"Do you have an appointment?" he asked.
"He'll talk to me," I informed him. "I'm Max Sayers."
"Well, I'll tell him you're here," he said, pushing himself back from the desk and strolling down the hallway as if he had all the time in the world.
I took advantage of that time to peruse the desk.
There was a stack of listings for sale, of course, including an eye-popping one for another property on Cottage Street that was selling for three times what I'd spent on Seaside Cottage Books. But there was also an old-fashioned message pad, with those pink "receipt" slips that record the message for posterity.
I glanced at it, looking for something relevant and trying to banish a twinge of conscience. There were several messages from contractors about drafts that hadn't come through. Most of them were marked URGENT. There was a message from CP for Scooter, saying he needed to talk ASAP. Cal Parker? I wondered.
And a message from Agatha Satterthwaite to Scooter, saying she couldn't find something and needed to talk about it RIGHT AWAY. That message was from two days ago... not long before Cal Parker was murdered.
I quickly snapped a photo. I heard a noise down the hallway and stepped back from the desk just as the receptionist reappeared.
"He'll see you in ten minutes," the young man announced and sat back down in a languid movement, then proceeded to clean his fingernails with a paperclip. Crisis averted, at least for now.
I sat in one of the three wooden chairs across from the desk, hearing the low voices of people on phones behind closed doors and wondering how this meeting was going to go. Not well, I imagined.
Twenty minutes passed, during which I had ample time to examine the art above the desk—a painting of Seabiscuit with a jockey astride his back, the horse's name embossed on a brass plate on the frame (which was the only way I knew what horse it was). A second painting, this one of a horse called Blue Moon, hung above my head, matted and framed in heavy, dark wood. Scooter had evidently acquired a passion for horses over the years since last I'd seen him, or else he was trying to project some kind of cultured image.
Finally, Scooter called down the hall that he was free. The receptionist stood up and led me out of the reception area, past a copy room that smelled of burnt coffee and copiers, to a door at the end of the hall. Scooter was there, sitting at a massive desk, wearing the same satisfied smirk I'd seen the other night at the store, more pictures of horses festooning the walls.
"Glad to see you, Max," he'd said. "I hear you made a nasty discovery."
"I did," I confirmed. "Your business partner, yes?"
"Not since he took office, of course, but in the past, yes. Tragic." Scooter didn't look all that broken up about it; his doughy face was impassive, except for those slitty eyes.
"Any idea who might have wanted to do him in?" I asked.
"Who knows?" he shrugged. "We did business, but we weren't close friends. Speaking of business... Come to talk about selling the place?'
"Not exactly," I said, still standing in the doorway.
"No?" His eyebrows rose in an expression of surprise, but his eyes told me this was just what he'd expected. "Come on in and we'll talk about it. Did Rupert offer you a drink?"
My eyes slid to Rupert, who was standing in the hallway eyeing me with some interest for the first time. "No," I said, "but I'm okay."
"Well, if you change your mind, let me know," Scooter said as I walked into his office, looking at the horse pictures lining the walls, paired with photos of retail developments—evidently projects his company had worked on—and thinking how out of place they'd be in Snug Harbor. His desk was massive and squatted like a mahogany toad in the middle of the room. Behind him was an imposing wall of bookshelves containing encyclopedias, horse books and property code tomes: light reading for a sunny afternoon. His visitors' chairs were small and spindly, all the better to make their occupants feel intimidated when Scooter sank back into his enormous studded leather chair.
"I didn't know you had so much interest in horses," I said, glancing at another painting of the same horse I'd seen above my head in the reception area. "This one in particular, Blue Moon."
"She's my lucky horse, actually," he said, puffing up a bit.
"You own a race horse?" I asked.
"No," he said. "She just made me a lot of money a few years back, so I'm fond of her. But I'm guessing that's not what you're here for. You're going to try to make a go of it with the old bookshop, eh?" he asked, leaning back with his hands behind his head.
"I came because I'd like to see a copy of the will you told me about."
"Ah," he said. "Rupert should be able to put his hands on a copy." He jabbed at the phone on his desk and loudly requested the office manager/receptionist find the necessary paperwork, then jabbed it again and turned his attention back to me. "Still as pretty as ever," he commented.
"Thank you," I said stiffly, the compliment making me feel even more uncomfortable.
"Single again, I understand. That was your ex-husband who was with the author, right? Theodore Sayers: he's a mortgage broker in Boston."
"That's right."
"They looked like regular lovebirds, didn't they? He sure didn't wait long; you've
