“Your phones really are out?” she asked.
“Afraid so,” I said.
“Pity,” she said. “I really would like to get word to Norris. He’ll be a nervous wreck.”
I already suspected that it was Norris she’d been berating back at the courthouse. I deduced from her mentioning Norris that she either thought I knew what she and Clarence had been up to or was too tired to remember that I wasn’t supposed to know.
“Just why were you . . . helping Norris Pruitt empty his storage bin in the middle of the night? Why didn’t he come himself?”
“Too terrified,” she said. “Nerves of butter, that’s Norris. Of course, he’s wonderful with wounded animals. I’ve seen him stay up all night nursing an injured falcon or feeding orphaned wolf cubs. But to come out here by himself in the middle of the night? Never happen.”
“Why would it have to happen?” I asked. “It’s his storage bin. Why couldn’t he just come out in broad daylight to clear it out?”
“Your martinis, madams,” Michael said, handing us each an elegant stemmed glass. I took a sip and decided we should have inaugurated this particular wedding present a lot sooner.
“Excellent,” Caroline proclaimed. “This one’s a keeper, dear. To your first Christmas together.”
We all drank to her toast. Technically it wasn’t the first time Michael and I had spent Christmas together, but I’d stopped fighting the world’s tendency to start the clock on our relationship with the day we’d eloped, forgetting all the interesting times that preceded it.
“Getting back to Norris,” I said. “Why couldn’t he just clean out his storage bin himself?”
“Didn’t have the key,” Caroline said.
“He couldn’t have just asked Ralph Doleson for another key?”
“Doleson’s the reason he doesn’t have a key in the first place,” she said. So much for not even knowing Doleson had owned the Spare Attic. “Changed the locks on poor Norris, and wouldn’t give him a new key.”
“Was he behind on the bin rental?” Michael asked.
“No, he was paid up a year in advance, the way Doleson always made people do,” Caroline said. I nodded.
“Then what happened?”
Caroline took a long sip of her martini, savored it for a moment with closed eyes, and then swallowed.
“Norris has a little problem,” she began. And then she left the sentence hanging, as if she’d said enough for us to deduce her meaning.
“When Mother says someone has a little problem, she usually means the person she’s gossiping about is a galloping dipsomaniac,” I said. “Is that Norris’s problem?”