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

by Mary Maxwell

  I stepped back. “A knife?” I said. “I thought a poisoned cupcake was your weapon of choice.”

  “Shut up, lady,” he hissed. “And FYI, you’re not a real cop, so whatever you heard me say can’t be used against me because it wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law.”

  I patted my chest with one hand. “Well, I’ve got an FYI for you, too,” I said. “I’ve been recording our conversation, and that can be used against you.”

  “You’re lying,” he said. “My buddy’s a lawyer. He told me that crap isn’t legal.”

  “Depends on the state that you’re in,” I replied. “Under Federal law, your friend is right; it is illegal to record conversations in certain places. But since Colorado is a one-party consent state, it’s perfectly fine for me to record our conversation without your consent or knowledge.”

  Hugh’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, yeah? You a big shot legal eagle now?”

  I smiled. “Not now,” I said, pulling the phone from my pocket. “And not ever. But I do know what I’m talking about when it comes to one-party consent.”

  “Good for you.” He leaned closer, glowering at the phone. “Testing,” he said. “One, two, buckle my damn shoe.”

  CHAPTER 39

  “When is someone both the victim and killer?” asked Dina the next afternoon.

  We were in her office at the Crescent Creek Police Department to discuss the Amelia Felton case. I’d received a string of messages from her the previous night that summarized her impressions of a long interview with Hugh Felton following his arrest. Although the text exchange had resolved a handful of loose ends, Dina had suggested a face-to-face conversation before she sat down again with Amelia’s brother.

  “Is that a trick question?” I said.

  Dina made a face, repeated her original query and tapped her pencil on the desk while I pondered my answer.

  “When it’s a suicide?” I answered finally.

  She smiled. “Or when there’s another explanation. It can also happen when someone, in this case Amelia Felton, accidentally eats one of the tainted cupcakes that she made to kill other people. That’s the best explanation for her death since we haven’t found a suicide note.”

  “Is that based on Hugh’s statement?”

  “More or less. He confessed to discussing the scheme with Amelia to punish Ken Ballard and the other folks. But he claims that she did all the work.”

  I shook my head. “That’s hard to believe,” I said. “What about the security camera footage of Hugh carrying the four bakery boxes into QuikFlash?”

  “He claimed that Amelia asked him to go by her apartment and bring them to the courier service,” Dina explained. “According to Hugh, she told him a very believable story about sending some surprise goodies to four of her friends in town.”

  “Did he explain why they wanted to kill innocent people?”

  “It began before Hugh flew up from Texas for the Family Flair Bakeoff,” Dina said. “They were on the phone one night, discussing logistics for his visit, when Amelia started telling him all of the details surrounding her financial difficulties. Before that conversation, she hadn’t shared anything with Hugh. He thought she was still working for Ken’s CPA firm and living in her house.”

  “But she had to come clean since he was coming to town,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Dina replied. “He told me that she got all weepy on the phone, blaming everything on Ken and Doris and a couple of other people.”

  “Deflecting from her own actions and choices,” I said.

  Dina sighed. “As many people do under the same circumstances.”

  “Did Hugh give you any indication that he was aware of his sister’s fragile state?” I said.

  “Are you asking if Hugh thinks Amelia killed herself?”

  “Basically,” I said. “It sounds like they had some pretty intense conversations in the days before she died.”

  “That’s what he claimed,” Dina replied. “She became increasingly focused on Ken Ballard’s life insurance policy. Somehow that was like the golden goose for Amelia, something that she could use as leverage in trying to force Ken to loan her enough money to stay afloat and save her house from foreclosure. When that didn’t happen, she decided revenge was her only option.”

  “But what about the report from Lori Franklin?” I asked. “Her neighbor saw Ken and Amelia kissing in front of Lori’s house one night.”

  Dina shrugged. “According to Ken’s sworn statement, he went to see Amelia that evening to try and work out something to help her with the financial difficulties, like a small loan or a part-time job for one of his friends. But Amelia rejected all of those offers. She wanted it all or she would follow through with the threats of going to the police. If she and Ken didn’t get back together and she didn’t go back to work for the firm again, she was going to do everything in her power to make people believe the lies that Ken was the one stalking her instead of the other way around.”

  “It’s like she crumbled under the pressure of the financial difficulties,” I said.

  “There must’ve been other things going on with Amelia,” Dina speculated. “Lots of people have money trouble, but they don’t go over the edge and plot to kill other folks.”

  “Were you able to confirm if Amelia was dating someone new?” I asked. “Ken mentioned last week that she was seeing a guy from Briarfield.”

  Dina shook her head. “There’s nothing in her email or phone logs to suggest that was true. Her sister told me that Amelia was too obsessed with Ken to even think about another man.”

  “Did her brother know?”

  “About Amelia claiming to be going out with someone from Briarfield?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I haven’t asked him about that yet,” she replied. “We’ve talked primarily about her demeanor in the past few weeks. As she became increasingly erratic, Amelia started making threats and hinting that she was, and I quote, ‘going to do something about it if nobody else will.’”

  “Including murder,” I said. “That’s a fairly brutal way to settle the score with someone.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Did Hugh try to intervene?” I asked. “I mean, when he realized that she was becoming unhinged, did he try to stop her?”

  “I don’t think he realized just how far she was willing to go,” Dina said. “Hugh told me that he was as stunned as everyone else when she went through with the plan. He figured that his sister was just blowing off steam because she was so stressed about money.”

  “I hear a sizable amount of skepticism in your voice,” I said.

  “I simply don’t believe the guy,” Dina replied.

  I nodded. “Is that because there are too many inconsistencies in his story?”

  “Partially,” she said. “But it’s also because we processed the boxes of rat poison that were recovered from the garbage that Lori Franklin found in her attic. Hugh Felton’s fingerprints were on all three packages.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That proves that he handled them at some point.”

  Dina nodded. “And I also finally heard about that smudge on the box delivered to Ken’s office,” she said. “Somebody at the lab dropped the ball, so it took until this morning to get the results. It was raspberry buttercream frosting. I reached out to Phyllis Hartley to check on details for that Nite to Remember cake, and she confirmed that the specs submitted along with the cake included that exact icing. It may be circumstantial, but it’s another link to Hugh Felton because he and his sister submitted that cake together for the Family Flair competition.”

  “Why are Hugh’s prints in the system?” I asked. “I didn’t realize that he had a police record.”

  “He didn’t until now,” Dina said. “Hugh’s in the system because he worked for the government in Dallas at one point. All Federal employees undergo thorough vetting, including credit and criminal history checks.”

  “What are you charging him with?”

  �
��Several things,” she said. “First-degree murder, accessory to murder, attempted murder, aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice for lying about his role in obtaining the poison used in the attempt to kill Ken Ballard and the others.”

  “It’s a slippery slope,” I said.

  “That’s quite true,” she replied. “Especially when you completely disregard things like civility, decency and truth.”

  “Did you suspect that Amelia was responsible for the poisoned cupcakes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “How about you?”

  “No, not exactly. I just had a hunch that something was off. The details were so different between what happened to Amelia and what was intended for the other four.”

  “The thought definitely crossed my mind,” Dina said. “But I didn’t dwell on it too long. When you’re dealing with the kind of perverse mind that would target four individuals with a highly toxic substance, there’s a chance there is no pattern. They might throw a curve ball just to keep us guessing.”

  “Mission accomplished,” I said. “At least for a little while.”

  “Right, but things fell into place fairly quickly because of you,” Dina said. “It’s really a huge benefit to have someone in town who can consult on cases like this when the scope has the potential to grow rapidly and in any number of directions.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the rumors,” she said. “Even though I was confident we weren’t dealing with a hit list that contained more than forty names, you just never know.”

  “Until you do,” I said.

  She smiled. “That’s right. And now we do. We’ve got Hugh’s signed statement and a journal that we found earlier today at his sister’s place. She documented all of the steps for baking and delivering the poisoned cupcakes.”

  “Don’t forget the other things,” I said. “You have all of the evidence that was collected from the attic at Lori Franklin’s house.”

  “And what about the smudge of raspberry buttercream?” she said. “If Amelia and Hugh had entered something else in the contest, we might not have that crucial piece of evidence linking Amelia to the cupcakes delivered to our four intended victims.”

  CHAPTER 40

  There was a chill in the air that afternoon as I ran errands before meeting Zack for a late dinner at Café Fleur. My first stop was QuikFlash Couriers to deliver the package that had arrived that morning via Federal Express. As I climbed out of the car and went through the front door, I smiled at the irony of using one delivery service to obtain a special surprise gift for someone that worked at another.

  “Hi, there,” Francine said when she spotted me walking toward her desk. “I sure hope you’ve got something sugary and sweet in that box. I haven’t eaten anything since my Jimmy Dean scramble at home this morning.”

  “It’s not sugary,” I said, putting the parcel on her desk. “But it might be sweet.”

  She gave me a wary look. “What is it?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said, pushing the package closer. “Open it and look inside.”

  After she gently lifted the box to gauge its weight, Francine returned it to the desktop. Then she reached into a drawer, came out with a pair of scissors and deftly sliced the tape holding the heavy brown paper around the box.

  A few moments later, as she pulled away the fluffy cotton used to protect the contents of the package, I watched with delight as her eyes expanded and her mouth plopped open.

  “Did you really?” she asked, carefully holding the porcelain bride and groom sculpture in her hands. “You’re replacing my Precious Moments figurine?”

  I smiled. “You looked so crushed the other day when your original was destroyed. I thought it would be nice to surprise you with another one.”

  She studied the bride’s cowboy boots and the groom’s wide-brimmed hat. Then she put the statuette back in the box before jumping up to surround me with a joyful hug.

  “You’re a miracle, Katie!” she said in a quivering voice. “An honest to goodness, real life miracle!”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I told her as my cheeks turned red. “I just like to see good people smiling as often as possible.”

  “Then today’s your day,” she said. “If my grin got any bigger, I probably wouldn’t fit through the door when I leave here later.”

  After a short chat with Francine about her Precious Moments wish list, I gave her another hug, jumped in the car again and drove to CVS. During the short time that I was in the store, I had nearly identical exchanges with three people about Amelia Felton. The conversations all reflected the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—but they also reached the same conclusion.

  “What could anybody have done?” asked Robin Bramble during our hushed discussion in the middle of the shampoo section. “If the woman was determined to bring that much evil and chaos into the world, there probably wasn’t any way to stop her.”

  “Do you think that was Amelia’s goal?” I asked.

  Robin scowled. “Well, what else? It was a premeditated scheme, right? She had to plan ahead to get the supplies. I mean, it’s not like she harvested seeds from her own Strychnos nux-vomica, but she had to go to the store and buy the stuff.”

  I smiled. “You sound like an authority there, Robin. Dropping the scientific name of the tree and everything.”

  “I did my research,” she said confidently. “As soon as I heard about Amelia, I wanted to find out what was going on. I’d heard of strychnine before, but I had no idea that it was from a tree that grows in Asia. The poison actually comes from the seeds inside the tree’s fruit as well as its dried blossoms.”

  I listened to the rest of her strychnine summary with a bemused grin. When she wasn’t getting her hair done, shopping for more new clothes or playing tennis at the local country club, Robin Bramble was a volunteer concierge at Crescent Creek Public Library. She’d married a wealthy man from Denver even before the ink was dry on her high school diploma. Although he was significantly older, they had a happy marriage until she caught him with the young woman that they’d hired to work as a nanny to their beloved family pet, a Great Dane named Mouse. After her husband retired, they moved to Crescent Creek.

  “That’s part of the beauty about helping Ivy Minkler at the library,” Robin explained. “If it’s super quiet, I can do my own thing. Some days I research interesting subjects, other days I catch up on reading the classics.”

  “That’s such a great arrangement,” I said.

  She nodded. “It’s ideal for everyone. Ivy gets an extra pair of hands. I can indulge my curiosity about countless topics. And my husband has the remote control to himself for at least a few hours every week. Although I don’t know why that even matters. The minute I leave the house for the library, he flips the channel to watch pigskin porn.”

  I smiled. “Pigskin porn?”

  “That’s right. That’s my nickname for football, even though they’re usually made out of cow hide.” She made a face and narrowed her gaze. “Can you believe the patriarchy lies to us about that, too?”

  Robin was a strong proponent of various conspiracy theories that united male executives from large corporations, unsubstantiated advertising claims and certain Hollywood celebrities. Since I didn’t have the time for one of her longwinded harangues, I took a quick peek at my phone.

  “Holy smokes,” I said. “I’d better get going. I’m meeting my patriarchy for dinner in fifteen minutes and I still have two more quick things to do before then.”

  “Your father’s up from Florida?”

  “No, no,” I said. “That was a bad joke. I was referring to Zack.”

  Robin’s eyebrows went up. “Then you better shake a leg, sister. If you leave that hunk sitting in a restaurant by himself, some other woman’s likely to scoop him up and take him home.”

  “Doubtful,” I said. “Zack and I are pretty much on t
he same wavelength.”

  “And what wavelength might that be?” she asked. “I know it’s none of my business, but I heard a girlfriend say something really similar to that about a week before her husband served divorce papers.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure Zack won’t do that.”

  “Every man’s capable of being a horse’s ass,” she said, “including your sweet boyfriend.”

  “That’s true,” I replied. “But I actually believe that every person is capable of boorish behavior.”

  “You’re right,” Robin agreed reluctantly. “Just look at Amelia. If what she did to Ken and those other three people wasn’t boorish, then I don’t know what you’d call it.”

  I offered a sigh. “Well, it’s called attempted murder,” I said. “But it doesn’t really matter at this point, considering how Amelia’s story ended.”

  CHAPTER 41

  I was working on a batch of chocolate chip cookies the next morning when my sister sent a text to ask for an update on the Amelia Felton case. Why haven’t you called me? Why hasn’t ANYONE called me? I left messages for Blanche, Esmé, Zack and about a million for you!!!

  I deleted the text and dialed her number.

  “I mean, really,” she grumbled before I could say a word. “I called you three times last night, Katie. What’s the deal?”

  I took a moment to suppress the urge to give her a complete rundown on the previous day: twelve batches of cookies, an unannounced visit by the health inspector, four deliveries, two chocolate cream pies, six catering proposals, two hours of billing, a crying baby in the middle of lunch and a partridge in a pear tree. Instead of rattling off the list, I simply apologized for not getting back to her the previous evening.

  “Well, I’ll forgive you,” she said. “Just this once.”

  The familiar refrain made me laugh. “How many times have we both said that this year alone?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Olivia replied. “But it’s true; I forgive you and I love you. But I’m also going to strangle you if the next words out of your mouth aren’t the latest news on the Strychnine Stalker.”