Death of a Russian Doll Page 14

  “I’ve been through it several times, but I’m curious to see if perhaps your fresh eyes and different point of view might cast new light on it.” He picked up the remote. “I’ll go through it pretty quickly. Let me know if you need me to slow it down.”

  Soon the video began playing. I noticed with some relief that the focus of the camera was clearly the entrance to the barber shop and not the toyshop, but I wondered about the connection to the pharmacist, if he was the client that hired Kelley to begin this particular surveillance.

  Within a minute or two, I had a hard time keeping a straight face. The black-and-white footage, especially at the speed Kelley played it, gave the effect of watching a Charlie Chaplin movie. Only these were mostly very old women going in and out of the barber shop at breakneck speed. By the time a darling little white-haired woman speed-walked her walker into the building, I lost it.

  Kelley paused the video. “What is so funny?”

  I pulled off my glasses and wiped tears away with the back of my hand. Kelley was still staring at me.

  “You don’t find it mildly amusing?” I said, mimicking the quick speed of the woman with her walker.

  Kelley shook his head.

  “Is the whole video like this?” I asked. “Customers going in and out of the barber shop?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you showed this to your client?” I asked.

  Kelley stretched his neck. “Yes. But don’t ask me who that is. You know I can’t tell you.”

  “Did anything in the video help you in your investigation?”

  Kelley folded his arms across his chest and drummed his fingers on his upper arm. “It was another place where the subjects of my investigation frequented. So, yes.”

  I leaned forward. “You weren’t watching Marya. You were trailing the old people?”

  Kelley clammed up tight.

  “That’s why you sent me to senior speed dating. Why are you watching old people?”

  “Will you quit saying old people? It’s not like I was watching all of them.”

  I squinted at him. “Some of them, then?”

  He gave a brief, hesitant nod.

  “So you were trailing certain old … you were trailing the subjects of you investigation and happened to notice them frequenting the barber shop, especially when Marya was working there.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That, and the mysterious group at the library we now know is senior speed dating. And I apologized about that.”

  “Anywhere else?” I asked.

  “A few of them go to bingo night at the fire hall, but not all, so I focused on the other two.”

  “And you can’t tell me which ones are your subjects of interest?” I gave him my best pouty look, since Antoine had suggested it was my strength.

  “No dice, Liz,” he said. “Do you want to see the rest of it, or no?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling an old envelope and pen out of my purse. While I watched the rest, I did my best to stifle any residue of laughter and jotted down the names of various women that I’d recognized. A couple I’d met at senior speed dating. Others I knew from game nights and from just living in the town for much of my life. If I were to talk to all of them, I suspected a substantial amount of tea in my future.

  The video continued up until the day that Marya was killed. When people stopped going in and out, the tape stopped too.

  “You don’t have that evening?”

  Kelley waved off the question. “Nobody else was coming. I didn’t see the point.”

  I had him replay the last bit. Marya never left, but neither did anyone else go in. At least not until after his tape had ended.

  “If you’d only let it run a few hours longer.”

  * * *

  As I headed back to the shop, I spotted the ancient barber standing in front of the barber shop, its crime scene tape still intact. I wasn’t sure anyone knew his name. The barber shop was called Ed’s, but it had borne the name since the 1800s. That Ed was surely dead and buried. But everybody called the barber Ed by default, and he seemed fine with it.

  “Ed” wagged his head as I approached. “You’ve been through this,” he said. “How long can they keep me shut down?”

  I shrugged. “Until they think they’ve processed the whole crime scene. It helps to show up at the police station every now and then and put a little pressure on them.”

  His eyes lit up under those thick, bushy white brows. “Will you talk to your father? I had a new stylist come by to see if she wanted to rent Marya’s old space, and she had to peek through the windows. Not a very good impression.”

  “That’s pretty quick,” I said.

  He rubbed his neck. “I’ve had to postpone my flight to Florida. I’d like to get this all wrapped up before I go.”

  “I wanted to ask about Marya,” I said. “She seemed to have quite a large clientele.”

  “She kept busy,” the barber said. “And she paid her rent, so I have no complaints. But that woman, she didn’t listen to reason. No business sense. Senior discount.” He shuddered. Or shivered. Hard to tell.

  “You don’t think she managed her business well?”

  “Discounts,” he said with an emphatic wag of his finger, “bring in new customers. You manage a business. You know these things. But senior discounts? They’re on limited income. Social security. Have you ever met an old woman who tipped well?” He shook his head. “I don’t get it.” The barber jerked his head toward the road and whistled. “Well, will you look at that!”

  I did, then wished I hadn’t. The salt-splattered red pickup cruising down Main Street had a large multi-point deer lying in the bed.

  Then it was my turn to shiver, just as a few stray flakes began to fall and swirl in the breeze.

  I had a vague suspicion I knew where Ken Young might be.

  * * *

  I’m not a total idiot.

  I texted Dad to let him know where I was going, and I stopped in at the shop to check on Cathy and let her know, too.

  Then I changed into warm casual clothes, my chunky boots with the best traction, and took along my heaviest gloves, hat, and scarf. I even thought to grab a couple packs of those little hand warmers to stuff into my gloves.

  Ken had pointed out his hunting spot to me on a drive during the summer we were dating. I’d only been half paying attention. He thought he’d negotiated a great deal on a bit of land to maybe put up a nice log cabin home, only to find out it was landlocked. It had no easement for a road, just a walking trail about a quarter of a mile long to get there. So he’d decided to keep the existing rundown cabin and just use it for hunting.

  With no access road, the property would probably be appraised for about half of what he paid for it, and since he was embarrassed to be snookered by his own shrewd business move, he hadn’t told a lot of people. I doubted Dad knew about it.

  But Ken went up there to hunt when he needed to think. And with his wife dead and his home invaded by Cujo and Mad Max, I can imagine he craved the solitude of the place.

  The potholed county route looked different now, coated in white, from how it did in the summer months, and I traversed the stretch of road several times, windshield wipers slapping, before I caught the entrance to the trail. Moments later I spotted the graveled parking area where his truck was camouflaged in a layer of snow.

  I pulled up next to it, climbed out, and soon found the trail. It was hard walking. As a kid, I always enjoyed playing in the snow, and Parker and I would trample the whole lawn. We were supposed to be making snow angels and snowmen, but when our parents weren’t looking, we’d been known to chuck a few snowballs—and ice balls—at each other. But that ill-fated day when we played Princess Bride using icicles as swords? That got both of us grounded.

  As an adult, though, trudging through the heavy snow took more effort than I recalled, and I was huffing a bit by the time the cabin came into view.

  And I use the term “cabin” a bit loosely.

 
Even by tiny house standards, this thing was small. And rickety. There were no windows, just a solid door at the front. The green shingles might have been asbestos, and the roof was snow covered in spots, bare in others, with large icicles hanging down, a sign of poor or no insulation. But that also meant someone was heating it, and a bit of smoke wisped from the decrepit chimney.

  I texted Dad again then slipped my phone into my coat pocket.

  After climbing a set of rough steps, which looked like they’d been hastily constructed from two-by-fours, I took a fortifying breath and knocked.

  No answer.

  I tried again, and still no answer. Finally, feeling a little brave—or perhaps a little cold—I tried the knob and the door swung open.

  Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see it was clearly no palace on the inside, either. Blankets were bunched up on a twin mattress on the rough plank floor. The only other furnishings were a folding camp chair, a small collapsible table—that looked on the verge of collapse—and, in the corner, a plastic bucket with a toilet seat attached to the top.

  I’d found Hooverville.

  I did an about-face and marched straight to the door, determined to leave. But when I pulled open the door, there was Ken Young. Carrying a chainsaw.

  Chapter 15

  “Liz!” Ken startled as he bobbled and then dropped the wood he carried under his arm. “What are you doing here?” He stopped to pick it up.

  “Don’t you know half the town is looking for you?”

  He blew out an exasperated breath. “I thought it might come to that eventually.” He stacked most of the wood onto the pile next to the cast iron stove and then added some on top of the glowing embers inside. The wood caught and flames kicked up hotter.

  “Your sisters filed a missing persons report, and Dad was about to issue a BOLO. I need to tell him.” I reached again for my cell.

  “Wait,” he said. “Before you do, we need to talk.” He pulled open a small, battery-powered lantern on the table, and it lit up the room—well, that portion of the room in a three-foot circle from the lantern. “Have you had lunch?”

  “Lunch?”

  “It’s a meal people eat, usually sometime around the noon hour.”

  “I guess I haven’t.”

  “Then you’re in luck,” he said. “I make a great woodstove grilled cheese. Or pancakes. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much the gamut of my cooking skills. Pick your poison.” He snapped his fingers. “Or is poison a poor choice of words coming from a murder suspect? I, uh, am a suspect now, right?”

  I inhaled through my teeth. “I’m afraid they’re not coming up with many more leads.”

  He nodded. “Pancakes then? I have just enough real maple syrup for one more meal, and I’d hate for it to go to waste if I’m going to prison. Please.” He pointed to the camp chair. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  I pulled off my outerwear and draped it on the back of the camp chair. Finally I pulled off the hat and did my best to smooth my hair with my fingers.

  I sank into the chair. “Why are you holed up here?”

  “Just a second. This is the crucial part.” I watched as he eyeballed the ratio of water and pancake mix into a bowl and stirred it with a wooden spoon. He grimaced a bit then added substantially more pancake mix. “Hope you’re hungry.”

  Only after the first three pancakes were bubbling up on the cast iron skillet did he answer. “First of all, I’m not ‘holed up here.’ I’m innocent until proven guilty, and I have a perfect right to come and go as I please.”

  “Without telling anyone? Your sisters were worried.”

  “And if my sisters knew about this cabin?” He stabbed the air with the spatula. “I’d have no place to get away and think. Look, my gut instinct is to help the police. That shyster they hired told me to clam up, and then he claimed he was tied up and couldn’t talk for a few days. But I’m sure I’ll have a bill long before then. Meanwhile, someone killed Marya.” His voice cracked. “If anyone has a shot at figuring out who that might be, it’s me. I needed to think.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He turned back to the stove and flipped the pancakes, sending off a hearty sizzle. His shoulders slumped. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper with you.”

  “You must be under a lot of stress.”

  “That may be so.” He slid a heaping plate in front of me, along with a bent metal fork and a jug of maple syrup bearing the label of a local farm. “But of all people, you don’t deserve it.”

  I paused to consider what he meant.

  “Go ahead while they’re hot. I’ll have the next ones.”

  I slathered syrup over the whole plate. “Have you thought of anything helpful?”

  “It must have something to do with the money.”

  “I’d heard that you were going over Marya’s business records.”

  The next batch went into the pan before he answered. “Does that seem creepy? That sounds creepy, even to me.”

  “I assumed that you wouldn’t have done it without good reason.”

  “Thanks for believing that,” he said. “At first I thought I was losing my mind. I bounced a check trying to pay a bill when I knew there was enough in the account. I checked the balance online, and almost the whole account was cleaned out. Then it magically reappeared. Marya tried to shrug it off as a bank error, but I backtracked and found she’d made a whole series of withdrawals and deposits. No explanation. But after I confronted her, she left the account alone.

  “Then one day I knocked over her purse by accident. She had almost a thousand dollars in cash stuffed into her wallet. I volunteered to make a bank deposit for her, told her it wasn’t safe to carry so much around. I was trying to be helpful. But she just got defensive and nervous. She was up to something. Something she didn’t want me to know about.”

  “You thought it might be something illegal?”

  His shoulders sagged. “I must have gone over every piece of paper in the house a dozen times. Every account. Every record. And I still don’t get it. Money came in from nowhere and vanished just as fast.”

  I avoided his eyes and dug into my lunch. “Mark Baker has those records now.”

  He wrestled with some bags in the corner and returned with another camp chair, which he propped up on the opposite side of the table. “Probably for the best. Sharp man. Maybe he can turn up something. It can only help me.”

  Even in the dim light, I noticed him eating his pancakes with a spoon.

  “Do you get more syrup that way?” I asked.

  He looked down at the spoon. “Only one set of utensils. Don’t get much company here. Not invited company, anyway.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Everything was all topsy-turvy when I got here. Not like I remembered it, and I swore I had more food. Maybe it’s just my imagination, though. Or maybe some kids found the place. I’ll have to get a lock. Assuming …”

  I let that comment slide. Assuming he didn’t go to prison.

  “Back to Marya,” I said. “You’d been following her, too?”

  He let his spoon fall onto his plate. “You know that?” He stared down at his puddle of syrup. “Yeah, I guess I was. Caught her lying. Told me she was going to the library on an evening when I knew the library closed early. I thought maybe there was someone else. That maybe she was giving him money.”

  “Did you find evidence of infidelity?”

  He shook his head. “Look, if I’m going to have to tell everyone about this, I might as well practice on you. In case you haven’t guessed, Marya and I weren’t particularly close lately. She came up here saying she wanted to make amends, but it became clear that she was just trying to get immigration off her back. I understand that. She had a long battle.” He looked up at me. “You know about any of that?”

  “Your sisters told me. They also told me repeatedly how the two of you were perfectly suited to each other, but I suspect they were trying to get under my skin.”
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br />   Ken rolled his eyes. “Sorry about that. They loved Marya. She could be a charmer when she wanted to. Didn’t hurt that she cut their hair for free. They might have been more taken in than I was.” He winced. “That sounds bitter, doesn’t it?” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I was furious. Not that I wanted anything to happen to Marya, but I was so angry that she’d come up here, tried to cozy up to me, turned everything upside down, and then was sneaking around, involved in who knows what. Now she’s dead, and I’m trying to remember the good things, and that’s painful. But so is remembering the bad things. And I feel guilty every time I get angry.”

  He released his clenched fists. “A year ago, I’d thought I’d closed that chapter of my life, and that you and I were starting something new. I was tempted to tell her I’d moved on.” He looked up and his eyes glistened in the lantern light. “But the costs were so high for her. Arrest. Deportation to a country she had no memories of. I couldn’t just walk away. But we had separate bedrooms, you know. That part of our marriage was long over. I want you to know that.”

  I shrugged. “Not sure that’s any of my business.”

  “I hoped you’d understand.” He stared down at his plate. “Marya was so young, so vulnerable. I guess I fancied myself as some valiant knight rescuing the damsel in distress. She was grateful. I was flattered. Somehow we both mistook that for love—or at least, I did—but after a few months that fairy tale disintegrated. On the day she got her citizenship, we celebrated with ice cream and divorce planning.”

  “Yet you were still together.”

  “Filing immediately could have raised eyebrows. If someone at INS decided that we’d entered into the relationship just to evade immigration laws, we both could have been charged. Seems the government considers that fraud.”

  Before I could respond, the cabin started creaking.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said, “the wind must have kicked up.”

  “You still should have called my father. To let him know where you were.”

  “My cell’s dead. Not that it would do me any good here. No reception.”

  I pulled my cell out of my coat pocket. And no, the little icon that lights up when there’s phone reception—which is like, always, except after that time I dropped it in Val’s water dish, but rice brought it back—wasn’t there, and I also had a nice little “unable to deliver” notice about that last text I’d sent Dad.