Cardinal Sin

by J. R. Ripley

  “Do you want a drink or not?” Kim snapped as she reached for the bottle and two glasses.

  We took our drinks to the living room and sat side by side on the sofa.

  I told her about my little adventure at Webber’s Pond. Of course, she had already heard Dan’s version of it. At least, as much as he felt he could, as an officer of the law, tell her without giving up any information that could jeopardize their investigation.

  I also described to her what had occurred down at the police station earlier that day.

  “Wow.” Kim pulled her knees up to her chin. “I hadn’t heard. Dan has been busy, and I haven’t talked to him all day.”

  I was nodding. “Believe me, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard Jerry asking Ross Barnswallow about his connection to Alan Spenner.”

  “That is weird,” Kim agreed. “And spooky.”

  “If it wasn’t Spenner who murdered them, then it had to be Ross. I just can’t figure out why.”

  “If you can’t, don’t expect me to.” Kim took a thoughtful drink. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe they were in it together?”

  I slapped my forehead. “Bird poop.” I drained my glass and quickly refilled it. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Because you are not as smart as me?”

  We batted around a lot of theories, but none of them made sense. Murderers do not kill for nothing. There had to be a reason that our killer decided that Yvonne Rice had to die and then Gar Samuelson.

  What was it?

  “Let’s say that Alan Spenner killed Yvonne because he was on the run. He barges into her cabin. There was no sign of a break-in, but she could have simply left her door unlocked.” I played the scene in my mind. “He shoots her, steals her cell phone—”

  “Why does he steal her phone?”

  “Maybe he was thinking he could use it and then decided that he couldn’t risk it because it could be traced.”

  “That makes sense,” Kim agreed. But then she had to ask, “Where did he get the gun?”

  “It could have been Lani Rice’s weapon.” I explained that he owned a handgun he claimed had gone missing.

  “How would Alan Spenner get Lani Rice’s gun?”

  I had to think about that one for a bit. Finally, I came up with an answer. “Maybe,” I speculated, “Yvonne borrowed the gun from her brother.”

  “Without telling him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “You said it yourself. Suppose you were right, Yvonne knew she was in some kind of danger. She borrowed her brother’s gun to protect herself.”

  “And instead it was used on her.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think your theory has more holes in it than one of those purple martin houses we sell at Birds and Bees.”

  “Such as?”

  “Maybe Yvonne had some connection to Alan Spenner and was worried for her safety.”

  Kim scrunched up her face. “Was the news even out at that point about his escape? Did she know?”

  “Not helping,” I snapped, feeling a drumming building in my skull. “Okay, how about this—”

  Kim yawned. “How about if I go check on the brownies?”

  I followed her, furiously constructing theory after theory in my brain as we entered the warm kitchen. Each carefully built theory fell apart as quickly as I formed it.

  Kim pulled a long-bladed knife from the drawer and sliced into the tray of brownies.

  I squinted, distracted from my thoughts. “They look sort of yellowish inside. Are you sure you cooked them long enough?”

  “Forty-five minutes, like it said on the package.”

  The inside of the brownies looked more like some sort of yellow-white alien guts than a dessert food. “What recipe did you use? Not your mother’s, I hope?” Kim’s mom was a notoriously bad cook.

  “No. I took it right off the box.”

  I picked up a fork and probed the side of a brownie. “It looks more like a chocolate omelet. How many eggs did you use?”

  “Maybe it’s just that one section that is funny.” Kim took her knife and cut a wide slice at the opposite end of the tray. “The oven cooks uneven at times.”

  But the brownie guts here looked as bad as they did on the other side. “I don’t understand it.” Kim studied the ugly stain on the knife. “I only used the one dozen.”

  I dropped my fork. I was just about to slide a bite onto my tongue. “One dozen eggs? That doesn’t sound right.” I scooped up my scrambled egg brownie and plopped it down in the kitchen sink, where it settled in over the dirty dishes. “Let me see this box.”

  “Okay, okay.” Kim pulled open the door under the sink and plucked a box from the trash. I noticed an empty carton of eggs in there too. “Here.”

  I read quickly. “One egg.”

  “Huh?” Kim was cutting the remaining brownies into somewhat equal squares.

  “Read here.” I pressed my fingernail to the side of the box. “That’s one egg per batch.”

  Kim came closer, squinting. “One egg. Yep, you’re right. You think it makes a difference?”

  “Only if you intend to eat them.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Go ahead.” I picked up a yellow-white-chocolate alien slime bar and lifted it to her mouth. “Try one.”

  Kim pushed my hand away. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry right now.”

  “Right.” Kim’s phone, sitting on the kitchen counter, rang. I looked at the screen. “It’s Dan. Aren’t you going to answer?”

  “Maybe later,” Kim said inexplicably. She retreated to the living room once again, and I followed her.

  Plopping down on the sofa—a touch irritable since I’d been deprived of my promised brownie—I said, “This whole thing just has to be about Alan Spenner and Ross Barnswallow. Where’s your laptop?”

  Kim pointed, and I retrieved it from her small desk near the front door. I fired it up on my lap.

  “Alan Spenner has been locked up for years,” I said after sifting the internet. “And there is no record of any Yvonne, Rice or otherwise, as ever having been connected to him, victim or otherwise.”

  “Plus, Yvonne only moved to the mainland from Hawaii a short while ago. Face it, Amy.” Kim picked up the TV remote and began flipping through the stations. “There is no reason on earth why Ross Barnswallow would want to help Alan Spenner kill anybody. Spenner almost beat him to death with a baseball bat.”

  Kim landed on a glitzy fashion show and turned her attention to the screen. “If somebody practically turned me into mush with a baseball bat, you wouldn’t see me helping them take out the trash, let alone commit murder.”

  “If not them, don’t you think that it must be one of the other guests at the housewarming party?” I insisted. “I mean, it has to be, hasn’t it? Somebody at the Ouija board wrote I am murdered.”

  “Could be. Or it could be that Yvonne wrote that herself like we already talked about.”

  “That’s the same thing that Murray Arnold said when I asked him about it. But why? What possible reason could she have to write such a thing? I don’t know.”

  Kim shrugged. “We’ve eliminated any connection with Alan Spenner. Maybe it was just a random home invasion.”

  “I could accept that, maybe,” I said, “if it had only been Yvonne. But Gar too?”

  “Maybe you’re making too much out of that whole I am murdered thing,” suggested Kim. “Maybe Dan got it wrong.”

  “I suppose you could be right. Could it have been meant as a joke? A premonition?”

  “If it was a joke, it was a sick one.”

  “I agree. But you have to agree that if it was a joke, Yvonne paid the ultimate price for it.”

  “Her life.�
�

  “Exactly.”

  “The more I think about it, the more I maintain that somebody at the housewarming party that night just has to be the murderer. And that somebody is Ross Barnswallow.”

  “So he killed Mr. Samuelson, too?”

  “It stands to reason.”

  “Why? Why would he kill Yvonne and then, later, Mr. Samuelson? According to you, Alan Spenner is the person Ross Barnswallow would have wanted to dead. And,” Kim just had to add as if adding salt to a wound, “Spenner is the one who had been hiding out in that empty cabin.”

  “I haven’t quite figured all that out yet.”

  Kim’s face suddenly fell. She switched off the television.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You don’t think this is my fault, do you?” Kim wrung her hands. “I mean, you don’t blame me, do you, Amy?”

  “You? Why would I think you would want to shoot Yvonne? It’s not like she was after your boyfriend.”

  “Thanks, I think.” Kim frowned. “I’m not talking about jealousy, thank you very much. I’m talking about Baron Samedi.”

  “Ah. Your housewarming gift. Welcome to Ruby Lake.” I thrust out my arms. “Here’s the Lord of Death. I thought you might enjoy him.”

  Kim squirmed uncomfortably. “I didn’t want—I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen to Yvonne,” she said softly.

  “Of course not.” I refilled our wine glasses. “Let’s stop talking about it now. Maybe the answer will come to us.”

  “Better yet, let the police handle this one. Jerry might be a little challenged in the gray-cell department, but Dan is really smart.”

  “A little?” I chuckled. “Speaking of Dan, he said the oddest thing to me.”

  “When was this?”

  “The night of Alan Spenner’s capture.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked me about you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  I ran my finger around the rim of my glass. “He asked me if you were okay.”

  “Okay?” Kim scrunched up her nose. “That’s funny.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I tipped back my head and drank. “He said something else funny.”

  “And that is?” Kim joined me gulp for gulp.

  “He asked me if you were seeing somebody.”

  “What? That’s preposterous. I would never do a thing like that!”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Good.” Kim slammed her glass down. “Seeing somebody,” she muttered between curses. “The nerve. He’s the one with that-that woman staying with him in his house.”

  “Turns out,” I said, ignoring Kim’s rant, “Dan didn’t mean seeing somebody quite the way I thought.”

  “That’s good,” Kim huffed, still brimming with indignation over the remark.

  “No. You made the same mistake I did. What Dan meant was seeing somebody as in a psychiatrist.” I stared steadily at Kim waiting for a reaction. “Have you any idea where he would get such a—pardon the pun—crazy idea?”

  Kim’s breath caught in her throat. “Uh…”

  I could see by the anguish and embarrassment written on her face that she had more than an idea. “Kim,” I said, “what did you do?”

  Kim stood and paced the floor.

  “They caught me,” Kim lamented.

  “Caught you what?”

  “Not what.” Kim faced out the front window. “Where.”

  “Okay, where?”

  “In Asheville. I rounded a corner downtown. You know, near the park where they have the drum circle on Saturday night?” Kim turned back to me.

  I knew the place and said so. “Paula and Dan caught you spying on them?” I groaned. “What did you do? What did they say?”

  “They were surprised to see me,” Kim replied, pink-faced. “I said the first thing I could think of.”

  “What was that?” If I’d been in her shoes, I had no idea what I might have said in my defense. Nothing believable or even plausible sprang to mind.

  “I told them I was in Asheville because I had an appointment.”

  “Okay, okay.” I nodded. “That’s not so bad.” I took the idea and ran with it. “You told them you had an appointment that you had forgotten about earlier and only remembered at the mention of Asheville. Good.” I rubbed my hands together. “Good. I like it.”

  Kim’s face told a different tale. She looked miserable.

  “Who did you say you had your appointment with? For what?”

  “With Dr. DiNizio.”

  That was a new one on me. “Who is Dr. DiNizio? GP?”

  Kim shook her head in the negative.

  “OB/GYN?”

  More negative head shaking.

  “Dentist?” I ventured. “He’s not a pediatrician, is he?” Kim could act rather childish.

  Kim hung her head and mumbled, “A psychologist.”

  I cupped a hand over my ear. “A what?”

  “A psychologist,” Kim repeated through gritted teeth.

  “What did you tell them that for? Why not just say that you were doing some shopping or seeing a dentist to get your teeth cleaned? A psychologist!”

  “I panicked,” Kim said. “It was the first thing I could think of.”

  “Psychologist was the first thing you could think of?” What would a psychologist make of that interesting tidbit?

  Kim huffed. “There was a sign for a psychologist on the door of the building I was standing beside when they caught me.”

  “Dr. DiNizio, Psychologist?”

  “Yes.”

  I pictured the scene and smiled. Did that make me a bad friend? “Then what happened? What did you do?”

  Kim’s head hung impossibly lower. “What could I do? I had no choice. I couldn’t let them know I’d been spying on them. I went inside.”

  “You went into Dr. DiNizio’s office?”

  Kim nodded reluctantly.

  I rubbed my jaw, a poor attempt to hide my grin. “So now Dan and Paula think you’re not a spy, just some crazy psycho?”

  Kim groaned.

  “Cheer up,” I said. “It’s better Dan should know the truth about you now rather than finding out later.”

  For once, Kim didn’t have a comeback. I almost felt sorry for her, then I remembered the time when she switched out my best moisturizing lotion with the cheapest, cheesiest orange self-tanner, and the feeling passed.

  I draped an arm over her sagging shoulder. “Look, I’m sure it will be fine. Why not simply admit that you—”

  “You want me to admit that I was spying on them?”

  I gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Of course not. How about this? You tell them you had changed your mind about joining them. Yes!” I snapped my fingers. “So you got in your car and drove up to Asheville to surprise them.”

  Kim sniffed and swiped the bottom of her nose with a balled-up tissue. “That’s not bad,” she said. “But how do I explain what I said about visiting Dr. DiNizio?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” I replied. I slid back my chair. “You tell them you are crazy!” I jumped and ran for the kitchen door.

  I was rounding the corner of the house when the wet brownie hit me in the back of the head.

  Hey, it was better than a cupcake.

  Or a rolling pin.

  25

  The next day was like an eternity. It was Esther’s day off, and I’d had to work for a change. Of course, Esther the Pester’s response when I’d asked her to postpone her free day so I could do some snooping had been to tell me that it was about time I worked for a change.

  Knowing I was on shaky ground, I had not bothered to argue the point with her.

  The highlight of the day was looking out the window and seeing Derek striding up the path to
Birds & Bees in his dark blue wool suit. He had a takeout food bag in his hand.

  He paused outside the door for a moment. He stood there as if hesitating, glanced at the sack in his hand, then pulled open the door. “Hi, Amy.”

  “This is a nice surprise.” I ran over and gave him a warm hug.

  “You may want to rethink that nice part,” Derek replied enigmatically.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Only a joke.”

  “How’s the cut?” I gently ran my fingers along the bandage on his chin.

  “It’s fine. The bandage gives me a rugged look, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “Very sexy.”

  He hefted the bag. “I brought lunch.”

  “So I see. Jessamine’s,” I said, reading the side of the bag. “Smells delicious.”

  “Shall we eat in the kitchenette?”

  “We can’t. I’m the only one in the store right now. I like to be up toward the front in case a customer comes in.”

  Derek did a three-sixty. “The sales counter? You’ve got a couple of stools, right?”

  “Yes, but I have a better idea.” I ran behind the counter and pulled a throw blanket from the bottom shelf. We kept it there when we needed something to take the chill off. I flapped the blanket in the air and laid it on the floor near the entrance. “We’ll have a picnic.”

  Derek chuckled. “Works for me.”

  I grabbed us a couple of teas, and we settled down on the throw. Lunch consisted of fried green tomato sandwiches on jalapeño cornbread with a side of boiled peanut hummus on spicy flatbread.

  Afterward, I settled my head against Derek’s warm chest. “That was delicious. Feel free to surprise me with lunch every day.”

  Our lunch had not been interrupted by a single customer. I decided to look at that as a good thing. My bank account could argue otherwise later.

  I felt Derek’s laughter vibrate against my head and spine. “Actually, there is another reason for my coming.”

  I twisted around, making eye contact. “Care to explain?” I ran my fingers along his chest. He had removed his jacket and hung it on the coat tree by the door. “Or demonstrate?”

  Derek cleared his throat. “You aren’t making this any easier, Amy.”