Into the Frying Pan

by Sarah Osborne

  My next call went to Sally. I was surprised she picked up. My theory was that she and Phil were somewhere together.

  “Phil is missing in action,” I said. “Any idea where he might be?”

  “Did you call Harper?” Sally asked.

  “I did. No answer.”

  “That’s your answer don’t you think?”

  “Were you the one who slammed a book onto his head?”

  “Where do you get off?”

  I’d never heard Sally really angry before. I thought she might hang up on me but she didn’t, so I kept talking.

  “I know you’ve been seeing Phil at the hotel. And I know Harper’s been doing the same.”

  I could hear Sally take a deep breath before she answered. “There’s no crime in that. At least not for me. I don’t have a husband who was recently murdered.”

  “Do you think Harper and Phil might have been involved in both murders?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past those two,” she said. “They’re both determined to get what they want, and they don’t care who gets hurt along the way.”

  “Harper says Phil wanted to marry her. Do you know about that?”

  “Part of Harper’s vivid imagination if you ask me. I’m done with both of them. They’re not worth my time, and as soon as I can get out of here, I’m gone.”

  “Sally, I know you were devastated by Carl’s death, but Kathy made it sound as if you two had a falling out right before he died,” I said.

  This time she did hang up on me.

  I called Danny to tell him I’d done all I could to help find Phil. Best bet was that he was off with Harper. Strangely, I didn’t have the same sense of panic about his safety that I’d had so recently. Maybe I no longer saw him as a potential victim.

  I heard Mason enter the house announcing dinner was about to be served. I found him and the kids at the kitchen island waiting for me to show up.

  “Did you get me Mongolian Beef?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And egg rolls?”

  “I’d never forget those,” Mason said and gave me a kiss.

  Jason made a face and Lucie giggled. Mason passed out chopsticks and for half an hour we enjoyed ourselves right down to the fortune cookies.

  After dinner, I got the kids in bed, and then Mason and I talked.

  “Still no word on Phil?” Mason said.

  “Nope.”

  “Your ex-boyfriend seems to disappear a lot.”

  I told him about my conversation with Sally.”

  “Sounds as if you ruffled a few feathers,” Mason said.

  “My mother and brother would say that’s what I spent my life doing. You know for some reason I’m not really worried about Phil, like I was the other day,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe you believe he actually is capable of murder. Of course, it would be foolish for him to run from the police. He’d know that, but perhaps he needed time to sort things out.”

  Mason led me out back where we could sit on the deck and not worry about the kids overhearing us.

  “Does Barden know any more?” I asked.

  “About as much as we do,” Mason said. “The sheriff from Gordon County is waiting for forensic evidence regarding the cannon to determine whether or not the explosion could have been an accident.”

  “I thought they’d already decided that.”

  “Phil Brockton’s father called in his own private investigator, an expert on munitions, and that guy is presenting all kinds of different scenarios,” Mason said.

  “He can’t come up with anything to explain the live ammunition that killed Ryan.”

  “No.”

  “So why haven’t they arrested Phil?” I asked.

  “All the evidence is circumstantial. No smoking gun, so to speak. Phil would have been smart enough to know the bullet couldn’t be traced to his gun.”

  “Any word on the mysterious accounting book?” I asked.

  “Not yet. I wish we could turn up those missing pages, but you can bet they’ve been destroyed.”

  “No information on the handwriting analysis?” I asked.

  “One curious fact. When handwriting experts compared Carl’s handwriting to the ledger, they did discover a difference. Carl never crossed his sevens.”

  “You mean the way an accountant might do?” I asked.

  “How would you know that?”

  “Lurleen explained it to me, so the number couldn’t be confused with a one.”

  “It’s lucky Lurleen’s not a suspect,” Mason said.

  “Right, and the only other person likely to write like an accountant is—”

  “Sally Cutter,” Mason finished for me. “People claim she’s not all that smart, not clever enough to embezzle money.”

  “I think she’s a whole lot smarter than people give her credit for,” I said, “and I have wondered how she had the money to dress in designer clothes and stay in a hotel like the Whitley. I assumed she got her money from her father, but maybe she got it somewhere else.”

  I looked at Mason.

  “Did the book make it clear that the money was going out and not coming in?”

  “I don’t think it did, but the payments coincided with money leaving Carl’s account.”

  “Any chance Lurleen and I might see the book?” I asked.

  “Highly unlikely,” Mason said. “The police do know what they’re doing, Ditie.”

  I suddenly remembered something. Sally had written her cell number on the card she gave me at the funeral service. I’d just used it to call her, but I hadn’t paid any attention to the way she wrote her numbers. I fished it out. “There you go. Every seven is crossed. Sally’s our girl.”

  “She might be our girl, but there may be a lot of people who cross their sevens. I’ll tell the police to check this out.”

  My cell phone rang. It was Dan. I listened and after he hung up I relayed the information to Mason.

  “Phil finally called Dan. He told him he was going stir crazy, so he took off to be by himself for a while. He said he’d be back in an hour or two.”

  Mason looked angry. “He didn’t bother to tell Danny where he was going?”

  “Apparently not. He apologized to Danny and then said some things were private.”

  “You believe all that?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t believe he was alone. I’ll bet he was with Harper.”

  I went inside to check on the kids. Jason was asleep but Lucie was writing in her notebook. She put it aside when I walked in.

  “You’ve been doing some more thinking about the case, Lucie?”

  She blushed. “Are you teasing me, Aunt Di?”

  “Not at all. You have a remarkable eye for detail, and detail may be what we need right now.”

  “I was making a list of people who might want to hurt Dr. Thompson,” Lucie said.

  “May I see it?”

  Together we went over the list. Lucie described Carl Thompson as someone who was not a nice person. When I asked her what she meant, she said she’d heard people at the party talk about him. That he stole money. That he was mean to people. They said he was mean to his wife. They said he took whatever he could get, and if it belonged to someone else that didn’t matter.”

  “Who said these things, Lucie?”

  “Dr. Frank and Dr. Andy and Dr. Ryan.”

  “They were together?”

  “Yes. They were all together in a group and then when the woman named Sally came over, they stopped talking.”

  I nodded, kissed her and turned out the light.

  I found Mason on the deck where I’d left him. The mosquitoes didn’t love Mason, but they certainly loved me. It was just growing dark, and after a minute I claimed defeat.

 
; “I’m being eaten alive.”

  “We can’t have that.” Mason took my hand and headed for the living room. “You were gone a while.”

  “Lucie’s doing more detecting. She confirms what we already know. We have a lot of suspects who might have wanted Carl dead.”

  My cell rang.

  “Hi Mabel, it’s me Harper. I hope it’s not too late to call. I got your message that you were looking for Phil. I don’t know where he is. Have you found him?”

  “Yes, he’s fine.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “I don’t know if this is possible, but I wondered if I might come over for a few minutes tonight. I was a little hysterical when I saw you last, and I want to straighten that out.”

  “Okay. Mason Garrett is here. I hope that’s not a problem.”

  “Not at all. I’d be happy to talk with both of you. I want us all to be on the same page.”

  I made a fresh pot of decaf coffee, defrosted some macaroons, and then we waited. I’d said she’d never be welcome in my house again, and I meant it. But this wasn’t a social visit, and I needed to hear what she had to say.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Harper arrived thirty minutes later, looking calm but somber.

  I ushered her into the living room and made sure the kids’ doors were closed.

  “We’ll have to speak quietly, so we don’t wake the kids,” I said.

  “No problem,” Harper said. “I don’t know if Lucie mentioned anything about my behavior at the party, but I wanted to apologize for it anyway. I don’t think I was very nice to her.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Actually I wasn’t very nice to anyone at the party. I’d had too much to drink. I think we all did. Anyway, when I shooed Lucie away, it was really because I find it hard to be around children.”

  She paused, and again Mason and I remained silent.

  “I’ve never really gotten over the fact that I can’t have my own.”

  Mason looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  “It’s not a secret.” She turned to Mason. “I got sick, and it left me infertile.”

  She didn’t add that her infertility was caused by multiple sexual contacts and sexually transmitted diseases.

  “So, you see it’s hard for me to be around children. I was a young woman when it all happened. Ryan was incredibly loyal to me even though he wanted a family. At some point he said we would adopt. Now, he’s gone, and I’m totally alone.”

  “How are you coping?” I asked.

  “It’s hard. Harder than I imagined. I lost my father last year, but in many ways this is more painful.”

  She ran a hand through her sleek blond hair.

  “Ryan was so upset before he died. I don’t think he understood how much I loved him.”

  I was having a hard time with this conversation. I stuffed a macaroon in my mouth to avoid saying something I might regret.

  “I know you don’t like me much, Mabel. Sometimes I don’t like myself either. I think I’ve always felt I had to prove I was attractive to men since I couldn’t give them what most men wanted—children.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “If you were so devoted to Ryan, why were you in Phil’s hotel room before he was attacked?”

  “Attacked. What are you talking about?”

  “After you left someone threw a book at Phil and sliced open the back of his head.”

  “But I just saw him. He’s fine.”

  “That means you were with Phil this afternoon, and you lied to Ditie,” Mason said.

  “How would it look for a widow of a few days to be with a man accused of murdering her husband?”

  “Not good,” I said.

  “Maybe you’ve never lost anyone important to you, Mabel, so you wouldn’t understand. I needed comfort, and Phil provided it.” She paused briefly. “Do the police think Phil killed Carl and Ryan?”

  “Do you?” Mason asked.

  “He tells me he didn’t kill anyone, and when I’m with him I believe him. When I’m away from him, I’m less sure.”

  She looked at us as if she expected us to say something. We didn’t.

  “I won’t keep you any longer.” She stood. “If you have the time, Mabel, I might want to come back and talk to you about what it’s like to raise children who are not your own.”

  “They are my own. I didn’t give birth to them if that’s what you mean, but I couldn’t love them any more if I had.”

  Harper nodded. “You know what I mean. I’m so lonely—I’m thinking I might want to adopt. It’s what Ryan always wanted, and I was never quite ready. Now I think I am.”

  I was speechless. The idea of Harper as a mother made my blood run cold.

  When Harper left, I turned to Mason.

  “Why is it that every time I talk with Harper, I feel like she’s onstage delivering a performance?”

  “Because she is?” Mason said.

  “I wonder if she came tonight to check on the investigation, to see what the police know,” I said.

  Mason nodded and helped me collect coffee cups and carry them to the kitchen.

  “And what’s all this crazy talk about adoption? Harper hates children,” I said.

  Again he nodded.

  “I wish we could pin the murders on her,” I said, “but she wasn’t near either man when he was killed.”

  “No, she wasn’t,” Mason said. “Regardless, I don’t want you meeting with her alone.”

  “Agreed.”

  Mason put the dishes in the dishwasher, gave me a kiss and went home.

  While I wanted Harper to be the murderer, there were other contenders, closer to the scene of the crimes, like Sally for one.

  There was something about the photo sent to Kathy that sounded so vengeful. I wasn’t sure if I was being unfair to women, but it sounded more like what a woman would do than a man. A man could have killed Carl for a dozen reasons, but would he show the photo to Kathy out of spite? Frank could have simply been in touch with Kathy and demanded the money that was stilled owed to him. If it was a woman, then we had only two candidates—Sally and Harper. Of course, if I left my emotion out of it as Lurleen suggested, I had to include Kathy. She could have orchestrated all of it through Andy and pretended to be devastated by the photo. That still seemed so farfetched.

  * * * *

  I woke up the next morning determined to talk to Phil. He was at the center of this, and if he wasn’t the guilty party he might have ideas about who was.

  I went to work that morning and focused all my energies on the children in front of me. At lunchtime I made a call to Phil, and he actually picked up.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Why do you sound so intense?” he said. “I’m the one in trouble.”

  “Why do you sound so casual, as if someone is threatening you with a parking ticket? You’re under investigation for murder.”

  “I know that, Ditie, but it doesn’t do me any good to dwell on it. My father’s hired two of the best lawyers in Atlanta, and he’s got his investigators swarming all over the case. I can’t do anything but wait.”

  I’d forgotten how good Phil was at compartmentalizing. If something didn’t need his immediate attention, he set it aside. He wasn’t one to waste his time worrying about a problem he couldn’t solve.

  “Phil, I need to see you face to face.”

  “I’m pretty busy,” Phil said.

  “Doing what?”

  “My dad and I have to make plans. We have to deal with patient overload now that Carl is gone. We have to let them know what happened if they don’t already.”

  “Are you going to work with your father after all?”

  “I might.”

  “Phil, I’m asking for half an hour. No, I’m not asking. I’m demanding ha
lf an hour of your time.”

  “We can’t do it over the phone?”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “All right, but it’ll have to be tonight.”

  “That’s fine. Then Mason can come.”

  “I don’t want your boyfriend there,” Phil said.

  “You can’t always have what you want, Phil. Not this time.”

  “You sound like every other pushy woman I know,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a joke.

  “Really? Like whom?”

  “Never mind. Let’s meet at ten tonight in the lobby here at the hotel.”

  Phil was doing everything he could to make things difficult for me. It would take an hour to get to Buckhead on a Saturday night, but Phil could have told me to meet him on the moon, and I would have gone. I hoped Mason would be as obliging.

  He was my next call. He agreed. Then I called Lurleen. She said she could stay over with the kids.

  “I have some news for you,” Lurleen said. “Phil fired Danny today. He said he didn’t need protection anymore. No explanation. Just thanks but no thanks. He paid him in cash with a bonus.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I stayed at the clinic Saturday afternoon, so Vic could have a weekend off. Fortunately, two seasoned nurses were working with me. We had one six-year-old boy with a bad asthma attack who was immediately sent to the ER. I didn’t get out until six, but since Lurleen was staying over with the kids, it didn’t matter how late I finished up.

  I came home to find Danny in the kitchen and Lurleen in the family room reading with Jason and Lucie. “You’ve got to listen to Jason,” Lurleen told me. “Pick up any book and he’ll read it to you.”

  I picked up Where the Wild Things Are.

  “Not that one, Aunt Di,” Lucie said. “Jason reads that one all the time.”

  “You pick one out, Jason,” I said.

  Jason grabbed one about a dragon. He read each page flawlessly.

  Lurleen handed him two more, and he read them without a single mistake. I watched him read. He seemed to be looking more at the pictures than the words. I began to wonder if Jason had memorized the stories. Maybe he had the same kind of memory Lucie had. She could repeat conversations verbatim.

  Danny called us to dinner.