A Game of Cones

by Abby Collette

  Veronica’s bed wasn’t made, and from the appearance of it and the way she looked, I guess she’d been in it when we knocked.

  It was easy to see that she was down about something.

  Was she feeling bad because Zeke Reynolds was dead, or was it because she was the one that had killed him?

  “We’re sorry to hear about your coworker,” I said as she pulled out the same artist case she’d brought to the meeting two nights prior.

  “Thank you,” she said, and with that she seemed to soften somewhat to our intrusion. “Here they are.” She had pulled out the renderings and placed them on the bed. We all converged to look at them under the guise of genuine interest.

  But before we even got a good look, or at least pretended to, Maisie jumped in.

  “So where were you when it happened?”

  “When what happened?” Veronica asked. Maisie’s words had jarred her.

  “The murder.”

  With those words, Veronica’s back straightened up and she jutted out her chin. Just that quickly she had become defensive. “What kind of question is that?” Veronica asked. Her voice had changed, as had, it seemed, her attitude toward us.

  “I’m sure the police asked you the same question,” Maisie said, like she was making some point. I kept my head down pretending I was looking at the drawings on the bed, but I was keeping an eye on Veronica and any sudden moves she’d make.

  “And are you the police?” Veronica asked. She was livid now. I don’t know if she had been questioned or accused of something, because she became distrustful of us once we posed the one question after she’d just welcomed us into her room.

  “No,” Maisie said, “but this is our town and because of all of this”—she waved her hands over the drawings—“everything has really gone sour. Did you have anything to do with it?”

  “Do with what?” she said. She came over, took the pictures and stuffed them back into the portfolio. She was finished showing us anything.

  Not that we really cared anything about them.

  “This whole thing?”

  Veronica turned around and narrowed her eyes at Maisie. “I know who you are. Are you the one that threw the shoe?”

  “What shoe?” Rory whispered to me. “Threw a shoe at what?”

  “It was a whom and I’ll tell you later,” I said.

  “Maybe I should ask where you were,” Veronica said.

  We weren’t getting anywhere with Veronica. She responded to everything Maisie asked her with another question. And she was getting angrier by the second. She slammed the portfolio against the wall and I thought maybe I should reassess what I initially thought about her when we first came in.

  From the conversation, I wouldn’t think Veronica was the type of woman who cried and cowed. But she did an about-face really quickly. Exhibiting a temper.

  Detective Beverly said that might have been what happened. Zeke Reynolds was killed because someone couldn’t control their temper.

  “We apologize, Veronica, we aren’t assuming anything here, and we’re not trying to throw blame around,” I said, trying to calm her down. “We just wondered and, you know, were concerned about what the drawings depicted and, of course, being residents here, about what happened to . . . uhm . . . Zeke.”

  “Weren’t you two dating?” Maisie asked, not giving me the chance to repair the damage she’d done. “What were you crying about at the restaurant? Was he breaking up with you?”

  “What does that have to do with you?”

  I was getting nervous. I knew we’d never find out anything from her at the rate we were going, if in fact she knew anything.

  Veronica hadn’t answered one of Maisie’s questions.

  “They found my shoes in a dumpster. I had found him that night. They were all bloody,” Rory said. It was the first time she’d spoken to Veronica. She pointed at the ones lined up on the wall. “They were Louboutins. I hated to throw them away.”

  “What a waste,” Veronica said with disgust. It was the first time since Maisie had started questioning her that she made a statement in response to the conversation at hand. “How much did you pay for them?”

  “Two thousand,” Rory said. “It took me a while to save up enough out of my paychecks to afford them.”

  “Zeke wanted to quit Rhys Enterprises,” Veronica said, like that had been the question we asked her. Her kinship with another wearer of designer products seemed to open her up and calm her down. “Go back home to Florida. Leave Dallas. And I’m guessing, he wanted to quit me, too.”

  Ah, there was the answer to Maisie’s question.

  “I was lost in that alley,” Rory said. The two talking but each one telling a story not part of the same conversation. But Rory was getting answers, even if it was in a roundabout way. “Couldn’t find coffee,” she continued. “What place doesn’t have a Java Joe’s?”

  Veronica let out a chuckle.

  “Saw his body and I wanted to help.”

  “I wanted to help get him to stay,” Veronica said. “Rhys Enterprises wanted him to stay. He was good at what he did.”

  “I wish I understood their language so I could get some questions in,” Maisie, who’d walked over to me, leaned in to whisper.

  “I got in late,” Rory said. “I live in New York.”

  “So did Zeke.” She glanced at Rory. “Get in late, I mean.” Veronica puffed out some air through her nostrils. “At least that’s what I thought.” She sucked in enough air to finish vocalizing her thought. “Guess he never really made it back at all. He’d gone to check on the owners of the buildings we were purchasing. And he wanted to stop by the art gallery. He was real excited about that place. Went over there two or three times since we’ve been here. He had said since they were selling, he’d probably get a good deal on some artwork. He knew exactly what he wanted to get.”

  “They were selling,” I whispered to Maisie. “Black Market Paper.”

  “We can cross them off the list,” she said.

  “Bet wherever he is, he sure is sorry he missed that.” Veronica glanced up and out the window as if she assumed it was the way Zeke had gone. Not up. Not down. Somewhere horizontal. Just like the mall they were trying to put up.

  “He liked art?” Rory asked.

  “He did,” she said. “He loved art.”

  “Rory’s an artist,” Maisie said. “Aren’t you, Rory?”

  Veronica ignored Maisie.

  “What time did he go to check on the stores? The bookstore and the art gallery,” I asked, hoping I’d have better luck getting an answer to my question.

  Veronica shrugged. “It had to be after dinner because I never saw him again. And then he had the one holdout, he needed to talk to that owner, too. That’s why I thought he was gone for so long.”

  “Had he bought the building next to the lot where my community garden is?” Maisie asked. That was the building she wanted.

  “Those were going to be purchased as one lot. You’d have to speak to the owner about that,” Veronica said, answering one of Maisie’s questions for the first time.

  “There’s a gun missing from the Chinese restaurant where you ate,” Maisie said. Guess she figured if she was getting something out of Veronica, she should keep going. “I was wondering, did you see it?”

  “Are you insinuating I took the gun?” Veronica said, again asking Maisie a question instead of answering the one that Maisie posed, her mood changed all over again. “I think you should go.” She marched over, swung the door open and stood glaring at us.

  Well, at Maisie.

  But that didn’t deter Maisie, she was bound and determined to get another question in. “Did you say you wished he was dead?” Maisie got the question in before she got out the door.

  If looks could kill, Maisie would have been as dead as Zeke.

 
; When Rory passed by her, Veronica said, with what seemed like sincerity, “Sorry about your shoes.”

  chapter

  TWENTY-FIVE

  We sat in the car and waited in quiet reflection.

  We’d parked down the street from the Rose Cottage Inn. We hadn’t learned a thing inside of Veronica’s room, except that she felt a certain kinship with people who had had some misfortune with designer wear.

  “What do we do now?” Rory asked after we’d been waiting for a while. “Do we have any other leads?”

  “We could start questioning shop owners?” Maisie said. Her inflection at the end made it sound more like a question. Even the self-professed amateur sleuth, Maisie, didn’t quite know what to do.

  “Or,” I said, sitting up in my seat, “we could follow her.”

  “Who?” Maisie asked.

  I pointed out of the window. “Where is she going with that envelope?” I said. Veronica had a big brown envelope cradled in her arms. She had pulled her hair back in a ponytail, thrown on a pair of flats and walked out of the inn with a determined look on her face.

  “To the post office?” Rory guessed.

  “Or maybe it has the gun,” Maisie said, getting excited. “That’s what happens when you tell people you know about evidence—they try to hide it.”

  “I didn’t see that envelope when I was in her room,” I said.

  “I didn’t either,” Maisie said.

  “That does not mean she didn’t have it,” Rory said. “Maybe it was at the bottom of that messy pile of clothes hanging out of her suitcase, or under the covers on her bed.”

  “And after we left, then she remembered she needed to take it somewhere?” Maisie asked.

  “Maybe her office called and needed her to send it to them,” Rory offered. “Maybe they said they needed to have it—whatever ‘it’ is—right away.”

  “Through regular mail?” Maisie said.

  “Companies big enough to buy a whole city block, Rory, don’t use the post office when they need a document,” I said. “She could have scanned it.”

  “Maybe she didn’t have a scanner,” Rory said.

  “There’s an app for that,” I said. “Tiny Scanner. There is an app for everything.”

  “Is there really an app called Tiny Scanner?” Maisie asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “Just for things like when your office needs something right away and you’re nowhere near one.”

  “What about if she needed one of the owners of a shop to sign it?” Rory suggested.

  “Why didn’t Zeke get it signed?” Maisie asked.

  “Maybe because he’s dead,” Rory said.

  “I think no one would be signing papers in the wake of the murder, especially if they’re sending someone else down to take over.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Rory relented. “I just don’t like to jump to conclusions as big as ‘she has an envelope with the murder weapon in it’ when we don’t even know why she has it or what’s in it.” Rory looked at me. “We shouldn’t wrongly accuse people.”

  I understood that. It was exactly what had happened to my father in the last case.

  “Just because the two of you had that designer-love thing going on,” I said, “doesn’t mean we should cross her off our list of suspects. And that’s why we should follow her.”

  “I think she did it,” Maisie said. “I think she took my grandmother’s gun after their fight in the restaurant and shot him with it for wanting to break up with her.”

  “Does she always jump to conclusions like that?” Rory asked.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “she’ll work through it. Before this is over she’ll have lots of suspects for a variety of reasons.”

  “I already do,” Maisie said, patting her book bag. “It’s all in my little notebook.” Her grin turned to a frown soon after it had formed. “Look! She’s getting away.” Maisie was pointing at Veronica, who had turned the corner off of American onto Bell Street.

  I started the car and jerked the gear into drive.

  “Wait!” Rory said, holding up her hand. “We can’t follow her in a car if she’s walking. We’d have to drive, like, two miles an hour.”

  “True,” I said.

  “So let’s go catch up with her on foot,” Maisie said and started to open the car door.

  This time it was me who said it. “Wait!” I held on to Maisie so she wouldn’t bolt. “The three of us can’t go following down the street after her, she’ll see us. Everyone will see us.” I shook my head no. “It’s too obvious.”

  “What are we going to do?” Maisie asked. She was bouncing around in her seat.

  “We could just park at the corner of each street she turns onto and watch where she goes,” I offered. “Then go to the next corner, you know, and do the same thing.”

  “What if she sees us?” Rory asked.

  “Who cares,” Maisie said. “We’re not breaking any laws, we can do what we want.”

  “Stalking,” Rory said. “We’re breaking the law against stalking.”

  “We’re trying to apprehend a murderer,” Maisie said. “I think if we get caught they’ll be lenient with us.”

  Rory looked at me. “When you’re hanging out with her, do you ever feel like you might end up in jail?”

  I made a U-turn and headed in the direction we’d last seen Veronica. Maisie was pushing down on my knee trying to make me go faster, as if it were connected directly to my foot. I swatted her hand away.

  We found Veronica before she rounded the next corner onto North Main Street.

  “Hurry!” Maisie said. “She’ll lose us on North Main, it’s a busy street.”

  “Isn’t North Main the street your ice cream shop is on?” Rory asked.

  “Yep,” I said.

  Rory chuckled. “Maisie should see the streets in New York if she thinks that’s a busy street.” Rory patted Maisie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I think we’ll be able to find her.”

  I drove down to North Main and parked. “C’mon,” I said. “We walk down this street all the time. Following her won’t be obvious.”

  We piled out of the car and kept pace with Veronica at a safe distance as she walked down North Main for another block and a half and then turned the corner onto West Washington.

  As we turned the corner, I could feel it as Rory fell back, then she stopped walking altogether when Veronica turned into the two-story redbrick building.

  It was the city’s administrative office building. Attached to it was the police station where Rory had made her confession.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” Rory said.

  “We need to go in to find out what she’s doing in there,” Maisie said. “Maybe she’s going in to kill more people.”

  “Maisie. If she killed Zeke, it was a crime of passion. She doesn’t have any reason to kill anyone else.”

  “Unless she figured out we were on to her.”

  “Then maybe we shouldn’t follow her,” I said.

  Maisie’s look of determination showed me she was going to find out whether I went with her or not, and whether Veronica had gone in dead set on a killing spree or not.

  “Maisie, you go ahead, then,” I said. “Keep up with her.” Then I turned to Rory. “You don’t have to come in, but you shouldn’t stand here either, just milling around.” I bit my lip trying to think. “I know.” I smiled at the idea. “Go to the art gallery. Black Market Paper Fine Art.” I rubbed her arms up and down like my mother always did when she was trying to calm someone. “You didn’t get to go this morning after you did all your research. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, good. Art will make you feel good—you might even decide which Florida Highwaymen painting you want to buy. Keep your mind off of all this stuff for a little while. Then that’ll gi
ve us time to see what Veronica is up to and where she’s headed next.”

  Rory took in a deep breath and let it out. “Sounds good,” she said. “I did want to get back to that art gallery.” She gave a resolute nod and turned to leave. “I only hope,” she called over her shoulder, “Baraniece and Ivan haven’t heard about my shoes and the dumpster. I’d be so embarrassed.”

  “I hope so, too,” I mumbled and hustled off to find Maisie.

  When I got inside the administration offices, Maisie was nowhere in sight. I walked up and down the halls until I found her on the second floor outside the mayor’s office.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Veronica went in there.” She pointed to the mayor’s door.

  There was an outside door that said Mayor’s Office. But just inside the doors was a reception area and the mayor’s administrative assistant. His personal office was just beyond that. I remembered I’d visited the mayor once with my grandfather. He’d given a resolution for my grandmother for her funeral.

  “Did she go all the way into the mayor’s office, or is she in there waiting?”

  Maisie hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to look, but I know she can only get out through these doors.”

  “Oh,” I said and stared at the door. “Maybe she’s here on business. I’m guessing the mayor is probably part of the mall deal.”

  “Maybe she’s here to kill the mayor,” Maisie suggested.

  “That would be very bold on her part,” I said. “She has no reason to kill him, Maisie. Do you really think she’s capable of killing in cold blood?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know her, other than she seems to have mood swings. But if you hear gunshots, you’ve got your answer.”