by J. R. Ripley
I could only shrug. “Kim is my best friend. Even when I know what she’s thinking, I don’t know what she’s thinking.” I slammed the door shut. “You know what I mean?”
“Not a clue.”
The beautiful brunette stepped up to us. Her eyes were the delicate golden brown of a kestrel’s wing feathers. “You’re just in time, Dan. I’ve got lunch.” She held up the bag.
“Toss it inside.” Dan looked at the sky. There was nary a cloud in sight. Those that were tarrying above were puffy white and cute as marshmallows.
It was a near-perfect Carolina blue day. Weather-wise, at least. On a personal level, I’d see how things went before calling it one way or the other.
“Sure thing.”
“Amy, this is Paula. Paula, Amy.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you finally,” I said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” Seeing Paula up close it was no wonder Kim was homicidal and suicidal.
“Amy is a friend of Kim’s.”
“Oh, I—Oh! That Kim,” Paula exclaimed.
I squirmed. “I’m afraid so. She’s harmless, really.”
“Nobody’s ever been killed by a flying cupcake,” Paula said equably.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Dan added.
Paula peered around me toward Birds & Bees. “Is she working now? Maybe we can stop in, Dan.”
“Kim won’t be in for another hour,” I explained. “Why don’t the two of you go enjoy your lunch and stop back at the store afterward?” I took Dan’s hand. “I think it will do you all good to clear the air.”
“Clear the air of flying cupcakes at the very least,” Paula said, but she was laughing as she pulled open the passenger-side door. “Hey, what’s all that in the back seat?”
“Dan has decided to take up backyard bird-watching,” I answered.
“I have?” asked Dan, working his way around the front of the car to his side. “Or did Esther decide to take it up for me?” He slid behind the wheel. “And with my credit card.”
Dan wasn’t wrong, so I didn’t correct him.
“Who’s Esther?” Paula asked.
“She works with me,” I explained.
“Yeah.” Dan started his engine. “I’ll introduce you to her later. But you might want to prepare yourself first.”
Paula looked puzzled. “Prepare? Prepare how?”
“Carry a loaded weapon.” Dan threw the car into gear and waved goodbye. “And leave your wallet at home.”
As they drove toward the lake, I spotted another familiar figure. A not-so-friendly one.
Lani Rice.
He was covering the distance between Yvonne’s matte black pickup truck and the diner’s entrance.
I waited for a gap in traffic, then hurried over.
By the time I got inside, Lani was seated at a stool and hunched over the green counter.
“I saw that cop talking to you.” Lani stuffed a huge onion ring, hot oil dripping, into his mouth and chewed. “Good. Questioning you about my sister’s murder, I hope.”
My taste buds went into attack mode. It was all I could do not to help myself to the jumbo basket of fried heaven beside him. Onion rings are my Achilles’ heel. Okay, one of my Achilles’ heels.
I cupped my hand and pulled the smell up to my nostrils. I sniffed. Fried heaven, for sure. I ignored Lani’s insults and plopped myself down on the stool beside him.
I waved to Tiffany, then pointed to the basket of onion rings.
She smiled and nodded.
To make sure I had something healthy to go with them, I ordered up a strawberry milkshake, too. What? The milkshakes at Ruby’s Diner are made with good, old-fashioned whole milk, not powder, plenty of protein and vitamins there, and fresh strawberries—none of that frozen stuff.
“What are you doing?” Lani eyed me curiously.
Fortunately, I was saved from having to reply by the appearance of Tiffany. She slid a fresh-from-the-fryer basket of rings under my nose.
“Your shake will be up in a minute,” Tiffany said, sashaying toward the milkshake machine.
Lani’s eyes followed her backside. Tiff gets a lot of that. Me, not so much.
I grabbed a boiling-hot onion ring and gave it a whiff before biting into it. “Speaking of Yvonne’s murder, have you heard anything new?”
“Nothing much.” Lani took a gulp from his cup, then dumped so much milk in the coffee that it turned ecru. “They questioned all the people who were at her house that night. Plus, everybody in the surrounding area. Nobody saw anything, and nobody heard anything.” He gnawed another ring in half. “That’s what happens when you choose to live alone in the middle of Nowheresville.”
“I take it you didn’t approve?”
Lani shrugged. “Like it mattered to her one way or the other.” He pushed his hand across the side of his head. “She was only three years older than me but acted like she thought she was my mother.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what will you do with the house?” I thanked Tiffany for the milkshake and planted my lips over the fat, striped straw.
Lani stared at me.
“You will inherit it, won’t you?” The milkshake was icy cold, sweet, and fruity. His hard, glassy eyes were making me uncomfortable. I took another sip and felt a brain freeze coming on.
I clenched my fist and rubbed the tip of my tongue furiously across the roof of my mouth. I’d read somewhere that this was supposed to help. I couldn’t remember why. The article had presented a rigorous rationale.
It didn’t work. Now I had tongue freeze. Sometimes science sucks.
Tears welled up in my eyes. My brain slowly melted back to normal. Such as it is. “I heard you were her only living relative.”
“In the first place, I do mind you asking. In the second place, it’s none of your business whether I’m her only living relative or one of hundreds.”
Lani whipped out his wallet and threw down a couple of bills on the counter. “Nor is it any business of yours what I do or don’t do with the cabin. That contractor guy is supposed to stop by so we can get started tearing things down and ripping things up tomorrow. The cabin and those smelly stables.”
Lani slid off his stool. His feet slapped the tile. “Maybe I’ll turn the place into a recording studio. Maybe I’ll rent it out to a family of circus clowns.” A flash of malice sprang up in his eyes. “Maybe I’ll turn it into a bird shop.”
Lani grinned evilly. “How would you feel about a little competition for that joint of yours?” He stabbed a finger in the direction of Birds & Bees, then fumbled with the zipper of his black leather jacket.
“Your sister and I discussed transforming the property into a suitable gold-throated warbler habitat. The birds are threatened, you know.” There was an edge to my voice.
Lani spat. “Better still. Maybe I’ll turn the place into a cat sanctuary. For feral cats. The world’s full of them.”
“Cats and birds don’t get along,” I snapped. “Cats eat birds.”
“Cats gotta eat, don’t they?”
“You are impossible!”
“Impossible?” Lani said. “I don’t think so. “In fact, the more I think, the more possibilities I come up with.”
I was beginning to wish that if a Rice had been shot it would have been this one. It was an evil thing to think, but I couldn’t help myself.
“I don’t understand why you are getting so upset.” With a tip of my head, I indicated to him that his raised voice was raising concerned eyebrows.
“Everything okay out there?” Len, the lead cook, stuck his head out the serving window.
“Fine, Len,” I replied. Len had been a longtime employee of the diner but had left inexplicably for a time. I was happy to see him back. Moire Leora never said so, but I believed it had something to do with her one-time lover, a
man who had insinuated himself into her life and business. Fortunately, he was now out of the picture.
Lani grimaced and leaned into me. “Look,” he began, suddenly appealing to me, “I’ve just lost my sister. My only living relative. It’s not easy.”
“I know.” I fingered a couple of onion rings. They were getting cold. I nibbled the crusty breading off one. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill your sister?”
“Not a clue.” Lani fell back onto his stool. His elbow bumped his cup. “Rats.” He dabbed at the counter with a couple of napkins.
Tiffany came to his rescue, cleaning up and taking everything away when he said he was finished. She didn’t ask me if I was finished, as I had plenty of onion rings left in my basket. She knew better.
“I mean, she was new to town. She wasn’t here long enough for anybody to hate her.” A chuckle escaped his lips.
I wondered what that was all about.
“Did she have any enemies from her past?”
“Not really. No.”
I wasn’t sure how to phrase this next question, especially without getting shot, but I had to know. “You carry a gun,” I began softly. “Why?”
Lani bit down on the corner of his lip. “It’s a big scary world, isn’t it?” There was a harshness to his response. “My sister’s death ought to prove that. You live in this cutesy little town, dreaming about birds and strawberry milkshakes. Let me tell you, the real world isn’t so pretty.”
Lani pressed his hands into the counter. “Oh.” Comprehension filled his eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it? You think I shot my sister.”
“Did you?” I whispered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tiffany watching us as she ran a cloth over a coffeepot, pretending to dry it.
“No. I did not.”
“I suppose the police checked your weapon.” I helped myself to a room-temperature onion ring and chewed slowly. I didn’t want to miss a word.
“Listen, lady, if you want to help and insist on poking your nose around where it doesn’t belong, why don’t you ask that Barnswallow character?”
“Ross Barnswallow? Why?”
“I saw him skulking around a couple of times on my property.”
“You mean Yvonne’s property.”
Lani merely shrugged. “It will be mine soon enough. I saw him lurking about.”
“When was this?”
“Once in the morning. Once in the afternoon. I thought I saw him out by the shed one evening, too, but I can’t be certain.
“And it isn’t just him,” groused Lani, on a tear. “There’s some goofy invalid scooting around the property on a doped-out golf cart like he owns the place. I’d put a ten-foot fence around the perimeter if it wasn’t so expensive. Maybe I’ll get a guard dog. A nice Rottweiler. The bigger the teeth, the better,” he added, opening wide to show his own teeth.
“You think Ross Barnswallow might have killed her? Why?”
“Why not? Somebody did. If it wasn’t Spenner, then he’s as good as anybody.”
“But not you?”
“Not me.”
I wrapped my fingers around my ice-cold glass and sipped. “A certain someone told me that you and your sister didn’t get along.”
Lani cursed. “Phil. It was Phil, right? It couldn’t have been Ted. Teddy only talks to himself. And there’s nobody else around this burg who could know a damn thing about me.” He nodded. “That leaves Phil.”
“I really don’t remember,” I lied. It was not a very smooth lie, and both of us knew it.
Lani plucked a laminated menu from the napkin holder and flipped to the drinks page. “Why don’t they sell beer in this dump?”
“I really wouldn’t know.”
Lani cursed some more. “Phil’s got a lot of nerve pointing fingers at me. He’s the one Yvonne was running away from.”
“He was?”
“That’s right.” Lani’s hand dove into my basket. He extracted the biggest onion ring in the batch, balled it up, and tossed it in his mouth.
I gasped. I couldn’t help it—I’d been saving that monster ring for last. After recovering my senses, I said, “Yvonne had mentioned something about wanting to get away from someone.”
“That someone was Phil.” Lani folded his arms over his chest. “I’ll bet he didn’t tell you that, did he?”
“No,” I admitted. “As a matter of fact, he said she wasn’t running away from him. Merely that they were taking a break from each other.”
“Give me a break,” replied Lani. “I mean, the dude’s my friend, but he couldn’t understand that when my sister said she’d had enough, she’d had enough. And she had definitely had enough of Phil. Enough to have called the police on him one time.” He wiped his face with his sleeve. “I’m beginning to feel that way myself.”
“There’s no one else from her past that she could have been trying to get away from?”
“What? You back to accusing me again? Give it up. I did not kill my sister.”
This certainly changed things.
Had Phil been harassing and stalking Yvonne? Had she rebuffed him? Had that led to rage and then murder?
Maybe with Lani’s gun?
He had the opportunity, or so it seemed. Did he have motive, too?
There was more going on beneath the surface here. I could picture Lani pulling the trigger as well, judging by his words and actions. I wasn’t impressed with either man and wouldn’t rule out either of them as suspects.
The only thing I could be sure about with those two was that they were willing to throw each other under the bus. Even when that bus was the murder bus.
For being pals, Lani and Phil sure seemed to treat each other as enemies. Did that same principal apply to brother-sister relations?
“About your gun…”
“As a matter of fact, I lost it.”
“Where?”
Lani made a sour face. It seemed to be his specialty. “The police asked me the same thing. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: ‘If I knew where it was, it wouldn’t be lost, now would it?’”
He didn’t wait for my answer and stalked out the door.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I swiveled on my stool.
“Hello, Murray. I suppose you heard all that?”
Murray nodded. “The whole diner heard Lani, I’m afraid.” He buttoned up his burgundy pea coat. He had his bill in his hand. “I guess he intends to stay in Ruby Lake.”
“Apparently. Lani has an appointment with Cash Calderon. They are going to start on the stables tomorrow.”
“You mean they are going to tear them down, after all?” Murray said. “Why?”
“It seems Lani and his buddies have big plans. They intend to build a recording studio.” I assumed that Lani’s other options involving circus clowns and bird shops were mere venting. “Maybe they figure they can record their own tunes plus rent it out to others to cover their expenses,” I suggested. “You knew they were musicians, right?”
“We saw them playing on the porch, yes.” Murray scratched his head. “So they want to build a recording studio? Are they even allowed to run a commercial enterprise on the property?”
“I guess so. If Cash is involved, it must have been approved. Cash is a licensed contractor. He wouldn’t do anything that was illegal or even questionable.”
“I suppose so.” Murray crossed to the cash register and handed Moire his bill and a credit card.
When I finished my shake and licked my basket of onion rings clean and went to pay my own bill, I learned that Murray Arnold had paid for my meal as well.
It was nice to see that there were still some good people in the world. I left a fat tip for Tiffany under my milkshake glass. Before returning to Birds & Bees, I was determined to hit the lakeside trail to work off at least some
of the calories I’d consumed.
Lani was sitting in the diner’s parking lot, watching me in the rearview mirror of his vehicle as I headed toward the lakeside marina and park.
I didn’t think I had anything to worry about, but just in case, I stuck close to a mother walking with a toddler and their pooch.
15
Esther, Kim, and I were gathered around my kitchen table. Brochures, maps, and Carolina birding books lay around us. The scent of lavender and rose petals hung in the air—the commingled scents of Esther’s bath salts and Kim’s latest French perfume.
My conversation with Yvonne’s brother had left me feeling frustrated and glum. To rid myself of negative thoughts, I had spent the past few days focusing on business: bird business, not murder business.
I had posted the pictures of the yellow cardinal on the Birds & Bees bulletin board and web page as a tribute to Yvonne, without mentioning that the photographs had been taken on her property.
Solving Yvonne Rice’s murder was a problem best left to the police—even when the man in charge of those police was Jerry Kennedy.
We had a new business venture starting: Birds & Bees Adventures. Esther had come up with the name. I had suggested Birds & Bees Expeditions. Esther’s reply had been, “Expedition? You might as well say Death March.”
“Yes, Esther,” I’d replied, biting my tongue.
But Esther wasn’t done yet. “You aren’t going to get many senior citizens—and that seems to be the lifeblood of these trips, from what I’ve seen and heard—who want to go with you on some expedition.”
She said the word like it was some sort of exotic poison. “Expedition. It makes it sound like they’ll be forced to wear clunky, ten-pound hiking boots with forty-pound packs on their backs.” Tsk-tsking noises followed. “In the pouring rain.”
Esther could paint a vivid picture with words when she had a mind to.
She often had a mind to.
It hadn’t taken me long to realize that Esther was right, unfortunately, so Birds & Bees Adventures it became. And Esther was right again, adventures did sound way more fun and far more poetic than expeditions.
With luck, the new line of business would improve our bottom line, which at the moment was hovering somewhere near the bottom of the Mariana Trench.