“She was afraid of Clay?”
“He’s got a temper,” Sarah said. “He had a booth near us at the Caerphilly Home and Garden Show last year, and he was just a pill the whole time. Flirting with us, and smirking at us, and then snaking people away from us the whole time, and then at the end of the show, during the teardown, someone ticked him off and he just went berserk. Wrecked part of his booth and the booth next door. He was like a crazy man. And Kate freaked. Ever since then, she’s wanted nothing to do with him. He works out of his house, which isn’t that far from our office, and for a while he kept trying to drop in and schmooze. Until Bailey tried to bite him.”
“Bailey?” I echoed. “The third partner in Byrne, Banks, and Bailey?”
“Bailey’s an Irish setter,” she said, with a giggle. “And he pretty much hates Clay, too.”
“Dogs can be good judges of character,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Sarah agreed. “Anyway, when Kate heard Clay was part of the show house, she wanted us to pull out. And I didn’t think that would be good for our rep. I said she could pull out, but I’d do it myself. We had a pretty big fight over it.”
“And then she brought her gun over here.”
“Yesterday morning,” she said. “I was off running an errand, and evidently, while I was out, she came in and put it in the drawer in one of my end tables. I found it there a little later, and told her to come and get it. And then the whole flood thing happened, and when I remembered the gun and looked in the end table drawers, it was gone. I was hoping she’d taken it after all, but I asked her this morning and she didn’t. It’s gone.”
“And you think someone took it while we were moving everything out from under the flood?”
Sarah nodded.
“Damn,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“What kind of gun was it?”
“I have no idea.”
“How big was it?”
She held her hands out about eight inches apart. Then moved them out to ten inches. And down to six. And then threw them up in frustration.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Gun-sized. Kind of small, I guess.”
Her inability to identify the gun very accurately might have been more frustrating if I knew more about guns myself. Or if we knew what kind of gun had killed Clay.
“Anyway—I figure I should probably tell the chief.”
“Absolutely.”
“Even though it will make Kate a suspect, and she’ll be mad at me, and maybe her husband will be mad at her for losing the gun?”
“Even though.”
“Damn,” she said.
We waited in silence for a while, and then the door opened. Alice came out, looking relieved to have gotten her interview over with.
“Ms. Byrne?” the chief said.
Sarah stood up and slowly walked toward the study.
My phone rang. I answered it, my eyes still on Sarah and the chief.
“Goose or turkey?”
“What’s that?”
“I said, goose or turkey?”
I looked at my phone. The number showing was Michael’s and my home phone. But the voice—
Wait—it was Michael’s mother. Who evidently had arrived, and was starting the preparations for Christmas dinner.
Last year, my mother and Michael’s had each decided to cook a Christmas dinner for the family. No amount of diplomacy could convince them to combine their events, and I heard that several people unlucky enough to attend both dinners developed a temporary aversion to eating and fasted for one or more days afterward.
One of the saving graces of Mother’s involvement in the show house was that it would prevent a recurrence. Even the mothers realized that last year’s excess had been over the top, and while we’d made progress on getting them to join forces, I’d been more than a little worried about the possibility of conflict in the kitchen. Not that Mother cooked, of course. She usually drafted one or two relatives whose culinary skills she admired and got them to cook for her. But while most of her family were quite willing to let Mother order them around in the kitchen, I didn’t think Dahlia Waterston would be as patient.
So I’d been very relieved when Mother announced that, alas, due to the show house, she would have to withdraw from Christmas dinner preparation. Would Dahlia ever forgive her?
Michael’s mother not only forgave her, she rejoiced in the opportunity to plan the dinner solo. And I’d been grateful to have at least one holiday chore completely off my plate.
Evidently I wasn’t going to be completely uninvolved.
“I tend to prefer turkey,” I said. “But goose is also nice.”