Blended Bribes

by Jessica Beck

  Grace nodded. “You were playing kind of fast and loose with the truth there, weren’t you? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not scolding you, Suzanne. I thought it was a nice touch.”

  “I wanted to see how she reacted,” I admitted.

  “I just wish that I had thought to do it myself,” Grace admitted with a smile. “But then again, that’s why there are two of us.”

  As she took out her cell phone, I asked, “Who are you calling?”

  “I want to tell Stephen what’s going on,” she admitted.

  “I’ve already told him that we were investigating,” I reminded her.

  “I told him, too, but I promised to keep him updated, and I just realized that I hadn’t told him what Trish shared with us. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I’m not sure there’s enough to report just yet, but I’m fine if you want to tell him,” I said as I started driving toward Mindy Fulbright’s place.

  “When it comes to keeping my relationship with him on solid ground, I’d rather err on the side of caution,” she said. “After all, he’s the police chief, and he has a right to know what’s going on.”

  “Grace, I don’t have much time to talk. What’s up?” the chief asked as he answered her call. She’d put it on speaker so we could both talk to him, which I appreciated. Sometimes it was very frustrating having to listen in on half a conversation and try to fill in the blanks about what the other person was saying.

  “Suzanne and I are just leaving Tyra Hitchings’s place,” she told him.

  “Okay. Why exactly should that matter to me?”

  “It’s Suzanne, Chief. We found out that Tyra had an argument with Gabby yesterday before the fire,” I told Chief Grant. “From what an eyewitness told us, she was extremely upset about it.”

  “Which one was upset, Gabby or Tyra?” the chief asked.

  “Tyra,” I amended. “We never actually got a report on Gabby’s state of mind. Anyway, it might not be a bad idea to talk to her when you get a chance.”

  “About?” he asked, the question hanging in the air like a low cloud. It was pretty clear that his patience was wearing thin.

  “The fire, and the attack on Gabby,” Grace said bluntly.

  “Ladies, need I remind you that the fire, and Gabby’s condition, were both due to an accident, not arson?” the chief asked.

  “So you say,” Grace said, “but what would it hurt to drop by her place and have a friendly chat with her about it?”

  “Listen, is there any way that we can talk about this later? Something’s come up. Suzanne, you should probably hear this, too, since it concerns you as well.”

  “Is it about Buster Breckinridge?” I asked him. “Because if it is, we already know that he’s back in town. As a matter of fact, we talked to him in the park an hour ago.”

  “Did he say anything to you, Grace?” the chief asked her tensely.

  “He called me ‘Gorgeous,’” Grace admitted.

  “Well, that much is certainly true enough. Suzanne, you need to be careful. You remember his threats, right?”

  “I’m not likely to forget them,” I admitted. “I already told Jake about what happened.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “He told me that he was going to find Buster at his earliest convenience, and that the two men were going to have a little chat,” I said.

  “I’ll just bet they are,” the chief said, a hint of delight in his voice. “I wouldn’t mind being invited to that particular conversation myself.”

  “Jake promised me that he’d keep things civil,” I said, suddenly worried about my husband’s state of mind when it came to my welfare. Jake had a habit of being a bit overprotective of me, and while I normally didn’t mind it, at the moment, it might make things a little more difficult for all of us.

  “I’ll just bet he did,” the chief said. “Listen, if there’s nothing else I can do for you, I’ve got to get back to work. Thanks for checking in with me.”

  “You bet,” Grace said. “Will I see you tonight?”

  “I’ll call you later,” he answered as he signed off.

  After she put her phone away, Grace asked me, “I wonder what story we’ll get out of Mindy?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m dying to find out. Let’s go see what she has to say for herself about her argument with Gabby. I have a hunch the more we dig into this, the more folks we’re going to find who had a bone to pick with her.”

  Chapter 10

  “Mindy, we’d like to talk to you about Gabby Williams,” I said as Mindy Fulbright answered her door. She was a little older than Gabby, somewhere in her early sixties, and her fashion sense was more like my casual attire than Gabby’s. Still, she was quite lovely, tall and thin, almost regal in her bearing. Her home was certainly in better shape than Tyra’s had been, though not nearly so grand. It seemed just about the right size for one or two people, whereas Tyra must have really rattled around in her fading palace. Seeing Mindy’s place, I could certainly understand Tyra’s desire to downsize.

  “Did she die?” Mindy asked hesitantly.

  “Not as far as we know,” Grace said. “Would it really bother you that much if she had?”

  I thought that was way too harsh right out of the gate. “What Grace means is that we heard you two had an argument about money a few days ago.”

  Mindy looked genuinely perplexed by my statement. “I don’t have any earthly idea what you are talking about, Suzanne. Why on earth would Gabby and I argue about money?”

  “That’s just what we heard,” I backpedaled quickly. Was it possible that Paige had gotten it wrong? I knew my bookselling friend, and she wasn’t one to say things without reason. “Then you’re saying that it’s not true that you were fighting over money?”

  “Money? No. Oh, I see. I suppose that makes sense,” she replied.

  “Maybe to you, but we’re more in the dark than ever,” Grace said truthfully. “If you weren’t fighting over money, what were you arguing about?”

  “You might as well come in,” Mindy said. “It’s a long and sordid story, and I don’t care to tell it out on my front porch.”

  “Thanks,” I said as we walked inside after her. I knew that most times, actually being invited in was a major achievement in the course of our investigations, so at least Mindy was cooperating that much.

  “Would you ladies like some tea?” she offered. “I was just about to have some.”

  “We’re good,” I said quickly. “This won’t take long.”

  “Unfortunately, time is something I’ve got too much of these days,” Mindy said. “Ever since Henry died, I seem to be at a loss as to how to fill my life with meaning. I tried going back to work, but I just couldn’t bear it. Besides, Henry was a thoughtful man, always trying to plan for the worst-case scenario in case something ever happened to one of us. He never planned on getting run over by a teenaged girl asleep at the wheel while he was out on his morning stroll, but he left me more than comfortable, at least as far as money was concerned.”

  “So, if you weren’t arguing about money, what was it?” Grace asked.

  “Manny,” she said with a frown.

  “Manny? Who is he?” I asked.

  “It’s a long story. At first I thought he was sent to me from heaven, but the more I’ve found out about him lately, the more likely I believe his origins began in the opposite direction.” She looked down at her hands, which were clutching an old linen handkerchief. “This is embarrassing to admit, but I’ve been lonely since Henry died, so I decided to do something about it.”

  “There’s no need to be embarrassed about that,” I said quickly. “We understand how lonely life can be sometimes.”

  “Do you really, though? Suzanne, I know you’ve been through a divorce, and as painful as that must have been, Henry left me unwillingly. There’s been a void in my life ever since, and one of my friends from my bridge group told me about an online dating site for folks my age. It’s difficult meetin
g new people, so I thought I’d give it a try. Manny seemed sweet, and he was very handsome, so I agreed to go out with him. However, we’d been dating for over a month when I found out that Manny was seeing quite a few other women as well.”

  “Pardon me for saying so, but that’s not all that unusual, is it? After all, you hadn’t known each other that long,” I said.

  “That’s true enough, but when I began to dig a little deeper into his life, I learned that he was engaged to at least three women he’d met on the same dating service I’d been using, and evidently he had other women lined up as well.”

  “Including Gabby,” Grace and I said at nearly the same time. I liked to think that I’d been a half step ahead of her, but I couldn’t swear to it.

  “Yes, including Gabby. In fact, she was the first ‘other woman’ I discovered. I wanted to confront Manny, but I couldn’t find him anywhere, so naturally I went to speak with Gabby. Let me tell you, she was not pleased with me when I attacked her. I’m afraid I told her that Manny was mine and that she needed to find someone else. Gabby responded by threatening me, and I returned her harsh words in kind. It was a very ugly scene, and I felt bad about how I’d reacted almost immediately. You see, Manny had told me that I was the only woman he’d ever been able to love since his wife died. It turns out that he’d been divorced four times, but never widowed. I know I must sound like a perfect fool, but when I was with him, I found myself overwhelmed by the level of his intensity. It was as though I was the only other person in the world when we were together, and I’m afraid I fell for it completely and utterly.”

  I reached out and patted her hand. “You can’t blame yourself for trusting someone to be who they claimed to be,” I said.

  “At my age, I should have known better,” she said. “Anyway, I went to see Gabby to confront her, and evidently she’d thought she’d been exclusive with Manny as well. We had an argument that got fairly intense, and those were the last words I ever spoke to her. I’ve been wracked with guilt ever since I heard about the fire and her condition.”

  “What about Manny? Did you ever get in touch with him?”

  Mindy’s expression turned icy. “After fighting with Gabby, I no longer cared to speak with him ever again. I texted him and told him that we were through. I couldn’t even trust myself to tell him face to face. It was cowardly of me, I know, but the man is so charming that I wasn’t completely certain that I could resist him, even after everything I’d found out.”

  “Did he answer you?” I asked her.

  She pulled out her cell phone and showed the text to us. All it said was ‘Your loss.’ Evidently he wasn’t all that charming.

  “I do hope Gabby recovers.”

  “So do we,” I said.

  “Mindy, was that argument the last time you saw Gabby?” Grace asked.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it was.”

  “Okay then,” Grace said as she stood up. I did as well, but before we left, I asked her, “Do you happen to know where we can find Manny?”

  “Of course. He lives in Union Square. Do you know where the Moorcroft Garden Center is on the edge of town?”

  “I do,” I said. I’d bought a few plants there once, but they’d quickly died upon transplanting, so I’d never gone back.

  “He owns the place, so that’s probably where you’ll find him, if he’s not out already looking for replacements for both Gabby and me.”

  Once we were out in the Jeep, Grace looked at me and asked, “You bought her story hook, line, and sinker, didn’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked her. “Do you not believe that Mindy was wronged by that man?”

  “Suzanne, I couldn’t love you any more if you were my flesh-and-blood sister, but you have a fatal flaw.”

  “What might that be?” I asked. “Please, enlighten me.”

  “You tend to want to believe the best in people,” she said simply, as though she were stating a universal truth and not just her opinion.

  “And you don’t?”

  “Sometimes,” Grace admitted, “but do me a favor and think about it. Mindy had to know that she’d been caught fighting with Gabby in public before ReNEWed burned down. She also had to realize that if something happened to Gabby, someone would dig into her love life as a matter of course, which would have produced Manny, and a connection would be made between the two women.”

  “I don’t know. That sounds like a bit of a stretch to me,” I said as we got into the Jeep and headed for Union Square.

  “Not really, not if anyone worth their salt was investigating the case,” Grace said. “From the way Mindy was spinning the story, it would be impossible to believe that she had anything to do with the fire.”

  I didn’t want to admit to Grace that based on the interview we’d just had with Mindy, I’d already struck her name from our list of suspects in my mind. Grace was right. I did have a tendency to want to believe the best in people, and Mindy’s story had been quite skillfully told. “Okay, I can see your point. How do you think that it might have happened?”

  “I’m not saying that it occurred this way, but isn’t it just as likely that Mindy and Gabby fought over Manny’s affections, neither one knowing that they weren’t by any stretch of the imagination his only conquests? If Mindy was desperate to hold onto Manny, she could burn the shop down to thwart Gabby, whether she realized the owner was inside ReNEWed at the time or not. Then again, she could have continued the fight inside, hit Gabby in the head with whatever blunt object happened to be lying around when she turned her back on her, and then, thinking she’d killed her, burned the place down to cover her tracks?”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” I said.

  “Yes, but it makes more sense to me than Mindy’s version of what happened,” Grace said. “We need to keep digging into her life and see if there have been any other outbursts in her past that might show a tendency toward violence.”

  I glanced over at her for a second. “Do you honestly believe that woman we just spoke with is capable of doing what you’ve described?”

  “Maybe not the woman we saw, but there’s no telling if Mindy’s hiding another side from the rest of the world.”

  “Okay, I know the saying about a woman scorned and all, but Manny wasn’t attacked, Gabby was.”

  “That could be only because Manny wasn’t available,” Grace reminded me. “Besides, you read about it in the papers all of the time. A woman catches her husband cheating with another woman, but instead of going after the man, she attacks the other girl! If I were ever in that situation, I’d team up with her and make sure he never made that mistake again.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment,” I said. “Manny sounds like a real prize, doesn’t he?”

  “I can’t imagine anyone preying on lonely women in their sixties. Is he doing it for the power trip, or is he after something a bit more financial?”

  “It could be a little bit of both,” I said, “but we won’t know for sure until we ask him.”

  “Are we going to use aliases as covers when we talk to him?” Grace asked me eagerly. She loved it when we masqueraded as other people.

  “No, I think straight on is the best way to go after him,” I replied.

  Grace was clearly disappointed with my response. “Why is that?”

  “For one thing, he’d never believe it if we came in there and started flirting with him,” I said with a shrug.

  “I don’t know. If his ego is as big as it appears to be, he might actually expect us to do just that,” Grace said with a grin. “Who knows? We might even be able to use that to our advantage.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said.

  “Why not? Do you have a problem with women our age dating older men?” she asked me. “After all, Jake is older than you are, and you married him.”

  “By seven years,” I said, “not twenty or thirty. Anyway, that’s not the point. Manny is a user, plain and simple, going after vulnerable and lonely older women. A
ge isn’t even a factor here. What he does to their hearts makes my skin crawl, and that has nothing to do with his age.”

  “Okay, I can see that,” Grace said. “So then, how are we going to approach him? Are we going to tackle him head on the moment we see him?”

  “I’m not sure we have much choice,” I admitted. “If he’s a tenth as smooth as Mindy believes he is, we’re not going to be able to finesse him into telling us the truth. I think our only shot of getting anything useful at all out of him is to catch him off guard.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Grace said. “Now that I think about it, that sounds like more fun than using fake names.”

  “I thought you’d like that,” I said.

  “You know me too well, Suzanne,” she answered with a grin.

  Chapter 11

  “Excuse me, are you Manny Wright?” I asked the older gentleman with silver hair and a ready smile. He was in the process of flirting with a young woman who was barely into her twenties, wearing a sundress and sporting a troubling intrigued look from all of the attention. The garden center not only offered plants of many shapes and sizes but everything anyone would need to start a plot of their own. There were fertilizers, sprays, and dusts everywhere, more chemicals than a lab would ever need. I had to wonder if there were any long-term health risks working around so many dangerous products, but clearly it hadn’t dulled the shine of Manny’s smile one iota.

  “Yes, I’m Mr. Wright,” he said as he winked at the young woman, basically ignoring us both as he fixed his gaze on his latest prey.

  “Is that what all of your fiancés call you?” Grace asked with a sweet smile, hammering him with it immediately.

  “Did you say fiancés?” the young woman asked.

  “Evidently there is a whole host of them,” I said as I nodded in agreement.

  “Sorry. I’ve got to go,” she said as she put the tomato plant that had been in her hands down and hurried away.