“It turns out that I’d been abiding by and reading an older version of the church doctrine. I was gone for a week a couple of months ago on a cross-country run which Pete gets every once in a while. Since I’m not married, he usually asks me to take them.”
“And I’m guessing you were out of town when that particular subject was in a sermon.”
“Actually, it was more than a sermon. Several meetings were held that week about it, because it was quite a profound change. I just missed it. When I called my preacher, he was afraid I might think he was just trying to talk me out of doing something drastic, so that’s why he arranged for the elders to be on the call.
“Bottom line is that I’d been believing the wrong thing. They spent those two hours making sure that I was up to date on all the changes, and there were several more. And the reason they took so much time with me is because the preacher wants me to become an assistant preacher,” Jet said with a smile.
“What a compliment to you. Will you still be able to drive for Pete while you’re undergoing religious training?”
“Yes. In the church I attend, preachers don’t have to attend seminary school. They are instructed by the elders and the preacher. I will be spending my Saturdays with some of them on a rotating basis, depending on what part of our scripture we’ll be working on. This will last for about a year, and then I will take on the responsibilities of the assistant preacher.”
“Congratulations. And if you’re asked, it sounds like you have a solid alibi for where you were at the time of Kimberly’s death.”
“That I do. If the word of seven church members isn’t good enough for whoever would be asking, then I don’t think anything would be. I’m truly sorry that Kimberly was murdered, but given what’s come up, I’m not sorry she rejected my advances. I doubt if she would have been someone I would have been proud to introduce to my church. The Lord God has his reasons, doesn’t He?” Jet asked.
“Yes, I believe He does,” Kelly said, inwardly thinking the word “She.”
“Jet, again, thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I wish you well on your new undertaking, and I’m sure you’ll do an excellent job as an assistant preacher. And thanks for letting me enjoy your beautiful things. You’ve really created a peaceful oasis here,” she said as she stood up and walked towards the door.
“Well,” he said with a laugh, “you didn’t see the garage and all the workout equipment I have in there. And trust me, those machines are so loud, that when I’m through, I need a peaceful place.”
Kelly got in her car and drove back to the highway thinking that was one suspect she could take off the list. She started to call Josh, but decided she’d wait until after she’d talked to Snacks.
CHAPTER 19
Kelly could see Snacks’ rig as soon as she turned onto his street. She wondered what his neighbors thought about what some would call a serious eyesore. When she parked her car next to it, she looked at the yard and the house and couldn’t help but compare them to Jet’s immaculate home and yard.
As she walked up the sidewalk an SUV pulled up to the curb and a man quickly got out of it. “Hi, you must be Kelly. I’m Snacks. Hope I didn’t keep you waiting long, but one of my son’s teachers stopped to talk to us and the time kind of got away from me. Sorry. Come on in.”
He opened the door for her and given what the outside of the house looked like, she was pleasantly surprised at the inside. It had a warm, comfortable lived-in look. Books, electronic games, and dog toys only added to it.
“Pick your poison. Couch or chair,” Snacks said as he sat down on a recliner chair in what she assumed was his usual spot from how well-worn it was and the way it was situated in front of the television.
“Thanks. I appreciate you seeing me.”
“Mind telling me exactly why you wanted to see me?” Snacks asked as he reached for a bag of potato chips that was on the table next to him. She noticed that a large wastebasket was next to his chair which was filled with multiple bags of chips, candy bars, and snacks. He held it out to Kelly and said, “Help yourself.”
“No thanks. I ate a late lunch. As I mentioned on the phone, my husband is the sheriff of Beaver County, and he’s got a bad case of the flu, as does most of the sheriff’s department. They’re staffing is at a bare bones level, and Mike asked if I’d mind talking to a few people, since I was the one who discovered the body of Kimberly Laughlin.”
“Okay, but why did you want to see me?”
“Quite frankly your name came up several times on the CB as being involved in a bookmaking operation with Kimberly that was run out of the truck stop. I’m just following up on that.”
He was quiet for several long moments and then he said. “Yeah, I can see where you’d want to talk to me. First of all, let me tell you that I wasn’t the one who killed her, although knowing what I now know, I probably should have.”
“I’m listening, Snacks.”
“I have an airtight alibi for yesterday morning. I heard she was murdered around 6:30. My wife and I had a parent-teacher conference with our son’s teacher at 7:00 yesterday morning. Most schools do their conferences after school, but not my son’s. They sent out a questionnaire at the beginning of the school year asking which the parents would like, before school conferences or after school conferences. It was pretty much unanimous for before school.”
“What was the reasoning for that? I remember my children’s teachers always held them after school.”
“From what I understand, parents are reluctant to take time off from work to attend. When they’re scheduled before work, they have far more parents attend. Anyway, both my son’s teacher and the teacher’s aide will attest to the fact that I was at school yesterday morning from 7:00 until 8:00. My wife was also there.”
“Given the time frame of both your conference and the murder, you definitely have an airtight alibi. That’s especially true given the fact that the murder took place at the truck stop where Kimberly worked, and that’s about an hour’s drive south of Cedar Bay. Snacks, I’m curious, why did you say that you probably should have killed her?”
“Quite frankly, the whole thing was stupid for me to do. Kimberly mentioned to me once that several of the truckers had told her they wished they could place a bet when they were at the truck stop. It’d be something for them to think about when they were on the road.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with you?” Kelly asked
“I inherited some money about a year or so ago and foolishly told a couple of the truckers about it. One of them must have said something to her and she approached me, telling me that if I put up the seed money, she’d take care of everything else, and we’d split the profits on a weekly basis.”
“And I’m assuming you did?”
“I did. Everything worked out fine for several months, and then I noticed she was wearing really nice clothes and jewelry. About the same time the weekly profits diminished significantly.”
“How significantly are your talking about?”
“The first few months we were splitting about $5,000 a week, then it dwindled to $2,000. I began to wonder if she was cheating me, you know, skimming money off the top. Lizzie, who’s the resident Lot Lizard at the truck stop, lives across the street and next door to Kimberly. I went over there one afternoon and talked to her about Kimberly.”
Kelly looked at him questioningly.
“I know what you’re thinking, but the answer is no. Lizzie and I had become friends over the years, pure and simple, that, and nothing else. I’ve been married to a wonderful woman for a long time, and there’s no way I’d jeopardize that relationship.”
“What did she have to say?”
“She told me she thought Kimberly was developing a clientele of her own and was having men visit her at her home across from the truck stop while her mother was working. She also told me that Kimberly had a new BMW in her garage. She wondered if she was getting business from outside the truck stop, and if t
he car was a client’s. She watched for two days and when the garage door was open, she saw that it was still there.”
“Whose car did she think it was?”
“Kimberly’s, and the only way she could have gotten enough to afford a Beamer was by ripping me off. That and becoming a lady of the night, or at least until her mother got off work.”
“What did you do when you found out?”
“Quite frankly, I was ready to kill her. Plus, I didn’t like her infringing on Lizzie’s territory. Yeah, what Lizzie was doing was illegal, but she’d staked it out and from what I know, no one ever left her feeling other than a lot better. I remember asking her once if she and Kimberly were friends, because they were pretty much the same age.
“She told me they’d never been friends because Kimberly’s mother wouldn’t let her associate with Lizzie. She’d asked her mother why and her mother had always avoided the question, then one day she overheard a couple of neighbor women talking about it. She was just a young girl at the time and was playing jacks on a little stretch of sidewalk outside a neighbor’s house in the summertime and the windows were open.”
“What did she overhear?” Kelly asked.
“She heard one of them say, ‘I wonder if Josie’s ever told Lizzie who her father is.’ The other one answered, ‘You’d think those two girls would be close considering they share the same father.’ She told me it took her years to figure it out, but when she became an adult, she was pretty sure they’d been referring to Kimberly and her.
She told me she’d read how DNA can tell who your parents are and that her mother had a picture frame containing a swatch of a man’s hair framed that had sat on the nightstand next to her bed. Lizzie went on to tell me that one time she’d gone in the ladies room at the truck stop after Kimberly had been there on her morning break and saw some of her hair strands on the sink.
“She picked them up with a paper towel and put them in her purse. Lizzie said she was going to send some of her own hair, a couple of strands from her mother’s frame, and Kimberly’s hair to a lab that specialized in DNA testing and see if they were sisters.”
“What was the result?” Kelly asked.
“I have no idea. I haven’t seen her in over a week, so I don’t know if she sent them in and if she did, if she got the results.”
“I don’t know much about this, but it seems to me that Mike told me once that gambling is allowed only in a very few situations where a license has been issued and appropriate regulations are followed. If that’s true, what you were involved in was illegal. Were you ever concerned about what might happen to you if you were caught?”
“Not really. The truckers liked to have the ability to place bets, and I think other than someone getting angry because they’d lost money or Kimberly exposed it, it would be hard to prove. Maybe if there was an undercover cop masquerading as a trucker, it might happen, but I think that would have been pretty remote.”
“Since you’ve been so honest, tell me, are you going to get involved in bookmaking again?”
“Absolutely not. The night I came home after I talked to Lizzie and was pretty certain that Kimberly was cheating me, my wife knew something was wrong. She told me she wanted to talk to me and had our son go to his room and do his homework. She told me in no uncertain terms that she could tell I was angry, very angry, and wanted to know what it was all about.”
“She sounds like she’s pretty perceptive.”
“Beyond. We talked about the whole situation and she made it very clear that she’d leave me if I ever did anything like that again. I told her I just kind of got carried away with an easy way for me to make some extra money. Her response was that we were doing just fine, and if we couldn’t afford something, so be it.”
“What did she think about your relationship with Lizzie?” Kelly asked out of curiosity.
“She understands. I’ve told her about Lizzie before, so my friendship with her was no surprise to her. My wife is a clinical psychologist, and she understands and forgives human nature far more than most people do. Aberrations of human nature are fine with her, illegal things aren’t, so there will be no more bookmaking operations in my future.”
“Sounds like you skated on this one.”
“Agreed. I’ve had a couple of days to reflect on things, and I’ve decided to become the assistant coach for my son’s baseball team. They’ve been looking for someone, and I think this would be a lot healthier for me than financing a bookmaking operation. I’m going to take some time to just smell the roses, and I’m lucky enough to have a few.”
“Snacks, thanks for agreeing to see me and for being so candid. While what you told me certainly exonerates you, it opens up a lot of other questions. And here’s my last question for you. Do you have any thoughts on who the murderer might be?”
“In all honesty, no. I’ve racked my brain trying to come up with something logical, but I can’t think of anything. I don’t know of any of the truckers who would have wanted to kill Kimberly. She allowed them to gamble and she was now accessible personally to them, if they wanted to pay for it.”
“Were other women jealous of Kimberly because of her looks?”
“The only one I can think of would be Susie, Little Paul’s wife, but I don’t think she’s capable of murder. She knows Little Paul has a wandering eye and has had one forever. And if she did murder Kimberly, there would be another one after her, so no, I think that would have been stupid. And I’ve never thought that Susie was stupid.
“I’m beginning to wonder if it was just a random thing. Maybe she had a tryst with some guy, and he came back the next morning and murdered her. Who knows? Could be something to do with the bookmaking, although I’ve not heard that anyone was unhappy, and I think I would have. In all honesty, I simply can’t help you.”
“You’ve helped a lot, and I thank you. Good luck with your new coaching job, and if you think of anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call. Here’s my card,” she said as she handed him one.
“I didn’t know you were the owner of Kelly’s Koffee Shop,” he said as he looked at Kelly’s business card. “I’ve stopped there on and off for years. Good food.”
“Thanks, and next time you’re in there, it’ll be my treat. So long, Snacks.”
CHAPTER 20
Kelly called Roxie after she left Snacks’ home to see if there were any fires she needed to put out at the coffee shop.
“Afternoon, Kelly. How goes the hunt for the murderer? Any luck?”
“Only if you consider that two of the suspects had very good alibis, and I was able to cross them off my list. I don’t know if that’s a particularly good news thing or a bad news thing. And how did you do at the coffee shop today?”
“We were busy. You know that chocolate lasagna thing you made a couple of days ago that you said didn’t have a healthy thing in it?”
“Yes. I made several of them and even brought one home and froze it. Matter of fact, after the day I’ve had, I think I’ll defrost it when I get home and have some. Chocolate is definitely what I need at the moment. What about it?”
“It may be the most popular dessert we’ve ever served here. We ran out before noon, if you can believe that. If you’re not going to be here tomorrow, why don’t you email me the recipe, and I’ll stop at the all-night market in town and pick up the ingredients on my way to work in the morning. That way Charlie can make several of them, because when people saw customers eating it and were told they couldn’t have any, we almost had a riot on our hands.”
“You’re kidding. I figured people would turn their noses up when they asked what was in it.”
“You forget that everyone has a little kid in them, and that recipe definitely speaks to the little kid in all of us. I mean, deep down, who doesn’t like chocolate toast crunch cereal, and then you add all the different kinds of chocolate and whipped toppings, and there you go. Something no one can resist. And Kelly, I have a confession to make.”
&nbs
p; “What’s that, Roxie?”
“I took a big spoonful of it when I was in the kitchen, and I was in heaven. I know Joe would love it, and I can sure see why we almost had a riot on our hands.”
“In that case, I’ll email the recipe to you as soon as I get off the phone. Anything else going on?”
“No, pretty much business as usual. Oh, I just remembered that I’m supposed to give you a message from Jesse. He came in and was one of the lucky ones who scored the chocolate lasagna. Said if we start to serve it on a regular basis, he’ll stop in here on his route every day and get a piece to go.”
“I’m just glad it was such a hit. How’s he doing? I know yesterday was hard for him,” Kelly said.
“He said the same. By the way, I’m supposed to ask you to call him. He said he remembered something, but had no idea whether or not it was relevant.”
“Thanks. I’ll give him a call. Roxie, I won’t be in tomorrow, and I’m still iffy on the next day. Mike’s a little better today, but I’m sure he won’t be able to go in tomorrow, and I’d prefer it if he’d give himself an extra day to get over his bout with the flu. But knowing Mike, he’s going to feel he has to get back to the station as soon as possible, particularly since so many of his staff are sick and from what Josh, his deputy has told me, there’s really only a skeleton crew working at the station right now. In fact, he was worried he might have to ask a couple of sheriffs from nearby counties if they could loan him some deputies. I don’t remember that ever happening before.”
“Sounds like your hands are full. Take all the time you need. As long as we have the chocolate lasagna, the customers will be happy. I’m going to have to end the call, Kelly. I need to fix dinner because Joe and I are having a date night, and we’re going out to the movies. Talk to you tomorrow.”
Murder at the Truck Stop: A Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery (Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery Series Book 16) Page 7