by Sonia Parin
New cars didn’t break down.
She’d purchased her car ten years before and there were times when it didn’t get a service in months, and it still ran without a glitch.
She was about to turn away when she saw someone jump out of the car. A woman with long, blonde hair.
That’s when it clicked and she remembered where she’d seen the man before...
At the Mad Hatter’s Tea Shop.
A small fist pounded on her door. She knew that with certainty because she was still peering out the window and could see the small blonde woman standing at her front door.
Eve plastered a smile in place. “Can I help you?” she asked nudging the door open a fraction.
“I’m looking for my friend. He might have come this way.”
Eve heard the sound of scraping coming from the sitting room. Not a chair, she thought. Possibly the coffee table. Had Brandon tried to make a swift getaway?
“There was someone here a second ago. He was looking for the main road and he mentioned something about his car breaking down,” Eve said testily.
The girl rolled her eyes.
“If he happens to come this way, could you tell him his friends are looking for him?”
“Him?”
“Brandon.”
“I’ll try to remember the same. And if I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. Although, it’ll help if I know his friends’ names.”
The girl seemed to hesitate. “Mel.”
“Just Mel?”
“He’ll know who it is.”
Eve closed the door and waited to hear the girl’s steps retreating. Moments later, she saw the car drive off.
Back in the sitting room she was surprised to see Brandon still sitting there. Then again, Jill was holding a fire poker like a baseball bat.
“Did our friend here get violent?” Eve asked.
“No,” Jill said. “But he seemed to want to leave out the back door and I figured you wouldn’t be happy if he did that without first telling us what’s going on.”
“I’m sure Brandon only meant to stretch his legs, after all, we wouldn’t want to hold him here against his wishes. That could be interpreted as kidnapping.” She gestured for Jill to put the poker down. “Brandon.”
He looked up.
“We’re running out of patience. If you want us to help you, you have to start talking to us.”
“I didn’t do it.”
It?
Someone had done something. Brandon was pleading innocence. And that something had brought the police to the island. Again.
“Okay. That’s a start,” Eve said, “But you’ve already said that.” Again, she exchanged a look with Jill. “Does the police have something to do with what you didn’t do?”
“All this time... He was there...” He dug his fingers through his hair.
“Who?”
“Reg. Now he’s gone. Mel told me to get donuts for him. But he was already gone.”
A horde of scenarios stampeded through her mind. Reggie hanging up his brushes and calling it quits. Taking off and leaving Brandon to deal with his house guests. “Where did he go?”
Brandon frowned. “He’s gone. Gone for good—”
At the sound of a car coming to a screeching halt, they all looked up. Brandon shot to his feet.
“I’ll go see who it is,” Jill said.
“Here, take this with you,” Eve handed her the fire poker.
“You don’t think that’s a bit too much?”
“Better safe than sorry. In fact, I’m grabbing a poker myself.” Eve shrugged and turned back to Brandon. “You sit down again. Now, who’s Mel and why is she after you?”
Brandon gave a fierce shake of his head. “You should stay away from her. She’s bad news. She told me to get donuts. But she already knew Reggie was gone.”
Eve curved her eyebrow at him.
“She’s Reggie’s stepdaughter.”
“And the guy with her?” Eve asked.
“That’ll be Stevie. His stepson.”
“They’re brother and sister?”
Brandon shook his head. “Stevie’s from his first marriage and Mel from Reggie’s second marriage. You didn’t tell them I was here, did you?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t tell them, but there’s still time, I can call them back. I’m sure that’s them at the front door again. So start from the top, Brandon. I want to hear everything that happened since this afternoon when Jill and I went to the studio.” Again, she thought of the police sirens they’d heard.
Brandon shrunk back on the couch, his eyes widening. “You... you brought those donuts over.”
“Because you asked me to.”
“Not those donuts. The first ones. You tried to poison him. You tried to kill him. It makes sense now. After that, everything changed. He’d had dark days before. But not like this. I left him alone. If I hadn’t... The next day it was over. I thought he was just having one of his dark days—”
“He was depressed?”
“A dark day. The dark side of the moon. There but not there. He shuts everyone out and we all knew better than to go anywhere near him. He was there, but he wasn’t. And you tried to kill him, that’s probably why he went dark—”
“You’re rambling.” She jabbed the poker in his direction. “Why would I want to kill Reginald?”
“Everyone heard you. You wanted him dead.” Brandon sounded hysterical now.
“Yes, all right, I wanted him dead,” she baited him. Eve flung her hands out. “Brandon, I know food. If I wanted him dead, I would have done such a thorough job, he wouldn’t have lived another day to badmouth my donuts.”
“Maybe you just wanted him to get sick. Maybe it was just a warning.”
“You know what? You’re right. I’m armed and dangerous. I could tie you up and force feed you a dozen donuts laced with the most dangerous strain of bacteria, you’ll be writhing in pain for days, begging for mercy.” She leaned in and tried to look menacing. “So talk.”
“Eve.”
She waved a hand at Jill.
Brandon’s eyes widened. “You did try to poison him.”
“The man was an oaf. In fact, he was a prime candidate for death by donuts, but—”
“Eve,” Jill snapped.
“What?” Eve snapped back and swung around. “Jack.” She took a step toward him only to stop. Several other police officers stood behind him.
“Eve,” Jack said, “Put the poker down. Nice and slow.”
This didn’t look good.
Eve sat in the front living room, her fingers digging into her thighs. When Jack walked in, she slid to the edge of the seat. A police officer stood by the door.
“What’s going on? Why am I sitting here?” Jack had brought her here that first night they’d met... when the body had been found in her house. She’d been a prime suspect then...
No, this didn’t look good.
“You know I didn’t mean any of that.” She tried to smile. After all, if you smiled, the whole world smiled with you.
Jack’s expression didn’t waver.
He looked stern.
“Even if my donuts were responsible for making Reggie sick, it had nothing to do with me,” she said imagining Reggie suffering from another bout of the runs, “Those donuts were perfectly good when they left my house. Anyone could have done something to them. It only takes some unhygienic mishandling—”
“Eve,” Jack said in his best warning tone. She’d heard it often enough to recognize it. “This is Detective Mason Lars.”
“Hello, detective,” she chirped.
She tried to interpret Jack’s lifted eyebrow.
This wasn’t a social call and she should try to behave accordingly. Eve searched his eyes for the usual spark that meant he was doing his duty. Questions had to be asked, but he knew she was innocent. The spark in his eyes wasn’t there.
The detective took the chair opposite Eve.
Jac
k remained standing.
A quiver of apprehension ran up and down her back.
Eve brushed her hands along her thighs and winced.
“Could you tell us where you were this afternoon?” the detective asked.
Eve did a mental rehashing of the day’s events, gave a small nod and replayed the day from the moment she’d woken up with a hangover.
She had nothing to hide.
Then she remembered the donuts she’d taken over to the studio that afternoon. “Did the donuts make him sick again?”
“When was the last time you saw Reginald Bryant Burns?”
She had to think about that. “I had dinner with Abby Larkin at Shelby’s Table. Reggie put the spotlight on me. He told everyone about our run-in at the bakery.”
“What did he say?”
Eve looked up at Jack. He gave her a small nod.
“What didn’t he say? The man laughed at my expense...” She told them about the unfortunate encounter, right down to the last bag of chocolate chip cookies that had fallen on her face.
“How did that make you feel?” the detective asked.
“Not good.”
“You must have been angry with him,” he said.
“I’d been polite and he had nothing but horrible things to say.”
“It incensed you.”
“He didn’t have to be so nasty. Specially not in front of Jill.”
“Jill?”
“My friend. Jill Saunders. She’s an artist. I wanted to get an invitation for her to see his studio.”
“And when that failed, what did you do?”
“I took him a basket of donuts.”
“These are the donuts that gave him the runs,” the detective said.
“He didn’t get the runs from my donuts. You can’t prove that. The man has a voracious appetite for them. For all I know, he ate my donuts and the ones he got from the bakery.”
“That would have been convenient. Tell us about the other basket of donuts you took for him today.”
“There was nothing wrong with those.”
“Are you saying there was something wrong with the first lot of donuts?”
“No.” She speared her gaze at Jack. He stared back without blinking.
“I don’t know what this is about. Brandon organized for us to visit the studio—”
“When did you arrange that?” the detective asked.
“Early today. We had to be careful to organize it by stealth because—”
“By stealth?”
“Reggie and his entourage had been banned from the bakery,” Eve explained, “I had to be careful not to let on the donuts were for him.”
“So you got them from the bakery.”
“Yes.”
“And then you put them in a basket. Why did you do that?”
“Because... because I’d promised to bake them, but I didn’t.”
“So you took the purchased donuts from the store bag and put them in a basket.”
“Yes.”
“And did you do something to the donuts?”
“No... Well, yes. I gave them a light dusting—”
Jack folded his arms across his chest.
“A dusting of what?”
“Sugar. I wanted them to look fresh.”
“What were you trying to hide?”
“Nothing. I wanted to cover my tracks—”
“Your tracks?”
She gestured with her hands. “I didn’t want Brandon to know they were from the bakery because I’d promised to bake them.”
The detective didn’t say anything as he looked at her hands.
“Ms. Lloyd.”
Eve swallowed. “Yes?”
“How did you get those marks on your hands?”
She looked down at the palms of her hands and took another deep swallow. “I... I found a log I liked and hauled it back to the house. It was heavy.”
“How heavy.”
She wanted to be accurate. “Probably as heavy as Reginald. I had to make sure I could bring it all the way back to the house so I tied a rope around it.”
“You had to make sure? Was it like a practice run for you to see if you could pull that much weight?”
“What?”
The detective gestured to the police officer standing guard by the door. Moments later, a camera was produced.
“What are you doing?” Eve asked.
“We need to be thorough, Ms. Lloyd. Would you mind stretching your hands out, palms up? Your co-operation will be much appreciated. It will help our investigation.”
She looked at Jack but he’d turned away to exchange a few words with the officer.
“For what purpose?” Eve asked.
“We need all the information we can get to help us establish the time of death.”
“Death? Whose death?”
“Reginald Bryant Burns’ death.”
Chapter Nine
“This is a nightmare. Please tell me I’m still asleep.”
“Here, drink up.” Jill pressed a mug of coffee into her hands. “It’ll do you good.”
Eve dug her fingers through her hair. “They questioned me. Can you believe that?”
Jill lifted her shoulder in an easy shrug. “They questioned me too.”
Pressing the mug against her lips, Eve took a long sip. “He’s dead.”
“Yes,” Jill said, “Here, have some donuts.”
“Are you kidding?”
“What, they’re fresh. I got them at the bakery. It’s doing a roaring trade this morning. The place is buzzing. Everyone knows about... you know.”
“What?”
“You, trying to poison Reginald.”
“Cut it out, Jill.”
“I wonder if all this is going to influence my art. Picasso went through the rose period and the blue period. Imagine if I start a dark period. In fact, I might do that. Then years from now, I can point to the paintings and say, those are from my dark period.”
“Are you done?”
Jill nodded and bit into a donut.
“What happened to Brandon?”
“The police took him away last night,” Jill said, “But I saw him this morning. He went into town to grab a coffee. He walked right past me. I don’t think he recognized me.”
“So he’s free.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
Because he’d be an obvious suspect. Working closely with Reggie. Running... from something. Running scared.
“Did you hear anything about how... you know... how Reggie was found?” Eve asked.
“There’s a lot of speculation, but no facts.”
“All that time Brandon sat here, he could’ve given us the facts.” Eve gulped down her coffee. “Did he find Reggie? Did he call the police? And why did Mel and Stevie come looking for him?” She set her mug down. “I’m grabbing a shower and then we’ll go.”
“We can’t leave the island.”
“I didn’t say anything about leaving the island.”
Half an hour later, Jill grabbed Eve’s arm and pulled her back. “You didn’t say anything about going to the lighthouse.”
Eve managed to drag Jill right up to the clearing where the path opened up to the grounds surrounding the lighthouse.
“I don’t see any squad cars.” In fact, there weren’t any cars. “Come on, maybe we can see something through the windows.”
“What if someone sees us?” Jill asked. “They’ll think you’ve returned to the scene of the crime. I don’t care to be your accomplice. What if I don’t get painting privileges in prison?”
“Come on,” Eve said, “If anyone stops us, we’re out for an innocent walk.”
“If you’d told me that before, we could have brought Mischief and Mr. Magoo. That way we could have looked more convincing.”
“Where do you suppose everyone is?” Eve asked. “If we were asked to stay on the island, surely Reggie’s guests were issued similar instructions.”
They reac
hed the front door. Eve tried the door handle. Locked.
“You didn’t seriously expect it to be open,” Jill said on a gurgle of laughter.
“This is a serious matter. A man is dead.” And yet she couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for him. “I wonder if anyone will have a kind word to say about him? I’d hate to reach the end of my days and not have anyone entertain a single warm thought about me.”
“Where do you think they’ll hold the funeral?” Jill asked, “The entire artistic community might come out. I wonder if anyone will come to my funeral? I know plenty of people who’ll send fruit baskets. A few might attend the wake. It would make sense for them to also go to the funeral before the wake. Then again, not everyone has a stomach for it. Do you think it’ll bump up the importance of my art? Hey, there’s an idea. I could become famous posthumously. That painting you bought from me could be worth quite a bit after I’m gone.”
“I think that last cup of coffee you drank is kicking in.” Eve pressed her finger to her lips and pointed to the window. “Crime scene tape,” she whispered. Pressing her nose to the glass she could see the studio. The tape sealed off the door leading off to the side. She stepped back and looked up at the building. “The lighthouse,” she murmured.
“What about it?”
“That’s where they found him.”
“Who found him?”
“I was just wondering that myself.” Had Brandon been the one to find the body? Or had it been Mel and her stepbrother? And why had Brandon fled the scene?
They’re going to pin this on me.
That’s what Brandon had said. Several scenarios ran through Eve’s mind.
She saw Brandon stumbling upon the body, then turning and finding Mel and Stevie who’d just come in...
Or, Brandon could have gone into the lighthouse and found Mel and Stevie and, instead of waiting around to listen to their explanation, Brandon had fled...
He’d been afraid of something... someone.
“Mel. My guess is she found the body.” But she hadn’t looked distraught. In fact, she’d looked cool, calm and thoroughly collected. A woman on a mission. And she’d been on the hunt, looking for Brandon. Because she wanted to make sure they got their stories straight?
Yes.