Free Cancelled by Murder by Jean Flowers Page A

I’d expected. Ben had been away on vacation and I’d asked a neighbor on Main Street, two houses down, to post a sign on the post office door for me. She hadn’t fastened it securely and the paper blew away. I’d returned to a small klatch of annoyed customers.
    Was this note from one of them? Or from the woman whose five-hundred-dollar money order I wasn’t able to cash until the end of the retail day? Or the man who was unhappy that I was out of medium-sized complimentary Priority Mailboxes? I guess it had been a less than perfect summer at the North Ashcot Post Office after all.
    I hoped one of those complainers was responsible for the note in my hand. Anything more sinister would be hard to grasp.
    Letters of complaint were not something new to me. There was no limit to the number of people who might have a gripe. The grievance could be about poor service, too few hours of operation, a package that arrived damaged. I’d done my best to make up for any inadequacies, perceived or otherwise, over the course of my fifteen-year career with the postal service in various parts of Massachusetts. I remembered a time when I was working in Boston—a spider found its way to the top of my counter, prompting a woman to go screaming from the lobby and later to put her angry thoughts in writing. I wasn’t proud of the good laugh Linda and I had at the woman’s expense. Later, of course.
    I inspected the current letter again, this time more calmly. It wasn’t really ominous, I decided. Probably someone whose birthday card was lost in the mail for a while, through no fault of mine; or someone with a package I hadn’t taped securely enough, definitely a fault of my own.
    I put the letter in a “Miscellaneous” file, just in time to greet Cliff as he walked through the front doors carrying a leather-flap briefcase.
    *   *   *
    The chief of police was the only exception I made to the NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS rule posted behind the retail counter. Cliff didn’t measure up to that standard, so I tookadvantage of the adjoining community room where a group of volunteers was setting up for an evening meeting. With their permission, Cliff and I took our lunches to a table at the back, promising to leave it as clean as we’d found it.
    I’d brought my usual peanut butter sandwich, but succumbed to an aromatic offering from Cliff, who’d stopped at a new seafood restaurant in South Ashcot. If he was trying to woo me with food, he was on the right track with an order of shrimp scampi.
    Cliff showed no signs of being rested. Last evening’s dark rings seemed more prominent, as did the lines around his mouth. I recognized the same polo shirt he’d worn yesterday and wondered if he’d even tried to rest. “Did you get any sleep?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “I’ve got a lot to do. The police might release Daisy any minute and I’ll be flying down to Miami where her parents are.”
    I remembered that Daisy’s parents had started out as “snowbirds,” the term we used to describe longtime residents of New England who spent the winter months in Florida as soon as they retired. Every year, with the first snow and the search for ice scrapers, I thought it was an idea worth considering, but never acted on it. Eventually, like other couples, Daisy’s mom and dad sold their New Hampshire home and moved to Florida permanently.
    Cliff pulled a folder from his briefcase. He had two copies of everything in the folder. One by one, he handed me sheets of paper, giving me a quick explanation for each. A list of friends (“Not suspects, but they may have some useful insights”). A list of customers who had a complaint inthe last six months (“Nothing big, but you never know”). Assorted lists of tasks, possible motives for wanting Daisy out of someone’s life, and photos of the backyard where Daisy had met her