by Misty Simon
“It happens to all of us, Tallie, you more than others because of your history.”
My history of cutting everyone who had mattered to me out of my life after I’d married and thought I was better than everyone else. It didn’t pass my notice that most people had forgiven me without much fuss. I should be thankful for that, but sometimes I wished I had never married Waldo at all so that I wasn’t in this position. Then again, being in this position also had to do with me getting too involved in things that weren’t my business. I wasn’t going to admit that right now, though. I wasn’t even going to think about it. This was my business as of last night. If I had to go to jail for something I didn’t do, then by God I was going to get that justice and ram it down someone’s throat.
“Okay, so history aside. We need to find Marianne first. I don’t have anything that Letty needs help with this afternoon, and no other obligations the rest of the day, so I’m going to make some headway on this.”
Gina nodded. “Understandable. And what do I do since you cut me out of things last night?”
“That wasn’t intentional.”
“And yet you still did it.” She buffed a spot on the lunch counter, not looking at me. “Your brother did come over to apologize with flowers, chocolates, and a card. He said he’d put a piece of jewelry on order for me, but I don’t want to think about that until it’s in my hand.”
“Do you want it to be a ring?” They’d been dating for only a few months, but they’d known each other for years and had almost gotten together before. I would love Gina as a sister-in-law, more than anyone else. But I didn’t know if it was too soon.
She took a napkin out of the dispenser and twirled it around on the countertop with her index finger. “I don’t know.” She looked up with a wrinkled forehead. “Is that bad?”
Grabbing her hand, I squeezed her fingers. “Absolutely not. And even if it is a ring, you don’t have to answer right away.”
“If it’s a ring, she’d better say yes before he even finishes asking the question,” Mama Shirley said behind me.
I hadn’t known she was there, she could be stealthy like that. Gina hadn’t known either from the way her ears flamed.
“Mom, we’ve talked about this before and it’s all up in the air. We have years. It doesn’t have to be right now. I want to make sure we’re on the same page about things before I even consider something like marriage. I want it to be forever, and forever doesn’t have to start this second.”
So different from the way I had wanted Waldo to get me out of my situation when I’d said yes to his proposal.
“Fine, fine, but know what your heart wants and then go for it. Don’t wait too long.”
“I won’t, but right now Tallie and I are working on finding that woman Marianne.”
“Red hair, big glasses, new to town?” Mama Shirley leaned a hip against the counter.
Of course Mama would know all about her. “Yes.”
“She usually comes by the front of the shop and looks longingly at the cakes before she power walks up Arch Street.”
How did she get here? Did she drive and park her car, then get back in her car to go to work? There was no way she walked here from her rental then walked to work. “Every day? At the same time?”
“Pretty much. She was late one day, but I saw her stop at the bank so that could have been why. She works for that man you girls are looking into, doesn’t she? Why do you think she’s missing?”
I let Gina give her mom the rundown on what happened last night and then endured the swat I got on the arm for not taking Gina with me, or at least letting her know where I was going in case something had happened.
“I won’t do it again.”
“See that you don’t. You girls are a pair. Even if this went weird for a little while, you’re more a pair now than you ever were. You’re not alone anymore, Tallie, you remember that.”
“I will.” I gulped to hold back the tears threatening my eyes at that one phrase. Not alone anymore. And I wasn’t.
The door opened and closed. Mama’s eyes narrowed and I wondered who it might be. When I turned, I found myself looking at a not-very-happy Annie.
“Why are you still looking into this?” she demanded. “I told you what the police found and that should be good enough for you. Rhoda is a good woman and doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.”
I rocked back in my chair. What was she talking about?
“Now, Annie, calm down.” Mama pulled a to-go cup from the rack and filled it with a fragrant roast.
“I can’t,” the other woman said. “Rhoda is at the house crying because Tallie is looking into this as a murder and it’s going to make people cancel their plans for this weekend. It’s supposed to be the grand opening and she’s already lost two reservations.”
“She has?”
Annie turned to me at my words. “Yes, she has. She’s beside herself. A murder on the property certainly isn’t something you want to put up on the website, but the gossip has gotten around. Two of the people were out-of-towners related to people who live here. They heard about the murder from their relatives and have decided to stay at that new cheap chain hotel on the freeway instead of Rhoda’s bed-and-breakfast.”
God, I hadn’t expected that. I assumed, since I was one of the few who actually thought it was murder, that no guests would give any credence to the rumor.
But even lost reservations for my family friend didn’t stop me from wanting to know who did this.
“I’m sorry.” It wouldn’t do much, but I truly was sorry.
“Then you should stop looking because you might not like what you find at the end of your trail.”
“Now, what does that mean?” Gina asked, beating me to the punch.
Annie’s gaze dropped to the floor. When she lifted her eyelashes, they were wet with tears. “I’m just saying that I know there wasn’t anyone else there on Monday. I didn’t do it, Paul didn’t do it, Arthur didn’t do it. I think it would be better if you left things alone, Tallie. From what I understand, he wasn’t a good guy and the world is better without him.” She accepted the cup from Mama, handing over a five-dollar bill.
Mama pushed it back with a shake of her head. “On the house.”
“Thank you.” She turned back to me. “I don’t know what happened, but if the coroner is willing to go with heart attack and the police think the same thing, then maybe this time you should just let it go.”
With that she left the Bean.
Mama, Gina, and I exchanged glances.
I was the first one to speak. “I’m sorry, but even if it’s Rhoda, I don’t think I can let it go. There’s a part of me that wants to just walk away and not ruin the woman’s life, but I can’t. I’m in too far to back out, and whoever did it has no right to take a life, no matter how much of a jerk Eli was.” I rose from my chair. “Besides, I know that there were other people there. Two cars pulled in while I was cleaning the windows out front. Whoever they were, it’s possible that one of them is the killer. We have to find Marianne and look further into these files. I need to know who Eli had information on so we can start narrowing this down.”
“She still hasn’t come by and that’s unusual,” Mama said. “I wonder where she could be. You should go out and check her house again. Gina, you go with her. I’ve got the counter for a little while. Everything’s done in the oven for the next hour until lunch. Go, see what you can find.”
If Mama was giving permission, then I was not going to be the one to turn her down.
* * *
I felt a lot like Thelma and Louise off on a jaunt of illegal proportions when we first went to the office and found nothing. Next, we went to Marianne’s house. I heard Peanut barking up a storm and didn’t want to set her off more than she already was.
It couldn’t be helped, though. We walked up the porch steps and tiptoed around ceramic sunflowers and frogs to get to the front door. I knocked and Gina and I stared at each other as Peanut we
nt nuts, barking and pawing at the front door.
She started bouncing against the door, and I was afraid a neighbor might call the cops. I certainly didn’t need Hammond coming out here to answer a call about me. Again.
I was about to walk away and just call Marianne again when the door creaked and then flew open under the pressure of the huge dog. Peanut scrambled out of the house with her mouth open wide and I could have sworn I was a goner to the jaws of death named Peanut.
Chapter Thirteen
Gina cowered behind me as I braced myself to be eaten by a huge Saint Bernard. Squinching my eyes shut, I waited for the first bite, hoping the dog was up-to-date with her rabies vaccination. Not that it would help me if she killed me with her jaws, but at least I wouldn’t have rabies on top of everything else.
But nothing happened. Whining reached my ears just as I felt a gentle tug on the bottom of my T-shirt. I peeked out under my lashes to find Peanut sitting on her rear end with the tail of my shirt in her jaws, pulling in small increments.
“I think she wants us to follow her. Look at her eyes, they’re so sad.” Gina shoved me forward, surprising me into taking a step over the threshold.
Peanut let go immediately to run into the house. When she realized we weren’t following, she came back and sat in the doorway whining.
“Okay, girl.” Gina moved into the house. I was the one tugging on a shirt this time, trying to keep Gina from going into someone else’s house without permission and possibly walking into something we were not equipped to deal with. Why else would Peanut be whining and Marianne not coming to the door?
But once Gina was ten feet away from me, I couldn’t stay behind.
I wound my way through the bulky furniture in the tiny house, taking in everything I could lay my eyes on. Nothing appeared disturbed, or at least not that I could tell since there was so much of it. But nothing was overturned and everything was crammed posterior-to-elbow in the house, so I was relatively sure it would be obvious if something was messed up.
Peanut went to the back of the small house and sat in the bedroom doorway. I really didn’t want to go in, but Gina was already in there, talking in low tones.
When I rounded the corner I saw Marianne spread out over the bed, blood dribbling out of her mouth and her hair all over the place—more than all over the place since it was actually lying two feet from her. A wig? Why was she wearing a wig when she had a full head of platinum-blond hair?
That was a question for later, though, because I had to do something I absolutely wanted to avoid.
I had to call Hammond.
“Don’t touch anything,” I told Gina as I dialed the very familiar number.
“She’s breathing, but I don’t know how bad it is,” Gina reported. “She’s not responding to anything I say. She’s totally knocked out.
“Hello, Tallie,” Suzy answered. “What happened now?”
“Suzy, this is serious. I’m at Marianne’s house. Hammond, or someone else—just someone—needs to come out here now. Marianne is unconscious and bleeding. She’s Eli St. James’s secretary and might be targeted because of his death.”
“Oh, dear Jesus. I’m sending someone out right now.”
Within minutes we had an ambulance on the small street. Gina stayed with Marianne while I went out front to direct the ambulance. A few neighbors tried to ask me what had happened, but I didn’t have answers so I ignored them. My mind was racing with the possibilities and the questions and the non-answers in all of this.
I was so tempted to look for the files before Hammond got here, but I didn’t want to touch anything. It didn’t stop me from looking around while the EMS professionals did their thing. I kept my hands behind my back to make a visual scan, nothing more.
A police officer showed up just as I spotted the edges of several folders sticking out of a magazine rack crammed with issues of Better Homes and Gardens from the eighties. With great restraint I did not touch it. Instead, I stood guard at the front of the house so I could make sure no one else was coming in and out. I was tired of people disappearing when I needed them to be where they said they were going to be. I was also tired of feeling like an idiot, expecting people to not lie to me.
Who was Marianne? Was that even her name? I had trusted way too easily again. Had she killed Eli and then pretended to know nothing about it to get her hands on the files? To do what with them? Maybe she knew all about the filing cabinet and was in on the private-eye thing. Maybe she was the one who was actually running it since Eli seemed to need a handler for other things. So many questions and not an answer in sight.
I waved the officer on through to the bedroom while continuing to stand at the magazine rack, not moving. I wasn’t certain these were the right files. They could be coupons or articles she’d cut out. For all I knew, they could be pictures of Peanut.
I wasn’t going to touch a thing. I promised myself, and I tried hard to keep my promises to myself if no one else.
They wheeled Marianne out with Gina following close behind.
“I hope she’s going to be okay,” Gina said, softly. “They couldn’t tell immediately if anything was broken. The blood in her mouth looks like someone punched her hard enough to knock her unconscious, and they think maybe that person ran when Peanut came after him. The poor dog doesn’t know what to do with herself without Marianne here.”
“If that’s her real name,” I said as I spotted Matt pulling up at the curb.
“Yeah, I saw the wig, too. What do you think it means?” Gina asked. “Do you think she was hiding out? I wonder if she was working with Eli instead of for him.”
I leaned on the wall, still not touching anything else. “I wonder a lot of things, but that is definitely on the top of the list. I think I found the folders containing Eli’s private-eye info. I promised myself I wouldn’t touch them.”
“Thank God for small miracles,” Matt said.
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me finding the folders, or not touching them. I wasn’t going to ask that either, I was just happy he was here so Hammond didn’t immediately take me in for whatever he could come up with. I pointed at the magazine rack and stepped back.
He used gloves to pick them out of the magazines and then moved toward the front door. It didn’t look like there was a whole filing cabinet there, but I had no idea how many there might be. I told Matt as much when he asked.
“She never gave any indication that she was wearing the wig?”
“No, to that, too. I had no idea her hair wasn’t her own.”
“Well, we’re going to look into some things and definitely take Eli’s death more seriously now.”
At least there was that. I didn’t say it, but I was definitely thinking it.
“I’m sorry we didn’t take you more seriously, but you have to understand that without any evidence I wasn’t able to move forward.” Matt ran a hand over his chin.
I just looked at him because there was no answer I could give him that wouldn’t sound rude. And I was still pissed that he’d thrown me in jail last night. My mom didn’t know, yet. If she found out, there would be a serious penalty to pay for both of us.
“Okay then.” He sighed and took out his phone. “I’m going to have to call the pound. We don’t know how long the victim will take to recover from her injuries. I can’t leave the dog here the whole time. Not to mention that we need to be able to search the house from top to bottom for evidence without having a hundred pounds of fur following us around and getting in the way.”
Gina turned pleading eyes on me, and I shook my head. I knew what she was asking. I wasn’t going to do it. No way. No how.
“Please,” she mouthed. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you could,” I whispered back.
“No, I really can’t. Because I make so much of my food upstairs or use it as a test kitchen, I signed an agreement that I wouldn’t have anything furry living in my apartment, or the building.”
“But I can’t eit
her. Not only would my dad freak, but Mr. Fleefers would have a major meltdown. I don’t want to do that to him.”
“Look at her, though.” Gina pointed at the poor puppy who had sat on her rump again. This time she wasn’t whining so much as she was crying. Peanut kept looking at the front door and then back toward the bedroom, then back at the front door. She hung her head with her mouth turned down. Oh God, she was pulling at my heart. I was going to do it. I just knew it.
She cried again when Matt put his phone back in his belt and said, “They should be here in about thirty minutes. I’ll use the time to start looking around. I’m sure she’ll be fine, but they said they’re pretty full so they might have to put her out in the barn for the night.”
I was going to do it. Oh God.
I made one last-ditch effort, anyway. “She’ll be fine, though, right? She’s like a miniature pony, and hay isn’t the worst thing even if you have always slept in what looks like a pretty classy bed.” I pointed at the huge dog bed in the corner with a nest of blankets, toys, and a sign on the wall over the whole thing that read PEANUT in calligraphy surrounded by a heart and arrows and doggy bones.
I was doing this.
“Can I take her?”
Gina clapped and Matt looked at me.
“I’m serious. I can’t let her go to the shelter when she’s obviously been pampered. At least she knows me. And it’s not like Mr. Fleefers is around anyway. He probably won’t even realize there’s a dog there. I can put his food in another room if I have to. He likes the little room behind my closet, anyway. He hides there when he’s angry with me. I guess he could do that this time, too.” I shrugged and couldn’t believe I was doing this.
My mom would probably love it. She loved all creatures small and enormous. I was sure she’d be able to talk my dad into it, even if he wouldn’t want a dog in the funeral home, especially one that really was the size of a small pony. I just hoped my apartment would survive.
“I want something for taking her, though.” I decided I’d start out big. “I want to know who Marianne really is, and I want to know what’s in those files.”