Sight Shot (Imogene Museum Mystery #3) (4 page)

I wrinkled my nose and shrugged.

“Whatever, but I don’t think you want to hire any of these geezers,” Mac said, gesturing toward the line of men straddling barstools.

“
I’m desperate, Mac. Maybe a family member or friend?”

Mac scowled dubiously, but he said,
“Well, if I hear of anyone looking for work, anyone classy enough for the Imogene — I’ll send them your way.”

“
We need to catch up.” Val grabbed my free arm and tugged me into the crowded hall toward the restrooms. We stopped in front of a large corkboard packed with homemade advertisements — black lab puppies; appliance repair; a Kawasaki KLX 125 dirt bike — runs good; stump clearing; bee hives for rent; needed: one wife, good looks and cooks, will treat u well, call Jason. There were phone number tabs for Jason, several of which had been torn off.

“
Oh gosh,” Val said. She yanked Jason’s advertisement off the board and wadded it up. Then she moved Zack’s Guide Service info sheet to Jason’s spot, opening up a front and center location. “So you’re hiring? That’s great. Here.” She took a flyer from me and pinned it in place. “You going to the fireworks?”

“
Wouldn’t miss it.”

“
Me neither.” Val leaned a shoulder against the wall, a broad smile on her face. “On a scale from one to ten, where would you rank Mac as husband material?”

“
Whoa. That’s a big question. And so soon.” They’d been dating for a month, maybe.

“
I know.” Val held out a warning hand. “He hasn’t proposed or anything, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that after Ham, I’m not sure I’m good at reading men, you know, evaluating their honesty.”

“
You don’t have to worry about that with Mac. I’ve known him a couple years now, and he always does what he says he will. He’s generous and kind-hearted. In fact, he’s so eager to help that sometimes he comes across as a little — I don’t know — puppy-doggish?”

Val giggled.
“Isn’t he adorable?”

I probably wouldn
’t have used that word, but I shared her smile.

Val sighed.
“So? Pete? Spill, girl.”

I shrugged.
“He works a lot.”

“
So do you.”

I went to tuck the manila folder back in my purse and accidentally elbowed a youngish fellow who had just emerged from the men
’s room. He had shaggy brown hair and blushed terribly.

“
Excuse me, uh, sorry. Excuse me.” He tried to move me safely out of the way without actually touching me. “Sorry.” His blue eyes slid to the floor,  hid behind long eyelashes, and he held his arms up like he was being frisked.

“
My fault — sorry,” I said.

“
Do you have a girlfriend?” Val asked.

The poor guy turned bright red.
“No, uh, I’m not—” He darted a quick look at me, pleading for help. “I’m kinda busy right now—”

I fired an exasperated look at Val.
“What she means,” I said, “is that I’m hiring a gift shop manager at the Imogene Museum, which would be a perfect job for a young woman, and we were hoping you guys would tell your girlfriends and sisters.” I cringed at the illegality of such a statement. On the other hand, no one in this joint was going to turn me in for discriminatory employment practices. I pointed to the flyer and managed a hopeful smile.

“
Sorry, no sisters either,” the young man mumbled and quickly escaped the hallway.

“
Val—” I whirled toward her.

She giggled.
“Don’t worry, you can get in some catch-up smooching with Pete at the fireworks. It’s what we’re all here for, right?” She winked. “I gotta go. I promised Mac I’d work the bar.”

I fled to my truck and sat in the cab a few minutes pondering Val
’s comment. The windows slowly fogged up. Fireworks were for smooching? I guess New Year’s Eve is — the drop of the ball, all the hoopla — couples kissing at midnight. Oh yeah.

Pete and I hadn
’t kissed yet. It hadn’t really seemed appropriate. He was gone for long stretches ferrying loads up and down the Columbia, and it almost felt that we had to get to know each other all over again after those absences. Val was right that my spending so much time at the museum didn’t help matters.

But Pete was really good at snuggling. I smiled at the memories. He never hesitated to pull me into his chest and wrap his arms around me. Mmmm. So
— kissing or snuggling? Or both? The fireworks were sounding really good.

Next stop
— Junction General. Metal bells clanked against the glass door as I pushed through.

“
Hey, Meredith,” Gloria called. She was squatting in front of the candy rack next to the cash register, restocking Christmas-colored M&Ms. “I suppose I should mark them down, but they taste the same as regular M&Ms.” Gloria heaved a big sigh and stood.

“
Okay if I post another job flyer?”

“
Again?” Gloria asked. Then she shook her head. “Never mind. Silly question. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to hire a clerk to help in the store and keep an eye on the pumps. As you can see,” she stretched out her arms, “I’m still doing it all myself. Good thing people around here are pretty self-sufficient — and patient.”

Gloria pulled a roll of packing tape from behind the counter. “Let’s tape your flyer to the counter. That way everyone will have to read it while they’re waiting for change.” She ratcheted off a generous length.

“
Who didn’t stick?” Gloria asked when the flyer was able to withstand a hurricane.

Rumors
— and the truth — travel through Platts Landing faster than a skunked hound. I didn’t want to embarrass Edna but knew the facts would get out soon anyway. So I tried to put a positive spin on the situation. “Edna Garman. I’m afraid the Imogene can be a boring place to work if you’re not interested in history or folk art.” Or if you’d rather spend your time doodling in a notebook and lock visitors in the building overnight.

“
Oh, Edna.” Gloria bit her lip, and looked as though she had something she didn’t want to say.

“
You know her?”

“
Yeah. She was a few years behind me in school. Got teased a lot. I always felt sorry for her, but she kind of brought it on herself.”

“
How so?”

“
Poking around in other people’s business, lurking, gave the impression she knew people’s secrets.” Gloria shook her head. “Which is just crazy in high school, I mean, really — what kind of secrets can high school kids have? Dope? Sleeping around wasn’t as common back then, but maybe there was some of that. Not life or death stuff, but she’d hint at things which got the other kids riled up. She seemed to target athletes, cheerleaders — the popular crowd. Maybe she just wanted the attention.”

Maybe she needed help, I thought.

“I just think maybe Edna’s never really had a friend.” Gloria picked at a black spot on the counter then rubbed it with her sleeve. “You going to the fireworks?”

“
Yep.”

Gloria flashed perfect white teeth.
“They’re my favorite community celebration. I’ll talk up your job opening, Meredith, let everyone know.”

“
Appreciate it.”

I drove farther into town and parked on the side of deserted
Main Street. Neither Gloria nor Wade had mentioned Edna’s kleptomania. I wondered if they knew and were too polite to spread that information, or if Sheriff Marge and the people Edna’d stolen from had dealt with the situations discreetly. Pretty hard to do in such a small town.

I hopped out of the truck and slid a flyer under the door of each shop, skipping the storefronts that were obviously vacant. The owners would find the flyers in the morning and post them in their front windows. Saturday is the busiest day of the week along the short retail strip. Maybe this time I
’d get a couple decent applicants. I could always hope.

CHAPTER
4

The next morning, I packaged freshly-made chocolate peppermint cookies and lugged my insulated coffee mug and purse to the pickup. I have a thing for peppermint, so there’d been a stash — no, hoard is probably a better word — of post-Christmas, on-sale candy canes in my pantry, and I was certainly going to eat them all.

Unless I figured out a way to foist my now guilt-stricken purchases onto other people. Because I couldn
’t just throw them away. I’d felt a sense of relief last night while cracking the canes into tiny pieces and folding them into the dough. Sharing my calories with the world one cookie batch at a time — all in the name of gratitude.

I pulled into a parking spot in front of the Imogene and slid out of the truck into the frosty air.

The sun peeked, trembled, then burst above a thin, wispy layer of fog hovering over the Columbia River. Immediately, the fog started spiraling upward in tendrils and dissipating to reveal sparkly blue water. The lawn, covered in thick dew, twinkled in Technicolor like a million prisms as the sun’s rays stretched toward me.

I sucked in a breath and grinned. I never get tired of sunrises. Every day is different. Sure, the main thing is accomplished
— sun up — but the creative expression each time — stunningly unique.

I climbed the stairs to my office and consolidated Wade
’s things so there was room to work at my desk. First, I checked the progress of the three shipments Rupert had sent from Paris and Istanbul. Same customs holds, same expected arrival date for the one in transit. Clicking refresh on the website didn’t make them move faster, so I settled in to write descriptions of beautifully sculpted Czech marionettes from the 1920s.

The cast of characters had been a mess of knotted strings when Rupert found them at a flea market in
Prague, but I’d untangled the puppets, repaired a few small tears in their silk clothes and cleaned their painted paper mache and wood faces with Q-tips and a mild soap solution. The animals were by far my favorite — a giraffe and monkey. I wished I could find out what plays they’d performed and get a copy of the scripts. The marionettes were too fragile to let visitors handle them, but I hoped to suspend them in a display case and rig up their lines so levers on the outside of the case would make them move.

My desk phone buzzed.

“Sheriff Marge is here,” Lindsay said. I checked the clock — the museum opened an hour ago. Where did the time go?

“
Be right there.” I snatched the cookies and dashed downstairs.

Sheriff Marge is short and stocky with a barrel-shaped torso corseted in a Kevlar vest. She
’s always in her khaki uniform and thick-soled boots. Her grey hair sticks out in tufts around a full face, gray eyes and perennial reading glasses. Lindsay bent near Sheriff Marge, and they were examining something in a catalog.

“
What do you think, Meredith? Neutrals or primaries?” Lindsay folded back a catalog page and showed me pictures of baby blanket kits, yarn and knitting needles.

I stood there with my mouth open. I couldn
’t imagine either Lindsay or Sheriff Marge sitting still long enough to knit a blanket. And then I remembered Sheriff Marge’s first grandchild is due in a few months. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. Sheriff Marge thrives on wrangling criminals and is happiest tearing around Sockeye County in her Ford Explorer with the light bar flashing. She’d be more likely to use a knitting needle to jerry-rig a broken pair of handcuffs than loop yarn with it.

“
Uh, I’m guessing you don’t know the gender yet?” I said.

“
Nope,” Sheriff Marge grunted.

Even if the baby
’s a girl, I bet Sheriff Marge will get her a tiny holster belt and pair of plastic six-shooters. Gotta grow up in her grandma’s shoes — and her grandpa’s. Sheriff Marge’s husband, Big John, had been the sheriff for decades until he died. The county elected his widow to take his place. I ducked my head to hide a smile.

Lindsay caught my eye and frowned.
“Babies like bright colors, so I vote for the primary kit.”

“
Uh-huh.” Sheriff Marge was clearly uncomfortable with the whole idea, but she seemed determined.

I spotted the missing ceramic black bear on the counter.
“You saw Edna?”

“
Yep.” Sheriff Marge fished in her chest pocket and pulled out the leg piece. “Said it was already broken.”

“
It was. Why would she take something so worthless?”

“
Animal. Everything I’ve ever retrieved from her has either been an animal or had pictures of animals on it.”

“
We didn’t really need it back,” Lindsay said. “She could have kept it.”

“
Matter of principle,” Sheriff Marge replied. “She knows what she’s done is wrong, knows the items should be returned. I try to be consistent, not confuse her.”

“
Has she always been — awkward?” I asked.

“
Half the people in my county are awkward.” Sheriff Marge pursed her lips. “But yeah, Edna’s had a difficult life.”

“
Any reason for her outburst?”

“
Not that she’d tell me about. But she seemed regretful. Kept saying how nice you’d been to her.” Sheriff Marge fixed me with a steady gaze. “If you’re up to it, you might try calling or going for a visit. I know you can’t have her in here,” she gestured toward the shop, “but I got the impression she might open up to the right person.”

“
Alright.” I thrummed my fingers on the countertop. “What do you know about Wade Snead’s family?”

Sheriff Marge
’s eyebrows shot up. “Got a reason for asking?”

I told her about the personal papers, photos and flower bulbs and Wade
’s hunt for valuables.

“
Hmmm. That boy’s never satisfied.” Sheriff Marge crossed her arms over her midsection and spread her feet in her toughest cop stance. Her jaw tightened. “The man with the eye patch in those photos would be Spence Snead, Wade’s uncle. Lost his eye in Vietnam. Lost his brother, Stu, there too. Never recovered from that. Today, we’d know he had PTSD, but back then vets suffered through that stuff alone. He was one of Big John’s best friends.”

Sheriff Marge removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Shot himself about ten years ago, about six months before Big John’s heart attack. It really ate Big John up.” She sniffed and replaced her glasses. “My husband carried that to his grave, wishing he could’ve saved Spence.”

I blinked back tears, and noticed Lindsay was too.
“Where does Wade fit in the picture?”

“
Wade is Spence’s sister’s son. He’s the oldest of that brood, and home life was hard. Abusive, alcoholic father. So Spence took Wade in for a while, through high school mostly. He shows up from time to time ‘cause he inherited Spence’s property west of town. Not sure what he’s going to do with it. Sits vacant most of the time.”

Sheriff Marge
’s phone rang, and she stepped into the ballroom to answer it.

“
I don’t know how she does it,” Lindsay said. “Sheriffing — law enforcement. I’d curl up in a corner and cry every night.”

“
Heading out,” Sheriff Marge hollered from the ballroom. “Semi rollover east of Lupine.” The doors swished closed behind her.

“
I’ll see if this can be glued.” I scooped up the broken bear figurine and trudged upstairs.

I had just arranged glue, toothpicks, clamps and rubber bands on my desk and was doing a dry run to match up the leg piece at the right angle when my phone rang again.

“Get down here,” Lindsay hissed. I hadn’t heard that tone of voice before. Lindsay usually faces difficulties with good-natured cheerfulness. Something awful must be happening.

I knocked the bear over and broke it into several pieces while scrambling out from behind the desk. I flew down the stairs
— much faster than the elevator — and skidded to a stop at the gift shop entrance.

A huge man who appeared more like a bear than the figurine upstairs towered in the doorway. It was hard to tell where his hair stopped and the fur of his poncho started. It looked like an old buffalo robe with armholes cut into it. I think it had fleas, or mange, or both. Does mange have an odor? Because he had a rather pungent aura. He could double for Bigfoot in broad daylight. A wide leather belt strapped around his middle held two impressive knives and a tomahawk.

“You the boss?” he growled.

What would happen if I said no? Would he leave
— or scalp me? I wrinkled my nose. I had a feeling he could smell a lie from a mile away. “Yes?”

“
Saw your vert down at the Sidetrack.”

“
Vert?”

Lindsay was making crazy gestures behind his back, her eyes huge. I was afraid she might hyperventilate.

“Advertissiment. For a job.”

“
Oh.” I cast about for something to say. “Do you have customer service experience?”

“
I can skin an elk with only three cuts.” He pulled a knife out of his belt and twirled it across the back of his fingers the way I’d seen engineers and IT guys play with their pens during boring meetings at my old job.

Lindsay made a strangled sound.

So he could count. “How about ordering supplies online?”

“
You mean computers?” He pulled an iPhone out of his pants pocket. “Got this doohickey. Do anything on this.”

“
What’s your name?”

“
Zach Ratliff.”

“
Well, Zach, how’s your schedule?”

“
Slow at the moment. But I have a couple guide jobs lined up for next month.”

I grinned.
“I’m afraid the gift shop manager position is Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 6. But I have another idea. Would you be interested in providing mountain man demonstrations during fundraising events? We’d schedule in advance so you could coordinate with your other jobs.”

Zach scowled.
“What’d I have to do?”

“
Show up looking the way you do now. Talk about hunting, offer survival tips, demonstrate how to make campfires in the rain, maybe do some target practice with rifles or bows — which you’d have to provide, of course.”

Zach shrugged.
“Easy.”

“
What’s your number?”

After giving me his contact information, Zach directed a curt nod at Lindsay and strode out of the museum.

“Isn’t he perfect?”

“
Is he?” Lindsay still had a death grip on the counter. “That was real? Not a costume or something?”

“
He saw my flyer at the Sidetrack, and I saw his — he’s a hunting guide.”

“
Oh my gosh.” Lindsay popped the lid off the cookie container and grabbed a handful. “I told myself I was through snacking on these, but after that — yeah, I need another one, or two. Sorry — I should have figured out what he was talking about. But with those knives and demanding to see the boss—” She shook her head.