Marriage and Murder: Solving for Pie: Cletus and Jenn Mysteries Series Book #2

by Penny Reid

  “Uh, no. I’ll be leaving soon. Williams is coming to relieve me. But thanks for the offer.”

  I scratched my cheek, nodding. He’d given me the information I’d been after; the sheriff wanted Jenn’s house watched. They’d come and go in shifts until Diane was found, or until some undefined future event, or until the sheriff couldn’t spare the deputies for the assignment.

  “Well, all right then.” I made a show of shivering. “I’m getting my ass back inside. It is cold.”

  “Tell Jenn I said thanks for the muffin.”

  “I will.” I turned and lifted my hand, giving him a little wave.

  I hadn’t taken three steps before I heard Boone’s radio click on and Flo McClure’s voice say, “They found her, boys. Time to head home.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Roger that,” Boone said, followed by a chorus of other voices acknowledging the order.

  It only took me a split second to decide what to do. Glancing over my shoulder, I watched Boone set aside the coffee and the muffin. Then he turned the engine. I cleared my throat, making my way back to him and raising my voice over the hum of the car.

  “I thought you said you were here ’til Williams arrived?”

  “Oh, no. That was Flo with dispatch. We’re all done.” He gave me a tired and mostly flat smile. “But I guess you probably knew that?”

  “How’d you mean?”

  “Diane Donner.”

  “Yeah? What about her?”

  Boone’s eyebrows pulled together, and his eyes flicked over me in an inspection. “They found her. I thought you would know.”

  I allowed my actual and genuine surprise to show. “I did not. No one called us.”

  “Jenn’s momma didn’t call her? Last night or this morning?”

  “Well, no. Jenn’s phone is missing. And Diane didn’t call me.”

  “Jenn’s phone is missing? Since when?” Even in his exhausted state, this news seemed to perk him up.

  I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering again to stall answering the question. The truth was the phone had been missing since last night. Apparently, Jenn had left it in the honeymoon cabin during the party. Since everyone she knew was going to be in the fancy faux-barn, she had no reason to bring it. Plus, it’s not like her delightful red dress had a phone pocket.

  But when the police had released everyone at 2:00 AM and we went to retrieve her things before driving home, her phone wasn’t where she’d left it in the cabin. Her bag, wallet, clothes, and even her earrings were present and accounted for. But no phone.

  “You know, I can’t rightly say when she misplaced it.” I shivered harder, backing away, and raising my voice. If he asked me something else, I would pretend I couldn’t hear him, what with his car engine, the distance, and my slow brain. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep much either, and it is damn cold out here. Maybe when I warm up my brain will work better.” I said this last bit from the front porch, waving again as I backed into the house. “Well, see you later!”

  With that I shut the door, and just in time too. The burner phone in my pocket buzzed.

  Burro.

  Jogging on the balls of my feet, I silently vamoosed to the kitchen and shivered for real. Once there, I skadoodled to the pantry, closed the pantry door—Hmm. Hiding in pantries. Seems to be becoming a habit—and answered the phone.

  “What I really want to know is, does he have an old lady?” I launched right into it. Burro and I didn’t exchange pleasantries. Ever.

  “I wondered when you were going to find out.” He chuckled, sounding pleased as a pig in pie. Or more precisely, like a donkey. He had this crazy laugh, like a hee-haw, even when he chuckled.

  “You knew?”

  “Of course.”

  I made a sound of disbelief, not catching it in time. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

  “That’s not our arrangement. I answer all the questions you ask and none of the ones you don’t.”

  That was our arrangement, mostly because Burro liked to talk, and I didn’t always have time for his stories.

  “Fine.” I narrowed my eyes, frowning. No use schooling an expression he couldn’t see. “Just to be sure we’re both referring to the same person, who is Repo’s woman?”

  “Diane Donner.”

  “Fuck.” I stopped myself just before hitting a bag of flour with my palm. How was this possible? How had I not known? How . . . many bags of flour did Jenn have in here?

  Focus!

  “How long?”

  “Well, that’s complicated.” Burro still sounded gleeful. “The first time I saw them together was Christmas, over a year ago now. Believe it or not, she just showed up here, la-di-da. And in a miniskirt.”

  “Well, God bless her.”

  “Repo saw to that.” He was chuckling again.

  “Moving on. They’ve been together for over a year?” That didn’t seem right. What else had I not noticed while I’d been pleasantly ensconced in amor facit with my fiancée?

  If Diane and Repo had been together for over a year and I’d failed to notice? Then this was the intervention I required, the wake-up call. Mind you, I didn’t plan to do a single thing about it. I would not change my current course of pleasurable actions for anything in the world, but at least I’d be prepared for the fact that I was no longer omniscient.

  “No, they have not been together for over a year. And I kept an eye out, ’cause that was something worth knowing. I’d started to think it was a one-time thing, a fluke. No contact for a year, at least none that made it into my net. And then all of a sudden, as of the week after this past Christmas, they’ve been fucking around a lot.”

  I grimaced at his choice of words but remained on task. “Where do they meet?”

  “One of the safe houses known only to the top brass, barely used.”

  “I can’t see that going over well,” I mumbled. Dammit. There I went, volunteering my thoughts again. What was wrong with me?

  You haven’t slept and you haven’t had your coffee yet. You left it on the counter.

  Oh. Well. That explained it.

  “Repo has been diverting funds for upkeep recently. Had the interior painted two months ago I think, outside still looks like shit, though.”

  I opened the pantry door and peeked around the corner. Coast clear, I stepped out just long enough to grab my coffee. “Send me the address. And where is Repo now?”

  “He’s here. Walked in about an hour ago looking like the sole of my boot. I reckon he’s sleeping now.”

  I swallowed a gulp of my now disappointingly tepid coffee. “I need to know where he was for the last—uh—twelve—no—fourteen hours. Where he was, how long he was there, in each place. Send everything to this phone. And I want to know when he leaves again and where he goes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Burro may have been helping only because he owed me—big time—but I had no reason to take the man for granted. “I’ll be in touch, different number next time, same area code.”

  “Wait, one more thing. Isaac Sylvester—Twilight—I think he found out last night, about his father.”

  I took another gulp of my coffee and swallowed before asking, “Why’re you telling me? I didn’t ask.”

  Isaac Sylvester could go die in a fire for all I cared. Jenn would be broken up about the death of her brother, but the guy was a piece of work. In my book, he was just as bad as his father.

  “Well, I thought you should know, you being so close to the family. He’s not a bad kid.”

  I grunted. Burro and I had two very different definitions for the word bad.

  “Listen, Cletus. He was gone all night, and no one knows where he went.”

  “But you do.”

  “Of course I do. I checked when the news came over the scanner. He was at the lodge, or the vicinity. You know that slope on the north side through the forest? The dirt road through the trees? That’s where he went. After a while, he left and went to y
’all’s place.”

  “Jenn’s house?”

  “No. The Winston homestead. Or, you know, around there. He parked at the abandoned convenience store, and so I figured he went on foot to your place, at least that’s what his phone’s locator says.”

  “Hmm.” Why would he be there? “Where is he now?”

  “Last I checked, still there.”

  I pondered that. Billy, Roscoe, Jethro, Sienna and baby Ben were all at the homestead. Isaac would have to be an idiot to attempt anything with three of my brothers there. Especially Billy. He’d beat the tar out of any Iron Wraith he found on the property.

  Nevertheless, better to be safe than sorry. “But where specifically? How close to the house?”

  “You know I can’t be certain, but it looks like he’s still in the forest, to the west.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the heads-up.” I’d call Jethro and let him know.

  Jethro is tired. Leave Jethro alone.

  Right. I’d call Beau and Shelly, let them know to head over and keep an eye out. Shelly was due for some baby-holding time in any case. I knew how much she loved holding babies (almost as much as me).

  “Sucks, though. His dad dies and he can’t, you know, be there for his sister, his momma.” Burro, who wasn’t prone to sympathy for anyone for any reason, surprised me.

  Unsure what he expected me to say, I settled on, “That’s the life you live. He chose it.”

  “Yeah, but . . . it’s his dad.”

  “His dad was seagull guano left on a plastic trash island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. No, actually, Kip was the plastic trash island. Guano has purpose.”

  Burro chuckled. “Sure. But the kid is gonna grieve.”

  “He shouldn’t.”

  “Name a person alive who doesn’t have a lot of feelings about their father.”

  Hmm. “Good point.”

  To my knowledge, there existed no handbook regarding suitable actions when one’s fiancée has learned of their father’s untimely demise on the evening of her engagement party. Nor, I suspected, did a resource exist that summarized appropriate methods for offering comfort when said fiancée’s mother is hauled into the police station the morning after aforementioned father’s untimely demise, to be questioned and without the ability to receive visitors.

  This is all to say, Kip was exceedingly dead. Diane was somewhere in the police station being questioned. Jenn wasn’t allowed to see her momma, and that seemed to make her sad.

  And I didn’t know what to do, so I made lists. I’d already made several mental lists to pass the time, one of which centered around things that needed to be done straightaway at the lodge. Someone needed to see about the logistics of continuing bakery operations with reduced capacity—Jenn wasn’t going back to work anytime soon—and, given what I knew of Diane’s whereabouts last night, I’d assumed she wouldn’t be going back to work anytime soon either.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jenn's chin wobble and she glanced down at her lap. A new tear fell, trailing down her cheek and upending the mental list I’d been working on. She dabbed at it with a tissue. I shifted in my seat to lean closer but was careful to ensure our hands stayed linked. Sensing someone watching me, I glanced up to the where Flo McClure sat behind her desk at the far side of the police station’s waiting room and met the woman’s dark brown gaze.

  She gave me a tight-lipped smile. It did not reach her eyes.

  “I don't even know what I'm thinking,” Jenn whispered, drawing my attention back to her.

  She hadn’t said much this morning. I’d woken her up after alerting Beau and Shelly about a potential Iron Wraith camping out in the woods behind the house. I told them my sources said the Wraith was Isaac Sylvester but asked them to keep his identity from the folks at the homestead.

  When I roused Jenn to tell her Diane had been found and was safe, I’d hoped Jenn would go back to sleep. Instead, she’d insisted on going down to the police station and seeing her mother for herself.

  That had been hours ago. There’d been no Saturday waffles. We hadn’t eaten breakfast. I was starting to worry about her blood sugar levels. If Diane didn’t materialize from wherever they held her soon, I was going to call in an order at Daisy’s and bribe Roscoe to pick it up and deliver it.

  “I don't know or understand what I'm feeling.” Her stare remained unfocused, forward and down.

  I leaned in close, squeezing her hand. “If you need to talk about it, about anything, I hope you know you can talk to me. But I’m not going to push you to talk if you don’t want to.”

  “I know.” She nodded, wiping her nose with a tissue. Then, after inhaling a tremendous breath, she turned her head and faced me. “Cletus, I have to tell you something.”

  “Anything. Tell me anything.” I cupped her jaw, not caring that Flo McClure might as well have been eating popcorn as she enjoyed the show. I swear, that woman.

  “Last night, when we were in the pantry, hiding after the gunshots?” Her voice was so quiet, and I knew she didn’t want anyone to overhear. Posey Lamont, Vanessa Romero, Jedediah Hill, Nikki Becker, and a few others from the party last night were scattered around the waiting room. They’d given us soft looks as we entered but hadn’t approached.

  I bent forward so she could talk directly into my ear. “Yes? What about it?”

  “And Roger came in?” Her voice was more breath than sound. “I thought maybe my father had shot into the bakery and he was the intruder and I—I—”

  “What? What is it?” I leaned away so I could see her face. My brow furrowed because she looked so darn sad. And guilty.

  “I said a prayer.” Her face crumpled, more tears leaking out of her eyes.

  “That’s okay. Saying prayers isn’t—”

  “No. I prayed that God would strike my father dead, and now he is!”

  “Oh.” Oh no.

  Jenn nodded, clearly beside herself, and she sorta leaned, but mostly fell into me, pressing her face against my shoulder as her arms came around my neck. She sobbed.

  I held her tightly, knowing that a single Oh wasn’t going to suffice as a response to her confession. “There, there,” I added, the words clumsy and unhelpful.

  But, Lord help me, I had no idea how to respond. I thought about admitting that I’d also prayed for Kip Sylvester to be on the receiving end of a biblical smiting—more than once—but dismissed that idea right out of the gate.

  “You know . . .” I paused, cleared my throat, thought for a bit, and tried yet again, “You know you’re a good person, right?”

  She cried harder.

  Dammit.

  I felt certain the internet was full of all sorts of information related to guilt, grief, and end of life issues. Yet I seriously doubted it contained anything remotely related to our present predicament. What I needed was something entitled, How to support your fiancée as she tries to process the death of her evil bastard of a father who was found in the parking lot of her mother’s hotel and realize she’s not to blame for his being strangled then shot on the evening of her engagement party when he wasn’t even invited.

  That’s what I needed.

  Maybe I’ll write it.

  “Uh, Cletus?” In an uncharacteristic display of tact, Flo McClure had approached us and gentled her voice to say my name.

  I looked up without pulling out of Jenn’s embrace. “Yes?”

  “Diane is almost done. She’ll be out in a sec.”

  “Thanks, Flo.”

  Jenn sniffled and pulled away, wiping at her eyes again. The tissue she used was more crumbles of lint than solid form. “Thanks, Flo,” Jenn echoed.

  “Oh, Jennifer. I’m so sorry,” Flo said, surprising me. The woman was not usually one to offer comfort. At her most agreeable, she was saltier than a sardine.

  “Thanks.” Jenn grabbed her purse and pulled the strap to her shoulder as she stood.

  “That must’ve been a real blow, having all your careful planning ruined like that,” Flo c
ontinued, earning her a confused look from both Jenn and me.

  “What?” Jenn’s voice was nasally, rough with lack of sleep and tears.

  “The party, hun. That was a real shame.” The older woman shook her head sadly. “Nancy and I were so looking forward to it. And to have it ruined like that, by those people.” She clicked her tongue. “Any chance your momma will try for a round two? I heard scallops were on the menu.”

  Jenn glanced at me, I glanced at Jenn, and I believe we had the same thought at precisely the same time.

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. Raised a finger. Dropped it.

  It was Posey Lamont who eventually spoke up. “Florence McClure. You know that girl just lost her daddy, and you’re asking her to reschedule a party so you can try scallops?”

  Flo cast Posey—who was dressed in an ill-advised chartreuse ensemble with fringe at the cuffs and shoulder pads—a withering stare. “Of course I know Kip is dead, Posey. We were all there. But I also know that asshole got what was coming to him. I bet the girl is crying over her good fortune, sure. That man was a menace.”

  Ah. There she is. Salty as a sea shanty.

  Posey and Vanessa, who’d been sitting next to each other, reared back in perfect synchronization.

  Vanessa’s mouth dropped and she pressed her hand to her chest. “Don’t presume to know Jennifer Sylvester’s feelings about anything, Florence. Just because Nancy Danvish told you some story about—”

  “He stole her farm! Stole it right out from under her, her life’s work. Turned her out of her own house, kicked her off her own land. So don’t you presume to tell me what Nancy did or did not say. I know the truth, and the truth is whoever killed Kip Sylvester did us all a favor.”

  With that, Florence lifted her chin, turned on her heel, and marched back to her desk.

  “Well!” Posey Lamont and Vanessa Romero exchanged wide-eyed stares, huffing in unison.

  “Good grief!” This came from Jedidiah Hill, flinging his own wide-eyed stare around the room.

  “I should say so.” Nikki Becker pursed her lips together, flicking a disapproving glance to Flo and then turning her body as though to give the woman her back.