Roast Turkey and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

  “Why don’t you come in? It’s awfully dusty in here though, so maybe you wouldn’t want to,” I said, stepping back.

  “I don’t mind,” she said, handing me the pie. “My husband Burt completely remodeled our house over the years, so I understand about dust and debris that comes as a result of hard work.” She reached out and placed a hand on Cade’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “And you are a hard worker, aren’t you?”

  Cade blushed and grinned. “Well, I try to be. Rainey’s really putting me through my paces, as you can see,” he said, giving me the eye.

  “I appreciate you bringing this pie by, Ida. Let me put it into the refrigerator so dust doesn’t get into it,” I said and headed into the kitchen with the pie. “It smells wonderful.”

  “I hope you like it,” she said when I returned. “I know you’re quite the baker yourself, so it may not be up to your standards.”

  “Nonsense,” I said to her. “I’ve tasted some of your baking and I’m just a bit jealous of your skill, if you want to know the truth.”

  She chuckled. “You’re being silly now,” she said. “Did you all have a nice Thanksgiving?”

  I nodded and glanced at Cade. “We did. We helped out at the community dinner and then we had a little get together with the family and a couple of friends here afterward.”

  She nodded and looked from Cade to me. “I don’t want to gossip, but I heard poor Tori Wells died while working at the community Thanksgiving dinner. It’s all anyone is talking about it seems.”

  “She actually died before the dinner got started,” I said glancing at Cade again. I hated to say too much, but he didn’t seem to mind the direction the conversation had gone. “It’s a terrible thing to have happen on a holiday.”

  She nodded. “Isn’t it though? I really feel terrible about it. But, Detective,” she said looking at Cade now, “I heard it may have been a murder?”

  “We’re still investigating. It’s early yet, but there’s a possibility that it may have been,” he said, taking a step closer to Ida.

  She nodded. “I was afraid of that. Can I tell you both something? And will you keep it in the strictest of confidence?” she asked, looking at both of us.

  We both nodded. “Go ahead,” Cade said.

  “I happen to know that Tori and her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Wells, did not get along at all. I know Elizabeth from my bridge club and we were talking one day, and she told me that Tori would be the death of her someday.”

  “Did she say why she felt that way?” I asked her. Cade was looking at her intently, anticipating her answer.

  “She said Tori was incredibly two-faced. In front of her husband she was sweet to Elizabeth, but as soon as it was just the two of them, she was hateful to her. She would do things like tell her she would be at her house for dinner at 6:00 and wouldn’t show up until 8:30, claiming she had no idea what time she was expected.”

  I wasn’t sure why this was a concern for Ida. Some people had no respect for other people’s time. “I suppose some in-laws don’t get along very well,” I said.

  “That’s true I suppose,” she said smiling. “I’ve been so fortunate that I get along so well with my two daughters-in-law and son-in-law. I suppose other people aren’t as fortunate as I am, but Elizabeth was just terribly disturbed that day. She said Tori had invited her to lunch at the country club in Boise a week earlier. Elizabeth had suggested they drive over together so they would be there at the same time. But Tori insisted she had errands to run beforehand and she would meet her there. Of course, Tori never showed up and Elizabeth ended up not only being stood up, but she had to pay for her own meal when Tori had said she was treating her.”

  “Something like that can really get on your nerves,” I said glancing at Cade again. “Some people are so inconsiderate.”

  “I suppose that would make for some bad blood in the family,” Cade said mildly. “Do you think Elizabeth would have done something about it?”

  Ida thought about it. “I hate to think something like that of Elizabeth, but you didn’t see how angry she was that day. Her face turned red, and she was clenching her fists. I told her getting this upset over something like that just wasn’t worth the trouble, but she insisted I didn’t understand the situation. She said the two of them were at each other’s throats all the time when her son Rick wasn’t there.”

  I wasn’t convinced that Ida was saying anything that indicated Elizabeth might be responsible for Tori’s death, and from the look on Cade’s face, I didn’t think he did either.

  “Well, any information is good to have so that Cade can decide if he needs to look into it,” I assured Ida.

  “There’s something else,” she said quietly. “And like I said, I do hate to gossip because it feels like that’s what I’m doing. But it would be wrong of me not to tell you something I knew in the case of a murder, wouldn’t it?”

  “If you have something that concerns you,” Cade said to her, “I really do need to know.”

  She nodded. “Maybe I’m just being silly,” she said. “But, Elizabeth told me that she begged her son Rick to divorce Tori. She told him that if he would leave her, she would buy him a house to move into, as well as a new car.”

  I looked at her wide-eyed. That was one of the strangest things I had ever heard. A mother bribing her son to leave his wife? Things between Tori and Elizabeth suddenly got interesting.

  “She was willing to pay her son to leave his wife?” Cade reiterated.

  She nodded. “I thought it was extreme, considering what she had told me about her frustrations with Tori. And it really does make me wonder if there was something else going on that she wasn’t mentioning. Oh, I really hate to be saying these things about Elizabeth. She certainly is a sweet woman, and she’s always so nice. Our bridge club sometimes does community service as a group and she’s always there, helping out. I probably should have just kept my mouth shut, shouldn’t I?” Worry creased her forehead, and she looked at Cade for reassurance.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, Ida,” Cade reassured her. “I’ll keep this in the strictest of confidence and if I feel I need to look into this further, I will. I don’t need to tell anyone where I heard it from, so you can set your mind at ease.”

  She nodded, putting a hand to her throat. “Well then, I suppose I should be getting back home. I’ve got all kinds of work to do around the house. Please forgive me if what I’ve said is inappropriate.”

  “Nothing you said is inappropriate Ida, and I appreciate the information,” Cade said.

  We watched as Ida made her way back to her house next door and then I turned to Cade. “What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “It’s kind of an odd thing to offer a son, isn’t it? Leave your wife and I’ll buy you a house and a new car. Either Elizabeth Wells has no idea of boundaries, or there’s something more going on there.”

  I agreed with him. There was something weird about the offer and I was going to figure out what it was.

  Chapter Eleven

  I hadn’t gotten around to speaking to John Greenlee, so the next day I decided I just had to have a doughnut. With fall slipping away, I decided I’d get a maple bar to celebrate what was left of the season. Sure, I could get a maple bar any time of year, but maple flavor always made me think of fall and I rarely ate them at other times of year.

  Greenlee Bakery had been in business for more years than I had been alive. John had inherited the bakery from his parents years ago. I pushed open the door to the bakery and stepped inside, inhaling the aroma of sweet baked goodness. John was at the front counter waiting on a customer and I went over to the glass case and peered in. There were some adorable frosted sugar cookies cut into the shape of Christmas trees, Santas, and snowmen. I knew the cookies were great from past experience and thought I might pick up a couple of those to go.

  I spotted some pumpkin spice donuts and changed my mind on the maple bars. I was sure once November was over I wouldn’t be getting much of a
nything pumpkin spice flavored and I needed to get it while I still could.

  When the lady John had been waiting on paid for her donuts and left, he turned to me and smiled. John was in his late forties with chocolate brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. It made him look a decade younger than his age.

  “Good morning, Rainey,” he said heading over to the display case in front of me. “What can I get for you?”

  “Well John, I had my heart all set on a maple bar, but now I’ve spotted these pumpkin spice donuts and I think I need one of those.”

  “Well don’t be shy, why don’t you get a maple bar and a pumpkin spice donut?” he asked, opening the back of the display case.

  I chuckled. “Well, now that you’re strong-arming me, John, I think I just may do that. Why don’t you give me two maple bars and two pumpkin spice donuts, and one each of the Santa cookies and snowman cookies? There now, have I made your day?”

  He chuckled and picked up a white paper bag and a square of waxed paper to pick up the donuts and cookies with. “You sure have,” he said. “Did you get enough sweets on Thanksgiving day?”

  “Yes, I did. I made most of the sweets, after all. But I think I’m going to take some of these donuts and cookies to Cade since he’s been working so hard lately.”

  He looked at me, an eyebrow raised. “That’s right, you’re dating that new detective, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “I sure am. There aren’t any secrets in this town, are there?”

  He chuckled again and placed the donuts into the bag. “Not in this town there aren’t. I heard about Tori Wells. They think it was a murder?”

  I nodded. “I guess it’s a possibility. Or maybe somebody was out drinking late that night and accidentally hit her, got scared, and ran off. Have you heard anything about what happened from your customers maybe?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I hit the hay early that night because my wife expected me to cook the Thanksgiving dinner. Can you believe that? I told her she was the woman of the house and the kitchen was her domain, but she just laughed at me.” He laughed again.

  “Lucky her that she has a man that’ll do that for her,” I said. “We missed you at the community Thanksgiving dinner. It would have been nice to have another cook there.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I guess I could have gone down there and helped out. But when somebody comes into my business and tells me what I’m going to do early Thanksgiving morning, you can bet it isn’t going to happen.”

  “Tori?”

  He nodded and placed the cookies into the bag along with the donuts. “There wouldn’t be anyone else that would do something like that. I tell you what, ever since she decided she wanted to be president of the business owners association, everything just went downhill in this town. At least now that she’s gone we can get somebody in there that knows how to run things. There was no reason that Kayla Wright shouldn’t have been reelected.”

  I nodded. “I heard she did a great job,” I said. “Still, it’s a shame about Tori. I just feel terrible that it happened on Thanksgiving Day.”

  He shrugged. “I guess I ought to feel bad, but I think the business owners of Sparrow dodged a bullet, if you want to know the truth.”

  I was taken aback that he put it that way. “What do you mean?”

  “Tori Wells was nuts. Honestly, somebody like her could completely destroy a town. That probably sounds dramatic, but she was really out there.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean. My mom sometimes talks about her, and she certainly wasn’t a fan, but she didn’t indicate that it was a serious as you’re making it sound.”

  He took my bag of cookies and donuts down to the end of the counter where the cash register was and I followed him on my side of the display case. “Let’s just say that when someone has to stoop to the levels that she did to get what she wanted, there can only be trouble. Even her mother-in-law couldn’t stand her.”

  As he began ringing up my purchases, I dug through my purse for my debit card. “So there was bad blood between them?” No use letting him know that I was already aware Elizabeth and Tori had problems. I wanted to see what he would say about it.

  He nodded. “You better believe it. Don’t tell anyone, but I happened to run into Elizabeth Wells over at that new sports bar in Boise. We sat with each other for a little while waiting on a table to open up for dinner. She told me she was so desperate to be rid of Tori that she bribed her son to leave her.”

  I feigned a look of surprise. “Really? I had no idea.” Okay, so it was a lie. But I needed to know what he knew.

  “She offered him a new house and car if he would just leave Tori and start over with someone else. She said Tori scared her.”

  “What do you mean scared her? Did Tori’s husband already have somebody in mind to start over with?” Maybe Elizabeth was just giving him a little push if he was already seeing someone on the side.

  “I don’t know that he had anybody in mind, he stayed with her, after all. But Elizabeth said that one night she was ran off the road by another vehicle. They had their bright lights on and got incredibly close, forcing her off the highway. It just happened to be the day after she and Tori had had an argument.”

  “Wow,” I said thinking this over. “That does sound scary. And Elizabeth felt strongly that it was Tori that did it? Did she get a look at the vehicle?”

  He nodded as I ran my debit card through the card reader. “She could tell that the other vehicle was an SUV, and she thought it was black like Tori’s. But she did say it was really dark out there on the highway without any moon, and the car had come up on her fast, and it was hard for her to see it.”

  This gave me something else to think about. Was Tori really as dangerous as John was making her seem? It did make me wonder, especially after all I’d heard about Elizabeth. Maybe Elizabeth really was desperate to get rid of her daughter-in-law.

  “John, how did you get along with Tori?”

  He looked at me, his mouth making a straight line. “I guess I already told you when I said I don’t take kindly to people coming into my business and ordering me around. There was just something about Tori. I couldn’t stand her from the minute I met her years ago. But then, no one should be surprised by that. Most of the business owners couldn’t stand her, except for a handful of them. Tori brought a bizarre element to our monthly meetings. Those friends of hers acted like they were in love with her.” He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Can you believe it? That woman was nuts.”

  I nodded, taking this all in. I hadn’t known Tori well, and I didn’t understand how she had garnered so much animosity. John and I spoke for a few more minutes and then I took my donuts and cookies and left to find Cade.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Order up,” Sam said as he placed an order of fries next to the burger on the plate on the counter.

  “That’s mine,” Luanne said, squeezing past me to pick up the plate along with another one that held a Reuben sandwich.

  “So Rainey,” Sam said as he put four more burgers on the grill. “Anything new on Tori Wells’ death?”

  “Nope,” I said as I made a salad for my customer at table nine. “Just seems such a shame that it happened on Thanksgiving Day.”

  “I agree with you there,” he said. “Tori wasn’t a very popular person.” He turned and looked at me, spatula in hand.

  “So I gather,” I said, smiling and putting three cherry tomatoes on top of the side salad. “That seems to be the general consensus with everyone I’ve talked to. It seemed that Tori wanted to control just about everyone and everything she was involved in.”

  He chuckled. “I guess that’s a good way of putting it. It seems like once she set her eye on being elected president of the business owners association, she wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.”

  “Some people are determined to get what they want at any cost. There’s more to life than that, don’t you think?” I mused, picking up
the salad.

  “You better believe there’s more to life than that. This diner sometimes takes more out of me than I think I can stand.” He turned back to the grill and flipped a hamburger patty.

  I turned to him. Sam wasn’t one to complain, not that this was a complaint exactly, but it surprised me to hear him say anything that wasn’t completely positive about the diner. “Really Sam? Do you ever think you’ll get tired of the diner and do something else?”

  He turned around and smiled. “Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think I should just put the diner up for sale and move on with my life.”