Murder by Meringue (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 25)

by Mary Maxwell

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “I called ages ago.”

  “I’m sorry, but we got slammed for lunch and then I had a couple of orders to take care of.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” She laughed. “When we get deep into a case, I sometimes forget that you have other things going on.”

  “Like running a business,” I said.

  “Yep. And having a life. I remember those days. There was a time when I also had one. With real friends and social engagements and going out to brunch on Sunday for three hours and four mimosas.”

  “We can do that whenever you’d like,” I said. “But in the meantime, I learned a few interesting tidbits about Amelia’s life.”

  “Sounds promising,” Dina replied. “What did you hear?”

  “I think we have a possible motive,” I said. “And I think there are actually two suspects.” “Who is it?” she asked excitedly. “And do you know where they are?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “I don’t know where the male half of the duo is, but the female half is no longer in a position to hurt anyone else.”

  “Are you talking about Amelia?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the other half?” she said.

  “Her brother,” I replied. “I had a conversation with Carmen Alvarez, who told me that Amelia was the beneficiary on Ken Ballard’s life insurance policy, and—”

  “They broke up months ago,” Dina interrupted.

  “I know,” I replied. “But Amelia was still on Ken’s policy. And guess who else she had listed on her life insurance paperwork?”

  “Ken?”

  “That’s one of the two names,” I said. “Care to guess the other?”

  “Her brother?” Dina replied. “Is that right?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told,” I said. “And it will all obviously need to be confirmed.”

  “Obviously. But that would explain quite a few things, wouldn’t it?”

  “If it’s true, that would give Hugh a lucrative motive to kill his sister and her ex-boyfriend.”

  “How lucrative?” asked Dina.

  “Seven figures for Ken Ballard,” I said. “And half a million for Amelia. Although she lost her house to foreclosure, Amelia managed to pay the life insurance premiums without interruption.”

  Dina whistled. “Not a bad payday if you’re a homicidal, heartless bastard.”

  “Right, but there were wrinkles along Hugh’s path to the payday,” I said. “At some point, Amelia approached Ken to see if he’d loan her enough to avoid foreclosure on her mortgage. When he refused, she reminded him about being the beneficiary and warned him to watch his back.”

  “She threatened Ken?”

  “That’s what I was told, but it’s all second-hand information,” I said. “I also believe that I know where Hugh got the idea.”

  “Seriously?” Dina sounded skeptical. “Did you already talk to him or something?”

  “No, but Carmen gave me a huge tip about a guy named Garrett Bachus.”

  “What about him?” asked Dina.

  “Well, that surname was on Amelia and Hugh’s birth certificates,” I said. “They changed their identities after Uncle Garrett was charged with multiple homicides years ago.”

  “What?”

  “I know,” I said. “I had the same reaction. But it’s true. After Carmen gave me the scoop, I went online and verified the story. Amelia’s uncle allegedly used strychnine to kill three business rivals in Rhode Island. They were feuding about ownership and control of a company, and Garrett decided he didn’t have the patience for arbitration. He went from long simmering hostility and heated arguments to a much more expeditious way to resolve the dispute.”

  “Carmen told you about this?” asked Dina.

  “That’s correct,” I said. “When Amelia and Carmen both worked for Ken Ballard’s firm, they used an outside resource to handle background checks on employees. Apparently, the consultant dug much deeper into Amelia’s records and discovered that her social security number was actually attached to two different names. Since Carmen was the hiring manager, she asked about the discrepancy during the final interview. Amelia got pretty miffed, but Carmen understood completely when she explained that the name change was due to something awful that her uncle did when she was much younger.”

  “Interesting,” Dina said. “Too bad the one person that can answer all of our questions is no longer among the living.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I said with a weary sigh. “But I’m meeting with Lori Franklin in a few minutes to talk to her about Amelia. Maybe she’ll help fill in at least a couple of the missing pieces.”

  CHAPTER 34

  At five o’clock that afternoon, I was sitting in the Sky High dining room with a cup of tea and my laptop when Lori Franklin came through the front door. I got up from the chair as she walked past the empty tables.

  “Thank you for taking a moment to talk,” I said.

  “I’m happy to,” she replied. “Believe you me, it’ll be good therapy.”

  When she’d called earlier in the day after talking to Blanche Speltzer, Lori had offered to stop by and give me a complete rundown on the Amelia Felton house-sitting fiasco.

  “Would you like anything to drink?” I asked as she shrugged off her coat. “Or maybe a cookie to nibble on while we chat?”

  “I’m fine, but thank you,” she said, coming in for a quick hug. “I had a late lunch.”

  I motioned toward the table where I’d been sitting. “We can talk out here in the dining room,” I suggested. “Or we can go to the office if you’d prefer.”

  “Right here is fine.” She smiled and dropped into one of the chairs. “This whole Amelia thing is like a nightmare come to life. It was bad enough when I got home from my trip, but to find out that she’s…” Her mouth pinched tightly as she trembled from a sudden chill. “Well, now that she’s gone to meet her maker, it makes everything that happened at my house seem even more freaky.”

  I sat down across from her and got comfortable. It was obvious that Lori was agitated, so I decided to let her head in whatever conversational direction she preferred.

  “When I saw the state of my beautiful kitchen,” she continued, “I was ready to explode! I was on the phone with my husband at the time. Danny has also been away on business, which is why I asked Amelia to house-sit in the first place. Anyway, I was on the phone with him describing my flight back to Denver from Philadelphia when I walked into the house. There was this…” She stopped and made a sound in her throat. “I’m sorry, Katie. I still gag when I remember how wretched it smelled in our house. Like burned steak and rotten eggs and dog poo. All smooshed into one terrible odor. I mean, it just reeked! It still does! I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get the horrible stench out of the air.”

  I nodded solemnly. I hated the foul, lingering tang of burned, spoiled or rancid anything, so the thought of Lori’s visceral reaction was understandable. I didn’t know her well, but I’d heard through the Crescent Creek grapevine that she and her husband had spent a small fortune the previous year to renovate their Cape Cod.

  “When did you find the burned Dutch oven?” I asked.

  “About two seconds after I walked in the door,” she replied. “It was on the counter beside the sink. A few of the cabinet doors were gaping open, there were a bunch of horrible purple stains on the floor, and somebody left a pizza slice on one of the kitchen chairs.”

  She shook her head, scowling at the memory. “And it was pepperoni! Do you know how much I loathe pepperoni?”

  I answered with a quick smile before she headed for the grand finale.

  “Well, I loathe it very much,” she went on. “But not half as much as what I found in the attic!”

  “What was in the attic?”

  “A bag of trash,” she said. “Courtesy of Amelia Felton. I didn’t open it or anything, but it was crammed full. I carried it outside because it was leaking this sort of disgusting purpl
e ooze.”

  When she stopped to take a breath, I asked if she’d called the police when she discovered the bag and its suspicious contents.

  “You bet I did!” Lori answered. “I wasn’t about to ignore the fact that Amelia had destroyed our kitchen and betrayed my friendship. I didn’t know it at the time, but our house is now part of a murder investigation. Can you believe it?”

  I nodded. “It’s unfortunate that you’re going through all of this.”

  “It could be worse,” Lori said in a sorrowful tone. “I could be dead. Dina told me that the bag contained rat poison. She also said it can get into your system just by touching the stuff and then, you know, rubbing your face or your mouth or something like that.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But what I still don’t understand,” she added, “is why Amelia and her companion left our house in such a state.”

  “Why do you think someone else was there with her?” I asked.

  “Because there’s no way she’d ever go into the attic,” Lori said. “She told me once a long time ago about a Halloween prank that her brother played on her. I think she was around eight or nine. Hugh lured her to the attic of their house with a couple of her friends. He promised it was no big deal, just another trick-or-treat stop along the way. But when the girls climbed the ladder into the attic, Hugh and his buddies were dressed in white robes splattered with catsup. In the dim light, Amelia and her friends didn’t recognize her brother. They were terrified by the stunt. In fact, one girl had an asthma attack afterward that sent her to the Emergency Room later that night.”

  “So you think that someone else hid the bag in the attic?”

  “I do,” she said. “And I think that I know who it was.”

  “Do tell,” I said.

  Lori took another breath. “Ken Ballard,” she said. “My neighbor saw him leaving late one night while Amelia was house-sitting.”

  “Well, that’s odd. Ken and Amelia broke up months ago, and there’s been quite a lot of bad blood between them ever since.”

  Lori arched one eyebrow. “Maybe so,” she said. “But I’ve seen the video that my neighbor shot. Whatever they were doing together on the front porch before Ken left looked more like French kissing than quarrelling.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Dina Kincaid was glaring at a stack of case files on her desk when I walked into her office early that evening with carryout from Drake’s Deli and a six-pack of lemon-flavored sparkling water.

  “You don’t look very happy,” I said.

  She ignored my remark and pointed at the cans of San Pellegrino. “No wine or beer?”

  “You’re working, detective.” I put the food and beverages on one of the guest chairs facing her desk. “Aren’t there rules about drinking on the job?”

  “My point exactly,” she replied with a bubbly laugh. “I’m giddy from staring at interview notes and Google search results for the past couple of hours. Not to mention that I had about thirty seconds of sleep last night.”

  “What was on your mind?” I asked.

  “Amelia Felton and Ken Ballard,” she said, pushing back from the desk and getting up. “I was reviewing the crime scene photos from her apartment the other day, and it suddenly dawned on me that I’d read about a similar case somewhere along the line.”

  “Poisoned cupcakes?” I said.

  I waited while Dina stretched her arms overhead, ruffled her hair and then sat down again.

  “Even better than that,” she replied. “Poisoned meringue cupcakes.”

  “Seriously?”

  She opened her laptop, waited for the screen to refresh and then spun it around on the desk. The display showed a newspaper article with an astonishing headline: MERINGUE MURDERS PLAGUE PROVIDENCE!

  “Rhode Island?” I asked.

  Dina nodded. “Twenty-five years ago,” she said. “I know a guy that worked in Connecticut before he retired and relocated to Denver. He told me about that case one time when we were at a conference. One of the breakout sessions was about food that’s made deadly with toxic or dangerous substances.”

  “That sounds like dinner at my sister’s house about half of the time,” I joked.

  When Dina smiled, it was fleeting; she was clearly focused on a serious discussion about the Rhode Island case and the use of poison as a murder weapon.

  “Was the case in Providence solved back then?” I asked.

  She rotated the computer again. “Let me find it,” she said, scanning the page and clicking the keyboard. “I found this particular paragraph about…” She paused, scrolled down again and then smiled victoriously. “Here we go. The suspect in the Rhode Island murders was a guy named—”

  “Garrett Bacchus?” I said quickly.

  Dina stared at me silently for a few seconds.

  “Wasn’t that his name?” I smiled. “I can’t imagine two cases from Rhode Island back then that used poisoned baked goods to kill the victims.”

  “That’s right,” Dina said after a few more seconds of silence. “There was circumstantial evidence, but the case was thrown out because the chain of custody was botched by a detective with a drinking problem.”

  “Are you saying that Mr. Bacchus just walked?” I asked. “I didn’t find that little detail online.”

  She frowned. “The wheels of justice sometimes get knocked off the track by incompetent fools.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Were you able to confirm that Bachus is related to Amelia and Hugh?” I asked.

  “I called a woman that we’ve worked with before on a couple of other cases,” Dina replied. “She specializes in genealogical research, and she really knows how to deliver the goods.”

  “Can’t we just use one of those websites they advertise on television?” I asked. “I’ve heard a few people talk about Ancestry and MyHeritage.”

  “Of course,” Dina said. “There’s also 23andMe, LivingDNA and a bunch of other paid sites as well as some free ones. But the woman we’ve worked with will handle it all and do a fantastic job. While she’s looking into the Rhode Island killer’s family tree, we can keep doing our thing here and talk to more witnesses.”

  “That sounds good,” I said. “Speaking of witnesses, Lori Franklin had some interesting things to say about Amelia and Ken.”

  “She did,” Dina replied. “And I’ve added them to the list of questions for my next interview with Ken.”

  “Lori’s pretty furious about her house,” I said. “It’ll be nice to see if Ken’s version matches the one that Lori told us.”

  “It’ll also be nice to see if it’s true,” Dina told me. “Lori was so angry when I talked to her that I caught a couple of inconsistencies. I ascribed it to the heated emotions, but we’ll need to verify as much as we can about her story as well as the other folks that we’ve talked to.”

  “And while you’re doing all of that,” I said. “I’ll check with Earl at the Moonlight. I heard that Amelia’s brother is staying at the motel. I figured it was worth a drive over to see if he has anything to say.”

  Dina rolled her eyes. “I talked to Hugh again yesterday,” she said. “He hasn’t been much help so far. Shell-shocked is a good way to describe him: glazed eyes, blank stare, mouth agape. I’ve never lost a sibling, but his reaction seems pretty textbook.”

  “What’s the story?” I asked. “Someone told me that he was in town to help Amelia move to a new apartment and do the Family Flair Bakeoff.”

  “That’s right,” Dina said. “Amelia’s renting the top floor of that Colonial Revival on Belleview with the huge lawn and the stone fence. It’s about a mile from the new strip mall.”

  “I know that one,” I said. “It has the bric-a-brac all around the front windows?”

  She smiled. “The realtor called them architectural and decorative gewgaws in the brochure.”

  “How did she swing that if the other house went to a foreclosure?”

  “I’m not sure about the details,” Dina said. “Suze
e Dirnhofer with Eugene Crisp’s company handled the lease agreement for the owner,” answered Dina. “Do you know her? She was the receptionist forever and a day, but Eugene finally agreed to pay for her real estate license so he could promote her.”

  “What was that?” I asked in disbelief. “Eugene paid for her classes and license?”

  Dina smiled. “Ain’t love grand?”

  “They’re dating?” I said. “I haven’t heard that one yet.”

  “Not dating,” she replied. “They’re engaged. And I was in the dark myself until the Amelia Felton case popped up. When we searched her apartment, we found the rental agreement for the new apartment in Amelia’s desk. Suzee was more than happy to tell us all about the conversations she had when they were looking at apartments for two months before Amelia settled on the one she ended up renting.”

  “I’d imagine that realtors hear lots of juicy dish when they’re working with clients,” I said.

  “Especially around here,” Dina said with a wicked grin. “Eugene told me a wild story about a woman who no longer lives in town. She apparently owned an extensive wardrobe of skimpy negligees and bathrobes. Whenever Eugene or one his sales agents arrived for the open houses, the seller acted like she’d totally forgotten the appointment. She would scamper around the house, flitting from room to room and giving everyone a free show of her assets.”

  I smiled. “Pun intended?”

  “Very much so,” Dina said. “In the end, they sold her house for way above the asking price, and Eugene’s convinced it was because the last prospective buyer was a single guy who was mesmerized by Mrs. Forgetful’s curvy exterior.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Earl Dodd was behind the registration counter at his family’s motel when I hurried through the front door a short time later. He had one hand buried in a jumbo bag of Doritos while the other was clamped around a can of Mountain Dew.

  “Hey, Katie!” He quickly loosened his grip on the soda and wiped both hands on a wad of paper towels. “Long time no see!”