Pumpkin Spice Lies: A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 16

by Kathleen Suzette

  “That’s crazy,” I said slowly. Maybe Hailey had died because she knew too much.

  She nodded. “I told Hailey she was playing with fire and she needed to just drop the whole thing. I told her she should get another job someplace else because this wasn’t going to end well.”

  “What did Hailey say to all of that?”

  She sighed and her eyes teared up again. “She said she knew how to handle Betty Mays.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  She nodded. “You’re telling me. It was a crazy situation. And now, I just have to wonder about what happened. I wonder if Betty got tired of Hailey holding her secret over her head and did something about it.”

  I was quiet a moment. “Maybe you should talk to the police about this.”

  Her eyes went wide again. “Oh no, I’m not getting involved in this thing. If Betty found out I went to them and told them, then I know she would come after me. That woman is crazy. I was never so happy to leave a job as I was when I left that one.”

  I nodded. “Well, I guess I can see your point.” I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. If she was so afraid of Betty, why did she jump at the chance to work for her again?

  There was no way I was going to keep this from Ethan. He needed to know about it. I didn’t know whether it would lead anywhere, but it might.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The following morning, I headed down to the Sweet Goblin Bakery for some donuts. I was working an early shift, and I knew everyone at the candy store would appreciate the donuts. I felt like I needed a donut in the morning these days, although it might not have been the best habit to get into.

  I pushed open the bakery door and inhaled. “Something smells good today,” I said to Angela.

  She brightened when she saw me. “Good morning, Mia. I just pulled a batch of pumpkin spice muffins out of the oven.”

  “That must be what smells so good in here. I love the smell of pumpkin spice. I’m going to have to get some of those muffins.” I went up to the front counter and looked into the display case. There were a dozen pumpkin muffins with streusel topping sprinkled over them in the front.

  “They’re what smells so good in here. I put cream cheese filling in the middle of them. Makes them extra special.”

  “Oh my gosh, for sure I am going to have to get some of those. I came for a dozen donuts, but I think I’m going to get half a dozen of your pumpkin spice muffins, and the rest donuts. I hate to take so many of them, but I have an idea they are going to be very popular with everyone at the candy store.”

  “That’s okay, I have two more dozen already made in the kitchen.” She picked up a bakery box and unfolded it. “So Mia, how is the investigation going? I’m sure Ethan keeps you informed.”

  “Honestly, Angela, I know Ethan is doing all he can to find Hailey’s killer, but I’ve barely had time to speak to him the last few days. We’ve been crazy busy at the candy store and he’s working long hours on the investigation.”

  She nodded and opened the back of the display case. “I know, it’s been crazy busy around here too. And I’m sure Ethan will catch her killer. I just can’t stand the wait.”

  Before I could answer her, the bakery door opened and Ethan stepped through it. I smiled at him. “Were your ears burning? Angela and I were just talking about you.”

  He looked from me to Angela and back. “Oh? I hope you’re saying good things about me.”

  “Of course we are,” Angela said with a nod. “We were just discussing the investigation and how we both had confidence in you that you were going to find the killer.”

  “Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence,” he said with a nod. He came over to me and gave me a quick kiss and turned back to her. “I’m doing everything I can to get her killer arrested as quickly as possible.”

  She stopped what she was doing, a pumpkin muffin in one hand, and looked at him. “You know what, Ethan? I’ve been thinking. What about her boss? I know Hailey had a lot of problems with that Betty Mays. They couldn’t stand each other. I told her I’d give her a job down here at the bakery if she wanted to quit her job, but she didn’t want to work in food. She said she didn’t want to go home smelling like donuts.” She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “That kid. She was something else.”

  “Betty Mays,” Ethan said thoughtfully and stepped up to the front counter. “Did she say anything specific about her that makes you think she might have had something to do with her death?”

  “Well, between the three of us, Hailey caught her cheating on her husband. Ran into her with her boyfriend at a restaurant, and ever since then, Betty Mays was on her case. Hailey said Betty wanted to fire her, but she was afraid to because of what she knew. Hailey of course, would never have told anybody about the affair. She wasn’t that sort of person. I mean, she wouldn’t tell anybody except for her mother and me. But apparently, Betty was worried about her talking.”

  “Really? Did Hailey ever say that Betty threatened her in any way?” he asked.

  “Yeah, one day she came in late to work and Betty said that some people were lucky they still had a job. And that some people were so nosy they didn’t deserve to keep their jobs.”

  I crossed my arms in front of me. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Ethan about Shayna telling me the exact same thing. But Angela was wrong about Hailey. Shayna knew about the affair, so Hailey obviously didn’t mind telling other people. It made me wonder how many people she told. Maybe it had gotten back to Betty that she was talking about the affair, and she got scared and killed her.

  “It’s definitely worth checking into,” Ethan said, leaning against the counter.

  Angela nodded. “I think you should.” She turned to me. “What else did you want besides the muffins?”

  “Go ahead and fill the box with whatever donuts you’ve got to make up a dozen. Everyone loves donuts, so it really doesn’t matter which ones. Myself, I’m looking forward to that pumpkin spice muffin.”

  Angela nodded and got to work adding donuts to the box with the muffins in it. I turned and looked at Ethan. “What are you up to this morning?”

  He grinned. “At the risk of looking like a walking cliché, I came to buy donuts for the station.”

  Angela chuckled. “Don’t you worry about anybody making fun of you for eating donuts, Ethan. I eat plenty of them myself.”

  “I’m not worried. I’m going to eat donuts regardless of what anybody says,” Ethan said, and wrapped his arm around me and gave me a one-armed hug. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I miss you too,” I said, rubbing my nose against his arm. “We need to get together for dinner again. Soon.”

  He nodded. “We sure do. I’ll try to get off at a decent time tonight or tomorrow night. Maybe we can go and get something then.”

  I laid my head against his arm. “That sounds great.”

  Angela finished filling the box of donuts for me and I paid for my order and waited, hanging around for Ethan to buy his. Angela filled three boxes with donuts for Ethan and after he paid for them, we stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  “So what’s going on with you?” he asked me, holding the three boxes in one hand.

  “Not a lot. But Angela isn’t the first person to tell me about Betty Mays and Hailey discovering that she was having an affair. Her friend Shayna came in to apply for a job at the candy store, and she told me the same thing. Makes me wonder if Hailey was telling a lot of people about it and it made Betty angry.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a possibility. No one would be too happy about someone exposing them if they were having an affair.”

  I filled him in on everything I found out of the past couple of days and I waited to see what he would say about it.

  “I know Angela would like to believe that her niece was an angel, but there aren’t many people besides her parents and her aunt that believe that. Sounds like she was running around sticking her nose into things that didn’t concern her.”

&n
bsp; “I also think you should stop by and say hello to her college teacher, Frank Gillespie.”

  “He’s already on my list,” he said. “He was one of the last people who saw her alive.”

  I looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “Really? Who told you that?”

  “I traced her last couple of days and she had gone to afternoon classes, and then got into her car and left the college. He taught her last class. She was taking summer classes to graduate early.”

  “It’s funny that Frank Gillespie didn’t mention she was taking a summer class with him at the college. He said he’d had her in a class last year.”

  “That’s interesting. I guess I do need to have a talk with him.”

  “I think it’s very interesting.” I shifted the box of donuts in my hands. “I also wonder who had the keys to the heavy equipment at the park? How would they have been able to turn the equipment on and bury her without drawing attention?”

  He looked at me in surprise and then smiled. “Didn’t I tell you? They didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The shallow hole was already dug. They were replacing the dirt around the playground with sand before adding that soft rubber covering over it that we saw Saturday. If the kids fall off the playground equipment, it will be a softer landing than hard dirt. But they realized they didn’t have all the materials to finish the project, and they left the small shallow area they had dug up. The killer put Shayna in it and filled it in with the loose dirt from the hole, using a shovel.”

  “Well, that was convenient.”

  “It was a stroke of good luck. Or the killer planned it out after having seen the shallow hole.”

  “Interesting.”

  I didn’t like the way Frank Gillespie made had made me feel when we talked to him and that made me suspicious that he might have had something to do with Hailey’s death. But at this point Betty Mays seemed to have the best reason for killing her. If there was a possibility that Hailey might expose her affair, it might make her angry enough to kill her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Christy called me after work the following day. I had just left her at work twenty minutes earlier, and she wanted me to come to her apartment immediately without explaining why. I hurried over, and as I walked across the apartment complex; I knew exactly why she called me. There was a big party going on over at Frank Gillespie’s apartment.

  I knocked on her door and she opened it almost before I was done knocking. “What took you so long?”

  “I got in the car and came over as soon as you called me,” I said, stepping into her apartment. “What’s going on over there?”

  She closed the door behind me and we moved over to her window. “Frank is throwing one heck of a party. I’ve seen young college-age kids going in there for the past hour.” She pulled the curtain back, peering over at his apartment.

  “You remind me of a little old lady hiding out in her apartment watching the party across the street,” I said. “It’s sad when you aren’t invited to the party, isn’t it?”

  She looked at me, narrowing her eyes. “I do not want to go to that kind of party. It’s crazy how loud the music is. I thought the parties from last month that were going on here were loud, but this is nuts.”

  “Do you recognize anybody that’s gone in there?” I asked, looking through the window again.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t recognize any of them. I certainly haven’t seen his wife show up, either.”

  “Ex-wife,” I corrected. “She probably had all she could take of his partying lifestyle and kicked him out.”

  “She did end up with the house, didn’t she?” she said. “I wonder if this is going to go on all night?”

  “It’s summer, and they’re all off on summer break. Probably so.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to listen to that all night long. What kind of music is that, anyway? It’s horrible.”

  I chuckled. “I have no idea, but I can’t imagine how you’re going to get any sleep. Do you want to come to my house and spend the night?”

  She shook her head. “No. Why should I leave my apartment when I happen to know someone in law enforcement that can break that party up?”

  “Say no more.” I chuckled again, and pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Ethan.

  “Hey, Mia,” he said answering the phone. “What are you up to?”

  “I’m hanging out at Christy’s apartment, and there’s a wild party going on over here in the apartment across the way. Can you come and bust it up?”

  He chuckled. “Is it creating a disturbance?”

  “Oh, you better believe it’s creating a disturbance. The music is horrible, and it’s loud. Really loud.”

  “The only thing worse than horrible music, is loud horrible music. I’ll be right over.”

  I put my phone back in my pocket and turned to Christy. “Your problems are about to be solved.”

  She nodded. “Good. I hate this apartment complex. I was so excited to move here because the apartments were so cute, but somebody’s always throwing a wild party. The manager doesn’t do anything about it, either.”

  “That stinks,” I said, crossing my arms in front of myself and looking out the window again. “I wouldn’t want to live here with all this going on.”

  “Hey,” she said. “When you and Ethan get married, you’re moving out of your house, right? Maybe I can rent it?”

  I looked at her. “Ethan’s moving into my house. Maybe you can rent Ethan’s?”

  She brightened. “It would be a lot of fun living across the street from you. You can make me dinner every night.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “No way. You’re making us dinner.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she said and peered out the window as a young woman in a halter top arrived for the party.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, Ethan arrived and stopped by Christy’s apartment before going over to take care of business. “I’m so glad you reported a wild party, Christy,” he said, standing in her open doorway. “I didn’t have anything else to do this evening.” He glanced over his shoulder at the offending parties.

  “No problem. They started up over an hour ago, and it’s only gotten louder. You know who that is over there, don’t you?”

  He turned back to her and shook his head. “No, who?”

  “Frank Gillespie. It seems he’s in the habit of hosting parties for college students.”

  “Is he?” Ethan asked, looking at the party apartment again. “Well, I’m about to break this one up. You two stay here.”

  We watched as Ethan headed over to Frank’s apartment.

  “Maybe we should shut the door and hide?” I asked her.

  “Why?” She looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  I shrugged. “You called the cops and ruined his party. He might retaliate.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not afraid of him. I’m just annoyed because of all the noise. If he does retaliate, he’s going to be sorry.”

  I grinned. “You know what? Why don’t you give your notice to the apartment manager and come camp out in my living room until Ethan and I get married? We can put your stuff in storage and when we get Ethan’s stuff moved out of his house, you can move in there. We’ll put in a good word for you with the owner.”

  “I like the way you think,” she said. “I might do just that. I can’t tell you how much I’d appreciate getting out of here.”

  I nodded and watched as a young college girl answered Frank’s door with a bottle of wine in her hand. Ethan flashed his badge at her and her eyes went big.

  “Oh,” Christy said as we watched. “Somebody’s about to become very sad.”

  I laughed. “The cops are busting up the party.”

  “I wonder if that girl is old enough to drink alcohol?”

  “That’s a good question. She sure doesn’t look like she is.”

  We watched as Frank made his way to the front door and Et
han talked with him for a few minutes. I could see Frank shaking his head. If I wasn’t mistaken, his face was turning red. It was his own fault, thinking he could have a party that loud in this apartment complex and thinking no one was going to complain.

  “He doesn’t look very happy,” Christy said as we stood at her open door and watched. Frank shot us a look and then looked back at Ethan.

  “And now he knows who the perpetrators are,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.

  She snorted. “I’m not going to give him any more candy.”

  “Maybe you should pack a bag and come and stay with me tonight.”

  “I told you I wasn’t afraid of him,” she said, looking at me. “Are you?”

  I shook my head. “No, but who needs the hassle?”

  “Can’t argue with you there.”

  The college students began filing out of Frank’s apartment. “I wonder what the attraction is there? It’s not like Frank is good looking.”

  “Well, I think the attraction is probably a passing grade,” I said.

  She looked at me and laughed. “Okay, maybe I do see the attraction now. Sort of. But summer classes are over, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know for sure. If they aren’t out, I think they might be getting ready to take their finals just about now.”

  “Then I can see why they would come to a party at their teacher’s house. Plus, free booze.”

  Ethan finished talking to Frank and walked back over to us. He was smiling. We stepped back into the apartment and he followed us and closed the door behind himself.

  “Okay. Party handled.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He was mad. Said he had a right to have a party in his own home. I told him that he could have a party in his apartment, but he couldn’t disturb everybody else in the apartment complex. And I also said that some of his friends might be too young to drink.”

  Christy laughed. “What did he say to that?”

  “He got angry and said they were all old enough to drink, and when I pointed out that I could ask for everyone’s ID, he decided not to argue with me.”